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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:42:59 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:42:59 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/13813-0.txt b/13813-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d537181 --- /dev/null +++ b/13813-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17548 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13813 *** + +_The_ + +COMMON LAW + + + + +Works of Robert W. Chambers + + The Common Law + The Adventures of a Modest Man + Ailsa Paige + The Danger Mark + Special Messenger + The Firing Line + The Younger Set + The Fighting Chance + Some Ladies in Haste + The Tree of Heaven + The Tracer of Lost Persons + A Young Man in a Hurry + Lorraine + Maids of Paradise + Ashes of Empire + The Red Republic + Outsiders + The Green Mouse + Iole + The Reckoning + The Maid-at-Arms + Cardigan + The Haunts of Men + The Mystery of Choice + The Cambric Mask + The Maker of Moons + The King in Yellow + In Search of the Unknown + The Conspirators + A King and a Few Dukes + In the Quarter + + +For Children + + Garden-Land + Forest-Land + River-Land + Mountain-Land + Orchard-Land + Outdoor-Land + Hide and Seek in Forest-Land + + + + +_The_ + +COMMON LAW + +BY + +ROBERT W. CHAMBERS + + + +WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY + +CHARLES DANA GIBSON + + + +NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1911 + + + +[Illustration: "She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over +the keyboard." [Page 48.]] + + + +TO CHARLES DANA GIBSON + +A FRIEND OF MANY YEARS + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + PAGE + +"She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over the keyboard" +_Frontispiece_ + +"There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door" 3 + +"'Now, Miss West,' he said decisively" 13 + +"'I know perfectly well that this isn't right,'she said" 31 + +"'What's the matter with it, then?'" 40 + +"For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, looking +fixedly into space" 65 + +"Neville stood stock-still before the canvas" 81 + +"When he first tried to ring her up the wire was busy" 83 + +"'Kelly, dear, are you unhappy?'" 90 + +"He picked up a bit of white chalk ... and traced on the floor the +outline of her shoes" 93 + +"'I _will_ call you a god if I like!'" 96 + +"'If she's as much of a winner as all that,' began Cameron with +decision, 'I want to meet her immediately--'" 109 + +"'Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before luncheon'" 116 + +"'I know it is _you_. Is it?' 125 + +"A smartly dressed and very confident drummer" 136 + +"Valerie sat cross-legged on the grass ... scribbling away" 145 + +"'How well you look!' He exclaimed" 149 + +"Querida had laughed ... and returned compliment for compliment" 175 + +"'Me lord, the taxi waits!'" 179 + +Mazie Gray 183 + +"And the last rose dropped from her hand" 188-189 + +"'How perfectly horrid you can be!'she exclaimed" 199 + +"She began by balancing her check book" 224 + +"He stood before it, searching in it for any hint of that elusive and +mysterious _something_" 229 + +"'I shall have need of friends,' she said half to herself" 245 + +'"Don't do it, Valerie!'" 247 + +"Ogilvy stood looking sentimentally at the two young girls" 249 + +"Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she bent lower over +her sewing" 286 + +"She and Rita dined with him once or twice" 293 + +"Tall, transparently pale, negative in character" 297 + +"Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning simplicity of her manner +were noticed everywhere" 307 + +"'Where do you keep those pretty models, Louis?' he demanded" 315 + +"'Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting one,' said Lily" +326 + +"It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds" 338 + +The Countess d'Enver 347 + +"'May I sit here with you until she arrives? I am Stephanie Swift'" 355 + +"'John, you don't look very well,' said Valerie" 359 + +"'It is very beautiful, Louis,' said his mother, with a smile of pride" +387 + +"'You are not happy, Louis'" 390 + +"'What have you been saying to your mother?' he asked" 404 + +"'If you'll place a lump of sugar on my nose, and say "when," I'll +perform'" 409 + +"And what happier company for her than her thoughts--what tenderer +companionship than her memories?" 413 + +"She prowled around the library, luxuriously, dipping into inviting +volumes" 415 + +"'Miss West!' he exclaimed. 'How on earth did you ever find your way +into my woods?'" 417 + +"'Dearest,' he whispered, putting his arm around her, 'you must come +with us'" 427 + +"'Well, Louis, what do you know about this?'" 430 + +"The parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and shrieking from +his perch" 449 + +"'And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just men'" 453 + +"His thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie" 458 + +"Ogilvy ... began a lively fencing bout with an imaginary adversary" 479 + +"Then Rita came silently on sandalled feet to stand behind him and look +at what he had done" 483 + +"'You'd better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as well born as I +am'" 491 + +"She knelt down beside the bed and ... said whatever prayer she had in +mind" 507 + +"She was longer over her hair ... gathering it and bringing it under +discipline" 510 + +"'Yes,' she said, 'it is really great'" 521 + +"'I am scared blue. That's why I'm holding on to your hand so +desperately'" 531 + + + + +THE COMMON LAW + +CHAPTER I + + +There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door. He continued +working. After an interval the bell rang again, briefly, as though the +light touch on the electric button had lost its assurance. + +"Somebody's confidence has departed," he thought to himself, busy with a +lead-weighted string and a stick of soft charcoal wrapped in silver +foil. For a few moments he continued working, not inclined to trouble +himself to answer the door, but the hesitating timidity of a third +appeal amused him, and he walked out into the hallway and opened the +door. In the dim light a departing figure turned from the stairway: + +"Do you wish a model?" she asked in an unsteady voice. + +"No," he said, vexed. + +"Then--I beg your pardon for disturbing you--" + +"Who gave you my name?" he demanded. + +"Why--nobody--" + +"Who sent you to me? Didn't anybody send you?" + +"No." + +"But how did you get in?" + +"I--walked in." + +There was a scarcely perceptible pause; then she turned away in the dim +light of the corridor. + +"You know," he said, "models are not supposed to come here unless sent +for. It isn't done in this building." He pointed to a black and white +sign on his door which bore the words: "No Admittance." + +"I am very sorry. I didn't understand--" + +"Oh, it's all right; only, I don't see how you got up here at all. +Didn't the elevator boy question you? It's his business." + +"I didn't come up on the elevator." + +"You didn't _walk_ up!" + +"Yes." + +"Twelve stories!" + +"Both elevators happened to be in service. Besides, I was not quite +certain that models were expected to use the elevators." + +"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "you must have wanted an engagement pretty +badly." + +"Yes, I did." + +He stared: "I suppose you do, still," + +"If you would care to try me." + +"I'll take your name and address, anyhow. Twelve flights! For the love +of--oh, come in anyway and rest." + +It was dusky in the private hallway through which he preceded her, but +there was light enough in the great studio. Through the vast sheets of +glass fleecy clouds showed blue sky between. The morning was clearing. + +He went over to an ornate Louis XV table, picked up a note book, +motioned her to be seated, dropped into a chair himself, and began to +sharpen a pencil. As yet he had scarcely glanced at her, and now, while +he leisurely shaved the cedar and scraped the lead to a point, he +absent-mindedly and good-humouredly admonished her: + +"You models have your own guild, your club, your regular routine, and +it would make it much easier for us if you'd all register and quietly +wait until we send for you. + +[Illustration: "There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door."] + +"You see we painters know what we want and we know where to apply for +it. But if you all go wandering over studio buildings in search of +engagements, we won't have any leisure to employ you because it will +take all our time to answer the bell. And it will end by our not +answering it at all. And that's why it is fit and proper for good little +models to remain _chez eux_." + +He had achieved a point to his pencil. Now he opened his model book, +looked up at her with his absent smile, and remained looking. + +"Aren't you going to remove your veil?" + +"Oh--I beg your pardon!" Slender gloved fingers flew up, were nervously +busy a moment. She removed her veil and sat as though awaiting his +comment. None came. + +After a moment's pause she said: "Did you wish--my name and address?" + +He nodded, still looking intently at her. + +"Miss West," she said, calmly. He wrote it down. + +"Is that all? Just 'Miss West'?" + +"Valerie West--if that is custom--necessary." + +He wrote "Valerie West"; and, as she gave it to him, he noted her +address. + +"Head and shoulders?" he asked, quietly. + +"Yes," very confidently. + +"Figure?" + +"Yes,"--less confidently. + +"Draped or undraped?" + +When he looked up again, for an instant he thought her skin even whiter +than it had been; perhaps not, for, except the vivid lips and a +carnation tint in the cheeks, the snowy beauty of her face and neck had +already preoccupied him. + +"Do you pose undraped?" he repeated, interested. + +"I--expect to do--what is--required of--models." + +"Sensible," he commented, noting the detail in his book. "Now, Miss +West, for whom have you recently posed?" + +And, as she made no reply, he looked up amiably, balancing his pencil in +his hand and repeating the question. + +"Is it necessary to--tell you?" + +"Not at all. One usually asks that question, probably because you models +are always so everlastingly anxious to tell us--particularly when the +men for whom you have posed are more famous than the poor devil who +offers you an engagement." + +There was something very good humoured in his smile, and she strove to +smile, too, but her calmness was now all forced, and her heart was +beating very fast, and her black-gloved fingers were closing and +doubling till the hands that rested on the arms of the gilded antique +chair lay tightly clenched. + +He was leisurely writing in his note book under her name: + +"Height, medium; eyes, a dark brown; hair, thick, lustrous, and brown; +head, unusually beautiful; throat and neck, perfect--" + +He stopped writing and lifted his eyes: + +"How much of your time is taken ahead, I wonder?" + +"What?" + +"How many engagements have you? Is your time all cut up--as I fancy it +is?" + +"N-no." + +"Could you give me what time I might require?" + +"I think so." + +"What I mean, Miss West, is this: suppose that your figure is what I +have an idea it is; could you give me a lot of time ahead?" + +She remained silent so long that he had started to write, "probably +unreliable," under his notes; but, as his pencil began to move, her lips +unclosed with, a low, breathless sound that became a ghost of a voice: + +"I will do what you require of me. I meant to answer." + +"Do you mean that you are in a position to make a time contract with +me?--provided you prove to be what I need?" + +She nodded uncertainly. + +"I'm beginning the ceiling, lunettes, and panels for the Byzantine +Theatre," he added, sternly stroking his short mustache, "and under +those circumstances I suppose you know what a contract between us +means." + +She nodded again, but in her eyes was bewilderment, and in her heart, +fear. + +"Yes," she managed to say, "I think I understand." + +"Very well. I merely want to say that a model threw me down hard in the +very middle of the Bimmington's ball-room. Max Schindler put on a show, +and she put for the spot-light. She'd better stay put," he added grimly: +"she'll never have another chance in your guild." + +Then the frown vanished, and the exceedingly engaging smile glimmered in +his eyes: + +"You wouldn't do such a thing as that to me," he added; "would you, +Miss West?" + +"Oh, no," she replied, not clearly comprehending the enormity of the +Schindler recruit's behaviour. + +"And you'll stand by me if our engagement goes through?" + +"Yes, I--will try to." + +"Good business! Now, if you really are what I have an idea you are, I'll +know pretty quick whether I can use you for the Byzantine job." He rose, +walked over to a pair of closed folding doors and opened them. "You can +undress in there," he said. "I think you will find everything you need." + +For a second she sat rigid, her black-gloved hands doubled, her eyes +fastened on him as though fascinated. He had already turned and +sauntered over to one of several easels where he picked up the lump of +charcoal in its silver foil. + +The colour began to come back into her face--swifter, more swiftly: the +vast blank window with its amber curtains stared at her; she lifted her +tragic gaze and saw the sheet of glass above swimming in crystal light. +Through it clouds were dissolving in the bluest of skies; against it a +spiderweb of pendant cords drooped from the high ceiling; and she saw +the looming mystery of huge canvases beside which stepladders rose +surmounted by little crow's-nests where the graceful oval of palettes +curved, tinted with scraped brilliancy. + +"What a dreamer you are!" he called across the studio to her. "The light +is fine, now. Hadn't we better take advantage of it?" + +She managed to find her footing; contrived to rise, to move with +apparent self-possession toward the folding doors. + +"Better hurry," he said, pleasantly. "If you're what I need we might +start things now. I am all ready for the sort of figure I expect you +have." + +She stepped inside the room and became desperately busy for a moment +trying to close the doors; but either her hands had suddenly become +powerless or they shook too much; and when he turned, almost +impatiently, from his easel to see what all that rattling meant, she +shrank hastily aside into the room beyond, keeping out of his view. + +The room was charming--not like the studio, but modern and fresh and +dainty with chintz and flowered wall-paper and the graceful white +furniture of a bed-room. There was a flowered screen there, too. Behind +it stood a chair, and onto this she sank, laid her hands for an instant +against her burning face, then stooped and, scarcely knowing what she +was about, began to untie her patent-leather shoes. + +He remained standing at his easel, very busy with his string and lump of +charcoal; but after a while it occurred to him that she was taking an +annoyingly long time about a simple matter. + +"What on earth is the trouble?" he called. "Do you realise you've been +in there a quarter of an hour?" + +She made no answer. A second later he thought he heard an indistinct +sound--and it disquieted him. + +"Miss West?" + +There was no reply. + +Impatient, a little disturbed, he walked across to the folding doors; +and the same low, suppressed sound caught his ear. + +"What in the name of--" he began, walking into the room; and halted, +amazed. + +She sat all huddled together behind the screen, partly undressed, her +face hidden in her hands; and between the slender fingers tears ran down +brightly. + +"Are you ill?" he asked, anxiously. + +After a moment she slowly shook her head. + +"Then--what in the name of Mike--" + +"P-please forgive me. I--I will be ready in a in-moment--if you wouldn't +mind going out--" + +"_Are_ you ill? Answer me?" + +"N-no." + +"Has anything disturbed you so that you don't feel up to posing to-day?" + +"No.... I--am--almost ready--if you will go out--" + +He considered her, uneasy and perplexed. Then: + +"All right," he said, briefly. "Take your own time, Miss West." + +At his easel, fussing with yard-stick and crayon, he began to square off +his canvas, muttering to himself: + +"What the deuce is the matter with that girl? Nice moment to nurse +secret sorrows or blighted affections. There's always something wrong +with the best lookers.... And she is a real beauty--or I miss my guess." +He went on ruling off, measuring, grumbling, until slowly there came +over him the sense of the nearness of another person. He had not heard +her enter, but he turned around, knowing she was there. + +She stood silent, motionless, as though motion terrified her and inertia +were salvation. Her dark hair rippled to her waist; her white arms hung +limp, yet the fingers had curled till every delicate nail was pressed +deep into the pink palm. She was trying to look at him. Her face was as +white as a flower. + +"All right," he said under his breath, "you're practically faultless. I +suppose you realise it!" + +A scarcely perceptible shiver passed over her entire body, then, as he +stepped back, his keen artist's gaze narrowing, there stole over her a +delicate flush, faintly staining her from brow to ankle, transfiguring +the pallour exquisitely, enchantingly. And her small head drooped +forward, shadowed by her hair. + +"You're what I want," he said. "You're about everything I require in +colour and form and texture." + +She neither spoke nor moved as much as an eyelash. + +"Look here, Miss West," he said in a slightly excited voice, "let's go +about this thing intelligently." He swung another easel on its rollers, +displaying a sketch in soft, brilliant colours--a multitude of figures +amid a swirl of sunset-tinted clouds and patches of azure sky. + +"You're intelligent," he went on with animation,--"I saw that--somehow +or other--though you haven't said very much." He laughed, and laid his +hand on the painted canvas beside him: + +"You're a model, and it's not necessary to inform you that this Is only +a preliminary sketch. Your experience tells you that. But it is +necessary to tell you that it's the final composition. I've decided on +this arrangement for the ceiling: You see for yourself that you're +perfectly fitted to stand or sit for all these floating, drifting, +cloud-cradled goddesses. You're an inspiration in yourself--for the +perfections of Olympus!" he added, laughing, "and that's no idle +compliment. But of course other artists have often told you this +before--as though you didn't have eyes of your own I And beautiful ones +at that!" He laughed again, turned and dragged a two-storied model-stand +across the floor, tossed up one or two silk cushions, and nodded to her. + +"Don't be afraid; it's rickety but safe. It will hold us both. Are you +ready?" + +As in a dream she set one little bare foot on the steps, mounted, +balancing with arms extended and the tips of her fingers resting on his +outstretched hand. + +Standing on the steps he arranged the cushions, told her where to be +seated, how to recline, placed the wedges and blocks to support her +feet, chalked the bases, marked positions with arrows, and wedged and +blocked up her elbow. Then he threw over her a soft, white, wool robe, +swathing her from throat to feet, descended the steps, touched an +electric bell, and picking up a huge clean palette began to squeeze out +coils of colour from a dozen plump tubes. + +Presently a short, squarely built man entered. He wore a blue jumper; +there were traces of paint on it, on his large square hands, on his +square, serious face. + +"O'Hara?" + +"Sorr?" + +"We're going to begin _now_!--thank Heaven. So if you'll be kind enough +to help move forward the ceiling canvas--" + +O'Hara glanced up carelessly at the swathed and motionless figure above, +then calmly spat upon his hands and laid hold of one side of the huge +canvas indicated. The painter took the other side. + +"Now, O'Hara, careful! Back off a little!--don't let it sway! +There--that's where I want it. Get a ladder and clamp the tops. Pitch it +a little forward--more!--stop! Fix those pully ropes; I'll make things +snug below." + +[Illustration: "'Now, Miss West,' he said decisively."] + +For ten minutes they worked deftly, rapidly, making fast the great blank +canvas which had been squared and set with an enormous oval in heavy +outline. + +From her lofty eyrie she looked down at them as in a dream while they +shifted other enormous framed canvases and settled the oval one into +place. Everything below seemed to be on rubber wheels or casters, +easels, stepladders, colour cabinets, even the great base where the oval +set canvas rested. + +She looked up at the blue sky. Sparrows dropped out of the brilliant +void into unseen canons far below from whence came the softened roar of +traffic. Northward the city spread away between its rivers, glittering +under the early April sun; the Park lay like a grey and green map set +with, the irregular silver of water; beyond, the huge unfinished +cathedral loomed dark against the big white hospital of St. Luke; +farther still a lilac-tinted haze hung along the edges of the Bronx. + +"All right, O'Hara. Much obliged. I won't need you again." + +"Very good, Sorr." + +The short, broad Irishman went out with another incurious glance aloft, +and closed the outer door. + +High up on her perch she watched the man below. He calmly removed coat +and waistcoat, pulled a painter's linen blouse over his curly head, +lighted a cigarette, picked up his palette, fastened a tin cup to the +edge, filled it from a bottle, took a handful of brushes and a bunch of +cheese cloth, and began to climb up a stepladder opposite her, lugging +his sketch in the other hand. + +He fastened the little sketch to an upright and stood on the ladder +halfway up, one leg higher than the other. + +"Now, Miss West," he said decisively. + +At the sound of his voice fear again leaped through her like a flame, +burning her face as she let slip the white wool robe. + +"All right," he said. "Don't move while I'm drawing unless you have to." + +She could see him working. He seemed to be drawing with a brush, +rapidly, and with, a kind of assurance that appeared almost careless. + +At first she could make out little of the lines. They were all dark in +tint, thin, tinged with plum colour. There seemed to be no curves in +them--and at first she could not comprehend that he was drawing her +figure. But after a little while curves appeared; long delicate outlines +began to emerge as rounded surfaces in monochrome, casting definite +shadows on other surfaces. She could recognise the shape of a human +head; saw it gradually become a colourless drawing; saw shoulders, arms, +a body emerging into shadowy shape; saw the long fine limbs appear, the +slender indication of feet. + +Then flat on the cheek lay a patch of brilliant colour, another on the +mouth. A great swirl of cloud forms sprang into view high piled in a +corner of the canvas. + +And now he seemed to be eternally running up and down his ladder, +shifting it here and there across the vast white background of canvas, +drawing great meaningless lines in distant expanses of the texture, +then, always consulting her with his keen, impersonal gaze, he pushed +back his ladder, mounted, wiped the big brushes, selected others smaller +and flatter, considering her in penetrating silence between every brush, +stroke. + +She saw a face and hair growing lovely under her eyes, bathed in an +iris-tinted light; saw little exquisite flecks of colour set here and +there on the white expanse; watched all so intently, so wonderingly, +that the numbness of her body became a throbbing pain before she was +aware that she was enduring torture. + +She strove to move, gave a little gasp; and he was down from his ladder +and up on hers before her half-paralysed body had swayed to the edge of +danger. + +"Why didn't you say so?" he asked, sharply. "I can't keep track of time +when I'm working!" + +With arms and fingers that scarcely obeyed her she contrived to gather +the white wool covering around her shoulders and limbs and lay back. + +"You know," he said, "that it's foolish to act this way. I don't want to +kill you, Miss West." + +She only lowered her head amid its lovely crown of hair. + +"You know your own limits," he said, resentfully. He looked down at the +big clock: "It's a full hour. You had only to speak. Why didn't you?" + +"I--I didn't know what to say." + +"Didn't know!" He paused, astonished. Then: "Well, you felt yourself +getting numb, didn't you?" + +"Y-yes. But I thought it was--to be expected"--she blushed vividly under +his astonished gaze: "I think I had better tell you that--that this +is--the first time." + +"The first time!" + +"Yes.... I ought to have told you. I was afraid you might not want me." + +"Lord above!" he breathed. "You poor--poor little thing!" + +She began to cry silently; he saw the drops fall shining on the white +wool robe, and leaned one elbow on the ladder, watching them. After a +while they ceased, but she still held her head low, and her face was +bent in the warm shadow of her hair. + +"How could I understand?" he asked very gently. + +"I--should have told you. I was afraid." + +He said: "I'm terribly sorry. It must have been perfect torture for you +to undress--to come into the studio. If you'd only given me an idea of +how matters stood I could have made it a little easier. I'm afraid I was +brusque--taking it for granted that you were a model and knew your +business.... I'm terribly sorry." + +She lifted her head, looked at him, with the tears still clinging to her +lashes. + +"You have been very nice to me. It is all my own fault." + +He smiled. "Then it's all right, now that we understand. Isn't it?" + +"Yes." + +"You make a stunning model," he said frankly. + +"Do I? Then you will let me come again?" + +"_Let_ you!" He laughed; "I'll be more likely to beg you." + +"Oh, you won't have to," she said; "I'll come as long as you want me." + +"That is simply angelic of you. Tell me, do you wish to descend to terra +firma?" + +She glanced below, doubtfully: + +"N-no, thank you. If I could only stretch my--legs--" + +"Stretch away," he said, much amused, "but don't tumble off and break +into pieces. I like you better as you are than as an antique and +limbless Venus." + +She cautiously and daintily extended first one leg then the other under +the wool robe, then eased the cramped muscles of her back, straightening +her body and flexing her arms with a little sigh of relief. As her shy +sidelong gaze reverted to him she saw to her relief that he was not +noticing her. A slight sense of warmth, suffused her body, and she +stretched herself again, more confidently, and ventured to glance +around. + +"Speaking of terms," he said in an absent way, apparently preoccupied +with the palette which he was carefully scraping, "do you happen to know +what is the usual recompense for a model's service?" + +She said that she had heard, and added with quick diffidence that she +could not expect so much, being only a beginner. + +He polished the surface of the palette with a handful of cheese cloth: + +"Don't you think that you are worth it?" + +"How can _I_ be until I know how to pose for you?" + +"You will never have to learn how to pose, Miss West." + +"I don't know exactly what you mean." + +"I mean that some models never learn. Some know how already--you, for +example." + +She flushed slightly: "Do you really mean that?" + +"Oh, I wouldn't say so if I didn't. It's merely necessary for you to +accustom yourself to holding a pose; the rest you already know +instinctively." + +"What is the rest?" she ventured to ask. "I don't quite understand what +you see in me--" + +"Well," he said placidly, "you are beautifully made. That is +nine-tenths of the matter. Your head is set logically on your neck, and +your neck is correctly placed on your spine, and your legs and arms are +properly attached to your torso--your entire body, anatomically +speaking, is hinged, hung, supported, developed as the ideal body should +be. It's undeformed, unmarred, unspoiled, and that's partly luck, partly +inheritance, and mostly decent habits and digestion." + +She was listening intently, interested, surprised, her pink lips +slightly parted. + +"Another point," he continued; "you seem unable to move or rest +ungracefully. Few women are so built that an ungraceful motion is +impossible for them. You are one of the few. It's all a matter of +anatomy." + +She remained silent, watching him curiously. + +He said: "But the final clincher to your qualifications is that you are +intelligent. I have known pretty women," he added with, sarcasm, "who +were not what learned men would call precisely intelligent. But you are. +I showed you my sketch, indicated in a general way what I wanted, and +instinctively and intelligently you assumed the proper attitude. I +didn't have to take you by the chin and twist your head as though you +were a lay figure; I didn't have to pull you about and flex and bend and +twist you. You knew that I wanted you to look like some sort of an +ethereal immortality, deliciously relaxed, adrift in sunset clouds. And +you _were_ it--somehow or other." + +She looked down, thoughtfully, nestling to the chin in the white wool +folds. A smile, almost imperceptible, curved her lips. + +"You are making it very easy for me," she said. + +"You make it easy for yourself." + +"I was horribly afraid," she said thoughtfully. + +"I have no doubt of it." + +"Oh, you don't know--nobody can know--no man can understand the terror +of--of the first time--" + +"It must be a ghastly experience." + +"It is!--I don't mean that you have not done everything to make it +easier--but--there in the little room--my courage left me--I almost +died. I'd have run away only--I was afraid you wouldn't let me--" + +He began to laugh; she tried to, but the terror of it all was as yet too +recent. + +"At first," she said, "I was afraid I wouldn't do for a model--not +exactly afraid of my--my appearance, but because I was a novice; and I +imagined that one had to know exactly how to pose--" + +"I think," he interrupted smilingly, "that you might take the pose again +if you are rested. Go on talking; I don't mind it." + +She sat erect, loosened the white wool robe and dropped it from her with +less consciousness and effort than before. Very carefully she set her +feet on the blocks, fitting the shapely heels to the chalked outlines; +found the mark for her elbow, adjusted her slim, smooth body and looked +at him, flushing. + +"All right," he said briefly; "go ahead and talk to me." + +"Do you wish me to?" + +"Yes; I'd rather." + +"I don't know exactly what to say." + +"Say anything," he returned absently, selecting a flat brush with a very +long handle. + +She thought a moment, then, lifting her eyes: + +"I might ask you your name." + +"What? Don't you know it? Oh, Lord! Oh, Vanity! I thought you'd heard of +me." + +She blushed, confused by her ignorance and what she feared was annoyance +on his part; then perceived that he was merely amused; and her face +cleared. + +"We folk who create concrete amusement for the public always imagine +ourselves much better known to that public than we are, Miss West. It's +our little vanity--rather harmless after all. We're a pretty decent lot, +sometimes absurd, especially in our tragic moments; sometimes emotional, +usually illogical, often impulsive, frequently tender-hearted as well as +supersensitive. + +"Now it was a pleasant little vanity for me to take it for granted that +somehow you had heard of me and had climbed twelve flights of stairs for +the privilege of sitting for me." + +He laughed so frankly that the shy, responsive smile made her face +enchanting; and he coolly took advantage of it, and while exciting and +stimulating it, affixed it immortally on the exquisite creature he was +painting. + +"So you didn't climb those twelve flights solely for the privilege of +having me paint you?" + +"No," she admitted, laughingly, "I was merely going to begin at the top +and apply for work all the way down until somebody took me--or nobody +took me." + +"But why begin at the top?" + +"It is easier to bear disappointment going down," she said, seriously; +"if two or three artists had refused me on the first and second floors, +my legs would not have carried me up very far." + +"Bad logic," he commented. "We mount by experience, using our wrecked +hopes as footholds." + +"You don't know how much a girl can endure. There comes a time-after +years of steady descent--when misfortune and disappointment become +endurable; when hope deferred no longer sickens. It is in rising toward +better things that disappointments hurt most cruelly." + +He turned his head in surprise; then went on painting: + +"Your philosophy is the philosophy of submission." + +"Do you call a struggle of years, submission?" + +"But it was giving up after all--acquiescence, despondency, a _laissez +faire_ policy." + +"One may tire of fighting." + +"One may. Another may not." + +"I think you have never had to fight very hard." + +He turned his head abruptly; after a moment's silent survey of her, he +resumed his painting with a sharp, impersonal glance before every swift +and decisive brush stroke: + +"No; I have never had to fight, Miss West.... It was keen of you to +recognise it. I have never had to fight at all. Things come easily to +me--things have a habit of coming my way.... I suppose I'm not exactly +the man to lecture anybody on the art of fighting fortune. She's always +been decent to me.... Sometimes I'm afraid--I have an instinct that +she's too friendly.... And it troubles me. Do you understand what I +mean?" + +"Yes." + +He looked up at her: "Are you sure?" + +"I think so. I have been watching you painting. I never imagined +anybody could draw so swiftly, so easily--paint so surely, so +accurately--that every brush stroke could be so--so significant, so +decisive.... Is it not unusual? And is not that what is called +facility?" + +"Lord in Heaven!" he said; "what kind of a girl am I dealing with?--or +what kind of a girl is dealing so unmercifully with me?" + +"I--I didn't mean--" + +"Yes, you did. Those very lovely and wonderfully shaped eyes of yours +are not entirely for ornament. Inside that pretty head there's an +apparatus designed for thinking; and it isn't idle." + +He laughed gaily, a trifle defiantly: + +"You've said it. You've found the fly in the amber. I'm cursed with +facility. Worse still it gives me keenest pleasure to employ it. It does +scare me occasionally--has for years--makes me miserable at +intervals--fills me full of all kinds of fears and doubts." + +He turned toward her, standing on his ladder, the big palette curving up +over his left shoulder, a wet brush extended in his right hand: + +"What shall I do!" he exclaimed so earnestly that she sat up straight, +startled, forgetting her pose. "Ought I to stifle the vigour, the +energy, the restless desire that drives me to express myself--that will +not tolerate the inertia of calculation and ponderous reflection? Ought +I to check myself, consider, worry, entangle myself in psychologies, +seek for subtleties where none exist--split hairs, relapse into +introspective philosophy when my fingers itch for a lump of charcoal and +every colour on my set palette yells at me to be about my business?" + +He passed the flat tip of his wet brush through the mass of rags in his +left hand with a graceful motion like one unsheathing a sword: + +"I tell you I do the things which I do, as easily, as naturally, as +happily as any fool of a dicky-bird does his infernal twittering on an +April morning. God knows whether there's anything in my work or in his +twitter; but neither he nor I are likely to improve our output by +pondering and cogitation.... Please resume the pose." + +She did so, her dark young eyes on him; and he continued painting and +talking in his clear, rapid, decisive manner: + +"My name is Louis Neville. They call me Kelly--my friends do," he added, +laughing. "Have you ever seen any of my work?" + +"Yes." + +He laughed again: "That's more soothing. However, I suppose you saw that +big canvas of mine for the ceiling of the Metropolitan Museum's new +northwest wing. The entire town saw it." + +"Yes, I saw it." + +"Did you care for it?" + +She had cared for it too intensely to give him any adequate answer. +Never before had her sense of colour and form and beauty been so +exquisitely satisfied by the painted magic of any living painter. So +this was the man who had enveloped her, swayed her senses, whirled her +upward into his ocean of limpid light! This was the man who had done +that miracle before which, all day long, crowds of the sober, decent, +unimaginative--the solid, essentials of the nation--had lingered +fascinated! This was the man--across there on a stepladder. And he was +evidently not yet thirty; and his name was Neville and his friends +called him Kelly. + +"Yes," she said, diffidently, "I cared for it." + +"Really?" + +He caught her eye, laughed, and went on with his work. + +"The critics were savage," he said. "Lord! It hurts, too. But I've +simply got to be busy. What good would it do me to sit down and draw +casts with a thin, needle-pointed stick of hard charcoal. Not that they +say I can't draw. They admit that I can. They admit that I can paint, +too." + +He laughed, stretched his arms: + +"Draw! A blank canvas sets me mad. When I look at one I feel like +covering it with a thousand figures twisted into every intricacy and +difficulty of foreshortening! I wish I were like that Hindu god with a +dozen arms; and even then I couldn't paint fast enough to satisfy what +my eyes and brain have already evoked upon an untouched canvas.... It's +a sort of intoxication that gets hold of me; I'm perfectly cool, too, +which seems a paradox but isn't. And all the while, inside me, is a +constant, hushed kind of laughter, bubbling, which accompanies every +brush stroke with an 'I told you so!'--if you know what I'm trying to +say--_do_ you?" + +"N-not exactly. But I suppose you mean that you are self-confident." + +"Lord! Listen to this girl say in a dozen words what I'm trying to say +in a volume so that it won't scare me! Yes! That's it. I am confident. +And it's that self-confidence which sometimes scares me half to death." + +From his ladder he pointed with his brush to the preliminary sketch +that faced her, touching figure after figure: + +"I'm going to draw them in, now," he said; "first this one. Can you +catch the pose? It's going to be hard; I'll block up your heels, later; +that's it! Stand up straight, stretch as though the next moment you were +going to rise on tiptoe and float upward without an effort--" + +He was working like lightning in long, beautiful, clean outline strokes, +brushed here and there with shadow shapes and masses. And time flew at +first, then went slowly, more slowly, until it dragged at her delicate +body and set every nerve aching. + +"I--may I rest a moment?" + +"Sure thing!" he said, cordially, laying aside palette and brushes. +"Come on, Miss West, and we'll have luncheon." + +She hastily swathed herself in the wool robe. + +"Do you mean--here?" + +"Yes. There's a dumb-waiter. I'll ring for the card." + +"I'd like to," she said, "but do you think I had better?" + +"Why not?" + +"You mean--take lunch with you?" + +"Why not?" + +"Is it customary?" + +"No, it isn't." + +"Then I think I will go out to lunch somewhere--" + +"I'm not going to let you get away," he said, laughing. "You're too good +to be real; I'm worried half to death for fear that you'll vanish in a +golden cloud, or something equally futile and inconsiderate. No, I want +you to stay. You don't mind, do you?" + +He was aiding her to descend from her eyrie, her little white hand +balanced on his arm. When she set foot on the floor she looked up at him +gravely: + +"You wouldn't let me do anything that I ought not to, would you, Mr. +Kelly--I mean Mr. Neville?" she added in confusion. + +"No. Anyway I don't know what you ought or ought not to do. Luncheon is +a simple matter of routine. It's sole significance is two empty +stomachs. I suppose if you go out you _will_ come back, but--I'd rather +you'd remain." + +"Why?" + +"Well," he admitted with a laugh, "it's probably because I like to hear +myself talk to you. Besides, I've always the hope that you'll suddenly +become conversational, and that's a possibility exciting enough to give +anybody an appetite." + +"But I _have_ conversed with you," she said. + +"Only a little. What you said acted like a cocktail to inspire me for a +desire for more." + +"I am afraid that you were not named Kelly in vain." + +"You mean blarney? No, it's merely frankness. Let me get you some +bath-slippers--" + +"Oh--but if I am to lunch here--I can't do it this way!" she exclaimed +in flushed consternation. + +"Indeed you must learn to do that without embarrassment, Miss West. Tie +up your robe at the throat, tuck up your sleeves, slip your feet into a +nice pair of brand-new bath-slippers, and I'll ring for luncheon." + +"I--don't--want to--" she began; but he went away into the hall, rang, +and presently she heard the ascending clatter of a dumb-waiter. From it +he took the luncheon card and returned to where she was sitting at a +rococo table. She blushed as he laid the card before her, and would have +nothing to do with it. The result was that he did the ordering, sent the +dumb-waiter down with his scribbled memorandum, and came wandering back +with long, cool glances at his canvas and the work he had done on it. + +"I mean to make a stunning thing of it," he remarked, eying the huge +chassis critically. "All this--deviltry--whatever it is inside of +me--must come out somehow. And that canvas is the place for it." He +laughed and sat down opposite her: + +"Man is born to folly, Miss West--born full of it. I get rid of mine on +canvas. It's a safer outlet for original sin than some other ways." + +She lay back in her antique gilded chair, hands extended along the arms, +looking at him with a smile that was still shy. + +"My idea of you--of an artist--was so different," she said. + +"There are all kinds, mostly the seriously inspired and humourless +variety who makes a mystic religion of a very respectable profession. +This world is full of pale, enraptured artists; full of muscular, +thumb-smearing artists; full of dreamy weavers of visions, usually +deficient in spinal process; full of unwashed little inverts to whom the +world really resembles a kaleidoscope full of things that wiggle--" + +They began to laugh, he with a singular delight in her comprehension of +his idle, irresponsible chatter, she from sheer pleasure in listening +and looking at this man who was so different from anybody she had ever +known--and, thank God!--so young. + +And when the bell rang and the clatter announced the advent of luncheon, +she settled in her chair with a little shiver of happiness, blushing at +her capacity for it, and at her acquiescence in the strangest conditions +in which she had ever found herself in all her life,--conditions so +bizarre, so grotesque, so impossible that there was no use in trying to +consider them--alas! no point in blushing now. + +Mechanically she settled her little naked feet deep into the big +bath-slippers, tucked up her white wool sleeves to the dimpled elbow, +and surveyed the soup which he had placed before her to serve. + +"I know perfectly well that this isn't right," she said, helping him and +then herself. "But I am wondering what there is about it that isn't +right." + +"Isn't it demoralising!" he said, amused. + +"I--wonder if it is?" + +He laughed: "Such ideas are nonsense, Miss West. Listen to me: you and +I--everybody except those with whom something is physically wrong--are +born with a full and healthy capacity for demoralisation and mischief. +Mischief is only one form of energy. If lightning flies about unguided +it's likely to do somebody some damage; if it's conducted properly to a +safe terminal there's no damage done and probably a little good." + +"Your brushes are your lightning-rods?" she suggested, laughing. + +"Certainly. I only demoralise canvas. What outlet have you for your +perfectly normal deviltry?" + +"I haven't any." + +[Illustration: "'I know perfectly well that this isn't right,' she +said."] + +"Any deviltry?" + +"Any outlet." + +"You ought to have." + +"Ought I?" + +"Certainly. You are as full of restless energy as I am." + +"Oh, I don't think I am." + +"You are. Look at yourself! I never saw anybody so sound, so superbly +healthy, so"--he laughed--"adapted to dynamics. You've got to have an +outlet. Or there'll be the deuce to pay." + +She looked at her fruit salad gravely, tasted it, and glanced up at him: + +"I have never in all my life had any outlet--never even any outlook, Mr. +Neville." + +"You should have had both," he grumbled, annoyed at himself for the +interest her words had for him; uneasy, now that she had responded, yet +curious to learn something about this fair young girl, approximately his +intellectual equal, who came to his door looking for work as a model. He +thought to himself that probably it was some distressing tale which he +couldn't help, and the recital of which would do neither of them any +good. Of stories of models' lives he was tired, satiated. There was no +use encouraging her to family revelations; an easy, pleasant footing was +far more amusing to maintain. The other hinted of intimacy; and that he +had never tolerated in his employees. + +Yet, looking now across the table at her, a not unkind curiosity began +to prod him. He could easily have left matters where they were, +maintained the _status quo_ indefinitely--or as long as he needed her +services. + +"Outlets are necessary," he said, cautiously. "Otherwise we go to the +bow-wows." + +"Or--die." + +"What?" sharply. + +She looked up without a trace of self-consciousness or the least hint of +the dramatic: + +"I would die unless I had an outlet. This is almost one. At least it +gives me something to do with my life." + +"Posing?" + +"Yes." + +"I don't quite understand you." + +"Why, I only mean that--the other"--she smiled--"what you call the +bow-wows, would not have been an outlet for me.... I was a show-girl for +two months last winter; I ought to know. And I'd rather have died +than--" + +"I see," he said; "that outlet was too stupid to have attracted you." + +She nodded. "Besides, I have principles," she said, candidly. + +"Which effectually blocked that outlet. They sometimes kill, too, as you +say. Youth stifled too long means death--the death of youth at least. +Outlets mean life. The idea is to find a safe one." + +She flushed in quick, sensitive response: + +"_That_ is it; that is what I meant. Mr. Neville, I am twenty-one; and +do you know I never had a childhood? And I am simply wild for it--for +the girlhood and the playtime that I never had--" + +She checked herself, looking across at him uncertainly. + +"Go on," he nodded. + +"That is all." + +"No; tell me the rest." + +She sat with head bent, slender fingers picking at her napkin; then, +without raising her troubled eyes: + +"Life has been--curious. My mother was bedridden. My childhood and +girlhood were passed caring for her. That is all I ever did until--a +year ago," she added, her voice falling so low he could scarcely hear +her. + +"She died, then?" + +"A year ago last February." + +"You went to school. You must have made friends there." + +"I went to a public school for a year. After that mother taught me." + +"She must have been extremely cultivated." + +The girl nodded, looking absently at the cloth. Then, glancing up: + +"I wonder whether you will understand me when I tell you why I decided +to ask employment of artists." + +"I'll try to," he said, smiling. + +"It was an intense desire to be among cultivated people--if only for a +few hours. Besides, I had read about artists; and their lives seemed so +young, so gay, so worth living--please don't think me foolish and +immature, Mr. Neville--but I was so stifled, so cut off from such +people, so uninspired, so--so starved for a little gaiety--and I needed +youthful companionship--surroundings where people of my own age and +intelligence sometimes entered--and I had never had it--" + +She looked at him with a strained, wistful expression as though begging +him to understand her: + +"I couldn't remain at the theatre," she said. "I had little talent--no +chance except chances I would not tolerate; no companionship except what +I was unfitted for by education and inclination.... The men +were--impossible. There may have been girls I could have liked--but I +did not meet them. So, as I had to do something--and my years of +seclusion with mother had unfitted me for any business--for office work +or shop work--I thought that artists might care to employ me--might give +me--or let me see--be near--something of the gayer, brighter, more +pleasant and youthful side of life--" + +She ceased, bent her head thoughtfully. + +"You want--friends? Young ones--with intellects? You want to combine +these with a chance of making a decent living?" + +"Yes." She looked up candidly: "I am simply starved for it. You must +believe that when you see what I have submitted to--gone through with in +your studio"--she blushed vividly--"in a--a desperate attempt to escape +the--the loneliness, the silence and isolation"--she raised her dark +eyes--"the isolation of the poor," she said. "You don't know what that +means." + +After a moment she added, level-eyed: "For which there is supposed to be +but one outlet--if a girl is attractive." + +He rose, walked to and fro for a few moments, then, halting: + +"All memory of the initial terror and distress and uncertainty aside, +have you not enjoyed this morning, Miss West?" + +"Yes, I--have. I--you have no idea what it has meant to me." + +"It has given you an outlook, anyway." + +"Yes.... Only--I'm terrified at the idea of going through it again--with +another man--" + +He laughed, and she tried to, saying: + +"But if all artists are as kind and considerate--" + +"Plenty of 'em are more so. There are a few bounders, a moderate number +of beasts. You'll find them everywhere in the world from the purlieus to +the pulpit.... I'm going to make a contract with you. After that, +regretfully, I'll see that you meet the men who will be valuable to +you.... I wish there was some way I could box you up in a jeweller's +case so that nobody else could have you and I could find you when I +needed you!" + +She laughed shyly, extended her slim white hand for him to support her +while she mounted to her eyrie. Then, erect, delicately flushed, she let +the robe fall from her and stood looking down at him in silence. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Spring came unusually early that year. By the first of the month a few +willows and thorn bushes in the Park had turned green; then, in a single +day, the entire Park became lovely with golden bell-flowers, and the +first mowing machine clinked over the greenswards leaving a fragrance of +clipped verdure in its wake. + +Under a characteristic blue sky April unfolded its myriad leaves beneath +which robins ran over shaven lawns and purple grackle bustled busily +about, and the water fowl quacked and whistled and rushed through the +water nipping and chasing one another or, sidling alongside, began that +nodding, bowing, bobbing acquaintance preliminary to aquatic courtship. + +Many of the wild birds had mated; many were mating; amorous caterwauling +on back fences made night an inferno; pigeons cooed and bubbled and made +endless nuisances of themselves all day long. + +In lofts, offices, and shops youthful faces, whitened by the winter's +pallour, appeared at open windows gazing into the blue above, or, with, +pretty, inscrutable eyes, studied the passing throng till the lifted +eyes of youth below completed the occult circuit with a smile. + +And the spring sunshine grew hot, and sprinkling carts appeared, and the +metropolis moulted its overcoats, and the derby became a burden, and the +annual spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design remained +uncrowded. + +Neville, lunching at the Syrinx Club, carelessly caught the ball of +conversation tossed toward him and contributed his final comment: + +"Burleson--and you, Sam Ogilvy--and you, Annan, all say that the +exhibition is rotten. You say so every year; so does the majority of +people. And the majority will continue saying the same thing throughout +the coming decades as long as there are any exhibitions to damn. + +"It is the same thing in other countries. For a hundred years the +majority has pronounced every Salon rotten. And it will so continue. + +"But the facts are these: the average does not vary much. A mediocrity, +not disagreeable, always rules; supremity has been, is, and always will +be the stick in the riffle around which the little whirlpool will always +centre. This year it happens to be José Querida who stems the sparkling +mediocrity and sticks up from the bottom gravel making a fine little +swirl. Next year--or next decade it may be anybody--you, Annan, or +Sam--perhaps," he added with a slight smile, "it might be I. _Quand +même_. The exhibitions are no rottener than they have ever been; and +it's up to us to go about our business. And I'm going. Good-bye." + +He rose from the table, laid aside the remains of his cigar, nodded +good-humouredly to the others, and went out with that quick, graceful, +elastic step which was noticed by everybody and envied by many. + +"Hell," observed John Burleson, hitching his broad shoulders forward and +swallowing a goblet of claret at a single gulp, "it's all right for +Kelly Neville to shed sweetness and light over a rotten exhibition where +half the people are crowded around his own picture." + +"What a success he's having," mused Ogilvy, looking sideways out of the +window at a pretty girl across the street. + +Annan nodded: "He works hard enough for it." + +"He works all the time," grumbled Burleson, "but, does he work _hard_?" + +"A cat scrambling in a molasses barrel works hard," observed Ogilvy--"if +you see any merit in that, John." + +Burleson reared his huge frame and his symmetrical features became more +bovine than ever: + +"What the devil has a cat in a molasses barrel to do with the subject?" +he demanded. + +Annan laughed: "Poor old honest, literal John," he said, lazily. +"Listen; from my back window in the country, yesterday, I observed one +of my hens scratching her ear with her foot. How would you like to be +able to accomplish that, John?" + +"I wouldn't like it at all!" roared Burleson in serious disapproval. + +"That's because you're a sculptor and a Unitarian," said Annan, gravely. + +"My God!" shouted Burleson, "what's that got to do with a hen scratching +herself!" + +Ogilvy was too weak with laughter to continue the favourite pastime of +"touching up John"; and Burleson who, under provocation, never exhibited +any emotion except impatient wonder at the foolishness of others, +emptied his claret bottle with unruffled confidence in his own +common-sense and the futility of his friends. + +"Kelly, they say, is making a stunning lot of stuff for that Byzantine +Theatre," he said in his honest, resonant voice. "I wish to Heaven I +could paint like him." + +Annan passed his delicate hand over his pale, handsome face: "Kelly +Neville is, without exception, the most gifted man I ever knew." + +"No, the most skilful," suggested Ogilvy. "I have known more gifted men +who never became skilful." + +[Illustration: "'What's the matter with it, then?'"] + +"What hair is that you're splitting, Sam?" demanded Burleson. "Don't +you like Kelly's work?" + +"Sure I do." + +"What's the matter with it, then?" + +There was a silence. One or two men at neighbouring tables turned partly +around to listen. There seemed to be something in the very simple and +honest question of John Burleson that arrested the attention of every +man at the Syrinx Club who had heard it. Because, for the first time, +the question which every man there had silently, involuntarily asked +himself had been uttered aloud at last by John Burleson--voiced in utter +good faith and with all confidence that the answer could be only that +there was nothing whatever the matter with Louis Neville's work. And his +answer had been a universal silence. + +Clive Gail, lately admitted to the Academy said: "I have never in my +life seen or believed possible such facility as is Louis Neville's." + +"Sure thing," grunted Burleson. + +"His personal manner of doing his work--which the critics and public +term 'tek--nee--ee--eek,'" laughed Annan, "is simply gloriously +bewildering. There is a sweeping splendour to it--and _what_ colour!" + +There ensued murmured and emphatic approbation; and another silence. + +Ogilvy's dark, pleasant face was troubled when he broke the quiet, and +everybody turned toward him: + +"Then," he said, slowly, "what _is_ the matter with Neville?" + +Somebody said: "He _does_ convince you; it isn't that, is it?" + +A voice replied: "Does he convince himself?" + +"There is--there always has been something lacking in all that big, +glorious, splendid work. It only needs that one thing--whatever it is," +said Ogilvy, quietly. "Kelly is too sure, too powerfully perfect, too +omniscient--" + +"And we mortals can't stand that," commented Annan, laughing. "'Raus mit +Neville!' He paints joy and sorrow as though he'd never known either--" + +And his voice checked itself of its own instinct in the startled +silence. + +"That man, Neville, has never known the pain of work," said Gail, +deliberately. "When he has passed through it and it has made his hand +less steady, less omnipotent--" + +"That's right. We can't love a man who has never endured what we have," +said another. "No genius can hide his own immunity. That man paints with +an unscarred soul. A little hell for his--and no living painter could +stand beside him." + +"Piffle," observed John Burleson. + +Ogilvy said: "It is true, I think, that out of human suffering a quality +is distilled which affects everything one does. Those who have known +sorrow can best depict it--not perhaps most plausibly, but most +convincingly--and with fewer accessories, more reticence, and--better +taste." + +"Why do you want to paint tragedies?" demanded Burleson. + +"One need not paint them, John, but one needs to understand them to +paint anything else--needs to have lived them, perhaps, to become a +master of pictured happiness, physical or spiritual." + +"That's piffle, too!" said Burleson in his rumbling bass--"like that +damn hen you lugged in--" + +A shout of laughter relieved everybody. + +"Do you want a fellow to go and poke his head into trouble and get +himself mixed up in a tragedy so that he can paint better?" insisted +Burleson, scornfully. + +"There's usually no necessity to hunt trouble," said Annan. + +"But you say that Kelly never had any and that he'd paint better if he +had." + +"Trouble _might_ be the making of Kelly Neville," mused Ogilvy, "and it +might not. It depends, John, not on the amount and quality of the hell, +but on the man who's frying on the gridiron." + +Annan said: "Personally I don't see how Kelly _could_ paint happiness or +sorrow or wonder or fear into any of his creations any more convincingly +than he does. And yet--and yet--sometimes we love men for their +shortcomings--for the sincerity of their blunders--for the fallible +humanity in them. That after all is where love starts. The rest--what +Kelly shows us--evokes wonder, delight, awe, enthusiasm.... If he could +only make us love him--" + +"_I_ love him!" said Burleson. + +"We all are inclined to--if we could get near enough to him," said Annan +with a faint smile. + +"Him--or his work?" + +"Both, John. There's a vast amount of nonsense talked about the +necessity of separation between a man and his work--that the public has +no business with the creator, only with his creations. It is partly +true. Still, no man ever created anything in which he did not include a +sample of himself--if not what he himself is, at least what he would +like to be and what he likes and dislikes in others. No creator who +shows his work can hope to remain entirely anonymous. And--I am not yet +certain that the public has no right to make its comments on the man who +did the work as well as on the work which it is asked to judge." + +"The man is nothing; the work everything," quoted Burleson, heavily. + +"So I've heard," observed Annan, blandly. "It's rather a precious +thought, isn't it, John?" + +"Do you consider that statement to be pure piffle?" + +"Partly, dear friend. But I'm one of those nobodies who cherish a +degenerate belief that man comes first, and then his works, and that the +main idea is to get through life as happily as possible with the minimum +of inconvenience to others. Human happiness is what I venture to +consider more important than the gim-cracks created by those same +humans. Man first, then man's work, that's the order of mundane +importance to me. And if you've got to criticise the work, for God's +sake do it with your hand on the man's shoulder." + +"Our little socialist," said Ogilvy, patting Annan's blonde head. "He +wants to love everybody and everybody to love him, especially when +they're ornamental and feminine. Yes? No?" he asked, fondly coddling +Annan, who submitted with a bored air and tried to kick his shins. + +Later, standing in a chance group on the sidewalk before scattering to +their several occupations, Burleson said: + +"That's a winner of a model--that Miss West. I used her for the fountain +I'm doing for Cardemon's sunken garden. I never saw a model put together +as she is. And that's going some." + +"She's a dream," said Ogilvy--"_un pen sauvage_--no inclination to +socialism there, Annan. I know because I was considering the +advisability of bestowing upon her one of those innocent, inadvertent, +and fascinatingly chaste salutes--just to break the formality. She +wouldn't have it. I'd taken her to the theatre, too. Girls are +astonishing problems." + +"You're a joyous beast, aren't you, Sam?" observed Burleson. + +"I may be a trifle joyous. I tried to explain that to her, but she +wouldn't listen. Heaven knows my intentions are child-like. I liked her +because she's the sort of girl you can take anywhere and not queer +yourself if you collide with your fiancée--visiting relative from +'Frisco, you know. She's equipped to impersonate anything from the +younger set to the prune and pickle class." + +"She certainly is a looker," nodded Annan. + +"She can deliver the cultivated goods, too, and make a perfectly good +play at the unsophisticated intellectual," said Ogilvy with conviction. +"And it's a rare combination to find a dream that looks as real at the +Opera as it does in a lobster palace. But she's no socialist, +Harry--she'll ride in a taxi with you and sit up half the night with +you, but it's nix for getting closer, and the frozen Fownes for the +chaste embrace--that's all." + +"She's a curious kind of girl," mused Burleson;--"seems perfectly +willing to go about with you;--enjoys it like one of those +bread-and-butter objects that the department shops call a 'Miss.'" + +Annan said: "The girl is unusual, everyway. You don't know where to +place her. She's a girl without a caste. I like her. I made some +studies from her; Kelly let me." + +"Does Kelly own her?" asked Burleson, puffing out his chest. + +"He discovered her. He has first call." + +Allaire, who had come up, caught the drift of the conversation. + +"Oh, hell," he said, in his loud, careless voice, "anybody can take +Valerie West to supper. The town's full of her kind." + +"Have you taken her anywhere?" asked Annan, casually. + +Allaire flushed up: "I haven't had time." He added something which +changed the fixed smile on his symmetrical, highly coloured face into an +expression not entirely agreeable. + +"The girl's all right," said Burleson, reddening. "She's damn decent to +everybody. What are you talking about, Allaire? Kelly will put a head on +you!" + +Allaire, careless and assertive, shrugged away the rebuke with a laugh: + +"Neville is one of those professional virgins we read about in our +neatly manicured fiction. He's what is known as the original mark. +Jezebel and Potiphar's wife in combination with Salome and the daughters +of Lot couldn't disturb his confidence in them or in himself. And--in my +opinion--he paints that way, too." And he went away laughing and +swinging his athletic shoulders and twirling his cane, his hat not +mathematically straight on his handsome, curly head. + +"There strides a joyous bounder," observed Ogilvy. + +"Curious," mused Annan. "His family is oldest New York. You see 'em that +way, at times." + +Burleson, who came from New England, grunted his scorn for Manhattan, +ancient or recent, and, nodding a brusque adieu, walked away with +ponderous and powerful strides. And the others followed, presently, each +in pursuit of his own vocation, Annan and Ogilvy remaining together as +their common destination was the big new studio building which they as +well as Neville inhabited. + +Passing Neville's door they saw it still ajar, and heard laughter and a +piano and gay voices. + +"Hi!" exclaimed Ogilvy, softly, "let's assist at the festivities. +Probably we're not wanted, but does that matter, Harry?" + +"It merely adds piquancy to our indiscretion," said Annan, gravely, +following him in unannounced--"Oh, hello, Miss West! Was that you +playing? Hello, Rita"--greeting a handsome blonde young girl who +stretched out a gloved hand to them both and nodded amiably. Then she +glanced upward where, perched on his ladder, big palette curving over +his left elbow, Neville stood undisturbed by the noise below, outlining +great masses of clouds on a canvas where a celestial company, sketched +in from models, soared, floated, or hung suspended, cradled in mid air +with a vast confusion of wide wings spreading, fluttering, hovering, +beating the vast ethereal void, all in pursuit of a single exquisite +shape darting up into space. + +"What's all that, Kelly? Leda chased by swans?" asked Ogilvy, with all +the disrespect of cordial appreciation. + +"It's the classic game of follow my Leda," observed Annan. + +"Oh--oh!" exclaimed Valerie West, laughing; "such a wretched witticism, +Mr. Annan!" + +"Your composition is one magnificent vista of legs, Kelly," insisted +Ogilvy. "Put pants on those swans." + +Neville merely turned and threw an empty paint tube at him, and +continued his cloud outlining with undisturbed composure. + +"Where have you been, Rita?" asked Ogilvy, dropping into a chair. +"Nobody sees you any more." + +"That's because nobody went to the show, and that's why they took it +off," said Rita Tevis, resentfully. "I had a perfectly good part which +nobody crabbed because nobody wanted it, which suited me beautifully +because I hate to have anything that others want. Now there's nothing +doing in the millinery line and I'm ready for suggestions." + +"Dinner with me," said Ogilvy, fondly. But she turned up her dainty +nose: + +"Have _you_ anything more interesting to offer, Mr. Annan?" + +"Only my heart, hand, and Ogilvy's fortune," said Annan, regretfully. +"But I believe Archie Allaire was looking for a model of your type--" + +"I don't want to pose for Mr. Allaire," said the girl, pouting and +twirling the handle of her parasol. + +But neither Annan nor Ogilvy could use her then; and Neville had just +finished a solid week of her. + +"What I'll do," she said with decision, "will be to telephone John +Burleson. I never knew him to fail a girl in search of an engagement." + +"Isn't he a dear," said Valerie, smiling. "I adore him." + +She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over the keyboard, +listening to what was being said, watching with happy interest +everything that was going on around her, and casting an occasional +glance over her shoulder and upward to where Neville stood at work. + +"John Burleson," observed Rita, looking fixedly at Ogilvy, "is easily +the nicest man I know." + +"Help!" said Ogilvy, feebly. + +Valerie glanced across the top of the piano, laughing, while her hands +passed idly here and there over the keys: + +"Sam _can_ be very nice, Rita; but you've got to make him," she said. + +"Did you ever know a really interesting man who didn't require +watching?" inquired Annan, mildly. + +Rita surveyed him with disdain: "Plenty." + +"Don't believe it. No girl has any very enthusiastic use for a man in +whom she has perfect confidence." + +"Here's another profound observation," added Ogilvy; "when a woman loses +confidence in a man she finds a brand-new interest in him. But when a +man once really loses confidence in a woman, he never regains it, and +it's the beginning of the end. What do you think about that, Miss West?" + +Valerie, still smiling, struck a light chord or two, considering: + +"I don't know how it would be," she said, "to lose confidence in a man +you really care much about. I should think it would break a girl's +heart." + +"It doesn't," said Rita, with supreme contempt. "You become accustomed +to it." + +Valerie leaned forward against the keyboard, laughing: + +"Oh, Rita!" she said, "what a confession!" + +"You silly child," retorted Rita, "I'm twenty-two. Do you think I have +the audacity to pretend I've never been in love?" + +Ogilvy said with a grin: "How about you, Miss West?"--hoping to +embarrass her; but she only smiled gaily and continued to play a light +accompaniment to the fugitive air that was running through her head. + +"Don't be selfish with your experiences," urged Ogilvy. "Come on, Miss +West! 'Raus mit 'em!'" + +"What do you wish me to say, Sam?" + +"That you've been in love several times." + +"But I haven't." + +"Not once?" + +Her lowered face was still smiling, as her pliant fingers drifted into +Grieg's "Spring Song." + +"Not one pretty amourette to cheer those twenty-one years of yours?" +insisted Ogilvy. + +But his only answer was her lowered head and the faint smile edging her +lips, and the "Spring Song," low, clear, exquisitely persistent in the +hush. + +When the last note died out in the stillness Rita emphasised the finish +with the ferrule of her parasol and rose with decision: + +"I require several new frocks," she said, "and how am I to acquire them +unless I pose for somebody? Good-bye, Mr. Neville--bye-bye! +Sam--good-bye, Mr. Annan--good-bye, dear,"--to Valerie--"if you've +nothing better on hand drop in this evening. I've a duck of a new hat." + +The girl nodded, and, as Rita Tevis walked out, turning up her nose at +Ogilvy who opened the door for her, Valerie glanced up over her shoulder +at Neville: + +"I don't believe you are going to need me to-day after all, are you?" +she asked. + +"No," he said, absently. "I've a lot of things to do. You needn't stay, +Miss West." + +"Now will you be good!" said Annan, smiling at her with his humourous, +bantering air. And to his surprise and discomfiture he saw the least +trace of annoyance in her dark eyes. + +"Come up to the studio and have a julep," he said with hasty cordiality. +"And suppose we dine together at Arrowhead--if you've nothing else on +hand--" + +She shook her head--the movement was scarcely perceptible. The smile had +returned to her lips. + +"Won't you, Miss West?" + +"Isn't it like you to ask me when you heard Rita's invitation? You're a +fraud, Mr. Annan." + +"Are you going to sit in that boarding-house parlour and examine Rita's +new bonnet all this glorious evening?" + +She laughed: "Is there any man on earth who can prophesy what any woman +on earth is likely to do? If _you_ can, please begin." + +Ogilvy, hands clasped behind him, balancing alternately on heels and +toes, stood regarding Neville's work. Annan looked up, too, watching +Neville where he stood on the scaffolding, busy as always, with the only +recreation he cared anything for--work. + +"I wish to Heaven I were infected with the bacillus of industry," broke +out Ogilvy. "I never come into this place but I see Kelly busily doing +something." + +"You're an inhuman sort of brute, Kelly!" added Annan. "What do you work +that way for--money? If I had my way I'd spend three quarters of my time +shooting and fishing and one quarter painting--and I'm as devotedly +stuck on art as any healthy man ought to be." + +"Art's a bum mistress if she makes you hustle like that!" commented +Ogilvy. "Shake her, Kelly. She's a wampire mit a sarpint's tongue!" + +"The worst of Kelly is that he'd _rather_ paint," said Annan, +hopelessly. "It's sufficient to sicken the proverbial cat." + +"Get a machine and take us all out to Woodmanston?" suggested Ogilvy. +"It's a bee--u--tiful day, dearie!" + +"Get out of here!" retorted Neville, painting composedly. + +"Your industry saddens us," insisted Annan. "It's only in mediocrity +that you encounter industry. Genius frivols; talent takes numerous +vacations on itself--" + +"And at its own expense," added Valerie, demurely. "I knew a man who +couldn't finish his 'Spring Academy' in time: and he had all winter to +finish it. But he didn't. Did you ever hear about that man, Sam?" + +"Me," said Ogilvy, bowing with hand on heart. "And with that cruel jab +from _you_--false fair one--I'll continue heavenward in the elevator. +Come on, Harry." + +Annan took an elaborate farewell of Valerie which she met in the same +mock-serious manner; then she waved a gay and dainty adieu to Ogilvy, +and reseated herself after their departure. But this time she settled +down into a great armchair facing Neville and his canvas, and lay back +extending her arms and resting the back of her head on the cushions. + +Whether or not Neville was conscious of her presence below she could not +determine, so preoccupied did he appear to be with the work in hand. She +lay there in the pleasant, mellow light of the great windows, watching +him, at first intently, then, soothed by the soft spring wind that +fitfully stirred the hair at her temples, she relaxed her attention, +idly contented, happy without any particular reason. + +Now and then a pigeon flashed by the windows, sheering away high above +the sunlit city. Once, wind-caught, or wandering into unaccustomed +heights, high in the blue a white butterfly glimmered, still mounting to +infinite altitudes, fluttering, breeze-blown, a silvery speck adrift. + +"Like a poor soul aspiring," she thought listlessly, watching with dark +eyes over which the lids dropped lazily at moments, only to lift again +as her gaze reverted to the man above. + +She thought about him, too; she usually did--about his niceness to her, +his never-to-be-forgotten kindness; her own gratitude to him for her +never-to-be-forgotten initiation. + +It seemed scarcely possible that two months had passed since her +novitiate--that two months ago she still knew nothing of the people, the +friendships, the interest, the surcease from loneliness and hopeless +apathy, that these new conditions had brought to her. + +Had she known Louis Neville only two months? Did all this new buoyancy +date from two short months' experience--this quickened interest in life, +this happy development of intelligence so long starved, this unfolding +of youth in the atmosphere of youth? She found it difficult to realise, +lying there so contentedly, so happily, following, with an interest and +appreciation always developing, the progress of the work. + +Already, to herself, she could interpret much that she saw in this new +world. Cant phrases, bits of studio lore, artists' patter, their ways +of looking at things, their manners of expression, their mannerisms, +their little vanities, their ideas, ideals, aspirations, were fast +becoming familiar to her. Also she was beginning to notice and secretly +to reflect on their generic characteristics--their profoundly serious +convictions concerning themselves and their art modified by surface +individualities; their composite lack of humour--exceptions like Ogilvy +and Annan, and even Neville only proving the rule; their simplicity, +running the entire gamut from candour to stupidity; their patience which +was half courage, half a capacity for suffering; and, in the latter, +more woman-like than like a man. + +Simplicity, courage, lack of humour--those appeared to be the +fundamentals characterising the ensemble--supplemented by the extremes +of restless intelligence and grim conservatism. + +And the whole fabric seemed to be founded not on industry but on impulse +born of sentiment. In this new, busy, inspiring, delightful world logic +became a synthesis erected upon some inceptive absurdity, carried +solemnly to a picturesque and erroneous conclusion. + +She had been aware, in stage folk, of the tendency to sentimental +impulse; and she again discovered it in this new world, in a form +slightly modified by the higher average of reasoning power. In both +professions the heart played the dominant part in creator and creation. +The exceptions to the rule were the few in either profession who might +be called distinguished. + +Neville had once said to her: "Nothing that amounts to anything in art +is ever done accidentally or merely because the person who creates it +loves to do it." + +She was thinking of this, now, as she lay there watching him. + +He had added: "Enthusiasm is excellent while you're dressing for +breakfast; but good pictures are painted in cold blood. Go out into the +back yard and yell your appreciation of the universe if you want to; but +the studio is a silent place; and a blank canvas a mathematical +proposition." + +Could this be true? Was all the beauty, all the joyous charm, all the +splendour of shape and colour the result of working out a mathematical +proposition? Was this exquisite surety of touch and handling, of mass +and line composition, all these lovely depths and vast ethereal spaces +superbly peopled, merely the logical result of solving that problem? Was +it all clear, limpid, steady, nerveless intelligence; and was nothing +due to the chance and hazard of inspiration? + +Gladys, the cat, walked in, gently flourishing her tail, hesitated, +looked around with narrowing green-jewelled eyes, and, ignoring the +whispered invitation and the outstretched hand, leaped lightly to a +chair and settled down on a silken cushion, paws and tail folded under +her jet-black body. + +Valerie reproached her in a whisper, reminding her of past caresses and +attentions, but the cat only blinked at her pleasantly. + +On a low revolving stand at Valerie's elbow lay a large lump of green +modelling wax. This wax Neville sometimes used to fashion, with his +facile hands, little figures sketched from his models. These he arranged +in groups as though to verify the composition on the canvas before him, +and this work and the pliant material which he employed had for her a +particular and never-flagging interest. And now, without thinking, +purely instinctively, she leaned forward and laid her hand caressingly +on the lump of wax. There was something about the yielding, velvety +texture that fascinated her, as though in her slim fingers some delicate +nerves were responding to the pleasure of contact. + +For a while she moulded little cubes and pyramids, pinched out +bread-crumb chickens and pigs and cats. + +"_What_ do you think of this little wax kitten, Gladys?" she whispered, +holding it up for the cat's inspection. Gladys regarded it without +interest and resumed her pleasant contemplation of space. + +Valerie, elbows on knees, seated at the revolving stool with all the +naïve absorption of a child constructing mud pies, began to make out of +the fascinating green wax an image of Gladys dozing. + +Time fled away in the studio; intent, absorbed, she pinched little +morsels of wax from the lump and pushed them into place with a snowy, +pink-tipped thumb, or with the delicate nail of her forefinger removed +superfluous material. + +Stepping noiselessly so not to disturb Neville she made frequent +journeys around to the other side of the cat, sometimes passing +sensitive fingers over silky feline contours, which, research inspired a +loud purring. + +As she worked sometimes she talked under her breath to herself, to +Gladys, to Neville: + +"I am making a perfectly good cat, Valerie," she whispered. "Gladys, +aren't you a little bit flattered? I suppose you think it's honour +enough to belong to that man up there on the scaffolding. I imagine it +is; he is a very wonderful man, Gladys, very high above us in intellect +as he is in body. He doesn't pay very much attention to you and me down +here on the floor; he's just satisfied to own us and be amiable to us +when he thinks about us. + +"I don't mean that in any critical or reproachful sense, Gladys. Don't +you dare think I do--not for one moment! Do you hear me? Well then! If +you are stupid enough to misunderstand me I'll put a perfectly horrid +pair of ears on you!... I've made a very dainty pair of ears for you, +dear; I only said that to frighten you. You and I like that man up +there--tremendously, don't we? And we're very grateful to him for--for a +great many happy moments--and for his unfailing kindness and +consideration.... You don't mind posing for me; _you_ wear fur. But I +didn't wear anything, dear, when I first sat to him as a novice; and, +kitty, I was a fortunate girl in my choice of the man before whom I was +to make a début. And I--" + +The rattle of brushes and the creak of the scaffolding arrested her: +Neville was coming down for a view of his work. + +"Hello," he said, pleasantly, noticing for the first time that she was +still in the studio. + +"Have I disturbed you, Mr. Neville?" + +"Not a bit. You never do any more than does Gladys." He glanced absently +at the cat, then, facing his canvas, backed away from it, palette in +hand. + +For ten minutes he examined his work, shifting his position from minute +to minute, until the change of positions brought him backed up beside +Valerie, and his thigh brushing her arm made him aware of her. Glancing +down with smiling apology his eye fell on the wax, and was arrested. +Then he bent over the work she had done, examining it, twirled the top +of the stool, and inspected it carefully from every side. + +"Have you ever studied modelling, Miss West?" + +"No," she said, blushing, "you must know that I haven't." And looked up +expecting to see laughter in his eyes; and saw only the curiosity of +interest. + +"How did you know how to start this?" + +"I have often watched you." + +"Is that all the instruction you've ever had in modelling?" + +She could not quite bring herself to believe in his pleasant +seriousness: + +"Y-yes," she admitted, "except when I have watched John Burleson. +But--this is simply rotten--childish--isn't it?" + +"No," he said in a matter of fact tone, "it's interesting." + +"Do you really think--mean--" + +He looked down at her, considering her while the smile that she knew and +liked best and thought best suited to his face, began to glimmer; that +amused, boyish, bantering smile hinting of experience and wisdom +delightfully beyond her. + +"I really think that you're a very unusual girl," he said. "I don't want +to spoil you by telling you so every minute." + +"You don't spoil me by telling me so. Sometimes I think you may spoil me +by not telling me so." + +"Miss West! You're spoiled already! I'm throwing bouquets at you every +minute! You're about the only girl who ever sat for me with whom I talk +unreservedly and incessantly." + +"Really, Mr. Neville?" + +"Yes--really, Mr. Neville," he repeated, laughing--"you bad, spoiled +little beauty! You know devilish well that if there's any intellectual +space between you and me it's purely a matter of circumstance and +opportunity." + +"Do you think me silly enough to believe that!" + +"I think you clever enough to know it without my telling you." + +"I wish you wouldn't say that." + +She was still smiling but in the depths of her eyes he felt that the +smile was not genuine. + +"See here," he said, "I don't want you to think that I don't mean what I +say. I do. You're as intelligent a woman as I ever knew. I've known +girls more cultivated in general and in particular, but, I say again, +that is the hazard of circumstance. Is all clear between us now, Miss +West?" + +"Yes." + +He held out his hand; she glanced up, smiled, and laid her own in it. +And they shook hands heartily. + +"Good business," he said with satisfaction. "Don't ever let anything +threaten our very charming accord. The moment you don't approve of +anything I say or do come straight to me and complain--and don't let me +divine it in your eyes, Miss West." + +"Did you?" + +"Certainly I did. Your lips were smiling but in your eyes was something +that did not corroborate your lips." + +"Yes.... But how could you see it?" + +"After all," he said, "it's part of my business to notice such things." +He seated himself on the arm of her chair and bent over the wax model, +his shoulder against hers. And the chance contact meant nothing to +either: but what he said about men and things in the world was +inevitably arousing the intelligence in her to a gratitude, a happiness, +at first timid, then stirring subtly, tremulously, toward passionate +response. + +No man can do that to a girl and leave the higher side of her +indifferent or unresponsive. What he had aroused--what he was awakening +every day in her was what he must some day reckon with. Loyalty is born +of the spirit, devotion of the mind; and spiritual intelligence arouses +fiercer passions than the sensuous emotions born of the flesh. + +Leaning there above the table, shoulder to shoulder, his light finger +tips caressing the wax model which she had begun, he told her clearly, +and with the engaging candour which she already had begun to adore in +him, all about what she had achieved in the interesting trifle before +them--explained to her wherein she had failed not only to accomplish but +to see correctly--wherein she had seen clearly and wrought +intelligently. + +He might have been talking to a brother sculptor--and therein lay the +fascination of this man--for her--that, and the pains he always took +with her--which courtesy was only part of him--part of the wonder of +this man; of his unerring goodness in all things to her. + +Listening, absorbed in all that he said she still was conscious of a +parallel thread of thought accompanying--a tiny filament of innocent +praise in her heart that chance had given her this man to listen to and +to heed and talk to and to think about. + +"I won't touch what you've done, Miss West," he said, smilingly; "but +just take a pinch of wax--_that_ way!--and accent that relaxed flank +muscle!... Don't be afraid; watch the shape of the shadows.... That's +it! Do you see? Never be afraid of dealing vigorously with your subject. +Every modification of the first vigorous touch is bound to weaken and +sometimes to emasculate.... I don't mean for you to parade crudity and +bunches of exaggerated muscle as an ultimate expression of vigour. Only +the devotee of the obvious is satisfied with that sort of result; and +our exhibitions reek with them. But there is no reason why the satin +skin and smooth contour of a naked child shouldn't express virility and +vigour--no reason why the flawless delicacy of Venus herself should not, +if necessary, express violence unexaggerated and without either +distortion or lack of finish." + +He glanced across at the dozing cat: + +"Under that silky black fur there are bones and fibres and muscles. +Don't exaggerate them and call your task finished; merely remember +always that they're there framing and padding the velvet skin. More is +done by skilful inference than by parading every abstract fact you know +and translating the sum-accumulative of your knowledge into the +over-accented concrete. Reticence is a kind of vigour. It can even +approach violence. The mentally garrulous kill their own inspiration. +Inadequacy loves to lump things and gamble with chance for effective +results." + +He rose, walked over and examined Gladys, touched her contemplatively +with the button of his mahl-stick, and listened absently to her +responsive purr. Then, palette still in hand, he sat down opposite +Valerie, gazing at her in that detached manner which some mistook for +indifference: + +"There are, I think, two reasons for failure in art," he said, "excess +of creative emotion, excess of psychological hair-splitting. The one +produces the normal and lovable failures which, decorate our art +exhibitions; the other results in those curious products which amuse the +public to good-humoured contempt--I mean those pictures full of violent +colour laid on in streaks, in great sweeps, in patches, in dots. The +painter has turned half theorist, half scientist; the theories of the +juxtaposition of colour, and the science of complementary colours, +engrosses his attention. He is no longer an artist; he is a chemist and +physiologist and an artisan. + +"Every now and then there is a revolt from the accepted order of things. +New groups form, sometimes damning what they call the artificial +lighting of the studio, sometimes exclaiming against the carnival of +harmonious or crude colour generally known as 'plein air.' +Impressionists scorn the classic, and _vice versa_. But, Miss West, as a +matter of fact, all schools are as good as all religions. + +"To speak of studio lighting as artificial and unworthy is silly. It is +pretty hard to find anything really artificial in the world, indoors, or +out, or even in the glare of the footlights. I think the main idea is +that a man should prefer doing what the public calls his work, to any +other form of recreation--should use enough reason--not too much--enough +inspiration--but watching himself at every brush stroke; and finally +should feel physically unfettered--that is, have the _a b c_, the +drudgery, the artisan's part of the work at his finger tips. Then, if he +does what makes him happy, whether in a spirit of realism or +romanticism, he can safely leave the rest to Fate." + +He looked at her, curiously for a moment, then a smile wholly +involuntary broke over his face: + +"Lord! What a lecture! And you listened to all that nonsense like an +angel!" + +The dreamy absorption died out in her eyes; she clasped her hands on her +knee, looked down, then up at him almost irritably: + +"Please go on, Mr. Neville." + +"Not much. I've a few stunts to execute aloft there--" + +He contemplated her in amused silence, which became more serious: + +"You have talent, Miss West. Artistic talent is not unusual among +Americans, but patience is. That is one reason why talent accomplishes +so little in this country." + +"Isn't another reason that patience is too expensive to be indulged in +by talent?" + +He laughed: "That is perfectly true. The majority of us have to make a +living before we know how." + +"Did you have to do that?" + +"No, I didn't." + +"You were fortunate?" + +"Yes. I was--perhaps.... I'm not sure." + +She touched the lump of green wax gravely, absently. He remained looking +at her, busy with his own reflections. + +"Would you like to have a chance to study?" he asked. + +"Study? What?" + +"Sculpture--any old thing! Would you like to try? + +"What chance have I for such expensive amusements as study?" she +laughed. + +"I'll be responsible for you." + +"_You_?"--in blank surprise. + +"I'll attend to the material part of it, if you like. I'll see that you +can afford the--patience." + +"Mr. Neville, I don't understand." + +"What don't you understand?" he asked, lazily humorous. + +"Do you mean--that you offer me--an opportunity--" + +"Yes; an opportunity to exercise patience. It's an offer, Miss West. But +I'm perfectly certain you won't take it." + +For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, looking fixedly +into space. Then she stirred, glanced up, blushed vividly, sprang to her +feet and crossed to where he sat. + +"I've been considering your offer," she said, striving to speak without +effort. + +"I'll bet you won't accept it!" + +"You win your wager, Mr. Neville." + +"I wonder why?" he said with his bantering smile: "but I think I know. +Talent in America is seldom intellectually ambitious." + +To his amazement and vexation tears sprang to her eyes; she said, biting +her lower lip: "My ambition is humble. I care--more than anything in the +world--to be of use to--to your career." + +Taken completely by surprise he said, "Nonsense," and rose to confront +her where she stood wholly charming in her nervous, flushed emotion: + +"It isn't nonsense, Mr. Neville; it is my happiness. + +"I don't believe you realise what your career means to me. I would not +willingly consider anything that might interrupt my humble part in +it--in this happy companionship.... After all, happiness is the +essential. You said so once. I am happier here than I possibly could be +in an isolation where I might perhaps study--learn--" Her voice broke +deliciously as he met her gaze in cool, curious disapproval. + +[Illustration: "For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, +looking fixedly into space."] + +"You _can't_ understand it!" she said, flushing almost fiercely. "You +can't comprehend what the daily intimacy with a man of your sort has +done--is doing for me every moment of my life. How can you understand? +You, who have your own place in the world--in life--in this country--in +this city! You, who have family, friends, clubs, your social life in +city and country, and abroad. Life is very full for you--has always +been. But--what I am now learning in contact with you and with the +people to whom you have introduced me--is utterly new to +me--and--very--pleasant.... I have tasted it; I cannot live without it +now." + +She drew a deep quick breath, then, looking up at him with a tremulous +smile: + +"What would you think if I told you that, until Sam took me, I had never +even been inside a theatre except when I was engaged by Schindler? It is +perfectly true. Mother did not approve. Until I went with John Burleson +I had never ever been in a restaurant; until I was engaged by Schindler +I had never seen the city lighted at night--I mean where the theatres +and cafés and hotels are.... And, Mr. Neville, until I came here to you, +I had never had an opportunity to talk to a cultivated man of my own +age--I mean the kind of man you are." + +She dropped her eyes, considering, while the smile still played faintly +with the edges of her lips; then: + +"Is it very hard for you to realise that what is an ordinary matter of +course to the young of my age is, to me, all a delightful novelty?--that +I am enjoying to a perfectly heavenly degree what to you and others may +be commonplace and uninteresting? All I ask is to be permitted to enjoy +it while I am still young enough. I--I _must_! I really need it, Mr. +Neville. It seems, at moments, as if I could never have enough--after +the years--where I had--nothing." + +Neville had begun walking to and fro in front of her with the quick, +decisive step that characterised his movements; but his restlessness +seemed only to emphasise the attention he concentrated on every word she +spoke; and, though he merely glanced at her from moment to moment, she +was conscious that the man now understood, and was responding more +directly to her than ever before in their brief and superficial +acquaintance. + +"I don't want to go away and study," she said. "It is perfectly dear of +you to offer it--I--there is no use in trying to thank you--" + +"Valerie!" + +"What!" she said, startled by his use of her given name for the first +time in their acquaintance. + +He said, smilingly grave: "You didn't think there was a string attached +to anything I offered?" + +"A--a string?" + +"Did you?" + +She blushed hotly: "No, of course not." + +"It's all right then," he nodded; but she began to think of that new +idea in a confused, startled, helpless sort of way. + +"How could you think _that_ of me?" she faltered. + +"I didn't--" + +"You--it must have been in your mind--" + +"I wanted to be sure it wasn't in _yours_--" + +"You ought to have known! Haven't you learned anything at all about me +in two months?" + +"Do you think any man can learn anything about anybody in two months?" +he asked, lightly. + +"Yes, I do. I've learned a good deal about you--enough, anyway, not to +attribute anything--unworthy--" + +"You silly child; you've learned nothing about me if that's what you +think you've discovered." + +"I _have_ discovered it!" she retorted, tremulously; "I've learned +horrid things about other men, too--and they're not like you!" + +"Valerie! Valerie! I'm precisely like all the rest--my selfishness is a +little more concentrated than theirs, that's the only difference. For +God's sake don't make a god of me." + +She sat down on the head of the sofa, looking straight at him, pretty +head lowered a trifle so that her gaze was accented by the lovely level +of her brows: + +"I've long wanted to have a thorough talk with you," she said. "Have you +got time now?" + +He hesitated, controlling his secret amusement under an anxious gravity +as he consulted the clock. + +"Suppose you give me an hour on those figures up there? The light will +be too poor to work by in another hour. Then we'll have tea and +'thorough talks.'" + +"All right," she said, calmly. + +He picked up palette and mahl-stick and mounted to his perch on the +scaffolding; she walked slowly into the farther room, stood motionless a +moment, then raising both arms she began to unhook the collar of her +gown. + +When she was ready she stepped into her sandals, threw the white wool +robe over her body, and tossed one end across her bare shoulder. + +He descended, aided her aloft to her own eyrie, walked across the +planking to his own, and resumed palette and brushes in excellent humour +with himself, talking gaily while he was working: + +"I'm devoured by curiosity to know what that 'thorough talk' of yours is +going to be about. You and I, in our briefly connected careers, have +discussed every subject on earth, gravely or flippantly, and what in the +world this 'thorough talk' is going to resemble is beyond me--" + +"It might have to do with your lack of ceremony--a few minutes ago," she +said, laughing at him. + +"My--what?" + +"Lack of ceremony. You called me Valerie." + +"You can easily revenge that presumption, you know." + +"I think I will--Kelly." + +He smiled as he painted: + +"I don't know why the devil they call me Kelly," he mused. "No episode +that I ever heard of is responsible for that Milesian misnomer. _Quand +même_! It sounds prettier from you than it ever did before. I'd rather +hear you call me Kelly than Caruso sing my name as Algernon." + +"Shall I really call you Kelly?" + +"Sure thing! Why not?" + +"I don't know. You're rather celebrated--to have a girl call you Kelly." + +He puffed out his chest in pretence of pompous satisfaction: + +"True, child. Good men are scarce--but the good and great are too +nearly extinct for such familiarity. Call me _Mr._ Kelly." + +"I won't. You are only a big boy, anyway--Louis Neville--and sometimes I +shall call you Kelly, and sometimes Louis, and very occasionally Mr. +Neville." + +"All right," he said, absently--"only hold that distractingly ornamental +head and those incomparable shoulders a trifle more steady, please--rest +solidly on the left leg--let the right hip fall into its natural +position--_that's_ it. Thank you." + +Holding the pose her eyes wandered from him and his canvas to the +evening tinted clouds already edged with deeper gold. Through the sheet +of glass above she saw a shred of white fleece in mid-heaven turn to a +pale pink. + +"I wonder why you asked me to tea?" she mused. + +"What?" He turned around to look at her. + +"You never before asked me to do such a thing," she said, candidly. +"You're an absent-minded man, Mr. Neville." + +"It never occurred to me," he retorted, amused. "Tea is weak-minded." + +"It occurred to me. That's what part of my 'thorough talk' is to be +about; your carelessness in noticing me except professionally." + +He continued working, rapidly now; and it seemed to her as though +something--a hint of the sombre--had come into his face--nothing +definite--but the smile was no longer there, and the brows were slightly +knitted. + +Later he glanced up impatiently at the sky: the summer clouds wore a +deeper rose and gold. + +"We'd better have our foolish tea," he said, abruptly, driving his +brushes into a bowl of black soap and laying aside his palette for his +servant to clean later. + +For a while, not noticing her, he fussed about his canvas, using a knife +here, a rag there, passing to and fro across the scaffolding, oblivious +of the flight of time, until at length the waning light began to +prophesy dusk, and he came to himself with a guilty start. + +Below, in the studio, Valerie sat, fully dressed except for hat and +gloves, head resting in the padded depths of an armchair, watching him +in silence. + +"I declare," he said, looking down at her contritely, "I never meant to +keep you all this time. Good Lord! Have I been puttering up here for an +hour and a half! It's nearly eight o'clock! Why on earth didn't you +speak to me, Valerie?" + +"It's a braver girl than I am who'll venture to interrupt you at work, +Kelly," she said, laughingly. "I'm a little afraid of you." + +"Nonsense! I wasn't doing anything. My Heaven!--_can_ it be eight +o'clock?" + +"It is.... You _said_ we were going to have tea." + +"Tea! Child, you can't have tea at eight o'clock! I'm terribly +sorry"--he came down the ladder, vexed with himself, wiping the paint +from his hands with a bunch of cheese cloth--"I'm humiliated and +ashamed, Miss West. Wait a moment--" + +He walked hastily through the next room into his small suite of +apartments, washed his hands, changed his painter's linen blouse for his +street coat, and came back into the dim studio. + +"I'm really sorry, Valerie," he said. "It was rotten rude of me." + +"So am I sorry. It's absurd, but I feel like a perfectly unreasonable +kid about it.... You never before asked me--and I--wanted to--stay--so +much--" + +"Why didn't you remind me, you foolish child!" + +"Somehow I couldn't.... I wanted _you_ to think of it." + +"Well, I'm a chump...." He stood before her in the dim light; she still +reclined in the armchair, not looking at him, one arm crook'd over her +head and the fingers closed tightly over the rosy palm which was turned +outward, resting across her forehead. + +For a few moments neither spoke; then: + +"I'm horridly lonely to-night," she said, abruptly. + +"Why, Valerie! What a--an unusual--" + +"I want to talk to you.... I suppose you are too hungry to want to talk +now." + +"N-no, I'm not." He began to laugh: "What's the matter, Valerie? What is +on your mind? Have you any serious fidgets, or are you just a spoiled, +pretty girl?" + +"Spoiled, Kelly. There's nothing really the matter. I just felt +like--what you asked me to do--" + +She jumped up suddenly, biting her lips with vexation: "I don't know +what I'm saying--except that it's rather rude of me--and I've got to go +home. Good-night--I think my hat is in the dressing-room--" + +He stood uneasily watching her pin it before the mirror; he could just +see her profile and the slender, busy hands white in the dusk. + +When she returned, slowly drawing on her long gloves, she said to him +with composure: + +"Some day ask me again. I really would like it--if you would." + +"Do you really think that you could stand the excitement of taking a +cup of weak tea with me," he said, jestingly--"after all those jolly +dinners and suppers and theatres and motor parties that I hear about?" + +She nodded and held out her hand with decision: + +"Good-night." + +He retained her hand a moment, not meaning to--not really intending to +ask her what he did ask her. And she raised her velvet eyes gravely: + +"Do you really want me?" + +"Yes.... I don't know why I never asked you before--" + +"It was absurd not to," she said, impulsively; "I'd have gone anywhere +with you the first day I ever knew you! Besides, I dress well enough for +you not to be ashamed of me." + +He began to laugh: "Valerie, you funny little thing! You funny, funny +little thing!" + +"Not in the slightest," she retorted, sedately. "I'm having a heavenly +time for the first time in my life, and I have so wanted you to be part +of it ... of course you _are_ part of it," she added, hastily--"most of +it! I only meant that I--I'd like to be a little in your other +life--have you enter mine, a little--just so I can remember, in years to +come, an evening with you now and then--to see things going on around +us--to hear what you think of things that we see together.... Because, +with you, I feel so divinely free, so unembarrassed, so entirely off my +guard.... I don't mean to say that I don't have a splendid time with the +others even when I have to watch them; I do--and even the watching is +fun--" + +The child-like audacity and laughing frankness, the confidence of her +attitude toward him were delightfully refreshing. He looked into her +pretty, eager, engaging face, smiling, captivated. + +"Valerie," he said, "tell me something--will you?" + +"Yes, if I can." + +"I'm more or less of a painting machine. I've made myself so, +deliberately--to the exclusion of other interests. I wonder"--he looked +at her musingly--"whether I'm carrying it too far for my own good." + +"I don't understand." + +"I mean--is there anything machine-made about my work? Does it +lack--does it lack anything?" + +"No!" she said, indignantly loyal. "Why do you ask me that?" + +"People--some people say it does lack--a certain quality." + +She said with supreme contempt: "You must not believe them. I also hear +things--and I know it is an unworthy jealousy that--" + +"What have you heard?" he interrupted. + +"Absurdities. I don't wish even to think of them--" + +"I wish you to. Please. Such things are sometimes significant." + +"But--is there any significance in what a few envious artists say--or a +few silly models--" + +"More significance in what they say than in a whole chorus of +professional critics." + +"Are you serious?" she asked, astonished. + +"Perfectly. Without naming anybody or betraying any confidence, what +have you heard in criticism of my work? It's from models and brother +painters that the real truth comes--usually distorted, half told, +maliciously hinted sometimes--but usually the germ of truth is to be +found in what they say, however they may choose to say it." + +Valerie leaned back against the door, hands clasped behind her, eyebrows +bent slightly inward in an unwilling effort to remember. + +Finally she said impatiently: "They don't know what they're talking +about. They all say, substantially, the same thing--" + +"What is that thing?" + +"Why--oh, it's too silly to repeat--but they say there is nothing +lovable about your work--that it's inhumanly and coldly +perfect--too--too--" she flushed and laughed uncertainly--"'too damn +omniscient' is what one celebrated man said. And I could have boxed his +large, thin, celebrated ears for him!" + +"Go on," he nodded; "what else do they say?" + +"Nothing. That's all they can find to say--all they dare say. You know +what they are--what other men are--and some of the younger girls, too. +Not that I don't like them--and they are very sweet to me--only they're +not like you--" + +"They're more human. Is that it, Valerie?" + +"No, I don't mean that!" + +"Yes, you do. You mean that the others take life in a perfectly human +manner--find enjoyment, amusement in each other, in a hundred things +outside of their work. They act like men and women, not like a painting +machine; if they experience impulses and emotions they don't entirely +stifle 'em. They have time and leisure to foregather, laugh, be silly, +discuss, banter, flirt, make love, and cut up all the various harmless +capers that humanity is heir to. _That's_ what you mean, but you don't +realise it. And you think, and they think, that my solemn and owlish +self-suppression is drying me up, squeezing out of me the essence of +that warm, lovable humanity in which, they say, my work is deficient. +They say, too, that my inspiration is lacking in that it is not founded +on personal experience; that I have never known any deep emotion, any +suffering, any of the sterner, darker regrets--anything of that passion +which I sometimes depict. They say that the personal and convincing +element is totally absent because I have not lived"--he laughed--"and +loved; that my work lacks the one thing which only the self-knowledge of +great happiness and great pain can lend to it.... And--I think they are +right, Valerie. What do you think?" + +The girl stood silent, with lowered eyes, reflecting for a moment. Then +she looked up curiously. + +"_Have_ you never been very unhappy?" + +"I had a toothache once." + +She said, unsmiling: "Haven't you ever suffered mentally?" + +"No--not seriously. Oh, I've regretted little secret meannesses--bad +temper, jealousy--" + +"Nothing else? Have you never experienced deep unhappiness--through +death, for example?" + +"No, thank God. My father and mother and sister are living.... It is +rather strange," he added, partly to himself, "that the usual troubles +and sorrows have so far passed me by. I am twenty-seven; there has never +been a death in my family, or among my intimate friends." + +"Have you any intimate friends?" + +"Well--perhaps not--in the strict sense. I don't confide." + +"Have you never cared, very much, for anybody--any woman?" + +"Not sentimentally," he returned, laughing. "Do you think that a good +course of modern flirtation--a thorough schooling in the old-fashioned +misfortunes of true love would inject into my canvases that elusively +occult quality they're all howling for?" + +She remained smilingly silent. + +"Perhaps something less strenuous would do," he said, mischievously--"a +pretty amourette?--just one of those gay, frivolous, Louis XV affairs +with some daintily receptive girl, not really improper, but only ultra +fashionable. Do you think _that_ would help some, Valerie?" + +She raised her eyes, still smiling, a little incredulous, very slightly +embarrassed: + +"I don't think your painting requires any such sacrifices of you, Mr. +Neville.... Are you going to take me somewhere to dinner? I'm dreadfully +hungry." + +"You poor little girl, of course I am. Besides, you must be suffering +under the terrible suppression of that 'thorough talk' which you--" + +"It doesn't really require a thorough talk," she said; "I'll tell you +now what I had to say. No, don't interrupt, please! I want to--please +let me--so that nothing will mar our enjoyment of each other and of the +gay world around us when we are dining.... It is this: Sometimes--once +in a while--I become absurdly lonely, which makes me a fool, +temporarily. And--will you let me telephone you at such times?--just to +talk to you--perhaps see you for a minute?" + +"Of course. You know my telephone number. Call me up whenever you like." + +"_Could_ I see you at such moments? I--there's a--some--a kind of +sentiment about me--when I'm _very_ lonely; and I've been foolish enough +to let one or two men see it--in fact I've been rather +indiscreet--silly--with a man--several men--now and then. A lonely girl +is easily sympathised with--and rather likes it; and is inclined to let +herself go a little.... I don't want to.... And at times I've done +it.... Sam Ogilvy nearly kissed me, which really doesn't count--does it? +But I let Harry Annan do it, once.... If I'm weak enough to drift into +such silliness I'd better find a safeguard. I've been +thinking--thinking--that it really does originate in a sort of foolish +loneliness ...not in anything worse. So I thought I'd have a thorough +talk with you about it. I'm twenty-one--with all my experience of life +and of men crowded into a single winter and spring. I have as friends +only the few people I have met through you. I have nobody to see unless +I see them--nowhere to go unless I go where they ask me.... So I thought +I'd ask you to let me depend a little on you, sometimes--as a refuge +from isolation and morbid thinking now and then. And from other +mischief--for which I apparently have a capacity--to judge by what I've +done--and what I've let men do already." + +She laid her hand lightly on his arm in sudden and impulsive confidence: + +"That's my 'thorough talk.' I haven't any one else to tell it to. And +I've told you the worst." She smiled at him adorably: "And now I am +ready to go out with you," she said,--"go anywhere in the world with +you, Kelly. And I am going to be perfectly happy--if you are." + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +One day toward the middle of June Valerie did not arrive on time at the +studio. She had never before been late. + +About two o'clock Sam Ogilvy sauntered in, a skull pipe in his mouth, +his hair rumpled: + +"It's that damn mermaid of mine," he said, "can't you come up and look +at her and tell me what's the trouble, Kelly?" + +"Not now. Who's posing?" + +"Rita. She's in a volatile humour, too--fidgets; denies fidgeting; +reproaches me for making her keep quiet; says I draw like a bum +chimney--no wonder my work's rotten! Besides, she's in a tub of water, +wearing that suit of fish-scales I had made for Violet Cliland, and she +says it's too tight and she's tired of the job, anyway. Fancy my mental +condition." + +"Oh, she won't throw you down. Rita is a good sport," said Neville. + +"I hope so. It's an important picture. Really, Kelly, it's great +stuff--a still, turquoise-tinted pool among wet rocks; ebb tide; a +corking little mermaid caught in a pool left by the receding waves--all +tones and subtle values," he declared, waving his arm. + +"Don't paint things in the air with your thumb," said Neville, coldly. +"No wonder Rita is nervous." + +"Rita is nervous," said Ogilvy, "because she's been on a bat and supped +somewhere until the coy and rosy dawn chased her homeward. And your +pretty paragon, Miss West, was with the party--" + +"What?" said Neville, sharply. + +"Sure thing! Harry Annan, Rita, Burleson, Valerie--and I don't know who +else. They feasted somewhere east of Coney--where the best is like the +würst--and ultimately became full of green corn, clams, watermelon, and +assorted fidgets.... Can't you come up and look at my picture?" + +Neville got up, frowning, and followed Ogilvy upstairs. + +Rita Tevis, swathed in a blanket from which protruded a dripping +tinselled fish's tail, sat disconsolately on a chair, knitting a +red-silk necktie for some party of the second part, as yet unidentified. + +"Mr. Neville," she said, "Sam has been quarrelling with me every minute +while I'm doing my best in that horrid tub of water. If anybody thinks +it's a comfortable pose, let them try it! I wish--I _wish_ I could have +the happiness of seeing Sam afloat in this old fish-scale suit with +every spangle sticking into him and his legs cramped into this +unspeakable tail!" + +She extended a bare arm, shook hands, pulled up her blanket wrap, and +resumed her knitting with a fierce glance at Ogilvy, who had attempted +an appealing smile. + +Neville stood stock-still before the canvas. The picture promised well; +it was really beautiful--the combined result of several outdoor studies +now being cleverly worked up. But Ogilvy's pictures never kept their +promise. + +[Illustration: "Neville stood stock-still before the canvas."] + + +"Also," observed Rita, reproachfully, "_I_ posed _en plein air_ for +those rainbow sketches of his--and though it was a lonely cove with a +cunningly secluded little crescent beach, I was horribly afraid of +somebody coming--and besides I got most cruelly sun-burned--" + +"Rita! You _said_ you enjoyed that excursion!" exclaimed Ogilvy, with +pathos. + +"I said it to flatter that enormous vanity of yours, Sam. I had a +perfectly wretched time." + +"What sort of a time did you have last evening?" inquired Neville, +turning from the picture. + +"Horrid. Everybody ate too much, and Valerie spooned with a new man--I +don't remember his name. She went out in a canoe with him and they sang +'She kissed him on the gangplank when the boat moved out.'" + +Neville, silent, turned to the picture once more. In a low rapid voice +he indicated to Ogilvy where matters might be differently treated, +stepped back a few paces, nodded decisively, and turned again to Rita: + +"I've been waiting for Miss West," he said. "Have you any reason to +think that she might not keep her appointment this morning?" + +"She had a headache when we got home," said Rita. "She stayed with me +last night. I left her asleep. Why don't you ring her up. You know my +number." + +"All right," said Neville, shortly, and went out. + +When he first tried to ring her up the wire was busy. It was a party +wire, yet a curious uneasiness set him pacing the studio, smoking, brows +knitted, until he decided it was time to try again. + +This time he recognised her distant voice: "Hello--hello! _Is_ that you, +Mr. Neville?" + +"Valerie!" + +"Oh, it _is_ you, Kelly? I hoped you would call me up. I _knew_ it must +be _you_!" + +"Yes, it is. What the deuce is the matter? Are you ill?" + +"Oh, dear, no.'" + +"_What,_ then?" + +[Illustration: "When he first tried to ring her up the wire was busy."] + +"I was _so_ sleepy, Kelly. Please forgive me. We had such a late +party--and it was daylight before I went to bed. Please forgive me; +won't you?" + +"When I called you a few minutes ago your wire was busy. Were you +conversing?" + +"Yes. I was talking to José Querida." + +"H'm!" + +"José was with us last evening.... I went canoeing with him. He just +called me up to ask how I felt." + +"Hunh!" + +"What?" + +"Nothing." + +"Are you annoyed, Louis?" + +"No!" + +"Oh, I thought it sounded as though you were irritated. I am so ashamed +at having overslept. Who told you I was here? Oh, Rita, I suppose. Poor +child, she was more faithful than I. The alarm clock woke her and she +was plucky enough to get up--and I only yawned and thought of you, and I +was _so_ sleepy! Are you sure you do forgive me?" + +"Of course." + +"You don't say it very kindly." + +"I mean it cordially," he snapped. He could hear her sigh: "I suppose +you do." Then she added: + +"I am dressing, Kelly. I don't wish for any breakfast, and I'll come to +the studio as soon as I can--" + +"Take your breakfast first!" + +"No, I really don't care for--" + +"All right. Come ahead." + +"I will. Good-bye, Kelly, dear." + +He rang off, picked up the telephone again, called the great Hotel +Regina, and ordered breakfast sent to his studio immediately. + +When Valerie arrived she found silver, crystal, and snowy linen awaiting +her with chilled grapefruit, African melon, fragrant coffee, toast, and +pigeon's eggs poached on Astrakan caviar. + +"Oh, Louis!" she exclaimed, enraptured; "I don't deserve this--but it is +perfectly dear of you--and I _am_ hungry!... Good-morning," she added, +shyly extending a fresh cool hand; "I am really none the worse for wear +you see." + +That was plain enough. In her fresh and youthful beauty the only sign of +the night's unwisdom was in the scarcely perceptible violet tint under +her thick lashes. Her skin was clear and white and dewy fresh, her dark +eyes unwearied--her gracefully slender presence fairly fragrant with +health and vigour. + +She seated herself--offered to share with him in dumb appeal, urged him +in delicious pantomime, and smiled encouragingly as he reluctantly found +a chair beside her and divided the magnificent melon. + +"Did you have a good time?" he asked, trying not to speak ungraciously. + +"Y-yes.... It was a silly sort of a time." + +"Silly?" + +"I was rather sentimental--with Querida." + +He said nothing--grimly. + +"I told you last night, Louis. Why couldn't you see me?" + +"I was dining out; I couldn't." + +She sipped her chilled grapefruit meditatively: + +"I hadn't seen you for a week," she laughed, glancing sideways at him, +"and that lonely feeling began about five o'clock; and I called you up +at seven because I couldn't stand it.... But you wouldn't see me; and so +when Rita and the others came in a big touring car--do you blame me very +much for going with them?" + +"No." + +Her expression became serious, a trifle appealing: + +"My room isn't very attractive," she said, timidly. "It is scarcely big +enough for the iron bed and one chair--and I get so tired trying to read +or sew every evening by the gas--and it's very hot in there." + +"Are you making excuses for going?" + +"I do not know.... Unless people ask me, I have nowhere to go except to +my room; and when a girl sits there evening after evening alone it--it +is not very gay." + +She tried the rich, luscious melon with much content, and presently her +smile came back: + +"Louis, it was a funny party. To begin we had one of those terrible +clambakes--like a huge, horrid feast of the Middle Ages--and it did not +agree with everybody--or perhaps it was because we weren't +middle-aged--or perhaps it was just the beer. I drank water; so did the +beautiful José Querida.... I think he is pretty nearly the handsomest +man I ever saw; don't you?" + +"He's handsome, cultivated, a charming conversationalist, and a really +great painter," said Neville, drily. + +She looked absently at the melon; tasted it: "He is very romantic ... when +he laughs and shows those beautiful, even teeth.... He's really +quite adorable, Kelly--and so gentle and considerate--" + +"That's the Latin in him." + +"His parents were born in New York." + +She sipped her coffee, tried a pigeon egg, inquired what it was, ate it, +enchanted. + +"How thoroughly nice you always are to me, Kelly!" she said, looking up +in the engagingly fearless way characteristic of her when with him. + +"Isn't everybody nice to you?" he said with a shrug which escaped her +notice. + +"Nice?" She coloured a trifle and laughed. "Not in _your_ way, Kelly. In +the sillier sense they are--some of them." + +"Even Querida?" he said, carelessly. + +"Oh, just like other men--generously ready for any event. What +self-sacrificing opportunists men are! After all, Kelly," she added, +slipping easily into the vernacular, "it's always up to the girl." + +"Is it?" + +"Yes, I think so. I knew perfectly well that I had no business to let +Querida's arm remain around me. But--there was a moon, Kelly." + +"Certainly." + +"Why do you say 'certainly'?" + +"Because there _was_ one." + +"But you say it in a manner--" She hesitated, continued her breakfast in +leisurely reflection for a while, then: + +"Louis?" + +"Yes." + +"Am I too frank with you?" + +"Why?" + +"I don't know; I was just thinking. I tell you pretty nearly everything. +If I didn't have you to tell--have somebody--" She considered, with +brows slightly knitted--"if I didn't have _somebody_ to talk to, it +wouldn't be very good for me. I realise that." + +"You need a grandmother," he said, drily; "and I'm the closest +resemblance to one procurable." + +The imagery struck her as humorous and she laughed. + +"Poor Kelly," she said aloud to herself, "he is used and abused and +imposed upon, and in revenge he offers his ungrateful tormentor +delicious breakfasts. _What_ shall his reward be?--or must he await it +in Paradise where he truly belongs amid the martyrs and the blessed +saints!" + +Neville grunted. + +"Oh, _oh_! such a post-Raphaelite scowl! Job won't bow to you when you +go aloft, Kelly. Besides, polite martyrs smile pleasantly while enduring +torment.... What are you going to do with me to-day?" she added, +glancing around with frank curiosity at an easel which was set with a +full-length virgin canvas. + +"Portrait," he replied, tersely. + +"Oh," she said, surprised. He had never before painted her clothed. + +From moment to moment, as she leisurely breakfasted, she glanced around +at the canvas, interested in the new idea of his painting her draped; a +trifle perplexed, too. + +"Louis," she said, "I don't quite see how you're ever going to find a +purchaser for just a plain portrait of me." + +He said, irritably: "I don't have to work for a living _every_ minute, +do I? For Heaven's sake give me a day off to study." + +"But--it seems like wasted time--" + +"What is wasted time?" + +"Why just to paint a portrait of me as I am. Isn't it?" She looked up +smilingly, perfectly innocent of any self-consciousness. "In the big +canvases for the Byzantine Theatre you always made my features too +radiant, too glorious for portraits. It seems rather a slump to paint me +as I am--just a girl in street clothes." + +A singular expression passed over his face. + +"Yes," he said, after a moment--"just a girl in street clothes. No +clouds, no sky, no diaphanous draperies of silk; no folds of cloth of +gold; no gemmed girdles, no jewels. Nothing of the old glamour, the old +glory; no sunburst laced with mist; no 'light that never was on sea or +land.' ... Just a young girl standing in the half light of my studio.... +And by God!--if I can not do it--the rest is worthless." + +Amazed at his tone and expression she turned quickly, set back her cup, +remained gazing at him, bewildered by the first note of bitterness she +had ever heard in his voice. + +He had risen and walked to his easel, back partly turned. She saw him +fussing with his palette, colours, and brushes, watched him for a few +moments, then she went away into the farther room where she had a glass +shelf to herself with toilet requisites--a casual and dainty gift from +him. + +When she returned he was still bending over his colour-table; and she +walked up and laid her hand on his shoulder--not quite understanding why +she did it. + +He straightened up to his full stature, surprised, turning his head to +meet a very clear, very sweetly disturbed gaze. + +"Kelly, dear, are you unhappy?" + +"Why--no." + +"You seem to be a little discontented." + +[Illustration: "'Kelly, dear, are you unhappy?'"] + +"I hope I am. It's a healthy sign." + +"Healthy?" + +"Certainly. The satisfied never get anywhere.... That Byzanite business +has begun to wear on my nerves." + +"Thousands and thousands of people have gone to see it, and have praised +it. You know what the papers have been saying--" + +Under her light hand she felt the impatient movement of his shoulders, +and her hand fell away. + +"Don't you care for it, now that it's finished?" she asked, wondering. + +"I'm devilish sick of it," he said, so savagely that every nerve in her +recoiled with a tiny shock. She remained silent, motionless, awaiting +his pleasure. He set his palette, frowning. She had never before seen +him like this. + +After a while she said, quietly: "If you are waiting for me, please tell +me what you expect me to do, because I don't know, Kelly." + +"Oh, just stand over there," he said, vaguely; "just walk about and stop +anywhere when you feel like stopping." + +She walked a few steps at hazard, partly turned to look back at him with +a movement adorable in its hesitation. + +"Don't budge!" he said, brusquely. + +"Am I to remain like this?" + +"Exactly." + +He picked up a bit of white chalk, went over to her, knelt down, and +traced on the floor the outline of her shoes. + +Then he went back, and, with his superbly cool assurance, began to draw +with his brush upon the untouched canvas. + +From where she stood, and as far as she could determine, he seemed, +however, to work less rapidly than usual--with a trifle less +decision--less precision. Another thing she noticed; the calm had +vanished from his face. The vivid animation, the cool self-confidence, +the half indolent relapse into careless certainty--all familiar phases +of the man as she had so often seen him painting--were now not +perceptible. There seemed to be, too, a curious lack of authority about +his brush strokes at intervals--moments of grave perplexity, indecision +almost resembling the hesitation of inexperience--and for the first time +she saw in his gray eyes the narrowing concentration of mental +uncertainty. + +It seemed to her sometimes as though she were looking at a total +stranger. She had never thought of him as having any capacity for the +ordinary and lesser ills, vanities, and vexations--the trivial worries +that beset other artists. + +"Louis?" she said, full of curiosity. + +"What?" he demanded, ungraciously. + +"You are not one bit like yourself to-day." + +He made no comment. She ventured again: + +"Do I hold the pose properly?" + +"Yes, thanks," he said, absently. + +"May I talk?" + +"I'd rather you didn't, Valerie, just at present." + +"All right," she rejoined, cheerfully; but her pretty eyes watched him +very earnestly, a little troubled. + +When she was tired the pose ended; that had been their rule; but long +after her neck and back and thighs and limbs begged for relief, she held +the pose, reluctant to interrupt him. When at last she could endure it +no longer she moved; but her right leg had lost not only all sense of +feeling but all power to support her; and down she came with a surprised +and frightened little exclamation--and he sprang to her and swung her to +her feet again. + +"Valerie! You bad little thing! Don't you know enough to stop when +you're tired?" + +[Illustration: "He picked up a bit of white chalk ... and traced on the +floor the outline of her shoes."] + +"I--didn't know I was so utterly gone," she said, bewildered. + +He passed his arm around her and supported her to the sofa where she +sat, demure, a little surprised at her collapse, yet shyly enjoying his +disconcerted attentions to her. + +"It's your fault, Kelly. You had such a queer expression--not at all +like you--that I tried harder than ever to help you--and fell down for +my pains." + +"You're an angel," he said, contritely, "but a silly one." + +"A scared one, Kelly--and a fallen one." She laughed, flexing the +muscles of her benumbed leg: "Your expression intimidated me. I didn't +recognise you; I could not form any opinion of what was going on inside +that very stern and frowning head of yours. If you look like that I'll +never dare call you Kelly." + +"Did I seem inhuman?" + +"N-no. On the contrary--very human--ordinary--like the usual +ill-tempered artist man, with whom I have learned how to deal. You +know," she added, teasingly, "that you are calm and god-like, +usually--and when you suddenly became a mere mortal--" + +"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," he said; "I'll pick you up and +put you to bed." + +"I wish you would, Kelly. I haven't had half enough sleep." + +He sat down beside her on the sofa: "Don't talk any more of that +god-like business," he growled, "or I'll find the proper punishment." + +"Would _you_ punish _me_, Kelly?" + +"I sure would." + +"If I displeased you?" + +"You bet." + +"Really?" She turned partly toward him, half in earnest. +"Suppose--suppose--" but she stopped suddenly, with a light little laugh +that lingered pleasantly in the vast, still room. + +She said: "I begin to think that there are two Kellys--no, _one_ Kelly +and _one_ Louis. Kelly is familiar to me; I seem to have known him all +my life--the happy part of my life. Louis I have just seen for the first +time--there at the easel, painting, peering from me to his canvas with +Kelly's good-looking eyes all narrow with worry--" + +"What on earth are you chattering about, Valerie?" + +"You and Kelly.... I don't quite know which I like best--the dear, +sweet, kind, clever, brilliant, impersonal, god-like Kelly, or this new +Louis--so very abrupt in speaking to me--" + +"Valerie, dear! Forgive me. I'm out of sorts somehow. It began--I don't +know--waiting for you--wondering if you could be ill--all alone. Then +that ass, Sam Ogilvy--oh, it's just oversmoking I guess, or--I don't +know what." + +She sat regarding him, head tipped unconsciously on one side in an +attitude suggesting a mind concocting malice. + +"Louis?" + +"What?" + +"You're very attractive when you're god-like--" + +"You little wretch!" + +"But--you're positively dangerous when you're human." + +"Valerie! I'll--" + +"The great god Kelly, or the fascinating, fearsome, erring Louis! Which +is it to be? I've an idea that the time is come to decide!" + +[Illustration: "'I _will_ call you a god if I like!'"] + +Fairly radiating a charming aura of malice she sat back, nursing one +knee, distractingly pretty and defiant, saying: "I _will_ call you a god +if I like!" + +"I'll tell you what, Valerie," he said, half in earnest; "I've played +grandmother to you long enough, by Heck!" + +"Oh, Kelly, be lofty and Olympian! Be a god and shame the rest of us!" + +"I'll shamefully resemble one of 'em in another moment if you continue +tormenting me!" + +"Which one, great one?" + +"Jupiter, little lady. He was the boss philanderer you know." + +"What is a philanderer, my Olympian friend?" + +"Oh, one of those Olympian divinities who always began the day by +kissing the girls all around." + +"Before breakfast?" + +"Certainly." + +"It's--after breakfast, Kelly." + +"Luncheon and dinner still impend." + +"Besides--I'm not a bit lonely to-day.... I'm afraid I wouldn't let you, +Kel--I mean Louis." + +"Why didn't you say 'Kelly'?" + +"Kelly is too god-like to kiss." + +"Oh! So _that's_ the difference! Kelly isn't human; Louis is." + +"Kelly, to me," she admitted, "is practically kissless.... I haven't +thought about Louis in that regard." + +"Consider the matter thoroughly." + +"Do you wish me to?" She bent her head, smiling. Then, looking up with +enchanting audacity: + +"I really don't know, Mr. Neville. Some day when I'm lonely--and if +Louis is at home and Kelly is out--you and I might spend an evening +together on a moonlit lake and see how much of a human being Louis can +be." + +She laughed, watching him under the dark lashes, charming mouth mocking +him in every curve. + +"Do you think you're likely to be lonely to-night?" he asked, surprised +at the slight acceleration of his pulses. + +"No, I don't. Besides, you'd be only the great god Kelly to me this +evening. Besides that I'm going to dinner with Querida, and afterward +we're going to see the 'Joy of the Town' at the Folly Theatre." + +"I didn't know," he said, curtly. For a few moments he sat there, +looking interestedly at a familiar door-knob. Then rising: "Do you feel +all right for posing?" + +"Yes." + +"Alors--" + +"Allons, mon dieu!" she laughed. + +Work began. She thought, watching him with sudden and unexpected +shyness, that he seemed even more aloof, more preoccupied, more worried, +more intent than before. In this new phase the man she had known as a +friend was now entirely gone, vanished! Here stood an utter stranger, +very human, very determined, very deeply perplexed, very much in +earnest. Everything about this man was unknown to her. There seemed to +be nothing about him that particularly appealed to her confidence, +either; yet the very uncertainty was interesting her now--intensely. + +This other phase of his dual personality had been so completely a +surprise that, captivated, curious, she could keep neither her gaze from +him nor her thoughts. Was it that she was going to miss in him the other +charm, lose the delight in his speech, his impersonal and kindly manner, +miss the comfortable security she had enjoyed with him, perhaps after +some half gay, half sentimental conflict with lesser men? + +What was she to expect from this brand-new incarnation of Louis +Neville? The delightful indifference, fascinating absent-mindedness and +personal neglect of the other phase? Would he be god enough to be less +to her, now? Man enough to be more than other men? For a moment she had +a little shrinking, a miniature panic lest this man turn too much like +other men. But she let her eyes rest on him, and knew he would not. +Whatever Protean changes might yet be reserved for her to witness, she +came to the conclusion that this man was a man apart, different, and +would not disappoint her no matter what he turned into. + +She thought to herself: "If I want Kelly to lean on, he'll surely +appear, god-like, impersonally nice, and kindly as ever; if I want Louis +to torment and provoke and flirt with--a little--a very little--I'm +quite sure he'll come, too. Whatever else is contained in Mr. Neville I +don't know; but I like him separately and compositely, and I'm happy +when I'm with him." + +With which healthy conclusion she asked if she might rest, and came +around to look at the canvas. + +As she had stood in silence for some time, he asked her, a little +nervously, what she thought of it. + +"Louis--I don't know." + +"Is your opinion unfavourable?" + +"N-no. I _am_ like that, am I not?" + +"In a shadowy way. It _will_ be like you." + +"Am I as--interesting?" + +"More so," he said. + +"Are you going to make me--beautiful?" + +"Yes--or cut this canvas into shreds." + +"Oh-h!" she exclaimed with a soft intake of breath; "would you have the +heart to destroy me after you've made me?" + +"I don't know what I'd do, Valerie. I never felt just this way about +anything. If I can't paint you--a human, breathing _you_--with all of +you there on the canvas--_all_ of you, soul, mind, and body--all of your +beauty, your youth, your sadness, happiness--your errors, your +nobility--_you_, Valerie!--then there's no telling what I'll do." + +She said nothing. Presently she resumed the pose and he his painting. + +It became very still in the sunny studio. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +In that month of June, for the first time in his deliberately active +career, Neville experienced a disinclination to paint. And when he +realised that it was disinclination, it appalled him. Something--he +didn't understand what--had suddenly left him satiated--and with all the +uneasiness and discontent of satiation he forced matters until he could +force no further. + +He had commissions, several, and valuable; and let them lie. For the +first time in all his life the blank canvas of an unexecuted commission +left him untempted, unresponsive, weary. + +He had, also, his portrait of Valerie to continue. He continued it +mentally, at intervals; but for several days, now, he had not laid a +brush to it. + +"It's funny," he said to Querida, going out on the train to his sister's +country home one delicious morning--"it's confoundedly odd that I should +turn lazy in my old age. Do you think I'm worked out?" He gulped down a +sudden throb of fear smilingly. + +"Lie fallow," said Querida, gently. "No soil is deep enough to yield +without rest." + +"Yours does." + +"Oh, for me," said Querida, showing his snowy teeth, "I often sicken of +my fat sunlight, frying everything to an iridescent omelette." He +shrugged, laughed: "I turn lazy for months every year. Try it, my +friend. Don't you even keep _mi-carême_?" + +Neville stared out of the window at the station platform past which +they were gliding, and rose with Querida as the train stopped. His +sister's touring car was waiting; into it stepped Querida, and he +followed; and away they sped over the beautiful rolling country, where +handsome cattle tried to behave like genuine Troyon's, and silvery sheep +attempted to imitate Mauve, and even the trees, separately or in groups, +did their best to look like sections of Rousseau, Diaz, and even +Corot--but succeeded only in resembling questionable imitations. + +"There's to be quite a week-end party?" inquired Querida. + +"I don't know. My sister telephoned me to fill in. I fancy the party is +for you." + +"For _me_!" exclaimed Querida with delightful enthusiasm. "That is most +charming of Mrs. Collis." + +"They'll all think it charming of you. Lord, what a rage you've become +and what a furor you've aroused!... And you deserve it," added Neville, +coolly. + +Querida looked at him, calm intelligence in his dark gaze; and +understood the honesty of the comment. + +"That," he said, "if you permit the vigour of expression, is damn nice +of you, Neville. But you can afford to be generous to other painters." + +"Can I?" Neville turned and gazed at Querida, gray eyes clear in their +searching inquiry. Then he laughed a little and looked out over the +sunny landscape. + +Querida's olive cheeks had reddened a trifle. + +Neville said: "What _is_ the trouble with my work, anyway? Is it what +some of you fellows say?" + +Querida did not pretend to misunderstand: + +"You're really a great painter, Neville. And you know it. Must you have +_everything_?" + +"Well--I'm going after it." + +"Surely--surely. I, also. God knows my work lacks many, many things--" + +"But it doesn't lack that one essential which mine lacks. _What_ is it?" + +Querida laughed: "I can't explain. For me--your Byzantine canvas--there +is in it something not intimate--" + +"Austere?" + +"Yes--even in those divine and lovely throngs. There is, perhaps, an +aloofness--even a self-denial--" He laughed again: "I deny myself +nothing--on canvas--even I have the audacity to try to draw as you do!" + +Neville sat thinking, watching the landscape speed away on either side +in a running riot of green. + +"Self-denial--too much of it--separates you from your kind," said +Querida. "The solitary fasters are never personally pleasant; hermits +are the world's public admiration and private abomination. Oh, the good +world dearly loves to rub elbows with a talented sinner and patronise +him and sentimentalise over him--one whose miracles don't hurt their +eyes enough to blind them to the pleasant discovery that his halo is +tarnished in spots and needs polishing, and that there's a patch on the +seat of his carefully creased toga." + +Neville laughed. Presently he said: "Until recently I've cherished +theories. One of 'em was to subordinate everything in life to the +enjoyment of a single pleasure--the pleasure of work.... I guess +experience is putting that theory on the blink." + +"Surely. You might as well make an entire meal of one favourite dish. +For a day you could stand it, even like it, perhaps. After that--" he +shrugged. + +"But--I'd _rather_ spend my time painting--if I could stand the diet." + +"Would you? I don't know what I'd rather do. I like almost everything. +It makes me paint better to talk to a pretty woman, for example. To kiss +her inspires a masterpiece." + +"Does it?" said Neville, thoughtfully. + +"Of course. A week or two of motoring--riding, dancing, white flannel +idleness--all these I adore. And," tapping his carefully pinned lilac +tie--"inside of me I know that every pleasant experience, every pleasure +I offer myself, is going to make me a better painter!" + +"Experience," repeated the other. + +"By all means and every means--experience in pleasure, in idleness, in +love, in sorrow--but experience!--always experience, by hook or by +crook, and at any cost. That is the main idea, Neville--_my_ main +idea--like the luscious agglomeration of juicy green things which that +cow is eating; they all go to make good milk. Bah!--that's a stupid +simile," he added, reddening. + +Neville laughed. Presently he pointed across the meadows. + +"Is _that_ your sister's place?" asked Querida with enthusiasm, +interested and disappointed. "What a charming house!" + +"That is Ashuelyn, my sister's house. Beyond is El Naúar, Cardemon's +place.... Here we are." + +The small touring car stopped; the young men descended to a grassy +terrace where a few people in white flannels had gathered after +breakfast. A slender woman, small of bone and built like an undeveloped +girl, came forward, the sun shining on her thick chestnut hair. + +"Hello, Lily," said Neville. + +"Hello, Louis. Thank you for coming, Mr. Querida--it is exceedingly nice +of you to come--" She gave him her firm, cool hand, smiled on him with +unfeigned approval, turned and presented him to the others--Miss Aulne, +Miss Swift, Miss Annan, a Mr. Cameron, and, a moment later, to her +husband, Gordon Collis, a good-looking, deeply sun-burned young man +whose only passion, except his wife and baby, was Ashuelyn, the home of +his father. + +But it was a quiet passion which bored nobody, not even his wife. + +When conversation became general, with Querida as the centre around +which it eddied, Neville, who had seated himself on the gray stone +parapet near his sister, said in a low voice: + +"Well, how goes it, Lily?" + +"All right," she replied with boyish directness, but in the same low +tone. "Mother and father have spent a week with us. You saw them in +town?" + +"Of course. I'll run up to Spindrift House to see them as often as I can +this summer.... How's the kid?" + +"Fine. Do you want to see him?" + +"Yes, I'd like to." + +His sister caught his hand, jumped up, and led him into the house to the +nursery where a normal and in nowise extraordinary specimen of infancy +reposed in a cradle, pink with slumber, one thumb inserted in its mouth. + +"Isn't he a wonder," murmured Neville, venturing to release the thumb. + +The young mother bent over, examining her offspring in all the eloquent +silence of pride unutterable. After a little while she said: "I've got +to feed him. Go back to the others, Louis, and say I'll be down after a +while." + +He sauntered back through the comfortable but modest house, glancing +absently about him on his way to the terrace, nodding to familiar faces +among the servants, stopping to inspect a sketch of his own which he had +done long ago and which his sister loved and he hated. + +"Rotten," he murmured--"it has an innocence about it that is actually +more offensive than stupidity." + +On the terrace Stephanie Swift came over to him: + +"Do you want a single at tennis, Louis? The others are hot for +Bridge--except Gordon Collis--and he is going to dicker with a farmer +over some land he wants to buy." + +Neville looked at the others: + +"Do you mean to say that you people are going to sit here all hunched up +around a table on a glorious day like this?" + +"We are," said Alexander Cameron, calmly breaking the seal of two fresh, +packs. "You artists have nothing to do for a living except to paint +pretty models, and when the week end comes you're in fine shape to caper +and cut up didoes. But we business men are too tired to go galumphing +over the greensward when Saturday arrives. It's a wicker chair and a +'high one,' and peaceful and improving cards for ours." + +Alice Annan laughed and glanced at Querida degrees Cameron's idea was +her idea of what her brother Harry was doing for a living; but she +wasn't sure that Querida would think it either flattering or humorous. + +But Jose Querida laughed, too, saying: "Quite right, Mr. Cameron. It's +only bluff with, us; we never work. Life is one continual comic opera." + +"It's a cinch," murmured Cameron. "Stocks and bonds are exciting, but +_your_ business puts it all over us. Nobody would have to drive me to +business every morning if there was a pretty model in a cosey studio +awaiting me." + +"Sandy, you're rather horrid," said Miss Aulne, watching him sort out +the jokers from the new packs and, with a skilful flip, send them +scaling out, across the grass, for somebody to pick up. + +Cameron said: "How about this Trilby business, anyway, Miss Annan? You +have a brother in it. Is the world of art full of pretty models clad in +ballet skirts--when they wear anything? Is it all one mad, joyous +melange of high-brow conversation discreetly peppered with low-brow +revelry? Yes? No? Inform an art lover, please--as they say in the _Times +Saturday Review_." + +"I don't know," said Miss Annan, laughing. "Harry never has anybody +interesting in the studio when he lets me take tea there." + +Rose Aulne said: "I saw some photographs of a very beautiful girl in Sam +Ogilvy's studio--a model. What is her name, Alice?--the one Sam and +Harry are always raving over?" + +"They call her Valerie, I believe." + +"Yes, that's the one--Valerie West, isn't it? _Is_ it, Louis? You know +her, of course." + +Neville nodded coolly. + +"Introduce me," murmured Cameron, spreading a pack for cutting. "Perhaps +she'd like to see the Stock Exchange when I'm at my best." + +"Is she such a beauty? Do you know her, too, Mr. Querida?" asked Rose +Aulne. + +Querida laughed: "I do. Miss West is a most engaging, most amiable and +cultivated girl, and truly very beautiful." + +"Oh! They _are_ sometimes educated?" asked Stephanie, surprised. + +"Sometimes they are even equipped to enter almost any drawing-room in +New York. It doesn't always require the very highest equipment to do +that," he added, laughing. + +"That sounds like romantic fiction," observed Alice Annan. "You are a +poet, Mr. Querida." + +"Oh, it's not often a girl like Valerie West crosses our path. I admit +that. Now and then such a comet passes across our sky--or is reported. I +never before saw any except this one." + +"If she's as much of a winner as all that," began Cameron with decision, +"I want to meet her immediately--" + +"Mere brokers are out of it," said Alice.... "Cut, please." + +Rose Aulne said: "If you painters only knew it, your stupid studio teas +would be far more interesting if you'd have a girl like this Valerie +West to pour for you ... and for us to see." + +"Yes," added Alice; "but they're a vain lot. They think we are +unsophisticated enough to want to go to their old studios and be +perfectly satisfied to look at their precious pictures, and listen to +their art patter. I've told Harry that what we want is to see something +of the real studio life; and he tries to convince me that it's about as +exciting as a lawyer's life when he dictates to his stenographer." + +[Illustration: "'If she's as much of a winner as all that,' began +Cameron with decision, 'I want to meet her immediately--'"] + +"Is it?" asked Stephanie of Neville. + +"Just about as exciting. Some few business men may smirk at their +stenographers; some few painters may behave in the same way to their +models. I fancy it's the exception to the rule in any kind of +business--isn't it, Sandy?" + +"Certainly," said Cameron, hastily. "I never winked at my +stenographer--never! never! Will you deal, Mr. Querida?" he asked, +courteously. + +"I should think a girl like that would be interesting to know," said +Lily Collis, who had come up behind her brother and Stephanie Swift and +stood, a hand on each of their shoulders, listening and looking on at +the card game. + +"That is what I wanted to say, too," nodded Stephanie. "I'd like to meet +a really nice girl who is courageous enough, and romantic enough to pose +for artists--" + +"You mean poor enough, don't you?" said Neville. "They don't do it +because it's romantic." + +"It must be romantic work." + +"It isn't, I assure you. It's drudgery--and sometimes torture." + +Stephanie laughed: "I believe it's easy work and a gay existence full of +romance. Don't undeceive me, Louis. And I think you're selfish not to +let us meet your beautiful Valerie at tea." + +"Why not?" added his sister. "I'd like to see her myself." + +"Oh, Lily, you know perfectly well that oil and water don't mix," he +said with a weary shrug. + +"I suppose we're the oil," remarked Rose Aulne--"horrid, smooth, +insinuating stuff. And his beautiful Valerie is the clear, crystalline, +uncontaminated fountain of inspiration." + +Lily Collis dropped her hands from Stephanie's and her brother's +shoulders: + +"Do ask us to tea to meet her, Louis," she coaxed. + +"We've never seen a model--" + +"Do you want me to exhibit a sensitive girl as a museum freak?" he +asked, impatiently. + +"Don't you suppose we know how to behave toward her? Really, Louis, +you--" + +"Probably you know how to behave. And I can assure you that she knows +perfectly well how to behave toward anybody. But that isn't the +question. You want to see her out of curiosity. You wouldn't make a +friend of her--or even an acquaintance. And I tell you, frankly, I don't +think it's square to her and I won't do it. Women are nuisances in +studios, anyway." + +"What a charming way your brother has of explaining things," laughed +Stephanie, passing her arm through Lily's: "Shall we reveal to him that +he was seen with his Valerie at the St. Regis a week ago?" + +"Why not?" he said, coolly, but inwardly exasperated. "She's as +ornamental as anybody who dines there." + +"I don't do _that_ with _my_ stenographers!" called out Cameron +gleefully, cleaning up three odd in spades. "Oh, don't talk to me, +Louis! You're a gay bunch all right!--you're qualified, every one of +you, artists and models, to join the merry, merry!" + +Stephanie dropped Lily's arm with a light laugh, swung her tennis bat, +tossed a ball into the sunshine, and knocked it over toward the tennis +court. + +"I'll take you on if you like, Louis!" she called back over her +shoulder, then continued her swift, graceful pace, white serge skirts +swinging above her ankles, bright hair wind-blown--a lithe, full, +wholesome figure, very comforting to look at. + +"Come upstairs; I'll show you where Gordon's shoes are," said his +sister. + +Gordon's white shoes fitted him, also his white trousers. When he was +dressed he came out of the room and joined his sister, who was seated on +the stairs, balancing his racquet across her knees. + +"Louis," she said, "how about the good taste of taking that model of +yours to the St. Regis?" + +"It was perfectly good taste," he said, carelessly. + +"Stephanie took it like an angel," mused his sister. + +"Why shouldn't she? If there was anything queer about it, you don't +suppose I'd select the St. Regis, do you?" + +"Nobody supposed there was anything queer." + +"Well, then," he demanded, impatiently, "what's the row?" + +"There is no row. Stephanie doesn't make what you call rows. Neither +does anybody in your immediate family. I was merely questioning the +wisdom of your public appearance--under the circumstances." + +"What circumstances?" + +His sister looked at him calmly: + +"The circumstances of your understanding with Stephanie.... An +understanding of years, which, in her mind at least, amounts to a tacit +engagement." + +"I'm glad you said that," he began, after a moment's steady thinking. +"If that is the way that Stephanie and you still regard a college +affair--" + +"A--what!" + +"A boy-and-girl preference which became an undergraduate romance--and +has never amounted to anything more--" + +"Louis!" + +"What?" + +"Don't you _care_ for her?" + +"Certainly; as much as I ever did--as much, as she really and actually +cares for me," he answered, defiantly. "You know perfectly well what +such affairs ever amount to--in the sentimental-ever-after line. Infant +sweethearts almost never marry. She has no more idea of it than have I. +We are fond of each other; neither of us has happened, so far, to +encounter the real thing. But as soon as the right man comes along +Stephanie will spread her wings and take flight--" + +"You don't know her! Well--of all faithless wretches--your inconstancy +makes me positively ill!" + +"Inconstancy! I'm not inconstant. I never saw a girl I liked better than +Stephanie. I'm not likely to. But that doesn't mean that I want to marry +her--" + +"For shame!" + +"Nonsense! Why do you talk about inconstancy? It's a ridiculous word. +What is constancy in love? Either an accident or a fortunate state of +mind. To promise constancy in love is promising to continue in a state +of mind over which your will has no control. It's never an honest +promise; it can be only an honest hope. Love comes and goes and no man +can stay it, and no man is its prophet. Coming unasked, sometimes +undesired, often unwelcome, it goes unbidden, without reason, without +logic, as inexorably as it came, governed by laws that no man has ever +yet understood--" + +"Louis!" exclaimed his sister, bewildered; "what in the world are you +lecturing about? Why, to hear you expound the anatomy of love--" + +He began to laugh, caught her hands, and kissed her: + +"Little goose, that was all impromptu and horribly trite and +commonplace. Only it was new to me because I never before took the +trouble to consider it. But it's true, even if it is trite. People love +or they don't love, and a regard for ethics controls only what they do +about it." + +"That's another Tupperesque truism, isn't it, dear?" + +"Sure thing. Who am I to mock at the Proverbial One when I've never yet +evolved anything better?... Listen; you don't want me to marry +Stephanie, do you?" + +"Yes, I do." + +"No, you don't. You think you do--" + +"I do, I do, Louis! She's the sweetest, finest, most generous, most +suitable--" + +"Sure," he said, hastily, "she's all that except 'suitable'--and she +isn't that, and I'm not, either. For the love of Mike, Lily, let me go +on admiring her, even loving her in a perfectly harmless--" + +"It _isn't_ harmless to caress a girl--" + +"Why--you can't call it caressing--" + +"What do you call it?" + +"Nothing. We've always been on an intimate footing. She's perfectly +unembarrassed about--whatever impulsive--er--fugitive impulses--" + +"You _do_ kiss her!" + +"Seldom--very seldom. At moments the conditions happen accidentally +to--suggest--some slight demonstration--of a very warm friendship--" + +"You positively sicken me! Do you think a nice girl is going to let a +man paw her if she doesn't consider him pledged to her?" + +"I don't think anything about it. Nice girls have done madder things +than their eulogists admit. As a plain matter of fact you can't tell +what anybody nice is going to do under theoretical circumstances. And +the nicer they are the bigger the gamble--particularly if they're +endowed with brains--" + +"_That's_ cynicism. You seem to be developing several streaks--" + +"Polite blinking of facts never changes them. Conforming to conventional +and accepted theories never yet appealed to intelligence. I'm not going +to be dishonest with myself; that's one of the streaks I've developed. +You ask me if I love Stephanie enough to marry her, and I say I don't. +What's the good of blinking it? I don't love anybody enough to marry +'em; but I like a number of girls well enough to spoon with them." + +"_That_ is disgusting!" + +"No, it isn't," he said, with smiling weariness; "it's the unvarnished +truth about the average man. Why wink at it? The average man can like a +lot of girls enough to spoon and sentimentalise with them. It's the pure +accident of circumstance and environment that chooses for him the one he +marries. There are myriads of others in the world with whom, under +proper circumstances and environment, he'd have been just as +happy--often happier. Choice is a mystery, constancy a gamble, +discontent the one best bet. It isn't pleasant; it isn't nice fiction +and delightful romance; it isn't poetry or precept as it is popularly +inculcated; it's the brutal truth about the average man.... And I'm +going to find Stephanie. Have you any objection?" + +"Louis--I'm terribly disappointed in you--" + +"I'm disappointed, too. Until you spoke to me so plainly a few minutes +ago I never clearly understood that I couldn't marry Stephanie. When I +thought of it at all it seemed a vague and shadowy something, too far +away to be really impending--threatening--like death--" + +[Illustration: "'Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before +luncheon.'"] + +"Oh!" cried his sister in revolt. "I shall make it my business to see +that Stephanie understands you thoroughly before this goes any +farther--" + +"I wish to heaven you would," he said, so heartily that his sister, +exasperated, turned her back and marched away to the nursery. + +When he went out to the tennis court he found Stephanie idly batting the +balls across the net with Cameron, who, being dummy, had strolled down +to gibe at her--a pastime both enjoyed: + +"Here comes your Alonzo, fair lady--lightly skipping o'er the +green--yes, yes--wearing the panties of his brother-in-law!" He fell +into an admiring attitude and contemplated Neville with a simper, his +ruddy, prematurely bald head cocked on one side: + +"Oh, girls! _Ain't_ he just grand!" he exclaimed. "Honest, Stephanie, +your young man has me in the ditch with two blow-outs and the gas +afire!" + +"Get out of this court," said Neville, hurling a ball at him. + +"Isn't he the jealous old thing!" cried Cameron, flouncing away with an +affectation of feminine indignation. And presently the tennis balls +began to fly, and the little jets of white dust floated away on the June +breeze. + +They were very evenly matched; they always had been, never asking odds +or offering handicaps in anything. It had always been so; at the traps +she could break as many clay birds as he could; she rode as well, drove +as well; their averages usually balanced. From the beginning--even as +children--it had been always give and take and no favour. + +And so it was now; sets were even; it was a matter of service. + +Luncheon interrupted a drawn game; Stephanie, flushed, smiling, came +around to his side of the net to join him on the way to the house: + +"How do you keep up your game, Louis? Or do I never improve? It's +curious, isn't it, that we are always deadlocked." + +Bare-armed, bright hair in charming disorder, she swung along beside him +with that quick, buoyant step so characteristic of a spirit ever +undaunted, saluting the others on the terrace with high-lifted racquet. + +"Nobody won," she said. "Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before +luncheon. Thank you, Louis; I've had a splendid game--" She stretched +out a frank hand to him, going, and the tips of her fingers just brushed +his. + +His sister gave him a tragic look, which he ignored, and a little later +luncheon was on and Cameron garrulous, and Querida his own gentle, +expressive, fascinating self, devotedly receptive to any woman who was +inclined to talk to him or to listen. + +That evening Neville said to his sister: "There's a train at midnight; I +don't think I'll stay over--" + +"Why?" + +"I want to be in town early." + +"Why?" + +"The early light is the best." + +"I thought you'd stopped painting for a while." + +"I have, practically. There's one thing I keep on with, in a desultory +sort of way--" + +"What is it?" + +"Oh, nothing of importance--" he hesitated--"that Is, it may be +important. I can't be sure, yet." + +"Will you tell me what it is?" + +"Why, yes. It's a portrait--a study--" + +"Of whom, dear?" + +"Oh, of nobody you know--" + +"Is it a portrait of Valerie West?" + +"Yes," he said, carelessly. + +There was a silence; in the starlight his shadowy face was not clearly +visible to his sister. + +"Are you leaving just to continue that portrait?" + +"Yes. I'm interested in it." + +"Don't go," she said, in a low voice. + +"Don't be silly," he returned shortly. + +"Dear, I am not silly, but I suspect you are beginning to be. And over a +model!" + +"Lily, you little idiot," he laughed, exasperated; "what in the world is +worrying you?" + +"Your taking that girl to the St. Regis. It isn't like you." + +"Good Lord! How many girls do you suppose I've taken to various places?" + +"Not many," she said, smiling at him. "Your reputation for gallantries +is not alarming." + +Ho reddened. "You're perfectly right. That sort of thing never appealed +to me." + +"Then why does it appeal to you now?" + +"It doesn't. Can't you understand that this girl is entirely +different--" + +"Yes, I understand. And that is what worries me." + +"It needn't. It's precisely like taking any girl you know and like--" + +"Then let me know her--if you mean to decorate-public places with her." + +They looked at one another steadily. + +"Louis," she said, "this pretty Valerie is not your sister's sort, or +you wouldn't hesitate." + +"I--hesitate--yes, certainly I do. It's absurd on the face of it. She's +too fine a nature to be patronised--too inexperienced in the things of +your world--too ignorant of petty conventions and formalities--too free +and fearless and confident and independent to appeal to the world you +live in." + +"Isn't that a rather scornful indictment against my world, dear?" + +"No. Your world is all right in its way. You and I were brought up in +it. I got out of it. There are other worlds. The one I now inhabit is +more interesting to me. It's purely a matter of personal taste, dear. +Valerie West inhabits a world that suits her." + +"Has she had any choice in the matter?" + +"I--yes. She's had the sense and the courage to keep out of the various +unsafe planets where electric light furnishes the principal +illumination." + +"But has she had a chance for choosing a better planet than the one you +say she prefers? Your choice was free. Was hers?" + +"Look here, Lily! Why on earth are you so significant about a girl you +never saw--scarcely ever heard of--" + +"Dear, I have not told you everything. I _have_ heard of her--of her +charm, her beauty, her apparent innocence--yes, her audacity, her +popularity with men.... Such things are not unobserved and unreported +between your new planet and mine. Harry Annan is frankly crazy about +her, and his sister Alice is scared to death. Mr. Ogilvy, Mr. Burleson, +Clive Gail, dozens of men I know are quite mad about her.... If it was +she whom you used as model for the figures in the Byzantine decorations, +she is divine--the loveliest creature to look at! And I don't care, +Louis; I don't care a straw one way or the other except that I know you +have never bothered with the more or less Innocently irregular gaieties +which attract many men of your age and temperament. And so--when I hear +that you are frequently seen--" + +"Frequently?" + +"Is that St. Regis affair the only one?" + +"No, of course not. But, as for my being with her frequently--" + +"Well?" + +He was silent for a moment, then, looking up with a laugh: + +"I like her immensely. Until this moment I didn't realise how much I do +like her--how pleasant it is to be with a girl who is absolutely +fearless, clever, witty, intelligent, and unspoiled." + +"Are there no girls in your own set who conform to this standard?" + +"Plenty. But their very environment and conventional traditions kill +them--make them a nuisance." + +"Louis!" + +"That's more plain truth, which no woman likes. Will you tell me what +girl in your world, who approaches the qualitative standard set by +Valerie West, would go about by day or evening with any man except her +brother? Valerie does. What girl would be fearless enough to ignore the +cast-iron fetters of her caste? Valerie West is a law unto herself--a +law as sweet and good and excellent and as inflexible as any law made by +men to restrain women's liberty, arouse them to unhappy +self-consciousness and infect them with suspicion. Every one of you are +the terrified slaves of custom, and you know it. Most men like it. I +don't. I'm no tea drinker, no cruncher of macaroons, no gabbler at +receptions, no top-hatted haunter of weddings, no social graduate of the +Ecole Turvydrop. And these places--if I want to find companionship in +any girl of your world--must frequent. And I won't. And so there you +are." + +His sister came up to him and placed her arms around his neck. + +"Such--a--wrong-headed--illogical--boy," she sighed, kissing him +leisurely to punctuate her words. '"If you marry a girl you love you can +have all the roaming and unrestrained companionship you want. Did that +ever occur to you?" + +"At that price," he said, laughing, "I'll do without it." + +"Wrong head, handsome head! I'm in despair about you. Why in the world +cannot artists conform to the recognised customs of a perfectly pleasant +and respectable world? Don't answer me! You'll make me very unhappy.... +Now go and talk to Stephanie. The child won't understand your going +to-night, but make the best of it to her." + +"Good Lord, Lily! I haven't a string tied to me. It doesn't matter to +Stephanie what I do--why I go or remain. You're all wrong. Stephanie and +I understand each other." + +"I'll see that she understands _you_" said his sister, sorrowfully. + +He laughed and kissed her again, impatient. But why he was impatient he +himself did not know. Certainly it was not to find Stephanie, for whom +he started to look--and, on the way, glanced at his watch, determined +not to miss the train that would bring him into town in time to talk to +Valerie West over the telephone. + +Passing the lighted and open windows, he saw Querida and Alice absorbed +in a tête-à -tête, ensconced in a corner of the big living room; saw +Gordon playing with Heinz, the dog--named Heinz because of the +celebrated "57 varieties" of dog in his pedigree--saw Miss Aulne at +solitaire, exchanging lively civilities with Sandy Cameron at the piano +between charming bits of a classic ballad which he was inclined to sing: + + "I'd share my pottage + With you, dear, but + True love in a cottage + Is hell in a hut." + +"Is that you, Stephanie?" he asked, as a dark figure, seated on the +veranda, turned a shadowy head toward him. + +"Yes. Isn't this starlight magnificent? I've been up to the nursery +looking at the infant wonder--just wild to hug him; but he's asleep, and +his nurse glared at me. So I thought I'd come and look at something else +as unattainable--the stars, Louis," she added, laughing--"not you." + +"Sure," he said, smiling, "I'm always obtainable. Unlike the infant upon +whom you had designs," he added, "I'm neither asleep nor will any nurse +glare at you if you care to steal a kiss from me." + +"I've no inclination to transfer my instinctively maternal transports to +you," she said, serenely, "though, maternal solicitude might not be +amiss concerning you." + +"Do you think I need moral supervision?" + +"Not by me." + +"By whom?" + +"Ask me an easier one, Louis. And--I didn't _say_ you needed it at all, +did I?" + +He sat beside her, silent, head lifted, examining the stars. + +"I'm going back on the midnight," he remarked, casually. + +"Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, with her winning frankness. + +"I'm--there's something I have to attend to in town--" + +"Work?" + +"It has to do with my work--indirectly--" + +She glanced sideways at him, and remained for a moment curiously +observant. + +"How is the work going, anyway?" she asked. + +He hesitated. "I've apparently come up slap against a blank wall. It +isn't easy to explain how I feel--but I've no confidence in myself--" + +"_You_! No confidence? How absurd!" + +"It's true," he said a little sullenly. + +"You are having a spasm of progressive development," she said, calmly. +"You take it as a child takes teething--with a squirm and a mental howl +instead of a physical yell." + +He laughed. "I suppose it's something of that sort. But there's more--a +self-distrust amounting to self-disgust at moments.... Stephanie, I +_want_ to do something good--" + +"You have--dozens of times." + +"People say so. The world forgets what is really good--" he made a +nervous gesture--"always before us poor twentieth-century men looms the +goal guarded by the vast, austere, menacing phantoms of the Masters." + +[Illustration: "'I know it is _you_. Is it?'"] + +"Nobody ever won a race looking behind him," she Said, gaily; "let 'em +menace and loom!" + +He laughed in a half-hearted fashion, then his head fell again slowly, +and he sat there brooding, silent. + +"Louis, why are you always dissatisfied?" + +"I always will be, I suppose." His discontented gaze grew more vague. + +"Can you never learn to enjoy the moment?" + +"It goes too quickly, and there are so many others which promise more, +and will never fulfil their promise; I know it. We painters know it when +we dare to think clearly. It is better not to think too clearly--better +to go on and pretend to expect attainment.... Stephanie, sometimes I +wish I were in an honest business--selling, buying--and could close up +shop and go home to pleasant dreams." + +"Can't you?" + +"No. It's eternal obsession. A painter's work is never ended. It goes on +with some after they are asleep; and then they go crazy," he added, and +laughed and laid his hand lightly and unthinkingly over hers where it +rested on the arm of her chair. And he remained unaware of her delicate +response to the contact. + +The stars were clear and liquid-bright, swarming in myriads in the June +sky. A big meteor fell, leaving an incandescent arc which faded +instantly. + +"I wonder what time it is," Be said. + +"You mustn't miss your train, must you?" + +"No." ... Suddenly it struck him that it would be one o'clock before he +could get to the studio and call up Valerie. That would be too late. He +couldn't awake her just for the pleasure of talking to her. Besides, he +was sure to see her in the morning when she came to him for her +portrait.... Yet--yet--he wanted to talk to her.... There seemed to be +no particular reason for this desire. + +"I think I'll just step to the telephone a moment." He rose, and her +fingers dropped from his hand. "You don't mind, do you?" + +"Not at all," she smiled. "The stars are very faithful friends. I'll be +well guarded until you come back, Louis." + +What she said, for some reason, made him slightly uncomfortable. He was +thinking of her words as he called up "long distance" and waited. +Presently Central called him with a brisk "Here's your party!" And very +far away he heard her voice: + +"I know it is _you_. Is it?" + +"Who?" + +"It is! I recognise your voice. But _which_ is it--Kelly or Louis or Mr. +Neville?" + +"All three," he replied, laughing. + +"But which gentleman is in the ascendant? The god-like one? Or the +conventional Mr. Neville? Or--the bad and very lovable and very human +Louis?" + +"Stop talking-nonsense, Valerie. What are you doing?" + +"Conversing with an abrupt gentleman called Louis Neville. I _was_ +reading." + +"All alone in your room?" + +"Naturally. Two people _couldn't_ get into it unless one of them also +got into bed." + +"You poor child! What are you reading?" + +"Will you promise not to laugh?" + +"Yes, I will." + +"Then--I was reading the nineteenth psalm." + +"It's a beauty, isn't it," he said. + +"Oh, Louis, it is glorious!--I don't know what in it appeals most +thrillingly to me--the wisdom or the beauty of the verse--but I love +it." + +"It is fine," he said. "... And are you there in your room all alone +this beautiful starry night, reading the psalms of old King David?" + +"Yes. What are you doing? Where are you?" + +"At Ashuelyn, my sister's home." + +"Oh! Well, it is perfectly sweet of you to think of me and to call me +up--" + +"I usually--I--well, naturally I think of you. I thought I'd just call +you up to say good night. You see my train doesn't get in until one this +morning; and of course I couldn't wake you--" + +"Yes, you could. I am perfectly willing to have you wake me." + +"But that would be the limit!" + +"Is _that_ your limit, Louis? If it is you will never disturb my peace +of mind." He heard her laughing at the other end of the wire, delighted +with her own audacity. + +He said: "Shall I call you up at one o'clock when I get into town?" + +"Try it. I may awake." + +"Very well then. I'll make them ring till daylight." + +"Oh, they won't have to do that! I always know, about five minutes +before you call me, that you are going to." + +"You uncanny little thing! You've said that before." + +"It's true. I knew before you called me that you would. It's a vague +feeling--a--I don't know.... And oh, Louis, it _is_ hot in this room! +Are you cool out there in the country?" + +"Yes; and I hate to be when I think of you--" + +"I'm glad you are. It's one comfort, anyway. John Burleson called me up +and asked me to go to Manhattan Beach, but somehow it didn't appeal to +me.... I've rather missed you." + +"Have you?" + +"Really." + +"Well, I'll admit I've missed you." + +"Really?" + +Sure thing! I wish to heaven I were in town now. We would go somewhere." + +"Oh, I wish so, too." + +"Isn't it the limit!" + +"It is, Kelly. Can't you be a real god for a moment and come floating +into my room in a golden cloud?" + +"Shall I try?" + +"_Please_ do." + +"All right. I'll do my god-like best. And anyway I'll call you up at +one. Good night." + +"Good night." + +He went back to the girl waiting for him in the starlight. + +"Well," she said, smiling at his altered expression, "you certainly have +recovered your spirits." + +He laughed and took her unreluctant fingers and kissed them--a boyishly +impulsive expression of the gay spirits which might have perplexed him +or worried him to account for if he had tried to analyse them. But he +didn't; he was merely conscious of a sudden inrush of high spirits--of a +warm feeling for all the world--this star-set world, so still and +sweet-scented. + +"Stephanie, dear," he said, smiling, "you know perfectly well that I +think--always have thought--that there was nobody like you. You know +that, don't you?" + +She laughed, but her pulses quickened a little. + +"Well, then," he went on. "I take it for granted that our understanding +is as delightfully thorough as it has always been--a warm, cordial +intimacy which leaves us perfectly unembarrassed--perfectly free to +express our affection for each other without fear of being +misunderstood." + +The girl lifted her blue eyes: "Of course." + +"That's what I told Lily," he nodded, delighted. I told her that you and +I understood each other--that it was silly of her to suspect anything +sentimental in our comradeship; that whenever the real thing put in an +appearance and came tagging down the pike after you, you'd sink the gaff +into him--" + +"The--what?" + +"Rope him and paste your monogram all over him." + +"I certainly will," she said, laughing. Eyes and lips and voice were +steady; but the tumult in her brain confused her. + +"That is exactly what I told Lily," he said. "She seems to think that if +two people frankly enjoy each other's society they want to marry each +other. All married women are that way. Like clever decoys they take +genuine pleasure in bringing the passing string under the guns." + +He laughed and kissed her pretty fingers again: + +"Don't you listen to my sister. Freedom's a good thing; and people are +selfish when happy; they don't set up a racket to attract others into +their private paradise." + +"Oh, Louis, that is really horrid of you. Don't you think Lily is +happy?" + +"Sure--in a way. You can't have a perfectly good husband and baby, and +have the fun of being courted by other aspirants, too. Of course married +women are happy; but they give up a lot. And sometimes it slightly +irritates them to remember it when they see the unmarried innocently +frisking as they once frisked. And it's their instinct to call out 'Come +in! Matrimony's fine! You don't know what you are missing!'" + +Stephanie laughed and lay back in her steamer chair, her hand abandoned +to him. And when her mirth had passed a slight sense of fatigue left her +silent, inert, staring at nothing. + +When the time came to say _adieu_ he kissed her as he sometimes did, +with a smiling and impersonal tenderness--not conscious of the source of +all this happy, demonstrative, half impatient animation which seemed to +possess him in every fibre. + +"Good-bye, you dear girl," he said, as the lights of the motor lit up +the drive. "I've had a bully time, and I'll see you soon again." + +"Come when you can, Louis. There is no man I would rather see." + +"And no girl I would rather go to," he said, warmly, scarcely thinking +what he was saying. + +Their clasped hands relaxed, fell apart. He went in to take leave of +Lily and Gordon and their guests, then emerged hastily and sprang into +the car. + +Overhead the June stars watched him as he sped through the fragrant +darkness. But with him, time lagged; even the train crawled as he timed +it to the ticking seconds of his opened watch. + +In the city a taxi swallowed him and his haste; and it seemed as though +he would never get to his studio and to the telephone; but at last he +heard her voice--a demure, laughing little voice: + +"I didn't think you'd be brute enough to do it!" + +"But you said I might call you--" + +"There are many things that a girl says from which she expects a man to +infer, tactfully and mercifully, the contrary." + +"Did I wake you, Valerie? I'm terribly sorry--" + +"If you are sorry I'll retire to my pillow--" + +"I'll ring you up again!" + +"Oh, if you employ threats I think I'd better listen to you. What have +you to say to me?" + +"What were you doing when I rang you up?" + +"I Wish I could say that I was asleep. But I can't. And if I tell the +truth I've got to flatter you. So I refuse to answer." + +"You were not waiting up for--" + +"Kelly! I refuse to answer! Anyway you didn't keep your word to me." + +"How do you mean?" + +"You promised to appear in a golden cloud!" + +"Something went wrong with the Olympian machinery," he explained, "and I +was obliged to take the train.... What are you doing there, anyway?" + +"Now?" + +"Yes, now." + +"Why, I'm sitting at the telephone in my night-dress talking to an +exceedingly inquisitive gentleman--" + +"I mean were you reading more psalms?" + +"No. If you must know, I was reading 'Bocaccio'" + +He could hear her laughing. + +"I was meaning to ask you how you'd spent the day," he began. "Haven't +you been out at all?" + +"Oh, yes. I'm not under vows, Kelly." + +"Where?" + +"Now I wonder whether I'm expected to account for every minute when I'm +not with you? I'm beginning to believe that it's a sort of monstrous +vanity that incites you to such questions. And I'm going to inform you +that I did _not_ spend the day sitting by the window and thinking about +you." + +"What _did_ you do?" + +"I motored in the Park. I lunched at Woodmanston with a perfectly good +young man. I enjoyed it." + +"Who was the man?" + +"Sam." + +"Oh," said Neville, laughing. + +"You make me perfectly furious by laughing," she exclaimed. "I wish I +could tell you that I'd been to Niagara Falls with José Querida!" + +"I wouldn't believe it, anyway." + +"I wouldn't believe it myself, even if I had done it," she said, +naïvely. There was a pause; then: + +"I'm going to retire. Good night." + +"Good night, Valerie." + +"Louis!" + +"What?" + +"You say the golden-cloud machinery isn't working?" + +"It seems to have slipped a cog." + +"Oh! I thought you might have mended it and that--perhaps--I had better +not leave my window open." + +"That cloud is warranted to float through solid masonry." + +"You alarm me, Kelly." + +"I'm sorry, but the gods never announce their visits." + +"I know it.... And I suppose I must sleep in a dinner gown. When one +receives a god it's a full-dress affair, isn't it?" + +He laughed, not mistaking her innocent audacity. + +"Unexpected Olympians must take their chances," he said. "... Are you +sleepy?" + +"Fearfully." + +"Then I won't keep you--" + +"But I hope you won't be rude enough to dismiss me before I have a +chance to give you your _congé_!" + +"You blessed child. I could stay here all night listening to you--" + +"Could you? That's a temptation." + +"To you, Valerie?" + +"Yes--a temptation to make a splendid exit. Every girl adores being +regretted. So I'll hang up the receiver, I think.... Good night, Kelly, +dear.... Good night, Louis. _À demain!--non--pardon! à bien +tôt!--parceque il est deux heures de matin! Et--vous m'avez rendu bien +heureuse._" + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +Toward the last of June Neville left town to spend a month with his +father and mother at their summer Lome near Portsmouth. Valerie had +already gone to the mountains with Rita Tevis, gaily refusing her +address to everybody. And, packing their steamer trunks and satchels, +the two young girls departed triumphantly for the unindicated but modest +boarding-house tucked away somewhere amid the hills of Delaware County, +determined to enjoy every minute of a vacation well earned, and a +surcease from the round of urban and suburban gaiety which the advent of +July made a labour instead of a relaxation. + +From some caprice or other Valerie had decided that her whereabouts +should remain unknown even to Neville. And for a week it suited her +perfectly. She swam in the stump-pond with Rita, drove a buckboard with +Rita, fished industriously with Rita, played tennis on a rutty court, +danced rural dances at a "platform," went to church and giggled like a +schoolgirl, and rocked madly on the veranda in a rickety rocking-chair, +demurely tolerant of the adoration of two boys working their way +through, college, a smartly dressed and very confident drummer doing his +two weeks, and several assorted and ardent young men who, at odd +moments, had persuaded her to straw rides and soda at the village +druggists. + +[Illustration: "A smartly dressed and very confident drummer."] + +And all the while she giggled with Rita in a most shameless and +undignified fashion, went about hatless, with hair blowing and sleeves +rolled up; decorated a donation party at the local minister's and +flirted with him till his gold-rimmed eye-glasses protruded; behaved +like a thoughtful and considerate angel to the old, uninteresting and +infirm; romped like a young goddess with the adoring children of the +boarders, and was fiercely detested by the crocheting spinsters rocking +in acidulated rows on the piazza. + +The table was meagre and awful and pruneful; but she ate with an +appetite that amazed Rita, whose sophisticated palate was grossly +insulted thrice daily. + +"How on earth you can contrive to eat that hash," she said, resentfully, +"I don't understand. When my Maillard's give out I'll quietly starve in +a daisy field somewhere." + +"Close your eyes and pretend you and Sam are dining at the +Knickerbocker," suggested Valerie, cheerfully. "That's what I do when +the food doesn't appeal to me." + +"With whom do you pretend you are dining?" + +"Sometimes with Louis Neville, sometimes with Querida," she, said, +frankly. "It helps the hash wonderfully. Try it, dear. Close your eyes +and visualise some agreeable man, and the food isn't so very awful." + +Rita laughed: "I'm not as fond of men as that." + +"Aren't you? I am. I do like an agreeable man, and I don't mind saying +so." + +"I've observed that," said Rita, still laughing. + +"Of course you have. I've spent too many years without them not to enjoy +them now--bless their funny hearts!" + +"I'm glad there are no men here," observed Rita. + +"But there are men here," said Valerie, innocently. + +"Substitutes. Lemons." + +"The minister is superficially educated--" + +"He's a muff." + +"A nice muff. I let him pat my gloved hand." + +"You wicked child. He's married." + +"He only patted it in spiritual emphasis, dear. Married or single he's +more agreeable to me than that multi-coloured drummer. I let the +creature drive me to the post office in a buckboard, and he continued to +sit closer until I took the reins, snapped the whip, and drove at a +gallop over that terrible stony road. And he is so fat that it nearly +killed him. It killed all sentiment in him, anyway." + +Rita, stretched lazily in a hammock and displaying a perfectly shod foot +and silken ankle to the rage of the crocheters on the veranda, said +dreamily: + +"The unfortunate thing about us is that we know too much to like the +only sort of men who are likely to want to marry us." + +"What of it?" laughed Valerie. "We don't want to marry them--or anybody. +Do we?" + +"Don't you?" + +"Don't I what?" + +"Want to get married?" + +"I should think not." + +"Never?" + +"Not if I feel about it as I do now. I've never had enough play, Rita. +I've missed all those years that you've had--that most girls have had. I +never had any boys to play with. That's really all I am doing +now--playing with grown-up boys. That's all I am--merely a grown-up girl +with a child's heart." + +"A heart of gold," murmured Rita, "you darling." + +"Oh, it isn't all gold by any means! It's full of silver whims and +brassy selfishness and tin meannesses and senseless ideas--full of +fiery, coppery mischief, too; and, sometimes, I think, a little +malice--perhaps a kind of diluted deviltry. But it's a hungry heart, +dear, hungry for laughter and companionship and friendship--with a +capacity for happiness! Ah, you don't know, dear--you never can know how +capable I am of friendship and happiness!" + +"And--sentiment?" + +"I--don't--know." + +"Better watch out, sweetness!" + +"I do." + +Rita said thoughtfully, swinging in her hammock: + +"Sentiment, for us, is no good. I've learned that." + +"You?" + +"Of course." + +"How?" + +"Experience," said Rita, carelessly. "Every girl is bound to have it. +She doesn't have to hunt for it, either." + +"Were you ever in--love?" asked Valerie, curiously. + +"Now, dear, if I ever had been happily in love is it likely you wouldn't +know it?" + +"I suppose so," said Valerie.... She added, musingly: + +"I wonder what will become of me if I ever fall in love." + +"If you'll take my advice you'll run." + +"Run? Where? For goodness' sake!" + +"Anywhere until you became convalescent." + +"That would be a ridiculous idea," remarked Valerie so seriously that +Rita began to laugh: + +"You sweet thing," she said, "it's a million chances that you'd be +contented only with the sort of man who wouldn't marry you." + +"Because I'm poor, you mean? Or because I am working for my living?" + +"Both--and then some." + +"What else?" + +"Why, the only sort of men who'd attract you have come out of their own +world of their own accord to play about for a while in our world. They +can go back; that is the law. But they can't take us with them." + +"They'd be ashamed, you mean?" + +"Perhaps not. A man is likely enough to try. But alas! for us, if we're +silly enough to go. I tell you, Valerie, that their world is full of +mothers and sisters and feminine relatives and friends who could no more +endure us than they would permit us to endure them. It takes courage for +a man to ask us to go into that world with him; it takes more for us to +do it. And our courage is vain. We stand no chance. It means a rupture +of all his relations; and a drifting--not into our world, not into his, +but into a horrible midway void, peopled by derelicts.... I know, dear, +believe me. And I say that to fall in love is no good, no use, for us. +We've been spoiled for what we might once have found satisfactory. We +are people without a class, you and I." + +Valerie laughed: "That gives us the more liberty, doesn't it?" + +"It's up to us, dear. We are our own law, social and spiritual. If we +live inside it we are not going to be any too happy. If we live without +it--I don't know. Sometimes I wonder whether some of the pretty girls +you and I see at Rector's--" + +"I've wondered, too.... They _look_ happy--some of them." + +"I suppose they are--for a while.... But the worst of it is that it +never lasts." + +"I suppose not." Valerie pondered, grave, velvet-eyed, idly twisting a +grass stem. + +"After all," she said, "perhaps a brief happiness--with love--is worth +the consequences." + +"Many women risk it.... I wonder how many men, if social conditions were +reversed, would risk it? Not many, Valerie." + +They remained silent; Rita lay in the shadow of the maples, eyes closed; +Valerie plaited her grass stems with absent-minded industry. + +"I never yet wished to marry a man," she observed, presently. + +Rita made no response. + +"Because," continued the girl with quaint precision, "I never yet wanted +anything that was not offered freely; even friendship. I think--I don't +know--but I think--if any man offered me love--and I found that I could +respond--I _think_ that, if I took it, I'd be contented with love--and +ask nothing further--wish nothing else--unless he wanted it, too." + +Rita opened her eyes. + +Valerie, plaiting her grass very deftly, smiled to herself. + +"I don't know much about love, Rita; but I believe it is supreme +contentment. And if it is--what is the use of asking for more than +contents one?" + +"It's safer." + +"Oh--I know that.... I've read enough newspapers and novels and real +literature to know that. Incidentally the Scriptures treat of it.... +But, after all, love is love. You can't make it more than it is by law +and custom; you can't make it less; you can't summon it; you can't +dismiss it.... And I believe that I'd be inclined to take it, however +offered, if it were really love." + +"That is unmoral, dear," said Rita, smiling. + +"I'm not unmoral, am I?" + +"Well--your philosophy sounds Pagan." + +"Does it? Then, as you say, perhaps I'd better run if anything +resembling love threatens me." + +"The nymphs ran--in Pagan times." + +"And the gods ran after them," returned Valerie, laughing. "I've a very +fine specimen of god as a friend, by the way--a Protean gentleman with +three quick-change stunts. He's a perfectly good god, too, but he never +ran after me or tried to kiss me." + +"You _don't_ mean Querida, then." + +"No. He's no god." + +"Demi-god." + +"Not even that," said Valerie; "he's a sentimental shepherd who likes to +lie with his handsome head in a girl's lap and make lazy eyes at her." + +"I know," nodded Rita. "Look out for that shepherd." + +"Does he bite?" + +"No; there's the trouble. Anybody can pet him." + +Valerie laughed, turned over, and lay at length on her stomach in the +grass, exploring the verdure for a four-leaf clover. + +"I never yet found one," she said, cheerfully. "But then I've never +before seen much grass except in the Park." + +"Didn't you ever go to the country?" + +"No. Mother was a widow and bedridden. We had a tiny income; I have it +now. But it wasn't enough to take us to the country." + +"Didn't you work?" + +"I couldn't leave mother. Besides, she wished to educate me." + +"Didn't you go to school?" + +"Only a few months. We had father's books. We managed to buy a few +more--or borrow them from the library. And that is how I was educated, +Rita--in a room with a bedridden mother." + +"She must have been well educated." + +"I should think so. She was a college graduate.... When I was fifteen I +took the examinations for Barnard--knowing, of course, that I couldn't +go--and passed in everything.... If mother could have spared me I could +have had a scholarship." + +"That was hard luck, wasn't it, dear?" + +"N-no. I had mother--as long as she lived. After she died I had what she +had given me--and she had the education of a cultivated woman; she was a +lover of the best in literature and in art, a woman gently bred, +familiar with sorrow and privation." + +"If you choose," said Rita, "you are equipped for a governess--or a +lady's companion--or a secretary--" + +"I suppose I am. Before I signed with Schindler I advertised, offering +myself as a teacher. How many replies do you suppose I received?" + +"How many?" + +"Not one." + +Rita sighed. "I suppose you couldn't afford to go on advertising." + +"No, and I couldn't afford to wait.... Mother's burial took all the +little income. I was glad enough when Schindler signed me.... But a girl +can't remain long with Schindler." + +"I know." + +Valerie plucked a grass blade and bit it in two reflectively. + +"It's a funny sort of a world, isn't it, Rita?" + +"Very humorous--if you look at it that way." + +"Don't you?" + +"Not entirely." + +Valerie glanced up at the hammock. + +"How did _you_ happen to become a model, Rita?" + +"I'm a clergyman's daughter; what do you expect?" she said, with smiling +bitterness. + +"_You_!" + +"From Massachusetts, dear.... The blue-light elders got on my nerves. I +wanted to study music, too, with a view to opera." She laughed +unpleasantly. + +"Was your home life unhappy, dear?" + +"Does a girl leave happiness?" + +"You didn't run away, did you?" + +"I did--straight to the metropolis as a moth to its candle." + +Valerie waited, then, timidly: "Did you care to tell me any more, dear? +I thought perhaps you might like me to ask you. It isn't curiosity." + +"I know it isn't--you blessed child! I'll tell you--some +day--perhaps.... Pull the rope and set me swinging, please.... Isn't +this sky delicious--glimpsed through the green leaves? Fancy you're not +knowing the happiness of the country! I've always known it. Perhaps the +trouble was I had too much of it. My town was an ancient, respectable, +revolutionary relic set in a very beautiful rolling country near the +sea; but I suppose I caught the infection--the country rolled, the +breakers rolled, and finally I rolled out of it all--over and over +plump into Gotham! And I didn't land on my feet, either.... You are +correct, Valerie; there is something humorous about this world.... +There's one of the jokes, now!" as a native passed, hunched up on the +dashboard, driving a horse and a heifer in double harness. + +"Shall we go to the post office with him?" cried Valerie, jumping to her +feet. + +[Illustration: "Valerie sat cross-legged on the grass ... scribbling +away."] + +"Now, dear, what is the use of our going to the post office when nobody +knows our address and we never could possibly expect a letter!" + +"That is true," said Valerie, pensively. "Rita, I'm beginning to think +I'd like to have a letter. I believe--believe that I'll write to--to +somebody." + +"That is more than I'll do," yawned Rita, closing her eyes. She opened +them presently and said: + +"I've a nice little writing case in my trunk. Sam presented it. Bring it +out here if you're going to write." + +The next time she unclosed her eyes Valerie sat cross-legged on the +grass by the hammock, the writing case on her lap, scribbling away as +though she really enjoyed it. + +The letter was to Neville. It ran on: + +"Rita is asleep in a hammock; she's too pretty for words. I love her. +Why? Because she loves me, silly! + +"I'm a very responsive individual, Kelly, and a pat on the head elicits +purrs. + +"I want you to write to me. Also, pray be flattered; you are the only +person on earth who now has my address. I _may_ send it to José Querida; +but that is none of your business. When I saw the new moon on the +stump-pond last night I certainly did wish for Querida and a canoe. He +can sing very charmingly. + +"Now I suppose you want to know under what circumstances I have +permitted myself to wish for you. If you talk to a man about another man +he always attempts to divert the conversation to himself. Yes, he does. +And you are no better than other men, Louis--not exempt from their +vanities and cunning little weaknesses. Are you? + +"Well, then, as you admit that you are thoroughly masculine, I'll admit +that deep in a corner of my heart I've wished for you a hundred times. +The moon suggests Querida; but about everything suggests you. Now are +you flattered? + +"Anyway, I do want you. I like you, Louis! I like you, Mr. Neville! And +oh, Kelly, I worship you, without sentiment or any nonsense in reserve. +You are life, you are happiness, you are gaiety, you are inspiration, +you are contentment. + +"I wonder if it would be possible for you to come up here for a day or +two after your visit to your parents is ended. I'd adore it. You'd +probably hate it. Such food! Such beds! Such people! But--could +you--would you come--just to walk in the heavenly green with me? I +wonder. + +"And, Louis, I'd row you about on the majestic expanse of the +stump-pond, and we'd listen to the frogs. Can you desire anything more +romantic? + +"The trouble with you is that you're romantic only on canvas. Anyway, I +can't stir you to sentiment. Can I? True, I never tried. But if you come +here, and conditions are favourable, and you are so inclined, and I am +feeling lonely, nobody can tell what might happen in a flat scow on the +stump-pond. + +"To be serious for a moment, Louis, I'd really love to have you come. +You know I never before saw the real country; I'm a novice in the woods +and fields, and, somehow, I'd like to have you share my novitiate in +this--as you did when I first came to you. It is a curious feeling I +have about anything new; I wish you to experience it with me. + +"Rita is awake and exploring the box of Maillard's which is about +empty. Be a Samaritan and send me some assorted chocolates. Be a god, +and send me something to read--anything, please, from Jacobs to James. +There's latitude for you. Be a man, and send me yourself. You have no +idea how welcome you'd be. The chances are that I'd seize you and +embrace you. But if you're willing to run that risk, take your courage +in both hands and come. + +"Your friend, + +"VALERIE WEST." + +The second week of her sojourn she caught a small pickerel--the only +fish she had ever caught in all her life. And she tearfully begged the +yokel who was rowing her to replace the fish in its native element. But +it was too late; and she and Rita ate her victim, sadly, for dinner. + +At the end of the week an enormous box of bonbons came for her. Neither +she nor Rita were very well next day, but a letter from Neville did +wonders to restore abused digestion. + +Other letters, at intervals, cheered her immensely, as did baskets of +fruit and boxes of chocolates and a huge case of books of all kinds. + +"Never," she said to Rita, "did I ever hear of such an angel as Louis +Neville. When he comes the first of August I wish you to keep tight hold +of me, because, if he flees my demonstrations, I feel quite equal to +running him down." + +But, curiously enough, it was a rather silent and subdued young girl in +white who offered Neville a shy and sun-tanned hand as he descended from +the train and came forward, straw hat under one arm, to greet her. + +"How well you look!" he exclaimed, laughingly; "I never saw such a +flawless specimen of healthy perfection!" + +[Illustration: "'How well you look!' he exclaimed"] + +"Oh, I know I look like a milk-maid, Kelly; I've behaved like one, too. +Did you ever see such a skin? Do you suppose this sun-burn will ever +come off?" + +"Instead of snow and roses you're strawberries and cream," he +said--"and it's just as fetching, Valerie. How are you, anyway?" + +"Barely able to sit up and take nourishment," she admitted, demurely. +"... I don't think you look particularly vigorous," she added, more +seriously. "You are brown but thin." + +"Thin as a scorched pancake," he nodded. "The ocean was like a vast +plate of clam soup in which I simmered several times a day until I've +become as leathery and attenuated as a punctured pod of kelp.... Where's +the rig we depart in, Valerie?" he concluded, looking around the +sun-scorched, wooden platform with smiling interest. + +"I drove down to meet you in a buck-board." + +"Splendid! Is there room for my suit case?" + +"Plenty. I brought yards of rope." + +They walked to the rear of the station where buckboard and horse stood +tethered to a tree. He fastened his suit case to the rear of the +vehicle, swathing it securely in, fathoms of rope; she sprang in, he +followed; but she begged him to let her drive, and pulled on a pair of +weather-faded gloves with a business-like air which was enchanting. + +So he yielded seat and rusty reins to her; whip in hand, she steered the +fat horse through the wilderness of arriving and departing carriages of +every rural style and description--stages, surreys, mountain-waggons, +buck-boards--drove across the railroad track, and turned up a mountain +road--a gradual ascent bordered heavily by blackberry, raspberry, +thimble berry and wild grape, and flanked by young growths of beech and +maple set here and there with hemlock and white pine. But the +characteristic foliage was laurel and rhododendron--endless stretches +of the glossy undergrowth fringing every woodland, every diamond-clear +water-course. + +"It must be charming when it's in blossom," he said, drawing the sweet +air of the uplands deep into his lungs. "These streams look exceedingly +like trout, too. How high are we?" + +"Two thousand feet in the pass, Kelly. The hills are much higher. You +need blankets at night...." She turned her head and smilingly considered +him: + +"I can't yet believe you are here." + +"I've been trying to realise it, too." + +"Did you come in your favourite cloud?" + +"No; on an exceedingly dirty train." + +"You've a cinder mark on your nose." + +"Thanks." He gave her his handkerchief and she wiped away the smear. + +"How long can you stay?--Oh, don't answer! Please forget I asked you. +When you've got to go just tell me a few minutes before your +departure.... The main thing in life is to shorten unhappiness as much +as possible. That is Rita's philosophy." + +"Is Rita well?" + +"Perfectly--thanks to your bonbons. She doesn't precisely banquet on the +fare here--poor dear! But then," she added, philosophically, "what can a +girl expect on eight dollars a week? Besides, Rita has been spoiled. I +am not unaccustomed to fasting when what is offered does not interest +me." + +"You mean that boarding house of yours in town?" + +"Yes. Also, when mother and I kept house with an oil stove and two rooms +the odour of medicine and my own cooking left me rather indifferent to +the pleasures of Lucullus." + +"You poor child!" + +"Not at all to be pitied--as long as I had mother," she said, with a +quiet gravity that silenced him. + +Up, up, and still up they climbed, the fat horse walking leisurely, +nipping at blackberry leaves here, snatching at tender maple twigs +there. The winged mountain beauties--Diana's butterflies--bearing on +their velvety, blue-black pinions the silver bow of the goddess, flitted +ahead of the horse--celestial pilots to the tree-clad heights beyond. + +Save for the noise of the horse's feet and the crunch of narrow, +iron-tired wheels, the stillness was absolute under the azure splendour +of the heavens. + +"I am not yet quite at my ease--quite accustomed to it," she said. + +"To what, Valerie?" + +"To the stillness; to the remote horizons.... At night the vastness of +things, the height of the stars, fascinate me to the edge of uneasiness. +And sometimes I go and sit in my room for a while--to reassure +myself.... You see I am used to an enclosure--the walls of a room--the +walled-in streets of New York.... It's like suddenly stepping out of a +cellar to the edge of eternal space, and looking down into nothing." + +"Is that the way these rolling hillocks of Delaware County impress you?" +he asked, laughing. + +"Yes, Kelly. If I ever found myself in the Alps I believe the happiness +would so utterly over-awe me that I'd remain in my hotel under the bed. +What are you laughing at? _Voluptates commendat rarior usus_." + +"_Sit tua cura sequi, me duce tutus eris_!" he laughed, mischievously +testing her limit of Latin. + +"_Plus e medico quam e morbo periculi!_" she answered, saucily. + +"You cunning little thing!" he exclaimed: "_vix a te videor posse tenere +manus!_" + +"_Di melius, quam nos moneamus talia quenquam!_" she said, demurely; +"Louis, we are becoming silly! Besides, I probably know more Latin than +you do--as it was my mother's favourite relaxation to teach me to speak +it. And I imagine that your limit was your last year at Harvard." + +"Upon my word!" he exclaimed; "I never was so snubbed and patronised in +all my life!" + +"Beware, then!" she retorted, with an enchanting sideway glance: "_noli +me tangere!_" At the same instant he was aware of her arm in light, +friendly contact against his, and heard her musing aloud in deep +contentment: + +"Such perfect satisfaction to have you again, Louis. The world is a gray +void without the gods." + +And so, leisurely, they breasted the ascent and came out across the +height-of-land. Here and there a silvery ghost of the shorn forest +stood, now almost mercifully hidden in the green foliage of hard +wood--worthlessly young as yet but beautiful. + +From tree to tree flickered the brilliant woodpeckers--they of the solid +crimson head and ivory-barred wings. The great vermilion-tufted +cock-o'-the-woods called querulously; over the steel-blue stump-ponds +the blue kingfishers soared against the blue. It was a sky world of +breezy bushes and ruffled waters, of pathless fields and dense young +woodlands, of limpid streams clattering over greenish white rocks, +pouring into waterfalls, spreading through wild meadows set with iris +and pink azalea. + +"How is the work going, Louis?" she asked, glancing at him askance. + +"It's stopped." + +"_A cause de_--?" + +"_Je n'en sais rien, Valerie_." + +She flicked the harness with her whip, absently. He also leaned back, +thoughtfully intent on the blue hills in the distance. + +"Has not your desire to paint returned?" + +"No." + +"Do you know why?" + +"Partly. I am up against a solid wall. There is no thoroughfare." + +"Make one." + +"Through the wall?" + +"Straight through it." + +"Ah, yes"--he murmured--"but what lies beyond?" + +"It would spoil the pleasures of anticipation to know beforehand." + +He turned to her: "You are good for me. Do you know it?" + +"Querida said that, too. He said that I was an experience; and that all +good work is made up of experiences that concern it only indirectly." + +"Do you like Querida?" he asked, curiously. + +"Sometimes." + +"Not always?" + +"Oh, yes, always more or less. But sometimes"--she was silent, her dark +eyes dreaming, lips softly parted. + +"What do you mean by that?" he inquired, carelessly. + +"By what, Louis?" she asked, naïvely, interrupted in her day-dream. + +"By hinting--that sometimes you like Querida--more than at others?" + +"Why, I do," she said, frankly. "Besides, I don't hint things; I say +them." She had turned her head to look at him. Their eyes met in silence +for a few moments. + +"You are funny about Querida," she said. "Don't you like him?" + +"I have no reason to dislike him." + +"Oh! Is it the case of Sabidius? '_Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere +quare!_'" + +He laughed uneasily: "Oh, no, I think not.... You and he are such +excellent friends that I certainly ought to like him anyway." + +But she remained silent, musing; and on the edge of her upcurled lip he +saw the faint smile lingering, then fading, leaving the oval face almost +expressionless. + +So they drove past the one-story post office where a group of young +people stood awaiting the arrival of the stage with its battered mail +bags; past the stump-pond where Valerie had caught her first and only +fish, past a few weather-beaten farm houses, a white-washed church, a +boarding house or two, a village store, a watering-trough, and then +drove up to the wooden veranda where Rita rose from a rocker and came +forward with hand outstretched. + +"Hello, Rita!" he said, giving her hand a friendly shake. "Why didn't +you drive down with Valerie?" + +"I? That child would have burst into tears at such a suggestion." + +"Probably," said Valerie, calmly: "I wanted him for myself. Now that +I've had him I'll share him." + +She sprang lightly to the veranda ignoring Neville's offered hand with a +smile. A hired man took away the horse; a boy picked up his suit case +and led the way. + +"I'll be back in a moment," he said to Valerie and Rita. + +That evening at supper, a weird rite where the burnt offering was rice +pudding and the stewed sacrifice was prunes, Neville was presented to an +interesting assemblage of the free-born. + +There was the clerk, the drummer, the sales-lady, and ladies unsaleable +and damaged by carping years; city-wearied fathers of youngsters who +called their parents "pop" and "mom"; young mothers prematurely aged and +neglectful of their coiffure and shoe-heels; simpering maidenhood, acid +maidenhood, sophisticated maidenhood; shirt-waisted manhood, flippant +manhood, full of strange slang and double negatives unresponsively +suspicious manhood, and manhood disillusioned, prematurely tired, burnt +out with the weariness of a sordid Harlem struggle. + +Here in the height-of-land among scant pastures and the green charity +which a spindling second-growth spread over the nakedness of rotting +forest bones--here amid the wasted uplands and into this flimsy wooden +building came the rank and file of the metropolis in search of air, of +green, of sky, for ten days' surcease from toil and heat and the sad +perplexities of those with slender means. + +Neville, seated on the veranda with Valerie and Rita in the long summer +twilight, looked around him at scenes quite new to him. + +On the lumpy croquet ground where battered wickets and stakes awry +constituted the centre of social activity after supper, some young girls +were playing in partnership with young men, hatless, striped of shirt, +and very, very yellow of foot-gear. + +A social favourite, very jolly and corporeally redundant, sat in the +hammock fanning herself and uttering screams of laughter at jests +emanating from the boarding-house cut-up--a blonde young man with +rah-rah hair and a brier pipe. + +Children, neither very clean nor very dirty, tumbled noisily about the +remains of a tennis court or played base-ball in the dusty road. Ominous +sounds arose from the parlour piano, where a gaunt maiden lady rested +one spare hand among the keys while the other languidly pawed the music +of the "Holy City." + +Somewhere in the house a baby was being spanked and sent to bed. There +came the clatter of dishes from the wrecks of the rite in the kitchen, +accompanied by the warm perfume of dishwater. + +But, little by little the high stars came out, and the gray veil fell +gently over unloveliness and squalour; little by little the raucous +voices were hushed; the scuffle and clatter and the stringy noise of the +piano died away, till, distantly, the wind awoke in the woods, and very +far away the rushing music of a little brook sweetened the silence. + +Rita, who had been reading yesterday's paper by the lamplight which +streamed over her shoulder from the open parlour-window, sighed, stifled +a yawn, laid the paper aside, and drew her pretty wrap around her +shoulders. + +"It's absurd," she said, plaintively, "but in this place I become +horribly sleepy by nine o'clock. You won't mind if I go up, will you?" + +"Not if you feel that way about it," he said, smiling. + +"Oh, Rita!" said Valerie, reproachfully, "I thought we were going to row +Louis about on the stump-pond!" + +"I am too sleepy; I'd merely fall overboard," said Rita, simply, +gathering up her bonbons. "Louis, you'll forgive me, won't you? I don't +understand why, but that child never sleeps." + +They rose to bid her good night. Valerie's finger tips rested a moment +on Neville's sleeve in a light gesture of excuse for leaving him and of +promise to return. Then she went away with Rita. + +When she returned, the piazza was deserted except for Neville, who stood +on the steps smoking and looking out across the misty waste. + +"I usually go up with Rita," she said. "Rita is a dear. But do you know, +I believe she is not a particularly happy girl." + +"Why?" + +"I don't know why.... After all, such a life--hers and mine--is only +happy if you make it so.... And I don't believe she tries to make it so. +Perhaps she doesn't care. She is very young--and very pretty--too young +and pretty to be so indifferent--so tired." + +She stood on the step behind and above him, looking down at his back and +his well-set shoulders. They were inviting, those firm, broad, young +shoulders of his; and she laid both hands on them. + +"Shall I row you about in the flat-boat, Louis?" + +"I'll do the paddling--" + +"Not by any means. I like to row, if you please. I have cold cream and a +pair of gloves, so that I shall acquire no blisters." + +They walked together out to the road and along it, she holding to her +skirts and his arm, until the star-lit pond came into view. + +Afloat in the ancient, weedy craft he watched her slender strength +mastering the clumsy oars--watched her, idly charmed with her beauty and +the quaint, childish pleasure that she took in manoeuvring among the +shoreward lily pads and stumps till clear water was reached and the +little misty wavelets came slap! slap! against the bow. + +"If you were Querida you'd sing in an exceedingly agreeable tenor," she +observed. + +"Not being Querida, and labouring further under the disadvantage of a +barytone, I won't," he said. + +"Please, Louis." + +"Oh, very well--if you feel as romantic as that." And he began to sing: + + "My wife's gone to the country, + Hurrah! Hurrah!" + +"Louis! Stop it! Do you know you are positively corrupt to do such a +thing at such a time as this?" + +"Well, it's all I know, Valerie--" + +"I could cry!" she said, indignantly, and maintained a dangerous silence +until they drifted into the still waters of the outlet where the +starlight silvered the sedge-grass and feathery foliage formed a roof +above. + +Into the leafy tunnel they floated, oars shipped; she, cheek on hand, +watching the fire-flies on the water; he, rid of his cigarette, +motionless in the stern. + +After they had drifted half a mile she seemed disinclined to resume the +oars; so he crossed with her, swung the boat, and drove it foaming +against the silent current. + +On the return they said very little. She stood pensive, distraite, as he +tied the boat, then--for the road was dark and uneven--took his arm and +turned away beside him. + +"I'm afraid I haven't been very amusing company," he ventured. + +She tightened her arm in his--a momentary, gentle pressure: + +"I'm merely too happy to talk," she said. "Does that answer satisfy +you?" + +Touched deeply, he took her hand which rested so lightly on his +sleeve--a hand so soft and fine of texture--so cool and fresh and +slender that the youth and fragrance of it drew his lips to it. Then he +reversed it and kissed the palm. + +"Why, Louis," she said, "I didn't think you could be so sentimental." + +"Is that sentimental?" + +"Isn't it?" + +"It rather looks like it, doesn't it?" + +"Rather." + +"Did you mind?" + +"No.... Only--you and I--it seems--superfluous. I don't think anything +you do could make me like you more than I do." + +"You sweet little thing!" + +"No, only loyal, Kelly. I can never alter toward you." + +"What's that? A vow!" + +"Yes--of constancy and of friendship eternal." + +"'_Nomen amicitia est; nomen inane fides_!--Friendship is only a name; +constancy an empty title,'" he quoted. + +"Do you believe that?" + +"Constancy is an honest wish, but a dishonest promise," he said. "You +know it lies with the gods, Valerie." + +"So they say. But I know myself. And I know that, however I may ever +care for anybody else, it can never be at your expense--at the cost of +one atom of my regard for you. As I care for you now, so have I from the +beginning; so will I to the end; care more for you, perhaps; but never +less, Louis. And that I know." + +More deeply moved than he perhaps cared to be, he walked on slowly in +silence, measuring his step to hers. In the peace of the midnight world, +in the peace of her presence, he was aware of a tranquillity, a rest +that he had not known in weeks. Vaguely first, then uneasily, he +remembered that he had not known it since her departure, and shook off +the revelation with instinctive recoil--dismissed it, smiled at it to +have done with it. For such things could not happen. + +The woods were fragrant as they passed; a little rill, swelling from the +thicket of tangled jewel-weed, welled up, bubbling in the starlight. She +knelt down and drank from her cupped hands, and offered him the same +sweet cup, holding it fragrantly to his lips. + +And there, on their knees under the stars, he touched her full +child-like lips with his; and, laughing, she let him kiss her again--but +not a third time, swaying back from her knees to avoid him, then rising +lithely to her feet. + +"The poor nymph and the great god Kelly!" she said; "a new hero for the +pantheon: a new dryad to weep over. Kelly, I believe your story of your +golden cloud, now." + +"Didn't you credit it before?" + +"No." + +"But now that I've kissed you, you do believe it?" + +"Y-yes." + +"Then to fix that belief more firmly--" + +"Oh, no, you mustn't, Kelly--" she cried, her soft voice hinting of +hidden laughter. "I'm quite sure that my belief is very firmly fixed. +Hear me recite my creed. Credo! I believe that you are the great god +Kelly, perfectly capable of travelling about wrapped in a golden +cloud--" + +"You are mocking at the gods!" + +"No, I'm not. Who am I to affront Olympus?... Wh-what are you going to +do, Kelly? Fly to the sacred mount with me?" + +But she suffered his arm to remain around her waist as they moved slowly +on through the darkness. + +"How long are you going to stay? Tell me, Louis. I'm as tragically +curious as Pandora and Psyche and Bluebeard's wife, melted into the one +and eternal feminine." + +"I'm going to-morrow." + +"Oh-h," she said, softly. + +He was silent. They walked on, she with her head bent a little. + +"Didn't you want me to?" he asked at length. + +"Not if you care to stay.... I never want what those I care for are +indifferent about." + +"I am not indifferent. I think I had better go." + +"Is the reason important?" + +"I don't know, Valerie--I don't really know." + +He was thinking of this new and sweet familiarity--something suddenly +born into being under the wide stars--something that had not been a +moment since, and now was--something invoked by the vastness of earth +and sky--something confirmed by the wind in the forest. + +"I had better go," he said. + +Her silence acquiesced; they turned into the ragged lawn, ascended the +dew-wet steps; and then he released her waist. + +The hallways were dark and deserted as they mounted the stairs side by +side. + +"This is my door," she said. + +"Mine is on the next floor." + +"Then--good night, Louis." + +He took her hand in silence. After a moment she released it; laid both +hands lightly on his shoulders, lifted her face and kissed him. + +"Good night," she said. "You have made this a very happy day in my life. +Shall I see you in the morning?" + +"I'm afraid not. I left word to have a horse ready at daylight. It is +not far from that, now." + +"Then I shall not see you again?" + +"Not until you come to New York." + +"Couldn't you come back for a day? Querida is coming. Sammy and Harry +Annan are coming up over Sunday. Couldn't you?" + +"Valerie, dear, I _could_"--he checked himself; thought for a while +until the strain of his set teeth aroused him to consciousness of his +own emotion. + +Rather white he looked at her, searching for the best phrase--for it was +already threatening to be a matter of phrases now--of forced smiles--and +some breathing spot fit for the leisure of self-examination. + +"I'm going back to paint," he said. "Those commissions have waited long +enough." + +He strove to visualise his studio, to summon up the calm routine of the +old regime--as though the colourless placidity of the past could steady +him. + +"Will you need me?" she asked. + +"Later--of course. Just now I've a lot of men's figures to deal +with--that symbolical affair for the new court house." + +"Then you don't need me?" + +"No." + +She thought a moment, slim fingers resting on the knob of her door, +standing partly turned away from him. Then, opening her door, she +stepped inside, hesitated, looked back: + +"Good-bye, Louis, dear," she said, gently. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Neville had begun to see less and less of Valerie West. When she first +returned from the country in September she had come to the studio and +had given him three or four mornings on the portrait which he had begun +during the previous summer. But the painting of it involved him in +difficulties entirely foreign to him--difficulties born of technical +timidity of the increasing and inexplicable lack of self-confidence. And +deeply worried, he laid it aside, A dull, unreasoning anxiety possessed +him. Those who had given him commissions to execute were commencing to +importune him for results. He had never before disappointed any client. +Valerie could be of very little service to him in the big mural +decorations which, almost in despair, he had abruptly started. Here and +there, in the imposing compositions designed for the Court House, a +female figure, or group of figures, was required, but, in the main, male +figures filled the preliminary cartoons--great law-givers and +law-defenders of all ages and all lands, in robes and gowns of silks; in +armour, in skins, in velvet and ermine--men wearing doublet, jack-coat, +pourpoint; men in turban and caftan, men covered with mail of all +kinds--armour of leather, of fibre, of lacquer, of quilted silk, of +linked steel, Milanaise, iron cuirass; the emblazoned panoply of the +Mongol paladins; Timour Melek's greaves of virgin gold; men of all +nations and of all ages who fashioned or executed human law, from Moses +to Caesar, from Mohammed to Genghis Kahn and the Golden Emperor, from +Charlemagne to Napoleon, and down through those who made and upheld the +laws in the Western world, beginning with Hiawatha, creator of the +Iroquois Confederacy--the Great League. + +His studio was a confusion of silks, cut velvets, tapestries, +embroideries, carpets of the East, lay figures glittering with replicas +of priceless armour. Delicate fabrics trailed over chair and floor +almost under foot; inlaid and gem-hilted weapons, illuminated missals, +glass-cased papyri, gilded zones, filets, girdles, robes of fur, hoods, +wallets, helmets, hats, lay piled up, everywhere in methodical disorder. +And into and out of the studio passed male models of all statures, all +ages, venerable, bearded men, men in their prime, men with the +hard-hammered features and thick, sinewy necks of gladiators, men +slender and pallid as dreaming scholars, youths that might have worn the +gold-red elf-locks and the shoulder cloak of Venice, youth chiselled in +a beauty as dark and fierce as David wore when the mailed giant went +crashing earthward under the smooth round pebble from his sling. + +Valerie's turn in this splendid panoply was soon over. Even had she been +so inclined there was, of course, no place for her to visit now, no +place to sit and watch him among all these men. After hours, once or +twice, she came in to tea--to gossip a little with the old-time ease, +and barter with him epigram for jest, nonsense for inconsequence. Yet, +subtly--after she had gone home--she felt the effort. Either he or she +had imperceptibly changed; she knew not which was guilty; but she knew. + +Besides, she herself was now in universal demand--and in the furor of +her popularity she had been, from the beginning, forced to choose among +a very few with whom she personally felt herself at ease, and to whom +she had become confidently accustomed. Also, from the beginning, she had +not found it necessary to sit undraped for many--a sculptor or +two--Burleson and Gary Graves--Sam Ogilvy with his eternal mermaidens, +Querida--nobody else. The other engagements had been for costume or, at +most, for head and shoulders. Illustrators now clamoured for her in +modish garments of the moment--in dinner gown, ball gown, afternoon, +carriage, motor, walking, tennis, golf, riding costumes; poster artists +made her pretty features popular; photographs of her in every style of +indoor and outdoor garb decorated advertisements in the backs of monthly +magazines. She was seen turning on the water in model bathtubs, offering +the admiring reader a box of bonbons, demurely displaying a brand of +hosiery, recommending cold cream, baked beans, railroad routes, tooth +powder, and real-estate on Long Island. + +Her beauty, the innocent loveliness of her features, her dainty modest +charm, the enchanting outline and mould of her figure were beginning to +make her celebrated. Already people about town--at the play, in the +park, on avenue and street, in hotels and restaurants, were beginning to +recognise her, follow her with approving or hostile eyes, turn their +heads to watch her. + +Theatrical agents wrote her, making attractive offers for an engagement +where showgirls were the ornamental caryatids which upheld the three +tottering unities along Broadway. She also had chances to wear very +wonderful model gowns for next season at the Countess of Severn's new +dressmaking, drawing-rooms whither all snobdom crowded and shoved to get +near the trade-marked coronet, and where bewildering young ladies +strolled haughtily about all day long, displaying to agitated Gotham the +most startling gowns in the extravagant metropolis. + +She had other opportunities, too--such as meeting several varieties of +fashionable men of various ages--gentlemen prominently identified with +the arts and sciences--the art of killing time and the science of +enjoying the assassination. And some of these assorted gentlemen +maintained extensive stables and drove tandems, spikes, and fours; and +some were celebrated for their yachts, or motors, or prima-donnas, or +business acumen, or charitable extravagances.... Yes, truly, Valerie +West was beginning to have many opportunities in this generously +philanthropic world. And she was making a great deal of money--for +her--but nothing like what she might very easily have made. And she knew +it, young as she was. For it does not take very long to learn about such +things when a girl is attempting to earn her living in this altruistic +world. + +"She'll spread her wings and go one of these days," observed Archie +Allaire to Rita Tevis, who was posing as Psyche for one of his clever, +thinly brushed, high-keyed studies very much after the manner and +palette of Chaplin when they resembled neither Chartrain nor Zier, nor +any other artist temporarily in vogue. For he was an adaptable man, +facile, adroit, a master navigator in trimming sail to the fitful breeze +of popular favour. And his work was in great demand. + +"She'll be decorating the tonneau of some big touring car with crested +panels--and there'll be a bunch of orchids in the crystal holder, and a +Chow dog beside her, defying the traffic squad--" + +"No, she won't!" snapped Rita. "She's as likely to do that as she is to +dine with you again." + +Allaire, caught off his guard, scowled with unfeigned annoyance. +Repeated essays to ingratiate himself with Valerie had finally resulted +in a dinner at the Astor, and in her firm, polite, but uncompromising +declination of all future invitations from him, either to sit for him or +beside him under any circumstances and any conditions whatever. + +"So that's your opinion, is it, Rita?" he inquired, keeping his +light-blue eyes and his thin wet brush busy on his canvas. "Well, +sister, take it from muh, she thinks she's the big noise in the Great +White Alley; but they're giving her the giggle behind her back." + +"That giggle may be directed at you, Archie," observed Rita, scornfully; +"you're usually behind her back, you know, hoisting the C.Q.D." + +"Which is all right, too," he said, apparently undisturbed; "but when +she goes to Atlantic City with Querida--" + +"That is an utter falsehood," retorted Rita, calmly. "Whoever told you +that she went there with Querida, lied." + +"You think so?" + +"I know so! She went alone." + +"Then we'll let it go at that," said Allaire so unpleasantly that Rita +took fiery offence. + +"There is not a man living who has the right to look sideways at Valerie +West! Everybody knows it--Neville, Querida, Sam, John Burleson--even you +know it! If a man or two has touched her finger tips--her waist--her +lips, perhaps--no man has obtained more than that of her--dared more +than that! I have never heard that any man has ever even ventured to +offend her ears, unless"--she added with malice, "that is the reason +that she accepts no more invitations from you and your intimate +friends." + +Allaire managed to smile and continue to paint. But later he found use +for his palette knife--which was unusual in a painter as clever as he +and whose pride was in his technical skill with materials used and +applied _premier coup_. + +With October came the opening of many theatres; a premature gaiety +animated the hotels and restaurants; winter fabrics, hats, furs, gowns, +appeared in shops; the glittering windows along Fifth Avenue reflected +more limousines and fewer touring bodies passing. Later top hats +reappeared on street and in lobby; and when the Opera reopened, Long +Island, Jersey, and Westchester were already beginning to pour in +cityward, followed later by Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbour. The police +put on their new winter uniforms; furs were displayed in carriages, +automobiles, and theatres; the beauty of the florist's windows became +mellower, richer, and more splendid; the jewellery in the restaurants +more gorgeous. Gotham was beginning to be its own again, jacked up by +the Horse Show, the New Theatre, and the Opera; and by that energetic +Advertising Trust Company with its branches, dependencies, and mergers, +which is called Society, and which is a matter of eternal vigilance and +desperate business instead of the relaxation of cultivated security in +an accepted and acceptable order of things. + +Among other minor incidents, almost local in character, the Academy and +Society of American Artists opened its doors. And the exhibition +averaged as well as it ever will, as badly as it ever had averaged. +Allaire showed two portraits of fashionable women, done, this time, in +the manner of Zorn, and quite as clever on the streaky surface. Sam +Ogilvy proudly displayed another mermaid--Rita in_ the tub--and two +babies from photographs and "chic"--very bad; but as usual it was very +quickly marked sold. + +Annan had a portrait of his sister Alice, poorly painted and even +recognised by some of her more intimate friends. Clive Gail offered one +of his marines--waves splashing and dashing all over the canvas so +realistically that women instinctively stepped back and lifted their +skirts, and men looked vaguely around for a waiter--at least Ogilvy said +so. As for Neville, he had a single study to show--a full length--just +the back and head and the soft contour of limbs melting into a +luminously sombre background--a masterpiece in technical perfection, +which was instantly purchased by a wise and Western millionaire, and +which left the public staring but unmoved. + +But it was José Querida who dominated the whole show, flooding +everything with the splendour of his sunshine so that all else in the +same room looked cold or tawdry or washed out. His canvas, with its +superbly vigorous drawing, at once became the sensation of the +exhibition. Sunday supplements reproduced it with a photograph of +Querida looking amiably at a statuette of Venus which he held in his +long, tapering fingers; magazines tried to print it in two colours, in +three, in dozens, and made fireworks of it to Querida's inwardly +suppressed agony, and their own satisfaction. Serious young men wrote +"appreciations" about it; serious young women published instructive +discourses concerning it in the daily papers. Somebody in the valuable +columns of the _Tribune_ inquired whether Querida's painting was meant +to be symbolical; somebody in the _Nation_ said yes; somebody in the +_Sun_ said no; somebody in something or other explained its +psychological subtleties; somebody in something else screamed, "bosh!" + +Meanwhile the discussion was a god-send to fashionable diners-out and to +those cultivated leaders of society who prefer to talk through the Opera +and philharmonic. + +In what the educated daily press calls the "world of art" and the "realm +of literature," Querida's picture was discussed intelligently and +otherwise, but it _was_ discussed--from the squalid table d'hôte, where +unmanicured genius punctures the air with patois and punches holes in it +with frenzied thumbs, to quiet, cultivated homes, where community of +taste restricts the calling lists--from the noisy studio, where pianos +and girls make evenings lively, to the austere bare boards or the velvet +elegance of studios where authority and preciousness, and occasionally +attainment, reside, and sometimes do not. + + _Cognatis maculis similis fera_. + +Neville was busy, but not too busy to go about in the evening among his +own kind, and among other kinds, too. This unexpected resurgance within +him of the social instinct, he made no attempt to account for to others +or to himself. He had developed a mental and physical restlessness, +which was not yet entirely nervous, but it had become sufficiently +itching to stir him out of fatigue when the long day's work had +ended--enough to drive him out of the studio--at first merely to roam +about at hazard through the livelier sections of the city. But to the +lonely, there is no lonelier place than a lively one; and the false +brilliancy and gaiety drove him back upon himself and into his lair +again, where for a while he remained meditating amid the sombre menace +of looming canvases and the heavy futility of dull-gold hangings, and +the mischievous malice of starlight splintering into a million +incandescent rainbow rays through the sheet of glass above. + +Out of this, after some days, he emerged, set in motion by his +increasing restlessness. And it shoved him in the direction of his kind +once more--and in the direction of other kinds. + +He dined at his sister's in Seventy-ninth Street near Madison Avenue; he +dined with the Grandcourts on Fifth Avenue; he decorated a few dances, +embellished an opera box now and then, went to Lakewood and Tuxedo for +week ends, rode for a few days at Hot Springs, frequented his clubs, +frequented Stephanie, frequented Maxim's. + +And all the while it seemed to him as though he were temporarily +enduring something which required patience, which could not last +forever, which must one day end in a great change, a complete +transformation for himself, of himself, of the world around him and of +his aim and hope and purpose in living. At moments, too, an odd +sensation of expectancy came over him--the sense of waiting, of +suppressed excitement. And he could not account for it. + +Perhaps it concerned the finishing of his great mural frieze for the +Court House--that is, the completion of the section begun in September. +For, when it was done, and cleared out of his studio, and had been set +in its place, framed by the rose and gold of marble and ormolu, a heavy +reaction of relief set in, leaving him listless and indifferent at +first, then idle, disinclined to begin the companion frieze; then again +restless, discontented, tired, and lonely in that strange solitude which +seemed to be growing wider and wider around him in rings of silence. Men +praised and lauded the great frieze; and he strove to respond, to +believe them--to believe in the work and in himself--strove to shake off +the terrible discouragement invading him, lurking always near to reach +out and touch him, slinking at his heels from street to street, from +room to room, skulking always just beyond the shadows that his reading +lamp cast. + +Without envy, yet with profound sadness, he stood and faced the +splendour of Querida's canvas. He had gone to Querida and taken him by +both of his thin, olive-skinned hands, and had praised the work with a +heart clean of anything unworthy. And Querida had laughed and displayed +his handsome teeth, and returned compliment for compliment.... And +Neville had seen, on his dresser, a photograph of Valerie, signed in her +long, girlish, angular hand--"To José from Valerie"; and the date was of +mid-winter. + +Christmas came; he sent Valerie some furs and a note, and, before he +went to Aiken to spend the holidays with his father and mother, he tried +to get her on the telephone--tried half a dozen times. But she was +either busy with business or with pleasure somewhere or other--and he +never found her at home; so he went South without hearing from her. + +[Illustration: "Querida had laughed ... and returned compliment for +compliment."] + +After he arrived, it is true, he received from her a cigarette case and +a very gay and frank Christmas greeting--happy and untroubled +apparently, brimming with gossip, inconsequences, and nonsense. In it +she thanked him for his letter and his gift, hoped he was happy with his +parents, and expressed an almost conventional desire to see him on his +return. + +Then his parents came back to New York with him. Two days before New +Year's Day they went to Spindrift House instead of sailing for Egypt, +where for some years now they had been accustomed to spend the winters +shivering at Shepherd's. And he and his sister and brother-in-law and +Stephanie dined together that evening. But the plans they made to +include him for a New Year's Eve home party remained uncertain as far as +he was concerned. He was vague--could not promise--he himself knew not +why. And they ceased to press him. + +"You're growing thin and white," said Lily. "I believe you're getting +painter's colic." + +"House painters acquire that," he said, smiling. "I'm not a member of +their union yet." + +"Well, you must use as much white lead as they do on those enormous +canvases of yours. Why don't you start on a trip around the world, +Louis?" + +He laughed. + +Later, after he had taken his leave, the suggestion reoccurred to him. +He took enough trouble to think about it the next morning; sent out his +servant to amass a number of folders advertising world girdling tours of +various attractions, read them while lunching, and sat and pondered. Why +not? It might help. Because he certainly began to need help. He had gone +quite stale. Querida was right; he ought to lie fallow. No ground could +yield eternally without rest. Querida was clever enough to know that; +and he had been stupid enough to ignore it--even disbelieve it, +contemptuous of precept and proverb and wise saw, buoyed above +apprehension by consciousness and faith in his own inexhaustible energy. + +And, after all, something really seemed to have happened to him. He +almost admitted it now for the first time--considered the proposition +silently, wearily, without any definite idea of analysing it, without +even the desire to solve it. + +Somehow, at some time, he had lost pleasure in his powers, faith in his +capacity, desire for the future. What had satisfied him yesterday, +to-day became contemptible. Farther than ever, farther than the +farthest, stars receded the phantoms of the great Masters. What they +believed and endured and wrought and achieved seemed now not only +hopelessly beyond any comprehension or attainment of his, but even +beyond hope of humble discipleship. + +And always, horribly, like an obsession, was creeping over him in these +days the conviction of some similarity between his work and the thin, +clear, clever brush-work of Allaire--with all its mastery of ways and +means, all its triumph over technical difficulties, all its tricks and +subtle appeals, and its falsity, and its glamour. + +Reflection, retrospection sickened him. It was snowing and growing late +when he wrote to a steamship agent making inquiries and asking for plans +of staterooms. + +Then he had tea, alone there in the early winter dusk, with the +firelight playing over Gladys who sat in the full heat of the blaze, +licking her only kitten, embracing its neck with one maternal paw. + +He dressed about six, intending to dine somewhere alone that New Year's +Eve. The somewhere, as usual, ended at the Syrinx Club--or rather at the +snowy portal--for there he collided with Samuel Strathclyde Ogilvy and +Henry Knickerbocker Annan, and was seized and compelled to perform with +them on the snowy sidewalk, a kind of round dance resembling a pow-wow, +which utterly scandalised the perfectly respectable club porter, and +immensely interested the chauffeurs of a row of taxicabs in waiting. + +"Come! Let up! This isn't the most dignified performance I ever assisted +at," he protested. + +"Who said it was dignified?" demanded Ogilvy. "We're not hunting for +dignity. Harry and I came here in a hurry to find an undignified +substitute for John Burleson. You're the man!" + +"Certainly," said Annan, "you're the sort of cheerful ass we need in our +business. Come on! Some of these taxis belong to us--" + +"Where do you want me to go, you crazy--" + +"Now be nice, Louis," he said, soothingly; "play pretty and don't kick +and scream. Burleson was going with us to see the old year out at the +Cafe Gigolette, but he's got laryngitis or some similar species of +pip--" + +"I don't want to go--" + +"You've got to, dear friend. We've engaged a table for six--" + +"Six!" + +"Sure, dearie. In the college of experience coeducation is a necessary +evil. Step lively, son!" + +"Who is going?" + +[Illustration: "'Me lord, the taxi waits.'"] + +"One dream, one vision, one hallucination--" he wafted three kisses +from his gloved finger tips in the general direction of Broadway--"and +you, and Samuel, and I. Me lord, the taxi waits!" + +"Now, Harry, I'm not feeling particularly cheerful--" + +"But you will, dear friend; you will soon be feeling the Fifty-seven +Varieties of cheerfulness. All kinds of society will be at the +Gigolette--good, bad, fashionable, semi-fashionable--all imbued with the +intellectual and commendable curiosity to see somebody 'start +something.' And," he added, modestly, "Sam and I are going to see what +can be accomplished--" + +"No; I won't go--" + +But they fell upon him and fairly slid him into a taxi, beckoning two +other similar vehicles to follow in procession. + +"Now, dearie," simpered Sam, "don't you feel better?" + +Neville laughed and smoothed out the nap of his top hat. + +They made three stops at three imposing looking apartment hotels between +Sixth Avenue and Broadway--The Daisy, The Gwendolyn, The Sans +Souci--where negro porters and hallboys were gorgeously conspicuous and +the clerk at the desk seemed to be unusually popular with the guests. +And after every stop there ensued a shifting of passengers in the +taxicabs, until Neville found himself occupying the rear taxi in the +procession accompanied by a lively young lady in pink silk and +swansdown--a piquant face and pretty figure, white and smooth and +inclined to a plumpness so far successfully contended with by her corset +maker. + +"I have on my very oldest gown," she explained with violet-eyed +animation, patting her freshly dressed hair with two smooth little hands +loaded with diamonds and turquoises. "I'm afraid somebody will start +something and then they'll throw confetti, and somebody will think it's +funny to aim champagne corks at you. So I've come prepared," she added, +looking up at him with a challenge to deny her beauty. "By the way," she +said, "I'm Mazie Gray. Nobody had the civility to tell you, did they?" + +"They said something.... I'm Louis Neville," he replied, smiling. + +"Are you?" she laughed. "Well, you may take it from mother that you're +as cute as your name, Louis. Who was it they had all framed up to give +me my cues? That big Burleson gentleman who'd starve if he had to laugh +for a living, wasn't it? Can you laugh, child?" + +"A few, Mazie. It is my only Sunday accomplishment." + +"Dearie," she added, correcting him. + +"It is my only accomplishment, dearie." + +"That will be about all--for a beginning!" She laughed as the cab +stopped at the red awning and Neville aided her to descend. + +Steps, vestibules, stairs, cloak-rooms were crowded with jolly, +clamouring throngs flourishing horns, canes, rattles, and dusters decked +with brilliant ribbons. Already some bore marks of premature encounters +with confetti and cocktails. + +Waiters and head-waiters went gliding and scurrying about, assigning +guests to tables reserved months in advance. Pages in flame-coloured and +gold uniforms lifted the silken rope that stretched its barrier between +the impatient crowd and the tables; managers verified offered +credentials and escorted laughing parties to spaces bespoken. + +Two orchestras, relieving each other, fiddled and tooted continuously; +great mounds of flowers, smilax, ropes of evergreens, multi-tinted +electroliers made the vast salon gay and filled it with perfume. + +Even in the beginning it was lively enough though not yet boisterous in +the city where all New York was dining and preparing for eventualities; +the eventualities being that noisy mid-winter madness which seizes the +metropolis when the birth of the New Year is imminent. + +It is a strange evolution, a strange condition, a state of mind not to +be logically accounted for. It is not accurate to say that the nicer +people, the better sort, hold aloof; because some of them do not. And in +this uproarious carnival the better sort are as likely to misbehave as +are the worse; and they have done it, and do it, and probably will +continue to say and do and tolerate and permit inanities in themselves +and in others that, at other moments, they would regard as +insanities--and rightly. + + +Around every table, rosily illuminated, laughter rang. White throats and +shoulders glimmered, jewels sparkled, the clear crystalline shock of +glasses touching glasses rang continual accompaniment to the music and +the breezy confusion of voices. + +Here and there, in premonition of the eventual, the comet-like passage +of streaming confetti was blocked by bare arms upflung to shield +laughing faces; arms that flashed with splendid jewels on wrist and +finger. + +Neville, coolly surveying the room, recognised many, responding to +recognition with a laugh, a gesture, or with glass uplifted. + +"Stop making goo-goos," cried Mazie, dropping her hand over his wrist. +"Listen, and I'll be imprudent enough to tell you the very latest +toast--" She leaned nearer, opening her fan with a daring laugh; but +Ogilvy wouldn't have it. + +"This is no time for single sentiment!" he shouted. "Everybody should +be perfectly plural to-night--everything should be plural, multiple, +diffuse, all embracing, general, polydipsiatic, polygynyatic, +polyandryatic!" + +[Illustration: Mazie Gray.] + +"What's polyandryatic?" demanded Mazie in astonishment. + +"It means everybody is everybody else's! I'm yours and you're mine but +everybody else owns us and we own everybody." + +"Hurrah!" shouted Annan. "Hear--hear! Where is the fair and total +stranger who is going to steal the first kiss from me? Somebody count +three before the rush begins--" + +A ball of roses struck him squarely on the mouth; a furious shower of +confetti followed. For a few moments the volleys became general, then +the wild interchange of civilities subsided, and the cries of laughter +died away and were lost in the loud animated hum which never ceased +under the gay uproar of the music. + +When they played the barcarole from Contes d'Hoffman everybody sang it +and rose to their feet cheering the beautiful prima donna with whom the +song was so closely identified, and who made one of a gay group at a +flower-smothered table. + +And she rose and laughingly acknowledged the plaudits; but they wouldn't +let her alone until she mounted her chair and sang it in solo for them; +and then the vast salon went wild. + +Neville, surveying the vicinity, recognised people he never dreamed +would have appeared in such a place--here a celebrated architect and his +pretty wife entertaining a jolly party, there a well-known lawyer and +somebody else's pretty wife; and there were men well known at +fashionable clubs and women known in fashionable sets, and men and women +characteristic of quieter sets, plainly a little uncertain and surprised +to find themselves there. And he recognised assorted lights of the +"profession," masculine and feminine; and one or two beautiful meteors +that were falling athwart the underworld, leaving fading trails of +incandescence in their jewelled wake. + +The noise began to stun him; he laughed and talked and sang with the +others, distinguishing neither his own voice nor the replies. For the +tumult grew as the hour advanced toward midnight, gathering steadily in +strength, in license, in abandon. + +And now, as the minute hands on the big gilded clock twitched nearer and +nearer to midnight, the racket became terrific, swelling, roaring into +an infernal din as the raucous blast of horns increased in the streets +outside and the whistles began to sound over the city from Westchester +to the Bay, from Long Island to the Palisades. + +Sheer noise, stupefying, abominable, incredible, unending, greeted the +birth of the New Year; they were dancing in circles, singing, cheering +amid the crash of glasses. Table-cloths, silken gowns, flowers were +crushed and trampled under foot; flushed faces looked into strange +faces, laughing; eyes strange to other eyes smiled; strange hands +exchanged clasps with hands unknown; the whirl had become a madness. + +And, suddenly, in its vortex, Neville saw Valerie West. Somebody had set +her on a table amid the silver and flowers and splintered crystal. Her +face was flushed, eyes and mouth brilliant, her gown almost torn from +her left shoulder and fluttering around the lovely arm in wisps and rags +of silk and lace. Querida supported her there. + +They pelted her with flowers and confetti, and she threw roses back at +everybody, snatching her ammunition from a great basket which Querida +held for her. + +Ogilvy and Annan saw her and opened fire on her with a cheer, and she +recognised them and replied with volleys of rosebuds--was in the act of +hurling her last blossom--caught sight of Neville where he stood with +Mazie on a chair behind him, her arms resting on his shoulders. And the +last rose dropped from her hand. + +Querida turned, too, inquiringly; recognised Neville; and for a second +his olive cheeks reddened; then with a gay laugh he passed his arm +around Valerie and, coolly facing the bombardment of confetti and +flowers, swung her from the table to the floor. + +A furious little battle of flowers began at his own table, but Neville +was already lost in the throng, making his way toward the door, pelted, +shouldered, blocked, tormented--but, indifferent, unresponsive, forcing +his path to the outer air. + +Once or twice voices called his name, but he scarcely heard them. Then a +hand caught at his; and a breathless voice whispered: + +"Are you going?" + +"Yes," he said, dully. + +"Why?" + +"I've had enough--of the New Year." + +Breathing fast, the colour in her face coming and going, she stood, +vivid lips parted, regarding him. Then, in a low voice: + +"I didn't know you were to be here, Louis." + +"Nor I. It was an accident." + +"Who was the--girl--" + +"What girl?" + +"She stood behind you with her hands on your shoulders." + +"How the devil do I know," he said, savagely--"her name's +Mazie--something--or--other." + +"Did you bring her?" + +"Yes. Did Querida bring _you_?" he asked, insolently. + +[Illustration: "And the last rose dropped from her hand."] + +She looked at him in a confused, bewildered way--laid her hand on his +sleeve with an impulse as though he had been about to strike her. + +He no longer knew what he was doing in the sudden surge of unreasoning +anger that possessed him; he shook her hand from his sleeve and turned. + +And the next moment, on the stairs, she was beside him again, slender, +pale, close to his shoulder, descending the great staircase beside him, +one white-gloved hand resting lightly within his arm. + +Neither spoke. At the cloak-room she turned and looked at him--stood a +moment slowly tearing the orchids from her breast and dropping the +crushed petals underfoot. + +A maid brought her fur coat--his gift; a page brought his own coat and +hat. + +"Will you call a cab?" + +He turned and spoke to the porter. Then they waited, side by side, in +silence. + +When the taxicab arrived he turned to give the porter her address, but +she had forestalled him. And he entered the narrow vehicle; and they sat +through the snowy journey in utter silence until the cab drew up at his +door. + +Then he said: "Are you not going home?" + +"Not yet." + +They descended, stood in the falling snow while he settled with the +driver, then entered the great building, ascended in the elevator, and +stepped out at his door. + +He found his latch-key; the door swung slowly open on darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +An electric lamp was burning in the hallway; he threw open the +connecting doors of the studio where a light gleamed high on the +ceiling, and stood aside for her to pass him. + +She stepped across the threshold into the subdued radiance, stood for a +moment undecided, then: + +"Are you coming in?" she asked, cheerfully, quite aware of his +ill-temper. "Because if you are, you may take off my coat for me." + +He crossed the threshold in silence, and divested her of the fur garment +which was all sparkling with melting snow. + +"Do let's enjoy the firelight," she said, turning out the single ceiling +lamp; "and please find some nice, big crackly logs for the fire, +Kelly!--there's a treasure!" + +His frowning visage said: "Don't pretend that it's all perfectly +pleasant between us"; but he turned without speaking, cleared a big +arm-chair of its pile of silks, velvets, and antique weapons, and pushed +it to the edge of the hearth. Every movement he made, his every attitude +was characterised by a sulky dignity which she found rather funny, now +that the first inexplicable consternation of meeting him had subsided. +And already she was wondering just what it was that had startled her; +why she had left the café with him; why _he_ had left; why he seemed to +be vexed with her. For her conscience, in regard to him, was perfectly +clear and serene. + +"Now the logs, Kelly, dear," she said, "the kind that catch fire in a +second and make frying-pan music, please." + +He laid three or four logs of yellow birch across the bed of coals. The +blaze caught swiftly, mounting in a broad sheet of yellow flame, making +their faces brilliant in the darkness; and the tall shadows leaped +across floor and wall and towered, wavering above them from the ruddy +ceiling. + +"Kelly!" + +"What?" + +"I wish you a Happy New Year." + +"Thank you. I wish you the same." + +"Come over here and curl up on the hearth and drop your head back on my +knees, and tell me what is the trouble--you sulky boy!" + +He did not appear to hear her. + +"Please?--" with a slight rising inflection. + +"What is the use of pretending?" he said, shortly. + +"Pretending!" she repeated, mimicking him delightedly. Then with a +clear, frank laugh: "Oh, you great, big infant! The idea of _you_ being +the famous painter Louis Neville! I wish there was a nursery here. I'd +place you in it and let you pout!" + +"That's more pretence," he said, "and you know it." + +"What silly things you do say, Louis! As though people could find life +endurable if they did not pretend. Of course I'm pretending. And if a +girl pretends hard enough it sometimes comes true." + +"What comes true?" + +"Ah!--you ask me too much.... Well, for example, if I pretend I don't +mind your ill-temper it _may_ come true that you will be amiable to me +before I go home." + +There was no smile from him, no response. The warmth of the burning logs +deepened the colour in her cold cheeks. Snow crystals on her dark hair +melted into iris-rayed drops. She stretched her arms to the fire, and +her eyes fell on Gladys and her kitten, slumbering, softly embraced. + +"Oh, do look, Kelly! How perfectly sweet and cunning! Gladys has her +front paws right around the kitten's neck." + +Impulsively she knelt down, burying her face in the fluffy heap; the +kitten partly opened its bluish eyes; the mother-cat stretched her legs, +yawned, glanced up, and began to lick the kitten, purring loudly. + +For a moment or two the girl caressed the drowsy cats, then, rising, she +resumed her seat, sinking back deeply into the arm-chair and casting a +sidelong and uncertain glance at Neville. + +The flames burned steadily, noiselessly, now; nothing else stirred in +the studio; there was no sound save the ghostly whisper of driving snow +blotting the glass roof above. + +Her gaze wandered over the silken disorder in the studio, arrested here +and there as the firelight gleamed on bits of armour--on polished +corselet and helmet and the tall hilts of swords. Then she looked upward +where the high canvas loomed a vast expanse of gray, untouched except +for the brushed-in outlines of men in shadowy processional. + +She watched Neville, who had begun to prowl about in the disorder of +the place, stepping over trailing velvets, avoiding manikins armed +cap-a-pie, moving restlessly, aimlessly. And her eyes followed his +indecision with a smile that gradually became perplexed and then a +little troubled. + +For even in the uncertain firelight she was aware of the change in his +face--of features once boyish and familiar that seemed now to have +settled into a sterner, darker mould--a visage that was too lean for his +age--a face already haunted of shadows; a mature face--the face of a man +who had known unhappiness. + +He had paused, now, head lifted, eyes fixed on vast canvas above. And +for a long while he stood there leaning sideways against a ladder, +apparently oblivious of her. + +Time lagged, halted--then sped forward, slyly robbing him of minutes of +which his senses possessed no record. But minutes had come and gone +while he stood there thinking, unconscious of the trick time played +him--for the fire was already burning low again and the tall clock in +the shadows pointed with stiff and ancient hands to the death of another +hour and the birth of yet another; and the old-time bell chimed +impartially for both with a shift and slide of creaking weights and +wheels. + +He lifted his head abruptly and looked at Valerie, who lay curled up in +her chair, eyes closed, dark lashes resting on her cheeks. + +As he passed her chair and returned to place more logs on the fire she +opened her eyes and looked up at him. The curve of her mouth grew softly +humorous. + +"I'd much prefer my own bed," she said, "if this is all you have to say +to me." + +"Had you anything to say to me?" he asked, unsmiling. + +"About what, Kelly, dear?" + +"God knows; I don't." + +"Listen to this very cross and cranky young man!" she exclaimed, sitting +up and winking her eyes in the rushing brilliancy of the blaze. "He is +neither a very gracious host, nor a very reasonable one; nor yet +particularly nice to a girl who left a perfectly good party for an hour +with him." + +She stole a glance at him, and her gaze softened: + +"Perhaps," she said aloud to herself, "he is not really very cross; +perhaps he is only tired--or in trouble. Otherwise his voice and manners +are scarcely pardonable--even by me." + +He stood regarding the flames with narrowing gaze for a few moments, +then, hands in his pockets, walked over to his chair once more and +dropped into it. + +A slight flush stole into her cheeks; but it went as it came. She rose, +crossed to where he sat and stood looking down at him. + +"What _is_ the matter?" + +"With me?" in crude pretence of surprise. + +"Of course. I am happy enough. What troubles _you_?" + +"Absolutely nothing." + +"Then--what troubles _us_?" she persisted. "What has gone wrong between +us, Kelly, dear? Because we mustn't let it, you know," she added, +slowly, shaking her head. + +"Has anything gone wrong with us?" he asked, sullenly. + +"Evidently. I don't know what it is. I'm keeping my composure and +controlling my temper until I find out. You know what that dreadful +temper of mine can be?" She added, smiling: "Well, then, please beware +of it unless you are ready to talk sensibly. Are you?" + +"What is it you wish me to say?" + +"How perfectly horrid you can be!" she exclaimed, "I never knew you +could be like this? Do you want a girl to go on her knees to you? I care +enough for our friendship to do it--but I won't!" + +Her mood was altering: + +"You're a brute, Kelly, to make me miserable. I was having such a good +time at the Gigolette when I suddenly saw you--your expression--and--I +don't even yet know why, but every bit of joy went out of everything for +me--" + +"_I_ was going out, too," he said, laughing. "Why didn't you remain? +Your gay spirits would have returned untroubled after my departure." + +There was an ugly sound to his laugh which checked her, left her silent +for a moment. Then: + +"Did you disapprove of me?" she asked, curiously. "Was that it?" + +"No. You can take care of yourself, I fancy." + +"I have had to," she said, gravely. + +He was silent. + +She added with a light laugh not perfectly genuine: + +"I suppose I am experiencing with you what all mortals experience when +they become entangled with the gods." + +"What is that?" + +"Unhappiness. All the others experienced it--Proserpine, Helen, poor +little Psyche--every nice girl who ever became mixed up with the +Olympians had a bad half hour of it sooner or later. And to-night the +great god Kelly has veiled his face from me, and I'm on my knees at his +altar sacrificing every shred of sweet temper to propitiate him. Now, +mighty and sulky oracle! _what_ has happened to displease you?" + +He said: "If there seems to be any constraint--if anything has altered +our pleasant intimacy, I don't know what it is any more than you do, +Valerie." + +"Then there _is_ something!" + +"I have not said so." + +"Well, then, I say so," she said, impatiently. "And I say, also, that +whatever threatens our excellent understanding ought to be hunted out +and destroyed. Shall we do it together, Louis?" + +He said nothing. + +"Come to the fire and talk it over like two sensible people. Will you? +And please pull that sofa around to the blaze for me. Thank you. This, +Kelly, is our bed of justice." + +She drew the cushions under her head and nestled down in the full warmth +of the hearth. + +"_Le lit de justice_," she repeated, gaily. "Here I preside, possessing +inquisitorial power and prerogative, and exercising here to-night the +high justice, the middle, and the low. Now hale before me those skulking +knaves, Doubt, Suspicion, and Distrust, and you and I will make short +work of them. Pull 'em along by their ears, Louis! This Court means to +sit all night if necessary!" + +[Illustration: "'How perfectly horrid you can be!' she exclaimed."] + +She laughed merrily, raised herself on one arm, and looked him straight +in the eyes: + +"Louis!" + +"What?" + +"Do you doubt me?" + +"Doubt what?" + +"That my friendship for you is as warm as the moment it began?" + +He said, unsmiling: "People meet as we met, become friends--very good, +very close friends--in that sort of friendship which is governed by +chance and environment. The hazard that throws two people into each +other's company is the same hazard that separates them. It is not +significant either way.... I liked you--missed you.... Our companionship +had been pleasant." + +"Very," she said, quietly. + +He nodded: "Then chance became busy; your duties led you elsewhere--mine +set me adrift in channels once familiar--" + +"Is that all you see in our estrangement?" + +"What?" he asked, abruptly. + +"Estrangement," she repeated, tranquilly. "That is the real word for it. +Because the old intimacy is gone. And now we both admit it." + +"We have had no opportunity to be together this--" + +"We once _made_ opportunities." + +"We have had no time--" + +"We halted time, hastened it, dictated to it, ruled it--once." + +"Then explain it otherwise if you can." + +"I am trying to--with God's help. Will you aid me, too?" + +Her sudden seriousness and emotion startled him. + +"Louis, if our estrangement is important enough for us to notice at all, +it is important enough to analyse, isn't it?" + +"I have analysed the reasons--" + +"Truthfully?" + +"I think so--as far as I have gone--" + +"Let us go farther, then--to the end." + +"But there is no particular significance--" + +"Isn't there?" + +"I don't know. After all, _why_ did you leave that café? Why did _I_? +Why are we together, now--here in your studio, and utterly miserable at +one o'clock of the New Year's morning? For you and I are unhappy and ill +at ease; and you and I are talking at cross purposes, groping, evading, +fencing with words. If there is nothing significant in the friendship we +gave each other from the hour we met--it is not worth the self-deception +you are content with." + +"Self-deception!" he repeated, flushing up. + +"Yes. Because you do care more for me than what you have said about our +friendship indicates.... And I care more for your regard than you seem +willing to recognise--" + +"I am very glad to--" + +"Listen, Kelly. Can't we be honest with ourselves and with each other? +Because--our being here, now--my leaving that place in the way I +did--surprises me. I want to find out why there has been confusion, +constraint, somewhere--there is _something_ to clear up between us--I +have felt that, vaguely, at moments; now I _know_ it. Let us try to find +out what it is, what is steadily undermining our friendship." + +"Nothing, Valerie," he said, smiling. "I am as fond of you as ever. Only +you have found time for other friendships. Your life has become more +interesting, fuller, happier--" + +"Not happier. I realise that, now, as you say it." She glanced around +her; swiftly her dark eyes passed over things familiar. "I was happier +here than I have ever been in all my life," she said. "I love this +room--and everything in it. You know I do, Louis. But I couldn't very +well come here when you were using all those models. If you think that I +have neglected you, it is a silly and unfair thing to think. If I did +neglect you I couldn't help it. And you didn't seem to care." + +He shrugged and looked up at the outlined men's figures partly covering +the canvas above them. Her gaze followed his, then again she raised +herself on one elbow and looked around her, searching with quick eyes +among the shadows. + +"Where is my portrait?" + +"Behind the tapestry." + +"Have you abandoned it?" + +"I don't know." + +Her smile became tremulous: "Are you going to abandon the original, +too?" + +"I never possessed very much of you, did I?" he said, sulkily; and +looked up at her quick exclamation of anger and surprise. + +"What do you mean? You had all of me worth having--" there came a quick +catch, in her throat--"you had all there is to me--confidence in you, +gratitude for your friendship, deep, happy response to your every +mood--my unquestioning love and esteem--" + +"Your _love_?" he repeated, with an unpleasant laugh. + +"What else do you call it?" she demanded, fiercely. "Is there a name +less hackneyed for it? If there is, teach it to me. Yet--if ever a girl +truly loved a man, I have loved you. And I do love you, dearly, +honestly, cleanly, without other excuse than that, until to-night, you +have been sweet to me and made me happier and better than I have ever +been." + +He sprang to his feet confused, deeply moved, suddenly ashamed of his +own inexplicable attitude that seemed to be driving him into a +bitterness that had no reason. + +"Valerie," he began, but she interrupted him: + +"I ask you, Kelly, to look back with me over our brief and happy +companionship--over the hours together, over all you have done for me--" + +"Have you done less for me?" + +"I? What have I done?" + +"You say you have given me--love." + +"I have--with all my heart and soul. And, now that I think of it, I have +given you more--I have given you all that goes with love--an unselfish +admiration; a quick sympathy in your perplexities; quiet solicitude in +your silences, in your aloof and troubled moments." She leaned nearer, a +brighter flush on either cheek: + +"Louis, I have given you more than that; I gave you my bodily self for +your work--gave it to _you_ first of all--came first of all to you--came +as a novice, ignorant, frightened--and what you did for me then--what +you were to me at that time--I can never, never forget. And that is why +I overlook your injustice to me now!" + +She sat up on the sofa's edge balanced forward between her arms, fingers +nervously working at the silken edges of the upholstery. + +"You ought never to have doubted my interest and affection," she said. +"In my heart I have not doubted yours--never--except to-night. And it +makes me perfectly wretched." + +"I did not mean--" + +"Yes, you did! There was something about you--your expression--when you +saw me throwing roses at everybody--that hurt me--and you meant to." + +"With Querida's arm around you, did you expect me to smile?" he asked, +savagely. + +"Was it _that_?" she demanded, astonished. + +"What?" + +"Querida's arm--" She hesitated, gazing straight into his eyes in utter +amazement. + +"It wasn't _that_?" she repeated. "Was it?... You never cared about such +petty things, did you? _Did_ you? _Do_ you care? Because I never dreamed +that you cared.... What has a little imprudence--a little silly +mischief--to do with our friendship? _Has_ it anything to do with it? +You've never said anything--and ... I've flirted--I've been spoons on +men--you knew it. Besides, I've nearly always told you. I've told you +without thinking it could possibly matter to you--to _you_ of all men! +What do you care what I do?--as long as I am to you what I have always +been?" + +"I--_don't_--care." + +"Of course not. How _can_ you?" She leaned nearer, dark and curious gaze +searching his. Then, with a nervous laugh voicing the impossible--"_You_ +are not in love with me--that way. Are you?" she asked, scarcely +realising what she was saying. + +"No," he said, forcing a smile. "Are you with _me_?" + +She flushed scarlet: + +"Kelly, I never thought--dreamed--hoped--" Her voice caught in her +throat a moment; "I--such a matter has not occurred to me." She looked +at him partly dismayed, partly confused, unable now to understand +him--or even herself. + +"You know--that kind of love--" she began--"_real_ love, never has +happened to me. You didn't think _that_, did you?--because--just because +I did flirt a little with you? It didn't mean anything serious--anything +of _that_ kind. Kelly, dear, _have_ you mistaken me? Is _that_ what +annoys you? Were you afraid I was silly enough, mad enough to--to really +think of you--in that way?" + +"No." + +"Oh, I was sure you couldn't believe it of me. See how perfectly frank +and honest I have been with you. Why, you never were sentimental--and a +girl isn't unless a man begins it! You never kissed me--except last +summer when you were going away--and both of our hearts were pretty +full--" + +"Wait," he said, suddenly exasperated, "are you trying to make me +understand that you haven't the slightest real emotion concerning +me--concerning me as a _man_--like other men?" + +She looked at him, still confused and distressed, still determined he +should not misunderstand her: + +"I don't know what you mean; truly I don't. I'm only trying to make you +believe that I am not guilty of thinking--wishing--of pretending that in +our frank companionship there lay concealed anything of--of deeper +significance--" + +"Suppose--it were true?" he said. + +"But it is _not_ true!" she retorted angrily--and looked up, caught his +gaze, and her breath failed her. + +"Suppose it were true--for example," he repeated. "Suppose you did find +that you or I were capable of--deeper--" + +"Louis! Louis! Do you realise what you are saying to me? Do you +understand what you are doing to the old order of things between us--to +the old confidences, the old content, the happiness, the--the innocence +of our life together? _Do_ you? Do you even _care_?" + +"Care? Yes--I care." + +"Because," she said, excitedly, "if it is to be--_that_ way with +you--I--I can not help you--be of use to you here in the studio as I +have been.... _Am_ I taking you too seriously? You do not mean that you +_really_ could ever love me, or I you, do you? You mean that--that you +just want me back again--as I was--as we were--perfectly content to be +together. That is what you mean, isn't it, Kelly, dear?" she asked, +piteously. + +He looked into her flushed and distressed face: + +"Yes," he said, "that is exactly what I mean, Valerie--you dear, +generous, clear-seeing girl! I just wanted you back again; I miss you; I +am perfectly wretched without you, and that is all the trouble. Will you +come?" + +"I--don't--know. Why did you say such a thing?" + +"Forgive me, dear!" + +She slowly shook her head: + +"You've made me think of--things," she said. "You shouldn't ever have +done it." + +"Done what, Valerie?" + +"What you did--what you said--which makes it impossible for me to--to +ever again be what I have been to you--even pose for you--as I did--" + +"You mean that you won't pose for me any more?" he asked, aghast. + +"Only--in costume." She sat on the edge of the sofa, head averted, +looking steadily down at the hearth below. There was a pink spot on +either cheek. + +He thought a moment. "Valerie," he said, "I believe we had better finish +what we have only begun to say." + +"Is there--anything more?" she asked, unsmiling. + +"Ask yourself. Do you suppose things can be left this way between +us--all the happiness and the confidence--and the innocence, as you say, +destroyed?" + +"What more is there to say," she demanded, coldly. + +"Shall--I--say it?" he stammered. + +She looked up, startled, scarcely recognising the voice as his--scarcely +now recognising his altered features. + +"What _is_ the matter with you?" she exclaimed nervously. + +"Good God," he said, hoarsely, "can't you see I've gone quite mad about +you!" + +"About--_me_!" she repeated, blankly. + +"About _you_--Valerie West. Can't you see it? Didn't you know it? Hasn't +it been plain enough to you--even if it hasn't been to me?" + +"Louis! Louis!" she cried in hurt astonishment, "what have you said to +me?" + +"That I'm mad about you, and I am. And it's been so--for +months--always--ever since the very first! I must have been crazy not to +realise it. I've been fool enough not to understand what has been the +matter. Now you know the truth, Valerie!" He sprang to his feet, took a +short turn or two before the hearth, then, catching sight of her face in +its colourless dismay and consternation: + +"I suppose you don't care a damn for me--that way!" he said, with a +mirthless laugh. + +"What!" she whispered, bewildered by his violence. Then: "Do you mean +that you are in _love_ with me!" + +"Utterly, hopelessly--" his voice broke and he stood with hands +clenched, unable to utter a word. + +She sat up very straight and pale, the firelight gleaming on her neck +and shoulders. After a moment his voice came back to his choked throat: + +"I love you better than anything in the world." he said in unsteady +tones. "And _that_ is what has come between us. Do you think it is +something we had better hunt down and destroy--this love that has come +between us?" + +"Is--is that _true_?" she asked in the awed voice of a child. + +"It seems to be," he managed to say. She slid stiffly to the floor and +stood leaning against the sofa's edge, looking at him wide-eyed as a +schoolgirl. + +"It never occurred to you what the real trouble might be," he asked, +"did it?" + +She shook her head mechanically. + +"Well, we know now. Your court of inquiry has brought out the truth +after all." + +She only stared at him, fascinated. No colour had returned to her +cheeks. + +He began to pace the hearth again, lip caught savagely between his +teeth. + +"You are no more amazed than I am to learn the truth," he said. "I never +supposed it was that.... And it's been that from the moment I laid eyes +on you. I know it now. I'm learning, you see--learning not to lie to +myself or to you.... Learning other things, too--God knows what--if this +is love--this utter--suffering--" + +He swung on his heel and began to pace the glimmering tiles toward her: + +"Discontent, apathy, unhappiness, loneliness--the hidden ache which +merely meant I missed you when you were not here--when I was not beside +you--all these are now explained before your bed of justice. Your court +has heard the truth to-night; and you, Valerie, are armed with +justice--the high, the middle, and the low." + +Pale, mute, she raised her dark eyes and met his gaze. + +In the throbbing silence he heard his heart heavy in his breast; and now +she heard her own, rapid, terrifying her, hurrying her she knew not +whither. And again, trembling, she covered her eyes with her hands. + +"Valerie," he said, in anguish, "come back to me. I will not ask you to +love me if you cannot. Only come back. I--can't--endure it--without +you." + +There was no response. + +He stepped nearer, touched her hands, drew them from her face--revealing +its pallid loveliness--pressed them to his lips, to his face; drew them +against his own shoulders--closer, till they fell limply around his +neck. + +She uttered a low cry: "Louis!" Then: + +"It--it is all over--with us," she faltered. "I--had never thought of +you--this way." + +"Can you think of me this way, now?" + +"I--can't help it." + +"Dearest--dearest--" he stammered, and kissed her unresponsive lips, her +throat, her hair. She only gazed silently at the man whose arms held +her tightly imprisoned. + +Under the torn lace and silk one bare shoulder glimmered; and he kissed +it, touched the pale veins with his lips, drew the arm from his neck and +kissed elbow, wrist, and palm, and every slender finger; and still she +looked at him as though dazed. A lassitude, heavy, agreeable to endure, +possessed her. She yielded to the sense of fatigue--to the confused +sweetness that invaded her; every pulse in her body beat its assent, +every breath consented. + +"Will you try to care for me, Valerie?" + +"You know I will." + +"With all your heart?" he asked, trembling. + +"I do already." + +"Will you give yourself to me?" + +There was a second's hesitation; then with a sudden movement she dropped +her face on his shoulder. After a moment her voice came, very small, +smothered: + +"What did you mean, Louis?" + +"By what--my darling?" + +"By--my giving myself--to you?" + +"I mean that I want you always," he said in a happy, excited voice that +thrilled her. But she looked up at him, still unenlightened. + +"I don't quite understand," she said--"but--" and her voice fell so low +he could scarcely hear it--"I am--not afraid--to love you." + +"Afraid!" He stood silent a moment, then: "What did you think I meant, +Valerie? I want you to _marry_ me!" + +She flushed and laid her cheek against his shoulder, striving to think +amid the excited disorder of her mind, the delicious bewilderment of +her senses--strove to keep clear one paramount thought from the heavenly +confusion that was invading her, carrying her away, sweeping her into +paradise--struggled to keep that thought intact, uninfluenced, and cling +to it through everything that threatened to overwhelm her. + +Her slim hands resting in his, her flushed face on his breast, his words +ringing in her ears, she strove hard, hard! to steady herself. Because +already she knew what her decision must be--what her love for him had +always meant in the days when that love had been as innocent as +friendship. And even now there was little in it except innocence; little +yet of passion. It was still only a confused, heavenly surprise, +unvexed, and, alas! unterrified. The involuntary glimpse of any future +for it or for her left her gaze dreamy, curious, but unalarmed. The +future he had offered her she would never accept; no other future +frightened her. + +"Louis?" + +"Dearest," he whispered, his lips to hers. + +"It is sweet of you, it is perfectly dear of you to wish me to be +your--wife. But--let us decide such questions later--" + +"Valerie! What do you mean?" + +"I didn't mean that I don't love you," she said, tremulously. "I believe +you scarcely understand how truly I do love you.... As a matter of fact, +I have always been in love with you without knowing it. You are not the +only fool," she said, with a confused little laugh. + +"You darling!" + +She smiled again uncertainly and shook her head: + +"I truly believe I have always been in love with you.... Now that I +look back and consider, I am sure of it." She lifted her pretty head and +gazed at him, then with a gay little laugh of sheer happiness almost +defiant: "You see I am not afraid to love you," she said. + +"Afraid? Why should you be?" he repeated, watching her expression. + +"Because--I am not going to marry you," she announced, gaily. + +He stared at her, stunned. + +"Listen, you funny boy," she added, framing his face with her hands and +smiling confidently into his troubled eyes: "I am not afraid to love you +because I never was afraid to face the inevitable. And the inevitable +confronts me now. And I know it. But I will not marry you, Louis. It is +good of you, dear of you to ask it. But it is too utterly unwise. And I +will not." + +"Why?" + +"Because," she said, frankly, "I love you better than I do myself." She +forced another laugh, adding: "Unlike the gods, whom I love I do not +destroy." + +"That is a queer answer, dear--" + +"Is it? Because I say I love you better than I do myself? Why, Louis, +all the history of my friendship for you has been only that. Have you +ever seen anything selfish in my affection for you?". + +"Of course not, but--" + +"Well, then! There isn't one atom of it in my love for you, either. And +I love you dearly--dearly! But I'm not selfish enough to marry you. +Don't scowl and try to persuade me, Louis, I've a perfectly healthy mind +of my own, and you know it--and it's absolutely clear on that subject. +You must be satisfied with what I offer--every bit of love that is in +me--" She hesitated, level eyed and self-possessed, considering him +with the calm gaze of a young goddess: + +"Dear," she went on, slowly, "let us end this marriage question once and +for all. You can't take me out of my world into yours without suffering +for it. Because your world is full of women of your own kind--mothers, +sisters, relatives, friends.... And all your loyalty, all your tact, all +_their_ tact and philosophy, too, could not ease one moment in life for +you if I were unwise enough to go with you into that world and let you +try to force them to accept me." + +"_I tell you_," he began, excitedly, "that they must accept--" + +"Hush!" she smiled, placing her hand gently across his lips; "with all +your man's experience you are only a man; but I _know_ how it is with +women. I have no illusions, Louis. Even by your side, and with the +well-meant kindness of your family to me, you would suffer; and I have +not the courage to let you--even for love's sake." + +"You are entirely mistaken--" he broke out; but she silenced him with a +pretty gesture, intimate, appealing, a little proud. + +"No, I am not mistaken, nor am I likely to deceive myself that any woman +of your world could ever consider me of it--or could ever forgive you +for taking me there. And that means spoiling life for you. And I will +not!" + +"Then they can eliminate me, also!" he said, impatiently. + +"What logic! When I have tried _so_ hard to make you understand that I +will not accept any sacrifice from you!" + +"It is no sacrifice for me to give up such a--" + +"You say very foolish and very sweet things to me, Louis, but I could +not love you enough to make up to you your unhappiness at seeing me in +your world and not a part of it. Ah, the living ghosts of that world, +Louis! Yet _I_ could endure it for myself--a woman can endure anything +when she loves; and find happiness, too--if only the man she loves is +happy. But, for a man, the woman is never entirely sufficient. My +position in your world would anger you, humiliate you, finally embitter +you. And I could not live if sorrow came to you through me." + +"You are bringing sorrow on me with every word--" + +"No, dear. It hurts for a moment. Then wisdom will heal it. You do not +believe what I say. But you must believe this, that through me you shall +never know real unhappiness if I can prevent it." + +"And I say to you, Valerie, that I want you for my wife. And if my +family and my friends hesitate to receive you, it means severing my +relations with them until they come to their senses--" + +"_That_ is _exactly_ what I will not do to your life, Louis! _Can't_ you +understand? Is your mother less dear to you than was mine to me? I will +_not_ break your heart! I will not humiliate either you or her; I will +not ask her to endure--or any of your family--or one man or woman in +that world where you belong.... I am too proud--and too merciful to +you!" + +"I am my own master!" he broke out, angrily-- + +"I am my own mistress--and incidentally yours," she added in a low +voice. + +"Valerie!" + +"Am I not?" she asked, quietly. + +"How can you say such a thing, child!" + +"Because it is true--or will be. Won't it?" She lifted her clear eyes to +his, unshrinking--deep brown wells of truth untroubled by the shallows +of sham and pretence. + +His face burned a deep red; she confronted him, slender, calm eyed, +composed: "I am not the kind of woman who loves twice. I love you so +dearly that I will not marry you. That is settled. I love you so deeply +that I can be happy with you unmarried. And if this is true, is it not +better for me to tell you? I ask nothing except love; I give all I +have--myself." + +She dropped her arms, palms outward, gazing serenely at him; then +blushed vividly as he caught her to him in a close embrace, her +delicate, full lips crushed to his. + +"Dearest--dearest," he whispered, "you will change your ideas when you +understand me better--" + +"I can love you no more than I do. Could I love you more if I were your +wife?" + +"Yes, you wilful, silly child!" + +She laughed, her lips still touching his. "I don't believe it, Louis. I +_know_ I couldn't. Besides, there is no use thinking about it." + +"Valerie, your logic and your ethics are terribly twisted--" + +"Perhaps. All I know is that I love you. I'd rather talk of that--" + +"Than talk of marrying me!" + +"Yes, dear." + +"But you'd make me so happy, so proud--" + +"You darling! to say so. Think so always, Louis, because I promise to +make you happy, anyway--" + +He had encircled her waist with one arm, and they were slowly pacing the +floor before the hearth, she with her charming young head bent, eyes +downcast, measuring her steps to his. + +She said, thoughtfully: "I have my own ideas concerning life. One of +them is to go through it without giving pain to others. To me, the only +real wickedness is the wilful infliction of unhappiness. That covers all +guilt.... Other matters seem so trivial in comparison--I mean the forms +and observances--the formalism of sect and creed.... To me they mean +nothing--these petty laws designed to govern those who are willing to +endure them. So I ignore them," she concluded, smilingly; and touched +her lips to his hand. + +"Do you include the marriage law?" he asked, curiously. + +"In our case, yes.... I don't think it would do for everybody to ignore +it." + +"You think we may, safely?" + +"Don't you, Louis?" she asked, flushing. "It leaves you free in your own +world." + +"How would it leave you?" + +She looked up, smiling adorably at his thought of her: + +"Free as I am now, dearest of men--free to be with you when you wish for +me, free to relieve you of myself when you need that relief, free to +come and go and earn my living as independently as you gain yours. It +would leave me absolutely tranquil in body and mind...." She laid her +flushed face against his. "Only my heart would remain fettered. And +that is now inevitable." + +He kissed her and drew her closer: + +"You are so very, very wrong, dear. The girl who gives herself without +benefit of clergy walks the earth with her lover in heavier chains than +ever were forged at any earthly altar." + +She bent her head thoughtfully; they paced the floor for a while in +silence. + +Presently she looked up: "You once said that love comes unasked and goes +unbidden. Do vows at an altar help matters? Is divorce more decent +because lawful? Is love more decent when it has been officially and +clerically catalogued?" + +"It is safer." + +"For whom?" + +"For the community." + +"Perhaps." She considered as she timed her slow pace to his: + +"But, Louis, I can't marry you and I love you! What am I to do? Live out +life without you? Let you live out life without me? When my loving you +would not harm you or me? When I love you dearly--more dearly, more +deeply every minute? When life itself is--is beginning to be nothing in +this world except you? What are we to do?" + +And, as he made no answer: + +"Dear," she said, hesitating a little, "I am perfectly unconscious of +any guilt in loving you. I am glad I love you. I wish to be part of you +before I die. I wish it more than anything in the world! How can an +unselfish girl who loves you harm you or herself or the world if she +gives herself to you--without asking benefit of clergy and the bureau +of licenses?" + +Standing before the fire, her head resting against his shoulder, they +watched the fading embers for a while in silence. Then, irresistibly +drawn by the same impulse, they turned toward one another, trembling: + +"I'll marry you that way--if it's the only way," he said. + +"It is the--only way." + +She laid a soft hand in his; he bent and kissed it, then touched her +mouth with his lips. + +"Do you give yourself to me, Valerie?" + +"Yes." + +"From this moment?" he whispered. + +Her face paled. She stood resting her cheek on his shoulder, eyes +distrait thinking. Then, in a voice so low and tremulous he scarce could +understand: + +"Yes, _now_," she said, "I--give--myself." + +He drew her closer: she relaxed in his embrace; her face, white as a +flower, upturned to his, her dark eyes looking blindly into his. + +There was no sound save the feathery rush of snow against the panes--the +fall of an ember amid whitening ashes--a sigh--silence. + +Twice logs fell from the andirons, showering the chimney with sparks; +presently a little flame broke out amid the débris, lighting up the +studio with a fitful radiance; and the single shadow cast by them +wavered high on wall and ceiling. + +His arms were around her; his lips rested on her face where it lay +against his shoulder. The ruddy resurgence of firelight stole under the +lashes on her cheeks, and her eyes slowly unclosed. + +Standing there gathered close in his embrace, she turned her head and +watched the flame growing brighter among the cinders. Thought, which had +ceased when her lips met his in the first quick throb of passion, +stirred vaguely, and awoke. And, far within her, somewhere in confused +obscurity, her half-stunned senses began groping again toward reason. + +"Louis!" + +"Dearest one!" + +"I ought to go. Will you take me home? It is morning--do you realise +it?" + +She lifted her head, cleared her eyes with one slender wrist, pushing +back the disordered hair. Then gently disengaging herself from his arms, +and still busy with her tumbled hair, she looked up at the dial of the +ancient clock which glimmered red in the firelight. + +"Morning--and a strange new year," she said aloud, to herself. She moved +nearer to the clock, watching the stiff, jerking revolution of the +second hand around its lesser dial. + +Hearing him come forward behind her, she dropped her head back against +him without turning. + +"Do you see what Time is doing to us?--Time, the incurable, killing us +by seconds, Louis--eating steadily into the New Year, devouring it hour +by hour--the hours that we thought belonged to us." She added, musingly: +"I wonder how many hours of the future remain for us." + +He answered in a low voice: + +"That is for you to decide." + +"I know it," she murmured. She lifted one ringless hand and still +without looking at him, pressed the third finger backward against his +lips. + +"So much for the betrothal," she said. "My ring-finger is consecrated." + +"Will you not wear any ring?" he asked. + +"No. Your kiss is enough." + +"Yet--if we are--are--" + +"Engaged?" she suggested, calmly. "Yes, call it that. I really am +engaged to give myself to you--_ex cathedra--extra muros_." + +"When?" he said under his breath. + +"I don't know.... I must think. A girl who is going to break all +conventions ought to have time to consider the consequences--" She +smiled, faintly--"a little time to prepare herself for the--the great +change.... I think we ought to remain engaged for a while--don't you?" + +"Dearest!" he broke out, pleadingly, "the old way _is_ the best way! I +cannot bear to take you--to have you promise yourself without formality +or sanction--" + +"But I have already consented, Louis. _Volenti non fit injuria_," she +added with a faint smile. "_Voluntas non potest cogi_--dearest--dearest +of lovers! I love you dearly for what you offer me--I adore you for it. +And--_how_ long do you think you ought to wait for me?" + +She disengaged herself from his arm, walked slowly toward the tall old +clock, turned her back to it and faced him with clear level eyes. After +a moment she laughed lightly: + +"Did ever an engaged gentleman face the prospect of impending happiness +with such a long face as this suitor of mine is wearing!" + +His voice broke in the protest wrung from his lips. + +"You _must_ be my wife. I tell you! For God's sake marry me and let the +future take care of itself!" + +"You say so many sweet, confusing, and foolish things to me, Louis, +that while you are saying them I almost believe them. And then that +clear, pitiless reasoning power of mine awakens me; and I turn my gaze +inward and read written on my heart that irrevocable law of mine, that +no unhappiness shall ever come to you through me." + +Her face, sweetly serious, brightened slowly to a smile. + +"Now I am going home, monsieur--home to think over my mad and incredible +promise to you ... and I'm wondering whether I'll wake up scared to +death.... Daylight is a chilly shower-bath. No doubt at all that I'll be +pretty well frightened over what I've said and done to-night.... Louis, +dear, you simply _must_ take me home this very minute!" She came up to +him, placed both hands on his shoulders, kissed him lightly, looked at +him for a moment, humorously grave: + +"Some day," she said, "a big comet will hit this law-ridden, +man-regulated earth--or the earth will slip a cog and go wabbling out of +its orbit into interstellar space and side-wipe another planet--or it +will ultimately freeze up like the moon. And who will care then _how_ +Valerie West loved Louis Neville?--or what letters in a forgotten +language spelled 'wife' and what letters spelled 'mistress'? After all, +I am not afraid of words. Nor do I fear what is in my heart. God reads +it as I stand here; and he can see no selfishness in it. So if merely +loving you all my life--and proving it--is an evil thing to do, I shall +be punished; but I'm going to do it and find out what celestial justice +really thinks about it." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Valerie was busy--exceedingly busy arranging matters, in view of the +great change impending. + +She began by balancing her check book, comparing stubs with cancelled +checks, adding and verifying sums total, filing away paid bills and +paying the remainder--a financial operation which did not require much +time, but to which she applied herself with all the seriousness of a +wealthy man hunting through a check book which will not balance, for a +few pennies that ought to be his. + +For since she had any accounts at all to keep, she had kept them with +method and determination. Her genius for order was inherent: even when +she possessed nothing except the clothes she wore, she had always kept +them in perfect condition. And now that her popularity in business gave +her a bank balance and permitted some of the intimate little luxuries +that make for a woman's self-respect, a perfect passion for order and +method possessed her. + +The tiny bedroom which she inhabited, and the adjoining bathroom, were +always immaculate. Every week she made an inventory of her few but +pretty garments, added or subtracted from her memorandum, went over her +laundry list, noted and laid aside whatever clothing needed repairs. + +Once a week, too, she inspected her hats, foot-wear, furs; dusted the +three rows of books, emptied and cleaned the globe in which a solitary +goldfish swam, goggling his eyes in the sunshine, and scrubbed the +porcelain perching pole on which her parrot sat all day in the bathroom +window making limited observations in French, Spanish, and English, and +splitting red peppers and dried watermelon seeds with his heavy curved +beak. He was a gorgeous bird, with crimson and turquoise blue on him, +and a capacity for deviltry restrained only by a silver anklet and +chain, gifts from Querida, as was also the parrot. + +So Valerie, in view of the great change impending, began to put her +earthly house in order--without any particular reason, however, because +the great change would not affect her quarters or her living in them. +Nor could she afford to permit it to interfere with her business career +for which perfect independence was necessary. + +She had had it out with Neville one stormy afternoon in January, +stopping in for tea after posing for John Burleson's Psyche fountain +ordered by Penrhyn Cardemon. She had demanded from Neville acquiescence +in her perfect freedom of action, absolute independence; had modestly +requested non-interference in her business affairs and the liberty to +support herself. + +"There is no other way, Louis," she explained very sweetly. "I do not +think I am going to lose any self-respect in giving myself to you--but +there would not be one shred of it left to cover me if I were not as +free as you are to make the world pay me fairly for what I give it." + +And, another time, she had said to him: "It is better not to tell me all +about your personal, private, and financial affairs--better that I do +not tell you about mine. Is it necessary to burst into financial and +trivial confidences when one is in love? + +"I have an idea that that is what spoils most marriages. To me there is +a certain respectability in reticence when a girl is very much in love. +I would no more open my personal and private archives in all their +petty disorder to your inspection than I would let you see me +dress--even if we had been married for hundreds of years." + +[Illustration: "She began by balancing her check book."] + +And still, on another occasion, when he had fought her for hours in an +obstinate determination to make her say she would marry him--and when, +beaten, chagrined, baffled, he had lost his temper, she won him back +with her child-like candour and self-control. + +"Your logic," he said, "is unbaked, unmature, unfledged. It's +squab-logic, I tell you, Valerie; and it is not very easy for me to +listen to it." + +"I'm afraid that I am not destined to be entirely easy for you, dear, +even with love as the only tie with which to bind you. The arbitrary +laws of a false civilisation are going to impose on you what you think +are duties and obligations to me and to yourself--until I explain them +away. You must come to me in your perplexity, Louis, and give me a +chance to remind you of the basic and proven proposition that a girl is +born into this world as free as any man, and as responsible to herself +and to others; and that her title to her own individuality and +independence--her liberty of mind, her freedom to give and accept, her +capability of taking care of herself, her divine right of considering, +re-considering, of meeting the world unafraid--is what really ought to +make her lovable." + +He had answered: "What rotten books have you been reading?" And it +annoyed her, particularly when he had asked her whether she expected to +overturn, with the squab-logic of twenty years, the formalisms of a +civilisation several thousand years old. He had added: + +"The runways of wild animals became Indian paths; the Indian paths +became settlers' roads, and the roads, in time, city streets. But it was +the instinct of wild creatures that surveyed and laid out the present +highways of our reasoning civilisation. And I tell you, Valerie, that +the old ways are the best, for on them is founded every straight highway +of modern thought and custom." + +She considered: + +"Then there is only one way left--to see you no more." + +He had thought so, too, infuriated at the idea; and they had passed a +very miserable and very stormy afternoon together, which resulted in her +crying silently on the way home; and in a sleepless night for two; and +in prolonged telephone conversation at daybreak. But it all ended with a +ring at his door-bell, a girl in furs all flecked with snow, springing +swiftly into his studio; a moment's hesitation--then the girl and her +furs in his arms, her cold pink cheeks against his face--a brief moment +of utter happiness--for she was on her way to business--a swift, silent +caress, then eyes searching eyes in silent promise--in reluctant +farewell for an hour or two. + +But it left him to face the problems of the day with a new sense of +helplessness--the first confused sensation that hers was the stronger +nature, the dominant personality--although he did not definitely +understand this. + +Because, how could he understand it of a young girl so soft, so +yielding, so sweet, so shy and silent in the imminence of passion when +her consenting lips trembled and grew fragrant in half-awakened response +to his. + +How could he believe it--conscious of what he had made of himself +through sheer will and persistent? How could he credit it--remembering +what he already stood for in the world, where he stood, how he had +arrived by the rigid road of self-denial; how he had mounted, steadily, +undismayed, unperturbed, undeterred by the clamour of envy, of +hostility, unseduced by the honey of flattery? + +Upright, calm, self-confident, he had forged on straight ahead, +following nobody--battled steadily along the upward path until--out of +the void, suddenly he had come up against a blank wall. + +That wall which had halted, perplexed, troubled, dismayed, terrified him +because he was beginning to believe it to be the boundary which marked +his own limitations, suddenly had become a transparent barrier through +which he could see. And what he saw on the other side was an endless +vista leading into infinity. But the path was guarded; Love stood +sentinel there. And that was what he saw ahead of him now, and he knew +that he might pass on if Love willed it--and that he would never care to +pass on alone. But that he _could_ not go forward, ignoring Love, +neither occurred to him nor would he have believed it if it had. Yet, at +times, an indefinable unease possessed him as though some occult +struggle was impending for which he was unprepared. + +That struggle had already begun, but he did not know it. + +On the contrary all his latent strength and brilliancy had revived, +exquisitely virile; and the new canvas on which he began now to work +blossomed swiftly into magnificent florescence. + +A superb riot of colour bewitched the entire composition; never had his +brushes swept with such sun-tipped fluency, never had the fresh +splendour of his hues and tones approached so closely to convincing +himself in the hours of fatigue and coldly sober reaction from the +auto-intoxication of his own facility. + +That auto-intoxication had always left his mind and his eye steady and +watchful, although drugged--like the calm judgment of the intoxicated +opportunist at the steering wheel of a racing motor. And a race once run +and ended, a deliberate consideration of results usually justified the +pleasure of the pace. + +Yet that mysterious something which some said he lacked, had not yet +appeared. That _something_, according to many, was an elusive quality +born of a sympathy for human suffering--an indefinable and delicate bond +between the artist and his world--between a master who has suffered, and +all humanity who understands. + +The world seemed to recognise this subtle bond between themselves and +Querida's pictures. Yet in the pictures there was never any sadness. Had +Querida ever suffered? Was it in that olive-skinned, soft-voiced young +man to suffer?--a man apparently all grace and unruffled surface and +gentle charm--a man whose placid brow remained smooth and untroubled by +any line of perplexity or of sorrow. + +And as Neville studied his own canvas coolly, logically, with an +impersonal scrutiny that almost amounted to hostility, he wondered what +it was in Querida's work that still remained absent in his. He felt its +absence but he could not define what it was that was absent, could not +discover the nature of it. He really began to feel the lack of it in his +work, but he searched his canvas and his own heart in vain for any +vacuum unfilled. + +[Illustration: "He stood before it, searching in it for any hint of +that elusive and mysterious _something_"] + +Then, too, had he himself not suffered? What had that restless, +miserable winter meant, if it had not meant sorrow? He _had_ +suffered--blindly it is true until the truth of his love for Valerie had +suddenly confronted him. Yet that restless pain--and the intense emotion +of their awakening--all the doubts, all the anxieties--the wonder and +happiness and sadness in the imminence of that strange future impending +for them both--had altered nothing in his work--brought into it no new +quality--unless, as he thought, it had intensified to a dazzling +brilliancy the same qualities which already had made his work famous. + +"It's all talk," he said to himself--"it's sentimental jargon, precious +twaddle--all this mysterious babble about occult quality and humanity +and sympathy. If José Querida has the capacity of a chipmunk for mental +agony, I've lost my bet that he hasn't." + +And all the time he was conscious that there _was_ something about +Querida's work which made that work great; and that it was not in his +own work, and that his own work was not great, and never had been great. + +"But it will be," he said rather grimly to himself one day, turning with +a shrug from his amazing canvas and pulling the unfinished portrait of +Valerie into the cold north light. + +For a long while he stood before it, searching in it for any hint of +that elusive and mysterious _something_, and found none. + +Moreover there was in the painting of this picture a certain candour +amounting to stupidity--an uncertainty--a naïve, groping sort of brush +work. It seemed to be technically, almost deliberately, muddled. + +There was a tentative timidity about it that surprised his own technical +assurance--almost moved him to contempt. + +What had he been trying to do? For what had he been searching in those +slow, laborious, almost painful brush strokes--in that clumsy groping +for values, in the painstaking reticence, the joyless and mathematical +establishment of a sombre and uninspiring key, in the patient plotting +of simpler planes where space and quiet reigned unaccented? + +"Lord!" he said, biting his lip. "I've been stung by the microbe of the +precious! I'll be talking Art next with both thumbs and a Vandyke +beard." + +Still, through his self-disgust, a sensation of respect for the canvas +at which he was scowling, persisted. Nor could he account for the +perfectly unwelcome and involuntary idea that there was, about the +half-finished portrait, something almost dignified in the very candour +of its painting. + +John Burleson came striding in while he was still examining it. He +usually came about tea time, and the door was left open after five +o'clock. + +"O-ho!" he said in his big, unhumorous voice, "what in hell and the name +of Jimmy Whistler have we here?" + +"Mud," said Neville, shortly--"like Mr. Whistler's." + +"He was muddy--sometimes," said John, seriously, "but _you_ never were +until this." + +"Oh, I know it, Johnny. Something infected me. I merely tried to do what +isn't in me. And this is the result. When a man decides he has a +mission, you can never tell what fool thing he'll be guilty of." + +"It's Valerie West, isn't it?" demanded John, bluntly. + +"She won't admire you for finding any resemblance," said Neville, +laughing. + +The big sculptor rubbed his big nose reflectively. + +"After all," he said, "what is so bad about it, Kelly?" + +"Oh, everything." + +"No, it isn't. There's something about it that's--different--and +interesting--" + +"Oh, shut up, John, and fix yourself a drink--" + +"Kelly, I'm telling you that it isn't bad--that there's something +terribly solid and sincere about this beginning--" + +He looked around with a bovine grunt as Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan came +mincing in: "I say, you would-be funny fellows!--come over and tell +Kelly Neville that he's got a pretty good thing here if he only has the +brains to develop it!" + +Neville lighted a cigarette and looked on cynically as Ogilvy and Annan +joined Burleson on tiptoe, affecting exaggerated curiosity. + +"I think it's rotten," said Annan, after a moment's scrutiny; "don't +you, Sam?" + +Ogilvy, fists thrust deep into the pockets of his painting jacket, eyed +the canvas in silence. + +"_Don't_ you?" repeated Annan. "Or is it a masterpiece beyond my vulgar +ken?" + +"Well--no. Kelly was evidently trying to get at something new--work out +some serious idea. No, I don't think it's rotten at all. I rather like +it." + +"It looks too much like her; that's why it's rotten," said Annan. "Thank +God I've a gift for making pretty women out of my feminine clients, +otherwise I'd starve. Kelly, you haven't made Valerie pretty enough. +That's the trouble. Besides, it's muddy in spots. Her gown needs +dry-cleaning. But my chief criticism is the terrible resemblance to the +original." + +"Ah-h, what are you talking about!" growled Burleson; "did you ever see +a prettier girl than Valerie West?" + +Ogilvy said slowly: "She's pretty--to look at in real life. But, +somehow, Kelly has managed here to paint her more exactly than we have +really ever noticed her. That's Valerie's face and figure all right; and +it's more--it reflects what is going on inside her head--all the +unbaked, unassimilated ideas of immaturity whirring in a sequence which +resembles logic to the young, but isn't." + +"What do you mean by such bally stuff?" demanded Burleson, bluntly. + +Annan laughed, but Ogilvy said seriously: + +"I mean that Kelly has painted something interesting. It's a fascinating +head--all soft hair and delicious curves, and the charming indecision of +immature contours which ought some day to fall into a nobler +firmness.... It's as interesting as a satire, I tell you. Look at that +perfectly good mouth and its delicate sensitive decision with a hint of +puritanical primness in the upper lip--and the full, sensuous under lip +mocking the upper and giving the lie to the child's eyes which are still +wide with the wonder of men and things. And there's something of an +adolescent's mystery in the eyes, too--a hint of languor where the bloom +of the cheek touches the lower lid--and those smooth, cool, little +hands, scarcely seen in the shadow--did you ever see more purity and +innocence--more character and the lack of it--painted into a pair of +hands since Van Dyck and Whistler died?" + +Neville, astonished, stood looking incredulously at the canvas around +which the others had gathered. + +Burleson said: "There's something honest and solid about it, anyway; +hanged if there isn't." + +"Like a hen," suggested Ogilvy, absently. + +"Like a hen?" repeated Burleson. "What in hell has a hen got to do with +the subject?" + +"Like _you_, then, John," said Annan, "honest, solid, but totally +unacquainted with the finer phases of contemporary humour--" + +"I'm as humorous as anybody!" roared Burleson. + +"Sure you are, John--just as humorously contemporaneous as anybody of +our anachronistic era," said Ogilvy, soothingly. "You're right; there's +nothing funny about a hen." + +"And here's a highball for you, John," said Neville, concocting a huge +one on the sideboard. + +"And here are two charming ladies for you, John," added Sam, as Valerie +and Rita Tevis entered the open door and mockingly curtsied to the +company. + +"We've dissected _your_ character," observed Annan to Valerie, pointing +to her portrait. "We know all about you now; Sam was the professor who +lectured on you, but you can blame Kelly for turning on the +searchlight." + +"What search-light?" she asked, pivotting from Neville's greeting, +letting her gloved hand linger in his for just a second longer than +convention required. + +"Harry means that portrait of you I started last year," said Neville, +vexed. "He pretends to find it full of psychological subtleties." + +"Do you?" inquired Valerie. "Have you discovered anything horrid in my +character?" + +"I haven't finished looking for the character yet," said Sam with an +impudent grin. "When I find it I'll investigate it." + +"Sam! Come here!" + +He came carefully, wincing when she took him by the generous lobes of +both ears. + +"Now _what_ did you say?" + +"Help!" he murmured, contritely; "will no kind wayfarer aid me?" + +"Answer me!" + +"I only said you were beautifully decorative but intellectually +impulsive--" + +"No, answer me, Sam!" + +"Ouch! _I_ said you had a pair of baby eyes and an obstinate mouth and +an immature mind that came to, conclusions before facts were properly +assimilated. In other words I intimated that you were afflicted with +incurable femininity and extreme youth," he added with satisfaction, +"and if you tweak my ears again I'll kiss you!" + +She let him go with a last disdainful tweak, gracefully escaping his +charge and taking refuge behind Neville who was mixing another highball +for Annan. + +"This is a dignified episode," observed Neville, threatening Ogilvy with +the siphon. + +"Help me make tea, Sam," coaxed Valerie. "Bring out the table; that's an +exceedingly nice boy. Rita, you'll have tea, too, won't you, dear?" + +Unconsciously she had come to assume the role of hostess in Neville's +studio, even among those who had been familiar there long before Neville +ever heard of her. + +Perfectly unaware herself of her instinctive attitude, other people +noticed it. For the world is sharp-eyed, and its attitude is always +alert, ears pricked forward even when its tail wags good-naturedly. + +Ogilvy watched her curiously as she took her seat at the tea table. +Then he glanced at Neville; but could not make up his mind. + +It would be funny if there was anything between Valerie and +Neville--anything more than there ever had been between the girl and +dozens of her men friends. For Ogilvy never allowed himself to make any +mistake concerning the informality and freedom of Valerie West in her +intimacies with men of his kind. She was a born flirt, a coquette, +daring, even indiscreet; but that ended it; and he knew it; and so did +every man with whom she came in contact. + +Yet--and he looked again at her and then at Neville--there seemed to him +to be, lately, something a little different in the attitudes of these +two toward each other--nothing that he could name--but it preoccupied +him sometimes. + +There was a little good-natured malice in Ogilvy; some masculine +curiosity, too. Looking from Valerie to Neville, he said very +innocently: + +"Kelly, you know that peachy dream with whom you cut up so shamefully on +New-year's night? Well, she asked me for your telephone number--" + +"What are you talking about?" demanded Neville, annoyed. + +"Why, I'm talking about Mazie," said Sam, pleasantly. "You remember +Mazie Gray? And how crazy you and she became about each other?" + +Valerie, who was pouring tea, remained amiably unconcerned; and Ogilvy +obtained no satisfaction from her; but Neville's scowl was so hearty and +unfeigned that a glimpse of his visage sent Annan into fits of laughter. +To relieve which he ran across the floor, like a huge spider. Then +Valerie leisurely lifted her tranquil eyes and her eyebrows, too, a +trifle. + +"Why such unseemly contortions, Harry?" she inquired. + +"Sam tormenting Kelly to stir _you_ up! He's got a theory that you and +Kelly are mutually infatuated." + +"What a delightful theory, Sam," said Valerie, smiling so sincerely at +Ogilvy that he made up his mind there wasn't anything in it. But the +next moment, catching sight of Neville's furious face, his opinion +wavered. + +Valerie said laughingly to Rita: "They'll never grow up, these two--" +nodding her head toward Ogilvy and Annan. And to Neville carelessly--too +carelessly: "Will you have a little more tea, Kelly dear?" + +Her attitude was amiable and composed; her voice clear and +unembarrassed. There may have been a trifle more colour in her cheeks; +but what preoccupied Rita was in her eyes--a fleeting glimpse of +something that suddenly concentrated all of Rita's attention upon the +girl across the table. + +For a full minute she sat looking at Valerie who seemed pleasantly +unconscious of her inspection; then almost stealthily she shifted her +gaze to Neville. + +Gladys and her kitten came purring around in quest of cream; Rita +gathered them into her arms and caressed them and fed them bits of +cassava and crumbs of cake. She was unusually silent that afternoon. +John Burleson tried to interest her with heavy information of various +kinds, but she only smiled absently at that worthy man. Sam Ogilvy and +Harry Annan attempted to goad her into one of those lively exchanges of +banter in which Rita was entirely capable of taking care of herself. +But her smile was spiritless and non-combative; and finally they let her +alone and concentrated their torment upon Valerie, who endured it with +equanimity and dangerously sparkling eyes, and an occasional lightening +retort which kept those young men busy, especially when the epigram was +in Latin--which hurt their feelings. + +She had just furnished them with a sample of this classical food for +thought when the door-bell rang and Neville looked up in astonishment to +see José Querida come in. + +"Hello," he said, springing up with friendly hand outstretched--"this is +exceedingly good of you, Querida. You have not been here in a very long +while." + +Querida's smile showed his teeth; he bowed to Valerie and to Rita, bowed +to the men in turn, and smiled on Neville. + +"In excuse I must plead work, my dear fellow--a poor plea and poorer +excuse for the pleasure lost in seeing you--" he nodded to the +others--"and in missing many agreeable little gatherings--similar to +this, I fancy?" + +There was a rising inflection to his voice which made the end of his +little speech terminate as a question; and he looked to Valerie for his +answer. + +"Yes," she said, "we usually have tea in Kelly's studio. And you may +have some now, if you wish, José." + +He nodded his thanks and placed his chair beside hers. + + +The conversation had become general; Rita woke up, dumped the cats out +of her lap, and made a few viciously verbal passes at Ogilvy. Burleson, +earnest and most worthy, engaged Querida's attention for a while; but +that intellectually lithe young man evaded the ponderously impending +dispute with suave skill, and his gentle smile lingered longer on +Valerie than on anybody else. Several times, with an adroit carelessness +that seemed to be purposeless, he contrived to draw Valerie out of the +general level of conversation by merely lowering his voice; but she +seemed to understand the invitation; and, answering him as carelessly as +he spoke, keyed her replies in harmony with the chatter going on around +them. + +He drank his tea smilingly; listened to the others; bore his part +modestly; and at intervals his handsome eyes wandered about the studio, +reverting frequently to the great canvas overhead. + +"You know," he said to Neville, showing the eternal edge of teeth under +his crisp black beard--"that composition of yours is simply superb. I am +all for it, Neville." + +"I'm glad you are," nodded Neville, pleasantly, "but it hasn't yet +developed into what I hoped it might." His eyes swerved toward Valerie; +their glances encountered casually and passed on. Only Rita saw the +girl's breath quicken for an instant--saw the scarcely perceptible +quiver of Neville's mouth where the smile twitched at his lip for its +liberty to tell the whole world that he was in love. But their faces +were placid, their expressions well schooled; Querida's half-veiled eyes +appeared to notice nothing and for a while he remained smilingly silent. + +Later, by accident, he caught sight of Valerie's portrait; he turned +sharply in his chair and looked full at the canvas. + +Nobody spoke for a moment; Neville, who was passing Valerie, felt the +slightest contact as the velvet of her fingers brushed across his. + +Then Querida rose and walked over to the portrait and stood before it in +silence, biting at his vivid under lip and at the crisp hairs of his +beard that framed it. + +Without knowing why, Neville began to feel that Querida was finding in +that half-finished work something that disturbed him; and that he was +not going to acknowledge what it was that he saw there, whether of good +or of the contrary. + +Nobody spoke and Querida said nothing. + +A mild hope entered Neville's mind that the _something_, which had never +been in any work of his, might perhaps lie latent in that canvas--that +Querida was discovering it--without a pleasure--but with a sensitive +clairvoyance which was already warning him of a new banner in the +distance, a new trumpet-call from the barriers, another lance in the +lists where he, Querida, had ridden so long unchallenged and supreme. + +Within him he felt a sudden and secret excitement that he never before +had known--a conviction that the unexpressed hostility of Querida's +silence was the truest tribute ever paid him--the tribute that at last +was arousing hope from its apathy, and setting spurs to his courage. + +Rita, watching Querida, yawned and concealed the indiscretion with her +hand and a taunting word directed at Ogilvy, who retorted in kind. And +general conversation began again. + +Querida turned toward Neville, caught his eye, and shrugged: + +"That portrait is scarcely in your happiest manner, is it?" he asked +with a grimace. "For me--" he touched his breast with long pale +fingers--"I adore your gayer vein--your colour, clarity--the glamour of +splendour that you alone can cast over such works as that--" He waved +his hand upward toward the high canvas looming above. And he smiled at +Neville and seated himself beside Valerie. + +A portfolio of new mezzotints attracted Annan; others gathered around to +examine Neville's treasures; the tea table was deserted for a while +except by Querida and Valerie. Then he deliberately dropped his voice: + +"Will you give me another cup of tea, Valerie? And let me talk to you?" + +"With pleasure." She set about preparing it. + +"I have not seen you for some time," he said in the same caressing +undertone. + +"You haven't required me, José." + +"Must it be entirely a matter of business between us?" + +"Why, of course," she said in cool surprise. "You know perfectly well +how busy I am--and must be." + +"You are sometimes busy--pouring tea, here." + +"But it is after hours." + +"Yet, after hours, you no longer drop in to chat with me." + +"Why, yes, I do--" + +"Pardon. Not since--the new year began.... Will you permit me a word?" + +She inclined her head with undisturbed composure; he went on: + +"I have asked you to many theatres, invited you to dine with me, to go +with me to many, many places. And, it appeared, that you had always +other engagements.... Have I offended you?" + +"Of course not. You know I like you immensely--" + +"Immensely," he repeated with a smile. "Once there was more of sentiment +in your response, Valerie. There is little sentiment in immensity." + +She flushed: "I _was_ spoons on you," she said, candidly. "I was silly +with you--and very indiscreet.... But I'd rather not recall that--" + +"_I_ can not choose but recall it!" + +"Nice men forget such things," she said, hastily. + +"How can you speak that way about it?" + +"Because I _think_ that way, José," she said, looking up at him; but she +saw no answering smile in his face, and little colour in it; and she +remained unquietly conscious of his gaze. + +"I will not talk to you if you begin to look at me like that," she began +under her breath; "I don't care for it--" + +"Can I help it--remembering--" + +"You have nothing to remember except my pardon," she interrupted hotly. + +"Your pardon--for showing that I cared for you?" + +"My pardon for your losing your head." + +"We were absolutely frank with one another--" + +"I do not understand that you are the sort of man a girl can not be +frank with. We imprudently exchanged a few views on life. You--" + +"Many," he said--"and particularly views on marriage." + +She said, steadily: "I told you that I cared at heart nothing at all for +ceremony and form. You said the same. But you misunderstood me. What +was there in that silly conversation significant to you or to me other +than an impersonal interest in hearing ideas expressed?" + +"You knew I was in love with you." + +"I did _not_!" she said, sharply. + +"You let me touch your hands--kiss you, once--" + +"And you behaved like a madman--and frightened me nearly to death! Had +you better recall that night, José? I was generous about it; I was even +a little sorry for you. And I forgave you." + +"Forgave me my loving you?" + +"You don't know what love is," she said, reddening. + +"Do you, Valerie?" + +She sat flushed and silent, looking fixedly at the cups and saucers +before her. + +"_Do_ you?" he repeated in a curious voice. And there seemed to be +something of terror in it, for she looked up, startled, to meet his +long, handsome eyes looking at her out of a colourless visage. + +"José," she said, "what in the world possesses you to speak to me this +way? Have you any right to assume this attitude--merely because I +flirted with you as harmlessly--or meant it harmlessly--" + +She glanced involuntarily across the studio where the others had +gathered over the new collection of mezzotints, and at her glance +Neville raised his head and smiled at her, and encountered Querida's +expressionless gaze. + +For a moment Querida turned his head away, and Valerie saw that his face +was pale and sinister. + +"José," she said, "are you insane to take our innocent affair so +seriously? What in the world has come over you? We have been such +excellent friends. You have been just as nice as you could be, so gay +and inconsequential, so witty, so jolly, such good company!--and now, +suddenly, out of a perfectly clear sky your wrath strikes me like +lightning!" + +"My anger is like that." + +"José!" she exclaimed, incredulously. + +He showed the edge of perfect teeth again, but she was not sure that he +was smiling. Then he laughed gently. + +"Oh," she said in relief--"you really startled me." + +"I won't do it again, Valerie." She looked at him, still uncertain, +fascinated by her uncertainty. + +The colour--as much as he ever had--returned to his face; he reached +over for a cigarette, lighted it, smiled at her charmingly. + +"I was just lonely without you," he said. "Like an unreasonable child I +brooded over it and--" he shrugged, "it suddenly went to my head. Will +_you_ forgive my bad temper?" + +"Yes--I will. Only I never knew _you_ had a temper. It--astonishes me." + +He said nothing, smilingly. + +"Of course," she went on, still flushed, "I knew you were +impulsive--hot-headed--but I know you like me--" + +"I was crazily in love with you," he said, lightly; "and when you let me +touch you--" + +"Oh, I won't ever again, José!" she exclaimed, half-fearfully; "I +supposed you understood that sentiment could be a perfectly meaningless +and harmless thing--merely a silly moment--a foolish interlude in a +sober friendship.... And I _liked_ you, José--" + +[Illustration: "'I shall have need of friends,' she said half to +herself."] + +"Can you still like me?" + +"Y-yes. Why, of course--if you'll let me." + +"Shall we be the same excellent friends, Valerie? And all this ill +temper of mine will be forgotten?" + +"I'll try.... Yes, why not? I _do_ like you, and I admire you +tremendously." + +His eyes rested on her a moment; he inhaled a deep breath from his +cigarette, expelled it, nodded. + +"I'll try to win back all your friendship for me," he said, pleasantly. + +"That will be easy. I want you to like me. I want to be able to like +you.... I shall have need of friends," she said half to herself, and +looked across at Neville with a face tranquil, almost expressionless +save for the sensitive beauty of the mouth. + +After a moment Querida, too, lifted his head and gazed deliberately at +Neville. Then very quietly: + +"Are you dining alone this evening?" + +"No." + +"Oh. Perhaps to-morrow evening, then--" + +"I'm afraid not, José." + +He smiled: "Not dining alone ever again?" + +"Not--for the present." + +"I see." + +"There is nothing to see," she said calmly. But his smile seemed now so +genuine that it disarmed her; and she blushed when he said: + +"Am I to wish you happiness, Valerie? Is _that_ the trouble?" + +"Certainly. Please wish it for me always--as I do for you--and for +everybody." + +But he continued to laugh, and the colour in her face persisted, +annoying her intensely. + +"Nevertheless," he said, "I do not believe you can be hopelessly in +love." + +"What ever put such an idea into that cynical head of yours?" + +"Chance," he said. "But you are not irrevocably in love. You are +ignorant of what love can really mean. Only he who understands it--and +who has suffered through it--can ever teach you. And you will never be +satisfied until he does."' + +"Are you _very_ wise concerning love, José?" she asked, laughing. + +[Illustration: "'Don't do it, Valerie!'"] + +"Perhaps. You will desire to be, too, some day. A good school, an +accomplished scholar." + +"And the schoolmaster? Oh! José!" + +They both were laughing now--he with apparent pleasure in her coquetry +and animation, she still a little confused and instinctively on her +guard. + +Rita came strolling over, a tiny cigarette balanced between her slender +fingers: + +"Stop flirting, José," she said; "it's too near dinner time. Valerie, +child, I'm dining with the unspeakable John again. It's a horrid habit. +Can't you prescribe for me? José, what are you doing this evening?" + +"Penance," he said; "I'm dining with my family." + +"Penance," she repeated with a singular look--"well--that's one way of +regarding the pleasure of having any family to dine with--isn't it, +Valerie?" + +"José didn't mean it that way." + +Rita blew a ring from her cigarette's glimmering end. + +"Will you be at home this evening, Valerie?" + +"Y-yes ... rather late." + +"Too late to see me?" + +"No, you dear girl. Come at eleven, anyway. And if I'm a little late +you'll forgive me, won't you?" + +"No, I won't," said Rita, crossly. "You and I are business women, +anyway, and eleven is too late for week days. I'll wait until I can see +you, sometime--" + +"Was it anything important, dear?" + +"Not to me." + +Querida rose, took his leave of Valerie and Rita, went over and made his +adieux to his host and the others. When he had gone Rita, standing alone +with Valerie beside the tea table, said in a low voice: + +"Don't do it, Valerie!" + +"Do--what?" asked the girl in astonishment. + +"Fall in love." + +[Illustration: "Ogilvy stood looking sentimentally at the two young +girls."] + +Valerie laughed. + +"Do you mean with Querida?" + +"No." + +"Then--what _do_ you mean?" + +"You're on the edge of doing it, child. It isn't wise. It won't do for +us.... I know--I _know_, Valerie, more than you know about--love. Listen +to me. Don't! Go away--go somewhere; drop everything and go, if you've +any sense left. I'll go with you if you will let me.... I'll do anything +for you, dear. Only listen to me before it's too late; keep your +self-control; keep your mind clear on this one thing, that love is of no +use to us--no good to us. And if you think you suspect its presence in +your neighbourhood, get away from it; pick up your skirts and run, +Valerie.... You've plenty of time to come back and wonder what you ever +could have seen in the man to make you believe you could fall in love +with him." + +Ogilvy, strolling up, stood looking sentimentally at the two young +girls. + +"A--perfect--pair--of precious--priceless--peaches," he said; "I'd love +to be a Turk with an Oriental smirk and an ornamental dirk, and a +tendency to shirk when the others go to work; for the workers I can't +bear 'em and I'd rather run a harem--" + +"No doubt," said Rita, coldly; "so you need not explain to me the rather +lively young lady I met in the corridor looking for studio number ten--" + +"Rita! Zuleika! Star of my soul! Jewel of my turban! Do you entertain +suspicions--" + +"Oh, _you_ probably did the entertaining--" + +"I? Heaven! How I am misunderstood! John Burleson! Come over here and +tell this very charming young lady all about that somewhat conspicuous +vision from a local theatre who came floating into my studio by accident +while in joyous quest of you!" + +But Annan only laughed, and Rita shrugged her disdain. But as she nodded +adieu to Valerie, the latter saw a pinched look in her face, and did not +understand it. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +The world, and his own family, had always been inclined to love Louis +Neville, and had advanced no farther than the inclination. There were +exceptions. + +Archie Allaire, who hated him, discussing him floridly once with Querida +at the Thumb-tack Club in the presence of a dozen others, characterised +him as "one of those passively selfish snobs whose virtues are all +negative and whose modesty is the mental complacency of an underdone +capon." + +He was sharply rebuked by Ogilvy, Annan, and Burleson; skilfully by +Querida--so adroitly indeed that his amiable and smiling apology for the +absent painter produced a curiously depressing effect upon Ogilvy and +Annan, and even left John Burleson dully uncomfortable, although Allaire +had been apparently well drubbed. + +"All the same," said Allaire with a sneer to Querida after the others +had departed, "Neville is really a most frightful snob. Like a busy +bacillus surrounded by a glass tube full of prepared culture, he exists +in his own intellectual exudations perfectly oblivious to the miseries +and joys of the world around him. He hasn't time for anybody except +himself." + +Querida laughed: "What has Neville done to you, my friend?" + +"To me?" repeated Allaire with a shrug. "Oh, nothing. It isn't that.... +All the same when I had my exhibition at the Monson Galleries I went to +him and said, 'See here, Neville, I've got some Shoe-trust and +Button-trust women to pour tea for me. Now you know a lot of fashionable +people and I want my tea-pourers to see them, and I want the papers to +say that they've been to a private view of my exhibition.' + +"He gave me one of those absent-treatment stares and said he'd tell all +the really interesting people he knew; and the damnedest lot of scrubby, +dowdy, down-at-the-heels tatterdemalions presented his card at my +private view that you ever saw outside an artist's rathskeller, a lower +Fifth Avenue reception, or a varnishing day! By God, I can go to the +bread-line and get that sort of lookers myself--and I don't care whether +his bunch came from Tenth Street Colonial stock or the Washington Square +nobility or the landed gentry of Chelsea or from the purlieus of the +Bronx, which is where they apparently belong! I can get that kind +myself. I wanted automobiles and broughams and clothes, and I got one +sea-going taxi, and the dirty end of the stick! And to cap the climax he +strolled in himself with a girl whose face is familiar to everybody who +looks at bath tubs in the back of the magazines--Valerie West! And I +want to tell you I couldn't look my Shoe-trust tea-pourers in the face; +and they're so mad that I haven't got an order out of them since." + +Querida laughed till the tears stood in his big, velvety, almond-shaped +eyes. + +"Why didn't you come to me?" he said. + +"Tell you the truth, Querida, I would have if I'd known then that you +were painting portraits of half of upper Fifth Avenue. Besides," he +added, naïvely, "that was before I began to see you in the grand tier +at the opera every week." + +"It was before I sat anywhere except in the gallery," said Querida with +a humorous shrug. "Until this winter I knew nobody, either. And very +often I washed my own handkerchiefs and dried them on the window pane. I +had only fame for my laundress and notoriety for my butcher." + +"Hey?" said Allaire, a trifle out of countenance. + +"It is very true. It cost me so much to paint and frame my pictures that +the prices they brought scarcely paid for models and materials." He +added, pleasantly: "I have dined more often on a box of crackers and a +jar of olives than at a table set with silver and spread with linen." He +laughed without affectation or bitterness: + +"It has been a long road, Allaire--from a stable-loft studio to--" he +shrugged--"the 'Van Rypens' grand tier box, for example." + +"How in God's name did you do it?" inquired Allaire, awed to the +momentary obliteration of envy. + +"I--painted," said Querida, smiling. + +"Sure. I know that. I suppose it was the hellish row made over your +canvases last winter that did the trick." + +Querida's eyes were partly closed as though in retrospection. "Also," he +said, softly, "I painted a very fashionable woman--for nothing--and to +her entire satisfaction." + +"That's the _real_ thing, isn't it?" + +"I'm afraid so.... Make two or three unlovely and unlovable old ladies +lovely and lovable--on canvas--for nothing. Then society will let you +slap its powdered and painted face--yes--permit you--other +liberties--if only you will paint it and sign your canvases and ask them +a wicked price for what you give them and--for what they yield to you." + +Allaire's ruddy face grew ruddier; he grinned and passed a muscular hand +over his thick, handsome, fox-tinted hair. + +"I wish I could get next," he said with a hard glance at Querida. "I'd +sting 'em." + +"I would be very glad to introduce you to anybody I know," observed the +other. + +"Do you mean that?" + +"Why not. A man who has waited as I have for opportunity understands +what others feel who are still waiting." + +"That's damn square of you, Querida." + +"Oh, no, not square; just natural. The public table is big enough for +everybody." + +Allaire thought a moment, slowly caressing his foxy hair. + +"After all," he said with a nervous snicker, "you needn't be afraid of +anybody. Nobody can paint like you.... But I'd like to get a look in, +Querida. I've got to make a little money in one way or another--" he +added impudently--"and if I can't paint well enough to sting them, +there's always the chance of marrying one of 'em." + +Querida laughed: "Any man can always marry any woman. There's no trick +in getting any _wife_ you want." + +"Sure," grinned Allaire; "a wife is a cinch; it's the front row that +keeps good men guessing." He glanced at Querida, his gray-green eyes +brimming with an imprudent malice he could not even now deny +himself--"Also the backs of the magazines keep one guessing," he added, +carelessly; "and I've the patience of a tom-cat, myself." + +Querida's beautifully pencilled eyebrows were raised interrogatively. + +"Oh, I'll admit that the little West girl kept me sitting on back fences +until some other fellow threw a bottle at me," said Allaire with a +disagreeable laugh. He had come as near as he dared to taunting Querida +and, afraid at the last moment, had turned the edge of it on himself. + +Querida lighted a cigarette and blew a whiff of smoke toward the +ceiling. + +"I've an idea," he said, lazily, "that somebody is trying to marry her." + +"Forget it," observed Allaire in contempt. "She wouldn't stand for the +sort who marry her kind. She'll land hard on her neck one of these days, +and the one best bet will be some long-faced Botticelli with heavenly +principles and the moral stability of a tumbler pigeon. Then there'll be +hell to pay; but _he_ will get over it and she'll get aboard the +toboggan. That's the way it ends, Querida." + +Querida sipped his coffee and glanced out of the club window. From the +window he could see the roof of the studio building where Neville lived. +And he wondered how far Valerie was from that building at the present +moment, wondered, and sipped his coffee. + +He was a man whose career had been builded upon perseverance. He had +begun life by slaying every doubt. And his had been a bitter life; but +he had suffered smilingly; the sordid struggle along the edges of +starvation had hardened nothing of his heart. + +Sensitive, sympathetic, ardent, proud, and ambitious with the quiet +certainty of a man predestined, he had a woman's capacity for patience, +for suffering, and for concealment, but not for mercy. And he cared +passionately for love as he did for beauty--had succumbed to both in +spirit oftener than in the caprice of some inconsequential amourette. + +But never, until he came to know Valerie West, had a living woman meant +anything vital to his happiness. Yet, what she aroused in him was that +part of his nature to which he himself was a stranger--a restless, +sensuous side which her very isolation and exposure to danger seemed to +excite the more until desire to control her, to drive others away, to +subdue, master, mould her, make her his own, obsessed him. And he had +tried it and failed; and had drawn aside, fiercely, still watching and +determined. + +Some day he meant to marry properly. He had never doubted his ability to +do so even in the sordid days. But there was no hurry, and life was +young, and so was Valerie West--young enough, beautiful enough to bridge +the years with him until his ultimate destiny awaited him. + +And all was going well again with him until that New-year's night; and +matters had gone ill with him since then--so ill that he could not put +the thought of it from him, and her beauty haunted him--and the +expression of Neville's eyes!-- + +But he remained silent, quiet, alert, watching and waiting with all his +capacity for enduring. And he had now something else to watch--something +that his sensitive intuition had divined in a single unfinished canvas +of Neville's. + +So far there had been but one man supreme in the new world as a great +painter of sunlight and of women. There could not be two. And he already +felt the approach of a shadow menacing the glory of his +sunlight--already stood alert and fixedly observant of a young man who +had painted something disquieting into an unfinished canvas. + + +That man and the young girl whom he had painted to the astonishment and +inward disturbance of José Querida, were having no easy time in that new +world which they had created for themselves. + +Embarked upon an enterprise in the management of which they were neither +in accord nor ever seemed likely to be, they had, so far, weathered the +storms of misunderstandings and the stress of prejudice. Blindly +confident in Love, they were certain, so far, that it was Love itself +that they worshipped no matter what rites and ceremonies each one +observed in its adoration. Yet each was always attempting to convert the +other to the true faith; and there were days of trouble and of tears and +of telephones. + +Neville presented a frightfully complex problem to Valerie West. + +His even-tempered indifference to others--an indifference which had +always characterised him--had left only a wider and deeper void now +filling with his passion for her. + +They were passing through a maze of cross-purposes; his ardent and +exacting intolerance of any creed and opinion save his own was ever +forcing her toward a more formal and literal appreciation of what he +was determined must become a genuine and formal engagement--which +attitude on his part naturally produced clash after clash between them. + +That he entertained so confidently the conviction of her ultimate +surrender to convention, at moments vexed her to the verge of anger. At +times, too, his disposition to interfere with her liberty tried her +patience. Again and again she explained to him the unalterable +fundamentals of their pact. These were, first of all, her refusal to +alienate him from his family and his own world; second, her right to her +own individuality and freedom to support herself without interference or +unrequested assistance from him; third, absolute independence of him in +material matters and the perfect liberty of managing her own little +financial affairs without a hint of dependence on him either before or +after the great change. + +That she posed only in costume now did not satisfy him. He did not wish +her to pose at all; and they discussed various other theatres for her +business activity. But she very patiently explained to him that she +found, in posing for interesting people, much of the intellectual +pleasure that he and other men found in painting; that the life and the +environment, and the people she met, made her happy; and that she could +not expect to meet cultivated people in any other way. + +"I _don't_ want to learn stenography and take dictation in a stuffy +office, dear," she pleaded. "I _don't_ want to sit all day in a library +where people whisper about books. I don't want to teach in a public +school or read novels to invalids, or learn how to be a trained nurse +and place thermometers in people's mouths. I like children pretty well +but I don't want to be a governess and teach other people's children; I +want to be taught myself; I want to learn--I'm a sort of a child, too, +dear; and it's the familiarity with wiser people and brighter people and +pleasant surroundings that has made me as happy as I am--given me what I +never had as a child. You don't understand, but I'm having my childhood +now--nursery, kindergarten, parties, boarding-school, finishing school, +début--all concentrated into this happy year of being among gay, clever, +animated people." + +"Yet you will not let me take you into a world which is still +pleasanter--" + +And the eternal discussion immediately became inevitable, tiring both +with its earnestness and its utter absence of a common ground. Because +in him apparently remained every vital germ of convention and of +generations of training in every precept of formality; and in her--for +with Valerie West adolescence had arrived late--that mystery had been +responsible for far-reaching disturbances consequent on the starved +years of self-imprisonment, of exaltations suppressed, of fears and +doubts and vague desires and dreams ineffable possessing the silence of +a lonely soul. + +And so, essentially solitary, inevitably lonely, out of her own young +heart and an untrained mind she was evolving a code of responsibility to +herself and to the world. + +Her ethics and her morals were becoming what wide, desultory, and +unrestrained reading was making them; her passion for happiness and for +truth, her restless intelligence, were prematurely forming her +character. There was no one in authority to tell her--check, guide, or +direct her in the revolt from dogmatism, pedantry, sophistry and +conventionalism. And by this path youthful intelligence inevitably +passes, incredulous of snare and pitfall where lie the bones of many a +savant under magic blossoms nourished by creeds long dead. + + +"To bring no sorrow to any one, Louis--that is the way I am trying to +live," she said, seriously. + +"You are bringing it to me." + +"If that is so--then I had better depart as I came and leave you in +peace." + +"It's too late." + +"Perhaps it is not. Shall we try it?" + +"Could _you_ recover?" + +"I don't know. I am willing to try for your sake." + +"Do you _want_ to?" he asked, almost angrily. + +"I am not thinking of myself, Louis." + +"I _want_ you to. I don't want you _not_ to think about yourself all the +time." + +She made a hopeless gesture, opening her arms and turning her palms +outward: + +"Kelly Neville! _What_ do you suppose loving you means to me?" + +"Don't you think of yourself at all when you love me?" + +"Why--I suppose I do--in a way. I know I'm fortunate, happy--I--" She +glanced up shyly--"I am glad that I am--loved--" + +"You darling!" + +She let him take her into his arms, suffered his caress, looking at him +in silence out of eyes as dark and clear and beautiful as brown pools in +a forest. + +"You're just a bad, spoiled, perverse little kid, aren't you?" he said, +rumpling her hair. + +"You say so." + +"Breaking my heart because you won't marry me." + +"No, breaking my own because you don't really love me enough, yet." + +"I love you too much--" + +"That is literary bosh, Louis." + +"Good God! Can't you ever understand that I'm respectable enough to want +you for my wife?" + +"You mean that you want me for what I do not wish to be. And you decline +to love me unless I turn into a selfish, dependent, conventional +nonentity, which you adore because respectable. Is that what you mean?" + +"I want the laws of civilisation to safeguard you," he persisted +patiently. + +"I need no more protection than you need. I am not a baby. I am not +afraid. Are you?" + +"That is not the question--" + +"Yes it is, dear. I stand in no fear. Why do you wish to force me to do +what I believe would be a wrong to you? Can't you respect my +disreputable convictions?" + +"They are theories--not convictions--" + +"Oh, Kelly, I'm so tired of hearing you say that!" + +"I should think you would be, you little imp of perversity!" + +"I am.... And I wonder how I can love you just as much, as though you +were kind and reasonable and--and minded your own business, dear." + +"Isn't it my business to tell the girl to whom I'm engaged what I +believe to be right?" + +"Yes; and it's her business to tell _you_" she said, smiling; and put +her arms higher so that they slipped around his neck for a moment, then +were quickly withdrawn. + +"What a thoroughly obstinate boy you are!" she exclaimed. "We're wasting +such lots of time in argument when it's all so very simple. Your soul is +your own to develop; mine is mine. _Noli, me tangere_!" + +But he was not to be pacified; and presently she went away to pour their +tea, and he followed and sat down in an armchair near the fire, brooding +gaze fixed on the coals. + +They had tea in hostile silence; he lighted a cigarette, but presently +flung it into the fire without smoking. + +She said: "You know, Louis, if this is really going to be an unhappiness +to you, instead of a happiness beyond words, we had better end it now." +She added, with an irrepressible laugh, partly nervous, "Your happiness +seems to be beyond words already. Your silence is very eloquent.... I +think I'll take my doll and go home." + +She rose, stood still a moment looking at him where he sat, head bent, +staring into the coals; then a swift tenderness filled her eyes; her +sensitive lips quivered; and she came swiftly to him and took his head +into her arms. + +"Dear," she whispered, "I only want to do the best for you. Let me try +in my own way. It's all for you--everything I do or think or wish or +hope is for you. Even I myself was made merely for you." + +Sideways on the arm of his chair, she stooped down, laying her cheek +against his, drawing his face closer. + +"I am so hopelessly in love with you," she murmured; "if I make +mistakes, forgive me; remember only that it is because I love you enough +to die for you very willingly." + +He drew her down into his arms. She was never quick to respond to the +deeper emotions in him, but her cheeks and throat were flushed now, and, +as his embrace enclosed her, she responded with a sudden flash of blind +passion--a moment's impulsive self-surrender to his lips and arms--and +drew away from him dazed, trembling, shielding her face with one arm. + +All that the swift contact was awakening in him turned on her fiercely +now; in his arms again she swayed, breathless, covering her face with +desperate hands, striving to comprehend, to steady her senses, to reason +while pulses and heart beat wildly and every vein ran fire. + +"No--" she stammered--"this is--is wrong--wrong! Louis, I beg you, to +remember what I am to you.... Don't kiss me again--I ask you not to--I +pray that you won't.... We are--I am--engaged to you, dear.... Oh--it is +wrong--wrong, now!--all wrong between us!" + +"Valerie," he stammered, "you care nothing for any law--nor do I--now--" + +"I _do_! You don't understand me! Let me go. Louis--you don't love me +enough.... This--this is madness--wickedness!--you can't love me! You +don't--you can't!" + +"I do love you, Valerie--" + +"No--no--or you would let me go!--or you would not kiss me again--" + +She freed herself, breathless, crimson with shame and anger, avoiding +his eyes, and slipped out of his embrace to her knees, sank down on the +rug at his feet, and laid her head against the chair, breathing fast, +both small hands pressed to her breast. + +For a few minutes he let her lie so; then, stooping over her, white +lipped, trembling: + +"What can you expect if we sow the wind?" + +She began to cry, softly: "You don't understand--you never have +understood!" + +"I understand this: that I am ready to take you in your way, now. I +cannot live without you, and I won't. I care no longer how I take you, +or when, or where, as long as I can have you for mine, to keep for ever, +to love, to watch over, to worship.... Dear--will you speak to me?" + +She shook her head, desolately, where it lay now against his knees, amid +its tumbled hair. + +Then he asked again for her forgiveness--almost fiercely, for passion +still swayed him with every word. He told her he loved her, adored her, +could not endure life without her; that he was only too happy to take +her on any terms she offered. + +"Louis," she said in a voice made very small and low by the crossed arms +muffling her face, "I am wondering whether you will ever know what love +is." + +"Have I not proved that I love you?" + +"I--don't know what it is you have proved.... We were engaged to each +other--and--and--" + +"I thought you cared nothing for such conventions!" + +She began to cry again, silently. + +"Valerie--darling--" + +"No--you don't understand," she sobbed. + +"Understand what, dearest--dearest-- + +"That I thought our love was its own protection--and mine." + +He made no answer. + +She knelt there silent for a little while, then put her hand up +appealingly for his handkerchief. + +"I have been very happy in loving you," she faltered; "I have promised +you all there is of myself. And you have already had my best self. The +rest--whatever it is--whatever happens to me--I have promised--so that +there will be nothing of this girl called Valerie West which is not all +yours--all, all--every thought, Louis, every pulse-beat--mind, soul, +body.... But no future day had been set; I had thought of none as yet. +Still--since I knew I was to be to you what I am to be, I have been very +busy preparing for it--mind, soul, my little earthly possessions, my +personal affairs in their small routine.... No bride in your world, busy +with her trousseau, has been a happier dreamer than have I, Louis. You +don't know how true I have tried to be to myself, and to the truth as I +understand it--as true as I have been to you in thought and deed.... +And, somehow, what threatened--a moment since--frightens me, humiliates +me--" + +She lifted her head and looked up at him with dimmed eyes: + +"You were untrue to yourself, Louis--to your own idea of truth. And you +were untrue to me. And for the first time I look at you, ashamed and +shamed." + +"Yes," he said, very white. + +"Why did you offer our love such an insult?" she asked. + +He made no answer. + +"Was it because, in your heart, you hold a girl lightly who promised to +give herself to you for your own sake, renouncing the marriage vows?" + +"No! Good God--" + +"Then--is it because you do not yet love me enough? For I shall not give +myself to you until you do." + +He hung his head. + +"I think that is it," she said, sorrowfully. + +"No. I'm no good," he said. "And that's the truth, Valerie." A dark +flush stained his face and he turned it away, sitting there in silence, +his tense clasp tightening on the arms of the chair. Then he said, still +not meeting her eyes: + +"Whatever your beliefs are you practice them; you are true to your +convictions, loyal to yourself. I am only a miserable, rotten specimen +of man who is true to nothing--not even to himself. I'm not worth your +trouble, Valerie." + +"Louis!" + +"Well, what am I?" he demanded in fierce disgust. "I have told you that +I believe in the conventions--and I violate every one of them. I'm a +spectacle for gods and men!" His face was stern with self-disgust: he +forced himself to meet her gaze, wincing under it; but he went on: + +"I know well enough that I deserve your contempt; I've acquired plenty +of self-contempt already. But I _do_ love you, God knows how or in what +manner, but I love you, cur that I am--and I respect you--oh, more that +you understand, Valerie. And if I ask your mercy on such a man as I am, +it is not because I deserve it." + +"My mercy, Louis?" + +She rose to her knees and laid both hands on his shoulders. + +"You _are_ only a man, dear--with all the lovable faults and sins and +contradictions of one. But there is no real depravity in you any more +than there is in me. Only--I think you are a little more selfish than I +am--you lose self-command--" she blushed--"but that is because you are +only a man after all.... I think, perhaps, that a girl's love is +different in many ways. Dear, my love for you is perfectly honest. You +believe it, don't you? If for one moment I thought it was otherwise, I'd +never let you see me again. If I thought for one moment that anything +spiritual was to be gained for us by denying that love to you or to +myself--or by living out life alone without you, I have the courage to +do it. Do you doubt it?" + +"No," he said. + +She sighed, and her gaze passed from his and became remote for a moment, +then: + +"I want to live my life with you," she said, wistfully; "I want to be to +you all that the woman you love could possibly be. But to me, the giving +of myself to you is to be, in my heart, a ceremony more solemn than any +in the world--and it is to be a rite at which my soul shall serve on its +knees, Louis." + +"Dearest--dearest," he breathed, "I know--I understand--I ask your +pardon. And I worship you." + +Then a swift, smiling change passed over her face; and, her hands still +resting on his shoulders, kneeling there before him, she bent forward +and kissed him on the forehead. + +"Pax," she said. "You are forgiven. Love me enough, Louis. And when I +am quite sure you do, then--then--you may ask me, and I will answer +you." + +"I love you now, enough." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--ask," she said, faintly. + +His lips moved in a voiceless question, she could not hear him, but she +understood. + +"In a year, I think," she answered, forcing her eyes to meet his, but +the delicate rose colour was playing over her cheeks and throat. + +"As long as that?" + +"That is not long. Besides, perhaps you won't learn to love me enough +even by that time. Do you think you will? If you really think +so--perhaps in June--" + +She watched him as he pressed her hands together and kissed them; +laughed a little, shyly, as she suddenly divined a new tenderness and +respect in his eyes--something matching the vague exaltation of her own +romantic dreams. + +"I will wait all my life if you wish it," he said. + +"Do you mean it?" + +"You know I do, now." + +She considered him, smiling. "If you truly do feel that +way--perhaps--perhaps it might really be in June--or in July--" + +"You _said_ June." + +"Listen to the decree of the great god Kelly! He says it must be in +June, and he shakes his thunderbolts and frowns." + +"June! Say so, Valerie," + +"_You_ have said so." + +"But there's no use in _my_ saying so if--" + +"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, "the great god totters on his pedestal and +the oracle falters and I see the mere man looking very humbly around the +corner of the shrine at me, whispering, 'June, if you please, dear +lady!'" + +"Yes," he said, "that's what you see and hear. Now answer me, dear." + +"And what am I to say?" + +"June, please." + +"June--please," she repeated, demurely. + +"You darling!... What day?" + +"Oh, that's too early to decide--" + +"Please, dear!" + +"No; I don't want to decide--" + +"Dearest!" + +"What?" + +"Won't you answer me?" + +"If you make me answer now, I'll be tempted to fix the first of April." + +"All right, fix it." + +"It's All Fool's day, you know," she threatened. "Probably it is +peculiarly suitable for us.... Very well, then, I'll say it." + +She was laughing when he caught her hands and looked at her, grave, +unsmiling. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and her lip trembled. + +"Forgive me, I meant no mockery," she whispered. "I had already fixed +the first day of June for--for the great change in our lives. Are you +content?" + +"Yes." And before she knew what he was doing a brilliant flashed along +her ring finger and clung sparkling to it; and she stared at the gold +circlet and the gem flashing in the firelight. + +There were tears in her eyes when she kissed it, looking at him while +her soft lips rested on the jewel. + +Neither spoke for a moment; then, still looking at him, she drew the +ring from her finger, touched it again with her lips, and laid it gently +in his hand. + +"No, dear," she said. + +He did not urge her; but she knew he still believed that she would come +to think as he thought; and the knowledge edged her lips with tremulous +humour. But her eyes were very sweet and tender as she watched him lay +away the ring as though it and he were serenely biding their time. + +"Such a funny boy," she said, "and such a dear one. He will never, never +grow up, will he?" + +"Such an idiot, you mean," he said, drawing her into the big chair +beside him. + +"Yes, I mean that, too," she said, impudently, nose in the air. +"Because, if I were you, Louis, I wouldn't waste any more energy in +worrying about a girl who is perfectly able to take care of herself, but +transfer it to a boy who apparently is not." + +"How do you mean?" + +"I mean about your painting. Dear, you've got it into that obstinate +head of yours that there's something lacking in your pictures, and there +isn't." + +"Oh, Valerie! You know there is!" + +"No, no, no! There isn't anything lacking in them. They're all of you, +Louis--every bit of you--as far as you have lived." + +"What!" + +"Certainly. As far as you have lived. Now live a little more, and let +more things come into your life. You can't paint what isn't in you; and +there's nothing in you except what you get out of life." + +She laid her soft cheek against his. + +"Get a little real love out of life, Louis; a little _real_ love. Then +surely, surely your canvases can not disguise that you know what life +means to us all. Love nobly; and the world will not doubt that love is +noble; love mercifully; and the world will understand mercy. For I +believe that what you are must show in your work, dear. + +"Until now the world has seen in your work only the cold splendour, or +dreamy glamour, or the untroubled sweetness and brilliancy of +passionless romance. I love your work. It is happiness to look at it; it +thrills, bewitches, enthralls!... Dear, forgive me if in it I have not +yet found a deeper inspiration.... And that inspiration, to be there, +must be first in you, my darling--born of a wider interest in your +fellow men, a little tenderness for friends--a more generous experience +and more real sympathy with humanity--and perhaps you may think it out +of place for me to say it--but--a deeper, truer, spiritual conviction. + +"Do you think it strange of me to have such convictions? I can't escape +them. Those who are merciful, those who are kind, to me are Christ-like. +Nothing else matters. But to be kind is to be first of all interested in +the happiness of others. And you care nothing for people. You _must_ +care, Louis! + +"And, somehow, you who are, at heart, good and kind and merciful, have +not really awakened real love in many of those about you. For one thing +your work has absorbed you. But if, at the same time, you could pay a +little more attention to human beings--" + +"Valerie!" he said in astonishment, "I have plenty of friends. Do you +mean to say I care nothing for them?" + +"How much _do_ you care, Louis?" + +"Why, I--" He fell silent, troubled gaze searching hers. + +She smiled: "Take Sam, for example. The boy adores you. He's a rotten +painter, I know--and you don't even pretend to an interest in what he +does because you are too honest to praise it. But, Louis, he's a lovable +fellow--and he does the best that's in him. You needn't pretend to care +for what he does--but if you could show that you do care for and respect +the effort--" + +"I do, Valerie--when I think about it!" + +"Then think about it; and let Sam know that you think about his efforts +and himself. And do the same for Harry Annan. He's a worse painter than +Sam--but do you think he doesn't know it? Don't you realise what a lot +of heartache the monkey-shines of those two boys conceal?" + +"I am fond of them," he said, slowly. "I like people, even if I don't +show it--" + +"Ah, Louis! Louis! That is the world's incurable hurt--the silence that +replies to its perplexity--the wistful appeal that remains +unanswered.... And many, many vex God with the desolation of their +endless importunities and complaints when a look, a word, a touch from a +human being would relieve them of the heaviest of all burdens--a sad +heart's solitude." + +He put his arm around her, impulsively: + +"You little angel," he said, tenderly. + +"No--only a human girl who has learned what solitude can mean." + +"I shall make you forget the past," he said. + +"No, dear--for that might make me less kind." She put her lips against +his cheek, thoughtfully: "And--I think--that you are going to need all +the tenderness in me--some day, Louis--as I need all of yours.... We +shall have much to learn--after the great change.... And much to endure. +And I think we will need all the kindness that we can give each +other--and all that the world can spare us." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +It was slowly becoming evident to Neville that Valerie's was the +stronger character--not through any genius for tenacity nor on account +of any domineering instinct--but because, mistaken or otherwise in her +ethical reasoning, she was consistent, true to her belief, and had the +courage to live up to it. And this made her convictions almost +unassailable. + +Slavery to established custom of any kind she smilingly disdained, +refusing to submit to restrictions which centuries of social usage had +established, when such social restrictions and limitations hampered or +annoyed her. + +Made conscious by the very conventions designed to safeguard +unconsciousness; made wise by the unwisdom of a civilisation which +required ignorance of innocence, she had as yet lost none of her +sweetness and confidence in herself and in a world which she considered +a friendly one at best and, at worst, more silly than vicious. + +Her life, the experience of a lonely girlhood in the world, wide and +varied reading, unwise and otherwise, and an intelligence which needed +only experience and training, had hastened to a premature maturity her +impatience with the faults of civilisation. And in the honest revolt of +youth, she forgot that what she rejected was, after all, civilisation +itself, and that as yet there had been offered no acceptable substitute +for its faulty codification. + +To do one's best was to be fearlessly true to one's convictions and let +God judge; that was her only creed. And from her point of view humanity +needed no other. + +So she went about the pleasure and happiness of living with a light +heart and a healthy interest, not doubting that all was right between +her and the world, and that the status quo must endure. + +And endless misunderstandings ensued between her and the man she loved. +She was a very busy business girl and he objected. She went about to +theatres and parties and dinners and concerts with other men; and +Neville didn't like it. Penrhyn Cardemon met her at a theatrical supper +and asked her to be one of his guests on his big yacht, the _Mohave_, +fitted out for the Azores. There were twenty in the party, and she would +have gone had not Neville objected angrily. + +It was not his objection but his irritation that confused her. She could +discover no reason for it. + +"It can't be that you don't trust me," she said to him, "so it must be +that you're lonely without me, even when you go to spend two weeks with +your parents. I don't mind not going if you don't wish me to, Louis, and +I'll stay here in town while you visit your father and mother, but it +seems a little bit odd of you not to let me go when I can be of no +earthly use to you." + +Her gentleness with him, and her sweet way of reasoning made him +ashamed. + +"It's the crowd that's going, Valerie--Cardemon, Querida, Marianne +Valdez--where did you meet her, anyway?" + +"In her dressing room at the Opera. She's perfectly sweet. Isn't she all +right?" + +"She's Cardemon's mistress," he said, bluntly. + +A painful colour flushed her face and neck; and at the same instant he +realised what he had said. + +Neither spoke for a while; he went on with his painting; she, standing +once more for the full-length portrait, resumed her pose in silence. + +After a while she heard his brushes clatter to the floor, saw him leave +his easel, was aware that he was coming toward her. And the next moment +he had dropped at her feet, kneeling there, one arm tightening around +her knees, his head pressed close. + +Listlessly she looked down at him, dropped one slim hand on his +shoulder, considering him. + +"The curious part of it is," she said, "that all the scorn in your voice +was for Marianne Valdez and none for Penrhyn Cardemon." + +He said nothing. + +"Such a queer, topsy-turvy world," she sighed, letting her hand wander +from his shoulder to his thick, short hair. She caressed his forehead +thoughtfully. + +"I suppose some man will say that of me some day.... But that is a +little matter--compared to making life happy for you.... To be your +mistress could never make me unhappy." + +"To be your husband--and to put an end to all these damnable doubts and +misgivings and cross-purposes would make me happy all my life!" he burst +out with a violence that startled her. + +"Hush, Louis. We must not begin that hopeless argument again." + +"Valerie! Valerie! You are breaking my heart!" + +"Hush, dear. You know I am not." + +She looked down at him; her lip was trembling. + +Suddenly she slid down to the floor and knelt there confronting him, +her arms around him. + +"Dearer than all the world and heaven!--do you think that I am breaking +your heart? You _know_ I am not. You know what I am doing for your sake, +for your family's sake, for my own. I am only giving you a love that can +cause them no pain, bring no regret to you. Take it, then, and kiss me." + + +But the days were full of little scenes like this--of earnest, fiery +discussions, of passionate arguments, of flashes of temper ending in +tears and heavenly reconciliation. + +He had gone for two weeks to visit his father and mother at their summer +home near Portsmouth, and before he went he took her in his arms and +told her how ashamed he was of his bad temper at the idea of her going +on the _Mohave_, and said that she might go; that he did trust her +anywhere, and that he was trying to learn to concede to her the same +liberty of action and of choice that any man enjoyed. + +But she convinced him very sweetly that she really had no desire to go, +and sent him off to Spindrift House happy, and madly in love; which +resulted in two letters a day from him, and in her passing long evenings +in confidential duets with Rita Tevis. + +Rita had taken the bedroom next to Valerie's, and together they had +added the luxury of a tiny living room to the suite. + +It was the first time that either had ever had any place in which to +receive anybody; and now, delighted to be able to ask people, they let +it be known that their friends could have tea with them. + +Ogilvy and Annan had promptly availed themselves. + +"This is exceedingly grand," said Ogilvy, examining everything in a tour +around the pretty little sitting room. "We can have all kinds of a rough +house now." And he got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the +rug and very gravely turned a somersault. + +"Sam! Behave! Or I'll set my parrot on you!" exclaimed Valerie. + +Ogilvy sat up and inspected the parrot. + +"You know," he said, "I believe I've seen that parrot somewhere." + +"Impossible, my dear friend--unless you've been in my bedroom." + +Ogilvy got up, dusted his trowsers, and walked over to the parrot. + +"Well it looks like a bird I used to know--I--it certainly resembles--" +He hesitated, then addressing the bird: + +"Hello, Leparello--you old scoundrel!" he said, cautiously. + +"Forget it!" muttered the bird, cocking his head and lifting first one +slate-coloured claw from his perch, then the other;--"forget it! Help! +Oh, very well. God bless the ladies!" + +"_Where_ on earth did you ever before see my parrot?" asked Valerie, +astonished. Ogilvy appeared to be a little out of countenance, too. + +"Oh, I really don't remember exactly where I did see him," he tried to +explain; and nobody believed him. + +"Sam! Answer me!" + +"Well, where did _you_ get him?" + +"José Querida gave Leparello to me." + +Annan and Ogilvy exchanged the briefest glance--a perfectly blank +glance. + +"It probably isn't the same bird," said Ogilvy, carelessly. "There are +plenty of parrots that talk--plenty of 'em named Leparello, probably." + +"Sam, how _can_ you be so untruthful! Rita, hold him tightly while I +pull his ears!" + +It was a form of admonition peculiarly distasteful to Ogilvy, and he +made a vain effort to escape. + +"Now, Sam, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Quick, +or I'll tweak!" + +"All right, then," he said, maliciously, "Querida's got relatives in +Oporto who send him these kind of parrots occasionally. He names 'em all +Leparello, teaches 'em all the same jargon, and--gives 'em to girls!" + +"How funny," said Valerie. She looked at Sam, aware of something else in +his grin, and gave an uncertain little laugh. + +He sat down, rubbing his ear-lobes, the malicious grin still lingering +on his countenance. What he had not told her was that Querida's +volcanically irregular affairs of the heart always ended with the gift +of an Oporto parrot. Marianne Valdez owned one. So did Mazie Gray. + +His cynical gaze rested on Valerie reflectively. He had heard plenty of +rumours and whispers concerning her; and never believed any of them. He +could not believe now that the gift of this crimson, green and sky-blue +creature signified anything. Yet Querida had known her as long as +anybody except Neville. + +"When did he give you this parrot?" he asked, carelessly. + +"Oh, one day just before I was going to Atlantic City. He was coming +down, too, to stay a fortnight while I was there, and come back with me; +and he said that He had intended to give the parrot to me after our +return, but that he might as well give it to me before I went." + +"I see," said Ogilvy, thoughtfully. A few moments later, as he and Annan +were leaving the house, he said: + +"It looks to me as though our friend, José, had taken too much for +granted." + +"It looks like it," nodded Annan, smiling unpleasantly. + +"Too sure of conquest," added Ogilvy. "Got the frozen mitt, didn't he?" + +"_And_ the Grand Cordon of the double cross." + +"_And_ the hot end of the poker; yes?" + +"Sure; and it's still sizzling." Ogilvy cast a gleeful glance back at +the house: + +"Fine little girl. All white. Yes? No?" + +"All white," nodded Annan.... "And Neville isn't that kind of a man, +anyway." + +Ogilvy said: "So _you_ think so, too?" + +"Oh, yes. He's crazy about her, and she isn't taking Sundays out if it's +his day in.... Only, what's the use?" + +"No use.... I guess Kelly Neville has seen as many artists who've +married their models as we have. Besides, his people are frightful +snobs." + +Annan, walking along briskly, swung his stick vigorously: + +"She's a sweet little thing," he said. + +"I know it. It's going to be hard for her. She can't stand for a +mutt--and it's the only sort that will marry her.... I don't +know--she's a healthy kind of girl--but God help her if she ever really +falls in love with one of our sort." + +"I think she's done it," said Annan. + +"Kelly!" + +"Doesn't it look like it?" + +"Oh, it will wear off without any harm to either of them. That little +girl is smart, all right; she'll never waste an evening screaming for +the moon. And Kelly Neville is--is Kelly Neville--a dear fellow, so +utterly absorbed in the career of a brilliant and intelligent young +artist named Louis Neville, that if the entire earth blew up he'd begin +a new canvas the week after.... Not that I think him cold-hearted--no, +not even selfish as that little bounder Allaire says--but he's a man who +has never yet had time to spare." + +"They're the most hopeless," observed Annan--"the men who haven't time +to spare. Because it takes only a moment to say, 'Hello, old man! How in +hell are you?' It takes only a moment to put yourself, mentally, in some +less lucky man's shoes; and be friendly and sorry and interested." + +"He's a pretty decent sort," murmured Ogilvy. "Anyway, that Valerie +child is safe enough in temporarily adoring Kelly Neville." + + * * * * * + +The "Valerie child," in a loose, rose-silk peignoir, cross-legged on her +bed, was sewing industriously on her week's mending. Rita, in +dishabille, lay across the foot of the bed nibbling bonbons and reading +the evening paper. + +They had dined in their living room, a chafing dish aiding. Afterward +Valerie went over her weekly accounts and had now taken up her regular +mending; and there she sat, sewing away, and singing in her clear, young +voice, the old madrigal: + + "_Let us dry the starting tear + For the hours are surely fleeting + And the sad sundown is near. + All must sip the cup of sorrow, + I to-day, and thou to-morrow! + This the end of every song, + Ding-dong! Ding-dong! + Yet until the shadows fall + Over one and over all, + Sing a merry madrigal!_" + +Rita, nibbling a chocolate, glanced up: + +"That's a gay little creed," she observed. + +"Of course. It's the _only_ creed." + +Rita shrugged and Valerie went on blithely singing and sewing. + +"How long has that young man of yours been away?" inquired Rita, looking +up again. + +"Thirteen days." + +"Oh. Are you sure it isn't fourteen?" + +"Perfectly." Then the sarcasm struck her, and she looked around at Rita +and laughed: + +"Of course I count the days," she said, conscious of the soft colour +mounting to her cheeks. + +Rita sat up and, tucking a pillow under her shoulders, leaned back +against the foot-board of the bed, kicking the newspaper to the floor. +"Do you know," she said, "that you have come pretty close to falling in +love with Kelly Neville?" + +Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she bent lower over +her sewing, but she made no reply. + +"I should say," continued Rita, "that it was about time for you to pick +up your skirts and run for it." + +Still Valerie sewed on in silence. + +"Valerie!" + +"What?" + +"For goodness' sake, say something!" + +"What do you want me to say, dear?" asked the girl, laughing. + +"That you are _not_ in danger of making a silly ninny of yourself over +Kelly Neville." + +"Oh, I'll say that very cheerfully--" + +"Valerie!" + +The girl looked at her, calmly amused. Then she said: + +"I might as well tell you. I am head over heels in love with him. You +knew it, anyway, Rita. You've known it--oh, I don't know how long--but +you've known it. Haven't you?" + +Rita thought a moment: "Yes, I have known it.... What are you going to +do?" + +"Do?" + +"Yes; what do you intend to do about this matter?" + +"Love him," said Valerie. "What else can I do?" + +"You could try not to." + +"I don't want to." + +"You had better." + +"Why?" + +"Because," said Rita, deliberately, "if you really love him you'll +either become his wife or his mistress; and it's a pretty rotten choice +either way." + +Valerie blushed scarlet; + +"Rotten--choice?" + +"Certainly. You know perfectly well what your position would be when his +family and his friends learned that he'd married his model. No girl of +any spirit would endure it--no matter how affable his friends might +perhaps pretend to be. No girl of any sense would ever put herself in +such a false position.... I tell you, Valerie, it's only the exceptional +man who'll stand by you. No doubt Louis Neville would. But it would cost +him every friend he has--and probably the respect of his parents. And +that means misery for you both--because he couldn't conceal from you +what marrying you was costing him--" + +[Illustration: "Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she +bent lower over her sewing."] + +"Rita!" + +"Yes." + +"There is no use telling me all this. I know it. He knows I know it. I +am not going to marry him." + +After a silence Rita said, slowly: "Did he ask you to?" + +Valerie looked down, passed her needle through the hem once, twice. + +"Yes," she said, softly, "he asked me." + +"And--you refused?" + +"Yes." + +Rita said: "I like Kelly Neville ... and I love you better, dear. But +it's not best for you to marry him.... Life isn't a very sentimental +affair--not nearly as silly a matter as poets and painters and dramas +and novels pretend it is. Love really plays a very minor part in life, +Don't you know it?" + +"Yes. I lived twenty years without it," said Valerie, demurely, yet in +her smile Rita divined the hidden tragedy. And she leaned forward and +kissed her impulsively. + +"Let's swear celibacy," she said, "and live out our lives together in +single blessedness! Will you? We can have a perfectly good time until +the undertaker knocks." + +"I hope he won't knock for a long while," said Valerie, with a slight +shiver. "There's so much I want to see first." + +"You shall. We'll see everything together. We'll work hard, live +frugally if you say so, cut out all frills and nonsense, and save and +save until we have enough to retire on respectably. And then, like two +nice old ladies, we'll start out to see the world--" + +"Oh, Rita! I don't want to see it when I'm too old!" + +"You'll enjoy it more--" + +"Rita! How ridiculous! You've seen more of the world than I have, +anyway. It's all very well for you to say wait till I'm an old maid; but +you've been to Paris--haven't you?" + +"Yes," said Rita. There was a slight colour in her face. + +"Well, then! Why must I wait until I'm a dowdy old frump before I go? +Why should you and I not be as happy as we can afford to be while we're +young and attractive and unspoiled?" + +"I want you to be as happy as you can afford to be, Valerie.... But you +can't afford to fall in love." + +"Why?" + +"Because it will make you miserable." + +"But it doesn't." + +"It will if it is love." + +"It is, Rita," said the girl, smiling out of her dark eyes--deep brown +wells of truth that the other gazed into and saw a young soul there, +fearless and doomed. + +"Valerie," she said, shivering, "you won't do--_that_--will you?" + +"Dear, I cannot marry him, and I love him. What else am I to do?" + +"Well, then--then you'd better marry him!" stammered Rita, frightened. +"It's better for you! It's better--" + +"For _me_? Yes, but how about him?" + +"What do you care about him!" burst out Rita, almost incoherent in her +fright and anger. "He's a man; he can take care of himself. Don't think +of him. It isn't your business to consider him. If he wants to marry you +it's his concern after all. Let him do it! Marry him and let him fight +it out with his friends! After all what does a man give a girl that +compares with what she gives him? Men--men--" she stammered--"they're +all alike in the depths of their own hearts. We are incidents to +them--no matter how they say they love us. They _can't_ love as we do. +They're not made for it! We are part of the game to them; they are the +whole game to us; we are, at best, an important episode in their +careers; they are our whole careers. Oh, Valerie! Valerie! listen to me, +child! That man could go on living and painting and eating and drinking +and sleeping and getting up to dress and going to bed to sleep, if you +lay dead in your grave. But if you loved him, and were his wife--or God +forgive me!--his mistress, the day he died _you_ would die, though your +body might live on. I know--_I_ know, Valerie. Death--whether it be his +body or his love, ends all for the woman who really loves him. Woman's +loss is eternal. But man's loss is only temporary--he is made that way, +fashioned so. Now I tell you the exchange is not fair--it has never been +fair--never will be, never can be. And I warn you not to give this man +the freshness of your youth, the happy years of your life, your +innocence, the devotion which he will transmute into passion with his +accursed magic! I warn you not to forsake the tranquillity of ignorance, +the blessed immunity from that devil's paradise that you are already +gazing into--" + +"Rita! Rita! What are you saying?" + +"I scarcely know, child. I am trying to save you from lifelong +unhappiness--trying to tell you that--that men are not worth it--" + +"How do you know?" + +There was a silence, then Rita, very pale and quiet, leaned forward, +resting her elbows on her knees and framing her face with her hands. + +"I had my lesson," she said. + +"You! Oh, my darling--forgive me! I did not know--" + +Rita suffered herself to be drawn into the younger girl's impulsive +embrace; they both cried a little, arms around each other, faltering out +question and answer in unsteady whispers: + +"Were you married, dearest?" + +"No." + +"Oh--I am _so_ sorry, dear--" + +"So am I.... Do you blame me for thinking about men as I do think?" + +"Didn't you love--him?" + +"I thought I did.... I was too young to know.... It doesn't matter +now--" + +"No, no, of course not. You made a ghastly mistake, but it's no more +shame to you than it is to him. Besides, you thought you loved him." + +"He could have made me. I was young enough.... But he let me see how +absolutely wicked he was.... And then it was too late to ever love him." + +"O Rita, Rita!--then you haven't ever even had the happiness of loving? +Have you?" + +Rita did not answer. + +"Have you, darling?" + +Then Rita broke down and laid her head on Valerie's knees, crying as +though her heart would break. + +"That's the terrible part of it," she sobbed--"I really do love a man, +now.... Not that _first_ one ... and there's nothing to do about +it--nothing, Valerie, nothing--because even if he asked me to marry him +I can't, now--" + +"Because you--" + +"Yes." + +"And if you had not--" + +"God knows what I would do," sobbed Rita, "I love him so, Valerie--I +love him so!" + +The younger girl looked down at the blond head lying on her +knees--looked at the pretty tear-stained face gleaming through the +fingers--looked and wondered over the philosophy broken down beside the +bowed head and breaking heart. + +Terrible her plight; with or without benefit of clergy she dared not +give herself. Love was no happiness to her, no confidence, no +sacrifice--only a dreadful mockery--a thing that fettered, paralysed, +terrified. + +"Does he love you?" whispered Valerie. + +"No--I think not." + +"If he did he would forgive." + +"Do you think so?" + +"Of course. Love pardons everything," said the girl in surprise. + +"Yes. But never forgets." + + * * * * * + +That was the first confidence that ever had passed between Valerie West +and Rita Tevis. And after it, Rita, apparently forgetting her own +philosophical collapse, never ceased to urge upon Valerie the wisdom, +the absolute necessity of self-preservation in considering her future +relations with Louis Neville. But, like Neville's logic, Rita's failed +before the innocent simplicity of the creed which Valerie had embraced. +Valerie was willing that their relations should remain indefinitely as +they were if the little gods of convention were to be considered; she +had the courage to sever all relations with the man she loved if anybody +could convince her that it was better for Neville. Marry him she would +not, because she believed it meant inevitable unhappiness for him. But +she was not afraid to lay her ringless hands in his for ever. + +Querida called on them and was very agreeable and lively and +fascinating; and when he went away Valerie asked him to come again. He +did; and again after that. She and Rita dined with him once or twice; +and things gradually slipped back to their old footing; and Querida +remained on his best behaviour. + +Neville had prolonged the visit to the parental roof. He did not explain +to her why, but the reason was that he had made up his mind to tell his +parents that he wished to marry and to find out once and for all what +their attitudes would be toward such a girl as Valerie West. But he had +not yet found courage to do it, and he was lingering on, trying to find +it and the proper moment to employ it. + +His father was a gentleman so utterly devoid of imagination that he had +never even ventured into business, but had been emotionlessly content to +marry and live upon an income sufficient to maintain the material and +intellectual traditions of the house of Neville. + +Tall, transparently pale, negative in character, he had made it a life +object to get through life without increasing the number of his +acquaintances--legacies in the second generation left him by his father, +whose father before him had left the grandfathers of these friends as +legacies to his son. + +[Illustration: "She and Rita dined with him once or twice."] + +It was a pallid and limited society that Henry Neville and his wife +frequented--a coterie of elderly, intellectual people, and their +prematurely dried-out offspring. And intellectual in-breeding was +thinning it to attenuation--to a bloodless meagreness in which they, who +composed it, conceived a mournful pride. + +Old New Yorkers all, knowing no other city, no other bourne north of +Tenth Street or west of Chelsea--silent, serene, drab-toned people, +whose drawing-rooms were musty with what had been fragrance once, whose +science, religion, interests, desires were the beliefs, interests and +emotions of a century ago, their colourless existence and passive +snobbishness affronted nobody who did not come seeking affront. + +To them Theodore Thomas had been the last conductor; his orchestra the +last musical expression fit for a cultivated society; the Academy of +Music remained their last symphonic temple, Wallack's the last refuge of +a drama now dead for ever. + +Delmonico's had been their northern limit, Stuyvesant Square their +eastern, old Trinity their southern, and their western, Chelsea. Outside +there was nothing. The blatancy and gilt of the million-voiced +metropolis fell on closed eyes, and on ears attuned only to the murmurs +of the past. They lived in their ancient houses and went abroad and +summered in some simple old-time hamlet hallowed by the headstones of +their grandsires, and existed as meaninglessly and blamelessly as the +old catalpa trees spreading above their dooryards. + +And into this narrow circle Louis Neville and his sister Lily had been +born. + +It had been a shock to her parents when Lily married Gordon Collis, a +mining engineer from Denver. She came to see them with her husband every +year; Collis loved her enough to endure it. + +As for Louis' career, his achievements, his work, they regarded it +without approval. Their last great painters had been Bierstadt and Hart, +their last great sculptor, Powers. Blankly they gazed upon the +splendours of the mural symphonies achieved by the son and heir of all +the Nevilles; they could not comprehend the art of the Uitlanders; their +comment was silence and dignity. + +To them all had become only shadowy tradition; even affection and human +emotion, and the relationship of kin to kin, of friend to friend, had +become only part of a negative existence which conformed to precedent, +temporal and spiritual, as written in the archives of a worn-out +civilisation. + +So, under the circumstances, it was scarcely to be wondered that Neville +hesitated to introduce the subject of Valerie West as he sat in the +parlour at Spindrift House with his father and mother, reading the +_Tribune_ or the _Evening Post_ or poring over some ancient tome of +travels, or looking out across the cliffs at an icy sea splintering and +glittering against a coast of frozen adamant. + +At length he could remain no longer; commissions awaited him in town; +hunger for Valerie gnawed ceaselessly, unsubdued by his letters or by +hers to him. + +"Mother," he said, the evening before his departure, "would it surprise +you very much if I told you that I wished to marry?" + +"No," she said, tranquilly; "you mean Stephanie Swift, I suppose." + +[Illustration: "Tall, transparently pale, negative in character."] + +His father glanced up over his spectacles, and he hesitated; then, as +his father resumed his reading: + +"I don't mean Stephanie, mother." + +His father laid aside his book and removed, the thin gold-rimmed +spectacles. + +"I understand from Lily that we are to be prepared to receive Stephanie +Swift as your affianced wife," he said. "I shall be gratified. Stephen +Swift was my oldest friend." + +"Lily was mistaken, father. Stephanie and I are merely very good +friends. I have no idea of asking her to marry me." + +"I had been given to understand otherwise, Louis. I am disappointed." + +Louis Neville looked out of the window, considering, yet conscious of +the hopelessness of it all. + +"Who is this girl, Louis?" asked his mother, pulling the white-and-lilac +wool shawl closer around her thin shoulders. + +"Her name is Valerie West." + +"One of the Wests of West Eighth Street?" demanded his father. + +The humour of it all twitched for a moment at his son's grimly set jaws, +then a slight flush mantled his face: + +"No, father." + +"Do you mean the Chelsea Wests, Louis?" + +"No." + +"Then we--don't know them," concluded his father with a shrug of his +shoulders, which dismissed many, many things from any possibility of +further discussion. But his mother's face grew troubled. + +"Who is this Miss West?" she asked in a colourless voice. + +"She is a very good, very noble, very cultivated, very beautiful young +girl--an orphan--who is supporting herself by her own endeavours." + +"What!" said his father, astonished. + +"Mother, I know how it sounds to you, but you and father have only to +meet her to recognise in her every quality that you could possibly wish +for in my wife." + +"_Who_ is she, Louis!" demanded his father, casting aside the evening +newspaper and folding up his spectacles. + +"I've told you, father." + +"I beg to differ with you. Who is this girl? In what description of +business is she actually engaged?" + +The young fellow's face grew red: + +"She _was_ engaged in--the drama." + +"What!" + +"She was an actress," he said, realising now the utter absurdity of any +hope from the beginning, yet now committed and determined to see it +through to the bitter end. + +"An actress! Louis!" faltered his mother. + +There was a silence, cut like a knife by the thin edge of his father's +voice: + +"If she _was_ an actress, what is she now?" + +"She has helped me with my painting." + +"Helped you? How?" + +"By--posing." + +"Do you desire me to understand that the girl is an artist's model!" + +"Yes." + +His father stared at him a moment, then: + +"And is this the woman you propose to have your mother meet?" + +"Father," he said, hopelessly, "there is no use in my saying anything +more. Miss West is a sweet, good, generous young girl, fully my peer in +education, my superior in many things.... You and mother can never +believe that the ideas, standards--even the ideals of civilisation +change--have changed since your youth--are changing every hour. In your +youth the word actress had a dubious significance; to-day it signifies +only what the character of her who wears the title signifies. In your +youth it was immodest, unmaidenly, reprehensible, for a woman to be +anything except timid, easily abashed, ignorant of vital truths, and +submissive to every social convention; to-day women are neither ignorant +nor timid; they are innocent because they choose to be; they are +fearless, intelligent, ambitious, and self-reliant--and lose nothing in +feminine charm by daring to be themselves instead of admitting their +fitness only for the seraglio of some Occidental monogamist--" + +"Louis! Your mother is present!" + +"Good heavens, father, I know it! Isn't it possible even for a man's own +mother to hear a little truth once in a while--" + +His father rose in pallid wrath: + +"Be silent!" he said, unsteadily; "the subject is definitely ended." + + * * * * * + +It was ended. His father gave him a thin, chilly hand at parting. But +his mother met him at the outer door and laid her trembling lips to his +forehead. + +"You won't bring this shame on us, Louis, I know. Nor on yourself, nor +on the name you bear.... It is an honourable name in the land, Louis.... +I pray God to bless you and counsel you, my son--" She turned away, +adding in a whisper--"and--and comfort you." + +And so he went away from Spindrift House through a snow-storm, and +arrived in New York late that evening; but not too late to call Valerie +on the telephone and hear again the dear voice with its happy little cry +of greeting--and the promise of to-morrow's meeting before the day of +duty should begin. + + * * * * * + +Love grew as the winter sped glittering toward the far primrose dawn of +spring; work filled their days; evening brought the happiness of a +reunion eternally charming in its surprises, its endless novelty. New, +forever new, love seemed; and youth, too, seemed immortal. + +On various occasions when Valerie chanced to be at his studio, pouring +tea for him, friends of his sister came unannounced--agreeable women +more or less fashionable, who pleaded his sister's sanction of an +unceremonious call to see the great painted frieze before it was sent to +the Court House. + +He was perfectly nice to them; and Valerie was perfectly at ease; and it +was very plain that these people were interested and charmed with this +lovely Miss West, whom they found pouring tea in the studio of an artist +already celebrated; and every one of them expressed themselves and their +curiosity to his sister, Mrs. Collis, who, never having heard of Valerie +West, prudently conveyed the contrary in smiling but silent +acquiescence, and finally wrote to her brother and told him what was +being said. + +Before he determined to reply, another friend--or rather acquaintance of +the Collis family--came in to see the picture--the slim and pretty +Countess d'Enver. And went quite mad over Valerie--so much so that she +remained for an hour talking to her, almost oblivious of Neville and +his picture and of Ogilvy and Annan, who consumed time and cocktails in +the modest background. + +When she finally went away, and Neville had returned from putting her +into her over-elaborate carriage, Ogilvy said: + +"Gee, Valerie, you sure did make a hit with the lady. What was she +trying to make you do?" + +"She asked me to come to a reception of the Five-Minute Club with +Louis," said Valerie, laughing. "What _is_ the Five-Minute Club, Louis?" + +"Oh, it's a semi-fashionable, semi-artistic affair--one of the +incarnations of the latest group of revolting painters and sculptors and +literary people, diluted with a little society and a good deal of +near-society." + +Later, as they were dining together at Delmonico's, he said: + +"Would you care to go, Valerie?" + +"Yes--if you think it best for us to accept such invitations together." + +"Why not?" + +"I don't know.... Considering what we are to become to each other--I +thought--perhaps the prejudices of your friends--" + +He turned a dull red, said nothing for a moment, then, looking up at +her, suddenly laid his hand over hers where it rested on the table's +edge. + +"The world must take us as it finds us," he said. + +"I know; but is it quite fair to seek it?" + +"You adorable girl! Didn't the Countess seek us--or rather you?--and +torment you until you promised to go to the up-to-date doings of her +bally club! It's across to her, now. And as half of society has +exchanged husbands and half of the remainder doesn't bother to, I don't +think a girl like you and a man like myself are likely to meet very many +people as innately decent as ourselves." + + * * * * * + +A reception at the Five-Minute Club was anything but an ordinary affair. + +It was the ultra-modern school of positivists where realism was on the +cards and romance in the discards; where muscle, biceps, and +thumb-punching replaced technical mastery and delicate skill; where +inspiration was physical, not intellectual; where writers called a spade +a spade, and painters painted all sorts of similar bucolic instruments +with candour and an inadequate knowledge of their art; where composers +thumped their pianos the harder, the less their raucous inspiration +responded, or maundered incapably into interminable incoherency, hunting +for themes in grays and mauves and reds and yellows, determined to find +in music what does not belong there and never did. + +In spite of its apparent vigour and uncompromising modernity, one +suspected a sub-stratum of weakness and a perversity slightly vicious. + +Colour blindness might account for some of the canvases, strabismus for +some of the draughtmanship; but not for all. There was an ugly +deliberation in the glorification of the raw, the uncouth; there was a +callous hardness in the deadly elaboration of ugliness for its own sake. +And transcendentalism looked on in approval. + +A near-sighted study of various masters, brilliant, morbid, or +essentially rotten, was the basis of this cult--not originality. Its +devotees were the devotees of Richard Strauss, of Huysmans, of Manet, of +Degas, Rops, Louis Le Grand, Forain, Monticelli; its painters painted +nakedness in footlight effects with blobs for faces and blue shadows +where they were needed to conceal the defects of impudent drawing; its +composers maundered with both ears spread wide for stray echoes of +Salome; its sculptors, stupefied by Rodin, achieved sections of human +anatomy protruding from lumps of clay and marble; its dramatists, +drugged by Mallarmé and Maeterlinck, dabbled in dullness, platitude and +mediocre psychology; its writers wrote as bloodily, as squalidly, and as +immodestly as they dared; its poets blubbered with Verlaine, spat with +Aristide Bruant, or leered with the alcoholic muses of the Dead Rat. + +They were all young, all in deadly earnest, all imperfectly educated, +all hard workers, brave workers, blind, incapable workers sweating and +twisting and hammering in their impotence against the changeless laws of +truth and beauty. With them it was not a case of a loose screw; all +screws had been tightened so brutally that the machinery became +deadlocked. They were neither lazy, languid, nor precious; they only +thought they knew how and they didn't. All their vigour was sterile; all +their courage vain. + +Several attractive women exquisitely gowned were receiving; there was +just a little something unusual in their prettiness, in their toilets; +and also a little something lacking; and its absence was as noticeable +in them as it was in the majority of arriving or departing guests. + +It could not have been self-possession and breeding which an outsider +missed. For the slim Countess d'Enver possessed both, inherited from +her Pittsburgh parents; and Mrs. Hind-Willet was born to a social +security indisputable; and Latimer Varyck had been in the diplomatic +service before he wrote "Unclothed," and the handsome, dark-eyed Mrs. +Atherstane divided social Manhattan with a blonder and lovelier rival. + +Valerie entering with Neville, slender, self-possessed, a hint of +inquiry in her level eyes, heard the man at the door announce them, and +was conscious of many people turning as they passed into the big +reception room. A woman near her murmured, "What a beauty!" Another +added, "How intelligently gowned!" The slim Countess Hélène d'Enver, née +Nellie Jackson, held out a perfectly gloved hand and nodded amiably to +Neville. Then, smiling fixedly at Valerie: + +"My dear, how nice of you," she said. "And you, too, Louis; it is very +amusing of you to come. José Querida has just departed. He gave us such +a delightful five-minute talk on modernity. Quoting Huneker, he spoke of +it as a 'quality'--and 'that nervous, naked vibration'--" + +She ended with a capricious gesture which might have meant anything +ineffable, or an order for a Bronx cocktail. + +"What's a nervous, naked vibration?" demanded Neville, with an impatient +shrug. "It sounds like a massage parlour--not," he added with respect, +"that Huneker doesn't know what he's talking about. Nobody doubts that. +Only art is one delicious bouillabaisse to him." + +The Countess d'Enver laughed, still retaining Valerie's hand: + +"Your gown is charming--may I add that you are disturbingly beautiful, +Miss West? When they have given you some tea, will you find me if I +can't find you?" + +"Yes, I will," said Valerie. + +At the tea table Neville brought her a glass of sherry and a bite of +something squashy; a number of people spoke to him and asked to be +presented to Valerie. Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning +simplicity of her manner were noticed everywhere, and everywhere +commented on. People betrayed a tendency to form groups around her; +women, prepared by her unusual beauty for anything between mediocrity +and inanity, were a little perplexed at her intelligence and candour. + +To Mrs, Hind-Willet's question she replied innocently: "To me there is +no modern painter comparable to Mr. Neville, though I dearly love +Wilson, Sorella and Querida." + +To Latimer Varyck's whimsical insistence she finally was obliged to +admit that her reasons for not liking Richard Strauss were because she +thought him ugly, uninspired, and disreputable, which unexpected truism +practically stunned that harmless dilettante and so delighted Neville +that he was obliged to disguise his mirth with a scowl directed at the +ceiling. + +"Did I say anything very dreadful, Kelly?" she whispered, when +opportunity offered. + +"No, you darling. I couldn't keep a civil face when you told the truth +about Richard Strauss to that rickety old sensualist." + +[Illustration: "Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning simplicity +of her manner were noticed everywhere."] + +"I don't really know enough to criticise anything. But Mr. Varyck +_would_ make me answer; and one must say something." + +Olaf Dennison, without preliminary, sat down at the piano, tossed aside +his heavy hair, and gave a five-minute prelude to the second act of his +new opera, "Yvonne of Bannalec." The opera might as well have been +called Mamie of Hoboken, for all the music signified to Neville. + +Mrs. Hind-Willet, leaning over the chair where Valerie was seated, +whispered fervently: + +"Isn't it graphic! The music describes an old Breton peasant going to +market. You can hear the very click of his sabots and the gurgle of the +cider in his jug. And that queer little slap-stick noise is where he's +striking palms with another peasant bargaining for his cider." + +"But where does Yvonne come in?" inquired Valerie in soft bewilderment. + +"He's Yvonne's father," whispered Mrs. Hind-Willet. "The girl doesn't +appear during the entire opera. It's a marvellously important advance +beyond the tonal and graphic subtleties of Richard Strauss." + +Other earnest and worthy people consumed intervals of five minutes now +and then; a "discuse,"--whom Neville insisted on calling a +"disease,"--said a coy and rather dirty little French poem directly at +her audience, leeringly assisted by an over-sophisticated piano +accompaniment. + +"If that's modernity it's certainly naked and nervous enough," commented +Neville, drily. + +"It's--it's perfectly horrid," murmured Valerie, the blush still +lingering on cheek and brow. "I can't understand how intelligent people +can even think about such things." + +"Modernity," repeated Neville. "Hello; there's Carrillo, the young +apostle of Bruant, who makes such a hit with the elect." + +"How, Kelly?" + +"Realism, New York, and the spade business. He saw a sign on a Bowery +clothing store,--'Gents Pants Half Off Today,' and he wrote a poem on it +and all Manhattan sat up and welcomed him as a peerless realist; and +dear old Dean Williams compared him to Tolstoy and Ed. Harrigan, and +there was the deuce to pay artistically and generally. Listen to the +Yankee Steinlen in five-minute verse, dear." + +Carrillo rose, glanced carelessly at his type-written manuscript and +announced its title unconcernedly: + + "_Mutts In Madison Square_. + + "A sodden tramp sits scratching on a bench, + The S.C.D. cart trails a lengthening stench + Where White Wings scrape the asphalt; and a breeze + Ripples the fountain and the budding trees. + Now fat old women, waddling like hogs, + Arrive to exercise their various dogs; + And 'round and 'round the little mutts all run, + Grass-maddened, frantic, circling in the sun, + Wagging and nosing--see! beneath yon tree + One little mutt meets his affinity: + And, near, another madly wags his tail + Inquiringly; but his advances fail, + And, 'yap-yap-yap!' replies the shrewish tyke, + So off the other starts upon a hike, + Rushing at random, crazed with sun and air, + Circling and barking out his canine prayer: + + "'Oh, Lord of dogs who made the Out-of-doors + And fashioned mutts to gambol on all fours, + Grant us a respite from the city's stones! + Grant us a grassy place to bury bones!--A + grassy spot to roll on now and then, + Oh, Lord of dogs who also fashioned men, + Accept our thanks for this brief breath of air, + And grant, Oh, Lord, a humble mongrel's prayer!' + + * * * * * + + The hoboe, sprawling, scratches in the sun; + While 'round and 'round the happy mongrels run." + +"Good Heavens," breathed Neville, "that sort of thing may be modern and +strong, but it's too rank for me, Valerie. Shall we bolt?" + +"I--I think we'd better," she said miserably. "I don't think I care +for--for these interesting people very much." + +They rose and passed slowly along the walls of the room, which were hung +with "five-minute sketches," which probably took five seconds to +conceive and five hours to execute--here an unclothed woman, chiefly +remarkable for an extraordinary development of adipose tissue and +house-maid's knee; here a pathological gem that might have aptly +illustrated a work on malformations; yonder a dashing dab of balderdash, +and next it one of Rackin's masterpieces, flanked by a gem of Stanley +Pooks. + +In the centre of the room, emerging from a chunk of marble, the back and +neck and one ear of an unclothed lady protruded; and the sculptured +achievement was labelled, "Beatrice Andante." + +"Oh, Lord," whispered Neville, repressing a violent desire to laugh. +"Beatrice and Aunty! I didn't know he had one." + +"Is it Dante's Beatrice, Kelly? Where is Dante and his Aunty?" + +"God knows. They made a mess of it anyway, those two--andante--which I +suppose this mess in marble symbolises. Pity he didn't have an aunty to +tell him how." + +"Louis! How irreverent!" she whispered, eyes sparkling with laughter. + +"Shall I try a five-minute fashionable impromptu, dear?" he asked: + + "If Dante'd had an Aunty + Who ante-dated Dante + And scolded him + And tolded him + The way to win a winner, + It's a cinch or I'm a sinner, + He'd have taken Trix to dinner, + He'd have given her the eye + Of the fish about to die, + And folded her, + And moulded her + Like dough within a pie-- + sallow, pallid pie-- + And cooked a scheme to marry her, + And hired a hack to carry her + To stately Harlem-by-the-Bronx, + Where now the lonely taxi honks--" + +"Kelly!" she gasped. + +They both were laughing so that they hastened their steps, fearful of +offending, and barely contrived to compose their features when making +their adieux to Mrs. Hind-Willet and the Countess d'Enver. + +As they walked east along Fifty-ninth Street, breathing in the fresh, +sparkling evening air, she said impulsively: + +"And to think, Louis, that if I had been wicked enough to marry you I'd +have driven you into that kind of society--or into something genetically +similar!" + +His face sobered: + +"You could hold your own in any society." + +"Perhaps I could. But they wouldn't let me." + +"Are you afraid to fight it out?" + +"Yes, dear--at _your_ expense. Otherwise--" She gazed smilingly into +space, a slight colour in either cheek. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Valerie West was twenty-two years old in February. One year of life lay +behind her; her future stretched away into sunlit infinity. + +Neville attained his twenty-eighth year in March. Years still lay before +him, a few lay behind him; but in a single month he had waded so swiftly +forward through the sea of life that the shallows were already passed, +the last shoal was deepening rapidly. Only immeasurable and menacing +depths remained between him and the horizon--that pale, dead line +dividing the noonday of to-day from the phantom suns of blank eternity. + +It was that winter that he began the picture destined to fix definitely +his position among the painters of his times--began it humbly, yet +somehow aware of what it was to be; afraid, for all his courage, yet +conscious of something inevitable impending. It was Destiny; and, +instinctively, he arose to meet it. + +He called the picture "A Bride." A sapphire sky fading to turquoise, in +which great clouds crowded high in argent splendour--a young girl naked +of feet, her snowy body cinctured at the waist with straight and +silvered folds, standing amid a riot of wild flowers, head slightly +dropped back, white arms inert, pendant. And in her eyes' deep velvet +depths the mystery of the Annunciation. + +All of humanity and of maturity--of adolescence and of divinity was in +that face; in the exquisitely sensitive wisdom of the woman's eyes, in +the full sweet innocence of the childish mouth--in the smooth little +hands so unsoiled, so pure--in the nun-like pallor and slender beauty of +the throat. + +[Illustration: "'Where do you keep those pretty models, Louis?' he +demanded."] + +Whatever had been his inspiration--whether spiritual conviction, or the +physical beauty of Valerie, neither he nor she considered very deeply. +But that he was embodying and creating something of the existence of +which neither he nor she had been aware a month ago, was awaking +something within them that had never before stirred or given sign of +life. + +Since the last section of the mural decoration for the new court house +had been shipped to its destination, he had busied himself on two +canvases, a portrait of his sister in furs, and the portrait of Valerie. + +Lily Collis came in the mornings twice a week to sit for her; and once +or twice Stephanie Swift came with her; also Sandy Cameron, ruddy, bald, +jovial, scoffing, and insatiably curious. + +"Where do you keep all those pretty models, Louis?" he demanded, prying +aside the tapestry with the crook of his walking stick, and peeping +behind furniture and hangings and big piles of canvases. "Be a sport and +introduce us; Stephanie wants to see a few as well as I do." + +Neville shrugged and went on painting, which exasperated Cameron. + +"It's a fraud," he observed, in a loud, confidential aside to Stephanie; +"this studio ought to be full of young men in velvet coats and bunchy +ties, singing, 'Oh la--la!' and dextrously balancing on their baggy +knees a series of assorted soubrettes. It's a bluff, a hoax, a con game! +Are you going to stand for it? I don't see any absinthe either--or even +any Vin ordinaire! Only a tea-pot--a _tea-pot!_" he repeated in +unutterable scorn. "Why, there's more of Bohemia in a Broad Street Trust +Company than there is in this Pullman car studio!" + +Mrs. Collis was laughing so that her brother had difficulty in going on +with her portrait. + +"Get out of here, Sandy," he said--"or take Stephanie into the rest of +the apartment, somewhere, and tell her your woes." + +Stephanie, who had been exploring, turning over piles of chassis and +investigating canvases and charcoal studies stacked up here and there +against the wainscot, pulled aside an easel which impeded her progress, +and in so doing accidentally turned the canvas affixed to it toward the +light. + +"Hello!" exclaimed Cameron briskly, "who is this?" + +Lily turned her small, aristocratic head, and Stephanie looked around. + +"What a perfectly beautiful girl!" she exclaimed impulsively; "who is +she, Louis?" + +"A model," he said calmly; but the careless and casual exposure of the +canvas had angered him so suddenly that his own swift emotion astonished +him. + +Lily had risen from her seat, and now stood looking fixedly at the +portrait of Valerie West, her furs trailing from one shoulder to the +chair. + +"My eye and Betty Martin!" cried Cameron, "I'll take it all back, girls! +It's a real studio after all--and this is the real thing! Louis, do you +think she's seen the Aquarium? I'm disengaged after three o'clock--" + +He began to kiss his hand rapidly in the direction of the portrait, and +then, fondly embracing his own walking stick, he took a few jaunty steps +in circles, singing "Waltz me around again, Willy." + +Lily Collis said: "If your model is as lovely as her portrait, Louis, +she is a real beauty. Who is she?" + +"A professional model." He could scarcely contain his impatience with +his sister, with Cameron's fat humour, with Stephanie's quiet and +intent scrutiny--as though, somehow, he had suddenly exposed Valerie +herself to the cool and cynically detached curiosity of a world which +she knew must always remain unfriendly to her. + +He was perfectly aware that his sister had guessed whose portrait +confronted them; he supposed, too, that Stephanie probably suspected. +And the knowledge irritated him more than the clownishness of Cameron. + +"It is a splendid piece of painting," said Stephanie cordially, and +turned quietly to a portfolio of drawings at her elbow. She had let her +fleeting glance rest on Neville for a second; had divined in a flash +that he was enduring and not courting their examination of this picture; +that, somehow, her accidental discovery of it had displeased him--was +even paining him. + +"Sandy," she said cheerfully, "come here and help me look over these +sketches." + +"Any peaches among 'em?" + +"Bushels." + +Cameron came with alacrity; Neville waited until Lily reluctantly +resumed her seat; then he pushed back the easel, turned Valerie's +portrait to the wall, and quietly resumed his painting. + +Art in any form was powerless to retain Cameron's attention for very +many consecutive minutes at a time; he grew restless, fussed about with +portfolios for a little while longer, enlivening the tedium with +characteristic observations. + +"Well, I've got business down town," he exclaimed, with great pretence +of regret. "Come on, Stephanie; we'll go to the Exchange and start +something. Shall we? Oh, anything--from a panic to a bull-market! I +don't care; go as far as you like. You may wreck a few railroads if you +want to. Only I've _got_ to go.... Awfully good of you to let +me--er--see all these--er--interesting and er--m-m-m--things, Louis. +Glad I saw that dream of a peacherino, too. What is she on the side? An +actorine? If she is I'll take a box for the rest of the season including +the road and one-night stands.... Good-bye, Mrs. Collis! Good-bye, +Stephanie! _Good_-bye, Louis!--I'll come and spend the day with you when +you're too busy to see me. Now, Stephanie, child! It's the Stock +Exchange or the Little Church around the Corner for you and me, if you +say so!" + +Stephanie had duties at a different sort of an Exchange; and she also +took her leave, thanking Neville warmly for the pleasure she had had, +and promising to lunch with Lily at the Continental Club. + +When they had departed, Lily said: + +"I suppose that is a portrait of your model, Valerie West." + +"Yes," he replied shortly. + +"Well, Louis, it is perfectly absurd of you to show so plainly that you +consider our discovery of it a desecration." + +He turned red with surprise and irritation: + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"I mean exactly what I say. You showed by your expression and your +manner that our inspection of the picture and our questions and comments +concerning it were unwelcome." + +"I'm sorry I showed it.... But they _were_ unwelcome." + +"Will you tell me why?" + +"I don't think I know exactly why--unless the portrait was a personal +and private affair concerning only myself--" + +"Louis! Has it gone as far as that?" + +"As far as what? What on earth are you trying to say, Lily?" + +"I'm trying to say--as nicely and as gently as I can--that your +behaviour--in regard to this girl is making us all perfectly wretched." + +"Who do you mean by 'us all'?" he demanded sullenly. + +"Father and mother and myself. You must have known perfectly well that +father would write to me about what you told him at Spindrift House a +month ago." + +"Did he?" + +"Of course he did, Louis! Mother is simply worrying herself ill over +you; father is incredulous--at least he pretends to be; but he has +written me twice on the subject--and I think you might just as well be +told what anxiety and unhappiness your fascination for this girl is +causing us all." + +Mrs. Collis was leaning far forward in her chair, forgetful of her pose; +Neville stood silent, head lowered, absently mixing tints upon his +palette without regard to the work under way. + +When he had almost covered his palette with useless squares of colour he +picked up a palette-knife, scraped it clean, smeared the residue on a +handful of rags, laid aside brushes and palette, and walked slowly to +the window. + +It was snowing again. He could hear the feathery whisper of the flakes +falling on the glass roof above; and he remembered the night of the new +year, and all that it had brought to him--all the wonder and happiness +and perplexity of a future utterly unsuspected, undreamed of. + +And now it was into that future he was staring with a fixed and blank +gaze as his sister's hand fell upon his shoulder and her cheek rested a +moment in caress against his. + +"Dearest child," she said tremulously, "I did not mean to speak harshly +or without sympathy. But, after all, shouldn't a son consider his father +and mother in a matter of this kind?" + +"I have considered them--tried to." + +Mrs. Collis dropped into an arm-chair. After a few moments he also +seated himself listlessly, and sat gazing at nothing out of absent eyes. + +She said: "You know what father and mother are. Even I have something +left of their old-fashioned conservatism clinging to me--and yet people +consider me extremely liberal in my views. But all my liberality, all my +modern education since I left the dear old absurdities of our narrow +childhood and youth, can not reconcile me to what you threaten us +with--with what you are threatened--you, your entire future life." + +"What seems to threaten you--and them--is my marriage to the woman with +whom I'm in love. Does that shock you?" + +"The circumstances shock me." + +"I could not control the circumstances." + +"You can control yourself, Louis." + +"Yes--I can do that. I can break her heart and mine." + +"Hearts don't break, Louis. And is anybody to live life through exempt +from suffering? If your unhappiness comes early in life to you it will +pass the sooner, leaving the future tranquil for you, and you ready for +it, unperplexed--made cleaner, purer, braver by a sorrow that came, as +comes all sorrow--and that has gone its way, like all sorrows, leaving +you the better and the worthier." + +"How is it to leave _her_?" + +He spoke so naturally, so simply, that for the moment his sister did not +recognise in him what had never before been there to recognise--the +thought of another before himself. Afterward she remembered it. + +She said quietly: "If Valerie West is a girl really sincere and meriting +your respect, she will face this matter as you face it." + +"Yes--she would do that," he said, thoughtfully. + +"Then I think that the sooner you explain matters to her--" + +He laughed: "_I_ don't have to explain anything to her, Lily." + +"What do you mean?" + +"She knows how things stand. She is perfectly aware of your world's +attitude toward her. She has not the slightest intention of forcing +herself on you, or of asking your indulgence or your charity." + +"You mean, then, that she desires to separate you from your family--from +your friends--" + +"No," he said wearily, "she does not desire that, either." + +His sister's troubled eyes rested on him in silence for a while; then: + +"I know she is beautiful; I am sure she is good, Louis--good in--in her +own way--worthy, in her own fashion. But, dear, is that all that you, a +Neville, require of the woman who is to bear your name--bear your +children?" + +"She _is_ all I require--and far more." + +"Dear, you are utterly blinded by your infatuation!" + +"You do not know her." + +"Then let me!" exclaimed Mrs. Collis desperately. "Let me meet her, +Louis--let me talk with her--" + +"No.... And I'll tell you why, Lily; it's because she does not care to +meet you." + +"What!" + +"I have told you the plain truth. She sees no reason for knowing you, or +for knowing my parents, or any woman in a world that would never +tolerate her, never submit to her entrance, never receive her as one of +them!--a world that might shrug and smile and endure her as my wife--and +embitter my life forever." + +As he spoke he was not aware that he merely repeated Valerie's own +words; he remained still unconscious that his decision was in fact +merely her decision; that his entire attitude had become hers because +her nature and her character were as yet the stronger. + +But in his words his sister's quick intelligence perceived a logic and a +conclusion entirely feminine and utterly foreign to her brother's habit +of mind. And she realised with a thrill of fear that she had to do, not +with her brother, but with a woman who was to be reckoned with. + +"Do you--or does Miss West think it likely that I am a woman to wound, +to affront another--no matter who she may be? Surely, Louis, you could +have told her very little about me--" + +"I never mention you to her." + +Lily caught her breath. + +"Why?" + +"Why should I?" + +"That is unfair, Louis! She has the right to know about your own +family--otherwise how can she understand the situation?" + +"It's like all situations, isn't it? You and father and mother have your +own arbitrary customs and traditions and standards of respectability. +You rule out whom you choose. Valerie West knows perfectly well that you +would rule her out. Why should she give you the opportunity?" + +"Is she afraid of me?" + +He smiled: "I don't think so." And his smile angered his sister. + +"Very well," she said, biting her lip. + +For a few moments she sat there deliberating, her pointed patent-leather +toe tapping the polished floor. Then she stood up, with decision: + +"There is no use in our quarrelling, Louis--until the time comes when +some outsider forces us into an unhappy misunderstanding. Kiss me +good-bye, dear." + +She lifted her face; he kissed her; and her hand closed impulsively on +his arm: + +"Louis! Louis! I love you. I am so proud of you--I--you know I love you, +don't you?" + +"Yes--I think so." + +"You _know_ I am devoted to your happiness!--your _real_ +happiness--which those blinded eyes in that obstinate head of yours +refuse to see. Believe me--believe me, dear, that your _real_ happiness +is not in this pretty, strange girl's keeping. No, no, no! You are +wrong, Louis--terribly and hopelessly wrong! Because happiness for you +lies in the keeping of another woman--a woman of your own world, +dear--of your own kind--a gently-bred, lovable, generous girl whom you, +deep in your heart and soul, love, unknowingly--have always loved!" + +He shook his head, slowly, looking down into his sister's eyes. + +She said, almost frightened: + +"You--you won't do it--suddenly--without letting us know--will you, +Louis?" + +"What?" + +"Marry this girl!" + +"No," he said, "it is not likely." + +"But you--you mean to marry her?" + +"I want to.... But it is not likely to happen--for a while." + +"How long?" + +"I don't know." + +She drew a tremulous breath of relief, looking up into his face. Then +her eyes narrowed; she thought a moment, and her gaze became preoccupied +and remote, and her lips grew firm with the train of thought she was +pursuing. + +He put his arms around her and kissed her again; and she felt the boyish +appeal in it and her lip quivered. But she could not respond, could not +consider for one moment, could not permit her sympathy for him to enlist +her against what she was devoutly convinced were his own most vital +interests--his honour, his happiness, the success of his future career. + +She said with tears in her eyes: "Louis, I love you dearly. If God will +grant us all a little patience and a little wisdom there will be a way +made clear to all of us. Good-bye." + +[Illustration: "'Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting +one,' said Lily."] + +Whether it was that the Almighty did not grant Mrs. Collis the patience +to wait until a way was made clear, or whether another letter from her +father decided her to clear that way for herself, is uncertain; but one +day in March Valerie received a letter from Mrs. Collis; and answered +it; and the next morning she shortened a seance with Querida, exchanged +her costume for her street-clothes, and hastened to her apartments, +where Mrs. Collis was already awaiting her in the little sitting-room. + +Valerie offered her hand and stood looking at Lily Collis, as though +searching for some resemblance to her brother in the pretty, slightly +flushed features. There was a very indefinite family resemblance. + +"Miss West," she said, "it is amiable of you to overlook the +informality--" + +"I am not formal, Mrs. Collis," she said, quietly. "Will you sit here?" +indicating an arm-chair near the window,--"because the light is not very +good and I have some mending to do on a costume which I must pose in +this afternoon." + +Lily Collis seated herself, her bewitched gaze following Valerie as she +moved lightly and gracefully about, collecting sewing materials and the +costume in question, and bringing them to a low chair under the north +window. + +"I am sure you will not mind my sewing," she said, with a slight upward +inflection to her voice, which made it a question. + +"Please, Miss West," said Lily, hastily. + +"It is really a necessity," observed Valerie threading her needle and +turning over the skirt. "Illustrators are very arbitrary gentlemen; a +model's failure to keep an engagement sometimes means loss of a valuable +contract to them, and that isn't fair either to them or to their +publishers, who would be forced to hunt up another artist at the last +moment." + +"Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting one," said Lily in +a low voice. + +Valerie smiled: "It is a very exacting one." + +There was a silence. Valerie's head was bent over her sewing; Mrs. +Collis, fascinated, almost alarmed by her beauty, could not take her +eyes from her. Outwardly Lily was pleasantly reserved, perfectly at +ease with this young girl; inwardly all was commotion approaching actual +consternation. + +She had been prepared for youth, for a certain kind of charm and +beauty--but not for this kind--not for the loveliness, the grace, the +composure, the exquisite simplicity of this young girl who sat sewing +there before her. + +She was obliged to force herself to recollect that this girl was a model +hired to pose for men--paid to expose her young, unclothed limbs and +body! Yet--could it be possible! Was this the girl hailed as a comrade +by the irrepressible Ogilvy and Annan--the heroine of a score of +unconventional and careless gaieties recounted by them? Was this the +coquette who, it was rumoured, had flung over Querida, snapped her white +fingers at Penrhyn Cardemon, and laughed disrespectfully at a dozen +respected pillars of society, who appeared to be willing to support her +in addition to the entire social structure? + +Very quietly the girl raised her head. Her sensitive lips were edged +with a smile, but there was no mirth in her clear eyes: + +"Mrs. Collis, perhaps you are waiting for me to say something about your +letter and my answer to it. I did not mean to embarrass you by not +speaking of it, but I was not certain that the initiative lay with me." + +Lily reddened: "It lies with _me_, Miss West--the initiative. I mean--" +She hesitated, suddenly realising how difficult it had become to go +on,--how utterly unprepared she was to encounter passive resistance from +such composure as this young girl already displayed. + +"You wrote to me about your anxiety concerning Mr. Neville," said +Valerie, gently. + +"Yes--I did, Miss West. You will surely understand--and forgive me--if I +say to you that I am still a prey to deepest anxiety." + +"Why?" + +The question was so candid, so direct that for a moment Lily remained +silent. But the dark, clear, friendly eyes were asking for an answer, +and the woman of the world who knew how to meet most situations and how +to dominate them, searched her experience in vain for the proper words +to use in this one. + +After a moment Valerie's eyes dropped, and she resumed her sewing; and +Lily bit her lip and composed her mind to its delicate task: + +"Miss West," she said, "what I have to say is not going to be very +agreeable to either of us. It is going to be painful perhaps--and it is +going to take a long while to explain--" + +"It need not take long," said Valerie, without raising her eyes from her +stitches; "it requires only a word to tell me that you and your father +and mother do not wish your brother to marry me." + +She looked up quietly, and her eyes met Lily's: + +"I promise not to marry him," she said. "You are perfectly right. He +belongs to his own family; he belongs in his own world." + +She looked down again at her sewing with a faint smile: + +"I shall not attempt to enter that world as his wife, Mrs. Collis, or to +draw him out of it.... And I hope that you will not be anxious any +more." + +She laid aside her work and rose to her slender height, smilingly, as +though the elder woman had terminated the interview; and Lily, utterly +confounded, rose, too, as Valerie offered her hand in adieu. + +"Miss West," she began, not perfectly sure of what she was saying, +"I--scarcely dare thank you--for what you have +said--for--my--brother's--sake--" + +Valerie laughed: "I would do much more than that for him, Mrs. +Collis.... Only I must first be sure of what is really the best way to +serve him." + +Lily's gloved hand tightened over hers; and she laid the other one over +it: + +"You are so generous, so sweet about it!" she said unsteadily. "And I +look into your face and I know you are good--_good_--all the way +through--" + +Valerie laughed again: + +"There isn't any real evil in me.... And I am not astonishingly +generous--merely sensible. I knew from the first that I couldn't marry +him--if I really loved him," she added, under her breath. + +They were at the door now. Lily passed out into the entry, halted, +turned impulsively, the tears in her eyes, and put both arms tenderly +around the girl. + +"You poor child," she whispered. "You dear, brave, generous girl! God +knows whether I am right or wrong. I am only trying to do my +duty--trying to do what is best for him." + +Valerie looked at her curiously: + +"Yes, you cannot choose but think of him if you really love him.... That +is the way it is with love." + +Afterward, sewing by the window, she could scarcely see the stitches for +the clinging tears. But they dried on her lashes; not one fell. And when +Rita came in breezily to join her at luncheon she was ready, her +costume mended and folded in her hand-satchel, and there remained +scarcely even a redness of the lids to betray her. + +That evening she did not stop for tea at Neville's studio; and, later, +when he telephoned, asking her to dine with him, she pleaded the +feminine prerogative of tea in her room and going to bed early for a +change. But she lay awake until midnight trying to think out a _modus +vivendi_ for Neville and herself which, would involve no sacrifice on +his part and no unhappiness for anybody except, perhaps, for herself. + +The morning was dull and threatened rain, and she awoke with a slight +headache, remembering that she had dreamed all night of weeping. + +In her mail there was a note from Querida asking her to stop for a few +moments at his studio that afternoon, several business communications, +and a long letter from Mrs. Collis which she read lying in bed, one hand +resting on her aching temples: + +"MY DEAR Miss WEST: Our interview this morning has left me with a +somewhat confused sense of indebtedness to you and an admiration and +respect for your character which I wished very much to convey to you +this morning, but which I was at a loss to express. + +"You are not only kind and reasonable, but so entirely unselfish that my +own attitude in this unhappy matter has seemed to me harsh and +ungracious. + +"I went to you entertaining a very different idea of you, and very +different sentiments from the opinion which I took away with me. I admit +that my call on you was not made with any agreeable anticipations; but +I was determined to see you and learn for myself what manner of woman +had so disturbed us all. + +"In justice to you--in grateful recognition of your tact and gentleness, +I am venturing to express to you now my very thorough respect for you, +my sense of deep obligation, and my sympathy--which I am afraid you may +not care for. + +"That it would not be suitable for a marriage to take place between my +brother and yourself is, it appears, as evident to you as it is to his +own family. Yet, will you permit me to wish that it were otherwise? I do +wish it; I wish that the circumstances had made such a marriage +possible. I say this to you in spite of the fact that we have always +expected my brother to marry into a family which has been intimate with +our own family for many generations. It is a tribute to your character +which I am unwilling to suppress; which I believe I owe to you, to say +that, had circumstances been different, you might have been made welcome +among us. + +"The circumstances of which I speak are of an importance to us, perhaps +exaggerated, possibly out of proportion to the fundamental conditions of +the situation. But they are conditions which our family has never +ignored. And it is too late for us to learn to ignore them now. + +"I think that you will feel--I think that a large part of the world +might consider our attitude toward such a woman as you have shown +yourself to be, narrow, prejudiced, provincial. The modern world would +scarcely arm us with any warrant for interfering in a matter which a man +nearly thirty is supposed to be able to manage for himself. But my +father and mother are old, and they will never change in their beliefs +and prejudices inherited from their parents, who, in turn, inherited +their beliefs. + +"It was for them more than for myself--more even than for my +brother--that I appealed to you. The latter end of their lives should +not be made unhappy. And your generous decision assures me that it will +not be made so. + +"As for myself, my marriage permitted me an early enfranchisement from +the obsolete conventional limits within which my brother and I were +brought up. + +"I understand enough of the modern world not to clash with, it +unnecessarily, enough of ultra-modernity not to be too much afraid of +it. + +"But even I, while I might theoretically admit and even admire that +cheerful and fearless courage which makes it possible for such a +self-respecting woman as yourself to face the world and force it to +recognise her right to earn her own living as she chooses--I could not +bring myself to contemplate with equanimity my brother's marrying you. +And I do not believe my father would survive such an event. + +"To us, to me, also, certain fixed conventional limits are the basis of +all happiness. To offend them is to be unhappy; to ignore them would +mean destruction to our peace of mind and self-respect. And, though I do +admire you and respect you for what you are, it is only just to you to +say that we could never reconcile ourselves to those modern social +conditions which you so charmingly represent, and which are embodied in +you with such convincing dignity. + +"Dear Miss West, have I pained you? Have I offended you in return for +all your courtesy to me? I hope not. I felt that I owed you this. +Please accept it as a tribute and as a sorrowful acquiescence in +conditions which an old-fashioned family are unable to change. + +"Very sincerely yours, + +"LILLY COLLIS." + +She lay for a while, thinking, the sheets of the letter lying loose on +the bed. It seemed to require no answer. Nor had Mrs. Collis, +apparently, any fear that Valerie would ever inform Louis Neville of +what had occurred between his sister and herself. + +Still, to Valerie, an unanswered letter was like a civil observation +ignored. + +She wrote that evening to Lily: + +"Dear Mrs. Collis: In acknowledging your letter of yesterday I beg to +assure you that I understand the inadvisability of my marrying your +brother, and that I have no idea of doing it, and that, through me, he +shall never know of your letters or of your visit to me in his behalf. + +"With many thanks for your kindly expressions of good-will toward me, I +am + +"Very truly yours, + +"VALERIE WEST." + +She had been too tired to call at Querida's studio, too tired even to +take tea at the Plaza with Neville. + +Rita came in, silent and out of spirits, and replied in monosyllables to +Valerie's inquiries. + +It finally transpired that Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan had been +tormenting John Burleson after their own fashion until their inanity +had exasperated her and she expressed herself freely to everybody +concerned. + +"It makes me very angry," she said, "to have a lot of brainless people +believe that John Burleson is stupid. He isn't; he is merely a trifle +literal, and far too intelligent to see any humour in the silly capers +Sam and Harry cut." + +Valerie, who was feeling better, sipped her tea and nibbled her toast, +much amused at Rita's championship of the big sculptor. + +"John is a dear," she said, "but even his most enthusiastic partisans +could hardly characterise him as a humorist." + +"He's not a clown--if that's what you mean," said Rita shortly. + +"But, Rita, he _isn't_ humorous, you know." + +"He _is_. He has a sense of humour perfectly intelligible to those who +understand it." + +"Do you, dear?" + +"Certainly ... And I always have understood it." + +"Oh, what kind of occult humour is it?" + +"It is a quiet, cultivated, dignified sense of humour not uncommon in +New England, and not understood in New York." + +Valerie nibbled her toast, secretly amused. Burleson was from +Massachusetts. Rita was the daughter of a Massachusetts clergyman. No +doubt they were fitted to understand each other. + +It occurred to her, too, that John Burleson and Rita Tevis had always +been on a friendly footing rather quieter and more serious than the +usual gay and irresponsible relations maintained between two people +under similar circumstances. + +Sometimes she had noticed that when affairs became too frivolous and +the scintillation of wit and epigram too rapid and continuous, John +Burleson and Rita were very apt to edge out of the circle as though for +mutual protection. + +"You're not posing for John, are you, Rita?" she asked. + +"No. He has a bad cold, and I stopped in to see that he wore a red +flannel bandage around his throat. A sculptor's work is so dreadfully +wet and sloppy, and his throat has always been very delicate." + +"Do you mean to say that you charge your mind with the coddling of that +great big, pink-cheeked boy?" laughed Valerie, + +"Coddling!" repeated Rita, flushing up. "I don't call it coddling to +stop in for a moment to remind a friend that he doesn't know how to take +care of himself, and never will." + +"Nonsense. You couldn't kill a man of that size and placidity of +character." + +"You don't know anything about him. He is much more delicate than he +looks." + +Valerie glanced curiously at the girl, who was preparing oysters in the +chafing dish. + +"How do _you_ happen to know so much about him, Rita?" + +She answered, carelessly: "I have known him ever since I began to +pose--almost." + +Valerie set her cup aside, sprang up to rinse mouth and hands. Then, +gathering her pink negligée around her, curled up in a big wing-chair, +drawing her bare feet up under the silken folds and watching Rita +prepare the modest repast for one. + +"Rita," she said, "who was the first artist you ever posed for? Was it +John Burleson--and did you endure the tortures of the damned?" + +"No, it was not John Burleson.... And I endured--enough." + +"Don't you care to tell me who it was?" + +Rita did not reply at that time. Later, however, when the simple supper +was ended, she lighted a cigarette and found a place where, with +lamplight behind her, she could read a book which Burleson had sent her, +and which she had been attempting to assimilate and digest all winter. +It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds. It was +called "Essays on the Obvious "; and Valerie had made fun of it until, +to her surprise, she noticed that her pleasantries annoyed Rita. + +Valerie, curled up in the wing-chair, cheek resting against its velvet +side, was reading the Psalms again--fascinated as always by the noble +music of the verse. And it was only by chance that, lifting her eyes +absently for a moment, she found that Rita had laid aside her book and +was looking at her intently. + +"Hello, dear!" she said, indolently humorous. + +Rita said: "You read your Bible a good deal, don't you?" + +"Parts of it." + +"The parts you believe?" + +"Yes; and the parts that I can't believe." + +"What parts can't you believe?" + +Valerie laughed: "Oh, the unfair parts--the cruel parts, the +inconsistent parts." + +"What about faith?" + +"Faith is a matter of temperament, dear." + +"Haven't you any?" + +"Yes, in all things good." + +"Then you have faith in yourself that you are capable of deciding what +is good and worthy of belief in the Scriptures, and what is unworthy?" + +[Illustration: "It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly +four pounds."] + +"It must be that way. I am intelligent. One must decide for one's self +what is fair and what is unfair; what is cruel and what is merciful and +kind. Intelligence must always evolve its own religion; sin is only an +unfaithfulness to what one really believes." + +"What _do_ you believe, Valerie?" + +"About what, dear?" + +"Love." + +"Loving a man?" + +"Yes." + +"You know what my creed is--that love must be utterly unselfish to be +pure--to be love at all." + +"One must not think of one's self," murmured Rita, absently. + +"I don't mean that. I mean that one must not hesitate to sacrifice one's +self when the happiness or welfare of the other is in the balance." + +"Yes. Of course!... Suppose you love a man." + +"Yes," said Valerie, smiling, "I can imagine that." + +"Listen, dear. Suppose you love a man. And you think that perhaps he is +beginning--just beginning to care a little for you. And suppose--suppose +that you are--have been--long ago--once, very long ago--" + +"What?" + +"Unwise," said Rita, in a low voice. + +"Unwise? How?" + +"In the--unwisest way that a girl can be." + +"You mean any less unwise than a man might be--probably the very man she +is in love with?" + +"You know well enough what is thought about a girl's unwisdom and the +same unwisdom in a man." + +"I know what is thought; but _I_ don't think it." + +"Perhaps you don't. But the world's opinion is different." + +"Yes, I know it.... What is your question again? You say to me, here's +a man beginning to care for a girl who has been unwise enough before she +knew him to let herself believe she cared enough for another man to +become his mistress. Is that it, Rita?" + +"Y-yes." + +"Very well. What do you wish to ask me?" + +"I wish to ask you what that girl should do." + +"Do? Nothing. What is there for her to do?" + +"Ought she to let that man care for her?" + +"Has he ever made the same mistake she has?" + +"I--don't think so." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Almost." + +"Well, then, I'd tell him." + +Rita lay silent, gazing into space, her blond hair clustering around the +pretty oval of her face. + +Valerie waited for a few moments, then resumed her reading, glancing +inquiringly at intervals over the top of her book at Rita, who seemed +disinclined for further conversation. + +After a long silence she sat up abruptly on the sofa and looked at +Valerie. + +"You asked me who was the first man for whom I posed. I'll tell you if +you wish to know. It was Penrhyn Cardemon!... And I was eighteen years +old." + +Valerie dropped her book in astonishment. + +"Penrhyn Cardemon!" she repeated. "Why, he isn't an artist!" + +"He has a studio." + +"Where?" + +"On Fifth Avenue." + +"What does he do there?" + +"Deviltry." + +Valerie's face was blank; Rita sat sullenly cradling one knee in her +arms, looking at the floor, her soft, gold hair hanging over her face +and forehead so that it shadowed her face. + +"I've meant to tell you for a long time," she went on; "I would have +told you if Cardemon had ever sent for you to--to pose--in his place." + +"He asked me to go on _The Mohave_." + +"I'd have warned you if Louis Neville had not objected." + +"Do you suppose Louis knew?" + +"No. He scarcely knows Penrhyn Cardemon. His family and Cardemon are +neighbours in the country, but the Nevilles and the Collises are +snobs--I'm speaking plainly, Valerie--and they have no use for that +red-faced, red-necked, stocky young millionaire." + +Valerie sat thinking; Rita, nursing her knee, brooded under the bright +tangle of her hair, linking and unlinking her fingers as she gently +swayed her foot to and fro. + +"That's how it is," she said at last. "Now you know." + +Valerie's head was still lowered, but she raised her eyes and looked +straight at Rita where she sat on the sofa's edge, carelessly swinging +her foot to and fro. + +"Was it--Penrhyn Cardemon?" she asked. + +"Yes.... I thought it had killed any possibility of ever caring--that +way--for any other man." + +"But it hasn't?" + +"No." + +"And--you are in love?" + +"Yes." + +"With John Burleson?" + +Rita looked up from the burnished disorder of her hair: + +"I have been in love with him for three years," she said, "and you are +the only person in the world except myself who knows it." + +Valerie rose and walked over to Rita and seated herself beside her. Then +she put one arm around her; and Rita bit her lip and stared at space, +swinging her slender foot. + +"You poor dear," said Valerie. Rita's bare foot hung inert; the silken +slipper dropped from it to the floor; and then her head fell, sideways, +resting on Valerie's shoulder, showering her body with its tangled gold. + +Valerie said, thoughtfully: "Girls don't seem to have a very good +chance.... I had no idea about Cardemon--that he was that kind of a man. +A girl never knows. Men can be so attractive and so nice.... And so many +of them are merciless.... I suppose you thought you loved him." + +"Y--yes." + +"We all think that, I suppose," said Valerie, thoughtfully. + +"Other girls have thought it of Penrhyn Cardemon." + +"Other _girls?_" + +"Yes." + +Valerie's face expressed bewilderment. + +"I didn't know that there were really such men." + +Rita closed her disillusioned eyes. + +"Plenty," she said wearily. + +"I don't care to believe that." + +"You may believe it, Valerie. Men are almost never single-minded; women +are--almost always. You see what chance for happiness we have? But it's +the truth, and the world has been made that way. It's a man's world, +Valerie. I don't think there's much use for us to fight against it.... +She sat very silent for a while, close to Valerie, her hot face on the +younger girl's shoulder. Suddenly she straightened up and dried her eyes +naïvely on the sleeve of her kimona. + +"Goodness!" she said, "I almost forgot!" + +And a moment later Valerie heard her at the telephone: + +"Is that you, John?" + + * * * * * + +"Have you remembered to take your medicine?" + + * * * * * + +"How perfectly horrid of you! Take it at once! It's the one in the brown +bottle--six drops in a wineglass of water--" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Mrs. Hind-Willet, born to the purple--or rather entitled to a narrow +border of discreet mauve on all occasions of ceremony in Manhattan, was +a dreamer of dreams. One of her dreams concerned her hyphenated husband, +and she put him away; another concerned Penrhyn Cardemon; and she woke +up. But the persistent visualisation, which had become obsession, of a +society to be formed out of the massed intellects of Manhattan +regardless of race, morals, or previous condition of social servitude--a +gentle intellectual affinity which knew no law of art except individual +inspiration, haunted her always. And there was always her own set to +which she could retreat if desirable. + +She had begun with a fashionable and semi-fashionable nucleus which +included Mrs. Atherstane, the Countess d'Enver, Latimer Varyck, Olaf +Dennison, and Pedro Carrillo, and then enlarged the circle from those +perpetual candidates squatting anxiously upon the social step-ladder all +the way from the bottom to the top. + +The result was what Ogilvy called intellectual local option; and though +he haunted this agglomeration at times, particularly when temporarily +smitten by a pretty face or figure, he was under no illusions concerning +it or the people composing it. + +Returning one afternoon from a reception at Mrs. Atherstane's he replied +to Annan's disrespectful inquiries and injurious observations: + +"You're on to that joint, Henry; it's a saloon, not a salon; and Art is +the petrified sandwich. Fix me a very, ve-ry high one, dearie, because +little sunshine is in love again." + +"Who drew the lucky number?" asked Annan with a shrug. + +"The Countess d'Enver. She's the birdie." + +"Intellectually?" + +"Oh, she's an intellectual four-flusher, bless her heart! But she was +the only woman there who didn't try to mentally frisk me. We lunch +together soon, Henry." + +"Where's Count hubby?" + +"Aloft. She's a bird," he repeated, fondly reminiscent over his +high-ball--"and I myself am the real ornithological thing--the species +that Brooklyn itself would label 'boid' ... She has such pretty, +confiding ways, Harry." + +"You'd both better join the Audubon Society for Mutual Protection," +observed Annan dryly. + +"I'll stand for anything she stands for except that social Tenderloin; +I'll join anything she joins except the 'classes now forming' in that +intellectual dance hall. By the way, who do you suppose was there?" + +"The police?" + +"Naw--the saloon wasn't raided, though 'Professor' Carrillo's poem was +_assez raide_. Mek-mek-k-k-k! But oh, the ginky pictures! Oh, the Art +Beautiful! Aniline rainbows exploding in a physical culture school +couldn't beat that omelette!... And guess who was pouring tea in the +centre of the olio, Harry!" + +"You?" inquired Annan wearily. + +"Valerie West." + +"What in God's name has that bunch taken her up for?" + + * * * * * + +For the last few weeks Valerie's telephone had rung intermittently +summoning her to conversation with Mrs. Hind-Willet. + +At first the amiable interest displayed by Mrs. Hind-Willet puzzled +Valerie until one day, returning to her rooms for luncheon, she found +the Countess d'Enver's brougham standing in front of the house and that +discreetly perfumed lady about to descend. + +"How do you do?" said Valerie, stopping on the sidewalk and offering her +hand with a frank smile. + +"I came to call on you," said the over-dressed little countess; "may I?" + +"It is very kind of you. Will you come upstairs? There is no elevator." + +The pretty bejewelled countess arrived in the living room out of breath, +and seated herself, flushed, speechless, overcome, her little white +gloved hand clutching her breast. + +Valerie, accustomed to the climb, was in nowise distressed; and went +serenely about her business while the countess was recovering. + +"I am going to prepare luncheon; may I hope you will remain and share it +with me?" she asked. + +The countess nodded, slowly recovering her breath and glancing curiously +around the room. + +"You see I have only an hour between poses," observed Valerie, moving +swiftly from cupboard to kitchenette, "so luncheon is always rather +simple. Miss Tevis, with whom I live, never lunches here, so I take +what there is left from breakfast." + +[Illustration: The Countess d'Enver.] + +A little later they were seated at a small table together, sipping +chocolate. There was cold meat, a light salad, and fruit. The +conversation was as haphazard and casual as the luncheon, until the +pretty countess lighted a cigarette and tasted her tiny glass of +Port--the latter a gift from Querida. "Do you think it odd of me to +call on you uninvited?" she asked, with that smiling abruptness which +sometimes arises from embarrassment. + +"I think it is very sweet of you," said Valerie, "I am very happy to +know that you remember me." + +The countess flushed up: "Do you really feel that way about it?" + +"Yes," said Valerie, smiling, "or I would not say so." + +"Then--you give me courage to tell you that since I first met you I've +been--quite mad about you." + +"About _me_!" in smiling surprise. + +"Yes. I wanted to know you. I told Mrs. Hind-Willet to ask you to the +club. She did. But you never came.... And I _did_ like you so much." + +Valerie said in a sweet, surprised way: "Do you know what I am?" + +"Yes; you sit for artists." + +"I am a professional model," said Valerie. "I don't believe you +understood that, did you?" + +"Yes, I did," said the countess. "You pose for the ensemble, too." + +Valerie looked at her incredulously: + +"Do you think you would really care to know me? I, an artist's model, +and you, the Countess d'Enver?" + +"I was Nellie Jackson before that." She leaned across the table, +smiling, with heightened colour; "I believe I'd never have to pretend +with you. The minute I saw you I liked you. Will you let me talk to +you?" + +"Y--yes." + +There was a constrained silence; Hélène d'Enver touched the water in the +bowl with her finger-tips, dried them, looked up at Valerie, who rose. +Under the window there was a tufted seat; and here they found places +together. + +"Do you know why I came?" asked Hélène d'Enver. "I was lonely." + +"_You!_" + +"My dear, I am a lonely woman; I'm lonely to desperation. I don't belong +in New York and I don't belong in France, and I don't like Pittsburgh. +I'm lonely! I've always been lonely ever since I left Pittsburgh. There +doesn't seem to be any definite place anywhere for me. And I haven't a +real woman friend in the world!" + +"How in the world can you say that?" exclaimed Valerie, astonished. + +The countess lighted another cigarette and wreathed her pretty face in +smoke. + +"You think because I have a title and am presentable that I can go +anywhere?" She smiled. "The society I might care for hasn't the +slightest interest in me. There is in this city a kind of society +recruited largely from the fashionable hotels and from among those who +have no fixed social position in New York--people who are never very far +outside or inside the edge of things--but who never penetrate any +farther." She laughed. "This society camps permanently at the base of +the Great Wall of China. But it never scales it." + +"Watch the men on Fifth Avenue," she went on. "Some walk there as though +they do not belong there; some walk as though they do belong there; +some, as though they lived there. I move about as though I belonged +where I am occasionally seen; but I'm tired of pretending that I live +there." + +She leaned back among the cushions, dropping one knee over the other +and tossing away her cigarette. And her little suede shoe swung +nervously to and fro. + +"You're the first girl I've seen in New York who, I believe, really +doesn't care what I am--and I don't care what she is. Shall we be +friends? I'm lonely." + +Valerie looked at her, diffidently: + +"I haven't had very much experience in friendship--except with Rita +Tevis," she said. + +"Will you let me take you to drive sometimes?" + +"I'd love to, only you see I am in business." + +"Of course I mean after hours." + +"Thank you.... But I usually am expected--to tea--and dinner--" + +Hélène lay back among the cushions, looking at her. + +"Haven't you any time at all for me?" she asked, wistfully. + +Valerie was thinking of Neville: "Not--very--much I am afraid--" + +"Can't you spare me an hour now and then?" + +"Y--yes; I'll try." + +There was a silence. The mantel clock struck, and Valerie glanced up. +Hélène d'Enver rose, stood still a moment, then stepped forward and took +both of Valerie's hands: + +"Can't we be friends? I do need one; and I like you so much. You've the +eyes that make a woman easy. There are none like yours in New York." + +Valerie laughed, uncertainly. + +"Your friends wouldn't care for me," she said. "I don't believe there is +any real place at all for me in this city except among the few men and +women I already know." + +"Won't you include me among the number? There is a place for you in my +heart." + +Touched and surprised, the girl stood looking at the older woman in +silence. + +"May I drive you to your destination?" asked Hélène gently. + +"You are very kind.... It is Mr. Burleson's studio--if it won't take you +too far out of your way." + +By the end of March Valerie had driven with the Countess d'Enver once or +twice; and once or twice had been to see her, and had met, in her +apartment, men and women who were inclined to make a fuss over her--men +like Carrillo and Dennison, and women like Mrs. Hind-Willet and Mrs. +Atherstane. It was her unconventional profession that interested them. + +To Neville, recounting her experiences, she said with a patient little +smile: + +"It's rather nice to be liked and to have some kind of a place among +people who live in this city. Nobody seems to mind my being a model. +Perhaps they _have_ taken merely a passing fancy to me and are +exhibiting me to each other as a wild thing just captured and being +trained--" She laughed--"but they do it so pleasantly that I don't +mind.... And anyway, the Countess d'Enver is genuine; I am sure of +that." + +"A genuine countess?" + +"A genuine woman, sincere, lovable, and kind--I am becoming very fond of +her.... Do you mind my abandoning you for an afternoon now and then? +Because it _is_ nice to have as a friend a woman older and more +experienced." + +"Does that mean you're going off with her this afternoon?" + +"I _was_ going. But I won't if you feel that I'm deserting you." + +He laid aside his palette and went over to where she was standing. + +"You darling," he said, "go and drive in the Park with your funny little +friend." + +"She was going to take me to the Plaza for tea. There are to be some +very nice women there who are interested in the New Idea Home." She +added, shyly, "I have subscribed ten dollars." + +He kissed her, lightly, humorously. "And what, sweetheart, may the New +Idea Home be?" + +"Oh, it's an idea of Mrs. Hind-Willet's about caring for wayward girls. +Mrs. Willet thinks that it is cruel and silly to send them into virtual +imprisonment, to punish them and watch them and confront them at every +turn with threats and the merciless routine of discipline. She thinks +that the thing to do is to give them a chance for sensible and normal +happiness; not to segregate them one side of a dead line; not to treat +them like criminals to be watched and doubted and suspected." + +She linked her arms around his neck, interested, earnest, sure of his +sympathy and approval: + +"We want to build a school in the country--two schools, one for girls +who have misbehaved, one for youths who are similarly delinquent. And, +during recreation, we mean to let them meet in a natural manner--play +games together, dance, mingle out of doors in a wholesome and innocent +way--of course, under necessary and sympathetic supervision--and learn a +healthy consideration and respect for one another which the squalid, +crowded, irresponsible conditions of their former street life in the +slums and tenements made utterly impossible." + +He looked into the pretty, eager face with its honest, beautiful eyes +and sensitive mouth--and touched his lips to her hair. + +"It sounds fine, sweetheart," he said: "and I won't be lonely if you go +to the Plaza and settle the affairs of this topsy-turvy world.... Do you +love me?" + +"Louis! Can you ask?" + +"I do ask." + +She smiled, faintly; then her young face grew serious, and a hint of +passion darkened her eyes as her arms tightened around his neck and her +lips met his. + +"All I care for in the world, or out of it, is you, Louis. If I find +pleasure in anything it is because of you; if I take a little pride in +having people like me, it is only for your sake--for the sake of the +pride you may feel in having others find me agreeable and desirable. I +wish it were possible that your, own world could find me agreeable and +desirable--for your sake, my darling, more than for mine. But it never +will--never could. There is a wall around your world which I can never +scale. And it does not make me unhappy--I only wish you to know that I +want to be what you would have me--and if I can't be all that you might +wish, I love and adore you none the less--am none the less willing to +give you all there is to me--all there is to a girl named Valerie West +who finds this life a happy one because you have made it so for her." + +She continued to see Hélène d'Enver, poured tea sometimes at the +Five-Minute-Club, listened to the consultations over the New Idea Home, +and met a great many people of all kinds, fashionable women with a +passion for the bizarre and unconventional, women of gentle breeding and +no social pretence, who worked to support themselves; idle women, +ambitious women, restless women; but the majority formed part of the +floating circles domiciled in apartments and at the great hotels--people +who wintered in New York and were a part of its social and civic life to +that extent, but whose duties and responsibilities for the metropolitan +welfare were self-imposed, and neither hereditary nor constant. + +As all circles in New York have, at certain irregular periods, +accidental points of temporary contact, Valerie now and then met people +whom she was scarcely ever likely to see again. And it was at a New Idea +Home conference, scheduled for five o'clock in the red parlour of the +ladies' waiting room in the great Hotel Imperator, that Valerie, +arriving early as delegated substitute for Mrs. Hind-Willet, found +herself among a small group of beautifully gowned strangers--the sort of +women whom she had never before met in this way. + +They all knew each other; others who arrived seemed to recognise with +more or less intimacy everybody in the room excepting herself. + +She was sitting apart by the crimson-curtained windows, perfectly +self-possessed and rather interested in watching the arrivals of women +whose names, as she caught them, suggested social positions which were +vaguely familiar to her, when an exceedingly pretty girl detached +herself from the increasing group and came across to where Valerie was +sitting alone. + +[Illustration: "'May I sit here with you until she arrives? I am +Stephanie Swift.'"] + +"I was wondering whether you had met any of the new committee," she said +pleasantly. + +"I _had_ expected to meet the Countess d'Enver here," said Valerie, +smiling. + +The girl's expression altered slightly, but she nodded amiably; "May I +sit here with you until she arrives? I am Stephanie Swift." + +Valerie said: "It is very amiable of you. I am Valerie West." + +Stephanie remained perfectly still for a moment; then, conscious that +she was staring, calmly averted her gaze while the slow fire died out in +her cheeks. And in a moment she had decided: + +"I have heard so pleasantly about you through Mrs. Collis," she said +with perfect composure. "You remember her, I think." + +Valerie, startled, lifted her brown eyes. Then very quietly: + +"Mrs. Collis is very kind. I remember her distinctly." + +"Mrs. Collis retains the most agreeable memories of meeting you.... I--" +she looked at Valerie, curiously--"I have heard from others how charming +and clever you are--from Mr. Ogilvy?--and Mr. Annan?" + +"They are my friends," said Valerie briefly. + +"And Mr. Querida, and Mr. Burleson, and--Mr. Neville." + +"They are my friends," repeated Valerie.... After a second she added: +"They also employ me." + +Stephanie looked away: "Your profession must be most interesting, Miss +West." + +"Yes." + +"But--exacting." + +"Very." + +Neither made any further effort. A moment later, however, Hélène d'Enver +came in. She knew some of the women very slightly, none intimately; and, +catching sight of Valerie, she came across the room with a quick smile +of recognition: + +"I'm dreadfully late, dear--how do you do, Miss Swift"--to Stephanie, +who had risen. And to Valerie: "Mr. Ogilvy came; just as I had my furs +on--and you know how casually a man takes his leave when you're in a +tearing hurry!" + +She laughed and took Valerie's gloved hands in her own; and Stephanie, +who had been looking at the latter, came to an abrupt conclusion that +amazed her; and she heard herself saying: + +"It has been most interesting to meet you, Miss West. I have heard of +you so pleasantly that I had hoped to meet you some time. And I hope I +shall again." + +Valerie thanked her with a self-possession which she did not entirely +feel, and turned away with Hélène d'Enver. + +"That's the girl who is supposed to be engaged to Louis Neville," +whispered the pretty countess. + +Valerie halted, astounded. + +"Didn't you know it?" asked the other, surprised. + +For a moment Valerie remained speechless, then the wild absurdity of it +flashed over her and she laughed her relief. + +"No, I didn't know it," she said. + +"Hasn't anybody ever told you?" + +"No," said Valerie, smiling. + +"Well, perhaps it isn't so, then," said the countess naïvely. "I know +very few people of that set, but I've heard it talked about--outside." + +"I don't believe it is so," said Valerie demurely. Her little heart was +beating confidently again and she seated herself beside Hélène d'Enver +in the prim circle of delegates intent upon their chairman, who was +calling the meeting to order. + +The meeting was interesting and there were few feminine clashes--merely +a smiling and deadly exchange of amenities between a fashionable woman +who was an ardent advocate of suffrage, and an equally distinguished +lady who was scornfully opposed to it. But the franchise had nothing at +all to do with the discussion concerning the New Idea Home, which is +doubtless why it was mentioned; and the meeting of delegates proceeded +without further debate. + +After it was ended Valerie hurried away to keep an appointment with +Neville at Burleson's studio, and found the big sculptor lying on the +sofa, neck swathed in flannel, and an array of medicine bottles at his +elbow. + +"Can't go to dinner with you," he said; "Rita won't have it. There's +nothing the matter with me, but she made me lie down here, and I've +promised to stay here until she returns." + +"John, you don't look very well," said Valerie, coming over and seating +herself by his side. + +"I'm all right, except that I catch cold now and then," he insisted +obstinately. + +Valerie looked at the pink patches of colour burning in his cheeks. +There was a transparency to his skin, too, that troubled her. He was one +of those big, blond, blue-eyed fellows whose vivid colour and +fine-grained, delicate skin caused physicians to look twice. + +He had been reading when Valerie entered; now he laid his ponderous book +away, doubled his arms back under his head and looked at Valerie with +the placid, bovine friendliness which warmed her heart but always left a +slight smile in the corner of her mouth. + +"Why do you always smile at me, Valerie?" he asked. + +"Because you're good, John, and I like you." + +"I know you do. You're a fine woman, Valerie.... So is Rita." + +"Rita is a darling." + +[Illustration: "'John, you don't look very well,' said Valerie."] + +"She's all right," he nodded. A moment later he added: "She comes from +Massachusetts." + +Valerie laughed: "The sacred codfish smiled on your cradle, too, didn't +it, John?" + +"Yes, thank God," he said seriously.... "I was born in the old town of +Hitherford." + +"How funny!" exclaimed the girl. + +"What is there funny about that?" demanded John. + +"Why, Rita was born in Hitherford." + +"Hitherford Centre," corrected John. "Her father was a clergyman there." + +"Oh; so you knew it?" + +"I knew, of course, that she was from Massachusetts," said John, +"because she speaks English properly. So I asked her where she was born +and she told me.... My grandfather knew hers." + +"Isn't it--curious," mused the girl. + +"What's curious?" + +"Your meeting this way--as sculptor and model." + +"Rita is a very fine girl," he said. "Would you mind handing me my pipe? +No, don't. I forgot that Rita won't let me. You see my chest is rather +uncomfortable." + +He glanced at the clock, leaned over and gulped down some medicine, then +placidly folding his hands, lay back: + +"How's Kelly?" + +"I haven't seen him to-day, John." + +"Well, he ought to be here very soon. He can take you and Rita to +dinner." + +"I'm so sorry you can't come." + +"So am I." + +Valerie laid a cool hand on his face; he seemed slightly feverish. Rita +came in at that moment, smiled at Valerie, and went straight to +Burleson's couch: + +"Have you taken your medicine?" + +"Certainly." + +She glanced at the bottles. "Men are so horridly untruthful," she +remarked to Valerie; "and this great, lumbering six-footer hasn't the +sense of a baby--" + +"I have, too!" roared John, indignantly; and Valerie laughed but Rita +scarcely smiled. + +"He's always working in a puddle of wet clay and he's always having +colds and coughing, and there's always more or less fever," she said, +looking down at the huge young fellow. "I know that he ought to give up +his work and go away for a while--" + +"Where?" demanded Burleson indignantly. + +"Oh, somewhere--where there's plenty of--air. Like Arizona, and +Colorado." + +"Do you think there's anything the matter with my lungs?" he roared. + +"No!--you perfect idiot!" said Rita, seating herself; "and if you shout +that way at me again I'll go to dinner with Kelly and Valerie and leave +you here alone. I will not permit you to be uncivil, John. Please +remember it." + +Neville arrived in excellent spirits, greeted everybody, and stood +beside Valerie, carelessly touching the tip of his fingers to hers where +they hung at her side. + +"What's the matter with _you_, John? Rita, isn't he coming? I've a taxi +outside ruining me." + +"John has a bad cold and doesn't care to go--" + +"Yes, I do!" growled John. + +"And he doesn't care to risk contracting pneumonia," continued Rita +icily, "and he isn't going, anyway. And if he behaves like a man instead +of an overgrown baby, I have promised to stay and dine with him here. +Otherwise I'll go with you." + +"Sure. You'd better stay indoors, John. You ought to buck up and get rid +of that cold. It's been hanging on all winter." + +Burleson rumbled and grumbled and shot a mutinous glance at Rita, who +paid it no attention. + +"Order us a nice dinner at the Plaza, Kelly--if you don't mind," she +said cheerfully, going with them to the door. She added under her +breath: "I wish he'd see a doctor, but the idea enrages him. I don't +see why he has such a cold all the time--and such flushed cheeks--" Her +voice quivered and she checked herself abruptly. + +"Suppose I ring up Dr. Colbert on my own hook?" whispered Neville. + +"Would you?" + +"Certainly. And you can tell John that I did it on my own +responsibility." + +Neville and Valerie went away together, and Rita returned to the studio. +Burleson was reading again, and scowling; and he scarcely noticed her. +She seated herself by the fire and looked into the big bare studio +beyond where the electric light threw strange shadows over shrouded +shapes of wet clay and blocks of marble in the rough or partly hewn into +rough semblance of human figures. + +It was a damp place at best; there were always wet sponges, wet cloths, +pails of water, masses of moist clay about. Her blue eyes wandered over +it with something approaching fear--almost the fear of hatred. + +"John," she said, "why won't you go to a dry climate for a few months +and get rid of your cold?" + +"Do you mean Arizona?" + +"Or some similar place: yes." + +"Well, how am I to do any work out there? I've got commissions on hand. +Where am I going to find any place to work out in Arizona?" + +"Build a shanty." + +"That's all very well, but there are no models to be had out there." + +"Why don't you do some Indians?" + +"Because," said John wrathfully, "I haven't any commissions that call +for Indians. I've two angels, a nymph and a Diana to do; and I can't do +them unless I have a female model, can I?" + +After a silence Rita said carelessly: + +"I'll go with you if you like." + +"You! Out there!" + +"I said so." + +"To Arizona! You wouldn't stand for it!" + +"John Burleson!" she said impatiently, "I've told you once that I'd go +with you if you need a model! Don't you suppose I know what I am +saying?" + +He lay placidly staring at her, the heavy book open across his chest. +Presently he coughed and Rita sprang up and removed the book. + +"You'd go with me to Arizona," he repeated, as though to himself--"just +to pose for me.... That's very kind of you, Rita. It's thoroughly nice +of you. But you couldn't stand it. You'd find it too cruelly stupid out +there alone--entirely isolated in some funny town. I couldn't ask it of +you--" + +"You haven't. I've asked it--of you." + +But he only began to grumble and fret again, thrashing about restlessly +on the lounge; and the tall young girl watched him out of lowered eyes, +silent, serious, the lamplight edging her hair with a halo of ruddy +gold. + + * * * * * + +The month sped away very swiftly for Valerie. Her companionship with +Rita, her new friendship for Hélène d'Enver, her work, filled all the +little moments not occupied with Neville. It had been a happy, exciting +winter; and now, with the first days of spring, an excitement and a +happiness so strange that it even resembled fear at moments, possessed +her, in the imminence of the great change. + +Often, in these days, she found herself staring at Neville with a sort +of fixed fascination almost bordering on terror;--there were moments +when alone with him, and even while with him among his friends and hers, +when there seemed to awake in her a fear so sudden, so inexplicable, +that every nerve in her quivered apprehension until it had passed as it +came. What those moments of keenest fear might signify she had no idea. +She loved, and was loved, and was not afraid. + +In early April Neville went to Ashuelyn. Ogilvy was there, also +Stephanie Swift. + +His sister Lily had triumphantly produced a second sample of what she +could do to perpetuate the House of Collis, and was much engrossed with +nursery duties; so Stephanie haunted the nursery, while Ogilvy, Neville, +and Gordon Collis played golf over the April pastures, joining them only +when Lily was at liberty. + +Why Stephanie avoided Neville she herself scarcely knew; why she clung +so closely to Lily's skirts seemed no easier to explain. But in her +heart there was a restlessness which no ignoring, no self-discipline +could suppress--an unease which had been there many days, now--a hard, +tired, ceaseless inquietude that found some little relief when she was +near Lily Collis, but which, when alone, became a dull ache. + +She had grown thin and spiritless within the last few months. Lily saw +it and resented it hotly. + +"The child," she said to her husband, "is perfectly wretched over Louis +and his ignominious affair with that West girl. I don't know whether she +means to keep her word to me or not, but she's with him every day. +They're seen together everywhere except where Louis really belongs." + +"It looks to me," said Gordon mildly, "as though he were really in love +with her." + +"Gordon! How _can_ you say such a thing in such a sympathetic tone!" + +"Why--aren't you sorry for them?" + +"I'm sorry for Louis--and perfectly disgusted. I _was_ sorry for her; an +excess of sentimentality. But she hasn't kept her word to me." + +"Did she promise not to gad about with him?" + +"That was the spirit of the compact; she agreed not to marry him." + +"Sometimes they--don't marry," observed Gordon, twirling his thumbs. + +Lily looked up quickly; then flushed slightly. + +"What do you mean, Gordon?" + +"Nothing specific; anything in general." + +"You mean to hint that--that Louis--Louis Neville could be--permit +himself to be so common--so unutterably low--" + +"Better men have taken the half-loaf." + +"Gordon!" she exclaimed, scarlet with amazement and indignation. + +"Personally," he said, unperturbed, "I haven't much sympathy with such +affairs. If a man can't marry a girl he ought to leave her alone; that's +my idea of the game. But men play it in a variety of ways. Personally, +I'd as soon plug a loaded shot-gun with mud and then fire it, as block a +man who wants to marry." + +"I _did_ block it!" said Lily with angry decision; "and I am glad I +did." + +"Look out for the explosion then," he said philosophically, and +strolled off to see to the setting out of some young hemlocks, headed in +the year previous. + +Lily Collis was deeply disturbed--more deeply than her pride and her +sophistication cared to admit. She strove to believe that such a horror +as her husband had hinted at so coolly could never happen to a Neville; +she rejected it with anger, with fear, with a proud and dainty +fastidiousness that ought to have calmed and reassured her. It did not. + +Once or twice she reverted to the subject, haughtily; but Gordon merely +shrugged: + +"You can't teach a man of twenty-eight when, where, and how to fall in +love," he said. "And it's all the more hopeless when the girl possesses +the qualities which you once told me this girl possesses." + +Lily bit her lip, angry and disconcerted, but utterly unable to refute +him or find anything in her memory of Valerie to criticise and condemn, +except the intimacy with her brother which had continued and which, she +had supposed, would cease on Valerie's promise to her. + +"It's very horrid of her to go about with him under the +circumstances--knowing she can't marry him if she keeps her word," said +Lily. + +"Why? Stephanie goes about with him." + +"Do you think it is good taste to compare those two people?" + +"Why not. From what you told me I gather that Valerie West is as +innocent and upright a woman as Stephanie--and as proudly capable of +self-sacrifice as any woman who ever loved." + +"Gordon," she said, exasperated, "do you actually wish to see my brother +marry a common model?" + +"_Is_ she common? I thought you said--" + +"You--you annoy me," said Lily; and began to cry. + +Stephanie, coming into the nursery that afternoon, found Lily watching +the sleeping children and knitting a tiny sweater. Mrs. Collis was pale, +but her eyes were still red. + +"Where have you been, Stephanie?" + +"Helping Gordon set hemlocks." + +"Where is Louis?" + +The girl did not appear to hear the question. + +"I thought I heard him telephoning a few minutes ago," added Lily. "Look +over the banisters, dear, and see if he's still there." + +"He is," said Stephanie, not stirring. + +"Telephoning all this time? Is he talking to somebody in town?" + +"I believe so." + +Lily suddenly looked up. Stephanie was quietly examining some recently +laundered clothing for the children. + +"To whom is Louis talking; do you happen to know?" asked Lily abruptly. + +Stephanie's serious gaze encountered hers. + +"Does that concern us, Lily?" + +After a while, as Mrs. Collis sat in silence working her ivory needles, +a tear or two fell silently upon the little white wool garment on her +lap. + +And presently Stephanie went over and touched her forehead with gentle +lips; but Lily did not look up--could not--and her fingers and ivory +needles flew the faster. + +"Do you know," said Stephanie in a low voice, "that she is a modest, +well-bred, and very beautiful girl?" + +"What!" exclaimed Lily, staring at her in grief and amazement. "Of whom +are you speaking, Stephanie?" + +"Of Valerie West, dear." + +"W-what do you know about her?" + +"I have met her." + +"_You_!" + +"Yes. She came, with that rather common countess, as substitute delegate +for Mrs. Hind-Willet, to a New Idea meeting. I spoke to her, seeing she +was alone and seemed to know nobody; I had no suspicion of who she was +until she told me." + +"Mrs. Hind-Willet is a busybody!" said Lily, furious. "Let her fill her +own drawing-room with freaks if it pleases her, but she has no right to +send them abroad among self-respecting people who are too unsuspicious +to protect themselves!" + +Stephanie said: "Until one has seen and spoken with Valerie West one can +scarcely understand how a man like your brother could care so much for +her--" + +"How do you know Louis cares for her?" + +"He told me." + +Lily looked into the frank, gray eyes in horror unutterable. The crash +had come. The last feeble hope that her brother might come to his senses +and marry this girl was ended forever. + +"How--could he!" she stammered, outraged. "How could he tell--tell +_you_--" + +"Because he and I are old and close friends, Lily.... And will remain +so, God willing." + +Lily was crying freely now. + +"He had no business to tell you. He knows perfectly well what his father +and mother think about it and what I think. He can't marry her! He shall +not. It is too cruel--too wicked--too heartless! And anyway--she +promised me not to marry him--" + +"What!" + +Lily brushed the tears from her eyes, heedless now of how much Stephanie +might learn. + +"I wrote her--I went to see her in behalf of my own family as I had a +perfect right to. She promised me not to marry Louis." + +"Does Louis know this?" + +"Not unless she's told him.... I don't care whether he does or not! He +has disappointed me--he has embittered life for me--and for his parents. +We--I--I had every reason to believe that he and--you--" + +Something in Stephanie's gray eyes checked her. When breeding goes to +pieces it makes a worse mess of it than does sheer vulgarity. + +"If I were Louis I would marry her," said Stephanie very quietly. "I +gave him that advice." + +She rose, looking down at Lily where she sat bowed over her wool-work, +her face buried in her hands. + +"Think about it; and talk patiently with Louis," she said gently. + +Passing the stairs she glanced toward the telephone. Louis was still +talking to somebody in New York. + + * * * * * + +It was partly fear of what her husband had hinted, partly terror of what +she considered worse still--a legal marriage--that drove Lily Collis to +write once more to Valerie West: + +"DEAR MISS WEST: It is not that I have any disposition to doubt your +word to me, but, in view of the assurance you have given me, do you +consider it wise to permit my brother's rather conspicuous attentions to +you? + +"Permit me, my dear Miss West, as an older woman with wider experience +which years must bring, to suggest that it is due to yourself to curtail +an intimacy which the world--of course mistakenly in your case--views +always uncharitably. + +"No man--and I include my brother as severely as I do any man--has a +right to let the world form any misconception as to his intentions +toward any woman. If he does he is either ignorant or selfish and +ruthless; and it behooves a girl to protect her own reputation. + +"I write this in all faith and kindliness for your sake as well as for +his. But a man outlives such things, a woman never. And, for the sake of +your own future I beg you to consider this matter and I trust that you +may not misconstrue the motive which has given me the courage to write +you what has caused me deepest concern. + +"Very sincerely yours, + +"LILY COLLIS." + +To which Valerie replied: + +"MY DEAR, MRS. COLLIS: I have to thank you for your excellent intentions +in writing me. But with all deference to your wider experience I am +afraid that I must remain the judge of my own conduct. Pray, believe +that, in proportion to your sincerity, I am grateful to you; and that I +should never dream of being discourteous to Mr. Neville's sister if I +venture to suggest to her that liberty of conscience is a fundamental +scarcely susceptible of argument or discussion. + +"I assume that you would not care to have Mr. Neville know of this +correspondence, and for that reason I am returning to you your letter so +that you may be assured of its ultimate destruction. + +"Very truly yours, + +"VALERIE WEST." + + +Which letter and its reply made Valerie deeply unhappy; and she wrote +Neville a little note saying that she had gone to the country with +Hélène d'Enver for a few days' rest. + +The countess had taken a house among the hills at Estwich; and as chance +would have it, about eight miles from Ashuelyn and Penrhyn Cardemon's +great establishment, El Naúar. + +Later Valerie was surprised and disturbed to learn of the proximity of +Neville's family, fearing that if Mrs. Collis heard of her in the +neighbourhood she might misunderstand. + +But there was only scant and rough communication between Ashuelyn and +Estwich; the road was a wretched hill-path passable only by buck-boards; +Westwich was the nearest town to Ashuelyn and El Naúar and the city of +Dartford, the county seat most convenient to Estwich. + +Spring was early; the Estwich hills bloomed in May; and Hélène d'Enver +moved her numerous household from the huge Castilione Apartment House +to Estwich and settled down for a summer of mental and physical +recuperation. + +Valerie, writing to Neville the first week in May, said: + +"Louis, the country here is divine. I thought the shaggy, unkempt hills +of Delaware County were heavenly--and they _were_ when you came and made +them so--but this rich, green, well-ordered country with its hills and +woods and meadows of emerald--its calm river, its lovely little brooks, +its gardens, hedges, farms, is to me the most wonderful land I ever +looked upon. + +"Hélène has a pretty house, white with green blinds and verandas, and +the loveliest lawns you ever saw--unless the English lawns are lovelier. + +"To my city-wearied eyes the region is celestial in its horizon-wide +quiet. Only the ripple of water in leafy ravines--only the music of +birds breaks the silence that is so welcome, so blessed. + +"To-day Hélène and I picked strawberries for breakfast, then filled the +house with great fragrant peonies, some of which are the colour of +Brides' roses, some of water-lilies. + +"I'm quite mad with delight; I love the farm with its ducks and hens and +pigeons; I adore the cattle in the meadow. They are fragrant. Hélène +laughs at me because I follow the cows about, sniffing luxuriously. They +smell like the clover they chew. + +"Louis, dear, I have decided to remain a week here, if you don't mind. +I'm a little tired, I think. John Burleson, poor boy, does not need me. +I'm terribly worried about him. Rita writes that there is no danger of +pneumonia, but that Dr. Colbert is making a careful examination. I hope +it is not lung trouble. It would be too tragic. He is only twenty-seven. +Still, they cure such things now, don't they? Rita is hoping he will go +to Arizona, and has offered to go with him as his model. That means--if +she does go--that she'll nurse him and take care of him. She is devoted +to him. What a generous girl she is! + +"Dear, if you don't need me, or are not too lonely without seeing me +come fluttering into your studio every evening at tea-time, I would +really like to remain here a few days longer. I have arranged business +so that I can stay if it is agreeable to you. Tell me exactly how you +feel about it and I will do exactly as you wish--which, please God--I +shall always do while life lasts. + +"Sam came up over Sunday, lugging Harry Annan and a bulldog--a present +for Hélène. Sam is _so_ sentimental about Hélène! + +"And he's so droll about it. But I've seen him that way before; haven't +you? And Hélène, bless her heart, lets him make eyes at her and just +laughs in that happy, wholesome way of hers. + +"She's a perfect dear, Louis; so sweet and kind to me, so unaffected, so +genuine, so humorous about herself and her funny title. She told me that +she would gladly shed it if she were not obliged to shed her legacy with +it. I don't blame her. What an awful title--when you translate it! + +"Sam is temporarily laid up. He attempted to milk a cow and she kicked +him; and he's lying in a hammock and Hélène is reading to him, while +Harry paints her portrait. Oh, dear--I _love_ Harry Annan, but he can't +paint! + +"Dearest--as I sit here in my room with the chintz curtains blowing and +the sun shining on the vines outside my open windows, I am thinking of +you; and my girl's heart is very full--very humble in the wonder of your +love for me--a miracle ever new, ever sweeter, ever holier. + +"I pray that it be given to me to see the best way for your happiness +and your welfare; I pray that I may not be confused by thought of self. + +"Dear, the spring is going very swiftly. I can scarcely believe that May +is already here--is already passing--and that the first of June is so +near. + +"Will you _always_ love me? Will you always think tenderly of +me--happily--! Alas, it is a promise nobody can honestly make. One can +be honest only in wishing it may be so. + +"Dearest of men, the great change is near at hand--nearer than I can +realise. Do you still want me? Is the world impossible without me? Tell +me so, Louis; tell me so now--and in the years to come--very +often--very, very often. I shall need to hear you say it; I understand +now how great my need will be to hear you say it in the years to come." + +Writing to him in a gayer mood a week later: + +"It is perfectly dear of you to tell me to remain. I _do_ miss you; I'm +simply wild to see you; but I am getting so strong, so well, so +deliciously active and vigorous again. I _was_ rather run down in town. +But in the magic of this air and sunshine I have watched the +reincarnation of myself. I swim, I row, I am learning to sit a horse; I +play tennis--_and_ I flirt, Monsieur--shamelessly, with Sam and Harry. +Do you object-- + +"We had such a delightful time--a week-end party, perfectly informal and +crazy; Mrs. Hind-Willet--who is such a funny woman, considering the +position she might occupy in society--and José Querida--just six of us, +until--and this I'm afraid you may not like--Mrs. Hind-Willet telephoned +Penrhyn Cardemon to come over. + +"You know, Louis, he _seems_ a gentleman, though it is perfectly certain +that he isn't. I hate and despise him; and have been barely civil to +him. But in a small company one has to endure such things with outward +equanimity; and I am sure that nobody suspects my contempt for him and +that my dislike has not caused one awkward moment." + +She wrote again: + +"I beg of you not to suggest to your sister that she call on me. Try to +be reasonable, dear. Mrs. Collis does not desire to know me. Why should +she? Why should you wish to have me meet her? If you have any vague +ideas that my meeting her might in any possible way alter a situation +which must always exist between your family and myself, you are utterly +mistaken, dearest. + +"And my acquaintance with Miss Swift is so slight--I never saw her but +once, and then only for a moment!--that it would be only painful and +embarrassing to her if you asked her to call on me. Besides, you are a +man and you don't understand such things. Also, Mrs. Collis and Miss +Swift have only the slightest and most formal acquaintance with Hélène; +and it is very plain that they are as content with that acquaintance as +is Hélène. And in addition to that, you dear stupid boy, your family has +carefully ignored Mr. Cardemon for years, although he is their +neighbour; and Mr. Cardemon is here. And to cap the climax, your father +and mother are at Ashuelyn. _Can't_ you understand? + +"Dearest of men, don't put your family and yourself--and me--into such a +false position. I know you won't when I have explained it; I know you +trust me; I know you love me dearly. + +"We had a straw ride. There's no new straw, of course, so we had a wagon +filled with straw from one of the barns and we drove to Lake Gentian and +Querida was glorious in the moonlight with his guitar. + +"He's so nice to me now--so like himself. But I _hate_ Penrhyn Cardemon +and I wish he would go; and he's taken a fancy to me, and for Hélène's +sake I don't snub him--the unmitigated cad! + +"However, it takes all kinds to make even the smallest of house parties; +and I continue to be very happy and to write to you every day. + +"Sam is queer. I'm beginning to wonder whether he is really in love with +Hélène. If he isn't he ought to have his knuckles rapped. Of course, +Hélène will be sensible about it. But, Louis, when a really nice man +behaves as though he were in love with a woman, no matter how gaily she +laughs over it, it is bound to mean _something_ to her. And men don't +seem to understand that." + +"Mrs. Hind-Willet departs to-morrow. Sam and Harry go to Ashuelyn; Mr. +Cardemon to his rural palace, I devoutly trust; which will leave José to +Hélène and me; and he's equal to it. + +"How long may I stay, dear? I am having a heavenly time--which is odd +because heaven is in New York just now." + +Another letter in answer to one of his was briefer: + +"My Darling: + +"Certainly you must go to Ashuelyn if your father and mother wish it. +They are old, dear; and it is a heartless thing to thwart the old. + +"Don't think of attempting to come over here to see me. The chances are +that your family would hear of it and it would only pain them. Any +happiness that you and I are ever to have must not be gained at any +expense to them. + +"So keep your distance, Monsieur; make your parents and your sister +happy for the few days you are to be there; and on Thursday I will meet +you on the 9.30 train and we will go back to town together. + +"I am going anyway, for two reasons; I have been away from you entirely +too long, and--the First of June is very, very near. + +"I love you with all my heart, Louis. + +"Valerie West." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +He never doubted that, when at length the time came for the great +change--though perhaps not until the last moment--Valerie would consent +to marry him. Because, so far in his life of twenty-eight years, +everything he had desired very much had come true--everything he had +really believed in and worked for, had happened as he foresaw it would, +in spite of the doubts, the fears, the apprehensions that all creators +of circumstances and makers of their own destiny experience. + +Among his fellow-men he had forged a self-centred, confident way to the +front; and had met there not ultimate achievement, but a young girl, +Valerie West. Through her, somehow, already was coming into his life and +into his work that indefinite, elusive quality--that _something_, the +existence of which, until the last winter, he had never even admitted. +But it was coming; he first became conscious of it through his need of +it; suspected its existence as astronomers suspect the presence of a +star yet uncharted and unseen. Suddenly it had appeared in his portrait +of Valerie; and he knew that Querida had recognised it. + +In his picture "A Bride," the pale, mysterious glow of it suffused his +canvas. It was penetrating into his own veins, too, subtle, indefinable, +yet always there now; and he was sensitive to its presence not only +when absorbed in his work but, more or less in his daily life. + +And it was playing tricks on him, too, as when one morning, absorbed by +the eagerness of achievement, and midway in the happiness of his own +work, suddenly and unbidden the memory of poor Annan came to him--the +boy's patient, humorous face bravely confronting failure on the canvas, +before him, from which Neville had turned away without a word, because +he had no good word to say of it. + +And Neville, scarcely appreciating the reason for any immediate +self-sacrifice, nevertheless had laid aside his brushes as at some +unheard command, and had gone straight to Annan's studio. And there he +had spent the whole morning giving the discouraged boy all that was best +in him of strength and wisdom and cheerful sympathy, until, by noon, an +almost hopeless canvas was saved; and Annan, going with him to the door, +said unsteadily, "Kelly, that is the kindest thing one man ever did for +another, and I'll never forget it." + +Yes, the _something_ seemed to have penetrated to his own veins now; he +felt its serene glow mounting when he spent solemn evenings in John +Burleson's room, the big sculptor lying in his morris-chair, sometimes +irritable, sometimes morose, but always now wearing the vivid patch of +colour on his flat and sunken cheeks. + +Once John said: "Why on earth do you waste a perfectly good afternoon +dawdling in this place with me?" + +And Neville, for a second, wondered, too; then he laughed: + +"I get all that I give you, John, and more, too. Shut up and mind your +business." + +"_What_ do you get from me?" demanded the literal one, astonished. + +"All that you are, Johnny; which is much that I am not--but ought to +be--may yet be." + +"That's some sort of transcendental philosophy, isn't it?" grumbled the +sculptor. + +"You ought to know better than I, John. The sacred codfish never +penetrated to the Hudson. _Inde irac!_" + +Yes, truly, whatever it was that had crept into his veins had +imperceptibly suffused him, enveloped him--and was working changes. He +had a vague idea, sometimes, that Valerie had been the inception, the +source, the reagent in the chemistry which was surely altering either +himself or the world of men around him; that the change was less a +synthesis than a catalysis--that he was gradually becoming different +because of her nearness to him--her physical and spiritual nearness. + +He had plenty of leisure to think of her while she was away; but thought +of her was now only an active ebullition of the ceaseless consciousness +of her which so entirely possessed him. When a selfish man loves--if he +_really_ loves--his disintegration begins. + +Waking, sleeping, in happiness, in perplexity, abroad, at home, active +or at rest, inspired or weary, alone or with others, an exquisite sense +of her presence on earth invaded him, subtly refreshing him with every +breath he drew. He walked abroad amid the city crowds companioned by her +always; at rest the essence of her stole through and through him till +the very air around seemed sweetened. + +He heard others mention her, and remained silent, aloof, wrapped in his +memories, like one who listens to phantoms in a dream praising +perfection. + +Lying back in his chair before his canvas, he thought of her often--of +odd little details concerning their daily life--details almost +trivial--gestures, a glance, a laugh--recollections which surprised him +with the very charm of their insignificance. + +He remembered that he had never known her to be ungenerous--had never +detected in her a wilfully selfish motive. In his life he had never +before believed in a character so utterly unshackled by thought of self. + +He remembered that he had never known her to fail in sympathy for any +living thing; had never detected in her an indifference to either the +happiness or the sorrow of others. In his life he had never before +believed that the command to love one's neighbour had in it anything +more significant than the beauty of an immortal theory. He believed it +now because, in her, he had seen it in effortless practice. He was even +beginning to understand how it might be possible for him to follow where +she led--as she, unconsciously, was a follower of a precept given to +lead the world through eternities. + +Leaning on the closed piano, thinking of her in the still, sunny +afternoons, faintly in his ears her voice seemed to sound; and he +remembered her choice of ballads:-- + + --"For even the blind distinguisheth + The king with his robe and crown; + But only the humble eye of faith + Beholdeth Jesus of Nazareth + In the beggar's tattered gown. + + "I saw Him not in the mendicant + And I heeded not his cry; + Now Christ in His infinite mercy grant + That the prayer I say in my day of want, + Be not in scorn put by." + +No; he had never known her to be unkind, uncharitable, unforgiving; he +had never known her to be insincere, untruthful, or envious. But the +decalogue is no stronger than its weakest link. Was it in the heart of +such a woman--this woman he loved--was it in the heart of this young +girl to shatter it? + +He went on to Ashuelyn, confident of her and of himself, less confident +of his sister--almost appalled at the prospect of reconciling his father +and mother to this marriage that must surely be. Yet--so far in +life--life had finally yielded to him what he fought for; and it must +yield now; and in the end it would surely give him the loyalty and +sympathy of his family. Which meant that Valerie would listen to him; +and, in the certainty of his family's ultimate acquiescence, she would +wear his ring and face with him the problems and the sorrows that must +come to all. + +Cameron drove down to the station in the motor-car to meet him: + +"Hello, Genius," he said, patting Neville on the back with a pudgy hand. +"How's your twin brother, Vice?" + +"Hello, you large and adipose object!" retorted Neville, seating himself +in the tonneau. "How is that overworked, money-grubbing intellect of +yours staggering along?" + +"Handicapped with precious thoughts; Ogilvy threw 'em into me when he +was here. How's the wanton Muse, Louis? Sitting on your knees as usual?" + +"One arm around my neck," admitted Neville, "and the band playing +'Sweethearts.'" + +"Waiting for you to order inspiration cocktails. You're looking fit." + +"Am I? I haven't had one." + +"Oh, I thought you threw one every time you painted that pretty model of +yours--" He looked sideways at Neville, but seeing that he was +unreceptive, shrugged. + +"You're a mean bunch, you artists," he said. "I'd like to meet that +girl, but because I'm a broker anybody'd think I had rat-plague from the +way you all quarantine her--yes, the whole lot of you--Ogilvy, Annan, +Querida. Why, even Penrhyn Cardemon has met her; he told me so; and if +he has why can't I--" + +"For heaven's sake let up!" said Neville, keeping his temper, "and tell +me how everybody is at Ashuelyn." + +"Huh! I'm ridden off as usual," grunted Cameron. "All right, then; I'll +fix it myself. What was it you were gracious enough to inquire of me?" + +"How the people are at Ashuelyn?" repeated Neville. + +"How they are? How the deuce do I know? Your mother embroiders and reads +_The Atlantic Monthly_; your father tucks his hands behind him and +critically inspects the landscape; and when he doesn't do that he reads +Herbert Spencer. Your efficient sister nourishes her progeny and does +all things thoroughly and well; Gordon digs up some trees and plants +others and squirts un-fragrant mixtures over the shrubbery, and sits on +fences talking to various Rubes. Stephanie floats about like a well-fed +angel, with a fox-terrier, and makes a monkey of me at tennis whenever +I'm lunatic enough to let her, and generally dispenses sweetness, +wholesomeness, and light upon a worthy household. I wouldn't mind +marrying that girl," he added casually. "What do you think?" + +Neville laughed: "Why don't you? She's the nicest girl I ever +knew--almost." + +"I'd ask her to marry me," said Cameron facetiously; "only I'm afraid +such a dazzling prospect would turn her head and completely spoil her." + +He spoke gaily and laughed loudly--almost boisterously. Neville glanced +at him with a feeling that Cameron was slightly overdoing it--rather +forcing the mirth without any particular reason. + +After a moment he said: "Sandy, you don't have to be a clown if you +don't want to be, you know." + +"Can't help it," said Cameron, reddening; "everybody expects it now. +When Ogilvy was here we played in a double ring to crowded houses. Every +seat on the veranda was taken; we turned 'em away, my boy. _What_ was it +you started to say about Stephanie?" + +"I didn't start to say anything about Stephanie." + +"Oh, I thought you were going to"--his voice died into an uncertain +grumble. Neville glanced at him again, thoughtfully. + +"You know, Sandy," he said, "that there's another side to you--which, +for some occult reason you seem to hide--even to be ashamed of." + +"Sure I'm ashamed to be a broker with all you highbrows lining out +homers for the girls while I have to sit on the bleachers and score 'em +up. If I try to make a hit with the ladies it's a bingle; and it's the +bench and the bush-league for muh--" + +"You great, overgrown kid! It's a pity people can't see you down town. +Everybody knows you're the cleverest thing south of Broad and Wall. Look +at all the boards, all the committees, all the directorates you're mixed +up with! Look at all the time you give freely to others--look at all +your charities, all your: civic activities, all--" + +"All the hell I raise!" said Cameron, very red. "Don't forget that, +Louis!" + +"You never did--that's the wonder and the eternal decency of you, +Cameron. You're a good citizen and a good man, and you do more for the +world than we painters ever could do! That's the real truth of it; and +why you so persistently try to represent yourself as a commonplace +something else is beyond me--and probably beyond Stephanie Swift," he +added carelessly. + +They whizzed along in silence for some time, and it was only when +Ashuelyn was in sight that Cameron suddenly turned and held out his +hand: + +"Thank you, Louis; you've said some very kind things." + +Neville shrugged: "I hear you are financing that New Idea Home. I tell +you that's a fine conception." + +But Cameron only looked modest. At heart he was a very shy man and he +deprecated any idea that he was doing anything unusual in giving most of +his time to affairs that paid dividends only in happiness and in the +consciousness of moral obligation fulfilled. + +The household was occupying the pergola as they arrived and sprang out +upon the clipped lawn. + +Neville kissed his mother tenderly, shook hands cordially with his +father, greeted Lily with a fraternal hug and Stephanie with a firm +grasp of both hands. + +"How perfectly beautiful it is here!" he exclaimed, looking out over the +green valley beyond--and unconsciously his gaze rested on the Estwich +hills, blue and hazy and soft as dimpled velvet. Out there, somewhere, +was Valerie; heart and pulse began to quicken. Suddenly he became aware +that his mother's eyes were on him, and he turned away toward the south +as though there was also something in that point of the compass to +interest him. + +Gordon Collis, following a hand-cart full of young trees wrapped in +burlap, passed across the lawn below and waved a greeting at Neville. + +"How are you, Louis!" he called out. "Don't you want to help us set +these hybrid catalpas?" + +"I'll be along by and by," he replied, and turned to the group under the +pergola who desired to know how it was in town--the first question +always asked by New Yorkers of anybody who has just arrived from that +holy spot. + +"It's not too warm," said Neville; "the Park is charming, most of the +houses on Fifth Avenue are closed--" + +"Have you chanced to pass through Tenth Street?" asked his father +solemnly. + +But Neville confessed that he had not set foot in those sanctified +precincts, and his father's personal interest in Manhattan Island ceased +immediately. + +They chatted inconsequentially for a while; then, in reply to a question +from Stephanie, he spoke of his picture, "A Bride," and, though it was +still unfinished, he showed them a photograph of it. + +[Illustration: "'It is very beautiful, Louis,' said his mother, with a +smile of pride."] + +The unmounted imprint passed from hand to hand amid various comments. + +"It is very beautiful, Louis," said his mother, with a smile of pride; +and even as she spoke the smile faded and her sad eyes rested on him +wistfully. + +"Is it a sacred picture?" asked his father, examining it through his +glasses without the slightest trace of interest. + +"It is an Annunciation, isn't it?" inquired Lily, calmly. But her heart +was failing her, for in the beauty of the exquisite, enraptured face, +she saw what might have been the very soul of Valerie West. + +His father, removing his spectacles, delivered himself of an opinion +concerning mysticism, and betrayed an illogical tendency to drift toward +the Concord School of Philosophy. However, there seemed to be +insufficient incentive; he glanced coldly toward Cameron and resumed +Herbert Spencer and his spectacles. + +"Mother, don't you want to stroll on the lawn a bit?" he asked +presently. "It looks very inviting to a city man's pavement-worn feet." + +She drew her light wool shawl around her shoulders and took her tall +son's arm. + +For a long while they strolled in silence, passed idly through the +garden where masses of peonies hung over the paths, and pansies, iris, +and forget-me-nots made the place fragrant. + +It was not until they came to the plank bridge where the meadow rivulet, +under its beds of cress and mint, threaded a shining way toward the +woods, that his mother said in a troubled voice: + +"You are not happy, Louis." + +"Why, mother--what an odd idea!" + +"Am I mistaken?" she asked, timidly. + +"Yes, indeed, you are. I am very happy." + +"Then," she said, "what is it that has changed you so?" + +[Illustration: "'You are not happy, Louis.'"] + +"Changed me?" + +"Yes, dear." + +"I am not changed, mother." + +"Do you think a mother can be mistaken in her only son? You are so +subdued, so serious. You are like men who have known sorrow.... What +sorrow have you ever known, Louis?" + +"None. No great one, mother. Perhaps, lately, I have +developed--recognised--become aware of the sombre part of life--become +sensitive to it--to unhappiness in others--and have cared more--" + +"You speak like a man who has suffered." + +"But I haven't, mother," he insisted. "Of course, every painter worries. +I did last winter--last winter--" He hesitated, conscious that last +winter--on the snowy threshold of the new year--sorrow and pain and +happiness and pity had, in an instant, assumed for him a significance +totally new. + +"Mother," he said slowly, "if I have changed it is only in a better +understanding of the world and those who live in it. I have cared very +little about people; I seem to have come to care more, lately. What they +did, what they thought, hoped, desired, endured, suffered, interested me +little except as it concerned my work. And somehow, since then, I am +becoming interested in people for their own sakes. It's a--new +sensation." + +He smiled and laid his hand over hers: + +"Do you know I never even appreciated what a good man Alexander Cameron +is until recently. Why, mother, that man is one of the most generous, +modest, kind, charitable, unselfish fellows in the world!" + +"His behaviour is sometimes a little extraordinary," said his +mother--"isn't it?" + +"Oh, that's all on the surface! He's full of boyish spirits. He dearly +loves a joke--but the greater part of that interminable funny business +is merely to mask the modesty of a man whose particular perversity is a +fear that people might discover how kind and how clever he really is!" + +They walked on in silence for a while, then his mother said: + +"Mr. Querida was here. Is he a friend of yours?" + +Neville hesitated: "I'll tell you, mother," he said, "I don't find +Querida personally very congenial. But I have no doubt he's an +exceedingly nice fellow. And he's far and away the best painter in +America.... When did he go back to town?" + +"Last week. I did not care for him." + +"You and father seldom do care for new acquaintances," he rejoined, +smiling. "Don't you think it is about time for you to emerge from your +shells and make up your minds that a few people have been born since you +retired?" + +"People have been born in China, too, but that scarcely interests your +father and me." + +"Let it interest you, mother. You have no idea how amusing new people +are. That's the way to keep young, too." + +"It is a little too late for us to think of youth--or to think as youth +thinks--even if it were desirable." + +"It _is_ desirable. Youth--which will be age to-morrow--may venture to +draw a little consideration in advance--" + +"My children interest me--and I give their youth my full consideration. +But I can scarcely be expected to find any further vital interest in +youth--and in the complexity of its modern views and ideas. You ask +impossibilities of two very old people." + +"I do not mean to. I ask only, then, that you and father take a vital +and intelligent interest in me. Will you, mother?" + +"Intelligent? What do you mean, Louis?" + +"I mean," he said, "that you might recognise my right to govern my own +conduct; that you might try to sympathise with views which are not your +own--with the ideas, ideals, desires, convictions which, if modern, are +none the less genuine--and are mine." + +There was a brief silence; then: + +"Louis, are you speaking with any thought of--that woman in your mind?" +she asked in a voice that quivered slightly. + +"Yes, mother." + +"I knew it," she said, under her breath; "I knew it was that--I knew +what had changed you--was changing you." + +"Have I altered for the worse?" + +"I don't know--I don't know, Louis!" She was leaning heavily on his +elbow now; he put one arm around her and they walked very slowly over +the fragrant grass. + +"First of all, mother, please don't call her, 'that woman.' Because she +is a very sweet, innocent, and blameless girl.... Will you let me tell +you a little about her?" + +His mother bent her head in silence; and for a long while he talked to +her of Valerie. + +The sun still hung high over the Estwich hills when he ended. His +mother, pale, silent, offered no comment until, in his trouble, he urged +her. Then she said: + +"Your father will never consent." + +"Let me talk to father. Will _you_ consent?" + +"I--Louis--it would break our hearts if--" + +"Not when you know her." + +"Lily knows her and is bitterly opposed to her--" + +"What!" he exclaimed, astounded. "You say that my sister knows Valerie +West?" + +"I--forgot," faltered his mother; "I ought not to have said anything." + +"Where did Lily meet her?" he asked, bewildered. + +"Don't ask me, Louis. I should not have spoken--" + +"Yes, you should have! It is my affair; it concerns me--and it concerns +Valerie--her future and mine--our happiness. Where did Lily meet her?" + +"You must ask that of Lily. I cannot and will not discuss it. I will say +only this: I have seen the--this Miss West. She is at present a guest at +the villa of a--countess--of whom neither your father nor I ever before +heard--and whom even Lily knows so slightly that she scarcely bows to +her. And yesterday, while motoring, we met them driving on the Estwich +road and your sister told us who they were." + +After a moment he said slowly: "So you have actually seen the girl I am +in love with?" + +"I saw--Miss West." + +"Can't you understand that I _am_ in love with her?" + +"Even if you are it is better for you to conquer your inclination--" + +"Why?" + +"Because all your life long you will regret such a marriage." + +"Why?" + +"Because nobody will care to receive a woman for whom you can make no +explanation--even if you are married to her." + +He kept his patience. + +"Will _you_ receive her, mother?" + +She closed her eyes, drew a quick, painful breath: "My son's +wife--whoever she may be--will meet with no discourtesy under my roof." + +"Is that the best you can offer us?" + +"Louis! Louis!--if it lay only with me--I would do what you wished--even +this--if it made you happy--" + +He took her in his arms and kissed her in silence. + +"You don't understand," she said,--"it is not I--it is the family--our +entire little world against her. It would be only an eternal, hopeless, +heart-breaking struggle for you, and for her;--pain for you--deep pain +and resentment and bitterness for those who did not--perhaps could +not--take your views of--" + +"I don't care, mother, as long as you and father and Lily stand by her. +And Valerie won't marry me unless you do. I didn't tell you that, but it +is the truth. And I'm fighting very hard to win her--harder than you +know--or will ever know. Don't embitter me; don't let me give up. +Because, if I do, it means desperation--and things which you never could +understand.... And _I_ want you to talk to father. Will you? And to +Lily, too. Its fairer to warn her that I have learned of her meeting +Valerie. Then I'll talk to them both and see what can be done.... And, +mother, I am very happy and very grateful and very proud that you are +going to stand by me--and by the loveliest girl in all the world." + +That night Lily came to his room. Her eyes were red, but there was fire +in them. She seated herself and surveyed her brother with ominous +self-possession. + +"Well, Lily," he said pleasantly, prepared to keep his temper at all +hazards. + +"Well, Louis, I understand from mother that you have some questions to +ask me." + +"No questions, little sister; only your sympathetic attention while I +tell you how matters stand with me." + +"You require too much!" she said shortly. + +"If I ask for your sympathy?" + +"Not if you ask it for yourself, Louis. But if you include that--" + +"Please, dear!" he interrupted, checking her with a slight gesture--for +an instant only; then she went on in a determined voice: + +"Louis, I might as well tell you at once that I have no sympathy for +her. I wrote to her, out of sheer kindness, for her own good--and she +replied so insolently that--that I am not yet perfectly recovered--" + +"What did you write?" + +Mrs. Collis remained disdainfully silent, but her eyes sparkled. + +"Won't you tell me," he asked, patiently, "what it was you wrote to +Valerie West?" + +"Yes, I'll tell you if you insist on knowing!--even if you do +misconstrue it! I wrote to her--for her own sake--and to avoid +ill-natured comment,--suggesting that she be seen less frequently with +you in public. I wrote as nicely, as kindly, as delicately as I knew +how. And her reply was a practical request that I mind my business!... +Which was vulgar and outrageous, considering that she had given me her +promise--" Mrs. Collis checked herself in her headlong and indignant +complaint; then she coloured painfully, but her mouth settled into +tight, uncompromising lines. + +"What promise had Valerie West made you?" he asked, resolutely subduing +his amazement and irritation. + +For a moment Mrs. Collis hesitated; then, realising that matters had +gone too far for concealment, she answered almost violently: + +"She promised me not to marry you,--if you must know! I can't help what +you think about it; I realised that you were infatuated--that you were +making a fatal and terrible mistake--ruining life for yourself and for +your family--and I went to her and told her so! I've done all I could to +save you. I suppose I have gained your enmity by doing it. She promised +me not to marry you--but she'll probably break her word. If you mean to +marry her you'll do so, no doubt. But, Louis, if you do, such a step +will sever all social relations between you and your family. Because I +will _not_ receive her! Nor will my friends--nor yours--nor father's and +mother's friends! And that settles it." + +He spoke with great care, hesitating, picking and choosing his words: + +"Is it--possible that you did--such a thing--as to write to Valerie +West--threatening her with my family's displeasure if she married me?" + +"I did not write her at first. The first time I went to see her. And I +told her kindly but plainly what I had to tell her! It was my duty to do +it and I didn't flinch." + +Lily was breathing fast; her eyes narrowed unpleasantly. + +He managed to master his astonishment and anger; but it was a heavy +draught on his reserve of self-discipline, good temper, and common sense +to pass over this thing that had been done to him and to concentrate +himself upon the main issue. When he was able to speak again, calmly and +without resentment, he said: + +"The first thing for us to do, as a family, is to eliminate all personal +bitterness from this discussion. There must be no question of our +affection for one another; no question but what we wish to do the best +by each other. I accept that as granted. If you took the step which you +did take it was because you really believed it necessary for my +happiness--" + +"I still believe it!" she insisted; and her lips became a thin, hard +line. + +"Then we won't discuss it. But I want to ask you one thing; have you +talked with mother about it?" + +"Yes--naturally." + +"Has she told you all that I told her this afternoon?" + +"I suppose so. It does not alter my opinion one particle," she replied, +her pretty head obstinately lowered. + +He said: "Valerie West will not marry me if my family continues hostile +to her." + +Lily slowly lifted her eyes: + +"Then will you tell me why she permits herself to be seen so constantly +with you? If she is not going to marry you what _is_ she going to do? +Does she care what people are saying about her?--and about you?" + +"No decent people are likely to say anything unpleasant about either of +us," he said, keeping a tight rein on himself--but the curb was biting +deeply now. "Mother will stand by me, Lily. Will you?" + +His sister's face reddened: "Louis," she said, "I am married; I have +children, friends, a certain position to maintain. You are unmarried, +careless of conventions, uninterested in the kind of life that I and my +friends have led, and will always lead. The life, the society, the +formalities, the conventional observances are all part of our lives, and +make for our happiness and self-respect; but they mean absolutely +nothing to you. And you propose to invade our respectable and +inoffensive seclusion with a conspicuous wife who has been a notorious +professional model; and you demand of your family that they receive her +as one of them! Louis, I ask you, is this fair to us?" + +He said very gravely: "You have met Valerie West. Do you really believe +that either the dignity or the morals of the family circle would suffer +by her introduction to it?" + +"I know nothing about her morals!" said his sister, excitedly. + +"Then why condemn them?" + +"I did not; I merely reminded you that she is a celebrated professional +model." + +"It is not necessary to remind me. My mother knows it and will stand by +her. Will you do less for your own brother?" + +"Louis! You are cruel, selfish, utterly heartless--" + +"I am trying to think of everybody in the family who is concerned; but, +when a man's in love he can't help thinking a little of the woman he +loves--especially if nobody else does." He turned his head and looked +out of the window. Stars were shining faintly in a luminous sky. His +face seemed to have grown old and gray and haggard: + +"I don't know what to do," he said, as though speaking to himself;--"I +don't know where to turn. She would marry me if you'd let her; she will +never marry me if my family is unkind to her--" + +"What _will_ she do, then?" asked Lily, coolly. + +For a moment he let her words pass, then, turned around. The expression +of his sister's brightly curious eyes perplexed him. + +"What do you mean?" he asked, disturbed. + +"What I say, Louis. I asked you what Miss West means to do if she does +not marry you? Discontinue her indiscreet intimacy with you?" + +"Why should she?" + +Lily said, sharply: "I would not have to put that question to a modest +girl." + +"I have to put it to _you_!" he retorted, beginning to lose his +self-command. "Why should Valerie West discontinue her friendship with +me because my family's stupid attitude toward her makes it impossible +for a generous and proud girl to marry me?" + +Lily, pale, infuriated, leaned forward in her chair. + +"Because," she retorted violently, "if that intimacy continues much +longer a stupid world and your stupid family will believe that the girl +is your mistress! But in that event, thank God, the infamy will rest +where it belongs--not on us!" + +A cold rage paralysed his speech; she saw its ghastly reflection on his +white and haggard face--saw him quiver under the shock; rose +involuntarily, terrified at the lengths to which passion had scourged +her: + +"Louis," she faltered--"I--I didn't mean that!--I was beside myself; +forgive me, please! Don't look like that; you are frightening me--" + +She caught his arm as he passed her, clung to it, pallid, fearful, +imploring,--"W-what are you going to do, Louis! Don't go, dear, please. +I'm sorry, I'm very, very humble. Won't you speak to me? I said too +much; I was wrong;--I--I will try to be different--try to reconcile +myself to--to what--you--wish--" + +He looked down at her where she hung to him, tearful face lifted to his: + +"I didn't know women could feel that way about another woman," he said, +in a dull voice. "There's no use--no use--" + +"But--but I love you dearly, Louis! I couldn't endure it to have +anything come between us--disrupt the family--" + +"Nothing will, Lily.... I must go now." + +"Don't you believe I love you?" + +He drew a deep, unconscious breath. + +"I suppose so. Different people express love differently. There's no use +in asking you to be different--" + +She said, piteously: "I'm trying. Don't you see I'm trying? Give me +time, Louis! Make allowances. You can't utterly change people in a few +hours." + +He gazed at her intently for a moment. + +"You mean that you are trying to be fair to--her?" + +"I--if you call it that;--yes! But a family can not adapt itself, +instantaneously, to such a cataclysm as threatens--I mean--I mean--oh, +Louis! Try to understand us and sympathise a little with us!" + +His arms closed around her shoulders: + +"Little sister, we both have the family temper--and beneath it, the +family instinct for cohesion. If we are also selfish it is not +individual but family selfishness. It is the family which has always +said to the world, '_Noli me tangere_!' while we, individually, are +really inclined to be kinder, more sympathetic, more curious about the +neighbours outside our gate. Let it be so now. Once inside the family, +what can harm Valerie?" + +"Dearest, dearest brother," she murmured, "you talk like a foolish man. +Women understand better. And if it is a part of your program that this +girl is to be accepted by an old-fashioned society, now almost obsolete, +but in which this family is merely a single superannuated unit, that +program can never be carried out." + +"I think you are mistaken," he said. + +"I know I am not. It is inevitable that if you marry this girl she will +be more or less ignored, isolated, humiliated, overlooked outside our +own little family circle. Even in that limited mob which the newspapers +call New York Society--in that modern, wealthy, hard-witted, +over-jewelled, self-sufficient league which is yet too eternally +uncertain of its own status to assume any authority or any +responsibility for a stranger without credentials,--it would not be +possible to make Valerie West acceptable in the slightest sense of the +word. Because she is too well known; her beauty is celebrated; she has +become famous. Her only chance there--or with us--would have been in her +absolute anonymity. Then lies _might_ have done the rest. But lying is +now useless in regard to her." + +"Perfectly," he said. "She would not permit it." + +In his vacant gaze there was something changed--a fixedness born of a +slow and hopeless enlightenment. + +"If that is the case, there is no chance," he said thoughtfully. "I had +not considered that aspect." + +"I had." + +He shook his head slightly, gazing through the window at the starry +lustre overhead. + +"I wouldn't care," he said, "if she would only marry me. If she'd do +that I'd never bother anybody--nor embarrass the family--" + +"Louis!" + +"I mean make any social demands on you.... And, as for the world--" He +slowly shook his head again: "We could make our own friends and our own +way--if she would only consent to do it. But she never will." + +"Do you mean to say she will not marry you if you ask her?" began Lily +incredulously. + +"Absolutely." + +"Why?" + +"For your sakes--yours, and mother's, and father's--and for mine." + +There was a long silence, then Lily said unsteadily: + +"There--there seems to be a certain--nobility--about her.... It is a +pity--a tragedy--that she is what she is!" + +"It is a tragedy that the world is what it is," he said. "Good night." + + * * * * * + +His father sent for him in the morning; Louis found him reading the +_Tribune_ in his room and sipping a bowl of hot milk and toast. + +[Illustration: "'What have you been saying to your mother?' he asked."] + +"What have you been saying to your mother?" he asked, looking up through +his gold-rimmed spectacles and munching toast. + +"Has she not told you, father?" + +"Yes, she has.... I think you had better make a trip around the world." + +"That would not alter matters." + +"I differ with you," observed his father, leisurely employing his +napkin. + +"There is no use considering it," said his son patiently. + +"Then what do you propose to do?" + +"There is nothing to do." + +"By that somewhat indefinite expression I suppose that you intend to +pursue a waiting policy?" + +"A waiting policy?" His son laughed, mirthlessly. "What am I to wait +for? If you all were kind to Valerie West she might, perhaps, consent to +marry me. But it seems that even our own family circle has not +sufficient authority to protect her from our friends' neglect and +humiliation.... + +"She warned me that it would be so, long ago. I did not believe it; I +could not comprehend it. But, somehow, Lily has made me believe it. And +so have you. I guess it must be true. And if that's all I have to offer +my wife, it's not enough to compensate her for her loss of freedom and +happiness and self-respect among those who really care for her." + +"Do you give me to understand that you renounce all intentions of +marrying this girl?" asked his father, breaking more toast into his bowl +of milk. + +"Yes," said his son, listlessly. + +"Thank God!" said his father; "come here, my son." + +They shook hands; the son's lifeless arm fell to his side and he stood +looking at the floor in silence. The father took a spoonful of hot milk +with satisfaction, and, after the younger man had left the room, he +resumed his newspaper. He was particularly interested in the "Sunshine +Column," which dispensed sweetness and light under a poetic caption too +beautiful to be true in a coldly humorous world. + + * * * * * + +That afternoon Gordon Collis said abruptly to Neville: + +"You look like the devil, Louis." + +"Do I?" + +"You certainly do." And, in a lower voice: "I guess I've heard what's +the matter. Don't worry. It's a thing about which nobody ever ought to +give anybody any advice--so I'll give you some. Marry whoever you damn +please. It'll be all the same after that oak I planted this morning is +half grown." + +"Gordon," he said, surprised, "I didn't suppose _you_ were liberal." + +"Liberal! Why, man alive! Do you think a fellow can live out of doors as +I have lived, and see germs sprout, and see mountain ranges decay, and +sit on a few glaciers, and swing a pick into a mother-lode--and _not_ be +liberal? Do you suppose ten-cent laws bother me when I'm up against the +blind laws that made the law-makers?--laws that made life itself before +Christ lived to conform to them?... I married where I loved. It chanced +that my marriage with your sister didn't clash with the sanctified order +of things in Manhattan town. But if your sister had been the maid who +dresses her, and I had loved her, I'd have married her all the same and +have gone about the pleasures and duties of procreation and conservation +exactly as I go about 'em now.... I wonder how much the Almighty was +thinking about Tenth Street when the first pair of anthropoids mated? +_Nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus_. If you love each other--_Noli +pugnare duobus._ ... And I'm going into the woods to look for ginseng. +Want to come?" + +Neville went. Cameron and Stephanie, equipped with buckskin gloves, a +fox terrier, and digging apparatus, joined them just where the slender +meadow brook entered the woods. + +"There are mosquitoes here!" exclaimed Cameron wrathfully. "All day and +every day I'm being stung down town, and I'm not going to stand for it +here!" + +Stephanie let him aid her to the top of a fallen log, glancing back once +or twice toward Neville, who was sauntering forward among the trees, +pretending to look for ginseng. + +"Do you notice how Louis has changed?" she said, keeping her balance on +the log. "I cannot bear to see him so thin and colourless." + +Cameron now entertained a lively suspicion how matters stood, and knew +that Stephanie also suspected; but he only said, carelessly: "It's +probably dissipation. You know what a terrible pace he's been going from +the cradle onward." + +She smiled quietly. "Yes, I know, Sandy. And I know, too, that you are +the only man who has been able to keep up that devilish pace with him." + +"I've led a horrible life," muttered Cameron darkly. + +Stephanie laughed; he gave her his hand as she stood balanced on the big +log; she laid her fingers in his confidently, looked into his honest +face, still laughing, then sprang lightly to the ground. + +"What a really good man you are!" she said tormentingly. + +"Oh, heaven! If you call me that I'm really done for!" + +"Done for?" she exclaimed in surprise. "How?" + +"Done for as far as you are concerned." + +"I? Why how, and with what am I concerned, Sandy? I don't understand +you." + +But he only turned red and muttered to himself and strolled about with +his hands in his pockets, kicking the dead leaves as though he expected +to find something astonishing under them. And Stephanie glanced at him +sideways once or twice, thoughtfully, curiously, but questioned him no +further. + +Gordon Collis pottered about in a neighbouring thicket; the fox terrier +was chasing chipmunks. As for Neville he had already sauntered out of +sight among the trees. + +Stephanie, seated on a dry and mossy stump, preoccupied with her own +ruminations, looked up absently as Cameron came up to her bearing floral +offerings. + +"Thank you, Sandy," she said, as he handed her a cluster of wild +blossoms. Then, fastening them to her waist, she glanced up +mischieviously: + +"How funny you are! You look and act like a little boy at a party +presenting his first offering to the eternal feminine." + +"It's my first offering," he said coolly. + +"Oh, Sandy! With _your_ devilish record!" + +"Do you know," he said, "that I'm thirty-two years old? And that you are +twenty-two? And that since you were twelve and I was twenty odd I've +been in love with you?" + +She looked at him in blank dismay for a moment, then forced a laugh: + +"Of course I know it, Sandy. It's the kind of love a girl cares most +about--" + +"It's really love," said Cameron, un-smiling--"the kind I'm afraid she +doesn't care very much about." + +[Illustration: "'If you'll place a lump of sugar on my nose, and say +"when," I'll perform.'"] + +She hesitated, then met his gaze with a distressed smile: + +"You don't really mean that, Sandy--" + +"I've meant it for ten years.... But it doesn't matter--" + +"Sandy!... It _does_ matter--if--" + +"No, it doesn't.... Come on and kick these leaves about and we'll make a +million dollars in ginseng!" + +But she remained seated, mute, her gaze a sorrowful interrogation which +at length he could not pretend to ignore: + +"Stephanie child, don't worry. I'm not worrying. I'm glad I told you.... +Now just let me go on as I've always gone--" + +"How _can_ we?" + +"Easily. Shut your eyes, breathe deeply, lifting both arms and lowering +them while counting ten in German--" + +"Sandy, don't be so foolish at--such a time." + +"Such a time? What time is it?" pretending to consult his watch with +great anxiety. Then a quick smile of relief spread over his features: +"It's all right, Stephanie; it's my hour to be foolish. If you'll place +a lump of sugar on my nose, and say 'when,' I'll perform." + +There was no answering smile on her face. + +"It's curious," she said, "how a girl can make a muddle of life without +even trying." + +"But just think what you might have done if you'd tried! You've much to +be thankful for," he said gravely. + +She raised her eyes, considering him: + +"I wonder," she said, under her breath. + +"Sure thing, Stephanie. You might have done worse; you might have +married me. Throw away those flowers--there's a good girl--and forget +what they meant." + +Slowly, deliberately, blossom by blossom she drew them from her girdle +and laid them on the moss beside her. + +"There's one left," he said cheerfully. "Raus mit it!" + +But she made no motion to detach it; appeared to be unconscious of it +and of him as she turned her face and looked silently toward the place +where Neville had disappeared. + +An hour or two later, when Gordon was ready to return to the house, he +shouted for Neville. Cameron also lifted up his voice in a series of +prolonged howls. + +But Neville was far beyond earshot, and still walking through woods and +valleys and pleasant meadows in the general direction of the Estwich +hills. + +Somewhere there amid that soft rolling expanse of green was the woman +who would never marry him. And it was now, at last, he decided that he +would never take her on any other terms even though they were her own +terms; that he must give her up to chance again as innocent as chance +had given her into his brief keeping. No, she would never accept his +terms and face the world with him as his wife. And so he must give her +up. For he believed that, in him, the instinct of moral law had been too +carefully developed ever to be deliberately ignored; he still believed +marriage to be not only a rational social procedure, not only a human +compromise and a divine convention, but the only possible sanctuary +where love might dwell, and remain, and permanently endure inviolate. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The Countess Hélène had taken her maid and gone to New York on business +for a day or two, leaving Valerie to amuse herself until her return. + +Which was no hardship for Valerie. The only difficulty lay in there +being too much to do. + +In the first place she had become excellent friends with the farmer and +had persuaded him to delegate to her a number of his duties. She had to +collect the newly laid eggs, hunt up stolen nests, inspect and feed the +clucking, quacking, gobbling personnel of the barnyard which came +crowding to her clear-voiced call. + +As for the cattle, she was rather timid about venturing to milk since +the Ogilvy's painful and undignified début as an amateur Strephon. + +However, she assisted at pasture call accompanied by a fat and lazy +collie; and she petted and salted the herd to her heart's content. + +Then there were books and magazines to be read, leisurely; and hammocks +to lie in, while her eyes watched the sky where clouds sailed in snowy +squadrons out of the breezy west. + +And what happier company for her than her thoughts--what tenderer +companionship than her memories; what more absorbing fellowship than the +little busy intimate reflections that came swarming around her, more +exciting, more impetuous, more exquisitely disturbing as the hurrying, +sunny hours sped away and the first day of June drew nigh? + +She spent hours alone on the hill behind the house, lying full length in +the fragrant, wild grasses, looking across a green and sunlit world +toward Ashuelyn. + +[Illustration: "And what happier company for her than her thoughts--what +tenderer companionship than her memories?"] + +She had told him not to attempt to come to Estwich; and, though she knew +she had told him wisely, often and often there on her breezy hilltop she +wished that she hadn't--wished that he would disregard her +request--hoped he would--lay there, a dry grass stem between her lips, +thinking how it would be if, suddenly, down there by--well, say down by +that big oak, for example, a figure should stroll into view along the +sheep-path.... And at first--just to prolong the tension--perhaps she +wouldn't recognise him--just for a moment. Then, suddenly-- + +But she never got beyond that first blissful instant of recognition--the +expression of his face--his quick spring forward--and she, amazed, +rising to her feet and hastening forward to meet him. For she never +pictured herself as standing still to await the man she loved. + +When Hélène left, Valerie had the place to herself; and, without any +disloyalty to the little countess, she experienced a new pleasure in the +liberty of an indolence which exacted nothing of her. + +She prowled around the library, luxuriously, dipping into inviting +volumes; she strolled at hazard from veranda to garden, from garden to +lawn, from lawn to farmyard. + +About luncheon time she arrived at the house with her arms full of +scented peonies, and spent a long while selecting the receptacles for +them. + +Luncheon was a deliciously lazy affair at which she felt at liberty to +take her own time; and she did so, scanning the morning paper, which had +just been delivered; making several bites of every cherry and +strawberry, and being good to the three cats with asparagus ends and a +saucer of chicken bouillon. + +Later, reclining in the hammock, she mended a pair of brier-torn +stockings; and when that thrifty and praiseworthy task was finished, +she lay back and thought of Neville. + +[Illustration: "She prowled around the library, luxuriously, dipping +into inviting volumes"] + +But at what moment in any day was she ever entirely unconscious of him? +Besides, she could always think of him better--summon him +nearer--visualise him more clearly, when she was afield, the blue sky +above her, the green earth under foot, and companioned only by memory. + +So she went to her room, put on her stout little shoes and her walking +skirt; braided her hair and made of it a soft, light, lustrous turban; +and taking her dog-whip, ran down stairs. + +The fat old collie came wagging up to the whistle, capered clumsily as +in duty bound; but before she had entirely traversed the chestnut woods +he basely deserted her and waddled back to the kitchen door where a +thoughtful cook and a succulent bone were combinations not unknown. + +Valerie missed him presently, and whistled; but the fat sybarite, if +within earshot, paid no attention; and she was left to swing her +dog-whip and stroll on alone. + +Her direction lay along the most inviting by-roads and paths; and she +let chance direct her feet through this friendly, sunny land where one +little hill was as green as another, and one little brook as clear and +musical as another, and the dainty, ferny patches of woodlands resembled +one another. + +It was a delight to scramble over stone walls; she adored lying flat and +wriggling under murderous barbed-wire, feeling the weeds brush her face. +When a brook was a little too wide to jump, it was ecstasy to attempt +it. She got both shoes wet and loved it. Brambles plucked boldly at her +skirt; wild forest blossoms timidly summoned her aside to kneel and +touch them, but to let them live; squirrels threatened her and rushed +madly up and down trees defying her; a redstart in vermilion and black, +fussed about her where she sat, closing and spreading its ornamental +tail for somebody's benefit--perhaps for hers. + +[Illustration: "'Miss West!' he exclaimed. 'How on earth did you ever +find your way into my woods?'"] + +She was not tired; she did not suppose that she had wandered very far, +but, glancing at her watch, she was surprised to find how late it was. +And she decided to return. + +After she had been deciding to return for about an hour it annoyed her +to find that she could not get clear of the woods. It seemed +preposterous; the woods could not be very extensive. As for being +actually lost it seemed too absurd. Life is largely composed of +absurdities. + +There was one direction which she had not tried, and it lay along a +bridle path, but whether north or south or east or west she was utterly +unable to determine. She felt quite certain that Estwich could not lie +either way along that bridle-path which stretched almost a straight, +dark way under the trees as far as she could see. + +Vexed, yet amused, at her own stupid plight, she was standing in the +road, trying to make up her mind to try it, when, far down the vista, a +horseman appeared, coming on at a leisurely canter; and with a sigh of +relief she saw her troubles already at an end. + +He drew bridle abreast of her, stared, sprang from his saddle and, cap +in hand, came up to her holding out his hand: + +"Miss West!" he exclaimed. "How on earth did you ever find your way into +my woods?" + +"I don't know, Mr. Cardemon," she said, thankful to encounter even him +in her dilemma. "I must have walked a great deal farther than I meant +to." + +"You've walked at least five miles if you came by road; and nobody knows +how far if you came across country," he said, staring at her out of his +slightly prominent eyes. + +"I did come across country. And if you will be kind enough to start me +toward home--" + +"You mean to _walk_ back!" + +"Of course I do." + +"I won't permit it!" he exclaimed. "It's only a little way across to the +house and we'll just step over and I'll have a car brought around for +you--" + +"Thank you, I am not tired--" + +"You are on my land, therefore you are my guest," he insisted. "I am not +going to let you go back on foot--" + +"Mr. Cardemon, if you please, I very much prefer to return in my own +way." + +"What an obstinate girl you are!" he said, with his uncertain laugh, +which never came until he had prejudged its effect on the situation; but +the puffy flesh above his white riding-stock behind his lobeless ears +reddened, and a slow, thickish colour came into his face and remained +under the thick skin. + +"If you won't let me send you back in a car," he said, "you at least +won't refuse a glass of sherry and a biscuit--" + +"Thank you--I haven't time--" + +"My housekeeper, Mrs. Munn, is on the premises," he persisted. + +"You are very kind, but--" + +"Oh, don't turn a man down so mercilessly, Miss West!" + +"You are exceedingly amiable," she repeated, "but I must go at once." + +He switched the weeds with his crop, then the uncertain laugh came: + +"I'll show you a short cut," he said. His prominent eyes rested on her, +passed over her from head to foot, then wandered askance over the young +woodland. + +"In which direction lies Estwich?" she asked, lifting her gaze to meet +his eyes; but they avoided her as he answered, busy fumbling with a +girth that required no adjustment: + +"Over yonder,"--making a slight movement with his head. Then taking his +horse by the head he said heartily: + +"Awfully sorry you won't accept my hospitality; but if you won't you +won't, and we'll try to find a short cut." + +He led his horse out of the path straight ahead through the woods, and +she walked beside him. + +"Of course you know the way, Mr. Cardemon?" she said pleasantly. + +"I ought to--unless the undergrowth has changed the looks of things +since I've been through." + +"How long is it since you've been through?" + +"Oh, I can't just recollect," he said carelessly. "I guess it will be +all right." + +For a while they walked steadily forward among the trees; he talking to +her with a frank and detached amiability, asking about the people at +Estwich, interested to hear that the small house-party had +disintegrated, surprised to learn that the countess had gone to town. + +"Are you entirely alone in the house?" he asked; and his eyes seemed to +protrude a little more than usual. + +"Entirely," she said carelessly; "except for Binns and his wife and the +servants." + +"Why didn't you 'phone a fellow to stop over to lunch?" he asked, +suddenly assuming a jovial manner which their acquaintance did not +warrant. "We country folk don't stand on ceremony you know." + +"I did not know it," she said quietly. + +His bold gaze rested on her again; again the uncertain laugh followed: + +"If you'd ask me to dine with you to-night I'd take it as a charming +concession to our native informality. What do you say, Miss West?" + +She forced a smile, making a sign of negation with her head, but he +began to press her until his importunities and his short, abrupt +laughter embarrassed her. + +"I couldn't ask anybody without permission from my hostess," she said, +striving to maintain the light, careless tone which his changing manner +toward her made more difficult for her. + +"Oh, come, Miss West!" he said in a loud humorous voice; "don't pass me +the prunes and prisms but be a good little sport and let a fellow come +over to see you! You never did give me half a chance to know you, but +you're hands across the table with that Ogilvy artist and José +Querida--" + +"I've known them rather longer than I have you, Mr. Cardemon." + +"That's my handicap! I'm not squealing. All I want is to start in the +race--" + +"What race?" she asked coolly, turning on him a level gaze that, in +spite of her, she could not maintain under the stare with which he +returned it. And again the slight uneasiness crept over her and +involuntarily she looked around her at the woods. + +"How far is it now?" she inquired. + +"Are you tired?" + +"No. But I'm anxious to get back. Could you tell me how near to some +road we are?" + +He halted and looked around; she watched him anxiously as he tossed his +bridle over his horse's neck and walked forward into a little glade +where the late rays of the sun struck ruddy and warm on the dry grass. + +"That's singular," he said as she went forward into the open where he +stood; "I don't seem to remember this place." + +"But you know about where we are, don't you?" she asked, resolutely +suppressing the growing uneasiness and anxiety. + +"Well--I am not perfectly certain." He kept his eyes off her while he +spoke; but when she also turned and gazed helplessly at the woods +encircling her, his glance stole toward her. + +"You're not scared, are you?" he asked, and then laughed abruptly. + +"Not in the slightest." + +"Sure! You're a perfectly good sport.... I'll tell you--I'll leave my +horse for one of my men to hunt up later, and we'll start off together +on a good old-fashioned hike! Are you game?" + +"Yes--if I only knew--if you were perfectly sure how to get to the edge +of the woods. I don't see how you _can_ be lost in your own woods--" + +"I don't believe I am!" he said, laughing violently. "The Estwich road +_must_ be over in that direction. Come ahead, Miss West; the birds can +cover us up if worst comes to worst!" + +She went with him, entering the thicker growth with a quick, vigorous +little stride as though energy and rapidity of motion could subdue the +misgiving that threatened to frighten her sooner or later. + +Over logs, boulders, gulleys, she swung forward, he supporting her from +time to time in spite of her hasty assurance that she did not require +aid. + +Once, before she could prevent it, he grasped her and fairly swung her +across a gulley; and again, as she gathered herself to jump, his +powerful arm slipped around her body and he lowered her to the moss +below, leaving her with red cheeks and a rapid heart to climb the +laurel-choked ravine beside him. + +It was breathless work; again and again, before she could prevent it, he +forced his assistance on her; and in the abrupt, almost rough contact +there was something that began at last to terrify her--weaken her--so +that, at the top of the slope, she caught breathless at a tree and +leaned against the trunk for a moment, closing her eyes. + +"You poor little girl," he breathed close to her ear; and as her +startled eyes flew open, he drew her into his arms. + +For a second his congested face and prominent, pale eyes swam before +her; then with a convulsive gasp she wrenched herself partly free and +strained away from his grasp, panting. + +"Let me go, Mr. Cardemon!" + +"Look here, Valerie, you know I'm crazy about you--" + +"Will you let me go?" + +"Oh, come, little girl, I know who you are, all right! Be a good little +sport and--" + +"Let me go," she whispered between her teeth. Then his red, perspiring +features--the prominent eyes and loose mouth drew nearer--nearer--and +she struck blindly at the face with her dog-whip--twice with the lash +and once with the stag-horn handle. And the next instant she was +running. + +He caught her at the foot of the slope; she saw blood on his cheek and +puffy welts striping his distorted features, strove to strike him again, +but felt her arm powerless in his grasp. + +"Are you mad!" she gasped. + +"Mad about _you_! For God's sake listen to me, Valerie! Batter me, tear +me to pieces--and I won't care, if you'll listen to me a moment--" + +She struggled silently, fiercely, to use her whip, to wrench herself +free. + +"I tell you I love you!" he said; "I'd go through hell for you. You've +got to listen--you've got to _know_--" + +"You coward!" she sobbed. + +"I don't care what you say to me if you'll listen a moment--" + +"As Rita Tevis listened to you!" she said, white to the lips--"you +murderer of souls!" And, as his grasp relaxed for a second, she tore her +arm free, sprang forward and slashed him across the mouth with the lash. + +Behind her she heard his sharp cry of pain, heard him staggering about +in the underbrush. Terror winged her feet and she fairly flew along the +open ridge and down through the dead leaves across a soft, green, marshy +hollow, hearing him somewhere in the woods behind her, coming on at a +heavy run. + +For a long time she ran; and suddenly collapsed, falling in a huddled +desperate heap, her slender hands catching at her throat. + +At the foot of the hill she saw him striding hither and thither, +examining the soft forest soil or halting to listen--then as though +scourged into action, running aimlessly toward where she lay, casting +about on every side like a burly dog at fault. + +Once, when he stood not very far away, and she had hidden her face in +her arms, trembling like a doomed thing--she heard him call to +her--heard the cry burst from him as though in agony: + +"Valerie, don't be afraid! I was crazy to touch you;--I'll let you cut +me to pieces if you'll only answer me." + +And again he shouted, in a voice made thin by fright: "For God's sake, +Valerie, think of _me_ for a moment. Don't run off like that and let +people know what's happened to you!" + +Then, in a moment, his heavy, hurried tread resounded; and he must have +run very near to where she crouched, because she could hear him +whimpering in his fear; but he ran on past where she lay, calling to her +at intervals, until his frightened voice sounded at a distance and she +could scarcely hear the rustle of the dead leaves under his hurrying +tread. + +Even then terror held her chained, breathing fast like a wounded thing, +eyes bright with the insanity of her fear. She lay flat in the leaves, +not stirring. + +The last red sunbeams slanted through the woods, painting tree trunks +crimson and running in fiery furrows through, the dead leaves; the sky +faded to rose-colour, to mauve; faintly a star shone. + +For a long time now nothing had stirred in the woodland silence. And, as +the star glimmered brighter through the branches, she shivered, moved, +lay listening, then crawled a little way. Every sound that she made was +a terror to her, every heart beat seemed to burst the silence. + +It was dusk when she crept out at last into a stony road, dragging her +limbs; a fine mist had settled over the fields; the air grew keener. +Somewhere in the darkness cow-bells tinkled; overhead, through the damp +sheet of fog, the veiled stars were still shining. + +Her senses were not perfectly clear; she remembered falling once or +twice--remembered seeing the granite posts and iron gates of a drive, +and that lighted windows were shining dimly somewhere beyond. And she +crept toward them, still stupid with exhaustion and fright. Then she was +aware of people, dim shapes in the darkness--of a dog barking--of +voices, a quick movement in the dusk--of a woman's startled exclamation. + +Suddenly she heard Neville's voice--and a door opened, flooding her with +yellow light where she stood swaying, dazed, deathly pale. + +"Louis!" she said. + +He sprang to her, caught her in his arms + +"Good God! What is the matter?" + +She rested against him, her eyes listlessly watching the people swiftly +gathering in the dazzling light. + +"Where in the world--how did you get here!--where have you been--" His +stammered words made him incoherent as he caught sight of the mud and +dust on her torn waist and skirt. + +Her eyes had closed a moment; they opened now with an effort. Once more +she looked blindly at the people clustering around her--recognised his +sister and Stephanie--divined that it was his mother who stood gazing at +her in pallid consternation--summoned every atom of her courage to spare +him the insult which a man's world had offered to her--found strength to +ignore it so that no shadow of the outrage should fall through her upon +him or upon those nearest to him. + +"I lost my way," she said. Her white lips tried to smile; she strove to +stand upright, alone; caught mechanically at his arm, the fixed smile +still stamped on her lips. "I am sorry to--disturb anybody.... I was +lost--and it grew dark.... I don't know my way--very well--" + +She turned, conscious of some one's arm supporting her; and Stephanie +said, in a low, pitiful voice: + +"Lean back on me. You must let me help you to the house." + +"Thank you--I won't go in.... If I could rest--a moment--perhaps +somebody--Mr. Neville--would help me to get home again--" + +[Illustration: "'Dearest,' he whispered, putting his arm around her, +'you must come with us'"] + +"Come with me, Miss West," whispered Stephanie, "I _want_ you. Will you +come to my room with me for a little while?" + +She looked into Stephanie's eyes, turned and looked at Neville. + +"Dearest," he whispered, putting his arm around her, "you must come with +us." + +She nodded and moved forward, steadily, between them both, and entered +the house, head-carried high on the slender neck, but her face was +colourless under the dark masses of her loosened hair, and she swayed at +the foot of the stairs, reaching out blindly at nothing--falling +forward. + +It was a dead weight that Neville bore into Stephanie's room. When his +mother turned him out and closed the door behind him he stood stupidly +about until his sister, who had gone into the room, opened the door and +bade him telephone for Dr. Ogilvy. + +"What has happened to her?" he asked, as though dazed. + +"I don't know. I think you'd better tell Quinn to bring around the car +and go for Dr. Ogilvy yourself." + +It was a swift rush to Dartford through the night; bareheaded he bent +forward beside the chauffeur, teeth set, every nerve tense and straining +as though his very will power was driving the machine forward. Then +there came a maddening slowing down through Dartford streets, a +nerve-racking delay until Sam Ogilvy's giant brother had stowed away +himself and his satchel in the tonneau; then slow speed to the town +limits; a swift hurling forward into space that whirled blackly around +them as the great acetylenes split the darkness and chaos roared in +their ears. + +Under the lighted windows the big doctor scrambled out and stamped +upstairs; and Neville waited on the landing. + +His father appeared below, looking up at him, and started to say +something; but apparently changed his mind and went back into the living +room, rattling his evening paper and coughing. + +Cameron passed through the hallway, looked at him, but let him alone. + +After a while the door opened and Lily came out. + +"I'm not needed," she said; "your mother and Stephanie have taken +charge." + +"Is she going to be very ill?" + +"Billy Ogilvy hasn't said anything yet." + +"Is she conscious?" + +"Yes, she is now." + +"Has she said anything more?" + +"No." + +Lily stood silent a moment, gazing absently down at the lighted hall +below, then she looked at her brother as though she, too, were about to +speak, but, like her father, she reconsidered the impulse, and went away +toward the nursery. + +Later his mother opened the door very softly, let herself and Stephanie +out, and stood looking at him, one finger across her lips, while +Stephanie hurried away downstairs. + +"She's asleep, Louis. Don't raise your voice--" as he stepped quickly +toward her. + +"Is it anything serious?" he asked in a low voice. + +"I don't know what Dr. Ogilvy thinks. He is coming out in a moment...." +She placed one hand on her son's shoulder, reddening a trifle. "I've +told William Ogilvy that she is a friend of--the family. He may have +heard Sam talking about her when he was here last. So I thought it +safer." + +Neville brought a chair for his mother, but she shook her head, +cautioning silence, and went noiselessly downstairs. + +[Illustration: "'Well, Louis, what do you know about this?'"] + +Half an hour later Dr. Ogilvy emerged, saw Neville--walked up and +inspected him, curiously. + +"Well, Louis, what do you know about this?" he asked, buttoning his big +thick rain-coat to the throat. + +"Absolutely nothing, Billy, except that Miss West, who is a guest of +the Countess d'Enver at Estwich, lost her way in the woods. How is she +now?" + +"All right," said the doctor, dryly. + +"Is she conscious?" + +"Perfectly." + +"Awake?" + +"Yes. She won't be--long." + +"Did she talk to you?" + +"A little." + +"What _is_ the matter?" + +"Fright. And I'm wondering whether merely being lost in the woods is +enough to have terrified a girl like that? Because, apparently, she is +as superb a specimen of healthy womanhood as this world manufactures +once in a hundred years. How well do you know her?" + +"We are very close friends." + +"H'm. Did you suppose she was the kind of woman to be frightened at +merely being lost in a civilised country?" + +"No. She has more courage--of all kinds--than most women." + +"Because," said the big doctor thoughtfully, "while she was unconscious +it took me ten minutes to pry open her fingers and disengage a rather +heavy dog-whip from her clutch.... And there was some evidences of blood +on the lash and on the bone handle." + +"What!" exclaimed Neville, amazed. + +The doctor shrugged: "I don't know of any fierce and vicious dogs +between here and Estwich, either," he mused. + +"No, Cardemon keeps none. And its mostly his estate." + +"Oh ... Any--h'm!--vicious _men_--in his employment?" + +"My God!" whispered Neville, "what do you mean, Billy?" + +"Finger imprints--black and blue--on both arms. Didn't Miss West say +anything that might enlighten _you_?" + +"No ... She only said she had been lost.... Wait a moment; I'm trying to +think of the men Cardemon employs--" + +He was ashy white and trembling, and the doctor laid a steadying hand on +his arm. + +"Hold on, Louis," he said sharply, "it was no _worse_ than a fright. _Do +you understand_?... And do you understand, too, that an innocent and +sensitive and modest girl would rather die than have such a thing made +public through your well-meant activity? So there's nothing for anybody +to do--yet." + +Neville could scarcely speak. + +"Do you mean--she was attacked by some--man!" + +"It looks like it. And--you'd better keep it from your family--because +_she_ did. She's game to the core--that little girl." + +"But she--she'll tell me!" stammered Neville--she's _got_ to tell me--" + +"She won't if she can help it. Would it aid her any if you found out who +it was and killed him?--ran for a gun and did a little murdering some +pleasant morning--just to show your chivalrous consideration and +devotion to her?" + +"Are you asking me to let a beast like that go unpunished?" demanded +Neville violently. + +"Oh, use your brains, Louis. He frightened her and she slashed him well +for it. And, womanlike--after there was no more danger and no more +necessity for pluck--she got scared and ran; and the farther she ran the +more scared she became. Look here, Louis; look at me--squarely." He laid +both ponderous hands on Neville's shoulders: + +"Sam has told me all about you and Miss West--and I can guess how your +family takes it. Can't you see why she had the pluck to remain silent +about this thing? It was because she saw in it the brutal contempt of +the world toward a woman who stood in that world alone, unsupported, +unprotected. And she would not have you and your family know how lightly +the world held the woman whom you love and wish to marry--not for her +own sake alone--but for the sake of your family's pride--and yours." + +His hands dropped from Neville's shoulders; he stood considering him for +a moment in silence. + +"I've told _you_ because, if you are the man I think you are, you ought +to know the facts. Forcing her to the humiliation of telling you will +not help matters; filling this pup full of lead means an agony of +endless publicity and shame for her, for your family, and for you.... +He'll never dare remain in the same county with her after this. He's +probably skedaddled by this time anyway." ... Dr. Ogilvy looked narrowly +at Neville. "Are you pretty sane, now?" + +"Yes." + +"You realise that gun-play is no good in this matter?" + +"Y-yes." + +"And you really are going to consider Miss West before your own natural +but very primitive desire to do murder?" + +Neville nodded. + +"Knowing," added the doctor, "that the unspeakable cur who affronted her +has probably taken to his heels?" + +Neville, pale and silent, raised his eyes: + +"Do you suspect anybody?" + +"I don't know," said the doctor carelessly;--"I'll just step over to the +telephone and make an inquiry of Penrhyn Cardemon--" + +He walked to the end of the big hall, unhooked the receiver, asked for +Cardemon's house, got it. + +Neville heard him say: + +"This is Dr. Ogilvy. Is that you, Gelett? Isn't your master at home?" + + * * * * * + +"What? Had to catch a train?" + + * * * * * + +"Oh! A sudden matter of business." + + * * * * * + +"I see. He's had a cable calling him to London. How long will he be +away, Gelett?" + + * * * * * + +"Oh, I see. You don't know. Very well. I only called up because I +understood he required medical attention." + + * * * * * + +"Yes--I understood he'd been hurt about the head and face, but I didn't +know he had received such a--battering." + + * * * * * + +"You say that his horse threw him in the big beech-woods? Was he really +very much cut up?" + + * * * * * + +"Pretty roughly handled, eh! All right. When you communicate with him +tell him that Dr. Ogilvy and Mr. Neville, Jr., were greatly interested +to know how badly he was injured. Do you understand? Well, don't forget. +And you may tell him, Gelett, that as long as the scars remain, he'd +better remain, too. Get it straight, Gelett; tell him it's my medical +advice to remain away as long as he can--and a little longer. This +climate is no good for him. Good-bye." + +He turned from the telephone and sauntered toward Neville, who regarded +him with a fixed stare. + +"You see," he remarked with a shrug; and drew from his pocket a slightly +twisted scarf pin--a big horse-shoe set with sapphires and diamonds--the +kind of pin some kinds of men use in their riding-stocks. + +"I've often seen him wearing it," he said carelessly. "Curious how it +could have become twisted and entangled in Miss West's lace waist." + +He held out the pin, turning it over reflectively as the facets of the +gems caught and flashed back the light from the hall brackets. + +"I'll drop it into the poor-box I think," he mused. "Cardemon will +remain away so long that this pin will be entirely out of fashion when +he returns." + +After a few moments Neville drew a long, deep breath, and his clenched +hands relaxed. + +"Sure," commented the burly doctor. "That's right--feeling better--rush +of common sense to the head. Well, I've got to go." + +"Will you be here in the morning?" + +"I think not. She'll be all right. If she isn't, send over for me." + +"You don't think that the shock--the exhaustion--" + +"Naw," said the big doctor with good-natured contempt; "she's going to +be all right in the morning.... She's a lovely creature, isn't she? Sam +said so. Sam has an eye for beauty. But, by jinks! I was scarcely +prepared for such physical perfection--h'm!--or such fine and nice +discrimination--or for such pluck.... God knows what people's families +want these days. If the world mated properly our best families would be +extinct in another generation.... You're one of 'em; you'd better get +diligent before the world wakes up with a rush of common sense to its +doddering old head." He gave him both hands, warmly, cordially: +"Good-bye, Louis." + +Neville said: "I want you to know that I'd marry her to-morrow if she'd +have me, Billy." + +The doctor lifted his eyebrows. + +"Won't she?" + +"No." + +"Then probably you're not up to sample. A girl like that is no fool. +She'll require a lot in a man. However, you're young; and you may make +good yet." + +"You don't understand, Billy--" + +"Yes, I do. She wears a dinky miniature of you against her naked heart. +Yes, I guess I understand.... And I guess she's that kind of a girl all +unselfishness and innocence, and generous perversity and--quixotic +love.... It's too bad, Louis. I guess you're up against it for fair." + +He surveyed the younger man, shook his head: + +"They can't stand for her, can they?" + +"No." + +"And she won't stand for snaking you out of the fold. That's it, I +fancy?" + +"Yes." + +"Too bad--too bad. She's a fine woman--a very fine little woman. That's +the kind a man ought to marry and bother the Almighty with gratitude all +the rest of his life. Well--well! Your family is your own after all; and +I live in Dartford, thank God!--not on lower Fifth Avenue or Tenth +Street." + +He started away, halted, came back: + +"Couldn't you run away with her?" he asked anxiously. + +"She won't," replied Neville, unsmiling. + +"I mean, violently. But she's too heavy to carry, I fancy--and I'll bet +she's got the vigour of little old Diana herself. No--you couldn't do +the Sabine act with her--only a club and the cave-man's gentle +persuasion would help either of you.... Well--well, if they see her at +breakfast it may help some. You know a woman makes or breaks herself at +breakfast. That's why the majority of woman take it abed. I'm serious, +Louis; no man can stand 'em--the majority." + +Once more he started away, hesitated, came back. + +"Who's this Countess that Sam is so crazy about?" + +"A sweet little woman, well-bred, and very genuine and sincere." + +"Never heard of her in Dartford," muttered the doctor. + +Neville laughed grimly: + +"Billy, Tenth Street and lower Fifth Avenue and Greenwich Village and +Chelsea and Stuyvesant Square--and Syringa Avenue, Dartford, are all +about alike. Bird Centre is just as stupid as Manhattan; and there never +was and never will be a republic and a democracy in any country on the +face of this snob-cursed globe." + +The doctor, very red, stared at him. + +"By jinks!" he said, "I guess I'm one after all. Now, who in hell would +suspect that!--after all the advice I've given you!" + +"It was another fellow's family, that's all," said Neville wearily. +"Theories work or they don't; only few care to try them on themselves or +their own families--particularly when they devoutly believe in them." + +"Gad! That's a stinger! You've got me going all right," said the doctor, +wincing, "and you're perfectly correct. Here I've been practically +counselling you to marry where your inclination led you, and let the +rest go to blazes; and when it's a question of Sam doing something +similar, I retire hastily across the river and establish a residence in +Missouri. What a rotten, custom-ridden bunch of snippy-snappy-snobbery +we are after all!... All the same--who _is_ the Countess?" + +Neville didn't know much about her. + +"Sam's such an ass," said his brother, "and it isn't all snobbery on my +part." + +"The safest thing to do," said Neville bitterly, "is to let a man in +love alone." + +"Right. Foolish--damned foolish--but right! There is no greater ass than +a wise one. Those who don't know anything at all are the better +asses--and the happier." + +And he went away down the stairs, muttering and gesticulating. + +Mrs. Neville came to the door as he opened it to go out. They talked in +low voices for a few moments, then the doctor went out and Mrs. Neville +called to Stephanie. + +The girl came from the lighted drawing-room, and, together, the two +women ascended the stairs. + +Stephanie smiled and nodded to Neville, then continued on along the +hall; but his mother stopped to speak to him. + +"Go and sit with your father a little while," she said. "And don't be +impatient with him, dear. He is an old man--a product of a different age +and a simpler civilisation--perhaps a narrower one. Be patient and +gentle with him. He really is fond of you and proud of you." + +"Very well, mother.... Is anybody going to sit up with Valerie?" + +"Stephanie insists on sleeping on the couch at the foot of her bed. I +offered to sit up but she wouldn't let me.... You'll see that I'm called +if anything happens, won't you?" + +"Yes. Good-night, mother." + +He kissed her, stood a moment looking at the closed door behind which +lay Valerie--tried to realise that she did lie there under the same +roof-tree that sheltered father, mother, and sister--then, with a +strange thrill in his heart, he went downstairs. + +Cameron passed him, on his upward way to slumberland. + +"How's Miss West?" he asked cheerfully. + +"Asleep, I think. Billy Ogilvy expects her to be all right in the +morning." + +"Good work! Glad of it. Tell your governor; he's been inquiring." + +"Has he?" said Neville, with another thrill, and went into the living +room where his father sat alone before the whitening ashes of the fire. + +"Well, father!" he said, smiling. + +The older man turned his head, then turned it away as his son drew up a +chair and laid a stick across the andirons. + +"It's turned a little chilly," he said. + +"I have known of many a frost in May," said his father. + +There was a silence; then his father slowly turned and gazed at him. + +"How is--Miss West?" he asked stiffly. + +"Billy Ogilvy says she will be all right to-morrow, father." + +"Was she injured by her unfortunate experience?" + +"A little briar-torn, I'm afraid. Those big beech woods are rather a +puzzle to anybody who is not familiar with the country. No wonder she +became frightened when it grew dark." + +"It was--very distressing," nodded his father. + +They remained silent again until Mr. Neville rose, took off his +spectacles, laid aside _The Evening Post_, and held out his hand. + +"Good-night, my son." + +"Good-night, father." + +"Yes--yes--good-night--good-night--to many, many things, my son; +old-fashioned things of no value any more--of no use to me, or you, or +anybody any more." + +He retained his son's hand in his, peering at him, dim-eyed, without his +spectacles: + +"The old order passes--the old ideas, the old beliefs--and the old +people who cherished them--who know no others, needed no others.... +Good-night, my son." + +But he made no movement to leave, and still held to his son's hand: + +"I've tried to live as blamelessly as my father lived, Louis--and as God +has given me to see my way through life.... But--the times change +so--change so. The times are perplexing; life grows noisier, and +stranger and more complex and more violent every day around us--and the +old require repose, Louis. Try to understand that." + +"Yes, father." + +The other looked at him, wearily: + +"Your mother seems to think that your happiness in life depends on--what +we say to you--this evening. Stephanie seems to believe it, too.... Lily +says very little.... And so do I, Louis--very little ... only enough +to--to wish you--happiness. And so--good-night." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +It was barely daylight when Valerie awoke. She lay perfectly still, +listening, remembering, her eyes wandering over the dim, unfamiliar +room. Through thin silk curtains a little of the early light penetrated; +she heard the ceaseless chorus of the birds, cocks crowing near and far +away, the whimpering flight of pigeons around the eaves above her +windows, and their low, incessant cooing. + +Suddenly, through the foot-bars of her bed she caught sight of Stephanie +lying sound asleep on the couch, and she sat up--swiftly, noiselessly, +staring at her out of wide eyes from which the last trace of dreams had +fled. + +For a long while she remained upright among her pillows, looking at +Stephanie, remembering, considering; then, with decision, she slipped +silently out of bed, and went about her dressing without a sound. + +In the connecting bath-room and dressing-room beyond she found her +clothing gathered in a heap, evidently to be taken away and freshened +early in the morning. She dared not brush it for fear of awakening +Stephanie; her toilet was swift and simple; she clothed herself rapidly +and stepped out into the hall, her rubber-soled walking shoes making no +noise. + +Below, the side-lights of the door made unbolting and unchaining easy; +it would be hours yet before even the servants were stirring, but she +moved with infinite caution, stepping out onto the veranda and closing +the door behind her without making the slightest noise. + +Dew splashed her shoes as she hastened across the lawn. She knew the +Estwich road even if there had been no finger-posts to point out her +way. + +The sun had not yet risen; woods were foggy; the cattle in the fields +stood to their shadowy flanks in the thin mist; and everywhere, like the +cheery rush of a stream, sounded the torrent of bird-music from bramble +patch and alder-swale, from hedge and orchard and young woodland. + +It was not until she had arrived in sight of Estwich Corners that she +met the first farmer afield; and, as she turned into the drive, the edge +of the sun sent a blinding search-light over a dew-soaked world, and her +long-shadow sprang into view, streaming away behind her across the lawn. + +To her surprise the front door was open and a harnessed buck-board stood +at the gate; and suddenly she recollected with a hot blush that the +household must have been amazed and probably alarmed by her +non-appearance the night before. + +Hélène's farmer and her maid came out as she entered the front walk, +and, seeing her, stood round-eyed and gaping. + +"I got lost and remained over night at Mrs. Collis's," she said, +smiling. "Now, I'd like a bath if you please and some fresh clothing for +travelling, because I am obliged to go to the city, and I wish to catch +the earliest train." + +When at last it was plain to them that she was alive and well, Hélène's +maid, still trembling, hastened to draw a bath for her and pack the +small steamer trunk; and the farmer sat down on the porch and waited, +still more or less shaken by the anxiety which had sent him pottering +about the neighbouring woods and fields with a lantern the night before, +and had aroused him to renewed endeavour before sunrise. + +Bathed and freshly clothed, Valerie hastened into the pretty library, +seated herself at the desk, pushed up her veil, and wrote rapidly: + +"MY DEAR MRS. COLLIS: My gratitude to you, to Mrs. Neville, and to Miss +Swift is none the less real because I am acknowledging it by letter. +Besides, I am very certain that you would prefer it so. + +"You and your family have been kindness itself to me in my awkward and +painful dilemma; you have sheltered me and provided medical attendance; +and I am deeply in your debt. + +"Had matters been different I need scarcely say that it would have been +a pleasure for me to personally acknowledge to you and your family my +grateful appreciation. + +"But I am very sure that I could show my gratitude in no more welcome +manner than by doing what I have done this morning and by expressing +that obligation to you in writing. + +"Before I close may I ask you to believe that I had no intention of +seeking shelter at your house? Until I heard Mr. Neville's voice I had +no idea where I was. I merely made my way toward the first lighted +windows that I saw, never dreaming that I had come to Ashuelyn. + +"I am sorry that my stupid misadventure has caused you and your family +so much trouble and annoyance. I feel it very keenly--more keenly +because of your kindness in making the best of what must have been to +you and your family a most disagreeable episode. + +"May I venture to express to you my thanks to Miss Swift who so +generously remained in my room last night? I am deeply sensible of her +sweetness to an unwelcome stranger--and of Mrs. Neville's gentle manner +toward one who, I am afraid, has caused her much anxiety. + +"To the very amiable physician who did so much to calm a foolish and +inexcusable nervousness, I am genuinely grateful. If I knew his name and +address I would write and properly acknowledge my debt. + +"There is one thing more before I close: I am sorry that I wrote you so +ungraciously after receiving your last letter. It would have been +perfectly easy to have thanked you courteously, whatever private opinion +I may have entertained concerning a matter about which there may be more +than my own opinion. + +"And now, please believe that I will never again voluntarily cause you +and your family the slightest uneasiness or inconvenience; and believe +me, too, if you care to. Very gratefully yours, + +"VALERIE WEST." + +She directed and sealed the letter, then drew toward her another sheet +of paper: + +"DEAREST: I could die of shame for having blundered into your family +circle. I dare not even consider what they must think of me now. _You_ +will know how innocently and unsuspiciously it was done--how utterly +impossible it would have been for me to have voluntarily committed such +an act even in the last extremity. But what _they_ will think of my +appearance at your door last night, I don't know and I dare not surmise. +I have done all I could; I have rid them of me, and I have written to +your sister to thank her and your family for their very real kindness to +the last woman in the world whom they would have willingly chosen to +receive and entertain. + +"Dear, I didn't know I had nerves; but this experience seems to have +developed them. I am perfectly well, but the country here has become +distasteful to me, and I am going to town in a few minutes. I want to +get away--I want to go back to my work--earn my living again--live in +blessed self-respect where, as a worker, I have the right to live. + +"Dearest, I am sorry about not meeting you at the station and going back +to town with you. But I simply cannot endure staying here after last +night. I suppose it is weak and silly of me, but I feel now as though +your family would never be perfectly tranquil again until I am out of +their immediate vicinity. I cannot convey to you or to them how sorry +and how distressed I am that this thing has occurred. + +"But I can, perhaps, make you understand that I love you, dearly--love +you enough to give myself to you--love you enough to give you up +forever. + +"And it is to consider what is best, what to do, that I am going away +quietly somewhere by myself to think it all out once more--and to come +to a final decision before the first of June. + +"I want to search my heart, and let God search it for any secret +selfishness and unworthiness that might sway me in my choice--any +overmastering love for you that might blind me. When I know myself, you +shall know me. Until then I shall not write you; but sometime before the +first of June--or on that day, you shall know and I shall know how I +have decided wherein I may best serve you--whether by giving or +withholding--whether by accepting or refusing forever all that I care +for in the world--you, Louis, and the love you have given me. + +"VALERIE WEST." + +She sealed and directed this, laid it beside the other, and summoned the +maid: + +"Have these sent at once to Ashuelyn," she said; "let Jimmy go on his +bicycle. Are my things ready? Is the buck-board still there? Then I will +leave a note for the Countess." + +And she scribbled hastily: + +"HÉLÈNE DEAR: I've got to go to town in a hurry on matters of +importance, and so I am taking a very unceremonious leave of you and of +your delightful house. + +"They'll tell you I got lost in the woods last night, and I did. It was +too stupid of me; but no harm came of it--only a little embarrassment in +accepting a night's shelter at Ashuelyn among people who were everything +that was hospitable, but who must have been anything but delighted to +entertain me. + +"In a few weeks I shall write you again. I have not exactly decided what +to do this summer. I may go abroad for a vacation as I have saved enough +to do so in an economical manner; and I should love to see the French +cathedrals. Perhaps, if I so decide, you might be persuaded to go with +me. + +"However, it is too early to plan yet. A matter of utmost importance is +going to keep me busy and secluded for a week or so. After that I shall +come to some definite decision; and then you shall hear from me. + +"In the meanwhile--I have enjoyed Estwich and you immensely. It was kind +and dear of you to ask me. I shall never forget my visit. + +"Good-bye, Hélène dear. + +"VALERIE WEST." + +This note she left on Hélène's dresser, then ran downstairs and sprang +into the buck-board. + +They had plenty of time to catch the train; and on the train she had +plenty of leisure for reflection. But she could not seem to think; a +confused sensation of excitement invaded her mind and she sat in her +velvet armed chair alternately shivering with the memory of Cardemon's +villainy, and quivering under the recollection of her night at Ashuelyn. + +Rita was not at home when she came into their little apartment. The +parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and shrieking from his +perch; the goldfish goggled his eyes and swam 'round and 'round. She +stood still in the centre of her room looking vacantly about her. An +immense, overwhelming sense of loneliness came over her; she turned as +the rush of tears blinded her and flung herself full length among the +pillows of her bed. + + * * * * * + +Her first two or three days in town were busy ones; she had her accounts +to balance, her inventories to take, her mending to do, her modest +summer wardrobe to acquire, letters to write and to answer, engagements +to make, to fulfill, to postpone; friends to call on and to receive, +duties in regard to the New Idea Home to attend to. + +[Illustration: "The parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and +shrieking from his perch."] + +Also, the morning after her arrival came a special delivery letter from +Neville: + +"It was a mistake to go, dear, because, although you could not have +known it, matters have changed most happily for us. You were a welcome +guest in my sister's house; you would have been asked to remain after +your visit at Estwich was over. My family's sentiments are +changing--have changed. It requires only you yourself to convince them. +I wish you had remained, although your going so quietly commanded the +respect of everybody. They all are very silent about it and about you, +yet I can see that they have been affected most favourably by their +brief glimpse of you. + +"As for your wishing to remain undisturbed for a few days, I can see no +reason for it now, dear, but of course I shall respect your wishes. + +"Only send me a line to say that the month of June will mean our +marriage. Say it, dear, because there is now no reason to refuse." + +To which she answered: + +"Dearest among all men, no family's sentiments change over night. Your +people were nice to me and I have thanked them. But, dear, I am not +likely to delude myself in regard to their real sentiments concerning +me. Too deeply ingrained, too basic, too essentially part of themselves +and of their lives are the creeds, codes, and beliefs which, in spite of +themselves, must continue to govern their real attitude toward such a +girl as I am. + +"It is dear of you to wish for us what cannot be; it is kind of them to +accept your wish with resignation. + +"But I have told you many times, my darling, that I would not accept a +status as your wife at any cost to you or to them--and I can read +between the lines, even if I did not know, what it would cost them and +you. And so, very gently, and with a heart full of gratitude and love +for you, I must decline this public honour. + +"But, God willing, I shall not decline a lifetime devoted to you when +you are not with them. That is all I can hope for; and it is so much +more than I ever dreamed of having, that, to have you at all--even for a +part of the time--even for a part of my life, is enough. And I say it +humbly, reverently, without ignoble envy or discontent for what might +have been had you and I been born to the same life amid the same +surroundings. + +"Don't write to me again, dear, until I have determined what is best for +us. Before the first day of summer, or on that day, you will know. And +so will I. + +"My life is such a little thing compared to yours--of such slight value +and worth that sometimes I think I am considering matters too +deeply--that if I simply fling it in the scales the balance will +scarcely be altered--the splendid, even tenor of your career will +scarcely swerve a shade. + +"Yet my life is already something to you; and besides it is all I have +to give you; and if I am to give it--if it is adding an iota to your +happiness for me to give it--then I must truly treat it with respect, +and deeply consider the gift, and the giving, and if it shall be better +for you to possess it, or better that you never shall. + +"And whatever I do with myself, my darling, be certain that it is of you +I am thinking and not of the girl, who loves you. + +"V." + +By degrees she cleared up her accounts and set her small house in order. + +Rita seemed to divine that something radical was in progress of +evolution, but Valerie offered no confidence, and the girl, already +deeply worried over John Burleson's condition, had not spirit enough to +meddle. + +"Sam Ogilvy's brother is a wonder on tubercular cases," she said to +Valerie, "and I'm doing my best to get John to go and see him at +Dartford." + +"Won't he?" + +"He says he will, but you know how horridly untruthful men are. And now +John is slopping about with his wet clay again as usual--an order for a +tomb in Greenwood--poor boy, he had better think how best to keep away +from tombs." + +"Why, Rita!" said Valerie, shocked. + +"I can't help it; I'm really frightened, dear. And you know well enough +I'm no flighty alarmist. Besides, somehow, I feel certain that Sam's +brother would tell John to go to Arizona"--she pointed piteously to her +trunk: "It's packed; it has been packed for weeks. I'm all ready to go +with him. Why can't a man mould clay and chip marble and cast bronze as +well in Arizona as in this vile pest-hole?" + +Valerie sat with folded hands looking at her. + +"How do you think _you_ could stand that desolation?" + +"Arizona?" + +"Yes." + +"There is another desolation I dread more." + +"Do you really love him so?" + +Rita slowly turned from the window and looked at her. + +"Yes," she said. + +[Illustration: "'And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just +men.'"] + +"Does he know it, Rita?" + +"No, dear." + +"Do you think--if he did--" + +"No.... How could it be--after what has happened to me?" + +"You would tell him?" + +"Of course. I sometimes wonder whether he has not already +heard--something--from that beast--" + +"Does John know him?" + +"He has done two fountains for his place at El Naúar. He had several +other things in view--" she shrugged--"but _The Mohave_ sailed suddenly +with its owner for a voyage around the world--so John was +told;--and--Valerie, it's the first clear breath of relief I've drawn +since Penrhyn Cardemon entered John's studio." + +"I didn't know he had ever been there." + +"Yes; twice." + +"Did you see him there?" + +"Yes. I nearly dropped. At first he did not recognise me--I was very +young--when--" + +"Did he speak to you?" + +"Yes. I managed to answer. John was not looking at me, fortunately.... +After that he wrote to me--and I burned the letter.... It was horrible; +he said that José Querida was his guest at El Naúar, and he asked me to +get you because you knew Querida, and be his guest for a week end.... I +cried that night; you heard me." + +"Was _that_ it!" asked Valerie, very pale. + +"Yes; I was too wretched to tell you," + +Valerie sat silent, her teeth fixed in her lower lip. Then: + +"José could not have known what kind of a man the--other--is." + +"I hope not." + +"Oh, he _couldn't_ have known! Rita, he wouldn't have let him ask us--" + +"Men seldom deceive one another." + +"You _don't_ think José Querida _knew_?" + +"I--don't--think.... Valerie, men are very--very unlike women.... +Forgive me if I seem to be embittered.... Even you have had your +experience with men--the men that all the world seems to like--kind, +jolly, generous, jovial, amusing men--and clever men; men of attainment, +of distinction. And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just +men, Valerie, just men in a world made for men, a world into which we +come like timid intruders; uncertain through generations of +uncertainty--innocently stupid through ages of stupid innocence, ready +to please though not knowing exactly how; ready to be pleased, God +knows, with pleasures as innocent as the simple minds that dream of +them. + +"Valerie, I do not believe any evil first came into this world of men +through any woman." + +Valerie looked down at her folded hands--small, smooth, white hands, +pure of skin and innocent as a child's. + +"I don't know," she said, troubled, "how much more unhappiness arises +through men than through women, if any more ... I like men. Some are +unruly--like children; some have the sense and the morals of marauding +dogs. + +"But, at worst, the unruly and the marauders seem so hopelessly beneath +one, intellectually, that a girl's resentment is really more of +contempt than of anger--and perhaps more of pity than of either." + +Rita said: "I cannot feel as charitably.... _You_ still have that +right." + +"Rita! Rita!" she said softly, "we both have loved men, you with the +ignorance and courage of a child--I with less ignorance and with my +courage as yet untested. Where is the difference between us--if we love +sincerely?" + +Rita leaned forward and looked at her searchingly: + +"Do you mean to do--what you said you would?" + +"Yes." + +"Why?" + +"Because he wants me." + +Rita sprang to her feet and began pacing the floor. + +"I will not have it so!" she said excitedly, "I will not have it so! If +he is a man--a real man--he will not have it so, either. If he will, he +does not love you; mark what I say, Valerie--he does not love you +enough. No man can love a woman enough to accept that from her; it would +be a paradox, I tell you!" + +"He loves me enough," said Valerie, very pale. "He could not love me as +I care for him; it is not in a man to do it, nor in any human being to +love as I love him. You don't understand, Rita. I _must_ be a part of +him--not very much, because already there is so much to him--and I am +so--so unimportant." + +"You are more important than he is," said Rita fiercely--"with all your +fineness and loyalty and divine sympathy and splendid humility--with +your purity and your loveliness; and in spite of his very lofty +intellect and his rather amazing genius, and his inherited social +respectability--_you_ are the more important to the happiness and +welfare of this world--even to the humblest corner in it!" + +"Rita! Rita! What wild, partisan nonsense you are talking!" + +[Illustration: "His thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie."] + +"Oh, Valerie, Valerie, if you only knew! If you only knew!" + + * * * * * + +Querida called next day. Rita was at home but flatly refused to see him. + +"Tell Mr. Querida," she said to the janitor, "that neither I nor Miss +West are at home to him, and that if he is as nimble at riddles as he is +at mischief he can guess this one before his friend Mr. Cardemon +returns from a voyage around the world." + +Which reply slightly disturbed Querida. + +All during dinner--and he was dining alone--he considered it; and his +thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie. + +Somehow, some way or other he must come to an understanding with Valerie +West. Somehow, some way, she must be brought to listen to him. Because, +while he lived, married or single, poor or wealthy, he would never rest, +never be satisfied, never wring from life the last drop that life must +pay him, until this woman's love was his. + +He loved her as such a man loves; he had no idea of letting that love +for her interfere with other ambitions. + +Long ago, when very poor and very talented and very confident that the +world, which pretended to ignore him, really knew in its furtive heart +that it owed him fame and fortune and social position, he had determined +to begin the final campaign with a perfectly suitable marriage. + +That was all years ago; and he had never swerved in his +determination--not even when Valerie West surprised his life in all the +freshness of her young beauty. + +And, as he sat there leisurely over his claret, he reflected, easily, +that the time had come for the marriage, and that the woman he had +picked out was perfectly suitable, and that the suitable evening to +inform her was the present evening. + +Mrs. Hind-Willet was prepossessing enough to interest him, clever enough +to stop gaps in a dinner table conversation, wealthy enough to permit +him a liberty of rejecting commissions, which he had never before dared +to exercise, and fashionable enough to carry for him what could not be +carried through his own presentable good looks and manners and fame. + +This last winter he had become a frequenter of her house on Sixty-third +Street; and so carelessly assiduous, and so delightfully casual had +become his attentions to that beautifully groomed widow, that his +footing with her was already an intimacy, and his portrait of her, which +he had given her, had been the sensation of the loan exhibition at the +great Interborough Charity Bazaar. + +He was neither apprehensive nor excited as he calmly finished his +claret. He was to drop in there after dinner to discuss with her several +candidates as architects for the New Idea Home. + +So when he was entirely ready he took his hat and stick and departed in +a taxicab, pleasantly suffused with a gentle glow of anticipation. He +had waited many years for such an evening as this was to be. He was a +patient and unmoral man. He could wait longer for Valerie,--and for the +first secret blow at the happiness and threatened artistic success of +Louis Neville. + +So he rolled away in his taxi very comfortably, savouring his cigarette, +indolently assured of his reception in a house which it would suit him +perfectly to inhabit when he cared to. + +Only one thing worried him a little--the short note he had received from +his friend Penrhyn Cardemon, saying rather brusquely that he'd made up +his mind not to have his portrait painted for five thousand dollars, and +that he was going off on _The Mohave_ to be gone a year at least. + +Which pained Querida, because Cardemon had not only side-stepped what +was almost a commission, but he had, also, apparently forgotten his +invitation to spend the summer on _The Mohave_--with the understanding +that Valerie West was also to be invited. + +However, everything comes in its season; and this did not appear to be +the season for ripe commissions and yachting enterprises; but it +certainly seemed to be the season for a judicious matrimonial +enterprise. + +And when Mrs. Hind-Willet received him in a rose-tinted reception +corner, audaciously intimate and secluded, he truly felt that he was +really missing something of the pleasures of the chase, and that it was +a little too easy to be acutely enjoyable. + +However, when at last he had gently retained her hand and had whispered, +"Alma," and had let his big, dark, velvet eyes rest with respectful +passion upon her smaller and clearer and blacker ones, something +somewhere in the machinery seemed to go wrong--annoyingly wrong. + +Because Mrs. Hind-Willet began to laugh--and evidently was trying not +to--trying to remain very serious; but her little black eyes were +glistening with tears of suppressed mirth, and when, amazed and +offended, he would have withdrawn his hand, she retained it almost +convulsively: + +"José! I _beg_ your pardon!--I truly do. It is perfectly horrid and +unspeakable of me to behave this way; but listen, child! I am forty; I +am perfectly contented not to marry again; _and_ I don't love you. So, +my poor José, what on earth am I to do if I don't laugh a little. I +_can't_ weep over it you know." + +The scarlet flush faded from his olive skin. "Alma," he began +mournfully, but she only shook her head, vigorously. + +"Nonsense," she said. "You like me for a sufficient variety of reasons. +And to tell you the truth I suspect that I am quite as madly in love +with you as you actually are with me. No, no, José. There are too +many--discrepancies--of various kinds. I have too little to gain!--to be +horribly frank--and you--alas!--are a very cautious, very clever, and +admirably sophisticated young man.... There, there! I am not really +accusing you--or blaming you--very much.... I'd have tried the same +thing in your place--yes, indeed I would.... But, José dear, if you'll +take the mature advice of fair, plump, and forty, you'll let the lesser +ambition go. + +"A clever wealthy woman nearer your age, and on the edge of things--with +you for a husband, ought to carry you and herself far enough to suit +you. And there'd be more amusement in it, believe me.... And now--you +may kiss my hand--very good-humoredly and respectfully, and we'll talk +about those architects. Shall we?" + + * * * * * + +For twenty-four hours Querida remained a profoundly astonished man. +Examine, in retrospective, as he would, the details of the delicately +adjusted machinery which for so many years had slowly but surely turned +the interlocking cog-wheels of destiny for him, he could not find where +the trouble had been--could discover no friction caused by neglect of +lubricants; no over-oiling, either; no flaw. + +Wherein lay the trouble? Based on what error was his theory that the +average man could marry anybody he chose? Just where had he +miscalculated? + +He admitted that times changed very fast; that the world was spinning at +a rate that required nimble wits to keep account of its revolutions. But +his own wits were nimble, almost feminine in the rapid delicacy of their +intuition--_almost_ feminine, but not quite. And he felt, vaguely, that +there lay his mistake in engaging a woman with a woman's own weapons; +and that the only chance a man has is to perplex her with his own. + +The world was spinning rapidly; times changed very fast, but not as fast +as women were changing in the Western World. For the self-sufficient +woman--the self-confident, self-sustaining individual, not only content +but actually preferring autonomy of mind and body, was a fact in which +José Querida had never really ever believed. No sentimentalist does or +really can. And all creators of things artistic are, basically, +sentimentalists. + +Querida's almond-shaped, velvet eyes had done their share for him in his +time; they were merely part of a complex machinery which, included many +exquisitely adjusted parts which could produce at will such phenomena as +temporary but genuine sympathy and emotion: a voice controlled and +modulated to the finest nuances; a grace of body and mind that resembled +inherent delicacy; a nervous receptiveness and intelligence almost +supersensitive in its recognition of complicated ethical problems. It +was a machinery which could make of him any manner of man which the +opportunism of the particular moment required. Yet, with all this, in +every nerve and bone and fibre he adored material and intellectual +beauty, and physical suffering in others actually distressed him. + +Now, reviewing matters, deeply interested to find the microscopic +obstruction which had so abruptly stopped the machinery of destiny for +him, he was modest enough and sufficiently liberal-minded to admit to +himself that Alma Hind-Willet was the exception that proved this rule. +There _were_ women so constructed that they had become essentially +unresponsive. Alma was one. But, he concluded that if he lived a +thousand years he was not likely to encounter another. + +And the following afternoon he called upon Mrs. Hind-Willet's +understudy, the blue-eyed little Countess d'Enver. + +Hélène d'Enver was superintending the definite closing of her beautiful +duplex apartments--the most beautiful in the great château-like, +limestone building. And José Querida knew perfectly well what the rents +were. + +"Such a funny time to come to see me," she had said laughingly over the +telephone; "I'm in a dreadful state with skirts pinned up and a +motor-bonnet over my hair, but I will _not_ permit my maids to touch the +porcelains; and if you really wish to see me, come ahead." + +He really wished to. Besides he adored her Ming porcelains and her +Celedon, and the idea of any maid touching them almost gave him +heart-failure. He himself possessed one piece of Ming and a broken +fragment of Celedon. Women had been married for less. + +She was very charming in her pinned-up skirts and her dainty head-gear, +and she welcomed him and intrusted him with specimens which sent +pleasant shivers down his flexible spine. + +And, together, they put away many scores of specimens which were +actually priceless, inasmuch as any rumour of a public sale would have +excited amateurs to the verge of lunacy, and almost any psychopathic +might have established a new record for madness at an auction of this +matchless collection. + +They breathed easier when the thrilling task was ended; but emotion +still enchained them as they seated themselves at a tea-table--an +emotion so deep on Hélène's part that she suffered Querida to retain the +tips of her fingers for an appreciable moment when transferring sugar to +his cup. And she listened, with a smile almost tremulous, to the +fascinating music of his voice, charmingly attuned and modulated to a +pitch which, somehow, seemed to harmonise with the very word, Celedon. + +"I am so surprised," she said softly--but his dark eyes noted that she +was still busy with her tea paraphernalia--"I scarcely know what to +think, Mr. Querida--" + +"Think that I love you--" breathed Querida, his dark and beautiful head +very near to her blond one. + +"I--am--thinking of it.... But--" + +"Hélène," he whispered musically;--and suddenly stiffened in his chair +as the maid came clattering in over the rugless and polished parquet to +announce Mr. Ogilvy, followed _san façon_ by that young man, swinging a +straw hat and a malacca stick. + +"Sam!" said the pretty Countess, changing countenance. + +"Hello, Hélène! How-do, Querida! I heard you were temporarily in town, +dear lady--" He kissed a hand that was as faltering and guilty as the +irresolute eyes she lifted to his. + +Ten minutes later Querida took his leave. He dismissed the expensive +taxi which had been devouring time outside, and walked thoughtfully away +down the fashionable street. + +Because the machinery had chanced to clog twice did not disturb his +theory; but the trouble with him was local; he was intensely and +personally annoyed, nervous, irritated unspeakably. Because, except for +Valerie, these two, Alma Hind-Willet and Hélène d'Enver, were the only +two socially and financially suitable women in whom he took the +slightest physical interest. + +There is, in all women, one moment--sometimes repeated--in which a +sudden yielding to caprice sometimes overturns the logical plans laid +out and inexorably followed for half a lifetime. And there was much of +the feminine about Querida. + +And it chanced to happen on this day--when no doubt all unsuspected and +unperceived some lurking jettatura had given him the evil eye--that he +passed by hazard through the block where Valerie lived, and saw her +mounting the steps. + +"Why, José!" she exclaimed, a trifle confused in her smiling cordiality +as he sprang up the steps behind her--for Rita's bitterness, if it had +not aroused in her suspicions, had troubled her in spite of her +declaration of unbelief. + +He asked for a cup of tea, and she invited him. Rita was in the room +when they entered; and she stood up coolly, coolly returned Querida's +steady glance and salutation with a glance as calm, as detached, and as +intelligent as a surgeon's. + +Neither he nor she referred to his recent call; he was perfectly +self-possessed, entirely amiable with that serene and level good-humour +which sometimes masks a defiance almost contemptuous. + +But Rita's engagements required her to leave very shortly after his +advent; and before she went out she deliberately waited to catch +Valerie's eye; and Valerie coloured deeply under her silent message. + +Then Rita went away with a scarcely perceptible nod to Querida; and +when, by the clock, she had been gone twenty minutes, Querida, without +reason, without preparation, and perfectly aware of his moment's +insanity, yielded to a second's flash of caprice--the second that comes +once in the lives of all women--and now, in the ordered symmetry of his +life, had come to him. + +"Valerie," he said, "I love you. Will you marry me?" + +She had been leaning sideways on the back of her chair, one hand +supporting her cheek, gazing almost listlessly out of the open window. + +She did not stir, nor did her face alter, but, very quietly she turned +her head and looked at him. + +He spoke, breathlessly, eloquently, persuasively, and well; the perfect +machinery was imitating for him a single-minded, ardent, honourable +young man, intelligent enough to know his own mind, manly enough to +speak it. The facsimile was flawless. + +He had finished and was waiting, long fingers gripping the arms of his +chair; and her face had altered only to soften divinely, and her eyes +were very sweet and untroubled. + +"I am glad you have spoken this way to me, José. Something has been said +about you--in connection with Mr. Cardemon--which disturbed me and made +me very sad and miserable, although I would not permit myself to believe +it.... And now I know it was a mistake--because you have asked me to be +your wife." + +She sat looking at him, the sadness in her eyes emphasised by the +troubled smile curving her lips: + +"I couldn't marry you, José, because I am not in love with you. If I +were I would do it.... But I do not care for you that way." + +For an instant some inner flare of madness blinded his brain and vision. +There was, in his face, something so terrible that Valerie unconsciously +rose to her feet, bewildered, almost stunned. + +"I want you," he said slowly. + +"José! What in the world--" + +His dry lips moved, but no articulate sound came from them. Suddenly he +sprang to his feet, and out of his twisted, distorted mouth poured a +torrent of passion, of reproach, of half-crazed pleading--incoherency +tumbling over incoherency, deafening her, beating in upon her, till she +swayed where she stood, holding her arms up as though to shield herself. + +The next instant she was straining, twisting in his arms, striving to +cry out, to wrench herself free to keep her feet amid the crash of the +overturned table and a falling chair. + +"José! Are you insane?" she panted, tearing herself free and springing +toward the door. Suddenly she halted, uttered a cry as he jumped back to +block her way. The low window-ledge caught him under both knees; he +clutched at nothing, reeled backward and outward and fell into space. + +For a second she covered her white face with both hands, then turned, +dragged herself to the open window, forced herself to look out. + +He lay on his back on the grass in the rear yard, and the janitor was +already bending over him. And when she reached the yard Querida had +opened both eyes. + +Later the ambulance came, and with its surgeon came a policeman. +Querida, lying with his head on her lap, opened his eyes again: + +"I was--seated--on the window-ledge," he said with difficulty--"and +overbalanced myself.... Caught the table--but it fell over.... That's +all." + +The eyes in his ghastly face closed wearily, then fluttered: + +"Awfully sorry, Valerie--make such a mess--in your house." + +"Oh-h--José," she sobbed. + +After that they took him away to the Presbyterian Hospital; and nobody +seemed to find very much the matter with him except that he'd been badly +shocked. + +But the next day all sensation ceased in his body from the neck +downward. + +And they told Valerie why. + +For ten days he lay there, perfectly conscious, patient, good-humored, +and his almond-shaped and hollow eyes rested on Valerie and Rita with a +fatalistic serenity subtly tinged with irony. + +John Burleson came to see him, and cried. After he left, Querida said to +Valerie: + +"John and I are destined to remain near neighbours; his grief is well +meant, but a trifle premature." + +"You are not going to die, José!" she said gently. + +But he only smiled. + +Ogilvy came, Annan came, the Countess Hélène, and even Mrs. +Hind-Willet. He inspected them all with his shadowy and mysterious +smile, answered them gently deep in his sunken eyes a sombre amusement +seemed to dwell. But there was in it no bitterness. + +Then Neville came. Valerie and Rita were absent that day but their roses +filled the private ward-room with a hint of the coming summer. + +Querida lay looking at Neville, the half smile resting on his pallid +face like a slight shadow that faintly waxed and waned with every breath +he drew. + +"Well," he said quietly, "you are the man I wished to see." + +"Querida," he said, deeply affected, "this thing isn't going to be +permanent--" + +"No; not permanent. It won't last, Neville. Nothing does last.... unless +you can tell me whether my pictures are going to endure. Are they? I +know that you will be as honest with me as I was--dishonest with you. I +will believe what you say. Is my work destined to be permanent?" + +"Don't you know it is?" + +"I thought so.... But _you_ know. Because, Neville, you are the man who +is coming into what was mine, and what will be your own;--and you are +coming into more than that, Neville, more than I ever could have +attained. Now answer me; will my work live?" + +"Always," said Neville simply. + +Querida smiled: + +"The rest doesn't matter then.... Even Valerie doesn't matter.... But +you may hand me one of her roses.... No, a bud, if you don't +mind--unopened." + +When it was time for Neville to go Querida's smile had faded and the +pink rose-bud lay wilted in his fingers. + +"It is just as well, Neville," he said. "I couldn't have endured your +advent. Somebody _has_ to be first; I was--as long as I lived.... It is +curious how acquiescent a man's mind becomes--when he's like this. I +never believed it possible that a man really could die without regret, +without some shadow of a desire to live. Yet it is that way, Neville.... +But a man must lie dying before he can understand it." + + * * * * * + +A highly tinted uncle from Oporto arrived in New York just in time to +see Querida alive. He brought with him a parrot. + +"Send it to Mrs. Hind-Willet," whispered Querida with stiffening lips; +"_uno lavanta la caça y otro la nata_." + +A few minutes later he died, and his highly coloured uncle from Oporto +sent the bird to Mrs. Hind-Willet and made the thriftiest arrangement +possible to transport what was mortal of a great artist to Oporto--where +a certain kind of parrot comes from. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +On the morning of the first day of June Neville came into his studio and +found there a letter from Valerie: + +"DEAREST: I am not keeping my word to you; I am asking you for more +time; and I know you will grant it. + +"José Querida's death has had a curious effect on me. I was inclined to +care very sincerely for him; I comprehended him better than many people, +I think. Yet there was much in him that I never understood. And I doubt +that he ever entirely understood himself. + +"I believe that he was really a great painter, Louis--and have sometimes +thought that his character was mediæval at the foundations--with five +centuries of civilisation thinly deposited over the bed-rock.... In him +there seemed to be something primitive; something untamable, and utterly +irreconcilable with, the fundamental characteristics of modern man. + +"He was my friend.... Friendship, they say, is a record of +misunderstandings; and it was so with us But may I tell you something? +José Querida loved me--in his own fashion. + +"What kind of a love it was--of what value--I can not tell you. I do not +think it was very high in the scale. Only he felt it for me, and for no +other woman, I believe. + +"It never was a love that I could entirely understand or respect; +yet,--it is odd but true--I cared something for it--perhaps because, in +spite of its unfamiliar and sometimes repellent disguises--it _was_ love +after all. + +"And now, as at heart and in mind you and I are one; and as I keep +nothing of real importance from you--perhaps _can_ not; I must tell you +that José Querida came that day to ask me to marry him. + +"I tried to make him understand that I could not think of such a thing; +and he lost his head and became violent. That is how the table fell:--I +had started toward the door when he sprang back to block me, and the low +window-sill caught him under the knees, and he fell outward into the +yard. + +"I know of course that no blame could rest on me, but it was a terrible +and dreadful thing that happened there in one brief second; and somehow +it seems to have moved in me depths that have never before been stirred. + +"The newspapers, as you know, published it merely as an accident--which +it really was. But they might have made it, by innuendo, a horror for +me. However, they put it so simply and so unsuspiciously that José +Querida might have been any nice man calling on any nice woman. + +"Louis, I have never been so lonely in my life as I have been since José +Querida died; alas! not because he has gone out of my life forever, but +because, somehow, the manner of his death has made me realise how +difficult it is for a woman alone to contend with men in a man's own +world. + +"Do what she may to maintain her freedom, her integrity, there is +always,--sometimes impalpable, sometimes not--a steady, remorseless +pressure on her, forcing her unwillingly to take frightened cognisance +of men;--take into account their inexorable desire for domination; the +subtle cohesion existent among them which, at moments, becomes like a +wall of adamant barring, limiting, inclosing and forcing women toward +the deep-worn grooves which women have trodden through the sad +centuries;--and which they tread still--and will tread perhaps for years +to come before the real enfranchisement of mankind begins. + +"I do not mean to write bitterly, dear; but, somehow, all this seems to +bear significantly, ominously, upon my situation in the world. + +"When I first knew you I felt so young, so confident, so free, so +scornful of custom, so wholesomely emancipated from silly and unjust +conventions, that perhaps I overestimated my own vigour and ability to +go my way, unvexed, unfettered in this man's world, and let the world +make its own journey in peace. But it will not. + +"Twice, now, within a month,--and not through any conscious fault of +mine--this man's world has shown its teeth at me; I have been menaced by +its innate scorn of woman, and have, by chance, escaped a publicity +which would have damned me so utterly that I would not have cared to +live. + +"And dear, for the first time I really begin to understand now what the +shelter of a family means; what it is to have law on my side,--and a man +who understands his man's world well enough to fight it with its own +weapons;--well enough to protect a woman from things she never dreamed +might menace her. + +"When that policeman came into my room,--dear, you will think me a +perfect coward--but suddenly I seemed to realise what law meant, and +that it had power to protect me or destroy me.... And I was +frightened,--and the table lay there with the fragments of broken +china--and there was that dreadful window--and I--I who knew how he +died!--Louis! Louis! guiltless as I was,--blameless in thought and +deed--I died a thousand deaths there while the big policeman and the +reporters were questioning me. + +"If it had not been for what José was generous enough to say, I could +never have thought out a lie to tell them; I should have told them how +it had really happened.... And what the papers would have printed about +him and about me, God only knows. + +"Never, never had I needed you as I needed you at that moment.... Well; +I lied to them, somehow; I said to them what José had said--that he was +seated on the window-ledge, lost his balance, clutched at the table, +overturned it, and fell. And they believed me.... It is the first lie +since I was a little child, that I have ever knowingly told.... And I +know now that I could never contrive to tell another. + +"Dear, let me try to think out what is best for us.... And forgive me, +Louis, if I can not help a thought or two of self creeping in. I am so +terribly alone. Somehow I am beginning to believe that it may sometimes +be a weakness to totally ignore one's self.... Not that I consider +myself of importance compared to you, my darling; not that I would fail +to set aside any thought of self where your welfare is concerned. You +know that, don't you? + +"But I have been wondering how it would be with you if I passed quietly +and absolutely out of your life. That is what I am trying to determine. +Because it must be either that or the tie unrecognised by civilisation. +And which would be better for you? I do not know yet. I ask more time. +Don't write me. Your silence will accord it. + +"You are always in my thoughts. + +"VALERIE." + +Ogilvy came into the studio that afternoon, loquacious, in excellent +humour, and lighting a pipe, detailed what news he had while Neville +tried to hide his own deep perplexity and anxiety under a cordial +welcome. + +"You know," said Ogilvy, "that all the time you've given me and all your +kindness and encouragement has made a corker of that picture of mine." + +"You did it yourself," said Neville. "It's good work, Sam." + +"Sure it's good work--being mostly yours. And what do you think, Kelly; +it's sold!" + +"Good for you!" + +"Certainly it's good for me. I need the mazuma. A courteous multi +purchased it for his Long Branch cottage--said cottage costing a +million. What?" + +"Oh, you're doing very well," laughed Neville. + +"I've _got_ to.... I've--h'm!--undertaken to assume obligations toward +civilisation--h'm!--and certain duties to my--h'm--country--" + +"What on earth are you driving at?" asked Neville, eying him. + +"Huh! Driving single just at present; practising for tandem--h'm!--and a +spike--h'm--some day--I hope--of course--" + +"Sam!" + +"Hey?" + +"Are you trying to say something?" + +"Oh, Lord, no! Why, Kelly, did you suspect that I was really attempting +to convey anything to you which I was really too damned embarrassed to +tell you in the patois of my native city?" + +"It sounded that way," observed Neville, smiling. + +"Did it?" Ogilvy considered, head on one side. "Did it sound anything +like a--h'm!--a man who was trying to--h'm!--to tell you that he was +going to--h'm!--to try to get somebody to try to let him try to tell her +that he wanted to--marry her?" + +"Good heavens!" exclaimed Neville, bewildered, "what do you mean?" + +Ogilvy pirouetted, picked up a mahl-stick, and began a lively fencing +bout with an imaginary adversary. + +"I'm going to get married," he said amiably. + +"What!" + +"Sure." + +"To whom?" + +"To Hélène d'Enver. Only she doesn't know it yet." + +"What an infernal idiot you are, Sam!" + +"Ya-as, so they say. Some say I'm an ass, others a bally idiot, others +merely refer to me as imbecile. And so it goes, Kelly,--so it goes." + +He flourished his mahl-stick, neatly punctured the air, and cried "Hah!" +very fiercely. + +Then he said: + +"I've concluded to let Hélène know about it this afternoon." + +"About what?--you monkey?" + +"About our marriage. _Won't_ it surprise her though! Oh, no! But I +think I'll let her into the secret before some suspicious gink gets wind +of it and tells her himself." + +Neville looked at the boy, perplexed, undecided, until he caught his +eye. And over Sam's countenance stole a vivid and beauteous blush. + +"Sam! I--upon my word I believe you mean it!" + +"Sure I do!" + +Neville grasped his hand: + +"My dear fellow!" he said cordially, "I was slow, not unsympathetic. I'm +frightfully glad--I'm perfectly delighted. She's a charming and sincere +woman. Go in and win and God bless you both!" + +Ogilvy wrung his hand, then, to relieve his feelings, ran all over the +floor like a spider and was pretending to spin a huge web in a corner +when Harry Annan and Rita Tevis came in and discovered him. + +"Hah!" he exclaimed, "flies! Two nice, silly, appetising flies. Pretend +to fall into my web, Rita, and begin to buzz like mad!" + +Rita's dainty nose went up into the air, but Annan succumbed to the +alluring suggestion, and presently he was buzzing frantically in a +corner while Sam spun an imaginary web all over him. + +Rita and Neville looked on for a while. + +"Sam never will grow up," she said disdainfully. + +"He's fortunate," observed Neville. + +"_You_ don't think so." + +"I wish I knew what I did think, Rita. How is John?" + +"I came to tell you. He has gone to Dartford." + +"To see Dr. Ogilvy? Good! I'm glad, Rita. Billy Ogilvy usually makes +people do what he tells them to do." + +[Illustration: "Ogilvy ... began a lively fencing bout with an imaginary +adversary."] + +The girl stood silent, eyes lowered. After a while she looked up at him; +and in her unfaltering but sorrowful gaze he read the tragedy which he +had long since suspected. + +Neither spoke for a moment; he held out both hands; she laid hers in +them, and her gaze became remote. + +After a while she said in a low voice: + +"Let me be with you now and then while he's away; will you, Kelly?" + +"Yes. Would you like to pose for me? I haven't anything pressing on +hand. You might begin now if it suits you." + +"May I?" she asked gratefully. + +"Of course, child.... Let me think--" He looked again into her dark blue +eyes, absently, then suddenly his attention became riveted upon +something which he seemed to be reading in her face. + +Long before Sam and Harry had ended their puppy-like scuffling and had +retired to woo their respective deputy-muses, Rita was seated on the +model-stand, and Neville had already begun that strange and sombre +picture afterward so famous, and about which one of the finest of our +modern poets wrote: + + "Her gold hair, fallen about her face + Made light within that shadowy place, + But on her garments lay the dust + Of many a vanished race. + + "Her deep eyes, gazing straight ahead, + Saw years and days and hours long dead, + While strange gems glittered at her feet, + Yellow, and green, and red. + + "And ever from the shadows came + Voices to pierce her heart like flame, + The great bats fanned her with their wings, + The voices called her name. + + "But yet her look turned not aside + From the black deep where dreams abide, + Where worlds and pageantries lay dead + Beneath that viewless tide. + + "Her elbow on her knee was set, + Her strong hand propt her chin, and yet + No man might name that look she wore, + Nor any man forget." + +All day long in the pleasant June weather they worked together over the +picture; and if he really knew what he was about, it is uncertain, for +his thoughts were of Valerie; and he painted as in a dream, and with a +shadowy splendour that seemed even to him unreal. + +They scarcely spoke; now and then Rita came silently on sandalled feet +to stand behind him and look at what he had done. + +The first time she thought to herself, "Querida!" But the second time +she remained mute; and when the daylight was waning to a golden gloom in +the room she came a third time and stood with one hand on his arm, her +eyes fixed upon the dawning mystery on the canvas--spellbound under the +sombre magnificence already vaguely shadowed forth from infinite depth +of shade. + +Gladys came and rubbed and purred around his legs; the most recent +progeny toddled after her, ratty tails erect; sportive, casual little +optimists frisking unsteadily on wavering legs among the fading sunbeams +on the floor. + +The sunbeams died out on wall and ceiling; high through the glass roof +above, a shoal of rosy clouds paled to saffron, then to a cinder gray. +And the first night-hawk, like a huge, erratic swallow, sailed into +view, soaring, tumbling aloft, while its short raucous cry sounded +incessantly above the roofs and chimneys. + +Neville was still seated before his canvas, palette flat across his left +arm, the sheaf of wet brushes held loosely. + +"I suppose you are dining with Valerie," he said. + +"No." + +He turned and looked at her, inquiringly. + +"Valerie has gone away." + +"Where?" + +"I don't know, Kelly.... I was not to know." + +"I see." He picked up a handful of waste and slowly began to clean the +brushes, one by one. Then he drove them deep into a bowl of black soap. + +"Shall we dine together here, Rita?" + +"If you care to have me." + +"Yes, I do." + +He laid aside his palette, rang up the kitchen, gave his order, and +slowly returned to where Rita was seated. + +Dinner was rather a silent affair. They touched briefly and formally on +Querida and his ripening talent prematurely annihilated; they spoke of +men they knew who were to come after him--a long, long way after him. + +"I don't know who is to take his place," mused Neville over his claret. + +"You." + +"Not his place, Rita. He thought so; but that place must remain his." + +"Perhaps. But you are carving out your own niche in a higher tier. You +are already beginning to do it; and yesterday his niche was the +higher.... Yet, after all--after all--" + +[Illustration: "Then Rita came silently on sandalled feet to stand +behind him and look at what he had done."] + +He nodded. "Yes," he said, "what does it matter to him, now? A man +carves out his resting place as you say, but he carves it out in vain. +Those who come after him will either place him in his proper sepulchre +... or utterly neglect him.... And neglect or transfer will cause him +neither happiness nor pain.... Both are ended for Querida;--let men +exalt him above all, or bury him and his work out of sight--what does he +care about it now? He has had all that life held for him, and what +another life may promise him no man can know. All reward for labour is +here, Rita; and the reward lasts only while the pleasure in labour +lasts. Creative work--even if well done--loses its savour when it is +finished. Happiness in it ends with the final touch. It is like a dead +thing to him who created it; men's praise or blame makes little +impression; and the aftertaste of both is either bitter or flat and +lasts but a moment." + +"Are you a little morbid, Kelly?" + +"Am I?" + +"It seems to me so." + +"And you, Rita?" + +She shook her pretty head in silence. + +After a while Gladys jumped up into her lap, and she lay back in her +arm-chair smoothing the creature's fur, and gazing absently into space. + +"Kelly," she said, "how many, many years ago it seems when you came up +to Delaware County to see us." + +"It seems very long ago to me, too." + +She lifted her blue eyes: + +"May I speak plainly? I have known you a long while. There is only one +man I like better. But there is no woman in the world whom I love as I +love Valerie West.... May I speak plainly?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--be fair to her, Kelly. Will you?" + +"I will try." + +"Try very hard. For after all it _is_ a man's world, and she doesn't +understand it. Try to be fair to her, Kelly. For--whether or not the +laws that govern the world are man-made and unjust--they are, +nevertheless, the only laws. Few men can successfully fight them; no +woman can--yet.... I am not angering you, am I?" + +"No. Go on." + +"I have so little to say--I who feel so deeply--deeply.... And the laws +are always there, Kelly, always there--fair or unfair, just or +unjust--they are always there to govern the world that framed them. And +a woman disobeys them at her peril." + +She moved slightly in her chair and sat supporting her head on one +pretty ringless hand. + +"Yet," she said, "although a woman disobeys any law at her peril--laws +which a man may often ignore with impunity--there is one law to which no +woman should dare subscribe. And it is sometimes known as 'The Common +Law of Marriage.'" + +She sat silent for a while, her gaze never leaving his shadowy face. + +"That is the only law--if it is truly a law--that a woman must ignore. +All others it is best for her to observe. And if the laws of marriage +are merely man-made or divine, I do not know. There is a din in the +world to-day which drowns the voices preaching old beliefs.... And a +girl is deafened by the clamour.... And I don't know. + +"But, it seems to me, that back of the laws men have made--if there be +nothing divine in their inspiration--there is another foundation solid +enough to carry them. Because it seems to me that the world's laws--even +when unjust--are built on natural laws. And how can a girl say that +these natural laws are unjust because they have fashioned her to bear +children and feed them from her own body? + +"And another thing, Kelly; if a man breaks a man-made law--founded, we +believe, on a divine commandment--he suffers only in a spiritual and +moral sense.... And with us it may be more than that. For women, at +least, hell is on earth." + +He stirred in his chair, and his sombre gaze rested on the floor at her +feet. + +"What are we to do?" he said dully. + +Rita shook her head: + +"I don't know. I am not instructing you, Kelly, only recalling to your +mind what you already know; what all men know, and find so convenient to +forget. Love is not excuse enough; the peril is unequally divided. The +chances are uneven; the odds are unfair. If a man really loves a woman, +how can he hazard her in a game of chance that is not square? How can he +let her offer more than he has at stake--even if she is willing? How can +he permit her to risk more than he is even able to risk? How can he +accept a magnanimity which leaves him her hopeless debtor? But men have +done it, men will continue to do it; God alone knows how they reconcile +it with their manhood or find it in their hearts to deal so unfairly by +us. But they do.... And still we stake all; and proudly overlook the +chances against us; and face the contemptible odds with a smile, +dauntless and--damned!" + +He leaned forward in the dusk; she could see his bloodless features now +only as a pale blot in the twilight. + +"All this I knew, Rita. But it is just as well, perhaps, that you remind +me." + +"I thought it might be as well. The world has grown very clever; but +after all there is no steadier anchor for a soul than a platitude." + +Ogilvy and Annan came mincing in about nine o'clock, disposed for +flippancy and gossip; but neither Neville nor Rita encouraged them; so +after a while they took their unimpaired cheerfulness and horse-play +elsewhere, leaving the two occupants of the studio to their own silent +devices. + +It was nearly midnight when he walked back with Rita to her rooms. + +And now day followed day in a sequence of limpid dawns and cloudless +sunsets. Summer began with a clear, hot week in June, followed by three +days' steady downpour which freshened and cooled the city and unfolded, +in square and park, everything green into magnificent maturity. + +Every day Neville and Rita worked together in the studio; and every +evening they walked together in the park or sat in the cool, dusky +studio, companionably conversational or permitting silence to act as +their interpreter. + +Then John Burleson came back from Dartford after remaining there ten +days under Dr. Ogilvy's observation; and Rita arrived at the studio next +day almost smiling. + +"We're' going to Arizona," she said. "_What_ do you think of that, +Kelly?" + +"You poor child!" exclaimed Neville, taking her hands into his and +holding them closely. + +"Why, Kelly," she said gently, "I knew he had to go. This has not taken +me unawares." + +"I hoped there might be some doubt," he said. + +"There was none in my mind. I foresaw it. Listen to me: twice in a +woman's life a woman becomes a prophetess. That fatal clairvoyance is +permitted to a woman twice in her life--and the second time it is +neither for herself that she foresees the future, nor for him whom she +loves...." + +"I wish--I wish--" he hesitated; and she flushed brightly. + +"I know what you wish, Kelly dear. I don't think it will ever happen. +But it is so much for me to be permitted to remain near him--so +much!--Ah, you don't know, Kelly! You don't know!" + +"Would you marry him?" + +Her honest blue eyes met his: + +"If he asked me; and if he still wished it--after he knew." + +"Could you ever be less to him--and perhaps more, Rita?" + +"Do you mean--" + +He nodded deliberately. + +She hung her head. + +"Yes," she said, "if I could be no more I would be what I could." + +"And you tell _me_ that, after all that you have said?" + +"I did not pretend to speak for men, Kelly. I told you that women had, +and women still would overlook the chances menacing them and face the +odds dauntlessly.... Because, whatever a man is--if a woman loves him +enough--he is worth to her what she gives." + +"Rita! Rita! Is it _you_ who content yourself with such sorry +philosophy?" + +"Yes, it is I. You asked me and I answer you. Whatever I said--I know +only one thing now. And you know what that is." + +"And where am I to look for sympathy and support in my own decision? +What can I think now about all that you have said to me?" + +"You will never forget it, Kelly--whatever becomes of the girl who said +it. Because it's the truth, no matter whose lips uttered it." + +He released her hands and she went away to dress herself for the pose. +When she returned and seated herself he picked up his palette and +brushes and began in silence. + + * * * * * + +That evening he went to see John Buries on and found him smoking +tranquilly in the midst of disorder. Packing cases, trunks, bundles, +boxes were scattered and piled up in every direction, and the master of +the establishment, apparently in excellent health, reclined on a lounge +in the centre of chaos, the long clay stem of a church-warden pipe +between his lips, puffing rings at the ceiling. + +"Hello, Kelly!" he exclaimed, sitting up; "I've got to move out of this +place. Rita told you all about it, didn't she? Isn't it rotten hard +luck?" + +"Not a bit of it. What did Billy Ogilvy say?" + +"Oh, I've got _it_ all right. Not seriously yet. What's Arizona like, +anyway?" + +"Half hell, half paradise, they say." + +"Then me for the celestial section. Ogilvy gave me the name of a +place"--he fumbled about--"Rita has it, I believe.... Isn't she a corker +to go? My conscience, Kelly, what a Godsend it will be to have a +Massachusetts girl out there to talk to!" + +"Isn't she going as your model?" + +"My Lord, man! Don't you talk to a model? Is a nice girl who poses for +a fellow anything extra-human or superhuman or--or unhuman or +inhuman--so that intelligent conversation becomes impossible?" + +"No," began Neville, laughing, but Burleson interrupted excitedly: + +"A girl can be anything she chooses if she's all right, can't she? And +Rita comes from Massachusetts, doesn't she?" + +"Certainly." + +"Not only from Massachusetts, but from Hitherford!" added Burleson +triumphantly. "I came from Hitherford. My grandfather knew hers. Why, +man alive, Rita Tevis is entitled to do anything she chooses to do." + +"That's one way of looking at it, anyway," admitted Neville gravely. + +"I look at it that way. _You_ can't; you're not from Massachusetts; but +you have a sort of a New England name, too. It's Yankee, isn't it?" + +"Southern." + +"Oh," said Burleson, honestly depressed; "I _am_ sorry. There were +Nevilles in Hitherford Lower Falls two hundred years ago. I've always +liked to think of you as originating, somehow or other, in Massachusetts +Bay." + +"No, John: unlike McGinty, I am unfamiliar with the cod-thronged ocean +deeps.... When are you going?" + +"Day after to-morrow. Rita says you don't need her any longer on that +picture--" + +"Lord, man! If I did I wouldn't hold you up. But don't worry, John; she +wouldn't let me.... She's a fine specimen of girl," he added casually. + +[Illustration: "'You'd better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as +well born as I am.'"] + +"Do you suppose that is news to me?" + +"Oh, no; I'm sure you find her amusing--" + +"What!" + +"Amusing," repeated Neville innocently. "Don't you?" + +"That is scarcely the word I would have chosen, Kelly. I have a very +warm admiration and a very sincere respect for Rita Tevis--" + +"John! You sound like a Puritan making love!" + +Burleson was intensely annoyed: + +"You'd better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as well born as I +am, and that there would be nothing at all incongruous in any +declaration that any decent man might make her!" + +"Why, I know that." + +"I'm glad you do. And I'm gratified that what you said has given me the +opportunity to make myself very plain on the subject of Rita Tevis. It +may amaze you to know that her great grandsire carried a flintlock with +the Hitherford Minute Men, and fell most respectably at Boston Neck." + +"Certainly, John. I knew she was all right. But I wasn't sure you knew +it--" + +"Confound it! Of course I did. I've always known it. Do you think I'd +care for her so much if she wasn't all right?" + +Neville smiled at him gravely, then held out his hand: + +"Give my love to her, John. I'll see you both again before you go." + +For nearly two weeks he had not heard a word from Valerie West. Rita and +John Burleson had departed, cheerful, sure of early convalescence and a +complete and radical cure. + +Neville went with them to the train, but his mind was full of his own +troubles and he could scarcely keep his attention on the ponderous +conversation of Burleson, who was admonishing him and Ogilvy impartially +concerning the true interpretation of creative art. + +He turned aside to Rita when opportunity offered and said in a low +voice: + +"Before you go, tell me where Valerie is." + +"I can't, Kelly." + +"Did you promise her not to?" + +"Yes." + +He said, slowly: "I haven't had one word from her in nearly two weeks. +Is she well?" + +"Yes. She came into town this morning to say good-bye to me." + +"I didn't know she was out of town," he said, troubled. + +"She has been, and is now. That's all I can tell you, Kelly dear." + +"She _is_ coming back, isn't she?" + +"I hope so." + +"Don't you know?" + +She looked into his anxious and miserable face and gently shook her +head: + +"I _don't_ know, Kelly." + +"Didn't she say--intimate anything--" + +"No.... I don't think she knows--yet." + +He said, very quietly: "If she ever comes to any conclusion that it is +better for us both never to meet again--I might be as dead as Querida +for any work I should ever again set hand to. + +"If she will not marry me, but will let things remain as they are, at +least I can go on caring for her and working out this miserable problem +of life. But if she goes out of my life, life will go out of me. I know +that now." + +Rita looked at him pitifully: + +"Valerie's mind is her own, Kelly. It is the most honest mind I have +ever known; and nothing on earth--no pain that her decision might +inflict upon her--would swerve it a hair's breath from what she +concludes is the right thing to do." + +"I know it," he said, swallowing a sudden throb of fear. + +"Then what can I say to you?" + +"Nothing. I must wait." + +"Kelly, if you loved her enough you would not even wait." + +"What!" + +"Because her return to you will mean only one thing. Are you going to +accept it of her?" + +"What can I do? I can't live without her!" + +"_Her_ problem is nobler, Kelly. She is asking herself not whether she +can live life through without _you_--but whether you can live life well, +and to the full, without _her_?" + +Neville flushed painfully. + +"Yes," he said, "_that is_ Valerie. I'm not worth the anxiety, the +sorrow that I have brought her. I'm not worth marrying; and I'm not +worth a heavier sacrifice.... I'm trying to think less of myself, Rita, +and more of her.... Perhaps, if I knew she were happy, I could +stand--losing her.... If she could be--without me--" He checked himself, +for the struggle was unnerving him; then he set his face firmly and +looked straight at Rita. + +"Do you believe she could forget me and be contented and tranquil--if I +gave her the chance?" + +"Are _you_ talking of self-sacrifice for _her_ sake?" + +He drew a deep, uneven breath: + +"I--suppose it's--that." + +"You mean that you're willing to eliminate yourself and give her an +opportunity to see a little of the world--a little of its order and +tranquillity and quieter happiness?--a chance to meet interesting women +and attractive men of her own age--as she is certain to do through her +intimacy with the Countess d'Enver?" + +"Yes," he said, "that is what must be done.... I've been blind--and +rottenly selfish. I did not mean to be.... I've tried to force her--I +have done nothing else since I fell in love with her, but force her +toward people whom she has a perfect right not to care for--even if they +happen to be my own people. She has felt nothing but a steady and stupid +pressure from me;--heard from me nothing except importunities--the +merciless, obstinate urging of my own views--which, God forgive me, I +thought were the only views because they were respectable!" + +He stood, head lowered, nervously clenching and unclenching his hands. + +"It was not for her own sake--that's the worst of it! It was for my +sake--because I've had respectability inculcated until I can't conceive +of my doing anything not respectable.... Once, something else got away +with me--and I gave it rein for a moment--until checked.... I'm really +no different from other men." + +"I think you are beginning to be, Kelly." + +"Am I? I don't know. But the worst of it was my selfishness--my fixed +idea that her marrying me was the _only_ salvation for her.... I never +thought of giving her a chance of seeing other people--other men--better +men--of seeing a tranquil, well-ordered world--of being in it and of it. +I behaved as though my world--the fragment inhabited by my friends and +family--was the only alternative to this one. I've been a fool, Rita; +and a cruel one." + +"No, only an average man, Kelly.... If I give you Valerie's address, +would you write and give her her freedom--for her own sake?--the freedom +to try life in that well-ordered world we speak of?... Because she is +very young. Life is all before her. Who can foretell what friends she +may be destined to make; what opportunities she may have. I care a great +deal for you, Kelly; but I love Valerie.... And, there _are_ other men +in the world after all;--but there is only one Valerie.... And--_how +truly do you love her_?" + +"Enough," he said under his breath. + +"Enough to--leave her alone?" + +"Yes." + +"Then write and tell her so. Here is the address." + +She slipped a small bit of folded paper into Neville's land. + +"We must join the others, now," she said calmly. + +Annan had come up, and he and Ogilvy were noisily baiting Burleson amid +shouts of laughter and a protesting roar from John. + +"Stop it, you wretches," said Rita amiably, entering the little group. +"John, are you never going to earn not to pay any attention to this pair +of infants?" + +"Are you going to kiss me good-bye, Rita, when the train departs?" +inquired Sam, anxiously. + +"Certainly; I kissed Gladys good-bye--" + +"Before all this waiting room full of people?" persisted Sam. "_Are_ +you?" + +"Why I'll do it now if you like, Sammy dear." + +"They'll take you for my sister," said Sam, disgusted. + +"Or your nurse; John, what _is_ that man bellowing through the +megaphone?" + +"Our train," said Burleson, picking up the satchels. He dropped them +again to shake the hands that were offered: + +"Good-bye, John, dear old fellow! You'll get all over this thing in a +jiffy out there You'll be back in no time at all! Don't worry, and get +well!" + +He smiled confidently and shook all their hands Rita's pretty face was +pale; she let Ogilvy kiss her cheek, shook hands with Annan, and then, +turning to Neville, put both hands on his shoulders and kissed him on +the mouth. + +"Give her her chance, Kelly," she whispered ... "And it shall be +rendered unto you seven-fold." + +"No, Rita; it never will be now." + +"Who knows?" + +"Rita! Rita!" he said under his breath, "when I am ending, she must +begin.... You are right: this world needs her. Try as I might, I never +could be worth what she is worth without effort. It is my life which +does not matter, not hers. I will do what ought to be done. Don't be +afraid. I will do it. And thank God that it is not too late." + +That night, seated at his desk in the studio, he looked at the +calendar. It was the thirteenth day since he had heard from her; the +last day but two of the fifteen days she had asked for. The day after +to-morrow she would have come, or would have written him that she was +renouncing him forever for his own sake. Which might it have been? He +would never know now. + +He wrote her: + +"Dearest of women, Rita has been loyal to you. It was only when I +explained to her for what purpose I wished your address that she wisely +gave it to me. + +"Dearest, from the beginning of our acquaintance and afterward when it +ripened into friendship and finally became love, upon you has rested the +burden of decision; and I have permitted it. + +"Even now, as I am writing here in the studio, the burden lies heavily +upon your girl's shoulders and is weighting your girl's heart. And it +must not be so any longer. + +"I have never, perhaps, really meant to be selfish; a man in love really +doesn't know what he means. But now I know what I have done; and what +must be undone. + +"You were perfectly right. It was for you to say whether you would marry +me or not. It was for you to decide whether it was possible or +impossible for you to appear as my wife in a world in which you had had +no experience. It was for you to generously decide whether a rupture +between that world and myself--between my family and myself--would +render me--and yourself--eternally unhappy. + +"You were free to decide; you used your own intellect, and you so +decided. And I had no right to question you--I have no right now. I +shall never question you again. + +"Then, because you loved me, and because it was the kind of love that +ignored self, you offered me a supreme sacrifice. And I did not refuse; +I merely continued to fight for what I thought ought to be--distressing, +confusing, paining you with the stupid, obstinate reiterations of my +importunities. And you stood fast by your colours. + +"Dear, I _was_ wrong. And so were you. Those were not the only +alternatives. I allowed them to appear so because of selfishness.... +Alas, Valerie, in spite of all I have protested and professed of love +and passion for you, to-day, for the first time, have I really loved you +enough to consider you, alone. And with God's help I will do so always. + +"You have offered me two alternatives: to give yourself and your life to +me without marriage; or to quietly slip out of my life forever. + +"And it never occurred to you--and I say, with shame, that it never +occurred to me--that I might quietly efface myself and my demands from +_your_ life: leave you free and at peace to rest and develop in that new +and quieter world which your beauty and goodness has opened to you. + +"Desirable people have met you more than half-way, and they like you. +Your little friend, Hélène d'Enver is a genuine and charming woman. +Your friendship for her will mean all that you have so far missed in +life all that a girl is entitled to. + +"Through her you will widen the circle of your acquaintances and form +newer and better friendships You will meet men and women of your own +age and your own tastes which is what ought to happen. + +"And it is right and just and fair that you enter into the beginning of +your future with a mind unvexed and a heart untroubled by conflicts +which can never solve for you and me any future life together. + +"I do not believe you will ever forget me, or wish to, wholly. Time +heals--otherwise the world had gone mad some centuries ago. + +"But whatever destiny is reserved for you, I know you will meet it with +the tranquillity and the sweet courage which you have always shown. + +"What kind of future I wish for you, I need not write here. You know. +And it is for the sake of that future--for the sake of the girl whose +unselfish life has at last taught me and shamed me, that I give you up +forever. + +"Dear, perhaps you had better not answer this for a long, long time. +Then, when that clever surgeon, Time, has effaced all scars--and when +not only tranquillity is yours but, perhaps, a deeper happiness is in +sight, write and tell me so. And the great god Kelly, nodding before his +easel, will rouse up from his Olympian revery and totter away to find a +sheaf of blessings to bestow upon the finest, truest, and loveliest girl +in all the world. + +"_Halcyonii dies! Fortem posce animum! Forsan et haec olim meminisse +juvabit. Vale!_ + +"LOUIS NEVILLE." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +The fifteenth day of her absence had come and gone and there had been no +word from her. + +Whether or not he had permitted himself to expect any, the suspense had +been none the less almost unendurable. He walked the floor of the studio +all day long, scarcely knowing what he was about, insensible to fatigue +or to anything except the dull, ceaseless beating of his heart. He +seemed older, thinner:--a man whose sands were running very swiftly. + +With the dawn of the fifteenth day of her absence a gray pallor had come +into his face; and it remained there. Ogilvy and Annan sauntered into +the studio to visit him, twice, and the second time they arrived bearing +gifts--favourite tonics, prescriptions, and pills. + +"You look like hell, Kelly," observed Sam with tactful and +characteristic frankness. "Try a few of this assorted dope. Harry and I +dote on dope: + + _"'After the bat is over, + After the last cent's spent, + And the pigs have gone from the clover + And the very last gent has went; + After the cards are scattered, + After I've paid the bill, + Weary and rocky and battered + I swallow my liver pill!_'" + +--he sang, waltzing slowly around the room with Annan until, +inadvertently, they stepped upon the tail of Gladys who went off like a +pack of wet fire-crackers; whereupon they retired in confusion to their +respective abodes above. + +Evening came, and with evening, letters; but none from her. And slowly +the stealthy twilight hours dragged their heavy minutes toward darkness; +and night crawled into the room like some sinister living thing, and +found him still pacing the floor. + +Through the dusky June silence far below in the street sounded the +clatter of wheels; but they never stopped before his abode. Voices rose +faintly at moments in the still air, borne upward as from infinite +depths; but her voice would never sound again for him: he knew it +now--never again for him. And yet he paced the floor, listening. The +pain in his heart grew duller at intervals, benumbed by the tension; but +it always returned, sickening him, almost crazing him. + +Late in the evening he gave way under the torture--turned coward, and +started to write to her. Twice he began letters--pleading with her to +forget his letter; begging her to come back. And destroyed them with +hands that shook like the hands of a sick man. Then the dull +insensibility to pain gave him a little respite, but later the misery +and terror of it drove him out into the street with an insane idea of +seeking her--of taking the train and finding her. + +He throttled that impulse; the struggle exhausted him; and he returned, +listlessly, to the door and stood there, vacant-eyed, staring into the +lamp-lit street. + +Once he caught sight of a shadowy, graceful figure crossing the +avenue--a lithe young silhouette against the gas-light--and his heart +stood still for an instant but it was not she, and he swayed where he +stood, under the agony of reaction, dazed by the rushing recession of +emotion. + +Then a sudden fear seized him that she might have come while he had been +away. He had been as far as the avenue. Could she have come? + +But when he arrived at his door he had scarce courage enough to go in. +She had a key; she might have entered. Had she entered: was she there, +behind the closed door? To go in and find the studio empty seemed almost +more than he could endure. But, at last, he went in; and he found the +studio empty. + +Confused, shaken, tortured, he began again his aimless tour of the +place, ranging the four walls like a wild creature dulled to insanity by +long imprisonment--passing backward, forward, to and fro, across, around +his footsteps timing the dreadful monotone of his heart, his pulse +beating, thudding out his doom. + +She would never come; never come again. She had determined what was best +to do; she had arrived at her decision. Perhaps his letter had convinced +her,--had cleared her vision;--the letter which he had been man enough +to write--fool enough--God!--perhaps brave enough.... But if what he had +done in his madness was bravery, it was an accursed thing; and he set +his teeth and cursed himself scarce knowing what he was saying. + +It promised to be an endless night for him; and there were other nights +to come--interminable nights. And now he began to watch the +clock--strained eyes riveted on the stiff gilded hands--and on the +little one jerkily, pitilessly recording the seconds and twitching them +one by one into eternity. + +Nearer and nearer to midnight crept the gilded, flamboyant hour-hand; +the gaunter minute-hand was slowly but inexorably overtaking it. Nearer, +nearer, they drew together; then came the ominous click; a moment's +suspense; the high-keyed gong quivered twelve times under the impact of +the tiny steel hammer. + +And he never would hear her voice again. And he dropped to his knees +asking mercy on them both. + +In his dulled ears still lingered the treble ringing echo of the +bell--lingered, reiterated, repeated incessantly, until he thought he +was going mad. Then, of a sudden, he realised that the telephone was +ringing; and he reeled from his knees to his feet, and crept forward +into the shadows, feeling his way like a blind man. + +"Louis?" + +But he could not utter a sound. + +"Louis, is it you?" + +"Yes," he whispered. + +"What is the matter? Are you ill? Your voice is so strange. _Are_ you?" + +"No!--Is it _you_, Valerie?" + +"You know it is!" + +"Where--are you?" + +"In my room--where I have been all day." + +"You have been--_there_! You have been _here_--in the city--all this +time--" + +"I came in on the morning train. I wanted to be sure. There _have_ been +such things as railroad delays you know." + +"Why--_why_ didn't you let me know--" + +"Louis! You will please to recollect that I had until midnight ... +I--was busy. Besides, midnight has just sounded--and here I am." + +He waited. + +"I received your letter." Her voice had the sweet, familiar, rising +inflection which seemed to invite an answer. + +"Yes," he muttered, "I wrote to you." + +"Do you wish to know what I thought of your letter?" + +"Yes," he breathed. + +"I will tell you some other time; not now.... Have you been perfectly +well, Louis? But I heard all about you, every day,--through Rita. Do you +know I am quite mad to see that picture you painted of her,--the new +one--'Womanhood.' She says it is a great picture--really great. Is it?" + +He did not answer. + +"Louis!" + +"Yes." + +"I would like to see that picture." + +"Valerie?" + +"Yes?"--sweetly impatient. + +"Are we to see each other again?" + +She said calmly: "I didn't ask to see _you_, Louis: I asked to see a +picture which you recently painted, called 'Womanhood.'" + +He remained silent and presently she called him again by name: "You say +that you are well--or rather Rita said so two days ago--and I'm +wondering whether in the interim you've fallen ill? Two days without +news from you is rather disquieting. Please tell me at once exactly how +you are?" + +He succeeded in forcing something resembling a laugh: "I am all right," +he said. + +"I don't see how you could be--after the letter you wrote me. How much +of it did you mean?" + +He was silent. + +"Louis! Answer me!" + +"All--of it," he managed to reply. + +[Illustration: "She knelt down beside the bed and ... said whatever +prayer she had in mind"] + +"_All!_" + +"Yes." + +"Then--perhaps you scarcely expected me to call up to-night. Did you?" + +"No." + +"Suppose I had not done so." + +He shivered slightly, but remained mute. + +"Answer me, Louis?" + +"It would have been--better." + +"For you?" + +"For--both." + +"Do you believe it?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--have I any choice except to say--good-night?" + +"No choice. Good-night." + +"Good-night." + +He crept, shaking, into his bed-room, sat down, resting his hands on his +knees and staring at vacancy. + +Valerie, in her room, hung up the receiver, buried her face in her hands +for a moment, then quietly turned, lowering her hands from her face, and +looked down at the delicate, intimate garments spread in order on the +counterpane beside her. There was a new summer gown there, too--a light, +dainty, fragile affair on which she had worked while away. Beside it lay +a big summer hat of white straw and white lilacs. + +She stood for a moment, reflecting; then she knelt down beside the bed +and covered her eyes again while she said whatever prayer she had in +mind. + +It was not a very short petition, because it concerned Neville. She +asked nothing for herself except as it regarded him or might matter to +his peace of mind. Otherwise what she said, asked, and offered, related +wholly to Neville. + +Presently she rose and went lightly and silently about her ablutions; +and afterward she dressed herself in the fragile snowy garments ranged +so methodically upon the white counterpane, each in its proper place. + +She was longer over her hair, letting it fall in a dark lustrous cloud +to her waist, then combing and gathering it and bringing it under +discipline. + +She put on her gown, managing somehow to fasten it, her lithe young body +and slender arms aiding her to achieve the impossible between neck and +shoulders. Afterward she pinned on her big white hat. + +At the door she paused for a second; took a last look at the quiet, +white little room tranquil and silent in the lamplight; then she turned +off the light and went out, softly, holding in her hands a key which +fitted no door of her own. + +One o'clock sounded heavily from Saint Hilda's as she left her house; +the half hour was striking as she stooped in the dark hallway outside +the studio and fitted the key she held--the key that was to unlock for +her the mystery of the world. + +He had not heard her. She groped her way into the unlighted studio, +touched with caressing finger-tips the vague familiar shapes that the +starlight, falling through the glass above, revealed to her as she +passed. + +In the little inner room she paused. There was a light through the +passageway beyond, but she stood here a moment, looking around her while +memories of the place deepened the colour in her cheeks. + +Then she went forward, timidly, and stood at his closed door, listening. + +A sudden fright seized her; one hand flew to her breast, her +throat--covered her eyes for a moment--and fell limp by her side. + +[Illustration: "She was longer over her hair ... gathering it and +bringing it under discipline."] + +"Louis!" she faltered. She heard him spring to his feet and stand as +though transfixed. + +"Louis," she said, "it is I. Will you open your door to me?" + +The sudden flood of electric light dazzled her; then she saw him +standing there, one hand still resting on the door knob. + +"I've come," she said, with a faint smile. + +"Valerie! My God!" + +She stood, half smiling, half fearful, her dark eyes meeting his, two +friendly little hands outstretched. Then, as his own caught them, almost +crushed them: + +"Oh, it was _your_ letter that ended all for me, Louis! It settled every +doubt I had. I _knew_ then--you darling!" + +She bent and touched his hands with her lips, then lifted her sweet, +untroubled gaze to his: + +"I had been away from you so long, so long. And the time was approaching +for me to decide, and I didn't know what was best for us, any more than +when I went away. And _then_!--your letter came!" + +She shook her head, slowly: + +"I don't know what I might have decided if you never had written that +letter to me; probably I would have come back to you anyway. I think so; +I can't think of my doing anything else: though I _might_ have +decided--against myself. But as soon as I read your letter I _knew_, +Louis.... And I am here." + +He said with drawn lips quivering: + +"Did you read in that letter one single word of cowardly appeal?--one +infamous word of self? If you did, I wrote in vain." + +"It was because I read nothing in it of self that I made up my mind, +Louis." She stepped nearer. "Why are you so dreadfully pale and worn? +Your face is so haggard--so terrible--" + +She laid one hand on his shoulder, looking up at him; then she smoothed +his forehead and hair, lightly. + +"As though I could ever live without you," she said under her breath. +Then she laughed, releasing her hands, and went over to the dresser +where there was a mirror. + +"I have come, at one in the morning, to pay you a call," she said, +withdrawing the long pins from her hat and taking it off. "Later I +should like a cup of chocolate, please.... Oh, there is Gladys! You +sweet thing!" she cried softly, kneeling to embrace the cat who came +silently into the room, tail waving aloft in gentle greeting. + +The girl lifted Gladys onto the bed and rolled her over into a fluffy +ball and rubbed her cheeks and her ears until her furry toes curled, and +her loud and grateful purring filled the room. + +Valerie, seated sideways on the edge of the bed, looked up at Neville, +laughing: + +"I _must_ tell you about Sam and Hélène," she said. "They are too funny! +Hélène was furious because Sam wrote her a letter saying that he +intended to marry her but had not the courage to notify her, personally, +of his decision; and Hélène was wild, and wrote him that he might save +himself further trouble in the matter. And they've been telephoning to +each other at intervals all day, and Sam is so afraid of her that he +dare not go to see her; and Hélène was in tears when I saw her--and I +_think_ it was because she was afraid Sam wouldn't come and resume the +quarrel where she could manage it and him more satisfactorily." + +She threw back her head and laughed at the recollection, stroking Gladys +the while: + +"It will come out all right, of course," she added, her eyes full of +laughter; "she's been in love with Sam ever since he broke a Ming jar +and almost died of fright. But isn't it funny, Louis?--the way people +fall in love, and their various manners of informing each other!" + +He was trying to smile, but the gray constraint in his face made it only +an effort. Valerie pretended not to notice it, and she rattled on gaily, +detailing her small budget of gossip and caressing Gladys--behaving as +irresponsibly and as capriciously as though her heart were not singing a +ceaseless hymn of happiness too deep, too thankful to utter by word or +look. + +"Dear little Rita," she exclaimed, suddenly and tenderly solemn--"I saw +her the morning of the day she departed with John. And first of all I +asked about you of course--you spoiled thing!--and then I asked about +John. And we put our arms around each other and had a good, +old-fashioned cry.... But--_don't_ you think he is going to get well, +Louis?" + +"Sam's brother--Billy Ogilvy--wrote me that he would always have to live +in Arizona. He _can_ live there. But the East would be death to him." + +"Can't he ever come back?" she asked pitifully. + +"No, dear." + +"But--but what will Rita do?" + +He said: "I think that will depend on Rita. I think it depends on her +already." + +"Why?" she asked, wide-eyed. "Do you believe that John cares for her?" + +"I know he does.... And I haven't much doubt that he wants to marry +her." + +"Do you think so? Oh, Louis--if that is true, what a heavenly future +for Rita!" + +"Heavenly? Out in that scorching desert?" + +"Do you think she'd care _where_ she was? Kelly, you're ridiculous!" + +"Do you believe that any woman could stand that for the rest of her +life, Valerie?" + +She smiled, head lowered, fondling the cat who had gone ecstatically to +sleep. + +She said, still smiling: "If a girl is loved she endures some things; if +she loves she endures more. But to a girl who is loved, and who loves, +nothing else matters ... And it would be that way with Rita"--she lifted +her eyes--"as it is with me." + +He was standing beside her now; she made room on the side of the bed for +him with a little gesture of invitation: + +"People who die for each other are less admirable than people who live +for each other. The latter requires the higher type of courage ... If I +go out of your life I am like a dead person to you--a little worse in +fact. Besides, I've shown the white feather and run away. That's a +cowardly solution of a problem, isn't it?" + +"Am I a coward if I decide to stand back and give you a chance?" + +"You haven't decided to do it," she said cheerfully, lifting the +somnolent cat and hugging it. + +"I'm afraid I have, dear." + +"Why?" + +"You read my letter?" + +"Yes and kissed every line in it." + +He retained sufficient self-control to keep his hands off her--but that +was all; and her eyes, which were looking into his, grew serious and +beautiful. + +"I love you so," she breathed. + +"I love you, Valerie." + +"Yes.... I know it.... I know you do...." She sat musing a moment, then: +"And I thought that I knew what it was to love, before you wrote that +letter." She shook her head, murmuring something to herself. Then the +swift smile curved her lips again, she dumped Gladys out of her lap +without ceremony, and leaned her shoulder on Neville's, resting her +cheek lightly against his: + +"It doesn't seem possible that the problem of life has really been +solved for us, Louis. I can scarcely realise it--scarcely understand +what this heavenly relief means--this utterly blissful relaxation and +untroubled confidence. There isn't anything in the world that can harm +me, now; is there?" + +"Nothing." + +"Nor my soul?" + +"It has always been beyond danger." + +"There are those who might tell me differently." + +"Let them talk. I _know_." + +"Do you?--you darling!" Her soft, fragrant mouth touched his cheek, +lingered, then she laughed to herself for the very happiness of living. + +"Isn't it wonderful how a word sometimes shatters the fixed ideas that a +girl has arrived at through prayer and fasting? I am beginning to think +that no real intelligence can remain very long welded to any one fixed +belief." + +"What do you mean, Valerie?" She rested her head on his shoulder and +sat considering, eyes remote; then her white fingers crept into his: + +"We won't talk about it now. I was wrong in some ways. You or common +sense--or something--opened my eyes.... But we won't talk about it +now.... Because there are still perplexities--some few.... We'll go over +them together--and arrange matters--somehow." + +"What matters?" + +But she placed a soft hand over his lips, imposing silence, and drew his +arm around her with a little sigh of content. + +Presently she said: "Have you noticed my gown? I made it." + +He smiled and bent forward to look. + +"I made _everything_ that I am wearing--except the shoes and stockings. +But they are perfectly new.... I wanted to come to you--perfectly new. +There was a Valerie who didn't really love you. She thought she did, but +she didn't.... So I left her behind when I came--left everything about +her behind me. I am all new, Louis.... Are you afraid to love me?" + +He drew her closer; she turned, partly, and put both arms around his +neck, and their lips touched and clung. + +Then, a little pale, she drew away from him, a vague smile tremulous on +her lips. The confused sweetness of her eyes held him breathless with +their enchantment; the faint fragrance of her dazed him. + +In silence she bent her head, remained curbed, motionless for a few +moments, then slowly lifted her eyes to his. + +"How much do you want me, Louis?" + +"You know." + +"Enough to--give me up?" + +His lips stiffened and refused at first, then: + +"Yes," they motioned. And she saw the word they formed. + +"I knew it," she breathed; "I only wanted to hear you say it again.... I +don't know why I'm crying;--do you?... What a perfect ninny a girl can +be when she tries to.... _All_ over your 'collar, too.... And now you're +what Mr. Mantalini would call 'demned moist and unpleasant!' ... I--I +don't want to--s-sob--this way! I do-don't wish to ... M-make me stop, +Louis!... I'd like a handkerchief--anything--give me Gladys and I'll +staunch my tears on her!" + +She slipped from the bed's edge to the floor, and stood with her back +toward him. Then she glanced sideways at the mirror to inspect her nose. + +"Thank goodness _that_ isn't red," she said gaily.... "Kelly, I'm +hungry.... I've fasted since dawn--on this day--because I wanted to +break bread with you on the first day of our new life together." + +He looked at her, appalled, but she laughed and went into the studio. +There was a beautiful old sideboard there always well stocked. + +He turned on the lights, brought peaches and melons and strawberries and +milk from the ice-chest, and found her already preparing chocolate over +the electric grill and buttering immense slices of peasant bread. + +"It's after two o'clock," she said, delighted. "Isn't this divinely +silly? I wonder if there happens to be any salad in the ice-chest?" + +"Cold chicken, too," he nodded, watching her set the table. + +She glanced at him over her shoulder from time to time: + +"Louis, are you going to enjoy all this? _All of_ it? +You--somehow--don't look entirely happy--" + +"I am.... All I wanted was to see you--hear your voice.... I shall be +contented now." + +"With just a view of me, and the sound of my voice?" + +"You know there is--nothing more for us." + +"I know nothing of the kind. The idea! And don't you dare struggle and +kick and scream when I kiss you. Do you hear me, Louis?" + +He laughed and watched her as she went swiftly and gracefully about the +table arrangement, glancing up at him from moment to moment. + +"The idea," she repeated, indignantly. "I guess I'll kiss you when I +choose to. You are not in holy orders, are you? You haven't made any +particular vows, have you--?" + +"One." + +She halted, looked at him, then went on with her labours, a delicate +colour flushing face and neck. + +"Where in the world is that salad, Louis? A hungry girl asks you! Don't +drive me to desperation--" + +"Are we going to have coffee?" + +"No, it will keep us awake all night! I believe you _are_ bent on my +destruction." And, as she hovered over the table, she hummed the latest +popular summer-roof ballad: + + "'Stand back! Go 'way! + I can no longer stay + Although you are a Marquis or a Earl! + You may tempt the upper classes + With your villainous demi-tasses + But-- + Heaven will protect the Working Girl!'" + +At length everything was ready. He had placed two chairs opposite one +another, but she wouldn't have it, and made him lug up a bench, lay a +cushion on it, and sit beside her. + +They behaved foolishly; she fed him strawberries at intervals, +discreetly, on a fork--and otherwise. + +"Think of it! Fruit--at three in the morning, Louis! I hope Heaven will +protect _this_ working girl.... No, dear, I'd rather not have any +champagne.... You forget that this is a brand-new girl you're supping +with ... And, for reasons of her own--perhaps as an example to +you--there is never again to be anything like that--not even a +cigarette." + +"Nonsense--" + +"Oh, it's on account of my voice, not my morals, goose! I have rather a +nice voice you know, and, if we can afford it, it would be a jolly good +idea to have it cultivated ...Isn't this melon divine! What fun, +Louis!... I believe you _are_ a little happier. That crease between your +eyes has quite disappeared--There! Don't dare let it come back! It has +no business there I tell you. I _know_ it hasn't--and you must trust my +word. Will you?" + +She leaned swiftly toward him, placed both hands on his shoulders. + +"You've a perfectly new girl to deal with," she said, looking him in +the eyes;--"a miracle of meekness and patience that is rather certain to +turn into a dreadful, frowsy old hausfrau some day. But that's the kind +you wanted.... It's none of my doings--" + +"Valerie!" + +"What?" + +"You darling!--do you mean--" + +She closed his lips with hers. + +"Silence," she said; "we have plenty to talk over before the hour +arrives for me to be a door-mat. I _won't_ be a door-mat when I'm trying +to be happy over a perfectly good supper!... Besides I want to torture +you while there's still time. I want to make you miserable by reminding +you how disgracefully unmoral we are, here in your studio together at +three in the morning--" She stretched out a slim, white ringless hand, +and lifted the third finger for his inspection: + +"Not a sign of a ring! Shame!" She turned her pretty, daring face to +his, eyes sparkling with audacity: + +"Besides, I'm not going back to-night." + +He said tranquilly: "I should think not." + +"I mean it, Kelly, I simply won't go. And you may ring up the police and +every ambulance in town--and the fire department--" + +"I've done it," he said, "but the fire department refuses to put you +out.... You don't mean to say you've finished!--after fasting all day +like a little idiot," he exclaimed as she sprang to her feet and pushed +away her chair. + +"I have. I am _not_ an anaconda!" ... She passed swiftly into the outer +room where her own toilet necessaries were always ready, and presently +came back, leisurely, her hands behind her back, sauntering toward, +him with a provoking smile edging her lips: + +[Illustration: "'Yes,' she said, 'it is really great.'"] + +"You may retire when you like, Kelly, and tie your red cotton night-cap +under your chin. _I_ shall sit up for the sun. It's due in about an +hour, you know." + +"Nonsense," he said. "We'll both, be dead in the morning." + +"You offer me your guest-room?" she said in pretence of surprise. "How +_very_ nice of you, Mr. Neville. I--ah--will condescend to occupy +it--for this evening only--" Her eyes brightened into laughter: "Oh, +isn't it delicious, Louis! Isn't it perfectly heavenly to _know_ that we +are utterly and absolutely all right,--and to know that the world +outside would be perfectly certain that we are not? What a darling you +are!" + +Still holding her hands behind her back she bent forward and touched her +lips to his, daintily, fastidious in the light contact, + +"Where is that picture of 'Womanhood'?" she asked. + +He drew out the easel, adjusting the canvas to the light, and rolled a +big chair up in front of it. + +"Please sit there," she said; and seated herself on the padded arm, +still keeping her hands behind her back. + +"Are you concealing anything from me?" he asked. + +"Never mind. I want to look at your picture," she added slowly as her +eyes fell upon the canvas. + +Minute after minute she sat there in silence, neither stirring nor +offering comment. And after a long time he moved restlessly in the +depths of the chair beside her. + +Then she turned and looked down at him: + +"Yes," she said, "it is really great.... And, _somehow_, I am lonely. +Take me, Louis." + +He drew her into his arms. She lay very silent against his breast for a +while, and at last raised her curiously troubled eyes. + +"You are going to be a very, very great painter, aren't you, Louis?" + +He laughed and kissed her, watching her face. + +"Don't be too great--so great that I shall feel too--too lonely," she +whispered. + +Then his eyes fell upon the ring which he had given her--and which she +had gently put aside. She was wearing it on her betrothal finger. + +"Where did you--find it?" he said unsteadily. + +"In its box on your dresser." + +"Do you realise what it means?" + +"Yes.... And I am wearing it." + +"Valerie!" + +Her head nestled closer: + +"Because I am going to marry you, Louis.... You were right.... If I +fail, as your wife, to win my way in your world, then it will be because +I have attempted the impossible. Which is no crime.... Who was it said +'Not failure, but low aim is crime'?" + +She sighed, nestling closer like a child seeking rest: + +"I am not coward enough to run away from you and destiny.... And if I +stay, only two ways remain.... And the lawful is the better for us +both...." She laid her flushed cheek against his: "Because," she said +dreamily, "there is one thing of which I never thought--children.... And +I don't, perhaps, exactly understand, but I realise that--such things +have happened;--and that it could happen to--us." + +She lay silent for a while, her fingers restless on his shoulder; then +she spoke again in the same dreamy voice of a half-awakened child: + +"Each for the other's sake is not enough. It must be broader, wider, +more generous ... it must be for the sake of all.... I have learned +this.... We can learn it better together.... Louis, can you guess what I +did the day your letter came to me at Estwich?" + +"What did you do, my darling?" + +"I went to Ashuelyn." + +"What?" + +"Yes, dear. If it had not been for your letter which I could feel +against my breast I should have been frightened.... Because all your +family were together under the pergola.... As it was I could scarcely +speak; I gave your mother the letter, and when she had read it and your +father and your sister had read it, I asked them what I was to do. + +"It was so strange and still there under the pergola; and I scarcely +knew what I was saying--and I didn't realise that there were tears in my +eyes--until I saw them in your mother's, too. + +"Louis! Louis! I wonder if she can really ever care for me!--she was so +good--so sweet to me.... And Mrs. Collis took me away to her own +room--after your father had shaken hands with me--very stiffly but I +think kindly--and I behaved very badly, dear--and your sister let me +cry--all that I needed to." + +She said nothing more for a while, resting in his arms, dark eyes fixed +on space. Then: + +"They asked me to remain; your brother-in-law is a dear!--but I still +had a long day of self-examination before me. Your father and mother +walked with me to the gate. Your mother kissed me." + +His eyes, blinded by tears, scarcely saw her; and she turned her head +and smiled at him. + +"What they said to me was _very_ sweet and patient, Louis.... I +believe--I sometimes believe that I may, in time, win more than their +consent, I believe that, some day, they will care to think of me as your +wife--and think of me as such, kindly, without regret for what might +have been if I had never known you." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Hélène d'Enver had gone back to the country, and Ogilvy dared not pursue +her thither. + +From her fastness at Estwich she defied him in letters, but every letter +of hers seemed to leave some loophole open for further argument, and +Ogilvy replied valiantly from a perfectly safe distance, vowing that he +meant to marry her some day in spite of herself and threatening to go up +and tell her so to her face, until she became bored to death waiting for +him to fulfil this threat. + +"There's a perfectly good inn here," she wrote,--"for of course, under +the circumstances, you would scarcely have the impudence to expect the +hospitality of my own roof. But if you are determined to have a final +'No' for your answer, I am entirely competent to give it to you by word +of mouth--" + +"And such a distractingly lovely mouth," sighed Ogilvy, perusing the +letter in his studio. He whistled a slow waltz, thoughtfully, and as +slowly and solemnly kept step to it, turning round and round, buried in +deepest reflection. He had a habit of doing this when profoundly +perplexed. + +Annan discovered him waltzing mournfully all by himself: + +"What's up?" he inquired cheerfully. + +"It's all up, I suppose." + +"With you and your countess?" + +"Yes, Harry." + +"Rot! Why don't you go and talk to her?" + +"Because if I remain invisible she might possibly forget my face. I +stand a better chance by letter, Harry." + +"Now you're not bad-looking," insisted Annan, kindly. "And besides, a +man's face doesn't count with a girl. Half of 'em are neurotics, anyway, +and they adore the bizarre--" + +"Damn it," snapped Sam, "do you mean that my countenance resembles a +gargoyle? If you do, say so in English." + +"No, no, no," said Annan soothingly,--"I've seen more awful +mugs--married mugs, too. What woman has done woman may do again. Buck +up! Beauty and the beast is no idle jest--" + +"I'll punch you good and plenty," began Sam wrathfully, but Annan fled, +weak with laughter. + +"There's no vainer man than an ugly one!" he called back, and slammed +the door to escape a flight of paint brushes hurled by a maddened man. + +"I'll go! By jinks, I'll go, anyway!" he exclaimed; "and I don't care +what she thinks of my face ... only I think I'll take Annan with +me--just for company--or--dummy bridge on the way up.... Harry!" he +shouted. + +Annan cautiously appeared, ready for rapid flight. + +"Aw come on in! My face suits me. Besides, thank Heaven I've got a +reputation back of it; but yours breaks the speed laws. Will you go up +there with me--like a man?" + +"Where?" + +"To Estwich?" + +"When?" inquired Annan, sceptically. + +"Now!--b' jinks!" + +"Have _you_ sufficient nerve, _this_ time?" + +"Watch me." + +And he dragged out a suit-case and began wildly throwing articles of +toilet and apparel into it, + +"Come on, Harry!" he shouted, hurling a pair of tennis shoes at the +suit-case; "I've got to go while I'm excited or I'll never budge!" + +But when, ten minutes later, Annan arrived, suit-case in hand, ready for +love's journey, he could scarcely contrive to kick and drag Sam into the +elevator, and, later, into a taxicab. + +Ogilvy sat there alternately shivering and attempting to invent +imperative engagements in town which he had just remembered, but Annan +said angrily: + +"No, you don't. This makes the seventh time I've started with you for +Estwich, and I'm going to put it through or perish in a hand-to-hand +conflict with you." + +And he started for the train, dragging Sam with him, talking angrily all +the time. + +He talked all the way to Estwich, too, partly to reassure Ogilvy and +give him no time for terrified reflection, partly because he liked to +talk. And when they arrived at the Estwich Arms he shoved Ogilvy into a +room, locked the door, and went away to telephone to the Countess +d'Enver. + +"Yes?" she inquired sweetly, "who is it?" + +"Me," replied Annan, regardless of an unpopular grammatical convention. +"I'm here with Ogilvy. May we come to tea?" + +"Is Mr. Ogilvy _here_?" + +"Yes, here at the Estwich Arms. May I--er--may _he_ bring _me_ over to +call on you?" + +"Y-yes. Oh, with pleasure, Mr. Annan.... When may I expect hi--you?" + +"In about ten minutes," replied Annan firmly. + +Then he went back and looked into Ogilvy's room. Sam was seated, his +head clasped in his hands. + +"I thought you _might_ tear up your sheets and let yourself out of the +window," said Annan sarcastically. "You're a fine specimen! Why you're +actually lantern-jawed with fright. But I don't care! Come on; we're +expected to tea! Get into your white flannels and pretty blue coat and +put on your dinkey rah-rah, and follow me. Or, by heaven!--I'll do +murder right now!" + +Ogilvy's knees wavered as they entered the gateway. + +"Go on!" hissed Annan, giving him a violent shove. + +Then, to Ogilvy, came that desperate and hysterical courage that comes +to those whose terrors have at last infuriated them. + +"By jinks!" he said with an unearthly smile, "I _will_ come on!" + +And he did, straight through the door and into the pretty living room +where Hélène d'Enver rose in some slight consternation to receive this +astonishingly pale and rather desperate-faced young man. + +"Harry," said Ogilvy, calmly retaining Hélène's hand, "you go and play +around the yard for a few moments. I have something to tell the Countess +d'Enver; and then we'll all have tea." + +"Mr. Ogilvy!" she said, amazed. + +But Annan had already vanished; and she looked into a pair of steady +eyes that suddenly made her quail. + +"Hélène," he said, "I really do love you." + +[Illustration: "'I am scared blue. That's why I'm holding on to your +hand so desperately.'"] + +"Please--" + +"No! I love you! Are you going to let me?" + +"I--how on earth--what a perfectly senseless--" + +"I know it. I'm half senseless from fright. Yes, I am, Hélène! Now! +here! at this very minute, I am scared blue. That's why I'm holding on +to your hand so desperately; I'm afraid to let go." + +She flushed brightly with annoyance, or something or other--but he held +fast to her hand and put one arm around her waist. + +"Sam!" she said, exasperated. That was the last perfectly coherent word +she uttered for several minutes. And, later, she was too busy to say +very much. + + * * * * * + +When Annan returned, Hélène rose from the couch where she and Ogilvy had +been seated and came across the floor, blushing vividly. + +"I don't know what on earth you think of me, Mr. Annan, and I suppose I +will have to learn to endure the consequences of Mr. Ogilvy's +eccentricities--" + +"Oh, I'm terribly glad!" said Annan, grinning, and taking her hand in +both of his. + +They had tea on the veranda. Ogilvy was too excited and far too happy to +be dignified, and Hélène was so much embarrassed by his behaviour and so +much in love that she made a distractingly pretty picture between the +two young men who, as Rita had said, would never, never be old enough to +grow up. + +"Do you know," said Hélène, "that your friends the Nevilles have +recently been very nice to me? They have called, and have returned my +call, and have asked me to dinner. I suppose cordiality takes longer to +arrive at maturity in New York State than in any other part of the +Union. But when New York people make up their minds to be agreeable, +they certainly are delightful." + +"They're a bunch of snobs," said Ogilvy, calmly. + +"Oh!" said Hélène with a distressed glance at Annan. + +"He's one, too," observed her affianced, coolly nodding toward Annan. +"We're a sickening lot, Hélène--until some charming and genuine person +like you comes along to jounce us out of our smiling and imbecile +self-absorption." + +"I," said Annan gravely, "am probably the most frightful snob that ever +wandered, in a moment of temporary aberration, north of lower Fifth +Avenue." + +"I'm worse," observed Sam gloomily. "Help us, Hélène, toward loftier +aspirations. Be our little uplift girl--" + +"You silly things!" she said indignantly. + +Later two riders passed the house, Cameron and Stephanie Swift, who +saluted Hélène most cordially, and waved airy recognition to the two +men. + +"More snobs," commented Sam. + +"They are very delightful people!" retorted Hélène hotly. + +"Most snobs are when they like you." + +"Sam! I won't have you express such sentiments!" + +He bent nearer to her: + +"Dearest, I never had any sentiments except for you. And only the +inconvenient propinquity of that man Annan prevents me from expressing +them." + +"Please, Sam--" + +"Don't be afraid; I won't. He wouldn't care;--but I won't.... Hello! Why +look who's here!" he exclaimed, rising. "Why it's the great god Kelly +and little Sunshine!"--as Neville and Valerie sprang out of Mrs. +Collis's touring car and came up the walk. + +Hélène went forward to meet them, putting one arm around Valerie and +holding out the other to Neville. + +"When did you arrive, darling?" she exclaimed. "How do you do, Mr. +Neville? Valerie, child, I'm perfectly enchanted to see you. But where +in the world are you stopping?" + +"At Ashuelyn," said the girl, looking straight into Hélène's eyes. A +faint flash of telepathy passed between them; then, slowly, Hélène +turned and looked at Neville. + +"Will you wish us happiness?" he said, smiling. + +"Oh-h," whispered Hélène under her breath--"I do--I do--God knows. I +wish you everything that makes for happiness in all the world!" she +stammered, for the wonder of it was still on her. + +Then Sam's voice sounded close at hand: + +"Why," he said admiringly, "it _looks_ like lovey and dovey!" + +"It is," said Valerie, laughing. + +"You!--_and_ Kelly!" + +"We two." + +Sam in his excitement became a little wild and incongruous: + + "'My wife's gone to the country! + Hooray! Hooray!'" + +he shouted, holding hands with Annan and swinging back and forth. + +"Sam!" exclaimed Hélène, mortified. + +"Darling?--oh, gee! I forgot what is due to decorum! Please, _please_ +forgive me, Hélène! And kindly inform these ladies and gentlemen that +you have consented to render me eternally and supremely happy; because +if I tried to express to them that delirious fact I'd end by standing on +my head in the grass--" + +"You dear!" whispered Valerie, holding tightly to Hélène's hands. + +"Isn't it dreadful?" murmured Hélène, turning her blue eyes on the man +who never would grow old enough to grow up. "I had no such intention, I +can assure you; and I don't even understand myself yet." + +"Don't you?" said Valerie, laughing tenderly;--"then you are like all +other women. What is the use of our ever trying to understand +ourselves?" + +Hélène laughed, too: + +"No use, dear. Leave it to men who say _they_ understand us. It's a +mercy somebody does." + +"Isn't it," nodded Valerie; and they kissed each other, laughing. + +"My goodness, it's like the embrace of the two augurs!" said Ogilvy. +"They're laughing at _us_, Kelly!--at you, and me and Harry!--and at man +in general!--innocent man!--so charmingly and guilelessly symbolised by +us! Stop it, Hélène! You make me shiver. You'll frighten Annan so that +he'll _never_ marry if you and Valerie laugh that way at each other." + +"I wonder," said Hélène, quieting him with a fair hand laid lightly on +his sleeve, "whether you all would remain and dine with me this +evening--just as you are I mean;--and I won't dress--" + +"I insist _proh pudeur_," muttered Sam. "I can't countenance any such +saturnalia--" + +"Oh, Sam, do be quiet, dear--" She caught herself up with a blush, and +everybody smiled. + +"What do we care!" said Sam. "I'm tired of convention! If I want to +call you darling in public, b'jinks! I will! +Darling--darling--darling--there!--" + +"Sam!" + +"Dearest--" + +"_Sam!_" + +"Ma'am?" + +Hélène looked at Valerie: + +"There's no use," she sighed, "is there?" + +"No use," sighed Valerie, smiling at the man she loved. + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Common Law, by Robert W. Chambers + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13813 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..89a7139 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #13813 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13813) diff --git a/old/13813-8.txt b/old/13813-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e80b83e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13813-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17937 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Common Law, by Robert W. Chambers + +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 Common Law + +Author: Robert W. Chambers + +Release Date: October 20, 2004 [EBook #13813] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMMON LAW *** + + + + +Produced by Gene Smethers and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading +Team. Produced from images provided by the Million Book Project + + + + + + +_The_ + +COMMON LAW + + + + +Works of Robert W. Chambers + + The Common Law + The Adventures of a Modest Man + Ailsa Paige + The Danger Mark + Special Messenger + The Firing Line + The Younger Set + The Fighting Chance + Some Ladies in Haste + The Tree of Heaven + The Tracer of Lost Persons + A Young Man in a Hurry + Lorraine + Maids of Paradise + Ashes of Empire + The Red Republic + Outsiders + The Green Mouse + Iole + The Reckoning + The Maid-at-Arms + Cardigan + The Haunts of Men + The Mystery of Choice + The Cambric Mask + The Maker of Moons + The King in Yellow + In Search of the Unknown + The Conspirators + A King and a Few Dukes + In the Quarter + + +For Children + + Garden-Land + Forest-Land + River-Land + Mountain-Land + Orchard-Land + Outdoor-Land + Hide and Seek in Forest-Land + + + + +_The_ + +COMMON LAW + +BY + +ROBERT W. CHAMBERS + + + +WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY + +CHARLES DANA GIBSON + + + +NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1911 + + + +[Illustration: "She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over +the keyboard." [Page 48.]] + + + +TO CHARLES DANA GIBSON + +A FRIEND OF MANY YEARS + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + PAGE + +"She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over the keyboard" +_Frontispiece_ + +"There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door" 3 + +"'Now, Miss West,' he said decisively" 13 + +"'I know perfectly well that this isn't right,'she said" 31 + +"'What's the matter with it, then?'" 40 + +"For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, looking +fixedly into space" 65 + +"Neville stood stock-still before the canvas" 81 + +"When he first tried to ring her up the wire was busy" 83 + +"'Kelly, dear, are you unhappy?'" 90 + +"He picked up a bit of white chalk ... and traced on the floor the +outline of her shoes" 93 + +"'I _will_ call you a god if I like!'" 96 + +"'If she's as much of a winner as all that,' began Cameron with +decision, 'I want to meet her immediately--'" 109 + +"'Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before luncheon'" 116 + +"'I know it is _you_. Is it?' 125 + +"A smartly dressed and very confident drummer" 136 + +"Valerie sat cross-legged on the grass ... scribbling away" 145 + +"'How well you look!' He exclaimed" 149 + +"Querida had laughed ... and returned compliment for compliment" 175 + +"'Me lord, the taxi waits!'" 179 + +Mazie Gray 183 + +"And the last rose dropped from her hand" 188-189 + +"'How perfectly horrid you can be!'she exclaimed" 199 + +"She began by balancing her check book" 224 + +"He stood before it, searching in it for any hint of that elusive and +mysterious _something_" 229 + +"'I shall have need of friends,' she said half to herself" 245 + +'"Don't do it, Valerie!'" 247 + +"Ogilvy stood looking sentimentally at the two young girls" 249 + +"Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she bent lower over +her sewing" 286 + +"She and Rita dined with him once or twice" 293 + +"Tall, transparently pale, negative in character" 297 + +"Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning simplicity of her manner +were noticed everywhere" 307 + +"'Where do you keep those pretty models, Louis?' he demanded" 315 + +"'Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting one,' said Lily" +326 + +"It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds" 338 + +The Countess d'Enver 347 + +"'May I sit here with you until she arrives? I am Stephanie Swift'" 355 + +"'John, you don't look very well,' said Valerie" 359 + +"'It is very beautiful, Louis,' said his mother, with a smile of pride" +387 + +"'You are not happy, Louis'" 390 + +"'What have you been saying to your mother?' he asked" 404 + +"'If you'll place a lump of sugar on my nose, and say "when," I'll +perform'" 409 + +"And what happier company for her than her thoughts--what tenderer +companionship than her memories?" 413 + +"She prowled around the library, luxuriously, dipping into inviting +volumes" 415 + +"'Miss West!' he exclaimed. 'How on earth did you ever find your way +into my woods?'" 417 + +"'Dearest,' he whispered, putting his arm around her, 'you must come +with us'" 427 + +"'Well, Louis, what do you know about this?'" 430 + +"The parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and shrieking from +his perch" 449 + +"'And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just men'" 453 + +"His thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie" 458 + +"Ogilvy ... began a lively fencing bout with an imaginary adversary" 479 + +"Then Rita came silently on sandalled feet to stand behind him and look +at what he had done" 483 + +"'You'd better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as well born as I +am'" 491 + +"She knelt down beside the bed and ... said whatever prayer she had in +mind" 507 + +"She was longer over her hair ... gathering it and bringing it under +discipline" 510 + +"'Yes,' she said, 'it is really great'" 521 + +"'I am scared blue. That's why I'm holding on to your hand so +desperately'" 531 + + + + +THE COMMON LAW + +CHAPTER I + + +There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door. He continued +working. After an interval the bell rang again, briefly, as though the +light touch on the electric button had lost its assurance. + +"Somebody's confidence has departed," he thought to himself, busy with a +lead-weighted string and a stick of soft charcoal wrapped in silver +foil. For a few moments he continued working, not inclined to trouble +himself to answer the door, but the hesitating timidity of a third +appeal amused him, and he walked out into the hallway and opened the +door. In the dim light a departing figure turned from the stairway: + +"Do you wish a model?" she asked in an unsteady voice. + +"No," he said, vexed. + +"Then--I beg your pardon for disturbing you--" + +"Who gave you my name?" he demanded. + +"Why--nobody--" + +"Who sent you to me? Didn't anybody send you?" + +"No." + +"But how did you get in?" + +"I--walked in." + +There was a scarcely perceptible pause; then she turned away in the dim +light of the corridor. + +"You know," he said, "models are not supposed to come here unless sent +for. It isn't done in this building." He pointed to a black and white +sign on his door which bore the words: "No Admittance." + +"I am very sorry. I didn't understand--" + +"Oh, it's all right; only, I don't see how you got up here at all. +Didn't the elevator boy question you? It's his business." + +"I didn't come up on the elevator." + +"You didn't _walk_ up!" + +"Yes." + +"Twelve stories!" + +"Both elevators happened to be in service. Besides, I was not quite +certain that models were expected to use the elevators." + +"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "you must have wanted an engagement pretty +badly." + +"Yes, I did." + +He stared: "I suppose you do, still," + +"If you would care to try me." + +"I'll take your name and address, anyhow. Twelve flights! For the love +of--oh, come in anyway and rest." + +It was dusky in the private hallway through which he preceded her, but +there was light enough in the great studio. Through the vast sheets of +glass fleecy clouds showed blue sky between. The morning was clearing. + +He went over to an ornate Louis XV table, picked up a note book, +motioned her to be seated, dropped into a chair himself, and began to +sharpen a pencil. As yet he had scarcely glanced at her, and now, while +he leisurely shaved the cedar and scraped the lead to a point, he +absent-mindedly and good-humouredly admonished her: + +"You models have your own guild, your club, your regular routine, and +it would make it much easier for us if you'd all register and quietly +wait until we send for you. + +[Illustration: "There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door."] + +"You see we painters know what we want and we know where to apply for +it. But if you all go wandering over studio buildings in search of +engagements, we won't have any leisure to employ you because it will +take all our time to answer the bell. And it will end by our not +answering it at all. And that's why it is fit and proper for good little +models to remain _chez eux_." + +He had achieved a point to his pencil. Now he opened his model book, +looked up at her with his absent smile, and remained looking. + +"Aren't you going to remove your veil?" + +"Oh--I beg your pardon!" Slender gloved fingers flew up, were nervously +busy a moment. She removed her veil and sat as though awaiting his +comment. None came. + +After a moment's pause she said: "Did you wish--my name and address?" + +He nodded, still looking intently at her. + +"Miss West," she said, calmly. He wrote it down. + +"Is that all? Just 'Miss West'?" + +"Valerie West--if that is custom--necessary." + +He wrote "Valerie West"; and, as she gave it to him, he noted her +address. + +"Head and shoulders?" he asked, quietly. + +"Yes," very confidently. + +"Figure?" + +"Yes,"--less confidently. + +"Draped or undraped?" + +When he looked up again, for an instant he thought her skin even whiter +than it had been; perhaps not, for, except the vivid lips and a +carnation tint in the cheeks, the snowy beauty of her face and neck had +already preoccupied him. + +"Do you pose undraped?" he repeated, interested. + +"I--expect to do--what is--required of--models." + +"Sensible," he commented, noting the detail in his book. "Now, Miss +West, for whom have you recently posed?" + +And, as she made no reply, he looked up amiably, balancing his pencil in +his hand and repeating the question. + +"Is it necessary to--tell you?" + +"Not at all. One usually asks that question, probably because you models +are always so everlastingly anxious to tell us--particularly when the +men for whom you have posed are more famous than the poor devil who +offers you an engagement." + +There was something very good humoured in his smile, and she strove to +smile, too, but her calmness was now all forced, and her heart was +beating very fast, and her black-gloved fingers were closing and +doubling till the hands that rested on the arms of the gilded antique +chair lay tightly clenched. + +He was leisurely writing in his note book under her name: + +"Height, medium; eyes, a dark brown; hair, thick, lustrous, and brown; +head, unusually beautiful; throat and neck, perfect--" + +He stopped writing and lifted his eyes: + +"How much of your time is taken ahead, I wonder?" + +"What?" + +"How many engagements have you? Is your time all cut up--as I fancy it +is?" + +"N-no." + +"Could you give me what time I might require?" + +"I think so." + +"What I mean, Miss West, is this: suppose that your figure is what I +have an idea it is; could you give me a lot of time ahead?" + +She remained silent so long that he had started to write, "probably +unreliable," under his notes; but, as his pencil began to move, her lips +unclosed with, a low, breathless sound that became a ghost of a voice: + +"I will do what you require of me. I meant to answer." + +"Do you mean that you are in a position to make a time contract with +me?--provided you prove to be what I need?" + +She nodded uncertainly. + +"I'm beginning the ceiling, lunettes, and panels for the Byzantine +Theatre," he added, sternly stroking his short mustache, "and under +those circumstances I suppose you know what a contract between us +means." + +She nodded again, but in her eyes was bewilderment, and in her heart, +fear. + +"Yes," she managed to say, "I think I understand." + +"Very well. I merely want to say that a model threw me down hard in the +very middle of the Bimmington's ball-room. Max Schindler put on a show, +and she put for the spot-light. She'd better stay put," he added grimly: +"she'll never have another chance in your guild." + +Then the frown vanished, and the exceedingly engaging smile glimmered in +his eyes: + +"You wouldn't do such a thing as that to me," he added; "would you, +Miss West?" + +"Oh, no," she replied, not clearly comprehending the enormity of the +Schindler recruit's behaviour. + +"And you'll stand by me if our engagement goes through?" + +"Yes, I--will try to." + +"Good business! Now, if you really are what I have an idea you are, I'll +know pretty quick whether I can use you for the Byzantine job." He rose, +walked over to a pair of closed folding doors and opened them. "You can +undress in there," he said. "I think you will find everything you need." + +For a second she sat rigid, her black-gloved hands doubled, her eyes +fastened on him as though fascinated. He had already turned and +sauntered over to one of several easels where he picked up the lump of +charcoal in its silver foil. + +The colour began to come back into her face--swifter, more swiftly: the +vast blank window with its amber curtains stared at her; she lifted her +tragic gaze and saw the sheet of glass above swimming in crystal light. +Through it clouds were dissolving in the bluest of skies; against it a +spiderweb of pendant cords drooped from the high ceiling; and she saw +the looming mystery of huge canvases beside which stepladders rose +surmounted by little crow's-nests where the graceful oval of palettes +curved, tinted with scraped brilliancy. + +"What a dreamer you are!" he called across the studio to her. "The light +is fine, now. Hadn't we better take advantage of it?" + +She managed to find her footing; contrived to rise, to move with +apparent self-possession toward the folding doors. + +"Better hurry," he said, pleasantly. "If you're what I need we might +start things now. I am all ready for the sort of figure I expect you +have." + +She stepped inside the room and became desperately busy for a moment +trying to close the doors; but either her hands had suddenly become +powerless or they shook too much; and when he turned, almost +impatiently, from his easel to see what all that rattling meant, she +shrank hastily aside into the room beyond, keeping out of his view. + +The room was charming--not like the studio, but modern and fresh and +dainty with chintz and flowered wall-paper and the graceful white +furniture of a bed-room. There was a flowered screen there, too. Behind +it stood a chair, and onto this she sank, laid her hands for an instant +against her burning face, then stooped and, scarcely knowing what she +was about, began to untie her patent-leather shoes. + +He remained standing at his easel, very busy with his string and lump of +charcoal; but after a while it occurred to him that she was taking an +annoyingly long time about a simple matter. + +"What on earth is the trouble?" he called. "Do you realise you've been +in there a quarter of an hour?" + +She made no answer. A second later he thought he heard an indistinct +sound--and it disquieted him. + +"Miss West?" + +There was no reply. + +Impatient, a little disturbed, he walked across to the folding doors; +and the same low, suppressed sound caught his ear. + +"What in the name of--" he began, walking into the room; and halted, +amazed. + +She sat all huddled together behind the screen, partly undressed, her +face hidden in her hands; and between the slender fingers tears ran down +brightly. + +"Are you ill?" he asked, anxiously. + +After a moment she slowly shook her head. + +"Then--what in the name of Mike--" + +"P-please forgive me. I--I will be ready in a in-moment--if you wouldn't +mind going out--" + +"_Are_ you ill? Answer me?" + +"N-no." + +"Has anything disturbed you so that you don't feel up to posing to-day?" + +"No.... I--am--almost ready--if you will go out--" + +He considered her, uneasy and perplexed. Then: + +"All right," he said, briefly. "Take your own time, Miss West." + +At his easel, fussing with yard-stick and crayon, he began to square off +his canvas, muttering to himself: + +"What the deuce is the matter with that girl? Nice moment to nurse +secret sorrows or blighted affections. There's always something wrong +with the best lookers.... And she is a real beauty--or I miss my guess." +He went on ruling off, measuring, grumbling, until slowly there came +over him the sense of the nearness of another person. He had not heard +her enter, but he turned around, knowing she was there. + +She stood silent, motionless, as though motion terrified her and inertia +were salvation. Her dark hair rippled to her waist; her white arms hung +limp, yet the fingers had curled till every delicate nail was pressed +deep into the pink palm. She was trying to look at him. Her face was as +white as a flower. + +"All right," he said under his breath, "you're practically faultless. I +suppose you realise it!" + +A scarcely perceptible shiver passed over her entire body, then, as he +stepped back, his keen artist's gaze narrowing, there stole over her a +delicate flush, faintly staining her from brow to ankle, transfiguring +the pallour exquisitely, enchantingly. And her small head drooped +forward, shadowed by her hair. + +"You're what I want," he said. "You're about everything I require in +colour and form and texture." + +She neither spoke nor moved as much as an eyelash. + +"Look here, Miss West," he said in a slightly excited voice, "let's go +about this thing intelligently." He swung another easel on its rollers, +displaying a sketch in soft, brilliant colours--a multitude of figures +amid a swirl of sunset-tinted clouds and patches of azure sky. + +"You're intelligent," he went on with animation,--"I saw that--somehow +or other--though you haven't said very much." He laughed, and laid his +hand on the painted canvas beside him: + +"You're a model, and it's not necessary to inform you that this Is only +a preliminary sketch. Your experience tells you that. But it is +necessary to tell you that it's the final composition. I've decided on +this arrangement for the ceiling: You see for yourself that you're +perfectly fitted to stand or sit for all these floating, drifting, +cloud-cradled goddesses. You're an inspiration in yourself--for the +perfections of Olympus!" he added, laughing, "and that's no idle +compliment. But of course other artists have often told you this +before--as though you didn't have eyes of your own I And beautiful ones +at that!" He laughed again, turned and dragged a two-storied model-stand +across the floor, tossed up one or two silk cushions, and nodded to her. + +"Don't be afraid; it's rickety but safe. It will hold us both. Are you +ready?" + +As in a dream she set one little bare foot on the steps, mounted, +balancing with arms extended and the tips of her fingers resting on his +outstretched hand. + +Standing on the steps he arranged the cushions, told her where to be +seated, how to recline, placed the wedges and blocks to support her +feet, chalked the bases, marked positions with arrows, and wedged and +blocked up her elbow. Then he threw over her a soft, white, wool robe, +swathing her from throat to feet, descended the steps, touched an +electric bell, and picking up a huge clean palette began to squeeze out +coils of colour from a dozen plump tubes. + +Presently a short, squarely built man entered. He wore a blue jumper; +there were traces of paint on it, on his large square hands, on his +square, serious face. + +"O'Hara?" + +"Sorr?" + +"We're going to begin _now_!--thank Heaven. So if you'll be kind enough +to help move forward the ceiling canvas--" + +O'Hara glanced up carelessly at the swathed and motionless figure above, +then calmly spat upon his hands and laid hold of one side of the huge +canvas indicated. The painter took the other side. + +"Now, O'Hara, careful! Back off a little!--don't let it sway! +There--that's where I want it. Get a ladder and clamp the tops. Pitch it +a little forward--more!--stop! Fix those pully ropes; I'll make things +snug below." + +[Illustration: "'Now, Miss West,' he said decisively."] + +For ten minutes they worked deftly, rapidly, making fast the great blank +canvas which had been squared and set with an enormous oval in heavy +outline. + +From her lofty eyrie she looked down at them as in a dream while they +shifted other enormous framed canvases and settled the oval one into +place. Everything below seemed to be on rubber wheels or casters, +easels, stepladders, colour cabinets, even the great base where the oval +set canvas rested. + +She looked up at the blue sky. Sparrows dropped out of the brilliant +void into unseen canons far below from whence came the softened roar of +traffic. Northward the city spread away between its rivers, glittering +under the early April sun; the Park lay like a grey and green map set +with, the irregular silver of water; beyond, the huge unfinished +cathedral loomed dark against the big white hospital of St. Luke; +farther still a lilac-tinted haze hung along the edges of the Bronx. + +"All right, O'Hara. Much obliged. I won't need you again." + +"Very good, Sorr." + +The short, broad Irishman went out with another incurious glance aloft, +and closed the outer door. + +High up on her perch she watched the man below. He calmly removed coat +and waistcoat, pulled a painter's linen blouse over his curly head, +lighted a cigarette, picked up his palette, fastened a tin cup to the +edge, filled it from a bottle, took a handful of brushes and a bunch of +cheese cloth, and began to climb up a stepladder opposite her, lugging +his sketch in the other hand. + +He fastened the little sketch to an upright and stood on the ladder +halfway up, one leg higher than the other. + +"Now, Miss West," he said decisively. + +At the sound of his voice fear again leaped through her like a flame, +burning her face as she let slip the white wool robe. + +"All right," he said. "Don't move while I'm drawing unless you have to." + +She could see him working. He seemed to be drawing with a brush, +rapidly, and with, a kind of assurance that appeared almost careless. + +At first she could make out little of the lines. They were all dark in +tint, thin, tinged with plum colour. There seemed to be no curves in +them--and at first she could not comprehend that he was drawing her +figure. But after a little while curves appeared; long delicate outlines +began to emerge as rounded surfaces in monochrome, casting definite +shadows on other surfaces. She could recognise the shape of a human +head; saw it gradually become a colourless drawing; saw shoulders, arms, +a body emerging into shadowy shape; saw the long fine limbs appear, the +slender indication of feet. + +Then flat on the cheek lay a patch of brilliant colour, another on the +mouth. A great swirl of cloud forms sprang into view high piled in a +corner of the canvas. + +And now he seemed to be eternally running up and down his ladder, +shifting it here and there across the vast white background of canvas, +drawing great meaningless lines in distant expanses of the texture, +then, always consulting her with his keen, impersonal gaze, he pushed +back his ladder, mounted, wiped the big brushes, selected others smaller +and flatter, considering her in penetrating silence between every brush, +stroke. + +She saw a face and hair growing lovely under her eyes, bathed in an +iris-tinted light; saw little exquisite flecks of colour set here and +there on the white expanse; watched all so intently, so wonderingly, +that the numbness of her body became a throbbing pain before she was +aware that she was enduring torture. + +She strove to move, gave a little gasp; and he was down from his ladder +and up on hers before her half-paralysed body had swayed to the edge of +danger. + +"Why didn't you say so?" he asked, sharply. "I can't keep track of time +when I'm working!" + +With arms and fingers that scarcely obeyed her she contrived to gather +the white wool covering around her shoulders and limbs and lay back. + +"You know," he said, "that it's foolish to act this way. I don't want to +kill you, Miss West." + +She only lowered her head amid its lovely crown of hair. + +"You know your own limits," he said, resentfully. He looked down at the +big clock: "It's a full hour. You had only to speak. Why didn't you?" + +"I--I didn't know what to say." + +"Didn't know!" He paused, astonished. Then: "Well, you felt yourself +getting numb, didn't you?" + +"Y-yes. But I thought it was--to be expected"--she blushed vividly under +his astonished gaze: "I think I had better tell you that--that this +is--the first time." + +"The first time!" + +"Yes.... I ought to have told you. I was afraid you might not want me." + +"Lord above!" he breathed. "You poor--poor little thing!" + +She began to cry silently; he saw the drops fall shining on the white +wool robe, and leaned one elbow on the ladder, watching them. After a +while they ceased, but she still held her head low, and her face was +bent in the warm shadow of her hair. + +"How could I understand?" he asked very gently. + +"I--should have told you. I was afraid." + +He said: "I'm terribly sorry. It must have been perfect torture for you +to undress--to come into the studio. If you'd only given me an idea of +how matters stood I could have made it a little easier. I'm afraid I was +brusque--taking it for granted that you were a model and knew your +business.... I'm terribly sorry." + +She lifted her head, looked at him, with the tears still clinging to her +lashes. + +"You have been very nice to me. It is all my own fault." + +He smiled. "Then it's all right, now that we understand. Isn't it?" + +"Yes." + +"You make a stunning model," he said frankly. + +"Do I? Then you will let me come again?" + +"_Let_ you!" He laughed; "I'll be more likely to beg you." + +"Oh, you won't have to," she said; "I'll come as long as you want me." + +"That is simply angelic of you. Tell me, do you wish to descend to terra +firma?" + +She glanced below, doubtfully: + +"N-no, thank you. If I could only stretch my--legs--" + +"Stretch away," he said, much amused, "but don't tumble off and break +into pieces. I like you better as you are than as an antique and +limbless Venus." + +She cautiously and daintily extended first one leg then the other under +the wool robe, then eased the cramped muscles of her back, straightening +her body and flexing her arms with a little sigh of relief. As her shy +sidelong gaze reverted to him she saw to her relief that he was not +noticing her. A slight sense of warmth, suffused her body, and she +stretched herself again, more confidently, and ventured to glance +around. + +"Speaking of terms," he said in an absent way, apparently preoccupied +with the palette which he was carefully scraping, "do you happen to know +what is the usual recompense for a model's service?" + +She said that she had heard, and added with quick diffidence that she +could not expect so much, being only a beginner. + +He polished the surface of the palette with a handful of cheese cloth: + +"Don't you think that you are worth it?" + +"How can _I_ be until I know how to pose for you?" + +"You will never have to learn how to pose, Miss West." + +"I don't know exactly what you mean." + +"I mean that some models never learn. Some know how already--you, for +example." + +She flushed slightly: "Do you really mean that?" + +"Oh, I wouldn't say so if I didn't. It's merely necessary for you to +accustom yourself to holding a pose; the rest you already know +instinctively." + +"What is the rest?" she ventured to ask. "I don't quite understand what +you see in me--" + +"Well," he said placidly, "you are beautifully made. That is +nine-tenths of the matter. Your head is set logically on your neck, and +your neck is correctly placed on your spine, and your legs and arms are +properly attached to your torso--your entire body, anatomically +speaking, is hinged, hung, supported, developed as the ideal body should +be. It's undeformed, unmarred, unspoiled, and that's partly luck, partly +inheritance, and mostly decent habits and digestion." + +She was listening intently, interested, surprised, her pink lips +slightly parted. + +"Another point," he continued; "you seem unable to move or rest +ungracefully. Few women are so built that an ungraceful motion is +impossible for them. You are one of the few. It's all a matter of +anatomy." + +She remained silent, watching him curiously. + +He said: "But the final clincher to your qualifications is that you are +intelligent. I have known pretty women," he added with, sarcasm, "who +were not what learned men would call precisely intelligent. But you are. +I showed you my sketch, indicated in a general way what I wanted, and +instinctively and intelligently you assumed the proper attitude. I +didn't have to take you by the chin and twist your head as though you +were a lay figure; I didn't have to pull you about and flex and bend and +twist you. You knew that I wanted you to look like some sort of an +ethereal immortality, deliciously relaxed, adrift in sunset clouds. And +you _were_ it--somehow or other." + +She looked down, thoughtfully, nestling to the chin in the white wool +folds. A smile, almost imperceptible, curved her lips. + +"You are making it very easy for me," she said. + +"You make it easy for yourself." + +"I was horribly afraid," she said thoughtfully. + +"I have no doubt of it." + +"Oh, you don't know--nobody can know--no man can understand the terror +of--of the first time--" + +"It must be a ghastly experience." + +"It is!--I don't mean that you have not done everything to make it +easier--but--there in the little room--my courage left me--I almost +died. I'd have run away only--I was afraid you wouldn't let me--" + +He began to laugh; she tried to, but the terror of it all was as yet too +recent. + +"At first," she said, "I was afraid I wouldn't do for a model--not +exactly afraid of my--my appearance, but because I was a novice; and I +imagined that one had to know exactly how to pose--" + +"I think," he interrupted smilingly, "that you might take the pose again +if you are rested. Go on talking; I don't mind it." + +She sat erect, loosened the white wool robe and dropped it from her with +less consciousness and effort than before. Very carefully she set her +feet on the blocks, fitting the shapely heels to the chalked outlines; +found the mark for her elbow, adjusted her slim, smooth body and looked +at him, flushing. + +"All right," he said briefly; "go ahead and talk to me." + +"Do you wish me to?" + +"Yes; I'd rather." + +"I don't know exactly what to say." + +"Say anything," he returned absently, selecting a flat brush with a very +long handle. + +She thought a moment, then, lifting her eyes: + +"I might ask you your name." + +"What? Don't you know it? Oh, Lord! Oh, Vanity! I thought you'd heard of +me." + +She blushed, confused by her ignorance and what she feared was annoyance +on his part; then perceived that he was merely amused; and her face +cleared. + +"We folk who create concrete amusement for the public always imagine +ourselves much better known to that public than we are, Miss West. It's +our little vanity--rather harmless after all. We're a pretty decent lot, +sometimes absurd, especially in our tragic moments; sometimes emotional, +usually illogical, often impulsive, frequently tender-hearted as well as +supersensitive. + +"Now it was a pleasant little vanity for me to take it for granted that +somehow you had heard of me and had climbed twelve flights of stairs for +the privilege of sitting for me." + +He laughed so frankly that the shy, responsive smile made her face +enchanting; and he coolly took advantage of it, and while exciting and +stimulating it, affixed it immortally on the exquisite creature he was +painting. + +"So you didn't climb those twelve flights solely for the privilege of +having me paint you?" + +"No," she admitted, laughingly, "I was merely going to begin at the top +and apply for work all the way down until somebody took me--or nobody +took me." + +"But why begin at the top?" + +"It is easier to bear disappointment going down," she said, seriously; +"if two or three artists had refused me on the first and second floors, +my legs would not have carried me up very far." + +"Bad logic," he commented. "We mount by experience, using our wrecked +hopes as footholds." + +"You don't know how much a girl can endure. There comes a time-after +years of steady descent--when misfortune and disappointment become +endurable; when hope deferred no longer sickens. It is in rising toward +better things that disappointments hurt most cruelly." + +He turned his head in surprise; then went on painting: + +"Your philosophy is the philosophy of submission." + +"Do you call a struggle of years, submission?" + +"But it was giving up after all--acquiescence, despondency, a _laissez +faire_ policy." + +"One may tire of fighting." + +"One may. Another may not." + +"I think you have never had to fight very hard." + +He turned his head abruptly; after a moment's silent survey of her, he +resumed his painting with a sharp, impersonal glance before every swift +and decisive brush stroke: + +"No; I have never had to fight, Miss West.... It was keen of you to +recognise it. I have never had to fight at all. Things come easily to +me--things have a habit of coming my way.... I suppose I'm not exactly +the man to lecture anybody on the art of fighting fortune. She's always +been decent to me.... Sometimes I'm afraid--I have an instinct that +she's too friendly.... And it troubles me. Do you understand what I +mean?" + +"Yes." + +He looked up at her: "Are you sure?" + +"I think so. I have been watching you painting. I never imagined +anybody could draw so swiftly, so easily--paint so surely, so +accurately--that every brush stroke could be so--so significant, so +decisive.... Is it not unusual? And is not that what is called +facility?" + +"Lord in Heaven!" he said; "what kind of a girl am I dealing with?--or +what kind of a girl is dealing so unmercifully with me?" + +"I--I didn't mean--" + +"Yes, you did. Those very lovely and wonderfully shaped eyes of yours +are not entirely for ornament. Inside that pretty head there's an +apparatus designed for thinking; and it isn't idle." + +He laughed gaily, a trifle defiantly: + +"You've said it. You've found the fly in the amber. I'm cursed with +facility. Worse still it gives me keenest pleasure to employ it. It does +scare me occasionally--has for years--makes me miserable at +intervals--fills me full of all kinds of fears and doubts." + +He turned toward her, standing on his ladder, the big palette curving up +over his left shoulder, a wet brush extended in his right hand: + +"What shall I do!" he exclaimed so earnestly that she sat up straight, +startled, forgetting her pose. "Ought I to stifle the vigour, the +energy, the restless desire that drives me to express myself--that will +not tolerate the inertia of calculation and ponderous reflection? Ought +I to check myself, consider, worry, entangle myself in psychologies, +seek for subtleties where none exist--split hairs, relapse into +introspective philosophy when my fingers itch for a lump of charcoal and +every colour on my set palette yells at me to be about my business?" + +He passed the flat tip of his wet brush through the mass of rags in his +left hand with a graceful motion like one unsheathing a sword: + +"I tell you I do the things which I do, as easily, as naturally, as +happily as any fool of a dicky-bird does his infernal twittering on an +April morning. God knows whether there's anything in my work or in his +twitter; but neither he nor I are likely to improve our output by +pondering and cogitation.... Please resume the pose." + +She did so, her dark young eyes on him; and he continued painting and +talking in his clear, rapid, decisive manner: + +"My name is Louis Neville. They call me Kelly--my friends do," he added, +laughing. "Have you ever seen any of my work?" + +"Yes." + +He laughed again: "That's more soothing. However, I suppose you saw that +big canvas of mine for the ceiling of the Metropolitan Museum's new +northwest wing. The entire town saw it." + +"Yes, I saw it." + +"Did you care for it?" + +She had cared for it too intensely to give him any adequate answer. +Never before had her sense of colour and form and beauty been so +exquisitely satisfied by the painted magic of any living painter. So +this was the man who had enveloped her, swayed her senses, whirled her +upward into his ocean of limpid light! This was the man who had done +that miracle before which, all day long, crowds of the sober, decent, +unimaginative--the solid, essentials of the nation--had lingered +fascinated! This was the man--across there on a stepladder. And he was +evidently not yet thirty; and his name was Neville and his friends +called him Kelly. + +"Yes," she said, diffidently, "I cared for it." + +"Really?" + +He caught her eye, laughed, and went on with his work. + +"The critics were savage," he said. "Lord! It hurts, too. But I've +simply got to be busy. What good would it do me to sit down and draw +casts with a thin, needle-pointed stick of hard charcoal. Not that they +say I can't draw. They admit that I can. They admit that I can paint, +too." + +He laughed, stretched his arms: + +"Draw! A blank canvas sets me mad. When I look at one I feel like +covering it with a thousand figures twisted into every intricacy and +difficulty of foreshortening! I wish I were like that Hindu god with a +dozen arms; and even then I couldn't paint fast enough to satisfy what +my eyes and brain have already evoked upon an untouched canvas.... It's +a sort of intoxication that gets hold of me; I'm perfectly cool, too, +which seems a paradox but isn't. And all the while, inside me, is a +constant, hushed kind of laughter, bubbling, which accompanies every +brush stroke with an 'I told you so!'--if you know what I'm trying to +say--_do_ you?" + +"N-not exactly. But I suppose you mean that you are self-confident." + +"Lord! Listen to this girl say in a dozen words what I'm trying to say +in a volume so that it won't scare me! Yes! That's it. I am confident. +And it's that self-confidence which sometimes scares me half to death." + +From his ladder he pointed with his brush to the preliminary sketch +that faced her, touching figure after figure: + +"I'm going to draw them in, now," he said; "first this one. Can you +catch the pose? It's going to be hard; I'll block up your heels, later; +that's it! Stand up straight, stretch as though the next moment you were +going to rise on tiptoe and float upward without an effort--" + +He was working like lightning in long, beautiful, clean outline strokes, +brushed here and there with shadow shapes and masses. And time flew at +first, then went slowly, more slowly, until it dragged at her delicate +body and set every nerve aching. + +"I--may I rest a moment?" + +"Sure thing!" he said, cordially, laying aside palette and brushes. +"Come on, Miss West, and we'll have luncheon." + +She hastily swathed herself in the wool robe. + +"Do you mean--here?" + +"Yes. There's a dumb-waiter. I'll ring for the card." + +"I'd like to," she said, "but do you think I had better?" + +"Why not?" + +"You mean--take lunch with you?" + +"Why not?" + +"Is it customary?" + +"No, it isn't." + +"Then I think I will go out to lunch somewhere--" + +"I'm not going to let you get away," he said, laughing. "You're too good +to be real; I'm worried half to death for fear that you'll vanish in a +golden cloud, or something equally futile and inconsiderate. No, I want +you to stay. You don't mind, do you?" + +He was aiding her to descend from her eyrie, her little white hand +balanced on his arm. When she set foot on the floor she looked up at him +gravely: + +"You wouldn't let me do anything that I ought not to, would you, Mr. +Kelly--I mean Mr. Neville?" she added in confusion. + +"No. Anyway I don't know what you ought or ought not to do. Luncheon is +a simple matter of routine. It's sole significance is two empty +stomachs. I suppose if you go out you _will_ come back, but--I'd rather +you'd remain." + +"Why?" + +"Well," he admitted with a laugh, "it's probably because I like to hear +myself talk to you. Besides, I've always the hope that you'll suddenly +become conversational, and that's a possibility exciting enough to give +anybody an appetite." + +"But I _have_ conversed with you," she said. + +"Only a little. What you said acted like a cocktail to inspire me for a +desire for more." + +"I am afraid that you were not named Kelly in vain." + +"You mean blarney? No, it's merely frankness. Let me get you some +bath-slippers--" + +"Oh--but if I am to lunch here--I can't do it this way!" she exclaimed +in flushed consternation. + +"Indeed you must learn to do that without embarrassment, Miss West. Tie +up your robe at the throat, tuck up your sleeves, slip your feet into a +nice pair of brand-new bath-slippers, and I'll ring for luncheon." + +"I--don't--want to--" she began; but he went away into the hall, rang, +and presently she heard the ascending clatter of a dumb-waiter. From it +he took the luncheon card and returned to where she was sitting at a +rococo table. She blushed as he laid the card before her, and would have +nothing to do with it. The result was that he did the ordering, sent the +dumb-waiter down with his scribbled memorandum, and came wandering back +with long, cool glances at his canvas and the work he had done on it. + +"I mean to make a stunning thing of it," he remarked, eying the huge +chassis critically. "All this--deviltry--whatever it is inside of +me--must come out somehow. And that canvas is the place for it." He +laughed and sat down opposite her: + +"Man is born to folly, Miss West--born full of it. I get rid of mine on +canvas. It's a safer outlet for original sin than some other ways." + +She lay back in her antique gilded chair, hands extended along the arms, +looking at him with a smile that was still shy. + +"My idea of you--of an artist--was so different," she said. + +"There are all kinds, mostly the seriously inspired and humourless +variety who makes a mystic religion of a very respectable profession. +This world is full of pale, enraptured artists; full of muscular, +thumb-smearing artists; full of dreamy weavers of visions, usually +deficient in spinal process; full of unwashed little inverts to whom the +world really resembles a kaleidoscope full of things that wiggle--" + +They began to laugh, he with a singular delight in her comprehension of +his idle, irresponsible chatter, she from sheer pleasure in listening +and looking at this man who was so different from anybody she had ever +known--and, thank God!--so young. + +And when the bell rang and the clatter announced the advent of luncheon, +she settled in her chair with a little shiver of happiness, blushing at +her capacity for it, and at her acquiescence in the strangest conditions +in which she had ever found herself in all her life,--conditions so +bizarre, so grotesque, so impossible that there was no use in trying to +consider them--alas! no point in blushing now. + +Mechanically she settled her little naked feet deep into the big +bath-slippers, tucked up her white wool sleeves to the dimpled elbow, +and surveyed the soup which he had placed before her to serve. + +"I know perfectly well that this isn't right," she said, helping him and +then herself. "But I am wondering what there is about it that isn't +right." + +"Isn't it demoralising!" he said, amused. + +"I--wonder if it is?" + +He laughed: "Such ideas are nonsense, Miss West. Listen to me: you and +I--everybody except those with whom something is physically wrong--are +born with a full and healthy capacity for demoralisation and mischief. +Mischief is only one form of energy. If lightning flies about unguided +it's likely to do somebody some damage; if it's conducted properly to a +safe terminal there's no damage done and probably a little good." + +"Your brushes are your lightning-rods?" she suggested, laughing. + +"Certainly. I only demoralise canvas. What outlet have you for your +perfectly normal deviltry?" + +"I haven't any." + +[Illustration: "'I know perfectly well that this isn't right,' she +said."] + +"Any deviltry?" + +"Any outlet." + +"You ought to have." + +"Ought I?" + +"Certainly. You are as full of restless energy as I am." + +"Oh, I don't think I am." + +"You are. Look at yourself! I never saw anybody so sound, so superbly +healthy, so"--he laughed--"adapted to dynamics. You've got to have an +outlet. Or there'll be the deuce to pay." + +She looked at her fruit salad gravely, tasted it, and glanced up at him: + +"I have never in all my life had any outlet--never even any outlook, Mr. +Neville." + +"You should have had both," he grumbled, annoyed at himself for the +interest her words had for him; uneasy, now that she had responded, yet +curious to learn something about this fair young girl, approximately his +intellectual equal, who came to his door looking for work as a model. He +thought to himself that probably it was some distressing tale which he +couldn't help, and the recital of which would do neither of them any +good. Of stories of models' lives he was tired, satiated. There was no +use encouraging her to family revelations; an easy, pleasant footing was +far more amusing to maintain. The other hinted of intimacy; and that he +had never tolerated in his employees. + +Yet, looking now across the table at her, a not unkind curiosity began +to prod him. He could easily have left matters where they were, +maintained the _status quo_ indefinitely--or as long as he needed her +services. + +"Outlets are necessary," he said, cautiously. "Otherwise we go to the +bow-wows." + +"Or--die." + +"What?" sharply. + +She looked up without a trace of self-consciousness or the least hint of +the dramatic: + +"I would die unless I had an outlet. This is almost one. At least it +gives me something to do with my life." + +"Posing?" + +"Yes." + +"I don't quite understand you." + +"Why, I only mean that--the other"--she smiled--"what you call the +bow-wows, would not have been an outlet for me.... I was a show-girl for +two months last winter; I ought to know. And I'd rather have died +than--" + +"I see," he said; "that outlet was too stupid to have attracted you." + +She nodded. "Besides, I have principles," she said, candidly. + +"Which effectually blocked that outlet. They sometimes kill, too, as you +say. Youth stifled too long means death--the death of youth at least. +Outlets mean life. The idea is to find a safe one." + +She flushed in quick, sensitive response: + +"_That_ is it; that is what I meant. Mr. Neville, I am twenty-one; and +do you know I never had a childhood? And I am simply wild for it--for +the girlhood and the playtime that I never had--" + +She checked herself, looking across at him uncertainly. + +"Go on," he nodded. + +"That is all." + +"No; tell me the rest." + +She sat with head bent, slender fingers picking at her napkin; then, +without raising her troubled eyes: + +"Life has been--curious. My mother was bedridden. My childhood and +girlhood were passed caring for her. That is all I ever did until--a +year ago," she added, her voice falling so low he could scarcely hear +her. + +"She died, then?" + +"A year ago last February." + +"You went to school. You must have made friends there." + +"I went to a public school for a year. After that mother taught me." + +"She must have been extremely cultivated." + +The girl nodded, looking absently at the cloth. Then, glancing up: + +"I wonder whether you will understand me when I tell you why I decided +to ask employment of artists." + +"I'll try to," he said, smiling. + +"It was an intense desire to be among cultivated people--if only for a +few hours. Besides, I had read about artists; and their lives seemed so +young, so gay, so worth living--please don't think me foolish and +immature, Mr. Neville--but I was so stifled, so cut off from such +people, so uninspired, so--so starved for a little gaiety--and I needed +youthful companionship--surroundings where people of my own age and +intelligence sometimes entered--and I had never had it--" + +She looked at him with a strained, wistful expression as though begging +him to understand her: + +"I couldn't remain at the theatre," she said. "I had little talent--no +chance except chances I would not tolerate; no companionship except what +I was unfitted for by education and inclination.... The men +were--impossible. There may have been girls I could have liked--but I +did not meet them. So, as I had to do something--and my years of +seclusion with mother had unfitted me for any business--for office work +or shop work--I thought that artists might care to employ me--might give +me--or let me see--be near--something of the gayer, brighter, more +pleasant and youthful side of life--" + +She ceased, bent her head thoughtfully. + +"You want--friends? Young ones--with intellects? You want to combine +these with a chance of making a decent living?" + +"Yes." She looked up candidly: "I am simply starved for it. You must +believe that when you see what I have submitted to--gone through with in +your studio"--she blushed vividly--"in a--a desperate attempt to escape +the--the loneliness, the silence and isolation"--she raised her dark +eyes--"the isolation of the poor," she said. "You don't know what that +means." + +After a moment she added, level-eyed: "For which there is supposed to be +but one outlet--if a girl is attractive." + +He rose, walked to and fro for a few moments, then, halting: + +"All memory of the initial terror and distress and uncertainty aside, +have you not enjoyed this morning, Miss West?" + +"Yes, I--have. I--you have no idea what it has meant to me." + +"It has given you an outlook, anyway." + +"Yes.... Only--I'm terrified at the idea of going through it again--with +another man--" + +He laughed, and she tried to, saying: + +"But if all artists are as kind and considerate--" + +"Plenty of 'em are more so. There are a few bounders, a moderate number +of beasts. You'll find them everywhere in the world from the purlieus to +the pulpit.... I'm going to make a contract with you. After that, +regretfully, I'll see that you meet the men who will be valuable to +you.... I wish there was some way I could box you up in a jeweller's +case so that nobody else could have you and I could find you when I +needed you!" + +She laughed shyly, extended her slim white hand for him to support her +while she mounted to her eyrie. Then, erect, delicately flushed, she let +the robe fall from her and stood looking down at him in silence. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Spring came unusually early that year. By the first of the month a few +willows and thorn bushes in the Park had turned green; then, in a single +day, the entire Park became lovely with golden bell-flowers, and the +first mowing machine clinked over the greenswards leaving a fragrance of +clipped verdure in its wake. + +Under a characteristic blue sky April unfolded its myriad leaves beneath +which robins ran over shaven lawns and purple grackle bustled busily +about, and the water fowl quacked and whistled and rushed through the +water nipping and chasing one another or, sidling alongside, began that +nodding, bowing, bobbing acquaintance preliminary to aquatic courtship. + +Many of the wild birds had mated; many were mating; amorous caterwauling +on back fences made night an inferno; pigeons cooed and bubbled and made +endless nuisances of themselves all day long. + +In lofts, offices, and shops youthful faces, whitened by the winter's +pallour, appeared at open windows gazing into the blue above, or, with, +pretty, inscrutable eyes, studied the passing throng till the lifted +eyes of youth below completed the occult circuit with a smile. + +And the spring sunshine grew hot, and sprinkling carts appeared, and the +metropolis moulted its overcoats, and the derby became a burden, and the +annual spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design remained +uncrowded. + +Neville, lunching at the Syrinx Club, carelessly caught the ball of +conversation tossed toward him and contributed his final comment: + +"Burleson--and you, Sam Ogilvy--and you, Annan, all say that the +exhibition is rotten. You say so every year; so does the majority of +people. And the majority will continue saying the same thing throughout +the coming decades as long as there are any exhibitions to damn. + +"It is the same thing in other countries. For a hundred years the +majority has pronounced every Salon rotten. And it will so continue. + +"But the facts are these: the average does not vary much. A mediocrity, +not disagreeable, always rules; supremity has been, is, and always will +be the stick in the riffle around which the little whirlpool will always +centre. This year it happens to be José Querida who stems the sparkling +mediocrity and sticks up from the bottom gravel making a fine little +swirl. Next year--or next decade it may be anybody--you, Annan, or +Sam--perhaps," he added with a slight smile, "it might be I. _Quand +même_. The exhibitions are no rottener than they have ever been; and +it's up to us to go about our business. And I'm going. Good-bye." + +He rose from the table, laid aside the remains of his cigar, nodded +good-humouredly to the others, and went out with that quick, graceful, +elastic step which was noticed by everybody and envied by many. + +"Hell," observed John Burleson, hitching his broad shoulders forward and +swallowing a goblet of claret at a single gulp, "it's all right for +Kelly Neville to shed sweetness and light over a rotten exhibition where +half the people are crowded around his own picture." + +"What a success he's having," mused Ogilvy, looking sideways out of the +window at a pretty girl across the street. + +Annan nodded: "He works hard enough for it." + +"He works all the time," grumbled Burleson, "but, does he work _hard_?" + +"A cat scrambling in a molasses barrel works hard," observed Ogilvy--"if +you see any merit in that, John." + +Burleson reared his huge frame and his symmetrical features became more +bovine than ever: + +"What the devil has a cat in a molasses barrel to do with the subject?" +he demanded. + +Annan laughed: "Poor old honest, literal John," he said, lazily. +"Listen; from my back window in the country, yesterday, I observed one +of my hens scratching her ear with her foot. How would you like to be +able to accomplish that, John?" + +"I wouldn't like it at all!" roared Burleson in serious disapproval. + +"That's because you're a sculptor and a Unitarian," said Annan, gravely. + +"My God!" shouted Burleson, "what's that got to do with a hen scratching +herself!" + +Ogilvy was too weak with laughter to continue the favourite pastime of +"touching up John"; and Burleson who, under provocation, never exhibited +any emotion except impatient wonder at the foolishness of others, +emptied his claret bottle with unruffled confidence in his own +common-sense and the futility of his friends. + +"Kelly, they say, is making a stunning lot of stuff for that Byzantine +Theatre," he said in his honest, resonant voice. "I wish to Heaven I +could paint like him." + +Annan passed his delicate hand over his pale, handsome face: "Kelly +Neville is, without exception, the most gifted man I ever knew." + +"No, the most skilful," suggested Ogilvy. "I have known more gifted men +who never became skilful." + +[Illustration: "'What's the matter with it, then?'"] + +"What hair is that you're splitting, Sam?" demanded Burleson. "Don't +you like Kelly's work?" + +"Sure I do." + +"What's the matter with it, then?" + +There was a silence. One or two men at neighbouring tables turned partly +around to listen. There seemed to be something in the very simple and +honest question of John Burleson that arrested the attention of every +man at the Syrinx Club who had heard it. Because, for the first time, +the question which every man there had silently, involuntarily asked +himself had been uttered aloud at last by John Burleson--voiced in utter +good faith and with all confidence that the answer could be only that +there was nothing whatever the matter with Louis Neville's work. And his +answer had been a universal silence. + +Clive Gail, lately admitted to the Academy said: "I have never in my +life seen or believed possible such facility as is Louis Neville's." + +"Sure thing," grunted Burleson. + +"His personal manner of doing his work--which the critics and public +term 'tek--nee--ee--eek,'" laughed Annan, "is simply gloriously +bewildering. There is a sweeping splendour to it--and _what_ colour!" + +There ensued murmured and emphatic approbation; and another silence. + +Ogilvy's dark, pleasant face was troubled when he broke the quiet, and +everybody turned toward him: + +"Then," he said, slowly, "what _is_ the matter with Neville?" + +Somebody said: "He _does_ convince you; it isn't that, is it?" + +A voice replied: "Does he convince himself?" + +"There is--there always has been something lacking in all that big, +glorious, splendid work. It only needs that one thing--whatever it is," +said Ogilvy, quietly. "Kelly is too sure, too powerfully perfect, too +omniscient--" + +"And we mortals can't stand that," commented Annan, laughing. "'Raus mit +Neville!' He paints joy and sorrow as though he'd never known either--" + +And his voice checked itself of its own instinct in the startled +silence. + +"That man, Neville, has never known the pain of work," said Gail, +deliberately. "When he has passed through it and it has made his hand +less steady, less omnipotent--" + +"That's right. We can't love a man who has never endured what we have," +said another. "No genius can hide his own immunity. That man paints with +an unscarred soul. A little hell for his--and no living painter could +stand beside him." + +"Piffle," observed John Burleson. + +Ogilvy said: "It is true, I think, that out of human suffering a quality +is distilled which affects everything one does. Those who have known +sorrow can best depict it--not perhaps most plausibly, but most +convincingly--and with fewer accessories, more reticence, and--better +taste." + +"Why do you want to paint tragedies?" demanded Burleson. + +"One need not paint them, John, but one needs to understand them to +paint anything else--needs to have lived them, perhaps, to become a +master of pictured happiness, physical or spiritual." + +"That's piffle, too!" said Burleson in his rumbling bass--"like that +damn hen you lugged in--" + +A shout of laughter relieved everybody. + +"Do you want a fellow to go and poke his head into trouble and get +himself mixed up in a tragedy so that he can paint better?" insisted +Burleson, scornfully. + +"There's usually no necessity to hunt trouble," said Annan. + +"But you say that Kelly never had any and that he'd paint better if he +had." + +"Trouble _might_ be the making of Kelly Neville," mused Ogilvy, "and it +might not. It depends, John, not on the amount and quality of the hell, +but on the man who's frying on the gridiron." + +Annan said: "Personally I don't see how Kelly _could_ paint happiness or +sorrow or wonder or fear into any of his creations any more convincingly +than he does. And yet--and yet--sometimes we love men for their +shortcomings--for the sincerity of their blunders--for the fallible +humanity in them. That after all is where love starts. The rest--what +Kelly shows us--evokes wonder, delight, awe, enthusiasm.... If he could +only make us love him--" + +"_I_ love him!" said Burleson. + +"We all are inclined to--if we could get near enough to him," said Annan +with a faint smile. + +"Him--or his work?" + +"Both, John. There's a vast amount of nonsense talked about the +necessity of separation between a man and his work--that the public has +no business with the creator, only with his creations. It is partly +true. Still, no man ever created anything in which he did not include a +sample of himself--if not what he himself is, at least what he would +like to be and what he likes and dislikes in others. No creator who +shows his work can hope to remain entirely anonymous. And--I am not yet +certain that the public has no right to make its comments on the man who +did the work as well as on the work which it is asked to judge." + +"The man is nothing; the work everything," quoted Burleson, heavily. + +"So I've heard," observed Annan, blandly. "It's rather a precious +thought, isn't it, John?" + +"Do you consider that statement to be pure piffle?" + +"Partly, dear friend. But I'm one of those nobodies who cherish a +degenerate belief that man comes first, and then his works, and that the +main idea is to get through life as happily as possible with the minimum +of inconvenience to others. Human happiness is what I venture to +consider more important than the gim-cracks created by those same +humans. Man first, then man's work, that's the order of mundane +importance to me. And if you've got to criticise the work, for God's +sake do it with your hand on the man's shoulder." + +"Our little socialist," said Ogilvy, patting Annan's blonde head. "He +wants to love everybody and everybody to love him, especially when +they're ornamental and feminine. Yes? No?" he asked, fondly coddling +Annan, who submitted with a bored air and tried to kick his shins. + +Later, standing in a chance group on the sidewalk before scattering to +their several occupations, Burleson said: + +"That's a winner of a model--that Miss West. I used her for the fountain +I'm doing for Cardemon's sunken garden. I never saw a model put together +as she is. And that's going some." + +"She's a dream," said Ogilvy--"_un pen sauvage_--no inclination to +socialism there, Annan. I know because I was considering the +advisability of bestowing upon her one of those innocent, inadvertent, +and fascinatingly chaste salutes--just to break the formality. She +wouldn't have it. I'd taken her to the theatre, too. Girls are +astonishing problems." + +"You're a joyous beast, aren't you, Sam?" observed Burleson. + +"I may be a trifle joyous. I tried to explain that to her, but she +wouldn't listen. Heaven knows my intentions are child-like. I liked her +because she's the sort of girl you can take anywhere and not queer +yourself if you collide with your fiancée--visiting relative from +'Frisco, you know. She's equipped to impersonate anything from the +younger set to the prune and pickle class." + +"She certainly is a looker," nodded Annan. + +"She can deliver the cultivated goods, too, and make a perfectly good +play at the unsophisticated intellectual," said Ogilvy with conviction. +"And it's a rare combination to find a dream that looks as real at the +Opera as it does in a lobster palace. But she's no socialist, +Harry--she'll ride in a taxi with you and sit up half the night with +you, but it's nix for getting closer, and the frozen Fownes for the +chaste embrace--that's all." + +"She's a curious kind of girl," mused Burleson;--"seems perfectly +willing to go about with you;--enjoys it like one of those +bread-and-butter objects that the department shops call a 'Miss.'" + +Annan said: "The girl is unusual, everyway. You don't know where to +place her. She's a girl without a caste. I like her. I made some +studies from her; Kelly let me." + +"Does Kelly own her?" asked Burleson, puffing out his chest. + +"He discovered her. He has first call." + +Allaire, who had come up, caught the drift of the conversation. + +"Oh, hell," he said, in his loud, careless voice, "anybody can take +Valerie West to supper. The town's full of her kind." + +"Have you taken her anywhere?" asked Annan, casually. + +Allaire flushed up: "I haven't had time." He added something which +changed the fixed smile on his symmetrical, highly coloured face into an +expression not entirely agreeable. + +"The girl's all right," said Burleson, reddening. "She's damn decent to +everybody. What are you talking about, Allaire? Kelly will put a head on +you!" + +Allaire, careless and assertive, shrugged away the rebuke with a laugh: + +"Neville is one of those professional virgins we read about in our +neatly manicured fiction. He's what is known as the original mark. +Jezebel and Potiphar's wife in combination with Salome and the daughters +of Lot couldn't disturb his confidence in them or in himself. And--in my +opinion--he paints that way, too." And he went away laughing and +swinging his athletic shoulders and twirling his cane, his hat not +mathematically straight on his handsome, curly head. + +"There strides a joyous bounder," observed Ogilvy. + +"Curious," mused Annan. "His family is oldest New York. You see 'em that +way, at times." + +Burleson, who came from New England, grunted his scorn for Manhattan, +ancient or recent, and, nodding a brusque adieu, walked away with +ponderous and powerful strides. And the others followed, presently, each +in pursuit of his own vocation, Annan and Ogilvy remaining together as +their common destination was the big new studio building which they as +well as Neville inhabited. + +Passing Neville's door they saw it still ajar, and heard laughter and a +piano and gay voices. + +"Hi!" exclaimed Ogilvy, softly, "let's assist at the festivities. +Probably we're not wanted, but does that matter, Harry?" + +"It merely adds piquancy to our indiscretion," said Annan, gravely, +following him in unannounced--"Oh, hello, Miss West! Was that you +playing? Hello, Rita"--greeting a handsome blonde young girl who +stretched out a gloved hand to them both and nodded amiably. Then she +glanced upward where, perched on his ladder, big palette curving over +his left elbow, Neville stood undisturbed by the noise below, outlining +great masses of clouds on a canvas where a celestial company, sketched +in from models, soared, floated, or hung suspended, cradled in mid air +with a vast confusion of wide wings spreading, fluttering, hovering, +beating the vast ethereal void, all in pursuit of a single exquisite +shape darting up into space. + +"What's all that, Kelly? Leda chased by swans?" asked Ogilvy, with all +the disrespect of cordial appreciation. + +"It's the classic game of follow my Leda," observed Annan. + +"Oh--oh!" exclaimed Valerie West, laughing; "such a wretched witticism, +Mr. Annan!" + +"Your composition is one magnificent vista of legs, Kelly," insisted +Ogilvy. "Put pants on those swans." + +Neville merely turned and threw an empty paint tube at him, and +continued his cloud outlining with undisturbed composure. + +"Where have you been, Rita?" asked Ogilvy, dropping into a chair. +"Nobody sees you any more." + +"That's because nobody went to the show, and that's why they took it +off," said Rita Tevis, resentfully. "I had a perfectly good part which +nobody crabbed because nobody wanted it, which suited me beautifully +because I hate to have anything that others want. Now there's nothing +doing in the millinery line and I'm ready for suggestions." + +"Dinner with me," said Ogilvy, fondly. But she turned up her dainty +nose: + +"Have _you_ anything more interesting to offer, Mr. Annan?" + +"Only my heart, hand, and Ogilvy's fortune," said Annan, regretfully. +"But I believe Archie Allaire was looking for a model of your type--" + +"I don't want to pose for Mr. Allaire," said the girl, pouting and +twirling the handle of her parasol. + +But neither Annan nor Ogilvy could use her then; and Neville had just +finished a solid week of her. + +"What I'll do," she said with decision, "will be to telephone John +Burleson. I never knew him to fail a girl in search of an engagement." + +"Isn't he a dear," said Valerie, smiling. "I adore him." + +She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over the keyboard, +listening to what was being said, watching with happy interest +everything that was going on around her, and casting an occasional +glance over her shoulder and upward to where Neville stood at work. + +"John Burleson," observed Rita, looking fixedly at Ogilvy, "is easily +the nicest man I know." + +"Help!" said Ogilvy, feebly. + +Valerie glanced across the top of the piano, laughing, while her hands +passed idly here and there over the keys: + +"Sam _can_ be very nice, Rita; but you've got to make him," she said. + +"Did you ever know a really interesting man who didn't require +watching?" inquired Annan, mildly. + +Rita surveyed him with disdain: "Plenty." + +"Don't believe it. No girl has any very enthusiastic use for a man in +whom she has perfect confidence." + +"Here's another profound observation," added Ogilvy; "when a woman loses +confidence in a man she finds a brand-new interest in him. But when a +man once really loses confidence in a woman, he never regains it, and +it's the beginning of the end. What do you think about that, Miss West?" + +Valerie, still smiling, struck a light chord or two, considering: + +"I don't know how it would be," she said, "to lose confidence in a man +you really care much about. I should think it would break a girl's +heart." + +"It doesn't," said Rita, with supreme contempt. "You become accustomed +to it." + +Valerie leaned forward against the keyboard, laughing: + +"Oh, Rita!" she said, "what a confession!" + +"You silly child," retorted Rita, "I'm twenty-two. Do you think I have +the audacity to pretend I've never been in love?" + +Ogilvy said with a grin: "How about you, Miss West?"--hoping to +embarrass her; but she only smiled gaily and continued to play a light +accompaniment to the fugitive air that was running through her head. + +"Don't be selfish with your experiences," urged Ogilvy. "Come on, Miss +West! 'Raus mit 'em!'" + +"What do you wish me to say, Sam?" + +"That you've been in love several times." + +"But I haven't." + +"Not once?" + +Her lowered face was still smiling, as her pliant fingers drifted into +Grieg's "Spring Song." + +"Not one pretty amourette to cheer those twenty-one years of yours?" +insisted Ogilvy. + +But his only answer was her lowered head and the faint smile edging her +lips, and the "Spring Song," low, clear, exquisitely persistent in the +hush. + +When the last note died out in the stillness Rita emphasised the finish +with the ferrule of her parasol and rose with decision: + +"I require several new frocks," she said, "and how am I to acquire them +unless I pose for somebody? Good-bye, Mr. Neville--bye-bye! +Sam--good-bye, Mr. Annan--good-bye, dear,"--to Valerie--"if you've +nothing better on hand drop in this evening. I've a duck of a new hat." + +The girl nodded, and, as Rita Tevis walked out, turning up her nose at +Ogilvy who opened the door for her, Valerie glanced up over her shoulder +at Neville: + +"I don't believe you are going to need me to-day after all, are you?" +she asked. + +"No," he said, absently. "I've a lot of things to do. You needn't stay, +Miss West." + +"Now will you be good!" said Annan, smiling at her with his humourous, +bantering air. And to his surprise and discomfiture he saw the least +trace of annoyance in her dark eyes. + +"Come up to the studio and have a julep," he said with hasty cordiality. +"And suppose we dine together at Arrowhead--if you've nothing else on +hand--" + +She shook her head--the movement was scarcely perceptible. The smile had +returned to her lips. + +"Won't you, Miss West?" + +"Isn't it like you to ask me when you heard Rita's invitation? You're a +fraud, Mr. Annan." + +"Are you going to sit in that boarding-house parlour and examine Rita's +new bonnet all this glorious evening?" + +She laughed: "Is there any man on earth who can prophesy what any woman +on earth is likely to do? If _you_ can, please begin." + +Ogilvy, hands clasped behind him, balancing alternately on heels and +toes, stood regarding Neville's work. Annan looked up, too, watching +Neville where he stood on the scaffolding, busy as always, with the only +recreation he cared anything for--work. + +"I wish to Heaven I were infected with the bacillus of industry," broke +out Ogilvy. "I never come into this place but I see Kelly busily doing +something." + +"You're an inhuman sort of brute, Kelly!" added Annan. "What do you work +that way for--money? If I had my way I'd spend three quarters of my time +shooting and fishing and one quarter painting--and I'm as devotedly +stuck on art as any healthy man ought to be." + +"Art's a bum mistress if she makes you hustle like that!" commented +Ogilvy. "Shake her, Kelly. She's a wampire mit a sarpint's tongue!" + +"The worst of Kelly is that he'd _rather_ paint," said Annan, +hopelessly. "It's sufficient to sicken the proverbial cat." + +"Get a machine and take us all out to Woodmanston?" suggested Ogilvy. +"It's a bee--u--tiful day, dearie!" + +"Get out of here!" retorted Neville, painting composedly. + +"Your industry saddens us," insisted Annan. "It's only in mediocrity +that you encounter industry. Genius frivols; talent takes numerous +vacations on itself--" + +"And at its own expense," added Valerie, demurely. "I knew a man who +couldn't finish his 'Spring Academy' in time: and he had all winter to +finish it. But he didn't. Did you ever hear about that man, Sam?" + +"Me," said Ogilvy, bowing with hand on heart. "And with that cruel jab +from _you_--false fair one--I'll continue heavenward in the elevator. +Come on, Harry." + +Annan took an elaborate farewell of Valerie which she met in the same +mock-serious manner; then she waved a gay and dainty adieu to Ogilvy, +and reseated herself after their departure. But this time she settled +down into a great armchair facing Neville and his canvas, and lay back +extending her arms and resting the back of her head on the cushions. + +Whether or not Neville was conscious of her presence below she could not +determine, so preoccupied did he appear to be with the work in hand. She +lay there in the pleasant, mellow light of the great windows, watching +him, at first intently, then, soothed by the soft spring wind that +fitfully stirred the hair at her temples, she relaxed her attention, +idly contented, happy without any particular reason. + +Now and then a pigeon flashed by the windows, sheering away high above +the sunlit city. Once, wind-caught, or wandering into unaccustomed +heights, high in the blue a white butterfly glimmered, still mounting to +infinite altitudes, fluttering, breeze-blown, a silvery speck adrift. + +"Like a poor soul aspiring," she thought listlessly, watching with dark +eyes over which the lids dropped lazily at moments, only to lift again +as her gaze reverted to the man above. + +She thought about him, too; she usually did--about his niceness to her, +his never-to-be-forgotten kindness; her own gratitude to him for her +never-to-be-forgotten initiation. + +It seemed scarcely possible that two months had passed since her +novitiate--that two months ago she still knew nothing of the people, the +friendships, the interest, the surcease from loneliness and hopeless +apathy, that these new conditions had brought to her. + +Had she known Louis Neville only two months? Did all this new buoyancy +date from two short months' experience--this quickened interest in life, +this happy development of intelligence so long starved, this unfolding +of youth in the atmosphere of youth? She found it difficult to realise, +lying there so contentedly, so happily, following, with an interest and +appreciation always developing, the progress of the work. + +Already, to herself, she could interpret much that she saw in this new +world. Cant phrases, bits of studio lore, artists' patter, their ways +of looking at things, their manners of expression, their mannerisms, +their little vanities, their ideas, ideals, aspirations, were fast +becoming familiar to her. Also she was beginning to notice and secretly +to reflect on their generic characteristics--their profoundly serious +convictions concerning themselves and their art modified by surface +individualities; their composite lack of humour--exceptions like Ogilvy +and Annan, and even Neville only proving the rule; their simplicity, +running the entire gamut from candour to stupidity; their patience which +was half courage, half a capacity for suffering; and, in the latter, +more woman-like than like a man. + +Simplicity, courage, lack of humour--those appeared to be the +fundamentals characterising the ensemble--supplemented by the extremes +of restless intelligence and grim conservatism. + +And the whole fabric seemed to be founded not on industry but on impulse +born of sentiment. In this new, busy, inspiring, delightful world logic +became a synthesis erected upon some inceptive absurdity, carried +solemnly to a picturesque and erroneous conclusion. + +She had been aware, in stage folk, of the tendency to sentimental +impulse; and she again discovered it in this new world, in a form +slightly modified by the higher average of reasoning power. In both +professions the heart played the dominant part in creator and creation. +The exceptions to the rule were the few in either profession who might +be called distinguished. + +Neville had once said to her: "Nothing that amounts to anything in art +is ever done accidentally or merely because the person who creates it +loves to do it." + +She was thinking of this, now, as she lay there watching him. + +He had added: "Enthusiasm is excellent while you're dressing for +breakfast; but good pictures are painted in cold blood. Go out into the +back yard and yell your appreciation of the universe if you want to; but +the studio is a silent place; and a blank canvas a mathematical +proposition." + +Could this be true? Was all the beauty, all the joyous charm, all the +splendour of shape and colour the result of working out a mathematical +proposition? Was this exquisite surety of touch and handling, of mass +and line composition, all these lovely depths and vast ethereal spaces +superbly peopled, merely the logical result of solving that problem? Was +it all clear, limpid, steady, nerveless intelligence; and was nothing +due to the chance and hazard of inspiration? + +Gladys, the cat, walked in, gently flourishing her tail, hesitated, +looked around with narrowing green-jewelled eyes, and, ignoring the +whispered invitation and the outstretched hand, leaped lightly to a +chair and settled down on a silken cushion, paws and tail folded under +her jet-black body. + +Valerie reproached her in a whisper, reminding her of past caresses and +attentions, but the cat only blinked at her pleasantly. + +On a low revolving stand at Valerie's elbow lay a large lump of green +modelling wax. This wax Neville sometimes used to fashion, with his +facile hands, little figures sketched from his models. These he arranged +in groups as though to verify the composition on the canvas before him, +and this work and the pliant material which he employed had for her a +particular and never-flagging interest. And now, without thinking, +purely instinctively, she leaned forward and laid her hand caressingly +on the lump of wax. There was something about the yielding, velvety +texture that fascinated her, as though in her slim fingers some delicate +nerves were responding to the pleasure of contact. + +For a while she moulded little cubes and pyramids, pinched out +bread-crumb chickens and pigs and cats. + +"_What_ do you think of this little wax kitten, Gladys?" she whispered, +holding it up for the cat's inspection. Gladys regarded it without +interest and resumed her pleasant contemplation of space. + +Valerie, elbows on knees, seated at the revolving stool with all the +naïve absorption of a child constructing mud pies, began to make out of +the fascinating green wax an image of Gladys dozing. + +Time fled away in the studio; intent, absorbed, she pinched little +morsels of wax from the lump and pushed them into place with a snowy, +pink-tipped thumb, or with the delicate nail of her forefinger removed +superfluous material. + +Stepping noiselessly so not to disturb Neville she made frequent +journeys around to the other side of the cat, sometimes passing +sensitive fingers over silky feline contours, which, research inspired a +loud purring. + +As she worked sometimes she talked under her breath to herself, to +Gladys, to Neville: + +"I am making a perfectly good cat, Valerie," she whispered. "Gladys, +aren't you a little bit flattered? I suppose you think it's honour +enough to belong to that man up there on the scaffolding. I imagine it +is; he is a very wonderful man, Gladys, very high above us in intellect +as he is in body. He doesn't pay very much attention to you and me down +here on the floor; he's just satisfied to own us and be amiable to us +when he thinks about us. + +"I don't mean that in any critical or reproachful sense, Gladys. Don't +you dare think I do--not for one moment! Do you hear me? Well then! If +you are stupid enough to misunderstand me I'll put a perfectly horrid +pair of ears on you!... I've made a very dainty pair of ears for you, +dear; I only said that to frighten you. You and I like that man up +there--tremendously, don't we? And we're very grateful to him for--for a +great many happy moments--and for his unfailing kindness and +consideration.... You don't mind posing for me; _you_ wear fur. But I +didn't wear anything, dear, when I first sat to him as a novice; and, +kitty, I was a fortunate girl in my choice of the man before whom I was +to make a début. And I--" + +The rattle of brushes and the creak of the scaffolding arrested her: +Neville was coming down for a view of his work. + +"Hello," he said, pleasantly, noticing for the first time that she was +still in the studio. + +"Have I disturbed you, Mr. Neville?" + +"Not a bit. You never do any more than does Gladys." He glanced absently +at the cat, then, facing his canvas, backed away from it, palette in +hand. + +For ten minutes he examined his work, shifting his position from minute +to minute, until the change of positions brought him backed up beside +Valerie, and his thigh brushing her arm made him aware of her. Glancing +down with smiling apology his eye fell on the wax, and was arrested. +Then he bent over the work she had done, examining it, twirled the top +of the stool, and inspected it carefully from every side. + +"Have you ever studied modelling, Miss West?" + +"No," she said, blushing, "you must know that I haven't." And looked up +expecting to see laughter in his eyes; and saw only the curiosity of +interest. + +"How did you know how to start this?" + +"I have often watched you." + +"Is that all the instruction you've ever had in modelling?" + +She could not quite bring herself to believe in his pleasant +seriousness: + +"Y-yes," she admitted, "except when I have watched John Burleson. +But--this is simply rotten--childish--isn't it?" + +"No," he said in a matter of fact tone, "it's interesting." + +"Do you really think--mean--" + +He looked down at her, considering her while the smile that she knew and +liked best and thought best suited to his face, began to glimmer; that +amused, boyish, bantering smile hinting of experience and wisdom +delightfully beyond her. + +"I really think that you're a very unusual girl," he said. "I don't want +to spoil you by telling you so every minute." + +"You don't spoil me by telling me so. Sometimes I think you may spoil me +by not telling me so." + +"Miss West! You're spoiled already! I'm throwing bouquets at you every +minute! You're about the only girl who ever sat for me with whom I talk +unreservedly and incessantly." + +"Really, Mr. Neville?" + +"Yes--really, Mr. Neville," he repeated, laughing--"you bad, spoiled +little beauty! You know devilish well that if there's any intellectual +space between you and me it's purely a matter of circumstance and +opportunity." + +"Do you think me silly enough to believe that!" + +"I think you clever enough to know it without my telling you." + +"I wish you wouldn't say that." + +She was still smiling but in the depths of her eyes he felt that the +smile was not genuine. + +"See here," he said, "I don't want you to think that I don't mean what I +say. I do. You're as intelligent a woman as I ever knew. I've known +girls more cultivated in general and in particular, but, I say again, +that is the hazard of circumstance. Is all clear between us now, Miss +West?" + +"Yes." + +He held out his hand; she glanced up, smiled, and laid her own in it. +And they shook hands heartily. + +"Good business," he said with satisfaction. "Don't ever let anything +threaten our very charming accord. The moment you don't approve of +anything I say or do come straight to me and complain--and don't let me +divine it in your eyes, Miss West." + +"Did you?" + +"Certainly I did. Your lips were smiling but in your eyes was something +that did not corroborate your lips." + +"Yes.... But how could you see it?" + +"After all," he said, "it's part of my business to notice such things." +He seated himself on the arm of her chair and bent over the wax model, +his shoulder against hers. And the chance contact meant nothing to +either: but what he said about men and things in the world was +inevitably arousing the intelligence in her to a gratitude, a happiness, +at first timid, then stirring subtly, tremulously, toward passionate +response. + +No man can do that to a girl and leave the higher side of her +indifferent or unresponsive. What he had aroused--what he was awakening +every day in her was what he must some day reckon with. Loyalty is born +of the spirit, devotion of the mind; and spiritual intelligence arouses +fiercer passions than the sensuous emotions born of the flesh. + +Leaning there above the table, shoulder to shoulder, his light finger +tips caressing the wax model which she had begun, he told her clearly, +and with the engaging candour which she already had begun to adore in +him, all about what she had achieved in the interesting trifle before +them--explained to her wherein she had failed not only to accomplish but +to see correctly--wherein she had seen clearly and wrought +intelligently. + +He might have been talking to a brother sculptor--and therein lay the +fascination of this man--for her--that, and the pains he always took +with her--which courtesy was only part of him--part of the wonder of +this man; of his unerring goodness in all things to her. + +Listening, absorbed in all that he said she still was conscious of a +parallel thread of thought accompanying--a tiny filament of innocent +praise in her heart that chance had given her this man to listen to and +to heed and talk to and to think about. + +"I won't touch what you've done, Miss West," he said, smilingly; "but +just take a pinch of wax--_that_ way!--and accent that relaxed flank +muscle!... Don't be afraid; watch the shape of the shadows.... That's +it! Do you see? Never be afraid of dealing vigorously with your subject. +Every modification of the first vigorous touch is bound to weaken and +sometimes to emasculate.... I don't mean for you to parade crudity and +bunches of exaggerated muscle as an ultimate expression of vigour. Only +the devotee of the obvious is satisfied with that sort of result; and +our exhibitions reek with them. But there is no reason why the satin +skin and smooth contour of a naked child shouldn't express virility and +vigour--no reason why the flawless delicacy of Venus herself should not, +if necessary, express violence unexaggerated and without either +distortion or lack of finish." + +He glanced across at the dozing cat: + +"Under that silky black fur there are bones and fibres and muscles. +Don't exaggerate them and call your task finished; merely remember +always that they're there framing and padding the velvet skin. More is +done by skilful inference than by parading every abstract fact you know +and translating the sum-accumulative of your knowledge into the +over-accented concrete. Reticence is a kind of vigour. It can even +approach violence. The mentally garrulous kill their own inspiration. +Inadequacy loves to lump things and gamble with chance for effective +results." + +He rose, walked over and examined Gladys, touched her contemplatively +with the button of his mahl-stick, and listened absently to her +responsive purr. Then, palette still in hand, he sat down opposite +Valerie, gazing at her in that detached manner which some mistook for +indifference: + +"There are, I think, two reasons for failure in art," he said, "excess +of creative emotion, excess of psychological hair-splitting. The one +produces the normal and lovable failures which, decorate our art +exhibitions; the other results in those curious products which amuse the +public to good-humoured contempt--I mean those pictures full of violent +colour laid on in streaks, in great sweeps, in patches, in dots. The +painter has turned half theorist, half scientist; the theories of the +juxtaposition of colour, and the science of complementary colours, +engrosses his attention. He is no longer an artist; he is a chemist and +physiologist and an artisan. + +"Every now and then there is a revolt from the accepted order of things. +New groups form, sometimes damning what they call the artificial +lighting of the studio, sometimes exclaiming against the carnival of +harmonious or crude colour generally known as 'plein air.' +Impressionists scorn the classic, and _vice versa_. But, Miss West, as a +matter of fact, all schools are as good as all religions. + +"To speak of studio lighting as artificial and unworthy is silly. It is +pretty hard to find anything really artificial in the world, indoors, or +out, or even in the glare of the footlights. I think the main idea is +that a man should prefer doing what the public calls his work, to any +other form of recreation--should use enough reason--not too much--enough +inspiration--but watching himself at every brush stroke; and finally +should feel physically unfettered--that is, have the _a b c_, the +drudgery, the artisan's part of the work at his finger tips. Then, if he +does what makes him happy, whether in a spirit of realism or +romanticism, he can safely leave the rest to Fate." + +He looked at her, curiously for a moment, then a smile wholly +involuntary broke over his face: + +"Lord! What a lecture! And you listened to all that nonsense like an +angel!" + +The dreamy absorption died out in her eyes; she clasped her hands on her +knee, looked down, then up at him almost irritably: + +"Please go on, Mr. Neville." + +"Not much. I've a few stunts to execute aloft there--" + +He contemplated her in amused silence, which became more serious: + +"You have talent, Miss West. Artistic talent is not unusual among +Americans, but patience is. That is one reason why talent accomplishes +so little in this country." + +"Isn't another reason that patience is too expensive to be indulged in +by talent?" + +He laughed: "That is perfectly true. The majority of us have to make a +living before we know how." + +"Did you have to do that?" + +"No, I didn't." + +"You were fortunate?" + +"Yes. I was--perhaps.... I'm not sure." + +She touched the lump of green wax gravely, absently. He remained looking +at her, busy with his own reflections. + +"Would you like to have a chance to study?" he asked. + +"Study? What?" + +"Sculpture--any old thing! Would you like to try? + +"What chance have I for such expensive amusements as study?" she +laughed. + +"I'll be responsible for you." + +"_You_?"--in blank surprise. + +"I'll attend to the material part of it, if you like. I'll see that you +can afford the--patience." + +"Mr. Neville, I don't understand." + +"What don't you understand?" he asked, lazily humorous. + +"Do you mean--that you offer me--an opportunity--" + +"Yes; an opportunity to exercise patience. It's an offer, Miss West. But +I'm perfectly certain you won't take it." + +For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, looking fixedly +into space. Then she stirred, glanced up, blushed vividly, sprang to her +feet and crossed to where he sat. + +"I've been considering your offer," she said, striving to speak without +effort. + +"I'll bet you won't accept it!" + +"You win your wager, Mr. Neville." + +"I wonder why?" he said with his bantering smile: "but I think I know. +Talent in America is seldom intellectually ambitious." + +To his amazement and vexation tears sprang to her eyes; she said, biting +her lower lip: "My ambition is humble. I care--more than anything in the +world--to be of use to--to your career." + +Taken completely by surprise he said, "Nonsense," and rose to confront +her where she stood wholly charming in her nervous, flushed emotion: + +"It isn't nonsense, Mr. Neville; it is my happiness. + +"I don't believe you realise what your career means to me. I would not +willingly consider anything that might interrupt my humble part in +it--in this happy companionship.... After all, happiness is the +essential. You said so once. I am happier here than I possibly could be +in an isolation where I might perhaps study--learn--" Her voice broke +deliciously as he met her gaze in cool, curious disapproval. + +[Illustration: "For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, +looking fixedly into space."] + +"You _can't_ understand it!" she said, flushing almost fiercely. "You +can't comprehend what the daily intimacy with a man of your sort has +done--is doing for me every moment of my life. How can you understand? +You, who have your own place in the world--in life--in this country--in +this city! You, who have family, friends, clubs, your social life in +city and country, and abroad. Life is very full for you--has always +been. But--what I am now learning in contact with you and with the +people to whom you have introduced me--is utterly new to +me--and--very--pleasant.... I have tasted it; I cannot live without it +now." + +She drew a deep quick breath, then, looking up at him with a tremulous +smile: + +"What would you think if I told you that, until Sam took me, I had never +even been inside a theatre except when I was engaged by Schindler? It is +perfectly true. Mother did not approve. Until I went with John Burleson +I had never ever been in a restaurant; until I was engaged by Schindler +I had never seen the city lighted at night--I mean where the theatres +and cafés and hotels are.... And, Mr. Neville, until I came here to you, +I had never had an opportunity to talk to a cultivated man of my own +age--I mean the kind of man you are." + +She dropped her eyes, considering, while the smile still played faintly +with the edges of her lips; then: + +"Is it very hard for you to realise that what is an ordinary matter of +course to the young of my age is, to me, all a delightful novelty?--that +I am enjoying to a perfectly heavenly degree what to you and others may +be commonplace and uninteresting? All I ask is to be permitted to enjoy +it while I am still young enough. I--I _must_! I really need it, Mr. +Neville. It seems, at moments, as if I could never have enough--after +the years--where I had--nothing." + +Neville had begun walking to and fro in front of her with the quick, +decisive step that characterised his movements; but his restlessness +seemed only to emphasise the attention he concentrated on every word she +spoke; and, though he merely glanced at her from moment to moment, she +was conscious that the man now understood, and was responding more +directly to her than ever before in their brief and superficial +acquaintance. + +"I don't want to go away and study," she said. "It is perfectly dear of +you to offer it--I--there is no use in trying to thank you--" + +"Valerie!" + +"What!" she said, startled by his use of her given name for the first +time in their acquaintance. + +He said, smilingly grave: "You didn't think there was a string attached +to anything I offered?" + +"A--a string?" + +"Did you?" + +She blushed hotly: "No, of course not." + +"It's all right then," he nodded; but she began to think of that new +idea in a confused, startled, helpless sort of way. + +"How could you think _that_ of me?" she faltered. + +"I didn't--" + +"You--it must have been in your mind--" + +"I wanted to be sure it wasn't in _yours_--" + +"You ought to have known! Haven't you learned anything at all about me +in two months?" + +"Do you think any man can learn anything about anybody in two months?" +he asked, lightly. + +"Yes, I do. I've learned a good deal about you--enough, anyway, not to +attribute anything--unworthy--" + +"You silly child; you've learned nothing about me if that's what you +think you've discovered." + +"I _have_ discovered it!" she retorted, tremulously; "I've learned +horrid things about other men, too--and they're not like you!" + +"Valerie! Valerie! I'm precisely like all the rest--my selfishness is a +little more concentrated than theirs, that's the only difference. For +God's sake don't make a god of me." + +She sat down on the head of the sofa, looking straight at him, pretty +head lowered a trifle so that her gaze was accented by the lovely level +of her brows: + +"I've long wanted to have a thorough talk with you," she said. "Have you +got time now?" + +He hesitated, controlling his secret amusement under an anxious gravity +as he consulted the clock. + +"Suppose you give me an hour on those figures up there? The light will +be too poor to work by in another hour. Then we'll have tea and +'thorough talks.'" + +"All right," she said, calmly. + +He picked up palette and mahl-stick and mounted to his perch on the +scaffolding; she walked slowly into the farther room, stood motionless a +moment, then raising both arms she began to unhook the collar of her +gown. + +When she was ready she stepped into her sandals, threw the white wool +robe over her body, and tossed one end across her bare shoulder. + +He descended, aided her aloft to her own eyrie, walked across the +planking to his own, and resumed palette and brushes in excellent humour +with himself, talking gaily while he was working: + +"I'm devoured by curiosity to know what that 'thorough talk' of yours is +going to be about. You and I, in our briefly connected careers, have +discussed every subject on earth, gravely or flippantly, and what in the +world this 'thorough talk' is going to resemble is beyond me--" + +"It might have to do with your lack of ceremony--a few minutes ago," she +said, laughing at him. + +"My--what?" + +"Lack of ceremony. You called me Valerie." + +"You can easily revenge that presumption, you know." + +"I think I will--Kelly." + +He smiled as he painted: + +"I don't know why the devil they call me Kelly," he mused. "No episode +that I ever heard of is responsible for that Milesian misnomer. _Quand +même_! It sounds prettier from you than it ever did before. I'd rather +hear you call me Kelly than Caruso sing my name as Algernon." + +"Shall I really call you Kelly?" + +"Sure thing! Why not?" + +"I don't know. You're rather celebrated--to have a girl call you Kelly." + +He puffed out his chest in pretence of pompous satisfaction: + +"True, child. Good men are scarce--but the good and great are too +nearly extinct for such familiarity. Call me _Mr._ Kelly." + +"I won't. You are only a big boy, anyway--Louis Neville--and sometimes I +shall call you Kelly, and sometimes Louis, and very occasionally Mr. +Neville." + +"All right," he said, absently--"only hold that distractingly ornamental +head and those incomparable shoulders a trifle more steady, please--rest +solidly on the left leg--let the right hip fall into its natural +position--_that's_ it. Thank you." + +Holding the pose her eyes wandered from him and his canvas to the +evening tinted clouds already edged with deeper gold. Through the sheet +of glass above she saw a shred of white fleece in mid-heaven turn to a +pale pink. + +"I wonder why you asked me to tea?" she mused. + +"What?" He turned around to look at her. + +"You never before asked me to do such a thing," she said, candidly. +"You're an absent-minded man, Mr. Neville." + +"It never occurred to me," he retorted, amused. "Tea is weak-minded." + +"It occurred to me. That's what part of my 'thorough talk' is to be +about; your carelessness in noticing me except professionally." + +He continued working, rapidly now; and it seemed to her as though +something--a hint of the sombre--had come into his face--nothing +definite--but the smile was no longer there, and the brows were slightly +knitted. + +Later he glanced up impatiently at the sky: the summer clouds wore a +deeper rose and gold. + +"We'd better have our foolish tea," he said, abruptly, driving his +brushes into a bowl of black soap and laying aside his palette for his +servant to clean later. + +For a while, not noticing her, he fussed about his canvas, using a knife +here, a rag there, passing to and fro across the scaffolding, oblivious +of the flight of time, until at length the waning light began to +prophesy dusk, and he came to himself with a guilty start. + +Below, in the studio, Valerie sat, fully dressed except for hat and +gloves, head resting in the padded depths of an armchair, watching him +in silence. + +"I declare," he said, looking down at her contritely, "I never meant to +keep you all this time. Good Lord! Have I been puttering up here for an +hour and a half! It's nearly eight o'clock! Why on earth didn't you +speak to me, Valerie?" + +"It's a braver girl than I am who'll venture to interrupt you at work, +Kelly," she said, laughingly. "I'm a little afraid of you." + +"Nonsense! I wasn't doing anything. My Heaven!--_can_ it be eight +o'clock?" + +"It is.... You _said_ we were going to have tea." + +"Tea! Child, you can't have tea at eight o'clock! I'm terribly +sorry"--he came down the ladder, vexed with himself, wiping the paint +from his hands with a bunch of cheese cloth--"I'm humiliated and +ashamed, Miss West. Wait a moment--" + +He walked hastily through the next room into his small suite of +apartments, washed his hands, changed his painter's linen blouse for his +street coat, and came back into the dim studio. + +"I'm really sorry, Valerie," he said. "It was rotten rude of me." + +"So am I sorry. It's absurd, but I feel like a perfectly unreasonable +kid about it.... You never before asked me--and I--wanted to--stay--so +much--" + +"Why didn't you remind me, you foolish child!" + +"Somehow I couldn't.... I wanted _you_ to think of it." + +"Well, I'm a chump...." He stood before her in the dim light; she still +reclined in the armchair, not looking at him, one arm crook'd over her +head and the fingers closed tightly over the rosy palm which was turned +outward, resting across her forehead. + +For a few moments neither spoke; then: + +"I'm horridly lonely to-night," she said, abruptly. + +"Why, Valerie! What a--an unusual--" + +"I want to talk to you.... I suppose you are too hungry to want to talk +now." + +"N-no, I'm not." He began to laugh: "What's the matter, Valerie? What is +on your mind? Have you any serious fidgets, or are you just a spoiled, +pretty girl?" + +"Spoiled, Kelly. There's nothing really the matter. I just felt +like--what you asked me to do--" + +She jumped up suddenly, biting her lips with vexation: "I don't know +what I'm saying--except that it's rather rude of me--and I've got to go +home. Good-night--I think my hat is in the dressing-room--" + +He stood uneasily watching her pin it before the mirror; he could just +see her profile and the slender, busy hands white in the dusk. + +When she returned, slowly drawing on her long gloves, she said to him +with composure: + +"Some day ask me again. I really would like it--if you would." + +"Do you really think that you could stand the excitement of taking a +cup of weak tea with me," he said, jestingly--"after all those jolly +dinners and suppers and theatres and motor parties that I hear about?" + +She nodded and held out her hand with decision: + +"Good-night." + +He retained her hand a moment, not meaning to--not really intending to +ask her what he did ask her. And she raised her velvet eyes gravely: + +"Do you really want me?" + +"Yes.... I don't know why I never asked you before--" + +"It was absurd not to," she said, impulsively; "I'd have gone anywhere +with you the first day I ever knew you! Besides, I dress well enough for +you not to be ashamed of me." + +He began to laugh: "Valerie, you funny little thing! You funny, funny +little thing!" + +"Not in the slightest," she retorted, sedately. "I'm having a heavenly +time for the first time in my life, and I have so wanted you to be part +of it ... of course you _are_ part of it," she added, hastily--"most of +it! I only meant that I--I'd like to be a little in your other +life--have you enter mine, a little--just so I can remember, in years to +come, an evening with you now and then--to see things going on around +us--to hear what you think of things that we see together.... Because, +with you, I feel so divinely free, so unembarrassed, so entirely off my +guard.... I don't mean to say that I don't have a splendid time with the +others even when I have to watch them; I do--and even the watching is +fun--" + +The child-like audacity and laughing frankness, the confidence of her +attitude toward him were delightfully refreshing. He looked into her +pretty, eager, engaging face, smiling, captivated. + +"Valerie," he said, "tell me something--will you?" + +"Yes, if I can." + +"I'm more or less of a painting machine. I've made myself so, +deliberately--to the exclusion of other interests. I wonder"--he looked +at her musingly--"whether I'm carrying it too far for my own good." + +"I don't understand." + +"I mean--is there anything machine-made about my work? Does it +lack--does it lack anything?" + +"No!" she said, indignantly loyal. "Why do you ask me that?" + +"People--some people say it does lack--a certain quality." + +She said with supreme contempt: "You must not believe them. I also hear +things--and I know it is an unworthy jealousy that--" + +"What have you heard?" he interrupted. + +"Absurdities. I don't wish even to think of them--" + +"I wish you to. Please. Such things are sometimes significant." + +"But--is there any significance in what a few envious artists say--or a +few silly models--" + +"More significance in what they say than in a whole chorus of +professional critics." + +"Are you serious?" she asked, astonished. + +"Perfectly. Without naming anybody or betraying any confidence, what +have you heard in criticism of my work? It's from models and brother +painters that the real truth comes--usually distorted, half told, +maliciously hinted sometimes--but usually the germ of truth is to be +found in what they say, however they may choose to say it." + +Valerie leaned back against the door, hands clasped behind her, eyebrows +bent slightly inward in an unwilling effort to remember. + +Finally she said impatiently: "They don't know what they're talking +about. They all say, substantially, the same thing--" + +"What is that thing?" + +"Why--oh, it's too silly to repeat--but they say there is nothing +lovable about your work--that it's inhumanly and coldly +perfect--too--too--" she flushed and laughed uncertainly--"'too damn +omniscient' is what one celebrated man said. And I could have boxed his +large, thin, celebrated ears for him!" + +"Go on," he nodded; "what else do they say?" + +"Nothing. That's all they can find to say--all they dare say. You know +what they are--what other men are--and some of the younger girls, too. +Not that I don't like them--and they are very sweet to me--only they're +not like you--" + +"They're more human. Is that it, Valerie?" + +"No, I don't mean that!" + +"Yes, you do. You mean that the others take life in a perfectly human +manner--find enjoyment, amusement in each other, in a hundred things +outside of their work. They act like men and women, not like a painting +machine; if they experience impulses and emotions they don't entirely +stifle 'em. They have time and leisure to foregather, laugh, be silly, +discuss, banter, flirt, make love, and cut up all the various harmless +capers that humanity is heir to. _That's_ what you mean, but you don't +realise it. And you think, and they think, that my solemn and owlish +self-suppression is drying me up, squeezing out of me the essence of +that warm, lovable humanity in which, they say, my work is deficient. +They say, too, that my inspiration is lacking in that it is not founded +on personal experience; that I have never known any deep emotion, any +suffering, any of the sterner, darker regrets--anything of that passion +which I sometimes depict. They say that the personal and convincing +element is totally absent because I have not lived"--he laughed--"and +loved; that my work lacks the one thing which only the self-knowledge of +great happiness and great pain can lend to it.... And--I think they are +right, Valerie. What do you think?" + +The girl stood silent, with lowered eyes, reflecting for a moment. Then +she looked up curiously. + +"_Have_ you never been very unhappy?" + +"I had a toothache once." + +She said, unsmiling: "Haven't you ever suffered mentally?" + +"No--not seriously. Oh, I've regretted little secret meannesses--bad +temper, jealousy--" + +"Nothing else? Have you never experienced deep unhappiness--through +death, for example?" + +"No, thank God. My father and mother and sister are living.... It is +rather strange," he added, partly to himself, "that the usual troubles +and sorrows have so far passed me by. I am twenty-seven; there has never +been a death in my family, or among my intimate friends." + +"Have you any intimate friends?" + +"Well--perhaps not--in the strict sense. I don't confide." + +"Have you never cared, very much, for anybody--any woman?" + +"Not sentimentally," he returned, laughing. "Do you think that a good +course of modern flirtation--a thorough schooling in the old-fashioned +misfortunes of true love would inject into my canvases that elusively +occult quality they're all howling for?" + +She remained smilingly silent. + +"Perhaps something less strenuous would do," he said, mischievously--"a +pretty amourette?--just one of those gay, frivolous, Louis XV affairs +with some daintily receptive girl, not really improper, but only ultra +fashionable. Do you think _that_ would help some, Valerie?" + +She raised her eyes, still smiling, a little incredulous, very slightly +embarrassed: + +"I don't think your painting requires any such sacrifices of you, Mr. +Neville.... Are you going to take me somewhere to dinner? I'm dreadfully +hungry." + +"You poor little girl, of course I am. Besides, you must be suffering +under the terrible suppression of that 'thorough talk' which you--" + +"It doesn't really require a thorough talk," she said; "I'll tell you +now what I had to say. No, don't interrupt, please! I want to--please +let me--so that nothing will mar our enjoyment of each other and of the +gay world around us when we are dining.... It is this: Sometimes--once +in a while--I become absurdly lonely, which makes me a fool, +temporarily. And--will you let me telephone you at such times?--just to +talk to you--perhaps see you for a minute?" + +"Of course. You know my telephone number. Call me up whenever you like." + +"_Could_ I see you at such moments? I--there's a--some--a kind of +sentiment about me--when I'm _very_ lonely; and I've been foolish enough +to let one or two men see it--in fact I've been rather +indiscreet--silly--with a man--several men--now and then. A lonely girl +is easily sympathised with--and rather likes it; and is inclined to let +herself go a little.... I don't want to.... And at times I've done +it.... Sam Ogilvy nearly kissed me, which really doesn't count--does it? +But I let Harry Annan do it, once.... If I'm weak enough to drift into +such silliness I'd better find a safeguard. I've been +thinking--thinking--that it really does originate in a sort of foolish +loneliness ...not in anything worse. So I thought I'd have a thorough +talk with you about it. I'm twenty-one--with all my experience of life +and of men crowded into a single winter and spring. I have as friends +only the few people I have met through you. I have nobody to see unless +I see them--nowhere to go unless I go where they ask me.... So I thought +I'd ask you to let me depend a little on you, sometimes--as a refuge +from isolation and morbid thinking now and then. And from other +mischief--for which I apparently have a capacity--to judge by what I've +done--and what I've let men do already." + +She laid her hand lightly on his arm in sudden and impulsive confidence: + +"That's my 'thorough talk.' I haven't any one else to tell it to. And +I've told you the worst." She smiled at him adorably: "And now I am +ready to go out with you," she said,--"go anywhere in the world with +you, Kelly. And I am going to be perfectly happy--if you are." + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +One day toward the middle of June Valerie did not arrive on time at the +studio. She had never before been late. + +About two o'clock Sam Ogilvy sauntered in, a skull pipe in his mouth, +his hair rumpled: + +"It's that damn mermaid of mine," he said, "can't you come up and look +at her and tell me what's the trouble, Kelly?" + +"Not now. Who's posing?" + +"Rita. She's in a volatile humour, too--fidgets; denies fidgeting; +reproaches me for making her keep quiet; says I draw like a bum +chimney--no wonder my work's rotten! Besides, she's in a tub of water, +wearing that suit of fish-scales I had made for Violet Cliland, and she +says it's too tight and she's tired of the job, anyway. Fancy my mental +condition." + +"Oh, she won't throw you down. Rita is a good sport," said Neville. + +"I hope so. It's an important picture. Really, Kelly, it's great +stuff--a still, turquoise-tinted pool among wet rocks; ebb tide; a +corking little mermaid caught in a pool left by the receding waves--all +tones and subtle values," he declared, waving his arm. + +"Don't paint things in the air with your thumb," said Neville, coldly. +"No wonder Rita is nervous." + +"Rita is nervous," said Ogilvy, "because she's been on a bat and supped +somewhere until the coy and rosy dawn chased her homeward. And your +pretty paragon, Miss West, was with the party--" + +"What?" said Neville, sharply. + +"Sure thing! Harry Annan, Rita, Burleson, Valerie--and I don't know who +else. They feasted somewhere east of Coney--where the best is like the +würst--and ultimately became full of green corn, clams, watermelon, and +assorted fidgets.... Can't you come up and look at my picture?" + +Neville got up, frowning, and followed Ogilvy upstairs. + +Rita Tevis, swathed in a blanket from which protruded a dripping +tinselled fish's tail, sat disconsolately on a chair, knitting a +red-silk necktie for some party of the second part, as yet unidentified. + +"Mr. Neville," she said, "Sam has been quarrelling with me every minute +while I'm doing my best in that horrid tub of water. If anybody thinks +it's a comfortable pose, let them try it! I wish--I _wish_ I could have +the happiness of seeing Sam afloat in this old fish-scale suit with +every spangle sticking into him and his legs cramped into this +unspeakable tail!" + +She extended a bare arm, shook hands, pulled up her blanket wrap, and +resumed her knitting with a fierce glance at Ogilvy, who had attempted +an appealing smile. + +Neville stood stock-still before the canvas. The picture promised well; +it was really beautiful--the combined result of several outdoor studies +now being cleverly worked up. But Ogilvy's pictures never kept their +promise. + +[Illustration: "Neville stood stock-still before the canvas."] + + +"Also," observed Rita, reproachfully, "_I_ posed _en plein air_ for +those rainbow sketches of his--and though it was a lonely cove with a +cunningly secluded little crescent beach, I was horribly afraid of +somebody coming--and besides I got most cruelly sun-burned--" + +"Rita! You _said_ you enjoyed that excursion!" exclaimed Ogilvy, with +pathos. + +"I said it to flatter that enormous vanity of yours, Sam. I had a +perfectly wretched time." + +"What sort of a time did you have last evening?" inquired Neville, +turning from the picture. + +"Horrid. Everybody ate too much, and Valerie spooned with a new man--I +don't remember his name. She went out in a canoe with him and they sang +'She kissed him on the gangplank when the boat moved out.'" + +Neville, silent, turned to the picture once more. In a low rapid voice +he indicated to Ogilvy where matters might be differently treated, +stepped back a few paces, nodded decisively, and turned again to Rita: + +"I've been waiting for Miss West," he said. "Have you any reason to +think that she might not keep her appointment this morning?" + +"She had a headache when we got home," said Rita. "She stayed with me +last night. I left her asleep. Why don't you ring her up. You know my +number." + +"All right," said Neville, shortly, and went out. + +When he first tried to ring her up the wire was busy. It was a party +wire, yet a curious uneasiness set him pacing the studio, smoking, brows +knitted, until he decided it was time to try again. + +This time he recognised her distant voice: "Hello--hello! _Is_ that you, +Mr. Neville?" + +"Valerie!" + +"Oh, it _is_ you, Kelly? I hoped you would call me up. I _knew_ it must +be _you_!" + +"Yes, it is. What the deuce is the matter? Are you ill?" + +"Oh, dear, no.'" + +"_What,_ then?" + +[Illustration: "When he first tried to ring her up the wire was busy."] + +"I was _so_ sleepy, Kelly. Please forgive me. We had such a late +party--and it was daylight before I went to bed. Please forgive me; +won't you?" + +"When I called you a few minutes ago your wire was busy. Were you +conversing?" + +"Yes. I was talking to José Querida." + +"H'm!" + +"José was with us last evening.... I went canoeing with him. He just +called me up to ask how I felt." + +"Hunh!" + +"What?" + +"Nothing." + +"Are you annoyed, Louis?" + +"No!" + +"Oh, I thought it sounded as though you were irritated. I am so ashamed +at having overslept. Who told you I was here? Oh, Rita, I suppose. Poor +child, she was more faithful than I. The alarm clock woke her and she +was plucky enough to get up--and I only yawned and thought of you, and I +was _so_ sleepy! Are you sure you do forgive me?" + +"Of course." + +"You don't say it very kindly." + +"I mean it cordially," he snapped. He could hear her sigh: "I suppose +you do." Then she added: + +"I am dressing, Kelly. I don't wish for any breakfast, and I'll come to +the studio as soon as I can--" + +"Take your breakfast first!" + +"No, I really don't care for--" + +"All right. Come ahead." + +"I will. Good-bye, Kelly, dear." + +He rang off, picked up the telephone again, called the great Hotel +Regina, and ordered breakfast sent to his studio immediately. + +When Valerie arrived she found silver, crystal, and snowy linen awaiting +her with chilled grapefruit, African melon, fragrant coffee, toast, and +pigeon's eggs poached on Astrakan caviar. + +"Oh, Louis!" she exclaimed, enraptured; "I don't deserve this--but it is +perfectly dear of you--and I _am_ hungry!... Good-morning," she added, +shyly extending a fresh cool hand; "I am really none the worse for wear +you see." + +That was plain enough. In her fresh and youthful beauty the only sign of +the night's unwisdom was in the scarcely perceptible violet tint under +her thick lashes. Her skin was clear and white and dewy fresh, her dark +eyes unwearied--her gracefully slender presence fairly fragrant with +health and vigour. + +She seated herself--offered to share with him in dumb appeal, urged him +in delicious pantomime, and smiled encouragingly as he reluctantly found +a chair beside her and divided the magnificent melon. + +"Did you have a good time?" he asked, trying not to speak ungraciously. + +"Y-yes.... It was a silly sort of a time." + +"Silly?" + +"I was rather sentimental--with Querida." + +He said nothing--grimly. + +"I told you last night, Louis. Why couldn't you see me?" + +"I was dining out; I couldn't." + +She sipped her chilled grapefruit meditatively: + +"I hadn't seen you for a week," she laughed, glancing sideways at him, +"and that lonely feeling began about five o'clock; and I called you up +at seven because I couldn't stand it.... But you wouldn't see me; and so +when Rita and the others came in a big touring car--do you blame me very +much for going with them?" + +"No." + +Her expression became serious, a trifle appealing: + +"My room isn't very attractive," she said, timidly. "It is scarcely big +enough for the iron bed and one chair--and I get so tired trying to read +or sew every evening by the gas--and it's very hot in there." + +"Are you making excuses for going?" + +"I do not know.... Unless people ask me, I have nowhere to go except to +my room; and when a girl sits there evening after evening alone it--it +is not very gay." + +She tried the rich, luscious melon with much content, and presently her +smile came back: + +"Louis, it was a funny party. To begin we had one of those terrible +clambakes--like a huge, horrid feast of the Middle Ages--and it did not +agree with everybody--or perhaps it was because we weren't +middle-aged--or perhaps it was just the beer. I drank water; so did the +beautiful José Querida.... I think he is pretty nearly the handsomest +man I ever saw; don't you?" + +"He's handsome, cultivated, a charming conversationalist, and a really +great painter," said Neville, drily. + +She looked absently at the melon; tasted it: "He is very romantic ... when +he laughs and shows those beautiful, even teeth.... He's really +quite adorable, Kelly--and so gentle and considerate--" + +"That's the Latin in him." + +"His parents were born in New York." + +She sipped her coffee, tried a pigeon egg, inquired what it was, ate it, +enchanted. + +"How thoroughly nice you always are to me, Kelly!" she said, looking up +in the engagingly fearless way characteristic of her when with him. + +"Isn't everybody nice to you?" he said with a shrug which escaped her +notice. + +"Nice?" She coloured a trifle and laughed. "Not in _your_ way, Kelly. In +the sillier sense they are--some of them." + +"Even Querida?" he said, carelessly. + +"Oh, just like other men--generously ready for any event. What +self-sacrificing opportunists men are! After all, Kelly," she added, +slipping easily into the vernacular, "it's always up to the girl." + +"Is it?" + +"Yes, I think so. I knew perfectly well that I had no business to let +Querida's arm remain around me. But--there was a moon, Kelly." + +"Certainly." + +"Why do you say 'certainly'?" + +"Because there _was_ one." + +"But you say it in a manner--" She hesitated, continued her breakfast in +leisurely reflection for a while, then: + +"Louis?" + +"Yes." + +"Am I too frank with you?" + +"Why?" + +"I don't know; I was just thinking. I tell you pretty nearly everything. +If I didn't have you to tell--have somebody--" She considered, with +brows slightly knitted--"if I didn't have _somebody_ to talk to, it +wouldn't be very good for me. I realise that." + +"You need a grandmother," he said, drily; "and I'm the closest +resemblance to one procurable." + +The imagery struck her as humorous and she laughed. + +"Poor Kelly," she said aloud to herself, "he is used and abused and +imposed upon, and in revenge he offers his ungrateful tormentor +delicious breakfasts. _What_ shall his reward be?--or must he await it +in Paradise where he truly belongs amid the martyrs and the blessed +saints!" + +Neville grunted. + +"Oh, _oh_! such a post-Raphaelite scowl! Job won't bow to you when you +go aloft, Kelly. Besides, polite martyrs smile pleasantly while enduring +torment.... What are you going to do with me to-day?" she added, +glancing around with frank curiosity at an easel which was set with a +full-length virgin canvas. + +"Portrait," he replied, tersely. + +"Oh," she said, surprised. He had never before painted her clothed. + +From moment to moment, as she leisurely breakfasted, she glanced around +at the canvas, interested in the new idea of his painting her draped; a +trifle perplexed, too. + +"Louis," she said, "I don't quite see how you're ever going to find a +purchaser for just a plain portrait of me." + +He said, irritably: "I don't have to work for a living _every_ minute, +do I? For Heaven's sake give me a day off to study." + +"But--it seems like wasted time--" + +"What is wasted time?" + +"Why just to paint a portrait of me as I am. Isn't it?" She looked up +smilingly, perfectly innocent of any self-consciousness. "In the big +canvases for the Byzantine Theatre you always made my features too +radiant, too glorious for portraits. It seems rather a slump to paint me +as I am--just a girl in street clothes." + +A singular expression passed over his face. + +"Yes," he said, after a moment--"just a girl in street clothes. No +clouds, no sky, no diaphanous draperies of silk; no folds of cloth of +gold; no gemmed girdles, no jewels. Nothing of the old glamour, the old +glory; no sunburst laced with mist; no 'light that never was on sea or +land.' ... Just a young girl standing in the half light of my studio.... +And by God!--if I can not do it--the rest is worthless." + +Amazed at his tone and expression she turned quickly, set back her cup, +remained gazing at him, bewildered by the first note of bitterness she +had ever heard in his voice. + +He had risen and walked to his easel, back partly turned. She saw him +fussing with his palette, colours, and brushes, watched him for a few +moments, then she went away into the farther room where she had a glass +shelf to herself with toilet requisites--a casual and dainty gift from +him. + +When she returned he was still bending over his colour-table; and she +walked up and laid her hand on his shoulder--not quite understanding why +she did it. + +He straightened up to his full stature, surprised, turning his head to +meet a very clear, very sweetly disturbed gaze. + +"Kelly, dear, are you unhappy?" + +"Why--no." + +"You seem to be a little discontented." + +[Illustration: "'Kelly, dear, are you unhappy?'"] + +"I hope I am. It's a healthy sign." + +"Healthy?" + +"Certainly. The satisfied never get anywhere.... That Byzanite business +has begun to wear on my nerves." + +"Thousands and thousands of people have gone to see it, and have praised +it. You know what the papers have been saying--" + +Under her light hand she felt the impatient movement of his shoulders, +and her hand fell away. + +"Don't you care for it, now that it's finished?" she asked, wondering. + +"I'm devilish sick of it," he said, so savagely that every nerve in her +recoiled with a tiny shock. She remained silent, motionless, awaiting +his pleasure. He set his palette, frowning. She had never before seen +him like this. + +After a while she said, quietly: "If you are waiting for me, please tell +me what you expect me to do, because I don't know, Kelly." + +"Oh, just stand over there," he said, vaguely; "just walk about and stop +anywhere when you feel like stopping." + +She walked a few steps at hazard, partly turned to look back at him with +a movement adorable in its hesitation. + +"Don't budge!" he said, brusquely. + +"Am I to remain like this?" + +"Exactly." + +He picked up a bit of white chalk, went over to her, knelt down, and +traced on the floor the outline of her shoes. + +Then he went back, and, with his superbly cool assurance, began to draw +with his brush upon the untouched canvas. + +From where she stood, and as far as she could determine, he seemed, +however, to work less rapidly than usual--with a trifle less +decision--less precision. Another thing she noticed; the calm had +vanished from his face. The vivid animation, the cool self-confidence, +the half indolent relapse into careless certainty--all familiar phases +of the man as she had so often seen him painting--were now not +perceptible. There seemed to be, too, a curious lack of authority about +his brush strokes at intervals--moments of grave perplexity, indecision +almost resembling the hesitation of inexperience--and for the first time +she saw in his gray eyes the narrowing concentration of mental +uncertainty. + +It seemed to her sometimes as though she were looking at a total +stranger. She had never thought of him as having any capacity for the +ordinary and lesser ills, vanities, and vexations--the trivial worries +that beset other artists. + +"Louis?" she said, full of curiosity. + +"What?" he demanded, ungraciously. + +"You are not one bit like yourself to-day." + +He made no comment. She ventured again: + +"Do I hold the pose properly?" + +"Yes, thanks," he said, absently. + +"May I talk?" + +"I'd rather you didn't, Valerie, just at present." + +"All right," she rejoined, cheerfully; but her pretty eyes watched him +very earnestly, a little troubled. + +When she was tired the pose ended; that had been their rule; but long +after her neck and back and thighs and limbs begged for relief, she held +the pose, reluctant to interrupt him. When at last she could endure it +no longer she moved; but her right leg had lost not only all sense of +feeling but all power to support her; and down she came with a surprised +and frightened little exclamation--and he sprang to her and swung her to +her feet again. + +"Valerie! You bad little thing! Don't you know enough to stop when +you're tired?" + +[Illustration: "He picked up a bit of white chalk ... and traced on the +floor the outline of her shoes."] + +"I--didn't know I was so utterly gone," she said, bewildered. + +He passed his arm around her and supported her to the sofa where she +sat, demure, a little surprised at her collapse, yet shyly enjoying his +disconcerted attentions to her. + +"It's your fault, Kelly. You had such a queer expression--not at all +like you--that I tried harder than ever to help you--and fell down for +my pains." + +"You're an angel," he said, contritely, "but a silly one." + +"A scared one, Kelly--and a fallen one." She laughed, flexing the +muscles of her benumbed leg: "Your expression intimidated me. I didn't +recognise you; I could not form any opinion of what was going on inside +that very stern and frowning head of yours. If you look like that I'll +never dare call you Kelly." + +"Did I seem inhuman?" + +"N-no. On the contrary--very human--ordinary--like the usual +ill-tempered artist man, with whom I have learned how to deal. You +know," she added, teasingly, "that you are calm and god-like, +usually--and when you suddenly became a mere mortal--" + +"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," he said; "I'll pick you up and +put you to bed." + +"I wish you would, Kelly. I haven't had half enough sleep." + +He sat down beside her on the sofa: "Don't talk any more of that +god-like business," he growled, "or I'll find the proper punishment." + +"Would _you_ punish _me_, Kelly?" + +"I sure would." + +"If I displeased you?" + +"You bet." + +"Really?" She turned partly toward him, half in earnest. +"Suppose--suppose--" but she stopped suddenly, with a light little laugh +that lingered pleasantly in the vast, still room. + +She said: "I begin to think that there are two Kellys--no, _one_ Kelly +and _one_ Louis. Kelly is familiar to me; I seem to have known him all +my life--the happy part of my life. Louis I have just seen for the first +time--there at the easel, painting, peering from me to his canvas with +Kelly's good-looking eyes all narrow with worry--" + +"What on earth are you chattering about, Valerie?" + +"You and Kelly.... I don't quite know which I like best--the dear, +sweet, kind, clever, brilliant, impersonal, god-like Kelly, or this new +Louis--so very abrupt in speaking to me--" + +"Valerie, dear! Forgive me. I'm out of sorts somehow. It began--I don't +know--waiting for you--wondering if you could be ill--all alone. Then +that ass, Sam Ogilvy--oh, it's just oversmoking I guess, or--I don't +know what." + +She sat regarding him, head tipped unconsciously on one side in an +attitude suggesting a mind concocting malice. + +"Louis?" + +"What?" + +"You're very attractive when you're god-like--" + +"You little wretch!" + +"But--you're positively dangerous when you're human." + +"Valerie! I'll--" + +"The great god Kelly, or the fascinating, fearsome, erring Louis! Which +is it to be? I've an idea that the time is come to decide!" + +[Illustration: "'I _will_ call you a god if I like!'"] + +Fairly radiating a charming aura of malice she sat back, nursing one +knee, distractingly pretty and defiant, saying: "I _will_ call you a god +if I like!" + +"I'll tell you what, Valerie," he said, half in earnest; "I've played +grandmother to you long enough, by Heck!" + +"Oh, Kelly, be lofty and Olympian! Be a god and shame the rest of us!" + +"I'll shamefully resemble one of 'em in another moment if you continue +tormenting me!" + +"Which one, great one?" + +"Jupiter, little lady. He was the boss philanderer you know." + +"What is a philanderer, my Olympian friend?" + +"Oh, one of those Olympian divinities who always began the day by +kissing the girls all around." + +"Before breakfast?" + +"Certainly." + +"It's--after breakfast, Kelly." + +"Luncheon and dinner still impend." + +"Besides--I'm not a bit lonely to-day.... I'm afraid I wouldn't let you, +Kel--I mean Louis." + +"Why didn't you say 'Kelly'?" + +"Kelly is too god-like to kiss." + +"Oh! So _that's_ the difference! Kelly isn't human; Louis is." + +"Kelly, to me," she admitted, "is practically kissless.... I haven't +thought about Louis in that regard." + +"Consider the matter thoroughly." + +"Do you wish me to?" She bent her head, smiling. Then, looking up with +enchanting audacity: + +"I really don't know, Mr. Neville. Some day when I'm lonely--and if +Louis is at home and Kelly is out--you and I might spend an evening +together on a moonlit lake and see how much of a human being Louis can +be." + +She laughed, watching him under the dark lashes, charming mouth mocking +him in every curve. + +"Do you think you're likely to be lonely to-night?" he asked, surprised +at the slight acceleration of his pulses. + +"No, I don't. Besides, you'd be only the great god Kelly to me this +evening. Besides that I'm going to dinner with Querida, and afterward +we're going to see the 'Joy of the Town' at the Folly Theatre." + +"I didn't know," he said, curtly. For a few moments he sat there, +looking interestedly at a familiar door-knob. Then rising: "Do you feel +all right for posing?" + +"Yes." + +"Alors--" + +"Allons, mon dieu!" she laughed. + +Work began. She thought, watching him with sudden and unexpected +shyness, that he seemed even more aloof, more preoccupied, more worried, +more intent than before. In this new phase the man she had known as a +friend was now entirely gone, vanished! Here stood an utter stranger, +very human, very determined, very deeply perplexed, very much in +earnest. Everything about this man was unknown to her. There seemed to +be nothing about him that particularly appealed to her confidence, +either; yet the very uncertainty was interesting her now--intensely. + +This other phase of his dual personality had been so completely a +surprise that, captivated, curious, she could keep neither her gaze from +him nor her thoughts. Was it that she was going to miss in him the other +charm, lose the delight in his speech, his impersonal and kindly manner, +miss the comfortable security she had enjoyed with him, perhaps after +some half gay, half sentimental conflict with lesser men? + +What was she to expect from this brand-new incarnation of Louis +Neville? The delightful indifference, fascinating absent-mindedness and +personal neglect of the other phase? Would he be god enough to be less +to her, now? Man enough to be more than other men? For a moment she had +a little shrinking, a miniature panic lest this man turn too much like +other men. But she let her eyes rest on him, and knew he would not. +Whatever Protean changes might yet be reserved for her to witness, she +came to the conclusion that this man was a man apart, different, and +would not disappoint her no matter what he turned into. + +She thought to herself: "If I want Kelly to lean on, he'll surely +appear, god-like, impersonally nice, and kindly as ever; if I want Louis +to torment and provoke and flirt with--a little--a very little--I'm +quite sure he'll come, too. Whatever else is contained in Mr. Neville I +don't know; but I like him separately and compositely, and I'm happy +when I'm with him." + +With which healthy conclusion she asked if she might rest, and came +around to look at the canvas. + +As she had stood in silence for some time, he asked her, a little +nervously, what she thought of it. + +"Louis--I don't know." + +"Is your opinion unfavourable?" + +"N-no. I _am_ like that, am I not?" + +"In a shadowy way. It _will_ be like you." + +"Am I as--interesting?" + +"More so," he said. + +"Are you going to make me--beautiful?" + +"Yes--or cut this canvas into shreds." + +"Oh-h!" she exclaimed with a soft intake of breath; "would you have the +heart to destroy me after you've made me?" + +"I don't know what I'd do, Valerie. I never felt just this way about +anything. If I can't paint you--a human, breathing _you_--with all of +you there on the canvas--_all_ of you, soul, mind, and body--all of your +beauty, your youth, your sadness, happiness--your errors, your +nobility--_you_, Valerie!--then there's no telling what I'll do." + +She said nothing. Presently she resumed the pose and he his painting. + +It became very still in the sunny studio. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +In that month of June, for the first time in his deliberately active +career, Neville experienced a disinclination to paint. And when he +realised that it was disinclination, it appalled him. Something--he +didn't understand what--had suddenly left him satiated--and with all the +uneasiness and discontent of satiation he forced matters until he could +force no further. + +He had commissions, several, and valuable; and let them lie. For the +first time in all his life the blank canvas of an unexecuted commission +left him untempted, unresponsive, weary. + +He had, also, his portrait of Valerie to continue. He continued it +mentally, at intervals; but for several days, now, he had not laid a +brush to it. + +"It's funny," he said to Querida, going out on the train to his sister's +country home one delicious morning--"it's confoundedly odd that I should +turn lazy in my old age. Do you think I'm worked out?" He gulped down a +sudden throb of fear smilingly. + +"Lie fallow," said Querida, gently. "No soil is deep enough to yield +without rest." + +"Yours does." + +"Oh, for me," said Querida, showing his snowy teeth, "I often sicken of +my fat sunlight, frying everything to an iridescent omelette." He +shrugged, laughed: "I turn lazy for months every year. Try it, my +friend. Don't you even keep _mi-carême_?" + +Neville stared out of the window at the station platform past which +they were gliding, and rose with Querida as the train stopped. His +sister's touring car was waiting; into it stepped Querida, and he +followed; and away they sped over the beautiful rolling country, where +handsome cattle tried to behave like genuine Troyon's, and silvery sheep +attempted to imitate Mauve, and even the trees, separately or in groups, +did their best to look like sections of Rousseau, Diaz, and even +Corot--but succeeded only in resembling questionable imitations. + +"There's to be quite a week-end party?" inquired Querida. + +"I don't know. My sister telephoned me to fill in. I fancy the party is +for you." + +"For _me_!" exclaimed Querida with delightful enthusiasm. "That is most +charming of Mrs. Collis." + +"They'll all think it charming of you. Lord, what a rage you've become +and what a furor you've aroused!... And you deserve it," added Neville, +coolly. + +Querida looked at him, calm intelligence in his dark gaze; and +understood the honesty of the comment. + +"That," he said, "if you permit the vigour of expression, is damn nice +of you, Neville. But you can afford to be generous to other painters." + +"Can I?" Neville turned and gazed at Querida, gray eyes clear in their +searching inquiry. Then he laughed a little and looked out over the +sunny landscape. + +Querida's olive cheeks had reddened a trifle. + +Neville said: "What _is_ the trouble with my work, anyway? Is it what +some of you fellows say?" + +Querida did not pretend to misunderstand: + +"You're really a great painter, Neville. And you know it. Must you have +_everything_?" + +"Well--I'm going after it." + +"Surely--surely. I, also. God knows my work lacks many, many things--" + +"But it doesn't lack that one essential which mine lacks. _What_ is it?" + +Querida laughed: "I can't explain. For me--your Byzantine canvas--there +is in it something not intimate--" + +"Austere?" + +"Yes--even in those divine and lovely throngs. There is, perhaps, an +aloofness--even a self-denial--" He laughed again: "I deny myself +nothing--on canvas--even I have the audacity to try to draw as you do!" + +Neville sat thinking, watching the landscape speed away on either side +in a running riot of green. + +"Self-denial--too much of it--separates you from your kind," said +Querida. "The solitary fasters are never personally pleasant; hermits +are the world's public admiration and private abomination. Oh, the good +world dearly loves to rub elbows with a talented sinner and patronise +him and sentimentalise over him--one whose miracles don't hurt their +eyes enough to blind them to the pleasant discovery that his halo is +tarnished in spots and needs polishing, and that there's a patch on the +seat of his carefully creased toga." + +Neville laughed. Presently he said: "Until recently I've cherished +theories. One of 'em was to subordinate everything in life to the +enjoyment of a single pleasure--the pleasure of work.... I guess +experience is putting that theory on the blink." + +"Surely. You might as well make an entire meal of one favourite dish. +For a day you could stand it, even like it, perhaps. After that--" he +shrugged. + +"But--I'd _rather_ spend my time painting--if I could stand the diet." + +"Would you? I don't know what I'd rather do. I like almost everything. +It makes me paint better to talk to a pretty woman, for example. To kiss +her inspires a masterpiece." + +"Does it?" said Neville, thoughtfully. + +"Of course. A week or two of motoring--riding, dancing, white flannel +idleness--all these I adore. And," tapping his carefully pinned lilac +tie--"inside of me I know that every pleasant experience, every pleasure +I offer myself, is going to make me a better painter!" + +"Experience," repeated the other. + +"By all means and every means--experience in pleasure, in idleness, in +love, in sorrow--but experience!--always experience, by hook or by +crook, and at any cost. That is the main idea, Neville--_my_ main +idea--like the luscious agglomeration of juicy green things which that +cow is eating; they all go to make good milk. Bah!--that's a stupid +simile," he added, reddening. + +Neville laughed. Presently he pointed across the meadows. + +"Is _that_ your sister's place?" asked Querida with enthusiasm, +interested and disappointed. "What a charming house!" + +"That is Ashuelyn, my sister's house. Beyond is El Naúar, Cardemon's +place.... Here we are." + +The small touring car stopped; the young men descended to a grassy +terrace where a few people in white flannels had gathered after +breakfast. A slender woman, small of bone and built like an undeveloped +girl, came forward, the sun shining on her thick chestnut hair. + +"Hello, Lily," said Neville. + +"Hello, Louis. Thank you for coming, Mr. Querida--it is exceedingly nice +of you to come--" She gave him her firm, cool hand, smiled on him with +unfeigned approval, turned and presented him to the others--Miss Aulne, +Miss Swift, Miss Annan, a Mr. Cameron, and, a moment later, to her +husband, Gordon Collis, a good-looking, deeply sun-burned young man +whose only passion, except his wife and baby, was Ashuelyn, the home of +his father. + +But it was a quiet passion which bored nobody, not even his wife. + +When conversation became general, with Querida as the centre around +which it eddied, Neville, who had seated himself on the gray stone +parapet near his sister, said in a low voice: + +"Well, how goes it, Lily?" + +"All right," she replied with boyish directness, but in the same low +tone. "Mother and father have spent a week with us. You saw them in +town?" + +"Of course. I'll run up to Spindrift House to see them as often as I can +this summer.... How's the kid?" + +"Fine. Do you want to see him?" + +"Yes, I'd like to." + +His sister caught his hand, jumped up, and led him into the house to the +nursery where a normal and in nowise extraordinary specimen of infancy +reposed in a cradle, pink with slumber, one thumb inserted in its mouth. + +"Isn't he a wonder," murmured Neville, venturing to release the thumb. + +The young mother bent over, examining her offspring in all the eloquent +silence of pride unutterable. After a little while she said: "I've got +to feed him. Go back to the others, Louis, and say I'll be down after a +while." + +He sauntered back through the comfortable but modest house, glancing +absently about him on his way to the terrace, nodding to familiar faces +among the servants, stopping to inspect a sketch of his own which he had +done long ago and which his sister loved and he hated. + +"Rotten," he murmured--"it has an innocence about it that is actually +more offensive than stupidity." + +On the terrace Stephanie Swift came over to him: + +"Do you want a single at tennis, Louis? The others are hot for +Bridge--except Gordon Collis--and he is going to dicker with a farmer +over some land he wants to buy." + +Neville looked at the others: + +"Do you mean to say that you people are going to sit here all hunched up +around a table on a glorious day like this?" + +"We are," said Alexander Cameron, calmly breaking the seal of two fresh, +packs. "You artists have nothing to do for a living except to paint +pretty models, and when the week end comes you're in fine shape to caper +and cut up didoes. But we business men are too tired to go galumphing +over the greensward when Saturday arrives. It's a wicker chair and a +'high one,' and peaceful and improving cards for ours." + +Alice Annan laughed and glanced at Querida degrees Cameron's idea was +her idea of what her brother Harry was doing for a living; but she +wasn't sure that Querida would think it either flattering or humorous. + +But Jose Querida laughed, too, saying: "Quite right, Mr. Cameron. It's +only bluff with, us; we never work. Life is one continual comic opera." + +"It's a cinch," murmured Cameron. "Stocks and bonds are exciting, but +_your_ business puts it all over us. Nobody would have to drive me to +business every morning if there was a pretty model in a cosey studio +awaiting me." + +"Sandy, you're rather horrid," said Miss Aulne, watching him sort out +the jokers from the new packs and, with a skilful flip, send them +scaling out, across the grass, for somebody to pick up. + +Cameron said: "How about this Trilby business, anyway, Miss Annan? You +have a brother in it. Is the world of art full of pretty models clad in +ballet skirts--when they wear anything? Is it all one mad, joyous +melange of high-brow conversation discreetly peppered with low-brow +revelry? Yes? No? Inform an art lover, please--as they say in the _Times +Saturday Review_." + +"I don't know," said Miss Annan, laughing. "Harry never has anybody +interesting in the studio when he lets me take tea there." + +Rose Aulne said: "I saw some photographs of a very beautiful girl in Sam +Ogilvy's studio--a model. What is her name, Alice?--the one Sam and +Harry are always raving over?" + +"They call her Valerie, I believe." + +"Yes, that's the one--Valerie West, isn't it? _Is_ it, Louis? You know +her, of course." + +Neville nodded coolly. + +"Introduce me," murmured Cameron, spreading a pack for cutting. "Perhaps +she'd like to see the Stock Exchange when I'm at my best." + +"Is she such a beauty? Do you know her, too, Mr. Querida?" asked Rose +Aulne. + +Querida laughed: "I do. Miss West is a most engaging, most amiable and +cultivated girl, and truly very beautiful." + +"Oh! They _are_ sometimes educated?" asked Stephanie, surprised. + +"Sometimes they are even equipped to enter almost any drawing-room in +New York. It doesn't always require the very highest equipment to do +that," he added, laughing. + +"That sounds like romantic fiction," observed Alice Annan. "You are a +poet, Mr. Querida." + +"Oh, it's not often a girl like Valerie West crosses our path. I admit +that. Now and then such a comet passes across our sky--or is reported. I +never before saw any except this one." + +"If she's as much of a winner as all that," began Cameron with decision, +"I want to meet her immediately--" + +"Mere brokers are out of it," said Alice.... "Cut, please." + +Rose Aulne said: "If you painters only knew it, your stupid studio teas +would be far more interesting if you'd have a girl like this Valerie +West to pour for you ... and for us to see." + +"Yes," added Alice; "but they're a vain lot. They think we are +unsophisticated enough to want to go to their old studios and be +perfectly satisfied to look at their precious pictures, and listen to +their art patter. I've told Harry that what we want is to see something +of the real studio life; and he tries to convince me that it's about as +exciting as a lawyer's life when he dictates to his stenographer." + +[Illustration: "'If she's as much of a winner as all that,' began +Cameron with decision, 'I want to meet her immediately--'"] + +"Is it?" asked Stephanie of Neville. + +"Just about as exciting. Some few business men may smirk at their +stenographers; some few painters may behave in the same way to their +models. I fancy it's the exception to the rule in any kind of +business--isn't it, Sandy?" + +"Certainly," said Cameron, hastily. "I never winked at my +stenographer--never! never! Will you deal, Mr. Querida?" he asked, +courteously. + +"I should think a girl like that would be interesting to know," said +Lily Collis, who had come up behind her brother and Stephanie Swift and +stood, a hand on each of their shoulders, listening and looking on at +the card game. + +"That is what I wanted to say, too," nodded Stephanie. "I'd like to meet +a really nice girl who is courageous enough, and romantic enough to pose +for artists--" + +"You mean poor enough, don't you?" said Neville. "They don't do it +because it's romantic." + +"It must be romantic work." + +"It isn't, I assure you. It's drudgery--and sometimes torture." + +Stephanie laughed: "I believe it's easy work and a gay existence full of +romance. Don't undeceive me, Louis. And I think you're selfish not to +let us meet your beautiful Valerie at tea." + +"Why not?" added his sister. "I'd like to see her myself." + +"Oh, Lily, you know perfectly well that oil and water don't mix," he +said with a weary shrug. + +"I suppose we're the oil," remarked Rose Aulne--"horrid, smooth, +insinuating stuff. And his beautiful Valerie is the clear, crystalline, +uncontaminated fountain of inspiration." + +Lily Collis dropped her hands from Stephanie's and her brother's +shoulders: + +"Do ask us to tea to meet her, Louis," she coaxed. + +"We've never seen a model--" + +"Do you want me to exhibit a sensitive girl as a museum freak?" he +asked, impatiently. + +"Don't you suppose we know how to behave toward her? Really, Louis, +you--" + +"Probably you know how to behave. And I can assure you that she knows +perfectly well how to behave toward anybody. But that isn't the +question. You want to see her out of curiosity. You wouldn't make a +friend of her--or even an acquaintance. And I tell you, frankly, I don't +think it's square to her and I won't do it. Women are nuisances in +studios, anyway." + +"What a charming way your brother has of explaining things," laughed +Stephanie, passing her arm through Lily's: "Shall we reveal to him that +he was seen with his Valerie at the St. Regis a week ago?" + +"Why not?" he said, coolly, but inwardly exasperated. "She's as +ornamental as anybody who dines there." + +"I don't do _that_ with _my_ stenographers!" called out Cameron +gleefully, cleaning up three odd in spades. "Oh, don't talk to me, +Louis! You're a gay bunch all right!--you're qualified, every one of +you, artists and models, to join the merry, merry!" + +Stephanie dropped Lily's arm with a light laugh, swung her tennis bat, +tossed a ball into the sunshine, and knocked it over toward the tennis +court. + +"I'll take you on if you like, Louis!" she called back over her +shoulder, then continued her swift, graceful pace, white serge skirts +swinging above her ankles, bright hair wind-blown--a lithe, full, +wholesome figure, very comforting to look at. + +"Come upstairs; I'll show you where Gordon's shoes are," said his +sister. + +Gordon's white shoes fitted him, also his white trousers. When he was +dressed he came out of the room and joined his sister, who was seated on +the stairs, balancing his racquet across her knees. + +"Louis," she said, "how about the good taste of taking that model of +yours to the St. Regis?" + +"It was perfectly good taste," he said, carelessly. + +"Stephanie took it like an angel," mused his sister. + +"Why shouldn't she? If there was anything queer about it, you don't +suppose I'd select the St. Regis, do you?" + +"Nobody supposed there was anything queer." + +"Well, then," he demanded, impatiently, "what's the row?" + +"There is no row. Stephanie doesn't make what you call rows. Neither +does anybody in your immediate family. I was merely questioning the +wisdom of your public appearance--under the circumstances." + +"What circumstances?" + +His sister looked at him calmly: + +"The circumstances of your understanding with Stephanie.... An +understanding of years, which, in her mind at least, amounts to a tacit +engagement." + +"I'm glad you said that," he began, after a moment's steady thinking. +"If that is the way that Stephanie and you still regard a college +affair--" + +"A--what!" + +"A boy-and-girl preference which became an undergraduate romance--and +has never amounted to anything more--" + +"Louis!" + +"What?" + +"Don't you _care_ for her?" + +"Certainly; as much as I ever did--as much, as she really and actually +cares for me," he answered, defiantly. "You know perfectly well what +such affairs ever amount to--in the sentimental-ever-after line. Infant +sweethearts almost never marry. She has no more idea of it than have I. +We are fond of each other; neither of us has happened, so far, to +encounter the real thing. But as soon as the right man comes along +Stephanie will spread her wings and take flight--" + +"You don't know her! Well--of all faithless wretches--your inconstancy +makes me positively ill!" + +"Inconstancy! I'm not inconstant. I never saw a girl I liked better than +Stephanie. I'm not likely to. But that doesn't mean that I want to marry +her--" + +"For shame!" + +"Nonsense! Why do you talk about inconstancy? It's a ridiculous word. +What is constancy in love? Either an accident or a fortunate state of +mind. To promise constancy in love is promising to continue in a state +of mind over which your will has no control. It's never an honest +promise; it can be only an honest hope. Love comes and goes and no man +can stay it, and no man is its prophet. Coming unasked, sometimes +undesired, often unwelcome, it goes unbidden, without reason, without +logic, as inexorably as it came, governed by laws that no man has ever +yet understood--" + +"Louis!" exclaimed his sister, bewildered; "what in the world are you +lecturing about? Why, to hear you expound the anatomy of love--" + +He began to laugh, caught her hands, and kissed her: + +"Little goose, that was all impromptu and horribly trite and +commonplace. Only it was new to me because I never before took the +trouble to consider it. But it's true, even if it is trite. People love +or they don't love, and a regard for ethics controls only what they do +about it." + +"That's another Tupperesque truism, isn't it, dear?" + +"Sure thing. Who am I to mock at the Proverbial One when I've never yet +evolved anything better?... Listen; you don't want me to marry +Stephanie, do you?" + +"Yes, I do." + +"No, you don't. You think you do--" + +"I do, I do, Louis! She's the sweetest, finest, most generous, most +suitable--" + +"Sure," he said, hastily, "she's all that except 'suitable'--and she +isn't that, and I'm not, either. For the love of Mike, Lily, let me go +on admiring her, even loving her in a perfectly harmless--" + +"It _isn't_ harmless to caress a girl--" + +"Why--you can't call it caressing--" + +"What do you call it?" + +"Nothing. We've always been on an intimate footing. She's perfectly +unembarrassed about--whatever impulsive--er--fugitive impulses--" + +"You _do_ kiss her!" + +"Seldom--very seldom. At moments the conditions happen accidentally +to--suggest--some slight demonstration--of a very warm friendship--" + +"You positively sicken me! Do you think a nice girl is going to let a +man paw her if she doesn't consider him pledged to her?" + +"I don't think anything about it. Nice girls have done madder things +than their eulogists admit. As a plain matter of fact you can't tell +what anybody nice is going to do under theoretical circumstances. And +the nicer they are the bigger the gamble--particularly if they're +endowed with brains--" + +"_That's_ cynicism. You seem to be developing several streaks--" + +"Polite blinking of facts never changes them. Conforming to conventional +and accepted theories never yet appealed to intelligence. I'm not going +to be dishonest with myself; that's one of the streaks I've developed. +You ask me if I love Stephanie enough to marry her, and I say I don't. +What's the good of blinking it? I don't love anybody enough to marry +'em; but I like a number of girls well enough to spoon with them." + +"_That_ is disgusting!" + +"No, it isn't," he said, with smiling weariness; "it's the unvarnished +truth about the average man. Why wink at it? The average man can like a +lot of girls enough to spoon and sentimentalise with them. It's the pure +accident of circumstance and environment that chooses for him the one he +marries. There are myriads of others in the world with whom, under +proper circumstances and environment, he'd have been just as +happy--often happier. Choice is a mystery, constancy a gamble, +discontent the one best bet. It isn't pleasant; it isn't nice fiction +and delightful romance; it isn't poetry or precept as it is popularly +inculcated; it's the brutal truth about the average man.... And I'm +going to find Stephanie. Have you any objection?" + +"Louis--I'm terribly disappointed in you--" + +"I'm disappointed, too. Until you spoke to me so plainly a few minutes +ago I never clearly understood that I couldn't marry Stephanie. When I +thought of it at all it seemed a vague and shadowy something, too far +away to be really impending--threatening--like death--" + +[Illustration: "'Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before +luncheon.'"] + +"Oh!" cried his sister in revolt. "I shall make it my business to see +that Stephanie understands you thoroughly before this goes any +farther--" + +"I wish to heaven you would," he said, so heartily that his sister, +exasperated, turned her back and marched away to the nursery. + +When he went out to the tennis court he found Stephanie idly batting the +balls across the net with Cameron, who, being dummy, had strolled down +to gibe at her--a pastime both enjoyed: + +"Here comes your Alonzo, fair lady--lightly skipping o'er the +green--yes, yes--wearing the panties of his brother-in-law!" He fell +into an admiring attitude and contemplated Neville with a simper, his +ruddy, prematurely bald head cocked on one side: + +"Oh, girls! _Ain't_ he just grand!" he exclaimed. "Honest, Stephanie, +your young man has me in the ditch with two blow-outs and the gas +afire!" + +"Get out of this court," said Neville, hurling a ball at him. + +"Isn't he the jealous old thing!" cried Cameron, flouncing away with an +affectation of feminine indignation. And presently the tennis balls +began to fly, and the little jets of white dust floated away on the June +breeze. + +They were very evenly matched; they always had been, never asking odds +or offering handicaps in anything. It had always been so; at the traps +she could break as many clay birds as he could; she rode as well, drove +as well; their averages usually balanced. From the beginning--even as +children--it had been always give and take and no favour. + +And so it was now; sets were even; it was a matter of service. + +Luncheon interrupted a drawn game; Stephanie, flushed, smiling, came +around to his side of the net to join him on the way to the house: + +"How do you keep up your game, Louis? Or do I never improve? It's +curious, isn't it, that we are always deadlocked." + +Bare-armed, bright hair in charming disorder, she swung along beside him +with that quick, buoyant step so characteristic of a spirit ever +undaunted, saluting the others on the terrace with high-lifted racquet. + +"Nobody won," she said. "Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before +luncheon. Thank you, Louis; I've had a splendid game--" She stretched +out a frank hand to him, going, and the tips of her fingers just brushed +his. + +His sister gave him a tragic look, which he ignored, and a little later +luncheon was on and Cameron garrulous, and Querida his own gentle, +expressive, fascinating self, devotedly receptive to any woman who was +inclined to talk to him or to listen. + +That evening Neville said to his sister: "There's a train at midnight; I +don't think I'll stay over--" + +"Why?" + +"I want to be in town early." + +"Why?" + +"The early light is the best." + +"I thought you'd stopped painting for a while." + +"I have, practically. There's one thing I keep on with, in a desultory +sort of way--" + +"What is it?" + +"Oh, nothing of importance--" he hesitated--"that Is, it may be +important. I can't be sure, yet." + +"Will you tell me what it is?" + +"Why, yes. It's a portrait--a study--" + +"Of whom, dear?" + +"Oh, of nobody you know--" + +"Is it a portrait of Valerie West?" + +"Yes," he said, carelessly. + +There was a silence; in the starlight his shadowy face was not clearly +visible to his sister. + +"Are you leaving just to continue that portrait?" + +"Yes. I'm interested in it." + +"Don't go," she said, in a low voice. + +"Don't be silly," he returned shortly. + +"Dear, I am not silly, but I suspect you are beginning to be. And over a +model!" + +"Lily, you little idiot," he laughed, exasperated; "what in the world is +worrying you?" + +"Your taking that girl to the St. Regis. It isn't like you." + +"Good Lord! How many girls do you suppose I've taken to various places?" + +"Not many," she said, smiling at him. "Your reputation for gallantries +is not alarming." + +Ho reddened. "You're perfectly right. That sort of thing never appealed +to me." + +"Then why does it appeal to you now?" + +"It doesn't. Can't you understand that this girl is entirely +different--" + +"Yes, I understand. And that is what worries me." + +"It needn't. It's precisely like taking any girl you know and like--" + +"Then let me know her--if you mean to decorate-public places with her." + +They looked at one another steadily. + +"Louis," she said, "this pretty Valerie is not your sister's sort, or +you wouldn't hesitate." + +"I--hesitate--yes, certainly I do. It's absurd on the face of it. She's +too fine a nature to be patronised--too inexperienced in the things of +your world--too ignorant of petty conventions and formalities--too free +and fearless and confident and independent to appeal to the world you +live in." + +"Isn't that a rather scornful indictment against my world, dear?" + +"No. Your world is all right in its way. You and I were brought up in +it. I got out of it. There are other worlds. The one I now inhabit is +more interesting to me. It's purely a matter of personal taste, dear. +Valerie West inhabits a world that suits her." + +"Has she had any choice in the matter?" + +"I--yes. She's had the sense and the courage to keep out of the various +unsafe planets where electric light furnishes the principal +illumination." + +"But has she had a chance for choosing a better planet than the one you +say she prefers? Your choice was free. Was hers?" + +"Look here, Lily! Why on earth are you so significant about a girl you +never saw--scarcely ever heard of--" + +"Dear, I have not told you everything. I _have_ heard of her--of her +charm, her beauty, her apparent innocence--yes, her audacity, her +popularity with men.... Such things are not unobserved and unreported +between your new planet and mine. Harry Annan is frankly crazy about +her, and his sister Alice is scared to death. Mr. Ogilvy, Mr. Burleson, +Clive Gail, dozens of men I know are quite mad about her.... If it was +she whom you used as model for the figures in the Byzantine decorations, +she is divine--the loveliest creature to look at! And I don't care, +Louis; I don't care a straw one way or the other except that I know you +have never bothered with the more or less Innocently irregular gaieties +which attract many men of your age and temperament. And so--when I hear +that you are frequently seen--" + +"Frequently?" + +"Is that St. Regis affair the only one?" + +"No, of course not. But, as for my being with her frequently--" + +"Well?" + +He was silent for a moment, then, looking up with a laugh: + +"I like her immensely. Until this moment I didn't realise how much I do +like her--how pleasant it is to be with a girl who is absolutely +fearless, clever, witty, intelligent, and unspoiled." + +"Are there no girls in your own set who conform to this standard?" + +"Plenty. But their very environment and conventional traditions kill +them--make them a nuisance." + +"Louis!" + +"That's more plain truth, which no woman likes. Will you tell me what +girl in your world, who approaches the qualitative standard set by +Valerie West, would go about by day or evening with any man except her +brother? Valerie does. What girl would be fearless enough to ignore the +cast-iron fetters of her caste? Valerie West is a law unto herself--a +law as sweet and good and excellent and as inflexible as any law made by +men to restrain women's liberty, arouse them to unhappy +self-consciousness and infect them with suspicion. Every one of you are +the terrified slaves of custom, and you know it. Most men like it. I +don't. I'm no tea drinker, no cruncher of macaroons, no gabbler at +receptions, no top-hatted haunter of weddings, no social graduate of the +Ecole Turvydrop. And these places--if I want to find companionship in +any girl of your world--must frequent. And I won't. And so there you +are." + +His sister came up to him and placed her arms around his neck. + +"Such--a--wrong-headed--illogical--boy," she sighed, kissing him +leisurely to punctuate her words. '"If you marry a girl you love you can +have all the roaming and unrestrained companionship you want. Did that +ever occur to you?" + +"At that price," he said, laughing, "I'll do without it." + +"Wrong head, handsome head! I'm in despair about you. Why in the world +cannot artists conform to the recognised customs of a perfectly pleasant +and respectable world? Don't answer me! You'll make me very unhappy.... +Now go and talk to Stephanie. The child won't understand your going +to-night, but make the best of it to her." + +"Good Lord, Lily! I haven't a string tied to me. It doesn't matter to +Stephanie what I do--why I go or remain. You're all wrong. Stephanie and +I understand each other." + +"I'll see that she understands _you_" said his sister, sorrowfully. + +He laughed and kissed her again, impatient. But why he was impatient he +himself did not know. Certainly it was not to find Stephanie, for whom +he started to look--and, on the way, glanced at his watch, determined +not to miss the train that would bring him into town in time to talk to +Valerie West over the telephone. + +Passing the lighted and open windows, he saw Querida and Alice absorbed +in a tête-à-tête, ensconced in a corner of the big living room; saw +Gordon playing with Heinz, the dog--named Heinz because of the +celebrated "57 varieties" of dog in his pedigree--saw Miss Aulne at +solitaire, exchanging lively civilities with Sandy Cameron at the piano +between charming bits of a classic ballad which he was inclined to sing: + + "I'd share my pottage + With you, dear, but + True love in a cottage + Is hell in a hut." + +"Is that you, Stephanie?" he asked, as a dark figure, seated on the +veranda, turned a shadowy head toward him. + +"Yes. Isn't this starlight magnificent? I've been up to the nursery +looking at the infant wonder--just wild to hug him; but he's asleep, and +his nurse glared at me. So I thought I'd come and look at something else +as unattainable--the stars, Louis," she added, laughing--"not you." + +"Sure," he said, smiling, "I'm always obtainable. Unlike the infant upon +whom you had designs," he added, "I'm neither asleep nor will any nurse +glare at you if you care to steal a kiss from me." + +"I've no inclination to transfer my instinctively maternal transports to +you," she said, serenely, "though, maternal solicitude might not be +amiss concerning you." + +"Do you think I need moral supervision?" + +"Not by me." + +"By whom?" + +"Ask me an easier one, Louis. And--I didn't _say_ you needed it at all, +did I?" + +He sat beside her, silent, head lifted, examining the stars. + +"I'm going back on the midnight," he remarked, casually. + +"Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, with her winning frankness. + +"I'm--there's something I have to attend to in town--" + +"Work?" + +"It has to do with my work--indirectly--" + +She glanced sideways at him, and remained for a moment curiously +observant. + +"How is the work going, anyway?" she asked. + +He hesitated. "I've apparently come up slap against a blank wall. It +isn't easy to explain how I feel--but I've no confidence in myself--" + +"_You_! No confidence? How absurd!" + +"It's true," he said a little sullenly. + +"You are having a spasm of progressive development," she said, calmly. +"You take it as a child takes teething--with a squirm and a mental howl +instead of a physical yell." + +He laughed. "I suppose it's something of that sort. But there's more--a +self-distrust amounting to self-disgust at moments.... Stephanie, I +_want_ to do something good--" + +"You have--dozens of times." + +"People say so. The world forgets what is really good--" he made a +nervous gesture--"always before us poor twentieth-century men looms the +goal guarded by the vast, austere, menacing phantoms of the Masters." + +[Illustration: "'I know it is _you_. Is it?'"] + +"Nobody ever won a race looking behind him," she Said, gaily; "let 'em +menace and loom!" + +He laughed in a half-hearted fashion, then his head fell again slowly, +and he sat there brooding, silent. + +"Louis, why are you always dissatisfied?" + +"I always will be, I suppose." His discontented gaze grew more vague. + +"Can you never learn to enjoy the moment?" + +"It goes too quickly, and there are so many others which promise more, +and will never fulfil their promise; I know it. We painters know it when +we dare to think clearly. It is better not to think too clearly--better +to go on and pretend to expect attainment.... Stephanie, sometimes I +wish I were in an honest business--selling, buying--and could close up +shop and go home to pleasant dreams." + +"Can't you?" + +"No. It's eternal obsession. A painter's work is never ended. It goes on +with some after they are asleep; and then they go crazy," he added, and +laughed and laid his hand lightly and unthinkingly over hers where it +rested on the arm of her chair. And he remained unaware of her delicate +response to the contact. + +The stars were clear and liquid-bright, swarming in myriads in the June +sky. A big meteor fell, leaving an incandescent arc which faded +instantly. + +"I wonder what time it is," Be said. + +"You mustn't miss your train, must you?" + +"No." ... Suddenly it struck him that it would be one o'clock before he +could get to the studio and call up Valerie. That would be too late. He +couldn't awake her just for the pleasure of talking to her. Besides, he +was sure to see her in the morning when she came to him for her +portrait.... Yet--yet--he wanted to talk to her.... There seemed to be +no particular reason for this desire. + +"I think I'll just step to the telephone a moment." He rose, and her +fingers dropped from his hand. "You don't mind, do you?" + +"Not at all," she smiled. "The stars are very faithful friends. I'll be +well guarded until you come back, Louis." + +What she said, for some reason, made him slightly uncomfortable. He was +thinking of her words as he called up "long distance" and waited. +Presently Central called him with a brisk "Here's your party!" And very +far away he heard her voice: + +"I know it is _you_. Is it?" + +"Who?" + +"It is! I recognise your voice. But _which_ is it--Kelly or Louis or Mr. +Neville?" + +"All three," he replied, laughing. + +"But which gentleman is in the ascendant? The god-like one? Or the +conventional Mr. Neville? Or--the bad and very lovable and very human +Louis?" + +"Stop talking-nonsense, Valerie. What are you doing?" + +"Conversing with an abrupt gentleman called Louis Neville. I _was_ +reading." + +"All alone in your room?" + +"Naturally. Two people _couldn't_ get into it unless one of them also +got into bed." + +"You poor child! What are you reading?" + +"Will you promise not to laugh?" + +"Yes, I will." + +"Then--I was reading the nineteenth psalm." + +"It's a beauty, isn't it," he said. + +"Oh, Louis, it is glorious!--I don't know what in it appeals most +thrillingly to me--the wisdom or the beauty of the verse--but I love +it." + +"It is fine," he said. "... And are you there in your room all alone +this beautiful starry night, reading the psalms of old King David?" + +"Yes. What are you doing? Where are you?" + +"At Ashuelyn, my sister's home." + +"Oh! Well, it is perfectly sweet of you to think of me and to call me +up--" + +"I usually--I--well, naturally I think of you. I thought I'd just call +you up to say good night. You see my train doesn't get in until one this +morning; and of course I couldn't wake you--" + +"Yes, you could. I am perfectly willing to have you wake me." + +"But that would be the limit!" + +"Is _that_ your limit, Louis? If it is you will never disturb my peace +of mind." He heard her laughing at the other end of the wire, delighted +with her own audacity. + +He said: "Shall I call you up at one o'clock when I get into town?" + +"Try it. I may awake." + +"Very well then. I'll make them ring till daylight." + +"Oh, they won't have to do that! I always know, about five minutes +before you call me, that you are going to." + +"You uncanny little thing! You've said that before." + +"It's true. I knew before you called me that you would. It's a vague +feeling--a--I don't know.... And oh, Louis, it _is_ hot in this room! +Are you cool out there in the country?" + +"Yes; and I hate to be when I think of you--" + +"I'm glad you are. It's one comfort, anyway. John Burleson called me up +and asked me to go to Manhattan Beach, but somehow it didn't appeal to +me.... I've rather missed you." + +"Have you?" + +"Really." + +"Well, I'll admit I've missed you." + +"Really?" + +Sure thing! I wish to heaven I were in town now. We would go somewhere." + +"Oh, I wish so, too." + +"Isn't it the limit!" + +"It is, Kelly. Can't you be a real god for a moment and come floating +into my room in a golden cloud?" + +"Shall I try?" + +"_Please_ do." + +"All right. I'll do my god-like best. And anyway I'll call you up at +one. Good night." + +"Good night." + +He went back to the girl waiting for him in the starlight. + +"Well," she said, smiling at his altered expression, "you certainly have +recovered your spirits." + +He laughed and took her unreluctant fingers and kissed them--a boyishly +impulsive expression of the gay spirits which might have perplexed him +or worried him to account for if he had tried to analyse them. But he +didn't; he was merely conscious of a sudden inrush of high spirits--of a +warm feeling for all the world--this star-set world, so still and +sweet-scented. + +"Stephanie, dear," he said, smiling, "you know perfectly well that I +think--always have thought--that there was nobody like you. You know +that, don't you?" + +She laughed, but her pulses quickened a little. + +"Well, then," he went on. "I take it for granted that our understanding +is as delightfully thorough as it has always been--a warm, cordial +intimacy which leaves us perfectly unembarrassed--perfectly free to +express our affection for each other without fear of being +misunderstood." + +The girl lifted her blue eyes: "Of course." + +"That's what I told Lily," he nodded, delighted. I told her that you and +I understood each other--that it was silly of her to suspect anything +sentimental in our comradeship; that whenever the real thing put in an +appearance and came tagging down the pike after you, you'd sink the gaff +into him--" + +"The--what?" + +"Rope him and paste your monogram all over him." + +"I certainly will," she said, laughing. Eyes and lips and voice were +steady; but the tumult in her brain confused her. + +"That is exactly what I told Lily," he said. "She seems to think that if +two people frankly enjoy each other's society they want to marry each +other. All married women are that way. Like clever decoys they take +genuine pleasure in bringing the passing string under the guns." + +He laughed and kissed her pretty fingers again: + +"Don't you listen to my sister. Freedom's a good thing; and people are +selfish when happy; they don't set up a racket to attract others into +their private paradise." + +"Oh, Louis, that is really horrid of you. Don't you think Lily is +happy?" + +"Sure--in a way. You can't have a perfectly good husband and baby, and +have the fun of being courted by other aspirants, too. Of course married +women are happy; but they give up a lot. And sometimes it slightly +irritates them to remember it when they see the unmarried innocently +frisking as they once frisked. And it's their instinct to call out 'Come +in! Matrimony's fine! You don't know what you are missing!'" + +Stephanie laughed and lay back in her steamer chair, her hand abandoned +to him. And when her mirth had passed a slight sense of fatigue left her +silent, inert, staring at nothing. + +When the time came to say _adieu_ he kissed her as he sometimes did, +with a smiling and impersonal tenderness--not conscious of the source of +all this happy, demonstrative, half impatient animation which seemed to +possess him in every fibre. + +"Good-bye, you dear girl," he said, as the lights of the motor lit up +the drive. "I've had a bully time, and I'll see you soon again." + +"Come when you can, Louis. There is no man I would rather see." + +"And no girl I would rather go to," he said, warmly, scarcely thinking +what he was saying. + +Their clasped hands relaxed, fell apart. He went in to take leave of +Lily and Gordon and their guests, then emerged hastily and sprang into +the car. + +Overhead the June stars watched him as he sped through the fragrant +darkness. But with him, time lagged; even the train crawled as he timed +it to the ticking seconds of his opened watch. + +In the city a taxi swallowed him and his haste; and it seemed as though +he would never get to his studio and to the telephone; but at last he +heard her voice--a demure, laughing little voice: + +"I didn't think you'd be brute enough to do it!" + +"But you said I might call you--" + +"There are many things that a girl says from which she expects a man to +infer, tactfully and mercifully, the contrary." + +"Did I wake you, Valerie? I'm terribly sorry--" + +"If you are sorry I'll retire to my pillow--" + +"I'll ring you up again!" + +"Oh, if you employ threats I think I'd better listen to you. What have +you to say to me?" + +"What were you doing when I rang you up?" + +"I Wish I could say that I was asleep. But I can't. And if I tell the +truth I've got to flatter you. So I refuse to answer." + +"You were not waiting up for--" + +"Kelly! I refuse to answer! Anyway you didn't keep your word to me." + +"How do you mean?" + +"You promised to appear in a golden cloud!" + +"Something went wrong with the Olympian machinery," he explained, "and I +was obliged to take the train.... What are you doing there, anyway?" + +"Now?" + +"Yes, now." + +"Why, I'm sitting at the telephone in my night-dress talking to an +exceedingly inquisitive gentleman--" + +"I mean were you reading more psalms?" + +"No. If you must know, I was reading 'Bocaccio'" + +He could hear her laughing. + +"I was meaning to ask you how you'd spent the day," he began. "Haven't +you been out at all?" + +"Oh, yes. I'm not under vows, Kelly." + +"Where?" + +"Now I wonder whether I'm expected to account for every minute when I'm +not with you? I'm beginning to believe that it's a sort of monstrous +vanity that incites you to such questions. And I'm going to inform you +that I did _not_ spend the day sitting by the window and thinking about +you." + +"What _did_ you do?" + +"I motored in the Park. I lunched at Woodmanston with a perfectly good +young man. I enjoyed it." + +"Who was the man?" + +"Sam." + +"Oh," said Neville, laughing. + +"You make me perfectly furious by laughing," she exclaimed. "I wish I +could tell you that I'd been to Niagara Falls with José Querida!" + +"I wouldn't believe it, anyway." + +"I wouldn't believe it myself, even if I had done it," she said, +naïvely. There was a pause; then: + +"I'm going to retire. Good night." + +"Good night, Valerie." + +"Louis!" + +"What?" + +"You say the golden-cloud machinery isn't working?" + +"It seems to have slipped a cog." + +"Oh! I thought you might have mended it and that--perhaps--I had better +not leave my window open." + +"That cloud is warranted to float through solid masonry." + +"You alarm me, Kelly." + +"I'm sorry, but the gods never announce their visits." + +"I know it.... And I suppose I must sleep in a dinner gown. When one +receives a god it's a full-dress affair, isn't it?" + +He laughed, not mistaking her innocent audacity. + +"Unexpected Olympians must take their chances," he said. "... Are you +sleepy?" + +"Fearfully." + +"Then I won't keep you--" + +"But I hope you won't be rude enough to dismiss me before I have a +chance to give you your _congé_!" + +"You blessed child. I could stay here all night listening to you--" + +"Could you? That's a temptation." + +"To you, Valerie?" + +"Yes--a temptation to make a splendid exit. Every girl adores being +regretted. So I'll hang up the receiver, I think.... Good night, Kelly, +dear.... Good night, Louis. _À demain!--non--pardon! à bien +tôt!--parceque il est deux heures de matin! Et--vous m'avez rendu bien +heureuse._" + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +Toward the last of June Neville left town to spend a month with his +father and mother at their summer Lome near Portsmouth. Valerie had +already gone to the mountains with Rita Tevis, gaily refusing her +address to everybody. And, packing their steamer trunks and satchels, +the two young girls departed triumphantly for the unindicated but modest +boarding-house tucked away somewhere amid the hills of Delaware County, +determined to enjoy every minute of a vacation well earned, and a +surcease from the round of urban and suburban gaiety which the advent of +July made a labour instead of a relaxation. + +From some caprice or other Valerie had decided that her whereabouts +should remain unknown even to Neville. And for a week it suited her +perfectly. She swam in the stump-pond with Rita, drove a buckboard with +Rita, fished industriously with Rita, played tennis on a rutty court, +danced rural dances at a "platform," went to church and giggled like a +schoolgirl, and rocked madly on the veranda in a rickety rocking-chair, +demurely tolerant of the adoration of two boys working their way +through, college, a smartly dressed and very confident drummer doing his +two weeks, and several assorted and ardent young men who, at odd +moments, had persuaded her to straw rides and soda at the village +druggists. + +[Illustration: "A smartly dressed and very confident drummer."] + +And all the while she giggled with Rita in a most shameless and +undignified fashion, went about hatless, with hair blowing and sleeves +rolled up; decorated a donation party at the local minister's and +flirted with him till his gold-rimmed eye-glasses protruded; behaved +like a thoughtful and considerate angel to the old, uninteresting and +infirm; romped like a young goddess with the adoring children of the +boarders, and was fiercely detested by the crocheting spinsters rocking +in acidulated rows on the piazza. + +The table was meagre and awful and pruneful; but she ate with an +appetite that amazed Rita, whose sophisticated palate was grossly +insulted thrice daily. + +"How on earth you can contrive to eat that hash," she said, resentfully, +"I don't understand. When my Maillard's give out I'll quietly starve in +a daisy field somewhere." + +"Close your eyes and pretend you and Sam are dining at the +Knickerbocker," suggested Valerie, cheerfully. "That's what I do when +the food doesn't appeal to me." + +"With whom do you pretend you are dining?" + +"Sometimes with Louis Neville, sometimes with Querida," she, said, +frankly. "It helps the hash wonderfully. Try it, dear. Close your eyes +and visualise some agreeable man, and the food isn't so very awful." + +Rita laughed: "I'm not as fond of men as that." + +"Aren't you? I am. I do like an agreeable man, and I don't mind saying +so." + +"I've observed that," said Rita, still laughing. + +"Of course you have. I've spent too many years without them not to enjoy +them now--bless their funny hearts!" + +"I'm glad there are no men here," observed Rita. + +"But there are men here," said Valerie, innocently. + +"Substitutes. Lemons." + +"The minister is superficially educated--" + +"He's a muff." + +"A nice muff. I let him pat my gloved hand." + +"You wicked child. He's married." + +"He only patted it in spiritual emphasis, dear. Married or single he's +more agreeable to me than that multi-coloured drummer. I let the +creature drive me to the post office in a buckboard, and he continued to +sit closer until I took the reins, snapped the whip, and drove at a +gallop over that terrible stony road. And he is so fat that it nearly +killed him. It killed all sentiment in him, anyway." + +Rita, stretched lazily in a hammock and displaying a perfectly shod foot +and silken ankle to the rage of the crocheters on the veranda, said +dreamily: + +"The unfortunate thing about us is that we know too much to like the +only sort of men who are likely to want to marry us." + +"What of it?" laughed Valerie. "We don't want to marry them--or anybody. +Do we?" + +"Don't you?" + +"Don't I what?" + +"Want to get married?" + +"I should think not." + +"Never?" + +"Not if I feel about it as I do now. I've never had enough play, Rita. +I've missed all those years that you've had--that most girls have had. I +never had any boys to play with. That's really all I am doing +now--playing with grown-up boys. That's all I am--merely a grown-up girl +with a child's heart." + +"A heart of gold," murmured Rita, "you darling." + +"Oh, it isn't all gold by any means! It's full of silver whims and +brassy selfishness and tin meannesses and senseless ideas--full of +fiery, coppery mischief, too; and, sometimes, I think, a little +malice--perhaps a kind of diluted deviltry. But it's a hungry heart, +dear, hungry for laughter and companionship and friendship--with a +capacity for happiness! Ah, you don't know, dear--you never can know how +capable I am of friendship and happiness!" + +"And--sentiment?" + +"I--don't--know." + +"Better watch out, sweetness!" + +"I do." + +Rita said thoughtfully, swinging in her hammock: + +"Sentiment, for us, is no good. I've learned that." + +"You?" + +"Of course." + +"How?" + +"Experience," said Rita, carelessly. "Every girl is bound to have it. +She doesn't have to hunt for it, either." + +"Were you ever in--love?" asked Valerie, curiously. + +"Now, dear, if I ever had been happily in love is it likely you wouldn't +know it?" + +"I suppose so," said Valerie.... She added, musingly: + +"I wonder what will become of me if I ever fall in love." + +"If you'll take my advice you'll run." + +"Run? Where? For goodness' sake!" + +"Anywhere until you became convalescent." + +"That would be a ridiculous idea," remarked Valerie so seriously that +Rita began to laugh: + +"You sweet thing," she said, "it's a million chances that you'd be +contented only with the sort of man who wouldn't marry you." + +"Because I'm poor, you mean? Or because I am working for my living?" + +"Both--and then some." + +"What else?" + +"Why, the only sort of men who'd attract you have come out of their own +world of their own accord to play about for a while in our world. They +can go back; that is the law. But they can't take us with them." + +"They'd be ashamed, you mean?" + +"Perhaps not. A man is likely enough to try. But alas! for us, if we're +silly enough to go. I tell you, Valerie, that their world is full of +mothers and sisters and feminine relatives and friends who could no more +endure us than they would permit us to endure them. It takes courage for +a man to ask us to go into that world with him; it takes more for us to +do it. And our courage is vain. We stand no chance. It means a rupture +of all his relations; and a drifting--not into our world, not into his, +but into a horrible midway void, peopled by derelicts.... I know, dear, +believe me. And I say that to fall in love is no good, no use, for us. +We've been spoiled for what we might once have found satisfactory. We +are people without a class, you and I." + +Valerie laughed: "That gives us the more liberty, doesn't it?" + +"It's up to us, dear. We are our own law, social and spiritual. If we +live inside it we are not going to be any too happy. If we live without +it--I don't know. Sometimes I wonder whether some of the pretty girls +you and I see at Rector's--" + +"I've wondered, too.... They _look_ happy--some of them." + +"I suppose they are--for a while.... But the worst of it is that it +never lasts." + +"I suppose not." Valerie pondered, grave, velvet-eyed, idly twisting a +grass stem. + +"After all," she said, "perhaps a brief happiness--with love--is worth +the consequences." + +"Many women risk it.... I wonder how many men, if social conditions were +reversed, would risk it? Not many, Valerie." + +They remained silent; Rita lay in the shadow of the maples, eyes closed; +Valerie plaited her grass stems with absent-minded industry. + +"I never yet wished to marry a man," she observed, presently. + +Rita made no response. + +"Because," continued the girl with quaint precision, "I never yet wanted +anything that was not offered freely; even friendship. I think--I don't +know--but I think--if any man offered me love--and I found that I could +respond--I _think_ that, if I took it, I'd be contented with love--and +ask nothing further--wish nothing else--unless he wanted it, too." + +Rita opened her eyes. + +Valerie, plaiting her grass very deftly, smiled to herself. + +"I don't know much about love, Rita; but I believe it is supreme +contentment. And if it is--what is the use of asking for more than +contents one?" + +"It's safer." + +"Oh--I know that.... I've read enough newspapers and novels and real +literature to know that. Incidentally the Scriptures treat of it.... +But, after all, love is love. You can't make it more than it is by law +and custom; you can't make it less; you can't summon it; you can't +dismiss it.... And I believe that I'd be inclined to take it, however +offered, if it were really love." + +"That is unmoral, dear," said Rita, smiling. + +"I'm not unmoral, am I?" + +"Well--your philosophy sounds Pagan." + +"Does it? Then, as you say, perhaps I'd better run if anything +resembling love threatens me." + +"The nymphs ran--in Pagan times." + +"And the gods ran after them," returned Valerie, laughing. "I've a very +fine specimen of god as a friend, by the way--a Protean gentleman with +three quick-change stunts. He's a perfectly good god, too, but he never +ran after me or tried to kiss me." + +"You _don't_ mean Querida, then." + +"No. He's no god." + +"Demi-god." + +"Not even that," said Valerie; "he's a sentimental shepherd who likes to +lie with his handsome head in a girl's lap and make lazy eyes at her." + +"I know," nodded Rita. "Look out for that shepherd." + +"Does he bite?" + +"No; there's the trouble. Anybody can pet him." + +Valerie laughed, turned over, and lay at length on her stomach in the +grass, exploring the verdure for a four-leaf clover. + +"I never yet found one," she said, cheerfully. "But then I've never +before seen much grass except in the Park." + +"Didn't you ever go to the country?" + +"No. Mother was a widow and bedridden. We had a tiny income; I have it +now. But it wasn't enough to take us to the country." + +"Didn't you work?" + +"I couldn't leave mother. Besides, she wished to educate me." + +"Didn't you go to school?" + +"Only a few months. We had father's books. We managed to buy a few +more--or borrow them from the library. And that is how I was educated, +Rita--in a room with a bedridden mother." + +"She must have been well educated." + +"I should think so. She was a college graduate.... When I was fifteen I +took the examinations for Barnard--knowing, of course, that I couldn't +go--and passed in everything.... If mother could have spared me I could +have had a scholarship." + +"That was hard luck, wasn't it, dear?" + +"N-no. I had mother--as long as she lived. After she died I had what she +had given me--and she had the education of a cultivated woman; she was a +lover of the best in literature and in art, a woman gently bred, +familiar with sorrow and privation." + +"If you choose," said Rita, "you are equipped for a governess--or a +lady's companion--or a secretary--" + +"I suppose I am. Before I signed with Schindler I advertised, offering +myself as a teacher. How many replies do you suppose I received?" + +"How many?" + +"Not one." + +Rita sighed. "I suppose you couldn't afford to go on advertising." + +"No, and I couldn't afford to wait.... Mother's burial took all the +little income. I was glad enough when Schindler signed me.... But a girl +can't remain long with Schindler." + +"I know." + +Valerie plucked a grass blade and bit it in two reflectively. + +"It's a funny sort of a world, isn't it, Rita?" + +"Very humorous--if you look at it that way." + +"Don't you?" + +"Not entirely." + +Valerie glanced up at the hammock. + +"How did _you_ happen to become a model, Rita?" + +"I'm a clergyman's daughter; what do you expect?" she said, with smiling +bitterness. + +"_You_!" + +"From Massachusetts, dear.... The blue-light elders got on my nerves. I +wanted to study music, too, with a view to opera." She laughed +unpleasantly. + +"Was your home life unhappy, dear?" + +"Does a girl leave happiness?" + +"You didn't run away, did you?" + +"I did--straight to the metropolis as a moth to its candle." + +Valerie waited, then, timidly: "Did you care to tell me any more, dear? +I thought perhaps you might like me to ask you. It isn't curiosity." + +"I know it isn't--you blessed child! I'll tell you--some +day--perhaps.... Pull the rope and set me swinging, please.... Isn't +this sky delicious--glimpsed through the green leaves? Fancy you're not +knowing the happiness of the country! I've always known it. Perhaps the +trouble was I had too much of it. My town was an ancient, respectable, +revolutionary relic set in a very beautiful rolling country near the +sea; but I suppose I caught the infection--the country rolled, the +breakers rolled, and finally I rolled out of it all--over and over +plump into Gotham! And I didn't land on my feet, either.... You are +correct, Valerie; there is something humorous about this world.... +There's one of the jokes, now!" as a native passed, hunched up on the +dashboard, driving a horse and a heifer in double harness. + +"Shall we go to the post office with him?" cried Valerie, jumping to her +feet. + +[Illustration: "Valerie sat cross-legged on the grass ... scribbling +away."] + +"Now, dear, what is the use of our going to the post office when nobody +knows our address and we never could possibly expect a letter!" + +"That is true," said Valerie, pensively. "Rita, I'm beginning to think +I'd like to have a letter. I believe--believe that I'll write to--to +somebody." + +"That is more than I'll do," yawned Rita, closing her eyes. She opened +them presently and said: + +"I've a nice little writing case in my trunk. Sam presented it. Bring it +out here if you're going to write." + +The next time she unclosed her eyes Valerie sat cross-legged on the +grass by the hammock, the writing case on her lap, scribbling away as +though she really enjoyed it. + +The letter was to Neville. It ran on: + +"Rita is asleep in a hammock; she's too pretty for words. I love her. +Why? Because she loves me, silly! + +"I'm a very responsive individual, Kelly, and a pat on the head elicits +purrs. + +"I want you to write to me. Also, pray be flattered; you are the only +person on earth who now has my address. I _may_ send it to José Querida; +but that is none of your business. When I saw the new moon on the +stump-pond last night I certainly did wish for Querida and a canoe. He +can sing very charmingly. + +"Now I suppose you want to know under what circumstances I have +permitted myself to wish for you. If you talk to a man about another man +he always attempts to divert the conversation to himself. Yes, he does. +And you are no better than other men, Louis--not exempt from their +vanities and cunning little weaknesses. Are you? + +"Well, then, as you admit that you are thoroughly masculine, I'll admit +that deep in a corner of my heart I've wished for you a hundred times. +The moon suggests Querida; but about everything suggests you. Now are +you flattered? + +"Anyway, I do want you. I like you, Louis! I like you, Mr. Neville! And +oh, Kelly, I worship you, without sentiment or any nonsense in reserve. +You are life, you are happiness, you are gaiety, you are inspiration, +you are contentment. + +"I wonder if it would be possible for you to come up here for a day or +two after your visit to your parents is ended. I'd adore it. You'd +probably hate it. Such food! Such beds! Such people! But--could +you--would you come--just to walk in the heavenly green with me? I +wonder. + +"And, Louis, I'd row you about on the majestic expanse of the +stump-pond, and we'd listen to the frogs. Can you desire anything more +romantic? + +"The trouble with you is that you're romantic only on canvas. Anyway, I +can't stir you to sentiment. Can I? True, I never tried. But if you come +here, and conditions are favourable, and you are so inclined, and I am +feeling lonely, nobody can tell what might happen in a flat scow on the +stump-pond. + +"To be serious for a moment, Louis, I'd really love to have you come. +You know I never before saw the real country; I'm a novice in the woods +and fields, and, somehow, I'd like to have you share my novitiate in +this--as you did when I first came to you. It is a curious feeling I +have about anything new; I wish you to experience it with me. + +"Rita is awake and exploring the box of Maillard's which is about +empty. Be a Samaritan and send me some assorted chocolates. Be a god, +and send me something to read--anything, please, from Jacobs to James. +There's latitude for you. Be a man, and send me yourself. You have no +idea how welcome you'd be. The chances are that I'd seize you and +embrace you. But if you're willing to run that risk, take your courage +in both hands and come. + +"Your friend, + +"VALERIE WEST." + +The second week of her sojourn she caught a small pickerel--the only +fish she had ever caught in all her life. And she tearfully begged the +yokel who was rowing her to replace the fish in its native element. But +it was too late; and she and Rita ate her victim, sadly, for dinner. + +At the end of the week an enormous box of bonbons came for her. Neither +she nor Rita were very well next day, but a letter from Neville did +wonders to restore abused digestion. + +Other letters, at intervals, cheered her immensely, as did baskets of +fruit and boxes of chocolates and a huge case of books of all kinds. + +"Never," she said to Rita, "did I ever hear of such an angel as Louis +Neville. When he comes the first of August I wish you to keep tight hold +of me, because, if he flees my demonstrations, I feel quite equal to +running him down." + +But, curiously enough, it was a rather silent and subdued young girl in +white who offered Neville a shy and sun-tanned hand as he descended from +the train and came forward, straw hat under one arm, to greet her. + +"How well you look!" he exclaimed, laughingly; "I never saw such a +flawless specimen of healthy perfection!" + +[Illustration: "'How well you look!' he exclaimed"] + +"Oh, I know I look like a milk-maid, Kelly; I've behaved like one, too. +Did you ever see such a skin? Do you suppose this sun-burn will ever +come off?" + +"Instead of snow and roses you're strawberries and cream," he +said--"and it's just as fetching, Valerie. How are you, anyway?" + +"Barely able to sit up and take nourishment," she admitted, demurely. +"... I don't think you look particularly vigorous," she added, more +seriously. "You are brown but thin." + +"Thin as a scorched pancake," he nodded. "The ocean was like a vast +plate of clam soup in which I simmered several times a day until I've +become as leathery and attenuated as a punctured pod of kelp.... Where's +the rig we depart in, Valerie?" he concluded, looking around the +sun-scorched, wooden platform with smiling interest. + +"I drove down to meet you in a buck-board." + +"Splendid! Is there room for my suit case?" + +"Plenty. I brought yards of rope." + +They walked to the rear of the station where buckboard and horse stood +tethered to a tree. He fastened his suit case to the rear of the +vehicle, swathing it securely in, fathoms of rope; she sprang in, he +followed; but she begged him to let her drive, and pulled on a pair of +weather-faded gloves with a business-like air which was enchanting. + +So he yielded seat and rusty reins to her; whip in hand, she steered the +fat horse through the wilderness of arriving and departing carriages of +every rural style and description--stages, surreys, mountain-waggons, +buck-boards--drove across the railroad track, and turned up a mountain +road--a gradual ascent bordered heavily by blackberry, raspberry, +thimble berry and wild grape, and flanked by young growths of beech and +maple set here and there with hemlock and white pine. But the +characteristic foliage was laurel and rhododendron--endless stretches +of the glossy undergrowth fringing every woodland, every diamond-clear +water-course. + +"It must be charming when it's in blossom," he said, drawing the sweet +air of the uplands deep into his lungs. "These streams look exceedingly +like trout, too. How high are we?" + +"Two thousand feet in the pass, Kelly. The hills are much higher. You +need blankets at night...." She turned her head and smilingly considered +him: + +"I can't yet believe you are here." + +"I've been trying to realise it, too." + +"Did you come in your favourite cloud?" + +"No; on an exceedingly dirty train." + +"You've a cinder mark on your nose." + +"Thanks." He gave her his handkerchief and she wiped away the smear. + +"How long can you stay?--Oh, don't answer! Please forget I asked you. +When you've got to go just tell me a few minutes before your +departure.... The main thing in life is to shorten unhappiness as much +as possible. That is Rita's philosophy." + +"Is Rita well?" + +"Perfectly--thanks to your bonbons. She doesn't precisely banquet on the +fare here--poor dear! But then," she added, philosophically, "what can a +girl expect on eight dollars a week? Besides, Rita has been spoiled. I +am not unaccustomed to fasting when what is offered does not interest +me." + +"You mean that boarding house of yours in town?" + +"Yes. Also, when mother and I kept house with an oil stove and two rooms +the odour of medicine and my own cooking left me rather indifferent to +the pleasures of Lucullus." + +"You poor child!" + +"Not at all to be pitied--as long as I had mother," she said, with a +quiet gravity that silenced him. + +Up, up, and still up they climbed, the fat horse walking leisurely, +nipping at blackberry leaves here, snatching at tender maple twigs +there. The winged mountain beauties--Diana's butterflies--bearing on +their velvety, blue-black pinions the silver bow of the goddess, flitted +ahead of the horse--celestial pilots to the tree-clad heights beyond. + +Save for the noise of the horse's feet and the crunch of narrow, +iron-tired wheels, the stillness was absolute under the azure splendour +of the heavens. + +"I am not yet quite at my ease--quite accustomed to it," she said. + +"To what, Valerie?" + +"To the stillness; to the remote horizons.... At night the vastness of +things, the height of the stars, fascinate me to the edge of uneasiness. +And sometimes I go and sit in my room for a while--to reassure +myself.... You see I am used to an enclosure--the walls of a room--the +walled-in streets of New York.... It's like suddenly stepping out of a +cellar to the edge of eternal space, and looking down into nothing." + +"Is that the way these rolling hillocks of Delaware County impress you?" +he asked, laughing. + +"Yes, Kelly. If I ever found myself in the Alps I believe the happiness +would so utterly over-awe me that I'd remain in my hotel under the bed. +What are you laughing at? _Voluptates commendat rarior usus_." + +"_Sit tua cura sequi, me duce tutus eris_!" he laughed, mischievously +testing her limit of Latin. + +"_Plus e medico quam e morbo periculi!_" she answered, saucily. + +"You cunning little thing!" he exclaimed: "_vix a te videor posse tenere +manus!_" + +"_Di melius, quam nos moneamus talia quenquam!_" she said, demurely; +"Louis, we are becoming silly! Besides, I probably know more Latin than +you do--as it was my mother's favourite relaxation to teach me to speak +it. And I imagine that your limit was your last year at Harvard." + +"Upon my word!" he exclaimed; "I never was so snubbed and patronised in +all my life!" + +"Beware, then!" she retorted, with an enchanting sideway glance: "_noli +me tangere!_" At the same instant he was aware of her arm in light, +friendly contact against his, and heard her musing aloud in deep +contentment: + +"Such perfect satisfaction to have you again, Louis. The world is a gray +void without the gods." + +And so, leisurely, they breasted the ascent and came out across the +height-of-land. Here and there a silvery ghost of the shorn forest +stood, now almost mercifully hidden in the green foliage of hard +wood--worthlessly young as yet but beautiful. + +From tree to tree flickered the brilliant woodpeckers--they of the solid +crimson head and ivory-barred wings. The great vermilion-tufted +cock-o'-the-woods called querulously; over the steel-blue stump-ponds +the blue kingfishers soared against the blue. It was a sky world of +breezy bushes and ruffled waters, of pathless fields and dense young +woodlands, of limpid streams clattering over greenish white rocks, +pouring into waterfalls, spreading through wild meadows set with iris +and pink azalea. + +"How is the work going, Louis?" she asked, glancing at him askance. + +"It's stopped." + +"_A cause de_--?" + +"_Je n'en sais rien, Valerie_." + +She flicked the harness with her whip, absently. He also leaned back, +thoughtfully intent on the blue hills in the distance. + +"Has not your desire to paint returned?" + +"No." + +"Do you know why?" + +"Partly. I am up against a solid wall. There is no thoroughfare." + +"Make one." + +"Through the wall?" + +"Straight through it." + +"Ah, yes"--he murmured--"but what lies beyond?" + +"It would spoil the pleasures of anticipation to know beforehand." + +He turned to her: "You are good for me. Do you know it?" + +"Querida said that, too. He said that I was an experience; and that all +good work is made up of experiences that concern it only indirectly." + +"Do you like Querida?" he asked, curiously. + +"Sometimes." + +"Not always?" + +"Oh, yes, always more or less. But sometimes"--she was silent, her dark +eyes dreaming, lips softly parted. + +"What do you mean by that?" he inquired, carelessly. + +"By what, Louis?" she asked, naïvely, interrupted in her day-dream. + +"By hinting--that sometimes you like Querida--more than at others?" + +"Why, I do," she said, frankly. "Besides, I don't hint things; I say +them." She had turned her head to look at him. Their eyes met in silence +for a few moments. + +"You are funny about Querida," she said. "Don't you like him?" + +"I have no reason to dislike him." + +"Oh! Is it the case of Sabidius? '_Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere +quare!_'" + +He laughed uneasily: "Oh, no, I think not.... You and he are such +excellent friends that I certainly ought to like him anyway." + +But she remained silent, musing; and on the edge of her upcurled lip he +saw the faint smile lingering, then fading, leaving the oval face almost +expressionless. + +So they drove past the one-story post office where a group of young +people stood awaiting the arrival of the stage with its battered mail +bags; past the stump-pond where Valerie had caught her first and only +fish, past a few weather-beaten farm houses, a white-washed church, a +boarding house or two, a village store, a watering-trough, and then +drove up to the wooden veranda where Rita rose from a rocker and came +forward with hand outstretched. + +"Hello, Rita!" he said, giving her hand a friendly shake. "Why didn't +you drive down with Valerie?" + +"I? That child would have burst into tears at such a suggestion." + +"Probably," said Valerie, calmly: "I wanted him for myself. Now that +I've had him I'll share him." + +She sprang lightly to the veranda ignoring Neville's offered hand with a +smile. A hired man took away the horse; a boy picked up his suit case +and led the way. + +"I'll be back in a moment," he said to Valerie and Rita. + +That evening at supper, a weird rite where the burnt offering was rice +pudding and the stewed sacrifice was prunes, Neville was presented to an +interesting assemblage of the free-born. + +There was the clerk, the drummer, the sales-lady, and ladies unsaleable +and damaged by carping years; city-wearied fathers of youngsters who +called their parents "pop" and "mom"; young mothers prematurely aged and +neglectful of their coiffure and shoe-heels; simpering maidenhood, acid +maidenhood, sophisticated maidenhood; shirt-waisted manhood, flippant +manhood, full of strange slang and double negatives unresponsively +suspicious manhood, and manhood disillusioned, prematurely tired, burnt +out with the weariness of a sordid Harlem struggle. + +Here in the height-of-land among scant pastures and the green charity +which a spindling second-growth spread over the nakedness of rotting +forest bones--here amid the wasted uplands and into this flimsy wooden +building came the rank and file of the metropolis in search of air, of +green, of sky, for ten days' surcease from toil and heat and the sad +perplexities of those with slender means. + +Neville, seated on the veranda with Valerie and Rita in the long summer +twilight, looked around him at scenes quite new to him. + +On the lumpy croquet ground where battered wickets and stakes awry +constituted the centre of social activity after supper, some young girls +were playing in partnership with young men, hatless, striped of shirt, +and very, very yellow of foot-gear. + +A social favourite, very jolly and corporeally redundant, sat in the +hammock fanning herself and uttering screams of laughter at jests +emanating from the boarding-house cut-up--a blonde young man with +rah-rah hair and a brier pipe. + +Children, neither very clean nor very dirty, tumbled noisily about the +remains of a tennis court or played base-ball in the dusty road. Ominous +sounds arose from the parlour piano, where a gaunt maiden lady rested +one spare hand among the keys while the other languidly pawed the music +of the "Holy City." + +Somewhere in the house a baby was being spanked and sent to bed. There +came the clatter of dishes from the wrecks of the rite in the kitchen, +accompanied by the warm perfume of dishwater. + +But, little by little the high stars came out, and the gray veil fell +gently over unloveliness and squalour; little by little the raucous +voices were hushed; the scuffle and clatter and the stringy noise of the +piano died away, till, distantly, the wind awoke in the woods, and very +far away the rushing music of a little brook sweetened the silence. + +Rita, who had been reading yesterday's paper by the lamplight which +streamed over her shoulder from the open parlour-window, sighed, stifled +a yawn, laid the paper aside, and drew her pretty wrap around her +shoulders. + +"It's absurd," she said, plaintively, "but in this place I become +horribly sleepy by nine o'clock. You won't mind if I go up, will you?" + +"Not if you feel that way about it," he said, smiling. + +"Oh, Rita!" said Valerie, reproachfully, "I thought we were going to row +Louis about on the stump-pond!" + +"I am too sleepy; I'd merely fall overboard," said Rita, simply, +gathering up her bonbons. "Louis, you'll forgive me, won't you? I don't +understand why, but that child never sleeps." + +They rose to bid her good night. Valerie's finger tips rested a moment +on Neville's sleeve in a light gesture of excuse for leaving him and of +promise to return. Then she went away with Rita. + +When she returned, the piazza was deserted except for Neville, who stood +on the steps smoking and looking out across the misty waste. + +"I usually go up with Rita," she said. "Rita is a dear. But do you know, +I believe she is not a particularly happy girl." + +"Why?" + +"I don't know why.... After all, such a life--hers and mine--is only +happy if you make it so.... And I don't believe she tries to make it so. +Perhaps she doesn't care. She is very young--and very pretty--too young +and pretty to be so indifferent--so tired." + +She stood on the step behind and above him, looking down at his back and +his well-set shoulders. They were inviting, those firm, broad, young +shoulders of his; and she laid both hands on them. + +"Shall I row you about in the flat-boat, Louis?" + +"I'll do the paddling--" + +"Not by any means. I like to row, if you please. I have cold cream and a +pair of gloves, so that I shall acquire no blisters." + +They walked together out to the road and along it, she holding to her +skirts and his arm, until the star-lit pond came into view. + +Afloat in the ancient, weedy craft he watched her slender strength +mastering the clumsy oars--watched her, idly charmed with her beauty and +the quaint, childish pleasure that she took in manoeuvring among the +shoreward lily pads and stumps till clear water was reached and the +little misty wavelets came slap! slap! against the bow. + +"If you were Querida you'd sing in an exceedingly agreeable tenor," she +observed. + +"Not being Querida, and labouring further under the disadvantage of a +barytone, I won't," he said. + +"Please, Louis." + +"Oh, very well--if you feel as romantic as that." And he began to sing: + + "My wife's gone to the country, + Hurrah! Hurrah!" + +"Louis! Stop it! Do you know you are positively corrupt to do such a +thing at such a time as this?" + +"Well, it's all I know, Valerie--" + +"I could cry!" she said, indignantly, and maintained a dangerous silence +until they drifted into the still waters of the outlet where the +starlight silvered the sedge-grass and feathery foliage formed a roof +above. + +Into the leafy tunnel they floated, oars shipped; she, cheek on hand, +watching the fire-flies on the water; he, rid of his cigarette, +motionless in the stern. + +After they had drifted half a mile she seemed disinclined to resume the +oars; so he crossed with her, swung the boat, and drove it foaming +against the silent current. + +On the return they said very little. She stood pensive, distraite, as he +tied the boat, then--for the road was dark and uneven--took his arm and +turned away beside him. + +"I'm afraid I haven't been very amusing company," he ventured. + +She tightened her arm in his--a momentary, gentle pressure: + +"I'm merely too happy to talk," she said. "Does that answer satisfy +you?" + +Touched deeply, he took her hand which rested so lightly on his +sleeve--a hand so soft and fine of texture--so cool and fresh and +slender that the youth and fragrance of it drew his lips to it. Then he +reversed it and kissed the palm. + +"Why, Louis," she said, "I didn't think you could be so sentimental." + +"Is that sentimental?" + +"Isn't it?" + +"It rather looks like it, doesn't it?" + +"Rather." + +"Did you mind?" + +"No.... Only--you and I--it seems--superfluous. I don't think anything +you do could make me like you more than I do." + +"You sweet little thing!" + +"No, only loyal, Kelly. I can never alter toward you." + +"What's that? A vow!" + +"Yes--of constancy and of friendship eternal." + +"'_Nomen amicitia est; nomen inane fides_!--Friendship is only a name; +constancy an empty title,'" he quoted. + +"Do you believe that?" + +"Constancy is an honest wish, but a dishonest promise," he said. "You +know it lies with the gods, Valerie." + +"So they say. But I know myself. And I know that, however I may ever +care for anybody else, it can never be at your expense--at the cost of +one atom of my regard for you. As I care for you now, so have I from the +beginning; so will I to the end; care more for you, perhaps; but never +less, Louis. And that I know." + +More deeply moved than he perhaps cared to be, he walked on slowly in +silence, measuring his step to hers. In the peace of the midnight world, +in the peace of her presence, he was aware of a tranquillity, a rest +that he had not known in weeks. Vaguely first, then uneasily, he +remembered that he had not known it since her departure, and shook off +the revelation with instinctive recoil--dismissed it, smiled at it to +have done with it. For such things could not happen. + +The woods were fragrant as they passed; a little rill, swelling from the +thicket of tangled jewel-weed, welled up, bubbling in the starlight. She +knelt down and drank from her cupped hands, and offered him the same +sweet cup, holding it fragrantly to his lips. + +And there, on their knees under the stars, he touched her full +child-like lips with his; and, laughing, she let him kiss her again--but +not a third time, swaying back from her knees to avoid him, then rising +lithely to her feet. + +"The poor nymph and the great god Kelly!" she said; "a new hero for the +pantheon: a new dryad to weep over. Kelly, I believe your story of your +golden cloud, now." + +"Didn't you credit it before?" + +"No." + +"But now that I've kissed you, you do believe it?" + +"Y-yes." + +"Then to fix that belief more firmly--" + +"Oh, no, you mustn't, Kelly--" she cried, her soft voice hinting of +hidden laughter. "I'm quite sure that my belief is very firmly fixed. +Hear me recite my creed. Credo! I believe that you are the great god +Kelly, perfectly capable of travelling about wrapped in a golden +cloud--" + +"You are mocking at the gods!" + +"No, I'm not. Who am I to affront Olympus?... Wh-what are you going to +do, Kelly? Fly to the sacred mount with me?" + +But she suffered his arm to remain around her waist as they moved slowly +on through the darkness. + +"How long are you going to stay? Tell me, Louis. I'm as tragically +curious as Pandora and Psyche and Bluebeard's wife, melted into the one +and eternal feminine." + +"I'm going to-morrow." + +"Oh-h," she said, softly. + +He was silent. They walked on, she with her head bent a little. + +"Didn't you want me to?" he asked at length. + +"Not if you care to stay.... I never want what those I care for are +indifferent about." + +"I am not indifferent. I think I had better go." + +"Is the reason important?" + +"I don't know, Valerie--I don't really know." + +He was thinking of this new and sweet familiarity--something suddenly +born into being under the wide stars--something that had not been a +moment since, and now was--something invoked by the vastness of earth +and sky--something confirmed by the wind in the forest. + +"I had better go," he said. + +Her silence acquiesced; they turned into the ragged lawn, ascended the +dew-wet steps; and then he released her waist. + +The hallways were dark and deserted as they mounted the stairs side by +side. + +"This is my door," she said. + +"Mine is on the next floor." + +"Then--good night, Louis." + +He took her hand in silence. After a moment she released it; laid both +hands lightly on his shoulders, lifted her face and kissed him. + +"Good night," she said. "You have made this a very happy day in my life. +Shall I see you in the morning?" + +"I'm afraid not. I left word to have a horse ready at daylight. It is +not far from that, now." + +"Then I shall not see you again?" + +"Not until you come to New York." + +"Couldn't you come back for a day? Querida is coming. Sammy and Harry +Annan are coming up over Sunday. Couldn't you?" + +"Valerie, dear, I _could_"--he checked himself; thought for a while +until the strain of his set teeth aroused him to consciousness of his +own emotion. + +Rather white he looked at her, searching for the best phrase--for it was +already threatening to be a matter of phrases now--of forced smiles--and +some breathing spot fit for the leisure of self-examination. + +"I'm going back to paint," he said. "Those commissions have waited long +enough." + +He strove to visualise his studio, to summon up the calm routine of the +old regime--as though the colourless placidity of the past could steady +him. + +"Will you need me?" she asked. + +"Later--of course. Just now I've a lot of men's figures to deal +with--that symbolical affair for the new court house." + +"Then you don't need me?" + +"No." + +She thought a moment, slim fingers resting on the knob of her door, +standing partly turned away from him. Then, opening her door, she +stepped inside, hesitated, looked back: + +"Good-bye, Louis, dear," she said, gently. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Neville had begun to see less and less of Valerie West. When she first +returned from the country in September she had come to the studio and +had given him three or four mornings on the portrait which he had begun +during the previous summer. But the painting of it involved him in +difficulties entirely foreign to him--difficulties born of technical +timidity of the increasing and inexplicable lack of self-confidence. And +deeply worried, he laid it aside, A dull, unreasoning anxiety possessed +him. Those who had given him commissions to execute were commencing to +importune him for results. He had never before disappointed any client. +Valerie could be of very little service to him in the big mural +decorations which, almost in despair, he had abruptly started. Here and +there, in the imposing compositions designed for the Court House, a +female figure, or group of figures, was required, but, in the main, male +figures filled the preliminary cartoons--great law-givers and +law-defenders of all ages and all lands, in robes and gowns of silks; in +armour, in skins, in velvet and ermine--men wearing doublet, jack-coat, +pourpoint; men in turban and caftan, men covered with mail of all +kinds--armour of leather, of fibre, of lacquer, of quilted silk, of +linked steel, Milanaise, iron cuirass; the emblazoned panoply of the +Mongol paladins; Timour Melek's greaves of virgin gold; men of all +nations and of all ages who fashioned or executed human law, from Moses +to Caesar, from Mohammed to Genghis Kahn and the Golden Emperor, from +Charlemagne to Napoleon, and down through those who made and upheld the +laws in the Western world, beginning with Hiawatha, creator of the +Iroquois Confederacy--the Great League. + +His studio was a confusion of silks, cut velvets, tapestries, +embroideries, carpets of the East, lay figures glittering with replicas +of priceless armour. Delicate fabrics trailed over chair and floor +almost under foot; inlaid and gem-hilted weapons, illuminated missals, +glass-cased papyri, gilded zones, filets, girdles, robes of fur, hoods, +wallets, helmets, hats, lay piled up, everywhere in methodical disorder. +And into and out of the studio passed male models of all statures, all +ages, venerable, bearded men, men in their prime, men with the +hard-hammered features and thick, sinewy necks of gladiators, men +slender and pallid as dreaming scholars, youths that might have worn the +gold-red elf-locks and the shoulder cloak of Venice, youth chiselled in +a beauty as dark and fierce as David wore when the mailed giant went +crashing earthward under the smooth round pebble from his sling. + +Valerie's turn in this splendid panoply was soon over. Even had she been +so inclined there was, of course, no place for her to visit now, no +place to sit and watch him among all these men. After hours, once or +twice, she came in to tea--to gossip a little with the old-time ease, +and barter with him epigram for jest, nonsense for inconsequence. Yet, +subtly--after she had gone home--she felt the effort. Either he or she +had imperceptibly changed; she knew not which was guilty; but she knew. + +Besides, she herself was now in universal demand--and in the furor of +her popularity she had been, from the beginning, forced to choose among +a very few with whom she personally felt herself at ease, and to whom +she had become confidently accustomed. Also, from the beginning, she had +not found it necessary to sit undraped for many--a sculptor or +two--Burleson and Gary Graves--Sam Ogilvy with his eternal mermaidens, +Querida--nobody else. The other engagements had been for costume or, at +most, for head and shoulders. Illustrators now clamoured for her in +modish garments of the moment--in dinner gown, ball gown, afternoon, +carriage, motor, walking, tennis, golf, riding costumes; poster artists +made her pretty features popular; photographs of her in every style of +indoor and outdoor garb decorated advertisements in the backs of monthly +magazines. She was seen turning on the water in model bathtubs, offering +the admiring reader a box of bonbons, demurely displaying a brand of +hosiery, recommending cold cream, baked beans, railroad routes, tooth +powder, and real-estate on Long Island. + +Her beauty, the innocent loveliness of her features, her dainty modest +charm, the enchanting outline and mould of her figure were beginning to +make her celebrated. Already people about town--at the play, in the +park, on avenue and street, in hotels and restaurants, were beginning to +recognise her, follow her with approving or hostile eyes, turn their +heads to watch her. + +Theatrical agents wrote her, making attractive offers for an engagement +where showgirls were the ornamental caryatids which upheld the three +tottering unities along Broadway. She also had chances to wear very +wonderful model gowns for next season at the Countess of Severn's new +dressmaking, drawing-rooms whither all snobdom crowded and shoved to get +near the trade-marked coronet, and where bewildering young ladies +strolled haughtily about all day long, displaying to agitated Gotham the +most startling gowns in the extravagant metropolis. + +She had other opportunities, too--such as meeting several varieties of +fashionable men of various ages--gentlemen prominently identified with +the arts and sciences--the art of killing time and the science of +enjoying the assassination. And some of these assorted gentlemen +maintained extensive stables and drove tandems, spikes, and fours; and +some were celebrated for their yachts, or motors, or prima-donnas, or +business acumen, or charitable extravagances.... Yes, truly, Valerie +West was beginning to have many opportunities in this generously +philanthropic world. And she was making a great deal of money--for +her--but nothing like what she might very easily have made. And she knew +it, young as she was. For it does not take very long to learn about such +things when a girl is attempting to earn her living in this altruistic +world. + +"She'll spread her wings and go one of these days," observed Archie +Allaire to Rita Tevis, who was posing as Psyche for one of his clever, +thinly brushed, high-keyed studies very much after the manner and +palette of Chaplin when they resembled neither Chartrain nor Zier, nor +any other artist temporarily in vogue. For he was an adaptable man, +facile, adroit, a master navigator in trimming sail to the fitful breeze +of popular favour. And his work was in great demand. + +"She'll be decorating the tonneau of some big touring car with crested +panels--and there'll be a bunch of orchids in the crystal holder, and a +Chow dog beside her, defying the traffic squad--" + +"No, she won't!" snapped Rita. "She's as likely to do that as she is to +dine with you again." + +Allaire, caught off his guard, scowled with unfeigned annoyance. +Repeated essays to ingratiate himself with Valerie had finally resulted +in a dinner at the Astor, and in her firm, polite, but uncompromising +declination of all future invitations from him, either to sit for him or +beside him under any circumstances and any conditions whatever. + +"So that's your opinion, is it, Rita?" he inquired, keeping his +light-blue eyes and his thin wet brush busy on his canvas. "Well, +sister, take it from muh, she thinks she's the big noise in the Great +White Alley; but they're giving her the giggle behind her back." + +"That giggle may be directed at you, Archie," observed Rita, scornfully; +"you're usually behind her back, you know, hoisting the C.Q.D." + +"Which is all right, too," he said, apparently undisturbed; "but when +she goes to Atlantic City with Querida--" + +"That is an utter falsehood," retorted Rita, calmly. "Whoever told you +that she went there with Querida, lied." + +"You think so?" + +"I know so! She went alone." + +"Then we'll let it go at that," said Allaire so unpleasantly that Rita +took fiery offence. + +"There is not a man living who has the right to look sideways at Valerie +West! Everybody knows it--Neville, Querida, Sam, John Burleson--even you +know it! If a man or two has touched her finger tips--her waist--her +lips, perhaps--no man has obtained more than that of her--dared more +than that! I have never heard that any man has ever even ventured to +offend her ears, unless"--she added with malice, "that is the reason +that she accepts no more invitations from you and your intimate +friends." + +Allaire managed to smile and continue to paint. But later he found use +for his palette knife--which was unusual in a painter as clever as he +and whose pride was in his technical skill with materials used and +applied _premier coup_. + +With October came the opening of many theatres; a premature gaiety +animated the hotels and restaurants; winter fabrics, hats, furs, gowns, +appeared in shops; the glittering windows along Fifth Avenue reflected +more limousines and fewer touring bodies passing. Later top hats +reappeared on street and in lobby; and when the Opera reopened, Long +Island, Jersey, and Westchester were already beginning to pour in +cityward, followed later by Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbour. The police +put on their new winter uniforms; furs were displayed in carriages, +automobiles, and theatres; the beauty of the florist's windows became +mellower, richer, and more splendid; the jewellery in the restaurants +more gorgeous. Gotham was beginning to be its own again, jacked up by +the Horse Show, the New Theatre, and the Opera; and by that energetic +Advertising Trust Company with its branches, dependencies, and mergers, +which is called Society, and which is a matter of eternal vigilance and +desperate business instead of the relaxation of cultivated security in +an accepted and acceptable order of things. + +Among other minor incidents, almost local in character, the Academy and +Society of American Artists opened its doors. And the exhibition +averaged as well as it ever will, as badly as it ever had averaged. +Allaire showed two portraits of fashionable women, done, this time, in +the manner of Zorn, and quite as clever on the streaky surface. Sam +Ogilvy proudly displayed another mermaid--Rita in_ the tub--and two +babies from photographs and "chic"--very bad; but as usual it was very +quickly marked sold. + +Annan had a portrait of his sister Alice, poorly painted and even +recognised by some of her more intimate friends. Clive Gail offered one +of his marines--waves splashing and dashing all over the canvas so +realistically that women instinctively stepped back and lifted their +skirts, and men looked vaguely around for a waiter--at least Ogilvy said +so. As for Neville, he had a single study to show--a full length--just +the back and head and the soft contour of limbs melting into a +luminously sombre background--a masterpiece in technical perfection, +which was instantly purchased by a wise and Western millionaire, and +which left the public staring but unmoved. + +But it was José Querida who dominated the whole show, flooding +everything with the splendour of his sunshine so that all else in the +same room looked cold or tawdry or washed out. His canvas, with its +superbly vigorous drawing, at once became the sensation of the +exhibition. Sunday supplements reproduced it with a photograph of +Querida looking amiably at a statuette of Venus which he held in his +long, tapering fingers; magazines tried to print it in two colours, in +three, in dozens, and made fireworks of it to Querida's inwardly +suppressed agony, and their own satisfaction. Serious young men wrote +"appreciations" about it; serious young women published instructive +discourses concerning it in the daily papers. Somebody in the valuable +columns of the _Tribune_ inquired whether Querida's painting was meant +to be symbolical; somebody in the _Nation_ said yes; somebody in the +_Sun_ said no; somebody in something or other explained its +psychological subtleties; somebody in something else screamed, "bosh!" + +Meanwhile the discussion was a god-send to fashionable diners-out and to +those cultivated leaders of society who prefer to talk through the Opera +and philharmonic. + +In what the educated daily press calls the "world of art" and the "realm +of literature," Querida's picture was discussed intelligently and +otherwise, but it _was_ discussed--from the squalid table d'hôte, where +unmanicured genius punctures the air with patois and punches holes in it +with frenzied thumbs, to quiet, cultivated homes, where community of +taste restricts the calling lists--from the noisy studio, where pianos +and girls make evenings lively, to the austere bare boards or the velvet +elegance of studios where authority and preciousness, and occasionally +attainment, reside, and sometimes do not. + + _Cognatis maculis similis fera_. + +Neville was busy, but not too busy to go about in the evening among his +own kind, and among other kinds, too. This unexpected resurgance within +him of the social instinct, he made no attempt to account for to others +or to himself. He had developed a mental and physical restlessness, +which was not yet entirely nervous, but it had become sufficiently +itching to stir him out of fatigue when the long day's work had +ended--enough to drive him out of the studio--at first merely to roam +about at hazard through the livelier sections of the city. But to the +lonely, there is no lonelier place than a lively one; and the false +brilliancy and gaiety drove him back upon himself and into his lair +again, where for a while he remained meditating amid the sombre menace +of looming canvases and the heavy futility of dull-gold hangings, and +the mischievous malice of starlight splintering into a million +incandescent rainbow rays through the sheet of glass above. + +Out of this, after some days, he emerged, set in motion by his +increasing restlessness. And it shoved him in the direction of his kind +once more--and in the direction of other kinds. + +He dined at his sister's in Seventy-ninth Street near Madison Avenue; he +dined with the Grandcourts on Fifth Avenue; he decorated a few dances, +embellished an opera box now and then, went to Lakewood and Tuxedo for +week ends, rode for a few days at Hot Springs, frequented his clubs, +frequented Stephanie, frequented Maxim's. + +And all the while it seemed to him as though he were temporarily +enduring something which required patience, which could not last +forever, which must one day end in a great change, a complete +transformation for himself, of himself, of the world around him and of +his aim and hope and purpose in living. At moments, too, an odd +sensation of expectancy came over him--the sense of waiting, of +suppressed excitement. And he could not account for it. + +Perhaps it concerned the finishing of his great mural frieze for the +Court House--that is, the completion of the section begun in September. +For, when it was done, and cleared out of his studio, and had been set +in its place, framed by the rose and gold of marble and ormolu, a heavy +reaction of relief set in, leaving him listless and indifferent at +first, then idle, disinclined to begin the companion frieze; then again +restless, discontented, tired, and lonely in that strange solitude which +seemed to be growing wider and wider around him in rings of silence. Men +praised and lauded the great frieze; and he strove to respond, to +believe them--to believe in the work and in himself--strove to shake off +the terrible discouragement invading him, lurking always near to reach +out and touch him, slinking at his heels from street to street, from +room to room, skulking always just beyond the shadows that his reading +lamp cast. + +Without envy, yet with profound sadness, he stood and faced the +splendour of Querida's canvas. He had gone to Querida and taken him by +both of his thin, olive-skinned hands, and had praised the work with a +heart clean of anything unworthy. And Querida had laughed and displayed +his handsome teeth, and returned compliment for compliment.... And +Neville had seen, on his dresser, a photograph of Valerie, signed in her +long, girlish, angular hand--"To José from Valerie"; and the date was of +mid-winter. + +Christmas came; he sent Valerie some furs and a note, and, before he +went to Aiken to spend the holidays with his father and mother, he tried +to get her on the telephone--tried half a dozen times. But she was +either busy with business or with pleasure somewhere or other--and he +never found her at home; so he went South without hearing from her. + +[Illustration: "Querida had laughed ... and returned compliment for +compliment."] + +After he arrived, it is true, he received from her a cigarette case and +a very gay and frank Christmas greeting--happy and untroubled +apparently, brimming with gossip, inconsequences, and nonsense. In it +she thanked him for his letter and his gift, hoped he was happy with his +parents, and expressed an almost conventional desire to see him on his +return. + +Then his parents came back to New York with him. Two days before New +Year's Day they went to Spindrift House instead of sailing for Egypt, +where for some years now they had been accustomed to spend the winters +shivering at Shepherd's. And he and his sister and brother-in-law and +Stephanie dined together that evening. But the plans they made to +include him for a New Year's Eve home party remained uncertain as far as +he was concerned. He was vague--could not promise--he himself knew not +why. And they ceased to press him. + +"You're growing thin and white," said Lily. "I believe you're getting +painter's colic." + +"House painters acquire that," he said, smiling. "I'm not a member of +their union yet." + +"Well, you must use as much white lead as they do on those enormous +canvases of yours. Why don't you start on a trip around the world, +Louis?" + +He laughed. + +Later, after he had taken his leave, the suggestion reoccurred to him. +He took enough trouble to think about it the next morning; sent out his +servant to amass a number of folders advertising world girdling tours of +various attractions, read them while lunching, and sat and pondered. Why +not? It might help. Because he certainly began to need help. He had gone +quite stale. Querida was right; he ought to lie fallow. No ground could +yield eternally without rest. Querida was clever enough to know that; +and he had been stupid enough to ignore it--even disbelieve it, +contemptuous of precept and proverb and wise saw, buoyed above +apprehension by consciousness and faith in his own inexhaustible energy. + +And, after all, something really seemed to have happened to him. He +almost admitted it now for the first time--considered the proposition +silently, wearily, without any definite idea of analysing it, without +even the desire to solve it. + +Somehow, at some time, he had lost pleasure in his powers, faith in his +capacity, desire for the future. What had satisfied him yesterday, +to-day became contemptible. Farther than ever, farther than the +farthest, stars receded the phantoms of the great Masters. What they +believed and endured and wrought and achieved seemed now not only +hopelessly beyond any comprehension or attainment of his, but even +beyond hope of humble discipleship. + +And always, horribly, like an obsession, was creeping over him in these +days the conviction of some similarity between his work and the thin, +clear, clever brush-work of Allaire--with all its mastery of ways and +means, all its triumph over technical difficulties, all its tricks and +subtle appeals, and its falsity, and its glamour. + +Reflection, retrospection sickened him. It was snowing and growing late +when he wrote to a steamship agent making inquiries and asking for plans +of staterooms. + +Then he had tea, alone there in the early winter dusk, with the +firelight playing over Gladys who sat in the full heat of the blaze, +licking her only kitten, embracing its neck with one maternal paw. + +He dressed about six, intending to dine somewhere alone that New Year's +Eve. The somewhere, as usual, ended at the Syrinx Club--or rather at the +snowy portal--for there he collided with Samuel Strathclyde Ogilvy and +Henry Knickerbocker Annan, and was seized and compelled to perform with +them on the snowy sidewalk, a kind of round dance resembling a pow-wow, +which utterly scandalised the perfectly respectable club porter, and +immensely interested the chauffeurs of a row of taxicabs in waiting. + +"Come! Let up! This isn't the most dignified performance I ever assisted +at," he protested. + +"Who said it was dignified?" demanded Ogilvy. "We're not hunting for +dignity. Harry and I came here in a hurry to find an undignified +substitute for John Burleson. You're the man!" + +"Certainly," said Annan, "you're the sort of cheerful ass we need in our +business. Come on! Some of these taxis belong to us--" + +"Where do you want me to go, you crazy--" + +"Now be nice, Louis," he said, soothingly; "play pretty and don't kick +and scream. Burleson was going with us to see the old year out at the +Cafe Gigolette, but he's got laryngitis or some similar species of +pip--" + +"I don't want to go--" + +"You've got to, dear friend. We've engaged a table for six--" + +"Six!" + +"Sure, dearie. In the college of experience coeducation is a necessary +evil. Step lively, son!" + +"Who is going?" + +[Illustration: "'Me lord, the taxi waits.'"] + +"One dream, one vision, one hallucination--" he wafted three kisses +from his gloved finger tips in the general direction of Broadway--"and +you, and Samuel, and I. Me lord, the taxi waits!" + +"Now, Harry, I'm not feeling particularly cheerful--" + +"But you will, dear friend; you will soon be feeling the Fifty-seven +Varieties of cheerfulness. All kinds of society will be at the +Gigolette--good, bad, fashionable, semi-fashionable--all imbued with the +intellectual and commendable curiosity to see somebody 'start +something.' And," he added, modestly, "Sam and I are going to see what +can be accomplished--" + +"No; I won't go--" + +But they fell upon him and fairly slid him into a taxi, beckoning two +other similar vehicles to follow in procession. + +"Now, dearie," simpered Sam, "don't you feel better?" + +Neville laughed and smoothed out the nap of his top hat. + +They made three stops at three imposing looking apartment hotels between +Sixth Avenue and Broadway--The Daisy, The Gwendolyn, The Sans +Souci--where negro porters and hallboys were gorgeously conspicuous and +the clerk at the desk seemed to be unusually popular with the guests. +And after every stop there ensued a shifting of passengers in the +taxicabs, until Neville found himself occupying the rear taxi in the +procession accompanied by a lively young lady in pink silk and +swansdown--a piquant face and pretty figure, white and smooth and +inclined to a plumpness so far successfully contended with by her corset +maker. + +"I have on my very oldest gown," she explained with violet-eyed +animation, patting her freshly dressed hair with two smooth little hands +loaded with diamonds and turquoises. "I'm afraid somebody will start +something and then they'll throw confetti, and somebody will think it's +funny to aim champagne corks at you. So I've come prepared," she added, +looking up at him with a challenge to deny her beauty. "By the way," she +said, "I'm Mazie Gray. Nobody had the civility to tell you, did they?" + +"They said something.... I'm Louis Neville," he replied, smiling. + +"Are you?" she laughed. "Well, you may take it from mother that you're +as cute as your name, Louis. Who was it they had all framed up to give +me my cues? That big Burleson gentleman who'd starve if he had to laugh +for a living, wasn't it? Can you laugh, child?" + +"A few, Mazie. It is my only Sunday accomplishment." + +"Dearie," she added, correcting him. + +"It is my only accomplishment, dearie." + +"That will be about all--for a beginning!" She laughed as the cab +stopped at the red awning and Neville aided her to descend. + +Steps, vestibules, stairs, cloak-rooms were crowded with jolly, +clamouring throngs flourishing horns, canes, rattles, and dusters decked +with brilliant ribbons. Already some bore marks of premature encounters +with confetti and cocktails. + +Waiters and head-waiters went gliding and scurrying about, assigning +guests to tables reserved months in advance. Pages in flame-coloured and +gold uniforms lifted the silken rope that stretched its barrier between +the impatient crowd and the tables; managers verified offered +credentials and escorted laughing parties to spaces bespoken. + +Two orchestras, relieving each other, fiddled and tooted continuously; +great mounds of flowers, smilax, ropes of evergreens, multi-tinted +electroliers made the vast salon gay and filled it with perfume. + +Even in the beginning it was lively enough though not yet boisterous in +the city where all New York was dining and preparing for eventualities; +the eventualities being that noisy mid-winter madness which seizes the +metropolis when the birth of the New Year is imminent. + +It is a strange evolution, a strange condition, a state of mind not to +be logically accounted for. It is not accurate to say that the nicer +people, the better sort, hold aloof; because some of them do not. And in +this uproarious carnival the better sort are as likely to misbehave as +are the worse; and they have done it, and do it, and probably will +continue to say and do and tolerate and permit inanities in themselves +and in others that, at other moments, they would regard as +insanities--and rightly. + + +Around every table, rosily illuminated, laughter rang. White throats and +shoulders glimmered, jewels sparkled, the clear crystalline shock of +glasses touching glasses rang continual accompaniment to the music and +the breezy confusion of voices. + +Here and there, in premonition of the eventual, the comet-like passage +of streaming confetti was blocked by bare arms upflung to shield +laughing faces; arms that flashed with splendid jewels on wrist and +finger. + +Neville, coolly surveying the room, recognised many, responding to +recognition with a laugh, a gesture, or with glass uplifted. + +"Stop making goo-goos," cried Mazie, dropping her hand over his wrist. +"Listen, and I'll be imprudent enough to tell you the very latest +toast--" She leaned nearer, opening her fan with a daring laugh; but +Ogilvy wouldn't have it. + +"This is no time for single sentiment!" he shouted. "Everybody should +be perfectly plural to-night--everything should be plural, multiple, +diffuse, all embracing, general, polydipsiatic, polygynyatic, +polyandryatic!" + +[Illustration: Mazie Gray.] + +"What's polyandryatic?" demanded Mazie in astonishment. + +"It means everybody is everybody else's! I'm yours and you're mine but +everybody else owns us and we own everybody." + +"Hurrah!" shouted Annan. "Hear--hear! Where is the fair and total +stranger who is going to steal the first kiss from me? Somebody count +three before the rush begins--" + +A ball of roses struck him squarely on the mouth; a furious shower of +confetti followed. For a few moments the volleys became general, then +the wild interchange of civilities subsided, and the cries of laughter +died away and were lost in the loud animated hum which never ceased +under the gay uproar of the music. + +When they played the barcarole from Contes d'Hoffman everybody sang it +and rose to their feet cheering the beautiful prima donna with whom the +song was so closely identified, and who made one of a gay group at a +flower-smothered table. + +And she rose and laughingly acknowledged the plaudits; but they wouldn't +let her alone until she mounted her chair and sang it in solo for them; +and then the vast salon went wild. + +Neville, surveying the vicinity, recognised people he never dreamed +would have appeared in such a place--here a celebrated architect and his +pretty wife entertaining a jolly party, there a well-known lawyer and +somebody else's pretty wife; and there were men well known at +fashionable clubs and women known in fashionable sets, and men and women +characteristic of quieter sets, plainly a little uncertain and surprised +to find themselves there. And he recognised assorted lights of the +"profession," masculine and feminine; and one or two beautiful meteors +that were falling athwart the underworld, leaving fading trails of +incandescence in their jewelled wake. + +The noise began to stun him; he laughed and talked and sang with the +others, distinguishing neither his own voice nor the replies. For the +tumult grew as the hour advanced toward midnight, gathering steadily in +strength, in license, in abandon. + +And now, as the minute hands on the big gilded clock twitched nearer and +nearer to midnight, the racket became terrific, swelling, roaring into +an infernal din as the raucous blast of horns increased in the streets +outside and the whistles began to sound over the city from Westchester +to the Bay, from Long Island to the Palisades. + +Sheer noise, stupefying, abominable, incredible, unending, greeted the +birth of the New Year; they were dancing in circles, singing, cheering +amid the crash of glasses. Table-cloths, silken gowns, flowers were +crushed and trampled under foot; flushed faces looked into strange +faces, laughing; eyes strange to other eyes smiled; strange hands +exchanged clasps with hands unknown; the whirl had become a madness. + +And, suddenly, in its vortex, Neville saw Valerie West. Somebody had set +her on a table amid the silver and flowers and splintered crystal. Her +face was flushed, eyes and mouth brilliant, her gown almost torn from +her left shoulder and fluttering around the lovely arm in wisps and rags +of silk and lace. Querida supported her there. + +They pelted her with flowers and confetti, and she threw roses back at +everybody, snatching her ammunition from a great basket which Querida +held for her. + +Ogilvy and Annan saw her and opened fire on her with a cheer, and she +recognised them and replied with volleys of rosebuds--was in the act of +hurling her last blossom--caught sight of Neville where he stood with +Mazie on a chair behind him, her arms resting on his shoulders. And the +last rose dropped from her hand. + +Querida turned, too, inquiringly; recognised Neville; and for a second +his olive cheeks reddened; then with a gay laugh he passed his arm +around Valerie and, coolly facing the bombardment of confetti and +flowers, swung her from the table to the floor. + +A furious little battle of flowers began at his own table, but Neville +was already lost in the throng, making his way toward the door, pelted, +shouldered, blocked, tormented--but, indifferent, unresponsive, forcing +his path to the outer air. + +Once or twice voices called his name, but he scarcely heard them. Then a +hand caught at his; and a breathless voice whispered: + +"Are you going?" + +"Yes," he said, dully. + +"Why?" + +"I've had enough--of the New Year." + +Breathing fast, the colour in her face coming and going, she stood, +vivid lips parted, regarding him. Then, in a low voice: + +"I didn't know you were to be here, Louis." + +"Nor I. It was an accident." + +"Who was the--girl--" + +"What girl?" + +"She stood behind you with her hands on your shoulders." + +"How the devil do I know," he said, savagely--"her name's +Mazie--something--or--other." + +"Did you bring her?" + +"Yes. Did Querida bring _you_?" he asked, insolently. + +[Illustration: "And the last rose dropped from her hand."] + +She looked at him in a confused, bewildered way--laid her hand on his +sleeve with an impulse as though he had been about to strike her. + +He no longer knew what he was doing in the sudden surge of unreasoning +anger that possessed him; he shook her hand from his sleeve and turned. + +And the next moment, on the stairs, she was beside him again, slender, +pale, close to his shoulder, descending the great staircase beside him, +one white-gloved hand resting lightly within his arm. + +Neither spoke. At the cloak-room she turned and looked at him--stood a +moment slowly tearing the orchids from her breast and dropping the +crushed petals underfoot. + +A maid brought her fur coat--his gift; a page brought his own coat and +hat. + +"Will you call a cab?" + +He turned and spoke to the porter. Then they waited, side by side, in +silence. + +When the taxicab arrived he turned to give the porter her address, but +she had forestalled him. And he entered the narrow vehicle; and they sat +through the snowy journey in utter silence until the cab drew up at his +door. + +Then he said: "Are you not going home?" + +"Not yet." + +They descended, stood in the falling snow while he settled with the +driver, then entered the great building, ascended in the elevator, and +stepped out at his door. + +He found his latch-key; the door swung slowly open on darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +An electric lamp was burning in the hallway; he threw open the +connecting doors of the studio where a light gleamed high on the +ceiling, and stood aside for her to pass him. + +She stepped across the threshold into the subdued radiance, stood for a +moment undecided, then: + +"Are you coming in?" she asked, cheerfully, quite aware of his +ill-temper. "Because if you are, you may take off my coat for me." + +He crossed the threshold in silence, and divested her of the fur garment +which was all sparkling with melting snow. + +"Do let's enjoy the firelight," she said, turning out the single ceiling +lamp; "and please find some nice, big crackly logs for the fire, +Kelly!--there's a treasure!" + +His frowning visage said: "Don't pretend that it's all perfectly +pleasant between us"; but he turned without speaking, cleared a big +arm-chair of its pile of silks, velvets, and antique weapons, and pushed +it to the edge of the hearth. Every movement he made, his every attitude +was characterised by a sulky dignity which she found rather funny, now +that the first inexplicable consternation of meeting him had subsided. +And already she was wondering just what it was that had startled her; +why she had left the café with him; why _he_ had left; why he seemed to +be vexed with her. For her conscience, in regard to him, was perfectly +clear and serene. + +"Now the logs, Kelly, dear," she said, "the kind that catch fire in a +second and make frying-pan music, please." + +He laid three or four logs of yellow birch across the bed of coals. The +blaze caught swiftly, mounting in a broad sheet of yellow flame, making +their faces brilliant in the darkness; and the tall shadows leaped +across floor and wall and towered, wavering above them from the ruddy +ceiling. + +"Kelly!" + +"What?" + +"I wish you a Happy New Year." + +"Thank you. I wish you the same." + +"Come over here and curl up on the hearth and drop your head back on my +knees, and tell me what is the trouble--you sulky boy!" + +He did not appear to hear her. + +"Please?--" with a slight rising inflection. + +"What is the use of pretending?" he said, shortly. + +"Pretending!" she repeated, mimicking him delightedly. Then with a +clear, frank laugh: "Oh, you great, big infant! The idea of _you_ being +the famous painter Louis Neville! I wish there was a nursery here. I'd +place you in it and let you pout!" + +"That's more pretence," he said, "and you know it." + +"What silly things you do say, Louis! As though people could find life +endurable if they did not pretend. Of course I'm pretending. And if a +girl pretends hard enough it sometimes comes true." + +"What comes true?" + +"Ah!--you ask me too much.... Well, for example, if I pretend I don't +mind your ill-temper it _may_ come true that you will be amiable to me +before I go home." + +There was no smile from him, no response. The warmth of the burning logs +deepened the colour in her cold cheeks. Snow crystals on her dark hair +melted into iris-rayed drops. She stretched her arms to the fire, and +her eyes fell on Gladys and her kitten, slumbering, softly embraced. + +"Oh, do look, Kelly! How perfectly sweet and cunning! Gladys has her +front paws right around the kitten's neck." + +Impulsively she knelt down, burying her face in the fluffy heap; the +kitten partly opened its bluish eyes; the mother-cat stretched her legs, +yawned, glanced up, and began to lick the kitten, purring loudly. + +For a moment or two the girl caressed the drowsy cats, then, rising, she +resumed her seat, sinking back deeply into the arm-chair and casting a +sidelong and uncertain glance at Neville. + +The flames burned steadily, noiselessly, now; nothing else stirred in +the studio; there was no sound save the ghostly whisper of driving snow +blotting the glass roof above. + +Her gaze wandered over the silken disorder in the studio, arrested here +and there as the firelight gleamed on bits of armour--on polished +corselet and helmet and the tall hilts of swords. Then she looked upward +where the high canvas loomed a vast expanse of gray, untouched except +for the brushed-in outlines of men in shadowy processional. + +She watched Neville, who had begun to prowl about in the disorder of +the place, stepping over trailing velvets, avoiding manikins armed +cap-a-pie, moving restlessly, aimlessly. And her eyes followed his +indecision with a smile that gradually became perplexed and then a +little troubled. + +For even in the uncertain firelight she was aware of the change in his +face--of features once boyish and familiar that seemed now to have +settled into a sterner, darker mould--a visage that was too lean for his +age--a face already haunted of shadows; a mature face--the face of a man +who had known unhappiness. + +He had paused, now, head lifted, eyes fixed on vast canvas above. And +for a long while he stood there leaning sideways against a ladder, +apparently oblivious of her. + +Time lagged, halted--then sped forward, slyly robbing him of minutes of +which his senses possessed no record. But minutes had come and gone +while he stood there thinking, unconscious of the trick time played +him--for the fire was already burning low again and the tall clock in +the shadows pointed with stiff and ancient hands to the death of another +hour and the birth of yet another; and the old-time bell chimed +impartially for both with a shift and slide of creaking weights and +wheels. + +He lifted his head abruptly and looked at Valerie, who lay curled up in +her chair, eyes closed, dark lashes resting on her cheeks. + +As he passed her chair and returned to place more logs on the fire she +opened her eyes and looked up at him. The curve of her mouth grew softly +humorous. + +"I'd much prefer my own bed," she said, "if this is all you have to say +to me." + +"Had you anything to say to me?" he asked, unsmiling. + +"About what, Kelly, dear?" + +"God knows; I don't." + +"Listen to this very cross and cranky young man!" she exclaimed, sitting +up and winking her eyes in the rushing brilliancy of the blaze. "He is +neither a very gracious host, nor a very reasonable one; nor yet +particularly nice to a girl who left a perfectly good party for an hour +with him." + +She stole a glance at him, and her gaze softened: + +"Perhaps," she said aloud to herself, "he is not really very cross; +perhaps he is only tired--or in trouble. Otherwise his voice and manners +are scarcely pardonable--even by me." + +He stood regarding the flames with narrowing gaze for a few moments, +then, hands in his pockets, walked over to his chair once more and +dropped into it. + +A slight flush stole into her cheeks; but it went as it came. She rose, +crossed to where he sat and stood looking down at him. + +"What _is_ the matter?" + +"With me?" in crude pretence of surprise. + +"Of course. I am happy enough. What troubles _you_?" + +"Absolutely nothing." + +"Then--what troubles _us_?" she persisted. "What has gone wrong between +us, Kelly, dear? Because we mustn't let it, you know," she added, +slowly, shaking her head. + +"Has anything gone wrong with us?" he asked, sullenly. + +"Evidently. I don't know what it is. I'm keeping my composure and +controlling my temper until I find out. You know what that dreadful +temper of mine can be?" She added, smiling: "Well, then, please beware +of it unless you are ready to talk sensibly. Are you?" + +"What is it you wish me to say?" + +"How perfectly horrid you can be!" she exclaimed, "I never knew you +could be like this? Do you want a girl to go on her knees to you? I care +enough for our friendship to do it--but I won't!" + +Her mood was altering: + +"You're a brute, Kelly, to make me miserable. I was having such a good +time at the Gigolette when I suddenly saw you--your expression--and--I +don't even yet know why, but every bit of joy went out of everything for +me--" + +"_I_ was going out, too," he said, laughing. "Why didn't you remain? +Your gay spirits would have returned untroubled after my departure." + +There was an ugly sound to his laugh which checked her, left her silent +for a moment. Then: + +"Did you disapprove of me?" she asked, curiously. "Was that it?" + +"No. You can take care of yourself, I fancy." + +"I have had to," she said, gravely. + +He was silent. + +She added with a light laugh not perfectly genuine: + +"I suppose I am experiencing with you what all mortals experience when +they become entangled with the gods." + +"What is that?" + +"Unhappiness. All the others experienced it--Proserpine, Helen, poor +little Psyche--every nice girl who ever became mixed up with the +Olympians had a bad half hour of it sooner or later. And to-night the +great god Kelly has veiled his face from me, and I'm on my knees at his +altar sacrificing every shred of sweet temper to propitiate him. Now, +mighty and sulky oracle! _what_ has happened to displease you?" + +He said: "If there seems to be any constraint--if anything has altered +our pleasant intimacy, I don't know what it is any more than you do, +Valerie." + +"Then there _is_ something!" + +"I have not said so." + +"Well, then, I say so," she said, impatiently. "And I say, also, that +whatever threatens our excellent understanding ought to be hunted out +and destroyed. Shall we do it together, Louis?" + +He said nothing. + +"Come to the fire and talk it over like two sensible people. Will you? +And please pull that sofa around to the blaze for me. Thank you. This, +Kelly, is our bed of justice." + +She drew the cushions under her head and nestled down in the full warmth +of the hearth. + +"_Le lit de justice_," she repeated, gaily. "Here I preside, possessing +inquisitorial power and prerogative, and exercising here to-night the +high justice, the middle, and the low. Now hale before me those skulking +knaves, Doubt, Suspicion, and Distrust, and you and I will make short +work of them. Pull 'em along by their ears, Louis! This Court means to +sit all night if necessary!" + +[Illustration: "'How perfectly horrid you can be!' she exclaimed."] + +She laughed merrily, raised herself on one arm, and looked him straight +in the eyes: + +"Louis!" + +"What?" + +"Do you doubt me?" + +"Doubt what?" + +"That my friendship for you is as warm as the moment it began?" + +He said, unsmiling: "People meet as we met, become friends--very good, +very close friends--in that sort of friendship which is governed by +chance and environment. The hazard that throws two people into each +other's company is the same hazard that separates them. It is not +significant either way.... I liked you--missed you.... Our companionship +had been pleasant." + +"Very," she said, quietly. + +He nodded: "Then chance became busy; your duties led you elsewhere--mine +set me adrift in channels once familiar--" + +"Is that all you see in our estrangement?" + +"What?" he asked, abruptly. + +"Estrangement," she repeated, tranquilly. "That is the real word for it. +Because the old intimacy is gone. And now we both admit it." + +"We have had no opportunity to be together this--" + +"We once _made_ opportunities." + +"We have had no time--" + +"We halted time, hastened it, dictated to it, ruled it--once." + +"Then explain it otherwise if you can." + +"I am trying to--with God's help. Will you aid me, too?" + +Her sudden seriousness and emotion startled him. + +"Louis, if our estrangement is important enough for us to notice at all, +it is important enough to analyse, isn't it?" + +"I have analysed the reasons--" + +"Truthfully?" + +"I think so--as far as I have gone--" + +"Let us go farther, then--to the end." + +"But there is no particular significance--" + +"Isn't there?" + +"I don't know. After all, _why_ did you leave that café? Why did _I_? +Why are we together, now--here in your studio, and utterly miserable at +one o'clock of the New Year's morning? For you and I are unhappy and ill +at ease; and you and I are talking at cross purposes, groping, evading, +fencing with words. If there is nothing significant in the friendship we +gave each other from the hour we met--it is not worth the self-deception +you are content with." + +"Self-deception!" he repeated, flushing up. + +"Yes. Because you do care more for me than what you have said about our +friendship indicates.... And I care more for your regard than you seem +willing to recognise--" + +"I am very glad to--" + +"Listen, Kelly. Can't we be honest with ourselves and with each other? +Because--our being here, now--my leaving that place in the way I +did--surprises me. I want to find out why there has been confusion, +constraint, somewhere--there is _something_ to clear up between us--I +have felt that, vaguely, at moments; now I _know_ it. Let us try to find +out what it is, what is steadily undermining our friendship." + +"Nothing, Valerie," he said, smiling. "I am as fond of you as ever. Only +you have found time for other friendships. Your life has become more +interesting, fuller, happier--" + +"Not happier. I realise that, now, as you say it." She glanced around +her; swiftly her dark eyes passed over things familiar. "I was happier +here than I have ever been in all my life," she said. "I love this +room--and everything in it. You know I do, Louis. But I couldn't very +well come here when you were using all those models. If you think that I +have neglected you, it is a silly and unfair thing to think. If I did +neglect you I couldn't help it. And you didn't seem to care." + +He shrugged and looked up at the outlined men's figures partly covering +the canvas above them. Her gaze followed his, then again she raised +herself on one elbow and looked around her, searching with quick eyes +among the shadows. + +"Where is my portrait?" + +"Behind the tapestry." + +"Have you abandoned it?" + +"I don't know." + +Her smile became tremulous: "Are you going to abandon the original, +too?" + +"I never possessed very much of you, did I?" he said, sulkily; and +looked up at her quick exclamation of anger and surprise. + +"What do you mean? You had all of me worth having--" there came a quick +catch, in her throat--"you had all there is to me--confidence in you, +gratitude for your friendship, deep, happy response to your every +mood--my unquestioning love and esteem--" + +"Your _love_?" he repeated, with an unpleasant laugh. + +"What else do you call it?" she demanded, fiercely. "Is there a name +less hackneyed for it? If there is, teach it to me. Yet--if ever a girl +truly loved a man, I have loved you. And I do love you, dearly, +honestly, cleanly, without other excuse than that, until to-night, you +have been sweet to me and made me happier and better than I have ever +been." + +He sprang to his feet confused, deeply moved, suddenly ashamed of his +own inexplicable attitude that seemed to be driving him into a +bitterness that had no reason. + +"Valerie," he began, but she interrupted him: + +"I ask you, Kelly, to look back with me over our brief and happy +companionship--over the hours together, over all you have done for me--" + +"Have you done less for me?" + +"I? What have I done?" + +"You say you have given me--love." + +"I have--with all my heart and soul. And, now that I think of it, I have +given you more--I have given you all that goes with love--an unselfish +admiration; a quick sympathy in your perplexities; quiet solicitude in +your silences, in your aloof and troubled moments." She leaned nearer, a +brighter flush on either cheek: + +"Louis, I have given you more than that; I gave you my bodily self for +your work--gave it to _you_ first of all--came first of all to you--came +as a novice, ignorant, frightened--and what you did for me then--what +you were to me at that time--I can never, never forget. And that is why +I overlook your injustice to me now!" + +She sat up on the sofa's edge balanced forward between her arms, fingers +nervously working at the silken edges of the upholstery. + +"You ought never to have doubted my interest and affection," she said. +"In my heart I have not doubted yours--never--except to-night. And it +makes me perfectly wretched." + +"I did not mean--" + +"Yes, you did! There was something about you--your expression--when you +saw me throwing roses at everybody--that hurt me--and you meant to." + +"With Querida's arm around you, did you expect me to smile?" he asked, +savagely. + +"Was it _that_?" she demanded, astonished. + +"What?" + +"Querida's arm--" She hesitated, gazing straight into his eyes in utter +amazement. + +"It wasn't _that_?" she repeated. "Was it?... You never cared about such +petty things, did you? _Did_ you? _Do_ you care? Because I never dreamed +that you cared.... What has a little imprudence--a little silly +mischief--to do with our friendship? _Has_ it anything to do with it? +You've never said anything--and ... I've flirted--I've been spoons on +men--you knew it. Besides, I've nearly always told you. I've told you +without thinking it could possibly matter to you--to _you_ of all men! +What do you care what I do?--as long as I am to you what I have always +been?" + +"I--_don't_--care." + +"Of course not. How _can_ you?" She leaned nearer, dark and curious gaze +searching his. Then, with a nervous laugh voicing the impossible--"_You_ +are not in love with me--that way. Are you?" she asked, scarcely +realising what she was saying. + +"No," he said, forcing a smile. "Are you with _me_?" + +She flushed scarlet: + +"Kelly, I never thought--dreamed--hoped--" Her voice caught in her +throat a moment; "I--such a matter has not occurred to me." She looked +at him partly dismayed, partly confused, unable now to understand +him--or even herself. + +"You know--that kind of love--" she began--"_real_ love, never has +happened to me. You didn't think _that_, did you?--because--just because +I did flirt a little with you? It didn't mean anything serious--anything +of _that_ kind. Kelly, dear, _have_ you mistaken me? Is _that_ what +annoys you? Were you afraid I was silly enough, mad enough to--to really +think of you--in that way?" + +"No." + +"Oh, I was sure you couldn't believe it of me. See how perfectly frank +and honest I have been with you. Why, you never were sentimental--and a +girl isn't unless a man begins it! You never kissed me--except last +summer when you were going away--and both of our hearts were pretty +full--" + +"Wait," he said, suddenly exasperated, "are you trying to make me +understand that you haven't the slightest real emotion concerning +me--concerning me as a _man_--like other men?" + +She looked at him, still confused and distressed, still determined he +should not misunderstand her: + +"I don't know what you mean; truly I don't. I'm only trying to make you +believe that I am not guilty of thinking--wishing--of pretending that in +our frank companionship there lay concealed anything of--of deeper +significance--" + +"Suppose--it were true?" he said. + +"But it is _not_ true!" she retorted angrily--and looked up, caught his +gaze, and her breath failed her. + +"Suppose it were true--for example," he repeated. "Suppose you did find +that you or I were capable of--deeper--" + +"Louis! Louis! Do you realise what you are saying to me? Do you +understand what you are doing to the old order of things between us--to +the old confidences, the old content, the happiness, the--the innocence +of our life together? _Do_ you? Do you even _care_?" + +"Care? Yes--I care." + +"Because," she said, excitedly, "if it is to be--_that_ way with +you--I--I can not help you--be of use to you here in the studio as I +have been.... _Am_ I taking you too seriously? You do not mean that you +_really_ could ever love me, or I you, do you? You mean that--that you +just want me back again--as I was--as we were--perfectly content to be +together. That is what you mean, isn't it, Kelly, dear?" she asked, +piteously. + +He looked into her flushed and distressed face: + +"Yes," he said, "that is exactly what I mean, Valerie--you dear, +generous, clear-seeing girl! I just wanted you back again; I miss you; I +am perfectly wretched without you, and that is all the trouble. Will you +come?" + +"I--don't--know. Why did you say such a thing?" + +"Forgive me, dear!" + +She slowly shook her head: + +"You've made me think of--things," she said. "You shouldn't ever have +done it." + +"Done what, Valerie?" + +"What you did--what you said--which makes it impossible for me to--to +ever again be what I have been to you--even pose for you--as I did--" + +"You mean that you won't pose for me any more?" he asked, aghast. + +"Only--in costume." She sat on the edge of the sofa, head averted, +looking steadily down at the hearth below. There was a pink spot on +either cheek. + +He thought a moment. "Valerie," he said, "I believe we had better finish +what we have only begun to say." + +"Is there--anything more?" she asked, unsmiling. + +"Ask yourself. Do you suppose things can be left this way between +us--all the happiness and the confidence--and the innocence, as you say, +destroyed?" + +"What more is there to say," she demanded, coldly. + +"Shall--I--say it?" he stammered. + +She looked up, startled, scarcely recognising the voice as his--scarcely +now recognising his altered features. + +"What _is_ the matter with you?" she exclaimed nervously. + +"Good God," he said, hoarsely, "can't you see I've gone quite mad about +you!" + +"About--_me_!" she repeated, blankly. + +"About _you_--Valerie West. Can't you see it? Didn't you know it? Hasn't +it been plain enough to you--even if it hasn't been to me?" + +"Louis! Louis!" she cried in hurt astonishment, "what have you said to +me?" + +"That I'm mad about you, and I am. And it's been so--for +months--always--ever since the very first! I must have been crazy not to +realise it. I've been fool enough not to understand what has been the +matter. Now you know the truth, Valerie!" He sprang to his feet, took a +short turn or two before the hearth, then, catching sight of her face in +its colourless dismay and consternation: + +"I suppose you don't care a damn for me--that way!" he said, with a +mirthless laugh. + +"What!" she whispered, bewildered by his violence. Then: "Do you mean +that you are in _love_ with me!" + +"Utterly, hopelessly--" his voice broke and he stood with hands +clenched, unable to utter a word. + +She sat up very straight and pale, the firelight gleaming on her neck +and shoulders. After a moment his voice came back to his choked throat: + +"I love you better than anything in the world." he said in unsteady +tones. "And _that_ is what has come between us. Do you think it is +something we had better hunt down and destroy--this love that has come +between us?" + +"Is--is that _true_?" she asked in the awed voice of a child. + +"It seems to be," he managed to say. She slid stiffly to the floor and +stood leaning against the sofa's edge, looking at him wide-eyed as a +schoolgirl. + +"It never occurred to you what the real trouble might be," he asked, +"did it?" + +She shook her head mechanically. + +"Well, we know now. Your court of inquiry has brought out the truth +after all." + +She only stared at him, fascinated. No colour had returned to her +cheeks. + +He began to pace the hearth again, lip caught savagely between his +teeth. + +"You are no more amazed than I am to learn the truth," he said. "I never +supposed it was that.... And it's been that from the moment I laid eyes +on you. I know it now. I'm learning, you see--learning not to lie to +myself or to you.... Learning other things, too--God knows what--if this +is love--this utter--suffering--" + +He swung on his heel and began to pace the glimmering tiles toward her: + +"Discontent, apathy, unhappiness, loneliness--the hidden ache which +merely meant I missed you when you were not here--when I was not beside +you--all these are now explained before your bed of justice. Your court +has heard the truth to-night; and you, Valerie, are armed with +justice--the high, the middle, and the low." + +Pale, mute, she raised her dark eyes and met his gaze. + +In the throbbing silence he heard his heart heavy in his breast; and now +she heard her own, rapid, terrifying her, hurrying her she knew not +whither. And again, trembling, she covered her eyes with her hands. + +"Valerie," he said, in anguish, "come back to me. I will not ask you to +love me if you cannot. Only come back. I--can't--endure it--without +you." + +There was no response. + +He stepped nearer, touched her hands, drew them from her face--revealing +its pallid loveliness--pressed them to his lips, to his face; drew them +against his own shoulders--closer, till they fell limply around his +neck. + +She uttered a low cry: "Louis!" Then: + +"It--it is all over--with us," she faltered. "I--had never thought of +you--this way." + +"Can you think of me this way, now?" + +"I--can't help it." + +"Dearest--dearest--" he stammered, and kissed her unresponsive lips, her +throat, her hair. She only gazed silently at the man whose arms held +her tightly imprisoned. + +Under the torn lace and silk one bare shoulder glimmered; and he kissed +it, touched the pale veins with his lips, drew the arm from his neck and +kissed elbow, wrist, and palm, and every slender finger; and still she +looked at him as though dazed. A lassitude, heavy, agreeable to endure, +possessed her. She yielded to the sense of fatigue--to the confused +sweetness that invaded her; every pulse in her body beat its assent, +every breath consented. + +"Will you try to care for me, Valerie?" + +"You know I will." + +"With all your heart?" he asked, trembling. + +"I do already." + +"Will you give yourself to me?" + +There was a second's hesitation; then with a sudden movement she dropped +her face on his shoulder. After a moment her voice came, very small, +smothered: + +"What did you mean, Louis?" + +"By what--my darling?" + +"By--my giving myself--to you?" + +"I mean that I want you always," he said in a happy, excited voice that +thrilled her. But she looked up at him, still unenlightened. + +"I don't quite understand," she said--"but--" and her voice fell so low +he could scarcely hear it--"I am--not afraid--to love you." + +"Afraid!" He stood silent a moment, then: "What did you think I meant, +Valerie? I want you to _marry_ me!" + +She flushed and laid her cheek against his shoulder, striving to think +amid the excited disorder of her mind, the delicious bewilderment of +her senses--strove to keep clear one paramount thought from the heavenly +confusion that was invading her, carrying her away, sweeping her into +paradise--struggled to keep that thought intact, uninfluenced, and cling +to it through everything that threatened to overwhelm her. + +Her slim hands resting in his, her flushed face on his breast, his words +ringing in her ears, she strove hard, hard! to steady herself. Because +already she knew what her decision must be--what her love for him had +always meant in the days when that love had been as innocent as +friendship. And even now there was little in it except innocence; little +yet of passion. It was still only a confused, heavenly surprise, +unvexed, and, alas! unterrified. The involuntary glimpse of any future +for it or for her left her gaze dreamy, curious, but unalarmed. The +future he had offered her she would never accept; no other future +frightened her. + +"Louis?" + +"Dearest," he whispered, his lips to hers. + +"It is sweet of you, it is perfectly dear of you to wish me to be +your--wife. But--let us decide such questions later--" + +"Valerie! What do you mean?" + +"I didn't mean that I don't love you," she said, tremulously. "I believe +you scarcely understand how truly I do love you.... As a matter of fact, +I have always been in love with you without knowing it. You are not the +only fool," she said, with a confused little laugh. + +"You darling!" + +She smiled again uncertainly and shook her head: + +"I truly believe I have always been in love with you.... Now that I +look back and consider, I am sure of it." She lifted her pretty head and +gazed at him, then with a gay little laugh of sheer happiness almost +defiant: "You see I am not afraid to love you," she said. + +"Afraid? Why should you be?" he repeated, watching her expression. + +"Because--I am not going to marry you," she announced, gaily. + +He stared at her, stunned. + +"Listen, you funny boy," she added, framing his face with her hands and +smiling confidently into his troubled eyes: "I am not afraid to love you +because I never was afraid to face the inevitable. And the inevitable +confronts me now. And I know it. But I will not marry you, Louis. It is +good of you, dear of you to ask it. But it is too utterly unwise. And I +will not." + +"Why?" + +"Because," she said, frankly, "I love you better than I do myself." She +forced another laugh, adding: "Unlike the gods, whom I love I do not +destroy." + +"That is a queer answer, dear--" + +"Is it? Because I say I love you better than I do myself? Why, Louis, +all the history of my friendship for you has been only that. Have you +ever seen anything selfish in my affection for you?". + +"Of course not, but--" + +"Well, then! There isn't one atom of it in my love for you, either. And +I love you dearly--dearly! But I'm not selfish enough to marry you. +Don't scowl and try to persuade me, Louis, I've a perfectly healthy mind +of my own, and you know it--and it's absolutely clear on that subject. +You must be satisfied with what I offer--every bit of love that is in +me--" She hesitated, level eyed and self-possessed, considering him +with the calm gaze of a young goddess: + +"Dear," she went on, slowly, "let us end this marriage question once and +for all. You can't take me out of my world into yours without suffering +for it. Because your world is full of women of your own kind--mothers, +sisters, relatives, friends.... And all your loyalty, all your tact, all +_their_ tact and philosophy, too, could not ease one moment in life for +you if I were unwise enough to go with you into that world and let you +try to force them to accept me." + +"_I tell you_," he began, excitedly, "that they must accept--" + +"Hush!" she smiled, placing her hand gently across his lips; "with all +your man's experience you are only a man; but I _know_ how it is with +women. I have no illusions, Louis. Even by your side, and with the +well-meant kindness of your family to me, you would suffer; and I have +not the courage to let you--even for love's sake." + +"You are entirely mistaken--" he broke out; but she silenced him with a +pretty gesture, intimate, appealing, a little proud. + +"No, I am not mistaken, nor am I likely to deceive myself that any woman +of your world could ever consider me of it--or could ever forgive you +for taking me there. And that means spoiling life for you. And I will +not!" + +"Then they can eliminate me, also!" he said, impatiently. + +"What logic! When I have tried _so_ hard to make you understand that I +will not accept any sacrifice from you!" + +"It is no sacrifice for me to give up such a--" + +"You say very foolish and very sweet things to me, Louis, but I could +not love you enough to make up to you your unhappiness at seeing me in +your world and not a part of it. Ah, the living ghosts of that world, +Louis! Yet _I_ could endure it for myself--a woman can endure anything +when she loves; and find happiness, too--if only the man she loves is +happy. But, for a man, the woman is never entirely sufficient. My +position in your world would anger you, humiliate you, finally embitter +you. And I could not live if sorrow came to you through me." + +"You are bringing sorrow on me with every word--" + +"No, dear. It hurts for a moment. Then wisdom will heal it. You do not +believe what I say. But you must believe this, that through me you shall +never know real unhappiness if I can prevent it." + +"And I say to you, Valerie, that I want you for my wife. And if my +family and my friends hesitate to receive you, it means severing my +relations with them until they come to their senses--" + +"_That_ is _exactly_ what I will not do to your life, Louis! _Can't_ you +understand? Is your mother less dear to you than was mine to me? I will +_not_ break your heart! I will not humiliate either you or her; I will +not ask her to endure--or any of your family--or one man or woman in +that world where you belong.... I am too proud--and too merciful to +you!" + +"I am my own master!" he broke out, angrily-- + +"I am my own mistress--and incidentally yours," she added in a low +voice. + +"Valerie!" + +"Am I not?" she asked, quietly. + +"How can you say such a thing, child!" + +"Because it is true--or will be. Won't it?" She lifted her clear eyes to +his, unshrinking--deep brown wells of truth untroubled by the shallows +of sham and pretence. + +His face burned a deep red; she confronted him, slender, calm eyed, +composed: "I am not the kind of woman who loves twice. I love you so +dearly that I will not marry you. That is settled. I love you so deeply +that I can be happy with you unmarried. And if this is true, is it not +better for me to tell you? I ask nothing except love; I give all I +have--myself." + +She dropped her arms, palms outward, gazing serenely at him; then +blushed vividly as he caught her to him in a close embrace, her +delicate, full lips crushed to his. + +"Dearest--dearest," he whispered, "you will change your ideas when you +understand me better--" + +"I can love you no more than I do. Could I love you more if I were your +wife?" + +"Yes, you wilful, silly child!" + +She laughed, her lips still touching his. "I don't believe it, Louis. I +_know_ I couldn't. Besides, there is no use thinking about it." + +"Valerie, your logic and your ethics are terribly twisted--" + +"Perhaps. All I know is that I love you. I'd rather talk of that--" + +"Than talk of marrying me!" + +"Yes, dear." + +"But you'd make me so happy, so proud--" + +"You darling! to say so. Think so always, Louis, because I promise to +make you happy, anyway--" + +He had encircled her waist with one arm, and they were slowly pacing the +floor before the hearth, she with her charming young head bent, eyes +downcast, measuring her steps to his. + +She said, thoughtfully: "I have my own ideas concerning life. One of +them is to go through it without giving pain to others. To me, the only +real wickedness is the wilful infliction of unhappiness. That covers all +guilt.... Other matters seem so trivial in comparison--I mean the forms +and observances--the formalism of sect and creed.... To me they mean +nothing--these petty laws designed to govern those who are willing to +endure them. So I ignore them," she concluded, smilingly; and touched +her lips to his hand. + +"Do you include the marriage law?" he asked, curiously. + +"In our case, yes.... I don't think it would do for everybody to ignore +it." + +"You think we may, safely?" + +"Don't you, Louis?" she asked, flushing. "It leaves you free in your own +world." + +"How would it leave you?" + +She looked up, smiling adorably at his thought of her: + +"Free as I am now, dearest of men--free to be with you when you wish for +me, free to relieve you of myself when you need that relief, free to +come and go and earn my living as independently as you gain yours. It +would leave me absolutely tranquil in body and mind...." She laid her +flushed face against his. "Only my heart would remain fettered. And +that is now inevitable." + +He kissed her and drew her closer: + +"You are so very, very wrong, dear. The girl who gives herself without +benefit of clergy walks the earth with her lover in heavier chains than +ever were forged at any earthly altar." + +She bent her head thoughtfully; they paced the floor for a while in +silence. + +Presently she looked up: "You once said that love comes unasked and goes +unbidden. Do vows at an altar help matters? Is divorce more decent +because lawful? Is love more decent when it has been officially and +clerically catalogued?" + +"It is safer." + +"For whom?" + +"For the community." + +"Perhaps." She considered as she timed her slow pace to his: + +"But, Louis, I can't marry you and I love you! What am I to do? Live out +life without you? Let you live out life without me? When my loving you +would not harm you or me? When I love you dearly--more dearly, more +deeply every minute? When life itself is--is beginning to be nothing in +this world except you? What are we to do?" + +And, as he made no answer: + +"Dear," she said, hesitating a little, "I am perfectly unconscious of +any guilt in loving you. I am glad I love you. I wish to be part of you +before I die. I wish it more than anything in the world! How can an +unselfish girl who loves you harm you or herself or the world if she +gives herself to you--without asking benefit of clergy and the bureau +of licenses?" + +Standing before the fire, her head resting against his shoulder, they +watched the fading embers for a while in silence. Then, irresistibly +drawn by the same impulse, they turned toward one another, trembling: + +"I'll marry you that way--if it's the only way," he said. + +"It is the--only way." + +She laid a soft hand in his; he bent and kissed it, then touched her +mouth with his lips. + +"Do you give yourself to me, Valerie?" + +"Yes." + +"From this moment?" he whispered. + +Her face paled. She stood resting her cheek on his shoulder, eyes +distrait thinking. Then, in a voice so low and tremulous he scarce could +understand: + +"Yes, _now_," she said, "I--give--myself." + +He drew her closer: she relaxed in his embrace; her face, white as a +flower, upturned to his, her dark eyes looking blindly into his. + +There was no sound save the feathery rush of snow against the panes--the +fall of an ember amid whitening ashes--a sigh--silence. + +Twice logs fell from the andirons, showering the chimney with sparks; +presently a little flame broke out amid the débris, lighting up the +studio with a fitful radiance; and the single shadow cast by them +wavered high on wall and ceiling. + +His arms were around her; his lips rested on her face where it lay +against his shoulder. The ruddy resurgence of firelight stole under the +lashes on her cheeks, and her eyes slowly unclosed. + +Standing there gathered close in his embrace, she turned her head and +watched the flame growing brighter among the cinders. Thought, which had +ceased when her lips met his in the first quick throb of passion, +stirred vaguely, and awoke. And, far within her, somewhere in confused +obscurity, her half-stunned senses began groping again toward reason. + +"Louis!" + +"Dearest one!" + +"I ought to go. Will you take me home? It is morning--do you realise +it?" + +She lifted her head, cleared her eyes with one slender wrist, pushing +back the disordered hair. Then gently disengaging herself from his arms, +and still busy with her tumbled hair, she looked up at the dial of the +ancient clock which glimmered red in the firelight. + +"Morning--and a strange new year," she said aloud, to herself. She moved +nearer to the clock, watching the stiff, jerking revolution of the +second hand around its lesser dial. + +Hearing him come forward behind her, she dropped her head back against +him without turning. + +"Do you see what Time is doing to us?--Time, the incurable, killing us +by seconds, Louis--eating steadily into the New Year, devouring it hour +by hour--the hours that we thought belonged to us." She added, musingly: +"I wonder how many hours of the future remain for us." + +He answered in a low voice: + +"That is for you to decide." + +"I know it," she murmured. She lifted one ringless hand and still +without looking at him, pressed the third finger backward against his +lips. + +"So much for the betrothal," she said. "My ring-finger is consecrated." + +"Will you not wear any ring?" he asked. + +"No. Your kiss is enough." + +"Yet--if we are--are--" + +"Engaged?" she suggested, calmly. "Yes, call it that. I really am +engaged to give myself to you--_ex cathedra--extra muros_." + +"When?" he said under his breath. + +"I don't know.... I must think. A girl who is going to break all +conventions ought to have time to consider the consequences--" She +smiled, faintly--"a little time to prepare herself for the--the great +change.... I think we ought to remain engaged for a while--don't you?" + +"Dearest!" he broke out, pleadingly, "the old way _is_ the best way! I +cannot bear to take you--to have you promise yourself without formality +or sanction--" + +"But I have already consented, Louis. _Volenti non fit injuria_," she +added with a faint smile. "_Voluntas non potest cogi_--dearest--dearest +of lovers! I love you dearly for what you offer me--I adore you for it. +And--_how_ long do you think you ought to wait for me?" + +She disengaged herself from his arm, walked slowly toward the tall old +clock, turned her back to it and faced him with clear level eyes. After +a moment she laughed lightly: + +"Did ever an engaged gentleman face the prospect of impending happiness +with such a long face as this suitor of mine is wearing!" + +His voice broke in the protest wrung from his lips. + +"You _must_ be my wife. I tell you! For God's sake marry me and let the +future take care of itself!" + +"You say so many sweet, confusing, and foolish things to me, Louis, +that while you are saying them I almost believe them. And then that +clear, pitiless reasoning power of mine awakens me; and I turn my gaze +inward and read written on my heart that irrevocable law of mine, that +no unhappiness shall ever come to you through me." + +Her face, sweetly serious, brightened slowly to a smile. + +"Now I am going home, monsieur--home to think over my mad and incredible +promise to you ... and I'm wondering whether I'll wake up scared to +death.... Daylight is a chilly shower-bath. No doubt at all that I'll be +pretty well frightened over what I've said and done to-night.... Louis, +dear, you simply _must_ take me home this very minute!" She came up to +him, placed both hands on his shoulders, kissed him lightly, looked at +him for a moment, humorously grave: + +"Some day," she said, "a big comet will hit this law-ridden, +man-regulated earth--or the earth will slip a cog and go wabbling out of +its orbit into interstellar space and side-wipe another planet--or it +will ultimately freeze up like the moon. And who will care then _how_ +Valerie West loved Louis Neville?--or what letters in a forgotten +language spelled 'wife' and what letters spelled 'mistress'? After all, +I am not afraid of words. Nor do I fear what is in my heart. God reads +it as I stand here; and he can see no selfishness in it. So if merely +loving you all my life--and proving it--is an evil thing to do, I shall +be punished; but I'm going to do it and find out what celestial justice +really thinks about it." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Valerie was busy--exceedingly busy arranging matters, in view of the +great change impending. + +She began by balancing her check book, comparing stubs with cancelled +checks, adding and verifying sums total, filing away paid bills and +paying the remainder--a financial operation which did not require much +time, but to which she applied herself with all the seriousness of a +wealthy man hunting through a check book which will not balance, for a +few pennies that ought to be his. + +For since she had any accounts at all to keep, she had kept them with +method and determination. Her genius for order was inherent: even when +she possessed nothing except the clothes she wore, she had always kept +them in perfect condition. And now that her popularity in business gave +her a bank balance and permitted some of the intimate little luxuries +that make for a woman's self-respect, a perfect passion for order and +method possessed her. + +The tiny bedroom which she inhabited, and the adjoining bathroom, were +always immaculate. Every week she made an inventory of her few but +pretty garments, added or subtracted from her memorandum, went over her +laundry list, noted and laid aside whatever clothing needed repairs. + +Once a week, too, she inspected her hats, foot-wear, furs; dusted the +three rows of books, emptied and cleaned the globe in which a solitary +goldfish swam, goggling his eyes in the sunshine, and scrubbed the +porcelain perching pole on which her parrot sat all day in the bathroom +window making limited observations in French, Spanish, and English, and +splitting red peppers and dried watermelon seeds with his heavy curved +beak. He was a gorgeous bird, with crimson and turquoise blue on him, +and a capacity for deviltry restrained only by a silver anklet and +chain, gifts from Querida, as was also the parrot. + +So Valerie, in view of the great change impending, began to put her +earthly house in order--without any particular reason, however, because +the great change would not affect her quarters or her living in them. +Nor could she afford to permit it to interfere with her business career +for which perfect independence was necessary. + +She had had it out with Neville one stormy afternoon in January, +stopping in for tea after posing for John Burleson's Psyche fountain +ordered by Penrhyn Cardemon. She had demanded from Neville acquiescence +in her perfect freedom of action, absolute independence; had modestly +requested non-interference in her business affairs and the liberty to +support herself. + +"There is no other way, Louis," she explained very sweetly. "I do not +think I am going to lose any self-respect in giving myself to you--but +there would not be one shred of it left to cover me if I were not as +free as you are to make the world pay me fairly for what I give it." + +And, another time, she had said to him: "It is better not to tell me all +about your personal, private, and financial affairs--better that I do +not tell you about mine. Is it necessary to burst into financial and +trivial confidences when one is in love? + +"I have an idea that that is what spoils most marriages. To me there is +a certain respectability in reticence when a girl is very much in love. +I would no more open my personal and private archives in all their +petty disorder to your inspection than I would let you see me +dress--even if we had been married for hundreds of years." + +[Illustration: "She began by balancing her check book."] + +And still, on another occasion, when he had fought her for hours in an +obstinate determination to make her say she would marry him--and when, +beaten, chagrined, baffled, he had lost his temper, she won him back +with her child-like candour and self-control. + +"Your logic," he said, "is unbaked, unmature, unfledged. It's +squab-logic, I tell you, Valerie; and it is not very easy for me to +listen to it." + +"I'm afraid that I am not destined to be entirely easy for you, dear, +even with love as the only tie with which to bind you. The arbitrary +laws of a false civilisation are going to impose on you what you think +are duties and obligations to me and to yourself--until I explain them +away. You must come to me in your perplexity, Louis, and give me a +chance to remind you of the basic and proven proposition that a girl is +born into this world as free as any man, and as responsible to herself +and to others; and that her title to her own individuality and +independence--her liberty of mind, her freedom to give and accept, her +capability of taking care of herself, her divine right of considering, +re-considering, of meeting the world unafraid--is what really ought to +make her lovable." + +He had answered: "What rotten books have you been reading?" And it +annoyed her, particularly when he had asked her whether she expected to +overturn, with the squab-logic of twenty years, the formalisms of a +civilisation several thousand years old. He had added: + +"The runways of wild animals became Indian paths; the Indian paths +became settlers' roads, and the roads, in time, city streets. But it was +the instinct of wild creatures that surveyed and laid out the present +highways of our reasoning civilisation. And I tell you, Valerie, that +the old ways are the best, for on them is founded every straight highway +of modern thought and custom." + +She considered: + +"Then there is only one way left--to see you no more." + +He had thought so, too, infuriated at the idea; and they had passed a +very miserable and very stormy afternoon together, which resulted in her +crying silently on the way home; and in a sleepless night for two; and +in prolonged telephone conversation at daybreak. But it all ended with a +ring at his door-bell, a girl in furs all flecked with snow, springing +swiftly into his studio; a moment's hesitation--then the girl and her +furs in his arms, her cold pink cheeks against his face--a brief moment +of utter happiness--for she was on her way to business--a swift, silent +caress, then eyes searching eyes in silent promise--in reluctant +farewell for an hour or two. + +But it left him to face the problems of the day with a new sense of +helplessness--the first confused sensation that hers was the stronger +nature, the dominant personality--although he did not definitely +understand this. + +Because, how could he understand it of a young girl so soft, so +yielding, so sweet, so shy and silent in the imminence of passion when +her consenting lips trembled and grew fragrant in half-awakened response +to his. + +How could he believe it--conscious of what he had made of himself +through sheer will and persistent? How could he credit it--remembering +what he already stood for in the world, where he stood, how he had +arrived by the rigid road of self-denial; how he had mounted, steadily, +undismayed, unperturbed, undeterred by the clamour of envy, of +hostility, unseduced by the honey of flattery? + +Upright, calm, self-confident, he had forged on straight ahead, +following nobody--battled steadily along the upward path until--out of +the void, suddenly he had come up against a blank wall. + +That wall which had halted, perplexed, troubled, dismayed, terrified him +because he was beginning to believe it to be the boundary which marked +his own limitations, suddenly had become a transparent barrier through +which he could see. And what he saw on the other side was an endless +vista leading into infinity. But the path was guarded; Love stood +sentinel there. And that was what he saw ahead of him now, and he knew +that he might pass on if Love willed it--and that he would never care to +pass on alone. But that he _could_ not go forward, ignoring Love, +neither occurred to him nor would he have believed it if it had. Yet, at +times, an indefinable unease possessed him as though some occult +struggle was impending for which he was unprepared. + +That struggle had already begun, but he did not know it. + +On the contrary all his latent strength and brilliancy had revived, +exquisitely virile; and the new canvas on which he began now to work +blossomed swiftly into magnificent florescence. + +A superb riot of colour bewitched the entire composition; never had his +brushes swept with such sun-tipped fluency, never had the fresh +splendour of his hues and tones approached so closely to convincing +himself in the hours of fatigue and coldly sober reaction from the +auto-intoxication of his own facility. + +That auto-intoxication had always left his mind and his eye steady and +watchful, although drugged--like the calm judgment of the intoxicated +opportunist at the steering wheel of a racing motor. And a race once run +and ended, a deliberate consideration of results usually justified the +pleasure of the pace. + +Yet that mysterious something which some said he lacked, had not yet +appeared. That _something_, according to many, was an elusive quality +born of a sympathy for human suffering--an indefinable and delicate bond +between the artist and his world--between a master who has suffered, and +all humanity who understands. + +The world seemed to recognise this subtle bond between themselves and +Querida's pictures. Yet in the pictures there was never any sadness. Had +Querida ever suffered? Was it in that olive-skinned, soft-voiced young +man to suffer?--a man apparently all grace and unruffled surface and +gentle charm--a man whose placid brow remained smooth and untroubled by +any line of perplexity or of sorrow. + +And as Neville studied his own canvas coolly, logically, with an +impersonal scrutiny that almost amounted to hostility, he wondered what +it was in Querida's work that still remained absent in his. He felt its +absence but he could not define what it was that was absent, could not +discover the nature of it. He really began to feel the lack of it in his +work, but he searched his canvas and his own heart in vain for any +vacuum unfilled. + +[Illustration: "He stood before it, searching in it for any hint of +that elusive and mysterious _something_"] + +Then, too, had he himself not suffered? What had that restless, +miserable winter meant, if it had not meant sorrow? He _had_ +suffered--blindly it is true until the truth of his love for Valerie had +suddenly confronted him. Yet that restless pain--and the intense emotion +of their awakening--all the doubts, all the anxieties--the wonder and +happiness and sadness in the imminence of that strange future impending +for them both--had altered nothing in his work--brought into it no new +quality--unless, as he thought, it had intensified to a dazzling +brilliancy the same qualities which already had made his work famous. + +"It's all talk," he said to himself--"it's sentimental jargon, precious +twaddle--all this mysterious babble about occult quality and humanity +and sympathy. If José Querida has the capacity of a chipmunk for mental +agony, I've lost my bet that he hasn't." + +And all the time he was conscious that there _was_ something about +Querida's work which made that work great; and that it was not in his +own work, and that his own work was not great, and never had been great. + +"But it will be," he said rather grimly to himself one day, turning with +a shrug from his amazing canvas and pulling the unfinished portrait of +Valerie into the cold north light. + +For a long while he stood before it, searching in it for any hint of +that elusive and mysterious _something_, and found none. + +Moreover there was in the painting of this picture a certain candour +amounting to stupidity--an uncertainty--a naïve, groping sort of brush +work. It seemed to be technically, almost deliberately, muddled. + +There was a tentative timidity about it that surprised his own technical +assurance--almost moved him to contempt. + +What had he been trying to do? For what had he been searching in those +slow, laborious, almost painful brush strokes--in that clumsy groping +for values, in the painstaking reticence, the joyless and mathematical +establishment of a sombre and uninspiring key, in the patient plotting +of simpler planes where space and quiet reigned unaccented? + +"Lord!" he said, biting his lip. "I've been stung by the microbe of the +precious! I'll be talking Art next with both thumbs and a Vandyke +beard." + +Still, through his self-disgust, a sensation of respect for the canvas +at which he was scowling, persisted. Nor could he account for the +perfectly unwelcome and involuntary idea that there was, about the +half-finished portrait, something almost dignified in the very candour +of its painting. + +John Burleson came striding in while he was still examining it. He +usually came about tea time, and the door was left open after five +o'clock. + +"O-ho!" he said in his big, unhumorous voice, "what in hell and the name +of Jimmy Whistler have we here?" + +"Mud," said Neville, shortly--"like Mr. Whistler's." + +"He was muddy--sometimes," said John, seriously, "but _you_ never were +until this." + +"Oh, I know it, Johnny. Something infected me. I merely tried to do what +isn't in me. And this is the result. When a man decides he has a +mission, you can never tell what fool thing he'll be guilty of." + +"It's Valerie West, isn't it?" demanded John, bluntly. + +"She won't admire you for finding any resemblance," said Neville, +laughing. + +The big sculptor rubbed his big nose reflectively. + +"After all," he said, "what is so bad about it, Kelly?" + +"Oh, everything." + +"No, it isn't. There's something about it that's--different--and +interesting--" + +"Oh, shut up, John, and fix yourself a drink--" + +"Kelly, I'm telling you that it isn't bad--that there's something +terribly solid and sincere about this beginning--" + +He looked around with a bovine grunt as Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan came +mincing in: "I say, you would-be funny fellows!--come over and tell +Kelly Neville that he's got a pretty good thing here if he only has the +brains to develop it!" + +Neville lighted a cigarette and looked on cynically as Ogilvy and Annan +joined Burleson on tiptoe, affecting exaggerated curiosity. + +"I think it's rotten," said Annan, after a moment's scrutiny; "don't +you, Sam?" + +Ogilvy, fists thrust deep into the pockets of his painting jacket, eyed +the canvas in silence. + +"_Don't_ you?" repeated Annan. "Or is it a masterpiece beyond my vulgar +ken?" + +"Well--no. Kelly was evidently trying to get at something new--work out +some serious idea. No, I don't think it's rotten at all. I rather like +it." + +"It looks too much like her; that's why it's rotten," said Annan. "Thank +God I've a gift for making pretty women out of my feminine clients, +otherwise I'd starve. Kelly, you haven't made Valerie pretty enough. +That's the trouble. Besides, it's muddy in spots. Her gown needs +dry-cleaning. But my chief criticism is the terrible resemblance to the +original." + +"Ah-h, what are you talking about!" growled Burleson; "did you ever see +a prettier girl than Valerie West?" + +Ogilvy said slowly: "She's pretty--to look at in real life. But, +somehow, Kelly has managed here to paint her more exactly than we have +really ever noticed her. That's Valerie's face and figure all right; and +it's more--it reflects what is going on inside her head--all the +unbaked, unassimilated ideas of immaturity whirring in a sequence which +resembles logic to the young, but isn't." + +"What do you mean by such bally stuff?" demanded Burleson, bluntly. + +Annan laughed, but Ogilvy said seriously: + +"I mean that Kelly has painted something interesting. It's a fascinating +head--all soft hair and delicious curves, and the charming indecision of +immature contours which ought some day to fall into a nobler +firmness.... It's as interesting as a satire, I tell you. Look at that +perfectly good mouth and its delicate sensitive decision with a hint of +puritanical primness in the upper lip--and the full, sensuous under lip +mocking the upper and giving the lie to the child's eyes which are still +wide with the wonder of men and things. And there's something of an +adolescent's mystery in the eyes, too--a hint of languor where the bloom +of the cheek touches the lower lid--and those smooth, cool, little +hands, scarcely seen in the shadow--did you ever see more purity and +innocence--more character and the lack of it--painted into a pair of +hands since Van Dyck and Whistler died?" + +Neville, astonished, stood looking incredulously at the canvas around +which the others had gathered. + +Burleson said: "There's something honest and solid about it, anyway; +hanged if there isn't." + +"Like a hen," suggested Ogilvy, absently. + +"Like a hen?" repeated Burleson. "What in hell has a hen got to do with +the subject?" + +"Like _you_, then, John," said Annan, "honest, solid, but totally +unacquainted with the finer phases of contemporary humour--" + +"I'm as humorous as anybody!" roared Burleson. + +"Sure you are, John--just as humorously contemporaneous as anybody of +our anachronistic era," said Ogilvy, soothingly. "You're right; there's +nothing funny about a hen." + +"And here's a highball for you, John," said Neville, concocting a huge +one on the sideboard. + +"And here are two charming ladies for you, John," added Sam, as Valerie +and Rita Tevis entered the open door and mockingly curtsied to the +company. + +"We've dissected _your_ character," observed Annan to Valerie, pointing +to her portrait. "We know all about you now; Sam was the professor who +lectured on you, but you can blame Kelly for turning on the +searchlight." + +"What search-light?" she asked, pivotting from Neville's greeting, +letting her gloved hand linger in his for just a second longer than +convention required. + +"Harry means that portrait of you I started last year," said Neville, +vexed. "He pretends to find it full of psychological subtleties." + +"Do you?" inquired Valerie. "Have you discovered anything horrid in my +character?" + +"I haven't finished looking for the character yet," said Sam with an +impudent grin. "When I find it I'll investigate it." + +"Sam! Come here!" + +He came carefully, wincing when she took him by the generous lobes of +both ears. + +"Now _what_ did you say?" + +"Help!" he murmured, contritely; "will no kind wayfarer aid me?" + +"Answer me!" + +"I only said you were beautifully decorative but intellectually +impulsive--" + +"No, answer me, Sam!" + +"Ouch! _I_ said you had a pair of baby eyes and an obstinate mouth and +an immature mind that came to, conclusions before facts were properly +assimilated. In other words I intimated that you were afflicted with +incurable femininity and extreme youth," he added with satisfaction, +"and if you tweak my ears again I'll kiss you!" + +She let him go with a last disdainful tweak, gracefully escaping his +charge and taking refuge behind Neville who was mixing another highball +for Annan. + +"This is a dignified episode," observed Neville, threatening Ogilvy with +the siphon. + +"Help me make tea, Sam," coaxed Valerie. "Bring out the table; that's an +exceedingly nice boy. Rita, you'll have tea, too, won't you, dear?" + +Unconsciously she had come to assume the role of hostess in Neville's +studio, even among those who had been familiar there long before Neville +ever heard of her. + +Perfectly unaware herself of her instinctive attitude, other people +noticed it. For the world is sharp-eyed, and its attitude is always +alert, ears pricked forward even when its tail wags good-naturedly. + +Ogilvy watched her curiously as she took her seat at the tea table. +Then he glanced at Neville; but could not make up his mind. + +It would be funny if there was anything between Valerie and +Neville--anything more than there ever had been between the girl and +dozens of her men friends. For Ogilvy never allowed himself to make any +mistake concerning the informality and freedom of Valerie West in her +intimacies with men of his kind. She was a born flirt, a coquette, +daring, even indiscreet; but that ended it; and he knew it; and so did +every man with whom she came in contact. + +Yet--and he looked again at her and then at Neville--there seemed to him +to be, lately, something a little different in the attitudes of these +two toward each other--nothing that he could name--but it preoccupied +him sometimes. + +There was a little good-natured malice in Ogilvy; some masculine +curiosity, too. Looking from Valerie to Neville, he said very +innocently: + +"Kelly, you know that peachy dream with whom you cut up so shamefully on +New-year's night? Well, she asked me for your telephone number--" + +"What are you talking about?" demanded Neville, annoyed. + +"Why, I'm talking about Mazie," said Sam, pleasantly. "You remember +Mazie Gray? And how crazy you and she became about each other?" + +Valerie, who was pouring tea, remained amiably unconcerned; and Ogilvy +obtained no satisfaction from her; but Neville's scowl was so hearty and +unfeigned that a glimpse of his visage sent Annan into fits of laughter. +To relieve which he ran across the floor, like a huge spider. Then +Valerie leisurely lifted her tranquil eyes and her eyebrows, too, a +trifle. + +"Why such unseemly contortions, Harry?" she inquired. + +"Sam tormenting Kelly to stir _you_ up! He's got a theory that you and +Kelly are mutually infatuated." + +"What a delightful theory, Sam," said Valerie, smiling so sincerely at +Ogilvy that he made up his mind there wasn't anything in it. But the +next moment, catching sight of Neville's furious face, his opinion +wavered. + +Valerie said laughingly to Rita: "They'll never grow up, these two--" +nodding her head toward Ogilvy and Annan. And to Neville carelessly--too +carelessly: "Will you have a little more tea, Kelly dear?" + +Her attitude was amiable and composed; her voice clear and +unembarrassed. There may have been a trifle more colour in her cheeks; +but what preoccupied Rita was in her eyes--a fleeting glimpse of +something that suddenly concentrated all of Rita's attention upon the +girl across the table. + +For a full minute she sat looking at Valerie who seemed pleasantly +unconscious of her inspection; then almost stealthily she shifted her +gaze to Neville. + +Gladys and her kitten came purring around in quest of cream; Rita +gathered them into her arms and caressed them and fed them bits of +cassava and crumbs of cake. She was unusually silent that afternoon. +John Burleson tried to interest her with heavy information of various +kinds, but she only smiled absently at that worthy man. Sam Ogilvy and +Harry Annan attempted to goad her into one of those lively exchanges of +banter in which Rita was entirely capable of taking care of herself. +But her smile was spiritless and non-combative; and finally they let her +alone and concentrated their torment upon Valerie, who endured it with +equanimity and dangerously sparkling eyes, and an occasional lightening +retort which kept those young men busy, especially when the epigram was +in Latin--which hurt their feelings. + +She had just furnished them with a sample of this classical food for +thought when the door-bell rang and Neville looked up in astonishment to +see José Querida come in. + +"Hello," he said, springing up with friendly hand outstretched--"this is +exceedingly good of you, Querida. You have not been here in a very long +while." + +Querida's smile showed his teeth; he bowed to Valerie and to Rita, bowed +to the men in turn, and smiled on Neville. + +"In excuse I must plead work, my dear fellow--a poor plea and poorer +excuse for the pleasure lost in seeing you--" he nodded to the +others--"and in missing many agreeable little gatherings--similar to +this, I fancy?" + +There was a rising inflection to his voice which made the end of his +little speech terminate as a question; and he looked to Valerie for his +answer. + +"Yes," she said, "we usually have tea in Kelly's studio. And you may +have some now, if you wish, José." + +He nodded his thanks and placed his chair beside hers. + + +The conversation had become general; Rita woke up, dumped the cats out +of her lap, and made a few viciously verbal passes at Ogilvy. Burleson, +earnest and most worthy, engaged Querida's attention for a while; but +that intellectually lithe young man evaded the ponderously impending +dispute with suave skill, and his gentle smile lingered longer on +Valerie than on anybody else. Several times, with an adroit carelessness +that seemed to be purposeless, he contrived to draw Valerie out of the +general level of conversation by merely lowering his voice; but she +seemed to understand the invitation; and, answering him as carelessly as +he spoke, keyed her replies in harmony with the chatter going on around +them. + +He drank his tea smilingly; listened to the others; bore his part +modestly; and at intervals his handsome eyes wandered about the studio, +reverting frequently to the great canvas overhead. + +"You know," he said to Neville, showing the eternal edge of teeth under +his crisp black beard--"that composition of yours is simply superb. I am +all for it, Neville." + +"I'm glad you are," nodded Neville, pleasantly, "but it hasn't yet +developed into what I hoped it might." His eyes swerved toward Valerie; +their glances encountered casually and passed on. Only Rita saw the +girl's breath quicken for an instant--saw the scarcely perceptible +quiver of Neville's mouth where the smile twitched at his lip for its +liberty to tell the whole world that he was in love. But their faces +were placid, their expressions well schooled; Querida's half-veiled eyes +appeared to notice nothing and for a while he remained smilingly silent. + +Later, by accident, he caught sight of Valerie's portrait; he turned +sharply in his chair and looked full at the canvas. + +Nobody spoke for a moment; Neville, who was passing Valerie, felt the +slightest contact as the velvet of her fingers brushed across his. + +Then Querida rose and walked over to the portrait and stood before it in +silence, biting at his vivid under lip and at the crisp hairs of his +beard that framed it. + +Without knowing why, Neville began to feel that Querida was finding in +that half-finished work something that disturbed him; and that he was +not going to acknowledge what it was that he saw there, whether of good +or of the contrary. + +Nobody spoke and Querida said nothing. + +A mild hope entered Neville's mind that the _something_, which had never +been in any work of his, might perhaps lie latent in that canvas--that +Querida was discovering it--without a pleasure--but with a sensitive +clairvoyance which was already warning him of a new banner in the +distance, a new trumpet-call from the barriers, another lance in the +lists where he, Querida, had ridden so long unchallenged and supreme. + +Within him he felt a sudden and secret excitement that he never before +had known--a conviction that the unexpressed hostility of Querida's +silence was the truest tribute ever paid him--the tribute that at last +was arousing hope from its apathy, and setting spurs to his courage. + +Rita, watching Querida, yawned and concealed the indiscretion with her +hand and a taunting word directed at Ogilvy, who retorted in kind. And +general conversation began again. + +Querida turned toward Neville, caught his eye, and shrugged: + +"That portrait is scarcely in your happiest manner, is it?" he asked +with a grimace. "For me--" he touched his breast with long pale +fingers--"I adore your gayer vein--your colour, clarity--the glamour of +splendour that you alone can cast over such works as that--" He waved +his hand upward toward the high canvas looming above. And he smiled at +Neville and seated himself beside Valerie. + +A portfolio of new mezzotints attracted Annan; others gathered around to +examine Neville's treasures; the tea table was deserted for a while +except by Querida and Valerie. Then he deliberately dropped his voice: + +"Will you give me another cup of tea, Valerie? And let me talk to you?" + +"With pleasure." She set about preparing it. + +"I have not seen you for some time," he said in the same caressing +undertone. + +"You haven't required me, José." + +"Must it be entirely a matter of business between us?" + +"Why, of course," she said in cool surprise. "You know perfectly well +how busy I am--and must be." + +"You are sometimes busy--pouring tea, here." + +"But it is after hours." + +"Yet, after hours, you no longer drop in to chat with me." + +"Why, yes, I do--" + +"Pardon. Not since--the new year began.... Will you permit me a word?" + +She inclined her head with undisturbed composure; he went on: + +"I have asked you to many theatres, invited you to dine with me, to go +with me to many, many places. And, it appeared, that you had always +other engagements.... Have I offended you?" + +"Of course not. You know I like you immensely--" + +"Immensely," he repeated with a smile. "Once there was more of sentiment +in your response, Valerie. There is little sentiment in immensity." + +She flushed: "I _was_ spoons on you," she said, candidly. "I was silly +with you--and very indiscreet.... But I'd rather not recall that--" + +"_I_ can not choose but recall it!" + +"Nice men forget such things," she said, hastily. + +"How can you speak that way about it?" + +"Because I _think_ that way, José," she said, looking up at him; but she +saw no answering smile in his face, and little colour in it; and she +remained unquietly conscious of his gaze. + +"I will not talk to you if you begin to look at me like that," she began +under her breath; "I don't care for it--" + +"Can I help it--remembering--" + +"You have nothing to remember except my pardon," she interrupted hotly. + +"Your pardon--for showing that I cared for you?" + +"My pardon for your losing your head." + +"We were absolutely frank with one another--" + +"I do not understand that you are the sort of man a girl can not be +frank with. We imprudently exchanged a few views on life. You--" + +"Many," he said--"and particularly views on marriage." + +She said, steadily: "I told you that I cared at heart nothing at all for +ceremony and form. You said the same. But you misunderstood me. What +was there in that silly conversation significant to you or to me other +than an impersonal interest in hearing ideas expressed?" + +"You knew I was in love with you." + +"I did _not_!" she said, sharply. + +"You let me touch your hands--kiss you, once--" + +"And you behaved like a madman--and frightened me nearly to death! Had +you better recall that night, José? I was generous about it; I was even +a little sorry for you. And I forgave you." + +"Forgave me my loving you?" + +"You don't know what love is," she said, reddening. + +"Do you, Valerie?" + +She sat flushed and silent, looking fixedly at the cups and saucers +before her. + +"_Do_ you?" he repeated in a curious voice. And there seemed to be +something of terror in it, for she looked up, startled, to meet his +long, handsome eyes looking at her out of a colourless visage. + +"José," she said, "what in the world possesses you to speak to me this +way? Have you any right to assume this attitude--merely because I +flirted with you as harmlessly--or meant it harmlessly--" + +She glanced involuntarily across the studio where the others had +gathered over the new collection of mezzotints, and at her glance +Neville raised his head and smiled at her, and encountered Querida's +expressionless gaze. + +For a moment Querida turned his head away, and Valerie saw that his face +was pale and sinister. + +"José," she said, "are you insane to take our innocent affair so +seriously? What in the world has come over you? We have been such +excellent friends. You have been just as nice as you could be, so gay +and inconsequential, so witty, so jolly, such good company!--and now, +suddenly, out of a perfectly clear sky your wrath strikes me like +lightning!" + +"My anger is like that." + +"José!" she exclaimed, incredulously. + +He showed the edge of perfect teeth again, but she was not sure that he +was smiling. Then he laughed gently. + +"Oh," she said in relief--"you really startled me." + +"I won't do it again, Valerie." She looked at him, still uncertain, +fascinated by her uncertainty. + +The colour--as much as he ever had--returned to his face; he reached +over for a cigarette, lighted it, smiled at her charmingly. + +"I was just lonely without you," he said. "Like an unreasonable child I +brooded over it and--" he shrugged, "it suddenly went to my head. Will +_you_ forgive my bad temper?" + +"Yes--I will. Only I never knew _you_ had a temper. It--astonishes me." + +He said nothing, smilingly. + +"Of course," she went on, still flushed, "I knew you were +impulsive--hot-headed--but I know you like me--" + +"I was crazily in love with you," he said, lightly; "and when you let me +touch you--" + +"Oh, I won't ever again, José!" she exclaimed, half-fearfully; "I +supposed you understood that sentiment could be a perfectly meaningless +and harmless thing--merely a silly moment--a foolish interlude in a +sober friendship.... And I _liked_ you, José--" + +[Illustration: "'I shall have need of friends,' she said half to +herself."] + +"Can you still like me?" + +"Y-yes. Why, of course--if you'll let me." + +"Shall we be the same excellent friends, Valerie? And all this ill +temper of mine will be forgotten?" + +"I'll try.... Yes, why not? I _do_ like you, and I admire you +tremendously." + +His eyes rested on her a moment; he inhaled a deep breath from his +cigarette, expelled it, nodded. + +"I'll try to win back all your friendship for me," he said, pleasantly. + +"That will be easy. I want you to like me. I want to be able to like +you.... I shall have need of friends," she said half to herself, and +looked across at Neville with a face tranquil, almost expressionless +save for the sensitive beauty of the mouth. + +After a moment Querida, too, lifted his head and gazed deliberately at +Neville. Then very quietly: + +"Are you dining alone this evening?" + +"No." + +"Oh. Perhaps to-morrow evening, then--" + +"I'm afraid not, José." + +He smiled: "Not dining alone ever again?" + +"Not--for the present." + +"I see." + +"There is nothing to see," she said calmly. But his smile seemed now so +genuine that it disarmed her; and she blushed when he said: + +"Am I to wish you happiness, Valerie? Is _that_ the trouble?" + +"Certainly. Please wish it for me always--as I do for you--and for +everybody." + +But he continued to laugh, and the colour in her face persisted, +annoying her intensely. + +"Nevertheless," he said, "I do not believe you can be hopelessly in +love." + +"What ever put such an idea into that cynical head of yours?" + +"Chance," he said. "But you are not irrevocably in love. You are +ignorant of what love can really mean. Only he who understands it--and +who has suffered through it--can ever teach you. And you will never be +satisfied until he does."' + +"Are you _very_ wise concerning love, José?" she asked, laughing. + +[Illustration: "'Don't do it, Valerie!'"] + +"Perhaps. You will desire to be, too, some day. A good school, an +accomplished scholar." + +"And the schoolmaster? Oh! José!" + +They both were laughing now--he with apparent pleasure in her coquetry +and animation, she still a little confused and instinctively on her +guard. + +Rita came strolling over, a tiny cigarette balanced between her slender +fingers: + +"Stop flirting, José," she said; "it's too near dinner time. Valerie, +child, I'm dining with the unspeakable John again. It's a horrid habit. +Can't you prescribe for me? José, what are you doing this evening?" + +"Penance," he said; "I'm dining with my family." + +"Penance," she repeated with a singular look--"well--that's one way of +regarding the pleasure of having any family to dine with--isn't it, +Valerie?" + +"José didn't mean it that way." + +Rita blew a ring from her cigarette's glimmering end. + +"Will you be at home this evening, Valerie?" + +"Y-yes ... rather late." + +"Too late to see me?" + +"No, you dear girl. Come at eleven, anyway. And if I'm a little late +you'll forgive me, won't you?" + +"No, I won't," said Rita, crossly. "You and I are business women, +anyway, and eleven is too late for week days. I'll wait until I can see +you, sometime--" + +"Was it anything important, dear?" + +"Not to me." + +Querida rose, took his leave of Valerie and Rita, went over and made his +adieux to his host and the others. When he had gone Rita, standing alone +with Valerie beside the tea table, said in a low voice: + +"Don't do it, Valerie!" + +"Do--what?" asked the girl in astonishment. + +"Fall in love." + +[Illustration: "Ogilvy stood looking sentimentally at the two young +girls."] + +Valerie laughed. + +"Do you mean with Querida?" + +"No." + +"Then--what _do_ you mean?" + +"You're on the edge of doing it, child. It isn't wise. It won't do for +us.... I know--I _know_, Valerie, more than you know about--love. Listen +to me. Don't! Go away--go somewhere; drop everything and go, if you've +any sense left. I'll go with you if you will let me.... I'll do anything +for you, dear. Only listen to me before it's too late; keep your +self-control; keep your mind clear on this one thing, that love is of no +use to us--no good to us. And if you think you suspect its presence in +your neighbourhood, get away from it; pick up your skirts and run, +Valerie.... You've plenty of time to come back and wonder what you ever +could have seen in the man to make you believe you could fall in love +with him." + +Ogilvy, strolling up, stood looking sentimentally at the two young +girls. + +"A--perfect--pair--of precious--priceless--peaches," he said; "I'd love +to be a Turk with an Oriental smirk and an ornamental dirk, and a +tendency to shirk when the others go to work; for the workers I can't +bear 'em and I'd rather run a harem--" + +"No doubt," said Rita, coldly; "so you need not explain to me the rather +lively young lady I met in the corridor looking for studio number ten--" + +"Rita! Zuleika! Star of my soul! Jewel of my turban! Do you entertain +suspicions--" + +"Oh, _you_ probably did the entertaining--" + +"I? Heaven! How I am misunderstood! John Burleson! Come over here and +tell this very charming young lady all about that somewhat conspicuous +vision from a local theatre who came floating into my studio by accident +while in joyous quest of you!" + +But Annan only laughed, and Rita shrugged her disdain. But as she nodded +adieu to Valerie, the latter saw a pinched look in her face, and did not +understand it. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +The world, and his own family, had always been inclined to love Louis +Neville, and had advanced no farther than the inclination. There were +exceptions. + +Archie Allaire, who hated him, discussing him floridly once with Querida +at the Thumb-tack Club in the presence of a dozen others, characterised +him as "one of those passively selfish snobs whose virtues are all +negative and whose modesty is the mental complacency of an underdone +capon." + +He was sharply rebuked by Ogilvy, Annan, and Burleson; skilfully by +Querida--so adroitly indeed that his amiable and smiling apology for the +absent painter produced a curiously depressing effect upon Ogilvy and +Annan, and even left John Burleson dully uncomfortable, although Allaire +had been apparently well drubbed. + +"All the same," said Allaire with a sneer to Querida after the others +had departed, "Neville is really a most frightful snob. Like a busy +bacillus surrounded by a glass tube full of prepared culture, he exists +in his own intellectual exudations perfectly oblivious to the miseries +and joys of the world around him. He hasn't time for anybody except +himself." + +Querida laughed: "What has Neville done to you, my friend?" + +"To me?" repeated Allaire with a shrug. "Oh, nothing. It isn't that.... +All the same when I had my exhibition at the Monson Galleries I went to +him and said, 'See here, Neville, I've got some Shoe-trust and +Button-trust women to pour tea for me. Now you know a lot of fashionable +people and I want my tea-pourers to see them, and I want the papers to +say that they've been to a private view of my exhibition.' + +"He gave me one of those absent-treatment stares and said he'd tell all +the really interesting people he knew; and the damnedest lot of scrubby, +dowdy, down-at-the-heels tatterdemalions presented his card at my +private view that you ever saw outside an artist's rathskeller, a lower +Fifth Avenue reception, or a varnishing day! By God, I can go to the +bread-line and get that sort of lookers myself--and I don't care whether +his bunch came from Tenth Street Colonial stock or the Washington Square +nobility or the landed gentry of Chelsea or from the purlieus of the +Bronx, which is where they apparently belong! I can get that kind +myself. I wanted automobiles and broughams and clothes, and I got one +sea-going taxi, and the dirty end of the stick! And to cap the climax he +strolled in himself with a girl whose face is familiar to everybody who +looks at bath tubs in the back of the magazines--Valerie West! And I +want to tell you I couldn't look my Shoe-trust tea-pourers in the face; +and they're so mad that I haven't got an order out of them since." + +Querida laughed till the tears stood in his big, velvety, almond-shaped +eyes. + +"Why didn't you come to me?" he said. + +"Tell you the truth, Querida, I would have if I'd known then that you +were painting portraits of half of upper Fifth Avenue. Besides," he +added, naïvely, "that was before I began to see you in the grand tier +at the opera every week." + +"It was before I sat anywhere except in the gallery," said Querida with +a humorous shrug. "Until this winter I knew nobody, either. And very +often I washed my own handkerchiefs and dried them on the window pane. I +had only fame for my laundress and notoriety for my butcher." + +"Hey?" said Allaire, a trifle out of countenance. + +"It is very true. It cost me so much to paint and frame my pictures that +the prices they brought scarcely paid for models and materials." He +added, pleasantly: "I have dined more often on a box of crackers and a +jar of olives than at a table set with silver and spread with linen." He +laughed without affectation or bitterness: + +"It has been a long road, Allaire--from a stable-loft studio to--" he +shrugged--"the 'Van Rypens' grand tier box, for example." + +"How in God's name did you do it?" inquired Allaire, awed to the +momentary obliteration of envy. + +"I--painted," said Querida, smiling. + +"Sure. I know that. I suppose it was the hellish row made over your +canvases last winter that did the trick." + +Querida's eyes were partly closed as though in retrospection. "Also," he +said, softly, "I painted a very fashionable woman--for nothing--and to +her entire satisfaction." + +"That's the _real_ thing, isn't it?" + +"I'm afraid so.... Make two or three unlovely and unlovable old ladies +lovely and lovable--on canvas--for nothing. Then society will let you +slap its powdered and painted face--yes--permit you--other +liberties--if only you will paint it and sign your canvases and ask them +a wicked price for what you give them and--for what they yield to you." + +Allaire's ruddy face grew ruddier; he grinned and passed a muscular hand +over his thick, handsome, fox-tinted hair. + +"I wish I could get next," he said with a hard glance at Querida. "I'd +sting 'em." + +"I would be very glad to introduce you to anybody I know," observed the +other. + +"Do you mean that?" + +"Why not. A man who has waited as I have for opportunity understands +what others feel who are still waiting." + +"That's damn square of you, Querida." + +"Oh, no, not square; just natural. The public table is big enough for +everybody." + +Allaire thought a moment, slowly caressing his foxy hair. + +"After all," he said with a nervous snicker, "you needn't be afraid of +anybody. Nobody can paint like you.... But I'd like to get a look in, +Querida. I've got to make a little money in one way or another--" he +added impudently--"and if I can't paint well enough to sting them, +there's always the chance of marrying one of 'em." + +Querida laughed: "Any man can always marry any woman. There's no trick +in getting any _wife_ you want." + +"Sure," grinned Allaire; "a wife is a cinch; it's the front row that +keeps good men guessing." He glanced at Querida, his gray-green eyes +brimming with an imprudent malice he could not even now deny +himself--"Also the backs of the magazines keep one guessing," he added, +carelessly; "and I've the patience of a tom-cat, myself." + +Querida's beautifully pencilled eyebrows were raised interrogatively. + +"Oh, I'll admit that the little West girl kept me sitting on back fences +until some other fellow threw a bottle at me," said Allaire with a +disagreeable laugh. He had come as near as he dared to taunting Querida +and, afraid at the last moment, had turned the edge of it on himself. + +Querida lighted a cigarette and blew a whiff of smoke toward the +ceiling. + +"I've an idea," he said, lazily, "that somebody is trying to marry her." + +"Forget it," observed Allaire in contempt. "She wouldn't stand for the +sort who marry her kind. She'll land hard on her neck one of these days, +and the one best bet will be some long-faced Botticelli with heavenly +principles and the moral stability of a tumbler pigeon. Then there'll be +hell to pay; but _he_ will get over it and she'll get aboard the +toboggan. That's the way it ends, Querida." + +Querida sipped his coffee and glanced out of the club window. From the +window he could see the roof of the studio building where Neville lived. +And he wondered how far Valerie was from that building at the present +moment, wondered, and sipped his coffee. + +He was a man whose career had been builded upon perseverance. He had +begun life by slaying every doubt. And his had been a bitter life; but +he had suffered smilingly; the sordid struggle along the edges of +starvation had hardened nothing of his heart. + +Sensitive, sympathetic, ardent, proud, and ambitious with the quiet +certainty of a man predestined, he had a woman's capacity for patience, +for suffering, and for concealment, but not for mercy. And he cared +passionately for love as he did for beauty--had succumbed to both in +spirit oftener than in the caprice of some inconsequential amourette. + +But never, until he came to know Valerie West, had a living woman meant +anything vital to his happiness. Yet, what she aroused in him was that +part of his nature to which he himself was a stranger--a restless, +sensuous side which her very isolation and exposure to danger seemed to +excite the more until desire to control her, to drive others away, to +subdue, master, mould her, make her his own, obsessed him. And he had +tried it and failed; and had drawn aside, fiercely, still watching and +determined. + +Some day he meant to marry properly. He had never doubted his ability to +do so even in the sordid days. But there was no hurry, and life was +young, and so was Valerie West--young enough, beautiful enough to bridge +the years with him until his ultimate destiny awaited him. + +And all was going well again with him until that New-year's night; and +matters had gone ill with him since then--so ill that he could not put +the thought of it from him, and her beauty haunted him--and the +expression of Neville's eyes!-- + +But he remained silent, quiet, alert, watching and waiting with all his +capacity for enduring. And he had now something else to watch--something +that his sensitive intuition had divined in a single unfinished canvas +of Neville's. + +So far there had been but one man supreme in the new world as a great +painter of sunlight and of women. There could not be two. And he already +felt the approach of a shadow menacing the glory of his +sunlight--already stood alert and fixedly observant of a young man who +had painted something disquieting into an unfinished canvas. + + +That man and the young girl whom he had painted to the astonishment and +inward disturbance of José Querida, were having no easy time in that new +world which they had created for themselves. + +Embarked upon an enterprise in the management of which they were neither +in accord nor ever seemed likely to be, they had, so far, weathered the +storms of misunderstandings and the stress of prejudice. Blindly +confident in Love, they were certain, so far, that it was Love itself +that they worshipped no matter what rites and ceremonies each one +observed in its adoration. Yet each was always attempting to convert the +other to the true faith; and there were days of trouble and of tears and +of telephones. + +Neville presented a frightfully complex problem to Valerie West. + +His even-tempered indifference to others--an indifference which had +always characterised him--had left only a wider and deeper void now +filling with his passion for her. + +They were passing through a maze of cross-purposes; his ardent and +exacting intolerance of any creed and opinion save his own was ever +forcing her toward a more formal and literal appreciation of what he +was determined must become a genuine and formal engagement--which +attitude on his part naturally produced clash after clash between them. + +That he entertained so confidently the conviction of her ultimate +surrender to convention, at moments vexed her to the verge of anger. At +times, too, his disposition to interfere with her liberty tried her +patience. Again and again she explained to him the unalterable +fundamentals of their pact. These were, first of all, her refusal to +alienate him from his family and his own world; second, her right to her +own individuality and freedom to support herself without interference or +unrequested assistance from him; third, absolute independence of him in +material matters and the perfect liberty of managing her own little +financial affairs without a hint of dependence on him either before or +after the great change. + +That she posed only in costume now did not satisfy him. He did not wish +her to pose at all; and they discussed various other theatres for her +business activity. But she very patiently explained to him that she +found, in posing for interesting people, much of the intellectual +pleasure that he and other men found in painting; that the life and the +environment, and the people she met, made her happy; and that she could +not expect to meet cultivated people in any other way. + +"I _don't_ want to learn stenography and take dictation in a stuffy +office, dear," she pleaded. "I _don't_ want to sit all day in a library +where people whisper about books. I don't want to teach in a public +school or read novels to invalids, or learn how to be a trained nurse +and place thermometers in people's mouths. I like children pretty well +but I don't want to be a governess and teach other people's children; I +want to be taught myself; I want to learn--I'm a sort of a child, too, +dear; and it's the familiarity with wiser people and brighter people and +pleasant surroundings that has made me as happy as I am--given me what I +never had as a child. You don't understand, but I'm having my childhood +now--nursery, kindergarten, parties, boarding-school, finishing school, +début--all concentrated into this happy year of being among gay, clever, +animated people." + +"Yet you will not let me take you into a world which is still +pleasanter--" + +And the eternal discussion immediately became inevitable, tiring both +with its earnestness and its utter absence of a common ground. Because +in him apparently remained every vital germ of convention and of +generations of training in every precept of formality; and in her--for +with Valerie West adolescence had arrived late--that mystery had been +responsible for far-reaching disturbances consequent on the starved +years of self-imprisonment, of exaltations suppressed, of fears and +doubts and vague desires and dreams ineffable possessing the silence of +a lonely soul. + +And so, essentially solitary, inevitably lonely, out of her own young +heart and an untrained mind she was evolving a code of responsibility to +herself and to the world. + +Her ethics and her morals were becoming what wide, desultory, and +unrestrained reading was making them; her passion for happiness and for +truth, her restless intelligence, were prematurely forming her +character. There was no one in authority to tell her--check, guide, or +direct her in the revolt from dogmatism, pedantry, sophistry and +conventionalism. And by this path youthful intelligence inevitably +passes, incredulous of snare and pitfall where lie the bones of many a +savant under magic blossoms nourished by creeds long dead. + + +"To bring no sorrow to any one, Louis--that is the way I am trying to +live," she said, seriously. + +"You are bringing it to me." + +"If that is so--then I had better depart as I came and leave you in +peace." + +"It's too late." + +"Perhaps it is not. Shall we try it?" + +"Could _you_ recover?" + +"I don't know. I am willing to try for your sake." + +"Do you _want_ to?" he asked, almost angrily. + +"I am not thinking of myself, Louis." + +"I _want_ you to. I don't want you _not_ to think about yourself all the +time." + +She made a hopeless gesture, opening her arms and turning her palms +outward: + +"Kelly Neville! _What_ do you suppose loving you means to me?" + +"Don't you think of yourself at all when you love me?" + +"Why--I suppose I do--in a way. I know I'm fortunate, happy--I--" She +glanced up shyly--"I am glad that I am--loved--" + +"You darling!" + +She let him take her into his arms, suffered his caress, looking at him +in silence out of eyes as dark and clear and beautiful as brown pools in +a forest. + +"You're just a bad, spoiled, perverse little kid, aren't you?" he said, +rumpling her hair. + +"You say so." + +"Breaking my heart because you won't marry me." + +"No, breaking my own because you don't really love me enough, yet." + +"I love you too much--" + +"That is literary bosh, Louis." + +"Good God! Can't you ever understand that I'm respectable enough to want +you for my wife?" + +"You mean that you want me for what I do not wish to be. And you decline +to love me unless I turn into a selfish, dependent, conventional +nonentity, which you adore because respectable. Is that what you mean?" + +"I want the laws of civilisation to safeguard you," he persisted +patiently. + +"I need no more protection than you need. I am not a baby. I am not +afraid. Are you?" + +"That is not the question--" + +"Yes it is, dear. I stand in no fear. Why do you wish to force me to do +what I believe would be a wrong to you? Can't you respect my +disreputable convictions?" + +"They are theories--not convictions--" + +"Oh, Kelly, I'm so tired of hearing you say that!" + +"I should think you would be, you little imp of perversity!" + +"I am.... And I wonder how I can love you just as much, as though you +were kind and reasonable and--and minded your own business, dear." + +"Isn't it my business to tell the girl to whom I'm engaged what I +believe to be right?" + +"Yes; and it's her business to tell _you_" she said, smiling; and put +her arms higher so that they slipped around his neck for a moment, then +were quickly withdrawn. + +"What a thoroughly obstinate boy you are!" she exclaimed. "We're wasting +such lots of time in argument when it's all so very simple. Your soul is +your own to develop; mine is mine. _Noli, me tangere_!" + +But he was not to be pacified; and presently she went away to pour their +tea, and he followed and sat down in an armchair near the fire, brooding +gaze fixed on the coals. + +They had tea in hostile silence; he lighted a cigarette, but presently +flung it into the fire without smoking. + +She said: "You know, Louis, if this is really going to be an unhappiness +to you, instead of a happiness beyond words, we had better end it now." +She added, with an irrepressible laugh, partly nervous, "Your happiness +seems to be beyond words already. Your silence is very eloquent.... I +think I'll take my doll and go home." + +She rose, stood still a moment looking at him where he sat, head bent, +staring into the coals; then a swift tenderness filled her eyes; her +sensitive lips quivered; and she came swiftly to him and took his head +into her arms. + +"Dear," she whispered, "I only want to do the best for you. Let me try +in my own way. It's all for you--everything I do or think or wish or +hope is for you. Even I myself was made merely for you." + +Sideways on the arm of his chair, she stooped down, laying her cheek +against his, drawing his face closer. + +"I am so hopelessly in love with you," she murmured; "if I make +mistakes, forgive me; remember only that it is because I love you enough +to die for you very willingly." + +He drew her down into his arms. She was never quick to respond to the +deeper emotions in him, but her cheeks and throat were flushed now, and, +as his embrace enclosed her, she responded with a sudden flash of blind +passion--a moment's impulsive self-surrender to his lips and arms--and +drew away from him dazed, trembling, shielding her face with one arm. + +All that the swift contact was awakening in him turned on her fiercely +now; in his arms again she swayed, breathless, covering her face with +desperate hands, striving to comprehend, to steady her senses, to reason +while pulses and heart beat wildly and every vein ran fire. + +"No--" she stammered--"this is--is wrong--wrong! Louis, I beg you, to +remember what I am to you.... Don't kiss me again--I ask you not to--I +pray that you won't.... We are--I am--engaged to you, dear.... Oh--it is +wrong--wrong, now!--all wrong between us!" + +"Valerie," he stammered, "you care nothing for any law--nor do I--now--" + +"I _do_! You don't understand me! Let me go. Louis--you don't love me +enough.... This--this is madness--wickedness!--you can't love me! You +don't--you can't!" + +"I do love you, Valerie--" + +"No--no--or you would let me go!--or you would not kiss me again--" + +She freed herself, breathless, crimson with shame and anger, avoiding +his eyes, and slipped out of his embrace to her knees, sank down on the +rug at his feet, and laid her head against the chair, breathing fast, +both small hands pressed to her breast. + +For a few minutes he let her lie so; then, stooping over her, white +lipped, trembling: + +"What can you expect if we sow the wind?" + +She began to cry, softly: "You don't understand--you never have +understood!" + +"I understand this: that I am ready to take you in your way, now. I +cannot live without you, and I won't. I care no longer how I take you, +or when, or where, as long as I can have you for mine, to keep for ever, +to love, to watch over, to worship.... Dear--will you speak to me?" + +She shook her head, desolately, where it lay now against his knees, amid +its tumbled hair. + +Then he asked again for her forgiveness--almost fiercely, for passion +still swayed him with every word. He told her he loved her, adored her, +could not endure life without her; that he was only too happy to take +her on any terms she offered. + +"Louis," she said in a voice made very small and low by the crossed arms +muffling her face, "I am wondering whether you will ever know what love +is." + +"Have I not proved that I love you?" + +"I--don't know what it is you have proved.... We were engaged to each +other--and--and--" + +"I thought you cared nothing for such conventions!" + +She began to cry again, silently. + +"Valerie--darling--" + +"No--you don't understand," she sobbed. + +"Understand what, dearest--dearest-- + +"That I thought our love was its own protection--and mine." + +He made no answer. + +She knelt there silent for a little while, then put her hand up +appealingly for his handkerchief. + +"I have been very happy in loving you," she faltered; "I have promised +you all there is of myself. And you have already had my best self. The +rest--whatever it is--whatever happens to me--I have promised--so that +there will be nothing of this girl called Valerie West which is not all +yours--all, all--every thought, Louis, every pulse-beat--mind, soul, +body.... But no future day had been set; I had thought of none as yet. +Still--since I knew I was to be to you what I am to be, I have been very +busy preparing for it--mind, soul, my little earthly possessions, my +personal affairs in their small routine.... No bride in your world, busy +with her trousseau, has been a happier dreamer than have I, Louis. You +don't know how true I have tried to be to myself, and to the truth as I +understand it--as true as I have been to you in thought and deed.... +And, somehow, what threatened--a moment since--frightens me, humiliates +me--" + +She lifted her head and looked up at him with dimmed eyes: + +"You were untrue to yourself, Louis--to your own idea of truth. And you +were untrue to me. And for the first time I look at you, ashamed and +shamed." + +"Yes," he said, very white. + +"Why did you offer our love such an insult?" she asked. + +He made no answer. + +"Was it because, in your heart, you hold a girl lightly who promised to +give herself to you for your own sake, renouncing the marriage vows?" + +"No! Good God--" + +"Then--is it because you do not yet love me enough? For I shall not give +myself to you until you do." + +He hung his head. + +"I think that is it," she said, sorrowfully. + +"No. I'm no good," he said. "And that's the truth, Valerie." A dark +flush stained his face and he turned it away, sitting there in silence, +his tense clasp tightening on the arms of the chair. Then he said, still +not meeting her eyes: + +"Whatever your beliefs are you practice them; you are true to your +convictions, loyal to yourself. I am only a miserable, rotten specimen +of man who is true to nothing--not even to himself. I'm not worth your +trouble, Valerie." + +"Louis!" + +"Well, what am I?" he demanded in fierce disgust. "I have told you that +I believe in the conventions--and I violate every one of them. I'm a +spectacle for gods and men!" His face was stern with self-disgust: he +forced himself to meet her gaze, wincing under it; but he went on: + +"I know well enough that I deserve your contempt; I've acquired plenty +of self-contempt already. But I _do_ love you, God knows how or in what +manner, but I love you, cur that I am--and I respect you--oh, more that +you understand, Valerie. And if I ask your mercy on such a man as I am, +it is not because I deserve it." + +"My mercy, Louis?" + +She rose to her knees and laid both hands on his shoulders. + +"You _are_ only a man, dear--with all the lovable faults and sins and +contradictions of one. But there is no real depravity in you any more +than there is in me. Only--I think you are a little more selfish than I +am--you lose self-command--" she blushed--"but that is because you are +only a man after all.... I think, perhaps, that a girl's love is +different in many ways. Dear, my love for you is perfectly honest. You +believe it, don't you? If for one moment I thought it was otherwise, I'd +never let you see me again. If I thought for one moment that anything +spiritual was to be gained for us by denying that love to you or to +myself--or by living out life alone without you, I have the courage to +do it. Do you doubt it?" + +"No," he said. + +She sighed, and her gaze passed from his and became remote for a moment, +then: + +"I want to live my life with you," she said, wistfully; "I want to be to +you all that the woman you love could possibly be. But to me, the giving +of myself to you is to be, in my heart, a ceremony more solemn than any +in the world--and it is to be a rite at which my soul shall serve on its +knees, Louis." + +"Dearest--dearest," he breathed, "I know--I understand--I ask your +pardon. And I worship you." + +Then a swift, smiling change passed over her face; and, her hands still +resting on his shoulders, kneeling there before him, she bent forward +and kissed him on the forehead. + +"Pax," she said. "You are forgiven. Love me enough, Louis. And when I +am quite sure you do, then--then--you may ask me, and I will answer +you." + +"I love you now, enough." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--ask," she said, faintly. + +His lips moved in a voiceless question, she could not hear him, but she +understood. + +"In a year, I think," she answered, forcing her eyes to meet his, but +the delicate rose colour was playing over her cheeks and throat. + +"As long as that?" + +"That is not long. Besides, perhaps you won't learn to love me enough +even by that time. Do you think you will? If you really think +so--perhaps in June--" + +She watched him as he pressed her hands together and kissed them; +laughed a little, shyly, as she suddenly divined a new tenderness and +respect in his eyes--something matching the vague exaltation of her own +romantic dreams. + +"I will wait all my life if you wish it," he said. + +"Do you mean it?" + +"You know I do, now." + +She considered him, smiling. "If you truly do feel that +way--perhaps--perhaps it might really be in June--or in July--" + +"You _said_ June." + +"Listen to the decree of the great god Kelly! He says it must be in +June, and he shakes his thunderbolts and frowns." + +"June! Say so, Valerie," + +"_You_ have said so." + +"But there's no use in _my_ saying so if--" + +"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, "the great god totters on his pedestal and +the oracle falters and I see the mere man looking very humbly around the +corner of the shrine at me, whispering, 'June, if you please, dear +lady!'" + +"Yes," he said, "that's what you see and hear. Now answer me, dear." + +"And what am I to say?" + +"June, please." + +"June--please," she repeated, demurely. + +"You darling!... What day?" + +"Oh, that's too early to decide--" + +"Please, dear!" + +"No; I don't want to decide--" + +"Dearest!" + +"What?" + +"Won't you answer me?" + +"If you make me answer now, I'll be tempted to fix the first of April." + +"All right, fix it." + +"It's All Fool's day, you know," she threatened. "Probably it is +peculiarly suitable for us.... Very well, then, I'll say it." + +She was laughing when he caught her hands and looked at her, grave, +unsmiling. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and her lip trembled. + +"Forgive me, I meant no mockery," she whispered. "I had already fixed +the first day of June for--for the great change in our lives. Are you +content?" + +"Yes." And before she knew what he was doing a brilliant flashed along +her ring finger and clung sparkling to it; and she stared at the gold +circlet and the gem flashing in the firelight. + +There were tears in her eyes when she kissed it, looking at him while +her soft lips rested on the jewel. + +Neither spoke for a moment; then, still looking at him, she drew the +ring from her finger, touched it again with her lips, and laid it gently +in his hand. + +"No, dear," she said. + +He did not urge her; but she knew he still believed that she would come +to think as he thought; and the knowledge edged her lips with tremulous +humour. But her eyes were very sweet and tender as she watched him lay +away the ring as though it and he were serenely biding their time. + +"Such a funny boy," she said, "and such a dear one. He will never, never +grow up, will he?" + +"Such an idiot, you mean," he said, drawing her into the big chair +beside him. + +"Yes, I mean that, too," she said, impudently, nose in the air. +"Because, if I were you, Louis, I wouldn't waste any more energy in +worrying about a girl who is perfectly able to take care of herself, but +transfer it to a boy who apparently is not." + +"How do you mean?" + +"I mean about your painting. Dear, you've got it into that obstinate +head of yours that there's something lacking in your pictures, and there +isn't." + +"Oh, Valerie! You know there is!" + +"No, no, no! There isn't anything lacking in them. They're all of you, +Louis--every bit of you--as far as you have lived." + +"What!" + +"Certainly. As far as you have lived. Now live a little more, and let +more things come into your life. You can't paint what isn't in you; and +there's nothing in you except what you get out of life." + +She laid her soft cheek against his. + +"Get a little real love out of life, Louis; a little _real_ love. Then +surely, surely your canvases can not disguise that you know what life +means to us all. Love nobly; and the world will not doubt that love is +noble; love mercifully; and the world will understand mercy. For I +believe that what you are must show in your work, dear. + +"Until now the world has seen in your work only the cold splendour, or +dreamy glamour, or the untroubled sweetness and brilliancy of +passionless romance. I love your work. It is happiness to look at it; it +thrills, bewitches, enthralls!... Dear, forgive me if in it I have not +yet found a deeper inspiration.... And that inspiration, to be there, +must be first in you, my darling--born of a wider interest in your +fellow men, a little tenderness for friends--a more generous experience +and more real sympathy with humanity--and perhaps you may think it out +of place for me to say it--but--a deeper, truer, spiritual conviction. + +"Do you think it strange of me to have such convictions? I can't escape +them. Those who are merciful, those who are kind, to me are Christ-like. +Nothing else matters. But to be kind is to be first of all interested in +the happiness of others. And you care nothing for people. You _must_ +care, Louis! + +"And, somehow, you who are, at heart, good and kind and merciful, have +not really awakened real love in many of those about you. For one thing +your work has absorbed you. But if, at the same time, you could pay a +little more attention to human beings--" + +"Valerie!" he said in astonishment, "I have plenty of friends. Do you +mean to say I care nothing for them?" + +"How much _do_ you care, Louis?" + +"Why, I--" He fell silent, troubled gaze searching hers. + +She smiled: "Take Sam, for example. The boy adores you. He's a rotten +painter, I know--and you don't even pretend to an interest in what he +does because you are too honest to praise it. But, Louis, he's a lovable +fellow--and he does the best that's in him. You needn't pretend to care +for what he does--but if you could show that you do care for and respect +the effort--" + +"I do, Valerie--when I think about it!" + +"Then think about it; and let Sam know that you think about his efforts +and himself. And do the same for Harry Annan. He's a worse painter than +Sam--but do you think he doesn't know it? Don't you realise what a lot +of heartache the monkey-shines of those two boys conceal?" + +"I am fond of them," he said, slowly. "I like people, even if I don't +show it--" + +"Ah, Louis! Louis! That is the world's incurable hurt--the silence that +replies to its perplexity--the wistful appeal that remains +unanswered.... And many, many vex God with the desolation of their +endless importunities and complaints when a look, a word, a touch from a +human being would relieve them of the heaviest of all burdens--a sad +heart's solitude." + +He put his arm around her, impulsively: + +"You little angel," he said, tenderly. + +"No--only a human girl who has learned what solitude can mean." + +"I shall make you forget the past," he said. + +"No, dear--for that might make me less kind." She put her lips against +his cheek, thoughtfully: "And--I think--that you are going to need all +the tenderness in me--some day, Louis--as I need all of yours.... We +shall have much to learn--after the great change.... And much to endure. +And I think we will need all the kindness that we can give each +other--and all that the world can spare us." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +It was slowly becoming evident to Neville that Valerie's was the +stronger character--not through any genius for tenacity nor on account +of any domineering instinct--but because, mistaken or otherwise in her +ethical reasoning, she was consistent, true to her belief, and had the +courage to live up to it. And this made her convictions almost +unassailable. + +Slavery to established custom of any kind she smilingly disdained, +refusing to submit to restrictions which centuries of social usage had +established, when such social restrictions and limitations hampered or +annoyed her. + +Made conscious by the very conventions designed to safeguard +unconsciousness; made wise by the unwisdom of a civilisation which +required ignorance of innocence, she had as yet lost none of her +sweetness and confidence in herself and in a world which she considered +a friendly one at best and, at worst, more silly than vicious. + +Her life, the experience of a lonely girlhood in the world, wide and +varied reading, unwise and otherwise, and an intelligence which needed +only experience and training, had hastened to a premature maturity her +impatience with the faults of civilisation. And in the honest revolt of +youth, she forgot that what she rejected was, after all, civilisation +itself, and that as yet there had been offered no acceptable substitute +for its faulty codification. + +To do one's best was to be fearlessly true to one's convictions and let +God judge; that was her only creed. And from her point of view humanity +needed no other. + +So she went about the pleasure and happiness of living with a light +heart and a healthy interest, not doubting that all was right between +her and the world, and that the status quo must endure. + +And endless misunderstandings ensued between her and the man she loved. +She was a very busy business girl and he objected. She went about to +theatres and parties and dinners and concerts with other men; and +Neville didn't like it. Penrhyn Cardemon met her at a theatrical supper +and asked her to be one of his guests on his big yacht, the _Mohave_, +fitted out for the Azores. There were twenty in the party, and she would +have gone had not Neville objected angrily. + +It was not his objection but his irritation that confused her. She could +discover no reason for it. + +"It can't be that you don't trust me," she said to him, "so it must be +that you're lonely without me, even when you go to spend two weeks with +your parents. I don't mind not going if you don't wish me to, Louis, and +I'll stay here in town while you visit your father and mother, but it +seems a little bit odd of you not to let me go when I can be of no +earthly use to you." + +Her gentleness with him, and her sweet way of reasoning made him +ashamed. + +"It's the crowd that's going, Valerie--Cardemon, Querida, Marianne +Valdez--where did you meet her, anyway?" + +"In her dressing room at the Opera. She's perfectly sweet. Isn't she all +right?" + +"She's Cardemon's mistress," he said, bluntly. + +A painful colour flushed her face and neck; and at the same instant he +realised what he had said. + +Neither spoke for a while; he went on with his painting; she, standing +once more for the full-length portrait, resumed her pose in silence. + +After a while she heard his brushes clatter to the floor, saw him leave +his easel, was aware that he was coming toward her. And the next moment +he had dropped at her feet, kneeling there, one arm tightening around +her knees, his head pressed close. + +Listlessly she looked down at him, dropped one slim hand on his +shoulder, considering him. + +"The curious part of it is," she said, "that all the scorn in your voice +was for Marianne Valdez and none for Penrhyn Cardemon." + +He said nothing. + +"Such a queer, topsy-turvy world," she sighed, letting her hand wander +from his shoulder to his thick, short hair. She caressed his forehead +thoughtfully. + +"I suppose some man will say that of me some day.... But that is a +little matter--compared to making life happy for you.... To be your +mistress could never make me unhappy." + +"To be your husband--and to put an end to all these damnable doubts and +misgivings and cross-purposes would make me happy all my life!" he burst +out with a violence that startled her. + +"Hush, Louis. We must not begin that hopeless argument again." + +"Valerie! Valerie! You are breaking my heart!" + +"Hush, dear. You know I am not." + +She looked down at him; her lip was trembling. + +Suddenly she slid down to the floor and knelt there confronting him, +her arms around him. + +"Dearer than all the world and heaven!--do you think that I am breaking +your heart? You _know_ I am not. You know what I am doing for your sake, +for your family's sake, for my own. I am only giving you a love that can +cause them no pain, bring no regret to you. Take it, then, and kiss me." + + +But the days were full of little scenes like this--of earnest, fiery +discussions, of passionate arguments, of flashes of temper ending in +tears and heavenly reconciliation. + +He had gone for two weeks to visit his father and mother at their summer +home near Portsmouth, and before he went he took her in his arms and +told her how ashamed he was of his bad temper at the idea of her going +on the _Mohave_, and said that she might go; that he did trust her +anywhere, and that he was trying to learn to concede to her the same +liberty of action and of choice that any man enjoyed. + +But she convinced him very sweetly that she really had no desire to go, +and sent him off to Spindrift House happy, and madly in love; which +resulted in two letters a day from him, and in her passing long evenings +in confidential duets with Rita Tevis. + +Rita had taken the bedroom next to Valerie's, and together they had +added the luxury of a tiny living room to the suite. + +It was the first time that either had ever had any place in which to +receive anybody; and now, delighted to be able to ask people, they let +it be known that their friends could have tea with them. + +Ogilvy and Annan had promptly availed themselves. + +"This is exceedingly grand," said Ogilvy, examining everything in a tour +around the pretty little sitting room. "We can have all kinds of a rough +house now." And he got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the +rug and very gravely turned a somersault. + +"Sam! Behave! Or I'll set my parrot on you!" exclaimed Valerie. + +Ogilvy sat up and inspected the parrot. + +"You know," he said, "I believe I've seen that parrot somewhere." + +"Impossible, my dear friend--unless you've been in my bedroom." + +Ogilvy got up, dusted his trowsers, and walked over to the parrot. + +"Well it looks like a bird I used to know--I--it certainly resembles--" +He hesitated, then addressing the bird: + +"Hello, Leparello--you old scoundrel!" he said, cautiously. + +"Forget it!" muttered the bird, cocking his head and lifting first one +slate-coloured claw from his perch, then the other;--"forget it! Help! +Oh, very well. God bless the ladies!" + +"_Where_ on earth did you ever before see my parrot?" asked Valerie, +astonished. Ogilvy appeared to be a little out of countenance, too. + +"Oh, I really don't remember exactly where I did see him," he tried to +explain; and nobody believed him. + +"Sam! Answer me!" + +"Well, where did _you_ get him?" + +"José Querida gave Leparello to me." + +Annan and Ogilvy exchanged the briefest glance--a perfectly blank +glance. + +"It probably isn't the same bird," said Ogilvy, carelessly. "There are +plenty of parrots that talk--plenty of 'em named Leparello, probably." + +"Sam, how _can_ you be so untruthful! Rita, hold him tightly while I +pull his ears!" + +It was a form of admonition peculiarly distasteful to Ogilvy, and he +made a vain effort to escape. + +"Now, Sam, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Quick, +or I'll tweak!" + +"All right, then," he said, maliciously, "Querida's got relatives in +Oporto who send him these kind of parrots occasionally. He names 'em all +Leparello, teaches 'em all the same jargon, and--gives 'em to girls!" + +"How funny," said Valerie. She looked at Sam, aware of something else in +his grin, and gave an uncertain little laugh. + +He sat down, rubbing his ear-lobes, the malicious grin still lingering +on his countenance. What he had not told her was that Querida's +volcanically irregular affairs of the heart always ended with the gift +of an Oporto parrot. Marianne Valdez owned one. So did Mazie Gray. + +His cynical gaze rested on Valerie reflectively. He had heard plenty of +rumours and whispers concerning her; and never believed any of them. He +could not believe now that the gift of this crimson, green and sky-blue +creature signified anything. Yet Querida had known her as long as +anybody except Neville. + +"When did he give you this parrot?" he asked, carelessly. + +"Oh, one day just before I was going to Atlantic City. He was coming +down, too, to stay a fortnight while I was there, and come back with me; +and he said that He had intended to give the parrot to me after our +return, but that he might as well give it to me before I went." + +"I see," said Ogilvy, thoughtfully. A few moments later, as he and Annan +were leaving the house, he said: + +"It looks to me as though our friend, José, had taken too much for +granted." + +"It looks like it," nodded Annan, smiling unpleasantly. + +"Too sure of conquest," added Ogilvy. "Got the frozen mitt, didn't he?" + +"_And_ the Grand Cordon of the double cross." + +"_And_ the hot end of the poker; yes?" + +"Sure; and it's still sizzling." Ogilvy cast a gleeful glance back at +the house: + +"Fine little girl. All white. Yes? No?" + +"All white," nodded Annan.... "And Neville isn't that kind of a man, +anyway." + +Ogilvy said: "So _you_ think so, too?" + +"Oh, yes. He's crazy about her, and she isn't taking Sundays out if it's +his day in.... Only, what's the use?" + +"No use.... I guess Kelly Neville has seen as many artists who've +married their models as we have. Besides, his people are frightful +snobs." + +Annan, walking along briskly, swung his stick vigorously: + +"She's a sweet little thing," he said. + +"I know it. It's going to be hard for her. She can't stand for a +mutt--and it's the only sort that will marry her.... I don't +know--she's a healthy kind of girl--but God help her if she ever really +falls in love with one of our sort." + +"I think she's done it," said Annan. + +"Kelly!" + +"Doesn't it look like it?" + +"Oh, it will wear off without any harm to either of them. That little +girl is smart, all right; she'll never waste an evening screaming for +the moon. And Kelly Neville is--is Kelly Neville--a dear fellow, so +utterly absorbed in the career of a brilliant and intelligent young +artist named Louis Neville, that if the entire earth blew up he'd begin +a new canvas the week after.... Not that I think him cold-hearted--no, +not even selfish as that little bounder Allaire says--but he's a man who +has never yet had time to spare." + +"They're the most hopeless," observed Annan--"the men who haven't time +to spare. Because it takes only a moment to say, 'Hello, old man! How in +hell are you?' It takes only a moment to put yourself, mentally, in some +less lucky man's shoes; and be friendly and sorry and interested." + +"He's a pretty decent sort," murmured Ogilvy. "Anyway, that Valerie +child is safe enough in temporarily adoring Kelly Neville." + + * * * * * + +The "Valerie child," in a loose, rose-silk peignoir, cross-legged on her +bed, was sewing industriously on her week's mending. Rita, in +dishabille, lay across the foot of the bed nibbling bonbons and reading +the evening paper. + +They had dined in their living room, a chafing dish aiding. Afterward +Valerie went over her weekly accounts and had now taken up her regular +mending; and there she sat, sewing away, and singing in her clear, young +voice, the old madrigal: + + "_Let us dry the starting tear + For the hours are surely fleeting + And the sad sundown is near. + All must sip the cup of sorrow, + I to-day, and thou to-morrow! + This the end of every song, + Ding-dong! Ding-dong! + Yet until the shadows fall + Over one and over all, + Sing a merry madrigal!_" + +Rita, nibbling a chocolate, glanced up: + +"That's a gay little creed," she observed. + +"Of course. It's the _only_ creed." + +Rita shrugged and Valerie went on blithely singing and sewing. + +"How long has that young man of yours been away?" inquired Rita, looking +up again. + +"Thirteen days." + +"Oh. Are you sure it isn't fourteen?" + +"Perfectly." Then the sarcasm struck her, and she looked around at Rita +and laughed: + +"Of course I count the days," she said, conscious of the soft colour +mounting to her cheeks. + +Rita sat up and, tucking a pillow under her shoulders, leaned back +against the foot-board of the bed, kicking the newspaper to the floor. +"Do you know," she said, "that you have come pretty close to falling in +love with Kelly Neville?" + +Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she bent lower over +her sewing, but she made no reply. + +"I should say," continued Rita, "that it was about time for you to pick +up your skirts and run for it." + +Still Valerie sewed on in silence. + +"Valerie!" + +"What?" + +"For goodness' sake, say something!" + +"What do you want me to say, dear?" asked the girl, laughing. + +"That you are _not_ in danger of making a silly ninny of yourself over +Kelly Neville." + +"Oh, I'll say that very cheerfully--" + +"Valerie!" + +The girl looked at her, calmly amused. Then she said: + +"I might as well tell you. I am head over heels in love with him. You +knew it, anyway, Rita. You've known it--oh, I don't know how long--but +you've known it. Haven't you?" + +Rita thought a moment: "Yes, I have known it.... What are you going to +do?" + +"Do?" + +"Yes; what do you intend to do about this matter?" + +"Love him," said Valerie. "What else can I do?" + +"You could try not to." + +"I don't want to." + +"You had better." + +"Why?" + +"Because," said Rita, deliberately, "if you really love him you'll +either become his wife or his mistress; and it's a pretty rotten choice +either way." + +Valerie blushed scarlet; + +"Rotten--choice?" + +"Certainly. You know perfectly well what your position would be when his +family and his friends learned that he'd married his model. No girl of +any spirit would endure it--no matter how affable his friends might +perhaps pretend to be. No girl of any sense would ever put herself in +such a false position.... I tell you, Valerie, it's only the exceptional +man who'll stand by you. No doubt Louis Neville would. But it would cost +him every friend he has--and probably the respect of his parents. And +that means misery for you both--because he couldn't conceal from you +what marrying you was costing him--" + +[Illustration: "Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she +bent lower over her sewing."] + +"Rita!" + +"Yes." + +"There is no use telling me all this. I know it. He knows I know it. I +am not going to marry him." + +After a silence Rita said, slowly: "Did he ask you to?" + +Valerie looked down, passed her needle through the hem once, twice. + +"Yes," she said, softly, "he asked me." + +"And--you refused?" + +"Yes." + +Rita said: "I like Kelly Neville ... and I love you better, dear. But +it's not best for you to marry him.... Life isn't a very sentimental +affair--not nearly as silly a matter as poets and painters and dramas +and novels pretend it is. Love really plays a very minor part in life, +Don't you know it?" + +"Yes. I lived twenty years without it," said Valerie, demurely, yet in +her smile Rita divined the hidden tragedy. And she leaned forward and +kissed her impulsively. + +"Let's swear celibacy," she said, "and live out our lives together in +single blessedness! Will you? We can have a perfectly good time until +the undertaker knocks." + +"I hope he won't knock for a long while," said Valerie, with a slight +shiver. "There's so much I want to see first." + +"You shall. We'll see everything together. We'll work hard, live +frugally if you say so, cut out all frills and nonsense, and save and +save until we have enough to retire on respectably. And then, like two +nice old ladies, we'll start out to see the world--" + +"Oh, Rita! I don't want to see it when I'm too old!" + +"You'll enjoy it more--" + +"Rita! How ridiculous! You've seen more of the world than I have, +anyway. It's all very well for you to say wait till I'm an old maid; but +you've been to Paris--haven't you?" + +"Yes," said Rita. There was a slight colour in her face. + +"Well, then! Why must I wait until I'm a dowdy old frump before I go? +Why should you and I not be as happy as we can afford to be while we're +young and attractive and unspoiled?" + +"I want you to be as happy as you can afford to be, Valerie.... But you +can't afford to fall in love." + +"Why?" + +"Because it will make you miserable." + +"But it doesn't." + +"It will if it is love." + +"It is, Rita," said the girl, smiling out of her dark eyes--deep brown +wells of truth that the other gazed into and saw a young soul there, +fearless and doomed. + +"Valerie," she said, shivering, "you won't do--_that_--will you?" + +"Dear, I cannot marry him, and I love him. What else am I to do?" + +"Well, then--then you'd better marry him!" stammered Rita, frightened. +"It's better for you! It's better--" + +"For _me_? Yes, but how about him?" + +"What do you care about him!" burst out Rita, almost incoherent in her +fright and anger. "He's a man; he can take care of himself. Don't think +of him. It isn't your business to consider him. If he wants to marry you +it's his concern after all. Let him do it! Marry him and let him fight +it out with his friends! After all what does a man give a girl that +compares with what she gives him? Men--men--" she stammered--"they're +all alike in the depths of their own hearts. We are incidents to +them--no matter how they say they love us. They _can't_ love as we do. +They're not made for it! We are part of the game to them; they are the +whole game to us; we are, at best, an important episode in their +careers; they are our whole careers. Oh, Valerie! Valerie! listen to me, +child! That man could go on living and painting and eating and drinking +and sleeping and getting up to dress and going to bed to sleep, if you +lay dead in your grave. But if you loved him, and were his wife--or God +forgive me!--his mistress, the day he died _you_ would die, though your +body might live on. I know--_I_ know, Valerie. Death--whether it be his +body or his love, ends all for the woman who really loves him. Woman's +loss is eternal. But man's loss is only temporary--he is made that way, +fashioned so. Now I tell you the exchange is not fair--it has never been +fair--never will be, never can be. And I warn you not to give this man +the freshness of your youth, the happy years of your life, your +innocence, the devotion which he will transmute into passion with his +accursed magic! I warn you not to forsake the tranquillity of ignorance, +the blessed immunity from that devil's paradise that you are already +gazing into--" + +"Rita! Rita! What are you saying?" + +"I scarcely know, child. I am trying to save you from lifelong +unhappiness--trying to tell you that--that men are not worth it--" + +"How do you know?" + +There was a silence, then Rita, very pale and quiet, leaned forward, +resting her elbows on her knees and framing her face with her hands. + +"I had my lesson," she said. + +"You! Oh, my darling--forgive me! I did not know--" + +Rita suffered herself to be drawn into the younger girl's impulsive +embrace; they both cried a little, arms around each other, faltering out +question and answer in unsteady whispers: + +"Were you married, dearest?" + +"No." + +"Oh--I am _so_ sorry, dear--" + +"So am I.... Do you blame me for thinking about men as I do think?" + +"Didn't you love--him?" + +"I thought I did.... I was too young to know.... It doesn't matter +now--" + +"No, no, of course not. You made a ghastly mistake, but it's no more +shame to you than it is to him. Besides, you thought you loved him." + +"He could have made me. I was young enough.... But he let me see how +absolutely wicked he was.... And then it was too late to ever love him." + +"O Rita, Rita!--then you haven't ever even had the happiness of loving? +Have you?" + +Rita did not answer. + +"Have you, darling?" + +Then Rita broke down and laid her head on Valerie's knees, crying as +though her heart would break. + +"That's the terrible part of it," she sobbed--"I really do love a man, +now.... Not that _first_ one ... and there's nothing to do about +it--nothing, Valerie, nothing--because even if he asked me to marry him +I can't, now--" + +"Because you--" + +"Yes." + +"And if you had not--" + +"God knows what I would do," sobbed Rita, "I love him so, Valerie--I +love him so!" + +The younger girl looked down at the blond head lying on her +knees--looked at the pretty tear-stained face gleaming through the +fingers--looked and wondered over the philosophy broken down beside the +bowed head and breaking heart. + +Terrible her plight; with or without benefit of clergy she dared not +give herself. Love was no happiness to her, no confidence, no +sacrifice--only a dreadful mockery--a thing that fettered, paralysed, +terrified. + +"Does he love you?" whispered Valerie. + +"No--I think not." + +"If he did he would forgive." + +"Do you think so?" + +"Of course. Love pardons everything," said the girl in surprise. + +"Yes. But never forgets." + + * * * * * + +That was the first confidence that ever had passed between Valerie West +and Rita Tevis. And after it, Rita, apparently forgetting her own +philosophical collapse, never ceased to urge upon Valerie the wisdom, +the absolute necessity of self-preservation in considering her future +relations with Louis Neville. But, like Neville's logic, Rita's failed +before the innocent simplicity of the creed which Valerie had embraced. +Valerie was willing that their relations should remain indefinitely as +they were if the little gods of convention were to be considered; she +had the courage to sever all relations with the man she loved if anybody +could convince her that it was better for Neville. Marry him she would +not, because she believed it meant inevitable unhappiness for him. But +she was not afraid to lay her ringless hands in his for ever. + +Querida called on them and was very agreeable and lively and +fascinating; and when he went away Valerie asked him to come again. He +did; and again after that. She and Rita dined with him once or twice; +and things gradually slipped back to their old footing; and Querida +remained on his best behaviour. + +Neville had prolonged the visit to the parental roof. He did not explain +to her why, but the reason was that he had made up his mind to tell his +parents that he wished to marry and to find out once and for all what +their attitudes would be toward such a girl as Valerie West. But he had +not yet found courage to do it, and he was lingering on, trying to find +it and the proper moment to employ it. + +His father was a gentleman so utterly devoid of imagination that he had +never even ventured into business, but had been emotionlessly content to +marry and live upon an income sufficient to maintain the material and +intellectual traditions of the house of Neville. + +Tall, transparently pale, negative in character, he had made it a life +object to get through life without increasing the number of his +acquaintances--legacies in the second generation left him by his father, +whose father before him had left the grandfathers of these friends as +legacies to his son. + +[Illustration: "She and Rita dined with him once or twice."] + +It was a pallid and limited society that Henry Neville and his wife +frequented--a coterie of elderly, intellectual people, and their +prematurely dried-out offspring. And intellectual in-breeding was +thinning it to attenuation--to a bloodless meagreness in which they, who +composed it, conceived a mournful pride. + +Old New Yorkers all, knowing no other city, no other bourne north of +Tenth Street or west of Chelsea--silent, serene, drab-toned people, +whose drawing-rooms were musty with what had been fragrance once, whose +science, religion, interests, desires were the beliefs, interests and +emotions of a century ago, their colourless existence and passive +snobbishness affronted nobody who did not come seeking affront. + +To them Theodore Thomas had been the last conductor; his orchestra the +last musical expression fit for a cultivated society; the Academy of +Music remained their last symphonic temple, Wallack's the last refuge of +a drama now dead for ever. + +Delmonico's had been their northern limit, Stuyvesant Square their +eastern, old Trinity their southern, and their western, Chelsea. Outside +there was nothing. The blatancy and gilt of the million-voiced +metropolis fell on closed eyes, and on ears attuned only to the murmurs +of the past. They lived in their ancient houses and went abroad and +summered in some simple old-time hamlet hallowed by the headstones of +their grandsires, and existed as meaninglessly and blamelessly as the +old catalpa trees spreading above their dooryards. + +And into this narrow circle Louis Neville and his sister Lily had been +born. + +It had been a shock to her parents when Lily married Gordon Collis, a +mining engineer from Denver. She came to see them with her husband every +year; Collis loved her enough to endure it. + +As for Louis' career, his achievements, his work, they regarded it +without approval. Their last great painters had been Bierstadt and Hart, +their last great sculptor, Powers. Blankly they gazed upon the +splendours of the mural symphonies achieved by the son and heir of all +the Nevilles; they could not comprehend the art of the Uitlanders; their +comment was silence and dignity. + +To them all had become only shadowy tradition; even affection and human +emotion, and the relationship of kin to kin, of friend to friend, had +become only part of a negative existence which conformed to precedent, +temporal and spiritual, as written in the archives of a worn-out +civilisation. + +So, under the circumstances, it was scarcely to be wondered that Neville +hesitated to introduce the subject of Valerie West as he sat in the +parlour at Spindrift House with his father and mother, reading the +_Tribune_ or the _Evening Post_ or poring over some ancient tome of +travels, or looking out across the cliffs at an icy sea splintering and +glittering against a coast of frozen adamant. + +At length he could remain no longer; commissions awaited him in town; +hunger for Valerie gnawed ceaselessly, unsubdued by his letters or by +hers to him. + +"Mother," he said, the evening before his departure, "would it surprise +you very much if I told you that I wished to marry?" + +"No," she said, tranquilly; "you mean Stephanie Swift, I suppose." + +[Illustration: "Tall, transparently pale, negative in character."] + +His father glanced up over his spectacles, and he hesitated; then, as +his father resumed his reading: + +"I don't mean Stephanie, mother." + +His father laid aside his book and removed, the thin gold-rimmed +spectacles. + +"I understand from Lily that we are to be prepared to receive Stephanie +Swift as your affianced wife," he said. "I shall be gratified. Stephen +Swift was my oldest friend." + +"Lily was mistaken, father. Stephanie and I are merely very good +friends. I have no idea of asking her to marry me." + +"I had been given to understand otherwise, Louis. I am disappointed." + +Louis Neville looked out of the window, considering, yet conscious of +the hopelessness of it all. + +"Who is this girl, Louis?" asked his mother, pulling the white-and-lilac +wool shawl closer around her thin shoulders. + +"Her name is Valerie West." + +"One of the Wests of West Eighth Street?" demanded his father. + +The humour of it all twitched for a moment at his son's grimly set jaws, +then a slight flush mantled his face: + +"No, father." + +"Do you mean the Chelsea Wests, Louis?" + +"No." + +"Then we--don't know them," concluded his father with a shrug of his +shoulders, which dismissed many, many things from any possibility of +further discussion. But his mother's face grew troubled. + +"Who is this Miss West?" she asked in a colourless voice. + +"She is a very good, very noble, very cultivated, very beautiful young +girl--an orphan--who is supporting herself by her own endeavours." + +"What!" said his father, astonished. + +"Mother, I know how it sounds to you, but you and father have only to +meet her to recognise in her every quality that you could possibly wish +for in my wife." + +"_Who_ is she, Louis!" demanded his father, casting aside the evening +newspaper and folding up his spectacles. + +"I've told you, father." + +"I beg to differ with you. Who is this girl? In what description of +business is she actually engaged?" + +The young fellow's face grew red: + +"She _was_ engaged in--the drama." + +"What!" + +"She was an actress," he said, realising now the utter absurdity of any +hope from the beginning, yet now committed and determined to see it +through to the bitter end. + +"An actress! Louis!" faltered his mother. + +There was a silence, cut like a knife by the thin edge of his father's +voice: + +"If she _was_ an actress, what is she now?" + +"She has helped me with my painting." + +"Helped you? How?" + +"By--posing." + +"Do you desire me to understand that the girl is an artist's model!" + +"Yes." + +His father stared at him a moment, then: + +"And is this the woman you propose to have your mother meet?" + +"Father," he said, hopelessly, "there is no use in my saying anything +more. Miss West is a sweet, good, generous young girl, fully my peer in +education, my superior in many things.... You and mother can never +believe that the ideas, standards--even the ideals of civilisation +change--have changed since your youth--are changing every hour. In your +youth the word actress had a dubious significance; to-day it signifies +only what the character of her who wears the title signifies. In your +youth it was immodest, unmaidenly, reprehensible, for a woman to be +anything except timid, easily abashed, ignorant of vital truths, and +submissive to every social convention; to-day women are neither ignorant +nor timid; they are innocent because they choose to be; they are +fearless, intelligent, ambitious, and self-reliant--and lose nothing in +feminine charm by daring to be themselves instead of admitting their +fitness only for the seraglio of some Occidental monogamist--" + +"Louis! Your mother is present!" + +"Good heavens, father, I know it! Isn't it possible even for a man's own +mother to hear a little truth once in a while--" + +His father rose in pallid wrath: + +"Be silent!" he said, unsteadily; "the subject is definitely ended." + + * * * * * + +It was ended. His father gave him a thin, chilly hand at parting. But +his mother met him at the outer door and laid her trembling lips to his +forehead. + +"You won't bring this shame on us, Louis, I know. Nor on yourself, nor +on the name you bear.... It is an honourable name in the land, Louis.... +I pray God to bless you and counsel you, my son--" She turned away, +adding in a whisper--"and--and comfort you." + +And so he went away from Spindrift House through a snow-storm, and +arrived in New York late that evening; but not too late to call Valerie +on the telephone and hear again the dear voice with its happy little cry +of greeting--and the promise of to-morrow's meeting before the day of +duty should begin. + + * * * * * + +Love grew as the winter sped glittering toward the far primrose dawn of +spring; work filled their days; evening brought the happiness of a +reunion eternally charming in its surprises, its endless novelty. New, +forever new, love seemed; and youth, too, seemed immortal. + +On various occasions when Valerie chanced to be at his studio, pouring +tea for him, friends of his sister came unannounced--agreeable women +more or less fashionable, who pleaded his sister's sanction of an +unceremonious call to see the great painted frieze before it was sent to +the Court House. + +He was perfectly nice to them; and Valerie was perfectly at ease; and it +was very plain that these people were interested and charmed with this +lovely Miss West, whom they found pouring tea in the studio of an artist +already celebrated; and every one of them expressed themselves and their +curiosity to his sister, Mrs. Collis, who, never having heard of Valerie +West, prudently conveyed the contrary in smiling but silent +acquiescence, and finally wrote to her brother and told him what was +being said. + +Before he determined to reply, another friend--or rather acquaintance of +the Collis family--came in to see the picture--the slim and pretty +Countess d'Enver. And went quite mad over Valerie--so much so that she +remained for an hour talking to her, almost oblivious of Neville and +his picture and of Ogilvy and Annan, who consumed time and cocktails in +the modest background. + +When she finally went away, and Neville had returned from putting her +into her over-elaborate carriage, Ogilvy said: + +"Gee, Valerie, you sure did make a hit with the lady. What was she +trying to make you do?" + +"She asked me to come to a reception of the Five-Minute Club with +Louis," said Valerie, laughing. "What _is_ the Five-Minute Club, Louis?" + +"Oh, it's a semi-fashionable, semi-artistic affair--one of the +incarnations of the latest group of revolting painters and sculptors and +literary people, diluted with a little society and a good deal of +near-society." + +Later, as they were dining together at Delmonico's, he said: + +"Would you care to go, Valerie?" + +"Yes--if you think it best for us to accept such invitations together." + +"Why not?" + +"I don't know.... Considering what we are to become to each other--I +thought--perhaps the prejudices of your friends--" + +He turned a dull red, said nothing for a moment, then, looking up at +her, suddenly laid his hand over hers where it rested on the table's +edge. + +"The world must take us as it finds us," he said. + +"I know; but is it quite fair to seek it?" + +"You adorable girl! Didn't the Countess seek us--or rather you?--and +torment you until you promised to go to the up-to-date doings of her +bally club! It's across to her, now. And as half of society has +exchanged husbands and half of the remainder doesn't bother to, I don't +think a girl like you and a man like myself are likely to meet very many +people as innately decent as ourselves." + + * * * * * + +A reception at the Five-Minute Club was anything but an ordinary affair. + +It was the ultra-modern school of positivists where realism was on the +cards and romance in the discards; where muscle, biceps, and +thumb-punching replaced technical mastery and delicate skill; where +inspiration was physical, not intellectual; where writers called a spade +a spade, and painters painted all sorts of similar bucolic instruments +with candour and an inadequate knowledge of their art; where composers +thumped their pianos the harder, the less their raucous inspiration +responded, or maundered incapably into interminable incoherency, hunting +for themes in grays and mauves and reds and yellows, determined to find +in music what does not belong there and never did. + +In spite of its apparent vigour and uncompromising modernity, one +suspected a sub-stratum of weakness and a perversity slightly vicious. + +Colour blindness might account for some of the canvases, strabismus for +some of the draughtmanship; but not for all. There was an ugly +deliberation in the glorification of the raw, the uncouth; there was a +callous hardness in the deadly elaboration of ugliness for its own sake. +And transcendentalism looked on in approval. + +A near-sighted study of various masters, brilliant, morbid, or +essentially rotten, was the basis of this cult--not originality. Its +devotees were the devotees of Richard Strauss, of Huysmans, of Manet, of +Degas, Rops, Louis Le Grand, Forain, Monticelli; its painters painted +nakedness in footlight effects with blobs for faces and blue shadows +where they were needed to conceal the defects of impudent drawing; its +composers maundered with both ears spread wide for stray echoes of +Salome; its sculptors, stupefied by Rodin, achieved sections of human +anatomy protruding from lumps of clay and marble; its dramatists, +drugged by Mallarmé and Maeterlinck, dabbled in dullness, platitude and +mediocre psychology; its writers wrote as bloodily, as squalidly, and as +immodestly as they dared; its poets blubbered with Verlaine, spat with +Aristide Bruant, or leered with the alcoholic muses of the Dead Rat. + +They were all young, all in deadly earnest, all imperfectly educated, +all hard workers, brave workers, blind, incapable workers sweating and +twisting and hammering in their impotence against the changeless laws of +truth and beauty. With them it was not a case of a loose screw; all +screws had been tightened so brutally that the machinery became +deadlocked. They were neither lazy, languid, nor precious; they only +thought they knew how and they didn't. All their vigour was sterile; all +their courage vain. + +Several attractive women exquisitely gowned were receiving; there was +just a little something unusual in their prettiness, in their toilets; +and also a little something lacking; and its absence was as noticeable +in them as it was in the majority of arriving or departing guests. + +It could not have been self-possession and breeding which an outsider +missed. For the slim Countess d'Enver possessed both, inherited from +her Pittsburgh parents; and Mrs. Hind-Willet was born to a social +security indisputable; and Latimer Varyck had been in the diplomatic +service before he wrote "Unclothed," and the handsome, dark-eyed Mrs. +Atherstane divided social Manhattan with a blonder and lovelier rival. + +Valerie entering with Neville, slender, self-possessed, a hint of +inquiry in her level eyes, heard the man at the door announce them, and +was conscious of many people turning as they passed into the big +reception room. A woman near her murmured, "What a beauty!" Another +added, "How intelligently gowned!" The slim Countess Hélène d'Enver, née +Nellie Jackson, held out a perfectly gloved hand and nodded amiably to +Neville. Then, smiling fixedly at Valerie: + +"My dear, how nice of you," she said. "And you, too, Louis; it is very +amusing of you to come. José Querida has just departed. He gave us such +a delightful five-minute talk on modernity. Quoting Huneker, he spoke of +it as a 'quality'--and 'that nervous, naked vibration'--" + +She ended with a capricious gesture which might have meant anything +ineffable, or an order for a Bronx cocktail. + +"What's a nervous, naked vibration?" demanded Neville, with an impatient +shrug. "It sounds like a massage parlour--not," he added with respect, +"that Huneker doesn't know what he's talking about. Nobody doubts that. +Only art is one delicious bouillabaisse to him." + +The Countess d'Enver laughed, still retaining Valerie's hand: + +"Your gown is charming--may I add that you are disturbingly beautiful, +Miss West? When they have given you some tea, will you find me if I +can't find you?" + +"Yes, I will," said Valerie. + +At the tea table Neville brought her a glass of sherry and a bite of +something squashy; a number of people spoke to him and asked to be +presented to Valerie. Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning +simplicity of her manner were noticed everywhere, and everywhere +commented on. People betrayed a tendency to form groups around her; +women, prepared by her unusual beauty for anything between mediocrity +and inanity, were a little perplexed at her intelligence and candour. + +To Mrs, Hind-Willet's question she replied innocently: "To me there is +no modern painter comparable to Mr. Neville, though I dearly love +Wilson, Sorella and Querida." + +To Latimer Varyck's whimsical insistence she finally was obliged to +admit that her reasons for not liking Richard Strauss were because she +thought him ugly, uninspired, and disreputable, which unexpected truism +practically stunned that harmless dilettante and so delighted Neville +that he was obliged to disguise his mirth with a scowl directed at the +ceiling. + +"Did I say anything very dreadful, Kelly?" she whispered, when +opportunity offered. + +"No, you darling. I couldn't keep a civil face when you told the truth +about Richard Strauss to that rickety old sensualist." + +[Illustration: "Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning simplicity +of her manner were noticed everywhere."] + +"I don't really know enough to criticise anything. But Mr. Varyck +_would_ make me answer; and one must say something." + +Olaf Dennison, without preliminary, sat down at the piano, tossed aside +his heavy hair, and gave a five-minute prelude to the second act of his +new opera, "Yvonne of Bannalec." The opera might as well have been +called Mamie of Hoboken, for all the music signified to Neville. + +Mrs. Hind-Willet, leaning over the chair where Valerie was seated, +whispered fervently: + +"Isn't it graphic! The music describes an old Breton peasant going to +market. You can hear the very click of his sabots and the gurgle of the +cider in his jug. And that queer little slap-stick noise is where he's +striking palms with another peasant bargaining for his cider." + +"But where does Yvonne come in?" inquired Valerie in soft bewilderment. + +"He's Yvonne's father," whispered Mrs. Hind-Willet. "The girl doesn't +appear during the entire opera. It's a marvellously important advance +beyond the tonal and graphic subtleties of Richard Strauss." + +Other earnest and worthy people consumed intervals of five minutes now +and then; a "discuse,"--whom Neville insisted on calling a +"disease,"--said a coy and rather dirty little French poem directly at +her audience, leeringly assisted by an over-sophisticated piano +accompaniment. + +"If that's modernity it's certainly naked and nervous enough," commented +Neville, drily. + +"It's--it's perfectly horrid," murmured Valerie, the blush still +lingering on cheek and brow. "I can't understand how intelligent people +can even think about such things." + +"Modernity," repeated Neville. "Hello; there's Carrillo, the young +apostle of Bruant, who makes such a hit with the elect." + +"How, Kelly?" + +"Realism, New York, and the spade business. He saw a sign on a Bowery +clothing store,--'Gents Pants Half Off Today,' and he wrote a poem on it +and all Manhattan sat up and welcomed him as a peerless realist; and +dear old Dean Williams compared him to Tolstoy and Ed. Harrigan, and +there was the deuce to pay artistically and generally. Listen to the +Yankee Steinlen in five-minute verse, dear." + +Carrillo rose, glanced carelessly at his type-written manuscript and +announced its title unconcernedly: + + "_Mutts In Madison Square_. + + "A sodden tramp sits scratching on a bench, + The S.C.D. cart trails a lengthening stench + Where White Wings scrape the asphalt; and a breeze + Ripples the fountain and the budding trees. + Now fat old women, waddling like hogs, + Arrive to exercise their various dogs; + And 'round and 'round the little mutts all run, + Grass-maddened, frantic, circling in the sun, + Wagging and nosing--see! beneath yon tree + One little mutt meets his affinity: + And, near, another madly wags his tail + Inquiringly; but his advances fail, + And, 'yap-yap-yap!' replies the shrewish tyke, + So off the other starts upon a hike, + Rushing at random, crazed with sun and air, + Circling and barking out his canine prayer: + + "'Oh, Lord of dogs who made the Out-of-doors + And fashioned mutts to gambol on all fours, + Grant us a respite from the city's stones! + Grant us a grassy place to bury bones!--A + grassy spot to roll on now and then, + Oh, Lord of dogs who also fashioned men, + Accept our thanks for this brief breath of air, + And grant, Oh, Lord, a humble mongrel's prayer!' + + * * * * * + + The hoboe, sprawling, scratches in the sun; + While 'round and 'round the happy mongrels run." + +"Good Heavens," breathed Neville, "that sort of thing may be modern and +strong, but it's too rank for me, Valerie. Shall we bolt?" + +"I--I think we'd better," she said miserably. "I don't think I care +for--for these interesting people very much." + +They rose and passed slowly along the walls of the room, which were hung +with "five-minute sketches," which probably took five seconds to +conceive and five hours to execute--here an unclothed woman, chiefly +remarkable for an extraordinary development of adipose tissue and +house-maid's knee; here a pathological gem that might have aptly +illustrated a work on malformations; yonder a dashing dab of balderdash, +and next it one of Rackin's masterpieces, flanked by a gem of Stanley +Pooks. + +In the centre of the room, emerging from a chunk of marble, the back and +neck and one ear of an unclothed lady protruded; and the sculptured +achievement was labelled, "Beatrice Andante." + +"Oh, Lord," whispered Neville, repressing a violent desire to laugh. +"Beatrice and Aunty! I didn't know he had one." + +"Is it Dante's Beatrice, Kelly? Where is Dante and his Aunty?" + +"God knows. They made a mess of it anyway, those two--andante--which I +suppose this mess in marble symbolises. Pity he didn't have an aunty to +tell him how." + +"Louis! How irreverent!" she whispered, eyes sparkling with laughter. + +"Shall I try a five-minute fashionable impromptu, dear?" he asked: + + "If Dante'd had an Aunty + Who ante-dated Dante + And scolded him + And tolded him + The way to win a winner, + It's a cinch or I'm a sinner, + He'd have taken Trix to dinner, + He'd have given her the eye + Of the fish about to die, + And folded her, + And moulded her + Like dough within a pie-- + sallow, pallid pie-- + And cooked a scheme to marry her, + And hired a hack to carry her + To stately Harlem-by-the-Bronx, + Where now the lonely taxi honks--" + +"Kelly!" she gasped. + +They both were laughing so that they hastened their steps, fearful of +offending, and barely contrived to compose their features when making +their adieux to Mrs. Hind-Willet and the Countess d'Enver. + +As they walked east along Fifty-ninth Street, breathing in the fresh, +sparkling evening air, she said impulsively: + +"And to think, Louis, that if I had been wicked enough to marry you I'd +have driven you into that kind of society--or into something genetically +similar!" + +His face sobered: + +"You could hold your own in any society." + +"Perhaps I could. But they wouldn't let me." + +"Are you afraid to fight it out?" + +"Yes, dear--at _your_ expense. Otherwise--" She gazed smilingly into +space, a slight colour in either cheek. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Valerie West was twenty-two years old in February. One year of life lay +behind her; her future stretched away into sunlit infinity. + +Neville attained his twenty-eighth year in March. Years still lay before +him, a few lay behind him; but in a single month he had waded so swiftly +forward through the sea of life that the shallows were already passed, +the last shoal was deepening rapidly. Only immeasurable and menacing +depths remained between him and the horizon--that pale, dead line +dividing the noonday of to-day from the phantom suns of blank eternity. + +It was that winter that he began the picture destined to fix definitely +his position among the painters of his times--began it humbly, yet +somehow aware of what it was to be; afraid, for all his courage, yet +conscious of something inevitable impending. It was Destiny; and, +instinctively, he arose to meet it. + +He called the picture "A Bride." A sapphire sky fading to turquoise, in +which great clouds crowded high in argent splendour--a young girl naked +of feet, her snowy body cinctured at the waist with straight and +silvered folds, standing amid a riot of wild flowers, head slightly +dropped back, white arms inert, pendant. And in her eyes' deep velvet +depths the mystery of the Annunciation. + +All of humanity and of maturity--of adolescence and of divinity was in +that face; in the exquisitely sensitive wisdom of the woman's eyes, in +the full sweet innocence of the childish mouth--in the smooth little +hands so unsoiled, so pure--in the nun-like pallor and slender beauty of +the throat. + +[Illustration: "'Where do you keep those pretty models, Louis?' he +demanded."] + +Whatever had been his inspiration--whether spiritual conviction, or the +physical beauty of Valerie, neither he nor she considered very deeply. +But that he was embodying and creating something of the existence of +which neither he nor she had been aware a month ago, was awaking +something within them that had never before stirred or given sign of +life. + +Since the last section of the mural decoration for the new court house +had been shipped to its destination, he had busied himself on two +canvases, a portrait of his sister in furs, and the portrait of Valerie. + +Lily Collis came in the mornings twice a week to sit for her; and once +or twice Stephanie Swift came with her; also Sandy Cameron, ruddy, bald, +jovial, scoffing, and insatiably curious. + +"Where do you keep all those pretty models, Louis?" he demanded, prying +aside the tapestry with the crook of his walking stick, and peeping +behind furniture and hangings and big piles of canvases. "Be a sport and +introduce us; Stephanie wants to see a few as well as I do." + +Neville shrugged and went on painting, which exasperated Cameron. + +"It's a fraud," he observed, in a loud, confidential aside to Stephanie; +"this studio ought to be full of young men in velvet coats and bunchy +ties, singing, 'Oh la--la!' and dextrously balancing on their baggy +knees a series of assorted soubrettes. It's a bluff, a hoax, a con game! +Are you going to stand for it? I don't see any absinthe either--or even +any Vin ordinaire! Only a tea-pot--a _tea-pot!_" he repeated in +unutterable scorn. "Why, there's more of Bohemia in a Broad Street Trust +Company than there is in this Pullman car studio!" + +Mrs. Collis was laughing so that her brother had difficulty in going on +with her portrait. + +"Get out of here, Sandy," he said--"or take Stephanie into the rest of +the apartment, somewhere, and tell her your woes." + +Stephanie, who had been exploring, turning over piles of chassis and +investigating canvases and charcoal studies stacked up here and there +against the wainscot, pulled aside an easel which impeded her progress, +and in so doing accidentally turned the canvas affixed to it toward the +light. + +"Hello!" exclaimed Cameron briskly, "who is this?" + +Lily turned her small, aristocratic head, and Stephanie looked around. + +"What a perfectly beautiful girl!" she exclaimed impulsively; "who is +she, Louis?" + +"A model," he said calmly; but the careless and casual exposure of the +canvas had angered him so suddenly that his own swift emotion astonished +him. + +Lily had risen from her seat, and now stood looking fixedly at the +portrait of Valerie West, her furs trailing from one shoulder to the +chair. + +"My eye and Betty Martin!" cried Cameron, "I'll take it all back, girls! +It's a real studio after all--and this is the real thing! Louis, do you +think she's seen the Aquarium? I'm disengaged after three o'clock--" + +He began to kiss his hand rapidly in the direction of the portrait, and +then, fondly embracing his own walking stick, he took a few jaunty steps +in circles, singing "Waltz me around again, Willy." + +Lily Collis said: "If your model is as lovely as her portrait, Louis, +she is a real beauty. Who is she?" + +"A professional model." He could scarcely contain his impatience with +his sister, with Cameron's fat humour, with Stephanie's quiet and +intent scrutiny--as though, somehow, he had suddenly exposed Valerie +herself to the cool and cynically detached curiosity of a world which +she knew must always remain unfriendly to her. + +He was perfectly aware that his sister had guessed whose portrait +confronted them; he supposed, too, that Stephanie probably suspected. +And the knowledge irritated him more than the clownishness of Cameron. + +"It is a splendid piece of painting," said Stephanie cordially, and +turned quietly to a portfolio of drawings at her elbow. She had let her +fleeting glance rest on Neville for a second; had divined in a flash +that he was enduring and not courting their examination of this picture; +that, somehow, her accidental discovery of it had displeased him--was +even paining him. + +"Sandy," she said cheerfully, "come here and help me look over these +sketches." + +"Any peaches among 'em?" + +"Bushels." + +Cameron came with alacrity; Neville waited until Lily reluctantly +resumed her seat; then he pushed back the easel, turned Valerie's +portrait to the wall, and quietly resumed his painting. + +Art in any form was powerless to retain Cameron's attention for very +many consecutive minutes at a time; he grew restless, fussed about with +portfolios for a little while longer, enlivening the tedium with +characteristic observations. + +"Well, I've got business down town," he exclaimed, with great pretence +of regret. "Come on, Stephanie; we'll go to the Exchange and start +something. Shall we? Oh, anything--from a panic to a bull-market! I +don't care; go as far as you like. You may wreck a few railroads if you +want to. Only I've _got_ to go.... Awfully good of you to let +me--er--see all these--er--interesting and er--m-m-m--things, Louis. +Glad I saw that dream of a peacherino, too. What is she on the side? An +actorine? If she is I'll take a box for the rest of the season including +the road and one-night stands.... Good-bye, Mrs. Collis! Good-bye, +Stephanie! _Good_-bye, Louis!--I'll come and spend the day with you when +you're too busy to see me. Now, Stephanie, child! It's the Stock +Exchange or the Little Church around the Corner for you and me, if you +say so!" + +Stephanie had duties at a different sort of an Exchange; and she also +took her leave, thanking Neville warmly for the pleasure she had had, +and promising to lunch with Lily at the Continental Club. + +When they had departed, Lily said: + +"I suppose that is a portrait of your model, Valerie West." + +"Yes," he replied shortly. + +"Well, Louis, it is perfectly absurd of you to show so plainly that you +consider our discovery of it a desecration." + +He turned red with surprise and irritation: + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"I mean exactly what I say. You showed by your expression and your +manner that our inspection of the picture and our questions and comments +concerning it were unwelcome." + +"I'm sorry I showed it.... But they _were_ unwelcome." + +"Will you tell me why?" + +"I don't think I know exactly why--unless the portrait was a personal +and private affair concerning only myself--" + +"Louis! Has it gone as far as that?" + +"As far as what? What on earth are you trying to say, Lily?" + +"I'm trying to say--as nicely and as gently as I can--that your +behaviour--in regard to this girl is making us all perfectly wretched." + +"Who do you mean by 'us all'?" he demanded sullenly. + +"Father and mother and myself. You must have known perfectly well that +father would write to me about what you told him at Spindrift House a +month ago." + +"Did he?" + +"Of course he did, Louis! Mother is simply worrying herself ill over +you; father is incredulous--at least he pretends to be; but he has +written me twice on the subject--and I think you might just as well be +told what anxiety and unhappiness your fascination for this girl is +causing us all." + +Mrs. Collis was leaning far forward in her chair, forgetful of her pose; +Neville stood silent, head lowered, absently mixing tints upon his +palette without regard to the work under way. + +When he had almost covered his palette with useless squares of colour he +picked up a palette-knife, scraped it clean, smeared the residue on a +handful of rags, laid aside brushes and palette, and walked slowly to +the window. + +It was snowing again. He could hear the feathery whisper of the flakes +falling on the glass roof above; and he remembered the night of the new +year, and all that it had brought to him--all the wonder and happiness +and perplexity of a future utterly unsuspected, undreamed of. + +And now it was into that future he was staring with a fixed and blank +gaze as his sister's hand fell upon his shoulder and her cheek rested a +moment in caress against his. + +"Dearest child," she said tremulously, "I did not mean to speak harshly +or without sympathy. But, after all, shouldn't a son consider his father +and mother in a matter of this kind?" + +"I have considered them--tried to." + +Mrs. Collis dropped into an arm-chair. After a few moments he also +seated himself listlessly, and sat gazing at nothing out of absent eyes. + +She said: "You know what father and mother are. Even I have something +left of their old-fashioned conservatism clinging to me--and yet people +consider me extremely liberal in my views. But all my liberality, all my +modern education since I left the dear old absurdities of our narrow +childhood and youth, can not reconcile me to what you threaten us +with--with what you are threatened--you, your entire future life." + +"What seems to threaten you--and them--is my marriage to the woman with +whom I'm in love. Does that shock you?" + +"The circumstances shock me." + +"I could not control the circumstances." + +"You can control yourself, Louis." + +"Yes--I can do that. I can break her heart and mine." + +"Hearts don't break, Louis. And is anybody to live life through exempt +from suffering? If your unhappiness comes early in life to you it will +pass the sooner, leaving the future tranquil for you, and you ready for +it, unperplexed--made cleaner, purer, braver by a sorrow that came, as +comes all sorrow--and that has gone its way, like all sorrows, leaving +you the better and the worthier." + +"How is it to leave _her_?" + +He spoke so naturally, so simply, that for the moment his sister did not +recognise in him what had never before been there to recognise--the +thought of another before himself. Afterward she remembered it. + +She said quietly: "If Valerie West is a girl really sincere and meriting +your respect, she will face this matter as you face it." + +"Yes--she would do that," he said, thoughtfully. + +"Then I think that the sooner you explain matters to her--" + +He laughed: "_I_ don't have to explain anything to her, Lily." + +"What do you mean?" + +"She knows how things stand. She is perfectly aware of your world's +attitude toward her. She has not the slightest intention of forcing +herself on you, or of asking your indulgence or your charity." + +"You mean, then, that she desires to separate you from your family--from +your friends--" + +"No," he said wearily, "she does not desire that, either." + +His sister's troubled eyes rested on him in silence for a while; then: + +"I know she is beautiful; I am sure she is good, Louis--good in--in her +own way--worthy, in her own fashion. But, dear, is that all that you, a +Neville, require of the woman who is to bear your name--bear your +children?" + +"She _is_ all I require--and far more." + +"Dear, you are utterly blinded by your infatuation!" + +"You do not know her." + +"Then let me!" exclaimed Mrs. Collis desperately. "Let me meet her, +Louis--let me talk with her--" + +"No.... And I'll tell you why, Lily; it's because she does not care to +meet you." + +"What!" + +"I have told you the plain truth. She sees no reason for knowing you, or +for knowing my parents, or any woman in a world that would never +tolerate her, never submit to her entrance, never receive her as one of +them!--a world that might shrug and smile and endure her as my wife--and +embitter my life forever." + +As he spoke he was not aware that he merely repeated Valerie's own +words; he remained still unconscious that his decision was in fact +merely her decision; that his entire attitude had become hers because +her nature and her character were as yet the stronger. + +But in his words his sister's quick intelligence perceived a logic and a +conclusion entirely feminine and utterly foreign to her brother's habit +of mind. And she realised with a thrill of fear that she had to do, not +with her brother, but with a woman who was to be reckoned with. + +"Do you--or does Miss West think it likely that I am a woman to wound, +to affront another--no matter who she may be? Surely, Louis, you could +have told her very little about me--" + +"I never mention you to her." + +Lily caught her breath. + +"Why?" + +"Why should I?" + +"That is unfair, Louis! She has the right to know about your own +family--otherwise how can she understand the situation?" + +"It's like all situations, isn't it? You and father and mother have your +own arbitrary customs and traditions and standards of respectability. +You rule out whom you choose. Valerie West knows perfectly well that you +would rule her out. Why should she give you the opportunity?" + +"Is she afraid of me?" + +He smiled: "I don't think so." And his smile angered his sister. + +"Very well," she said, biting her lip. + +For a few moments she sat there deliberating, her pointed patent-leather +toe tapping the polished floor. Then she stood up, with decision: + +"There is no use in our quarrelling, Louis--until the time comes when +some outsider forces us into an unhappy misunderstanding. Kiss me +good-bye, dear." + +She lifted her face; he kissed her; and her hand closed impulsively on +his arm: + +"Louis! Louis! I love you. I am so proud of you--I--you know I love you, +don't you?" + +"Yes--I think so." + +"You _know_ I am devoted to your happiness!--your _real_ +happiness--which those blinded eyes in that obstinate head of yours +refuse to see. Believe me--believe me, dear, that your _real_ happiness +is not in this pretty, strange girl's keeping. No, no, no! You are +wrong, Louis--terribly and hopelessly wrong! Because happiness for you +lies in the keeping of another woman--a woman of your own world, +dear--of your own kind--a gently-bred, lovable, generous girl whom you, +deep in your heart and soul, love, unknowingly--have always loved!" + +He shook his head, slowly, looking down into his sister's eyes. + +She said, almost frightened: + +"You--you won't do it--suddenly--without letting us know--will you, +Louis?" + +"What?" + +"Marry this girl!" + +"No," he said, "it is not likely." + +"But you--you mean to marry her?" + +"I want to.... But it is not likely to happen--for a while." + +"How long?" + +"I don't know." + +She drew a tremulous breath of relief, looking up into his face. Then +her eyes narrowed; she thought a moment, and her gaze became preoccupied +and remote, and her lips grew firm with the train of thought she was +pursuing. + +He put his arms around her and kissed her again; and she felt the boyish +appeal in it and her lip quivered. But she could not respond, could not +consider for one moment, could not permit her sympathy for him to enlist +her against what she was devoutly convinced were his own most vital +interests--his honour, his happiness, the success of his future career. + +She said with tears in her eyes: "Louis, I love you dearly. If God will +grant us all a little patience and a little wisdom there will be a way +made clear to all of us. Good-bye." + +[Illustration: "'Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting +one,' said Lily."] + +Whether it was that the Almighty did not grant Mrs. Collis the patience +to wait until a way was made clear, or whether another letter from her +father decided her to clear that way for herself, is uncertain; but one +day in March Valerie received a letter from Mrs. Collis; and answered +it; and the next morning she shortened a seance with Querida, exchanged +her costume for her street-clothes, and hastened to her apartments, +where Mrs. Collis was already awaiting her in the little sitting-room. + +Valerie offered her hand and stood looking at Lily Collis, as though +searching for some resemblance to her brother in the pretty, slightly +flushed features. There was a very indefinite family resemblance. + +"Miss West," she said, "it is amiable of you to overlook the +informality--" + +"I am not formal, Mrs. Collis," she said, quietly. "Will you sit here?" +indicating an arm-chair near the window,--"because the light is not very +good and I have some mending to do on a costume which I must pose in +this afternoon." + +Lily Collis seated herself, her bewitched gaze following Valerie as she +moved lightly and gracefully about, collecting sewing materials and the +costume in question, and bringing them to a low chair under the north +window. + +"I am sure you will not mind my sewing," she said, with a slight upward +inflection to her voice, which made it a question. + +"Please, Miss West," said Lily, hastily. + +"It is really a necessity," observed Valerie threading her needle and +turning over the skirt. "Illustrators are very arbitrary gentlemen; a +model's failure to keep an engagement sometimes means loss of a valuable +contract to them, and that isn't fair either to them or to their +publishers, who would be forced to hunt up another artist at the last +moment." + +"Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting one," said Lily in +a low voice. + +Valerie smiled: "It is a very exacting one." + +There was a silence. Valerie's head was bent over her sewing; Mrs. +Collis, fascinated, almost alarmed by her beauty, could not take her +eyes from her. Outwardly Lily was pleasantly reserved, perfectly at +ease with this young girl; inwardly all was commotion approaching actual +consternation. + +She had been prepared for youth, for a certain kind of charm and +beauty--but not for this kind--not for the loveliness, the grace, the +composure, the exquisite simplicity of this young girl who sat sewing +there before her. + +She was obliged to force herself to recollect that this girl was a model +hired to pose for men--paid to expose her young, unclothed limbs and +body! Yet--could it be possible! Was this the girl hailed as a comrade +by the irrepressible Ogilvy and Annan--the heroine of a score of +unconventional and careless gaieties recounted by them? Was this the +coquette who, it was rumoured, had flung over Querida, snapped her white +fingers at Penrhyn Cardemon, and laughed disrespectfully at a dozen +respected pillars of society, who appeared to be willing to support her +in addition to the entire social structure? + +Very quietly the girl raised her head. Her sensitive lips were edged +with a smile, but there was no mirth in her clear eyes: + +"Mrs. Collis, perhaps you are waiting for me to say something about your +letter and my answer to it. I did not mean to embarrass you by not +speaking of it, but I was not certain that the initiative lay with me." + +Lily reddened: "It lies with _me_, Miss West--the initiative. I mean--" +She hesitated, suddenly realising how difficult it had become to go +on,--how utterly unprepared she was to encounter passive resistance from +such composure as this young girl already displayed. + +"You wrote to me about your anxiety concerning Mr. Neville," said +Valerie, gently. + +"Yes--I did, Miss West. You will surely understand--and forgive me--if I +say to you that I am still a prey to deepest anxiety." + +"Why?" + +The question was so candid, so direct that for a moment Lily remained +silent. But the dark, clear, friendly eyes were asking for an answer, +and the woman of the world who knew how to meet most situations and how +to dominate them, searched her experience in vain for the proper words +to use in this one. + +After a moment Valerie's eyes dropped, and she resumed her sewing; and +Lily bit her lip and composed her mind to its delicate task: + +"Miss West," she said, "what I have to say is not going to be very +agreeable to either of us. It is going to be painful perhaps--and it is +going to take a long while to explain--" + +"It need not take long," said Valerie, without raising her eyes from her +stitches; "it requires only a word to tell me that you and your father +and mother do not wish your brother to marry me." + +She looked up quietly, and her eyes met Lily's: + +"I promise not to marry him," she said. "You are perfectly right. He +belongs to his own family; he belongs in his own world." + +She looked down again at her sewing with a faint smile: + +"I shall not attempt to enter that world as his wife, Mrs. Collis, or to +draw him out of it.... And I hope that you will not be anxious any +more." + +She laid aside her work and rose to her slender height, smilingly, as +though the elder woman had terminated the interview; and Lily, utterly +confounded, rose, too, as Valerie offered her hand in adieu. + +"Miss West," she began, not perfectly sure of what she was saying, +"I--scarcely dare thank you--for what you have +said--for--my--brother's--sake--" + +Valerie laughed: "I would do much more than that for him, Mrs. +Collis.... Only I must first be sure of what is really the best way to +serve him." + +Lily's gloved hand tightened over hers; and she laid the other one over +it: + +"You are so generous, so sweet about it!" she said unsteadily. "And I +look into your face and I know you are good--_good_--all the way +through--" + +Valerie laughed again: + +"There isn't any real evil in me.... And I am not astonishingly +generous--merely sensible. I knew from the first that I couldn't marry +him--if I really loved him," she added, under her breath. + +They were at the door now. Lily passed out into the entry, halted, +turned impulsively, the tears in her eyes, and put both arms tenderly +around the girl. + +"You poor child," she whispered. "You dear, brave, generous girl! God +knows whether I am right or wrong. I am only trying to do my +duty--trying to do what is best for him." + +Valerie looked at her curiously: + +"Yes, you cannot choose but think of him if you really love him.... That +is the way it is with love." + +Afterward, sewing by the window, she could scarcely see the stitches for +the clinging tears. But they dried on her lashes; not one fell. And when +Rita came in breezily to join her at luncheon she was ready, her +costume mended and folded in her hand-satchel, and there remained +scarcely even a redness of the lids to betray her. + +That evening she did not stop for tea at Neville's studio; and, later, +when he telephoned, asking her to dine with him, she pleaded the +feminine prerogative of tea in her room and going to bed early for a +change. But she lay awake until midnight trying to think out a _modus +vivendi_ for Neville and herself which, would involve no sacrifice on +his part and no unhappiness for anybody except, perhaps, for herself. + +The morning was dull and threatened rain, and she awoke with a slight +headache, remembering that she had dreamed all night of weeping. + +In her mail there was a note from Querida asking her to stop for a few +moments at his studio that afternoon, several business communications, +and a long letter from Mrs. Collis which she read lying in bed, one hand +resting on her aching temples: + +"MY DEAR Miss WEST: Our interview this morning has left me with a +somewhat confused sense of indebtedness to you and an admiration and +respect for your character which I wished very much to convey to you +this morning, but which I was at a loss to express. + +"You are not only kind and reasonable, but so entirely unselfish that my +own attitude in this unhappy matter has seemed to me harsh and +ungracious. + +"I went to you entertaining a very different idea of you, and very +different sentiments from the opinion which I took away with me. I admit +that my call on you was not made with any agreeable anticipations; but +I was determined to see you and learn for myself what manner of woman +had so disturbed us all. + +"In justice to you--in grateful recognition of your tact and gentleness, +I am venturing to express to you now my very thorough respect for you, +my sense of deep obligation, and my sympathy--which I am afraid you may +not care for. + +"That it would not be suitable for a marriage to take place between my +brother and yourself is, it appears, as evident to you as it is to his +own family. Yet, will you permit me to wish that it were otherwise? I do +wish it; I wish that the circumstances had made such a marriage +possible. I say this to you in spite of the fact that we have always +expected my brother to marry into a family which has been intimate with +our own family for many generations. It is a tribute to your character +which I am unwilling to suppress; which I believe I owe to you, to say +that, had circumstances been different, you might have been made welcome +among us. + +"The circumstances of which I speak are of an importance to us, perhaps +exaggerated, possibly out of proportion to the fundamental conditions of +the situation. But they are conditions which our family has never +ignored. And it is too late for us to learn to ignore them now. + +"I think that you will feel--I think that a large part of the world +might consider our attitude toward such a woman as you have shown +yourself to be, narrow, prejudiced, provincial. The modern world would +scarcely arm us with any warrant for interfering in a matter which a man +nearly thirty is supposed to be able to manage for himself. But my +father and mother are old, and they will never change in their beliefs +and prejudices inherited from their parents, who, in turn, inherited +their beliefs. + +"It was for them more than for myself--more even than for my +brother--that I appealed to you. The latter end of their lives should +not be made unhappy. And your generous decision assures me that it will +not be made so. + +"As for myself, my marriage permitted me an early enfranchisement from +the obsolete conventional limits within which my brother and I were +brought up. + +"I understand enough of the modern world not to clash with, it +unnecessarily, enough of ultra-modernity not to be too much afraid of +it. + +"But even I, while I might theoretically admit and even admire that +cheerful and fearless courage which makes it possible for such a +self-respecting woman as yourself to face the world and force it to +recognise her right to earn her own living as she chooses--I could not +bring myself to contemplate with equanimity my brother's marrying you. +And I do not believe my father would survive such an event. + +"To us, to me, also, certain fixed conventional limits are the basis of +all happiness. To offend them is to be unhappy; to ignore them would +mean destruction to our peace of mind and self-respect. And, though I do +admire you and respect you for what you are, it is only just to you to +say that we could never reconcile ourselves to those modern social +conditions which you so charmingly represent, and which are embodied in +you with such convincing dignity. + +"Dear Miss West, have I pained you? Have I offended you in return for +all your courtesy to me? I hope not. I felt that I owed you this. +Please accept it as a tribute and as a sorrowful acquiescence in +conditions which an old-fashioned family are unable to change. + +"Very sincerely yours, + +"LILLY COLLIS." + +She lay for a while, thinking, the sheets of the letter lying loose on +the bed. It seemed to require no answer. Nor had Mrs. Collis, +apparently, any fear that Valerie would ever inform Louis Neville of +what had occurred between his sister and herself. + +Still, to Valerie, an unanswered letter was like a civil observation +ignored. + +She wrote that evening to Lily: + +"Dear Mrs. Collis: In acknowledging your letter of yesterday I beg to +assure you that I understand the inadvisability of my marrying your +brother, and that I have no idea of doing it, and that, through me, he +shall never know of your letters or of your visit to me in his behalf. + +"With many thanks for your kindly expressions of good-will toward me, I +am + +"Very truly yours, + +"VALERIE WEST." + +She had been too tired to call at Querida's studio, too tired even to +take tea at the Plaza with Neville. + +Rita came in, silent and out of spirits, and replied in monosyllables to +Valerie's inquiries. + +It finally transpired that Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan had been +tormenting John Burleson after their own fashion until their inanity +had exasperated her and she expressed herself freely to everybody +concerned. + +"It makes me very angry," she said, "to have a lot of brainless people +believe that John Burleson is stupid. He isn't; he is merely a trifle +literal, and far too intelligent to see any humour in the silly capers +Sam and Harry cut." + +Valerie, who was feeling better, sipped her tea and nibbled her toast, +much amused at Rita's championship of the big sculptor. + +"John is a dear," she said, "but even his most enthusiastic partisans +could hardly characterise him as a humorist." + +"He's not a clown--if that's what you mean," said Rita shortly. + +"But, Rita, he _isn't_ humorous, you know." + +"He _is_. He has a sense of humour perfectly intelligible to those who +understand it." + +"Do you, dear?" + +"Certainly ... And I always have understood it." + +"Oh, what kind of occult humour is it?" + +"It is a quiet, cultivated, dignified sense of humour not uncommon in +New England, and not understood in New York." + +Valerie nibbled her toast, secretly amused. Burleson was from +Massachusetts. Rita was the daughter of a Massachusetts clergyman. No +doubt they were fitted to understand each other. + +It occurred to her, too, that John Burleson and Rita Tevis had always +been on a friendly footing rather quieter and more serious than the +usual gay and irresponsible relations maintained between two people +under similar circumstances. + +Sometimes she had noticed that when affairs became too frivolous and +the scintillation of wit and epigram too rapid and continuous, John +Burleson and Rita were very apt to edge out of the circle as though for +mutual protection. + +"You're not posing for John, are you, Rita?" she asked. + +"No. He has a bad cold, and I stopped in to see that he wore a red +flannel bandage around his throat. A sculptor's work is so dreadfully +wet and sloppy, and his throat has always been very delicate." + +"Do you mean to say that you charge your mind with the coddling of that +great big, pink-cheeked boy?" laughed Valerie, + +"Coddling!" repeated Rita, flushing up. "I don't call it coddling to +stop in for a moment to remind a friend that he doesn't know how to take +care of himself, and never will." + +"Nonsense. You couldn't kill a man of that size and placidity of +character." + +"You don't know anything about him. He is much more delicate than he +looks." + +Valerie glanced curiously at the girl, who was preparing oysters in the +chafing dish. + +"How do _you_ happen to know so much about him, Rita?" + +She answered, carelessly: "I have known him ever since I began to +pose--almost." + +Valerie set her cup aside, sprang up to rinse mouth and hands. Then, +gathering her pink negligée around her, curled up in a big wing-chair, +drawing her bare feet up under the silken folds and watching Rita +prepare the modest repast for one. + +"Rita," she said, "who was the first artist you ever posed for? Was it +John Burleson--and did you endure the tortures of the damned?" + +"No, it was not John Burleson.... And I endured--enough." + +"Don't you care to tell me who it was?" + +Rita did not reply at that time. Later, however, when the simple supper +was ended, she lighted a cigarette and found a place where, with +lamplight behind her, she could read a book which Burleson had sent her, +and which she had been attempting to assimilate and digest all winter. +It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds. It was +called "Essays on the Obvious "; and Valerie had made fun of it until, +to her surprise, she noticed that her pleasantries annoyed Rita. + +Valerie, curled up in the wing-chair, cheek resting against its velvet +side, was reading the Psalms again--fascinated as always by the noble +music of the verse. And it was only by chance that, lifting her eyes +absently for a moment, she found that Rita had laid aside her book and +was looking at her intently. + +"Hello, dear!" she said, indolently humorous. + +Rita said: "You read your Bible a good deal, don't you?" + +"Parts of it." + +"The parts you believe?" + +"Yes; and the parts that I can't believe." + +"What parts can't you believe?" + +Valerie laughed: "Oh, the unfair parts--the cruel parts, the +inconsistent parts." + +"What about faith?" + +"Faith is a matter of temperament, dear." + +"Haven't you any?" + +"Yes, in all things good." + +"Then you have faith in yourself that you are capable of deciding what +is good and worthy of belief in the Scriptures, and what is unworthy?" + +[Illustration: "It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly +four pounds."] + +"It must be that way. I am intelligent. One must decide for one's self +what is fair and what is unfair; what is cruel and what is merciful and +kind. Intelligence must always evolve its own religion; sin is only an +unfaithfulness to what one really believes." + +"What _do_ you believe, Valerie?" + +"About what, dear?" + +"Love." + +"Loving a man?" + +"Yes." + +"You know what my creed is--that love must be utterly unselfish to be +pure--to be love at all." + +"One must not think of one's self," murmured Rita, absently. + +"I don't mean that. I mean that one must not hesitate to sacrifice one's +self when the happiness or welfare of the other is in the balance." + +"Yes. Of course!... Suppose you love a man." + +"Yes," said Valerie, smiling, "I can imagine that." + +"Listen, dear. Suppose you love a man. And you think that perhaps he is +beginning--just beginning to care a little for you. And suppose--suppose +that you are--have been--long ago--once, very long ago--" + +"What?" + +"Unwise," said Rita, in a low voice. + +"Unwise? How?" + +"In the--unwisest way that a girl can be." + +"You mean any less unwise than a man might be--probably the very man she +is in love with?" + +"You know well enough what is thought about a girl's unwisdom and the +same unwisdom in a man." + +"I know what is thought; but _I_ don't think it." + +"Perhaps you don't. But the world's opinion is different." + +"Yes, I know it.... What is your question again? You say to me, here's +a man beginning to care for a girl who has been unwise enough before she +knew him to let herself believe she cared enough for another man to +become his mistress. Is that it, Rita?" + +"Y-yes." + +"Very well. What do you wish to ask me?" + +"I wish to ask you what that girl should do." + +"Do? Nothing. What is there for her to do?" + +"Ought she to let that man care for her?" + +"Has he ever made the same mistake she has?" + +"I--don't think so." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Almost." + +"Well, then, I'd tell him." + +Rita lay silent, gazing into space, her blond hair clustering around the +pretty oval of her face. + +Valerie waited for a few moments, then resumed her reading, glancing +inquiringly at intervals over the top of her book at Rita, who seemed +disinclined for further conversation. + +After a long silence she sat up abruptly on the sofa and looked at +Valerie. + +"You asked me who was the first man for whom I posed. I'll tell you if +you wish to know. It was Penrhyn Cardemon!... And I was eighteen years +old." + +Valerie dropped her book in astonishment. + +"Penrhyn Cardemon!" she repeated. "Why, he isn't an artist!" + +"He has a studio." + +"Where?" + +"On Fifth Avenue." + +"What does he do there?" + +"Deviltry." + +Valerie's face was blank; Rita sat sullenly cradling one knee in her +arms, looking at the floor, her soft, gold hair hanging over her face +and forehead so that it shadowed her face. + +"I've meant to tell you for a long time," she went on; "I would have +told you if Cardemon had ever sent for you to--to pose--in his place." + +"He asked me to go on _The Mohave_." + +"I'd have warned you if Louis Neville had not objected." + +"Do you suppose Louis knew?" + +"No. He scarcely knows Penrhyn Cardemon. His family and Cardemon are +neighbours in the country, but the Nevilles and the Collises are +snobs--I'm speaking plainly, Valerie--and they have no use for that +red-faced, red-necked, stocky young millionaire." + +Valerie sat thinking; Rita, nursing her knee, brooded under the bright +tangle of her hair, linking and unlinking her fingers as she gently +swayed her foot to and fro. + +"That's how it is," she said at last. "Now you know." + +Valerie's head was still lowered, but she raised her eyes and looked +straight at Rita where she sat on the sofa's edge, carelessly swinging +her foot to and fro. + +"Was it--Penrhyn Cardemon?" she asked. + +"Yes.... I thought it had killed any possibility of ever caring--that +way--for any other man." + +"But it hasn't?" + +"No." + +"And--you are in love?" + +"Yes." + +"With John Burleson?" + +Rita looked up from the burnished disorder of her hair: + +"I have been in love with him for three years," she said, "and you are +the only person in the world except myself who knows it." + +Valerie rose and walked over to Rita and seated herself beside her. Then +she put one arm around her; and Rita bit her lip and stared at space, +swinging her slender foot. + +"You poor dear," said Valerie. Rita's bare foot hung inert; the silken +slipper dropped from it to the floor; and then her head fell, sideways, +resting on Valerie's shoulder, showering her body with its tangled gold. + +Valerie said, thoughtfully: "Girls don't seem to have a very good +chance.... I had no idea about Cardemon--that he was that kind of a man. +A girl never knows. Men can be so attractive and so nice.... And so many +of them are merciless.... I suppose you thought you loved him." + +"Y--yes." + +"We all think that, I suppose," said Valerie, thoughtfully. + +"Other girls have thought it of Penrhyn Cardemon." + +"Other _girls?_" + +"Yes." + +Valerie's face expressed bewilderment. + +"I didn't know that there were really such men." + +Rita closed her disillusioned eyes. + +"Plenty," she said wearily. + +"I don't care to believe that." + +"You may believe it, Valerie. Men are almost never single-minded; women +are--almost always. You see what chance for happiness we have? But it's +the truth, and the world has been made that way. It's a man's world, +Valerie. I don't think there's much use for us to fight against it.... +She sat very silent for a while, close to Valerie, her hot face on the +younger girl's shoulder. Suddenly she straightened up and dried her eyes +naïvely on the sleeve of her kimona. + +"Goodness!" she said, "I almost forgot!" + +And a moment later Valerie heard her at the telephone: + +"Is that you, John?" + + * * * * * + +"Have you remembered to take your medicine?" + + * * * * * + +"How perfectly horrid of you! Take it at once! It's the one in the brown +bottle--six drops in a wineglass of water--" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Mrs. Hind-Willet, born to the purple--or rather entitled to a narrow +border of discreet mauve on all occasions of ceremony in Manhattan, was +a dreamer of dreams. One of her dreams concerned her hyphenated husband, +and she put him away; another concerned Penrhyn Cardemon; and she woke +up. But the persistent visualisation, which had become obsession, of a +society to be formed out of the massed intellects of Manhattan +regardless of race, morals, or previous condition of social servitude--a +gentle intellectual affinity which knew no law of art except individual +inspiration, haunted her always. And there was always her own set to +which she could retreat if desirable. + +She had begun with a fashionable and semi-fashionable nucleus which +included Mrs. Atherstane, the Countess d'Enver, Latimer Varyck, Olaf +Dennison, and Pedro Carrillo, and then enlarged the circle from those +perpetual candidates squatting anxiously upon the social step-ladder all +the way from the bottom to the top. + +The result was what Ogilvy called intellectual local option; and though +he haunted this agglomeration at times, particularly when temporarily +smitten by a pretty face or figure, he was under no illusions concerning +it or the people composing it. + +Returning one afternoon from a reception at Mrs. Atherstane's he replied +to Annan's disrespectful inquiries and injurious observations: + +"You're on to that joint, Henry; it's a saloon, not a salon; and Art is +the petrified sandwich. Fix me a very, ve-ry high one, dearie, because +little sunshine is in love again." + +"Who drew the lucky number?" asked Annan with a shrug. + +"The Countess d'Enver. She's the birdie." + +"Intellectually?" + +"Oh, she's an intellectual four-flusher, bless her heart! But she was +the only woman there who didn't try to mentally frisk me. We lunch +together soon, Henry." + +"Where's Count hubby?" + +"Aloft. She's a bird," he repeated, fondly reminiscent over his +high-ball--"and I myself am the real ornithological thing--the species +that Brooklyn itself would label 'boid' ... She has such pretty, +confiding ways, Harry." + +"You'd both better join the Audubon Society for Mutual Protection," +observed Annan dryly. + +"I'll stand for anything she stands for except that social Tenderloin; +I'll join anything she joins except the 'classes now forming' in that +intellectual dance hall. By the way, who do you suppose was there?" + +"The police?" + +"Naw--the saloon wasn't raided, though 'Professor' Carrillo's poem was +_assez raide_. Mek-mek-k-k-k! But oh, the ginky pictures! Oh, the Art +Beautiful! Aniline rainbows exploding in a physical culture school +couldn't beat that omelette!... And guess who was pouring tea in the +centre of the olio, Harry!" + +"You?" inquired Annan wearily. + +"Valerie West." + +"What in God's name has that bunch taken her up for?" + + * * * * * + +For the last few weeks Valerie's telephone had rung intermittently +summoning her to conversation with Mrs. Hind-Willet. + +At first the amiable interest displayed by Mrs. Hind-Willet puzzled +Valerie until one day, returning to her rooms for luncheon, she found +the Countess d'Enver's brougham standing in front of the house and that +discreetly perfumed lady about to descend. + +"How do you do?" said Valerie, stopping on the sidewalk and offering her +hand with a frank smile. + +"I came to call on you," said the over-dressed little countess; "may I?" + +"It is very kind of you. Will you come upstairs? There is no elevator." + +The pretty bejewelled countess arrived in the living room out of breath, +and seated herself, flushed, speechless, overcome, her little white +gloved hand clutching her breast. + +Valerie, accustomed to the climb, was in nowise distressed; and went +serenely about her business while the countess was recovering. + +"I am going to prepare luncheon; may I hope you will remain and share it +with me?" she asked. + +The countess nodded, slowly recovering her breath and glancing curiously +around the room. + +"You see I have only an hour between poses," observed Valerie, moving +swiftly from cupboard to kitchenette, "so luncheon is always rather +simple. Miss Tevis, with whom I live, never lunches here, so I take +what there is left from breakfast." + +[Illustration: The Countess d'Enver.] + +A little later they were seated at a small table together, sipping +chocolate. There was cold meat, a light salad, and fruit. The +conversation was as haphazard and casual as the luncheon, until the +pretty countess lighted a cigarette and tasted her tiny glass of +Port--the latter a gift from Querida. "Do you think it odd of me to +call on you uninvited?" she asked, with that smiling abruptness which +sometimes arises from embarrassment. + +"I think it is very sweet of you," said Valerie, "I am very happy to +know that you remember me." + +The countess flushed up: "Do you really feel that way about it?" + +"Yes," said Valerie, smiling, "or I would not say so." + +"Then--you give me courage to tell you that since I first met you I've +been--quite mad about you." + +"About _me_!" in smiling surprise. + +"Yes. I wanted to know you. I told Mrs. Hind-Willet to ask you to the +club. She did. But you never came.... And I _did_ like you so much." + +Valerie said in a sweet, surprised way: "Do you know what I am?" + +"Yes; you sit for artists." + +"I am a professional model," said Valerie. "I don't believe you +understood that, did you?" + +"Yes, I did," said the countess. "You pose for the ensemble, too." + +Valerie looked at her incredulously: + +"Do you think you would really care to know me? I, an artist's model, +and you, the Countess d'Enver?" + +"I was Nellie Jackson before that." She leaned across the table, +smiling, with heightened colour; "I believe I'd never have to pretend +with you. The minute I saw you I liked you. Will you let me talk to +you?" + +"Y--yes." + +There was a constrained silence; Hélène d'Enver touched the water in the +bowl with her finger-tips, dried them, looked up at Valerie, who rose. +Under the window there was a tufted seat; and here they found places +together. + +"Do you know why I came?" asked Hélène d'Enver. "I was lonely." + +"_You!_" + +"My dear, I am a lonely woman; I'm lonely to desperation. I don't belong +in New York and I don't belong in France, and I don't like Pittsburgh. +I'm lonely! I've always been lonely ever since I left Pittsburgh. There +doesn't seem to be any definite place anywhere for me. And I haven't a +real woman friend in the world!" + +"How in the world can you say that?" exclaimed Valerie, astonished. + +The countess lighted another cigarette and wreathed her pretty face in +smoke. + +"You think because I have a title and am presentable that I can go +anywhere?" She smiled. "The society I might care for hasn't the +slightest interest in me. There is in this city a kind of society +recruited largely from the fashionable hotels and from among those who +have no fixed social position in New York--people who are never very far +outside or inside the edge of things--but who never penetrate any +farther." She laughed. "This society camps permanently at the base of +the Great Wall of China. But it never scales it." + +"Watch the men on Fifth Avenue," she went on. "Some walk there as though +they do not belong there; some walk as though they do belong there; +some, as though they lived there. I move about as though I belonged +where I am occasionally seen; but I'm tired of pretending that I live +there." + +She leaned back among the cushions, dropping one knee over the other +and tossing away her cigarette. And her little suede shoe swung +nervously to and fro. + +"You're the first girl I've seen in New York who, I believe, really +doesn't care what I am--and I don't care what she is. Shall we be +friends? I'm lonely." + +Valerie looked at her, diffidently: + +"I haven't had very much experience in friendship--except with Rita +Tevis," she said. + +"Will you let me take you to drive sometimes?" + +"I'd love to, only you see I am in business." + +"Of course I mean after hours." + +"Thank you.... But I usually am expected--to tea--and dinner--" + +Hélène lay back among the cushions, looking at her. + +"Haven't you any time at all for me?" she asked, wistfully. + +Valerie was thinking of Neville: "Not--very--much I am afraid--" + +"Can't you spare me an hour now and then?" + +"Y--yes; I'll try." + +There was a silence. The mantel clock struck, and Valerie glanced up. +Hélène d'Enver rose, stood still a moment, then stepped forward and took +both of Valerie's hands: + +"Can't we be friends? I do need one; and I like you so much. You've the +eyes that make a woman easy. There are none like yours in New York." + +Valerie laughed, uncertainly. + +"Your friends wouldn't care for me," she said. "I don't believe there is +any real place at all for me in this city except among the few men and +women I already know." + +"Won't you include me among the number? There is a place for you in my +heart." + +Touched and surprised, the girl stood looking at the older woman in +silence. + +"May I drive you to your destination?" asked Hélène gently. + +"You are very kind.... It is Mr. Burleson's studio--if it won't take you +too far out of your way." + +By the end of March Valerie had driven with the Countess d'Enver once or +twice; and once or twice had been to see her, and had met, in her +apartment, men and women who were inclined to make a fuss over her--men +like Carrillo and Dennison, and women like Mrs. Hind-Willet and Mrs. +Atherstane. It was her unconventional profession that interested them. + +To Neville, recounting her experiences, she said with a patient little +smile: + +"It's rather nice to be liked and to have some kind of a place among +people who live in this city. Nobody seems to mind my being a model. +Perhaps they _have_ taken merely a passing fancy to me and are +exhibiting me to each other as a wild thing just captured and being +trained--" She laughed--"but they do it so pleasantly that I don't +mind.... And anyway, the Countess d'Enver is genuine; I am sure of +that." + +"A genuine countess?" + +"A genuine woman, sincere, lovable, and kind--I am becoming very fond of +her.... Do you mind my abandoning you for an afternoon now and then? +Because it _is_ nice to have as a friend a woman older and more +experienced." + +"Does that mean you're going off with her this afternoon?" + +"I _was_ going. But I won't if you feel that I'm deserting you." + +He laid aside his palette and went over to where she was standing. + +"You darling," he said, "go and drive in the Park with your funny little +friend." + +"She was going to take me to the Plaza for tea. There are to be some +very nice women there who are interested in the New Idea Home." She +added, shyly, "I have subscribed ten dollars." + +He kissed her, lightly, humorously. "And what, sweetheart, may the New +Idea Home be?" + +"Oh, it's an idea of Mrs. Hind-Willet's about caring for wayward girls. +Mrs. Willet thinks that it is cruel and silly to send them into virtual +imprisonment, to punish them and watch them and confront them at every +turn with threats and the merciless routine of discipline. She thinks +that the thing to do is to give them a chance for sensible and normal +happiness; not to segregate them one side of a dead line; not to treat +them like criminals to be watched and doubted and suspected." + +She linked her arms around his neck, interested, earnest, sure of his +sympathy and approval: + +"We want to build a school in the country--two schools, one for girls +who have misbehaved, one for youths who are similarly delinquent. And, +during recreation, we mean to let them meet in a natural manner--play +games together, dance, mingle out of doors in a wholesome and innocent +way--of course, under necessary and sympathetic supervision--and learn a +healthy consideration and respect for one another which the squalid, +crowded, irresponsible conditions of their former street life in the +slums and tenements made utterly impossible." + +He looked into the pretty, eager face with its honest, beautiful eyes +and sensitive mouth--and touched his lips to her hair. + +"It sounds fine, sweetheart," he said: "and I won't be lonely if you go +to the Plaza and settle the affairs of this topsy-turvy world.... Do you +love me?" + +"Louis! Can you ask?" + +"I do ask." + +She smiled, faintly; then her young face grew serious, and a hint of +passion darkened her eyes as her arms tightened around his neck and her +lips met his. + +"All I care for in the world, or out of it, is you, Louis. If I find +pleasure in anything it is because of you; if I take a little pride in +having people like me, it is only for your sake--for the sake of the +pride you may feel in having others find me agreeable and desirable. I +wish it were possible that your, own world could find me agreeable and +desirable--for your sake, my darling, more than for mine. But it never +will--never could. There is a wall around your world which I can never +scale. And it does not make me unhappy--I only wish you to know that I +want to be what you would have me--and if I can't be all that you might +wish, I love and adore you none the less--am none the less willing to +give you all there is to me--all there is to a girl named Valerie West +who finds this life a happy one because you have made it so for her." + +She continued to see Hélène d'Enver, poured tea sometimes at the +Five-Minute-Club, listened to the consultations over the New Idea Home, +and met a great many people of all kinds, fashionable women with a +passion for the bizarre and unconventional, women of gentle breeding and +no social pretence, who worked to support themselves; idle women, +ambitious women, restless women; but the majority formed part of the +floating circles domiciled in apartments and at the great hotels--people +who wintered in New York and were a part of its social and civic life to +that extent, but whose duties and responsibilities for the metropolitan +welfare were self-imposed, and neither hereditary nor constant. + +As all circles in New York have, at certain irregular periods, +accidental points of temporary contact, Valerie now and then met people +whom she was scarcely ever likely to see again. And it was at a New Idea +Home conference, scheduled for five o'clock in the red parlour of the +ladies' waiting room in the great Hotel Imperator, that Valerie, +arriving early as delegated substitute for Mrs. Hind-Willet, found +herself among a small group of beautifully gowned strangers--the sort of +women whom she had never before met in this way. + +They all knew each other; others who arrived seemed to recognise with +more or less intimacy everybody in the room excepting herself. + +She was sitting apart by the crimson-curtained windows, perfectly +self-possessed and rather interested in watching the arrivals of women +whose names, as she caught them, suggested social positions which were +vaguely familiar to her, when an exceedingly pretty girl detached +herself from the increasing group and came across to where Valerie was +sitting alone. + +[Illustration: "'May I sit here with you until she arrives? I am +Stephanie Swift.'"] + +"I was wondering whether you had met any of the new committee," she said +pleasantly. + +"I _had_ expected to meet the Countess d'Enver here," said Valerie, +smiling. + +The girl's expression altered slightly, but she nodded amiably; "May I +sit here with you until she arrives? I am Stephanie Swift." + +Valerie said: "It is very amiable of you. I am Valerie West." + +Stephanie remained perfectly still for a moment; then, conscious that +she was staring, calmly averted her gaze while the slow fire died out in +her cheeks. And in a moment she had decided: + +"I have heard so pleasantly about you through Mrs. Collis," she said +with perfect composure. "You remember her, I think." + +Valerie, startled, lifted her brown eyes. Then very quietly: + +"Mrs. Collis is very kind. I remember her distinctly." + +"Mrs. Collis retains the most agreeable memories of meeting you.... I--" +she looked at Valerie, curiously--"I have heard from others how charming +and clever you are--from Mr. Ogilvy?--and Mr. Annan?" + +"They are my friends," said Valerie briefly. + +"And Mr. Querida, and Mr. Burleson, and--Mr. Neville." + +"They are my friends," repeated Valerie.... After a second she added: +"They also employ me." + +Stephanie looked away: "Your profession must be most interesting, Miss +West." + +"Yes." + +"But--exacting." + +"Very." + +Neither made any further effort. A moment later, however, Hélène d'Enver +came in. She knew some of the women very slightly, none intimately; and, +catching sight of Valerie, she came across the room with a quick smile +of recognition: + +"I'm dreadfully late, dear--how do you do, Miss Swift"--to Stephanie, +who had risen. And to Valerie: "Mr. Ogilvy came; just as I had my furs +on--and you know how casually a man takes his leave when you're in a +tearing hurry!" + +She laughed and took Valerie's gloved hands in her own; and Stephanie, +who had been looking at the latter, came to an abrupt conclusion that +amazed her; and she heard herself saying: + +"It has been most interesting to meet you, Miss West. I have heard of +you so pleasantly that I had hoped to meet you some time. And I hope I +shall again." + +Valerie thanked her with a self-possession which she did not entirely +feel, and turned away with Hélène d'Enver. + +"That's the girl who is supposed to be engaged to Louis Neville," +whispered the pretty countess. + +Valerie halted, astounded. + +"Didn't you know it?" asked the other, surprised. + +For a moment Valerie remained speechless, then the wild absurdity of it +flashed over her and she laughed her relief. + +"No, I didn't know it," she said. + +"Hasn't anybody ever told you?" + +"No," said Valerie, smiling. + +"Well, perhaps it isn't so, then," said the countess naïvely. "I know +very few people of that set, but I've heard it talked about--outside." + +"I don't believe it is so," said Valerie demurely. Her little heart was +beating confidently again and she seated herself beside Hélène d'Enver +in the prim circle of delegates intent upon their chairman, who was +calling the meeting to order. + +The meeting was interesting and there were few feminine clashes--merely +a smiling and deadly exchange of amenities between a fashionable woman +who was an ardent advocate of suffrage, and an equally distinguished +lady who was scornfully opposed to it. But the franchise had nothing at +all to do with the discussion concerning the New Idea Home, which is +doubtless why it was mentioned; and the meeting of delegates proceeded +without further debate. + +After it was ended Valerie hurried away to keep an appointment with +Neville at Burleson's studio, and found the big sculptor lying on the +sofa, neck swathed in flannel, and an array of medicine bottles at his +elbow. + +"Can't go to dinner with you," he said; "Rita won't have it. There's +nothing the matter with me, but she made me lie down here, and I've +promised to stay here until she returns." + +"John, you don't look very well," said Valerie, coming over and seating +herself by his side. + +"I'm all right, except that I catch cold now and then," he insisted +obstinately. + +Valerie looked at the pink patches of colour burning in his cheeks. +There was a transparency to his skin, too, that troubled her. He was one +of those big, blond, blue-eyed fellows whose vivid colour and +fine-grained, delicate skin caused physicians to look twice. + +He had been reading when Valerie entered; now he laid his ponderous book +away, doubled his arms back under his head and looked at Valerie with +the placid, bovine friendliness which warmed her heart but always left a +slight smile in the corner of her mouth. + +"Why do you always smile at me, Valerie?" he asked. + +"Because you're good, John, and I like you." + +"I know you do. You're a fine woman, Valerie.... So is Rita." + +"Rita is a darling." + +[Illustration: "'John, you don't look very well,' said Valerie."] + +"She's all right," he nodded. A moment later he added: "She comes from +Massachusetts." + +Valerie laughed: "The sacred codfish smiled on your cradle, too, didn't +it, John?" + +"Yes, thank God," he said seriously.... "I was born in the old town of +Hitherford." + +"How funny!" exclaimed the girl. + +"What is there funny about that?" demanded John. + +"Why, Rita was born in Hitherford." + +"Hitherford Centre," corrected John. "Her father was a clergyman there." + +"Oh; so you knew it?" + +"I knew, of course, that she was from Massachusetts," said John, +"because she speaks English properly. So I asked her where she was born +and she told me.... My grandfather knew hers." + +"Isn't it--curious," mused the girl. + +"What's curious?" + +"Your meeting this way--as sculptor and model." + +"Rita is a very fine girl," he said. "Would you mind handing me my pipe? +No, don't. I forgot that Rita won't let me. You see my chest is rather +uncomfortable." + +He glanced at the clock, leaned over and gulped down some medicine, then +placidly folding his hands, lay back: + +"How's Kelly?" + +"I haven't seen him to-day, John." + +"Well, he ought to be here very soon. He can take you and Rita to +dinner." + +"I'm so sorry you can't come." + +"So am I." + +Valerie laid a cool hand on his face; he seemed slightly feverish. Rita +came in at that moment, smiled at Valerie, and went straight to +Burleson's couch: + +"Have you taken your medicine?" + +"Certainly." + +She glanced at the bottles. "Men are so horridly untruthful," she +remarked to Valerie; "and this great, lumbering six-footer hasn't the +sense of a baby--" + +"I have, too!" roared John, indignantly; and Valerie laughed but Rita +scarcely smiled. + +"He's always working in a puddle of wet clay and he's always having +colds and coughing, and there's always more or less fever," she said, +looking down at the huge young fellow. "I know that he ought to give up +his work and go away for a while--" + +"Where?" demanded Burleson indignantly. + +"Oh, somewhere--where there's plenty of--air. Like Arizona, and +Colorado." + +"Do you think there's anything the matter with my lungs?" he roared. + +"No!--you perfect idiot!" said Rita, seating herself; "and if you shout +that way at me again I'll go to dinner with Kelly and Valerie and leave +you here alone. I will not permit you to be uncivil, John. Please +remember it." + +Neville arrived in excellent spirits, greeted everybody, and stood +beside Valerie, carelessly touching the tip of his fingers to hers where +they hung at her side. + +"What's the matter with _you_, John? Rita, isn't he coming? I've a taxi +outside ruining me." + +"John has a bad cold and doesn't care to go--" + +"Yes, I do!" growled John. + +"And he doesn't care to risk contracting pneumonia," continued Rita +icily, "and he isn't going, anyway. And if he behaves like a man instead +of an overgrown baby, I have promised to stay and dine with him here. +Otherwise I'll go with you." + +"Sure. You'd better stay indoors, John. You ought to buck up and get rid +of that cold. It's been hanging on all winter." + +Burleson rumbled and grumbled and shot a mutinous glance at Rita, who +paid it no attention. + +"Order us a nice dinner at the Plaza, Kelly--if you don't mind," she +said cheerfully, going with them to the door. She added under her +breath: "I wish he'd see a doctor, but the idea enrages him. I don't +see why he has such a cold all the time--and such flushed cheeks--" Her +voice quivered and she checked herself abruptly. + +"Suppose I ring up Dr. Colbert on my own hook?" whispered Neville. + +"Would you?" + +"Certainly. And you can tell John that I did it on my own +responsibility." + +Neville and Valerie went away together, and Rita returned to the studio. +Burleson was reading again, and scowling; and he scarcely noticed her. +She seated herself by the fire and looked into the big bare studio +beyond where the electric light threw strange shadows over shrouded +shapes of wet clay and blocks of marble in the rough or partly hewn into +rough semblance of human figures. + +It was a damp place at best; there were always wet sponges, wet cloths, +pails of water, masses of moist clay about. Her blue eyes wandered over +it with something approaching fear--almost the fear of hatred. + +"John," she said, "why won't you go to a dry climate for a few months +and get rid of your cold?" + +"Do you mean Arizona?" + +"Or some similar place: yes." + +"Well, how am I to do any work out there? I've got commissions on hand. +Where am I going to find any place to work out in Arizona?" + +"Build a shanty." + +"That's all very well, but there are no models to be had out there." + +"Why don't you do some Indians?" + +"Because," said John wrathfully, "I haven't any commissions that call +for Indians. I've two angels, a nymph and a Diana to do; and I can't do +them unless I have a female model, can I?" + +After a silence Rita said carelessly: + +"I'll go with you if you like." + +"You! Out there!" + +"I said so." + +"To Arizona! You wouldn't stand for it!" + +"John Burleson!" she said impatiently, "I've told you once that I'd go +with you if you need a model! Don't you suppose I know what I am +saying?" + +He lay placidly staring at her, the heavy book open across his chest. +Presently he coughed and Rita sprang up and removed the book. + +"You'd go with me to Arizona," he repeated, as though to himself--"just +to pose for me.... That's very kind of you, Rita. It's thoroughly nice +of you. But you couldn't stand it. You'd find it too cruelly stupid out +there alone--entirely isolated in some funny town. I couldn't ask it of +you--" + +"You haven't. I've asked it--of you." + +But he only began to grumble and fret again, thrashing about restlessly +on the lounge; and the tall young girl watched him out of lowered eyes, +silent, serious, the lamplight edging her hair with a halo of ruddy +gold. + + * * * * * + +The month sped away very swiftly for Valerie. Her companionship with +Rita, her new friendship for Hélène d'Enver, her work, filled all the +little moments not occupied with Neville. It had been a happy, exciting +winter; and now, with the first days of spring, an excitement and a +happiness so strange that it even resembled fear at moments, possessed +her, in the imminence of the great change. + +Often, in these days, she found herself staring at Neville with a sort +of fixed fascination almost bordering on terror;--there were moments +when alone with him, and even while with him among his friends and hers, +when there seemed to awake in her a fear so sudden, so inexplicable, +that every nerve in her quivered apprehension until it had passed as it +came. What those moments of keenest fear might signify she had no idea. +She loved, and was loved, and was not afraid. + +In early April Neville went to Ashuelyn. Ogilvy was there, also +Stephanie Swift. + +His sister Lily had triumphantly produced a second sample of what she +could do to perpetuate the House of Collis, and was much engrossed with +nursery duties; so Stephanie haunted the nursery, while Ogilvy, Neville, +and Gordon Collis played golf over the April pastures, joining them only +when Lily was at liberty. + +Why Stephanie avoided Neville she herself scarcely knew; why she clung +so closely to Lily's skirts seemed no easier to explain. But in her +heart there was a restlessness which no ignoring, no self-discipline +could suppress--an unease which had been there many days, now--a hard, +tired, ceaseless inquietude that found some little relief when she was +near Lily Collis, but which, when alone, became a dull ache. + +She had grown thin and spiritless within the last few months. Lily saw +it and resented it hotly. + +"The child," she said to her husband, "is perfectly wretched over Louis +and his ignominious affair with that West girl. I don't know whether she +means to keep her word to me or not, but she's with him every day. +They're seen together everywhere except where Louis really belongs." + +"It looks to me," said Gordon mildly, "as though he were really in love +with her." + +"Gordon! How _can_ you say such a thing in such a sympathetic tone!" + +"Why--aren't you sorry for them?" + +"I'm sorry for Louis--and perfectly disgusted. I _was_ sorry for her; an +excess of sentimentality. But she hasn't kept her word to me." + +"Did she promise not to gad about with him?" + +"That was the spirit of the compact; she agreed not to marry him." + +"Sometimes they--don't marry," observed Gordon, twirling his thumbs. + +Lily looked up quickly; then flushed slightly. + +"What do you mean, Gordon?" + +"Nothing specific; anything in general." + +"You mean to hint that--that Louis--Louis Neville could be--permit +himself to be so common--so unutterably low--" + +"Better men have taken the half-loaf." + +"Gordon!" she exclaimed, scarlet with amazement and indignation. + +"Personally," he said, unperturbed, "I haven't much sympathy with such +affairs. If a man can't marry a girl he ought to leave her alone; that's +my idea of the game. But men play it in a variety of ways. Personally, +I'd as soon plug a loaded shot-gun with mud and then fire it, as block a +man who wants to marry." + +"I _did_ block it!" said Lily with angry decision; "and I am glad I +did." + +"Look out for the explosion then," he said philosophically, and +strolled off to see to the setting out of some young hemlocks, headed in +the year previous. + +Lily Collis was deeply disturbed--more deeply than her pride and her +sophistication cared to admit. She strove to believe that such a horror +as her husband had hinted at so coolly could never happen to a Neville; +she rejected it with anger, with fear, with a proud and dainty +fastidiousness that ought to have calmed and reassured her. It did not. + +Once or twice she reverted to the subject, haughtily; but Gordon merely +shrugged: + +"You can't teach a man of twenty-eight when, where, and how to fall in +love," he said. "And it's all the more hopeless when the girl possesses +the qualities which you once told me this girl possesses." + +Lily bit her lip, angry and disconcerted, but utterly unable to refute +him or find anything in her memory of Valerie to criticise and condemn, +except the intimacy with her brother which had continued and which, she +had supposed, would cease on Valerie's promise to her. + +"It's very horrid of her to go about with him under the +circumstances--knowing she can't marry him if she keeps her word," said +Lily. + +"Why? Stephanie goes about with him." + +"Do you think it is good taste to compare those two people?" + +"Why not. From what you told me I gather that Valerie West is as +innocent and upright a woman as Stephanie--and as proudly capable of +self-sacrifice as any woman who ever loved." + +"Gordon," she said, exasperated, "do you actually wish to see my brother +marry a common model?" + +"_Is_ she common? I thought you said--" + +"You--you annoy me," said Lily; and began to cry. + +Stephanie, coming into the nursery that afternoon, found Lily watching +the sleeping children and knitting a tiny sweater. Mrs. Collis was pale, +but her eyes were still red. + +"Where have you been, Stephanie?" + +"Helping Gordon set hemlocks." + +"Where is Louis?" + +The girl did not appear to hear the question. + +"I thought I heard him telephoning a few minutes ago," added Lily. "Look +over the banisters, dear, and see if he's still there." + +"He is," said Stephanie, not stirring. + +"Telephoning all this time? Is he talking to somebody in town?" + +"I believe so." + +Lily suddenly looked up. Stephanie was quietly examining some recently +laundered clothing for the children. + +"To whom is Louis talking; do you happen to know?" asked Lily abruptly. + +Stephanie's serious gaze encountered hers. + +"Does that concern us, Lily?" + +After a while, as Mrs. Collis sat in silence working her ivory needles, +a tear or two fell silently upon the little white wool garment on her +lap. + +And presently Stephanie went over and touched her forehead with gentle +lips; but Lily did not look up--could not--and her fingers and ivory +needles flew the faster. + +"Do you know," said Stephanie in a low voice, "that she is a modest, +well-bred, and very beautiful girl?" + +"What!" exclaimed Lily, staring at her in grief and amazement. "Of whom +are you speaking, Stephanie?" + +"Of Valerie West, dear." + +"W-what do you know about her?" + +"I have met her." + +"_You_!" + +"Yes. She came, with that rather common countess, as substitute delegate +for Mrs. Hind-Willet, to a New Idea meeting. I spoke to her, seeing she +was alone and seemed to know nobody; I had no suspicion of who she was +until she told me." + +"Mrs. Hind-Willet is a busybody!" said Lily, furious. "Let her fill her +own drawing-room with freaks if it pleases her, but she has no right to +send them abroad among self-respecting people who are too unsuspicious +to protect themselves!" + +Stephanie said: "Until one has seen and spoken with Valerie West one can +scarcely understand how a man like your brother could care so much for +her--" + +"How do you know Louis cares for her?" + +"He told me." + +Lily looked into the frank, gray eyes in horror unutterable. The crash +had come. The last feeble hope that her brother might come to his senses +and marry this girl was ended forever. + +"How--could he!" she stammered, outraged. "How could he tell--tell +_you_--" + +"Because he and I are old and close friends, Lily.... And will remain +so, God willing." + +Lily was crying freely now. + +"He had no business to tell you. He knows perfectly well what his father +and mother think about it and what I think. He can't marry her! He shall +not. It is too cruel--too wicked--too heartless! And anyway--she +promised me not to marry him--" + +"What!" + +Lily brushed the tears from her eyes, heedless now of how much Stephanie +might learn. + +"I wrote her--I went to see her in behalf of my own family as I had a +perfect right to. She promised me not to marry Louis." + +"Does Louis know this?" + +"Not unless she's told him.... I don't care whether he does or not! He +has disappointed me--he has embittered life for me--and for his parents. +We--I--I had every reason to believe that he and--you--" + +Something in Stephanie's gray eyes checked her. When breeding goes to +pieces it makes a worse mess of it than does sheer vulgarity. + +"If I were Louis I would marry her," said Stephanie very quietly. "I +gave him that advice." + +She rose, looking down at Lily where she sat bowed over her wool-work, +her face buried in her hands. + +"Think about it; and talk patiently with Louis," she said gently. + +Passing the stairs she glanced toward the telephone. Louis was still +talking to somebody in New York. + + * * * * * + +It was partly fear of what her husband had hinted, partly terror of what +she considered worse still--a legal marriage--that drove Lily Collis to +write once more to Valerie West: + +"DEAR MISS WEST: It is not that I have any disposition to doubt your +word to me, but, in view of the assurance you have given me, do you +consider it wise to permit my brother's rather conspicuous attentions to +you? + +"Permit me, my dear Miss West, as an older woman with wider experience +which years must bring, to suggest that it is due to yourself to curtail +an intimacy which the world--of course mistakenly in your case--views +always uncharitably. + +"No man--and I include my brother as severely as I do any man--has a +right to let the world form any misconception as to his intentions +toward any woman. If he does he is either ignorant or selfish and +ruthless; and it behooves a girl to protect her own reputation. + +"I write this in all faith and kindliness for your sake as well as for +his. But a man outlives such things, a woman never. And, for the sake of +your own future I beg you to consider this matter and I trust that you +may not misconstrue the motive which has given me the courage to write +you what has caused me deepest concern. + +"Very sincerely yours, + +"LILY COLLIS." + +To which Valerie replied: + +"MY DEAR, MRS. COLLIS: I have to thank you for your excellent intentions +in writing me. But with all deference to your wider experience I am +afraid that I must remain the judge of my own conduct. Pray, believe +that, in proportion to your sincerity, I am grateful to you; and that I +should never dream of being discourteous to Mr. Neville's sister if I +venture to suggest to her that liberty of conscience is a fundamental +scarcely susceptible of argument or discussion. + +"I assume that you would not care to have Mr. Neville know of this +correspondence, and for that reason I am returning to you your letter so +that you may be assured of its ultimate destruction. + +"Very truly yours, + +"VALERIE WEST." + + +Which letter and its reply made Valerie deeply unhappy; and she wrote +Neville a little note saying that she had gone to the country with +Hélène d'Enver for a few days' rest. + +The countess had taken a house among the hills at Estwich; and as chance +would have it, about eight miles from Ashuelyn and Penrhyn Cardemon's +great establishment, El Naúar. + +Later Valerie was surprised and disturbed to learn of the proximity of +Neville's family, fearing that if Mrs. Collis heard of her in the +neighbourhood she might misunderstand. + +But there was only scant and rough communication between Ashuelyn and +Estwich; the road was a wretched hill-path passable only by buck-boards; +Westwich was the nearest town to Ashuelyn and El Naúar and the city of +Dartford, the county seat most convenient to Estwich. + +Spring was early; the Estwich hills bloomed in May; and Hélène d'Enver +moved her numerous household from the huge Castilione Apartment House +to Estwich and settled down for a summer of mental and physical +recuperation. + +Valerie, writing to Neville the first week in May, said: + +"Louis, the country here is divine. I thought the shaggy, unkempt hills +of Delaware County were heavenly--and they _were_ when you came and made +them so--but this rich, green, well-ordered country with its hills and +woods and meadows of emerald--its calm river, its lovely little brooks, +its gardens, hedges, farms, is to me the most wonderful land I ever +looked upon. + +"Hélène has a pretty house, white with green blinds and verandas, and +the loveliest lawns you ever saw--unless the English lawns are lovelier. + +"To my city-wearied eyes the region is celestial in its horizon-wide +quiet. Only the ripple of water in leafy ravines--only the music of +birds breaks the silence that is so welcome, so blessed. + +"To-day Hélène and I picked strawberries for breakfast, then filled the +house with great fragrant peonies, some of which are the colour of +Brides' roses, some of water-lilies. + +"I'm quite mad with delight; I love the farm with its ducks and hens and +pigeons; I adore the cattle in the meadow. They are fragrant. Hélène +laughs at me because I follow the cows about, sniffing luxuriously. They +smell like the clover they chew. + +"Louis, dear, I have decided to remain a week here, if you don't mind. +I'm a little tired, I think. John Burleson, poor boy, does not need me. +I'm terribly worried about him. Rita writes that there is no danger of +pneumonia, but that Dr. Colbert is making a careful examination. I hope +it is not lung trouble. It would be too tragic. He is only twenty-seven. +Still, they cure such things now, don't they? Rita is hoping he will go +to Arizona, and has offered to go with him as his model. That means--if +she does go--that she'll nurse him and take care of him. She is devoted +to him. What a generous girl she is! + +"Dear, if you don't need me, or are not too lonely without seeing me +come fluttering into your studio every evening at tea-time, I would +really like to remain here a few days longer. I have arranged business +so that I can stay if it is agreeable to you. Tell me exactly how you +feel about it and I will do exactly as you wish--which, please God--I +shall always do while life lasts. + +"Sam came up over Sunday, lugging Harry Annan and a bulldog--a present +for Hélène. Sam is _so_ sentimental about Hélène! + +"And he's so droll about it. But I've seen him that way before; haven't +you? And Hélène, bless her heart, lets him make eyes at her and just +laughs in that happy, wholesome way of hers. + +"She's a perfect dear, Louis; so sweet and kind to me, so unaffected, so +genuine, so humorous about herself and her funny title. She told me that +she would gladly shed it if she were not obliged to shed her legacy with +it. I don't blame her. What an awful title--when you translate it! + +"Sam is temporarily laid up. He attempted to milk a cow and she kicked +him; and he's lying in a hammock and Hélène is reading to him, while +Harry paints her portrait. Oh, dear--I _love_ Harry Annan, but he can't +paint! + +"Dearest--as I sit here in my room with the chintz curtains blowing and +the sun shining on the vines outside my open windows, I am thinking of +you; and my girl's heart is very full--very humble in the wonder of your +love for me--a miracle ever new, ever sweeter, ever holier. + +"I pray that it be given to me to see the best way for your happiness +and your welfare; I pray that I may not be confused by thought of self. + +"Dear, the spring is going very swiftly. I can scarcely believe that May +is already here--is already passing--and that the first of June is so +near. + +"Will you _always_ love me? Will you always think tenderly of +me--happily--! Alas, it is a promise nobody can honestly make. One can +be honest only in wishing it may be so. + +"Dearest of men, the great change is near at hand--nearer than I can +realise. Do you still want me? Is the world impossible without me? Tell +me so, Louis; tell me so now--and in the years to come--very +often--very, very often. I shall need to hear you say it; I understand +now how great my need will be to hear you say it in the years to come." + +Writing to him in a gayer mood a week later: + +"It is perfectly dear of you to tell me to remain. I _do_ miss you; I'm +simply wild to see you; but I am getting so strong, so well, so +deliciously active and vigorous again. I _was_ rather run down in town. +But in the magic of this air and sunshine I have watched the +reincarnation of myself. I swim, I row, I am learning to sit a horse; I +play tennis--_and_ I flirt, Monsieur--shamelessly, with Sam and Harry. +Do you object-- + +"We had such a delightful time--a week-end party, perfectly informal and +crazy; Mrs. Hind-Willet--who is such a funny woman, considering the +position she might occupy in society--and José Querida--just six of us, +until--and this I'm afraid you may not like--Mrs. Hind-Willet telephoned +Penrhyn Cardemon to come over. + +"You know, Louis, he _seems_ a gentleman, though it is perfectly certain +that he isn't. I hate and despise him; and have been barely civil to +him. But in a small company one has to endure such things with outward +equanimity; and I am sure that nobody suspects my contempt for him and +that my dislike has not caused one awkward moment." + +She wrote again: + +"I beg of you not to suggest to your sister that she call on me. Try to +be reasonable, dear. Mrs. Collis does not desire to know me. Why should +she? Why should you wish to have me meet her? If you have any vague +ideas that my meeting her might in any possible way alter a situation +which must always exist between your family and myself, you are utterly +mistaken, dearest. + +"And my acquaintance with Miss Swift is so slight--I never saw her but +once, and then only for a moment!--that it would be only painful and +embarrassing to her if you asked her to call on me. Besides, you are a +man and you don't understand such things. Also, Mrs. Collis and Miss +Swift have only the slightest and most formal acquaintance with Hélène; +and it is very plain that they are as content with that acquaintance as +is Hélène. And in addition to that, you dear stupid boy, your family has +carefully ignored Mr. Cardemon for years, although he is their +neighbour; and Mr. Cardemon is here. And to cap the climax, your father +and mother are at Ashuelyn. _Can't_ you understand? + +"Dearest of men, don't put your family and yourself--and me--into such a +false position. I know you won't when I have explained it; I know you +trust me; I know you love me dearly. + +"We had a straw ride. There's no new straw, of course, so we had a wagon +filled with straw from one of the barns and we drove to Lake Gentian and +Querida was glorious in the moonlight with his guitar. + +"He's so nice to me now--so like himself. But I _hate_ Penrhyn Cardemon +and I wish he would go; and he's taken a fancy to me, and for Hélène's +sake I don't snub him--the unmitigated cad! + +"However, it takes all kinds to make even the smallest of house parties; +and I continue to be very happy and to write to you every day. + +"Sam is queer. I'm beginning to wonder whether he is really in love with +Hélène. If he isn't he ought to have his knuckles rapped. Of course, +Hélène will be sensible about it. But, Louis, when a really nice man +behaves as though he were in love with a woman, no matter how gaily she +laughs over it, it is bound to mean _something_ to her. And men don't +seem to understand that." + +"Mrs. Hind-Willet departs to-morrow. Sam and Harry go to Ashuelyn; Mr. +Cardemon to his rural palace, I devoutly trust; which will leave José to +Hélène and me; and he's equal to it. + +"How long may I stay, dear? I am having a heavenly time--which is odd +because heaven is in New York just now." + +Another letter in answer to one of his was briefer: + +"My Darling: + +"Certainly you must go to Ashuelyn if your father and mother wish it. +They are old, dear; and it is a heartless thing to thwart the old. + +"Don't think of attempting to come over here to see me. The chances are +that your family would hear of it and it would only pain them. Any +happiness that you and I are ever to have must not be gained at any +expense to them. + +"So keep your distance, Monsieur; make your parents and your sister +happy for the few days you are to be there; and on Thursday I will meet +you on the 9.30 train and we will go back to town together. + +"I am going anyway, for two reasons; I have been away from you entirely +too long, and--the First of June is very, very near. + +"I love you with all my heart, Louis. + +"Valerie West." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +He never doubted that, when at length the time came for the great +change--though perhaps not until the last moment--Valerie would consent +to marry him. Because, so far in his life of twenty-eight years, +everything he had desired very much had come true--everything he had +really believed in and worked for, had happened as he foresaw it would, +in spite of the doubts, the fears, the apprehensions that all creators +of circumstances and makers of their own destiny experience. + +Among his fellow-men he had forged a self-centred, confident way to the +front; and had met there not ultimate achievement, but a young girl, +Valerie West. Through her, somehow, already was coming into his life and +into his work that indefinite, elusive quality--that _something_, the +existence of which, until the last winter, he had never even admitted. +But it was coming; he first became conscious of it through his need of +it; suspected its existence as astronomers suspect the presence of a +star yet uncharted and unseen. Suddenly it had appeared in his portrait +of Valerie; and he knew that Querida had recognised it. + +In his picture "A Bride," the pale, mysterious glow of it suffused his +canvas. It was penetrating into his own veins, too, subtle, indefinable, +yet always there now; and he was sensitive to its presence not only +when absorbed in his work but, more or less in his daily life. + +And it was playing tricks on him, too, as when one morning, absorbed by +the eagerness of achievement, and midway in the happiness of his own +work, suddenly and unbidden the memory of poor Annan came to him--the +boy's patient, humorous face bravely confronting failure on the canvas, +before him, from which Neville had turned away without a word, because +he had no good word to say of it. + +And Neville, scarcely appreciating the reason for any immediate +self-sacrifice, nevertheless had laid aside his brushes as at some +unheard command, and had gone straight to Annan's studio. And there he +had spent the whole morning giving the discouraged boy all that was best +in him of strength and wisdom and cheerful sympathy, until, by noon, an +almost hopeless canvas was saved; and Annan, going with him to the door, +said unsteadily, "Kelly, that is the kindest thing one man ever did for +another, and I'll never forget it." + +Yes, the _something_ seemed to have penetrated to his own veins now; he +felt its serene glow mounting when he spent solemn evenings in John +Burleson's room, the big sculptor lying in his morris-chair, sometimes +irritable, sometimes morose, but always now wearing the vivid patch of +colour on his flat and sunken cheeks. + +Once John said: "Why on earth do you waste a perfectly good afternoon +dawdling in this place with me?" + +And Neville, for a second, wondered, too; then he laughed: + +"I get all that I give you, John, and more, too. Shut up and mind your +business." + +"_What_ do you get from me?" demanded the literal one, astonished. + +"All that you are, Johnny; which is much that I am not--but ought to +be--may yet be." + +"That's some sort of transcendental philosophy, isn't it?" grumbled the +sculptor. + +"You ought to know better than I, John. The sacred codfish never +penetrated to the Hudson. _Inde irac!_" + +Yes, truly, whatever it was that had crept into his veins had +imperceptibly suffused him, enveloped him--and was working changes. He +had a vague idea, sometimes, that Valerie had been the inception, the +source, the reagent in the chemistry which was surely altering either +himself or the world of men around him; that the change was less a +synthesis than a catalysis--that he was gradually becoming different +because of her nearness to him--her physical and spiritual nearness. + +He had plenty of leisure to think of her while she was away; but thought +of her was now only an active ebullition of the ceaseless consciousness +of her which so entirely possessed him. When a selfish man loves--if he +_really_ loves--his disintegration begins. + +Waking, sleeping, in happiness, in perplexity, abroad, at home, active +or at rest, inspired or weary, alone or with others, an exquisite sense +of her presence on earth invaded him, subtly refreshing him with every +breath he drew. He walked abroad amid the city crowds companioned by her +always; at rest the essence of her stole through and through him till +the very air around seemed sweetened. + +He heard others mention her, and remained silent, aloof, wrapped in his +memories, like one who listens to phantoms in a dream praising +perfection. + +Lying back in his chair before his canvas, he thought of her often--of +odd little details concerning their daily life--details almost +trivial--gestures, a glance, a laugh--recollections which surprised him +with the very charm of their insignificance. + +He remembered that he had never known her to be ungenerous--had never +detected in her a wilfully selfish motive. In his life he had never +before believed in a character so utterly unshackled by thought of self. + +He remembered that he had never known her to fail in sympathy for any +living thing; had never detected in her an indifference to either the +happiness or the sorrow of others. In his life he had never before +believed that the command to love one's neighbour had in it anything +more significant than the beauty of an immortal theory. He believed it +now because, in her, he had seen it in effortless practice. He was even +beginning to understand how it might be possible for him to follow where +she led--as she, unconsciously, was a follower of a precept given to +lead the world through eternities. + +Leaning on the closed piano, thinking of her in the still, sunny +afternoons, faintly in his ears her voice seemed to sound; and he +remembered her choice of ballads:-- + + --"For even the blind distinguisheth + The king with his robe and crown; + But only the humble eye of faith + Beholdeth Jesus of Nazareth + In the beggar's tattered gown. + + "I saw Him not in the mendicant + And I heeded not his cry; + Now Christ in His infinite mercy grant + That the prayer I say in my day of want, + Be not in scorn put by." + +No; he had never known her to be unkind, uncharitable, unforgiving; he +had never known her to be insincere, untruthful, or envious. But the +decalogue is no stronger than its weakest link. Was it in the heart of +such a woman--this woman he loved--was it in the heart of this young +girl to shatter it? + +He went on to Ashuelyn, confident of her and of himself, less confident +of his sister--almost appalled at the prospect of reconciling his father +and mother to this marriage that must surely be. Yet--so far in +life--life had finally yielded to him what he fought for; and it must +yield now; and in the end it would surely give him the loyalty and +sympathy of his family. Which meant that Valerie would listen to him; +and, in the certainty of his family's ultimate acquiescence, she would +wear his ring and face with him the problems and the sorrows that must +come to all. + +Cameron drove down to the station in the motor-car to meet him: + +"Hello, Genius," he said, patting Neville on the back with a pudgy hand. +"How's your twin brother, Vice?" + +"Hello, you large and adipose object!" retorted Neville, seating himself +in the tonneau. "How is that overworked, money-grubbing intellect of +yours staggering along?" + +"Handicapped with precious thoughts; Ogilvy threw 'em into me when he +was here. How's the wanton Muse, Louis? Sitting on your knees as usual?" + +"One arm around my neck," admitted Neville, "and the band playing +'Sweethearts.'" + +"Waiting for you to order inspiration cocktails. You're looking fit." + +"Am I? I haven't had one." + +"Oh, I thought you threw one every time you painted that pretty model of +yours--" He looked sideways at Neville, but seeing that he was +unreceptive, shrugged. + +"You're a mean bunch, you artists," he said. "I'd like to meet that +girl, but because I'm a broker anybody'd think I had rat-plague from the +way you all quarantine her--yes, the whole lot of you--Ogilvy, Annan, +Querida. Why, even Penrhyn Cardemon has met her; he told me so; and if +he has why can't I--" + +"For heaven's sake let up!" said Neville, keeping his temper, "and tell +me how everybody is at Ashuelyn." + +"Huh! I'm ridden off as usual," grunted Cameron. "All right, then; I'll +fix it myself. What was it you were gracious enough to inquire of me?" + +"How the people are at Ashuelyn?" repeated Neville. + +"How they are? How the deuce do I know? Your mother embroiders and reads +_The Atlantic Monthly_; your father tucks his hands behind him and +critically inspects the landscape; and when he doesn't do that he reads +Herbert Spencer. Your efficient sister nourishes her progeny and does +all things thoroughly and well; Gordon digs up some trees and plants +others and squirts un-fragrant mixtures over the shrubbery, and sits on +fences talking to various Rubes. Stephanie floats about like a well-fed +angel, with a fox-terrier, and makes a monkey of me at tennis whenever +I'm lunatic enough to let her, and generally dispenses sweetness, +wholesomeness, and light upon a worthy household. I wouldn't mind +marrying that girl," he added casually. "What do you think?" + +Neville laughed: "Why don't you? She's the nicest girl I ever +knew--almost." + +"I'd ask her to marry me," said Cameron facetiously; "only I'm afraid +such a dazzling prospect would turn her head and completely spoil her." + +He spoke gaily and laughed loudly--almost boisterously. Neville glanced +at him with a feeling that Cameron was slightly overdoing it--rather +forcing the mirth without any particular reason. + +After a moment he said: "Sandy, you don't have to be a clown if you +don't want to be, you know." + +"Can't help it," said Cameron, reddening; "everybody expects it now. +When Ogilvy was here we played in a double ring to crowded houses. Every +seat on the veranda was taken; we turned 'em away, my boy. _What_ was it +you started to say about Stephanie?" + +"I didn't start to say anything about Stephanie." + +"Oh, I thought you were going to"--his voice died into an uncertain +grumble. Neville glanced at him again, thoughtfully. + +"You know, Sandy," he said, "that there's another side to you--which, +for some occult reason you seem to hide--even to be ashamed of." + +"Sure I'm ashamed to be a broker with all you highbrows lining out +homers for the girls while I have to sit on the bleachers and score 'em +up. If I try to make a hit with the ladies it's a bingle; and it's the +bench and the bush-league for muh--" + +"You great, overgrown kid! It's a pity people can't see you down town. +Everybody knows you're the cleverest thing south of Broad and Wall. Look +at all the boards, all the committees, all the directorates you're mixed +up with! Look at all the time you give freely to others--look at all +your charities, all your: civic activities, all--" + +"All the hell I raise!" said Cameron, very red. "Don't forget that, +Louis!" + +"You never did--that's the wonder and the eternal decency of you, +Cameron. You're a good citizen and a good man, and you do more for the +world than we painters ever could do! That's the real truth of it; and +why you so persistently try to represent yourself as a commonplace +something else is beyond me--and probably beyond Stephanie Swift," he +added carelessly. + +They whizzed along in silence for some time, and it was only when +Ashuelyn was in sight that Cameron suddenly turned and held out his +hand: + +"Thank you, Louis; you've said some very kind things." + +Neville shrugged: "I hear you are financing that New Idea Home. I tell +you that's a fine conception." + +But Cameron only looked modest. At heart he was a very shy man and he +deprecated any idea that he was doing anything unusual in giving most of +his time to affairs that paid dividends only in happiness and in the +consciousness of moral obligation fulfilled. + +The household was occupying the pergola as they arrived and sprang out +upon the clipped lawn. + +Neville kissed his mother tenderly, shook hands cordially with his +father, greeted Lily with a fraternal hug and Stephanie with a firm +grasp of both hands. + +"How perfectly beautiful it is here!" he exclaimed, looking out over the +green valley beyond--and unconsciously his gaze rested on the Estwich +hills, blue and hazy and soft as dimpled velvet. Out there, somewhere, +was Valerie; heart and pulse began to quicken. Suddenly he became aware +that his mother's eyes were on him, and he turned away toward the south +as though there was also something in that point of the compass to +interest him. + +Gordon Collis, following a hand-cart full of young trees wrapped in +burlap, passed across the lawn below and waved a greeting at Neville. + +"How are you, Louis!" he called out. "Don't you want to help us set +these hybrid catalpas?" + +"I'll be along by and by," he replied, and turned to the group under the +pergola who desired to know how it was in town--the first question +always asked by New Yorkers of anybody who has just arrived from that +holy spot. + +"It's not too warm," said Neville; "the Park is charming, most of the +houses on Fifth Avenue are closed--" + +"Have you chanced to pass through Tenth Street?" asked his father +solemnly. + +But Neville confessed that he had not set foot in those sanctified +precincts, and his father's personal interest in Manhattan Island ceased +immediately. + +They chatted inconsequentially for a while; then, in reply to a question +from Stephanie, he spoke of his picture, "A Bride," and, though it was +still unfinished, he showed them a photograph of it. + +[Illustration: "'It is very beautiful, Louis,' said his mother, with a +smile of pride."] + +The unmounted imprint passed from hand to hand amid various comments. + +"It is very beautiful, Louis," said his mother, with a smile of pride; +and even as she spoke the smile faded and her sad eyes rested on him +wistfully. + +"Is it a sacred picture?" asked his father, examining it through his +glasses without the slightest trace of interest. + +"It is an Annunciation, isn't it?" inquired Lily, calmly. But her heart +was failing her, for in the beauty of the exquisite, enraptured face, +she saw what might have been the very soul of Valerie West. + +His father, removing his spectacles, delivered himself of an opinion +concerning mysticism, and betrayed an illogical tendency to drift toward +the Concord School of Philosophy. However, there seemed to be +insufficient incentive; he glanced coldly toward Cameron and resumed +Herbert Spencer and his spectacles. + +"Mother, don't you want to stroll on the lawn a bit?" he asked +presently. "It looks very inviting to a city man's pavement-worn feet." + +She drew her light wool shawl around her shoulders and took her tall +son's arm. + +For a long while they strolled in silence, passed idly through the +garden where masses of peonies hung over the paths, and pansies, iris, +and forget-me-nots made the place fragrant. + +It was not until they came to the plank bridge where the meadow rivulet, +under its beds of cress and mint, threaded a shining way toward the +woods, that his mother said in a troubled voice: + +"You are not happy, Louis." + +"Why, mother--what an odd idea!" + +"Am I mistaken?" she asked, timidly. + +"Yes, indeed, you are. I am very happy." + +"Then," she said, "what is it that has changed you so?" + +[Illustration: "'You are not happy, Louis.'"] + +"Changed me?" + +"Yes, dear." + +"I am not changed, mother." + +"Do you think a mother can be mistaken in her only son? You are so +subdued, so serious. You are like men who have known sorrow.... What +sorrow have you ever known, Louis?" + +"None. No great one, mother. Perhaps, lately, I have +developed--recognised--become aware of the sombre part of life--become +sensitive to it--to unhappiness in others--and have cared more--" + +"You speak like a man who has suffered." + +"But I haven't, mother," he insisted. "Of course, every painter worries. +I did last winter--last winter--" He hesitated, conscious that last +winter--on the snowy threshold of the new year--sorrow and pain and +happiness and pity had, in an instant, assumed for him a significance +totally new. + +"Mother," he said slowly, "if I have changed it is only in a better +understanding of the world and those who live in it. I have cared very +little about people; I seem to have come to care more, lately. What they +did, what they thought, hoped, desired, endured, suffered, interested me +little except as it concerned my work. And somehow, since then, I am +becoming interested in people for their own sakes. It's a--new +sensation." + +He smiled and laid his hand over hers: + +"Do you know I never even appreciated what a good man Alexander Cameron +is until recently. Why, mother, that man is one of the most generous, +modest, kind, charitable, unselfish fellows in the world!" + +"His behaviour is sometimes a little extraordinary," said his +mother--"isn't it?" + +"Oh, that's all on the surface! He's full of boyish spirits. He dearly +loves a joke--but the greater part of that interminable funny business +is merely to mask the modesty of a man whose particular perversity is a +fear that people might discover how kind and how clever he really is!" + +They walked on in silence for a while, then his mother said: + +"Mr. Querida was here. Is he a friend of yours?" + +Neville hesitated: "I'll tell you, mother," he said, "I don't find +Querida personally very congenial. But I have no doubt he's an +exceedingly nice fellow. And he's far and away the best painter in +America.... When did he go back to town?" + +"Last week. I did not care for him." + +"You and father seldom do care for new acquaintances," he rejoined, +smiling. "Don't you think it is about time for you to emerge from your +shells and make up your minds that a few people have been born since you +retired?" + +"People have been born in China, too, but that scarcely interests your +father and me." + +"Let it interest you, mother. You have no idea how amusing new people +are. That's the way to keep young, too." + +"It is a little too late for us to think of youth--or to think as youth +thinks--even if it were desirable." + +"It _is_ desirable. Youth--which will be age to-morrow--may venture to +draw a little consideration in advance--" + +"My children interest me--and I give their youth my full consideration. +But I can scarcely be expected to find any further vital interest in +youth--and in the complexity of its modern views and ideas. You ask +impossibilities of two very old people." + +"I do not mean to. I ask only, then, that you and father take a vital +and intelligent interest in me. Will you, mother?" + +"Intelligent? What do you mean, Louis?" + +"I mean," he said, "that you might recognise my right to govern my own +conduct; that you might try to sympathise with views which are not your +own--with the ideas, ideals, desires, convictions which, if modern, are +none the less genuine--and are mine." + +There was a brief silence; then: + +"Louis, are you speaking with any thought of--that woman in your mind?" +she asked in a voice that quivered slightly. + +"Yes, mother." + +"I knew it," she said, under her breath; "I knew it was that--I knew +what had changed you--was changing you." + +"Have I altered for the worse?" + +"I don't know--I don't know, Louis!" She was leaning heavily on his +elbow now; he put one arm around her and they walked very slowly over +the fragrant grass. + +"First of all, mother, please don't call her, 'that woman.' Because she +is a very sweet, innocent, and blameless girl.... Will you let me tell +you a little about her?" + +His mother bent her head in silence; and for a long while he talked to +her of Valerie. + +The sun still hung high over the Estwich hills when he ended. His +mother, pale, silent, offered no comment until, in his trouble, he urged +her. Then she said: + +"Your father will never consent." + +"Let me talk to father. Will _you_ consent?" + +"I--Louis--it would break our hearts if--" + +"Not when you know her." + +"Lily knows her and is bitterly opposed to her--" + +"What!" he exclaimed, astounded. "You say that my sister knows Valerie +West?" + +"I--forgot," faltered his mother; "I ought not to have said anything." + +"Where did Lily meet her?" he asked, bewildered. + +"Don't ask me, Louis. I should not have spoken--" + +"Yes, you should have! It is my affair; it concerns me--and it concerns +Valerie--her future and mine--our happiness. Where did Lily meet her?" + +"You must ask that of Lily. I cannot and will not discuss it. I will say +only this: I have seen the--this Miss West. She is at present a guest at +the villa of a--countess--of whom neither your father nor I ever before +heard--and whom even Lily knows so slightly that she scarcely bows to +her. And yesterday, while motoring, we met them driving on the Estwich +road and your sister told us who they were." + +After a moment he said slowly: "So you have actually seen the girl I am +in love with?" + +"I saw--Miss West." + +"Can't you understand that I _am_ in love with her?" + +"Even if you are it is better for you to conquer your inclination--" + +"Why?" + +"Because all your life long you will regret such a marriage." + +"Why?" + +"Because nobody will care to receive a woman for whom you can make no +explanation--even if you are married to her." + +He kept his patience. + +"Will _you_ receive her, mother?" + +She closed her eyes, drew a quick, painful breath: "My son's +wife--whoever she may be--will meet with no discourtesy under my roof." + +"Is that the best you can offer us?" + +"Louis! Louis!--if it lay only with me--I would do what you wished--even +this--if it made you happy--" + +He took her in his arms and kissed her in silence. + +"You don't understand," she said,--"it is not I--it is the family--our +entire little world against her. It would be only an eternal, hopeless, +heart-breaking struggle for you, and for her;--pain for you--deep pain +and resentment and bitterness for those who did not--perhaps could +not--take your views of--" + +"I don't care, mother, as long as you and father and Lily stand by her. +And Valerie won't marry me unless you do. I didn't tell you that, but it +is the truth. And I'm fighting very hard to win her--harder than you +know--or will ever know. Don't embitter me; don't let me give up. +Because, if I do, it means desperation--and things which you never could +understand.... And _I_ want you to talk to father. Will you? And to +Lily, too. Its fairer to warn her that I have learned of her meeting +Valerie. Then I'll talk to them both and see what can be done.... And, +mother, I am very happy and very grateful and very proud that you are +going to stand by me--and by the loveliest girl in all the world." + +That night Lily came to his room. Her eyes were red, but there was fire +in them. She seated herself and surveyed her brother with ominous +self-possession. + +"Well, Lily," he said pleasantly, prepared to keep his temper at all +hazards. + +"Well, Louis, I understand from mother that you have some questions to +ask me." + +"No questions, little sister; only your sympathetic attention while I +tell you how matters stand with me." + +"You require too much!" she said shortly. + +"If I ask for your sympathy?" + +"Not if you ask it for yourself, Louis. But if you include that--" + +"Please, dear!" he interrupted, checking her with a slight gesture--for +an instant only; then she went on in a determined voice: + +"Louis, I might as well tell you at once that I have no sympathy for +her. I wrote to her, out of sheer kindness, for her own good--and she +replied so insolently that--that I am not yet perfectly recovered--" + +"What did you write?" + +Mrs. Collis remained disdainfully silent, but her eyes sparkled. + +"Won't you tell me," he asked, patiently, "what it was you wrote to +Valerie West?" + +"Yes, I'll tell you if you insist on knowing!--even if you do +misconstrue it! I wrote to her--for her own sake--and to avoid +ill-natured comment,--suggesting that she be seen less frequently with +you in public. I wrote as nicely, as kindly, as delicately as I knew +how. And her reply was a practical request that I mind my business!... +Which was vulgar and outrageous, considering that she had given me her +promise--" Mrs. Collis checked herself in her headlong and indignant +complaint; then she coloured painfully, but her mouth settled into +tight, uncompromising lines. + +"What promise had Valerie West made you?" he asked, resolutely subduing +his amazement and irritation. + +For a moment Mrs. Collis hesitated; then, realising that matters had +gone too far for concealment, she answered almost violently: + +"She promised me not to marry you,--if you must know! I can't help what +you think about it; I realised that you were infatuated--that you were +making a fatal and terrible mistake--ruining life for yourself and for +your family--and I went to her and told her so! I've done all I could to +save you. I suppose I have gained your enmity by doing it. She promised +me not to marry you--but she'll probably break her word. If you mean to +marry her you'll do so, no doubt. But, Louis, if you do, such a step +will sever all social relations between you and your family. Because I +will _not_ receive her! Nor will my friends--nor yours--nor father's and +mother's friends! And that settles it." + +He spoke with great care, hesitating, picking and choosing his words: + +"Is it--possible that you did--such a thing--as to write to Valerie +West--threatening her with my family's displeasure if she married me?" + +"I did not write her at first. The first time I went to see her. And I +told her kindly but plainly what I had to tell her! It was my duty to do +it and I didn't flinch." + +Lily was breathing fast; her eyes narrowed unpleasantly. + +He managed to master his astonishment and anger; but it was a heavy +draught on his reserve of self-discipline, good temper, and common sense +to pass over this thing that had been done to him and to concentrate +himself upon the main issue. When he was able to speak again, calmly and +without resentment, he said: + +"The first thing for us to do, as a family, is to eliminate all personal +bitterness from this discussion. There must be no question of our +affection for one another; no question but what we wish to do the best +by each other. I accept that as granted. If you took the step which you +did take it was because you really believed it necessary for my +happiness--" + +"I still believe it!" she insisted; and her lips became a thin, hard +line. + +"Then we won't discuss it. But I want to ask you one thing; have you +talked with mother about it?" + +"Yes--naturally." + +"Has she told you all that I told her this afternoon?" + +"I suppose so. It does not alter my opinion one particle," she replied, +her pretty head obstinately lowered. + +He said: "Valerie West will not marry me if my family continues hostile +to her." + +Lily slowly lifted her eyes: + +"Then will you tell me why she permits herself to be seen so constantly +with you? If she is not going to marry you what _is_ she going to do? +Does she care what people are saying about her?--and about you?" + +"No decent people are likely to say anything unpleasant about either of +us," he said, keeping a tight rein on himself--but the curb was biting +deeply now. "Mother will stand by me, Lily. Will you?" + +His sister's face reddened: "Louis," she said, "I am married; I have +children, friends, a certain position to maintain. You are unmarried, +careless of conventions, uninterested in the kind of life that I and my +friends have led, and will always lead. The life, the society, the +formalities, the conventional observances are all part of our lives, and +make for our happiness and self-respect; but they mean absolutely +nothing to you. And you propose to invade our respectable and +inoffensive seclusion with a conspicuous wife who has been a notorious +professional model; and you demand of your family that they receive her +as one of them! Louis, I ask you, is this fair to us?" + +He said very gravely: "You have met Valerie West. Do you really believe +that either the dignity or the morals of the family circle would suffer +by her introduction to it?" + +"I know nothing about her morals!" said his sister, excitedly. + +"Then why condemn them?" + +"I did not; I merely reminded you that she is a celebrated professional +model." + +"It is not necessary to remind me. My mother knows it and will stand by +her. Will you do less for your own brother?" + +"Louis! You are cruel, selfish, utterly heartless--" + +"I am trying to think of everybody in the family who is concerned; but, +when a man's in love he can't help thinking a little of the woman he +loves--especially if nobody else does." He turned his head and looked +out of the window. Stars were shining faintly in a luminous sky. His +face seemed to have grown old and gray and haggard: + +"I don't know what to do," he said, as though speaking to himself;--"I +don't know where to turn. She would marry me if you'd let her; she will +never marry me if my family is unkind to her--" + +"What _will_ she do, then?" asked Lily, coolly. + +For a moment he let her words pass, then, turned around. The expression +of his sister's brightly curious eyes perplexed him. + +"What do you mean?" he asked, disturbed. + +"What I say, Louis. I asked you what Miss West means to do if she does +not marry you? Discontinue her indiscreet intimacy with you?" + +"Why should she?" + +Lily said, sharply: "I would not have to put that question to a modest +girl." + +"I have to put it to _you_!" he retorted, beginning to lose his +self-command. "Why should Valerie West discontinue her friendship with +me because my family's stupid attitude toward her makes it impossible +for a generous and proud girl to marry me?" + +Lily, pale, infuriated, leaned forward in her chair. + +"Because," she retorted violently, "if that intimacy continues much +longer a stupid world and your stupid family will believe that the girl +is your mistress! But in that event, thank God, the infamy will rest +where it belongs--not on us!" + +A cold rage paralysed his speech; she saw its ghastly reflection on his +white and haggard face--saw him quiver under the shock; rose +involuntarily, terrified at the lengths to which passion had scourged +her: + +"Louis," she faltered--"I--I didn't mean that!--I was beside myself; +forgive me, please! Don't look like that; you are frightening me--" + +She caught his arm as he passed her, clung to it, pallid, fearful, +imploring,--"W-what are you going to do, Louis! Don't go, dear, please. +I'm sorry, I'm very, very humble. Won't you speak to me? I said too +much; I was wrong;--I--I will try to be different--try to reconcile +myself to--to what--you--wish--" + +He looked down at her where she hung to him, tearful face lifted to his: + +"I didn't know women could feel that way about another woman," he said, +in a dull voice. "There's no use--no use--" + +"But--but I love you dearly, Louis! I couldn't endure it to have +anything come between us--disrupt the family--" + +"Nothing will, Lily.... I must go now." + +"Don't you believe I love you?" + +He drew a deep, unconscious breath. + +"I suppose so. Different people express love differently. There's no use +in asking you to be different--" + +She said, piteously: "I'm trying. Don't you see I'm trying? Give me +time, Louis! Make allowances. You can't utterly change people in a few +hours." + +He gazed at her intently for a moment. + +"You mean that you are trying to be fair to--her?" + +"I--if you call it that;--yes! But a family can not adapt itself, +instantaneously, to such a cataclysm as threatens--I mean--I mean--oh, +Louis! Try to understand us and sympathise a little with us!" + +His arms closed around her shoulders: + +"Little sister, we both have the family temper--and beneath it, the +family instinct for cohesion. If we are also selfish it is not +individual but family selfishness. It is the family which has always +said to the world, '_Noli me tangere_!' while we, individually, are +really inclined to be kinder, more sympathetic, more curious about the +neighbours outside our gate. Let it be so now. Once inside the family, +what can harm Valerie?" + +"Dearest, dearest brother," she murmured, "you talk like a foolish man. +Women understand better. And if it is a part of your program that this +girl is to be accepted by an old-fashioned society, now almost obsolete, +but in which this family is merely a single superannuated unit, that +program can never be carried out." + +"I think you are mistaken," he said. + +"I know I am not. It is inevitable that if you marry this girl she will +be more or less ignored, isolated, humiliated, overlooked outside our +own little family circle. Even in that limited mob which the newspapers +call New York Society--in that modern, wealthy, hard-witted, +over-jewelled, self-sufficient league which is yet too eternally +uncertain of its own status to assume any authority or any +responsibility for a stranger without credentials,--it would not be +possible to make Valerie West acceptable in the slightest sense of the +word. Because she is too well known; her beauty is celebrated; she has +become famous. Her only chance there--or with us--would have been in her +absolute anonymity. Then lies _might_ have done the rest. But lying is +now useless in regard to her." + +"Perfectly," he said. "She would not permit it." + +In his vacant gaze there was something changed--a fixedness born of a +slow and hopeless enlightenment. + +"If that is the case, there is no chance," he said thoughtfully. "I had +not considered that aspect." + +"I had." + +He shook his head slightly, gazing through the window at the starry +lustre overhead. + +"I wouldn't care," he said, "if she would only marry me. If she'd do +that I'd never bother anybody--nor embarrass the family--" + +"Louis!" + +"I mean make any social demands on you.... And, as for the world--" He +slowly shook his head again: "We could make our own friends and our own +way--if she would only consent to do it. But she never will." + +"Do you mean to say she will not marry you if you ask her?" began Lily +incredulously. + +"Absolutely." + +"Why?" + +"For your sakes--yours, and mother's, and father's--and for mine." + +There was a long silence, then Lily said unsteadily: + +"There--there seems to be a certain--nobility--about her.... It is a +pity--a tragedy--that she is what she is!" + +"It is a tragedy that the world is what it is," he said. "Good night." + + * * * * * + +His father sent for him in the morning; Louis found him reading the +_Tribune_ in his room and sipping a bowl of hot milk and toast. + +[Illustration: "'What have you been saying to your mother?' he asked."] + +"What have you been saying to your mother?" he asked, looking up through +his gold-rimmed spectacles and munching toast. + +"Has she not told you, father?" + +"Yes, she has.... I think you had better make a trip around the world." + +"That would not alter matters." + +"I differ with you," observed his father, leisurely employing his +napkin. + +"There is no use considering it," said his son patiently. + +"Then what do you propose to do?" + +"There is nothing to do." + +"By that somewhat indefinite expression I suppose that you intend to +pursue a waiting policy?" + +"A waiting policy?" His son laughed, mirthlessly. "What am I to wait +for? If you all were kind to Valerie West she might, perhaps, consent to +marry me. But it seems that even our own family circle has not +sufficient authority to protect her from our friends' neglect and +humiliation.... + +"She warned me that it would be so, long ago. I did not believe it; I +could not comprehend it. But, somehow, Lily has made me believe it. And +so have you. I guess it must be true. And if that's all I have to offer +my wife, it's not enough to compensate her for her loss of freedom and +happiness and self-respect among those who really care for her." + +"Do you give me to understand that you renounce all intentions of +marrying this girl?" asked his father, breaking more toast into his bowl +of milk. + +"Yes," said his son, listlessly. + +"Thank God!" said his father; "come here, my son." + +They shook hands; the son's lifeless arm fell to his side and he stood +looking at the floor in silence. The father took a spoonful of hot milk +with satisfaction, and, after the younger man had left the room, he +resumed his newspaper. He was particularly interested in the "Sunshine +Column," which dispensed sweetness and light under a poetic caption too +beautiful to be true in a coldly humorous world. + + * * * * * + +That afternoon Gordon Collis said abruptly to Neville: + +"You look like the devil, Louis." + +"Do I?" + +"You certainly do." And, in a lower voice: "I guess I've heard what's +the matter. Don't worry. It's a thing about which nobody ever ought to +give anybody any advice--so I'll give you some. Marry whoever you damn +please. It'll be all the same after that oak I planted this morning is +half grown." + +"Gordon," he said, surprised, "I didn't suppose _you_ were liberal." + +"Liberal! Why, man alive! Do you think a fellow can live out of doors as +I have lived, and see germs sprout, and see mountain ranges decay, and +sit on a few glaciers, and swing a pick into a mother-lode--and _not_ be +liberal? Do you suppose ten-cent laws bother me when I'm up against the +blind laws that made the law-makers?--laws that made life itself before +Christ lived to conform to them?... I married where I loved. It chanced +that my marriage with your sister didn't clash with the sanctified order +of things in Manhattan town. But if your sister had been the maid who +dresses her, and I had loved her, I'd have married her all the same and +have gone about the pleasures and duties of procreation and conservation +exactly as I go about 'em now.... I wonder how much the Almighty was +thinking about Tenth Street when the first pair of anthropoids mated? +_Nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus_. If you love each other--_Noli +pugnare duobus._ ... And I'm going into the woods to look for ginseng. +Want to come?" + +Neville went. Cameron and Stephanie, equipped with buckskin gloves, a +fox terrier, and digging apparatus, joined them just where the slender +meadow brook entered the woods. + +"There are mosquitoes here!" exclaimed Cameron wrathfully. "All day and +every day I'm being stung down town, and I'm not going to stand for it +here!" + +Stephanie let him aid her to the top of a fallen log, glancing back once +or twice toward Neville, who was sauntering forward among the trees, +pretending to look for ginseng. + +"Do you notice how Louis has changed?" she said, keeping her balance on +the log. "I cannot bear to see him so thin and colourless." + +Cameron now entertained a lively suspicion how matters stood, and knew +that Stephanie also suspected; but he only said, carelessly: "It's +probably dissipation. You know what a terrible pace he's been going from +the cradle onward." + +She smiled quietly. "Yes, I know, Sandy. And I know, too, that you are +the only man who has been able to keep up that devilish pace with him." + +"I've led a horrible life," muttered Cameron darkly. + +Stephanie laughed; he gave her his hand as she stood balanced on the big +log; she laid her fingers in his confidently, looked into his honest +face, still laughing, then sprang lightly to the ground. + +"What a really good man you are!" she said tormentingly. + +"Oh, heaven! If you call me that I'm really done for!" + +"Done for?" she exclaimed in surprise. "How?" + +"Done for as far as you are concerned." + +"I? Why how, and with what am I concerned, Sandy? I don't understand +you." + +But he only turned red and muttered to himself and strolled about with +his hands in his pockets, kicking the dead leaves as though he expected +to find something astonishing under them. And Stephanie glanced at him +sideways once or twice, thoughtfully, curiously, but questioned him no +further. + +Gordon Collis pottered about in a neighbouring thicket; the fox terrier +was chasing chipmunks. As for Neville he had already sauntered out of +sight among the trees. + +Stephanie, seated on a dry and mossy stump, preoccupied with her own +ruminations, looked up absently as Cameron came up to her bearing floral +offerings. + +"Thank you, Sandy," she said, as he handed her a cluster of wild +blossoms. Then, fastening them to her waist, she glanced up +mischieviously: + +"How funny you are! You look and act like a little boy at a party +presenting his first offering to the eternal feminine." + +"It's my first offering," he said coolly. + +"Oh, Sandy! With _your_ devilish record!" + +"Do you know," he said, "that I'm thirty-two years old? And that you are +twenty-two? And that since you were twelve and I was twenty odd I've +been in love with you?" + +She looked at him in blank dismay for a moment, then forced a laugh: + +"Of course I know it, Sandy. It's the kind of love a girl cares most +about--" + +"It's really love," said Cameron, un-smiling--"the kind I'm afraid she +doesn't care very much about." + +[Illustration: "'If you'll place a lump of sugar on my nose, and say +"when," I'll perform.'"] + +She hesitated, then met his gaze with a distressed smile: + +"You don't really mean that, Sandy--" + +"I've meant it for ten years.... But it doesn't matter--" + +"Sandy!... It _does_ matter--if--" + +"No, it doesn't.... Come on and kick these leaves about and we'll make a +million dollars in ginseng!" + +But she remained seated, mute, her gaze a sorrowful interrogation which +at length he could not pretend to ignore: + +"Stephanie child, don't worry. I'm not worrying. I'm glad I told you.... +Now just let me go on as I've always gone--" + +"How _can_ we?" + +"Easily. Shut your eyes, breathe deeply, lifting both arms and lowering +them while counting ten in German--" + +"Sandy, don't be so foolish at--such a time." + +"Such a time? What time is it?" pretending to consult his watch with +great anxiety. Then a quick smile of relief spread over his features: +"It's all right, Stephanie; it's my hour to be foolish. If you'll place +a lump of sugar on my nose, and say 'when,' I'll perform." + +There was no answering smile on her face. + +"It's curious," she said, "how a girl can make a muddle of life without +even trying." + +"But just think what you might have done if you'd tried! You've much to +be thankful for," he said gravely. + +She raised her eyes, considering him: + +"I wonder," she said, under her breath. + +"Sure thing, Stephanie. You might have done worse; you might have +married me. Throw away those flowers--there's a good girl--and forget +what they meant." + +Slowly, deliberately, blossom by blossom she drew them from her girdle +and laid them on the moss beside her. + +"There's one left," he said cheerfully. "Raus mit it!" + +But she made no motion to detach it; appeared to be unconscious of it +and of him as she turned her face and looked silently toward the place +where Neville had disappeared. + +An hour or two later, when Gordon was ready to return to the house, he +shouted for Neville. Cameron also lifted up his voice in a series of +prolonged howls. + +But Neville was far beyond earshot, and still walking through woods and +valleys and pleasant meadows in the general direction of the Estwich +hills. + +Somewhere there amid that soft rolling expanse of green was the woman +who would never marry him. And it was now, at last, he decided that he +would never take her on any other terms even though they were her own +terms; that he must give her up to chance again as innocent as chance +had given her into his brief keeping. No, she would never accept his +terms and face the world with him as his wife. And so he must give her +up. For he believed that, in him, the instinct of moral law had been too +carefully developed ever to be deliberately ignored; he still believed +marriage to be not only a rational social procedure, not only a human +compromise and a divine convention, but the only possible sanctuary +where love might dwell, and remain, and permanently endure inviolate. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The Countess Hélène had taken her maid and gone to New York on business +for a day or two, leaving Valerie to amuse herself until her return. + +Which was no hardship for Valerie. The only difficulty lay in there +being too much to do. + +In the first place she had become excellent friends with the farmer and +had persuaded him to delegate to her a number of his duties. She had to +collect the newly laid eggs, hunt up stolen nests, inspect and feed the +clucking, quacking, gobbling personnel of the barnyard which came +crowding to her clear-voiced call. + +As for the cattle, she was rather timid about venturing to milk since +the Ogilvy's painful and undignified début as an amateur Strephon. + +However, she assisted at pasture call accompanied by a fat and lazy +collie; and she petted and salted the herd to her heart's content. + +Then there were books and magazines to be read, leisurely; and hammocks +to lie in, while her eyes watched the sky where clouds sailed in snowy +squadrons out of the breezy west. + +And what happier company for her than her thoughts--what tenderer +companionship than her memories; what more absorbing fellowship than the +little busy intimate reflections that came swarming around her, more +exciting, more impetuous, more exquisitely disturbing as the hurrying, +sunny hours sped away and the first day of June drew nigh? + +She spent hours alone on the hill behind the house, lying full length in +the fragrant, wild grasses, looking across a green and sunlit world +toward Ashuelyn. + +[Illustration: "And what happier company for her than her thoughts--what +tenderer companionship than her memories?"] + +She had told him not to attempt to come to Estwich; and, though she knew +she had told him wisely, often and often there on her breezy hilltop she +wished that she hadn't--wished that he would disregard her +request--hoped he would--lay there, a dry grass stem between her lips, +thinking how it would be if, suddenly, down there by--well, say down by +that big oak, for example, a figure should stroll into view along the +sheep-path.... And at first--just to prolong the tension--perhaps she +wouldn't recognise him--just for a moment. Then, suddenly-- + +But she never got beyond that first blissful instant of recognition--the +expression of his face--his quick spring forward--and she, amazed, +rising to her feet and hastening forward to meet him. For she never +pictured herself as standing still to await the man she loved. + +When Hélène left, Valerie had the place to herself; and, without any +disloyalty to the little countess, she experienced a new pleasure in the +liberty of an indolence which exacted nothing of her. + +She prowled around the library, luxuriously, dipping into inviting +volumes; she strolled at hazard from veranda to garden, from garden to +lawn, from lawn to farmyard. + +About luncheon time she arrived at the house with her arms full of +scented peonies, and spent a long while selecting the receptacles for +them. + +Luncheon was a deliciously lazy affair at which she felt at liberty to +take her own time; and she did so, scanning the morning paper, which had +just been delivered; making several bites of every cherry and +strawberry, and being good to the three cats with asparagus ends and a +saucer of chicken bouillon. + +Later, reclining in the hammock, she mended a pair of brier-torn +stockings; and when that thrifty and praiseworthy task was finished, +she lay back and thought of Neville. + +[Illustration: "She prowled around the library, luxuriously, dipping +into inviting volumes"] + +But at what moment in any day was she ever entirely unconscious of him? +Besides, she could always think of him better--summon him +nearer--visualise him more clearly, when she was afield, the blue sky +above her, the green earth under foot, and companioned only by memory. + +So she went to her room, put on her stout little shoes and her walking +skirt; braided her hair and made of it a soft, light, lustrous turban; +and taking her dog-whip, ran down stairs. + +The fat old collie came wagging up to the whistle, capered clumsily as +in duty bound; but before she had entirely traversed the chestnut woods +he basely deserted her and waddled back to the kitchen door where a +thoughtful cook and a succulent bone were combinations not unknown. + +Valerie missed him presently, and whistled; but the fat sybarite, if +within earshot, paid no attention; and she was left to swing her +dog-whip and stroll on alone. + +Her direction lay along the most inviting by-roads and paths; and she +let chance direct her feet through this friendly, sunny land where one +little hill was as green as another, and one little brook as clear and +musical as another, and the dainty, ferny patches of woodlands resembled +one another. + +It was a delight to scramble over stone walls; she adored lying flat and +wriggling under murderous barbed-wire, feeling the weeds brush her face. +When a brook was a little too wide to jump, it was ecstasy to attempt +it. She got both shoes wet and loved it. Brambles plucked boldly at her +skirt; wild forest blossoms timidly summoned her aside to kneel and +touch them, but to let them live; squirrels threatened her and rushed +madly up and down trees defying her; a redstart in vermilion and black, +fussed about her where she sat, closing and spreading its ornamental +tail for somebody's benefit--perhaps for hers. + +[Illustration: "'Miss West!' he exclaimed. 'How on earth did you ever +find your way into my woods?'"] + +She was not tired; she did not suppose that she had wandered very far, +but, glancing at her watch, she was surprised to find how late it was. +And she decided to return. + +After she had been deciding to return for about an hour it annoyed her +to find that she could not get clear of the woods. It seemed +preposterous; the woods could not be very extensive. As for being +actually lost it seemed too absurd. Life is largely composed of +absurdities. + +There was one direction which she had not tried, and it lay along a +bridle path, but whether north or south or east or west she was utterly +unable to determine. She felt quite certain that Estwich could not lie +either way along that bridle-path which stretched almost a straight, +dark way under the trees as far as she could see. + +Vexed, yet amused, at her own stupid plight, she was standing in the +road, trying to make up her mind to try it, when, far down the vista, a +horseman appeared, coming on at a leisurely canter; and with a sigh of +relief she saw her troubles already at an end. + +He drew bridle abreast of her, stared, sprang from his saddle and, cap +in hand, came up to her holding out his hand: + +"Miss West!" he exclaimed. "How on earth did you ever find your way into +my woods?" + +"I don't know, Mr. Cardemon," she said, thankful to encounter even him +in her dilemma. "I must have walked a great deal farther than I meant +to." + +"You've walked at least five miles if you came by road; and nobody knows +how far if you came across country," he said, staring at her out of his +slightly prominent eyes. + +"I did come across country. And if you will be kind enough to start me +toward home--" + +"You mean to _walk_ back!" + +"Of course I do." + +"I won't permit it!" he exclaimed. "It's only a little way across to the +house and we'll just step over and I'll have a car brought around for +you--" + +"Thank you, I am not tired--" + +"You are on my land, therefore you are my guest," he insisted. "I am not +going to let you go back on foot--" + +"Mr. Cardemon, if you please, I very much prefer to return in my own +way." + +"What an obstinate girl you are!" he said, with his uncertain laugh, +which never came until he had prejudged its effect on the situation; but +the puffy flesh above his white riding-stock behind his lobeless ears +reddened, and a slow, thickish colour came into his face and remained +under the thick skin. + +"If you won't let me send you back in a car," he said, "you at least +won't refuse a glass of sherry and a biscuit--" + +"Thank you--I haven't time--" + +"My housekeeper, Mrs. Munn, is on the premises," he persisted. + +"You are very kind, but--" + +"Oh, don't turn a man down so mercilessly, Miss West!" + +"You are exceedingly amiable," she repeated, "but I must go at once." + +He switched the weeds with his crop, then the uncertain laugh came: + +"I'll show you a short cut," he said. His prominent eyes rested on her, +passed over her from head to foot, then wandered askance over the young +woodland. + +"In which direction lies Estwich?" she asked, lifting her gaze to meet +his eyes; but they avoided her as he answered, busy fumbling with a +girth that required no adjustment: + +"Over yonder,"--making a slight movement with his head. Then taking his +horse by the head he said heartily: + +"Awfully sorry you won't accept my hospitality; but if you won't you +won't, and we'll try to find a short cut." + +He led his horse out of the path straight ahead through the woods, and +she walked beside him. + +"Of course you know the way, Mr. Cardemon?" she said pleasantly. + +"I ought to--unless the undergrowth has changed the looks of things +since I've been through." + +"How long is it since you've been through?" + +"Oh, I can't just recollect," he said carelessly. "I guess it will be +all right." + +For a while they walked steadily forward among the trees; he talking to +her with a frank and detached amiability, asking about the people at +Estwich, interested to hear that the small house-party had +disintegrated, surprised to learn that the countess had gone to town. + +"Are you entirely alone in the house?" he asked; and his eyes seemed to +protrude a little more than usual. + +"Entirely," she said carelessly; "except for Binns and his wife and the +servants." + +"Why didn't you 'phone a fellow to stop over to lunch?" he asked, +suddenly assuming a jovial manner which their acquaintance did not +warrant. "We country folk don't stand on ceremony you know." + +"I did not know it," she said quietly. + +His bold gaze rested on her again; again the uncertain laugh followed: + +"If you'd ask me to dine with you to-night I'd take it as a charming +concession to our native informality. What do you say, Miss West?" + +She forced a smile, making a sign of negation with her head, but he +began to press her until his importunities and his short, abrupt +laughter embarrassed her. + +"I couldn't ask anybody without permission from my hostess," she said, +striving to maintain the light, careless tone which his changing manner +toward her made more difficult for her. + +"Oh, come, Miss West!" he said in a loud humorous voice; "don't pass me +the prunes and prisms but be a good little sport and let a fellow come +over to see you! You never did give me half a chance to know you, but +you're hands across the table with that Ogilvy artist and José +Querida--" + +"I've known them rather longer than I have you, Mr. Cardemon." + +"That's my handicap! I'm not squealing. All I want is to start in the +race--" + +"What race?" she asked coolly, turning on him a level gaze that, in +spite of her, she could not maintain under the stare with which he +returned it. And again the slight uneasiness crept over her and +involuntarily she looked around her at the woods. + +"How far is it now?" she inquired. + +"Are you tired?" + +"No. But I'm anxious to get back. Could you tell me how near to some +road we are?" + +He halted and looked around; she watched him anxiously as he tossed his +bridle over his horse's neck and walked forward into a little glade +where the late rays of the sun struck ruddy and warm on the dry grass. + +"That's singular," he said as she went forward into the open where he +stood; "I don't seem to remember this place." + +"But you know about where we are, don't you?" she asked, resolutely +suppressing the growing uneasiness and anxiety. + +"Well--I am not perfectly certain." He kept his eyes off her while he +spoke; but when she also turned and gazed helplessly at the woods +encircling her, his glance stole toward her. + +"You're not scared, are you?" he asked, and then laughed abruptly. + +"Not in the slightest." + +"Sure! You're a perfectly good sport.... I'll tell you--I'll leave my +horse for one of my men to hunt up later, and we'll start off together +on a good old-fashioned hike! Are you game?" + +"Yes--if I only knew--if you were perfectly sure how to get to the edge +of the woods. I don't see how you _can_ be lost in your own woods--" + +"I don't believe I am!" he said, laughing violently. "The Estwich road +_must_ be over in that direction. Come ahead, Miss West; the birds can +cover us up if worst comes to worst!" + +She went with him, entering the thicker growth with a quick, vigorous +little stride as though energy and rapidity of motion could subdue the +misgiving that threatened to frighten her sooner or later. + +Over logs, boulders, gulleys, she swung forward, he supporting her from +time to time in spite of her hasty assurance that she did not require +aid. + +Once, before she could prevent it, he grasped her and fairly swung her +across a gulley; and again, as she gathered herself to jump, his +powerful arm slipped around her body and he lowered her to the moss +below, leaving her with red cheeks and a rapid heart to climb the +laurel-choked ravine beside him. + +It was breathless work; again and again, before she could prevent it, he +forced his assistance on her; and in the abrupt, almost rough contact +there was something that began at last to terrify her--weaken her--so +that, at the top of the slope, she caught breathless at a tree and +leaned against the trunk for a moment, closing her eyes. + +"You poor little girl," he breathed close to her ear; and as her +startled eyes flew open, he drew her into his arms. + +For a second his congested face and prominent, pale eyes swam before +her; then with a convulsive gasp she wrenched herself partly free and +strained away from his grasp, panting. + +"Let me go, Mr. Cardemon!" + +"Look here, Valerie, you know I'm crazy about you--" + +"Will you let me go?" + +"Oh, come, little girl, I know who you are, all right! Be a good little +sport and--" + +"Let me go," she whispered between her teeth. Then his red, perspiring +features--the prominent eyes and loose mouth drew nearer--nearer--and +she struck blindly at the face with her dog-whip--twice with the lash +and once with the stag-horn handle. And the next instant she was +running. + +He caught her at the foot of the slope; she saw blood on his cheek and +puffy welts striping his distorted features, strove to strike him again, +but felt her arm powerless in his grasp. + +"Are you mad!" she gasped. + +"Mad about _you_! For God's sake listen to me, Valerie! Batter me, tear +me to pieces--and I won't care, if you'll listen to me a moment--" + +She struggled silently, fiercely, to use her whip, to wrench herself +free. + +"I tell you I love you!" he said; "I'd go through hell for you. You've +got to listen--you've got to _know_--" + +"You coward!" she sobbed. + +"I don't care what you say to me if you'll listen a moment--" + +"As Rita Tevis listened to you!" she said, white to the lips--"you +murderer of souls!" And, as his grasp relaxed for a second, she tore her +arm free, sprang forward and slashed him across the mouth with the lash. + +Behind her she heard his sharp cry of pain, heard him staggering about +in the underbrush. Terror winged her feet and she fairly flew along the +open ridge and down through the dead leaves across a soft, green, marshy +hollow, hearing him somewhere in the woods behind her, coming on at a +heavy run. + +For a long time she ran; and suddenly collapsed, falling in a huddled +desperate heap, her slender hands catching at her throat. + +At the foot of the hill she saw him striding hither and thither, +examining the soft forest soil or halting to listen--then as though +scourged into action, running aimlessly toward where she lay, casting +about on every side like a burly dog at fault. + +Once, when he stood not very far away, and she had hidden her face in +her arms, trembling like a doomed thing--she heard him call to +her--heard the cry burst from him as though in agony: + +"Valerie, don't be afraid! I was crazy to touch you;--I'll let you cut +me to pieces if you'll only answer me." + +And again he shouted, in a voice made thin by fright: "For God's sake, +Valerie, think of _me_ for a moment. Don't run off like that and let +people know what's happened to you!" + +Then, in a moment, his heavy, hurried tread resounded; and he must have +run very near to where she crouched, because she could hear him +whimpering in his fear; but he ran on past where she lay, calling to her +at intervals, until his frightened voice sounded at a distance and she +could scarcely hear the rustle of the dead leaves under his hurrying +tread. + +Even then terror held her chained, breathing fast like a wounded thing, +eyes bright with the insanity of her fear. She lay flat in the leaves, +not stirring. + +The last red sunbeams slanted through the woods, painting tree trunks +crimson and running in fiery furrows through, the dead leaves; the sky +faded to rose-colour, to mauve; faintly a star shone. + +For a long time now nothing had stirred in the woodland silence. And, as +the star glimmered brighter through the branches, she shivered, moved, +lay listening, then crawled a little way. Every sound that she made was +a terror to her, every heart beat seemed to burst the silence. + +It was dusk when she crept out at last into a stony road, dragging her +limbs; a fine mist had settled over the fields; the air grew keener. +Somewhere in the darkness cow-bells tinkled; overhead, through the damp +sheet of fog, the veiled stars were still shining. + +Her senses were not perfectly clear; she remembered falling once or +twice--remembered seeing the granite posts and iron gates of a drive, +and that lighted windows were shining dimly somewhere beyond. And she +crept toward them, still stupid with exhaustion and fright. Then she was +aware of people, dim shapes in the darkness--of a dog barking--of +voices, a quick movement in the dusk--of a woman's startled exclamation. + +Suddenly she heard Neville's voice--and a door opened, flooding her with +yellow light where she stood swaying, dazed, deathly pale. + +"Louis!" she said. + +He sprang to her, caught her in his arms + +"Good God! What is the matter?" + +She rested against him, her eyes listlessly watching the people swiftly +gathering in the dazzling light. + +"Where in the world--how did you get here!--where have you been--" His +stammered words made him incoherent as he caught sight of the mud and +dust on her torn waist and skirt. + +Her eyes had closed a moment; they opened now with an effort. Once more +she looked blindly at the people clustering around her--recognised his +sister and Stephanie--divined that it was his mother who stood gazing at +her in pallid consternation--summoned every atom of her courage to spare +him the insult which a man's world had offered to her--found strength to +ignore it so that no shadow of the outrage should fall through her upon +him or upon those nearest to him. + +"I lost my way," she said. Her white lips tried to smile; she strove to +stand upright, alone; caught mechanically at his arm, the fixed smile +still stamped on her lips. "I am sorry to--disturb anybody.... I was +lost--and it grew dark.... I don't know my way--very well--" + +She turned, conscious of some one's arm supporting her; and Stephanie +said, in a low, pitiful voice: + +"Lean back on me. You must let me help you to the house." + +"Thank you--I won't go in.... If I could rest--a moment--perhaps +somebody--Mr. Neville--would help me to get home again--" + +[Illustration: "'Dearest,' he whispered, putting his arm around her, +'you must come with us'"] + +"Come with me, Miss West," whispered Stephanie, "I _want_ you. Will you +come to my room with me for a little while?" + +She looked into Stephanie's eyes, turned and looked at Neville. + +"Dearest," he whispered, putting his arm around her, "you must come with +us." + +She nodded and moved forward, steadily, between them both, and entered +the house, head-carried high on the slender neck, but her face was +colourless under the dark masses of her loosened hair, and she swayed at +the foot of the stairs, reaching out blindly at nothing--falling +forward. + +It was a dead weight that Neville bore into Stephanie's room. When his +mother turned him out and closed the door behind him he stood stupidly +about until his sister, who had gone into the room, opened the door and +bade him telephone for Dr. Ogilvy. + +"What has happened to her?" he asked, as though dazed. + +"I don't know. I think you'd better tell Quinn to bring around the car +and go for Dr. Ogilvy yourself." + +It was a swift rush to Dartford through the night; bareheaded he bent +forward beside the chauffeur, teeth set, every nerve tense and straining +as though his very will power was driving the machine forward. Then +there came a maddening slowing down through Dartford streets, a +nerve-racking delay until Sam Ogilvy's giant brother had stowed away +himself and his satchel in the tonneau; then slow speed to the town +limits; a swift hurling forward into space that whirled blackly around +them as the great acetylenes split the darkness and chaos roared in +their ears. + +Under the lighted windows the big doctor scrambled out and stamped +upstairs; and Neville waited on the landing. + +His father appeared below, looking up at him, and started to say +something; but apparently changed his mind and went back into the living +room, rattling his evening paper and coughing. + +Cameron passed through the hallway, looked at him, but let him alone. + +After a while the door opened and Lily came out. + +"I'm not needed," she said; "your mother and Stephanie have taken +charge." + +"Is she going to be very ill?" + +"Billy Ogilvy hasn't said anything yet." + +"Is she conscious?" + +"Yes, she is now." + +"Has she said anything more?" + +"No." + +Lily stood silent a moment, gazing absently down at the lighted hall +below, then she looked at her brother as though she, too, were about to +speak, but, like her father, she reconsidered the impulse, and went away +toward the nursery. + +Later his mother opened the door very softly, let herself and Stephanie +out, and stood looking at him, one finger across her lips, while +Stephanie hurried away downstairs. + +"She's asleep, Louis. Don't raise your voice--" as he stepped quickly +toward her. + +"Is it anything serious?" he asked in a low voice. + +"I don't know what Dr. Ogilvy thinks. He is coming out in a moment...." +She placed one hand on her son's shoulder, reddening a trifle. "I've +told William Ogilvy that she is a friend of--the family. He may have +heard Sam talking about her when he was here last. So I thought it +safer." + +Neville brought a chair for his mother, but she shook her head, +cautioning silence, and went noiselessly downstairs. + +[Illustration: "'Well, Louis, what do you know about this?'"] + +Half an hour later Dr. Ogilvy emerged, saw Neville--walked up and +inspected him, curiously. + +"Well, Louis, what do you know about this?" he asked, buttoning his big +thick rain-coat to the throat. + +"Absolutely nothing, Billy, except that Miss West, who is a guest of +the Countess d'Enver at Estwich, lost her way in the woods. How is she +now?" + +"All right," said the doctor, dryly. + +"Is she conscious?" + +"Perfectly." + +"Awake?" + +"Yes. She won't be--long." + +"Did she talk to you?" + +"A little." + +"What _is_ the matter?" + +"Fright. And I'm wondering whether merely being lost in the woods is +enough to have terrified a girl like that? Because, apparently, she is +as superb a specimen of healthy womanhood as this world manufactures +once in a hundred years. How well do you know her?" + +"We are very close friends." + +"H'm. Did you suppose she was the kind of woman to be frightened at +merely being lost in a civilised country?" + +"No. She has more courage--of all kinds--than most women." + +"Because," said the big doctor thoughtfully, "while she was unconscious +it took me ten minutes to pry open her fingers and disengage a rather +heavy dog-whip from her clutch.... And there was some evidences of blood +on the lash and on the bone handle." + +"What!" exclaimed Neville, amazed. + +The doctor shrugged: "I don't know of any fierce and vicious dogs +between here and Estwich, either," he mused. + +"No, Cardemon keeps none. And its mostly his estate." + +"Oh ... Any--h'm!--vicious _men_--in his employment?" + +"My God!" whispered Neville, "what do you mean, Billy?" + +"Finger imprints--black and blue--on both arms. Didn't Miss West say +anything that might enlighten _you_?" + +"No ... She only said she had been lost.... Wait a moment; I'm trying to +think of the men Cardemon employs--" + +He was ashy white and trembling, and the doctor laid a steadying hand on +his arm. + +"Hold on, Louis," he said sharply, "it was no _worse_ than a fright. _Do +you understand_?... And do you understand, too, that an innocent and +sensitive and modest girl would rather die than have such a thing made +public through your well-meant activity? So there's nothing for anybody +to do--yet." + +Neville could scarcely speak. + +"Do you mean--she was attacked by some--man!" + +"It looks like it. And--you'd better keep it from your family--because +_she_ did. She's game to the core--that little girl." + +"But she--she'll tell me!" stammered Neville--she's _got_ to tell me--" + +"She won't if she can help it. Would it aid her any if you found out who +it was and killed him?--ran for a gun and did a little murdering some +pleasant morning--just to show your chivalrous consideration and +devotion to her?" + +"Are you asking me to let a beast like that go unpunished?" demanded +Neville violently. + +"Oh, use your brains, Louis. He frightened her and she slashed him well +for it. And, womanlike--after there was no more danger and no more +necessity for pluck--she got scared and ran; and the farther she ran the +more scared she became. Look here, Louis; look at me--squarely." He laid +both ponderous hands on Neville's shoulders: + +"Sam has told me all about you and Miss West--and I can guess how your +family takes it. Can't you see why she had the pluck to remain silent +about this thing? It was because she saw in it the brutal contempt of +the world toward a woman who stood in that world alone, unsupported, +unprotected. And she would not have you and your family know how lightly +the world held the woman whom you love and wish to marry--not for her +own sake alone--but for the sake of your family's pride--and yours." + +His hands dropped from Neville's shoulders; he stood considering him for +a moment in silence. + +"I've told _you_ because, if you are the man I think you are, you ought +to know the facts. Forcing her to the humiliation of telling you will +not help matters; filling this pup full of lead means an agony of +endless publicity and shame for her, for your family, and for you.... +He'll never dare remain in the same county with her after this. He's +probably skedaddled by this time anyway." ... Dr. Ogilvy looked narrowly +at Neville. "Are you pretty sane, now?" + +"Yes." + +"You realise that gun-play is no good in this matter?" + +"Y-yes." + +"And you really are going to consider Miss West before your own natural +but very primitive desire to do murder?" + +Neville nodded. + +"Knowing," added the doctor, "that the unspeakable cur who affronted her +has probably taken to his heels?" + +Neville, pale and silent, raised his eyes: + +"Do you suspect anybody?" + +"I don't know," said the doctor carelessly;--"I'll just step over to the +telephone and make an inquiry of Penrhyn Cardemon--" + +He walked to the end of the big hall, unhooked the receiver, asked for +Cardemon's house, got it. + +Neville heard him say: + +"This is Dr. Ogilvy. Is that you, Gelett? Isn't your master at home?" + + * * * * * + +"What? Had to catch a train?" + + * * * * * + +"Oh! A sudden matter of business." + + * * * * * + +"I see. He's had a cable calling him to London. How long will he be +away, Gelett?" + + * * * * * + +"Oh, I see. You don't know. Very well. I only called up because I +understood he required medical attention." + + * * * * * + +"Yes--I understood he'd been hurt about the head and face, but I didn't +know he had received such a--battering." + + * * * * * + +"You say that his horse threw him in the big beech-woods? Was he really +very much cut up?" + + * * * * * + +"Pretty roughly handled, eh! All right. When you communicate with him +tell him that Dr. Ogilvy and Mr. Neville, Jr., were greatly interested +to know how badly he was injured. Do you understand? Well, don't forget. +And you may tell him, Gelett, that as long as the scars remain, he'd +better remain, too. Get it straight, Gelett; tell him it's my medical +advice to remain away as long as he can--and a little longer. This +climate is no good for him. Good-bye." + +He turned from the telephone and sauntered toward Neville, who regarded +him with a fixed stare. + +"You see," he remarked with a shrug; and drew from his pocket a slightly +twisted scarf pin--a big horse-shoe set with sapphires and diamonds--the +kind of pin some kinds of men use in their riding-stocks. + +"I've often seen him wearing it," he said carelessly. "Curious how it +could have become twisted and entangled in Miss West's lace waist." + +He held out the pin, turning it over reflectively as the facets of the +gems caught and flashed back the light from the hall brackets. + +"I'll drop it into the poor-box I think," he mused. "Cardemon will +remain away so long that this pin will be entirely out of fashion when +he returns." + +After a few moments Neville drew a long, deep breath, and his clenched +hands relaxed. + +"Sure," commented the burly doctor. "That's right--feeling better--rush +of common sense to the head. Well, I've got to go." + +"Will you be here in the morning?" + +"I think not. She'll be all right. If she isn't, send over for me." + +"You don't think that the shock--the exhaustion--" + +"Naw," said the big doctor with good-natured contempt; "she's going to +be all right in the morning.... She's a lovely creature, isn't she? Sam +said so. Sam has an eye for beauty. But, by jinks! I was scarcely +prepared for such physical perfection--h'm!--or such fine and nice +discrimination--or for such pluck.... God knows what people's families +want these days. If the world mated properly our best families would be +extinct in another generation.... You're one of 'em; you'd better get +diligent before the world wakes up with a rush of common sense to its +doddering old head." He gave him both hands, warmly, cordially: +"Good-bye, Louis." + +Neville said: "I want you to know that I'd marry her to-morrow if she'd +have me, Billy." + +The doctor lifted his eyebrows. + +"Won't she?" + +"No." + +"Then probably you're not up to sample. A girl like that is no fool. +She'll require a lot in a man. However, you're young; and you may make +good yet." + +"You don't understand, Billy--" + +"Yes, I do. She wears a dinky miniature of you against her naked heart. +Yes, I guess I understand.... And I guess she's that kind of a girl all +unselfishness and innocence, and generous perversity and--quixotic +love.... It's too bad, Louis. I guess you're up against it for fair." + +He surveyed the younger man, shook his head: + +"They can't stand for her, can they?" + +"No." + +"And she won't stand for snaking you out of the fold. That's it, I +fancy?" + +"Yes." + +"Too bad--too bad. She's a fine woman--a very fine little woman. That's +the kind a man ought to marry and bother the Almighty with gratitude all +the rest of his life. Well--well! Your family is your own after all; and +I live in Dartford, thank God!--not on lower Fifth Avenue or Tenth +Street." + +He started away, halted, came back: + +"Couldn't you run away with her?" he asked anxiously. + +"She won't," replied Neville, unsmiling. + +"I mean, violently. But she's too heavy to carry, I fancy--and I'll bet +she's got the vigour of little old Diana herself. No--you couldn't do +the Sabine act with her--only a club and the cave-man's gentle +persuasion would help either of you.... Well--well, if they see her at +breakfast it may help some. You know a woman makes or breaks herself at +breakfast. That's why the majority of woman take it abed. I'm serious, +Louis; no man can stand 'em--the majority." + +Once more he started away, hesitated, came back. + +"Who's this Countess that Sam is so crazy about?" + +"A sweet little woman, well-bred, and very genuine and sincere." + +"Never heard of her in Dartford," muttered the doctor. + +Neville laughed grimly: + +"Billy, Tenth Street and lower Fifth Avenue and Greenwich Village and +Chelsea and Stuyvesant Square--and Syringa Avenue, Dartford, are all +about alike. Bird Centre is just as stupid as Manhattan; and there never +was and never will be a republic and a democracy in any country on the +face of this snob-cursed globe." + +The doctor, very red, stared at him. + +"By jinks!" he said, "I guess I'm one after all. Now, who in hell would +suspect that!--after all the advice I've given you!" + +"It was another fellow's family, that's all," said Neville wearily. +"Theories work or they don't; only few care to try them on themselves or +their own families--particularly when they devoutly believe in them." + +"Gad! That's a stinger! You've got me going all right," said the doctor, +wincing, "and you're perfectly correct. Here I've been practically +counselling you to marry where your inclination led you, and let the +rest go to blazes; and when it's a question of Sam doing something +similar, I retire hastily across the river and establish a residence in +Missouri. What a rotten, custom-ridden bunch of snippy-snappy-snobbery +we are after all!... All the same--who _is_ the Countess?" + +Neville didn't know much about her. + +"Sam's such an ass," said his brother, "and it isn't all snobbery on my +part." + +"The safest thing to do," said Neville bitterly, "is to let a man in +love alone." + +"Right. Foolish--damned foolish--but right! There is no greater ass than +a wise one. Those who don't know anything at all are the better +asses--and the happier." + +And he went away down the stairs, muttering and gesticulating. + +Mrs. Neville came to the door as he opened it to go out. They talked in +low voices for a few moments, then the doctor went out and Mrs. Neville +called to Stephanie. + +The girl came from the lighted drawing-room, and, together, the two +women ascended the stairs. + +Stephanie smiled and nodded to Neville, then continued on along the +hall; but his mother stopped to speak to him. + +"Go and sit with your father a little while," she said. "And don't be +impatient with him, dear. He is an old man--a product of a different age +and a simpler civilisation--perhaps a narrower one. Be patient and +gentle with him. He really is fond of you and proud of you." + +"Very well, mother.... Is anybody going to sit up with Valerie?" + +"Stephanie insists on sleeping on the couch at the foot of her bed. I +offered to sit up but she wouldn't let me.... You'll see that I'm called +if anything happens, won't you?" + +"Yes. Good-night, mother." + +He kissed her, stood a moment looking at the closed door behind which +lay Valerie--tried to realise that she did lie there under the same +roof-tree that sheltered father, mother, and sister--then, with a +strange thrill in his heart, he went downstairs. + +Cameron passed him, on his upward way to slumberland. + +"How's Miss West?" he asked cheerfully. + +"Asleep, I think. Billy Ogilvy expects her to be all right in the +morning." + +"Good work! Glad of it. Tell your governor; he's been inquiring." + +"Has he?" said Neville, with another thrill, and went into the living +room where his father sat alone before the whitening ashes of the fire. + +"Well, father!" he said, smiling. + +The older man turned his head, then turned it away as his son drew up a +chair and laid a stick across the andirons. + +"It's turned a little chilly," he said. + +"I have known of many a frost in May," said his father. + +There was a silence; then his father slowly turned and gazed at him. + +"How is--Miss West?" he asked stiffly. + +"Billy Ogilvy says she will be all right to-morrow, father." + +"Was she injured by her unfortunate experience?" + +"A little briar-torn, I'm afraid. Those big beech woods are rather a +puzzle to anybody who is not familiar with the country. No wonder she +became frightened when it grew dark." + +"It was--very distressing," nodded his father. + +They remained silent again until Mr. Neville rose, took off his +spectacles, laid aside _The Evening Post_, and held out his hand. + +"Good-night, my son." + +"Good-night, father." + +"Yes--yes--good-night--good-night--to many, many things, my son; +old-fashioned things of no value any more--of no use to me, or you, or +anybody any more." + +He retained his son's hand in his, peering at him, dim-eyed, without his +spectacles: + +"The old order passes--the old ideas, the old beliefs--and the old +people who cherished them--who know no others, needed no others.... +Good-night, my son." + +But he made no movement to leave, and still held to his son's hand: + +"I've tried to live as blamelessly as my father lived, Louis--and as God +has given me to see my way through life.... But--the times change +so--change so. The times are perplexing; life grows noisier, and +stranger and more complex and more violent every day around us--and the +old require repose, Louis. Try to understand that." + +"Yes, father." + +The other looked at him, wearily: + +"Your mother seems to think that your happiness in life depends on--what +we say to you--this evening. Stephanie seems to believe it, too.... Lily +says very little.... And so do I, Louis--very little ... only enough +to--to wish you--happiness. And so--good-night." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +It was barely daylight when Valerie awoke. She lay perfectly still, +listening, remembering, her eyes wandering over the dim, unfamiliar +room. Through thin silk curtains a little of the early light penetrated; +she heard the ceaseless chorus of the birds, cocks crowing near and far +away, the whimpering flight of pigeons around the eaves above her +windows, and their low, incessant cooing. + +Suddenly, through the foot-bars of her bed she caught sight of Stephanie +lying sound asleep on the couch, and she sat up--swiftly, noiselessly, +staring at her out of wide eyes from which the last trace of dreams had +fled. + +For a long while she remained upright among her pillows, looking at +Stephanie, remembering, considering; then, with decision, she slipped +silently out of bed, and went about her dressing without a sound. + +In the connecting bath-room and dressing-room beyond she found her +clothing gathered in a heap, evidently to be taken away and freshened +early in the morning. She dared not brush it for fear of awakening +Stephanie; her toilet was swift and simple; she clothed herself rapidly +and stepped out into the hall, her rubber-soled walking shoes making no +noise. + +Below, the side-lights of the door made unbolting and unchaining easy; +it would be hours yet before even the servants were stirring, but she +moved with infinite caution, stepping out onto the veranda and closing +the door behind her without making the slightest noise. + +Dew splashed her shoes as she hastened across the lawn. She knew the +Estwich road even if there had been no finger-posts to point out her +way. + +The sun had not yet risen; woods were foggy; the cattle in the fields +stood to their shadowy flanks in the thin mist; and everywhere, like the +cheery rush of a stream, sounded the torrent of bird-music from bramble +patch and alder-swale, from hedge and orchard and young woodland. + +It was not until she had arrived in sight of Estwich Corners that she +met the first farmer afield; and, as she turned into the drive, the edge +of the sun sent a blinding search-light over a dew-soaked world, and her +long-shadow sprang into view, streaming away behind her across the lawn. + +To her surprise the front door was open and a harnessed buck-board stood +at the gate; and suddenly she recollected with a hot blush that the +household must have been amazed and probably alarmed by her +non-appearance the night before. + +Hélène's farmer and her maid came out as she entered the front walk, +and, seeing her, stood round-eyed and gaping. + +"I got lost and remained over night at Mrs. Collis's," she said, +smiling. "Now, I'd like a bath if you please and some fresh clothing for +travelling, because I am obliged to go to the city, and I wish to catch +the earliest train." + +When at last it was plain to them that she was alive and well, Hélène's +maid, still trembling, hastened to draw a bath for her and pack the +small steamer trunk; and the farmer sat down on the porch and waited, +still more or less shaken by the anxiety which had sent him pottering +about the neighbouring woods and fields with a lantern the night before, +and had aroused him to renewed endeavour before sunrise. + +Bathed and freshly clothed, Valerie hastened into the pretty library, +seated herself at the desk, pushed up her veil, and wrote rapidly: + +"MY DEAR MRS. COLLIS: My gratitude to you, to Mrs. Neville, and to Miss +Swift is none the less real because I am acknowledging it by letter. +Besides, I am very certain that you would prefer it so. + +"You and your family have been kindness itself to me in my awkward and +painful dilemma; you have sheltered me and provided medical attendance; +and I am deeply in your debt. + +"Had matters been different I need scarcely say that it would have been +a pleasure for me to personally acknowledge to you and your family my +grateful appreciation. + +"But I am very sure that I could show my gratitude in no more welcome +manner than by doing what I have done this morning and by expressing +that obligation to you in writing. + +"Before I close may I ask you to believe that I had no intention of +seeking shelter at your house? Until I heard Mr. Neville's voice I had +no idea where I was. I merely made my way toward the first lighted +windows that I saw, never dreaming that I had come to Ashuelyn. + +"I am sorry that my stupid misadventure has caused you and your family +so much trouble and annoyance. I feel it very keenly--more keenly +because of your kindness in making the best of what must have been to +you and your family a most disagreeable episode. + +"May I venture to express to you my thanks to Miss Swift who so +generously remained in my room last night? I am deeply sensible of her +sweetness to an unwelcome stranger--and of Mrs. Neville's gentle manner +toward one who, I am afraid, has caused her much anxiety. + +"To the very amiable physician who did so much to calm a foolish and +inexcusable nervousness, I am genuinely grateful. If I knew his name and +address I would write and properly acknowledge my debt. + +"There is one thing more before I close: I am sorry that I wrote you so +ungraciously after receiving your last letter. It would have been +perfectly easy to have thanked you courteously, whatever private opinion +I may have entertained concerning a matter about which there may be more +than my own opinion. + +"And now, please believe that I will never again voluntarily cause you +and your family the slightest uneasiness or inconvenience; and believe +me, too, if you care to. Very gratefully yours, + +"VALERIE WEST." + +She directed and sealed the letter, then drew toward her another sheet +of paper: + +"DEAREST: I could die of shame for having blundered into your family +circle. I dare not even consider what they must think of me now. _You_ +will know how innocently and unsuspiciously it was done--how utterly +impossible it would have been for me to have voluntarily committed such +an act even in the last extremity. But what _they_ will think of my +appearance at your door last night, I don't know and I dare not surmise. +I have done all I could; I have rid them of me, and I have written to +your sister to thank her and your family for their very real kindness to +the last woman in the world whom they would have willingly chosen to +receive and entertain. + +"Dear, I didn't know I had nerves; but this experience seems to have +developed them. I am perfectly well, but the country here has become +distasteful to me, and I am going to town in a few minutes. I want to +get away--I want to go back to my work--earn my living again--live in +blessed self-respect where, as a worker, I have the right to live. + +"Dearest, I am sorry about not meeting you at the station and going back +to town with you. But I simply cannot endure staying here after last +night. I suppose it is weak and silly of me, but I feel now as though +your family would never be perfectly tranquil again until I am out of +their immediate vicinity. I cannot convey to you or to them how sorry +and how distressed I am that this thing has occurred. + +"But I can, perhaps, make you understand that I love you, dearly--love +you enough to give myself to you--love you enough to give you up +forever. + +"And it is to consider what is best, what to do, that I am going away +quietly somewhere by myself to think it all out once more--and to come +to a final decision before the first of June. + +"I want to search my heart, and let God search it for any secret +selfishness and unworthiness that might sway me in my choice--any +overmastering love for you that might blind me. When I know myself, you +shall know me. Until then I shall not write you; but sometime before the +first of June--or on that day, you shall know and I shall know how I +have decided wherein I may best serve you--whether by giving or +withholding--whether by accepting or refusing forever all that I care +for in the world--you, Louis, and the love you have given me. + +"VALERIE WEST." + +She sealed and directed this, laid it beside the other, and summoned the +maid: + +"Have these sent at once to Ashuelyn," she said; "let Jimmy go on his +bicycle. Are my things ready? Is the buck-board still there? Then I will +leave a note for the Countess." + +And she scribbled hastily: + +"HÉLÈNE DEAR: I've got to go to town in a hurry on matters of +importance, and so I am taking a very unceremonious leave of you and of +your delightful house. + +"They'll tell you I got lost in the woods last night, and I did. It was +too stupid of me; but no harm came of it--only a little embarrassment in +accepting a night's shelter at Ashuelyn among people who were everything +that was hospitable, but who must have been anything but delighted to +entertain me. + +"In a few weeks I shall write you again. I have not exactly decided what +to do this summer. I may go abroad for a vacation as I have saved enough +to do so in an economical manner; and I should love to see the French +cathedrals. Perhaps, if I so decide, you might be persuaded to go with +me. + +"However, it is too early to plan yet. A matter of utmost importance is +going to keep me busy and secluded for a week or so. After that I shall +come to some definite decision; and then you shall hear from me. + +"In the meanwhile--I have enjoyed Estwich and you immensely. It was kind +and dear of you to ask me. I shall never forget my visit. + +"Good-bye, Hélène dear. + +"VALERIE WEST." + +This note she left on Hélène's dresser, then ran downstairs and sprang +into the buck-board. + +They had plenty of time to catch the train; and on the train she had +plenty of leisure for reflection. But she could not seem to think; a +confused sensation of excitement invaded her mind and she sat in her +velvet armed chair alternately shivering with the memory of Cardemon's +villainy, and quivering under the recollection of her night at Ashuelyn. + +Rita was not at home when she came into their little apartment. The +parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and shrieking from his +perch; the goldfish goggled his eyes and swam 'round and 'round. She +stood still in the centre of her room looking vacantly about her. An +immense, overwhelming sense of loneliness came over her; she turned as +the rush of tears blinded her and flung herself full length among the +pillows of her bed. + + * * * * * + +Her first two or three days in town were busy ones; she had her accounts +to balance, her inventories to take, her mending to do, her modest +summer wardrobe to acquire, letters to write and to answer, engagements +to make, to fulfill, to postpone; friends to call on and to receive, +duties in regard to the New Idea Home to attend to. + +[Illustration: "The parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and +shrieking from his perch."] + +Also, the morning after her arrival came a special delivery letter from +Neville: + +"It was a mistake to go, dear, because, although you could not have +known it, matters have changed most happily for us. You were a welcome +guest in my sister's house; you would have been asked to remain after +your visit at Estwich was over. My family's sentiments are +changing--have changed. It requires only you yourself to convince them. +I wish you had remained, although your going so quietly commanded the +respect of everybody. They all are very silent about it and about you, +yet I can see that they have been affected most favourably by their +brief glimpse of you. + +"As for your wishing to remain undisturbed for a few days, I can see no +reason for it now, dear, but of course I shall respect your wishes. + +"Only send me a line to say that the month of June will mean our +marriage. Say it, dear, because there is now no reason to refuse." + +To which she answered: + +"Dearest among all men, no family's sentiments change over night. Your +people were nice to me and I have thanked them. But, dear, I am not +likely to delude myself in regard to their real sentiments concerning +me. Too deeply ingrained, too basic, too essentially part of themselves +and of their lives are the creeds, codes, and beliefs which, in spite of +themselves, must continue to govern their real attitude toward such a +girl as I am. + +"It is dear of you to wish for us what cannot be; it is kind of them to +accept your wish with resignation. + +"But I have told you many times, my darling, that I would not accept a +status as your wife at any cost to you or to them--and I can read +between the lines, even if I did not know, what it would cost them and +you. And so, very gently, and with a heart full of gratitude and love +for you, I must decline this public honour. + +"But, God willing, I shall not decline a lifetime devoted to you when +you are not with them. That is all I can hope for; and it is so much +more than I ever dreamed of having, that, to have you at all--even for a +part of the time--even for a part of my life, is enough. And I say it +humbly, reverently, without ignoble envy or discontent for what might +have been had you and I been born to the same life amid the same +surroundings. + +"Don't write to me again, dear, until I have determined what is best for +us. Before the first day of summer, or on that day, you will know. And +so will I. + +"My life is such a little thing compared to yours--of such slight value +and worth that sometimes I think I am considering matters too +deeply--that if I simply fling it in the scales the balance will +scarcely be altered--the splendid, even tenor of your career will +scarcely swerve a shade. + +"Yet my life is already something to you; and besides it is all I have +to give you; and if I am to give it--if it is adding an iota to your +happiness for me to give it--then I must truly treat it with respect, +and deeply consider the gift, and the giving, and if it shall be better +for you to possess it, or better that you never shall. + +"And whatever I do with myself, my darling, be certain that it is of you +I am thinking and not of the girl, who loves you. + +"V." + +By degrees she cleared up her accounts and set her small house in order. + +Rita seemed to divine that something radical was in progress of +evolution, but Valerie offered no confidence, and the girl, already +deeply worried over John Burleson's condition, had not spirit enough to +meddle. + +"Sam Ogilvy's brother is a wonder on tubercular cases," she said to +Valerie, "and I'm doing my best to get John to go and see him at +Dartford." + +"Won't he?" + +"He says he will, but you know how horridly untruthful men are. And now +John is slopping about with his wet clay again as usual--an order for a +tomb in Greenwood--poor boy, he had better think how best to keep away +from tombs." + +"Why, Rita!" said Valerie, shocked. + +"I can't help it; I'm really frightened, dear. And you know well enough +I'm no flighty alarmist. Besides, somehow, I feel certain that Sam's +brother would tell John to go to Arizona"--she pointed piteously to her +trunk: "It's packed; it has been packed for weeks. I'm all ready to go +with him. Why can't a man mould clay and chip marble and cast bronze as +well in Arizona as in this vile pest-hole?" + +Valerie sat with folded hands looking at her. + +"How do you think _you_ could stand that desolation?" + +"Arizona?" + +"Yes." + +"There is another desolation I dread more." + +"Do you really love him so?" + +Rita slowly turned from the window and looked at her. + +"Yes," she said. + +[Illustration: "'And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just +men.'"] + +"Does he know it, Rita?" + +"No, dear." + +"Do you think--if he did--" + +"No.... How could it be--after what has happened to me?" + +"You would tell him?" + +"Of course. I sometimes wonder whether he has not already +heard--something--from that beast--" + +"Does John know him?" + +"He has done two fountains for his place at El Naúar. He had several +other things in view--" she shrugged--"but _The Mohave_ sailed suddenly +with its owner for a voyage around the world--so John was +told;--and--Valerie, it's the first clear breath of relief I've drawn +since Penrhyn Cardemon entered John's studio." + +"I didn't know he had ever been there." + +"Yes; twice." + +"Did you see him there?" + +"Yes. I nearly dropped. At first he did not recognise me--I was very +young--when--" + +"Did he speak to you?" + +"Yes. I managed to answer. John was not looking at me, fortunately.... +After that he wrote to me--and I burned the letter.... It was horrible; +he said that José Querida was his guest at El Naúar, and he asked me to +get you because you knew Querida, and be his guest for a week end.... I +cried that night; you heard me." + +"Was _that_ it!" asked Valerie, very pale. + +"Yes; I was too wretched to tell you," + +Valerie sat silent, her teeth fixed in her lower lip. Then: + +"José could not have known what kind of a man the--other--is." + +"I hope not." + +"Oh, he _couldn't_ have known! Rita, he wouldn't have let him ask us--" + +"Men seldom deceive one another." + +"You _don't_ think José Querida _knew_?" + +"I--don't--think.... Valerie, men are very--very unlike women.... +Forgive me if I seem to be embittered.... Even you have had your +experience with men--the men that all the world seems to like--kind, +jolly, generous, jovial, amusing men--and clever men; men of attainment, +of distinction. And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just +men, Valerie, just men in a world made for men, a world into which we +come like timid intruders; uncertain through generations of +uncertainty--innocently stupid through ages of stupid innocence, ready +to please though not knowing exactly how; ready to be pleased, God +knows, with pleasures as innocent as the simple minds that dream of +them. + +"Valerie, I do not believe any evil first came into this world of men +through any woman." + +Valerie looked down at her folded hands--small, smooth, white hands, +pure of skin and innocent as a child's. + +"I don't know," she said, troubled, "how much more unhappiness arises +through men than through women, if any more ... I like men. Some are +unruly--like children; some have the sense and the morals of marauding +dogs. + +"But, at worst, the unruly and the marauders seem so hopelessly beneath +one, intellectually, that a girl's resentment is really more of +contempt than of anger--and perhaps more of pity than of either." + +Rita said: "I cannot feel as charitably.... _You_ still have that +right." + +"Rita! Rita!" she said softly, "we both have loved men, you with the +ignorance and courage of a child--I with less ignorance and with my +courage as yet untested. Where is the difference between us--if we love +sincerely?" + +Rita leaned forward and looked at her searchingly: + +"Do you mean to do--what you said you would?" + +"Yes." + +"Why?" + +"Because he wants me." + +Rita sprang to her feet and began pacing the floor. + +"I will not have it so!" she said excitedly, "I will not have it so! If +he is a man--a real man--he will not have it so, either. If he will, he +does not love you; mark what I say, Valerie--he does not love you +enough. No man can love a woman enough to accept that from her; it would +be a paradox, I tell you!" + +"He loves me enough," said Valerie, very pale. "He could not love me as +I care for him; it is not in a man to do it, nor in any human being to +love as I love him. You don't understand, Rita. I _must_ be a part of +him--not very much, because already there is so much to him--and I am +so--so unimportant." + +"You are more important than he is," said Rita fiercely--"with all your +fineness and loyalty and divine sympathy and splendid humility--with +your purity and your loveliness; and in spite of his very lofty +intellect and his rather amazing genius, and his inherited social +respectability--_you_ are the more important to the happiness and +welfare of this world--even to the humblest corner in it!" + +"Rita! Rita! What wild, partisan nonsense you are talking!" + +[Illustration: "His thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie."] + +"Oh, Valerie, Valerie, if you only knew! If you only knew!" + + * * * * * + +Querida called next day. Rita was at home but flatly refused to see him. + +"Tell Mr. Querida," she said to the janitor, "that neither I nor Miss +West are at home to him, and that if he is as nimble at riddles as he is +at mischief he can guess this one before his friend Mr. Cardemon +returns from a voyage around the world." + +Which reply slightly disturbed Querida. + +All during dinner--and he was dining alone--he considered it; and his +thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie. + +Somehow, some way or other he must come to an understanding with Valerie +West. Somehow, some way, she must be brought to listen to him. Because, +while he lived, married or single, poor or wealthy, he would never rest, +never be satisfied, never wring from life the last drop that life must +pay him, until this woman's love was his. + +He loved her as such a man loves; he had no idea of letting that love +for her interfere with other ambitions. + +Long ago, when very poor and very talented and very confident that the +world, which pretended to ignore him, really knew in its furtive heart +that it owed him fame and fortune and social position, he had determined +to begin the final campaign with a perfectly suitable marriage. + +That was all years ago; and he had never swerved in his +determination--not even when Valerie West surprised his life in all the +freshness of her young beauty. + +And, as he sat there leisurely over his claret, he reflected, easily, +that the time had come for the marriage, and that the woman he had +picked out was perfectly suitable, and that the suitable evening to +inform her was the present evening. + +Mrs. Hind-Willet was prepossessing enough to interest him, clever enough +to stop gaps in a dinner table conversation, wealthy enough to permit +him a liberty of rejecting commissions, which he had never before dared +to exercise, and fashionable enough to carry for him what could not be +carried through his own presentable good looks and manners and fame. + +This last winter he had become a frequenter of her house on Sixty-third +Street; and so carelessly assiduous, and so delightfully casual had +become his attentions to that beautifully groomed widow, that his +footing with her was already an intimacy, and his portrait of her, which +he had given her, had been the sensation of the loan exhibition at the +great Interborough Charity Bazaar. + +He was neither apprehensive nor excited as he calmly finished his +claret. He was to drop in there after dinner to discuss with her several +candidates as architects for the New Idea Home. + +So when he was entirely ready he took his hat and stick and departed in +a taxicab, pleasantly suffused with a gentle glow of anticipation. He +had waited many years for such an evening as this was to be. He was a +patient and unmoral man. He could wait longer for Valerie,--and for the +first secret blow at the happiness and threatened artistic success of +Louis Neville. + +So he rolled away in his taxi very comfortably, savouring his cigarette, +indolently assured of his reception in a house which it would suit him +perfectly to inhabit when he cared to. + +Only one thing worried him a little--the short note he had received from +his friend Penrhyn Cardemon, saying rather brusquely that he'd made up +his mind not to have his portrait painted for five thousand dollars, and +that he was going off on _The Mohave_ to be gone a year at least. + +Which pained Querida, because Cardemon had not only side-stepped what +was almost a commission, but he had, also, apparently forgotten his +invitation to spend the summer on _The Mohave_--with the understanding +that Valerie West was also to be invited. + +However, everything comes in its season; and this did not appear to be +the season for ripe commissions and yachting enterprises; but it +certainly seemed to be the season for a judicious matrimonial +enterprise. + +And when Mrs. Hind-Willet received him in a rose-tinted reception +corner, audaciously intimate and secluded, he truly felt that he was +really missing something of the pleasures of the chase, and that it was +a little too easy to be acutely enjoyable. + +However, when at last he had gently retained her hand and had whispered, +"Alma," and had let his big, dark, velvet eyes rest with respectful +passion upon her smaller and clearer and blacker ones, something +somewhere in the machinery seemed to go wrong--annoyingly wrong. + +Because Mrs. Hind-Willet began to laugh--and evidently was trying not +to--trying to remain very serious; but her little black eyes were +glistening with tears of suppressed mirth, and when, amazed and +offended, he would have withdrawn his hand, she retained it almost +convulsively: + +"José! I _beg_ your pardon!--I truly do. It is perfectly horrid and +unspeakable of me to behave this way; but listen, child! I am forty; I +am perfectly contented not to marry again; _and_ I don't love you. So, +my poor José, what on earth am I to do if I don't laugh a little. I +_can't_ weep over it you know." + +The scarlet flush faded from his olive skin. "Alma," he began +mournfully, but she only shook her head, vigorously. + +"Nonsense," she said. "You like me for a sufficient variety of reasons. +And to tell you the truth I suspect that I am quite as madly in love +with you as you actually are with me. No, no, José. There are too +many--discrepancies--of various kinds. I have too little to gain!--to be +horribly frank--and you--alas!--are a very cautious, very clever, and +admirably sophisticated young man.... There, there! I am not really +accusing you--or blaming you--very much.... I'd have tried the same +thing in your place--yes, indeed I would.... But, José dear, if you'll +take the mature advice of fair, plump, and forty, you'll let the lesser +ambition go. + +"A clever wealthy woman nearer your age, and on the edge of things--with +you for a husband, ought to carry you and herself far enough to suit +you. And there'd be more amusement in it, believe me.... And now--you +may kiss my hand--very good-humoredly and respectfully, and we'll talk +about those architects. Shall we?" + + * * * * * + +For twenty-four hours Querida remained a profoundly astonished man. +Examine, in retrospective, as he would, the details of the delicately +adjusted machinery which for so many years had slowly but surely turned +the interlocking cog-wheels of destiny for him, he could not find where +the trouble had been--could discover no friction caused by neglect of +lubricants; no over-oiling, either; no flaw. + +Wherein lay the trouble? Based on what error was his theory that the +average man could marry anybody he chose? Just where had he +miscalculated? + +He admitted that times changed very fast; that the world was spinning at +a rate that required nimble wits to keep account of its revolutions. But +his own wits were nimble, almost feminine in the rapid delicacy of their +intuition--_almost_ feminine, but not quite. And he felt, vaguely, that +there lay his mistake in engaging a woman with a woman's own weapons; +and that the only chance a man has is to perplex her with his own. + +The world was spinning rapidly; times changed very fast, but not as fast +as women were changing in the Western World. For the self-sufficient +woman--the self-confident, self-sustaining individual, not only content +but actually preferring autonomy of mind and body, was a fact in which +José Querida had never really ever believed. No sentimentalist does or +really can. And all creators of things artistic are, basically, +sentimentalists. + +Querida's almond-shaped, velvet eyes had done their share for him in his +time; they were merely part of a complex machinery which, included many +exquisitely adjusted parts which could produce at will such phenomena as +temporary but genuine sympathy and emotion: a voice controlled and +modulated to the finest nuances; a grace of body and mind that resembled +inherent delicacy; a nervous receptiveness and intelligence almost +supersensitive in its recognition of complicated ethical problems. It +was a machinery which could make of him any manner of man which the +opportunism of the particular moment required. Yet, with all this, in +every nerve and bone and fibre he adored material and intellectual +beauty, and physical suffering in others actually distressed him. + +Now, reviewing matters, deeply interested to find the microscopic +obstruction which had so abruptly stopped the machinery of destiny for +him, he was modest enough and sufficiently liberal-minded to admit to +himself that Alma Hind-Willet was the exception that proved this rule. +There _were_ women so constructed that they had become essentially +unresponsive. Alma was one. But, he concluded that if he lived a +thousand years he was not likely to encounter another. + +And the following afternoon he called upon Mrs. Hind-Willet's +understudy, the blue-eyed little Countess d'Enver. + +Hélène d'Enver was superintending the definite closing of her beautiful +duplex apartments--the most beautiful in the great château-like, +limestone building. And José Querida knew perfectly well what the rents +were. + +"Such a funny time to come to see me," she had said laughingly over the +telephone; "I'm in a dreadful state with skirts pinned up and a +motor-bonnet over my hair, but I will _not_ permit my maids to touch the +porcelains; and if you really wish to see me, come ahead." + +He really wished to. Besides he adored her Ming porcelains and her +Celedon, and the idea of any maid touching them almost gave him +heart-failure. He himself possessed one piece of Ming and a broken +fragment of Celedon. Women had been married for less. + +She was very charming in her pinned-up skirts and her dainty head-gear, +and she welcomed him and intrusted him with specimens which sent +pleasant shivers down his flexible spine. + +And, together, they put away many scores of specimens which were +actually priceless, inasmuch as any rumour of a public sale would have +excited amateurs to the verge of lunacy, and almost any psychopathic +might have established a new record for madness at an auction of this +matchless collection. + +They breathed easier when the thrilling task was ended; but emotion +still enchained them as they seated themselves at a tea-table--an +emotion so deep on Hélène's part that she suffered Querida to retain the +tips of her fingers for an appreciable moment when transferring sugar to +his cup. And she listened, with a smile almost tremulous, to the +fascinating music of his voice, charmingly attuned and modulated to a +pitch which, somehow, seemed to harmonise with the very word, Celedon. + +"I am so surprised," she said softly--but his dark eyes noted that she +was still busy with her tea paraphernalia--"I scarcely know what to +think, Mr. Querida--" + +"Think that I love you--" breathed Querida, his dark and beautiful head +very near to her blond one. + +"I--am--thinking of it.... But--" + +"Hélène," he whispered musically;--and suddenly stiffened in his chair +as the maid came clattering in over the rugless and polished parquet to +announce Mr. Ogilvy, followed _san façon_ by that young man, swinging a +straw hat and a malacca stick. + +"Sam!" said the pretty Countess, changing countenance. + +"Hello, Hélène! How-do, Querida! I heard you were temporarily in town, +dear lady--" He kissed a hand that was as faltering and guilty as the +irresolute eyes she lifted to his. + +Ten minutes later Querida took his leave. He dismissed the expensive +taxi which had been devouring time outside, and walked thoughtfully away +down the fashionable street. + +Because the machinery had chanced to clog twice did not disturb his +theory; but the trouble with him was local; he was intensely and +personally annoyed, nervous, irritated unspeakably. Because, except for +Valerie, these two, Alma Hind-Willet and Hélène d'Enver, were the only +two socially and financially suitable women in whom he took the +slightest physical interest. + +There is, in all women, one moment--sometimes repeated--in which a +sudden yielding to caprice sometimes overturns the logical plans laid +out and inexorably followed for half a lifetime. And there was much of +the feminine about Querida. + +And it chanced to happen on this day--when no doubt all unsuspected and +unperceived some lurking jettatura had given him the evil eye--that he +passed by hazard through the block where Valerie lived, and saw her +mounting the steps. + +"Why, José!" she exclaimed, a trifle confused in her smiling cordiality +as he sprang up the steps behind her--for Rita's bitterness, if it had +not aroused in her suspicions, had troubled her in spite of her +declaration of unbelief. + +He asked for a cup of tea, and she invited him. Rita was in the room +when they entered; and she stood up coolly, coolly returned Querida's +steady glance and salutation with a glance as calm, as detached, and as +intelligent as a surgeon's. + +Neither he nor she referred to his recent call; he was perfectly +self-possessed, entirely amiable with that serene and level good-humour +which sometimes masks a defiance almost contemptuous. + +But Rita's engagements required her to leave very shortly after his +advent; and before she went out she deliberately waited to catch +Valerie's eye; and Valerie coloured deeply under her silent message. + +Then Rita went away with a scarcely perceptible nod to Querida; and +when, by the clock, she had been gone twenty minutes, Querida, without +reason, without preparation, and perfectly aware of his moment's +insanity, yielded to a second's flash of caprice--the second that comes +once in the lives of all women--and now, in the ordered symmetry of his +life, had come to him. + +"Valerie," he said, "I love you. Will you marry me?" + +She had been leaning sideways on the back of her chair, one hand +supporting her cheek, gazing almost listlessly out of the open window. + +She did not stir, nor did her face alter, but, very quietly she turned +her head and looked at him. + +He spoke, breathlessly, eloquently, persuasively, and well; the perfect +machinery was imitating for him a single-minded, ardent, honourable +young man, intelligent enough to know his own mind, manly enough to +speak it. The facsimile was flawless. + +He had finished and was waiting, long fingers gripping the arms of his +chair; and her face had altered only to soften divinely, and her eyes +were very sweet and untroubled. + +"I am glad you have spoken this way to me, José. Something has been said +about you--in connection with Mr. Cardemon--which disturbed me and made +me very sad and miserable, although I would not permit myself to believe +it.... And now I know it was a mistake--because you have asked me to be +your wife." + +She sat looking at him, the sadness in her eyes emphasised by the +troubled smile curving her lips: + +"I couldn't marry you, José, because I am not in love with you. If I +were I would do it.... But I do not care for you that way." + +For an instant some inner flare of madness blinded his brain and vision. +There was, in his face, something so terrible that Valerie unconsciously +rose to her feet, bewildered, almost stunned. + +"I want you," he said slowly. + +"José! What in the world--" + +His dry lips moved, but no articulate sound came from them. Suddenly he +sprang to his feet, and out of his twisted, distorted mouth poured a +torrent of passion, of reproach, of half-crazed pleading--incoherency +tumbling over incoherency, deafening her, beating in upon her, till she +swayed where she stood, holding her arms up as though to shield herself. + +The next instant she was straining, twisting in his arms, striving to +cry out, to wrench herself free to keep her feet amid the crash of the +overturned table and a falling chair. + +"José! Are you insane?" she panted, tearing herself free and springing +toward the door. Suddenly she halted, uttered a cry as he jumped back to +block her way. The low window-ledge caught him under both knees; he +clutched at nothing, reeled backward and outward and fell into space. + +For a second she covered her white face with both hands, then turned, +dragged herself to the open window, forced herself to look out. + +He lay on his back on the grass in the rear yard, and the janitor was +already bending over him. And when she reached the yard Querida had +opened both eyes. + +Later the ambulance came, and with its surgeon came a policeman. +Querida, lying with his head on her lap, opened his eyes again: + +"I was--seated--on the window-ledge," he said with difficulty--"and +overbalanced myself.... Caught the table--but it fell over.... That's +all." + +The eyes in his ghastly face closed wearily, then fluttered: + +"Awfully sorry, Valerie--make such a mess--in your house." + +"Oh-h--José," she sobbed. + +After that they took him away to the Presbyterian Hospital; and nobody +seemed to find very much the matter with him except that he'd been badly +shocked. + +But the next day all sensation ceased in his body from the neck +downward. + +And they told Valerie why. + +For ten days he lay there, perfectly conscious, patient, good-humored, +and his almond-shaped and hollow eyes rested on Valerie and Rita with a +fatalistic serenity subtly tinged with irony. + +John Burleson came to see him, and cried. After he left, Querida said to +Valerie: + +"John and I are destined to remain near neighbours; his grief is well +meant, but a trifle premature." + +"You are not going to die, José!" she said gently. + +But he only smiled. + +Ogilvy came, Annan came, the Countess Hélène, and even Mrs. +Hind-Willet. He inspected them all with his shadowy and mysterious +smile, answered them gently deep in his sunken eyes a sombre amusement +seemed to dwell. But there was in it no bitterness. + +Then Neville came. Valerie and Rita were absent that day but their roses +filled the private ward-room with a hint of the coming summer. + +Querida lay looking at Neville, the half smile resting on his pallid +face like a slight shadow that faintly waxed and waned with every breath +he drew. + +"Well," he said quietly, "you are the man I wished to see." + +"Querida," he said, deeply affected, "this thing isn't going to be +permanent--" + +"No; not permanent. It won't last, Neville. Nothing does last.... unless +you can tell me whether my pictures are going to endure. Are they? I +know that you will be as honest with me as I was--dishonest with you. I +will believe what you say. Is my work destined to be permanent?" + +"Don't you know it is?" + +"I thought so.... But _you_ know. Because, Neville, you are the man who +is coming into what was mine, and what will be your own;--and you are +coming into more than that, Neville, more than I ever could have +attained. Now answer me; will my work live?" + +"Always," said Neville simply. + +Querida smiled: + +"The rest doesn't matter then.... Even Valerie doesn't matter.... But +you may hand me one of her roses.... No, a bud, if you don't +mind--unopened." + +When it was time for Neville to go Querida's smile had faded and the +pink rose-bud lay wilted in his fingers. + +"It is just as well, Neville," he said. "I couldn't have endured your +advent. Somebody _has_ to be first; I was--as long as I lived.... It is +curious how acquiescent a man's mind becomes--when he's like this. I +never believed it possible that a man really could die without regret, +without some shadow of a desire to live. Yet it is that way, Neville.... +But a man must lie dying before he can understand it." + + * * * * * + +A highly tinted uncle from Oporto arrived in New York just in time to +see Querida alive. He brought with him a parrot. + +"Send it to Mrs. Hind-Willet," whispered Querida with stiffening lips; +"_uno lavanta la caça y otro la nata_." + +A few minutes later he died, and his highly coloured uncle from Oporto +sent the bird to Mrs. Hind-Willet and made the thriftiest arrangement +possible to transport what was mortal of a great artist to Oporto--where +a certain kind of parrot comes from. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +On the morning of the first day of June Neville came into his studio and +found there a letter from Valerie: + +"DEAREST: I am not keeping my word to you; I am asking you for more +time; and I know you will grant it. + +"José Querida's death has had a curious effect on me. I was inclined to +care very sincerely for him; I comprehended him better than many people, +I think. Yet there was much in him that I never understood. And I doubt +that he ever entirely understood himself. + +"I believe that he was really a great painter, Louis--and have sometimes +thought that his character was mediæval at the foundations--with five +centuries of civilisation thinly deposited over the bed-rock.... In him +there seemed to be something primitive; something untamable, and utterly +irreconcilable with, the fundamental characteristics of modern man. + +"He was my friend.... Friendship, they say, is a record of +misunderstandings; and it was so with us But may I tell you something? +José Querida loved me--in his own fashion. + +"What kind of a love it was--of what value--I can not tell you. I do not +think it was very high in the scale. Only he felt it for me, and for no +other woman, I believe. + +"It never was a love that I could entirely understand or respect; +yet,--it is odd but true--I cared something for it--perhaps because, in +spite of its unfamiliar and sometimes repellent disguises--it _was_ love +after all. + +"And now, as at heart and in mind you and I are one; and as I keep +nothing of real importance from you--perhaps _can_ not; I must tell you +that José Querida came that day to ask me to marry him. + +"I tried to make him understand that I could not think of such a thing; +and he lost his head and became violent. That is how the table fell:--I +had started toward the door when he sprang back to block me, and the low +window-sill caught him under the knees, and he fell outward into the +yard. + +"I know of course that no blame could rest on me, but it was a terrible +and dreadful thing that happened there in one brief second; and somehow +it seems to have moved in me depths that have never before been stirred. + +"The newspapers, as you know, published it merely as an accident--which +it really was. But they might have made it, by innuendo, a horror for +me. However, they put it so simply and so unsuspiciously that José +Querida might have been any nice man calling on any nice woman. + +"Louis, I have never been so lonely in my life as I have been since José +Querida died; alas! not because he has gone out of my life forever, but +because, somehow, the manner of his death has made me realise how +difficult it is for a woman alone to contend with men in a man's own +world. + +"Do what she may to maintain her freedom, her integrity, there is +always,--sometimes impalpable, sometimes not--a steady, remorseless +pressure on her, forcing her unwillingly to take frightened cognisance +of men;--take into account their inexorable desire for domination; the +subtle cohesion existent among them which, at moments, becomes like a +wall of adamant barring, limiting, inclosing and forcing women toward +the deep-worn grooves which women have trodden through the sad +centuries;--and which they tread still--and will tread perhaps for years +to come before the real enfranchisement of mankind begins. + +"I do not mean to write bitterly, dear; but, somehow, all this seems to +bear significantly, ominously, upon my situation in the world. + +"When I first knew you I felt so young, so confident, so free, so +scornful of custom, so wholesomely emancipated from silly and unjust +conventions, that perhaps I overestimated my own vigour and ability to +go my way, unvexed, unfettered in this man's world, and let the world +make its own journey in peace. But it will not. + +"Twice, now, within a month,--and not through any conscious fault of +mine--this man's world has shown its teeth at me; I have been menaced by +its innate scorn of woman, and have, by chance, escaped a publicity +which would have damned me so utterly that I would not have cared to +live. + +"And dear, for the first time I really begin to understand now what the +shelter of a family means; what it is to have law on my side,--and a man +who understands his man's world well enough to fight it with its own +weapons;--well enough to protect a woman from things she never dreamed +might menace her. + +"When that policeman came into my room,--dear, you will think me a +perfect coward--but suddenly I seemed to realise what law meant, and +that it had power to protect me or destroy me.... And I was +frightened,--and the table lay there with the fragments of broken +china--and there was that dreadful window--and I--I who knew how he +died!--Louis! Louis! guiltless as I was,--blameless in thought and +deed--I died a thousand deaths there while the big policeman and the +reporters were questioning me. + +"If it had not been for what José was generous enough to say, I could +never have thought out a lie to tell them; I should have told them how +it had really happened.... And what the papers would have printed about +him and about me, God only knows. + +"Never, never had I needed you as I needed you at that moment.... Well; +I lied to them, somehow; I said to them what José had said--that he was +seated on the window-ledge, lost his balance, clutched at the table, +overturned it, and fell. And they believed me.... It is the first lie +since I was a little child, that I have ever knowingly told.... And I +know now that I could never contrive to tell another. + +"Dear, let me try to think out what is best for us.... And forgive me, +Louis, if I can not help a thought or two of self creeping in. I am so +terribly alone. Somehow I am beginning to believe that it may sometimes +be a weakness to totally ignore one's self.... Not that I consider +myself of importance compared to you, my darling; not that I would fail +to set aside any thought of self where your welfare is concerned. You +know that, don't you? + +"But I have been wondering how it would be with you if I passed quietly +and absolutely out of your life. That is what I am trying to determine. +Because it must be either that or the tie unrecognised by civilisation. +And which would be better for you? I do not know yet. I ask more time. +Don't write me. Your silence will accord it. + +"You are always in my thoughts. + +"VALERIE." + +Ogilvy came into the studio that afternoon, loquacious, in excellent +humour, and lighting a pipe, detailed what news he had while Neville +tried to hide his own deep perplexity and anxiety under a cordial +welcome. + +"You know," said Ogilvy, "that all the time you've given me and all your +kindness and encouragement has made a corker of that picture of mine." + +"You did it yourself," said Neville. "It's good work, Sam." + +"Sure it's good work--being mostly yours. And what do you think, Kelly; +it's sold!" + +"Good for you!" + +"Certainly it's good for me. I need the mazuma. A courteous multi +purchased it for his Long Branch cottage--said cottage costing a +million. What?" + +"Oh, you're doing very well," laughed Neville. + +"I've _got_ to.... I've--h'm!--undertaken to assume obligations toward +civilisation--h'm!--and certain duties to my--h'm--country--" + +"What on earth are you driving at?" asked Neville, eying him. + +"Huh! Driving single just at present; practising for tandem--h'm!--and a +spike--h'm--some day--I hope--of course--" + +"Sam!" + +"Hey?" + +"Are you trying to say something?" + +"Oh, Lord, no! Why, Kelly, did you suspect that I was really attempting +to convey anything to you which I was really too damned embarrassed to +tell you in the patois of my native city?" + +"It sounded that way," observed Neville, smiling. + +"Did it?" Ogilvy considered, head on one side. "Did it sound anything +like a--h'm!--a man who was trying to--h'm!--to tell you that he was +going to--h'm!--to try to get somebody to try to let him try to tell her +that he wanted to--marry her?" + +"Good heavens!" exclaimed Neville, bewildered, "what do you mean?" + +Ogilvy pirouetted, picked up a mahl-stick, and began a lively fencing +bout with an imaginary adversary. + +"I'm going to get married," he said amiably. + +"What!" + +"Sure." + +"To whom?" + +"To Hélène d'Enver. Only she doesn't know it yet." + +"What an infernal idiot you are, Sam!" + +"Ya-as, so they say. Some say I'm an ass, others a bally idiot, others +merely refer to me as imbecile. And so it goes, Kelly,--so it goes." + +He flourished his mahl-stick, neatly punctured the air, and cried "Hah!" +very fiercely. + +Then he said: + +"I've concluded to let Hélène know about it this afternoon." + +"About what?--you monkey?" + +"About our marriage. _Won't_ it surprise her though! Oh, no! But I +think I'll let her into the secret before some suspicious gink gets wind +of it and tells her himself." + +Neville looked at the boy, perplexed, undecided, until he caught his +eye. And over Sam's countenance stole a vivid and beauteous blush. + +"Sam! I--upon my word I believe you mean it!" + +"Sure I do!" + +Neville grasped his hand: + +"My dear fellow!" he said cordially, "I was slow, not unsympathetic. I'm +frightfully glad--I'm perfectly delighted. She's a charming and sincere +woman. Go in and win and God bless you both!" + +Ogilvy wrung his hand, then, to relieve his feelings, ran all over the +floor like a spider and was pretending to spin a huge web in a corner +when Harry Annan and Rita Tevis came in and discovered him. + +"Hah!" he exclaimed, "flies! Two nice, silly, appetising flies. Pretend +to fall into my web, Rita, and begin to buzz like mad!" + +Rita's dainty nose went up into the air, but Annan succumbed to the +alluring suggestion, and presently he was buzzing frantically in a +corner while Sam spun an imaginary web all over him. + +Rita and Neville looked on for a while. + +"Sam never will grow up," she said disdainfully. + +"He's fortunate," observed Neville. + +"_You_ don't think so." + +"I wish I knew what I did think, Rita. How is John?" + +"I came to tell you. He has gone to Dartford." + +"To see Dr. Ogilvy? Good! I'm glad, Rita. Billy Ogilvy usually makes +people do what he tells them to do." + +[Illustration: "Ogilvy ... began a lively fencing bout with an imaginary +adversary."] + +The girl stood silent, eyes lowered. After a while she looked up at him; +and in her unfaltering but sorrowful gaze he read the tragedy which he +had long since suspected. + +Neither spoke for a moment; he held out both hands; she laid hers in +them, and her gaze became remote. + +After a while she said in a low voice: + +"Let me be with you now and then while he's away; will you, Kelly?" + +"Yes. Would you like to pose for me? I haven't anything pressing on +hand. You might begin now if it suits you." + +"May I?" she asked gratefully. + +"Of course, child.... Let me think--" He looked again into her dark blue +eyes, absently, then suddenly his attention became riveted upon +something which he seemed to be reading in her face. + +Long before Sam and Harry had ended their puppy-like scuffling and had +retired to woo their respective deputy-muses, Rita was seated on the +model-stand, and Neville had already begun that strange and sombre +picture afterward so famous, and about which one of the finest of our +modern poets wrote: + + "Her gold hair, fallen about her face + Made light within that shadowy place, + But on her garments lay the dust + Of many a vanished race. + + "Her deep eyes, gazing straight ahead, + Saw years and days and hours long dead, + While strange gems glittered at her feet, + Yellow, and green, and red. + + "And ever from the shadows came + Voices to pierce her heart like flame, + The great bats fanned her with their wings, + The voices called her name. + + "But yet her look turned not aside + From the black deep where dreams abide, + Where worlds and pageantries lay dead + Beneath that viewless tide. + + "Her elbow on her knee was set, + Her strong hand propt her chin, and yet + No man might name that look she wore, + Nor any man forget." + +All day long in the pleasant June weather they worked together over the +picture; and if he really knew what he was about, it is uncertain, for +his thoughts were of Valerie; and he painted as in a dream, and with a +shadowy splendour that seemed even to him unreal. + +They scarcely spoke; now and then Rita came silently on sandalled feet +to stand behind him and look at what he had done. + +The first time she thought to herself, "Querida!" But the second time +she remained mute; and when the daylight was waning to a golden gloom in +the room she came a third time and stood with one hand on his arm, her +eyes fixed upon the dawning mystery on the canvas--spellbound under the +sombre magnificence already vaguely shadowed forth from infinite depth +of shade. + +Gladys came and rubbed and purred around his legs; the most recent +progeny toddled after her, ratty tails erect; sportive, casual little +optimists frisking unsteadily on wavering legs among the fading sunbeams +on the floor. + +The sunbeams died out on wall and ceiling; high through the glass roof +above, a shoal of rosy clouds paled to saffron, then to a cinder gray. +And the first night-hawk, like a huge, erratic swallow, sailed into +view, soaring, tumbling aloft, while its short raucous cry sounded +incessantly above the roofs and chimneys. + +Neville was still seated before his canvas, palette flat across his left +arm, the sheaf of wet brushes held loosely. + +"I suppose you are dining with Valerie," he said. + +"No." + +He turned and looked at her, inquiringly. + +"Valerie has gone away." + +"Where?" + +"I don't know, Kelly.... I was not to know." + +"I see." He picked up a handful of waste and slowly began to clean the +brushes, one by one. Then he drove them deep into a bowl of black soap. + +"Shall we dine together here, Rita?" + +"If you care to have me." + +"Yes, I do." + +He laid aside his palette, rang up the kitchen, gave his order, and +slowly returned to where Rita was seated. + +Dinner was rather a silent affair. They touched briefly and formally on +Querida and his ripening talent prematurely annihilated; they spoke of +men they knew who were to come after him--a long, long way after him. + +"I don't know who is to take his place," mused Neville over his claret. + +"You." + +"Not his place, Rita. He thought so; but that place must remain his." + +"Perhaps. But you are carving out your own niche in a higher tier. You +are already beginning to do it; and yesterday his niche was the +higher.... Yet, after all--after all--" + +[Illustration: "Then Rita came silently on sandalled feet to stand +behind him and look at what he had done."] + +He nodded. "Yes," he said, "what does it matter to him, now? A man +carves out his resting place as you say, but he carves it out in vain. +Those who come after him will either place him in his proper sepulchre +... or utterly neglect him.... And neglect or transfer will cause him +neither happiness nor pain.... Both are ended for Querida;--let men +exalt him above all, or bury him and his work out of sight--what does he +care about it now? He has had all that life held for him, and what +another life may promise him no man can know. All reward for labour is +here, Rita; and the reward lasts only while the pleasure in labour +lasts. Creative work--even if well done--loses its savour when it is +finished. Happiness in it ends with the final touch. It is like a dead +thing to him who created it; men's praise or blame makes little +impression; and the aftertaste of both is either bitter or flat and +lasts but a moment." + +"Are you a little morbid, Kelly?" + +"Am I?" + +"It seems to me so." + +"And you, Rita?" + +She shook her pretty head in silence. + +After a while Gladys jumped up into her lap, and she lay back in her +arm-chair smoothing the creature's fur, and gazing absently into space. + +"Kelly," she said, "how many, many years ago it seems when you came up +to Delaware County to see us." + +"It seems very long ago to me, too." + +She lifted her blue eyes: + +"May I speak plainly? I have known you a long while. There is only one +man I like better. But there is no woman in the world whom I love as I +love Valerie West.... May I speak plainly?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--be fair to her, Kelly. Will you?" + +"I will try." + +"Try very hard. For after all it _is_ a man's world, and she doesn't +understand it. Try to be fair to her, Kelly. For--whether or not the +laws that govern the world are man-made and unjust--they are, +nevertheless, the only laws. Few men can successfully fight them; no +woman can--yet.... I am not angering you, am I?" + +"No. Go on." + +"I have so little to say--I who feel so deeply--deeply.... And the laws +are always there, Kelly, always there--fair or unfair, just or +unjust--they are always there to govern the world that framed them. And +a woman disobeys them at her peril." + +She moved slightly in her chair and sat supporting her head on one +pretty ringless hand. + +"Yet," she said, "although a woman disobeys any law at her peril--laws +which a man may often ignore with impunity--there is one law to which no +woman should dare subscribe. And it is sometimes known as 'The Common +Law of Marriage.'" + +She sat silent for a while, her gaze never leaving his shadowy face. + +"That is the only law--if it is truly a law--that a woman must ignore. +All others it is best for her to observe. And if the laws of marriage +are merely man-made or divine, I do not know. There is a din in the +world to-day which drowns the voices preaching old beliefs.... And a +girl is deafened by the clamour.... And I don't know. + +"But, it seems to me, that back of the laws men have made--if there be +nothing divine in their inspiration--there is another foundation solid +enough to carry them. Because it seems to me that the world's laws--even +when unjust--are built on natural laws. And how can a girl say that +these natural laws are unjust because they have fashioned her to bear +children and feed them from her own body? + +"And another thing, Kelly; if a man breaks a man-made law--founded, we +believe, on a divine commandment--he suffers only in a spiritual and +moral sense.... And with us it may be more than that. For women, at +least, hell is on earth." + +He stirred in his chair, and his sombre gaze rested on the floor at her +feet. + +"What are we to do?" he said dully. + +Rita shook her head: + +"I don't know. I am not instructing you, Kelly, only recalling to your +mind what you already know; what all men know, and find so convenient to +forget. Love is not excuse enough; the peril is unequally divided. The +chances are uneven; the odds are unfair. If a man really loves a woman, +how can he hazard her in a game of chance that is not square? How can he +let her offer more than he has at stake--even if she is willing? How can +he permit her to risk more than he is even able to risk? How can he +accept a magnanimity which leaves him her hopeless debtor? But men have +done it, men will continue to do it; God alone knows how they reconcile +it with their manhood or find it in their hearts to deal so unfairly by +us. But they do.... And still we stake all; and proudly overlook the +chances against us; and face the contemptible odds with a smile, +dauntless and--damned!" + +He leaned forward in the dusk; she could see his bloodless features now +only as a pale blot in the twilight. + +"All this I knew, Rita. But it is just as well, perhaps, that you remind +me." + +"I thought it might be as well. The world has grown very clever; but +after all there is no steadier anchor for a soul than a platitude." + +Ogilvy and Annan came mincing in about nine o'clock, disposed for +flippancy and gossip; but neither Neville nor Rita encouraged them; so +after a while they took their unimpaired cheerfulness and horse-play +elsewhere, leaving the two occupants of the studio to their own silent +devices. + +It was nearly midnight when he walked back with Rita to her rooms. + +And now day followed day in a sequence of limpid dawns and cloudless +sunsets. Summer began with a clear, hot week in June, followed by three +days' steady downpour which freshened and cooled the city and unfolded, +in square and park, everything green into magnificent maturity. + +Every day Neville and Rita worked together in the studio; and every +evening they walked together in the park or sat in the cool, dusky +studio, companionably conversational or permitting silence to act as +their interpreter. + +Then John Burleson came back from Dartford after remaining there ten +days under Dr. Ogilvy's observation; and Rita arrived at the studio next +day almost smiling. + +"We're' going to Arizona," she said. "_What_ do you think of that, +Kelly?" + +"You poor child!" exclaimed Neville, taking her hands into his and +holding them closely. + +"Why, Kelly," she said gently, "I knew he had to go. This has not taken +me unawares." + +"I hoped there might be some doubt," he said. + +"There was none in my mind. I foresaw it. Listen to me: twice in a +woman's life a woman becomes a prophetess. That fatal clairvoyance is +permitted to a woman twice in her life--and the second time it is +neither for herself that she foresees the future, nor for him whom she +loves...." + +"I wish--I wish--" he hesitated; and she flushed brightly. + +"I know what you wish, Kelly dear. I don't think it will ever happen. +But it is so much for me to be permitted to remain near him--so +much!--Ah, you don't know, Kelly! You don't know!" + +"Would you marry him?" + +Her honest blue eyes met his: + +"If he asked me; and if he still wished it--after he knew." + +"Could you ever be less to him--and perhaps more, Rita?" + +"Do you mean--" + +He nodded deliberately. + +She hung her head. + +"Yes," she said, "if I could be no more I would be what I could." + +"And you tell _me_ that, after all that you have said?" + +"I did not pretend to speak for men, Kelly. I told you that women had, +and women still would overlook the chances menacing them and face the +odds dauntlessly.... Because, whatever a man is--if a woman loves him +enough--he is worth to her what she gives." + +"Rita! Rita! Is it _you_ who content yourself with such sorry +philosophy?" + +"Yes, it is I. You asked me and I answer you. Whatever I said--I know +only one thing now. And you know what that is." + +"And where am I to look for sympathy and support in my own decision? +What can I think now about all that you have said to me?" + +"You will never forget it, Kelly--whatever becomes of the girl who said +it. Because it's the truth, no matter whose lips uttered it." + +He released her hands and she went away to dress herself for the pose. +When she returned and seated herself he picked up his palette and +brushes and began in silence. + + * * * * * + +That evening he went to see John Buries on and found him smoking +tranquilly in the midst of disorder. Packing cases, trunks, bundles, +boxes were scattered and piled up in every direction, and the master of +the establishment, apparently in excellent health, reclined on a lounge +in the centre of chaos, the long clay stem of a church-warden pipe +between his lips, puffing rings at the ceiling. + +"Hello, Kelly!" he exclaimed, sitting up; "I've got to move out of this +place. Rita told you all about it, didn't she? Isn't it rotten hard +luck?" + +"Not a bit of it. What did Billy Ogilvy say?" + +"Oh, I've got _it_ all right. Not seriously yet. What's Arizona like, +anyway?" + +"Half hell, half paradise, they say." + +"Then me for the celestial section. Ogilvy gave me the name of a +place"--he fumbled about--"Rita has it, I believe.... Isn't she a corker +to go? My conscience, Kelly, what a Godsend it will be to have a +Massachusetts girl out there to talk to!" + +"Isn't she going as your model?" + +"My Lord, man! Don't you talk to a model? Is a nice girl who poses for +a fellow anything extra-human or superhuman or--or unhuman or +inhuman--so that intelligent conversation becomes impossible?" + +"No," began Neville, laughing, but Burleson interrupted excitedly: + +"A girl can be anything she chooses if she's all right, can't she? And +Rita comes from Massachusetts, doesn't she?" + +"Certainly." + +"Not only from Massachusetts, but from Hitherford!" added Burleson +triumphantly. "I came from Hitherford. My grandfather knew hers. Why, +man alive, Rita Tevis is entitled to do anything she chooses to do." + +"That's one way of looking at it, anyway," admitted Neville gravely. + +"I look at it that way. _You_ can't; you're not from Massachusetts; but +you have a sort of a New England name, too. It's Yankee, isn't it?" + +"Southern." + +"Oh," said Burleson, honestly depressed; "I _am_ sorry. There were +Nevilles in Hitherford Lower Falls two hundred years ago. I've always +liked to think of you as originating, somehow or other, in Massachusetts +Bay." + +"No, John: unlike McGinty, I am unfamiliar with the cod-thronged ocean +deeps.... When are you going?" + +"Day after to-morrow. Rita says you don't need her any longer on that +picture--" + +"Lord, man! If I did I wouldn't hold you up. But don't worry, John; she +wouldn't let me.... She's a fine specimen of girl," he added casually. + +[Illustration: "'You'd better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as +well born as I am.'"] + +"Do you suppose that is news to me?" + +"Oh, no; I'm sure you find her amusing--" + +"What!" + +"Amusing," repeated Neville innocently. "Don't you?" + +"That is scarcely the word I would have chosen, Kelly. I have a very +warm admiration and a very sincere respect for Rita Tevis--" + +"John! You sound like a Puritan making love!" + +Burleson was intensely annoyed: + +"You'd better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as well born as I +am, and that there would be nothing at all incongruous in any +declaration that any decent man might make her!" + +"Why, I know that." + +"I'm glad you do. And I'm gratified that what you said has given me the +opportunity to make myself very plain on the subject of Rita Tevis. It +may amaze you to know that her great grandsire carried a flintlock with +the Hitherford Minute Men, and fell most respectably at Boston Neck." + +"Certainly, John. I knew she was all right. But I wasn't sure you knew +it--" + +"Confound it! Of course I did. I've always known it. Do you think I'd +care for her so much if she wasn't all right?" + +Neville smiled at him gravely, then held out his hand: + +"Give my love to her, John. I'll see you both again before you go." + +For nearly two weeks he had not heard a word from Valerie West. Rita and +John Burleson had departed, cheerful, sure of early convalescence and a +complete and radical cure. + +Neville went with them to the train, but his mind was full of his own +troubles and he could scarcely keep his attention on the ponderous +conversation of Burleson, who was admonishing him and Ogilvy impartially +concerning the true interpretation of creative art. + +He turned aside to Rita when opportunity offered and said in a low +voice: + +"Before you go, tell me where Valerie is." + +"I can't, Kelly." + +"Did you promise her not to?" + +"Yes." + +He said, slowly: "I haven't had one word from her in nearly two weeks. +Is she well?" + +"Yes. She came into town this morning to say good-bye to me." + +"I didn't know she was out of town," he said, troubled. + +"She has been, and is now. That's all I can tell you, Kelly dear." + +"She _is_ coming back, isn't she?" + +"I hope so." + +"Don't you know?" + +She looked into his anxious and miserable face and gently shook her +head: + +"I _don't_ know, Kelly." + +"Didn't she say--intimate anything--" + +"No.... I don't think she knows--yet." + +He said, very quietly: "If she ever comes to any conclusion that it is +better for us both never to meet again--I might be as dead as Querida +for any work I should ever again set hand to. + +"If she will not marry me, but will let things remain as they are, at +least I can go on caring for her and working out this miserable problem +of life. But if she goes out of my life, life will go out of me. I know +that now." + +Rita looked at him pitifully: + +"Valerie's mind is her own, Kelly. It is the most honest mind I have +ever known; and nothing on earth--no pain that her decision might +inflict upon her--would swerve it a hair's breath from what she +concludes is the right thing to do." + +"I know it," he said, swallowing a sudden throb of fear. + +"Then what can I say to you?" + +"Nothing. I must wait." + +"Kelly, if you loved her enough you would not even wait." + +"What!" + +"Because her return to you will mean only one thing. Are you going to +accept it of her?" + +"What can I do? I can't live without her!" + +"_Her_ problem is nobler, Kelly. She is asking herself not whether she +can live life through without _you_--but whether you can live life well, +and to the full, without _her_?" + +Neville flushed painfully. + +"Yes," he said, "_that is_ Valerie. I'm not worth the anxiety, the +sorrow that I have brought her. I'm not worth marrying; and I'm not +worth a heavier sacrifice.... I'm trying to think less of myself, Rita, +and more of her.... Perhaps, if I knew she were happy, I could +stand--losing her.... If she could be--without me--" He checked himself, +for the struggle was unnerving him; then he set his face firmly and +looked straight at Rita. + +"Do you believe she could forget me and be contented and tranquil--if I +gave her the chance?" + +"Are _you_ talking of self-sacrifice for _her_ sake?" + +He drew a deep, uneven breath: + +"I--suppose it's--that." + +"You mean that you're willing to eliminate yourself and give her an +opportunity to see a little of the world--a little of its order and +tranquillity and quieter happiness?--a chance to meet interesting women +and attractive men of her own age--as she is certain to do through her +intimacy with the Countess d'Enver?" + +"Yes," he said, "that is what must be done.... I've been blind--and +rottenly selfish. I did not mean to be.... I've tried to force her--I +have done nothing else since I fell in love with her, but force her +toward people whom she has a perfect right not to care for--even if they +happen to be my own people. She has felt nothing but a steady and stupid +pressure from me;--heard from me nothing except importunities--the +merciless, obstinate urging of my own views--which, God forgive me, I +thought were the only views because they were respectable!" + +He stood, head lowered, nervously clenching and unclenching his hands. + +"It was not for her own sake--that's the worst of it! It was for my +sake--because I've had respectability inculcated until I can't conceive +of my doing anything not respectable.... Once, something else got away +with me--and I gave it rein for a moment--until checked.... I'm really +no different from other men." + +"I think you are beginning to be, Kelly." + +"Am I? I don't know. But the worst of it was my selfishness--my fixed +idea that her marrying me was the _only_ salvation for her.... I never +thought of giving her a chance of seeing other people--other men--better +men--of seeing a tranquil, well-ordered world--of being in it and of it. +I behaved as though my world--the fragment inhabited by my friends and +family--was the only alternative to this one. I've been a fool, Rita; +and a cruel one." + +"No, only an average man, Kelly.... If I give you Valerie's address, +would you write and give her her freedom--for her own sake?--the freedom +to try life in that well-ordered world we speak of?... Because she is +very young. Life is all before her. Who can foretell what friends she +may be destined to make; what opportunities she may have. I care a great +deal for you, Kelly; but I love Valerie.... And, there _are_ other men +in the world after all;--but there is only one Valerie.... And--_how +truly do you love her_?" + +"Enough," he said under his breath. + +"Enough to--leave her alone?" + +"Yes." + +"Then write and tell her so. Here is the address." + +She slipped a small bit of folded paper into Neville's land. + +"We must join the others, now," she said calmly. + +Annan had come up, and he and Ogilvy were noisily baiting Burleson amid +shouts of laughter and a protesting roar from John. + +"Stop it, you wretches," said Rita amiably, entering the little group. +"John, are you never going to earn not to pay any attention to this pair +of infants?" + +"Are you going to kiss me good-bye, Rita, when the train departs?" +inquired Sam, anxiously. + +"Certainly; I kissed Gladys good-bye--" + +"Before all this waiting room full of people?" persisted Sam. "_Are_ +you?" + +"Why I'll do it now if you like, Sammy dear." + +"They'll take you for my sister," said Sam, disgusted. + +"Or your nurse; John, what _is_ that man bellowing through the +megaphone?" + +"Our train," said Burleson, picking up the satchels. He dropped them +again to shake the hands that were offered: + +"Good-bye, John, dear old fellow! You'll get all over this thing in a +jiffy out there You'll be back in no time at all! Don't worry, and get +well!" + +He smiled confidently and shook all their hands Rita's pretty face was +pale; she let Ogilvy kiss her cheek, shook hands with Annan, and then, +turning to Neville, put both hands on his shoulders and kissed him on +the mouth. + +"Give her her chance, Kelly," she whispered ... "And it shall be +rendered unto you seven-fold." + +"No, Rita; it never will be now." + +"Who knows?" + +"Rita! Rita!" he said under his breath, "when I am ending, she must +begin.... You are right: this world needs her. Try as I might, I never +could be worth what she is worth without effort. It is my life which +does not matter, not hers. I will do what ought to be done. Don't be +afraid. I will do it. And thank God that it is not too late." + +That night, seated at his desk in the studio, he looked at the +calendar. It was the thirteenth day since he had heard from her; the +last day but two of the fifteen days she had asked for. The day after +to-morrow she would have come, or would have written him that she was +renouncing him forever for his own sake. Which might it have been? He +would never know now. + +He wrote her: + +"Dearest of women, Rita has been loyal to you. It was only when I +explained to her for what purpose I wished your address that she wisely +gave it to me. + +"Dearest, from the beginning of our acquaintance and afterward when it +ripened into friendship and finally became love, upon you has rested the +burden of decision; and I have permitted it. + +"Even now, as I am writing here in the studio, the burden lies heavily +upon your girl's shoulders and is weighting your girl's heart. And it +must not be so any longer. + +"I have never, perhaps, really meant to be selfish; a man in love really +doesn't know what he means. But now I know what I have done; and what +must be undone. + +"You were perfectly right. It was for you to say whether you would marry +me or not. It was for you to decide whether it was possible or +impossible for you to appear as my wife in a world in which you had had +no experience. It was for you to generously decide whether a rupture +between that world and myself--between my family and myself--would +render me--and yourself--eternally unhappy. + +"You were free to decide; you used your own intellect, and you so +decided. And I had no right to question you--I have no right now. I +shall never question you again. + +"Then, because you loved me, and because it was the kind of love that +ignored self, you offered me a supreme sacrifice. And I did not refuse; +I merely continued to fight for what I thought ought to be--distressing, +confusing, paining you with the stupid, obstinate reiterations of my +importunities. And you stood fast by your colours. + +"Dear, I _was_ wrong. And so were you. Those were not the only +alternatives. I allowed them to appear so because of selfishness.... +Alas, Valerie, in spite of all I have protested and professed of love +and passion for you, to-day, for the first time, have I really loved you +enough to consider you, alone. And with God's help I will do so always. + +"You have offered me two alternatives: to give yourself and your life to +me without marriage; or to quietly slip out of my life forever. + +"And it never occurred to you--and I say, with shame, that it never +occurred to me--that I might quietly efface myself and my demands from +_your_ life: leave you free and at peace to rest and develop in that new +and quieter world which your beauty and goodness has opened to you. + +"Desirable people have met you more than half-way, and they like you. +Your little friend, Hélène d'Enver is a genuine and charming woman. +Your friendship for her will mean all that you have so far missed in +life all that a girl is entitled to. + +"Through her you will widen the circle of your acquaintances and form +newer and better friendships You will meet men and women of your own +age and your own tastes which is what ought to happen. + +"And it is right and just and fair that you enter into the beginning of +your future with a mind unvexed and a heart untroubled by conflicts +which can never solve for you and me any future life together. + +"I do not believe you will ever forget me, or wish to, wholly. Time +heals--otherwise the world had gone mad some centuries ago. + +"But whatever destiny is reserved for you, I know you will meet it with +the tranquillity and the sweet courage which you have always shown. + +"What kind of future I wish for you, I need not write here. You know. +And it is for the sake of that future--for the sake of the girl whose +unselfish life has at last taught me and shamed me, that I give you up +forever. + +"Dear, perhaps you had better not answer this for a long, long time. +Then, when that clever surgeon, Time, has effaced all scars--and when +not only tranquillity is yours but, perhaps, a deeper happiness is in +sight, write and tell me so. And the great god Kelly, nodding before his +easel, will rouse up from his Olympian revery and totter away to find a +sheaf of blessings to bestow upon the finest, truest, and loveliest girl +in all the world. + +"_Halcyonii dies! Fortem posce animum! Forsan et haec olim meminisse +juvabit. Vale!_ + +"LOUIS NEVILLE." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +The fifteenth day of her absence had come and gone and there had been no +word from her. + +Whether or not he had permitted himself to expect any, the suspense had +been none the less almost unendurable. He walked the floor of the studio +all day long, scarcely knowing what he was about, insensible to fatigue +or to anything except the dull, ceaseless beating of his heart. He +seemed older, thinner:--a man whose sands were running very swiftly. + +With the dawn of the fifteenth day of her absence a gray pallor had come +into his face; and it remained there. Ogilvy and Annan sauntered into +the studio to visit him, twice, and the second time they arrived bearing +gifts--favourite tonics, prescriptions, and pills. + +"You look like hell, Kelly," observed Sam with tactful and +characteristic frankness. "Try a few of this assorted dope. Harry and I +dote on dope: + + _"'After the bat is over, + After the last cent's spent, + And the pigs have gone from the clover + And the very last gent has went; + After the cards are scattered, + After I've paid the bill, + Weary and rocky and battered + I swallow my liver pill!_'" + +--he sang, waltzing slowly around the room with Annan until, +inadvertently, they stepped upon the tail of Gladys who went off like a +pack of wet fire-crackers; whereupon they retired in confusion to their +respective abodes above. + +Evening came, and with evening, letters; but none from her. And slowly +the stealthy twilight hours dragged their heavy minutes toward darkness; +and night crawled into the room like some sinister living thing, and +found him still pacing the floor. + +Through the dusky June silence far below in the street sounded the +clatter of wheels; but they never stopped before his abode. Voices rose +faintly at moments in the still air, borne upward as from infinite +depths; but her voice would never sound again for him: he knew it +now--never again for him. And yet he paced the floor, listening. The +pain in his heart grew duller at intervals, benumbed by the tension; but +it always returned, sickening him, almost crazing him. + +Late in the evening he gave way under the torture--turned coward, and +started to write to her. Twice he began letters--pleading with her to +forget his letter; begging her to come back. And destroyed them with +hands that shook like the hands of a sick man. Then the dull +insensibility to pain gave him a little respite, but later the misery +and terror of it drove him out into the street with an insane idea of +seeking her--of taking the train and finding her. + +He throttled that impulse; the struggle exhausted him; and he returned, +listlessly, to the door and stood there, vacant-eyed, staring into the +lamp-lit street. + +Once he caught sight of a shadowy, graceful figure crossing the +avenue--a lithe young silhouette against the gas-light--and his heart +stood still for an instant but it was not she, and he swayed where he +stood, under the agony of reaction, dazed by the rushing recession of +emotion. + +Then a sudden fear seized him that she might have come while he had been +away. He had been as far as the avenue. Could she have come? + +But when he arrived at his door he had scarce courage enough to go in. +She had a key; she might have entered. Had she entered: was she there, +behind the closed door? To go in and find the studio empty seemed almost +more than he could endure. But, at last, he went in; and he found the +studio empty. + +Confused, shaken, tortured, he began again his aimless tour of the +place, ranging the four walls like a wild creature dulled to insanity by +long imprisonment--passing backward, forward, to and fro, across, around +his footsteps timing the dreadful monotone of his heart, his pulse +beating, thudding out his doom. + +She would never come; never come again. She had determined what was best +to do; she had arrived at her decision. Perhaps his letter had convinced +her,--had cleared her vision;--the letter which he had been man enough +to write--fool enough--God!--perhaps brave enough.... But if what he had +done in his madness was bravery, it was an accursed thing; and he set +his teeth and cursed himself scarce knowing what he was saying. + +It promised to be an endless night for him; and there were other nights +to come--interminable nights. And now he began to watch the +clock--strained eyes riveted on the stiff gilded hands--and on the +little one jerkily, pitilessly recording the seconds and twitching them +one by one into eternity. + +Nearer and nearer to midnight crept the gilded, flamboyant hour-hand; +the gaunter minute-hand was slowly but inexorably overtaking it. Nearer, +nearer, they drew together; then came the ominous click; a moment's +suspense; the high-keyed gong quivered twelve times under the impact of +the tiny steel hammer. + +And he never would hear her voice again. And he dropped to his knees +asking mercy on them both. + +In his dulled ears still lingered the treble ringing echo of the +bell--lingered, reiterated, repeated incessantly, until he thought he +was going mad. Then, of a sudden, he realised that the telephone was +ringing; and he reeled from his knees to his feet, and crept forward +into the shadows, feeling his way like a blind man. + +"Louis?" + +But he could not utter a sound. + +"Louis, is it you?" + +"Yes," he whispered. + +"What is the matter? Are you ill? Your voice is so strange. _Are_ you?" + +"No!--Is it _you_, Valerie?" + +"You know it is!" + +"Where--are you?" + +"In my room--where I have been all day." + +"You have been--_there_! You have been _here_--in the city--all this +time--" + +"I came in on the morning train. I wanted to be sure. There _have_ been +such things as railroad delays you know." + +"Why--_why_ didn't you let me know--" + +"Louis! You will please to recollect that I had until midnight ... +I--was busy. Besides, midnight has just sounded--and here I am." + +He waited. + +"I received your letter." Her voice had the sweet, familiar, rising +inflection which seemed to invite an answer. + +"Yes," he muttered, "I wrote to you." + +"Do you wish to know what I thought of your letter?" + +"Yes," he breathed. + +"I will tell you some other time; not now.... Have you been perfectly +well, Louis? But I heard all about you, every day,--through Rita. Do you +know I am quite mad to see that picture you painted of her,--the new +one--'Womanhood.' She says it is a great picture--really great. Is it?" + +He did not answer. + +"Louis!" + +"Yes." + +"I would like to see that picture." + +"Valerie?" + +"Yes?"--sweetly impatient. + +"Are we to see each other again?" + +She said calmly: "I didn't ask to see _you_, Louis: I asked to see a +picture which you recently painted, called 'Womanhood.'" + +He remained silent and presently she called him again by name: "You say +that you are well--or rather Rita said so two days ago--and I'm +wondering whether in the interim you've fallen ill? Two days without +news from you is rather disquieting. Please tell me at once exactly how +you are?" + +He succeeded in forcing something resembling a laugh: "I am all right," +he said. + +"I don't see how you could be--after the letter you wrote me. How much +of it did you mean?" + +He was silent. + +"Louis! Answer me!" + +"All--of it," he managed to reply. + +[Illustration: "She knelt down beside the bed and ... said whatever +prayer she had in mind"] + +"_All!_" + +"Yes." + +"Then--perhaps you scarcely expected me to call up to-night. Did you?" + +"No." + +"Suppose I had not done so." + +He shivered slightly, but remained mute. + +"Answer me, Louis?" + +"It would have been--better." + +"For you?" + +"For--both." + +"Do you believe it?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--have I any choice except to say--good-night?" + +"No choice. Good-night." + +"Good-night." + +He crept, shaking, into his bed-room, sat down, resting his hands on his +knees and staring at vacancy. + +Valerie, in her room, hung up the receiver, buried her face in her hands +for a moment, then quietly turned, lowering her hands from her face, and +looked down at the delicate, intimate garments spread in order on the +counterpane beside her. There was a new summer gown there, too--a light, +dainty, fragile affair on which she had worked while away. Beside it lay +a big summer hat of white straw and white lilacs. + +She stood for a moment, reflecting; then she knelt down beside the bed +and covered her eyes again while she said whatever prayer she had in +mind. + +It was not a very short petition, because it concerned Neville. She +asked nothing for herself except as it regarded him or might matter to +his peace of mind. Otherwise what she said, asked, and offered, related +wholly to Neville. + +Presently she rose and went lightly and silently about her ablutions; +and afterward she dressed herself in the fragile snowy garments ranged +so methodically upon the white counterpane, each in its proper place. + +She was longer over her hair, letting it fall in a dark lustrous cloud +to her waist, then combing and gathering it and bringing it under +discipline. + +She put on her gown, managing somehow to fasten it, her lithe young body +and slender arms aiding her to achieve the impossible between neck and +shoulders. Afterward she pinned on her big white hat. + +At the door she paused for a second; took a last look at the quiet, +white little room tranquil and silent in the lamplight; then she turned +off the light and went out, softly, holding in her hands a key which +fitted no door of her own. + +One o'clock sounded heavily from Saint Hilda's as she left her house; +the half hour was striking as she stooped in the dark hallway outside +the studio and fitted the key she held--the key that was to unlock for +her the mystery of the world. + +He had not heard her. She groped her way into the unlighted studio, +touched with caressing finger-tips the vague familiar shapes that the +starlight, falling through the glass above, revealed to her as she +passed. + +In the little inner room she paused. There was a light through the +passageway beyond, but she stood here a moment, looking around her while +memories of the place deepened the colour in her cheeks. + +Then she went forward, timidly, and stood at his closed door, listening. + +A sudden fright seized her; one hand flew to her breast, her +throat--covered her eyes for a moment--and fell limp by her side. + +[Illustration: "She was longer over her hair ... gathering it and +bringing it under discipline."] + +"Louis!" she faltered. She heard him spring to his feet and stand as +though transfixed. + +"Louis," she said, "it is I. Will you open your door to me?" + +The sudden flood of electric light dazzled her; then she saw him +standing there, one hand still resting on the door knob. + +"I've come," she said, with a faint smile. + +"Valerie! My God!" + +She stood, half smiling, half fearful, her dark eyes meeting his, two +friendly little hands outstretched. Then, as his own caught them, almost +crushed them: + +"Oh, it was _your_ letter that ended all for me, Louis! It settled every +doubt I had. I _knew_ then--you darling!" + +She bent and touched his hands with her lips, then lifted her sweet, +untroubled gaze to his: + +"I had been away from you so long, so long. And the time was approaching +for me to decide, and I didn't know what was best for us, any more than +when I went away. And _then_!--your letter came!" + +She shook her head, slowly: + +"I don't know what I might have decided if you never had written that +letter to me; probably I would have come back to you anyway. I think so; +I can't think of my doing anything else: though I _might_ have +decided--against myself. But as soon as I read your letter I _knew_, +Louis.... And I am here." + +He said with drawn lips quivering: + +"Did you read in that letter one single word of cowardly appeal?--one +infamous word of self? If you did, I wrote in vain." + +"It was because I read nothing in it of self that I made up my mind, +Louis." She stepped nearer. "Why are you so dreadfully pale and worn? +Your face is so haggard--so terrible--" + +She laid one hand on his shoulder, looking up at him; then she smoothed +his forehead and hair, lightly. + +"As though I could ever live without you," she said under her breath. +Then she laughed, releasing her hands, and went over to the dresser +where there was a mirror. + +"I have come, at one in the morning, to pay you a call," she said, +withdrawing the long pins from her hat and taking it off. "Later I +should like a cup of chocolate, please.... Oh, there is Gladys! You +sweet thing!" she cried softly, kneeling to embrace the cat who came +silently into the room, tail waving aloft in gentle greeting. + +The girl lifted Gladys onto the bed and rolled her over into a fluffy +ball and rubbed her cheeks and her ears until her furry toes curled, and +her loud and grateful purring filled the room. + +Valerie, seated sideways on the edge of the bed, looked up at Neville, +laughing: + +"I _must_ tell you about Sam and Hélène," she said. "They are too funny! +Hélène was furious because Sam wrote her a letter saying that he +intended to marry her but had not the courage to notify her, personally, +of his decision; and Hélène was wild, and wrote him that he might save +himself further trouble in the matter. And they've been telephoning to +each other at intervals all day, and Sam is so afraid of her that he +dare not go to see her; and Hélène was in tears when I saw her--and I +_think_ it was because she was afraid Sam wouldn't come and resume the +quarrel where she could manage it and him more satisfactorily." + +She threw back her head and laughed at the recollection, stroking Gladys +the while: + +"It will come out all right, of course," she added, her eyes full of +laughter; "she's been in love with Sam ever since he broke a Ming jar +and almost died of fright. But isn't it funny, Louis?--the way people +fall in love, and their various manners of informing each other!" + +He was trying to smile, but the gray constraint in his face made it only +an effort. Valerie pretended not to notice it, and she rattled on gaily, +detailing her small budget of gossip and caressing Gladys--behaving as +irresponsibly and as capriciously as though her heart were not singing a +ceaseless hymn of happiness too deep, too thankful to utter by word or +look. + +"Dear little Rita," she exclaimed, suddenly and tenderly solemn--"I saw +her the morning of the day she departed with John. And first of all I +asked about you of course--you spoiled thing!--and then I asked about +John. And we put our arms around each other and had a good, +old-fashioned cry.... But--_don't_ you think he is going to get well, +Louis?" + +"Sam's brother--Billy Ogilvy--wrote me that he would always have to live +in Arizona. He _can_ live there. But the East would be death to him." + +"Can't he ever come back?" she asked pitifully. + +"No, dear." + +"But--but what will Rita do?" + +He said: "I think that will depend on Rita. I think it depends on her +already." + +"Why?" she asked, wide-eyed. "Do you believe that John cares for her?" + +"I know he does.... And I haven't much doubt that he wants to marry +her." + +"Do you think so? Oh, Louis--if that is true, what a heavenly future +for Rita!" + +"Heavenly? Out in that scorching desert?" + +"Do you think she'd care _where_ she was? Kelly, you're ridiculous!" + +"Do you believe that any woman could stand that for the rest of her +life, Valerie?" + +She smiled, head lowered, fondling the cat who had gone ecstatically to +sleep. + +She said, still smiling: "If a girl is loved she endures some things; if +she loves she endures more. But to a girl who is loved, and who loves, +nothing else matters ... And it would be that way with Rita"--she lifted +her eyes--"as it is with me." + +He was standing beside her now; she made room on the side of the bed for +him with a little gesture of invitation: + +"People who die for each other are less admirable than people who live +for each other. The latter requires the higher type of courage ... If I +go out of your life I am like a dead person to you--a little worse in +fact. Besides, I've shown the white feather and run away. That's a +cowardly solution of a problem, isn't it?" + +"Am I a coward if I decide to stand back and give you a chance?" + +"You haven't decided to do it," she said cheerfully, lifting the +somnolent cat and hugging it. + +"I'm afraid I have, dear." + +"Why?" + +"You read my letter?" + +"Yes and kissed every line in it." + +He retained sufficient self-control to keep his hands off her--but that +was all; and her eyes, which were looking into his, grew serious and +beautiful. + +"I love you so," she breathed. + +"I love you, Valerie." + +"Yes.... I know it.... I know you do...." She sat musing a moment, then: +"And I thought that I knew what it was to love, before you wrote that +letter." She shook her head, murmuring something to herself. Then the +swift smile curved her lips again, she dumped Gladys out of her lap +without ceremony, and leaned her shoulder on Neville's, resting her +cheek lightly against his: + +"It doesn't seem possible that the problem of life has really been +solved for us, Louis. I can scarcely realise it--scarcely understand +what this heavenly relief means--this utterly blissful relaxation and +untroubled confidence. There isn't anything in the world that can harm +me, now; is there?" + +"Nothing." + +"Nor my soul?" + +"It has always been beyond danger." + +"There are those who might tell me differently." + +"Let them talk. I _know_." + +"Do you?--you darling!" Her soft, fragrant mouth touched his cheek, +lingered, then she laughed to herself for the very happiness of living. + +"Isn't it wonderful how a word sometimes shatters the fixed ideas that a +girl has arrived at through prayer and fasting? I am beginning to think +that no real intelligence can remain very long welded to any one fixed +belief." + +"What do you mean, Valerie?" She rested her head on his shoulder and +sat considering, eyes remote; then her white fingers crept into his: + +"We won't talk about it now. I was wrong in some ways. You or common +sense--or something--opened my eyes.... But we won't talk about it +now.... Because there are still perplexities--some few.... We'll go over +them together--and arrange matters--somehow." + +"What matters?" + +But she placed a soft hand over his lips, imposing silence, and drew his +arm around her with a little sigh of content. + +Presently she said: "Have you noticed my gown? I made it." + +He smiled and bent forward to look. + +"I made _everything_ that I am wearing--except the shoes and stockings. +But they are perfectly new.... I wanted to come to you--perfectly new. +There was a Valerie who didn't really love you. She thought she did, but +she didn't.... So I left her behind when I came--left everything about +her behind me. I am all new, Louis.... Are you afraid to love me?" + +He drew her closer; she turned, partly, and put both arms around his +neck, and their lips touched and clung. + +Then, a little pale, she drew away from him, a vague smile tremulous on +her lips. The confused sweetness of her eyes held him breathless with +their enchantment; the faint fragrance of her dazed him. + +In silence she bent her head, remained curbed, motionless for a few +moments, then slowly lifted her eyes to his. + +"How much do you want me, Louis?" + +"You know." + +"Enough to--give me up?" + +His lips stiffened and refused at first, then: + +"Yes," they motioned. And she saw the word they formed. + +"I knew it," she breathed; "I only wanted to hear you say it again.... I +don't know why I'm crying;--do you?... What a perfect ninny a girl can +be when she tries to.... _All_ over your 'collar, too.... And now you're +what Mr. Mantalini would call 'demned moist and unpleasant!' ... I--I +don't want to--s-sob--this way! I do-don't wish to ... M-make me stop, +Louis!... I'd like a handkerchief--anything--give me Gladys and I'll +staunch my tears on her!" + +She slipped from the bed's edge to the floor, and stood with her back +toward him. Then she glanced sideways at the mirror to inspect her nose. + +"Thank goodness _that_ isn't red," she said gaily.... "Kelly, I'm +hungry.... I've fasted since dawn--on this day--because I wanted to +break bread with you on the first day of our new life together." + +He looked at her, appalled, but she laughed and went into the studio. +There was a beautiful old sideboard there always well stocked. + +He turned on the lights, brought peaches and melons and strawberries and +milk from the ice-chest, and found her already preparing chocolate over +the electric grill and buttering immense slices of peasant bread. + +"It's after two o'clock," she said, delighted. "Isn't this divinely +silly? I wonder if there happens to be any salad in the ice-chest?" + +"Cold chicken, too," he nodded, watching her set the table. + +She glanced at him over her shoulder from time to time: + +"Louis, are you going to enjoy all this? _All of_ it? +You--somehow--don't look entirely happy--" + +"I am.... All I wanted was to see you--hear your voice.... I shall be +contented now." + +"With just a view of me, and the sound of my voice?" + +"You know there is--nothing more for us." + +"I know nothing of the kind. The idea! And don't you dare struggle and +kick and scream when I kiss you. Do you hear me, Louis?" + +He laughed and watched her as she went swiftly and gracefully about the +table arrangement, glancing up at him from moment to moment. + +"The idea," she repeated, indignantly. "I guess I'll kiss you when I +choose to. You are not in holy orders, are you? You haven't made any +particular vows, have you--?" + +"One." + +She halted, looked at him, then went on with her labours, a delicate +colour flushing face and neck. + +"Where in the world is that salad, Louis? A hungry girl asks you! Don't +drive me to desperation--" + +"Are we going to have coffee?" + +"No, it will keep us awake all night! I believe you _are_ bent on my +destruction." And, as she hovered over the table, she hummed the latest +popular summer-roof ballad: + + "'Stand back! Go 'way! + I can no longer stay + Although you are a Marquis or a Earl! + You may tempt the upper classes + With your villainous demi-tasses + But-- + Heaven will protect the Working Girl!'" + +At length everything was ready. He had placed two chairs opposite one +another, but she wouldn't have it, and made him lug up a bench, lay a +cushion on it, and sit beside her. + +They behaved foolishly; she fed him strawberries at intervals, +discreetly, on a fork--and otherwise. + +"Think of it! Fruit--at three in the morning, Louis! I hope Heaven will +protect _this_ working girl.... No, dear, I'd rather not have any +champagne.... You forget that this is a brand-new girl you're supping +with ... And, for reasons of her own--perhaps as an example to +you--there is never again to be anything like that--not even a +cigarette." + +"Nonsense--" + +"Oh, it's on account of my voice, not my morals, goose! I have rather a +nice voice you know, and, if we can afford it, it would be a jolly good +idea to have it cultivated ...Isn't this melon divine! What fun, +Louis!... I believe you _are_ a little happier. That crease between your +eyes has quite disappeared--There! Don't dare let it come back! It has +no business there I tell you. I _know_ it hasn't--and you must trust my +word. Will you?" + +She leaned swiftly toward him, placed both hands on his shoulders. + +"You've a perfectly new girl to deal with," she said, looking him in +the eyes;--"a miracle of meekness and patience that is rather certain to +turn into a dreadful, frowsy old hausfrau some day. But that's the kind +you wanted.... It's none of my doings--" + +"Valerie!" + +"What?" + +"You darling!--do you mean--" + +She closed his lips with hers. + +"Silence," she said; "we have plenty to talk over before the hour +arrives for me to be a door-mat. I _won't_ be a door-mat when I'm trying +to be happy over a perfectly good supper!... Besides I want to torture +you while there's still time. I want to make you miserable by reminding +you how disgracefully unmoral we are, here in your studio together at +three in the morning--" She stretched out a slim, white ringless hand, +and lifted the third finger for his inspection: + +"Not a sign of a ring! Shame!" She turned her pretty, daring face to +his, eyes sparkling with audacity: + +"Besides, I'm not going back to-night." + +He said tranquilly: "I should think not." + +"I mean it, Kelly, I simply won't go. And you may ring up the police and +every ambulance in town--and the fire department--" + +"I've done it," he said, "but the fire department refuses to put you +out.... You don't mean to say you've finished!--after fasting all day +like a little idiot," he exclaimed as she sprang to her feet and pushed +away her chair. + +"I have. I am _not_ an anaconda!" ... She passed swiftly into the outer +room where her own toilet necessaries were always ready, and presently +came back, leisurely, her hands behind her back, sauntering toward, +him with a provoking smile edging her lips: + +[Illustration: "'Yes,' she said, 'it is really great.'"] + +"You may retire when you like, Kelly, and tie your red cotton night-cap +under your chin. _I_ shall sit up for the sun. It's due in about an +hour, you know." + +"Nonsense," he said. "We'll both, be dead in the morning." + +"You offer me your guest-room?" she said in pretence of surprise. "How +_very_ nice of you, Mr. Neville. I--ah--will condescend to occupy +it--for this evening only--" Her eyes brightened into laughter: "Oh, +isn't it delicious, Louis! Isn't it perfectly heavenly to _know_ that we +are utterly and absolutely all right,--and to know that the world +outside would be perfectly certain that we are not? What a darling you +are!" + +Still holding her hands behind her back she bent forward and touched her +lips to his, daintily, fastidious in the light contact, + +"Where is that picture of 'Womanhood'?" she asked. + +He drew out the easel, adjusting the canvas to the light, and rolled a +big chair up in front of it. + +"Please sit there," she said; and seated herself on the padded arm, +still keeping her hands behind her back. + +"Are you concealing anything from me?" he asked. + +"Never mind. I want to look at your picture," she added slowly as her +eyes fell upon the canvas. + +Minute after minute she sat there in silence, neither stirring nor +offering comment. And after a long time he moved restlessly in the +depths of the chair beside her. + +Then she turned and looked down at him: + +"Yes," she said, "it is really great.... And, _somehow_, I am lonely. +Take me, Louis." + +He drew her into his arms. She lay very silent against his breast for a +while, and at last raised her curiously troubled eyes. + +"You are going to be a very, very great painter, aren't you, Louis?" + +He laughed and kissed her, watching her face. + +"Don't be too great--so great that I shall feel too--too lonely," she +whispered. + +Then his eyes fell upon the ring which he had given her--and which she +had gently put aside. She was wearing it on her betrothal finger. + +"Where did you--find it?" he said unsteadily. + +"In its box on your dresser." + +"Do you realise what it means?" + +"Yes.... And I am wearing it." + +"Valerie!" + +Her head nestled closer: + +"Because I am going to marry you, Louis.... You were right.... If I +fail, as your wife, to win my way in your world, then it will be because +I have attempted the impossible. Which is no crime.... Who was it said +'Not failure, but low aim is crime'?" + +She sighed, nestling closer like a child seeking rest: + +"I am not coward enough to run away from you and destiny.... And if I +stay, only two ways remain.... And the lawful is the better for us +both...." She laid her flushed cheek against his: "Because," she said +dreamily, "there is one thing of which I never thought--children.... And +I don't, perhaps, exactly understand, but I realise that--such things +have happened;--and that it could happen to--us." + +She lay silent for a while, her fingers restless on his shoulder; then +she spoke again in the same dreamy voice of a half-awakened child: + +"Each for the other's sake is not enough. It must be broader, wider, +more generous ... it must be for the sake of all.... I have learned +this.... We can learn it better together.... Louis, can you guess what I +did the day your letter came to me at Estwich?" + +"What did you do, my darling?" + +"I went to Ashuelyn." + +"What?" + +"Yes, dear. If it had not been for your letter which I could feel +against my breast I should have been frightened.... Because all your +family were together under the pergola.... As it was I could scarcely +speak; I gave your mother the letter, and when she had read it and your +father and your sister had read it, I asked them what I was to do. + +"It was so strange and still there under the pergola; and I scarcely +knew what I was saying--and I didn't realise that there were tears in my +eyes--until I saw them in your mother's, too. + +"Louis! Louis! I wonder if she can really ever care for me!--she was so +good--so sweet to me.... And Mrs. Collis took me away to her own +room--after your father had shaken hands with me--very stiffly but I +think kindly--and I behaved very badly, dear--and your sister let me +cry--all that I needed to." + +She said nothing more for a while, resting in his arms, dark eyes fixed +on space. Then: + +"They asked me to remain; your brother-in-law is a dear!--but I still +had a long day of self-examination before me. Your father and mother +walked with me to the gate. Your mother kissed me." + +His eyes, blinded by tears, scarcely saw her; and she turned her head +and smiled at him. + +"What they said to me was _very_ sweet and patient, Louis.... I +believe--I sometimes believe that I may, in time, win more than their +consent, I believe that, some day, they will care to think of me as your +wife--and think of me as such, kindly, without regret for what might +have been if I had never known you." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Hélène d'Enver had gone back to the country, and Ogilvy dared not pursue +her thither. + +From her fastness at Estwich she defied him in letters, but every letter +of hers seemed to leave some loophole open for further argument, and +Ogilvy replied valiantly from a perfectly safe distance, vowing that he +meant to marry her some day in spite of herself and threatening to go up +and tell her so to her face, until she became bored to death waiting for +him to fulfil this threat. + +"There's a perfectly good inn here," she wrote,--"for of course, under +the circumstances, you would scarcely have the impudence to expect the +hospitality of my own roof. But if you are determined to have a final +'No' for your answer, I am entirely competent to give it to you by word +of mouth--" + +"And such a distractingly lovely mouth," sighed Ogilvy, perusing the +letter in his studio. He whistled a slow waltz, thoughtfully, and as +slowly and solemnly kept step to it, turning round and round, buried in +deepest reflection. He had a habit of doing this when profoundly +perplexed. + +Annan discovered him waltzing mournfully all by himself: + +"What's up?" he inquired cheerfully. + +"It's all up, I suppose." + +"With you and your countess?" + +"Yes, Harry." + +"Rot! Why don't you go and talk to her?" + +"Because if I remain invisible she might possibly forget my face. I +stand a better chance by letter, Harry." + +"Now you're not bad-looking," insisted Annan, kindly. "And besides, a +man's face doesn't count with a girl. Half of 'em are neurotics, anyway, +and they adore the bizarre--" + +"Damn it," snapped Sam, "do you mean that my countenance resembles a +gargoyle? If you do, say so in English." + +"No, no, no," said Annan soothingly,--"I've seen more awful +mugs--married mugs, too. What woman has done woman may do again. Buck +up! Beauty and the beast is no idle jest--" + +"I'll punch you good and plenty," began Sam wrathfully, but Annan fled, +weak with laughter. + +"There's no vainer man than an ugly one!" he called back, and slammed +the door to escape a flight of paint brushes hurled by a maddened man. + +"I'll go! By jinks, I'll go, anyway!" he exclaimed; "and I don't care +what she thinks of my face ... only I think I'll take Annan with +me--just for company--or--dummy bridge on the way up.... Harry!" he +shouted. + +Annan cautiously appeared, ready for rapid flight. + +"Aw come on in! My face suits me. Besides, thank Heaven I've got a +reputation back of it; but yours breaks the speed laws. Will you go up +there with me--like a man?" + +"Where?" + +"To Estwich?" + +"When?" inquired Annan, sceptically. + +"Now!--b' jinks!" + +"Have _you_ sufficient nerve, _this_ time?" + +"Watch me." + +And he dragged out a suit-case and began wildly throwing articles of +toilet and apparel into it, + +"Come on, Harry!" he shouted, hurling a pair of tennis shoes at the +suit-case; "I've got to go while I'm excited or I'll never budge!" + +But when, ten minutes later, Annan arrived, suit-case in hand, ready for +love's journey, he could scarcely contrive to kick and drag Sam into the +elevator, and, later, into a taxicab. + +Ogilvy sat there alternately shivering and attempting to invent +imperative engagements in town which he had just remembered, but Annan +said angrily: + +"No, you don't. This makes the seventh time I've started with you for +Estwich, and I'm going to put it through or perish in a hand-to-hand +conflict with you." + +And he started for the train, dragging Sam with him, talking angrily all +the time. + +He talked all the way to Estwich, too, partly to reassure Ogilvy and +give him no time for terrified reflection, partly because he liked to +talk. And when they arrived at the Estwich Arms he shoved Ogilvy into a +room, locked the door, and went away to telephone to the Countess +d'Enver. + +"Yes?" she inquired sweetly, "who is it?" + +"Me," replied Annan, regardless of an unpopular grammatical convention. +"I'm here with Ogilvy. May we come to tea?" + +"Is Mr. Ogilvy _here_?" + +"Yes, here at the Estwich Arms. May I--er--may _he_ bring _me_ over to +call on you?" + +"Y-yes. Oh, with pleasure, Mr. Annan.... When may I expect hi--you?" + +"In about ten minutes," replied Annan firmly. + +Then he went back and looked into Ogilvy's room. Sam was seated, his +head clasped in his hands. + +"I thought you _might_ tear up your sheets and let yourself out of the +window," said Annan sarcastically. "You're a fine specimen! Why you're +actually lantern-jawed with fright. But I don't care! Come on; we're +expected to tea! Get into your white flannels and pretty blue coat and +put on your dinkey rah-rah, and follow me. Or, by heaven!--I'll do +murder right now!" + +Ogilvy's knees wavered as they entered the gateway. + +"Go on!" hissed Annan, giving him a violent shove. + +Then, to Ogilvy, came that desperate and hysterical courage that comes +to those whose terrors have at last infuriated them. + +"By jinks!" he said with an unearthly smile, "I _will_ come on!" + +And he did, straight through the door and into the pretty living room +where Hélène d'Enver rose in some slight consternation to receive this +astonishingly pale and rather desperate-faced young man. + +"Harry," said Ogilvy, calmly retaining Hélène's hand, "you go and play +around the yard for a few moments. I have something to tell the Countess +d'Enver; and then we'll all have tea." + +"Mr. Ogilvy!" she said, amazed. + +But Annan had already vanished; and she looked into a pair of steady +eyes that suddenly made her quail. + +"Hélène," he said, "I really do love you." + +[Illustration: "'I am scared blue. That's why I'm holding on to your +hand so desperately.'"] + +"Please--" + +"No! I love you! Are you going to let me?" + +"I--how on earth--what a perfectly senseless--" + +"I know it. I'm half senseless from fright. Yes, I am, Hélène! Now! +here! at this very minute, I am scared blue. That's why I'm holding on +to your hand so desperately; I'm afraid to let go." + +She flushed brightly with annoyance, or something or other--but he held +fast to her hand and put one arm around her waist. + +"Sam!" she said, exasperated. That was the last perfectly coherent word +she uttered for several minutes. And, later, she was too busy to say +very much. + + * * * * * + +When Annan returned, Hélène rose from the couch where she and Ogilvy had +been seated and came across the floor, blushing vividly. + +"I don't know what on earth you think of me, Mr. Annan, and I suppose I +will have to learn to endure the consequences of Mr. Ogilvy's +eccentricities--" + +"Oh, I'm terribly glad!" said Annan, grinning, and taking her hand in +both of his. + +They had tea on the veranda. Ogilvy was too excited and far too happy to +be dignified, and Hélène was so much embarrassed by his behaviour and so +much in love that she made a distractingly pretty picture between the +two young men who, as Rita had said, would never, never be old enough to +grow up. + +"Do you know," said Hélène, "that your friends the Nevilles have +recently been very nice to me? They have called, and have returned my +call, and have asked me to dinner. I suppose cordiality takes longer to +arrive at maturity in New York State than in any other part of the +Union. But when New York people make up their minds to be agreeable, +they certainly are delightful." + +"They're a bunch of snobs," said Ogilvy, calmly. + +"Oh!" said Hélène with a distressed glance at Annan. + +"He's one, too," observed her affianced, coolly nodding toward Annan. +"We're a sickening lot, Hélène--until some charming and genuine person +like you comes along to jounce us out of our smiling and imbecile +self-absorption." + +"I," said Annan gravely, "am probably the most frightful snob that ever +wandered, in a moment of temporary aberration, north of lower Fifth +Avenue." + +"I'm worse," observed Sam gloomily. "Help us, Hélène, toward loftier +aspirations. Be our little uplift girl--" + +"You silly things!" she said indignantly. + +Later two riders passed the house, Cameron and Stephanie Swift, who +saluted Hélène most cordially, and waved airy recognition to the two +men. + +"More snobs," commented Sam. + +"They are very delightful people!" retorted Hélène hotly. + +"Most snobs are when they like you." + +"Sam! I won't have you express such sentiments!" + +He bent nearer to her: + +"Dearest, I never had any sentiments except for you. And only the +inconvenient propinquity of that man Annan prevents me from expressing +them." + +"Please, Sam--" + +"Don't be afraid; I won't. He wouldn't care;--but I won't.... Hello! Why +look who's here!" he exclaimed, rising. "Why it's the great god Kelly +and little Sunshine!"--as Neville and Valerie sprang out of Mrs. +Collis's touring car and came up the walk. + +Hélène went forward to meet them, putting one arm around Valerie and +holding out the other to Neville. + +"When did you arrive, darling?" she exclaimed. "How do you do, Mr. +Neville? Valerie, child, I'm perfectly enchanted to see you. But where +in the world are you stopping?" + +"At Ashuelyn," said the girl, looking straight into Hélène's eyes. A +faint flash of telepathy passed between them; then, slowly, Hélène +turned and looked at Neville. + +"Will you wish us happiness?" he said, smiling. + +"Oh-h," whispered Hélène under her breath--"I do--I do--God knows. I +wish you everything that makes for happiness in all the world!" she +stammered, for the wonder of it was still on her. + +Then Sam's voice sounded close at hand: + +"Why," he said admiringly, "it _looks_ like lovey and dovey!" + +"It is," said Valerie, laughing. + +"You!--_and_ Kelly!" + +"We two." + +Sam in his excitement became a little wild and incongruous: + + "'My wife's gone to the country! + Hooray! Hooray!'" + +he shouted, holding hands with Annan and swinging back and forth. + +"Sam!" exclaimed Hélène, mortified. + +"Darling?--oh, gee! I forgot what is due to decorum! Please, _please_ +forgive me, Hélène! And kindly inform these ladies and gentlemen that +you have consented to render me eternally and supremely happy; because +if I tried to express to them that delirious fact I'd end by standing on +my head in the grass--" + +"You dear!" whispered Valerie, holding tightly to Hélène's hands. + +"Isn't it dreadful?" murmured Hélène, turning her blue eyes on the man +who never would grow old enough to grow up. "I had no such intention, I +can assure you; and I don't even understand myself yet." + +"Don't you?" said Valerie, laughing tenderly;--"then you are like all +other women. What is the use of our ever trying to understand +ourselves?" + +Hélène laughed, too: + +"No use, dear. Leave it to men who say _they_ understand us. It's a +mercy somebody does." + +"Isn't it," nodded Valerie; and they kissed each other, laughing. + +"My goodness, it's like the embrace of the two augurs!" said Ogilvy. +"They're laughing at _us_, Kelly!--at you, and me and Harry!--and at man +in general!--innocent man!--so charmingly and guilelessly symbolised by +us! Stop it, Hélène! You make me shiver. You'll frighten Annan so that +he'll _never_ marry if you and Valerie laugh that way at each other." + +"I wonder," said Hélène, quieting him with a fair hand laid lightly on +his sleeve, "whether you all would remain and dine with me this +evening--just as you are I mean;--and I won't dress--" + +"I insist _proh pudeur_," muttered Sam. "I can't countenance any such +saturnalia--" + +"Oh, Sam, do be quiet, dear--" She caught herself up with a blush, and +everybody smiled. + +"What do we care!" said Sam. "I'm tired of convention! If I want to +call you darling in public, b'jinks! I will! +Darling--darling--darling--there!--" + +"Sam!" + +"Dearest--" + +"_Sam!_" + +"Ma'am?" + +Hélène looked at Valerie: + +"There's no use," she sighed, "is there?" + +"No use," sighed Valerie, smiling at the man she loved. + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Common Law, by Robert W. Chambers + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMMON LAW *** + +***** This file should be named 13813-8.txt or 13813-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/8/1/13813/ + +Produced by Gene Smethers and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading +Team. 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Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/13813-8.zip b/old/13813-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2860ceb --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13813-8.zip diff --git a/old/13813.txt b/old/13813.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9850e3 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13813.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17937 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Common Law, by Robert W. Chambers + +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 Common Law + +Author: Robert W. Chambers + +Release Date: October 20, 2004 [EBook #13813] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMMON LAW *** + + + + +Produced by Gene Smethers and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading +Team. Produced from images provided by the Million Book Project + + + + + + +_The_ + +COMMON LAW + + + + +Works of Robert W. Chambers + + The Common Law + The Adventures of a Modest Man + Ailsa Paige + The Danger Mark + Special Messenger + The Firing Line + The Younger Set + The Fighting Chance + Some Ladies in Haste + The Tree of Heaven + The Tracer of Lost Persons + A Young Man in a Hurry + Lorraine + Maids of Paradise + Ashes of Empire + The Red Republic + Outsiders + The Green Mouse + Iole + The Reckoning + The Maid-at-Arms + Cardigan + The Haunts of Men + The Mystery of Choice + The Cambric Mask + The Maker of Moons + The King in Yellow + In Search of the Unknown + The Conspirators + A King and a Few Dukes + In the Quarter + + +For Children + + Garden-Land + Forest-Land + River-Land + Mountain-Land + Orchard-Land + Outdoor-Land + Hide and Seek in Forest-Land + + + + +_The_ + +COMMON LAW + +BY + +ROBERT W. CHAMBERS + + + +WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY + +CHARLES DANA GIBSON + + + +NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1911 + + + +[Illustration: "She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over +the keyboard." [Page 48.]] + + + +TO CHARLES DANA GIBSON + +A FRIEND OF MANY YEARS + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + PAGE + +"She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over the keyboard" +_Frontispiece_ + +"There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door" 3 + +"'Now, Miss West,' he said decisively" 13 + +"'I know perfectly well that this isn't right,'she said" 31 + +"'What's the matter with it, then?'" 40 + +"For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, looking +fixedly into space" 65 + +"Neville stood stock-still before the canvas" 81 + +"When he first tried to ring her up the wire was busy" 83 + +"'Kelly, dear, are you unhappy?'" 90 + +"He picked up a bit of white chalk ... and traced on the floor the +outline of her shoes" 93 + +"'I _will_ call you a god if I like!'" 96 + +"'If she's as much of a winner as all that,' began Cameron with +decision, 'I want to meet her immediately--'" 109 + +"'Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before luncheon'" 116 + +"'I know it is _you_. Is it?' 125 + +"A smartly dressed and very confident drummer" 136 + +"Valerie sat cross-legged on the grass ... scribbling away" 145 + +"'How well you look!' He exclaimed" 149 + +"Querida had laughed ... and returned compliment for compliment" 175 + +"'Me lord, the taxi waits!'" 179 + +Mazie Gray 183 + +"And the last rose dropped from her hand" 188-189 + +"'How perfectly horrid you can be!'she exclaimed" 199 + +"She began by balancing her check book" 224 + +"He stood before it, searching in it for any hint of that elusive and +mysterious _something_" 229 + +"'I shall have need of friends,' she said half to herself" 245 + +'"Don't do it, Valerie!'" 247 + +"Ogilvy stood looking sentimentally at the two young girls" 249 + +"Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she bent lower over +her sewing" 286 + +"She and Rita dined with him once or twice" 293 + +"Tall, transparently pale, negative in character" 297 + +"Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning simplicity of her manner +were noticed everywhere" 307 + +"'Where do you keep those pretty models, Louis?' he demanded" 315 + +"'Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting one,' said Lily" +326 + +"It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds" 338 + +The Countess d'Enver 347 + +"'May I sit here with you until she arrives? I am Stephanie Swift'" 355 + +"'John, you don't look very well,' said Valerie" 359 + +"'It is very beautiful, Louis,' said his mother, with a smile of pride" +387 + +"'You are not happy, Louis'" 390 + +"'What have you been saying to your mother?' he asked" 404 + +"'If you'll place a lump of sugar on my nose, and say "when," I'll +perform'" 409 + +"And what happier company for her than her thoughts--what tenderer +companionship than her memories?" 413 + +"She prowled around the library, luxuriously, dipping into inviting +volumes" 415 + +"'Miss West!' he exclaimed. 'How on earth did you ever find your way +into my woods?'" 417 + +"'Dearest,' he whispered, putting his arm around her, 'you must come +with us'" 427 + +"'Well, Louis, what do you know about this?'" 430 + +"The parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and shrieking from +his perch" 449 + +"'And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just men'" 453 + +"His thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie" 458 + +"Ogilvy ... began a lively fencing bout with an imaginary adversary" 479 + +"Then Rita came silently on sandalled feet to stand behind him and look +at what he had done" 483 + +"'You'd better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as well born as I +am'" 491 + +"She knelt down beside the bed and ... said whatever prayer she had in +mind" 507 + +"She was longer over her hair ... gathering it and bringing it under +discipline" 510 + +"'Yes,' she said, 'it is really great'" 521 + +"'I am scared blue. That's why I'm holding on to your hand so +desperately'" 531 + + + + +THE COMMON LAW + +CHAPTER I + + +There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door. He continued +working. After an interval the bell rang again, briefly, as though the +light touch on the electric button had lost its assurance. + +"Somebody's confidence has departed," he thought to himself, busy with a +lead-weighted string and a stick of soft charcoal wrapped in silver +foil. For a few moments he continued working, not inclined to trouble +himself to answer the door, but the hesitating timidity of a third +appeal amused him, and he walked out into the hallway and opened the +door. In the dim light a departing figure turned from the stairway: + +"Do you wish a model?" she asked in an unsteady voice. + +"No," he said, vexed. + +"Then--I beg your pardon for disturbing you--" + +"Who gave you my name?" he demanded. + +"Why--nobody--" + +"Who sent you to me? Didn't anybody send you?" + +"No." + +"But how did you get in?" + +"I--walked in." + +There was a scarcely perceptible pause; then she turned away in the dim +light of the corridor. + +"You know," he said, "models are not supposed to come here unless sent +for. It isn't done in this building." He pointed to a black and white +sign on his door which bore the words: "No Admittance." + +"I am very sorry. I didn't understand--" + +"Oh, it's all right; only, I don't see how you got up here at all. +Didn't the elevator boy question you? It's his business." + +"I didn't come up on the elevator." + +"You didn't _walk_ up!" + +"Yes." + +"Twelve stories!" + +"Both elevators happened to be in service. Besides, I was not quite +certain that models were expected to use the elevators." + +"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "you must have wanted an engagement pretty +badly." + +"Yes, I did." + +He stared: "I suppose you do, still," + +"If you would care to try me." + +"I'll take your name and address, anyhow. Twelve flights! For the love +of--oh, come in anyway and rest." + +It was dusky in the private hallway through which he preceded her, but +there was light enough in the great studio. Through the vast sheets of +glass fleecy clouds showed blue sky between. The morning was clearing. + +He went over to an ornate Louis XV table, picked up a note book, +motioned her to be seated, dropped into a chair himself, and began to +sharpen a pencil. As yet he had scarcely glanced at her, and now, while +he leisurely shaved the cedar and scraped the lead to a point, he +absent-mindedly and good-humouredly admonished her: + +"You models have your own guild, your club, your regular routine, and +it would make it much easier for us if you'd all register and quietly +wait until we send for you. + +[Illustration: "There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door."] + +"You see we painters know what we want and we know where to apply for +it. But if you all go wandering over studio buildings in search of +engagements, we won't have any leisure to employ you because it will +take all our time to answer the bell. And it will end by our not +answering it at all. And that's why it is fit and proper for good little +models to remain _chez eux_." + +He had achieved a point to his pencil. Now he opened his model book, +looked up at her with his absent smile, and remained looking. + +"Aren't you going to remove your veil?" + +"Oh--I beg your pardon!" Slender gloved fingers flew up, were nervously +busy a moment. She removed her veil and sat as though awaiting his +comment. None came. + +After a moment's pause she said: "Did you wish--my name and address?" + +He nodded, still looking intently at her. + +"Miss West," she said, calmly. He wrote it down. + +"Is that all? Just 'Miss West'?" + +"Valerie West--if that is custom--necessary." + +He wrote "Valerie West"; and, as she gave it to him, he noted her +address. + +"Head and shoulders?" he asked, quietly. + +"Yes," very confidently. + +"Figure?" + +"Yes,"--less confidently. + +"Draped or undraped?" + +When he looked up again, for an instant he thought her skin even whiter +than it had been; perhaps not, for, except the vivid lips and a +carnation tint in the cheeks, the snowy beauty of her face and neck had +already preoccupied him. + +"Do you pose undraped?" he repeated, interested. + +"I--expect to do--what is--required of--models." + +"Sensible," he commented, noting the detail in his book. "Now, Miss +West, for whom have you recently posed?" + +And, as she made no reply, he looked up amiably, balancing his pencil in +his hand and repeating the question. + +"Is it necessary to--tell you?" + +"Not at all. One usually asks that question, probably because you models +are always so everlastingly anxious to tell us--particularly when the +men for whom you have posed are more famous than the poor devil who +offers you an engagement." + +There was something very good humoured in his smile, and she strove to +smile, too, but her calmness was now all forced, and her heart was +beating very fast, and her black-gloved fingers were closing and +doubling till the hands that rested on the arms of the gilded antique +chair lay tightly clenched. + +He was leisurely writing in his note book under her name: + +"Height, medium; eyes, a dark brown; hair, thick, lustrous, and brown; +head, unusually beautiful; throat and neck, perfect--" + +He stopped writing and lifted his eyes: + +"How much of your time is taken ahead, I wonder?" + +"What?" + +"How many engagements have you? Is your time all cut up--as I fancy it +is?" + +"N-no." + +"Could you give me what time I might require?" + +"I think so." + +"What I mean, Miss West, is this: suppose that your figure is what I +have an idea it is; could you give me a lot of time ahead?" + +She remained silent so long that he had started to write, "probably +unreliable," under his notes; but, as his pencil began to move, her lips +unclosed with, a low, breathless sound that became a ghost of a voice: + +"I will do what you require of me. I meant to answer." + +"Do you mean that you are in a position to make a time contract with +me?--provided you prove to be what I need?" + +She nodded uncertainly. + +"I'm beginning the ceiling, lunettes, and panels for the Byzantine +Theatre," he added, sternly stroking his short mustache, "and under +those circumstances I suppose you know what a contract between us +means." + +She nodded again, but in her eyes was bewilderment, and in her heart, +fear. + +"Yes," she managed to say, "I think I understand." + +"Very well. I merely want to say that a model threw me down hard in the +very middle of the Bimmington's ball-room. Max Schindler put on a show, +and she put for the spot-light. She'd better stay put," he added grimly: +"she'll never have another chance in your guild." + +Then the frown vanished, and the exceedingly engaging smile glimmered in +his eyes: + +"You wouldn't do such a thing as that to me," he added; "would you, +Miss West?" + +"Oh, no," she replied, not clearly comprehending the enormity of the +Schindler recruit's behaviour. + +"And you'll stand by me if our engagement goes through?" + +"Yes, I--will try to." + +"Good business! Now, if you really are what I have an idea you are, I'll +know pretty quick whether I can use you for the Byzantine job." He rose, +walked over to a pair of closed folding doors and opened them. "You can +undress in there," he said. "I think you will find everything you need." + +For a second she sat rigid, her black-gloved hands doubled, her eyes +fastened on him as though fascinated. He had already turned and +sauntered over to one of several easels where he picked up the lump of +charcoal in its silver foil. + +The colour began to come back into her face--swifter, more swiftly: the +vast blank window with its amber curtains stared at her; she lifted her +tragic gaze and saw the sheet of glass above swimming in crystal light. +Through it clouds were dissolving in the bluest of skies; against it a +spiderweb of pendant cords drooped from the high ceiling; and she saw +the looming mystery of huge canvases beside which stepladders rose +surmounted by little crow's-nests where the graceful oval of palettes +curved, tinted with scraped brilliancy. + +"What a dreamer you are!" he called across the studio to her. "The light +is fine, now. Hadn't we better take advantage of it?" + +She managed to find her footing; contrived to rise, to move with +apparent self-possession toward the folding doors. + +"Better hurry," he said, pleasantly. "If you're what I need we might +start things now. I am all ready for the sort of figure I expect you +have." + +She stepped inside the room and became desperately busy for a moment +trying to close the doors; but either her hands had suddenly become +powerless or they shook too much; and when he turned, almost +impatiently, from his easel to see what all that rattling meant, she +shrank hastily aside into the room beyond, keeping out of his view. + +The room was charming--not like the studio, but modern and fresh and +dainty with chintz and flowered wall-paper and the graceful white +furniture of a bed-room. There was a flowered screen there, too. Behind +it stood a chair, and onto this she sank, laid her hands for an instant +against her burning face, then stooped and, scarcely knowing what she +was about, began to untie her patent-leather shoes. + +He remained standing at his easel, very busy with his string and lump of +charcoal; but after a while it occurred to him that she was taking an +annoyingly long time about a simple matter. + +"What on earth is the trouble?" he called. "Do you realise you've been +in there a quarter of an hour?" + +She made no answer. A second later he thought he heard an indistinct +sound--and it disquieted him. + +"Miss West?" + +There was no reply. + +Impatient, a little disturbed, he walked across to the folding doors; +and the same low, suppressed sound caught his ear. + +"What in the name of--" he began, walking into the room; and halted, +amazed. + +She sat all huddled together behind the screen, partly undressed, her +face hidden in her hands; and between the slender fingers tears ran down +brightly. + +"Are you ill?" he asked, anxiously. + +After a moment she slowly shook her head. + +"Then--what in the name of Mike--" + +"P-please forgive me. I--I will be ready in a in-moment--if you wouldn't +mind going out--" + +"_Are_ you ill? Answer me?" + +"N-no." + +"Has anything disturbed you so that you don't feel up to posing to-day?" + +"No.... I--am--almost ready--if you will go out--" + +He considered her, uneasy and perplexed. Then: + +"All right," he said, briefly. "Take your own time, Miss West." + +At his easel, fussing with yard-stick and crayon, he began to square off +his canvas, muttering to himself: + +"What the deuce is the matter with that girl? Nice moment to nurse +secret sorrows or blighted affections. There's always something wrong +with the best lookers.... And she is a real beauty--or I miss my guess." +He went on ruling off, measuring, grumbling, until slowly there came +over him the sense of the nearness of another person. He had not heard +her enter, but he turned around, knowing she was there. + +She stood silent, motionless, as though motion terrified her and inertia +were salvation. Her dark hair rippled to her waist; her white arms hung +limp, yet the fingers had curled till every delicate nail was pressed +deep into the pink palm. She was trying to look at him. Her face was as +white as a flower. + +"All right," he said under his breath, "you're practically faultless. I +suppose you realise it!" + +A scarcely perceptible shiver passed over her entire body, then, as he +stepped back, his keen artist's gaze narrowing, there stole over her a +delicate flush, faintly staining her from brow to ankle, transfiguring +the pallour exquisitely, enchantingly. And her small head drooped +forward, shadowed by her hair. + +"You're what I want," he said. "You're about everything I require in +colour and form and texture." + +She neither spoke nor moved as much as an eyelash. + +"Look here, Miss West," he said in a slightly excited voice, "let's go +about this thing intelligently." He swung another easel on its rollers, +displaying a sketch in soft, brilliant colours--a multitude of figures +amid a swirl of sunset-tinted clouds and patches of azure sky. + +"You're intelligent," he went on with animation,--"I saw that--somehow +or other--though you haven't said very much." He laughed, and laid his +hand on the painted canvas beside him: + +"You're a model, and it's not necessary to inform you that this Is only +a preliminary sketch. Your experience tells you that. But it is +necessary to tell you that it's the final composition. I've decided on +this arrangement for the ceiling: You see for yourself that you're +perfectly fitted to stand or sit for all these floating, drifting, +cloud-cradled goddesses. You're an inspiration in yourself--for the +perfections of Olympus!" he added, laughing, "and that's no idle +compliment. But of course other artists have often told you this +before--as though you didn't have eyes of your own I And beautiful ones +at that!" He laughed again, turned and dragged a two-storied model-stand +across the floor, tossed up one or two silk cushions, and nodded to her. + +"Don't be afraid; it's rickety but safe. It will hold us both. Are you +ready?" + +As in a dream she set one little bare foot on the steps, mounted, +balancing with arms extended and the tips of her fingers resting on his +outstretched hand. + +Standing on the steps he arranged the cushions, told her where to be +seated, how to recline, placed the wedges and blocks to support her +feet, chalked the bases, marked positions with arrows, and wedged and +blocked up her elbow. Then he threw over her a soft, white, wool robe, +swathing her from throat to feet, descended the steps, touched an +electric bell, and picking up a huge clean palette began to squeeze out +coils of colour from a dozen plump tubes. + +Presently a short, squarely built man entered. He wore a blue jumper; +there were traces of paint on it, on his large square hands, on his +square, serious face. + +"O'Hara?" + +"Sorr?" + +"We're going to begin _now_!--thank Heaven. So if you'll be kind enough +to help move forward the ceiling canvas--" + +O'Hara glanced up carelessly at the swathed and motionless figure above, +then calmly spat upon his hands and laid hold of one side of the huge +canvas indicated. The painter took the other side. + +"Now, O'Hara, careful! Back off a little!--don't let it sway! +There--that's where I want it. Get a ladder and clamp the tops. Pitch it +a little forward--more!--stop! Fix those pully ropes; I'll make things +snug below." + +[Illustration: "'Now, Miss West,' he said decisively."] + +For ten minutes they worked deftly, rapidly, making fast the great blank +canvas which had been squared and set with an enormous oval in heavy +outline. + +From her lofty eyrie she looked down at them as in a dream while they +shifted other enormous framed canvases and settled the oval one into +place. Everything below seemed to be on rubber wheels or casters, +easels, stepladders, colour cabinets, even the great base where the oval +set canvas rested. + +She looked up at the blue sky. Sparrows dropped out of the brilliant +void into unseen canons far below from whence came the softened roar of +traffic. Northward the city spread away between its rivers, glittering +under the early April sun; the Park lay like a grey and green map set +with, the irregular silver of water; beyond, the huge unfinished +cathedral loomed dark against the big white hospital of St. Luke; +farther still a lilac-tinted haze hung along the edges of the Bronx. + +"All right, O'Hara. Much obliged. I won't need you again." + +"Very good, Sorr." + +The short, broad Irishman went out with another incurious glance aloft, +and closed the outer door. + +High up on her perch she watched the man below. He calmly removed coat +and waistcoat, pulled a painter's linen blouse over his curly head, +lighted a cigarette, picked up his palette, fastened a tin cup to the +edge, filled it from a bottle, took a handful of brushes and a bunch of +cheese cloth, and began to climb up a stepladder opposite her, lugging +his sketch in the other hand. + +He fastened the little sketch to an upright and stood on the ladder +halfway up, one leg higher than the other. + +"Now, Miss West," he said decisively. + +At the sound of his voice fear again leaped through her like a flame, +burning her face as she let slip the white wool robe. + +"All right," he said. "Don't move while I'm drawing unless you have to." + +She could see him working. He seemed to be drawing with a brush, +rapidly, and with, a kind of assurance that appeared almost careless. + +At first she could make out little of the lines. They were all dark in +tint, thin, tinged with plum colour. There seemed to be no curves in +them--and at first she could not comprehend that he was drawing her +figure. But after a little while curves appeared; long delicate outlines +began to emerge as rounded surfaces in monochrome, casting definite +shadows on other surfaces. She could recognise the shape of a human +head; saw it gradually become a colourless drawing; saw shoulders, arms, +a body emerging into shadowy shape; saw the long fine limbs appear, the +slender indication of feet. + +Then flat on the cheek lay a patch of brilliant colour, another on the +mouth. A great swirl of cloud forms sprang into view high piled in a +corner of the canvas. + +And now he seemed to be eternally running up and down his ladder, +shifting it here and there across the vast white background of canvas, +drawing great meaningless lines in distant expanses of the texture, +then, always consulting her with his keen, impersonal gaze, he pushed +back his ladder, mounted, wiped the big brushes, selected others smaller +and flatter, considering her in penetrating silence between every brush, +stroke. + +She saw a face and hair growing lovely under her eyes, bathed in an +iris-tinted light; saw little exquisite flecks of colour set here and +there on the white expanse; watched all so intently, so wonderingly, +that the numbness of her body became a throbbing pain before she was +aware that she was enduring torture. + +She strove to move, gave a little gasp; and he was down from his ladder +and up on hers before her half-paralysed body had swayed to the edge of +danger. + +"Why didn't you say so?" he asked, sharply. "I can't keep track of time +when I'm working!" + +With arms and fingers that scarcely obeyed her she contrived to gather +the white wool covering around her shoulders and limbs and lay back. + +"You know," he said, "that it's foolish to act this way. I don't want to +kill you, Miss West." + +She only lowered her head amid its lovely crown of hair. + +"You know your own limits," he said, resentfully. He looked down at the +big clock: "It's a full hour. You had only to speak. Why didn't you?" + +"I--I didn't know what to say." + +"Didn't know!" He paused, astonished. Then: "Well, you felt yourself +getting numb, didn't you?" + +"Y-yes. But I thought it was--to be expected"--she blushed vividly under +his astonished gaze: "I think I had better tell you that--that this +is--the first time." + +"The first time!" + +"Yes.... I ought to have told you. I was afraid you might not want me." + +"Lord above!" he breathed. "You poor--poor little thing!" + +She began to cry silently; he saw the drops fall shining on the white +wool robe, and leaned one elbow on the ladder, watching them. After a +while they ceased, but she still held her head low, and her face was +bent in the warm shadow of her hair. + +"How could I understand?" he asked very gently. + +"I--should have told you. I was afraid." + +He said: "I'm terribly sorry. It must have been perfect torture for you +to undress--to come into the studio. If you'd only given me an idea of +how matters stood I could have made it a little easier. I'm afraid I was +brusque--taking it for granted that you were a model and knew your +business.... I'm terribly sorry." + +She lifted her head, looked at him, with the tears still clinging to her +lashes. + +"You have been very nice to me. It is all my own fault." + +He smiled. "Then it's all right, now that we understand. Isn't it?" + +"Yes." + +"You make a stunning model," he said frankly. + +"Do I? Then you will let me come again?" + +"_Let_ you!" He laughed; "I'll be more likely to beg you." + +"Oh, you won't have to," she said; "I'll come as long as you want me." + +"That is simply angelic of you. Tell me, do you wish to descend to terra +firma?" + +She glanced below, doubtfully: + +"N-no, thank you. If I could only stretch my--legs--" + +"Stretch away," he said, much amused, "but don't tumble off and break +into pieces. I like you better as you are than as an antique and +limbless Venus." + +She cautiously and daintily extended first one leg then the other under +the wool robe, then eased the cramped muscles of her back, straightening +her body and flexing her arms with a little sigh of relief. As her shy +sidelong gaze reverted to him she saw to her relief that he was not +noticing her. A slight sense of warmth, suffused her body, and she +stretched herself again, more confidently, and ventured to glance +around. + +"Speaking of terms," he said in an absent way, apparently preoccupied +with the palette which he was carefully scraping, "do you happen to know +what is the usual recompense for a model's service?" + +She said that she had heard, and added with quick diffidence that she +could not expect so much, being only a beginner. + +He polished the surface of the palette with a handful of cheese cloth: + +"Don't you think that you are worth it?" + +"How can _I_ be until I know how to pose for you?" + +"You will never have to learn how to pose, Miss West." + +"I don't know exactly what you mean." + +"I mean that some models never learn. Some know how already--you, for +example." + +She flushed slightly: "Do you really mean that?" + +"Oh, I wouldn't say so if I didn't. It's merely necessary for you to +accustom yourself to holding a pose; the rest you already know +instinctively." + +"What is the rest?" she ventured to ask. "I don't quite understand what +you see in me--" + +"Well," he said placidly, "you are beautifully made. That is +nine-tenths of the matter. Your head is set logically on your neck, and +your neck is correctly placed on your spine, and your legs and arms are +properly attached to your torso--your entire body, anatomically +speaking, is hinged, hung, supported, developed as the ideal body should +be. It's undeformed, unmarred, unspoiled, and that's partly luck, partly +inheritance, and mostly decent habits and digestion." + +She was listening intently, interested, surprised, her pink lips +slightly parted. + +"Another point," he continued; "you seem unable to move or rest +ungracefully. Few women are so built that an ungraceful motion is +impossible for them. You are one of the few. It's all a matter of +anatomy." + +She remained silent, watching him curiously. + +He said: "But the final clincher to your qualifications is that you are +intelligent. I have known pretty women," he added with, sarcasm, "who +were not what learned men would call precisely intelligent. But you are. +I showed you my sketch, indicated in a general way what I wanted, and +instinctively and intelligently you assumed the proper attitude. I +didn't have to take you by the chin and twist your head as though you +were a lay figure; I didn't have to pull you about and flex and bend and +twist you. You knew that I wanted you to look like some sort of an +ethereal immortality, deliciously relaxed, adrift in sunset clouds. And +you _were_ it--somehow or other." + +She looked down, thoughtfully, nestling to the chin in the white wool +folds. A smile, almost imperceptible, curved her lips. + +"You are making it very easy for me," she said. + +"You make it easy for yourself." + +"I was horribly afraid," she said thoughtfully. + +"I have no doubt of it." + +"Oh, you don't know--nobody can know--no man can understand the terror +of--of the first time--" + +"It must be a ghastly experience." + +"It is!--I don't mean that you have not done everything to make it +easier--but--there in the little room--my courage left me--I almost +died. I'd have run away only--I was afraid you wouldn't let me--" + +He began to laugh; she tried to, but the terror of it all was as yet too +recent. + +"At first," she said, "I was afraid I wouldn't do for a model--not +exactly afraid of my--my appearance, but because I was a novice; and I +imagined that one had to know exactly how to pose--" + +"I think," he interrupted smilingly, "that you might take the pose again +if you are rested. Go on talking; I don't mind it." + +She sat erect, loosened the white wool robe and dropped it from her with +less consciousness and effort than before. Very carefully she set her +feet on the blocks, fitting the shapely heels to the chalked outlines; +found the mark for her elbow, adjusted her slim, smooth body and looked +at him, flushing. + +"All right," he said briefly; "go ahead and talk to me." + +"Do you wish me to?" + +"Yes; I'd rather." + +"I don't know exactly what to say." + +"Say anything," he returned absently, selecting a flat brush with a very +long handle. + +She thought a moment, then, lifting her eyes: + +"I might ask you your name." + +"What? Don't you know it? Oh, Lord! Oh, Vanity! I thought you'd heard of +me." + +She blushed, confused by her ignorance and what she feared was annoyance +on his part; then perceived that he was merely amused; and her face +cleared. + +"We folk who create concrete amusement for the public always imagine +ourselves much better known to that public than we are, Miss West. It's +our little vanity--rather harmless after all. We're a pretty decent lot, +sometimes absurd, especially in our tragic moments; sometimes emotional, +usually illogical, often impulsive, frequently tender-hearted as well as +supersensitive. + +"Now it was a pleasant little vanity for me to take it for granted that +somehow you had heard of me and had climbed twelve flights of stairs for +the privilege of sitting for me." + +He laughed so frankly that the shy, responsive smile made her face +enchanting; and he coolly took advantage of it, and while exciting and +stimulating it, affixed it immortally on the exquisite creature he was +painting. + +"So you didn't climb those twelve flights solely for the privilege of +having me paint you?" + +"No," she admitted, laughingly, "I was merely going to begin at the top +and apply for work all the way down until somebody took me--or nobody +took me." + +"But why begin at the top?" + +"It is easier to bear disappointment going down," she said, seriously; +"if two or three artists had refused me on the first and second floors, +my legs would not have carried me up very far." + +"Bad logic," he commented. "We mount by experience, using our wrecked +hopes as footholds." + +"You don't know how much a girl can endure. There comes a time-after +years of steady descent--when misfortune and disappointment become +endurable; when hope deferred no longer sickens. It is in rising toward +better things that disappointments hurt most cruelly." + +He turned his head in surprise; then went on painting: + +"Your philosophy is the philosophy of submission." + +"Do you call a struggle of years, submission?" + +"But it was giving up after all--acquiescence, despondency, a _laissez +faire_ policy." + +"One may tire of fighting." + +"One may. Another may not." + +"I think you have never had to fight very hard." + +He turned his head abruptly; after a moment's silent survey of her, he +resumed his painting with a sharp, impersonal glance before every swift +and decisive brush stroke: + +"No; I have never had to fight, Miss West.... It was keen of you to +recognise it. I have never had to fight at all. Things come easily to +me--things have a habit of coming my way.... I suppose I'm not exactly +the man to lecture anybody on the art of fighting fortune. She's always +been decent to me.... Sometimes I'm afraid--I have an instinct that +she's too friendly.... And it troubles me. Do you understand what I +mean?" + +"Yes." + +He looked up at her: "Are you sure?" + +"I think so. I have been watching you painting. I never imagined +anybody could draw so swiftly, so easily--paint so surely, so +accurately--that every brush stroke could be so--so significant, so +decisive.... Is it not unusual? And is not that what is called +facility?" + +"Lord in Heaven!" he said; "what kind of a girl am I dealing with?--or +what kind of a girl is dealing so unmercifully with me?" + +"I--I didn't mean--" + +"Yes, you did. Those very lovely and wonderfully shaped eyes of yours +are not entirely for ornament. Inside that pretty head there's an +apparatus designed for thinking; and it isn't idle." + +He laughed gaily, a trifle defiantly: + +"You've said it. You've found the fly in the amber. I'm cursed with +facility. Worse still it gives me keenest pleasure to employ it. It does +scare me occasionally--has for years--makes me miserable at +intervals--fills me full of all kinds of fears and doubts." + +He turned toward her, standing on his ladder, the big palette curving up +over his left shoulder, a wet brush extended in his right hand: + +"What shall I do!" he exclaimed so earnestly that she sat up straight, +startled, forgetting her pose. "Ought I to stifle the vigour, the +energy, the restless desire that drives me to express myself--that will +not tolerate the inertia of calculation and ponderous reflection? Ought +I to check myself, consider, worry, entangle myself in psychologies, +seek for subtleties where none exist--split hairs, relapse into +introspective philosophy when my fingers itch for a lump of charcoal and +every colour on my set palette yells at me to be about my business?" + +He passed the flat tip of his wet brush through the mass of rags in his +left hand with a graceful motion like one unsheathing a sword: + +"I tell you I do the things which I do, as easily, as naturally, as +happily as any fool of a dicky-bird does his infernal twittering on an +April morning. God knows whether there's anything in my work or in his +twitter; but neither he nor I are likely to improve our output by +pondering and cogitation.... Please resume the pose." + +She did so, her dark young eyes on him; and he continued painting and +talking in his clear, rapid, decisive manner: + +"My name is Louis Neville. They call me Kelly--my friends do," he added, +laughing. "Have you ever seen any of my work?" + +"Yes." + +He laughed again: "That's more soothing. However, I suppose you saw that +big canvas of mine for the ceiling of the Metropolitan Museum's new +northwest wing. The entire town saw it." + +"Yes, I saw it." + +"Did you care for it?" + +She had cared for it too intensely to give him any adequate answer. +Never before had her sense of colour and form and beauty been so +exquisitely satisfied by the painted magic of any living painter. So +this was the man who had enveloped her, swayed her senses, whirled her +upward into his ocean of limpid light! This was the man who had done +that miracle before which, all day long, crowds of the sober, decent, +unimaginative--the solid, essentials of the nation--had lingered +fascinated! This was the man--across there on a stepladder. And he was +evidently not yet thirty; and his name was Neville and his friends +called him Kelly. + +"Yes," she said, diffidently, "I cared for it." + +"Really?" + +He caught her eye, laughed, and went on with his work. + +"The critics were savage," he said. "Lord! It hurts, too. But I've +simply got to be busy. What good would it do me to sit down and draw +casts with a thin, needle-pointed stick of hard charcoal. Not that they +say I can't draw. They admit that I can. They admit that I can paint, +too." + +He laughed, stretched his arms: + +"Draw! A blank canvas sets me mad. When I look at one I feel like +covering it with a thousand figures twisted into every intricacy and +difficulty of foreshortening! I wish I were like that Hindu god with a +dozen arms; and even then I couldn't paint fast enough to satisfy what +my eyes and brain have already evoked upon an untouched canvas.... It's +a sort of intoxication that gets hold of me; I'm perfectly cool, too, +which seems a paradox but isn't. And all the while, inside me, is a +constant, hushed kind of laughter, bubbling, which accompanies every +brush stroke with an 'I told you so!'--if you know what I'm trying to +say--_do_ you?" + +"N-not exactly. But I suppose you mean that you are self-confident." + +"Lord! Listen to this girl say in a dozen words what I'm trying to say +in a volume so that it won't scare me! Yes! That's it. I am confident. +And it's that self-confidence which sometimes scares me half to death." + +From his ladder he pointed with his brush to the preliminary sketch +that faced her, touching figure after figure: + +"I'm going to draw them in, now," he said; "first this one. Can you +catch the pose? It's going to be hard; I'll block up your heels, later; +that's it! Stand up straight, stretch as though the next moment you were +going to rise on tiptoe and float upward without an effort--" + +He was working like lightning in long, beautiful, clean outline strokes, +brushed here and there with shadow shapes and masses. And time flew at +first, then went slowly, more slowly, until it dragged at her delicate +body and set every nerve aching. + +"I--may I rest a moment?" + +"Sure thing!" he said, cordially, laying aside palette and brushes. +"Come on, Miss West, and we'll have luncheon." + +She hastily swathed herself in the wool robe. + +"Do you mean--here?" + +"Yes. There's a dumb-waiter. I'll ring for the card." + +"I'd like to," she said, "but do you think I had better?" + +"Why not?" + +"You mean--take lunch with you?" + +"Why not?" + +"Is it customary?" + +"No, it isn't." + +"Then I think I will go out to lunch somewhere--" + +"I'm not going to let you get away," he said, laughing. "You're too good +to be real; I'm worried half to death for fear that you'll vanish in a +golden cloud, or something equally futile and inconsiderate. No, I want +you to stay. You don't mind, do you?" + +He was aiding her to descend from her eyrie, her little white hand +balanced on his arm. When she set foot on the floor she looked up at him +gravely: + +"You wouldn't let me do anything that I ought not to, would you, Mr. +Kelly--I mean Mr. Neville?" she added in confusion. + +"No. Anyway I don't know what you ought or ought not to do. Luncheon is +a simple matter of routine. It's sole significance is two empty +stomachs. I suppose if you go out you _will_ come back, but--I'd rather +you'd remain." + +"Why?" + +"Well," he admitted with a laugh, "it's probably because I like to hear +myself talk to you. Besides, I've always the hope that you'll suddenly +become conversational, and that's a possibility exciting enough to give +anybody an appetite." + +"But I _have_ conversed with you," she said. + +"Only a little. What you said acted like a cocktail to inspire me for a +desire for more." + +"I am afraid that you were not named Kelly in vain." + +"You mean blarney? No, it's merely frankness. Let me get you some +bath-slippers--" + +"Oh--but if I am to lunch here--I can't do it this way!" she exclaimed +in flushed consternation. + +"Indeed you must learn to do that without embarrassment, Miss West. Tie +up your robe at the throat, tuck up your sleeves, slip your feet into a +nice pair of brand-new bath-slippers, and I'll ring for luncheon." + +"I--don't--want to--" she began; but he went away into the hall, rang, +and presently she heard the ascending clatter of a dumb-waiter. From it +he took the luncheon card and returned to where she was sitting at a +rococo table. She blushed as he laid the card before her, and would have +nothing to do with it. The result was that he did the ordering, sent the +dumb-waiter down with his scribbled memorandum, and came wandering back +with long, cool glances at his canvas and the work he had done on it. + +"I mean to make a stunning thing of it," he remarked, eying the huge +chassis critically. "All this--deviltry--whatever it is inside of +me--must come out somehow. And that canvas is the place for it." He +laughed and sat down opposite her: + +"Man is born to folly, Miss West--born full of it. I get rid of mine on +canvas. It's a safer outlet for original sin than some other ways." + +She lay back in her antique gilded chair, hands extended along the arms, +looking at him with a smile that was still shy. + +"My idea of you--of an artist--was so different," she said. + +"There are all kinds, mostly the seriously inspired and humourless +variety who makes a mystic religion of a very respectable profession. +This world is full of pale, enraptured artists; full of muscular, +thumb-smearing artists; full of dreamy weavers of visions, usually +deficient in spinal process; full of unwashed little inverts to whom the +world really resembles a kaleidoscope full of things that wiggle--" + +They began to laugh, he with a singular delight in her comprehension of +his idle, irresponsible chatter, she from sheer pleasure in listening +and looking at this man who was so different from anybody she had ever +known--and, thank God!--so young. + +And when the bell rang and the clatter announced the advent of luncheon, +she settled in her chair with a little shiver of happiness, blushing at +her capacity for it, and at her acquiescence in the strangest conditions +in which she had ever found herself in all her life,--conditions so +bizarre, so grotesque, so impossible that there was no use in trying to +consider them--alas! no point in blushing now. + +Mechanically she settled her little naked feet deep into the big +bath-slippers, tucked up her white wool sleeves to the dimpled elbow, +and surveyed the soup which he had placed before her to serve. + +"I know perfectly well that this isn't right," she said, helping him and +then herself. "But I am wondering what there is about it that isn't +right." + +"Isn't it demoralising!" he said, amused. + +"I--wonder if it is?" + +He laughed: "Such ideas are nonsense, Miss West. Listen to me: you and +I--everybody except those with whom something is physically wrong--are +born with a full and healthy capacity for demoralisation and mischief. +Mischief is only one form of energy. If lightning flies about unguided +it's likely to do somebody some damage; if it's conducted properly to a +safe terminal there's no damage done and probably a little good." + +"Your brushes are your lightning-rods?" she suggested, laughing. + +"Certainly. I only demoralise canvas. What outlet have you for your +perfectly normal deviltry?" + +"I haven't any." + +[Illustration: "'I know perfectly well that this isn't right,' she +said."] + +"Any deviltry?" + +"Any outlet." + +"You ought to have." + +"Ought I?" + +"Certainly. You are as full of restless energy as I am." + +"Oh, I don't think I am." + +"You are. Look at yourself! I never saw anybody so sound, so superbly +healthy, so"--he laughed--"adapted to dynamics. You've got to have an +outlet. Or there'll be the deuce to pay." + +She looked at her fruit salad gravely, tasted it, and glanced up at him: + +"I have never in all my life had any outlet--never even any outlook, Mr. +Neville." + +"You should have had both," he grumbled, annoyed at himself for the +interest her words had for him; uneasy, now that she had responded, yet +curious to learn something about this fair young girl, approximately his +intellectual equal, who came to his door looking for work as a model. He +thought to himself that probably it was some distressing tale which he +couldn't help, and the recital of which would do neither of them any +good. Of stories of models' lives he was tired, satiated. There was no +use encouraging her to family revelations; an easy, pleasant footing was +far more amusing to maintain. The other hinted of intimacy; and that he +had never tolerated in his employees. + +Yet, looking now across the table at her, a not unkind curiosity began +to prod him. He could easily have left matters where they were, +maintained the _status quo_ indefinitely--or as long as he needed her +services. + +"Outlets are necessary," he said, cautiously. "Otherwise we go to the +bow-wows." + +"Or--die." + +"What?" sharply. + +She looked up without a trace of self-consciousness or the least hint of +the dramatic: + +"I would die unless I had an outlet. This is almost one. At least it +gives me something to do with my life." + +"Posing?" + +"Yes." + +"I don't quite understand you." + +"Why, I only mean that--the other"--she smiled--"what you call the +bow-wows, would not have been an outlet for me.... I was a show-girl for +two months last winter; I ought to know. And I'd rather have died +than--" + +"I see," he said; "that outlet was too stupid to have attracted you." + +She nodded. "Besides, I have principles," she said, candidly. + +"Which effectually blocked that outlet. They sometimes kill, too, as you +say. Youth stifled too long means death--the death of youth at least. +Outlets mean life. The idea is to find a safe one." + +She flushed in quick, sensitive response: + +"_That_ is it; that is what I meant. Mr. Neville, I am twenty-one; and +do you know I never had a childhood? And I am simply wild for it--for +the girlhood and the playtime that I never had--" + +She checked herself, looking across at him uncertainly. + +"Go on," he nodded. + +"That is all." + +"No; tell me the rest." + +She sat with head bent, slender fingers picking at her napkin; then, +without raising her troubled eyes: + +"Life has been--curious. My mother was bedridden. My childhood and +girlhood were passed caring for her. That is all I ever did until--a +year ago," she added, her voice falling so low he could scarcely hear +her. + +"She died, then?" + +"A year ago last February." + +"You went to school. You must have made friends there." + +"I went to a public school for a year. After that mother taught me." + +"She must have been extremely cultivated." + +The girl nodded, looking absently at the cloth. Then, glancing up: + +"I wonder whether you will understand me when I tell you why I decided +to ask employment of artists." + +"I'll try to," he said, smiling. + +"It was an intense desire to be among cultivated people--if only for a +few hours. Besides, I had read about artists; and their lives seemed so +young, so gay, so worth living--please don't think me foolish and +immature, Mr. Neville--but I was so stifled, so cut off from such +people, so uninspired, so--so starved for a little gaiety--and I needed +youthful companionship--surroundings where people of my own age and +intelligence sometimes entered--and I had never had it--" + +She looked at him with a strained, wistful expression as though begging +him to understand her: + +"I couldn't remain at the theatre," she said. "I had little talent--no +chance except chances I would not tolerate; no companionship except what +I was unfitted for by education and inclination.... The men +were--impossible. There may have been girls I could have liked--but I +did not meet them. So, as I had to do something--and my years of +seclusion with mother had unfitted me for any business--for office work +or shop work--I thought that artists might care to employ me--might give +me--or let me see--be near--something of the gayer, brighter, more +pleasant and youthful side of life--" + +She ceased, bent her head thoughtfully. + +"You want--friends? Young ones--with intellects? You want to combine +these with a chance of making a decent living?" + +"Yes." She looked up candidly: "I am simply starved for it. You must +believe that when you see what I have submitted to--gone through with in +your studio"--she blushed vividly--"in a--a desperate attempt to escape +the--the loneliness, the silence and isolation"--she raised her dark +eyes--"the isolation of the poor," she said. "You don't know what that +means." + +After a moment she added, level-eyed: "For which there is supposed to be +but one outlet--if a girl is attractive." + +He rose, walked to and fro for a few moments, then, halting: + +"All memory of the initial terror and distress and uncertainty aside, +have you not enjoyed this morning, Miss West?" + +"Yes, I--have. I--you have no idea what it has meant to me." + +"It has given you an outlook, anyway." + +"Yes.... Only--I'm terrified at the idea of going through it again--with +another man--" + +He laughed, and she tried to, saying: + +"But if all artists are as kind and considerate--" + +"Plenty of 'em are more so. There are a few bounders, a moderate number +of beasts. You'll find them everywhere in the world from the purlieus to +the pulpit.... I'm going to make a contract with you. After that, +regretfully, I'll see that you meet the men who will be valuable to +you.... I wish there was some way I could box you up in a jeweller's +case so that nobody else could have you and I could find you when I +needed you!" + +She laughed shyly, extended her slim white hand for him to support her +while she mounted to her eyrie. Then, erect, delicately flushed, she let +the robe fall from her and stood looking down at him in silence. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Spring came unusually early that year. By the first of the month a few +willows and thorn bushes in the Park had turned green; then, in a single +day, the entire Park became lovely with golden bell-flowers, and the +first mowing machine clinked over the greenswards leaving a fragrance of +clipped verdure in its wake. + +Under a characteristic blue sky April unfolded its myriad leaves beneath +which robins ran over shaven lawns and purple grackle bustled busily +about, and the water fowl quacked and whistled and rushed through the +water nipping and chasing one another or, sidling alongside, began that +nodding, bowing, bobbing acquaintance preliminary to aquatic courtship. + +Many of the wild birds had mated; many were mating; amorous caterwauling +on back fences made night an inferno; pigeons cooed and bubbled and made +endless nuisances of themselves all day long. + +In lofts, offices, and shops youthful faces, whitened by the winter's +pallour, appeared at open windows gazing into the blue above, or, with, +pretty, inscrutable eyes, studied the passing throng till the lifted +eyes of youth below completed the occult circuit with a smile. + +And the spring sunshine grew hot, and sprinkling carts appeared, and the +metropolis moulted its overcoats, and the derby became a burden, and the +annual spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design remained +uncrowded. + +Neville, lunching at the Syrinx Club, carelessly caught the ball of +conversation tossed toward him and contributed his final comment: + +"Burleson--and you, Sam Ogilvy--and you, Annan, all say that the +exhibition is rotten. You say so every year; so does the majority of +people. And the majority will continue saying the same thing throughout +the coming decades as long as there are any exhibitions to damn. + +"It is the same thing in other countries. For a hundred years the +majority has pronounced every Salon rotten. And it will so continue. + +"But the facts are these: the average does not vary much. A mediocrity, +not disagreeable, always rules; supremity has been, is, and always will +be the stick in the riffle around which the little whirlpool will always +centre. This year it happens to be Jose Querida who stems the sparkling +mediocrity and sticks up from the bottom gravel making a fine little +swirl. Next year--or next decade it may be anybody--you, Annan, or +Sam--perhaps," he added with a slight smile, "it might be I. _Quand +meme_. The exhibitions are no rottener than they have ever been; and +it's up to us to go about our business. And I'm going. Good-bye." + +He rose from the table, laid aside the remains of his cigar, nodded +good-humouredly to the others, and went out with that quick, graceful, +elastic step which was noticed by everybody and envied by many. + +"Hell," observed John Burleson, hitching his broad shoulders forward and +swallowing a goblet of claret at a single gulp, "it's all right for +Kelly Neville to shed sweetness and light over a rotten exhibition where +half the people are crowded around his own picture." + +"What a success he's having," mused Ogilvy, looking sideways out of the +window at a pretty girl across the street. + +Annan nodded: "He works hard enough for it." + +"He works all the time," grumbled Burleson, "but, does he work _hard_?" + +"A cat scrambling in a molasses barrel works hard," observed Ogilvy--"if +you see any merit in that, John." + +Burleson reared his huge frame and his symmetrical features became more +bovine than ever: + +"What the devil has a cat in a molasses barrel to do with the subject?" +he demanded. + +Annan laughed: "Poor old honest, literal John," he said, lazily. +"Listen; from my back window in the country, yesterday, I observed one +of my hens scratching her ear with her foot. How would you like to be +able to accomplish that, John?" + +"I wouldn't like it at all!" roared Burleson in serious disapproval. + +"That's because you're a sculptor and a Unitarian," said Annan, gravely. + +"My God!" shouted Burleson, "what's that got to do with a hen scratching +herself!" + +Ogilvy was too weak with laughter to continue the favourite pastime of +"touching up John"; and Burleson who, under provocation, never exhibited +any emotion except impatient wonder at the foolishness of others, +emptied his claret bottle with unruffled confidence in his own +common-sense and the futility of his friends. + +"Kelly, they say, is making a stunning lot of stuff for that Byzantine +Theatre," he said in his honest, resonant voice. "I wish to Heaven I +could paint like him." + +Annan passed his delicate hand over his pale, handsome face: "Kelly +Neville is, without exception, the most gifted man I ever knew." + +"No, the most skilful," suggested Ogilvy. "I have known more gifted men +who never became skilful." + +[Illustration: "'What's the matter with it, then?'"] + +"What hair is that you're splitting, Sam?" demanded Burleson. "Don't +you like Kelly's work?" + +"Sure I do." + +"What's the matter with it, then?" + +There was a silence. One or two men at neighbouring tables turned partly +around to listen. There seemed to be something in the very simple and +honest question of John Burleson that arrested the attention of every +man at the Syrinx Club who had heard it. Because, for the first time, +the question which every man there had silently, involuntarily asked +himself had been uttered aloud at last by John Burleson--voiced in utter +good faith and with all confidence that the answer could be only that +there was nothing whatever the matter with Louis Neville's work. And his +answer had been a universal silence. + +Clive Gail, lately admitted to the Academy said: "I have never in my +life seen or believed possible such facility as is Louis Neville's." + +"Sure thing," grunted Burleson. + +"His personal manner of doing his work--which the critics and public +term 'tek--nee--ee--eek,'" laughed Annan, "is simply gloriously +bewildering. There is a sweeping splendour to it--and _what_ colour!" + +There ensued murmured and emphatic approbation; and another silence. + +Ogilvy's dark, pleasant face was troubled when he broke the quiet, and +everybody turned toward him: + +"Then," he said, slowly, "what _is_ the matter with Neville?" + +Somebody said: "He _does_ convince you; it isn't that, is it?" + +A voice replied: "Does he convince himself?" + +"There is--there always has been something lacking in all that big, +glorious, splendid work. It only needs that one thing--whatever it is," +said Ogilvy, quietly. "Kelly is too sure, too powerfully perfect, too +omniscient--" + +"And we mortals can't stand that," commented Annan, laughing. "'Raus mit +Neville!' He paints joy and sorrow as though he'd never known either--" + +And his voice checked itself of its own instinct in the startled +silence. + +"That man, Neville, has never known the pain of work," said Gail, +deliberately. "When he has passed through it and it has made his hand +less steady, less omnipotent--" + +"That's right. We can't love a man who has never endured what we have," +said another. "No genius can hide his own immunity. That man paints with +an unscarred soul. A little hell for his--and no living painter could +stand beside him." + +"Piffle," observed John Burleson. + +Ogilvy said: "It is true, I think, that out of human suffering a quality +is distilled which affects everything one does. Those who have known +sorrow can best depict it--not perhaps most plausibly, but most +convincingly--and with fewer accessories, more reticence, and--better +taste." + +"Why do you want to paint tragedies?" demanded Burleson. + +"One need not paint them, John, but one needs to understand them to +paint anything else--needs to have lived them, perhaps, to become a +master of pictured happiness, physical or spiritual." + +"That's piffle, too!" said Burleson in his rumbling bass--"like that +damn hen you lugged in--" + +A shout of laughter relieved everybody. + +"Do you want a fellow to go and poke his head into trouble and get +himself mixed up in a tragedy so that he can paint better?" insisted +Burleson, scornfully. + +"There's usually no necessity to hunt trouble," said Annan. + +"But you say that Kelly never had any and that he'd paint better if he +had." + +"Trouble _might_ be the making of Kelly Neville," mused Ogilvy, "and it +might not. It depends, John, not on the amount and quality of the hell, +but on the man who's frying on the gridiron." + +Annan said: "Personally I don't see how Kelly _could_ paint happiness or +sorrow or wonder or fear into any of his creations any more convincingly +than he does. And yet--and yet--sometimes we love men for their +shortcomings--for the sincerity of their blunders--for the fallible +humanity in them. That after all is where love starts. The rest--what +Kelly shows us--evokes wonder, delight, awe, enthusiasm.... If he could +only make us love him--" + +"_I_ love him!" said Burleson. + +"We all are inclined to--if we could get near enough to him," said Annan +with a faint smile. + +"Him--or his work?" + +"Both, John. There's a vast amount of nonsense talked about the +necessity of separation between a man and his work--that the public has +no business with the creator, only with his creations. It is partly +true. Still, no man ever created anything in which he did not include a +sample of himself--if not what he himself is, at least what he would +like to be and what he likes and dislikes in others. No creator who +shows his work can hope to remain entirely anonymous. And--I am not yet +certain that the public has no right to make its comments on the man who +did the work as well as on the work which it is asked to judge." + +"The man is nothing; the work everything," quoted Burleson, heavily. + +"So I've heard," observed Annan, blandly. "It's rather a precious +thought, isn't it, John?" + +"Do you consider that statement to be pure piffle?" + +"Partly, dear friend. But I'm one of those nobodies who cherish a +degenerate belief that man comes first, and then his works, and that the +main idea is to get through life as happily as possible with the minimum +of inconvenience to others. Human happiness is what I venture to +consider more important than the gim-cracks created by those same +humans. Man first, then man's work, that's the order of mundane +importance to me. And if you've got to criticise the work, for God's +sake do it with your hand on the man's shoulder." + +"Our little socialist," said Ogilvy, patting Annan's blonde head. "He +wants to love everybody and everybody to love him, especially when +they're ornamental and feminine. Yes? No?" he asked, fondly coddling +Annan, who submitted with a bored air and tried to kick his shins. + +Later, standing in a chance group on the sidewalk before scattering to +their several occupations, Burleson said: + +"That's a winner of a model--that Miss West. I used her for the fountain +I'm doing for Cardemon's sunken garden. I never saw a model put together +as she is. And that's going some." + +"She's a dream," said Ogilvy--"_un pen sauvage_--no inclination to +socialism there, Annan. I know because I was considering the +advisability of bestowing upon her one of those innocent, inadvertent, +and fascinatingly chaste salutes--just to break the formality. She +wouldn't have it. I'd taken her to the theatre, too. Girls are +astonishing problems." + +"You're a joyous beast, aren't you, Sam?" observed Burleson. + +"I may be a trifle joyous. I tried to explain that to her, but she +wouldn't listen. Heaven knows my intentions are child-like. I liked her +because she's the sort of girl you can take anywhere and not queer +yourself if you collide with your fiancee--visiting relative from +'Frisco, you know. She's equipped to impersonate anything from the +younger set to the prune and pickle class." + +"She certainly is a looker," nodded Annan. + +"She can deliver the cultivated goods, too, and make a perfectly good +play at the unsophisticated intellectual," said Ogilvy with conviction. +"And it's a rare combination to find a dream that looks as real at the +Opera as it does in a lobster palace. But she's no socialist, +Harry--she'll ride in a taxi with you and sit up half the night with +you, but it's nix for getting closer, and the frozen Fownes for the +chaste embrace--that's all." + +"She's a curious kind of girl," mused Burleson;--"seems perfectly +willing to go about with you;--enjoys it like one of those +bread-and-butter objects that the department shops call a 'Miss.'" + +Annan said: "The girl is unusual, everyway. You don't know where to +place her. She's a girl without a caste. I like her. I made some +studies from her; Kelly let me." + +"Does Kelly own her?" asked Burleson, puffing out his chest. + +"He discovered her. He has first call." + +Allaire, who had come up, caught the drift of the conversation. + +"Oh, hell," he said, in his loud, careless voice, "anybody can take +Valerie West to supper. The town's full of her kind." + +"Have you taken her anywhere?" asked Annan, casually. + +Allaire flushed up: "I haven't had time." He added something which +changed the fixed smile on his symmetrical, highly coloured face into an +expression not entirely agreeable. + +"The girl's all right," said Burleson, reddening. "She's damn decent to +everybody. What are you talking about, Allaire? Kelly will put a head on +you!" + +Allaire, careless and assertive, shrugged away the rebuke with a laugh: + +"Neville is one of those professional virgins we read about in our +neatly manicured fiction. He's what is known as the original mark. +Jezebel and Potiphar's wife in combination with Salome and the daughters +of Lot couldn't disturb his confidence in them or in himself. And--in my +opinion--he paints that way, too." And he went away laughing and +swinging his athletic shoulders and twirling his cane, his hat not +mathematically straight on his handsome, curly head. + +"There strides a joyous bounder," observed Ogilvy. + +"Curious," mused Annan. "His family is oldest New York. You see 'em that +way, at times." + +Burleson, who came from New England, grunted his scorn for Manhattan, +ancient or recent, and, nodding a brusque adieu, walked away with +ponderous and powerful strides. And the others followed, presently, each +in pursuit of his own vocation, Annan and Ogilvy remaining together as +their common destination was the big new studio building which they as +well as Neville inhabited. + +Passing Neville's door they saw it still ajar, and heard laughter and a +piano and gay voices. + +"Hi!" exclaimed Ogilvy, softly, "let's assist at the festivities. +Probably we're not wanted, but does that matter, Harry?" + +"It merely adds piquancy to our indiscretion," said Annan, gravely, +following him in unannounced--"Oh, hello, Miss West! Was that you +playing? Hello, Rita"--greeting a handsome blonde young girl who +stretched out a gloved hand to them both and nodded amiably. Then she +glanced upward where, perched on his ladder, big palette curving over +his left elbow, Neville stood undisturbed by the noise below, outlining +great masses of clouds on a canvas where a celestial company, sketched +in from models, soared, floated, or hung suspended, cradled in mid air +with a vast confusion of wide wings spreading, fluttering, hovering, +beating the vast ethereal void, all in pursuit of a single exquisite +shape darting up into space. + +"What's all that, Kelly? Leda chased by swans?" asked Ogilvy, with all +the disrespect of cordial appreciation. + +"It's the classic game of follow my Leda," observed Annan. + +"Oh--oh!" exclaimed Valerie West, laughing; "such a wretched witticism, +Mr. Annan!" + +"Your composition is one magnificent vista of legs, Kelly," insisted +Ogilvy. "Put pants on those swans." + +Neville merely turned and threw an empty paint tube at him, and +continued his cloud outlining with undisturbed composure. + +"Where have you been, Rita?" asked Ogilvy, dropping into a chair. +"Nobody sees you any more." + +"That's because nobody went to the show, and that's why they took it +off," said Rita Tevis, resentfully. "I had a perfectly good part which +nobody crabbed because nobody wanted it, which suited me beautifully +because I hate to have anything that others want. Now there's nothing +doing in the millinery line and I'm ready for suggestions." + +"Dinner with me," said Ogilvy, fondly. But she turned up her dainty +nose: + +"Have _you_ anything more interesting to offer, Mr. Annan?" + +"Only my heart, hand, and Ogilvy's fortune," said Annan, regretfully. +"But I believe Archie Allaire was looking for a model of your type--" + +"I don't want to pose for Mr. Allaire," said the girl, pouting and +twirling the handle of her parasol. + +But neither Annan nor Ogilvy could use her then; and Neville had just +finished a solid week of her. + +"What I'll do," she said with decision, "will be to telephone John +Burleson. I never knew him to fail a girl in search of an engagement." + +"Isn't he a dear," said Valerie, smiling. "I adore him." + +She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over the keyboard, +listening to what was being said, watching with happy interest +everything that was going on around her, and casting an occasional +glance over her shoulder and upward to where Neville stood at work. + +"John Burleson," observed Rita, looking fixedly at Ogilvy, "is easily +the nicest man I know." + +"Help!" said Ogilvy, feebly. + +Valerie glanced across the top of the piano, laughing, while her hands +passed idly here and there over the keys: + +"Sam _can_ be very nice, Rita; but you've got to make him," she said. + +"Did you ever know a really interesting man who didn't require +watching?" inquired Annan, mildly. + +Rita surveyed him with disdain: "Plenty." + +"Don't believe it. No girl has any very enthusiastic use for a man in +whom she has perfect confidence." + +"Here's another profound observation," added Ogilvy; "when a woman loses +confidence in a man she finds a brand-new interest in him. But when a +man once really loses confidence in a woman, he never regains it, and +it's the beginning of the end. What do you think about that, Miss West?" + +Valerie, still smiling, struck a light chord or two, considering: + +"I don't know how it would be," she said, "to lose confidence in a man +you really care much about. I should think it would break a girl's +heart." + +"It doesn't," said Rita, with supreme contempt. "You become accustomed +to it." + +Valerie leaned forward against the keyboard, laughing: + +"Oh, Rita!" she said, "what a confession!" + +"You silly child," retorted Rita, "I'm twenty-two. Do you think I have +the audacity to pretend I've never been in love?" + +Ogilvy said with a grin: "How about you, Miss West?"--hoping to +embarrass her; but she only smiled gaily and continued to play a light +accompaniment to the fugitive air that was running through her head. + +"Don't be selfish with your experiences," urged Ogilvy. "Come on, Miss +West! 'Raus mit 'em!'" + +"What do you wish me to say, Sam?" + +"That you've been in love several times." + +"But I haven't." + +"Not once?" + +Her lowered face was still smiling, as her pliant fingers drifted into +Grieg's "Spring Song." + +"Not one pretty amourette to cheer those twenty-one years of yours?" +insisted Ogilvy. + +But his only answer was her lowered head and the faint smile edging her +lips, and the "Spring Song," low, clear, exquisitely persistent in the +hush. + +When the last note died out in the stillness Rita emphasised the finish +with the ferrule of her parasol and rose with decision: + +"I require several new frocks," she said, "and how am I to acquire them +unless I pose for somebody? Good-bye, Mr. Neville--bye-bye! +Sam--good-bye, Mr. Annan--good-bye, dear,"--to Valerie--"if you've +nothing better on hand drop in this evening. I've a duck of a new hat." + +The girl nodded, and, as Rita Tevis walked out, turning up her nose at +Ogilvy who opened the door for her, Valerie glanced up over her shoulder +at Neville: + +"I don't believe you are going to need me to-day after all, are you?" +she asked. + +"No," he said, absently. "I've a lot of things to do. You needn't stay, +Miss West." + +"Now will you be good!" said Annan, smiling at her with his humourous, +bantering air. And to his surprise and discomfiture he saw the least +trace of annoyance in her dark eyes. + +"Come up to the studio and have a julep," he said with hasty cordiality. +"And suppose we dine together at Arrowhead--if you've nothing else on +hand--" + +She shook her head--the movement was scarcely perceptible. The smile had +returned to her lips. + +"Won't you, Miss West?" + +"Isn't it like you to ask me when you heard Rita's invitation? You're a +fraud, Mr. Annan." + +"Are you going to sit in that boarding-house parlour and examine Rita's +new bonnet all this glorious evening?" + +She laughed: "Is there any man on earth who can prophesy what any woman +on earth is likely to do? If _you_ can, please begin." + +Ogilvy, hands clasped behind him, balancing alternately on heels and +toes, stood regarding Neville's work. Annan looked up, too, watching +Neville where he stood on the scaffolding, busy as always, with the only +recreation he cared anything for--work. + +"I wish to Heaven I were infected with the bacillus of industry," broke +out Ogilvy. "I never come into this place but I see Kelly busily doing +something." + +"You're an inhuman sort of brute, Kelly!" added Annan. "What do you work +that way for--money? If I had my way I'd spend three quarters of my time +shooting and fishing and one quarter painting--and I'm as devotedly +stuck on art as any healthy man ought to be." + +"Art's a bum mistress if she makes you hustle like that!" commented +Ogilvy. "Shake her, Kelly. She's a wampire mit a sarpint's tongue!" + +"The worst of Kelly is that he'd _rather_ paint," said Annan, +hopelessly. "It's sufficient to sicken the proverbial cat." + +"Get a machine and take us all out to Woodmanston?" suggested Ogilvy. +"It's a bee--u--tiful day, dearie!" + +"Get out of here!" retorted Neville, painting composedly. + +"Your industry saddens us," insisted Annan. "It's only in mediocrity +that you encounter industry. Genius frivols; talent takes numerous +vacations on itself--" + +"And at its own expense," added Valerie, demurely. "I knew a man who +couldn't finish his 'Spring Academy' in time: and he had all winter to +finish it. But he didn't. Did you ever hear about that man, Sam?" + +"Me," said Ogilvy, bowing with hand on heart. "And with that cruel jab +from _you_--false fair one--I'll continue heavenward in the elevator. +Come on, Harry." + +Annan took an elaborate farewell of Valerie which she met in the same +mock-serious manner; then she waved a gay and dainty adieu to Ogilvy, +and reseated herself after their departure. But this time she settled +down into a great armchair facing Neville and his canvas, and lay back +extending her arms and resting the back of her head on the cushions. + +Whether or not Neville was conscious of her presence below she could not +determine, so preoccupied did he appear to be with the work in hand. She +lay there in the pleasant, mellow light of the great windows, watching +him, at first intently, then, soothed by the soft spring wind that +fitfully stirred the hair at her temples, she relaxed her attention, +idly contented, happy without any particular reason. + +Now and then a pigeon flashed by the windows, sheering away high above +the sunlit city. Once, wind-caught, or wandering into unaccustomed +heights, high in the blue a white butterfly glimmered, still mounting to +infinite altitudes, fluttering, breeze-blown, a silvery speck adrift. + +"Like a poor soul aspiring," she thought listlessly, watching with dark +eyes over which the lids dropped lazily at moments, only to lift again +as her gaze reverted to the man above. + +She thought about him, too; she usually did--about his niceness to her, +his never-to-be-forgotten kindness; her own gratitude to him for her +never-to-be-forgotten initiation. + +It seemed scarcely possible that two months had passed since her +novitiate--that two months ago she still knew nothing of the people, the +friendships, the interest, the surcease from loneliness and hopeless +apathy, that these new conditions had brought to her. + +Had she known Louis Neville only two months? Did all this new buoyancy +date from two short months' experience--this quickened interest in life, +this happy development of intelligence so long starved, this unfolding +of youth in the atmosphere of youth? She found it difficult to realise, +lying there so contentedly, so happily, following, with an interest and +appreciation always developing, the progress of the work. + +Already, to herself, she could interpret much that she saw in this new +world. Cant phrases, bits of studio lore, artists' patter, their ways +of looking at things, their manners of expression, their mannerisms, +their little vanities, their ideas, ideals, aspirations, were fast +becoming familiar to her. Also she was beginning to notice and secretly +to reflect on their generic characteristics--their profoundly serious +convictions concerning themselves and their art modified by surface +individualities; their composite lack of humour--exceptions like Ogilvy +and Annan, and even Neville only proving the rule; their simplicity, +running the entire gamut from candour to stupidity; their patience which +was half courage, half a capacity for suffering; and, in the latter, +more woman-like than like a man. + +Simplicity, courage, lack of humour--those appeared to be the +fundamentals characterising the ensemble--supplemented by the extremes +of restless intelligence and grim conservatism. + +And the whole fabric seemed to be founded not on industry but on impulse +born of sentiment. In this new, busy, inspiring, delightful world logic +became a synthesis erected upon some inceptive absurdity, carried +solemnly to a picturesque and erroneous conclusion. + +She had been aware, in stage folk, of the tendency to sentimental +impulse; and she again discovered it in this new world, in a form +slightly modified by the higher average of reasoning power. In both +professions the heart played the dominant part in creator and creation. +The exceptions to the rule were the few in either profession who might +be called distinguished. + +Neville had once said to her: "Nothing that amounts to anything in art +is ever done accidentally or merely because the person who creates it +loves to do it." + +She was thinking of this, now, as she lay there watching him. + +He had added: "Enthusiasm is excellent while you're dressing for +breakfast; but good pictures are painted in cold blood. Go out into the +back yard and yell your appreciation of the universe if you want to; but +the studio is a silent place; and a blank canvas a mathematical +proposition." + +Could this be true? Was all the beauty, all the joyous charm, all the +splendour of shape and colour the result of working out a mathematical +proposition? Was this exquisite surety of touch and handling, of mass +and line composition, all these lovely depths and vast ethereal spaces +superbly peopled, merely the logical result of solving that problem? Was +it all clear, limpid, steady, nerveless intelligence; and was nothing +due to the chance and hazard of inspiration? + +Gladys, the cat, walked in, gently flourishing her tail, hesitated, +looked around with narrowing green-jewelled eyes, and, ignoring the +whispered invitation and the outstretched hand, leaped lightly to a +chair and settled down on a silken cushion, paws and tail folded under +her jet-black body. + +Valerie reproached her in a whisper, reminding her of past caresses and +attentions, but the cat only blinked at her pleasantly. + +On a low revolving stand at Valerie's elbow lay a large lump of green +modelling wax. This wax Neville sometimes used to fashion, with his +facile hands, little figures sketched from his models. These he arranged +in groups as though to verify the composition on the canvas before him, +and this work and the pliant material which he employed had for her a +particular and never-flagging interest. And now, without thinking, +purely instinctively, she leaned forward and laid her hand caressingly +on the lump of wax. There was something about the yielding, velvety +texture that fascinated her, as though in her slim fingers some delicate +nerves were responding to the pleasure of contact. + +For a while she moulded little cubes and pyramids, pinched out +bread-crumb chickens and pigs and cats. + +"_What_ do you think of this little wax kitten, Gladys?" she whispered, +holding it up for the cat's inspection. Gladys regarded it without +interest and resumed her pleasant contemplation of space. + +Valerie, elbows on knees, seated at the revolving stool with all the +naive absorption of a child constructing mud pies, began to make out of +the fascinating green wax an image of Gladys dozing. + +Time fled away in the studio; intent, absorbed, she pinched little +morsels of wax from the lump and pushed them into place with a snowy, +pink-tipped thumb, or with the delicate nail of her forefinger removed +superfluous material. + +Stepping noiselessly so not to disturb Neville she made frequent +journeys around to the other side of the cat, sometimes passing +sensitive fingers over silky feline contours, which, research inspired a +loud purring. + +As she worked sometimes she talked under her breath to herself, to +Gladys, to Neville: + +"I am making a perfectly good cat, Valerie," she whispered. "Gladys, +aren't you a little bit flattered? I suppose you think it's honour +enough to belong to that man up there on the scaffolding. I imagine it +is; he is a very wonderful man, Gladys, very high above us in intellect +as he is in body. He doesn't pay very much attention to you and me down +here on the floor; he's just satisfied to own us and be amiable to us +when he thinks about us. + +"I don't mean that in any critical or reproachful sense, Gladys. Don't +you dare think I do--not for one moment! Do you hear me? Well then! If +you are stupid enough to misunderstand me I'll put a perfectly horrid +pair of ears on you!... I've made a very dainty pair of ears for you, +dear; I only said that to frighten you. You and I like that man up +there--tremendously, don't we? And we're very grateful to him for--for a +great many happy moments--and for his unfailing kindness and +consideration.... You don't mind posing for me; _you_ wear fur. But I +didn't wear anything, dear, when I first sat to him as a novice; and, +kitty, I was a fortunate girl in my choice of the man before whom I was +to make a debut. And I--" + +The rattle of brushes and the creak of the scaffolding arrested her: +Neville was coming down for a view of his work. + +"Hello," he said, pleasantly, noticing for the first time that she was +still in the studio. + +"Have I disturbed you, Mr. Neville?" + +"Not a bit. You never do any more than does Gladys." He glanced absently +at the cat, then, facing his canvas, backed away from it, palette in +hand. + +For ten minutes he examined his work, shifting his position from minute +to minute, until the change of positions brought him backed up beside +Valerie, and his thigh brushing her arm made him aware of her. Glancing +down with smiling apology his eye fell on the wax, and was arrested. +Then he bent over the work she had done, examining it, twirled the top +of the stool, and inspected it carefully from every side. + +"Have you ever studied modelling, Miss West?" + +"No," she said, blushing, "you must know that I haven't." And looked up +expecting to see laughter in his eyes; and saw only the curiosity of +interest. + +"How did you know how to start this?" + +"I have often watched you." + +"Is that all the instruction you've ever had in modelling?" + +She could not quite bring herself to believe in his pleasant +seriousness: + +"Y-yes," she admitted, "except when I have watched John Burleson. +But--this is simply rotten--childish--isn't it?" + +"No," he said in a matter of fact tone, "it's interesting." + +"Do you really think--mean--" + +He looked down at her, considering her while the smile that she knew and +liked best and thought best suited to his face, began to glimmer; that +amused, boyish, bantering smile hinting of experience and wisdom +delightfully beyond her. + +"I really think that you're a very unusual girl," he said. "I don't want +to spoil you by telling you so every minute." + +"You don't spoil me by telling me so. Sometimes I think you may spoil me +by not telling me so." + +"Miss West! You're spoiled already! I'm throwing bouquets at you every +minute! You're about the only girl who ever sat for me with whom I talk +unreservedly and incessantly." + +"Really, Mr. Neville?" + +"Yes--really, Mr. Neville," he repeated, laughing--"you bad, spoiled +little beauty! You know devilish well that if there's any intellectual +space between you and me it's purely a matter of circumstance and +opportunity." + +"Do you think me silly enough to believe that!" + +"I think you clever enough to know it without my telling you." + +"I wish you wouldn't say that." + +She was still smiling but in the depths of her eyes he felt that the +smile was not genuine. + +"See here," he said, "I don't want you to think that I don't mean what I +say. I do. You're as intelligent a woman as I ever knew. I've known +girls more cultivated in general and in particular, but, I say again, +that is the hazard of circumstance. Is all clear between us now, Miss +West?" + +"Yes." + +He held out his hand; she glanced up, smiled, and laid her own in it. +And they shook hands heartily. + +"Good business," he said with satisfaction. "Don't ever let anything +threaten our very charming accord. The moment you don't approve of +anything I say or do come straight to me and complain--and don't let me +divine it in your eyes, Miss West." + +"Did you?" + +"Certainly I did. Your lips were smiling but in your eyes was something +that did not corroborate your lips." + +"Yes.... But how could you see it?" + +"After all," he said, "it's part of my business to notice such things." +He seated himself on the arm of her chair and bent over the wax model, +his shoulder against hers. And the chance contact meant nothing to +either: but what he said about men and things in the world was +inevitably arousing the intelligence in her to a gratitude, a happiness, +at first timid, then stirring subtly, tremulously, toward passionate +response. + +No man can do that to a girl and leave the higher side of her +indifferent or unresponsive. What he had aroused--what he was awakening +every day in her was what he must some day reckon with. Loyalty is born +of the spirit, devotion of the mind; and spiritual intelligence arouses +fiercer passions than the sensuous emotions born of the flesh. + +Leaning there above the table, shoulder to shoulder, his light finger +tips caressing the wax model which she had begun, he told her clearly, +and with the engaging candour which she already had begun to adore in +him, all about what she had achieved in the interesting trifle before +them--explained to her wherein she had failed not only to accomplish but +to see correctly--wherein she had seen clearly and wrought +intelligently. + +He might have been talking to a brother sculptor--and therein lay the +fascination of this man--for her--that, and the pains he always took +with her--which courtesy was only part of him--part of the wonder of +this man; of his unerring goodness in all things to her. + +Listening, absorbed in all that he said she still was conscious of a +parallel thread of thought accompanying--a tiny filament of innocent +praise in her heart that chance had given her this man to listen to and +to heed and talk to and to think about. + +"I won't touch what you've done, Miss West," he said, smilingly; "but +just take a pinch of wax--_that_ way!--and accent that relaxed flank +muscle!... Don't be afraid; watch the shape of the shadows.... That's +it! Do you see? Never be afraid of dealing vigorously with your subject. +Every modification of the first vigorous touch is bound to weaken and +sometimes to emasculate.... I don't mean for you to parade crudity and +bunches of exaggerated muscle as an ultimate expression of vigour. Only +the devotee of the obvious is satisfied with that sort of result; and +our exhibitions reek with them. But there is no reason why the satin +skin and smooth contour of a naked child shouldn't express virility and +vigour--no reason why the flawless delicacy of Venus herself should not, +if necessary, express violence unexaggerated and without either +distortion or lack of finish." + +He glanced across at the dozing cat: + +"Under that silky black fur there are bones and fibres and muscles. +Don't exaggerate them and call your task finished; merely remember +always that they're there framing and padding the velvet skin. More is +done by skilful inference than by parading every abstract fact you know +and translating the sum-accumulative of your knowledge into the +over-accented concrete. Reticence is a kind of vigour. It can even +approach violence. The mentally garrulous kill their own inspiration. +Inadequacy loves to lump things and gamble with chance for effective +results." + +He rose, walked over and examined Gladys, touched her contemplatively +with the button of his mahl-stick, and listened absently to her +responsive purr. Then, palette still in hand, he sat down opposite +Valerie, gazing at her in that detached manner which some mistook for +indifference: + +"There are, I think, two reasons for failure in art," he said, "excess +of creative emotion, excess of psychological hair-splitting. The one +produces the normal and lovable failures which, decorate our art +exhibitions; the other results in those curious products which amuse the +public to good-humoured contempt--I mean those pictures full of violent +colour laid on in streaks, in great sweeps, in patches, in dots. The +painter has turned half theorist, half scientist; the theories of the +juxtaposition of colour, and the science of complementary colours, +engrosses his attention. He is no longer an artist; he is a chemist and +physiologist and an artisan. + +"Every now and then there is a revolt from the accepted order of things. +New groups form, sometimes damning what they call the artificial +lighting of the studio, sometimes exclaiming against the carnival of +harmonious or crude colour generally known as 'plein air.' +Impressionists scorn the classic, and _vice versa_. But, Miss West, as a +matter of fact, all schools are as good as all religions. + +"To speak of studio lighting as artificial and unworthy is silly. It is +pretty hard to find anything really artificial in the world, indoors, or +out, or even in the glare of the footlights. I think the main idea is +that a man should prefer doing what the public calls his work, to any +other form of recreation--should use enough reason--not too much--enough +inspiration--but watching himself at every brush stroke; and finally +should feel physically unfettered--that is, have the _a b c_, the +drudgery, the artisan's part of the work at his finger tips. Then, if he +does what makes him happy, whether in a spirit of realism or +romanticism, he can safely leave the rest to Fate." + +He looked at her, curiously for a moment, then a smile wholly +involuntary broke over his face: + +"Lord! What a lecture! And you listened to all that nonsense like an +angel!" + +The dreamy absorption died out in her eyes; she clasped her hands on her +knee, looked down, then up at him almost irritably: + +"Please go on, Mr. Neville." + +"Not much. I've a few stunts to execute aloft there--" + +He contemplated her in amused silence, which became more serious: + +"You have talent, Miss West. Artistic talent is not unusual among +Americans, but patience is. That is one reason why talent accomplishes +so little in this country." + +"Isn't another reason that patience is too expensive to be indulged in +by talent?" + +He laughed: "That is perfectly true. The majority of us have to make a +living before we know how." + +"Did you have to do that?" + +"No, I didn't." + +"You were fortunate?" + +"Yes. I was--perhaps.... I'm not sure." + +She touched the lump of green wax gravely, absently. He remained looking +at her, busy with his own reflections. + +"Would you like to have a chance to study?" he asked. + +"Study? What?" + +"Sculpture--any old thing! Would you like to try? + +"What chance have I for such expensive amusements as study?" she +laughed. + +"I'll be responsible for you." + +"_You_?"--in blank surprise. + +"I'll attend to the material part of it, if you like. I'll see that you +can afford the--patience." + +"Mr. Neville, I don't understand." + +"What don't you understand?" he asked, lazily humorous. + +"Do you mean--that you offer me--an opportunity--" + +"Yes; an opportunity to exercise patience. It's an offer, Miss West. But +I'm perfectly certain you won't take it." + +For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, looking fixedly +into space. Then she stirred, glanced up, blushed vividly, sprang to her +feet and crossed to where he sat. + +"I've been considering your offer," she said, striving to speak without +effort. + +"I'll bet you won't accept it!" + +"You win your wager, Mr. Neville." + +"I wonder why?" he said with his bantering smile: "but I think I know. +Talent in America is seldom intellectually ambitious." + +To his amazement and vexation tears sprang to her eyes; she said, biting +her lower lip: "My ambition is humble. I care--more than anything in the +world--to be of use to--to your career." + +Taken completely by surprise he said, "Nonsense," and rose to confront +her where she stood wholly charming in her nervous, flushed emotion: + +"It isn't nonsense, Mr. Neville; it is my happiness. + +"I don't believe you realise what your career means to me. I would not +willingly consider anything that might interrupt my humble part in +it--in this happy companionship.... After all, happiness is the +essential. You said so once. I am happier here than I possibly could be +in an isolation where I might perhaps study--learn--" Her voice broke +deliciously as he met her gaze in cool, curious disapproval. + +[Illustration: "For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, +looking fixedly into space."] + +"You _can't_ understand it!" she said, flushing almost fiercely. "You +can't comprehend what the daily intimacy with a man of your sort has +done--is doing for me every moment of my life. How can you understand? +You, who have your own place in the world--in life--in this country--in +this city! You, who have family, friends, clubs, your social life in +city and country, and abroad. Life is very full for you--has always +been. But--what I am now learning in contact with you and with the +people to whom you have introduced me--is utterly new to +me--and--very--pleasant.... I have tasted it; I cannot live without it +now." + +She drew a deep quick breath, then, looking up at him with a tremulous +smile: + +"What would you think if I told you that, until Sam took me, I had never +even been inside a theatre except when I was engaged by Schindler? It is +perfectly true. Mother did not approve. Until I went with John Burleson +I had never ever been in a restaurant; until I was engaged by Schindler +I had never seen the city lighted at night--I mean where the theatres +and cafes and hotels are.... And, Mr. Neville, until I came here to you, +I had never had an opportunity to talk to a cultivated man of my own +age--I mean the kind of man you are." + +She dropped her eyes, considering, while the smile still played faintly +with the edges of her lips; then: + +"Is it very hard for you to realise that what is an ordinary matter of +course to the young of my age is, to me, all a delightful novelty?--that +I am enjoying to a perfectly heavenly degree what to you and others may +be commonplace and uninteresting? All I ask is to be permitted to enjoy +it while I am still young enough. I--I _must_! I really need it, Mr. +Neville. It seems, at moments, as if I could never have enough--after +the years--where I had--nothing." + +Neville had begun walking to and fro in front of her with the quick, +decisive step that characterised his movements; but his restlessness +seemed only to emphasise the attention he concentrated on every word she +spoke; and, though he merely glanced at her from moment to moment, she +was conscious that the man now understood, and was responding more +directly to her than ever before in their brief and superficial +acquaintance. + +"I don't want to go away and study," she said. "It is perfectly dear of +you to offer it--I--there is no use in trying to thank you--" + +"Valerie!" + +"What!" she said, startled by his use of her given name for the first +time in their acquaintance. + +He said, smilingly grave: "You didn't think there was a string attached +to anything I offered?" + +"A--a string?" + +"Did you?" + +She blushed hotly: "No, of course not." + +"It's all right then," he nodded; but she began to think of that new +idea in a confused, startled, helpless sort of way. + +"How could you think _that_ of me?" she faltered. + +"I didn't--" + +"You--it must have been in your mind--" + +"I wanted to be sure it wasn't in _yours_--" + +"You ought to have known! Haven't you learned anything at all about me +in two months?" + +"Do you think any man can learn anything about anybody in two months?" +he asked, lightly. + +"Yes, I do. I've learned a good deal about you--enough, anyway, not to +attribute anything--unworthy--" + +"You silly child; you've learned nothing about me if that's what you +think you've discovered." + +"I _have_ discovered it!" she retorted, tremulously; "I've learned +horrid things about other men, too--and they're not like you!" + +"Valerie! Valerie! I'm precisely like all the rest--my selfishness is a +little more concentrated than theirs, that's the only difference. For +God's sake don't make a god of me." + +She sat down on the head of the sofa, looking straight at him, pretty +head lowered a trifle so that her gaze was accented by the lovely level +of her brows: + +"I've long wanted to have a thorough talk with you," she said. "Have you +got time now?" + +He hesitated, controlling his secret amusement under an anxious gravity +as he consulted the clock. + +"Suppose you give me an hour on those figures up there? The light will +be too poor to work by in another hour. Then we'll have tea and +'thorough talks.'" + +"All right," she said, calmly. + +He picked up palette and mahl-stick and mounted to his perch on the +scaffolding; she walked slowly into the farther room, stood motionless a +moment, then raising both arms she began to unhook the collar of her +gown. + +When she was ready she stepped into her sandals, threw the white wool +robe over her body, and tossed one end across her bare shoulder. + +He descended, aided her aloft to her own eyrie, walked across the +planking to his own, and resumed palette and brushes in excellent humour +with himself, talking gaily while he was working: + +"I'm devoured by curiosity to know what that 'thorough talk' of yours is +going to be about. You and I, in our briefly connected careers, have +discussed every subject on earth, gravely or flippantly, and what in the +world this 'thorough talk' is going to resemble is beyond me--" + +"It might have to do with your lack of ceremony--a few minutes ago," she +said, laughing at him. + +"My--what?" + +"Lack of ceremony. You called me Valerie." + +"You can easily revenge that presumption, you know." + +"I think I will--Kelly." + +He smiled as he painted: + +"I don't know why the devil they call me Kelly," he mused. "No episode +that I ever heard of is responsible for that Milesian misnomer. _Quand +meme_! It sounds prettier from you than it ever did before. I'd rather +hear you call me Kelly than Caruso sing my name as Algernon." + +"Shall I really call you Kelly?" + +"Sure thing! Why not?" + +"I don't know. You're rather celebrated--to have a girl call you Kelly." + +He puffed out his chest in pretence of pompous satisfaction: + +"True, child. Good men are scarce--but the good and great are too +nearly extinct for such familiarity. Call me _Mr._ Kelly." + +"I won't. You are only a big boy, anyway--Louis Neville--and sometimes I +shall call you Kelly, and sometimes Louis, and very occasionally Mr. +Neville." + +"All right," he said, absently--"only hold that distractingly ornamental +head and those incomparable shoulders a trifle more steady, please--rest +solidly on the left leg--let the right hip fall into its natural +position--_that's_ it. Thank you." + +Holding the pose her eyes wandered from him and his canvas to the +evening tinted clouds already edged with deeper gold. Through the sheet +of glass above she saw a shred of white fleece in mid-heaven turn to a +pale pink. + +"I wonder why you asked me to tea?" she mused. + +"What?" He turned around to look at her. + +"You never before asked me to do such a thing," she said, candidly. +"You're an absent-minded man, Mr. Neville." + +"It never occurred to me," he retorted, amused. "Tea is weak-minded." + +"It occurred to me. That's what part of my 'thorough talk' is to be +about; your carelessness in noticing me except professionally." + +He continued working, rapidly now; and it seemed to her as though +something--a hint of the sombre--had come into his face--nothing +definite--but the smile was no longer there, and the brows were slightly +knitted. + +Later he glanced up impatiently at the sky: the summer clouds wore a +deeper rose and gold. + +"We'd better have our foolish tea," he said, abruptly, driving his +brushes into a bowl of black soap and laying aside his palette for his +servant to clean later. + +For a while, not noticing her, he fussed about his canvas, using a knife +here, a rag there, passing to and fro across the scaffolding, oblivious +of the flight of time, until at length the waning light began to +prophesy dusk, and he came to himself with a guilty start. + +Below, in the studio, Valerie sat, fully dressed except for hat and +gloves, head resting in the padded depths of an armchair, watching him +in silence. + +"I declare," he said, looking down at her contritely, "I never meant to +keep you all this time. Good Lord! Have I been puttering up here for an +hour and a half! It's nearly eight o'clock! Why on earth didn't you +speak to me, Valerie?" + +"It's a braver girl than I am who'll venture to interrupt you at work, +Kelly," she said, laughingly. "I'm a little afraid of you." + +"Nonsense! I wasn't doing anything. My Heaven!--_can_ it be eight +o'clock?" + +"It is.... You _said_ we were going to have tea." + +"Tea! Child, you can't have tea at eight o'clock! I'm terribly +sorry"--he came down the ladder, vexed with himself, wiping the paint +from his hands with a bunch of cheese cloth--"I'm humiliated and +ashamed, Miss West. Wait a moment--" + +He walked hastily through the next room into his small suite of +apartments, washed his hands, changed his painter's linen blouse for his +street coat, and came back into the dim studio. + +"I'm really sorry, Valerie," he said. "It was rotten rude of me." + +"So am I sorry. It's absurd, but I feel like a perfectly unreasonable +kid about it.... You never before asked me--and I--wanted to--stay--so +much--" + +"Why didn't you remind me, you foolish child!" + +"Somehow I couldn't.... I wanted _you_ to think of it." + +"Well, I'm a chump...." He stood before her in the dim light; she still +reclined in the armchair, not looking at him, one arm crook'd over her +head and the fingers closed tightly over the rosy palm which was turned +outward, resting across her forehead. + +For a few moments neither spoke; then: + +"I'm horridly lonely to-night," she said, abruptly. + +"Why, Valerie! What a--an unusual--" + +"I want to talk to you.... I suppose you are too hungry to want to talk +now." + +"N-no, I'm not." He began to laugh: "What's the matter, Valerie? What is +on your mind? Have you any serious fidgets, or are you just a spoiled, +pretty girl?" + +"Spoiled, Kelly. There's nothing really the matter. I just felt +like--what you asked me to do--" + +She jumped up suddenly, biting her lips with vexation: "I don't know +what I'm saying--except that it's rather rude of me--and I've got to go +home. Good-night--I think my hat is in the dressing-room--" + +He stood uneasily watching her pin it before the mirror; he could just +see her profile and the slender, busy hands white in the dusk. + +When she returned, slowly drawing on her long gloves, she said to him +with composure: + +"Some day ask me again. I really would like it--if you would." + +"Do you really think that you could stand the excitement of taking a +cup of weak tea with me," he said, jestingly--"after all those jolly +dinners and suppers and theatres and motor parties that I hear about?" + +She nodded and held out her hand with decision: + +"Good-night." + +He retained her hand a moment, not meaning to--not really intending to +ask her what he did ask her. And she raised her velvet eyes gravely: + +"Do you really want me?" + +"Yes.... I don't know why I never asked you before--" + +"It was absurd not to," she said, impulsively; "I'd have gone anywhere +with you the first day I ever knew you! Besides, I dress well enough for +you not to be ashamed of me." + +He began to laugh: "Valerie, you funny little thing! You funny, funny +little thing!" + +"Not in the slightest," she retorted, sedately. "I'm having a heavenly +time for the first time in my life, and I have so wanted you to be part +of it ... of course you _are_ part of it," she added, hastily--"most of +it! I only meant that I--I'd like to be a little in your other +life--have you enter mine, a little--just so I can remember, in years to +come, an evening with you now and then--to see things going on around +us--to hear what you think of things that we see together.... Because, +with you, I feel so divinely free, so unembarrassed, so entirely off my +guard.... I don't mean to say that I don't have a splendid time with the +others even when I have to watch them; I do--and even the watching is +fun--" + +The child-like audacity and laughing frankness, the confidence of her +attitude toward him were delightfully refreshing. He looked into her +pretty, eager, engaging face, smiling, captivated. + +"Valerie," he said, "tell me something--will you?" + +"Yes, if I can." + +"I'm more or less of a painting machine. I've made myself so, +deliberately--to the exclusion of other interests. I wonder"--he looked +at her musingly--"whether I'm carrying it too far for my own good." + +"I don't understand." + +"I mean--is there anything machine-made about my work? Does it +lack--does it lack anything?" + +"No!" she said, indignantly loyal. "Why do you ask me that?" + +"People--some people say it does lack--a certain quality." + +She said with supreme contempt: "You must not believe them. I also hear +things--and I know it is an unworthy jealousy that--" + +"What have you heard?" he interrupted. + +"Absurdities. I don't wish even to think of them--" + +"I wish you to. Please. Such things are sometimes significant." + +"But--is there any significance in what a few envious artists say--or a +few silly models--" + +"More significance in what they say than in a whole chorus of +professional critics." + +"Are you serious?" she asked, astonished. + +"Perfectly. Without naming anybody or betraying any confidence, what +have you heard in criticism of my work? It's from models and brother +painters that the real truth comes--usually distorted, half told, +maliciously hinted sometimes--but usually the germ of truth is to be +found in what they say, however they may choose to say it." + +Valerie leaned back against the door, hands clasped behind her, eyebrows +bent slightly inward in an unwilling effort to remember. + +Finally she said impatiently: "They don't know what they're talking +about. They all say, substantially, the same thing--" + +"What is that thing?" + +"Why--oh, it's too silly to repeat--but they say there is nothing +lovable about your work--that it's inhumanly and coldly +perfect--too--too--" she flushed and laughed uncertainly--"'too damn +omniscient' is what one celebrated man said. And I could have boxed his +large, thin, celebrated ears for him!" + +"Go on," he nodded; "what else do they say?" + +"Nothing. That's all they can find to say--all they dare say. You know +what they are--what other men are--and some of the younger girls, too. +Not that I don't like them--and they are very sweet to me--only they're +not like you--" + +"They're more human. Is that it, Valerie?" + +"No, I don't mean that!" + +"Yes, you do. You mean that the others take life in a perfectly human +manner--find enjoyment, amusement in each other, in a hundred things +outside of their work. They act like men and women, not like a painting +machine; if they experience impulses and emotions they don't entirely +stifle 'em. They have time and leisure to foregather, laugh, be silly, +discuss, banter, flirt, make love, and cut up all the various harmless +capers that humanity is heir to. _That's_ what you mean, but you don't +realise it. And you think, and they think, that my solemn and owlish +self-suppression is drying me up, squeezing out of me the essence of +that warm, lovable humanity in which, they say, my work is deficient. +They say, too, that my inspiration is lacking in that it is not founded +on personal experience; that I have never known any deep emotion, any +suffering, any of the sterner, darker regrets--anything of that passion +which I sometimes depict. They say that the personal and convincing +element is totally absent because I have not lived"--he laughed--"and +loved; that my work lacks the one thing which only the self-knowledge of +great happiness and great pain can lend to it.... And--I think they are +right, Valerie. What do you think?" + +The girl stood silent, with lowered eyes, reflecting for a moment. Then +she looked up curiously. + +"_Have_ you never been very unhappy?" + +"I had a toothache once." + +She said, unsmiling: "Haven't you ever suffered mentally?" + +"No--not seriously. Oh, I've regretted little secret meannesses--bad +temper, jealousy--" + +"Nothing else? Have you never experienced deep unhappiness--through +death, for example?" + +"No, thank God. My father and mother and sister are living.... It is +rather strange," he added, partly to himself, "that the usual troubles +and sorrows have so far passed me by. I am twenty-seven; there has never +been a death in my family, or among my intimate friends." + +"Have you any intimate friends?" + +"Well--perhaps not--in the strict sense. I don't confide." + +"Have you never cared, very much, for anybody--any woman?" + +"Not sentimentally," he returned, laughing. "Do you think that a good +course of modern flirtation--a thorough schooling in the old-fashioned +misfortunes of true love would inject into my canvases that elusively +occult quality they're all howling for?" + +She remained smilingly silent. + +"Perhaps something less strenuous would do," he said, mischievously--"a +pretty amourette?--just one of those gay, frivolous, Louis XV affairs +with some daintily receptive girl, not really improper, but only ultra +fashionable. Do you think _that_ would help some, Valerie?" + +She raised her eyes, still smiling, a little incredulous, very slightly +embarrassed: + +"I don't think your painting requires any such sacrifices of you, Mr. +Neville.... Are you going to take me somewhere to dinner? I'm dreadfully +hungry." + +"You poor little girl, of course I am. Besides, you must be suffering +under the terrible suppression of that 'thorough talk' which you--" + +"It doesn't really require a thorough talk," she said; "I'll tell you +now what I had to say. No, don't interrupt, please! I want to--please +let me--so that nothing will mar our enjoyment of each other and of the +gay world around us when we are dining.... It is this: Sometimes--once +in a while--I become absurdly lonely, which makes me a fool, +temporarily. And--will you let me telephone you at such times?--just to +talk to you--perhaps see you for a minute?" + +"Of course. You know my telephone number. Call me up whenever you like." + +"_Could_ I see you at such moments? I--there's a--some--a kind of +sentiment about me--when I'm _very_ lonely; and I've been foolish enough +to let one or two men see it--in fact I've been rather +indiscreet--silly--with a man--several men--now and then. A lonely girl +is easily sympathised with--and rather likes it; and is inclined to let +herself go a little.... I don't want to.... And at times I've done +it.... Sam Ogilvy nearly kissed me, which really doesn't count--does it? +But I let Harry Annan do it, once.... If I'm weak enough to drift into +such silliness I'd better find a safeguard. I've been +thinking--thinking--that it really does originate in a sort of foolish +loneliness ...not in anything worse. So I thought I'd have a thorough +talk with you about it. I'm twenty-one--with all my experience of life +and of men crowded into a single winter and spring. I have as friends +only the few people I have met through you. I have nobody to see unless +I see them--nowhere to go unless I go where they ask me.... So I thought +I'd ask you to let me depend a little on you, sometimes--as a refuge +from isolation and morbid thinking now and then. And from other +mischief--for which I apparently have a capacity--to judge by what I've +done--and what I've let men do already." + +She laid her hand lightly on his arm in sudden and impulsive confidence: + +"That's my 'thorough talk.' I haven't any one else to tell it to. And +I've told you the worst." She smiled at him adorably: "And now I am +ready to go out with you," she said,--"go anywhere in the world with +you, Kelly. And I am going to be perfectly happy--if you are." + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +One day toward the middle of June Valerie did not arrive on time at the +studio. She had never before been late. + +About two o'clock Sam Ogilvy sauntered in, a skull pipe in his mouth, +his hair rumpled: + +"It's that damn mermaid of mine," he said, "can't you come up and look +at her and tell me what's the trouble, Kelly?" + +"Not now. Who's posing?" + +"Rita. She's in a volatile humour, too--fidgets; denies fidgeting; +reproaches me for making her keep quiet; says I draw like a bum +chimney--no wonder my work's rotten! Besides, she's in a tub of water, +wearing that suit of fish-scales I had made for Violet Cliland, and she +says it's too tight and she's tired of the job, anyway. Fancy my mental +condition." + +"Oh, she won't throw you down. Rita is a good sport," said Neville. + +"I hope so. It's an important picture. Really, Kelly, it's great +stuff--a still, turquoise-tinted pool among wet rocks; ebb tide; a +corking little mermaid caught in a pool left by the receding waves--all +tones and subtle values," he declared, waving his arm. + +"Don't paint things in the air with your thumb," said Neville, coldly. +"No wonder Rita is nervous." + +"Rita is nervous," said Ogilvy, "because she's been on a bat and supped +somewhere until the coy and rosy dawn chased her homeward. And your +pretty paragon, Miss West, was with the party--" + +"What?" said Neville, sharply. + +"Sure thing! Harry Annan, Rita, Burleson, Valerie--and I don't know who +else. They feasted somewhere east of Coney--where the best is like the +wuerst--and ultimately became full of green corn, clams, watermelon, and +assorted fidgets.... Can't you come up and look at my picture?" + +Neville got up, frowning, and followed Ogilvy upstairs. + +Rita Tevis, swathed in a blanket from which protruded a dripping +tinselled fish's tail, sat disconsolately on a chair, knitting a +red-silk necktie for some party of the second part, as yet unidentified. + +"Mr. Neville," she said, "Sam has been quarrelling with me every minute +while I'm doing my best in that horrid tub of water. If anybody thinks +it's a comfortable pose, let them try it! I wish--I _wish_ I could have +the happiness of seeing Sam afloat in this old fish-scale suit with +every spangle sticking into him and his legs cramped into this +unspeakable tail!" + +She extended a bare arm, shook hands, pulled up her blanket wrap, and +resumed her knitting with a fierce glance at Ogilvy, who had attempted +an appealing smile. + +Neville stood stock-still before the canvas. The picture promised well; +it was really beautiful--the combined result of several outdoor studies +now being cleverly worked up. But Ogilvy's pictures never kept their +promise. + +[Illustration: "Neville stood stock-still before the canvas."] + + +"Also," observed Rita, reproachfully, "_I_ posed _en plein air_ for +those rainbow sketches of his--and though it was a lonely cove with a +cunningly secluded little crescent beach, I was horribly afraid of +somebody coming--and besides I got most cruelly sun-burned--" + +"Rita! You _said_ you enjoyed that excursion!" exclaimed Ogilvy, with +pathos. + +"I said it to flatter that enormous vanity of yours, Sam. I had a +perfectly wretched time." + +"What sort of a time did you have last evening?" inquired Neville, +turning from the picture. + +"Horrid. Everybody ate too much, and Valerie spooned with a new man--I +don't remember his name. She went out in a canoe with him and they sang +'She kissed him on the gangplank when the boat moved out.'" + +Neville, silent, turned to the picture once more. In a low rapid voice +he indicated to Ogilvy where matters might be differently treated, +stepped back a few paces, nodded decisively, and turned again to Rita: + +"I've been waiting for Miss West," he said. "Have you any reason to +think that she might not keep her appointment this morning?" + +"She had a headache when we got home," said Rita. "She stayed with me +last night. I left her asleep. Why don't you ring her up. You know my +number." + +"All right," said Neville, shortly, and went out. + +When he first tried to ring her up the wire was busy. It was a party +wire, yet a curious uneasiness set him pacing the studio, smoking, brows +knitted, until he decided it was time to try again. + +This time he recognised her distant voice: "Hello--hello! _Is_ that you, +Mr. Neville?" + +"Valerie!" + +"Oh, it _is_ you, Kelly? I hoped you would call me up. I _knew_ it must +be _you_!" + +"Yes, it is. What the deuce is the matter? Are you ill?" + +"Oh, dear, no.'" + +"_What,_ then?" + +[Illustration: "When he first tried to ring her up the wire was busy."] + +"I was _so_ sleepy, Kelly. Please forgive me. We had such a late +party--and it was daylight before I went to bed. Please forgive me; +won't you?" + +"When I called you a few minutes ago your wire was busy. Were you +conversing?" + +"Yes. I was talking to Jose Querida." + +"H'm!" + +"Jose was with us last evening.... I went canoeing with him. He just +called me up to ask how I felt." + +"Hunh!" + +"What?" + +"Nothing." + +"Are you annoyed, Louis?" + +"No!" + +"Oh, I thought it sounded as though you were irritated. I am so ashamed +at having overslept. Who told you I was here? Oh, Rita, I suppose. Poor +child, she was more faithful than I. The alarm clock woke her and she +was plucky enough to get up--and I only yawned and thought of you, and I +was _so_ sleepy! Are you sure you do forgive me?" + +"Of course." + +"You don't say it very kindly." + +"I mean it cordially," he snapped. He could hear her sigh: "I suppose +you do." Then she added: + +"I am dressing, Kelly. I don't wish for any breakfast, and I'll come to +the studio as soon as I can--" + +"Take your breakfast first!" + +"No, I really don't care for--" + +"All right. Come ahead." + +"I will. Good-bye, Kelly, dear." + +He rang off, picked up the telephone again, called the great Hotel +Regina, and ordered breakfast sent to his studio immediately. + +When Valerie arrived she found silver, crystal, and snowy linen awaiting +her with chilled grapefruit, African melon, fragrant coffee, toast, and +pigeon's eggs poached on Astrakan caviar. + +"Oh, Louis!" she exclaimed, enraptured; "I don't deserve this--but it is +perfectly dear of you--and I _am_ hungry!... Good-morning," she added, +shyly extending a fresh cool hand; "I am really none the worse for wear +you see." + +That was plain enough. In her fresh and youthful beauty the only sign of +the night's unwisdom was in the scarcely perceptible violet tint under +her thick lashes. Her skin was clear and white and dewy fresh, her dark +eyes unwearied--her gracefully slender presence fairly fragrant with +health and vigour. + +She seated herself--offered to share with him in dumb appeal, urged him +in delicious pantomime, and smiled encouragingly as he reluctantly found +a chair beside her and divided the magnificent melon. + +"Did you have a good time?" he asked, trying not to speak ungraciously. + +"Y-yes.... It was a silly sort of a time." + +"Silly?" + +"I was rather sentimental--with Querida." + +He said nothing--grimly. + +"I told you last night, Louis. Why couldn't you see me?" + +"I was dining out; I couldn't." + +She sipped her chilled grapefruit meditatively: + +"I hadn't seen you for a week," she laughed, glancing sideways at him, +"and that lonely feeling began about five o'clock; and I called you up +at seven because I couldn't stand it.... But you wouldn't see me; and so +when Rita and the others came in a big touring car--do you blame me very +much for going with them?" + +"No." + +Her expression became serious, a trifle appealing: + +"My room isn't very attractive," she said, timidly. "It is scarcely big +enough for the iron bed and one chair--and I get so tired trying to read +or sew every evening by the gas--and it's very hot in there." + +"Are you making excuses for going?" + +"I do not know.... Unless people ask me, I have nowhere to go except to +my room; and when a girl sits there evening after evening alone it--it +is not very gay." + +She tried the rich, luscious melon with much content, and presently her +smile came back: + +"Louis, it was a funny party. To begin we had one of those terrible +clambakes--like a huge, horrid feast of the Middle Ages--and it did not +agree with everybody--or perhaps it was because we weren't +middle-aged--or perhaps it was just the beer. I drank water; so did the +beautiful Jose Querida.... I think he is pretty nearly the handsomest +man I ever saw; don't you?" + +"He's handsome, cultivated, a charming conversationalist, and a really +great painter," said Neville, drily. + +She looked absently at the melon; tasted it: "He is very romantic ... when +he laughs and shows those beautiful, even teeth.... He's really +quite adorable, Kelly--and so gentle and considerate--" + +"That's the Latin in him." + +"His parents were born in New York." + +She sipped her coffee, tried a pigeon egg, inquired what it was, ate it, +enchanted. + +"How thoroughly nice you always are to me, Kelly!" she said, looking up +in the engagingly fearless way characteristic of her when with him. + +"Isn't everybody nice to you?" he said with a shrug which escaped her +notice. + +"Nice?" She coloured a trifle and laughed. "Not in _your_ way, Kelly. In +the sillier sense they are--some of them." + +"Even Querida?" he said, carelessly. + +"Oh, just like other men--generously ready for any event. What +self-sacrificing opportunists men are! After all, Kelly," she added, +slipping easily into the vernacular, "it's always up to the girl." + +"Is it?" + +"Yes, I think so. I knew perfectly well that I had no business to let +Querida's arm remain around me. But--there was a moon, Kelly." + +"Certainly." + +"Why do you say 'certainly'?" + +"Because there _was_ one." + +"But you say it in a manner--" She hesitated, continued her breakfast in +leisurely reflection for a while, then: + +"Louis?" + +"Yes." + +"Am I too frank with you?" + +"Why?" + +"I don't know; I was just thinking. I tell you pretty nearly everything. +If I didn't have you to tell--have somebody--" She considered, with +brows slightly knitted--"if I didn't have _somebody_ to talk to, it +wouldn't be very good for me. I realise that." + +"You need a grandmother," he said, drily; "and I'm the closest +resemblance to one procurable." + +The imagery struck her as humorous and she laughed. + +"Poor Kelly," she said aloud to herself, "he is used and abused and +imposed upon, and in revenge he offers his ungrateful tormentor +delicious breakfasts. _What_ shall his reward be?--or must he await it +in Paradise where he truly belongs amid the martyrs and the blessed +saints!" + +Neville grunted. + +"Oh, _oh_! such a post-Raphaelite scowl! Job won't bow to you when you +go aloft, Kelly. Besides, polite martyrs smile pleasantly while enduring +torment.... What are you going to do with me to-day?" she added, +glancing around with frank curiosity at an easel which was set with a +full-length virgin canvas. + +"Portrait," he replied, tersely. + +"Oh," she said, surprised. He had never before painted her clothed. + +From moment to moment, as she leisurely breakfasted, she glanced around +at the canvas, interested in the new idea of his painting her draped; a +trifle perplexed, too. + +"Louis," she said, "I don't quite see how you're ever going to find a +purchaser for just a plain portrait of me." + +He said, irritably: "I don't have to work for a living _every_ minute, +do I? For Heaven's sake give me a day off to study." + +"But--it seems like wasted time--" + +"What is wasted time?" + +"Why just to paint a portrait of me as I am. Isn't it?" She looked up +smilingly, perfectly innocent of any self-consciousness. "In the big +canvases for the Byzantine Theatre you always made my features too +radiant, too glorious for portraits. It seems rather a slump to paint me +as I am--just a girl in street clothes." + +A singular expression passed over his face. + +"Yes," he said, after a moment--"just a girl in street clothes. No +clouds, no sky, no diaphanous draperies of silk; no folds of cloth of +gold; no gemmed girdles, no jewels. Nothing of the old glamour, the old +glory; no sunburst laced with mist; no 'light that never was on sea or +land.' ... Just a young girl standing in the half light of my studio.... +And by God!--if I can not do it--the rest is worthless." + +Amazed at his tone and expression she turned quickly, set back her cup, +remained gazing at him, bewildered by the first note of bitterness she +had ever heard in his voice. + +He had risen and walked to his easel, back partly turned. She saw him +fussing with his palette, colours, and brushes, watched him for a few +moments, then she went away into the farther room where she had a glass +shelf to herself with toilet requisites--a casual and dainty gift from +him. + +When she returned he was still bending over his colour-table; and she +walked up and laid her hand on his shoulder--not quite understanding why +she did it. + +He straightened up to his full stature, surprised, turning his head to +meet a very clear, very sweetly disturbed gaze. + +"Kelly, dear, are you unhappy?" + +"Why--no." + +"You seem to be a little discontented." + +[Illustration: "'Kelly, dear, are you unhappy?'"] + +"I hope I am. It's a healthy sign." + +"Healthy?" + +"Certainly. The satisfied never get anywhere.... That Byzanite business +has begun to wear on my nerves." + +"Thousands and thousands of people have gone to see it, and have praised +it. You know what the papers have been saying--" + +Under her light hand she felt the impatient movement of his shoulders, +and her hand fell away. + +"Don't you care for it, now that it's finished?" she asked, wondering. + +"I'm devilish sick of it," he said, so savagely that every nerve in her +recoiled with a tiny shock. She remained silent, motionless, awaiting +his pleasure. He set his palette, frowning. She had never before seen +him like this. + +After a while she said, quietly: "If you are waiting for me, please tell +me what you expect me to do, because I don't know, Kelly." + +"Oh, just stand over there," he said, vaguely; "just walk about and stop +anywhere when you feel like stopping." + +She walked a few steps at hazard, partly turned to look back at him with +a movement adorable in its hesitation. + +"Don't budge!" he said, brusquely. + +"Am I to remain like this?" + +"Exactly." + +He picked up a bit of white chalk, went over to her, knelt down, and +traced on the floor the outline of her shoes. + +Then he went back, and, with his superbly cool assurance, began to draw +with his brush upon the untouched canvas. + +From where she stood, and as far as she could determine, he seemed, +however, to work less rapidly than usual--with a trifle less +decision--less precision. Another thing she noticed; the calm had +vanished from his face. The vivid animation, the cool self-confidence, +the half indolent relapse into careless certainty--all familiar phases +of the man as she had so often seen him painting--were now not +perceptible. There seemed to be, too, a curious lack of authority about +his brush strokes at intervals--moments of grave perplexity, indecision +almost resembling the hesitation of inexperience--and for the first time +she saw in his gray eyes the narrowing concentration of mental +uncertainty. + +It seemed to her sometimes as though she were looking at a total +stranger. She had never thought of him as having any capacity for the +ordinary and lesser ills, vanities, and vexations--the trivial worries +that beset other artists. + +"Louis?" she said, full of curiosity. + +"What?" he demanded, ungraciously. + +"You are not one bit like yourself to-day." + +He made no comment. She ventured again: + +"Do I hold the pose properly?" + +"Yes, thanks," he said, absently. + +"May I talk?" + +"I'd rather you didn't, Valerie, just at present." + +"All right," she rejoined, cheerfully; but her pretty eyes watched him +very earnestly, a little troubled. + +When she was tired the pose ended; that had been their rule; but long +after her neck and back and thighs and limbs begged for relief, she held +the pose, reluctant to interrupt him. When at last she could endure it +no longer she moved; but her right leg had lost not only all sense of +feeling but all power to support her; and down she came with a surprised +and frightened little exclamation--and he sprang to her and swung her to +her feet again. + +"Valerie! You bad little thing! Don't you know enough to stop when +you're tired?" + +[Illustration: "He picked up a bit of white chalk ... and traced on the +floor the outline of her shoes."] + +"I--didn't know I was so utterly gone," she said, bewildered. + +He passed his arm around her and supported her to the sofa where she +sat, demure, a little surprised at her collapse, yet shyly enjoying his +disconcerted attentions to her. + +"It's your fault, Kelly. You had such a queer expression--not at all +like you--that I tried harder than ever to help you--and fell down for +my pains." + +"You're an angel," he said, contritely, "but a silly one." + +"A scared one, Kelly--and a fallen one." She laughed, flexing the +muscles of her benumbed leg: "Your expression intimidated me. I didn't +recognise you; I could not form any opinion of what was going on inside +that very stern and frowning head of yours. If you look like that I'll +never dare call you Kelly." + +"Did I seem inhuman?" + +"N-no. On the contrary--very human--ordinary--like the usual +ill-tempered artist man, with whom I have learned how to deal. You +know," she added, teasingly, "that you are calm and god-like, +usually--and when you suddenly became a mere mortal--" + +"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," he said; "I'll pick you up and +put you to bed." + +"I wish you would, Kelly. I haven't had half enough sleep." + +He sat down beside her on the sofa: "Don't talk any more of that +god-like business," he growled, "or I'll find the proper punishment." + +"Would _you_ punish _me_, Kelly?" + +"I sure would." + +"If I displeased you?" + +"You bet." + +"Really?" She turned partly toward him, half in earnest. +"Suppose--suppose--" but she stopped suddenly, with a light little laugh +that lingered pleasantly in the vast, still room. + +She said: "I begin to think that there are two Kellys--no, _one_ Kelly +and _one_ Louis. Kelly is familiar to me; I seem to have known him all +my life--the happy part of my life. Louis I have just seen for the first +time--there at the easel, painting, peering from me to his canvas with +Kelly's good-looking eyes all narrow with worry--" + +"What on earth are you chattering about, Valerie?" + +"You and Kelly.... I don't quite know which I like best--the dear, +sweet, kind, clever, brilliant, impersonal, god-like Kelly, or this new +Louis--so very abrupt in speaking to me--" + +"Valerie, dear! Forgive me. I'm out of sorts somehow. It began--I don't +know--waiting for you--wondering if you could be ill--all alone. Then +that ass, Sam Ogilvy--oh, it's just oversmoking I guess, or--I don't +know what." + +She sat regarding him, head tipped unconsciously on one side in an +attitude suggesting a mind concocting malice. + +"Louis?" + +"What?" + +"You're very attractive when you're god-like--" + +"You little wretch!" + +"But--you're positively dangerous when you're human." + +"Valerie! I'll--" + +"The great god Kelly, or the fascinating, fearsome, erring Louis! Which +is it to be? I've an idea that the time is come to decide!" + +[Illustration: "'I _will_ call you a god if I like!'"] + +Fairly radiating a charming aura of malice she sat back, nursing one +knee, distractingly pretty and defiant, saying: "I _will_ call you a god +if I like!" + +"I'll tell you what, Valerie," he said, half in earnest; "I've played +grandmother to you long enough, by Heck!" + +"Oh, Kelly, be lofty and Olympian! Be a god and shame the rest of us!" + +"I'll shamefully resemble one of 'em in another moment if you continue +tormenting me!" + +"Which one, great one?" + +"Jupiter, little lady. He was the boss philanderer you know." + +"What is a philanderer, my Olympian friend?" + +"Oh, one of those Olympian divinities who always began the day by +kissing the girls all around." + +"Before breakfast?" + +"Certainly." + +"It's--after breakfast, Kelly." + +"Luncheon and dinner still impend." + +"Besides--I'm not a bit lonely to-day.... I'm afraid I wouldn't let you, +Kel--I mean Louis." + +"Why didn't you say 'Kelly'?" + +"Kelly is too god-like to kiss." + +"Oh! So _that's_ the difference! Kelly isn't human; Louis is." + +"Kelly, to me," she admitted, "is practically kissless.... I haven't +thought about Louis in that regard." + +"Consider the matter thoroughly." + +"Do you wish me to?" She bent her head, smiling. Then, looking up with +enchanting audacity: + +"I really don't know, Mr. Neville. Some day when I'm lonely--and if +Louis is at home and Kelly is out--you and I might spend an evening +together on a moonlit lake and see how much of a human being Louis can +be." + +She laughed, watching him under the dark lashes, charming mouth mocking +him in every curve. + +"Do you think you're likely to be lonely to-night?" he asked, surprised +at the slight acceleration of his pulses. + +"No, I don't. Besides, you'd be only the great god Kelly to me this +evening. Besides that I'm going to dinner with Querida, and afterward +we're going to see the 'Joy of the Town' at the Folly Theatre." + +"I didn't know," he said, curtly. For a few moments he sat there, +looking interestedly at a familiar door-knob. Then rising: "Do you feel +all right for posing?" + +"Yes." + +"Alors--" + +"Allons, mon dieu!" she laughed. + +Work began. She thought, watching him with sudden and unexpected +shyness, that he seemed even more aloof, more preoccupied, more worried, +more intent than before. In this new phase the man she had known as a +friend was now entirely gone, vanished! Here stood an utter stranger, +very human, very determined, very deeply perplexed, very much in +earnest. Everything about this man was unknown to her. There seemed to +be nothing about him that particularly appealed to her confidence, +either; yet the very uncertainty was interesting her now--intensely. + +This other phase of his dual personality had been so completely a +surprise that, captivated, curious, she could keep neither her gaze from +him nor her thoughts. Was it that she was going to miss in him the other +charm, lose the delight in his speech, his impersonal and kindly manner, +miss the comfortable security she had enjoyed with him, perhaps after +some half gay, half sentimental conflict with lesser men? + +What was she to expect from this brand-new incarnation of Louis +Neville? The delightful indifference, fascinating absent-mindedness and +personal neglect of the other phase? Would he be god enough to be less +to her, now? Man enough to be more than other men? For a moment she had +a little shrinking, a miniature panic lest this man turn too much like +other men. But she let her eyes rest on him, and knew he would not. +Whatever Protean changes might yet be reserved for her to witness, she +came to the conclusion that this man was a man apart, different, and +would not disappoint her no matter what he turned into. + +She thought to herself: "If I want Kelly to lean on, he'll surely +appear, god-like, impersonally nice, and kindly as ever; if I want Louis +to torment and provoke and flirt with--a little--a very little--I'm +quite sure he'll come, too. Whatever else is contained in Mr. Neville I +don't know; but I like him separately and compositely, and I'm happy +when I'm with him." + +With which healthy conclusion she asked if she might rest, and came +around to look at the canvas. + +As she had stood in silence for some time, he asked her, a little +nervously, what she thought of it. + +"Louis--I don't know." + +"Is your opinion unfavourable?" + +"N-no. I _am_ like that, am I not?" + +"In a shadowy way. It _will_ be like you." + +"Am I as--interesting?" + +"More so," he said. + +"Are you going to make me--beautiful?" + +"Yes--or cut this canvas into shreds." + +"Oh-h!" she exclaimed with a soft intake of breath; "would you have the +heart to destroy me after you've made me?" + +"I don't know what I'd do, Valerie. I never felt just this way about +anything. If I can't paint you--a human, breathing _you_--with all of +you there on the canvas--_all_ of you, soul, mind, and body--all of your +beauty, your youth, your sadness, happiness--your errors, your +nobility--_you_, Valerie!--then there's no telling what I'll do." + +She said nothing. Presently she resumed the pose and he his painting. + +It became very still in the sunny studio. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +In that month of June, for the first time in his deliberately active +career, Neville experienced a disinclination to paint. And when he +realised that it was disinclination, it appalled him. Something--he +didn't understand what--had suddenly left him satiated--and with all the +uneasiness and discontent of satiation he forced matters until he could +force no further. + +He had commissions, several, and valuable; and let them lie. For the +first time in all his life the blank canvas of an unexecuted commission +left him untempted, unresponsive, weary. + +He had, also, his portrait of Valerie to continue. He continued it +mentally, at intervals; but for several days, now, he had not laid a +brush to it. + +"It's funny," he said to Querida, going out on the train to his sister's +country home one delicious morning--"it's confoundedly odd that I should +turn lazy in my old age. Do you think I'm worked out?" He gulped down a +sudden throb of fear smilingly. + +"Lie fallow," said Querida, gently. "No soil is deep enough to yield +without rest." + +"Yours does." + +"Oh, for me," said Querida, showing his snowy teeth, "I often sicken of +my fat sunlight, frying everything to an iridescent omelette." He +shrugged, laughed: "I turn lazy for months every year. Try it, my +friend. Don't you even keep _mi-careme_?" + +Neville stared out of the window at the station platform past which +they were gliding, and rose with Querida as the train stopped. His +sister's touring car was waiting; into it stepped Querida, and he +followed; and away they sped over the beautiful rolling country, where +handsome cattle tried to behave like genuine Troyon's, and silvery sheep +attempted to imitate Mauve, and even the trees, separately or in groups, +did their best to look like sections of Rousseau, Diaz, and even +Corot--but succeeded only in resembling questionable imitations. + +"There's to be quite a week-end party?" inquired Querida. + +"I don't know. My sister telephoned me to fill in. I fancy the party is +for you." + +"For _me_!" exclaimed Querida with delightful enthusiasm. "That is most +charming of Mrs. Collis." + +"They'll all think it charming of you. Lord, what a rage you've become +and what a furor you've aroused!... And you deserve it," added Neville, +coolly. + +Querida looked at him, calm intelligence in his dark gaze; and +understood the honesty of the comment. + +"That," he said, "if you permit the vigour of expression, is damn nice +of you, Neville. But you can afford to be generous to other painters." + +"Can I?" Neville turned and gazed at Querida, gray eyes clear in their +searching inquiry. Then he laughed a little and looked out over the +sunny landscape. + +Querida's olive cheeks had reddened a trifle. + +Neville said: "What _is_ the trouble with my work, anyway? Is it what +some of you fellows say?" + +Querida did not pretend to misunderstand: + +"You're really a great painter, Neville. And you know it. Must you have +_everything_?" + +"Well--I'm going after it." + +"Surely--surely. I, also. God knows my work lacks many, many things--" + +"But it doesn't lack that one essential which mine lacks. _What_ is it?" + +Querida laughed: "I can't explain. For me--your Byzantine canvas--there +is in it something not intimate--" + +"Austere?" + +"Yes--even in those divine and lovely throngs. There is, perhaps, an +aloofness--even a self-denial--" He laughed again: "I deny myself +nothing--on canvas--even I have the audacity to try to draw as you do!" + +Neville sat thinking, watching the landscape speed away on either side +in a running riot of green. + +"Self-denial--too much of it--separates you from your kind," said +Querida. "The solitary fasters are never personally pleasant; hermits +are the world's public admiration and private abomination. Oh, the good +world dearly loves to rub elbows with a talented sinner and patronise +him and sentimentalise over him--one whose miracles don't hurt their +eyes enough to blind them to the pleasant discovery that his halo is +tarnished in spots and needs polishing, and that there's a patch on the +seat of his carefully creased toga." + +Neville laughed. Presently he said: "Until recently I've cherished +theories. One of 'em was to subordinate everything in life to the +enjoyment of a single pleasure--the pleasure of work.... I guess +experience is putting that theory on the blink." + +"Surely. You might as well make an entire meal of one favourite dish. +For a day you could stand it, even like it, perhaps. After that--" he +shrugged. + +"But--I'd _rather_ spend my time painting--if I could stand the diet." + +"Would you? I don't know what I'd rather do. I like almost everything. +It makes me paint better to talk to a pretty woman, for example. To kiss +her inspires a masterpiece." + +"Does it?" said Neville, thoughtfully. + +"Of course. A week or two of motoring--riding, dancing, white flannel +idleness--all these I adore. And," tapping his carefully pinned lilac +tie--"inside of me I know that every pleasant experience, every pleasure +I offer myself, is going to make me a better painter!" + +"Experience," repeated the other. + +"By all means and every means--experience in pleasure, in idleness, in +love, in sorrow--but experience!--always experience, by hook or by +crook, and at any cost. That is the main idea, Neville--_my_ main +idea--like the luscious agglomeration of juicy green things which that +cow is eating; they all go to make good milk. Bah!--that's a stupid +simile," he added, reddening. + +Neville laughed. Presently he pointed across the meadows. + +"Is _that_ your sister's place?" asked Querida with enthusiasm, +interested and disappointed. "What a charming house!" + +"That is Ashuelyn, my sister's house. Beyond is El Nauar, Cardemon's +place.... Here we are." + +The small touring car stopped; the young men descended to a grassy +terrace where a few people in white flannels had gathered after +breakfast. A slender woman, small of bone and built like an undeveloped +girl, came forward, the sun shining on her thick chestnut hair. + +"Hello, Lily," said Neville. + +"Hello, Louis. Thank you for coming, Mr. Querida--it is exceedingly nice +of you to come--" She gave him her firm, cool hand, smiled on him with +unfeigned approval, turned and presented him to the others--Miss Aulne, +Miss Swift, Miss Annan, a Mr. Cameron, and, a moment later, to her +husband, Gordon Collis, a good-looking, deeply sun-burned young man +whose only passion, except his wife and baby, was Ashuelyn, the home of +his father. + +But it was a quiet passion which bored nobody, not even his wife. + +When conversation became general, with Querida as the centre around +which it eddied, Neville, who had seated himself on the gray stone +parapet near his sister, said in a low voice: + +"Well, how goes it, Lily?" + +"All right," she replied with boyish directness, but in the same low +tone. "Mother and father have spent a week with us. You saw them in +town?" + +"Of course. I'll run up to Spindrift House to see them as often as I can +this summer.... How's the kid?" + +"Fine. Do you want to see him?" + +"Yes, I'd like to." + +His sister caught his hand, jumped up, and led him into the house to the +nursery where a normal and in nowise extraordinary specimen of infancy +reposed in a cradle, pink with slumber, one thumb inserted in its mouth. + +"Isn't he a wonder," murmured Neville, venturing to release the thumb. + +The young mother bent over, examining her offspring in all the eloquent +silence of pride unutterable. After a little while she said: "I've got +to feed him. Go back to the others, Louis, and say I'll be down after a +while." + +He sauntered back through the comfortable but modest house, glancing +absently about him on his way to the terrace, nodding to familiar faces +among the servants, stopping to inspect a sketch of his own which he had +done long ago and which his sister loved and he hated. + +"Rotten," he murmured--"it has an innocence about it that is actually +more offensive than stupidity." + +On the terrace Stephanie Swift came over to him: + +"Do you want a single at tennis, Louis? The others are hot for +Bridge--except Gordon Collis--and he is going to dicker with a farmer +over some land he wants to buy." + +Neville looked at the others: + +"Do you mean to say that you people are going to sit here all hunched up +around a table on a glorious day like this?" + +"We are," said Alexander Cameron, calmly breaking the seal of two fresh, +packs. "You artists have nothing to do for a living except to paint +pretty models, and when the week end comes you're in fine shape to caper +and cut up didoes. But we business men are too tired to go galumphing +over the greensward when Saturday arrives. It's a wicker chair and a +'high one,' and peaceful and improving cards for ours." + +Alice Annan laughed and glanced at Querida degrees Cameron's idea was +her idea of what her brother Harry was doing for a living; but she +wasn't sure that Querida would think it either flattering or humorous. + +But Jose Querida laughed, too, saying: "Quite right, Mr. Cameron. It's +only bluff with, us; we never work. Life is one continual comic opera." + +"It's a cinch," murmured Cameron. "Stocks and bonds are exciting, but +_your_ business puts it all over us. Nobody would have to drive me to +business every morning if there was a pretty model in a cosey studio +awaiting me." + +"Sandy, you're rather horrid," said Miss Aulne, watching him sort out +the jokers from the new packs and, with a skilful flip, send them +scaling out, across the grass, for somebody to pick up. + +Cameron said: "How about this Trilby business, anyway, Miss Annan? You +have a brother in it. Is the world of art full of pretty models clad in +ballet skirts--when they wear anything? Is it all one mad, joyous +melange of high-brow conversation discreetly peppered with low-brow +revelry? Yes? No? Inform an art lover, please--as they say in the _Times +Saturday Review_." + +"I don't know," said Miss Annan, laughing. "Harry never has anybody +interesting in the studio when he lets me take tea there." + +Rose Aulne said: "I saw some photographs of a very beautiful girl in Sam +Ogilvy's studio--a model. What is her name, Alice?--the one Sam and +Harry are always raving over?" + +"They call her Valerie, I believe." + +"Yes, that's the one--Valerie West, isn't it? _Is_ it, Louis? You know +her, of course." + +Neville nodded coolly. + +"Introduce me," murmured Cameron, spreading a pack for cutting. "Perhaps +she'd like to see the Stock Exchange when I'm at my best." + +"Is she such a beauty? Do you know her, too, Mr. Querida?" asked Rose +Aulne. + +Querida laughed: "I do. Miss West is a most engaging, most amiable and +cultivated girl, and truly very beautiful." + +"Oh! They _are_ sometimes educated?" asked Stephanie, surprised. + +"Sometimes they are even equipped to enter almost any drawing-room in +New York. It doesn't always require the very highest equipment to do +that," he added, laughing. + +"That sounds like romantic fiction," observed Alice Annan. "You are a +poet, Mr. Querida." + +"Oh, it's not often a girl like Valerie West crosses our path. I admit +that. Now and then such a comet passes across our sky--or is reported. I +never before saw any except this one." + +"If she's as much of a winner as all that," began Cameron with decision, +"I want to meet her immediately--" + +"Mere brokers are out of it," said Alice.... "Cut, please." + +Rose Aulne said: "If you painters only knew it, your stupid studio teas +would be far more interesting if you'd have a girl like this Valerie +West to pour for you ... and for us to see." + +"Yes," added Alice; "but they're a vain lot. They think we are +unsophisticated enough to want to go to their old studios and be +perfectly satisfied to look at their precious pictures, and listen to +their art patter. I've told Harry that what we want is to see something +of the real studio life; and he tries to convince me that it's about as +exciting as a lawyer's life when he dictates to his stenographer." + +[Illustration: "'If she's as much of a winner as all that,' began +Cameron with decision, 'I want to meet her immediately--'"] + +"Is it?" asked Stephanie of Neville. + +"Just about as exciting. Some few business men may smirk at their +stenographers; some few painters may behave in the same way to their +models. I fancy it's the exception to the rule in any kind of +business--isn't it, Sandy?" + +"Certainly," said Cameron, hastily. "I never winked at my +stenographer--never! never! Will you deal, Mr. Querida?" he asked, +courteously. + +"I should think a girl like that would be interesting to know," said +Lily Collis, who had come up behind her brother and Stephanie Swift and +stood, a hand on each of their shoulders, listening and looking on at +the card game. + +"That is what I wanted to say, too," nodded Stephanie. "I'd like to meet +a really nice girl who is courageous enough, and romantic enough to pose +for artists--" + +"You mean poor enough, don't you?" said Neville. "They don't do it +because it's romantic." + +"It must be romantic work." + +"It isn't, I assure you. It's drudgery--and sometimes torture." + +Stephanie laughed: "I believe it's easy work and a gay existence full of +romance. Don't undeceive me, Louis. And I think you're selfish not to +let us meet your beautiful Valerie at tea." + +"Why not?" added his sister. "I'd like to see her myself." + +"Oh, Lily, you know perfectly well that oil and water don't mix," he +said with a weary shrug. + +"I suppose we're the oil," remarked Rose Aulne--"horrid, smooth, +insinuating stuff. And his beautiful Valerie is the clear, crystalline, +uncontaminated fountain of inspiration." + +Lily Collis dropped her hands from Stephanie's and her brother's +shoulders: + +"Do ask us to tea to meet her, Louis," she coaxed. + +"We've never seen a model--" + +"Do you want me to exhibit a sensitive girl as a museum freak?" he +asked, impatiently. + +"Don't you suppose we know how to behave toward her? Really, Louis, +you--" + +"Probably you know how to behave. And I can assure you that she knows +perfectly well how to behave toward anybody. But that isn't the +question. You want to see her out of curiosity. You wouldn't make a +friend of her--or even an acquaintance. And I tell you, frankly, I don't +think it's square to her and I won't do it. Women are nuisances in +studios, anyway." + +"What a charming way your brother has of explaining things," laughed +Stephanie, passing her arm through Lily's: "Shall we reveal to him that +he was seen with his Valerie at the St. Regis a week ago?" + +"Why not?" he said, coolly, but inwardly exasperated. "She's as +ornamental as anybody who dines there." + +"I don't do _that_ with _my_ stenographers!" called out Cameron +gleefully, cleaning up three odd in spades. "Oh, don't talk to me, +Louis! You're a gay bunch all right!--you're qualified, every one of +you, artists and models, to join the merry, merry!" + +Stephanie dropped Lily's arm with a light laugh, swung her tennis bat, +tossed a ball into the sunshine, and knocked it over toward the tennis +court. + +"I'll take you on if you like, Louis!" she called back over her +shoulder, then continued her swift, graceful pace, white serge skirts +swinging above her ankles, bright hair wind-blown--a lithe, full, +wholesome figure, very comforting to look at. + +"Come upstairs; I'll show you where Gordon's shoes are," said his +sister. + +Gordon's white shoes fitted him, also his white trousers. When he was +dressed he came out of the room and joined his sister, who was seated on +the stairs, balancing his racquet across her knees. + +"Louis," she said, "how about the good taste of taking that model of +yours to the St. Regis?" + +"It was perfectly good taste," he said, carelessly. + +"Stephanie took it like an angel," mused his sister. + +"Why shouldn't she? If there was anything queer about it, you don't +suppose I'd select the St. Regis, do you?" + +"Nobody supposed there was anything queer." + +"Well, then," he demanded, impatiently, "what's the row?" + +"There is no row. Stephanie doesn't make what you call rows. Neither +does anybody in your immediate family. I was merely questioning the +wisdom of your public appearance--under the circumstances." + +"What circumstances?" + +His sister looked at him calmly: + +"The circumstances of your understanding with Stephanie.... An +understanding of years, which, in her mind at least, amounts to a tacit +engagement." + +"I'm glad you said that," he began, after a moment's steady thinking. +"If that is the way that Stephanie and you still regard a college +affair--" + +"A--what!" + +"A boy-and-girl preference which became an undergraduate romance--and +has never amounted to anything more--" + +"Louis!" + +"What?" + +"Don't you _care_ for her?" + +"Certainly; as much as I ever did--as much, as she really and actually +cares for me," he answered, defiantly. "You know perfectly well what +such affairs ever amount to--in the sentimental-ever-after line. Infant +sweethearts almost never marry. She has no more idea of it than have I. +We are fond of each other; neither of us has happened, so far, to +encounter the real thing. But as soon as the right man comes along +Stephanie will spread her wings and take flight--" + +"You don't know her! Well--of all faithless wretches--your inconstancy +makes me positively ill!" + +"Inconstancy! I'm not inconstant. I never saw a girl I liked better than +Stephanie. I'm not likely to. But that doesn't mean that I want to marry +her--" + +"For shame!" + +"Nonsense! Why do you talk about inconstancy? It's a ridiculous word. +What is constancy in love? Either an accident or a fortunate state of +mind. To promise constancy in love is promising to continue in a state +of mind over which your will has no control. It's never an honest +promise; it can be only an honest hope. Love comes and goes and no man +can stay it, and no man is its prophet. Coming unasked, sometimes +undesired, often unwelcome, it goes unbidden, without reason, without +logic, as inexorably as it came, governed by laws that no man has ever +yet understood--" + +"Louis!" exclaimed his sister, bewildered; "what in the world are you +lecturing about? Why, to hear you expound the anatomy of love--" + +He began to laugh, caught her hands, and kissed her: + +"Little goose, that was all impromptu and horribly trite and +commonplace. Only it was new to me because I never before took the +trouble to consider it. But it's true, even if it is trite. People love +or they don't love, and a regard for ethics controls only what they do +about it." + +"That's another Tupperesque truism, isn't it, dear?" + +"Sure thing. Who am I to mock at the Proverbial One when I've never yet +evolved anything better?... Listen; you don't want me to marry +Stephanie, do you?" + +"Yes, I do." + +"No, you don't. You think you do--" + +"I do, I do, Louis! She's the sweetest, finest, most generous, most +suitable--" + +"Sure," he said, hastily, "she's all that except 'suitable'--and she +isn't that, and I'm not, either. For the love of Mike, Lily, let me go +on admiring her, even loving her in a perfectly harmless--" + +"It _isn't_ harmless to caress a girl--" + +"Why--you can't call it caressing--" + +"What do you call it?" + +"Nothing. We've always been on an intimate footing. She's perfectly +unembarrassed about--whatever impulsive--er--fugitive impulses--" + +"You _do_ kiss her!" + +"Seldom--very seldom. At moments the conditions happen accidentally +to--suggest--some slight demonstration--of a very warm friendship--" + +"You positively sicken me! Do you think a nice girl is going to let a +man paw her if she doesn't consider him pledged to her?" + +"I don't think anything about it. Nice girls have done madder things +than their eulogists admit. As a plain matter of fact you can't tell +what anybody nice is going to do under theoretical circumstances. And +the nicer they are the bigger the gamble--particularly if they're +endowed with brains--" + +"_That's_ cynicism. You seem to be developing several streaks--" + +"Polite blinking of facts never changes them. Conforming to conventional +and accepted theories never yet appealed to intelligence. I'm not going +to be dishonest with myself; that's one of the streaks I've developed. +You ask me if I love Stephanie enough to marry her, and I say I don't. +What's the good of blinking it? I don't love anybody enough to marry +'em; but I like a number of girls well enough to spoon with them." + +"_That_ is disgusting!" + +"No, it isn't," he said, with smiling weariness; "it's the unvarnished +truth about the average man. Why wink at it? The average man can like a +lot of girls enough to spoon and sentimentalise with them. It's the pure +accident of circumstance and environment that chooses for him the one he +marries. There are myriads of others in the world with whom, under +proper circumstances and environment, he'd have been just as +happy--often happier. Choice is a mystery, constancy a gamble, +discontent the one best bet. It isn't pleasant; it isn't nice fiction +and delightful romance; it isn't poetry or precept as it is popularly +inculcated; it's the brutal truth about the average man.... And I'm +going to find Stephanie. Have you any objection?" + +"Louis--I'm terribly disappointed in you--" + +"I'm disappointed, too. Until you spoke to me so plainly a few minutes +ago I never clearly understood that I couldn't marry Stephanie. When I +thought of it at all it seemed a vague and shadowy something, too far +away to be really impending--threatening--like death--" + +[Illustration: "'Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before +luncheon.'"] + +"Oh!" cried his sister in revolt. "I shall make it my business to see +that Stephanie understands you thoroughly before this goes any +farther--" + +"I wish to heaven you would," he said, so heartily that his sister, +exasperated, turned her back and marched away to the nursery. + +When he went out to the tennis court he found Stephanie idly batting the +balls across the net with Cameron, who, being dummy, had strolled down +to gibe at her--a pastime both enjoyed: + +"Here comes your Alonzo, fair lady--lightly skipping o'er the +green--yes, yes--wearing the panties of his brother-in-law!" He fell +into an admiring attitude and contemplated Neville with a simper, his +ruddy, prematurely bald head cocked on one side: + +"Oh, girls! _Ain't_ he just grand!" he exclaimed. "Honest, Stephanie, +your young man has me in the ditch with two blow-outs and the gas +afire!" + +"Get out of this court," said Neville, hurling a ball at him. + +"Isn't he the jealous old thing!" cried Cameron, flouncing away with an +affectation of feminine indignation. And presently the tennis balls +began to fly, and the little jets of white dust floated away on the June +breeze. + +They were very evenly matched; they always had been, never asking odds +or offering handicaps in anything. It had always been so; at the traps +she could break as many clay birds as he could; she rode as well, drove +as well; their averages usually balanced. From the beginning--even as +children--it had been always give and take and no favour. + +And so it was now; sets were even; it was a matter of service. + +Luncheon interrupted a drawn game; Stephanie, flushed, smiling, came +around to his side of the net to join him on the way to the house: + +"How do you keep up your game, Louis? Or do I never improve? It's +curious, isn't it, that we are always deadlocked." + +Bare-armed, bright hair in charming disorder, she swung along beside him +with that quick, buoyant step so characteristic of a spirit ever +undaunted, saluting the others on the terrace with high-lifted racquet. + +"Nobody won," she said. "Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before +luncheon. Thank you, Louis; I've had a splendid game--" She stretched +out a frank hand to him, going, and the tips of her fingers just brushed +his. + +His sister gave him a tragic look, which he ignored, and a little later +luncheon was on and Cameron garrulous, and Querida his own gentle, +expressive, fascinating self, devotedly receptive to any woman who was +inclined to talk to him or to listen. + +That evening Neville said to his sister: "There's a train at midnight; I +don't think I'll stay over--" + +"Why?" + +"I want to be in town early." + +"Why?" + +"The early light is the best." + +"I thought you'd stopped painting for a while." + +"I have, practically. There's one thing I keep on with, in a desultory +sort of way--" + +"What is it?" + +"Oh, nothing of importance--" he hesitated--"that Is, it may be +important. I can't be sure, yet." + +"Will you tell me what it is?" + +"Why, yes. It's a portrait--a study--" + +"Of whom, dear?" + +"Oh, of nobody you know--" + +"Is it a portrait of Valerie West?" + +"Yes," he said, carelessly. + +There was a silence; in the starlight his shadowy face was not clearly +visible to his sister. + +"Are you leaving just to continue that portrait?" + +"Yes. I'm interested in it." + +"Don't go," she said, in a low voice. + +"Don't be silly," he returned shortly. + +"Dear, I am not silly, but I suspect you are beginning to be. And over a +model!" + +"Lily, you little idiot," he laughed, exasperated; "what in the world is +worrying you?" + +"Your taking that girl to the St. Regis. It isn't like you." + +"Good Lord! How many girls do you suppose I've taken to various places?" + +"Not many," she said, smiling at him. "Your reputation for gallantries +is not alarming." + +Ho reddened. "You're perfectly right. That sort of thing never appealed +to me." + +"Then why does it appeal to you now?" + +"It doesn't. Can't you understand that this girl is entirely +different--" + +"Yes, I understand. And that is what worries me." + +"It needn't. It's precisely like taking any girl you know and like--" + +"Then let me know her--if you mean to decorate-public places with her." + +They looked at one another steadily. + +"Louis," she said, "this pretty Valerie is not your sister's sort, or +you wouldn't hesitate." + +"I--hesitate--yes, certainly I do. It's absurd on the face of it. She's +too fine a nature to be patronised--too inexperienced in the things of +your world--too ignorant of petty conventions and formalities--too free +and fearless and confident and independent to appeal to the world you +live in." + +"Isn't that a rather scornful indictment against my world, dear?" + +"No. Your world is all right in its way. You and I were brought up in +it. I got out of it. There are other worlds. The one I now inhabit is +more interesting to me. It's purely a matter of personal taste, dear. +Valerie West inhabits a world that suits her." + +"Has she had any choice in the matter?" + +"I--yes. She's had the sense and the courage to keep out of the various +unsafe planets where electric light furnishes the principal +illumination." + +"But has she had a chance for choosing a better planet than the one you +say she prefers? Your choice was free. Was hers?" + +"Look here, Lily! Why on earth are you so significant about a girl you +never saw--scarcely ever heard of--" + +"Dear, I have not told you everything. I _have_ heard of her--of her +charm, her beauty, her apparent innocence--yes, her audacity, her +popularity with men.... Such things are not unobserved and unreported +between your new planet and mine. Harry Annan is frankly crazy about +her, and his sister Alice is scared to death. Mr. Ogilvy, Mr. Burleson, +Clive Gail, dozens of men I know are quite mad about her.... If it was +she whom you used as model for the figures in the Byzantine decorations, +she is divine--the loveliest creature to look at! And I don't care, +Louis; I don't care a straw one way or the other except that I know you +have never bothered with the more or less Innocently irregular gaieties +which attract many men of your age and temperament. And so--when I hear +that you are frequently seen--" + +"Frequently?" + +"Is that St. Regis affair the only one?" + +"No, of course not. But, as for my being with her frequently--" + +"Well?" + +He was silent for a moment, then, looking up with a laugh: + +"I like her immensely. Until this moment I didn't realise how much I do +like her--how pleasant it is to be with a girl who is absolutely +fearless, clever, witty, intelligent, and unspoiled." + +"Are there no girls in your own set who conform to this standard?" + +"Plenty. But their very environment and conventional traditions kill +them--make them a nuisance." + +"Louis!" + +"That's more plain truth, which no woman likes. Will you tell me what +girl in your world, who approaches the qualitative standard set by +Valerie West, would go about by day or evening with any man except her +brother? Valerie does. What girl would be fearless enough to ignore the +cast-iron fetters of her caste? Valerie West is a law unto herself--a +law as sweet and good and excellent and as inflexible as any law made by +men to restrain women's liberty, arouse them to unhappy +self-consciousness and infect them with suspicion. Every one of you are +the terrified slaves of custom, and you know it. Most men like it. I +don't. I'm no tea drinker, no cruncher of macaroons, no gabbler at +receptions, no top-hatted haunter of weddings, no social graduate of the +Ecole Turvydrop. And these places--if I want to find companionship in +any girl of your world--must frequent. And I won't. And so there you +are." + +His sister came up to him and placed her arms around his neck. + +"Such--a--wrong-headed--illogical--boy," she sighed, kissing him +leisurely to punctuate her words. '"If you marry a girl you love you can +have all the roaming and unrestrained companionship you want. Did that +ever occur to you?" + +"At that price," he said, laughing, "I'll do without it." + +"Wrong head, handsome head! I'm in despair about you. Why in the world +cannot artists conform to the recognised customs of a perfectly pleasant +and respectable world? Don't answer me! You'll make me very unhappy.... +Now go and talk to Stephanie. The child won't understand your going +to-night, but make the best of it to her." + +"Good Lord, Lily! I haven't a string tied to me. It doesn't matter to +Stephanie what I do--why I go or remain. You're all wrong. Stephanie and +I understand each other." + +"I'll see that she understands _you_" said his sister, sorrowfully. + +He laughed and kissed her again, impatient. But why he was impatient he +himself did not know. Certainly it was not to find Stephanie, for whom +he started to look--and, on the way, glanced at his watch, determined +not to miss the train that would bring him into town in time to talk to +Valerie West over the telephone. + +Passing the lighted and open windows, he saw Querida and Alice absorbed +in a tete-a-tete, ensconced in a corner of the big living room; saw +Gordon playing with Heinz, the dog--named Heinz because of the +celebrated "57 varieties" of dog in his pedigree--saw Miss Aulne at +solitaire, exchanging lively civilities with Sandy Cameron at the piano +between charming bits of a classic ballad which he was inclined to sing: + + "I'd share my pottage + With you, dear, but + True love in a cottage + Is hell in a hut." + +"Is that you, Stephanie?" he asked, as a dark figure, seated on the +veranda, turned a shadowy head toward him. + +"Yes. Isn't this starlight magnificent? I've been up to the nursery +looking at the infant wonder--just wild to hug him; but he's asleep, and +his nurse glared at me. So I thought I'd come and look at something else +as unattainable--the stars, Louis," she added, laughing--"not you." + +"Sure," he said, smiling, "I'm always obtainable. Unlike the infant upon +whom you had designs," he added, "I'm neither asleep nor will any nurse +glare at you if you care to steal a kiss from me." + +"I've no inclination to transfer my instinctively maternal transports to +you," she said, serenely, "though, maternal solicitude might not be +amiss concerning you." + +"Do you think I need moral supervision?" + +"Not by me." + +"By whom?" + +"Ask me an easier one, Louis. And--I didn't _say_ you needed it at all, +did I?" + +He sat beside her, silent, head lifted, examining the stars. + +"I'm going back on the midnight," he remarked, casually. + +"Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, with her winning frankness. + +"I'm--there's something I have to attend to in town--" + +"Work?" + +"It has to do with my work--indirectly--" + +She glanced sideways at him, and remained for a moment curiously +observant. + +"How is the work going, anyway?" she asked. + +He hesitated. "I've apparently come up slap against a blank wall. It +isn't easy to explain how I feel--but I've no confidence in myself--" + +"_You_! No confidence? How absurd!" + +"It's true," he said a little sullenly. + +"You are having a spasm of progressive development," she said, calmly. +"You take it as a child takes teething--with a squirm and a mental howl +instead of a physical yell." + +He laughed. "I suppose it's something of that sort. But there's more--a +self-distrust amounting to self-disgust at moments.... Stephanie, I +_want_ to do something good--" + +"You have--dozens of times." + +"People say so. The world forgets what is really good--" he made a +nervous gesture--"always before us poor twentieth-century men looms the +goal guarded by the vast, austere, menacing phantoms of the Masters." + +[Illustration: "'I know it is _you_. Is it?'"] + +"Nobody ever won a race looking behind him," she Said, gaily; "let 'em +menace and loom!" + +He laughed in a half-hearted fashion, then his head fell again slowly, +and he sat there brooding, silent. + +"Louis, why are you always dissatisfied?" + +"I always will be, I suppose." His discontented gaze grew more vague. + +"Can you never learn to enjoy the moment?" + +"It goes too quickly, and there are so many others which promise more, +and will never fulfil their promise; I know it. We painters know it when +we dare to think clearly. It is better not to think too clearly--better +to go on and pretend to expect attainment.... Stephanie, sometimes I +wish I were in an honest business--selling, buying--and could close up +shop and go home to pleasant dreams." + +"Can't you?" + +"No. It's eternal obsession. A painter's work is never ended. It goes on +with some after they are asleep; and then they go crazy," he added, and +laughed and laid his hand lightly and unthinkingly over hers where it +rested on the arm of her chair. And he remained unaware of her delicate +response to the contact. + +The stars were clear and liquid-bright, swarming in myriads in the June +sky. A big meteor fell, leaving an incandescent arc which faded +instantly. + +"I wonder what time it is," Be said. + +"You mustn't miss your train, must you?" + +"No." ... Suddenly it struck him that it would be one o'clock before he +could get to the studio and call up Valerie. That would be too late. He +couldn't awake her just for the pleasure of talking to her. Besides, he +was sure to see her in the morning when she came to him for her +portrait.... Yet--yet--he wanted to talk to her.... There seemed to be +no particular reason for this desire. + +"I think I'll just step to the telephone a moment." He rose, and her +fingers dropped from his hand. "You don't mind, do you?" + +"Not at all," she smiled. "The stars are very faithful friends. I'll be +well guarded until you come back, Louis." + +What she said, for some reason, made him slightly uncomfortable. He was +thinking of her words as he called up "long distance" and waited. +Presently Central called him with a brisk "Here's your party!" And very +far away he heard her voice: + +"I know it is _you_. Is it?" + +"Who?" + +"It is! I recognise your voice. But _which_ is it--Kelly or Louis or Mr. +Neville?" + +"All three," he replied, laughing. + +"But which gentleman is in the ascendant? The god-like one? Or the +conventional Mr. Neville? Or--the bad and very lovable and very human +Louis?" + +"Stop talking-nonsense, Valerie. What are you doing?" + +"Conversing with an abrupt gentleman called Louis Neville. I _was_ +reading." + +"All alone in your room?" + +"Naturally. Two people _couldn't_ get into it unless one of them also +got into bed." + +"You poor child! What are you reading?" + +"Will you promise not to laugh?" + +"Yes, I will." + +"Then--I was reading the nineteenth psalm." + +"It's a beauty, isn't it," he said. + +"Oh, Louis, it is glorious!--I don't know what in it appeals most +thrillingly to me--the wisdom or the beauty of the verse--but I love +it." + +"It is fine," he said. "... And are you there in your room all alone +this beautiful starry night, reading the psalms of old King David?" + +"Yes. What are you doing? Where are you?" + +"At Ashuelyn, my sister's home." + +"Oh! Well, it is perfectly sweet of you to think of me and to call me +up--" + +"I usually--I--well, naturally I think of you. I thought I'd just call +you up to say good night. You see my train doesn't get in until one this +morning; and of course I couldn't wake you--" + +"Yes, you could. I am perfectly willing to have you wake me." + +"But that would be the limit!" + +"Is _that_ your limit, Louis? If it is you will never disturb my peace +of mind." He heard her laughing at the other end of the wire, delighted +with her own audacity. + +He said: "Shall I call you up at one o'clock when I get into town?" + +"Try it. I may awake." + +"Very well then. I'll make them ring till daylight." + +"Oh, they won't have to do that! I always know, about five minutes +before you call me, that you are going to." + +"You uncanny little thing! You've said that before." + +"It's true. I knew before you called me that you would. It's a vague +feeling--a--I don't know.... And oh, Louis, it _is_ hot in this room! +Are you cool out there in the country?" + +"Yes; and I hate to be when I think of you--" + +"I'm glad you are. It's one comfort, anyway. John Burleson called me up +and asked me to go to Manhattan Beach, but somehow it didn't appeal to +me.... I've rather missed you." + +"Have you?" + +"Really." + +"Well, I'll admit I've missed you." + +"Really?" + +Sure thing! I wish to heaven I were in town now. We would go somewhere." + +"Oh, I wish so, too." + +"Isn't it the limit!" + +"It is, Kelly. Can't you be a real god for a moment and come floating +into my room in a golden cloud?" + +"Shall I try?" + +"_Please_ do." + +"All right. I'll do my god-like best. And anyway I'll call you up at +one. Good night." + +"Good night." + +He went back to the girl waiting for him in the starlight. + +"Well," she said, smiling at his altered expression, "you certainly have +recovered your spirits." + +He laughed and took her unreluctant fingers and kissed them--a boyishly +impulsive expression of the gay spirits which might have perplexed him +or worried him to account for if he had tried to analyse them. But he +didn't; he was merely conscious of a sudden inrush of high spirits--of a +warm feeling for all the world--this star-set world, so still and +sweet-scented. + +"Stephanie, dear," he said, smiling, "you know perfectly well that I +think--always have thought--that there was nobody like you. You know +that, don't you?" + +She laughed, but her pulses quickened a little. + +"Well, then," he went on. "I take it for granted that our understanding +is as delightfully thorough as it has always been--a warm, cordial +intimacy which leaves us perfectly unembarrassed--perfectly free to +express our affection for each other without fear of being +misunderstood." + +The girl lifted her blue eyes: "Of course." + +"That's what I told Lily," he nodded, delighted. I told her that you and +I understood each other--that it was silly of her to suspect anything +sentimental in our comradeship; that whenever the real thing put in an +appearance and came tagging down the pike after you, you'd sink the gaff +into him--" + +"The--what?" + +"Rope him and paste your monogram all over him." + +"I certainly will," she said, laughing. Eyes and lips and voice were +steady; but the tumult in her brain confused her. + +"That is exactly what I told Lily," he said. "She seems to think that if +two people frankly enjoy each other's society they want to marry each +other. All married women are that way. Like clever decoys they take +genuine pleasure in bringing the passing string under the guns." + +He laughed and kissed her pretty fingers again: + +"Don't you listen to my sister. Freedom's a good thing; and people are +selfish when happy; they don't set up a racket to attract others into +their private paradise." + +"Oh, Louis, that is really horrid of you. Don't you think Lily is +happy?" + +"Sure--in a way. You can't have a perfectly good husband and baby, and +have the fun of being courted by other aspirants, too. Of course married +women are happy; but they give up a lot. And sometimes it slightly +irritates them to remember it when they see the unmarried innocently +frisking as they once frisked. And it's their instinct to call out 'Come +in! Matrimony's fine! You don't know what you are missing!'" + +Stephanie laughed and lay back in her steamer chair, her hand abandoned +to him. And when her mirth had passed a slight sense of fatigue left her +silent, inert, staring at nothing. + +When the time came to say _adieu_ he kissed her as he sometimes did, +with a smiling and impersonal tenderness--not conscious of the source of +all this happy, demonstrative, half impatient animation which seemed to +possess him in every fibre. + +"Good-bye, you dear girl," he said, as the lights of the motor lit up +the drive. "I've had a bully time, and I'll see you soon again." + +"Come when you can, Louis. There is no man I would rather see." + +"And no girl I would rather go to," he said, warmly, scarcely thinking +what he was saying. + +Their clasped hands relaxed, fell apart. He went in to take leave of +Lily and Gordon and their guests, then emerged hastily and sprang into +the car. + +Overhead the June stars watched him as he sped through the fragrant +darkness. But with him, time lagged; even the train crawled as he timed +it to the ticking seconds of his opened watch. + +In the city a taxi swallowed him and his haste; and it seemed as though +he would never get to his studio and to the telephone; but at last he +heard her voice--a demure, laughing little voice: + +"I didn't think you'd be brute enough to do it!" + +"But you said I might call you--" + +"There are many things that a girl says from which she expects a man to +infer, tactfully and mercifully, the contrary." + +"Did I wake you, Valerie? I'm terribly sorry--" + +"If you are sorry I'll retire to my pillow--" + +"I'll ring you up again!" + +"Oh, if you employ threats I think I'd better listen to you. What have +you to say to me?" + +"What were you doing when I rang you up?" + +"I Wish I could say that I was asleep. But I can't. And if I tell the +truth I've got to flatter you. So I refuse to answer." + +"You were not waiting up for--" + +"Kelly! I refuse to answer! Anyway you didn't keep your word to me." + +"How do you mean?" + +"You promised to appear in a golden cloud!" + +"Something went wrong with the Olympian machinery," he explained, "and I +was obliged to take the train.... What are you doing there, anyway?" + +"Now?" + +"Yes, now." + +"Why, I'm sitting at the telephone in my night-dress talking to an +exceedingly inquisitive gentleman--" + +"I mean were you reading more psalms?" + +"No. If you must know, I was reading 'Bocaccio'" + +He could hear her laughing. + +"I was meaning to ask you how you'd spent the day," he began. "Haven't +you been out at all?" + +"Oh, yes. I'm not under vows, Kelly." + +"Where?" + +"Now I wonder whether I'm expected to account for every minute when I'm +not with you? I'm beginning to believe that it's a sort of monstrous +vanity that incites you to such questions. And I'm going to inform you +that I did _not_ spend the day sitting by the window and thinking about +you." + +"What _did_ you do?" + +"I motored in the Park. I lunched at Woodmanston with a perfectly good +young man. I enjoyed it." + +"Who was the man?" + +"Sam." + +"Oh," said Neville, laughing. + +"You make me perfectly furious by laughing," she exclaimed. "I wish I +could tell you that I'd been to Niagara Falls with Jose Querida!" + +"I wouldn't believe it, anyway." + +"I wouldn't believe it myself, even if I had done it," she said, +naively. There was a pause; then: + +"I'm going to retire. Good night." + +"Good night, Valerie." + +"Louis!" + +"What?" + +"You say the golden-cloud machinery isn't working?" + +"It seems to have slipped a cog." + +"Oh! I thought you might have mended it and that--perhaps--I had better +not leave my window open." + +"That cloud is warranted to float through solid masonry." + +"You alarm me, Kelly." + +"I'm sorry, but the gods never announce their visits." + +"I know it.... And I suppose I must sleep in a dinner gown. When one +receives a god it's a full-dress affair, isn't it?" + +He laughed, not mistaking her innocent audacity. + +"Unexpected Olympians must take their chances," he said. "... Are you +sleepy?" + +"Fearfully." + +"Then I won't keep you--" + +"But I hope you won't be rude enough to dismiss me before I have a +chance to give you your _conge_!" + +"You blessed child. I could stay here all night listening to you--" + +"Could you? That's a temptation." + +"To you, Valerie?" + +"Yes--a temptation to make a splendid exit. Every girl adores being +regretted. So I'll hang up the receiver, I think.... Good night, Kelly, +dear.... Good night, Louis. _A demain!--non--pardon! a bien +tot!--parceque il est deux heures de matin! Et--vous m'avez rendu bien +heureuse._" + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +Toward the last of June Neville left town to spend a month with his +father and mother at their summer Lome near Portsmouth. Valerie had +already gone to the mountains with Rita Tevis, gaily refusing her +address to everybody. And, packing their steamer trunks and satchels, +the two young girls departed triumphantly for the unindicated but modest +boarding-house tucked away somewhere amid the hills of Delaware County, +determined to enjoy every minute of a vacation well earned, and a +surcease from the round of urban and suburban gaiety which the advent of +July made a labour instead of a relaxation. + +From some caprice or other Valerie had decided that her whereabouts +should remain unknown even to Neville. And for a week it suited her +perfectly. She swam in the stump-pond with Rita, drove a buckboard with +Rita, fished industriously with Rita, played tennis on a rutty court, +danced rural dances at a "platform," went to church and giggled like a +schoolgirl, and rocked madly on the veranda in a rickety rocking-chair, +demurely tolerant of the adoration of two boys working their way +through, college, a smartly dressed and very confident drummer doing his +two weeks, and several assorted and ardent young men who, at odd +moments, had persuaded her to straw rides and soda at the village +druggists. + +[Illustration: "A smartly dressed and very confident drummer."] + +And all the while she giggled with Rita in a most shameless and +undignified fashion, went about hatless, with hair blowing and sleeves +rolled up; decorated a donation party at the local minister's and +flirted with him till his gold-rimmed eye-glasses protruded; behaved +like a thoughtful and considerate angel to the old, uninteresting and +infirm; romped like a young goddess with the adoring children of the +boarders, and was fiercely detested by the crocheting spinsters rocking +in acidulated rows on the piazza. + +The table was meagre and awful and pruneful; but she ate with an +appetite that amazed Rita, whose sophisticated palate was grossly +insulted thrice daily. + +"How on earth you can contrive to eat that hash," she said, resentfully, +"I don't understand. When my Maillard's give out I'll quietly starve in +a daisy field somewhere." + +"Close your eyes and pretend you and Sam are dining at the +Knickerbocker," suggested Valerie, cheerfully. "That's what I do when +the food doesn't appeal to me." + +"With whom do you pretend you are dining?" + +"Sometimes with Louis Neville, sometimes with Querida," she, said, +frankly. "It helps the hash wonderfully. Try it, dear. Close your eyes +and visualise some agreeable man, and the food isn't so very awful." + +Rita laughed: "I'm not as fond of men as that." + +"Aren't you? I am. I do like an agreeable man, and I don't mind saying +so." + +"I've observed that," said Rita, still laughing. + +"Of course you have. I've spent too many years without them not to enjoy +them now--bless their funny hearts!" + +"I'm glad there are no men here," observed Rita. + +"But there are men here," said Valerie, innocently. + +"Substitutes. Lemons." + +"The minister is superficially educated--" + +"He's a muff." + +"A nice muff. I let him pat my gloved hand." + +"You wicked child. He's married." + +"He only patted it in spiritual emphasis, dear. Married or single he's +more agreeable to me than that multi-coloured drummer. I let the +creature drive me to the post office in a buckboard, and he continued to +sit closer until I took the reins, snapped the whip, and drove at a +gallop over that terrible stony road. And he is so fat that it nearly +killed him. It killed all sentiment in him, anyway." + +Rita, stretched lazily in a hammock and displaying a perfectly shod foot +and silken ankle to the rage of the crocheters on the veranda, said +dreamily: + +"The unfortunate thing about us is that we know too much to like the +only sort of men who are likely to want to marry us." + +"What of it?" laughed Valerie. "We don't want to marry them--or anybody. +Do we?" + +"Don't you?" + +"Don't I what?" + +"Want to get married?" + +"I should think not." + +"Never?" + +"Not if I feel about it as I do now. I've never had enough play, Rita. +I've missed all those years that you've had--that most girls have had. I +never had any boys to play with. That's really all I am doing +now--playing with grown-up boys. That's all I am--merely a grown-up girl +with a child's heart." + +"A heart of gold," murmured Rita, "you darling." + +"Oh, it isn't all gold by any means! It's full of silver whims and +brassy selfishness and tin meannesses and senseless ideas--full of +fiery, coppery mischief, too; and, sometimes, I think, a little +malice--perhaps a kind of diluted deviltry. But it's a hungry heart, +dear, hungry for laughter and companionship and friendship--with a +capacity for happiness! Ah, you don't know, dear--you never can know how +capable I am of friendship and happiness!" + +"And--sentiment?" + +"I--don't--know." + +"Better watch out, sweetness!" + +"I do." + +Rita said thoughtfully, swinging in her hammock: + +"Sentiment, for us, is no good. I've learned that." + +"You?" + +"Of course." + +"How?" + +"Experience," said Rita, carelessly. "Every girl is bound to have it. +She doesn't have to hunt for it, either." + +"Were you ever in--love?" asked Valerie, curiously. + +"Now, dear, if I ever had been happily in love is it likely you wouldn't +know it?" + +"I suppose so," said Valerie.... She added, musingly: + +"I wonder what will become of me if I ever fall in love." + +"If you'll take my advice you'll run." + +"Run? Where? For goodness' sake!" + +"Anywhere until you became convalescent." + +"That would be a ridiculous idea," remarked Valerie so seriously that +Rita began to laugh: + +"You sweet thing," she said, "it's a million chances that you'd be +contented only with the sort of man who wouldn't marry you." + +"Because I'm poor, you mean? Or because I am working for my living?" + +"Both--and then some." + +"What else?" + +"Why, the only sort of men who'd attract you have come out of their own +world of their own accord to play about for a while in our world. They +can go back; that is the law. But they can't take us with them." + +"They'd be ashamed, you mean?" + +"Perhaps not. A man is likely enough to try. But alas! for us, if we're +silly enough to go. I tell you, Valerie, that their world is full of +mothers and sisters and feminine relatives and friends who could no more +endure us than they would permit us to endure them. It takes courage for +a man to ask us to go into that world with him; it takes more for us to +do it. And our courage is vain. We stand no chance. It means a rupture +of all his relations; and a drifting--not into our world, not into his, +but into a horrible midway void, peopled by derelicts.... I know, dear, +believe me. And I say that to fall in love is no good, no use, for us. +We've been spoiled for what we might once have found satisfactory. We +are people without a class, you and I." + +Valerie laughed: "That gives us the more liberty, doesn't it?" + +"It's up to us, dear. We are our own law, social and spiritual. If we +live inside it we are not going to be any too happy. If we live without +it--I don't know. Sometimes I wonder whether some of the pretty girls +you and I see at Rector's--" + +"I've wondered, too.... They _look_ happy--some of them." + +"I suppose they are--for a while.... But the worst of it is that it +never lasts." + +"I suppose not." Valerie pondered, grave, velvet-eyed, idly twisting a +grass stem. + +"After all," she said, "perhaps a brief happiness--with love--is worth +the consequences." + +"Many women risk it.... I wonder how many men, if social conditions were +reversed, would risk it? Not many, Valerie." + +They remained silent; Rita lay in the shadow of the maples, eyes closed; +Valerie plaited her grass stems with absent-minded industry. + +"I never yet wished to marry a man," she observed, presently. + +Rita made no response. + +"Because," continued the girl with quaint precision, "I never yet wanted +anything that was not offered freely; even friendship. I think--I don't +know--but I think--if any man offered me love--and I found that I could +respond--I _think_ that, if I took it, I'd be contented with love--and +ask nothing further--wish nothing else--unless he wanted it, too." + +Rita opened her eyes. + +Valerie, plaiting her grass very deftly, smiled to herself. + +"I don't know much about love, Rita; but I believe it is supreme +contentment. And if it is--what is the use of asking for more than +contents one?" + +"It's safer." + +"Oh--I know that.... I've read enough newspapers and novels and real +literature to know that. Incidentally the Scriptures treat of it.... +But, after all, love is love. You can't make it more than it is by law +and custom; you can't make it less; you can't summon it; you can't +dismiss it.... And I believe that I'd be inclined to take it, however +offered, if it were really love." + +"That is unmoral, dear," said Rita, smiling. + +"I'm not unmoral, am I?" + +"Well--your philosophy sounds Pagan." + +"Does it? Then, as you say, perhaps I'd better run if anything +resembling love threatens me." + +"The nymphs ran--in Pagan times." + +"And the gods ran after them," returned Valerie, laughing. "I've a very +fine specimen of god as a friend, by the way--a Protean gentleman with +three quick-change stunts. He's a perfectly good god, too, but he never +ran after me or tried to kiss me." + +"You _don't_ mean Querida, then." + +"No. He's no god." + +"Demi-god." + +"Not even that," said Valerie; "he's a sentimental shepherd who likes to +lie with his handsome head in a girl's lap and make lazy eyes at her." + +"I know," nodded Rita. "Look out for that shepherd." + +"Does he bite?" + +"No; there's the trouble. Anybody can pet him." + +Valerie laughed, turned over, and lay at length on her stomach in the +grass, exploring the verdure for a four-leaf clover. + +"I never yet found one," she said, cheerfully. "But then I've never +before seen much grass except in the Park." + +"Didn't you ever go to the country?" + +"No. Mother was a widow and bedridden. We had a tiny income; I have it +now. But it wasn't enough to take us to the country." + +"Didn't you work?" + +"I couldn't leave mother. Besides, she wished to educate me." + +"Didn't you go to school?" + +"Only a few months. We had father's books. We managed to buy a few +more--or borrow them from the library. And that is how I was educated, +Rita--in a room with a bedridden mother." + +"She must have been well educated." + +"I should think so. She was a college graduate.... When I was fifteen I +took the examinations for Barnard--knowing, of course, that I couldn't +go--and passed in everything.... If mother could have spared me I could +have had a scholarship." + +"That was hard luck, wasn't it, dear?" + +"N-no. I had mother--as long as she lived. After she died I had what she +had given me--and she had the education of a cultivated woman; she was a +lover of the best in literature and in art, a woman gently bred, +familiar with sorrow and privation." + +"If you choose," said Rita, "you are equipped for a governess--or a +lady's companion--or a secretary--" + +"I suppose I am. Before I signed with Schindler I advertised, offering +myself as a teacher. How many replies do you suppose I received?" + +"How many?" + +"Not one." + +Rita sighed. "I suppose you couldn't afford to go on advertising." + +"No, and I couldn't afford to wait.... Mother's burial took all the +little income. I was glad enough when Schindler signed me.... But a girl +can't remain long with Schindler." + +"I know." + +Valerie plucked a grass blade and bit it in two reflectively. + +"It's a funny sort of a world, isn't it, Rita?" + +"Very humorous--if you look at it that way." + +"Don't you?" + +"Not entirely." + +Valerie glanced up at the hammock. + +"How did _you_ happen to become a model, Rita?" + +"I'm a clergyman's daughter; what do you expect?" she said, with smiling +bitterness. + +"_You_!" + +"From Massachusetts, dear.... The blue-light elders got on my nerves. I +wanted to study music, too, with a view to opera." She laughed +unpleasantly. + +"Was your home life unhappy, dear?" + +"Does a girl leave happiness?" + +"You didn't run away, did you?" + +"I did--straight to the metropolis as a moth to its candle." + +Valerie waited, then, timidly: "Did you care to tell me any more, dear? +I thought perhaps you might like me to ask you. It isn't curiosity." + +"I know it isn't--you blessed child! I'll tell you--some +day--perhaps.... Pull the rope and set me swinging, please.... Isn't +this sky delicious--glimpsed through the green leaves? Fancy you're not +knowing the happiness of the country! I've always known it. Perhaps the +trouble was I had too much of it. My town was an ancient, respectable, +revolutionary relic set in a very beautiful rolling country near the +sea; but I suppose I caught the infection--the country rolled, the +breakers rolled, and finally I rolled out of it all--over and over +plump into Gotham! And I didn't land on my feet, either.... You are +correct, Valerie; there is something humorous about this world.... +There's one of the jokes, now!" as a native passed, hunched up on the +dashboard, driving a horse and a heifer in double harness. + +"Shall we go to the post office with him?" cried Valerie, jumping to her +feet. + +[Illustration: "Valerie sat cross-legged on the grass ... scribbling +away."] + +"Now, dear, what is the use of our going to the post office when nobody +knows our address and we never could possibly expect a letter!" + +"That is true," said Valerie, pensively. "Rita, I'm beginning to think +I'd like to have a letter. I believe--believe that I'll write to--to +somebody." + +"That is more than I'll do," yawned Rita, closing her eyes. She opened +them presently and said: + +"I've a nice little writing case in my trunk. Sam presented it. Bring it +out here if you're going to write." + +The next time she unclosed her eyes Valerie sat cross-legged on the +grass by the hammock, the writing case on her lap, scribbling away as +though she really enjoyed it. + +The letter was to Neville. It ran on: + +"Rita is asleep in a hammock; she's too pretty for words. I love her. +Why? Because she loves me, silly! + +"I'm a very responsive individual, Kelly, and a pat on the head elicits +purrs. + +"I want you to write to me. Also, pray be flattered; you are the only +person on earth who now has my address. I _may_ send it to Jose Querida; +but that is none of your business. When I saw the new moon on the +stump-pond last night I certainly did wish for Querida and a canoe. He +can sing very charmingly. + +"Now I suppose you want to know under what circumstances I have +permitted myself to wish for you. If you talk to a man about another man +he always attempts to divert the conversation to himself. Yes, he does. +And you are no better than other men, Louis--not exempt from their +vanities and cunning little weaknesses. Are you? + +"Well, then, as you admit that you are thoroughly masculine, I'll admit +that deep in a corner of my heart I've wished for you a hundred times. +The moon suggests Querida; but about everything suggests you. Now are +you flattered? + +"Anyway, I do want you. I like you, Louis! I like you, Mr. Neville! And +oh, Kelly, I worship you, without sentiment or any nonsense in reserve. +You are life, you are happiness, you are gaiety, you are inspiration, +you are contentment. + +"I wonder if it would be possible for you to come up here for a day or +two after your visit to your parents is ended. I'd adore it. You'd +probably hate it. Such food! Such beds! Such people! But--could +you--would you come--just to walk in the heavenly green with me? I +wonder. + +"And, Louis, I'd row you about on the majestic expanse of the +stump-pond, and we'd listen to the frogs. Can you desire anything more +romantic? + +"The trouble with you is that you're romantic only on canvas. Anyway, I +can't stir you to sentiment. Can I? True, I never tried. But if you come +here, and conditions are favourable, and you are so inclined, and I am +feeling lonely, nobody can tell what might happen in a flat scow on the +stump-pond. + +"To be serious for a moment, Louis, I'd really love to have you come. +You know I never before saw the real country; I'm a novice in the woods +and fields, and, somehow, I'd like to have you share my novitiate in +this--as you did when I first came to you. It is a curious feeling I +have about anything new; I wish you to experience it with me. + +"Rita is awake and exploring the box of Maillard's which is about +empty. Be a Samaritan and send me some assorted chocolates. Be a god, +and send me something to read--anything, please, from Jacobs to James. +There's latitude for you. Be a man, and send me yourself. You have no +idea how welcome you'd be. The chances are that I'd seize you and +embrace you. But if you're willing to run that risk, take your courage +in both hands and come. + +"Your friend, + +"VALERIE WEST." + +The second week of her sojourn she caught a small pickerel--the only +fish she had ever caught in all her life. And she tearfully begged the +yokel who was rowing her to replace the fish in its native element. But +it was too late; and she and Rita ate her victim, sadly, for dinner. + +At the end of the week an enormous box of bonbons came for her. Neither +she nor Rita were very well next day, but a letter from Neville did +wonders to restore abused digestion. + +Other letters, at intervals, cheered her immensely, as did baskets of +fruit and boxes of chocolates and a huge case of books of all kinds. + +"Never," she said to Rita, "did I ever hear of such an angel as Louis +Neville. When he comes the first of August I wish you to keep tight hold +of me, because, if he flees my demonstrations, I feel quite equal to +running him down." + +But, curiously enough, it was a rather silent and subdued young girl in +white who offered Neville a shy and sun-tanned hand as he descended from +the train and came forward, straw hat under one arm, to greet her. + +"How well you look!" he exclaimed, laughingly; "I never saw such a +flawless specimen of healthy perfection!" + +[Illustration: "'How well you look!' he exclaimed"] + +"Oh, I know I look like a milk-maid, Kelly; I've behaved like one, too. +Did you ever see such a skin? Do you suppose this sun-burn will ever +come off?" + +"Instead of snow and roses you're strawberries and cream," he +said--"and it's just as fetching, Valerie. How are you, anyway?" + +"Barely able to sit up and take nourishment," she admitted, demurely. +"... I don't think you look particularly vigorous," she added, more +seriously. "You are brown but thin." + +"Thin as a scorched pancake," he nodded. "The ocean was like a vast +plate of clam soup in which I simmered several times a day until I've +become as leathery and attenuated as a punctured pod of kelp.... Where's +the rig we depart in, Valerie?" he concluded, looking around the +sun-scorched, wooden platform with smiling interest. + +"I drove down to meet you in a buck-board." + +"Splendid! Is there room for my suit case?" + +"Plenty. I brought yards of rope." + +They walked to the rear of the station where buckboard and horse stood +tethered to a tree. He fastened his suit case to the rear of the +vehicle, swathing it securely in, fathoms of rope; she sprang in, he +followed; but she begged him to let her drive, and pulled on a pair of +weather-faded gloves with a business-like air which was enchanting. + +So he yielded seat and rusty reins to her; whip in hand, she steered the +fat horse through the wilderness of arriving and departing carriages of +every rural style and description--stages, surreys, mountain-waggons, +buck-boards--drove across the railroad track, and turned up a mountain +road--a gradual ascent bordered heavily by blackberry, raspberry, +thimble berry and wild grape, and flanked by young growths of beech and +maple set here and there with hemlock and white pine. But the +characteristic foliage was laurel and rhododendron--endless stretches +of the glossy undergrowth fringing every woodland, every diamond-clear +water-course. + +"It must be charming when it's in blossom," he said, drawing the sweet +air of the uplands deep into his lungs. "These streams look exceedingly +like trout, too. How high are we?" + +"Two thousand feet in the pass, Kelly. The hills are much higher. You +need blankets at night...." She turned her head and smilingly considered +him: + +"I can't yet believe you are here." + +"I've been trying to realise it, too." + +"Did you come in your favourite cloud?" + +"No; on an exceedingly dirty train." + +"You've a cinder mark on your nose." + +"Thanks." He gave her his handkerchief and she wiped away the smear. + +"How long can you stay?--Oh, don't answer! Please forget I asked you. +When you've got to go just tell me a few minutes before your +departure.... The main thing in life is to shorten unhappiness as much +as possible. That is Rita's philosophy." + +"Is Rita well?" + +"Perfectly--thanks to your bonbons. She doesn't precisely banquet on the +fare here--poor dear! But then," she added, philosophically, "what can a +girl expect on eight dollars a week? Besides, Rita has been spoiled. I +am not unaccustomed to fasting when what is offered does not interest +me." + +"You mean that boarding house of yours in town?" + +"Yes. Also, when mother and I kept house with an oil stove and two rooms +the odour of medicine and my own cooking left me rather indifferent to +the pleasures of Lucullus." + +"You poor child!" + +"Not at all to be pitied--as long as I had mother," she said, with a +quiet gravity that silenced him. + +Up, up, and still up they climbed, the fat horse walking leisurely, +nipping at blackberry leaves here, snatching at tender maple twigs +there. The winged mountain beauties--Diana's butterflies--bearing on +their velvety, blue-black pinions the silver bow of the goddess, flitted +ahead of the horse--celestial pilots to the tree-clad heights beyond. + +Save for the noise of the horse's feet and the crunch of narrow, +iron-tired wheels, the stillness was absolute under the azure splendour +of the heavens. + +"I am not yet quite at my ease--quite accustomed to it," she said. + +"To what, Valerie?" + +"To the stillness; to the remote horizons.... At night the vastness of +things, the height of the stars, fascinate me to the edge of uneasiness. +And sometimes I go and sit in my room for a while--to reassure +myself.... You see I am used to an enclosure--the walls of a room--the +walled-in streets of New York.... It's like suddenly stepping out of a +cellar to the edge of eternal space, and looking down into nothing." + +"Is that the way these rolling hillocks of Delaware County impress you?" +he asked, laughing. + +"Yes, Kelly. If I ever found myself in the Alps I believe the happiness +would so utterly over-awe me that I'd remain in my hotel under the bed. +What are you laughing at? _Voluptates commendat rarior usus_." + +"_Sit tua cura sequi, me duce tutus eris_!" he laughed, mischievously +testing her limit of Latin. + +"_Plus e medico quam e morbo periculi!_" she answered, saucily. + +"You cunning little thing!" he exclaimed: "_vix a te videor posse tenere +manus!_" + +"_Di melius, quam nos moneamus talia quenquam!_" she said, demurely; +"Louis, we are becoming silly! Besides, I probably know more Latin than +you do--as it was my mother's favourite relaxation to teach me to speak +it. And I imagine that your limit was your last year at Harvard." + +"Upon my word!" he exclaimed; "I never was so snubbed and patronised in +all my life!" + +"Beware, then!" she retorted, with an enchanting sideway glance: "_noli +me tangere!_" At the same instant he was aware of her arm in light, +friendly contact against his, and heard her musing aloud in deep +contentment: + +"Such perfect satisfaction to have you again, Louis. The world is a gray +void without the gods." + +And so, leisurely, they breasted the ascent and came out across the +height-of-land. Here and there a silvery ghost of the shorn forest +stood, now almost mercifully hidden in the green foliage of hard +wood--worthlessly young as yet but beautiful. + +From tree to tree flickered the brilliant woodpeckers--they of the solid +crimson head and ivory-barred wings. The great vermilion-tufted +cock-o'-the-woods called querulously; over the steel-blue stump-ponds +the blue kingfishers soared against the blue. It was a sky world of +breezy bushes and ruffled waters, of pathless fields and dense young +woodlands, of limpid streams clattering over greenish white rocks, +pouring into waterfalls, spreading through wild meadows set with iris +and pink azalea. + +"How is the work going, Louis?" she asked, glancing at him askance. + +"It's stopped." + +"_A cause de_--?" + +"_Je n'en sais rien, Valerie_." + +She flicked the harness with her whip, absently. He also leaned back, +thoughtfully intent on the blue hills in the distance. + +"Has not your desire to paint returned?" + +"No." + +"Do you know why?" + +"Partly. I am up against a solid wall. There is no thoroughfare." + +"Make one." + +"Through the wall?" + +"Straight through it." + +"Ah, yes"--he murmured--"but what lies beyond?" + +"It would spoil the pleasures of anticipation to know beforehand." + +He turned to her: "You are good for me. Do you know it?" + +"Querida said that, too. He said that I was an experience; and that all +good work is made up of experiences that concern it only indirectly." + +"Do you like Querida?" he asked, curiously. + +"Sometimes." + +"Not always?" + +"Oh, yes, always more or less. But sometimes"--she was silent, her dark +eyes dreaming, lips softly parted. + +"What do you mean by that?" he inquired, carelessly. + +"By what, Louis?" she asked, naively, interrupted in her day-dream. + +"By hinting--that sometimes you like Querida--more than at others?" + +"Why, I do," she said, frankly. "Besides, I don't hint things; I say +them." She had turned her head to look at him. Their eyes met in silence +for a few moments. + +"You are funny about Querida," she said. "Don't you like him?" + +"I have no reason to dislike him." + +"Oh! Is it the case of Sabidius? '_Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere +quare!_'" + +He laughed uneasily: "Oh, no, I think not.... You and he are such +excellent friends that I certainly ought to like him anyway." + +But she remained silent, musing; and on the edge of her upcurled lip he +saw the faint smile lingering, then fading, leaving the oval face almost +expressionless. + +So they drove past the one-story post office where a group of young +people stood awaiting the arrival of the stage with its battered mail +bags; past the stump-pond where Valerie had caught her first and only +fish, past a few weather-beaten farm houses, a white-washed church, a +boarding house or two, a village store, a watering-trough, and then +drove up to the wooden veranda where Rita rose from a rocker and came +forward with hand outstretched. + +"Hello, Rita!" he said, giving her hand a friendly shake. "Why didn't +you drive down with Valerie?" + +"I? That child would have burst into tears at such a suggestion." + +"Probably," said Valerie, calmly: "I wanted him for myself. Now that +I've had him I'll share him." + +She sprang lightly to the veranda ignoring Neville's offered hand with a +smile. A hired man took away the horse; a boy picked up his suit case +and led the way. + +"I'll be back in a moment," he said to Valerie and Rita. + +That evening at supper, a weird rite where the burnt offering was rice +pudding and the stewed sacrifice was prunes, Neville was presented to an +interesting assemblage of the free-born. + +There was the clerk, the drummer, the sales-lady, and ladies unsaleable +and damaged by carping years; city-wearied fathers of youngsters who +called their parents "pop" and "mom"; young mothers prematurely aged and +neglectful of their coiffure and shoe-heels; simpering maidenhood, acid +maidenhood, sophisticated maidenhood; shirt-waisted manhood, flippant +manhood, full of strange slang and double negatives unresponsively +suspicious manhood, and manhood disillusioned, prematurely tired, burnt +out with the weariness of a sordid Harlem struggle. + +Here in the height-of-land among scant pastures and the green charity +which a spindling second-growth spread over the nakedness of rotting +forest bones--here amid the wasted uplands and into this flimsy wooden +building came the rank and file of the metropolis in search of air, of +green, of sky, for ten days' surcease from toil and heat and the sad +perplexities of those with slender means. + +Neville, seated on the veranda with Valerie and Rita in the long summer +twilight, looked around him at scenes quite new to him. + +On the lumpy croquet ground where battered wickets and stakes awry +constituted the centre of social activity after supper, some young girls +were playing in partnership with young men, hatless, striped of shirt, +and very, very yellow of foot-gear. + +A social favourite, very jolly and corporeally redundant, sat in the +hammock fanning herself and uttering screams of laughter at jests +emanating from the boarding-house cut-up--a blonde young man with +rah-rah hair and a brier pipe. + +Children, neither very clean nor very dirty, tumbled noisily about the +remains of a tennis court or played base-ball in the dusty road. Ominous +sounds arose from the parlour piano, where a gaunt maiden lady rested +one spare hand among the keys while the other languidly pawed the music +of the "Holy City." + +Somewhere in the house a baby was being spanked and sent to bed. There +came the clatter of dishes from the wrecks of the rite in the kitchen, +accompanied by the warm perfume of dishwater. + +But, little by little the high stars came out, and the gray veil fell +gently over unloveliness and squalour; little by little the raucous +voices were hushed; the scuffle and clatter and the stringy noise of the +piano died away, till, distantly, the wind awoke in the woods, and very +far away the rushing music of a little brook sweetened the silence. + +Rita, who had been reading yesterday's paper by the lamplight which +streamed over her shoulder from the open parlour-window, sighed, stifled +a yawn, laid the paper aside, and drew her pretty wrap around her +shoulders. + +"It's absurd," she said, plaintively, "but in this place I become +horribly sleepy by nine o'clock. You won't mind if I go up, will you?" + +"Not if you feel that way about it," he said, smiling. + +"Oh, Rita!" said Valerie, reproachfully, "I thought we were going to row +Louis about on the stump-pond!" + +"I am too sleepy; I'd merely fall overboard," said Rita, simply, +gathering up her bonbons. "Louis, you'll forgive me, won't you? I don't +understand why, but that child never sleeps." + +They rose to bid her good night. Valerie's finger tips rested a moment +on Neville's sleeve in a light gesture of excuse for leaving him and of +promise to return. Then she went away with Rita. + +When she returned, the piazza was deserted except for Neville, who stood +on the steps smoking and looking out across the misty waste. + +"I usually go up with Rita," she said. "Rita is a dear. But do you know, +I believe she is not a particularly happy girl." + +"Why?" + +"I don't know why.... After all, such a life--hers and mine--is only +happy if you make it so.... And I don't believe she tries to make it so. +Perhaps she doesn't care. She is very young--and very pretty--too young +and pretty to be so indifferent--so tired." + +She stood on the step behind and above him, looking down at his back and +his well-set shoulders. They were inviting, those firm, broad, young +shoulders of his; and she laid both hands on them. + +"Shall I row you about in the flat-boat, Louis?" + +"I'll do the paddling--" + +"Not by any means. I like to row, if you please. I have cold cream and a +pair of gloves, so that I shall acquire no blisters." + +They walked together out to the road and along it, she holding to her +skirts and his arm, until the star-lit pond came into view. + +Afloat in the ancient, weedy craft he watched her slender strength +mastering the clumsy oars--watched her, idly charmed with her beauty and +the quaint, childish pleasure that she took in manoeuvring among the +shoreward lily pads and stumps till clear water was reached and the +little misty wavelets came slap! slap! against the bow. + +"If you were Querida you'd sing in an exceedingly agreeable tenor," she +observed. + +"Not being Querida, and labouring further under the disadvantage of a +barytone, I won't," he said. + +"Please, Louis." + +"Oh, very well--if you feel as romantic as that." And he began to sing: + + "My wife's gone to the country, + Hurrah! Hurrah!" + +"Louis! Stop it! Do you know you are positively corrupt to do such a +thing at such a time as this?" + +"Well, it's all I know, Valerie--" + +"I could cry!" she said, indignantly, and maintained a dangerous silence +until they drifted into the still waters of the outlet where the +starlight silvered the sedge-grass and feathery foliage formed a roof +above. + +Into the leafy tunnel they floated, oars shipped; she, cheek on hand, +watching the fire-flies on the water; he, rid of his cigarette, +motionless in the stern. + +After they had drifted half a mile she seemed disinclined to resume the +oars; so he crossed with her, swung the boat, and drove it foaming +against the silent current. + +On the return they said very little. She stood pensive, distraite, as he +tied the boat, then--for the road was dark and uneven--took his arm and +turned away beside him. + +"I'm afraid I haven't been very amusing company," he ventured. + +She tightened her arm in his--a momentary, gentle pressure: + +"I'm merely too happy to talk," she said. "Does that answer satisfy +you?" + +Touched deeply, he took her hand which rested so lightly on his +sleeve--a hand so soft and fine of texture--so cool and fresh and +slender that the youth and fragrance of it drew his lips to it. Then he +reversed it and kissed the palm. + +"Why, Louis," she said, "I didn't think you could be so sentimental." + +"Is that sentimental?" + +"Isn't it?" + +"It rather looks like it, doesn't it?" + +"Rather." + +"Did you mind?" + +"No.... Only--you and I--it seems--superfluous. I don't think anything +you do could make me like you more than I do." + +"You sweet little thing!" + +"No, only loyal, Kelly. I can never alter toward you." + +"What's that? A vow!" + +"Yes--of constancy and of friendship eternal." + +"'_Nomen amicitia est; nomen inane fides_!--Friendship is only a name; +constancy an empty title,'" he quoted. + +"Do you believe that?" + +"Constancy is an honest wish, but a dishonest promise," he said. "You +know it lies with the gods, Valerie." + +"So they say. But I know myself. And I know that, however I may ever +care for anybody else, it can never be at your expense--at the cost of +one atom of my regard for you. As I care for you now, so have I from the +beginning; so will I to the end; care more for you, perhaps; but never +less, Louis. And that I know." + +More deeply moved than he perhaps cared to be, he walked on slowly in +silence, measuring his step to hers. In the peace of the midnight world, +in the peace of her presence, he was aware of a tranquillity, a rest +that he had not known in weeks. Vaguely first, then uneasily, he +remembered that he had not known it since her departure, and shook off +the revelation with instinctive recoil--dismissed it, smiled at it to +have done with it. For such things could not happen. + +The woods were fragrant as they passed; a little rill, swelling from the +thicket of tangled jewel-weed, welled up, bubbling in the starlight. She +knelt down and drank from her cupped hands, and offered him the same +sweet cup, holding it fragrantly to his lips. + +And there, on their knees under the stars, he touched her full +child-like lips with his; and, laughing, she let him kiss her again--but +not a third time, swaying back from her knees to avoid him, then rising +lithely to her feet. + +"The poor nymph and the great god Kelly!" she said; "a new hero for the +pantheon: a new dryad to weep over. Kelly, I believe your story of your +golden cloud, now." + +"Didn't you credit it before?" + +"No." + +"But now that I've kissed you, you do believe it?" + +"Y-yes." + +"Then to fix that belief more firmly--" + +"Oh, no, you mustn't, Kelly--" she cried, her soft voice hinting of +hidden laughter. "I'm quite sure that my belief is very firmly fixed. +Hear me recite my creed. Credo! I believe that you are the great god +Kelly, perfectly capable of travelling about wrapped in a golden +cloud--" + +"You are mocking at the gods!" + +"No, I'm not. Who am I to affront Olympus?... Wh-what are you going to +do, Kelly? Fly to the sacred mount with me?" + +But she suffered his arm to remain around her waist as they moved slowly +on through the darkness. + +"How long are you going to stay? Tell me, Louis. I'm as tragically +curious as Pandora and Psyche and Bluebeard's wife, melted into the one +and eternal feminine." + +"I'm going to-morrow." + +"Oh-h," she said, softly. + +He was silent. They walked on, she with her head bent a little. + +"Didn't you want me to?" he asked at length. + +"Not if you care to stay.... I never want what those I care for are +indifferent about." + +"I am not indifferent. I think I had better go." + +"Is the reason important?" + +"I don't know, Valerie--I don't really know." + +He was thinking of this new and sweet familiarity--something suddenly +born into being under the wide stars--something that had not been a +moment since, and now was--something invoked by the vastness of earth +and sky--something confirmed by the wind in the forest. + +"I had better go," he said. + +Her silence acquiesced; they turned into the ragged lawn, ascended the +dew-wet steps; and then he released her waist. + +The hallways were dark and deserted as they mounted the stairs side by +side. + +"This is my door," she said. + +"Mine is on the next floor." + +"Then--good night, Louis." + +He took her hand in silence. After a moment she released it; laid both +hands lightly on his shoulders, lifted her face and kissed him. + +"Good night," she said. "You have made this a very happy day in my life. +Shall I see you in the morning?" + +"I'm afraid not. I left word to have a horse ready at daylight. It is +not far from that, now." + +"Then I shall not see you again?" + +"Not until you come to New York." + +"Couldn't you come back for a day? Querida is coming. Sammy and Harry +Annan are coming up over Sunday. Couldn't you?" + +"Valerie, dear, I _could_"--he checked himself; thought for a while +until the strain of his set teeth aroused him to consciousness of his +own emotion. + +Rather white he looked at her, searching for the best phrase--for it was +already threatening to be a matter of phrases now--of forced smiles--and +some breathing spot fit for the leisure of self-examination. + +"I'm going back to paint," he said. "Those commissions have waited long +enough." + +He strove to visualise his studio, to summon up the calm routine of the +old regime--as though the colourless placidity of the past could steady +him. + +"Will you need me?" she asked. + +"Later--of course. Just now I've a lot of men's figures to deal +with--that symbolical affair for the new court house." + +"Then you don't need me?" + +"No." + +She thought a moment, slim fingers resting on the knob of her door, +standing partly turned away from him. Then, opening her door, she +stepped inside, hesitated, looked back: + +"Good-bye, Louis, dear," she said, gently. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Neville had begun to see less and less of Valerie West. When she first +returned from the country in September she had come to the studio and +had given him three or four mornings on the portrait which he had begun +during the previous summer. But the painting of it involved him in +difficulties entirely foreign to him--difficulties born of technical +timidity of the increasing and inexplicable lack of self-confidence. And +deeply worried, he laid it aside, A dull, unreasoning anxiety possessed +him. Those who had given him commissions to execute were commencing to +importune him for results. He had never before disappointed any client. +Valerie could be of very little service to him in the big mural +decorations which, almost in despair, he had abruptly started. Here and +there, in the imposing compositions designed for the Court House, a +female figure, or group of figures, was required, but, in the main, male +figures filled the preliminary cartoons--great law-givers and +law-defenders of all ages and all lands, in robes and gowns of silks; in +armour, in skins, in velvet and ermine--men wearing doublet, jack-coat, +pourpoint; men in turban and caftan, men covered with mail of all +kinds--armour of leather, of fibre, of lacquer, of quilted silk, of +linked steel, Milanaise, iron cuirass; the emblazoned panoply of the +Mongol paladins; Timour Melek's greaves of virgin gold; men of all +nations and of all ages who fashioned or executed human law, from Moses +to Caesar, from Mohammed to Genghis Kahn and the Golden Emperor, from +Charlemagne to Napoleon, and down through those who made and upheld the +laws in the Western world, beginning with Hiawatha, creator of the +Iroquois Confederacy--the Great League. + +His studio was a confusion of silks, cut velvets, tapestries, +embroideries, carpets of the East, lay figures glittering with replicas +of priceless armour. Delicate fabrics trailed over chair and floor +almost under foot; inlaid and gem-hilted weapons, illuminated missals, +glass-cased papyri, gilded zones, filets, girdles, robes of fur, hoods, +wallets, helmets, hats, lay piled up, everywhere in methodical disorder. +And into and out of the studio passed male models of all statures, all +ages, venerable, bearded men, men in their prime, men with the +hard-hammered features and thick, sinewy necks of gladiators, men +slender and pallid as dreaming scholars, youths that might have worn the +gold-red elf-locks and the shoulder cloak of Venice, youth chiselled in +a beauty as dark and fierce as David wore when the mailed giant went +crashing earthward under the smooth round pebble from his sling. + +Valerie's turn in this splendid panoply was soon over. Even had she been +so inclined there was, of course, no place for her to visit now, no +place to sit and watch him among all these men. After hours, once or +twice, she came in to tea--to gossip a little with the old-time ease, +and barter with him epigram for jest, nonsense for inconsequence. Yet, +subtly--after she had gone home--she felt the effort. Either he or she +had imperceptibly changed; she knew not which was guilty; but she knew. + +Besides, she herself was now in universal demand--and in the furor of +her popularity she had been, from the beginning, forced to choose among +a very few with whom she personally felt herself at ease, and to whom +she had become confidently accustomed. Also, from the beginning, she had +not found it necessary to sit undraped for many--a sculptor or +two--Burleson and Gary Graves--Sam Ogilvy with his eternal mermaidens, +Querida--nobody else. The other engagements had been for costume or, at +most, for head and shoulders. Illustrators now clamoured for her in +modish garments of the moment--in dinner gown, ball gown, afternoon, +carriage, motor, walking, tennis, golf, riding costumes; poster artists +made her pretty features popular; photographs of her in every style of +indoor and outdoor garb decorated advertisements in the backs of monthly +magazines. She was seen turning on the water in model bathtubs, offering +the admiring reader a box of bonbons, demurely displaying a brand of +hosiery, recommending cold cream, baked beans, railroad routes, tooth +powder, and real-estate on Long Island. + +Her beauty, the innocent loveliness of her features, her dainty modest +charm, the enchanting outline and mould of her figure were beginning to +make her celebrated. Already people about town--at the play, in the +park, on avenue and street, in hotels and restaurants, were beginning to +recognise her, follow her with approving or hostile eyes, turn their +heads to watch her. + +Theatrical agents wrote her, making attractive offers for an engagement +where showgirls were the ornamental caryatids which upheld the three +tottering unities along Broadway. She also had chances to wear very +wonderful model gowns for next season at the Countess of Severn's new +dressmaking, drawing-rooms whither all snobdom crowded and shoved to get +near the trade-marked coronet, and where bewildering young ladies +strolled haughtily about all day long, displaying to agitated Gotham the +most startling gowns in the extravagant metropolis. + +She had other opportunities, too--such as meeting several varieties of +fashionable men of various ages--gentlemen prominently identified with +the arts and sciences--the art of killing time and the science of +enjoying the assassination. And some of these assorted gentlemen +maintained extensive stables and drove tandems, spikes, and fours; and +some were celebrated for their yachts, or motors, or prima-donnas, or +business acumen, or charitable extravagances.... Yes, truly, Valerie +West was beginning to have many opportunities in this generously +philanthropic world. And she was making a great deal of money--for +her--but nothing like what she might very easily have made. And she knew +it, young as she was. For it does not take very long to learn about such +things when a girl is attempting to earn her living in this altruistic +world. + +"She'll spread her wings and go one of these days," observed Archie +Allaire to Rita Tevis, who was posing as Psyche for one of his clever, +thinly brushed, high-keyed studies very much after the manner and +palette of Chaplin when they resembled neither Chartrain nor Zier, nor +any other artist temporarily in vogue. For he was an adaptable man, +facile, adroit, a master navigator in trimming sail to the fitful breeze +of popular favour. And his work was in great demand. + +"She'll be decorating the tonneau of some big touring car with crested +panels--and there'll be a bunch of orchids in the crystal holder, and a +Chow dog beside her, defying the traffic squad--" + +"No, she won't!" snapped Rita. "She's as likely to do that as she is to +dine with you again." + +Allaire, caught off his guard, scowled with unfeigned annoyance. +Repeated essays to ingratiate himself with Valerie had finally resulted +in a dinner at the Astor, and in her firm, polite, but uncompromising +declination of all future invitations from him, either to sit for him or +beside him under any circumstances and any conditions whatever. + +"So that's your opinion, is it, Rita?" he inquired, keeping his +light-blue eyes and his thin wet brush busy on his canvas. "Well, +sister, take it from muh, she thinks she's the big noise in the Great +White Alley; but they're giving her the giggle behind her back." + +"That giggle may be directed at you, Archie," observed Rita, scornfully; +"you're usually behind her back, you know, hoisting the C.Q.D." + +"Which is all right, too," he said, apparently undisturbed; "but when +she goes to Atlantic City with Querida--" + +"That is an utter falsehood," retorted Rita, calmly. "Whoever told you +that she went there with Querida, lied." + +"You think so?" + +"I know so! She went alone." + +"Then we'll let it go at that," said Allaire so unpleasantly that Rita +took fiery offence. + +"There is not a man living who has the right to look sideways at Valerie +West! Everybody knows it--Neville, Querida, Sam, John Burleson--even you +know it! If a man or two has touched her finger tips--her waist--her +lips, perhaps--no man has obtained more than that of her--dared more +than that! I have never heard that any man has ever even ventured to +offend her ears, unless"--she added with malice, "that is the reason +that she accepts no more invitations from you and your intimate +friends." + +Allaire managed to smile and continue to paint. But later he found use +for his palette knife--which was unusual in a painter as clever as he +and whose pride was in his technical skill with materials used and +applied _premier coup_. + +With October came the opening of many theatres; a premature gaiety +animated the hotels and restaurants; winter fabrics, hats, furs, gowns, +appeared in shops; the glittering windows along Fifth Avenue reflected +more limousines and fewer touring bodies passing. Later top hats +reappeared on street and in lobby; and when the Opera reopened, Long +Island, Jersey, and Westchester were already beginning to pour in +cityward, followed later by Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbour. The police +put on their new winter uniforms; furs were displayed in carriages, +automobiles, and theatres; the beauty of the florist's windows became +mellower, richer, and more splendid; the jewellery in the restaurants +more gorgeous. Gotham was beginning to be its own again, jacked up by +the Horse Show, the New Theatre, and the Opera; and by that energetic +Advertising Trust Company with its branches, dependencies, and mergers, +which is called Society, and which is a matter of eternal vigilance and +desperate business instead of the relaxation of cultivated security in +an accepted and acceptable order of things. + +Among other minor incidents, almost local in character, the Academy and +Society of American Artists opened its doors. And the exhibition +averaged as well as it ever will, as badly as it ever had averaged. +Allaire showed two portraits of fashionable women, done, this time, in +the manner of Zorn, and quite as clever on the streaky surface. Sam +Ogilvy proudly displayed another mermaid--Rita in_ the tub--and two +babies from photographs and "chic"--very bad; but as usual it was very +quickly marked sold. + +Annan had a portrait of his sister Alice, poorly painted and even +recognised by some of her more intimate friends. Clive Gail offered one +of his marines--waves splashing and dashing all over the canvas so +realistically that women instinctively stepped back and lifted their +skirts, and men looked vaguely around for a waiter--at least Ogilvy said +so. As for Neville, he had a single study to show--a full length--just +the back and head and the soft contour of limbs melting into a +luminously sombre background--a masterpiece in technical perfection, +which was instantly purchased by a wise and Western millionaire, and +which left the public staring but unmoved. + +But it was Jose Querida who dominated the whole show, flooding +everything with the splendour of his sunshine so that all else in the +same room looked cold or tawdry or washed out. His canvas, with its +superbly vigorous drawing, at once became the sensation of the +exhibition. Sunday supplements reproduced it with a photograph of +Querida looking amiably at a statuette of Venus which he held in his +long, tapering fingers; magazines tried to print it in two colours, in +three, in dozens, and made fireworks of it to Querida's inwardly +suppressed agony, and their own satisfaction. Serious young men wrote +"appreciations" about it; serious young women published instructive +discourses concerning it in the daily papers. Somebody in the valuable +columns of the _Tribune_ inquired whether Querida's painting was meant +to be symbolical; somebody in the _Nation_ said yes; somebody in the +_Sun_ said no; somebody in something or other explained its +psychological subtleties; somebody in something else screamed, "bosh!" + +Meanwhile the discussion was a god-send to fashionable diners-out and to +those cultivated leaders of society who prefer to talk through the Opera +and philharmonic. + +In what the educated daily press calls the "world of art" and the "realm +of literature," Querida's picture was discussed intelligently and +otherwise, but it _was_ discussed--from the squalid table d'hote, where +unmanicured genius punctures the air with patois and punches holes in it +with frenzied thumbs, to quiet, cultivated homes, where community of +taste restricts the calling lists--from the noisy studio, where pianos +and girls make evenings lively, to the austere bare boards or the velvet +elegance of studios where authority and preciousness, and occasionally +attainment, reside, and sometimes do not. + + _Cognatis maculis similis fera_. + +Neville was busy, but not too busy to go about in the evening among his +own kind, and among other kinds, too. This unexpected resurgance within +him of the social instinct, he made no attempt to account for to others +or to himself. He had developed a mental and physical restlessness, +which was not yet entirely nervous, but it had become sufficiently +itching to stir him out of fatigue when the long day's work had +ended--enough to drive him out of the studio--at first merely to roam +about at hazard through the livelier sections of the city. But to the +lonely, there is no lonelier place than a lively one; and the false +brilliancy and gaiety drove him back upon himself and into his lair +again, where for a while he remained meditating amid the sombre menace +of looming canvases and the heavy futility of dull-gold hangings, and +the mischievous malice of starlight splintering into a million +incandescent rainbow rays through the sheet of glass above. + +Out of this, after some days, he emerged, set in motion by his +increasing restlessness. And it shoved him in the direction of his kind +once more--and in the direction of other kinds. + +He dined at his sister's in Seventy-ninth Street near Madison Avenue; he +dined with the Grandcourts on Fifth Avenue; he decorated a few dances, +embellished an opera box now and then, went to Lakewood and Tuxedo for +week ends, rode for a few days at Hot Springs, frequented his clubs, +frequented Stephanie, frequented Maxim's. + +And all the while it seemed to him as though he were temporarily +enduring something which required patience, which could not last +forever, which must one day end in a great change, a complete +transformation for himself, of himself, of the world around him and of +his aim and hope and purpose in living. At moments, too, an odd +sensation of expectancy came over him--the sense of waiting, of +suppressed excitement. And he could not account for it. + +Perhaps it concerned the finishing of his great mural frieze for the +Court House--that is, the completion of the section begun in September. +For, when it was done, and cleared out of his studio, and had been set +in its place, framed by the rose and gold of marble and ormolu, a heavy +reaction of relief set in, leaving him listless and indifferent at +first, then idle, disinclined to begin the companion frieze; then again +restless, discontented, tired, and lonely in that strange solitude which +seemed to be growing wider and wider around him in rings of silence. Men +praised and lauded the great frieze; and he strove to respond, to +believe them--to believe in the work and in himself--strove to shake off +the terrible discouragement invading him, lurking always near to reach +out and touch him, slinking at his heels from street to street, from +room to room, skulking always just beyond the shadows that his reading +lamp cast. + +Without envy, yet with profound sadness, he stood and faced the +splendour of Querida's canvas. He had gone to Querida and taken him by +both of his thin, olive-skinned hands, and had praised the work with a +heart clean of anything unworthy. And Querida had laughed and displayed +his handsome teeth, and returned compliment for compliment.... And +Neville had seen, on his dresser, a photograph of Valerie, signed in her +long, girlish, angular hand--"To Jose from Valerie"; and the date was of +mid-winter. + +Christmas came; he sent Valerie some furs and a note, and, before he +went to Aiken to spend the holidays with his father and mother, he tried +to get her on the telephone--tried half a dozen times. But she was +either busy with business or with pleasure somewhere or other--and he +never found her at home; so he went South without hearing from her. + +[Illustration: "Querida had laughed ... and returned compliment for +compliment."] + +After he arrived, it is true, he received from her a cigarette case and +a very gay and frank Christmas greeting--happy and untroubled +apparently, brimming with gossip, inconsequences, and nonsense. In it +she thanked him for his letter and his gift, hoped he was happy with his +parents, and expressed an almost conventional desire to see him on his +return. + +Then his parents came back to New York with him. Two days before New +Year's Day they went to Spindrift House instead of sailing for Egypt, +where for some years now they had been accustomed to spend the winters +shivering at Shepherd's. And he and his sister and brother-in-law and +Stephanie dined together that evening. But the plans they made to +include him for a New Year's Eve home party remained uncertain as far as +he was concerned. He was vague--could not promise--he himself knew not +why. And they ceased to press him. + +"You're growing thin and white," said Lily. "I believe you're getting +painter's colic." + +"House painters acquire that," he said, smiling. "I'm not a member of +their union yet." + +"Well, you must use as much white lead as they do on those enormous +canvases of yours. Why don't you start on a trip around the world, +Louis?" + +He laughed. + +Later, after he had taken his leave, the suggestion reoccurred to him. +He took enough trouble to think about it the next morning; sent out his +servant to amass a number of folders advertising world girdling tours of +various attractions, read them while lunching, and sat and pondered. Why +not? It might help. Because he certainly began to need help. He had gone +quite stale. Querida was right; he ought to lie fallow. No ground could +yield eternally without rest. Querida was clever enough to know that; +and he had been stupid enough to ignore it--even disbelieve it, +contemptuous of precept and proverb and wise saw, buoyed above +apprehension by consciousness and faith in his own inexhaustible energy. + +And, after all, something really seemed to have happened to him. He +almost admitted it now for the first time--considered the proposition +silently, wearily, without any definite idea of analysing it, without +even the desire to solve it. + +Somehow, at some time, he had lost pleasure in his powers, faith in his +capacity, desire for the future. What had satisfied him yesterday, +to-day became contemptible. Farther than ever, farther than the +farthest, stars receded the phantoms of the great Masters. What they +believed and endured and wrought and achieved seemed now not only +hopelessly beyond any comprehension or attainment of his, but even +beyond hope of humble discipleship. + +And always, horribly, like an obsession, was creeping over him in these +days the conviction of some similarity between his work and the thin, +clear, clever brush-work of Allaire--with all its mastery of ways and +means, all its triumph over technical difficulties, all its tricks and +subtle appeals, and its falsity, and its glamour. + +Reflection, retrospection sickened him. It was snowing and growing late +when he wrote to a steamship agent making inquiries and asking for plans +of staterooms. + +Then he had tea, alone there in the early winter dusk, with the +firelight playing over Gladys who sat in the full heat of the blaze, +licking her only kitten, embracing its neck with one maternal paw. + +He dressed about six, intending to dine somewhere alone that New Year's +Eve. The somewhere, as usual, ended at the Syrinx Club--or rather at the +snowy portal--for there he collided with Samuel Strathclyde Ogilvy and +Henry Knickerbocker Annan, and was seized and compelled to perform with +them on the snowy sidewalk, a kind of round dance resembling a pow-wow, +which utterly scandalised the perfectly respectable club porter, and +immensely interested the chauffeurs of a row of taxicabs in waiting. + +"Come! Let up! This isn't the most dignified performance I ever assisted +at," he protested. + +"Who said it was dignified?" demanded Ogilvy. "We're not hunting for +dignity. Harry and I came here in a hurry to find an undignified +substitute for John Burleson. You're the man!" + +"Certainly," said Annan, "you're the sort of cheerful ass we need in our +business. Come on! Some of these taxis belong to us--" + +"Where do you want me to go, you crazy--" + +"Now be nice, Louis," he said, soothingly; "play pretty and don't kick +and scream. Burleson was going with us to see the old year out at the +Cafe Gigolette, but he's got laryngitis or some similar species of +pip--" + +"I don't want to go--" + +"You've got to, dear friend. We've engaged a table for six--" + +"Six!" + +"Sure, dearie. In the college of experience coeducation is a necessary +evil. Step lively, son!" + +"Who is going?" + +[Illustration: "'Me lord, the taxi waits.'"] + +"One dream, one vision, one hallucination--" he wafted three kisses +from his gloved finger tips in the general direction of Broadway--"and +you, and Samuel, and I. Me lord, the taxi waits!" + +"Now, Harry, I'm not feeling particularly cheerful--" + +"But you will, dear friend; you will soon be feeling the Fifty-seven +Varieties of cheerfulness. All kinds of society will be at the +Gigolette--good, bad, fashionable, semi-fashionable--all imbued with the +intellectual and commendable curiosity to see somebody 'start +something.' And," he added, modestly, "Sam and I are going to see what +can be accomplished--" + +"No; I won't go--" + +But they fell upon him and fairly slid him into a taxi, beckoning two +other similar vehicles to follow in procession. + +"Now, dearie," simpered Sam, "don't you feel better?" + +Neville laughed and smoothed out the nap of his top hat. + +They made three stops at three imposing looking apartment hotels between +Sixth Avenue and Broadway--The Daisy, The Gwendolyn, The Sans +Souci--where negro porters and hallboys were gorgeously conspicuous and +the clerk at the desk seemed to be unusually popular with the guests. +And after every stop there ensued a shifting of passengers in the +taxicabs, until Neville found himself occupying the rear taxi in the +procession accompanied by a lively young lady in pink silk and +swansdown--a piquant face and pretty figure, white and smooth and +inclined to a plumpness so far successfully contended with by her corset +maker. + +"I have on my very oldest gown," she explained with violet-eyed +animation, patting her freshly dressed hair with two smooth little hands +loaded with diamonds and turquoises. "I'm afraid somebody will start +something and then they'll throw confetti, and somebody will think it's +funny to aim champagne corks at you. So I've come prepared," she added, +looking up at him with a challenge to deny her beauty. "By the way," she +said, "I'm Mazie Gray. Nobody had the civility to tell you, did they?" + +"They said something.... I'm Louis Neville," he replied, smiling. + +"Are you?" she laughed. "Well, you may take it from mother that you're +as cute as your name, Louis. Who was it they had all framed up to give +me my cues? That big Burleson gentleman who'd starve if he had to laugh +for a living, wasn't it? Can you laugh, child?" + +"A few, Mazie. It is my only Sunday accomplishment." + +"Dearie," she added, correcting him. + +"It is my only accomplishment, dearie." + +"That will be about all--for a beginning!" She laughed as the cab +stopped at the red awning and Neville aided her to descend. + +Steps, vestibules, stairs, cloak-rooms were crowded with jolly, +clamouring throngs flourishing horns, canes, rattles, and dusters decked +with brilliant ribbons. Already some bore marks of premature encounters +with confetti and cocktails. + +Waiters and head-waiters went gliding and scurrying about, assigning +guests to tables reserved months in advance. Pages in flame-coloured and +gold uniforms lifted the silken rope that stretched its barrier between +the impatient crowd and the tables; managers verified offered +credentials and escorted laughing parties to spaces bespoken. + +Two orchestras, relieving each other, fiddled and tooted continuously; +great mounds of flowers, smilax, ropes of evergreens, multi-tinted +electroliers made the vast salon gay and filled it with perfume. + +Even in the beginning it was lively enough though not yet boisterous in +the city where all New York was dining and preparing for eventualities; +the eventualities being that noisy mid-winter madness which seizes the +metropolis when the birth of the New Year is imminent. + +It is a strange evolution, a strange condition, a state of mind not to +be logically accounted for. It is not accurate to say that the nicer +people, the better sort, hold aloof; because some of them do not. And in +this uproarious carnival the better sort are as likely to misbehave as +are the worse; and they have done it, and do it, and probably will +continue to say and do and tolerate and permit inanities in themselves +and in others that, at other moments, they would regard as +insanities--and rightly. + + +Around every table, rosily illuminated, laughter rang. White throats and +shoulders glimmered, jewels sparkled, the clear crystalline shock of +glasses touching glasses rang continual accompaniment to the music and +the breezy confusion of voices. + +Here and there, in premonition of the eventual, the comet-like passage +of streaming confetti was blocked by bare arms upflung to shield +laughing faces; arms that flashed with splendid jewels on wrist and +finger. + +Neville, coolly surveying the room, recognised many, responding to +recognition with a laugh, a gesture, or with glass uplifted. + +"Stop making goo-goos," cried Mazie, dropping her hand over his wrist. +"Listen, and I'll be imprudent enough to tell you the very latest +toast--" She leaned nearer, opening her fan with a daring laugh; but +Ogilvy wouldn't have it. + +"This is no time for single sentiment!" he shouted. "Everybody should +be perfectly plural to-night--everything should be plural, multiple, +diffuse, all embracing, general, polydipsiatic, polygynyatic, +polyandryatic!" + +[Illustration: Mazie Gray.] + +"What's polyandryatic?" demanded Mazie in astonishment. + +"It means everybody is everybody else's! I'm yours and you're mine but +everybody else owns us and we own everybody." + +"Hurrah!" shouted Annan. "Hear--hear! Where is the fair and total +stranger who is going to steal the first kiss from me? Somebody count +three before the rush begins--" + +A ball of roses struck him squarely on the mouth; a furious shower of +confetti followed. For a few moments the volleys became general, then +the wild interchange of civilities subsided, and the cries of laughter +died away and were lost in the loud animated hum which never ceased +under the gay uproar of the music. + +When they played the barcarole from Contes d'Hoffman everybody sang it +and rose to their feet cheering the beautiful prima donna with whom the +song was so closely identified, and who made one of a gay group at a +flower-smothered table. + +And she rose and laughingly acknowledged the plaudits; but they wouldn't +let her alone until she mounted her chair and sang it in solo for them; +and then the vast salon went wild. + +Neville, surveying the vicinity, recognised people he never dreamed +would have appeared in such a place--here a celebrated architect and his +pretty wife entertaining a jolly party, there a well-known lawyer and +somebody else's pretty wife; and there were men well known at +fashionable clubs and women known in fashionable sets, and men and women +characteristic of quieter sets, plainly a little uncertain and surprised +to find themselves there. And he recognised assorted lights of the +"profession," masculine and feminine; and one or two beautiful meteors +that were falling athwart the underworld, leaving fading trails of +incandescence in their jewelled wake. + +The noise began to stun him; he laughed and talked and sang with the +others, distinguishing neither his own voice nor the replies. For the +tumult grew as the hour advanced toward midnight, gathering steadily in +strength, in license, in abandon. + +And now, as the minute hands on the big gilded clock twitched nearer and +nearer to midnight, the racket became terrific, swelling, roaring into +an infernal din as the raucous blast of horns increased in the streets +outside and the whistles began to sound over the city from Westchester +to the Bay, from Long Island to the Palisades. + +Sheer noise, stupefying, abominable, incredible, unending, greeted the +birth of the New Year; they were dancing in circles, singing, cheering +amid the crash of glasses. Table-cloths, silken gowns, flowers were +crushed and trampled under foot; flushed faces looked into strange +faces, laughing; eyes strange to other eyes smiled; strange hands +exchanged clasps with hands unknown; the whirl had become a madness. + +And, suddenly, in its vortex, Neville saw Valerie West. Somebody had set +her on a table amid the silver and flowers and splintered crystal. Her +face was flushed, eyes and mouth brilliant, her gown almost torn from +her left shoulder and fluttering around the lovely arm in wisps and rags +of silk and lace. Querida supported her there. + +They pelted her with flowers and confetti, and she threw roses back at +everybody, snatching her ammunition from a great basket which Querida +held for her. + +Ogilvy and Annan saw her and opened fire on her with a cheer, and she +recognised them and replied with volleys of rosebuds--was in the act of +hurling her last blossom--caught sight of Neville where he stood with +Mazie on a chair behind him, her arms resting on his shoulders. And the +last rose dropped from her hand. + +Querida turned, too, inquiringly; recognised Neville; and for a second +his olive cheeks reddened; then with a gay laugh he passed his arm +around Valerie and, coolly facing the bombardment of confetti and +flowers, swung her from the table to the floor. + +A furious little battle of flowers began at his own table, but Neville +was already lost in the throng, making his way toward the door, pelted, +shouldered, blocked, tormented--but, indifferent, unresponsive, forcing +his path to the outer air. + +Once or twice voices called his name, but he scarcely heard them. Then a +hand caught at his; and a breathless voice whispered: + +"Are you going?" + +"Yes," he said, dully. + +"Why?" + +"I've had enough--of the New Year." + +Breathing fast, the colour in her face coming and going, she stood, +vivid lips parted, regarding him. Then, in a low voice: + +"I didn't know you were to be here, Louis." + +"Nor I. It was an accident." + +"Who was the--girl--" + +"What girl?" + +"She stood behind you with her hands on your shoulders." + +"How the devil do I know," he said, savagely--"her name's +Mazie--something--or--other." + +"Did you bring her?" + +"Yes. Did Querida bring _you_?" he asked, insolently. + +[Illustration: "And the last rose dropped from her hand."] + +She looked at him in a confused, bewildered way--laid her hand on his +sleeve with an impulse as though he had been about to strike her. + +He no longer knew what he was doing in the sudden surge of unreasoning +anger that possessed him; he shook her hand from his sleeve and turned. + +And the next moment, on the stairs, she was beside him again, slender, +pale, close to his shoulder, descending the great staircase beside him, +one white-gloved hand resting lightly within his arm. + +Neither spoke. At the cloak-room she turned and looked at him--stood a +moment slowly tearing the orchids from her breast and dropping the +crushed petals underfoot. + +A maid brought her fur coat--his gift; a page brought his own coat and +hat. + +"Will you call a cab?" + +He turned and spoke to the porter. Then they waited, side by side, in +silence. + +When the taxicab arrived he turned to give the porter her address, but +she had forestalled him. And he entered the narrow vehicle; and they sat +through the snowy journey in utter silence until the cab drew up at his +door. + +Then he said: "Are you not going home?" + +"Not yet." + +They descended, stood in the falling snow while he settled with the +driver, then entered the great building, ascended in the elevator, and +stepped out at his door. + +He found his latch-key; the door swung slowly open on darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +An electric lamp was burning in the hallway; he threw open the +connecting doors of the studio where a light gleamed high on the +ceiling, and stood aside for her to pass him. + +She stepped across the threshold into the subdued radiance, stood for a +moment undecided, then: + +"Are you coming in?" she asked, cheerfully, quite aware of his +ill-temper. "Because if you are, you may take off my coat for me." + +He crossed the threshold in silence, and divested her of the fur garment +which was all sparkling with melting snow. + +"Do let's enjoy the firelight," she said, turning out the single ceiling +lamp; "and please find some nice, big crackly logs for the fire, +Kelly!--there's a treasure!" + +His frowning visage said: "Don't pretend that it's all perfectly +pleasant between us"; but he turned without speaking, cleared a big +arm-chair of its pile of silks, velvets, and antique weapons, and pushed +it to the edge of the hearth. Every movement he made, his every attitude +was characterised by a sulky dignity which she found rather funny, now +that the first inexplicable consternation of meeting him had subsided. +And already she was wondering just what it was that had startled her; +why she had left the cafe with him; why _he_ had left; why he seemed to +be vexed with her. For her conscience, in regard to him, was perfectly +clear and serene. + +"Now the logs, Kelly, dear," she said, "the kind that catch fire in a +second and make frying-pan music, please." + +He laid three or four logs of yellow birch across the bed of coals. The +blaze caught swiftly, mounting in a broad sheet of yellow flame, making +their faces brilliant in the darkness; and the tall shadows leaped +across floor and wall and towered, wavering above them from the ruddy +ceiling. + +"Kelly!" + +"What?" + +"I wish you a Happy New Year." + +"Thank you. I wish you the same." + +"Come over here and curl up on the hearth and drop your head back on my +knees, and tell me what is the trouble--you sulky boy!" + +He did not appear to hear her. + +"Please?--" with a slight rising inflection. + +"What is the use of pretending?" he said, shortly. + +"Pretending!" she repeated, mimicking him delightedly. Then with a +clear, frank laugh: "Oh, you great, big infant! The idea of _you_ being +the famous painter Louis Neville! I wish there was a nursery here. I'd +place you in it and let you pout!" + +"That's more pretence," he said, "and you know it." + +"What silly things you do say, Louis! As though people could find life +endurable if they did not pretend. Of course I'm pretending. And if a +girl pretends hard enough it sometimes comes true." + +"What comes true?" + +"Ah!--you ask me too much.... Well, for example, if I pretend I don't +mind your ill-temper it _may_ come true that you will be amiable to me +before I go home." + +There was no smile from him, no response. The warmth of the burning logs +deepened the colour in her cold cheeks. Snow crystals on her dark hair +melted into iris-rayed drops. She stretched her arms to the fire, and +her eyes fell on Gladys and her kitten, slumbering, softly embraced. + +"Oh, do look, Kelly! How perfectly sweet and cunning! Gladys has her +front paws right around the kitten's neck." + +Impulsively she knelt down, burying her face in the fluffy heap; the +kitten partly opened its bluish eyes; the mother-cat stretched her legs, +yawned, glanced up, and began to lick the kitten, purring loudly. + +For a moment or two the girl caressed the drowsy cats, then, rising, she +resumed her seat, sinking back deeply into the arm-chair and casting a +sidelong and uncertain glance at Neville. + +The flames burned steadily, noiselessly, now; nothing else stirred in +the studio; there was no sound save the ghostly whisper of driving snow +blotting the glass roof above. + +Her gaze wandered over the silken disorder in the studio, arrested here +and there as the firelight gleamed on bits of armour--on polished +corselet and helmet and the tall hilts of swords. Then she looked upward +where the high canvas loomed a vast expanse of gray, untouched except +for the brushed-in outlines of men in shadowy processional. + +She watched Neville, who had begun to prowl about in the disorder of +the place, stepping over trailing velvets, avoiding manikins armed +cap-a-pie, moving restlessly, aimlessly. And her eyes followed his +indecision with a smile that gradually became perplexed and then a +little troubled. + +For even in the uncertain firelight she was aware of the change in his +face--of features once boyish and familiar that seemed now to have +settled into a sterner, darker mould--a visage that was too lean for his +age--a face already haunted of shadows; a mature face--the face of a man +who had known unhappiness. + +He had paused, now, head lifted, eyes fixed on vast canvas above. And +for a long while he stood there leaning sideways against a ladder, +apparently oblivious of her. + +Time lagged, halted--then sped forward, slyly robbing him of minutes of +which his senses possessed no record. But minutes had come and gone +while he stood there thinking, unconscious of the trick time played +him--for the fire was already burning low again and the tall clock in +the shadows pointed with stiff and ancient hands to the death of another +hour and the birth of yet another; and the old-time bell chimed +impartially for both with a shift and slide of creaking weights and +wheels. + +He lifted his head abruptly and looked at Valerie, who lay curled up in +her chair, eyes closed, dark lashes resting on her cheeks. + +As he passed her chair and returned to place more logs on the fire she +opened her eyes and looked up at him. The curve of her mouth grew softly +humorous. + +"I'd much prefer my own bed," she said, "if this is all you have to say +to me." + +"Had you anything to say to me?" he asked, unsmiling. + +"About what, Kelly, dear?" + +"God knows; I don't." + +"Listen to this very cross and cranky young man!" she exclaimed, sitting +up and winking her eyes in the rushing brilliancy of the blaze. "He is +neither a very gracious host, nor a very reasonable one; nor yet +particularly nice to a girl who left a perfectly good party for an hour +with him." + +She stole a glance at him, and her gaze softened: + +"Perhaps," she said aloud to herself, "he is not really very cross; +perhaps he is only tired--or in trouble. Otherwise his voice and manners +are scarcely pardonable--even by me." + +He stood regarding the flames with narrowing gaze for a few moments, +then, hands in his pockets, walked over to his chair once more and +dropped into it. + +A slight flush stole into her cheeks; but it went as it came. She rose, +crossed to where he sat and stood looking down at him. + +"What _is_ the matter?" + +"With me?" in crude pretence of surprise. + +"Of course. I am happy enough. What troubles _you_?" + +"Absolutely nothing." + +"Then--what troubles _us_?" she persisted. "What has gone wrong between +us, Kelly, dear? Because we mustn't let it, you know," she added, +slowly, shaking her head. + +"Has anything gone wrong with us?" he asked, sullenly. + +"Evidently. I don't know what it is. I'm keeping my composure and +controlling my temper until I find out. You know what that dreadful +temper of mine can be?" She added, smiling: "Well, then, please beware +of it unless you are ready to talk sensibly. Are you?" + +"What is it you wish me to say?" + +"How perfectly horrid you can be!" she exclaimed, "I never knew you +could be like this? Do you want a girl to go on her knees to you? I care +enough for our friendship to do it--but I won't!" + +Her mood was altering: + +"You're a brute, Kelly, to make me miserable. I was having such a good +time at the Gigolette when I suddenly saw you--your expression--and--I +don't even yet know why, but every bit of joy went out of everything for +me--" + +"_I_ was going out, too," he said, laughing. "Why didn't you remain? +Your gay spirits would have returned untroubled after my departure." + +There was an ugly sound to his laugh which checked her, left her silent +for a moment. Then: + +"Did you disapprove of me?" she asked, curiously. "Was that it?" + +"No. You can take care of yourself, I fancy." + +"I have had to," she said, gravely. + +He was silent. + +She added with a light laugh not perfectly genuine: + +"I suppose I am experiencing with you what all mortals experience when +they become entangled with the gods." + +"What is that?" + +"Unhappiness. All the others experienced it--Proserpine, Helen, poor +little Psyche--every nice girl who ever became mixed up with the +Olympians had a bad half hour of it sooner or later. And to-night the +great god Kelly has veiled his face from me, and I'm on my knees at his +altar sacrificing every shred of sweet temper to propitiate him. Now, +mighty and sulky oracle! _what_ has happened to displease you?" + +He said: "If there seems to be any constraint--if anything has altered +our pleasant intimacy, I don't know what it is any more than you do, +Valerie." + +"Then there _is_ something!" + +"I have not said so." + +"Well, then, I say so," she said, impatiently. "And I say, also, that +whatever threatens our excellent understanding ought to be hunted out +and destroyed. Shall we do it together, Louis?" + +He said nothing. + +"Come to the fire and talk it over like two sensible people. Will you? +And please pull that sofa around to the blaze for me. Thank you. This, +Kelly, is our bed of justice." + +She drew the cushions under her head and nestled down in the full warmth +of the hearth. + +"_Le lit de justice_," she repeated, gaily. "Here I preside, possessing +inquisitorial power and prerogative, and exercising here to-night the +high justice, the middle, and the low. Now hale before me those skulking +knaves, Doubt, Suspicion, and Distrust, and you and I will make short +work of them. Pull 'em along by their ears, Louis! This Court means to +sit all night if necessary!" + +[Illustration: "'How perfectly horrid you can be!' she exclaimed."] + +She laughed merrily, raised herself on one arm, and looked him straight +in the eyes: + +"Louis!" + +"What?" + +"Do you doubt me?" + +"Doubt what?" + +"That my friendship for you is as warm as the moment it began?" + +He said, unsmiling: "People meet as we met, become friends--very good, +very close friends--in that sort of friendship which is governed by +chance and environment. The hazard that throws two people into each +other's company is the same hazard that separates them. It is not +significant either way.... I liked you--missed you.... Our companionship +had been pleasant." + +"Very," she said, quietly. + +He nodded: "Then chance became busy; your duties led you elsewhere--mine +set me adrift in channels once familiar--" + +"Is that all you see in our estrangement?" + +"What?" he asked, abruptly. + +"Estrangement," she repeated, tranquilly. "That is the real word for it. +Because the old intimacy is gone. And now we both admit it." + +"We have had no opportunity to be together this--" + +"We once _made_ opportunities." + +"We have had no time--" + +"We halted time, hastened it, dictated to it, ruled it--once." + +"Then explain it otherwise if you can." + +"I am trying to--with God's help. Will you aid me, too?" + +Her sudden seriousness and emotion startled him. + +"Louis, if our estrangement is important enough for us to notice at all, +it is important enough to analyse, isn't it?" + +"I have analysed the reasons--" + +"Truthfully?" + +"I think so--as far as I have gone--" + +"Let us go farther, then--to the end." + +"But there is no particular significance--" + +"Isn't there?" + +"I don't know. After all, _why_ did you leave that cafe? Why did _I_? +Why are we together, now--here in your studio, and utterly miserable at +one o'clock of the New Year's morning? For you and I are unhappy and ill +at ease; and you and I are talking at cross purposes, groping, evading, +fencing with words. If there is nothing significant in the friendship we +gave each other from the hour we met--it is not worth the self-deception +you are content with." + +"Self-deception!" he repeated, flushing up. + +"Yes. Because you do care more for me than what you have said about our +friendship indicates.... And I care more for your regard than you seem +willing to recognise--" + +"I am very glad to--" + +"Listen, Kelly. Can't we be honest with ourselves and with each other? +Because--our being here, now--my leaving that place in the way I +did--surprises me. I want to find out why there has been confusion, +constraint, somewhere--there is _something_ to clear up between us--I +have felt that, vaguely, at moments; now I _know_ it. Let us try to find +out what it is, what is steadily undermining our friendship." + +"Nothing, Valerie," he said, smiling. "I am as fond of you as ever. Only +you have found time for other friendships. Your life has become more +interesting, fuller, happier--" + +"Not happier. I realise that, now, as you say it." She glanced around +her; swiftly her dark eyes passed over things familiar. "I was happier +here than I have ever been in all my life," she said. "I love this +room--and everything in it. You know I do, Louis. But I couldn't very +well come here when you were using all those models. If you think that I +have neglected you, it is a silly and unfair thing to think. If I did +neglect you I couldn't help it. And you didn't seem to care." + +He shrugged and looked up at the outlined men's figures partly covering +the canvas above them. Her gaze followed his, then again she raised +herself on one elbow and looked around her, searching with quick eyes +among the shadows. + +"Where is my portrait?" + +"Behind the tapestry." + +"Have you abandoned it?" + +"I don't know." + +Her smile became tremulous: "Are you going to abandon the original, +too?" + +"I never possessed very much of you, did I?" he said, sulkily; and +looked up at her quick exclamation of anger and surprise. + +"What do you mean? You had all of me worth having--" there came a quick +catch, in her throat--"you had all there is to me--confidence in you, +gratitude for your friendship, deep, happy response to your every +mood--my unquestioning love and esteem--" + +"Your _love_?" he repeated, with an unpleasant laugh. + +"What else do you call it?" she demanded, fiercely. "Is there a name +less hackneyed for it? If there is, teach it to me. Yet--if ever a girl +truly loved a man, I have loved you. And I do love you, dearly, +honestly, cleanly, without other excuse than that, until to-night, you +have been sweet to me and made me happier and better than I have ever +been." + +He sprang to his feet confused, deeply moved, suddenly ashamed of his +own inexplicable attitude that seemed to be driving him into a +bitterness that had no reason. + +"Valerie," he began, but she interrupted him: + +"I ask you, Kelly, to look back with me over our brief and happy +companionship--over the hours together, over all you have done for me--" + +"Have you done less for me?" + +"I? What have I done?" + +"You say you have given me--love." + +"I have--with all my heart and soul. And, now that I think of it, I have +given you more--I have given you all that goes with love--an unselfish +admiration; a quick sympathy in your perplexities; quiet solicitude in +your silences, in your aloof and troubled moments." She leaned nearer, a +brighter flush on either cheek: + +"Louis, I have given you more than that; I gave you my bodily self for +your work--gave it to _you_ first of all--came first of all to you--came +as a novice, ignorant, frightened--and what you did for me then--what +you were to me at that time--I can never, never forget. And that is why +I overlook your injustice to me now!" + +She sat up on the sofa's edge balanced forward between her arms, fingers +nervously working at the silken edges of the upholstery. + +"You ought never to have doubted my interest and affection," she said. +"In my heart I have not doubted yours--never--except to-night. And it +makes me perfectly wretched." + +"I did not mean--" + +"Yes, you did! There was something about you--your expression--when you +saw me throwing roses at everybody--that hurt me--and you meant to." + +"With Querida's arm around you, did you expect me to smile?" he asked, +savagely. + +"Was it _that_?" she demanded, astonished. + +"What?" + +"Querida's arm--" She hesitated, gazing straight into his eyes in utter +amazement. + +"It wasn't _that_?" she repeated. "Was it?... You never cared about such +petty things, did you? _Did_ you? _Do_ you care? Because I never dreamed +that you cared.... What has a little imprudence--a little silly +mischief--to do with our friendship? _Has_ it anything to do with it? +You've never said anything--and ... I've flirted--I've been spoons on +men--you knew it. Besides, I've nearly always told you. I've told you +without thinking it could possibly matter to you--to _you_ of all men! +What do you care what I do?--as long as I am to you what I have always +been?" + +"I--_don't_--care." + +"Of course not. How _can_ you?" She leaned nearer, dark and curious gaze +searching his. Then, with a nervous laugh voicing the impossible--"_You_ +are not in love with me--that way. Are you?" she asked, scarcely +realising what she was saying. + +"No," he said, forcing a smile. "Are you with _me_?" + +She flushed scarlet: + +"Kelly, I never thought--dreamed--hoped--" Her voice caught in her +throat a moment; "I--such a matter has not occurred to me." She looked +at him partly dismayed, partly confused, unable now to understand +him--or even herself. + +"You know--that kind of love--" she began--"_real_ love, never has +happened to me. You didn't think _that_, did you?--because--just because +I did flirt a little with you? It didn't mean anything serious--anything +of _that_ kind. Kelly, dear, _have_ you mistaken me? Is _that_ what +annoys you? Were you afraid I was silly enough, mad enough to--to really +think of you--in that way?" + +"No." + +"Oh, I was sure you couldn't believe it of me. See how perfectly frank +and honest I have been with you. Why, you never were sentimental--and a +girl isn't unless a man begins it! You never kissed me--except last +summer when you were going away--and both of our hearts were pretty +full--" + +"Wait," he said, suddenly exasperated, "are you trying to make me +understand that you haven't the slightest real emotion concerning +me--concerning me as a _man_--like other men?" + +She looked at him, still confused and distressed, still determined he +should not misunderstand her: + +"I don't know what you mean; truly I don't. I'm only trying to make you +believe that I am not guilty of thinking--wishing--of pretending that in +our frank companionship there lay concealed anything of--of deeper +significance--" + +"Suppose--it were true?" he said. + +"But it is _not_ true!" she retorted angrily--and looked up, caught his +gaze, and her breath failed her. + +"Suppose it were true--for example," he repeated. "Suppose you did find +that you or I were capable of--deeper--" + +"Louis! Louis! Do you realise what you are saying to me? Do you +understand what you are doing to the old order of things between us--to +the old confidences, the old content, the happiness, the--the innocence +of our life together? _Do_ you? Do you even _care_?" + +"Care? Yes--I care." + +"Because," she said, excitedly, "if it is to be--_that_ way with +you--I--I can not help you--be of use to you here in the studio as I +have been.... _Am_ I taking you too seriously? You do not mean that you +_really_ could ever love me, or I you, do you? You mean that--that you +just want me back again--as I was--as we were--perfectly content to be +together. That is what you mean, isn't it, Kelly, dear?" she asked, +piteously. + +He looked into her flushed and distressed face: + +"Yes," he said, "that is exactly what I mean, Valerie--you dear, +generous, clear-seeing girl! I just wanted you back again; I miss you; I +am perfectly wretched without you, and that is all the trouble. Will you +come?" + +"I--don't--know. Why did you say such a thing?" + +"Forgive me, dear!" + +She slowly shook her head: + +"You've made me think of--things," she said. "You shouldn't ever have +done it." + +"Done what, Valerie?" + +"What you did--what you said--which makes it impossible for me to--to +ever again be what I have been to you--even pose for you--as I did--" + +"You mean that you won't pose for me any more?" he asked, aghast. + +"Only--in costume." She sat on the edge of the sofa, head averted, +looking steadily down at the hearth below. There was a pink spot on +either cheek. + +He thought a moment. "Valerie," he said, "I believe we had better finish +what we have only begun to say." + +"Is there--anything more?" she asked, unsmiling. + +"Ask yourself. Do you suppose things can be left this way between +us--all the happiness and the confidence--and the innocence, as you say, +destroyed?" + +"What more is there to say," she demanded, coldly. + +"Shall--I--say it?" he stammered. + +She looked up, startled, scarcely recognising the voice as his--scarcely +now recognising his altered features. + +"What _is_ the matter with you?" she exclaimed nervously. + +"Good God," he said, hoarsely, "can't you see I've gone quite mad about +you!" + +"About--_me_!" she repeated, blankly. + +"About _you_--Valerie West. Can't you see it? Didn't you know it? Hasn't +it been plain enough to you--even if it hasn't been to me?" + +"Louis! Louis!" she cried in hurt astonishment, "what have you said to +me?" + +"That I'm mad about you, and I am. And it's been so--for +months--always--ever since the very first! I must have been crazy not to +realise it. I've been fool enough not to understand what has been the +matter. Now you know the truth, Valerie!" He sprang to his feet, took a +short turn or two before the hearth, then, catching sight of her face in +its colourless dismay and consternation: + +"I suppose you don't care a damn for me--that way!" he said, with a +mirthless laugh. + +"What!" she whispered, bewildered by his violence. Then: "Do you mean +that you are in _love_ with me!" + +"Utterly, hopelessly--" his voice broke and he stood with hands +clenched, unable to utter a word. + +She sat up very straight and pale, the firelight gleaming on her neck +and shoulders. After a moment his voice came back to his choked throat: + +"I love you better than anything in the world." he said in unsteady +tones. "And _that_ is what has come between us. Do you think it is +something we had better hunt down and destroy--this love that has come +between us?" + +"Is--is that _true_?" she asked in the awed voice of a child. + +"It seems to be," he managed to say. She slid stiffly to the floor and +stood leaning against the sofa's edge, looking at him wide-eyed as a +schoolgirl. + +"It never occurred to you what the real trouble might be," he asked, +"did it?" + +She shook her head mechanically. + +"Well, we know now. Your court of inquiry has brought out the truth +after all." + +She only stared at him, fascinated. No colour had returned to her +cheeks. + +He began to pace the hearth again, lip caught savagely between his +teeth. + +"You are no more amazed than I am to learn the truth," he said. "I never +supposed it was that.... And it's been that from the moment I laid eyes +on you. I know it now. I'm learning, you see--learning not to lie to +myself or to you.... Learning other things, too--God knows what--if this +is love--this utter--suffering--" + +He swung on his heel and began to pace the glimmering tiles toward her: + +"Discontent, apathy, unhappiness, loneliness--the hidden ache which +merely meant I missed you when you were not here--when I was not beside +you--all these are now explained before your bed of justice. Your court +has heard the truth to-night; and you, Valerie, are armed with +justice--the high, the middle, and the low." + +Pale, mute, she raised her dark eyes and met his gaze. + +In the throbbing silence he heard his heart heavy in his breast; and now +she heard her own, rapid, terrifying her, hurrying her she knew not +whither. And again, trembling, she covered her eyes with her hands. + +"Valerie," he said, in anguish, "come back to me. I will not ask you to +love me if you cannot. Only come back. I--can't--endure it--without +you." + +There was no response. + +He stepped nearer, touched her hands, drew them from her face--revealing +its pallid loveliness--pressed them to his lips, to his face; drew them +against his own shoulders--closer, till they fell limply around his +neck. + +She uttered a low cry: "Louis!" Then: + +"It--it is all over--with us," she faltered. "I--had never thought of +you--this way." + +"Can you think of me this way, now?" + +"I--can't help it." + +"Dearest--dearest--" he stammered, and kissed her unresponsive lips, her +throat, her hair. She only gazed silently at the man whose arms held +her tightly imprisoned. + +Under the torn lace and silk one bare shoulder glimmered; and he kissed +it, touched the pale veins with his lips, drew the arm from his neck and +kissed elbow, wrist, and palm, and every slender finger; and still she +looked at him as though dazed. A lassitude, heavy, agreeable to endure, +possessed her. She yielded to the sense of fatigue--to the confused +sweetness that invaded her; every pulse in her body beat its assent, +every breath consented. + +"Will you try to care for me, Valerie?" + +"You know I will." + +"With all your heart?" he asked, trembling. + +"I do already." + +"Will you give yourself to me?" + +There was a second's hesitation; then with a sudden movement she dropped +her face on his shoulder. After a moment her voice came, very small, +smothered: + +"What did you mean, Louis?" + +"By what--my darling?" + +"By--my giving myself--to you?" + +"I mean that I want you always," he said in a happy, excited voice that +thrilled her. But she looked up at him, still unenlightened. + +"I don't quite understand," she said--"but--" and her voice fell so low +he could scarcely hear it--"I am--not afraid--to love you." + +"Afraid!" He stood silent a moment, then: "What did you think I meant, +Valerie? I want you to _marry_ me!" + +She flushed and laid her cheek against his shoulder, striving to think +amid the excited disorder of her mind, the delicious bewilderment of +her senses--strove to keep clear one paramount thought from the heavenly +confusion that was invading her, carrying her away, sweeping her into +paradise--struggled to keep that thought intact, uninfluenced, and cling +to it through everything that threatened to overwhelm her. + +Her slim hands resting in his, her flushed face on his breast, his words +ringing in her ears, she strove hard, hard! to steady herself. Because +already she knew what her decision must be--what her love for him had +always meant in the days when that love had been as innocent as +friendship. And even now there was little in it except innocence; little +yet of passion. It was still only a confused, heavenly surprise, +unvexed, and, alas! unterrified. The involuntary glimpse of any future +for it or for her left her gaze dreamy, curious, but unalarmed. The +future he had offered her she would never accept; no other future +frightened her. + +"Louis?" + +"Dearest," he whispered, his lips to hers. + +"It is sweet of you, it is perfectly dear of you to wish me to be +your--wife. But--let us decide such questions later--" + +"Valerie! What do you mean?" + +"I didn't mean that I don't love you," she said, tremulously. "I believe +you scarcely understand how truly I do love you.... As a matter of fact, +I have always been in love with you without knowing it. You are not the +only fool," she said, with a confused little laugh. + +"You darling!" + +She smiled again uncertainly and shook her head: + +"I truly believe I have always been in love with you.... Now that I +look back and consider, I am sure of it." She lifted her pretty head and +gazed at him, then with a gay little laugh of sheer happiness almost +defiant: "You see I am not afraid to love you," she said. + +"Afraid? Why should you be?" he repeated, watching her expression. + +"Because--I am not going to marry you," she announced, gaily. + +He stared at her, stunned. + +"Listen, you funny boy," she added, framing his face with her hands and +smiling confidently into his troubled eyes: "I am not afraid to love you +because I never was afraid to face the inevitable. And the inevitable +confronts me now. And I know it. But I will not marry you, Louis. It is +good of you, dear of you to ask it. But it is too utterly unwise. And I +will not." + +"Why?" + +"Because," she said, frankly, "I love you better than I do myself." She +forced another laugh, adding: "Unlike the gods, whom I love I do not +destroy." + +"That is a queer answer, dear--" + +"Is it? Because I say I love you better than I do myself? Why, Louis, +all the history of my friendship for you has been only that. Have you +ever seen anything selfish in my affection for you?". + +"Of course not, but--" + +"Well, then! There isn't one atom of it in my love for you, either. And +I love you dearly--dearly! But I'm not selfish enough to marry you. +Don't scowl and try to persuade me, Louis, I've a perfectly healthy mind +of my own, and you know it--and it's absolutely clear on that subject. +You must be satisfied with what I offer--every bit of love that is in +me--" She hesitated, level eyed and self-possessed, considering him +with the calm gaze of a young goddess: + +"Dear," she went on, slowly, "let us end this marriage question once and +for all. You can't take me out of my world into yours without suffering +for it. Because your world is full of women of your own kind--mothers, +sisters, relatives, friends.... And all your loyalty, all your tact, all +_their_ tact and philosophy, too, could not ease one moment in life for +you if I were unwise enough to go with you into that world and let you +try to force them to accept me." + +"_I tell you_," he began, excitedly, "that they must accept--" + +"Hush!" she smiled, placing her hand gently across his lips; "with all +your man's experience you are only a man; but I _know_ how it is with +women. I have no illusions, Louis. Even by your side, and with the +well-meant kindness of your family to me, you would suffer; and I have +not the courage to let you--even for love's sake." + +"You are entirely mistaken--" he broke out; but she silenced him with a +pretty gesture, intimate, appealing, a little proud. + +"No, I am not mistaken, nor am I likely to deceive myself that any woman +of your world could ever consider me of it--or could ever forgive you +for taking me there. And that means spoiling life for you. And I will +not!" + +"Then they can eliminate me, also!" he said, impatiently. + +"What logic! When I have tried _so_ hard to make you understand that I +will not accept any sacrifice from you!" + +"It is no sacrifice for me to give up such a--" + +"You say very foolish and very sweet things to me, Louis, but I could +not love you enough to make up to you your unhappiness at seeing me in +your world and not a part of it. Ah, the living ghosts of that world, +Louis! Yet _I_ could endure it for myself--a woman can endure anything +when she loves; and find happiness, too--if only the man she loves is +happy. But, for a man, the woman is never entirely sufficient. My +position in your world would anger you, humiliate you, finally embitter +you. And I could not live if sorrow came to you through me." + +"You are bringing sorrow on me with every word--" + +"No, dear. It hurts for a moment. Then wisdom will heal it. You do not +believe what I say. But you must believe this, that through me you shall +never know real unhappiness if I can prevent it." + +"And I say to you, Valerie, that I want you for my wife. And if my +family and my friends hesitate to receive you, it means severing my +relations with them until they come to their senses--" + +"_That_ is _exactly_ what I will not do to your life, Louis! _Can't_ you +understand? Is your mother less dear to you than was mine to me? I will +_not_ break your heart! I will not humiliate either you or her; I will +not ask her to endure--or any of your family--or one man or woman in +that world where you belong.... I am too proud--and too merciful to +you!" + +"I am my own master!" he broke out, angrily-- + +"I am my own mistress--and incidentally yours," she added in a low +voice. + +"Valerie!" + +"Am I not?" she asked, quietly. + +"How can you say such a thing, child!" + +"Because it is true--or will be. Won't it?" She lifted her clear eyes to +his, unshrinking--deep brown wells of truth untroubled by the shallows +of sham and pretence. + +His face burned a deep red; she confronted him, slender, calm eyed, +composed: "I am not the kind of woman who loves twice. I love you so +dearly that I will not marry you. That is settled. I love you so deeply +that I can be happy with you unmarried. And if this is true, is it not +better for me to tell you? I ask nothing except love; I give all I +have--myself." + +She dropped her arms, palms outward, gazing serenely at him; then +blushed vividly as he caught her to him in a close embrace, her +delicate, full lips crushed to his. + +"Dearest--dearest," he whispered, "you will change your ideas when you +understand me better--" + +"I can love you no more than I do. Could I love you more if I were your +wife?" + +"Yes, you wilful, silly child!" + +She laughed, her lips still touching his. "I don't believe it, Louis. I +_know_ I couldn't. Besides, there is no use thinking about it." + +"Valerie, your logic and your ethics are terribly twisted--" + +"Perhaps. All I know is that I love you. I'd rather talk of that--" + +"Than talk of marrying me!" + +"Yes, dear." + +"But you'd make me so happy, so proud--" + +"You darling! to say so. Think so always, Louis, because I promise to +make you happy, anyway--" + +He had encircled her waist with one arm, and they were slowly pacing the +floor before the hearth, she with her charming young head bent, eyes +downcast, measuring her steps to his. + +She said, thoughtfully: "I have my own ideas concerning life. One of +them is to go through it without giving pain to others. To me, the only +real wickedness is the wilful infliction of unhappiness. That covers all +guilt.... Other matters seem so trivial in comparison--I mean the forms +and observances--the formalism of sect and creed.... To me they mean +nothing--these petty laws designed to govern those who are willing to +endure them. So I ignore them," she concluded, smilingly; and touched +her lips to his hand. + +"Do you include the marriage law?" he asked, curiously. + +"In our case, yes.... I don't think it would do for everybody to ignore +it." + +"You think we may, safely?" + +"Don't you, Louis?" she asked, flushing. "It leaves you free in your own +world." + +"How would it leave you?" + +She looked up, smiling adorably at his thought of her: + +"Free as I am now, dearest of men--free to be with you when you wish for +me, free to relieve you of myself when you need that relief, free to +come and go and earn my living as independently as you gain yours. It +would leave me absolutely tranquil in body and mind...." She laid her +flushed face against his. "Only my heart would remain fettered. And +that is now inevitable." + +He kissed her and drew her closer: + +"You are so very, very wrong, dear. The girl who gives herself without +benefit of clergy walks the earth with her lover in heavier chains than +ever were forged at any earthly altar." + +She bent her head thoughtfully; they paced the floor for a while in +silence. + +Presently she looked up: "You once said that love comes unasked and goes +unbidden. Do vows at an altar help matters? Is divorce more decent +because lawful? Is love more decent when it has been officially and +clerically catalogued?" + +"It is safer." + +"For whom?" + +"For the community." + +"Perhaps." She considered as she timed her slow pace to his: + +"But, Louis, I can't marry you and I love you! What am I to do? Live out +life without you? Let you live out life without me? When my loving you +would not harm you or me? When I love you dearly--more dearly, more +deeply every minute? When life itself is--is beginning to be nothing in +this world except you? What are we to do?" + +And, as he made no answer: + +"Dear," she said, hesitating a little, "I am perfectly unconscious of +any guilt in loving you. I am glad I love you. I wish to be part of you +before I die. I wish it more than anything in the world! How can an +unselfish girl who loves you harm you or herself or the world if she +gives herself to you--without asking benefit of clergy and the bureau +of licenses?" + +Standing before the fire, her head resting against his shoulder, they +watched the fading embers for a while in silence. Then, irresistibly +drawn by the same impulse, they turned toward one another, trembling: + +"I'll marry you that way--if it's the only way," he said. + +"It is the--only way." + +She laid a soft hand in his; he bent and kissed it, then touched her +mouth with his lips. + +"Do you give yourself to me, Valerie?" + +"Yes." + +"From this moment?" he whispered. + +Her face paled. She stood resting her cheek on his shoulder, eyes +distrait thinking. Then, in a voice so low and tremulous he scarce could +understand: + +"Yes, _now_," she said, "I--give--myself." + +He drew her closer: she relaxed in his embrace; her face, white as a +flower, upturned to his, her dark eyes looking blindly into his. + +There was no sound save the feathery rush of snow against the panes--the +fall of an ember amid whitening ashes--a sigh--silence. + +Twice logs fell from the andirons, showering the chimney with sparks; +presently a little flame broke out amid the debris, lighting up the +studio with a fitful radiance; and the single shadow cast by them +wavered high on wall and ceiling. + +His arms were around her; his lips rested on her face where it lay +against his shoulder. The ruddy resurgence of firelight stole under the +lashes on her cheeks, and her eyes slowly unclosed. + +Standing there gathered close in his embrace, she turned her head and +watched the flame growing brighter among the cinders. Thought, which had +ceased when her lips met his in the first quick throb of passion, +stirred vaguely, and awoke. And, far within her, somewhere in confused +obscurity, her half-stunned senses began groping again toward reason. + +"Louis!" + +"Dearest one!" + +"I ought to go. Will you take me home? It is morning--do you realise +it?" + +She lifted her head, cleared her eyes with one slender wrist, pushing +back the disordered hair. Then gently disengaging herself from his arms, +and still busy with her tumbled hair, she looked up at the dial of the +ancient clock which glimmered red in the firelight. + +"Morning--and a strange new year," she said aloud, to herself. She moved +nearer to the clock, watching the stiff, jerking revolution of the +second hand around its lesser dial. + +Hearing him come forward behind her, she dropped her head back against +him without turning. + +"Do you see what Time is doing to us?--Time, the incurable, killing us +by seconds, Louis--eating steadily into the New Year, devouring it hour +by hour--the hours that we thought belonged to us." She added, musingly: +"I wonder how many hours of the future remain for us." + +He answered in a low voice: + +"That is for you to decide." + +"I know it," she murmured. She lifted one ringless hand and still +without looking at him, pressed the third finger backward against his +lips. + +"So much for the betrothal," she said. "My ring-finger is consecrated." + +"Will you not wear any ring?" he asked. + +"No. Your kiss is enough." + +"Yet--if we are--are--" + +"Engaged?" she suggested, calmly. "Yes, call it that. I really am +engaged to give myself to you--_ex cathedra--extra muros_." + +"When?" he said under his breath. + +"I don't know.... I must think. A girl who is going to break all +conventions ought to have time to consider the consequences--" She +smiled, faintly--"a little time to prepare herself for the--the great +change.... I think we ought to remain engaged for a while--don't you?" + +"Dearest!" he broke out, pleadingly, "the old way _is_ the best way! I +cannot bear to take you--to have you promise yourself without formality +or sanction--" + +"But I have already consented, Louis. _Volenti non fit injuria_," she +added with a faint smile. "_Voluntas non potest cogi_--dearest--dearest +of lovers! I love you dearly for what you offer me--I adore you for it. +And--_how_ long do you think you ought to wait for me?" + +She disengaged herself from his arm, walked slowly toward the tall old +clock, turned her back to it and faced him with clear level eyes. After +a moment she laughed lightly: + +"Did ever an engaged gentleman face the prospect of impending happiness +with such a long face as this suitor of mine is wearing!" + +His voice broke in the protest wrung from his lips. + +"You _must_ be my wife. I tell you! For God's sake marry me and let the +future take care of itself!" + +"You say so many sweet, confusing, and foolish things to me, Louis, +that while you are saying them I almost believe them. And then that +clear, pitiless reasoning power of mine awakens me; and I turn my gaze +inward and read written on my heart that irrevocable law of mine, that +no unhappiness shall ever come to you through me." + +Her face, sweetly serious, brightened slowly to a smile. + +"Now I am going home, monsieur--home to think over my mad and incredible +promise to you ... and I'm wondering whether I'll wake up scared to +death.... Daylight is a chilly shower-bath. No doubt at all that I'll be +pretty well frightened over what I've said and done to-night.... Louis, +dear, you simply _must_ take me home this very minute!" She came up to +him, placed both hands on his shoulders, kissed him lightly, looked at +him for a moment, humorously grave: + +"Some day," she said, "a big comet will hit this law-ridden, +man-regulated earth--or the earth will slip a cog and go wabbling out of +its orbit into interstellar space and side-wipe another planet--or it +will ultimately freeze up like the moon. And who will care then _how_ +Valerie West loved Louis Neville?--or what letters in a forgotten +language spelled 'wife' and what letters spelled 'mistress'? After all, +I am not afraid of words. Nor do I fear what is in my heart. God reads +it as I stand here; and he can see no selfishness in it. So if merely +loving you all my life--and proving it--is an evil thing to do, I shall +be punished; but I'm going to do it and find out what celestial justice +really thinks about it." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Valerie was busy--exceedingly busy arranging matters, in view of the +great change impending. + +She began by balancing her check book, comparing stubs with cancelled +checks, adding and verifying sums total, filing away paid bills and +paying the remainder--a financial operation which did not require much +time, but to which she applied herself with all the seriousness of a +wealthy man hunting through a check book which will not balance, for a +few pennies that ought to be his. + +For since she had any accounts at all to keep, she had kept them with +method and determination. Her genius for order was inherent: even when +she possessed nothing except the clothes she wore, she had always kept +them in perfect condition. And now that her popularity in business gave +her a bank balance and permitted some of the intimate little luxuries +that make for a woman's self-respect, a perfect passion for order and +method possessed her. + +The tiny bedroom which she inhabited, and the adjoining bathroom, were +always immaculate. Every week she made an inventory of her few but +pretty garments, added or subtracted from her memorandum, went over her +laundry list, noted and laid aside whatever clothing needed repairs. + +Once a week, too, she inspected her hats, foot-wear, furs; dusted the +three rows of books, emptied and cleaned the globe in which a solitary +goldfish swam, goggling his eyes in the sunshine, and scrubbed the +porcelain perching pole on which her parrot sat all day in the bathroom +window making limited observations in French, Spanish, and English, and +splitting red peppers and dried watermelon seeds with his heavy curved +beak. He was a gorgeous bird, with crimson and turquoise blue on him, +and a capacity for deviltry restrained only by a silver anklet and +chain, gifts from Querida, as was also the parrot. + +So Valerie, in view of the great change impending, began to put her +earthly house in order--without any particular reason, however, because +the great change would not affect her quarters or her living in them. +Nor could she afford to permit it to interfere with her business career +for which perfect independence was necessary. + +She had had it out with Neville one stormy afternoon in January, +stopping in for tea after posing for John Burleson's Psyche fountain +ordered by Penrhyn Cardemon. She had demanded from Neville acquiescence +in her perfect freedom of action, absolute independence; had modestly +requested non-interference in her business affairs and the liberty to +support herself. + +"There is no other way, Louis," she explained very sweetly. "I do not +think I am going to lose any self-respect in giving myself to you--but +there would not be one shred of it left to cover me if I were not as +free as you are to make the world pay me fairly for what I give it." + +And, another time, she had said to him: "It is better not to tell me all +about your personal, private, and financial affairs--better that I do +not tell you about mine. Is it necessary to burst into financial and +trivial confidences when one is in love? + +"I have an idea that that is what spoils most marriages. To me there is +a certain respectability in reticence when a girl is very much in love. +I would no more open my personal and private archives in all their +petty disorder to your inspection than I would let you see me +dress--even if we had been married for hundreds of years." + +[Illustration: "She began by balancing her check book."] + +And still, on another occasion, when he had fought her for hours in an +obstinate determination to make her say she would marry him--and when, +beaten, chagrined, baffled, he had lost his temper, she won him back +with her child-like candour and self-control. + +"Your logic," he said, "is unbaked, unmature, unfledged. It's +squab-logic, I tell you, Valerie; and it is not very easy for me to +listen to it." + +"I'm afraid that I am not destined to be entirely easy for you, dear, +even with love as the only tie with which to bind you. The arbitrary +laws of a false civilisation are going to impose on you what you think +are duties and obligations to me and to yourself--until I explain them +away. You must come to me in your perplexity, Louis, and give me a +chance to remind you of the basic and proven proposition that a girl is +born into this world as free as any man, and as responsible to herself +and to others; and that her title to her own individuality and +independence--her liberty of mind, her freedom to give and accept, her +capability of taking care of herself, her divine right of considering, +re-considering, of meeting the world unafraid--is what really ought to +make her lovable." + +He had answered: "What rotten books have you been reading?" And it +annoyed her, particularly when he had asked her whether she expected to +overturn, with the squab-logic of twenty years, the formalisms of a +civilisation several thousand years old. He had added: + +"The runways of wild animals became Indian paths; the Indian paths +became settlers' roads, and the roads, in time, city streets. But it was +the instinct of wild creatures that surveyed and laid out the present +highways of our reasoning civilisation. And I tell you, Valerie, that +the old ways are the best, for on them is founded every straight highway +of modern thought and custom." + +She considered: + +"Then there is only one way left--to see you no more." + +He had thought so, too, infuriated at the idea; and they had passed a +very miserable and very stormy afternoon together, which resulted in her +crying silently on the way home; and in a sleepless night for two; and +in prolonged telephone conversation at daybreak. But it all ended with a +ring at his door-bell, a girl in furs all flecked with snow, springing +swiftly into his studio; a moment's hesitation--then the girl and her +furs in his arms, her cold pink cheeks against his face--a brief moment +of utter happiness--for she was on her way to business--a swift, silent +caress, then eyes searching eyes in silent promise--in reluctant +farewell for an hour or two. + +But it left him to face the problems of the day with a new sense of +helplessness--the first confused sensation that hers was the stronger +nature, the dominant personality--although he did not definitely +understand this. + +Because, how could he understand it of a young girl so soft, so +yielding, so sweet, so shy and silent in the imminence of passion when +her consenting lips trembled and grew fragrant in half-awakened response +to his. + +How could he believe it--conscious of what he had made of himself +through sheer will and persistent? How could he credit it--remembering +what he already stood for in the world, where he stood, how he had +arrived by the rigid road of self-denial; how he had mounted, steadily, +undismayed, unperturbed, undeterred by the clamour of envy, of +hostility, unseduced by the honey of flattery? + +Upright, calm, self-confident, he had forged on straight ahead, +following nobody--battled steadily along the upward path until--out of +the void, suddenly he had come up against a blank wall. + +That wall which had halted, perplexed, troubled, dismayed, terrified him +because he was beginning to believe it to be the boundary which marked +his own limitations, suddenly had become a transparent barrier through +which he could see. And what he saw on the other side was an endless +vista leading into infinity. But the path was guarded; Love stood +sentinel there. And that was what he saw ahead of him now, and he knew +that he might pass on if Love willed it--and that he would never care to +pass on alone. But that he _could_ not go forward, ignoring Love, +neither occurred to him nor would he have believed it if it had. Yet, at +times, an indefinable unease possessed him as though some occult +struggle was impending for which he was unprepared. + +That struggle had already begun, but he did not know it. + +On the contrary all his latent strength and brilliancy had revived, +exquisitely virile; and the new canvas on which he began now to work +blossomed swiftly into magnificent florescence. + +A superb riot of colour bewitched the entire composition; never had his +brushes swept with such sun-tipped fluency, never had the fresh +splendour of his hues and tones approached so closely to convincing +himself in the hours of fatigue and coldly sober reaction from the +auto-intoxication of his own facility. + +That auto-intoxication had always left his mind and his eye steady and +watchful, although drugged--like the calm judgment of the intoxicated +opportunist at the steering wheel of a racing motor. And a race once run +and ended, a deliberate consideration of results usually justified the +pleasure of the pace. + +Yet that mysterious something which some said he lacked, had not yet +appeared. That _something_, according to many, was an elusive quality +born of a sympathy for human suffering--an indefinable and delicate bond +between the artist and his world--between a master who has suffered, and +all humanity who understands. + +The world seemed to recognise this subtle bond between themselves and +Querida's pictures. Yet in the pictures there was never any sadness. Had +Querida ever suffered? Was it in that olive-skinned, soft-voiced young +man to suffer?--a man apparently all grace and unruffled surface and +gentle charm--a man whose placid brow remained smooth and untroubled by +any line of perplexity or of sorrow. + +And as Neville studied his own canvas coolly, logically, with an +impersonal scrutiny that almost amounted to hostility, he wondered what +it was in Querida's work that still remained absent in his. He felt its +absence but he could not define what it was that was absent, could not +discover the nature of it. He really began to feel the lack of it in his +work, but he searched his canvas and his own heart in vain for any +vacuum unfilled. + +[Illustration: "He stood before it, searching in it for any hint of +that elusive and mysterious _something_"] + +Then, too, had he himself not suffered? What had that restless, +miserable winter meant, if it had not meant sorrow? He _had_ +suffered--blindly it is true until the truth of his love for Valerie had +suddenly confronted him. Yet that restless pain--and the intense emotion +of their awakening--all the doubts, all the anxieties--the wonder and +happiness and sadness in the imminence of that strange future impending +for them both--had altered nothing in his work--brought into it no new +quality--unless, as he thought, it had intensified to a dazzling +brilliancy the same qualities which already had made his work famous. + +"It's all talk," he said to himself--"it's sentimental jargon, precious +twaddle--all this mysterious babble about occult quality and humanity +and sympathy. If Jose Querida has the capacity of a chipmunk for mental +agony, I've lost my bet that he hasn't." + +And all the time he was conscious that there _was_ something about +Querida's work which made that work great; and that it was not in his +own work, and that his own work was not great, and never had been great. + +"But it will be," he said rather grimly to himself one day, turning with +a shrug from his amazing canvas and pulling the unfinished portrait of +Valerie into the cold north light. + +For a long while he stood before it, searching in it for any hint of +that elusive and mysterious _something_, and found none. + +Moreover there was in the painting of this picture a certain candour +amounting to stupidity--an uncertainty--a naive, groping sort of brush +work. It seemed to be technically, almost deliberately, muddled. + +There was a tentative timidity about it that surprised his own technical +assurance--almost moved him to contempt. + +What had he been trying to do? For what had he been searching in those +slow, laborious, almost painful brush strokes--in that clumsy groping +for values, in the painstaking reticence, the joyless and mathematical +establishment of a sombre and uninspiring key, in the patient plotting +of simpler planes where space and quiet reigned unaccented? + +"Lord!" he said, biting his lip. "I've been stung by the microbe of the +precious! I'll be talking Art next with both thumbs and a Vandyke +beard." + +Still, through his self-disgust, a sensation of respect for the canvas +at which he was scowling, persisted. Nor could he account for the +perfectly unwelcome and involuntary idea that there was, about the +half-finished portrait, something almost dignified in the very candour +of its painting. + +John Burleson came striding in while he was still examining it. He +usually came about tea time, and the door was left open after five +o'clock. + +"O-ho!" he said in his big, unhumorous voice, "what in hell and the name +of Jimmy Whistler have we here?" + +"Mud," said Neville, shortly--"like Mr. Whistler's." + +"He was muddy--sometimes," said John, seriously, "but _you_ never were +until this." + +"Oh, I know it, Johnny. Something infected me. I merely tried to do what +isn't in me. And this is the result. When a man decides he has a +mission, you can never tell what fool thing he'll be guilty of." + +"It's Valerie West, isn't it?" demanded John, bluntly. + +"She won't admire you for finding any resemblance," said Neville, +laughing. + +The big sculptor rubbed his big nose reflectively. + +"After all," he said, "what is so bad about it, Kelly?" + +"Oh, everything." + +"No, it isn't. There's something about it that's--different--and +interesting--" + +"Oh, shut up, John, and fix yourself a drink--" + +"Kelly, I'm telling you that it isn't bad--that there's something +terribly solid and sincere about this beginning--" + +He looked around with a bovine grunt as Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan came +mincing in: "I say, you would-be funny fellows!--come over and tell +Kelly Neville that he's got a pretty good thing here if he only has the +brains to develop it!" + +Neville lighted a cigarette and looked on cynically as Ogilvy and Annan +joined Burleson on tiptoe, affecting exaggerated curiosity. + +"I think it's rotten," said Annan, after a moment's scrutiny; "don't +you, Sam?" + +Ogilvy, fists thrust deep into the pockets of his painting jacket, eyed +the canvas in silence. + +"_Don't_ you?" repeated Annan. "Or is it a masterpiece beyond my vulgar +ken?" + +"Well--no. Kelly was evidently trying to get at something new--work out +some serious idea. No, I don't think it's rotten at all. I rather like +it." + +"It looks too much like her; that's why it's rotten," said Annan. "Thank +God I've a gift for making pretty women out of my feminine clients, +otherwise I'd starve. Kelly, you haven't made Valerie pretty enough. +That's the trouble. Besides, it's muddy in spots. Her gown needs +dry-cleaning. But my chief criticism is the terrible resemblance to the +original." + +"Ah-h, what are you talking about!" growled Burleson; "did you ever see +a prettier girl than Valerie West?" + +Ogilvy said slowly: "She's pretty--to look at in real life. But, +somehow, Kelly has managed here to paint her more exactly than we have +really ever noticed her. That's Valerie's face and figure all right; and +it's more--it reflects what is going on inside her head--all the +unbaked, unassimilated ideas of immaturity whirring in a sequence which +resembles logic to the young, but isn't." + +"What do you mean by such bally stuff?" demanded Burleson, bluntly. + +Annan laughed, but Ogilvy said seriously: + +"I mean that Kelly has painted something interesting. It's a fascinating +head--all soft hair and delicious curves, and the charming indecision of +immature contours which ought some day to fall into a nobler +firmness.... It's as interesting as a satire, I tell you. Look at that +perfectly good mouth and its delicate sensitive decision with a hint of +puritanical primness in the upper lip--and the full, sensuous under lip +mocking the upper and giving the lie to the child's eyes which are still +wide with the wonder of men and things. And there's something of an +adolescent's mystery in the eyes, too--a hint of languor where the bloom +of the cheek touches the lower lid--and those smooth, cool, little +hands, scarcely seen in the shadow--did you ever see more purity and +innocence--more character and the lack of it--painted into a pair of +hands since Van Dyck and Whistler died?" + +Neville, astonished, stood looking incredulously at the canvas around +which the others had gathered. + +Burleson said: "There's something honest and solid about it, anyway; +hanged if there isn't." + +"Like a hen," suggested Ogilvy, absently. + +"Like a hen?" repeated Burleson. "What in hell has a hen got to do with +the subject?" + +"Like _you_, then, John," said Annan, "honest, solid, but totally +unacquainted with the finer phases of contemporary humour--" + +"I'm as humorous as anybody!" roared Burleson. + +"Sure you are, John--just as humorously contemporaneous as anybody of +our anachronistic era," said Ogilvy, soothingly. "You're right; there's +nothing funny about a hen." + +"And here's a highball for you, John," said Neville, concocting a huge +one on the sideboard. + +"And here are two charming ladies for you, John," added Sam, as Valerie +and Rita Tevis entered the open door and mockingly curtsied to the +company. + +"We've dissected _your_ character," observed Annan to Valerie, pointing +to her portrait. "We know all about you now; Sam was the professor who +lectured on you, but you can blame Kelly for turning on the +searchlight." + +"What search-light?" she asked, pivotting from Neville's greeting, +letting her gloved hand linger in his for just a second longer than +convention required. + +"Harry means that portrait of you I started last year," said Neville, +vexed. "He pretends to find it full of psychological subtleties." + +"Do you?" inquired Valerie. "Have you discovered anything horrid in my +character?" + +"I haven't finished looking for the character yet," said Sam with an +impudent grin. "When I find it I'll investigate it." + +"Sam! Come here!" + +He came carefully, wincing when she took him by the generous lobes of +both ears. + +"Now _what_ did you say?" + +"Help!" he murmured, contritely; "will no kind wayfarer aid me?" + +"Answer me!" + +"I only said you were beautifully decorative but intellectually +impulsive--" + +"No, answer me, Sam!" + +"Ouch! _I_ said you had a pair of baby eyes and an obstinate mouth and +an immature mind that came to, conclusions before facts were properly +assimilated. In other words I intimated that you were afflicted with +incurable femininity and extreme youth," he added with satisfaction, +"and if you tweak my ears again I'll kiss you!" + +She let him go with a last disdainful tweak, gracefully escaping his +charge and taking refuge behind Neville who was mixing another highball +for Annan. + +"This is a dignified episode," observed Neville, threatening Ogilvy with +the siphon. + +"Help me make tea, Sam," coaxed Valerie. "Bring out the table; that's an +exceedingly nice boy. Rita, you'll have tea, too, won't you, dear?" + +Unconsciously she had come to assume the role of hostess in Neville's +studio, even among those who had been familiar there long before Neville +ever heard of her. + +Perfectly unaware herself of her instinctive attitude, other people +noticed it. For the world is sharp-eyed, and its attitude is always +alert, ears pricked forward even when its tail wags good-naturedly. + +Ogilvy watched her curiously as she took her seat at the tea table. +Then he glanced at Neville; but could not make up his mind. + +It would be funny if there was anything between Valerie and +Neville--anything more than there ever had been between the girl and +dozens of her men friends. For Ogilvy never allowed himself to make any +mistake concerning the informality and freedom of Valerie West in her +intimacies with men of his kind. She was a born flirt, a coquette, +daring, even indiscreet; but that ended it; and he knew it; and so did +every man with whom she came in contact. + +Yet--and he looked again at her and then at Neville--there seemed to him +to be, lately, something a little different in the attitudes of these +two toward each other--nothing that he could name--but it preoccupied +him sometimes. + +There was a little good-natured malice in Ogilvy; some masculine +curiosity, too. Looking from Valerie to Neville, he said very +innocently: + +"Kelly, you know that peachy dream with whom you cut up so shamefully on +New-year's night? Well, she asked me for your telephone number--" + +"What are you talking about?" demanded Neville, annoyed. + +"Why, I'm talking about Mazie," said Sam, pleasantly. "You remember +Mazie Gray? And how crazy you and she became about each other?" + +Valerie, who was pouring tea, remained amiably unconcerned; and Ogilvy +obtained no satisfaction from her; but Neville's scowl was so hearty and +unfeigned that a glimpse of his visage sent Annan into fits of laughter. +To relieve which he ran across the floor, like a huge spider. Then +Valerie leisurely lifted her tranquil eyes and her eyebrows, too, a +trifle. + +"Why such unseemly contortions, Harry?" she inquired. + +"Sam tormenting Kelly to stir _you_ up! He's got a theory that you and +Kelly are mutually infatuated." + +"What a delightful theory, Sam," said Valerie, smiling so sincerely at +Ogilvy that he made up his mind there wasn't anything in it. But the +next moment, catching sight of Neville's furious face, his opinion +wavered. + +Valerie said laughingly to Rita: "They'll never grow up, these two--" +nodding her head toward Ogilvy and Annan. And to Neville carelessly--too +carelessly: "Will you have a little more tea, Kelly dear?" + +Her attitude was amiable and composed; her voice clear and +unembarrassed. There may have been a trifle more colour in her cheeks; +but what preoccupied Rita was in her eyes--a fleeting glimpse of +something that suddenly concentrated all of Rita's attention upon the +girl across the table. + +For a full minute she sat looking at Valerie who seemed pleasantly +unconscious of her inspection; then almost stealthily she shifted her +gaze to Neville. + +Gladys and her kitten came purring around in quest of cream; Rita +gathered them into her arms and caressed them and fed them bits of +cassava and crumbs of cake. She was unusually silent that afternoon. +John Burleson tried to interest her with heavy information of various +kinds, but she only smiled absently at that worthy man. Sam Ogilvy and +Harry Annan attempted to goad her into one of those lively exchanges of +banter in which Rita was entirely capable of taking care of herself. +But her smile was spiritless and non-combative; and finally they let her +alone and concentrated their torment upon Valerie, who endured it with +equanimity and dangerously sparkling eyes, and an occasional lightening +retort which kept those young men busy, especially when the epigram was +in Latin--which hurt their feelings. + +She had just furnished them with a sample of this classical food for +thought when the door-bell rang and Neville looked up in astonishment to +see Jose Querida come in. + +"Hello," he said, springing up with friendly hand outstretched--"this is +exceedingly good of you, Querida. You have not been here in a very long +while." + +Querida's smile showed his teeth; he bowed to Valerie and to Rita, bowed +to the men in turn, and smiled on Neville. + +"In excuse I must plead work, my dear fellow--a poor plea and poorer +excuse for the pleasure lost in seeing you--" he nodded to the +others--"and in missing many agreeable little gatherings--similar to +this, I fancy?" + +There was a rising inflection to his voice which made the end of his +little speech terminate as a question; and he looked to Valerie for his +answer. + +"Yes," she said, "we usually have tea in Kelly's studio. And you may +have some now, if you wish, Jose." + +He nodded his thanks and placed his chair beside hers. + + +The conversation had become general; Rita woke up, dumped the cats out +of her lap, and made a few viciously verbal passes at Ogilvy. Burleson, +earnest and most worthy, engaged Querida's attention for a while; but +that intellectually lithe young man evaded the ponderously impending +dispute with suave skill, and his gentle smile lingered longer on +Valerie than on anybody else. Several times, with an adroit carelessness +that seemed to be purposeless, he contrived to draw Valerie out of the +general level of conversation by merely lowering his voice; but she +seemed to understand the invitation; and, answering him as carelessly as +he spoke, keyed her replies in harmony with the chatter going on around +them. + +He drank his tea smilingly; listened to the others; bore his part +modestly; and at intervals his handsome eyes wandered about the studio, +reverting frequently to the great canvas overhead. + +"You know," he said to Neville, showing the eternal edge of teeth under +his crisp black beard--"that composition of yours is simply superb. I am +all for it, Neville." + +"I'm glad you are," nodded Neville, pleasantly, "but it hasn't yet +developed into what I hoped it might." His eyes swerved toward Valerie; +their glances encountered casually and passed on. Only Rita saw the +girl's breath quicken for an instant--saw the scarcely perceptible +quiver of Neville's mouth where the smile twitched at his lip for its +liberty to tell the whole world that he was in love. But their faces +were placid, their expressions well schooled; Querida's half-veiled eyes +appeared to notice nothing and for a while he remained smilingly silent. + +Later, by accident, he caught sight of Valerie's portrait; he turned +sharply in his chair and looked full at the canvas. + +Nobody spoke for a moment; Neville, who was passing Valerie, felt the +slightest contact as the velvet of her fingers brushed across his. + +Then Querida rose and walked over to the portrait and stood before it in +silence, biting at his vivid under lip and at the crisp hairs of his +beard that framed it. + +Without knowing why, Neville began to feel that Querida was finding in +that half-finished work something that disturbed him; and that he was +not going to acknowledge what it was that he saw there, whether of good +or of the contrary. + +Nobody spoke and Querida said nothing. + +A mild hope entered Neville's mind that the _something_, which had never +been in any work of his, might perhaps lie latent in that canvas--that +Querida was discovering it--without a pleasure--but with a sensitive +clairvoyance which was already warning him of a new banner in the +distance, a new trumpet-call from the barriers, another lance in the +lists where he, Querida, had ridden so long unchallenged and supreme. + +Within him he felt a sudden and secret excitement that he never before +had known--a conviction that the unexpressed hostility of Querida's +silence was the truest tribute ever paid him--the tribute that at last +was arousing hope from its apathy, and setting spurs to his courage. + +Rita, watching Querida, yawned and concealed the indiscretion with her +hand and a taunting word directed at Ogilvy, who retorted in kind. And +general conversation began again. + +Querida turned toward Neville, caught his eye, and shrugged: + +"That portrait is scarcely in your happiest manner, is it?" he asked +with a grimace. "For me--" he touched his breast with long pale +fingers--"I adore your gayer vein--your colour, clarity--the glamour of +splendour that you alone can cast over such works as that--" He waved +his hand upward toward the high canvas looming above. And he smiled at +Neville and seated himself beside Valerie. + +A portfolio of new mezzotints attracted Annan; others gathered around to +examine Neville's treasures; the tea table was deserted for a while +except by Querida and Valerie. Then he deliberately dropped his voice: + +"Will you give me another cup of tea, Valerie? And let me talk to you?" + +"With pleasure." She set about preparing it. + +"I have not seen you for some time," he said in the same caressing +undertone. + +"You haven't required me, Jose." + +"Must it be entirely a matter of business between us?" + +"Why, of course," she said in cool surprise. "You know perfectly well +how busy I am--and must be." + +"You are sometimes busy--pouring tea, here." + +"But it is after hours." + +"Yet, after hours, you no longer drop in to chat with me." + +"Why, yes, I do--" + +"Pardon. Not since--the new year began.... Will you permit me a word?" + +She inclined her head with undisturbed composure; he went on: + +"I have asked you to many theatres, invited you to dine with me, to go +with me to many, many places. And, it appeared, that you had always +other engagements.... Have I offended you?" + +"Of course not. You know I like you immensely--" + +"Immensely," he repeated with a smile. "Once there was more of sentiment +in your response, Valerie. There is little sentiment in immensity." + +She flushed: "I _was_ spoons on you," she said, candidly. "I was silly +with you--and very indiscreet.... But I'd rather not recall that--" + +"_I_ can not choose but recall it!" + +"Nice men forget such things," she said, hastily. + +"How can you speak that way about it?" + +"Because I _think_ that way, Jose," she said, looking up at him; but she +saw no answering smile in his face, and little colour in it; and she +remained unquietly conscious of his gaze. + +"I will not talk to you if you begin to look at me like that," she began +under her breath; "I don't care for it--" + +"Can I help it--remembering--" + +"You have nothing to remember except my pardon," she interrupted hotly. + +"Your pardon--for showing that I cared for you?" + +"My pardon for your losing your head." + +"We were absolutely frank with one another--" + +"I do not understand that you are the sort of man a girl can not be +frank with. We imprudently exchanged a few views on life. You--" + +"Many," he said--"and particularly views on marriage." + +She said, steadily: "I told you that I cared at heart nothing at all for +ceremony and form. You said the same. But you misunderstood me. What +was there in that silly conversation significant to you or to me other +than an impersonal interest in hearing ideas expressed?" + +"You knew I was in love with you." + +"I did _not_!" she said, sharply. + +"You let me touch your hands--kiss you, once--" + +"And you behaved like a madman--and frightened me nearly to death! Had +you better recall that night, Jose? I was generous about it; I was even +a little sorry for you. And I forgave you." + +"Forgave me my loving you?" + +"You don't know what love is," she said, reddening. + +"Do you, Valerie?" + +She sat flushed and silent, looking fixedly at the cups and saucers +before her. + +"_Do_ you?" he repeated in a curious voice. And there seemed to be +something of terror in it, for she looked up, startled, to meet his +long, handsome eyes looking at her out of a colourless visage. + +"Jose," she said, "what in the world possesses you to speak to me this +way? Have you any right to assume this attitude--merely because I +flirted with you as harmlessly--or meant it harmlessly--" + +She glanced involuntarily across the studio where the others had +gathered over the new collection of mezzotints, and at her glance +Neville raised his head and smiled at her, and encountered Querida's +expressionless gaze. + +For a moment Querida turned his head away, and Valerie saw that his face +was pale and sinister. + +"Jose," she said, "are you insane to take our innocent affair so +seriously? What in the world has come over you? We have been such +excellent friends. You have been just as nice as you could be, so gay +and inconsequential, so witty, so jolly, such good company!--and now, +suddenly, out of a perfectly clear sky your wrath strikes me like +lightning!" + +"My anger is like that." + +"Jose!" she exclaimed, incredulously. + +He showed the edge of perfect teeth again, but she was not sure that he +was smiling. Then he laughed gently. + +"Oh," she said in relief--"you really startled me." + +"I won't do it again, Valerie." She looked at him, still uncertain, +fascinated by her uncertainty. + +The colour--as much as he ever had--returned to his face; he reached +over for a cigarette, lighted it, smiled at her charmingly. + +"I was just lonely without you," he said. "Like an unreasonable child I +brooded over it and--" he shrugged, "it suddenly went to my head. Will +_you_ forgive my bad temper?" + +"Yes--I will. Only I never knew _you_ had a temper. It--astonishes me." + +He said nothing, smilingly. + +"Of course," she went on, still flushed, "I knew you were +impulsive--hot-headed--but I know you like me--" + +"I was crazily in love with you," he said, lightly; "and when you let me +touch you--" + +"Oh, I won't ever again, Jose!" she exclaimed, half-fearfully; "I +supposed you understood that sentiment could be a perfectly meaningless +and harmless thing--merely a silly moment--a foolish interlude in a +sober friendship.... And I _liked_ you, Jose--" + +[Illustration: "'I shall have need of friends,' she said half to +herself."] + +"Can you still like me?" + +"Y-yes. Why, of course--if you'll let me." + +"Shall we be the same excellent friends, Valerie? And all this ill +temper of mine will be forgotten?" + +"I'll try.... Yes, why not? I _do_ like you, and I admire you +tremendously." + +His eyes rested on her a moment; he inhaled a deep breath from his +cigarette, expelled it, nodded. + +"I'll try to win back all your friendship for me," he said, pleasantly. + +"That will be easy. I want you to like me. I want to be able to like +you.... I shall have need of friends," she said half to herself, and +looked across at Neville with a face tranquil, almost expressionless +save for the sensitive beauty of the mouth. + +After a moment Querida, too, lifted his head and gazed deliberately at +Neville. Then very quietly: + +"Are you dining alone this evening?" + +"No." + +"Oh. Perhaps to-morrow evening, then--" + +"I'm afraid not, Jose." + +He smiled: "Not dining alone ever again?" + +"Not--for the present." + +"I see." + +"There is nothing to see," she said calmly. But his smile seemed now so +genuine that it disarmed her; and she blushed when he said: + +"Am I to wish you happiness, Valerie? Is _that_ the trouble?" + +"Certainly. Please wish it for me always--as I do for you--and for +everybody." + +But he continued to laugh, and the colour in her face persisted, +annoying her intensely. + +"Nevertheless," he said, "I do not believe you can be hopelessly in +love." + +"What ever put such an idea into that cynical head of yours?" + +"Chance," he said. "But you are not irrevocably in love. You are +ignorant of what love can really mean. Only he who understands it--and +who has suffered through it--can ever teach you. And you will never be +satisfied until he does."' + +"Are you _very_ wise concerning love, Jose?" she asked, laughing. + +[Illustration: "'Don't do it, Valerie!'"] + +"Perhaps. You will desire to be, too, some day. A good school, an +accomplished scholar." + +"And the schoolmaster? Oh! Jose!" + +They both were laughing now--he with apparent pleasure in her coquetry +and animation, she still a little confused and instinctively on her +guard. + +Rita came strolling over, a tiny cigarette balanced between her slender +fingers: + +"Stop flirting, Jose," she said; "it's too near dinner time. Valerie, +child, I'm dining with the unspeakable John again. It's a horrid habit. +Can't you prescribe for me? Jose, what are you doing this evening?" + +"Penance," he said; "I'm dining with my family." + +"Penance," she repeated with a singular look--"well--that's one way of +regarding the pleasure of having any family to dine with--isn't it, +Valerie?" + +"Jose didn't mean it that way." + +Rita blew a ring from her cigarette's glimmering end. + +"Will you be at home this evening, Valerie?" + +"Y-yes ... rather late." + +"Too late to see me?" + +"No, you dear girl. Come at eleven, anyway. And if I'm a little late +you'll forgive me, won't you?" + +"No, I won't," said Rita, crossly. "You and I are business women, +anyway, and eleven is too late for week days. I'll wait until I can see +you, sometime--" + +"Was it anything important, dear?" + +"Not to me." + +Querida rose, took his leave of Valerie and Rita, went over and made his +adieux to his host and the others. When he had gone Rita, standing alone +with Valerie beside the tea table, said in a low voice: + +"Don't do it, Valerie!" + +"Do--what?" asked the girl in astonishment. + +"Fall in love." + +[Illustration: "Ogilvy stood looking sentimentally at the two young +girls."] + +Valerie laughed. + +"Do you mean with Querida?" + +"No." + +"Then--what _do_ you mean?" + +"You're on the edge of doing it, child. It isn't wise. It won't do for +us.... I know--I _know_, Valerie, more than you know about--love. Listen +to me. Don't! Go away--go somewhere; drop everything and go, if you've +any sense left. I'll go with you if you will let me.... I'll do anything +for you, dear. Only listen to me before it's too late; keep your +self-control; keep your mind clear on this one thing, that love is of no +use to us--no good to us. And if you think you suspect its presence in +your neighbourhood, get away from it; pick up your skirts and run, +Valerie.... You've plenty of time to come back and wonder what you ever +could have seen in the man to make you believe you could fall in love +with him." + +Ogilvy, strolling up, stood looking sentimentally at the two young +girls. + +"A--perfect--pair--of precious--priceless--peaches," he said; "I'd love +to be a Turk with an Oriental smirk and an ornamental dirk, and a +tendency to shirk when the others go to work; for the workers I can't +bear 'em and I'd rather run a harem--" + +"No doubt," said Rita, coldly; "so you need not explain to me the rather +lively young lady I met in the corridor looking for studio number ten--" + +"Rita! Zuleika! Star of my soul! Jewel of my turban! Do you entertain +suspicions--" + +"Oh, _you_ probably did the entertaining--" + +"I? Heaven! How I am misunderstood! John Burleson! Come over here and +tell this very charming young lady all about that somewhat conspicuous +vision from a local theatre who came floating into my studio by accident +while in joyous quest of you!" + +But Annan only laughed, and Rita shrugged her disdain. But as she nodded +adieu to Valerie, the latter saw a pinched look in her face, and did not +understand it. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +The world, and his own family, had always been inclined to love Louis +Neville, and had advanced no farther than the inclination. There were +exceptions. + +Archie Allaire, who hated him, discussing him floridly once with Querida +at the Thumb-tack Club in the presence of a dozen others, characterised +him as "one of those passively selfish snobs whose virtues are all +negative and whose modesty is the mental complacency of an underdone +capon." + +He was sharply rebuked by Ogilvy, Annan, and Burleson; skilfully by +Querida--so adroitly indeed that his amiable and smiling apology for the +absent painter produced a curiously depressing effect upon Ogilvy and +Annan, and even left John Burleson dully uncomfortable, although Allaire +had been apparently well drubbed. + +"All the same," said Allaire with a sneer to Querida after the others +had departed, "Neville is really a most frightful snob. Like a busy +bacillus surrounded by a glass tube full of prepared culture, he exists +in his own intellectual exudations perfectly oblivious to the miseries +and joys of the world around him. He hasn't time for anybody except +himself." + +Querida laughed: "What has Neville done to you, my friend?" + +"To me?" repeated Allaire with a shrug. "Oh, nothing. It isn't that.... +All the same when I had my exhibition at the Monson Galleries I went to +him and said, 'See here, Neville, I've got some Shoe-trust and +Button-trust women to pour tea for me. Now you know a lot of fashionable +people and I want my tea-pourers to see them, and I want the papers to +say that they've been to a private view of my exhibition.' + +"He gave me one of those absent-treatment stares and said he'd tell all +the really interesting people he knew; and the damnedest lot of scrubby, +dowdy, down-at-the-heels tatterdemalions presented his card at my +private view that you ever saw outside an artist's rathskeller, a lower +Fifth Avenue reception, or a varnishing day! By God, I can go to the +bread-line and get that sort of lookers myself--and I don't care whether +his bunch came from Tenth Street Colonial stock or the Washington Square +nobility or the landed gentry of Chelsea or from the purlieus of the +Bronx, which is where they apparently belong! I can get that kind +myself. I wanted automobiles and broughams and clothes, and I got one +sea-going taxi, and the dirty end of the stick! And to cap the climax he +strolled in himself with a girl whose face is familiar to everybody who +looks at bath tubs in the back of the magazines--Valerie West! And I +want to tell you I couldn't look my Shoe-trust tea-pourers in the face; +and they're so mad that I haven't got an order out of them since." + +Querida laughed till the tears stood in his big, velvety, almond-shaped +eyes. + +"Why didn't you come to me?" he said. + +"Tell you the truth, Querida, I would have if I'd known then that you +were painting portraits of half of upper Fifth Avenue. Besides," he +added, naively, "that was before I began to see you in the grand tier +at the opera every week." + +"It was before I sat anywhere except in the gallery," said Querida with +a humorous shrug. "Until this winter I knew nobody, either. And very +often I washed my own handkerchiefs and dried them on the window pane. I +had only fame for my laundress and notoriety for my butcher." + +"Hey?" said Allaire, a trifle out of countenance. + +"It is very true. It cost me so much to paint and frame my pictures that +the prices they brought scarcely paid for models and materials." He +added, pleasantly: "I have dined more often on a box of crackers and a +jar of olives than at a table set with silver and spread with linen." He +laughed without affectation or bitterness: + +"It has been a long road, Allaire--from a stable-loft studio to--" he +shrugged--"the 'Van Rypens' grand tier box, for example." + +"How in God's name did you do it?" inquired Allaire, awed to the +momentary obliteration of envy. + +"I--painted," said Querida, smiling. + +"Sure. I know that. I suppose it was the hellish row made over your +canvases last winter that did the trick." + +Querida's eyes were partly closed as though in retrospection. "Also," he +said, softly, "I painted a very fashionable woman--for nothing--and to +her entire satisfaction." + +"That's the _real_ thing, isn't it?" + +"I'm afraid so.... Make two or three unlovely and unlovable old ladies +lovely and lovable--on canvas--for nothing. Then society will let you +slap its powdered and painted face--yes--permit you--other +liberties--if only you will paint it and sign your canvases and ask them +a wicked price for what you give them and--for what they yield to you." + +Allaire's ruddy face grew ruddier; he grinned and passed a muscular hand +over his thick, handsome, fox-tinted hair. + +"I wish I could get next," he said with a hard glance at Querida. "I'd +sting 'em." + +"I would be very glad to introduce you to anybody I know," observed the +other. + +"Do you mean that?" + +"Why not. A man who has waited as I have for opportunity understands +what others feel who are still waiting." + +"That's damn square of you, Querida." + +"Oh, no, not square; just natural. The public table is big enough for +everybody." + +Allaire thought a moment, slowly caressing his foxy hair. + +"After all," he said with a nervous snicker, "you needn't be afraid of +anybody. Nobody can paint like you.... But I'd like to get a look in, +Querida. I've got to make a little money in one way or another--" he +added impudently--"and if I can't paint well enough to sting them, +there's always the chance of marrying one of 'em." + +Querida laughed: "Any man can always marry any woman. There's no trick +in getting any _wife_ you want." + +"Sure," grinned Allaire; "a wife is a cinch; it's the front row that +keeps good men guessing." He glanced at Querida, his gray-green eyes +brimming with an imprudent malice he could not even now deny +himself--"Also the backs of the magazines keep one guessing," he added, +carelessly; "and I've the patience of a tom-cat, myself." + +Querida's beautifully pencilled eyebrows were raised interrogatively. + +"Oh, I'll admit that the little West girl kept me sitting on back fences +until some other fellow threw a bottle at me," said Allaire with a +disagreeable laugh. He had come as near as he dared to taunting Querida +and, afraid at the last moment, had turned the edge of it on himself. + +Querida lighted a cigarette and blew a whiff of smoke toward the +ceiling. + +"I've an idea," he said, lazily, "that somebody is trying to marry her." + +"Forget it," observed Allaire in contempt. "She wouldn't stand for the +sort who marry her kind. She'll land hard on her neck one of these days, +and the one best bet will be some long-faced Botticelli with heavenly +principles and the moral stability of a tumbler pigeon. Then there'll be +hell to pay; but _he_ will get over it and she'll get aboard the +toboggan. That's the way it ends, Querida." + +Querida sipped his coffee and glanced out of the club window. From the +window he could see the roof of the studio building where Neville lived. +And he wondered how far Valerie was from that building at the present +moment, wondered, and sipped his coffee. + +He was a man whose career had been builded upon perseverance. He had +begun life by slaying every doubt. And his had been a bitter life; but +he had suffered smilingly; the sordid struggle along the edges of +starvation had hardened nothing of his heart. + +Sensitive, sympathetic, ardent, proud, and ambitious with the quiet +certainty of a man predestined, he had a woman's capacity for patience, +for suffering, and for concealment, but not for mercy. And he cared +passionately for love as he did for beauty--had succumbed to both in +spirit oftener than in the caprice of some inconsequential amourette. + +But never, until he came to know Valerie West, had a living woman meant +anything vital to his happiness. Yet, what she aroused in him was that +part of his nature to which he himself was a stranger--a restless, +sensuous side which her very isolation and exposure to danger seemed to +excite the more until desire to control her, to drive others away, to +subdue, master, mould her, make her his own, obsessed him. And he had +tried it and failed; and had drawn aside, fiercely, still watching and +determined. + +Some day he meant to marry properly. He had never doubted his ability to +do so even in the sordid days. But there was no hurry, and life was +young, and so was Valerie West--young enough, beautiful enough to bridge +the years with him until his ultimate destiny awaited him. + +And all was going well again with him until that New-year's night; and +matters had gone ill with him since then--so ill that he could not put +the thought of it from him, and her beauty haunted him--and the +expression of Neville's eyes!-- + +But he remained silent, quiet, alert, watching and waiting with all his +capacity for enduring. And he had now something else to watch--something +that his sensitive intuition had divined in a single unfinished canvas +of Neville's. + +So far there had been but one man supreme in the new world as a great +painter of sunlight and of women. There could not be two. And he already +felt the approach of a shadow menacing the glory of his +sunlight--already stood alert and fixedly observant of a young man who +had painted something disquieting into an unfinished canvas. + + +That man and the young girl whom he had painted to the astonishment and +inward disturbance of Jose Querida, were having no easy time in that new +world which they had created for themselves. + +Embarked upon an enterprise in the management of which they were neither +in accord nor ever seemed likely to be, they had, so far, weathered the +storms of misunderstandings and the stress of prejudice. Blindly +confident in Love, they were certain, so far, that it was Love itself +that they worshipped no matter what rites and ceremonies each one +observed in its adoration. Yet each was always attempting to convert the +other to the true faith; and there were days of trouble and of tears and +of telephones. + +Neville presented a frightfully complex problem to Valerie West. + +His even-tempered indifference to others--an indifference which had +always characterised him--had left only a wider and deeper void now +filling with his passion for her. + +They were passing through a maze of cross-purposes; his ardent and +exacting intolerance of any creed and opinion save his own was ever +forcing her toward a more formal and literal appreciation of what he +was determined must become a genuine and formal engagement--which +attitude on his part naturally produced clash after clash between them. + +That he entertained so confidently the conviction of her ultimate +surrender to convention, at moments vexed her to the verge of anger. At +times, too, his disposition to interfere with her liberty tried her +patience. Again and again she explained to him the unalterable +fundamentals of their pact. These were, first of all, her refusal to +alienate him from his family and his own world; second, her right to her +own individuality and freedom to support herself without interference or +unrequested assistance from him; third, absolute independence of him in +material matters and the perfect liberty of managing her own little +financial affairs without a hint of dependence on him either before or +after the great change. + +That she posed only in costume now did not satisfy him. He did not wish +her to pose at all; and they discussed various other theatres for her +business activity. But she very patiently explained to him that she +found, in posing for interesting people, much of the intellectual +pleasure that he and other men found in painting; that the life and the +environment, and the people she met, made her happy; and that she could +not expect to meet cultivated people in any other way. + +"I _don't_ want to learn stenography and take dictation in a stuffy +office, dear," she pleaded. "I _don't_ want to sit all day in a library +where people whisper about books. I don't want to teach in a public +school or read novels to invalids, or learn how to be a trained nurse +and place thermometers in people's mouths. I like children pretty well +but I don't want to be a governess and teach other people's children; I +want to be taught myself; I want to learn--I'm a sort of a child, too, +dear; and it's the familiarity with wiser people and brighter people and +pleasant surroundings that has made me as happy as I am--given me what I +never had as a child. You don't understand, but I'm having my childhood +now--nursery, kindergarten, parties, boarding-school, finishing school, +debut--all concentrated into this happy year of being among gay, clever, +animated people." + +"Yet you will not let me take you into a world which is still +pleasanter--" + +And the eternal discussion immediately became inevitable, tiring both +with its earnestness and its utter absence of a common ground. Because +in him apparently remained every vital germ of convention and of +generations of training in every precept of formality; and in her--for +with Valerie West adolescence had arrived late--that mystery had been +responsible for far-reaching disturbances consequent on the starved +years of self-imprisonment, of exaltations suppressed, of fears and +doubts and vague desires and dreams ineffable possessing the silence of +a lonely soul. + +And so, essentially solitary, inevitably lonely, out of her own young +heart and an untrained mind she was evolving a code of responsibility to +herself and to the world. + +Her ethics and her morals were becoming what wide, desultory, and +unrestrained reading was making them; her passion for happiness and for +truth, her restless intelligence, were prematurely forming her +character. There was no one in authority to tell her--check, guide, or +direct her in the revolt from dogmatism, pedantry, sophistry and +conventionalism. And by this path youthful intelligence inevitably +passes, incredulous of snare and pitfall where lie the bones of many a +savant under magic blossoms nourished by creeds long dead. + + +"To bring no sorrow to any one, Louis--that is the way I am trying to +live," she said, seriously. + +"You are bringing it to me." + +"If that is so--then I had better depart as I came and leave you in +peace." + +"It's too late." + +"Perhaps it is not. Shall we try it?" + +"Could _you_ recover?" + +"I don't know. I am willing to try for your sake." + +"Do you _want_ to?" he asked, almost angrily. + +"I am not thinking of myself, Louis." + +"I _want_ you to. I don't want you _not_ to think about yourself all the +time." + +She made a hopeless gesture, opening her arms and turning her palms +outward: + +"Kelly Neville! _What_ do you suppose loving you means to me?" + +"Don't you think of yourself at all when you love me?" + +"Why--I suppose I do--in a way. I know I'm fortunate, happy--I--" She +glanced up shyly--"I am glad that I am--loved--" + +"You darling!" + +She let him take her into his arms, suffered his caress, looking at him +in silence out of eyes as dark and clear and beautiful as brown pools in +a forest. + +"You're just a bad, spoiled, perverse little kid, aren't you?" he said, +rumpling her hair. + +"You say so." + +"Breaking my heart because you won't marry me." + +"No, breaking my own because you don't really love me enough, yet." + +"I love you too much--" + +"That is literary bosh, Louis." + +"Good God! Can't you ever understand that I'm respectable enough to want +you for my wife?" + +"You mean that you want me for what I do not wish to be. And you decline +to love me unless I turn into a selfish, dependent, conventional +nonentity, which you adore because respectable. Is that what you mean?" + +"I want the laws of civilisation to safeguard you," he persisted +patiently. + +"I need no more protection than you need. I am not a baby. I am not +afraid. Are you?" + +"That is not the question--" + +"Yes it is, dear. I stand in no fear. Why do you wish to force me to do +what I believe would be a wrong to you? Can't you respect my +disreputable convictions?" + +"They are theories--not convictions--" + +"Oh, Kelly, I'm so tired of hearing you say that!" + +"I should think you would be, you little imp of perversity!" + +"I am.... And I wonder how I can love you just as much, as though you +were kind and reasonable and--and minded your own business, dear." + +"Isn't it my business to tell the girl to whom I'm engaged what I +believe to be right?" + +"Yes; and it's her business to tell _you_" she said, smiling; and put +her arms higher so that they slipped around his neck for a moment, then +were quickly withdrawn. + +"What a thoroughly obstinate boy you are!" she exclaimed. "We're wasting +such lots of time in argument when it's all so very simple. Your soul is +your own to develop; mine is mine. _Noli, me tangere_!" + +But he was not to be pacified; and presently she went away to pour their +tea, and he followed and sat down in an armchair near the fire, brooding +gaze fixed on the coals. + +They had tea in hostile silence; he lighted a cigarette, but presently +flung it into the fire without smoking. + +She said: "You know, Louis, if this is really going to be an unhappiness +to you, instead of a happiness beyond words, we had better end it now." +She added, with an irrepressible laugh, partly nervous, "Your happiness +seems to be beyond words already. Your silence is very eloquent.... I +think I'll take my doll and go home." + +She rose, stood still a moment looking at him where he sat, head bent, +staring into the coals; then a swift tenderness filled her eyes; her +sensitive lips quivered; and she came swiftly to him and took his head +into her arms. + +"Dear," she whispered, "I only want to do the best for you. Let me try +in my own way. It's all for you--everything I do or think or wish or +hope is for you. Even I myself was made merely for you." + +Sideways on the arm of his chair, she stooped down, laying her cheek +against his, drawing his face closer. + +"I am so hopelessly in love with you," she murmured; "if I make +mistakes, forgive me; remember only that it is because I love you enough +to die for you very willingly." + +He drew her down into his arms. She was never quick to respond to the +deeper emotions in him, but her cheeks and throat were flushed now, and, +as his embrace enclosed her, she responded with a sudden flash of blind +passion--a moment's impulsive self-surrender to his lips and arms--and +drew away from him dazed, trembling, shielding her face with one arm. + +All that the swift contact was awakening in him turned on her fiercely +now; in his arms again she swayed, breathless, covering her face with +desperate hands, striving to comprehend, to steady her senses, to reason +while pulses and heart beat wildly and every vein ran fire. + +"No--" she stammered--"this is--is wrong--wrong! Louis, I beg you, to +remember what I am to you.... Don't kiss me again--I ask you not to--I +pray that you won't.... We are--I am--engaged to you, dear.... Oh--it is +wrong--wrong, now!--all wrong between us!" + +"Valerie," he stammered, "you care nothing for any law--nor do I--now--" + +"I _do_! You don't understand me! Let me go. Louis--you don't love me +enough.... This--this is madness--wickedness!--you can't love me! You +don't--you can't!" + +"I do love you, Valerie--" + +"No--no--or you would let me go!--or you would not kiss me again--" + +She freed herself, breathless, crimson with shame and anger, avoiding +his eyes, and slipped out of his embrace to her knees, sank down on the +rug at his feet, and laid her head against the chair, breathing fast, +both small hands pressed to her breast. + +For a few minutes he let her lie so; then, stooping over her, white +lipped, trembling: + +"What can you expect if we sow the wind?" + +She began to cry, softly: "You don't understand--you never have +understood!" + +"I understand this: that I am ready to take you in your way, now. I +cannot live without you, and I won't. I care no longer how I take you, +or when, or where, as long as I can have you for mine, to keep for ever, +to love, to watch over, to worship.... Dear--will you speak to me?" + +She shook her head, desolately, where it lay now against his knees, amid +its tumbled hair. + +Then he asked again for her forgiveness--almost fiercely, for passion +still swayed him with every word. He told her he loved her, adored her, +could not endure life without her; that he was only too happy to take +her on any terms she offered. + +"Louis," she said in a voice made very small and low by the crossed arms +muffling her face, "I am wondering whether you will ever know what love +is." + +"Have I not proved that I love you?" + +"I--don't know what it is you have proved.... We were engaged to each +other--and--and--" + +"I thought you cared nothing for such conventions!" + +She began to cry again, silently. + +"Valerie--darling--" + +"No--you don't understand," she sobbed. + +"Understand what, dearest--dearest-- + +"That I thought our love was its own protection--and mine." + +He made no answer. + +She knelt there silent for a little while, then put her hand up +appealingly for his handkerchief. + +"I have been very happy in loving you," she faltered; "I have promised +you all there is of myself. And you have already had my best self. The +rest--whatever it is--whatever happens to me--I have promised--so that +there will be nothing of this girl called Valerie West which is not all +yours--all, all--every thought, Louis, every pulse-beat--mind, soul, +body.... But no future day had been set; I had thought of none as yet. +Still--since I knew I was to be to you what I am to be, I have been very +busy preparing for it--mind, soul, my little earthly possessions, my +personal affairs in their small routine.... No bride in your world, busy +with her trousseau, has been a happier dreamer than have I, Louis. You +don't know how true I have tried to be to myself, and to the truth as I +understand it--as true as I have been to you in thought and deed.... +And, somehow, what threatened--a moment since--frightens me, humiliates +me--" + +She lifted her head and looked up at him with dimmed eyes: + +"You were untrue to yourself, Louis--to your own idea of truth. And you +were untrue to me. And for the first time I look at you, ashamed and +shamed." + +"Yes," he said, very white. + +"Why did you offer our love such an insult?" she asked. + +He made no answer. + +"Was it because, in your heart, you hold a girl lightly who promised to +give herself to you for your own sake, renouncing the marriage vows?" + +"No! Good God--" + +"Then--is it because you do not yet love me enough? For I shall not give +myself to you until you do." + +He hung his head. + +"I think that is it," she said, sorrowfully. + +"No. I'm no good," he said. "And that's the truth, Valerie." A dark +flush stained his face and he turned it away, sitting there in silence, +his tense clasp tightening on the arms of the chair. Then he said, still +not meeting her eyes: + +"Whatever your beliefs are you practice them; you are true to your +convictions, loyal to yourself. I am only a miserable, rotten specimen +of man who is true to nothing--not even to himself. I'm not worth your +trouble, Valerie." + +"Louis!" + +"Well, what am I?" he demanded in fierce disgust. "I have told you that +I believe in the conventions--and I violate every one of them. I'm a +spectacle for gods and men!" His face was stern with self-disgust: he +forced himself to meet her gaze, wincing under it; but he went on: + +"I know well enough that I deserve your contempt; I've acquired plenty +of self-contempt already. But I _do_ love you, God knows how or in what +manner, but I love you, cur that I am--and I respect you--oh, more that +you understand, Valerie. And if I ask your mercy on such a man as I am, +it is not because I deserve it." + +"My mercy, Louis?" + +She rose to her knees and laid both hands on his shoulders. + +"You _are_ only a man, dear--with all the lovable faults and sins and +contradictions of one. But there is no real depravity in you any more +than there is in me. Only--I think you are a little more selfish than I +am--you lose self-command--" she blushed--"but that is because you are +only a man after all.... I think, perhaps, that a girl's love is +different in many ways. Dear, my love for you is perfectly honest. You +believe it, don't you? If for one moment I thought it was otherwise, I'd +never let you see me again. If I thought for one moment that anything +spiritual was to be gained for us by denying that love to you or to +myself--or by living out life alone without you, I have the courage to +do it. Do you doubt it?" + +"No," he said. + +She sighed, and her gaze passed from his and became remote for a moment, +then: + +"I want to live my life with you," she said, wistfully; "I want to be to +you all that the woman you love could possibly be. But to me, the giving +of myself to you is to be, in my heart, a ceremony more solemn than any +in the world--and it is to be a rite at which my soul shall serve on its +knees, Louis." + +"Dearest--dearest," he breathed, "I know--I understand--I ask your +pardon. And I worship you." + +Then a swift, smiling change passed over her face; and, her hands still +resting on his shoulders, kneeling there before him, she bent forward +and kissed him on the forehead. + +"Pax," she said. "You are forgiven. Love me enough, Louis. And when I +am quite sure you do, then--then--you may ask me, and I will answer +you." + +"I love you now, enough." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--ask," she said, faintly. + +His lips moved in a voiceless question, she could not hear him, but she +understood. + +"In a year, I think," she answered, forcing her eyes to meet his, but +the delicate rose colour was playing over her cheeks and throat. + +"As long as that?" + +"That is not long. Besides, perhaps you won't learn to love me enough +even by that time. Do you think you will? If you really think +so--perhaps in June--" + +She watched him as he pressed her hands together and kissed them; +laughed a little, shyly, as she suddenly divined a new tenderness and +respect in his eyes--something matching the vague exaltation of her own +romantic dreams. + +"I will wait all my life if you wish it," he said. + +"Do you mean it?" + +"You know I do, now." + +She considered him, smiling. "If you truly do feel that +way--perhaps--perhaps it might really be in June--or in July--" + +"You _said_ June." + +"Listen to the decree of the great god Kelly! He says it must be in +June, and he shakes his thunderbolts and frowns." + +"June! Say so, Valerie," + +"_You_ have said so." + +"But there's no use in _my_ saying so if--" + +"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, "the great god totters on his pedestal and +the oracle falters and I see the mere man looking very humbly around the +corner of the shrine at me, whispering, 'June, if you please, dear +lady!'" + +"Yes," he said, "that's what you see and hear. Now answer me, dear." + +"And what am I to say?" + +"June, please." + +"June--please," she repeated, demurely. + +"You darling!... What day?" + +"Oh, that's too early to decide--" + +"Please, dear!" + +"No; I don't want to decide--" + +"Dearest!" + +"What?" + +"Won't you answer me?" + +"If you make me answer now, I'll be tempted to fix the first of April." + +"All right, fix it." + +"It's All Fool's day, you know," she threatened. "Probably it is +peculiarly suitable for us.... Very well, then, I'll say it." + +She was laughing when he caught her hands and looked at her, grave, +unsmiling. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and her lip trembled. + +"Forgive me, I meant no mockery," she whispered. "I had already fixed +the first day of June for--for the great change in our lives. Are you +content?" + +"Yes." And before she knew what he was doing a brilliant flashed along +her ring finger and clung sparkling to it; and she stared at the gold +circlet and the gem flashing in the firelight. + +There were tears in her eyes when she kissed it, looking at him while +her soft lips rested on the jewel. + +Neither spoke for a moment; then, still looking at him, she drew the +ring from her finger, touched it again with her lips, and laid it gently +in his hand. + +"No, dear," she said. + +He did not urge her; but she knew he still believed that she would come +to think as he thought; and the knowledge edged her lips with tremulous +humour. But her eyes were very sweet and tender as she watched him lay +away the ring as though it and he were serenely biding their time. + +"Such a funny boy," she said, "and such a dear one. He will never, never +grow up, will he?" + +"Such an idiot, you mean," he said, drawing her into the big chair +beside him. + +"Yes, I mean that, too," she said, impudently, nose in the air. +"Because, if I were you, Louis, I wouldn't waste any more energy in +worrying about a girl who is perfectly able to take care of herself, but +transfer it to a boy who apparently is not." + +"How do you mean?" + +"I mean about your painting. Dear, you've got it into that obstinate +head of yours that there's something lacking in your pictures, and there +isn't." + +"Oh, Valerie! You know there is!" + +"No, no, no! There isn't anything lacking in them. They're all of you, +Louis--every bit of you--as far as you have lived." + +"What!" + +"Certainly. As far as you have lived. Now live a little more, and let +more things come into your life. You can't paint what isn't in you; and +there's nothing in you except what you get out of life." + +She laid her soft cheek against his. + +"Get a little real love out of life, Louis; a little _real_ love. Then +surely, surely your canvases can not disguise that you know what life +means to us all. Love nobly; and the world will not doubt that love is +noble; love mercifully; and the world will understand mercy. For I +believe that what you are must show in your work, dear. + +"Until now the world has seen in your work only the cold splendour, or +dreamy glamour, or the untroubled sweetness and brilliancy of +passionless romance. I love your work. It is happiness to look at it; it +thrills, bewitches, enthralls!... Dear, forgive me if in it I have not +yet found a deeper inspiration.... And that inspiration, to be there, +must be first in you, my darling--born of a wider interest in your +fellow men, a little tenderness for friends--a more generous experience +and more real sympathy with humanity--and perhaps you may think it out +of place for me to say it--but--a deeper, truer, spiritual conviction. + +"Do you think it strange of me to have such convictions? I can't escape +them. Those who are merciful, those who are kind, to me are Christ-like. +Nothing else matters. But to be kind is to be first of all interested in +the happiness of others. And you care nothing for people. You _must_ +care, Louis! + +"And, somehow, you who are, at heart, good and kind and merciful, have +not really awakened real love in many of those about you. For one thing +your work has absorbed you. But if, at the same time, you could pay a +little more attention to human beings--" + +"Valerie!" he said in astonishment, "I have plenty of friends. Do you +mean to say I care nothing for them?" + +"How much _do_ you care, Louis?" + +"Why, I--" He fell silent, troubled gaze searching hers. + +She smiled: "Take Sam, for example. The boy adores you. He's a rotten +painter, I know--and you don't even pretend to an interest in what he +does because you are too honest to praise it. But, Louis, he's a lovable +fellow--and he does the best that's in him. You needn't pretend to care +for what he does--but if you could show that you do care for and respect +the effort--" + +"I do, Valerie--when I think about it!" + +"Then think about it; and let Sam know that you think about his efforts +and himself. And do the same for Harry Annan. He's a worse painter than +Sam--but do you think he doesn't know it? Don't you realise what a lot +of heartache the monkey-shines of those two boys conceal?" + +"I am fond of them," he said, slowly. "I like people, even if I don't +show it--" + +"Ah, Louis! Louis! That is the world's incurable hurt--the silence that +replies to its perplexity--the wistful appeal that remains +unanswered.... And many, many vex God with the desolation of their +endless importunities and complaints when a look, a word, a touch from a +human being would relieve them of the heaviest of all burdens--a sad +heart's solitude." + +He put his arm around her, impulsively: + +"You little angel," he said, tenderly. + +"No--only a human girl who has learned what solitude can mean." + +"I shall make you forget the past," he said. + +"No, dear--for that might make me less kind." She put her lips against +his cheek, thoughtfully: "And--I think--that you are going to need all +the tenderness in me--some day, Louis--as I need all of yours.... We +shall have much to learn--after the great change.... And much to endure. +And I think we will need all the kindness that we can give each +other--and all that the world can spare us." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +It was slowly becoming evident to Neville that Valerie's was the +stronger character--not through any genius for tenacity nor on account +of any domineering instinct--but because, mistaken or otherwise in her +ethical reasoning, she was consistent, true to her belief, and had the +courage to live up to it. And this made her convictions almost +unassailable. + +Slavery to established custom of any kind she smilingly disdained, +refusing to submit to restrictions which centuries of social usage had +established, when such social restrictions and limitations hampered or +annoyed her. + +Made conscious by the very conventions designed to safeguard +unconsciousness; made wise by the unwisdom of a civilisation which +required ignorance of innocence, she had as yet lost none of her +sweetness and confidence in herself and in a world which she considered +a friendly one at best and, at worst, more silly than vicious. + +Her life, the experience of a lonely girlhood in the world, wide and +varied reading, unwise and otherwise, and an intelligence which needed +only experience and training, had hastened to a premature maturity her +impatience with the faults of civilisation. And in the honest revolt of +youth, she forgot that what she rejected was, after all, civilisation +itself, and that as yet there had been offered no acceptable substitute +for its faulty codification. + +To do one's best was to be fearlessly true to one's convictions and let +God judge; that was her only creed. And from her point of view humanity +needed no other. + +So she went about the pleasure and happiness of living with a light +heart and a healthy interest, not doubting that all was right between +her and the world, and that the status quo must endure. + +And endless misunderstandings ensued between her and the man she loved. +She was a very busy business girl and he objected. She went about to +theatres and parties and dinners and concerts with other men; and +Neville didn't like it. Penrhyn Cardemon met her at a theatrical supper +and asked her to be one of his guests on his big yacht, the _Mohave_, +fitted out for the Azores. There were twenty in the party, and she would +have gone had not Neville objected angrily. + +It was not his objection but his irritation that confused her. She could +discover no reason for it. + +"It can't be that you don't trust me," she said to him, "so it must be +that you're lonely without me, even when you go to spend two weeks with +your parents. I don't mind not going if you don't wish me to, Louis, and +I'll stay here in town while you visit your father and mother, but it +seems a little bit odd of you not to let me go when I can be of no +earthly use to you." + +Her gentleness with him, and her sweet way of reasoning made him +ashamed. + +"It's the crowd that's going, Valerie--Cardemon, Querida, Marianne +Valdez--where did you meet her, anyway?" + +"In her dressing room at the Opera. She's perfectly sweet. Isn't she all +right?" + +"She's Cardemon's mistress," he said, bluntly. + +A painful colour flushed her face and neck; and at the same instant he +realised what he had said. + +Neither spoke for a while; he went on with his painting; she, standing +once more for the full-length portrait, resumed her pose in silence. + +After a while she heard his brushes clatter to the floor, saw him leave +his easel, was aware that he was coming toward her. And the next moment +he had dropped at her feet, kneeling there, one arm tightening around +her knees, his head pressed close. + +Listlessly she looked down at him, dropped one slim hand on his +shoulder, considering him. + +"The curious part of it is," she said, "that all the scorn in your voice +was for Marianne Valdez and none for Penrhyn Cardemon." + +He said nothing. + +"Such a queer, topsy-turvy world," she sighed, letting her hand wander +from his shoulder to his thick, short hair. She caressed his forehead +thoughtfully. + +"I suppose some man will say that of me some day.... But that is a +little matter--compared to making life happy for you.... To be your +mistress could never make me unhappy." + +"To be your husband--and to put an end to all these damnable doubts and +misgivings and cross-purposes would make me happy all my life!" he burst +out with a violence that startled her. + +"Hush, Louis. We must not begin that hopeless argument again." + +"Valerie! Valerie! You are breaking my heart!" + +"Hush, dear. You know I am not." + +She looked down at him; her lip was trembling. + +Suddenly she slid down to the floor and knelt there confronting him, +her arms around him. + +"Dearer than all the world and heaven!--do you think that I am breaking +your heart? You _know_ I am not. You know what I am doing for your sake, +for your family's sake, for my own. I am only giving you a love that can +cause them no pain, bring no regret to you. Take it, then, and kiss me." + + +But the days were full of little scenes like this--of earnest, fiery +discussions, of passionate arguments, of flashes of temper ending in +tears and heavenly reconciliation. + +He had gone for two weeks to visit his father and mother at their summer +home near Portsmouth, and before he went he took her in his arms and +told her how ashamed he was of his bad temper at the idea of her going +on the _Mohave_, and said that she might go; that he did trust her +anywhere, and that he was trying to learn to concede to her the same +liberty of action and of choice that any man enjoyed. + +But she convinced him very sweetly that she really had no desire to go, +and sent him off to Spindrift House happy, and madly in love; which +resulted in two letters a day from him, and in her passing long evenings +in confidential duets with Rita Tevis. + +Rita had taken the bedroom next to Valerie's, and together they had +added the luxury of a tiny living room to the suite. + +It was the first time that either had ever had any place in which to +receive anybody; and now, delighted to be able to ask people, they let +it be known that their friends could have tea with them. + +Ogilvy and Annan had promptly availed themselves. + +"This is exceedingly grand," said Ogilvy, examining everything in a tour +around the pretty little sitting room. "We can have all kinds of a rough +house now." And he got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the +rug and very gravely turned a somersault. + +"Sam! Behave! Or I'll set my parrot on you!" exclaimed Valerie. + +Ogilvy sat up and inspected the parrot. + +"You know," he said, "I believe I've seen that parrot somewhere." + +"Impossible, my dear friend--unless you've been in my bedroom." + +Ogilvy got up, dusted his trowsers, and walked over to the parrot. + +"Well it looks like a bird I used to know--I--it certainly resembles--" +He hesitated, then addressing the bird: + +"Hello, Leparello--you old scoundrel!" he said, cautiously. + +"Forget it!" muttered the bird, cocking his head and lifting first one +slate-coloured claw from his perch, then the other;--"forget it! Help! +Oh, very well. God bless the ladies!" + +"_Where_ on earth did you ever before see my parrot?" asked Valerie, +astonished. Ogilvy appeared to be a little out of countenance, too. + +"Oh, I really don't remember exactly where I did see him," he tried to +explain; and nobody believed him. + +"Sam! Answer me!" + +"Well, where did _you_ get him?" + +"Jose Querida gave Leparello to me." + +Annan and Ogilvy exchanged the briefest glance--a perfectly blank +glance. + +"It probably isn't the same bird," said Ogilvy, carelessly. "There are +plenty of parrots that talk--plenty of 'em named Leparello, probably." + +"Sam, how _can_ you be so untruthful! Rita, hold him tightly while I +pull his ears!" + +It was a form of admonition peculiarly distasteful to Ogilvy, and he +made a vain effort to escape. + +"Now, Sam, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Quick, +or I'll tweak!" + +"All right, then," he said, maliciously, "Querida's got relatives in +Oporto who send him these kind of parrots occasionally. He names 'em all +Leparello, teaches 'em all the same jargon, and--gives 'em to girls!" + +"How funny," said Valerie. She looked at Sam, aware of something else in +his grin, and gave an uncertain little laugh. + +He sat down, rubbing his ear-lobes, the malicious grin still lingering +on his countenance. What he had not told her was that Querida's +volcanically irregular affairs of the heart always ended with the gift +of an Oporto parrot. Marianne Valdez owned one. So did Mazie Gray. + +His cynical gaze rested on Valerie reflectively. He had heard plenty of +rumours and whispers concerning her; and never believed any of them. He +could not believe now that the gift of this crimson, green and sky-blue +creature signified anything. Yet Querida had known her as long as +anybody except Neville. + +"When did he give you this parrot?" he asked, carelessly. + +"Oh, one day just before I was going to Atlantic City. He was coming +down, too, to stay a fortnight while I was there, and come back with me; +and he said that He had intended to give the parrot to me after our +return, but that he might as well give it to me before I went." + +"I see," said Ogilvy, thoughtfully. A few moments later, as he and Annan +were leaving the house, he said: + +"It looks to me as though our friend, Jose, had taken too much for +granted." + +"It looks like it," nodded Annan, smiling unpleasantly. + +"Too sure of conquest," added Ogilvy. "Got the frozen mitt, didn't he?" + +"_And_ the Grand Cordon of the double cross." + +"_And_ the hot end of the poker; yes?" + +"Sure; and it's still sizzling." Ogilvy cast a gleeful glance back at +the house: + +"Fine little girl. All white. Yes? No?" + +"All white," nodded Annan.... "And Neville isn't that kind of a man, +anyway." + +Ogilvy said: "So _you_ think so, too?" + +"Oh, yes. He's crazy about her, and she isn't taking Sundays out if it's +his day in.... Only, what's the use?" + +"No use.... I guess Kelly Neville has seen as many artists who've +married their models as we have. Besides, his people are frightful +snobs." + +Annan, walking along briskly, swung his stick vigorously: + +"She's a sweet little thing," he said. + +"I know it. It's going to be hard for her. She can't stand for a +mutt--and it's the only sort that will marry her.... I don't +know--she's a healthy kind of girl--but God help her if she ever really +falls in love with one of our sort." + +"I think she's done it," said Annan. + +"Kelly!" + +"Doesn't it look like it?" + +"Oh, it will wear off without any harm to either of them. That little +girl is smart, all right; she'll never waste an evening screaming for +the moon. And Kelly Neville is--is Kelly Neville--a dear fellow, so +utterly absorbed in the career of a brilliant and intelligent young +artist named Louis Neville, that if the entire earth blew up he'd begin +a new canvas the week after.... Not that I think him cold-hearted--no, +not even selfish as that little bounder Allaire says--but he's a man who +has never yet had time to spare." + +"They're the most hopeless," observed Annan--"the men who haven't time +to spare. Because it takes only a moment to say, 'Hello, old man! How in +hell are you?' It takes only a moment to put yourself, mentally, in some +less lucky man's shoes; and be friendly and sorry and interested." + +"He's a pretty decent sort," murmured Ogilvy. "Anyway, that Valerie +child is safe enough in temporarily adoring Kelly Neville." + + * * * * * + +The "Valerie child," in a loose, rose-silk peignoir, cross-legged on her +bed, was sewing industriously on her week's mending. Rita, in +dishabille, lay across the foot of the bed nibbling bonbons and reading +the evening paper. + +They had dined in their living room, a chafing dish aiding. Afterward +Valerie went over her weekly accounts and had now taken up her regular +mending; and there she sat, sewing away, and singing in her clear, young +voice, the old madrigal: + + "_Let us dry the starting tear + For the hours are surely fleeting + And the sad sundown is near. + All must sip the cup of sorrow, + I to-day, and thou to-morrow! + This the end of every song, + Ding-dong! Ding-dong! + Yet until the shadows fall + Over one and over all, + Sing a merry madrigal!_" + +Rita, nibbling a chocolate, glanced up: + +"That's a gay little creed," she observed. + +"Of course. It's the _only_ creed." + +Rita shrugged and Valerie went on blithely singing and sewing. + +"How long has that young man of yours been away?" inquired Rita, looking +up again. + +"Thirteen days." + +"Oh. Are you sure it isn't fourteen?" + +"Perfectly." Then the sarcasm struck her, and she looked around at Rita +and laughed: + +"Of course I count the days," she said, conscious of the soft colour +mounting to her cheeks. + +Rita sat up and, tucking a pillow under her shoulders, leaned back +against the foot-board of the bed, kicking the newspaper to the floor. +"Do you know," she said, "that you have come pretty close to falling in +love with Kelly Neville?" + +Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she bent lower over +her sewing, but she made no reply. + +"I should say," continued Rita, "that it was about time for you to pick +up your skirts and run for it." + +Still Valerie sewed on in silence. + +"Valerie!" + +"What?" + +"For goodness' sake, say something!" + +"What do you want me to say, dear?" asked the girl, laughing. + +"That you are _not_ in danger of making a silly ninny of yourself over +Kelly Neville." + +"Oh, I'll say that very cheerfully--" + +"Valerie!" + +The girl looked at her, calmly amused. Then she said: + +"I might as well tell you. I am head over heels in love with him. You +knew it, anyway, Rita. You've known it--oh, I don't know how long--but +you've known it. Haven't you?" + +Rita thought a moment: "Yes, I have known it.... What are you going to +do?" + +"Do?" + +"Yes; what do you intend to do about this matter?" + +"Love him," said Valerie. "What else can I do?" + +"You could try not to." + +"I don't want to." + +"You had better." + +"Why?" + +"Because," said Rita, deliberately, "if you really love him you'll +either become his wife or his mistress; and it's a pretty rotten choice +either way." + +Valerie blushed scarlet; + +"Rotten--choice?" + +"Certainly. You know perfectly well what your position would be when his +family and his friends learned that he'd married his model. No girl of +any spirit would endure it--no matter how affable his friends might +perhaps pretend to be. No girl of any sense would ever put herself in +such a false position.... I tell you, Valerie, it's only the exceptional +man who'll stand by you. No doubt Louis Neville would. But it would cost +him every friend he has--and probably the respect of his parents. And +that means misery for you both--because he couldn't conceal from you +what marrying you was costing him--" + +[Illustration: "Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she +bent lower over her sewing."] + +"Rita!" + +"Yes." + +"There is no use telling me all this. I know it. He knows I know it. I +am not going to marry him." + +After a silence Rita said, slowly: "Did he ask you to?" + +Valerie looked down, passed her needle through the hem once, twice. + +"Yes," she said, softly, "he asked me." + +"And--you refused?" + +"Yes." + +Rita said: "I like Kelly Neville ... and I love you better, dear. But +it's not best for you to marry him.... Life isn't a very sentimental +affair--not nearly as silly a matter as poets and painters and dramas +and novels pretend it is. Love really plays a very minor part in life, +Don't you know it?" + +"Yes. I lived twenty years without it," said Valerie, demurely, yet in +her smile Rita divined the hidden tragedy. And she leaned forward and +kissed her impulsively. + +"Let's swear celibacy," she said, "and live out our lives together in +single blessedness! Will you? We can have a perfectly good time until +the undertaker knocks." + +"I hope he won't knock for a long while," said Valerie, with a slight +shiver. "There's so much I want to see first." + +"You shall. We'll see everything together. We'll work hard, live +frugally if you say so, cut out all frills and nonsense, and save and +save until we have enough to retire on respectably. And then, like two +nice old ladies, we'll start out to see the world--" + +"Oh, Rita! I don't want to see it when I'm too old!" + +"You'll enjoy it more--" + +"Rita! How ridiculous! You've seen more of the world than I have, +anyway. It's all very well for you to say wait till I'm an old maid; but +you've been to Paris--haven't you?" + +"Yes," said Rita. There was a slight colour in her face. + +"Well, then! Why must I wait until I'm a dowdy old frump before I go? +Why should you and I not be as happy as we can afford to be while we're +young and attractive and unspoiled?" + +"I want you to be as happy as you can afford to be, Valerie.... But you +can't afford to fall in love." + +"Why?" + +"Because it will make you miserable." + +"But it doesn't." + +"It will if it is love." + +"It is, Rita," said the girl, smiling out of her dark eyes--deep brown +wells of truth that the other gazed into and saw a young soul there, +fearless and doomed. + +"Valerie," she said, shivering, "you won't do--_that_--will you?" + +"Dear, I cannot marry him, and I love him. What else am I to do?" + +"Well, then--then you'd better marry him!" stammered Rita, frightened. +"It's better for you! It's better--" + +"For _me_? Yes, but how about him?" + +"What do you care about him!" burst out Rita, almost incoherent in her +fright and anger. "He's a man; he can take care of himself. Don't think +of him. It isn't your business to consider him. If he wants to marry you +it's his concern after all. Let him do it! Marry him and let him fight +it out with his friends! After all what does a man give a girl that +compares with what she gives him? Men--men--" she stammered--"they're +all alike in the depths of their own hearts. We are incidents to +them--no matter how they say they love us. They _can't_ love as we do. +They're not made for it! We are part of the game to them; they are the +whole game to us; we are, at best, an important episode in their +careers; they are our whole careers. Oh, Valerie! Valerie! listen to me, +child! That man could go on living and painting and eating and drinking +and sleeping and getting up to dress and going to bed to sleep, if you +lay dead in your grave. But if you loved him, and were his wife--or God +forgive me!--his mistress, the day he died _you_ would die, though your +body might live on. I know--_I_ know, Valerie. Death--whether it be his +body or his love, ends all for the woman who really loves him. Woman's +loss is eternal. But man's loss is only temporary--he is made that way, +fashioned so. Now I tell you the exchange is not fair--it has never been +fair--never will be, never can be. And I warn you not to give this man +the freshness of your youth, the happy years of your life, your +innocence, the devotion which he will transmute into passion with his +accursed magic! I warn you not to forsake the tranquillity of ignorance, +the blessed immunity from that devil's paradise that you are already +gazing into--" + +"Rita! Rita! What are you saying?" + +"I scarcely know, child. I am trying to save you from lifelong +unhappiness--trying to tell you that--that men are not worth it--" + +"How do you know?" + +There was a silence, then Rita, very pale and quiet, leaned forward, +resting her elbows on her knees and framing her face with her hands. + +"I had my lesson," she said. + +"You! Oh, my darling--forgive me! I did not know--" + +Rita suffered herself to be drawn into the younger girl's impulsive +embrace; they both cried a little, arms around each other, faltering out +question and answer in unsteady whispers: + +"Were you married, dearest?" + +"No." + +"Oh--I am _so_ sorry, dear--" + +"So am I.... Do you blame me for thinking about men as I do think?" + +"Didn't you love--him?" + +"I thought I did.... I was too young to know.... It doesn't matter +now--" + +"No, no, of course not. You made a ghastly mistake, but it's no more +shame to you than it is to him. Besides, you thought you loved him." + +"He could have made me. I was young enough.... But he let me see how +absolutely wicked he was.... And then it was too late to ever love him." + +"O Rita, Rita!--then you haven't ever even had the happiness of loving? +Have you?" + +Rita did not answer. + +"Have you, darling?" + +Then Rita broke down and laid her head on Valerie's knees, crying as +though her heart would break. + +"That's the terrible part of it," she sobbed--"I really do love a man, +now.... Not that _first_ one ... and there's nothing to do about +it--nothing, Valerie, nothing--because even if he asked me to marry him +I can't, now--" + +"Because you--" + +"Yes." + +"And if you had not--" + +"God knows what I would do," sobbed Rita, "I love him so, Valerie--I +love him so!" + +The younger girl looked down at the blond head lying on her +knees--looked at the pretty tear-stained face gleaming through the +fingers--looked and wondered over the philosophy broken down beside the +bowed head and breaking heart. + +Terrible her plight; with or without benefit of clergy she dared not +give herself. Love was no happiness to her, no confidence, no +sacrifice--only a dreadful mockery--a thing that fettered, paralysed, +terrified. + +"Does he love you?" whispered Valerie. + +"No--I think not." + +"If he did he would forgive." + +"Do you think so?" + +"Of course. Love pardons everything," said the girl in surprise. + +"Yes. But never forgets." + + * * * * * + +That was the first confidence that ever had passed between Valerie West +and Rita Tevis. And after it, Rita, apparently forgetting her own +philosophical collapse, never ceased to urge upon Valerie the wisdom, +the absolute necessity of self-preservation in considering her future +relations with Louis Neville. But, like Neville's logic, Rita's failed +before the innocent simplicity of the creed which Valerie had embraced. +Valerie was willing that their relations should remain indefinitely as +they were if the little gods of convention were to be considered; she +had the courage to sever all relations with the man she loved if anybody +could convince her that it was better for Neville. Marry him she would +not, because she believed it meant inevitable unhappiness for him. But +she was not afraid to lay her ringless hands in his for ever. + +Querida called on them and was very agreeable and lively and +fascinating; and when he went away Valerie asked him to come again. He +did; and again after that. She and Rita dined with him once or twice; +and things gradually slipped back to their old footing; and Querida +remained on his best behaviour. + +Neville had prolonged the visit to the parental roof. He did not explain +to her why, but the reason was that he had made up his mind to tell his +parents that he wished to marry and to find out once and for all what +their attitudes would be toward such a girl as Valerie West. But he had +not yet found courage to do it, and he was lingering on, trying to find +it and the proper moment to employ it. + +His father was a gentleman so utterly devoid of imagination that he had +never even ventured into business, but had been emotionlessly content to +marry and live upon an income sufficient to maintain the material and +intellectual traditions of the house of Neville. + +Tall, transparently pale, negative in character, he had made it a life +object to get through life without increasing the number of his +acquaintances--legacies in the second generation left him by his father, +whose father before him had left the grandfathers of these friends as +legacies to his son. + +[Illustration: "She and Rita dined with him once or twice."] + +It was a pallid and limited society that Henry Neville and his wife +frequented--a coterie of elderly, intellectual people, and their +prematurely dried-out offspring. And intellectual in-breeding was +thinning it to attenuation--to a bloodless meagreness in which they, who +composed it, conceived a mournful pride. + +Old New Yorkers all, knowing no other city, no other bourne north of +Tenth Street or west of Chelsea--silent, serene, drab-toned people, +whose drawing-rooms were musty with what had been fragrance once, whose +science, religion, interests, desires were the beliefs, interests and +emotions of a century ago, their colourless existence and passive +snobbishness affronted nobody who did not come seeking affront. + +To them Theodore Thomas had been the last conductor; his orchestra the +last musical expression fit for a cultivated society; the Academy of +Music remained their last symphonic temple, Wallack's the last refuge of +a drama now dead for ever. + +Delmonico's had been their northern limit, Stuyvesant Square their +eastern, old Trinity their southern, and their western, Chelsea. Outside +there was nothing. The blatancy and gilt of the million-voiced +metropolis fell on closed eyes, and on ears attuned only to the murmurs +of the past. They lived in their ancient houses and went abroad and +summered in some simple old-time hamlet hallowed by the headstones of +their grandsires, and existed as meaninglessly and blamelessly as the +old catalpa trees spreading above their dooryards. + +And into this narrow circle Louis Neville and his sister Lily had been +born. + +It had been a shock to her parents when Lily married Gordon Collis, a +mining engineer from Denver. She came to see them with her husband every +year; Collis loved her enough to endure it. + +As for Louis' career, his achievements, his work, they regarded it +without approval. Their last great painters had been Bierstadt and Hart, +their last great sculptor, Powers. Blankly they gazed upon the +splendours of the mural symphonies achieved by the son and heir of all +the Nevilles; they could not comprehend the art of the Uitlanders; their +comment was silence and dignity. + +To them all had become only shadowy tradition; even affection and human +emotion, and the relationship of kin to kin, of friend to friend, had +become only part of a negative existence which conformed to precedent, +temporal and spiritual, as written in the archives of a worn-out +civilisation. + +So, under the circumstances, it was scarcely to be wondered that Neville +hesitated to introduce the subject of Valerie West as he sat in the +parlour at Spindrift House with his father and mother, reading the +_Tribune_ or the _Evening Post_ or poring over some ancient tome of +travels, or looking out across the cliffs at an icy sea splintering and +glittering against a coast of frozen adamant. + +At length he could remain no longer; commissions awaited him in town; +hunger for Valerie gnawed ceaselessly, unsubdued by his letters or by +hers to him. + +"Mother," he said, the evening before his departure, "would it surprise +you very much if I told you that I wished to marry?" + +"No," she said, tranquilly; "you mean Stephanie Swift, I suppose." + +[Illustration: "Tall, transparently pale, negative in character."] + +His father glanced up over his spectacles, and he hesitated; then, as +his father resumed his reading: + +"I don't mean Stephanie, mother." + +His father laid aside his book and removed, the thin gold-rimmed +spectacles. + +"I understand from Lily that we are to be prepared to receive Stephanie +Swift as your affianced wife," he said. "I shall be gratified. Stephen +Swift was my oldest friend." + +"Lily was mistaken, father. Stephanie and I are merely very good +friends. I have no idea of asking her to marry me." + +"I had been given to understand otherwise, Louis. I am disappointed." + +Louis Neville looked out of the window, considering, yet conscious of +the hopelessness of it all. + +"Who is this girl, Louis?" asked his mother, pulling the white-and-lilac +wool shawl closer around her thin shoulders. + +"Her name is Valerie West." + +"One of the Wests of West Eighth Street?" demanded his father. + +The humour of it all twitched for a moment at his son's grimly set jaws, +then a slight flush mantled his face: + +"No, father." + +"Do you mean the Chelsea Wests, Louis?" + +"No." + +"Then we--don't know them," concluded his father with a shrug of his +shoulders, which dismissed many, many things from any possibility of +further discussion. But his mother's face grew troubled. + +"Who is this Miss West?" she asked in a colourless voice. + +"She is a very good, very noble, very cultivated, very beautiful young +girl--an orphan--who is supporting herself by her own endeavours." + +"What!" said his father, astonished. + +"Mother, I know how it sounds to you, but you and father have only to +meet her to recognise in her every quality that you could possibly wish +for in my wife." + +"_Who_ is she, Louis!" demanded his father, casting aside the evening +newspaper and folding up his spectacles. + +"I've told you, father." + +"I beg to differ with you. Who is this girl? In what description of +business is she actually engaged?" + +The young fellow's face grew red: + +"She _was_ engaged in--the drama." + +"What!" + +"She was an actress," he said, realising now the utter absurdity of any +hope from the beginning, yet now committed and determined to see it +through to the bitter end. + +"An actress! Louis!" faltered his mother. + +There was a silence, cut like a knife by the thin edge of his father's +voice: + +"If she _was_ an actress, what is she now?" + +"She has helped me with my painting." + +"Helped you? How?" + +"By--posing." + +"Do you desire me to understand that the girl is an artist's model!" + +"Yes." + +His father stared at him a moment, then: + +"And is this the woman you propose to have your mother meet?" + +"Father," he said, hopelessly, "there is no use in my saying anything +more. Miss West is a sweet, good, generous young girl, fully my peer in +education, my superior in many things.... You and mother can never +believe that the ideas, standards--even the ideals of civilisation +change--have changed since your youth--are changing every hour. In your +youth the word actress had a dubious significance; to-day it signifies +only what the character of her who wears the title signifies. In your +youth it was immodest, unmaidenly, reprehensible, for a woman to be +anything except timid, easily abashed, ignorant of vital truths, and +submissive to every social convention; to-day women are neither ignorant +nor timid; they are innocent because they choose to be; they are +fearless, intelligent, ambitious, and self-reliant--and lose nothing in +feminine charm by daring to be themselves instead of admitting their +fitness only for the seraglio of some Occidental monogamist--" + +"Louis! Your mother is present!" + +"Good heavens, father, I know it! Isn't it possible even for a man's own +mother to hear a little truth once in a while--" + +His father rose in pallid wrath: + +"Be silent!" he said, unsteadily; "the subject is definitely ended." + + * * * * * + +It was ended. His father gave him a thin, chilly hand at parting. But +his mother met him at the outer door and laid her trembling lips to his +forehead. + +"You won't bring this shame on us, Louis, I know. Nor on yourself, nor +on the name you bear.... It is an honourable name in the land, Louis.... +I pray God to bless you and counsel you, my son--" She turned away, +adding in a whisper--"and--and comfort you." + +And so he went away from Spindrift House through a snow-storm, and +arrived in New York late that evening; but not too late to call Valerie +on the telephone and hear again the dear voice with its happy little cry +of greeting--and the promise of to-morrow's meeting before the day of +duty should begin. + + * * * * * + +Love grew as the winter sped glittering toward the far primrose dawn of +spring; work filled their days; evening brought the happiness of a +reunion eternally charming in its surprises, its endless novelty. New, +forever new, love seemed; and youth, too, seemed immortal. + +On various occasions when Valerie chanced to be at his studio, pouring +tea for him, friends of his sister came unannounced--agreeable women +more or less fashionable, who pleaded his sister's sanction of an +unceremonious call to see the great painted frieze before it was sent to +the Court House. + +He was perfectly nice to them; and Valerie was perfectly at ease; and it +was very plain that these people were interested and charmed with this +lovely Miss West, whom they found pouring tea in the studio of an artist +already celebrated; and every one of them expressed themselves and their +curiosity to his sister, Mrs. Collis, who, never having heard of Valerie +West, prudently conveyed the contrary in smiling but silent +acquiescence, and finally wrote to her brother and told him what was +being said. + +Before he determined to reply, another friend--or rather acquaintance of +the Collis family--came in to see the picture--the slim and pretty +Countess d'Enver. And went quite mad over Valerie--so much so that she +remained for an hour talking to her, almost oblivious of Neville and +his picture and of Ogilvy and Annan, who consumed time and cocktails in +the modest background. + +When she finally went away, and Neville had returned from putting her +into her over-elaborate carriage, Ogilvy said: + +"Gee, Valerie, you sure did make a hit with the lady. What was she +trying to make you do?" + +"She asked me to come to a reception of the Five-Minute Club with +Louis," said Valerie, laughing. "What _is_ the Five-Minute Club, Louis?" + +"Oh, it's a semi-fashionable, semi-artistic affair--one of the +incarnations of the latest group of revolting painters and sculptors and +literary people, diluted with a little society and a good deal of +near-society." + +Later, as they were dining together at Delmonico's, he said: + +"Would you care to go, Valerie?" + +"Yes--if you think it best for us to accept such invitations together." + +"Why not?" + +"I don't know.... Considering what we are to become to each other--I +thought--perhaps the prejudices of your friends--" + +He turned a dull red, said nothing for a moment, then, looking up at +her, suddenly laid his hand over hers where it rested on the table's +edge. + +"The world must take us as it finds us," he said. + +"I know; but is it quite fair to seek it?" + +"You adorable girl! Didn't the Countess seek us--or rather you?--and +torment you until you promised to go to the up-to-date doings of her +bally club! It's across to her, now. And as half of society has +exchanged husbands and half of the remainder doesn't bother to, I don't +think a girl like you and a man like myself are likely to meet very many +people as innately decent as ourselves." + + * * * * * + +A reception at the Five-Minute Club was anything but an ordinary affair. + +It was the ultra-modern school of positivists where realism was on the +cards and romance in the discards; where muscle, biceps, and +thumb-punching replaced technical mastery and delicate skill; where +inspiration was physical, not intellectual; where writers called a spade +a spade, and painters painted all sorts of similar bucolic instruments +with candour and an inadequate knowledge of their art; where composers +thumped their pianos the harder, the less their raucous inspiration +responded, or maundered incapably into interminable incoherency, hunting +for themes in grays and mauves and reds and yellows, determined to find +in music what does not belong there and never did. + +In spite of its apparent vigour and uncompromising modernity, one +suspected a sub-stratum of weakness and a perversity slightly vicious. + +Colour blindness might account for some of the canvases, strabismus for +some of the draughtmanship; but not for all. There was an ugly +deliberation in the glorification of the raw, the uncouth; there was a +callous hardness in the deadly elaboration of ugliness for its own sake. +And transcendentalism looked on in approval. + +A near-sighted study of various masters, brilliant, morbid, or +essentially rotten, was the basis of this cult--not originality. Its +devotees were the devotees of Richard Strauss, of Huysmans, of Manet, of +Degas, Rops, Louis Le Grand, Forain, Monticelli; its painters painted +nakedness in footlight effects with blobs for faces and blue shadows +where they were needed to conceal the defects of impudent drawing; its +composers maundered with both ears spread wide for stray echoes of +Salome; its sculptors, stupefied by Rodin, achieved sections of human +anatomy protruding from lumps of clay and marble; its dramatists, +drugged by Mallarme and Maeterlinck, dabbled in dullness, platitude and +mediocre psychology; its writers wrote as bloodily, as squalidly, and as +immodestly as they dared; its poets blubbered with Verlaine, spat with +Aristide Bruant, or leered with the alcoholic muses of the Dead Rat. + +They were all young, all in deadly earnest, all imperfectly educated, +all hard workers, brave workers, blind, incapable workers sweating and +twisting and hammering in their impotence against the changeless laws of +truth and beauty. With them it was not a case of a loose screw; all +screws had been tightened so brutally that the machinery became +deadlocked. They were neither lazy, languid, nor precious; they only +thought they knew how and they didn't. All their vigour was sterile; all +their courage vain. + +Several attractive women exquisitely gowned were receiving; there was +just a little something unusual in their prettiness, in their toilets; +and also a little something lacking; and its absence was as noticeable +in them as it was in the majority of arriving or departing guests. + +It could not have been self-possession and breeding which an outsider +missed. For the slim Countess d'Enver possessed both, inherited from +her Pittsburgh parents; and Mrs. Hind-Willet was born to a social +security indisputable; and Latimer Varyck had been in the diplomatic +service before he wrote "Unclothed," and the handsome, dark-eyed Mrs. +Atherstane divided social Manhattan with a blonder and lovelier rival. + +Valerie entering with Neville, slender, self-possessed, a hint of +inquiry in her level eyes, heard the man at the door announce them, and +was conscious of many people turning as they passed into the big +reception room. A woman near her murmured, "What a beauty!" Another +added, "How intelligently gowned!" The slim Countess Helene d'Enver, nee +Nellie Jackson, held out a perfectly gloved hand and nodded amiably to +Neville. Then, smiling fixedly at Valerie: + +"My dear, how nice of you," she said. "And you, too, Louis; it is very +amusing of you to come. Jose Querida has just departed. He gave us such +a delightful five-minute talk on modernity. Quoting Huneker, he spoke of +it as a 'quality'--and 'that nervous, naked vibration'--" + +She ended with a capricious gesture which might have meant anything +ineffable, or an order for a Bronx cocktail. + +"What's a nervous, naked vibration?" demanded Neville, with an impatient +shrug. "It sounds like a massage parlour--not," he added with respect, +"that Huneker doesn't know what he's talking about. Nobody doubts that. +Only art is one delicious bouillabaisse to him." + +The Countess d'Enver laughed, still retaining Valerie's hand: + +"Your gown is charming--may I add that you are disturbingly beautiful, +Miss West? When they have given you some tea, will you find me if I +can't find you?" + +"Yes, I will," said Valerie. + +At the tea table Neville brought her a glass of sherry and a bite of +something squashy; a number of people spoke to him and asked to be +presented to Valerie. Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning +simplicity of her manner were noticed everywhere, and everywhere +commented on. People betrayed a tendency to form groups around her; +women, prepared by her unusual beauty for anything between mediocrity +and inanity, were a little perplexed at her intelligence and candour. + +To Mrs, Hind-Willet's question she replied innocently: "To me there is +no modern painter comparable to Mr. Neville, though I dearly love +Wilson, Sorella and Querida." + +To Latimer Varyck's whimsical insistence she finally was obliged to +admit that her reasons for not liking Richard Strauss were because she +thought him ugly, uninspired, and disreputable, which unexpected truism +practically stunned that harmless dilettante and so delighted Neville +that he was obliged to disguise his mirth with a scowl directed at the +ceiling. + +"Did I say anything very dreadful, Kelly?" she whispered, when +opportunity offered. + +"No, you darling. I couldn't keep a civil face when you told the truth +about Richard Strauss to that rickety old sensualist." + +[Illustration: "Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning simplicity +of her manner were noticed everywhere."] + +"I don't really know enough to criticise anything. But Mr. Varyck +_would_ make me answer; and one must say something." + +Olaf Dennison, without preliminary, sat down at the piano, tossed aside +his heavy hair, and gave a five-minute prelude to the second act of his +new opera, "Yvonne of Bannalec." The opera might as well have been +called Mamie of Hoboken, for all the music signified to Neville. + +Mrs. Hind-Willet, leaning over the chair where Valerie was seated, +whispered fervently: + +"Isn't it graphic! The music describes an old Breton peasant going to +market. You can hear the very click of his sabots and the gurgle of the +cider in his jug. And that queer little slap-stick noise is where he's +striking palms with another peasant bargaining for his cider." + +"But where does Yvonne come in?" inquired Valerie in soft bewilderment. + +"He's Yvonne's father," whispered Mrs. Hind-Willet. "The girl doesn't +appear during the entire opera. It's a marvellously important advance +beyond the tonal and graphic subtleties of Richard Strauss." + +Other earnest and worthy people consumed intervals of five minutes now +and then; a "discuse,"--whom Neville insisted on calling a +"disease,"--said a coy and rather dirty little French poem directly at +her audience, leeringly assisted by an over-sophisticated piano +accompaniment. + +"If that's modernity it's certainly naked and nervous enough," commented +Neville, drily. + +"It's--it's perfectly horrid," murmured Valerie, the blush still +lingering on cheek and brow. "I can't understand how intelligent people +can even think about such things." + +"Modernity," repeated Neville. "Hello; there's Carrillo, the young +apostle of Bruant, who makes such a hit with the elect." + +"How, Kelly?" + +"Realism, New York, and the spade business. He saw a sign on a Bowery +clothing store,--'Gents Pants Half Off Today,' and he wrote a poem on it +and all Manhattan sat up and welcomed him as a peerless realist; and +dear old Dean Williams compared him to Tolstoy and Ed. Harrigan, and +there was the deuce to pay artistically and generally. Listen to the +Yankee Steinlen in five-minute verse, dear." + +Carrillo rose, glanced carelessly at his type-written manuscript and +announced its title unconcernedly: + + "_Mutts In Madison Square_. + + "A sodden tramp sits scratching on a bench, + The S.C.D. cart trails a lengthening stench + Where White Wings scrape the asphalt; and a breeze + Ripples the fountain and the budding trees. + Now fat old women, waddling like hogs, + Arrive to exercise their various dogs; + And 'round and 'round the little mutts all run, + Grass-maddened, frantic, circling in the sun, + Wagging and nosing--see! beneath yon tree + One little mutt meets his affinity: + And, near, another madly wags his tail + Inquiringly; but his advances fail, + And, 'yap-yap-yap!' replies the shrewish tyke, + So off the other starts upon a hike, + Rushing at random, crazed with sun and air, + Circling and barking out his canine prayer: + + "'Oh, Lord of dogs who made the Out-of-doors + And fashioned mutts to gambol on all fours, + Grant us a respite from the city's stones! + Grant us a grassy place to bury bones!--A + grassy spot to roll on now and then, + Oh, Lord of dogs who also fashioned men, + Accept our thanks for this brief breath of air, + And grant, Oh, Lord, a humble mongrel's prayer!' + + * * * * * + + The hoboe, sprawling, scratches in the sun; + While 'round and 'round the happy mongrels run." + +"Good Heavens," breathed Neville, "that sort of thing may be modern and +strong, but it's too rank for me, Valerie. Shall we bolt?" + +"I--I think we'd better," she said miserably. "I don't think I care +for--for these interesting people very much." + +They rose and passed slowly along the walls of the room, which were hung +with "five-minute sketches," which probably took five seconds to +conceive and five hours to execute--here an unclothed woman, chiefly +remarkable for an extraordinary development of adipose tissue and +house-maid's knee; here a pathological gem that might have aptly +illustrated a work on malformations; yonder a dashing dab of balderdash, +and next it one of Rackin's masterpieces, flanked by a gem of Stanley +Pooks. + +In the centre of the room, emerging from a chunk of marble, the back and +neck and one ear of an unclothed lady protruded; and the sculptured +achievement was labelled, "Beatrice Andante." + +"Oh, Lord," whispered Neville, repressing a violent desire to laugh. +"Beatrice and Aunty! I didn't know he had one." + +"Is it Dante's Beatrice, Kelly? Where is Dante and his Aunty?" + +"God knows. They made a mess of it anyway, those two--andante--which I +suppose this mess in marble symbolises. Pity he didn't have an aunty to +tell him how." + +"Louis! How irreverent!" she whispered, eyes sparkling with laughter. + +"Shall I try a five-minute fashionable impromptu, dear?" he asked: + + "If Dante'd had an Aunty + Who ante-dated Dante + And scolded him + And tolded him + The way to win a winner, + It's a cinch or I'm a sinner, + He'd have taken Trix to dinner, + He'd have given her the eye + Of the fish about to die, + And folded her, + And moulded her + Like dough within a pie-- + sallow, pallid pie-- + And cooked a scheme to marry her, + And hired a hack to carry her + To stately Harlem-by-the-Bronx, + Where now the lonely taxi honks--" + +"Kelly!" she gasped. + +They both were laughing so that they hastened their steps, fearful of +offending, and barely contrived to compose their features when making +their adieux to Mrs. Hind-Willet and the Countess d'Enver. + +As they walked east along Fifty-ninth Street, breathing in the fresh, +sparkling evening air, she said impulsively: + +"And to think, Louis, that if I had been wicked enough to marry you I'd +have driven you into that kind of society--or into something genetically +similar!" + +His face sobered: + +"You could hold your own in any society." + +"Perhaps I could. But they wouldn't let me." + +"Are you afraid to fight it out?" + +"Yes, dear--at _your_ expense. Otherwise--" She gazed smilingly into +space, a slight colour in either cheek. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Valerie West was twenty-two years old in February. One year of life lay +behind her; her future stretched away into sunlit infinity. + +Neville attained his twenty-eighth year in March. Years still lay before +him, a few lay behind him; but in a single month he had waded so swiftly +forward through the sea of life that the shallows were already passed, +the last shoal was deepening rapidly. Only immeasurable and menacing +depths remained between him and the horizon--that pale, dead line +dividing the noonday of to-day from the phantom suns of blank eternity. + +It was that winter that he began the picture destined to fix definitely +his position among the painters of his times--began it humbly, yet +somehow aware of what it was to be; afraid, for all his courage, yet +conscious of something inevitable impending. It was Destiny; and, +instinctively, he arose to meet it. + +He called the picture "A Bride." A sapphire sky fading to turquoise, in +which great clouds crowded high in argent splendour--a young girl naked +of feet, her snowy body cinctured at the waist with straight and +silvered folds, standing amid a riot of wild flowers, head slightly +dropped back, white arms inert, pendant. And in her eyes' deep velvet +depths the mystery of the Annunciation. + +All of humanity and of maturity--of adolescence and of divinity was in +that face; in the exquisitely sensitive wisdom of the woman's eyes, in +the full sweet innocence of the childish mouth--in the smooth little +hands so unsoiled, so pure--in the nun-like pallor and slender beauty of +the throat. + +[Illustration: "'Where do you keep those pretty models, Louis?' he +demanded."] + +Whatever had been his inspiration--whether spiritual conviction, or the +physical beauty of Valerie, neither he nor she considered very deeply. +But that he was embodying and creating something of the existence of +which neither he nor she had been aware a month ago, was awaking +something within them that had never before stirred or given sign of +life. + +Since the last section of the mural decoration for the new court house +had been shipped to its destination, he had busied himself on two +canvases, a portrait of his sister in furs, and the portrait of Valerie. + +Lily Collis came in the mornings twice a week to sit for her; and once +or twice Stephanie Swift came with her; also Sandy Cameron, ruddy, bald, +jovial, scoffing, and insatiably curious. + +"Where do you keep all those pretty models, Louis?" he demanded, prying +aside the tapestry with the crook of his walking stick, and peeping +behind furniture and hangings and big piles of canvases. "Be a sport and +introduce us; Stephanie wants to see a few as well as I do." + +Neville shrugged and went on painting, which exasperated Cameron. + +"It's a fraud," he observed, in a loud, confidential aside to Stephanie; +"this studio ought to be full of young men in velvet coats and bunchy +ties, singing, 'Oh la--la!' and dextrously balancing on their baggy +knees a series of assorted soubrettes. It's a bluff, a hoax, a con game! +Are you going to stand for it? I don't see any absinthe either--or even +any Vin ordinaire! Only a tea-pot--a _tea-pot!_" he repeated in +unutterable scorn. "Why, there's more of Bohemia in a Broad Street Trust +Company than there is in this Pullman car studio!" + +Mrs. Collis was laughing so that her brother had difficulty in going on +with her portrait. + +"Get out of here, Sandy," he said--"or take Stephanie into the rest of +the apartment, somewhere, and tell her your woes." + +Stephanie, who had been exploring, turning over piles of chassis and +investigating canvases and charcoal studies stacked up here and there +against the wainscot, pulled aside an easel which impeded her progress, +and in so doing accidentally turned the canvas affixed to it toward the +light. + +"Hello!" exclaimed Cameron briskly, "who is this?" + +Lily turned her small, aristocratic head, and Stephanie looked around. + +"What a perfectly beautiful girl!" she exclaimed impulsively; "who is +she, Louis?" + +"A model," he said calmly; but the careless and casual exposure of the +canvas had angered him so suddenly that his own swift emotion astonished +him. + +Lily had risen from her seat, and now stood looking fixedly at the +portrait of Valerie West, her furs trailing from one shoulder to the +chair. + +"My eye and Betty Martin!" cried Cameron, "I'll take it all back, girls! +It's a real studio after all--and this is the real thing! Louis, do you +think she's seen the Aquarium? I'm disengaged after three o'clock--" + +He began to kiss his hand rapidly in the direction of the portrait, and +then, fondly embracing his own walking stick, he took a few jaunty steps +in circles, singing "Waltz me around again, Willy." + +Lily Collis said: "If your model is as lovely as her portrait, Louis, +she is a real beauty. Who is she?" + +"A professional model." He could scarcely contain his impatience with +his sister, with Cameron's fat humour, with Stephanie's quiet and +intent scrutiny--as though, somehow, he had suddenly exposed Valerie +herself to the cool and cynically detached curiosity of a world which +she knew must always remain unfriendly to her. + +He was perfectly aware that his sister had guessed whose portrait +confronted them; he supposed, too, that Stephanie probably suspected. +And the knowledge irritated him more than the clownishness of Cameron. + +"It is a splendid piece of painting," said Stephanie cordially, and +turned quietly to a portfolio of drawings at her elbow. She had let her +fleeting glance rest on Neville for a second; had divined in a flash +that he was enduring and not courting their examination of this picture; +that, somehow, her accidental discovery of it had displeased him--was +even paining him. + +"Sandy," she said cheerfully, "come here and help me look over these +sketches." + +"Any peaches among 'em?" + +"Bushels." + +Cameron came with alacrity; Neville waited until Lily reluctantly +resumed her seat; then he pushed back the easel, turned Valerie's +portrait to the wall, and quietly resumed his painting. + +Art in any form was powerless to retain Cameron's attention for very +many consecutive minutes at a time; he grew restless, fussed about with +portfolios for a little while longer, enlivening the tedium with +characteristic observations. + +"Well, I've got business down town," he exclaimed, with great pretence +of regret. "Come on, Stephanie; we'll go to the Exchange and start +something. Shall we? Oh, anything--from a panic to a bull-market! I +don't care; go as far as you like. You may wreck a few railroads if you +want to. Only I've _got_ to go.... Awfully good of you to let +me--er--see all these--er--interesting and er--m-m-m--things, Louis. +Glad I saw that dream of a peacherino, too. What is she on the side? An +actorine? If she is I'll take a box for the rest of the season including +the road and one-night stands.... Good-bye, Mrs. Collis! Good-bye, +Stephanie! _Good_-bye, Louis!--I'll come and spend the day with you when +you're too busy to see me. Now, Stephanie, child! It's the Stock +Exchange or the Little Church around the Corner for you and me, if you +say so!" + +Stephanie had duties at a different sort of an Exchange; and she also +took her leave, thanking Neville warmly for the pleasure she had had, +and promising to lunch with Lily at the Continental Club. + +When they had departed, Lily said: + +"I suppose that is a portrait of your model, Valerie West." + +"Yes," he replied shortly. + +"Well, Louis, it is perfectly absurd of you to show so plainly that you +consider our discovery of it a desecration." + +He turned red with surprise and irritation: + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"I mean exactly what I say. You showed by your expression and your +manner that our inspection of the picture and our questions and comments +concerning it were unwelcome." + +"I'm sorry I showed it.... But they _were_ unwelcome." + +"Will you tell me why?" + +"I don't think I know exactly why--unless the portrait was a personal +and private affair concerning only myself--" + +"Louis! Has it gone as far as that?" + +"As far as what? What on earth are you trying to say, Lily?" + +"I'm trying to say--as nicely and as gently as I can--that your +behaviour--in regard to this girl is making us all perfectly wretched." + +"Who do you mean by 'us all'?" he demanded sullenly. + +"Father and mother and myself. You must have known perfectly well that +father would write to me about what you told him at Spindrift House a +month ago." + +"Did he?" + +"Of course he did, Louis! Mother is simply worrying herself ill over +you; father is incredulous--at least he pretends to be; but he has +written me twice on the subject--and I think you might just as well be +told what anxiety and unhappiness your fascination for this girl is +causing us all." + +Mrs. Collis was leaning far forward in her chair, forgetful of her pose; +Neville stood silent, head lowered, absently mixing tints upon his +palette without regard to the work under way. + +When he had almost covered his palette with useless squares of colour he +picked up a palette-knife, scraped it clean, smeared the residue on a +handful of rags, laid aside brushes and palette, and walked slowly to +the window. + +It was snowing again. He could hear the feathery whisper of the flakes +falling on the glass roof above; and he remembered the night of the new +year, and all that it had brought to him--all the wonder and happiness +and perplexity of a future utterly unsuspected, undreamed of. + +And now it was into that future he was staring with a fixed and blank +gaze as his sister's hand fell upon his shoulder and her cheek rested a +moment in caress against his. + +"Dearest child," she said tremulously, "I did not mean to speak harshly +or without sympathy. But, after all, shouldn't a son consider his father +and mother in a matter of this kind?" + +"I have considered them--tried to." + +Mrs. Collis dropped into an arm-chair. After a few moments he also +seated himself listlessly, and sat gazing at nothing out of absent eyes. + +She said: "You know what father and mother are. Even I have something +left of their old-fashioned conservatism clinging to me--and yet people +consider me extremely liberal in my views. But all my liberality, all my +modern education since I left the dear old absurdities of our narrow +childhood and youth, can not reconcile me to what you threaten us +with--with what you are threatened--you, your entire future life." + +"What seems to threaten you--and them--is my marriage to the woman with +whom I'm in love. Does that shock you?" + +"The circumstances shock me." + +"I could not control the circumstances." + +"You can control yourself, Louis." + +"Yes--I can do that. I can break her heart and mine." + +"Hearts don't break, Louis. And is anybody to live life through exempt +from suffering? If your unhappiness comes early in life to you it will +pass the sooner, leaving the future tranquil for you, and you ready for +it, unperplexed--made cleaner, purer, braver by a sorrow that came, as +comes all sorrow--and that has gone its way, like all sorrows, leaving +you the better and the worthier." + +"How is it to leave _her_?" + +He spoke so naturally, so simply, that for the moment his sister did not +recognise in him what had never before been there to recognise--the +thought of another before himself. Afterward she remembered it. + +She said quietly: "If Valerie West is a girl really sincere and meriting +your respect, she will face this matter as you face it." + +"Yes--she would do that," he said, thoughtfully. + +"Then I think that the sooner you explain matters to her--" + +He laughed: "_I_ don't have to explain anything to her, Lily." + +"What do you mean?" + +"She knows how things stand. She is perfectly aware of your world's +attitude toward her. She has not the slightest intention of forcing +herself on you, or of asking your indulgence or your charity." + +"You mean, then, that she desires to separate you from your family--from +your friends--" + +"No," he said wearily, "she does not desire that, either." + +His sister's troubled eyes rested on him in silence for a while; then: + +"I know she is beautiful; I am sure she is good, Louis--good in--in her +own way--worthy, in her own fashion. But, dear, is that all that you, a +Neville, require of the woman who is to bear your name--bear your +children?" + +"She _is_ all I require--and far more." + +"Dear, you are utterly blinded by your infatuation!" + +"You do not know her." + +"Then let me!" exclaimed Mrs. Collis desperately. "Let me meet her, +Louis--let me talk with her--" + +"No.... And I'll tell you why, Lily; it's because she does not care to +meet you." + +"What!" + +"I have told you the plain truth. She sees no reason for knowing you, or +for knowing my parents, or any woman in a world that would never +tolerate her, never submit to her entrance, never receive her as one of +them!--a world that might shrug and smile and endure her as my wife--and +embitter my life forever." + +As he spoke he was not aware that he merely repeated Valerie's own +words; he remained still unconscious that his decision was in fact +merely her decision; that his entire attitude had become hers because +her nature and her character were as yet the stronger. + +But in his words his sister's quick intelligence perceived a logic and a +conclusion entirely feminine and utterly foreign to her brother's habit +of mind. And she realised with a thrill of fear that she had to do, not +with her brother, but with a woman who was to be reckoned with. + +"Do you--or does Miss West think it likely that I am a woman to wound, +to affront another--no matter who she may be? Surely, Louis, you could +have told her very little about me--" + +"I never mention you to her." + +Lily caught her breath. + +"Why?" + +"Why should I?" + +"That is unfair, Louis! She has the right to know about your own +family--otherwise how can she understand the situation?" + +"It's like all situations, isn't it? You and father and mother have your +own arbitrary customs and traditions and standards of respectability. +You rule out whom you choose. Valerie West knows perfectly well that you +would rule her out. Why should she give you the opportunity?" + +"Is she afraid of me?" + +He smiled: "I don't think so." And his smile angered his sister. + +"Very well," she said, biting her lip. + +For a few moments she sat there deliberating, her pointed patent-leather +toe tapping the polished floor. Then she stood up, with decision: + +"There is no use in our quarrelling, Louis--until the time comes when +some outsider forces us into an unhappy misunderstanding. Kiss me +good-bye, dear." + +She lifted her face; he kissed her; and her hand closed impulsively on +his arm: + +"Louis! Louis! I love you. I am so proud of you--I--you know I love you, +don't you?" + +"Yes--I think so." + +"You _know_ I am devoted to your happiness!--your _real_ +happiness--which those blinded eyes in that obstinate head of yours +refuse to see. Believe me--believe me, dear, that your _real_ happiness +is not in this pretty, strange girl's keeping. No, no, no! You are +wrong, Louis--terribly and hopelessly wrong! Because happiness for you +lies in the keeping of another woman--a woman of your own world, +dear--of your own kind--a gently-bred, lovable, generous girl whom you, +deep in your heart and soul, love, unknowingly--have always loved!" + +He shook his head, slowly, looking down into his sister's eyes. + +She said, almost frightened: + +"You--you won't do it--suddenly--without letting us know--will you, +Louis?" + +"What?" + +"Marry this girl!" + +"No," he said, "it is not likely." + +"But you--you mean to marry her?" + +"I want to.... But it is not likely to happen--for a while." + +"How long?" + +"I don't know." + +She drew a tremulous breath of relief, looking up into his face. Then +her eyes narrowed; she thought a moment, and her gaze became preoccupied +and remote, and her lips grew firm with the train of thought she was +pursuing. + +He put his arms around her and kissed her again; and she felt the boyish +appeal in it and her lip quivered. But she could not respond, could not +consider for one moment, could not permit her sympathy for him to enlist +her against what she was devoutly convinced were his own most vital +interests--his honour, his happiness, the success of his future career. + +She said with tears in her eyes: "Louis, I love you dearly. If God will +grant us all a little patience and a little wisdom there will be a way +made clear to all of us. Good-bye." + +[Illustration: "'Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting +one,' said Lily."] + +Whether it was that the Almighty did not grant Mrs. Collis the patience +to wait until a way was made clear, or whether another letter from her +father decided her to clear that way for herself, is uncertain; but one +day in March Valerie received a letter from Mrs. Collis; and answered +it; and the next morning she shortened a seance with Querida, exchanged +her costume for her street-clothes, and hastened to her apartments, +where Mrs. Collis was already awaiting her in the little sitting-room. + +Valerie offered her hand and stood looking at Lily Collis, as though +searching for some resemblance to her brother in the pretty, slightly +flushed features. There was a very indefinite family resemblance. + +"Miss West," she said, "it is amiable of you to overlook the +informality--" + +"I am not formal, Mrs. Collis," she said, quietly. "Will you sit here?" +indicating an arm-chair near the window,--"because the light is not very +good and I have some mending to do on a costume which I must pose in +this afternoon." + +Lily Collis seated herself, her bewitched gaze following Valerie as she +moved lightly and gracefully about, collecting sewing materials and the +costume in question, and bringing them to a low chair under the north +window. + +"I am sure you will not mind my sewing," she said, with a slight upward +inflection to her voice, which made it a question. + +"Please, Miss West," said Lily, hastily. + +"It is really a necessity," observed Valerie threading her needle and +turning over the skirt. "Illustrators are very arbitrary gentlemen; a +model's failure to keep an engagement sometimes means loss of a valuable +contract to them, and that isn't fair either to them or to their +publishers, who would be forced to hunt up another artist at the last +moment." + +"Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting one," said Lily in +a low voice. + +Valerie smiled: "It is a very exacting one." + +There was a silence. Valerie's head was bent over her sewing; Mrs. +Collis, fascinated, almost alarmed by her beauty, could not take her +eyes from her. Outwardly Lily was pleasantly reserved, perfectly at +ease with this young girl; inwardly all was commotion approaching actual +consternation. + +She had been prepared for youth, for a certain kind of charm and +beauty--but not for this kind--not for the loveliness, the grace, the +composure, the exquisite simplicity of this young girl who sat sewing +there before her. + +She was obliged to force herself to recollect that this girl was a model +hired to pose for men--paid to expose her young, unclothed limbs and +body! Yet--could it be possible! Was this the girl hailed as a comrade +by the irrepressible Ogilvy and Annan--the heroine of a score of +unconventional and careless gaieties recounted by them? Was this the +coquette who, it was rumoured, had flung over Querida, snapped her white +fingers at Penrhyn Cardemon, and laughed disrespectfully at a dozen +respected pillars of society, who appeared to be willing to support her +in addition to the entire social structure? + +Very quietly the girl raised her head. Her sensitive lips were edged +with a smile, but there was no mirth in her clear eyes: + +"Mrs. Collis, perhaps you are waiting for me to say something about your +letter and my answer to it. I did not mean to embarrass you by not +speaking of it, but I was not certain that the initiative lay with me." + +Lily reddened: "It lies with _me_, Miss West--the initiative. I mean--" +She hesitated, suddenly realising how difficult it had become to go +on,--how utterly unprepared she was to encounter passive resistance from +such composure as this young girl already displayed. + +"You wrote to me about your anxiety concerning Mr. Neville," said +Valerie, gently. + +"Yes--I did, Miss West. You will surely understand--and forgive me--if I +say to you that I am still a prey to deepest anxiety." + +"Why?" + +The question was so candid, so direct that for a moment Lily remained +silent. But the dark, clear, friendly eyes were asking for an answer, +and the woman of the world who knew how to meet most situations and how +to dominate them, searched her experience in vain for the proper words +to use in this one. + +After a moment Valerie's eyes dropped, and she resumed her sewing; and +Lily bit her lip and composed her mind to its delicate task: + +"Miss West," she said, "what I have to say is not going to be very +agreeable to either of us. It is going to be painful perhaps--and it is +going to take a long while to explain--" + +"It need not take long," said Valerie, without raising her eyes from her +stitches; "it requires only a word to tell me that you and your father +and mother do not wish your brother to marry me." + +She looked up quietly, and her eyes met Lily's: + +"I promise not to marry him," she said. "You are perfectly right. He +belongs to his own family; he belongs in his own world." + +She looked down again at her sewing with a faint smile: + +"I shall not attempt to enter that world as his wife, Mrs. Collis, or to +draw him out of it.... And I hope that you will not be anxious any +more." + +She laid aside her work and rose to her slender height, smilingly, as +though the elder woman had terminated the interview; and Lily, utterly +confounded, rose, too, as Valerie offered her hand in adieu. + +"Miss West," she began, not perfectly sure of what she was saying, +"I--scarcely dare thank you--for what you have +said--for--my--brother's--sake--" + +Valerie laughed: "I would do much more than that for him, Mrs. +Collis.... Only I must first be sure of what is really the best way to +serve him." + +Lily's gloved hand tightened over hers; and she laid the other one over +it: + +"You are so generous, so sweet about it!" she said unsteadily. "And I +look into your face and I know you are good--_good_--all the way +through--" + +Valerie laughed again: + +"There isn't any real evil in me.... And I am not astonishingly +generous--merely sensible. I knew from the first that I couldn't marry +him--if I really loved him," she added, under her breath. + +They were at the door now. Lily passed out into the entry, halted, +turned impulsively, the tears in her eyes, and put both arms tenderly +around the girl. + +"You poor child," she whispered. "You dear, brave, generous girl! God +knows whether I am right or wrong. I am only trying to do my +duty--trying to do what is best for him." + +Valerie looked at her curiously: + +"Yes, you cannot choose but think of him if you really love him.... That +is the way it is with love." + +Afterward, sewing by the window, she could scarcely see the stitches for +the clinging tears. But they dried on her lashes; not one fell. And when +Rita came in breezily to join her at luncheon she was ready, her +costume mended and folded in her hand-satchel, and there remained +scarcely even a redness of the lids to betray her. + +That evening she did not stop for tea at Neville's studio; and, later, +when he telephoned, asking her to dine with him, she pleaded the +feminine prerogative of tea in her room and going to bed early for a +change. But she lay awake until midnight trying to think out a _modus +vivendi_ for Neville and herself which, would involve no sacrifice on +his part and no unhappiness for anybody except, perhaps, for herself. + +The morning was dull and threatened rain, and she awoke with a slight +headache, remembering that she had dreamed all night of weeping. + +In her mail there was a note from Querida asking her to stop for a few +moments at his studio that afternoon, several business communications, +and a long letter from Mrs. Collis which she read lying in bed, one hand +resting on her aching temples: + +"MY DEAR Miss WEST: Our interview this morning has left me with a +somewhat confused sense of indebtedness to you and an admiration and +respect for your character which I wished very much to convey to you +this morning, but which I was at a loss to express. + +"You are not only kind and reasonable, but so entirely unselfish that my +own attitude in this unhappy matter has seemed to me harsh and +ungracious. + +"I went to you entertaining a very different idea of you, and very +different sentiments from the opinion which I took away with me. I admit +that my call on you was not made with any agreeable anticipations; but +I was determined to see you and learn for myself what manner of woman +had so disturbed us all. + +"In justice to you--in grateful recognition of your tact and gentleness, +I am venturing to express to you now my very thorough respect for you, +my sense of deep obligation, and my sympathy--which I am afraid you may +not care for. + +"That it would not be suitable for a marriage to take place between my +brother and yourself is, it appears, as evident to you as it is to his +own family. Yet, will you permit me to wish that it were otherwise? I do +wish it; I wish that the circumstances had made such a marriage +possible. I say this to you in spite of the fact that we have always +expected my brother to marry into a family which has been intimate with +our own family for many generations. It is a tribute to your character +which I am unwilling to suppress; which I believe I owe to you, to say +that, had circumstances been different, you might have been made welcome +among us. + +"The circumstances of which I speak are of an importance to us, perhaps +exaggerated, possibly out of proportion to the fundamental conditions of +the situation. But they are conditions which our family has never +ignored. And it is too late for us to learn to ignore them now. + +"I think that you will feel--I think that a large part of the world +might consider our attitude toward such a woman as you have shown +yourself to be, narrow, prejudiced, provincial. The modern world would +scarcely arm us with any warrant for interfering in a matter which a man +nearly thirty is supposed to be able to manage for himself. But my +father and mother are old, and they will never change in their beliefs +and prejudices inherited from their parents, who, in turn, inherited +their beliefs. + +"It was for them more than for myself--more even than for my +brother--that I appealed to you. The latter end of their lives should +not be made unhappy. And your generous decision assures me that it will +not be made so. + +"As for myself, my marriage permitted me an early enfranchisement from +the obsolete conventional limits within which my brother and I were +brought up. + +"I understand enough of the modern world not to clash with, it +unnecessarily, enough of ultra-modernity not to be too much afraid of +it. + +"But even I, while I might theoretically admit and even admire that +cheerful and fearless courage which makes it possible for such a +self-respecting woman as yourself to face the world and force it to +recognise her right to earn her own living as she chooses--I could not +bring myself to contemplate with equanimity my brother's marrying you. +And I do not believe my father would survive such an event. + +"To us, to me, also, certain fixed conventional limits are the basis of +all happiness. To offend them is to be unhappy; to ignore them would +mean destruction to our peace of mind and self-respect. And, though I do +admire you and respect you for what you are, it is only just to you to +say that we could never reconcile ourselves to those modern social +conditions which you so charmingly represent, and which are embodied in +you with such convincing dignity. + +"Dear Miss West, have I pained you? Have I offended you in return for +all your courtesy to me? I hope not. I felt that I owed you this. +Please accept it as a tribute and as a sorrowful acquiescence in +conditions which an old-fashioned family are unable to change. + +"Very sincerely yours, + +"LILLY COLLIS." + +She lay for a while, thinking, the sheets of the letter lying loose on +the bed. It seemed to require no answer. Nor had Mrs. Collis, +apparently, any fear that Valerie would ever inform Louis Neville of +what had occurred between his sister and herself. + +Still, to Valerie, an unanswered letter was like a civil observation +ignored. + +She wrote that evening to Lily: + +"Dear Mrs. Collis: In acknowledging your letter of yesterday I beg to +assure you that I understand the inadvisability of my marrying your +brother, and that I have no idea of doing it, and that, through me, he +shall never know of your letters or of your visit to me in his behalf. + +"With many thanks for your kindly expressions of good-will toward me, I +am + +"Very truly yours, + +"VALERIE WEST." + +She had been too tired to call at Querida's studio, too tired even to +take tea at the Plaza with Neville. + +Rita came in, silent and out of spirits, and replied in monosyllables to +Valerie's inquiries. + +It finally transpired that Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan had been +tormenting John Burleson after their own fashion until their inanity +had exasperated her and she expressed herself freely to everybody +concerned. + +"It makes me very angry," she said, "to have a lot of brainless people +believe that John Burleson is stupid. He isn't; he is merely a trifle +literal, and far too intelligent to see any humour in the silly capers +Sam and Harry cut." + +Valerie, who was feeling better, sipped her tea and nibbled her toast, +much amused at Rita's championship of the big sculptor. + +"John is a dear," she said, "but even his most enthusiastic partisans +could hardly characterise him as a humorist." + +"He's not a clown--if that's what you mean," said Rita shortly. + +"But, Rita, he _isn't_ humorous, you know." + +"He _is_. He has a sense of humour perfectly intelligible to those who +understand it." + +"Do you, dear?" + +"Certainly ... And I always have understood it." + +"Oh, what kind of occult humour is it?" + +"It is a quiet, cultivated, dignified sense of humour not uncommon in +New England, and not understood in New York." + +Valerie nibbled her toast, secretly amused. Burleson was from +Massachusetts. Rita was the daughter of a Massachusetts clergyman. No +doubt they were fitted to understand each other. + +It occurred to her, too, that John Burleson and Rita Tevis had always +been on a friendly footing rather quieter and more serious than the +usual gay and irresponsible relations maintained between two people +under similar circumstances. + +Sometimes she had noticed that when affairs became too frivolous and +the scintillation of wit and epigram too rapid and continuous, John +Burleson and Rita were very apt to edge out of the circle as though for +mutual protection. + +"You're not posing for John, are you, Rita?" she asked. + +"No. He has a bad cold, and I stopped in to see that he wore a red +flannel bandage around his throat. A sculptor's work is so dreadfully +wet and sloppy, and his throat has always been very delicate." + +"Do you mean to say that you charge your mind with the coddling of that +great big, pink-cheeked boy?" laughed Valerie, + +"Coddling!" repeated Rita, flushing up. "I don't call it coddling to +stop in for a moment to remind a friend that he doesn't know how to take +care of himself, and never will." + +"Nonsense. You couldn't kill a man of that size and placidity of +character." + +"You don't know anything about him. He is much more delicate than he +looks." + +Valerie glanced curiously at the girl, who was preparing oysters in the +chafing dish. + +"How do _you_ happen to know so much about him, Rita?" + +She answered, carelessly: "I have known him ever since I began to +pose--almost." + +Valerie set her cup aside, sprang up to rinse mouth and hands. Then, +gathering her pink negligee around her, curled up in a big wing-chair, +drawing her bare feet up under the silken folds and watching Rita +prepare the modest repast for one. + +"Rita," she said, "who was the first artist you ever posed for? Was it +John Burleson--and did you endure the tortures of the damned?" + +"No, it was not John Burleson.... And I endured--enough." + +"Don't you care to tell me who it was?" + +Rita did not reply at that time. Later, however, when the simple supper +was ended, she lighted a cigarette and found a place where, with +lamplight behind her, she could read a book which Burleson had sent her, +and which she had been attempting to assimilate and digest all winter. +It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds. It was +called "Essays on the Obvious "; and Valerie had made fun of it until, +to her surprise, she noticed that her pleasantries annoyed Rita. + +Valerie, curled up in the wing-chair, cheek resting against its velvet +side, was reading the Psalms again--fascinated as always by the noble +music of the verse. And it was only by chance that, lifting her eyes +absently for a moment, she found that Rita had laid aside her book and +was looking at her intently. + +"Hello, dear!" she said, indolently humorous. + +Rita said: "You read your Bible a good deal, don't you?" + +"Parts of it." + +"The parts you believe?" + +"Yes; and the parts that I can't believe." + +"What parts can't you believe?" + +Valerie laughed: "Oh, the unfair parts--the cruel parts, the +inconsistent parts." + +"What about faith?" + +"Faith is a matter of temperament, dear." + +"Haven't you any?" + +"Yes, in all things good." + +"Then you have faith in yourself that you are capable of deciding what +is good and worthy of belief in the Scriptures, and what is unworthy?" + +[Illustration: "It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly +four pounds."] + +"It must be that way. I am intelligent. One must decide for one's self +what is fair and what is unfair; what is cruel and what is merciful and +kind. Intelligence must always evolve its own religion; sin is only an +unfaithfulness to what one really believes." + +"What _do_ you believe, Valerie?" + +"About what, dear?" + +"Love." + +"Loving a man?" + +"Yes." + +"You know what my creed is--that love must be utterly unselfish to be +pure--to be love at all." + +"One must not think of one's self," murmured Rita, absently. + +"I don't mean that. I mean that one must not hesitate to sacrifice one's +self when the happiness or welfare of the other is in the balance." + +"Yes. Of course!... Suppose you love a man." + +"Yes," said Valerie, smiling, "I can imagine that." + +"Listen, dear. Suppose you love a man. And you think that perhaps he is +beginning--just beginning to care a little for you. And suppose--suppose +that you are--have been--long ago--once, very long ago--" + +"What?" + +"Unwise," said Rita, in a low voice. + +"Unwise? How?" + +"In the--unwisest way that a girl can be." + +"You mean any less unwise than a man might be--probably the very man she +is in love with?" + +"You know well enough what is thought about a girl's unwisdom and the +same unwisdom in a man." + +"I know what is thought; but _I_ don't think it." + +"Perhaps you don't. But the world's opinion is different." + +"Yes, I know it.... What is your question again? You say to me, here's +a man beginning to care for a girl who has been unwise enough before she +knew him to let herself believe she cared enough for another man to +become his mistress. Is that it, Rita?" + +"Y-yes." + +"Very well. What do you wish to ask me?" + +"I wish to ask you what that girl should do." + +"Do? Nothing. What is there for her to do?" + +"Ought she to let that man care for her?" + +"Has he ever made the same mistake she has?" + +"I--don't think so." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Almost." + +"Well, then, I'd tell him." + +Rita lay silent, gazing into space, her blond hair clustering around the +pretty oval of her face. + +Valerie waited for a few moments, then resumed her reading, glancing +inquiringly at intervals over the top of her book at Rita, who seemed +disinclined for further conversation. + +After a long silence she sat up abruptly on the sofa and looked at +Valerie. + +"You asked me who was the first man for whom I posed. I'll tell you if +you wish to know. It was Penrhyn Cardemon!... And I was eighteen years +old." + +Valerie dropped her book in astonishment. + +"Penrhyn Cardemon!" she repeated. "Why, he isn't an artist!" + +"He has a studio." + +"Where?" + +"On Fifth Avenue." + +"What does he do there?" + +"Deviltry." + +Valerie's face was blank; Rita sat sullenly cradling one knee in her +arms, looking at the floor, her soft, gold hair hanging over her face +and forehead so that it shadowed her face. + +"I've meant to tell you for a long time," she went on; "I would have +told you if Cardemon had ever sent for you to--to pose--in his place." + +"He asked me to go on _The Mohave_." + +"I'd have warned you if Louis Neville had not objected." + +"Do you suppose Louis knew?" + +"No. He scarcely knows Penrhyn Cardemon. His family and Cardemon are +neighbours in the country, but the Nevilles and the Collises are +snobs--I'm speaking plainly, Valerie--and they have no use for that +red-faced, red-necked, stocky young millionaire." + +Valerie sat thinking; Rita, nursing her knee, brooded under the bright +tangle of her hair, linking and unlinking her fingers as she gently +swayed her foot to and fro. + +"That's how it is," she said at last. "Now you know." + +Valerie's head was still lowered, but she raised her eyes and looked +straight at Rita where she sat on the sofa's edge, carelessly swinging +her foot to and fro. + +"Was it--Penrhyn Cardemon?" she asked. + +"Yes.... I thought it had killed any possibility of ever caring--that +way--for any other man." + +"But it hasn't?" + +"No." + +"And--you are in love?" + +"Yes." + +"With John Burleson?" + +Rita looked up from the burnished disorder of her hair: + +"I have been in love with him for three years," she said, "and you are +the only person in the world except myself who knows it." + +Valerie rose and walked over to Rita and seated herself beside her. Then +she put one arm around her; and Rita bit her lip and stared at space, +swinging her slender foot. + +"You poor dear," said Valerie. Rita's bare foot hung inert; the silken +slipper dropped from it to the floor; and then her head fell, sideways, +resting on Valerie's shoulder, showering her body with its tangled gold. + +Valerie said, thoughtfully: "Girls don't seem to have a very good +chance.... I had no idea about Cardemon--that he was that kind of a man. +A girl never knows. Men can be so attractive and so nice.... And so many +of them are merciless.... I suppose you thought you loved him." + +"Y--yes." + +"We all think that, I suppose," said Valerie, thoughtfully. + +"Other girls have thought it of Penrhyn Cardemon." + +"Other _girls?_" + +"Yes." + +Valerie's face expressed bewilderment. + +"I didn't know that there were really such men." + +Rita closed her disillusioned eyes. + +"Plenty," she said wearily. + +"I don't care to believe that." + +"You may believe it, Valerie. Men are almost never single-minded; women +are--almost always. You see what chance for happiness we have? But it's +the truth, and the world has been made that way. It's a man's world, +Valerie. I don't think there's much use for us to fight against it.... +She sat very silent for a while, close to Valerie, her hot face on the +younger girl's shoulder. Suddenly she straightened up and dried her eyes +naively on the sleeve of her kimona. + +"Goodness!" she said, "I almost forgot!" + +And a moment later Valerie heard her at the telephone: + +"Is that you, John?" + + * * * * * + +"Have you remembered to take your medicine?" + + * * * * * + +"How perfectly horrid of you! Take it at once! It's the one in the brown +bottle--six drops in a wineglass of water--" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Mrs. Hind-Willet, born to the purple--or rather entitled to a narrow +border of discreet mauve on all occasions of ceremony in Manhattan, was +a dreamer of dreams. One of her dreams concerned her hyphenated husband, +and she put him away; another concerned Penrhyn Cardemon; and she woke +up. But the persistent visualisation, which had become obsession, of a +society to be formed out of the massed intellects of Manhattan +regardless of race, morals, or previous condition of social servitude--a +gentle intellectual affinity which knew no law of art except individual +inspiration, haunted her always. And there was always her own set to +which she could retreat if desirable. + +She had begun with a fashionable and semi-fashionable nucleus which +included Mrs. Atherstane, the Countess d'Enver, Latimer Varyck, Olaf +Dennison, and Pedro Carrillo, and then enlarged the circle from those +perpetual candidates squatting anxiously upon the social step-ladder all +the way from the bottom to the top. + +The result was what Ogilvy called intellectual local option; and though +he haunted this agglomeration at times, particularly when temporarily +smitten by a pretty face or figure, he was under no illusions concerning +it or the people composing it. + +Returning one afternoon from a reception at Mrs. Atherstane's he replied +to Annan's disrespectful inquiries and injurious observations: + +"You're on to that joint, Henry; it's a saloon, not a salon; and Art is +the petrified sandwich. Fix me a very, ve-ry high one, dearie, because +little sunshine is in love again." + +"Who drew the lucky number?" asked Annan with a shrug. + +"The Countess d'Enver. She's the birdie." + +"Intellectually?" + +"Oh, she's an intellectual four-flusher, bless her heart! But she was +the only woman there who didn't try to mentally frisk me. We lunch +together soon, Henry." + +"Where's Count hubby?" + +"Aloft. She's a bird," he repeated, fondly reminiscent over his +high-ball--"and I myself am the real ornithological thing--the species +that Brooklyn itself would label 'boid' ... She has such pretty, +confiding ways, Harry." + +"You'd both better join the Audubon Society for Mutual Protection," +observed Annan dryly. + +"I'll stand for anything she stands for except that social Tenderloin; +I'll join anything she joins except the 'classes now forming' in that +intellectual dance hall. By the way, who do you suppose was there?" + +"The police?" + +"Naw--the saloon wasn't raided, though 'Professor' Carrillo's poem was +_assez raide_. Mek-mek-k-k-k! But oh, the ginky pictures! Oh, the Art +Beautiful! Aniline rainbows exploding in a physical culture school +couldn't beat that omelette!... And guess who was pouring tea in the +centre of the olio, Harry!" + +"You?" inquired Annan wearily. + +"Valerie West." + +"What in God's name has that bunch taken her up for?" + + * * * * * + +For the last few weeks Valerie's telephone had rung intermittently +summoning her to conversation with Mrs. Hind-Willet. + +At first the amiable interest displayed by Mrs. Hind-Willet puzzled +Valerie until one day, returning to her rooms for luncheon, she found +the Countess d'Enver's brougham standing in front of the house and that +discreetly perfumed lady about to descend. + +"How do you do?" said Valerie, stopping on the sidewalk and offering her +hand with a frank smile. + +"I came to call on you," said the over-dressed little countess; "may I?" + +"It is very kind of you. Will you come upstairs? There is no elevator." + +The pretty bejewelled countess arrived in the living room out of breath, +and seated herself, flushed, speechless, overcome, her little white +gloved hand clutching her breast. + +Valerie, accustomed to the climb, was in nowise distressed; and went +serenely about her business while the countess was recovering. + +"I am going to prepare luncheon; may I hope you will remain and share it +with me?" she asked. + +The countess nodded, slowly recovering her breath and glancing curiously +around the room. + +"You see I have only an hour between poses," observed Valerie, moving +swiftly from cupboard to kitchenette, "so luncheon is always rather +simple. Miss Tevis, with whom I live, never lunches here, so I take +what there is left from breakfast." + +[Illustration: The Countess d'Enver.] + +A little later they were seated at a small table together, sipping +chocolate. There was cold meat, a light salad, and fruit. The +conversation was as haphazard and casual as the luncheon, until the +pretty countess lighted a cigarette and tasted her tiny glass of +Port--the latter a gift from Querida. "Do you think it odd of me to +call on you uninvited?" she asked, with that smiling abruptness which +sometimes arises from embarrassment. + +"I think it is very sweet of you," said Valerie, "I am very happy to +know that you remember me." + +The countess flushed up: "Do you really feel that way about it?" + +"Yes," said Valerie, smiling, "or I would not say so." + +"Then--you give me courage to tell you that since I first met you I've +been--quite mad about you." + +"About _me_!" in smiling surprise. + +"Yes. I wanted to know you. I told Mrs. Hind-Willet to ask you to the +club. She did. But you never came.... And I _did_ like you so much." + +Valerie said in a sweet, surprised way: "Do you know what I am?" + +"Yes; you sit for artists." + +"I am a professional model," said Valerie. "I don't believe you +understood that, did you?" + +"Yes, I did," said the countess. "You pose for the ensemble, too." + +Valerie looked at her incredulously: + +"Do you think you would really care to know me? I, an artist's model, +and you, the Countess d'Enver?" + +"I was Nellie Jackson before that." She leaned across the table, +smiling, with heightened colour; "I believe I'd never have to pretend +with you. The minute I saw you I liked you. Will you let me talk to +you?" + +"Y--yes." + +There was a constrained silence; Helene d'Enver touched the water in the +bowl with her finger-tips, dried them, looked up at Valerie, who rose. +Under the window there was a tufted seat; and here they found places +together. + +"Do you know why I came?" asked Helene d'Enver. "I was lonely." + +"_You!_" + +"My dear, I am a lonely woman; I'm lonely to desperation. I don't belong +in New York and I don't belong in France, and I don't like Pittsburgh. +I'm lonely! I've always been lonely ever since I left Pittsburgh. There +doesn't seem to be any definite place anywhere for me. And I haven't a +real woman friend in the world!" + +"How in the world can you say that?" exclaimed Valerie, astonished. + +The countess lighted another cigarette and wreathed her pretty face in +smoke. + +"You think because I have a title and am presentable that I can go +anywhere?" She smiled. "The society I might care for hasn't the +slightest interest in me. There is in this city a kind of society +recruited largely from the fashionable hotels and from among those who +have no fixed social position in New York--people who are never very far +outside or inside the edge of things--but who never penetrate any +farther." She laughed. "This society camps permanently at the base of +the Great Wall of China. But it never scales it." + +"Watch the men on Fifth Avenue," she went on. "Some walk there as though +they do not belong there; some walk as though they do belong there; +some, as though they lived there. I move about as though I belonged +where I am occasionally seen; but I'm tired of pretending that I live +there." + +She leaned back among the cushions, dropping one knee over the other +and tossing away her cigarette. And her little suede shoe swung +nervously to and fro. + +"You're the first girl I've seen in New York who, I believe, really +doesn't care what I am--and I don't care what she is. Shall we be +friends? I'm lonely." + +Valerie looked at her, diffidently: + +"I haven't had very much experience in friendship--except with Rita +Tevis," she said. + +"Will you let me take you to drive sometimes?" + +"I'd love to, only you see I am in business." + +"Of course I mean after hours." + +"Thank you.... But I usually am expected--to tea--and dinner--" + +Helene lay back among the cushions, looking at her. + +"Haven't you any time at all for me?" she asked, wistfully. + +Valerie was thinking of Neville: "Not--very--much I am afraid--" + +"Can't you spare me an hour now and then?" + +"Y--yes; I'll try." + +There was a silence. The mantel clock struck, and Valerie glanced up. +Helene d'Enver rose, stood still a moment, then stepped forward and took +both of Valerie's hands: + +"Can't we be friends? I do need one; and I like you so much. You've the +eyes that make a woman easy. There are none like yours in New York." + +Valerie laughed, uncertainly. + +"Your friends wouldn't care for me," she said. "I don't believe there is +any real place at all for me in this city except among the few men and +women I already know." + +"Won't you include me among the number? There is a place for you in my +heart." + +Touched and surprised, the girl stood looking at the older woman in +silence. + +"May I drive you to your destination?" asked Helene gently. + +"You are very kind.... It is Mr. Burleson's studio--if it won't take you +too far out of your way." + +By the end of March Valerie had driven with the Countess d'Enver once or +twice; and once or twice had been to see her, and had met, in her +apartment, men and women who were inclined to make a fuss over her--men +like Carrillo and Dennison, and women like Mrs. Hind-Willet and Mrs. +Atherstane. It was her unconventional profession that interested them. + +To Neville, recounting her experiences, she said with a patient little +smile: + +"It's rather nice to be liked and to have some kind of a place among +people who live in this city. Nobody seems to mind my being a model. +Perhaps they _have_ taken merely a passing fancy to me and are +exhibiting me to each other as a wild thing just captured and being +trained--" She laughed--"but they do it so pleasantly that I don't +mind.... And anyway, the Countess d'Enver is genuine; I am sure of +that." + +"A genuine countess?" + +"A genuine woman, sincere, lovable, and kind--I am becoming very fond of +her.... Do you mind my abandoning you for an afternoon now and then? +Because it _is_ nice to have as a friend a woman older and more +experienced." + +"Does that mean you're going off with her this afternoon?" + +"I _was_ going. But I won't if you feel that I'm deserting you." + +He laid aside his palette and went over to where she was standing. + +"You darling," he said, "go and drive in the Park with your funny little +friend." + +"She was going to take me to the Plaza for tea. There are to be some +very nice women there who are interested in the New Idea Home." She +added, shyly, "I have subscribed ten dollars." + +He kissed her, lightly, humorously. "And what, sweetheart, may the New +Idea Home be?" + +"Oh, it's an idea of Mrs. Hind-Willet's about caring for wayward girls. +Mrs. Willet thinks that it is cruel and silly to send them into virtual +imprisonment, to punish them and watch them and confront them at every +turn with threats and the merciless routine of discipline. She thinks +that the thing to do is to give them a chance for sensible and normal +happiness; not to segregate them one side of a dead line; not to treat +them like criminals to be watched and doubted and suspected." + +She linked her arms around his neck, interested, earnest, sure of his +sympathy and approval: + +"We want to build a school in the country--two schools, one for girls +who have misbehaved, one for youths who are similarly delinquent. And, +during recreation, we mean to let them meet in a natural manner--play +games together, dance, mingle out of doors in a wholesome and innocent +way--of course, under necessary and sympathetic supervision--and learn a +healthy consideration and respect for one another which the squalid, +crowded, irresponsible conditions of their former street life in the +slums and tenements made utterly impossible." + +He looked into the pretty, eager face with its honest, beautiful eyes +and sensitive mouth--and touched his lips to her hair. + +"It sounds fine, sweetheart," he said: "and I won't be lonely if you go +to the Plaza and settle the affairs of this topsy-turvy world.... Do you +love me?" + +"Louis! Can you ask?" + +"I do ask." + +She smiled, faintly; then her young face grew serious, and a hint of +passion darkened her eyes as her arms tightened around his neck and her +lips met his. + +"All I care for in the world, or out of it, is you, Louis. If I find +pleasure in anything it is because of you; if I take a little pride in +having people like me, it is only for your sake--for the sake of the +pride you may feel in having others find me agreeable and desirable. I +wish it were possible that your, own world could find me agreeable and +desirable--for your sake, my darling, more than for mine. But it never +will--never could. There is a wall around your world which I can never +scale. And it does not make me unhappy--I only wish you to know that I +want to be what you would have me--and if I can't be all that you might +wish, I love and adore you none the less--am none the less willing to +give you all there is to me--all there is to a girl named Valerie West +who finds this life a happy one because you have made it so for her." + +She continued to see Helene d'Enver, poured tea sometimes at the +Five-Minute-Club, listened to the consultations over the New Idea Home, +and met a great many people of all kinds, fashionable women with a +passion for the bizarre and unconventional, women of gentle breeding and +no social pretence, who worked to support themselves; idle women, +ambitious women, restless women; but the majority formed part of the +floating circles domiciled in apartments and at the great hotels--people +who wintered in New York and were a part of its social and civic life to +that extent, but whose duties and responsibilities for the metropolitan +welfare were self-imposed, and neither hereditary nor constant. + +As all circles in New York have, at certain irregular periods, +accidental points of temporary contact, Valerie now and then met people +whom she was scarcely ever likely to see again. And it was at a New Idea +Home conference, scheduled for five o'clock in the red parlour of the +ladies' waiting room in the great Hotel Imperator, that Valerie, +arriving early as delegated substitute for Mrs. Hind-Willet, found +herself among a small group of beautifully gowned strangers--the sort of +women whom she had never before met in this way. + +They all knew each other; others who arrived seemed to recognise with +more or less intimacy everybody in the room excepting herself. + +She was sitting apart by the crimson-curtained windows, perfectly +self-possessed and rather interested in watching the arrivals of women +whose names, as she caught them, suggested social positions which were +vaguely familiar to her, when an exceedingly pretty girl detached +herself from the increasing group and came across to where Valerie was +sitting alone. + +[Illustration: "'May I sit here with you until she arrives? I am +Stephanie Swift.'"] + +"I was wondering whether you had met any of the new committee," she said +pleasantly. + +"I _had_ expected to meet the Countess d'Enver here," said Valerie, +smiling. + +The girl's expression altered slightly, but she nodded amiably; "May I +sit here with you until she arrives? I am Stephanie Swift." + +Valerie said: "It is very amiable of you. I am Valerie West." + +Stephanie remained perfectly still for a moment; then, conscious that +she was staring, calmly averted her gaze while the slow fire died out in +her cheeks. And in a moment she had decided: + +"I have heard so pleasantly about you through Mrs. Collis," she said +with perfect composure. "You remember her, I think." + +Valerie, startled, lifted her brown eyes. Then very quietly: + +"Mrs. Collis is very kind. I remember her distinctly." + +"Mrs. Collis retains the most agreeable memories of meeting you.... I--" +she looked at Valerie, curiously--"I have heard from others how charming +and clever you are--from Mr. Ogilvy?--and Mr. Annan?" + +"They are my friends," said Valerie briefly. + +"And Mr. Querida, and Mr. Burleson, and--Mr. Neville." + +"They are my friends," repeated Valerie.... After a second she added: +"They also employ me." + +Stephanie looked away: "Your profession must be most interesting, Miss +West." + +"Yes." + +"But--exacting." + +"Very." + +Neither made any further effort. A moment later, however, Helene d'Enver +came in. She knew some of the women very slightly, none intimately; and, +catching sight of Valerie, she came across the room with a quick smile +of recognition: + +"I'm dreadfully late, dear--how do you do, Miss Swift"--to Stephanie, +who had risen. And to Valerie: "Mr. Ogilvy came; just as I had my furs +on--and you know how casually a man takes his leave when you're in a +tearing hurry!" + +She laughed and took Valerie's gloved hands in her own; and Stephanie, +who had been looking at the latter, came to an abrupt conclusion that +amazed her; and she heard herself saying: + +"It has been most interesting to meet you, Miss West. I have heard of +you so pleasantly that I had hoped to meet you some time. And I hope I +shall again." + +Valerie thanked her with a self-possession which she did not entirely +feel, and turned away with Helene d'Enver. + +"That's the girl who is supposed to be engaged to Louis Neville," +whispered the pretty countess. + +Valerie halted, astounded. + +"Didn't you know it?" asked the other, surprised. + +For a moment Valerie remained speechless, then the wild absurdity of it +flashed over her and she laughed her relief. + +"No, I didn't know it," she said. + +"Hasn't anybody ever told you?" + +"No," said Valerie, smiling. + +"Well, perhaps it isn't so, then," said the countess naively. "I know +very few people of that set, but I've heard it talked about--outside." + +"I don't believe it is so," said Valerie demurely. Her little heart was +beating confidently again and she seated herself beside Helene d'Enver +in the prim circle of delegates intent upon their chairman, who was +calling the meeting to order. + +The meeting was interesting and there were few feminine clashes--merely +a smiling and deadly exchange of amenities between a fashionable woman +who was an ardent advocate of suffrage, and an equally distinguished +lady who was scornfully opposed to it. But the franchise had nothing at +all to do with the discussion concerning the New Idea Home, which is +doubtless why it was mentioned; and the meeting of delegates proceeded +without further debate. + +After it was ended Valerie hurried away to keep an appointment with +Neville at Burleson's studio, and found the big sculptor lying on the +sofa, neck swathed in flannel, and an array of medicine bottles at his +elbow. + +"Can't go to dinner with you," he said; "Rita won't have it. There's +nothing the matter with me, but she made me lie down here, and I've +promised to stay here until she returns." + +"John, you don't look very well," said Valerie, coming over and seating +herself by his side. + +"I'm all right, except that I catch cold now and then," he insisted +obstinately. + +Valerie looked at the pink patches of colour burning in his cheeks. +There was a transparency to his skin, too, that troubled her. He was one +of those big, blond, blue-eyed fellows whose vivid colour and +fine-grained, delicate skin caused physicians to look twice. + +He had been reading when Valerie entered; now he laid his ponderous book +away, doubled his arms back under his head and looked at Valerie with +the placid, bovine friendliness which warmed her heart but always left a +slight smile in the corner of her mouth. + +"Why do you always smile at me, Valerie?" he asked. + +"Because you're good, John, and I like you." + +"I know you do. You're a fine woman, Valerie.... So is Rita." + +"Rita is a darling." + +[Illustration: "'John, you don't look very well,' said Valerie."] + +"She's all right," he nodded. A moment later he added: "She comes from +Massachusetts." + +Valerie laughed: "The sacred codfish smiled on your cradle, too, didn't +it, John?" + +"Yes, thank God," he said seriously.... "I was born in the old town of +Hitherford." + +"How funny!" exclaimed the girl. + +"What is there funny about that?" demanded John. + +"Why, Rita was born in Hitherford." + +"Hitherford Centre," corrected John. "Her father was a clergyman there." + +"Oh; so you knew it?" + +"I knew, of course, that she was from Massachusetts," said John, +"because she speaks English properly. So I asked her where she was born +and she told me.... My grandfather knew hers." + +"Isn't it--curious," mused the girl. + +"What's curious?" + +"Your meeting this way--as sculptor and model." + +"Rita is a very fine girl," he said. "Would you mind handing me my pipe? +No, don't. I forgot that Rita won't let me. You see my chest is rather +uncomfortable." + +He glanced at the clock, leaned over and gulped down some medicine, then +placidly folding his hands, lay back: + +"How's Kelly?" + +"I haven't seen him to-day, John." + +"Well, he ought to be here very soon. He can take you and Rita to +dinner." + +"I'm so sorry you can't come." + +"So am I." + +Valerie laid a cool hand on his face; he seemed slightly feverish. Rita +came in at that moment, smiled at Valerie, and went straight to +Burleson's couch: + +"Have you taken your medicine?" + +"Certainly." + +She glanced at the bottles. "Men are so horridly untruthful," she +remarked to Valerie; "and this great, lumbering six-footer hasn't the +sense of a baby--" + +"I have, too!" roared John, indignantly; and Valerie laughed but Rita +scarcely smiled. + +"He's always working in a puddle of wet clay and he's always having +colds and coughing, and there's always more or less fever," she said, +looking down at the huge young fellow. "I know that he ought to give up +his work and go away for a while--" + +"Where?" demanded Burleson indignantly. + +"Oh, somewhere--where there's plenty of--air. Like Arizona, and +Colorado." + +"Do you think there's anything the matter with my lungs?" he roared. + +"No!--you perfect idiot!" said Rita, seating herself; "and if you shout +that way at me again I'll go to dinner with Kelly and Valerie and leave +you here alone. I will not permit you to be uncivil, John. Please +remember it." + +Neville arrived in excellent spirits, greeted everybody, and stood +beside Valerie, carelessly touching the tip of his fingers to hers where +they hung at her side. + +"What's the matter with _you_, John? Rita, isn't he coming? I've a taxi +outside ruining me." + +"John has a bad cold and doesn't care to go--" + +"Yes, I do!" growled John. + +"And he doesn't care to risk contracting pneumonia," continued Rita +icily, "and he isn't going, anyway. And if he behaves like a man instead +of an overgrown baby, I have promised to stay and dine with him here. +Otherwise I'll go with you." + +"Sure. You'd better stay indoors, John. You ought to buck up and get rid +of that cold. It's been hanging on all winter." + +Burleson rumbled and grumbled and shot a mutinous glance at Rita, who +paid it no attention. + +"Order us a nice dinner at the Plaza, Kelly--if you don't mind," she +said cheerfully, going with them to the door. She added under her +breath: "I wish he'd see a doctor, but the idea enrages him. I don't +see why he has such a cold all the time--and such flushed cheeks--" Her +voice quivered and she checked herself abruptly. + +"Suppose I ring up Dr. Colbert on my own hook?" whispered Neville. + +"Would you?" + +"Certainly. And you can tell John that I did it on my own +responsibility." + +Neville and Valerie went away together, and Rita returned to the studio. +Burleson was reading again, and scowling; and he scarcely noticed her. +She seated herself by the fire and looked into the big bare studio +beyond where the electric light threw strange shadows over shrouded +shapes of wet clay and blocks of marble in the rough or partly hewn into +rough semblance of human figures. + +It was a damp place at best; there were always wet sponges, wet cloths, +pails of water, masses of moist clay about. Her blue eyes wandered over +it with something approaching fear--almost the fear of hatred. + +"John," she said, "why won't you go to a dry climate for a few months +and get rid of your cold?" + +"Do you mean Arizona?" + +"Or some similar place: yes." + +"Well, how am I to do any work out there? I've got commissions on hand. +Where am I going to find any place to work out in Arizona?" + +"Build a shanty." + +"That's all very well, but there are no models to be had out there." + +"Why don't you do some Indians?" + +"Because," said John wrathfully, "I haven't any commissions that call +for Indians. I've two angels, a nymph and a Diana to do; and I can't do +them unless I have a female model, can I?" + +After a silence Rita said carelessly: + +"I'll go with you if you like." + +"You! Out there!" + +"I said so." + +"To Arizona! You wouldn't stand for it!" + +"John Burleson!" she said impatiently, "I've told you once that I'd go +with you if you need a model! Don't you suppose I know what I am +saying?" + +He lay placidly staring at her, the heavy book open across his chest. +Presently he coughed and Rita sprang up and removed the book. + +"You'd go with me to Arizona," he repeated, as though to himself--"just +to pose for me.... That's very kind of you, Rita. It's thoroughly nice +of you. But you couldn't stand it. You'd find it too cruelly stupid out +there alone--entirely isolated in some funny town. I couldn't ask it of +you--" + +"You haven't. I've asked it--of you." + +But he only began to grumble and fret again, thrashing about restlessly +on the lounge; and the tall young girl watched him out of lowered eyes, +silent, serious, the lamplight edging her hair with a halo of ruddy +gold. + + * * * * * + +The month sped away very swiftly for Valerie. Her companionship with +Rita, her new friendship for Helene d'Enver, her work, filled all the +little moments not occupied with Neville. It had been a happy, exciting +winter; and now, with the first days of spring, an excitement and a +happiness so strange that it even resembled fear at moments, possessed +her, in the imminence of the great change. + +Often, in these days, she found herself staring at Neville with a sort +of fixed fascination almost bordering on terror;--there were moments +when alone with him, and even while with him among his friends and hers, +when there seemed to awake in her a fear so sudden, so inexplicable, +that every nerve in her quivered apprehension until it had passed as it +came. What those moments of keenest fear might signify she had no idea. +She loved, and was loved, and was not afraid. + +In early April Neville went to Ashuelyn. Ogilvy was there, also +Stephanie Swift. + +His sister Lily had triumphantly produced a second sample of what she +could do to perpetuate the House of Collis, and was much engrossed with +nursery duties; so Stephanie haunted the nursery, while Ogilvy, Neville, +and Gordon Collis played golf over the April pastures, joining them only +when Lily was at liberty. + +Why Stephanie avoided Neville she herself scarcely knew; why she clung +so closely to Lily's skirts seemed no easier to explain. But in her +heart there was a restlessness which no ignoring, no self-discipline +could suppress--an unease which had been there many days, now--a hard, +tired, ceaseless inquietude that found some little relief when she was +near Lily Collis, but which, when alone, became a dull ache. + +She had grown thin and spiritless within the last few months. Lily saw +it and resented it hotly. + +"The child," she said to her husband, "is perfectly wretched over Louis +and his ignominious affair with that West girl. I don't know whether she +means to keep her word to me or not, but she's with him every day. +They're seen together everywhere except where Louis really belongs." + +"It looks to me," said Gordon mildly, "as though he were really in love +with her." + +"Gordon! How _can_ you say such a thing in such a sympathetic tone!" + +"Why--aren't you sorry for them?" + +"I'm sorry for Louis--and perfectly disgusted. I _was_ sorry for her; an +excess of sentimentality. But she hasn't kept her word to me." + +"Did she promise not to gad about with him?" + +"That was the spirit of the compact; she agreed not to marry him." + +"Sometimes they--don't marry," observed Gordon, twirling his thumbs. + +Lily looked up quickly; then flushed slightly. + +"What do you mean, Gordon?" + +"Nothing specific; anything in general." + +"You mean to hint that--that Louis--Louis Neville could be--permit +himself to be so common--so unutterably low--" + +"Better men have taken the half-loaf." + +"Gordon!" she exclaimed, scarlet with amazement and indignation. + +"Personally," he said, unperturbed, "I haven't much sympathy with such +affairs. If a man can't marry a girl he ought to leave her alone; that's +my idea of the game. But men play it in a variety of ways. Personally, +I'd as soon plug a loaded shot-gun with mud and then fire it, as block a +man who wants to marry." + +"I _did_ block it!" said Lily with angry decision; "and I am glad I +did." + +"Look out for the explosion then," he said philosophically, and +strolled off to see to the setting out of some young hemlocks, headed in +the year previous. + +Lily Collis was deeply disturbed--more deeply than her pride and her +sophistication cared to admit. She strove to believe that such a horror +as her husband had hinted at so coolly could never happen to a Neville; +she rejected it with anger, with fear, with a proud and dainty +fastidiousness that ought to have calmed and reassured her. It did not. + +Once or twice she reverted to the subject, haughtily; but Gordon merely +shrugged: + +"You can't teach a man of twenty-eight when, where, and how to fall in +love," he said. "And it's all the more hopeless when the girl possesses +the qualities which you once told me this girl possesses." + +Lily bit her lip, angry and disconcerted, but utterly unable to refute +him or find anything in her memory of Valerie to criticise and condemn, +except the intimacy with her brother which had continued and which, she +had supposed, would cease on Valerie's promise to her. + +"It's very horrid of her to go about with him under the +circumstances--knowing she can't marry him if she keeps her word," said +Lily. + +"Why? Stephanie goes about with him." + +"Do you think it is good taste to compare those two people?" + +"Why not. From what you told me I gather that Valerie West is as +innocent and upright a woman as Stephanie--and as proudly capable of +self-sacrifice as any woman who ever loved." + +"Gordon," she said, exasperated, "do you actually wish to see my brother +marry a common model?" + +"_Is_ she common? I thought you said--" + +"You--you annoy me," said Lily; and began to cry. + +Stephanie, coming into the nursery that afternoon, found Lily watching +the sleeping children and knitting a tiny sweater. Mrs. Collis was pale, +but her eyes were still red. + +"Where have you been, Stephanie?" + +"Helping Gordon set hemlocks." + +"Where is Louis?" + +The girl did not appear to hear the question. + +"I thought I heard him telephoning a few minutes ago," added Lily. "Look +over the banisters, dear, and see if he's still there." + +"He is," said Stephanie, not stirring. + +"Telephoning all this time? Is he talking to somebody in town?" + +"I believe so." + +Lily suddenly looked up. Stephanie was quietly examining some recently +laundered clothing for the children. + +"To whom is Louis talking; do you happen to know?" asked Lily abruptly. + +Stephanie's serious gaze encountered hers. + +"Does that concern us, Lily?" + +After a while, as Mrs. Collis sat in silence working her ivory needles, +a tear or two fell silently upon the little white wool garment on her +lap. + +And presently Stephanie went over and touched her forehead with gentle +lips; but Lily did not look up--could not--and her fingers and ivory +needles flew the faster. + +"Do you know," said Stephanie in a low voice, "that she is a modest, +well-bred, and very beautiful girl?" + +"What!" exclaimed Lily, staring at her in grief and amazement. "Of whom +are you speaking, Stephanie?" + +"Of Valerie West, dear." + +"W-what do you know about her?" + +"I have met her." + +"_You_!" + +"Yes. She came, with that rather common countess, as substitute delegate +for Mrs. Hind-Willet, to a New Idea meeting. I spoke to her, seeing she +was alone and seemed to know nobody; I had no suspicion of who she was +until she told me." + +"Mrs. Hind-Willet is a busybody!" said Lily, furious. "Let her fill her +own drawing-room with freaks if it pleases her, but she has no right to +send them abroad among self-respecting people who are too unsuspicious +to protect themselves!" + +Stephanie said: "Until one has seen and spoken with Valerie West one can +scarcely understand how a man like your brother could care so much for +her--" + +"How do you know Louis cares for her?" + +"He told me." + +Lily looked into the frank, gray eyes in horror unutterable. The crash +had come. The last feeble hope that her brother might come to his senses +and marry this girl was ended forever. + +"How--could he!" she stammered, outraged. "How could he tell--tell +_you_--" + +"Because he and I are old and close friends, Lily.... And will remain +so, God willing." + +Lily was crying freely now. + +"He had no business to tell you. He knows perfectly well what his father +and mother think about it and what I think. He can't marry her! He shall +not. It is too cruel--too wicked--too heartless! And anyway--she +promised me not to marry him--" + +"What!" + +Lily brushed the tears from her eyes, heedless now of how much Stephanie +might learn. + +"I wrote her--I went to see her in behalf of my own family as I had a +perfect right to. She promised me not to marry Louis." + +"Does Louis know this?" + +"Not unless she's told him.... I don't care whether he does or not! He +has disappointed me--he has embittered life for me--and for his parents. +We--I--I had every reason to believe that he and--you--" + +Something in Stephanie's gray eyes checked her. When breeding goes to +pieces it makes a worse mess of it than does sheer vulgarity. + +"If I were Louis I would marry her," said Stephanie very quietly. "I +gave him that advice." + +She rose, looking down at Lily where she sat bowed over her wool-work, +her face buried in her hands. + +"Think about it; and talk patiently with Louis," she said gently. + +Passing the stairs she glanced toward the telephone. Louis was still +talking to somebody in New York. + + * * * * * + +It was partly fear of what her husband had hinted, partly terror of what +she considered worse still--a legal marriage--that drove Lily Collis to +write once more to Valerie West: + +"DEAR MISS WEST: It is not that I have any disposition to doubt your +word to me, but, in view of the assurance you have given me, do you +consider it wise to permit my brother's rather conspicuous attentions to +you? + +"Permit me, my dear Miss West, as an older woman with wider experience +which years must bring, to suggest that it is due to yourself to curtail +an intimacy which the world--of course mistakenly in your case--views +always uncharitably. + +"No man--and I include my brother as severely as I do any man--has a +right to let the world form any misconception as to his intentions +toward any woman. If he does he is either ignorant or selfish and +ruthless; and it behooves a girl to protect her own reputation. + +"I write this in all faith and kindliness for your sake as well as for +his. But a man outlives such things, a woman never. And, for the sake of +your own future I beg you to consider this matter and I trust that you +may not misconstrue the motive which has given me the courage to write +you what has caused me deepest concern. + +"Very sincerely yours, + +"LILY COLLIS." + +To which Valerie replied: + +"MY DEAR, MRS. COLLIS: I have to thank you for your excellent intentions +in writing me. But with all deference to your wider experience I am +afraid that I must remain the judge of my own conduct. Pray, believe +that, in proportion to your sincerity, I am grateful to you; and that I +should never dream of being discourteous to Mr. Neville's sister if I +venture to suggest to her that liberty of conscience is a fundamental +scarcely susceptible of argument or discussion. + +"I assume that you would not care to have Mr. Neville know of this +correspondence, and for that reason I am returning to you your letter so +that you may be assured of its ultimate destruction. + +"Very truly yours, + +"VALERIE WEST." + + +Which letter and its reply made Valerie deeply unhappy; and she wrote +Neville a little note saying that she had gone to the country with +Helene d'Enver for a few days' rest. + +The countess had taken a house among the hills at Estwich; and as chance +would have it, about eight miles from Ashuelyn and Penrhyn Cardemon's +great establishment, El Nauar. + +Later Valerie was surprised and disturbed to learn of the proximity of +Neville's family, fearing that if Mrs. Collis heard of her in the +neighbourhood she might misunderstand. + +But there was only scant and rough communication between Ashuelyn and +Estwich; the road was a wretched hill-path passable only by buck-boards; +Westwich was the nearest town to Ashuelyn and El Nauar and the city of +Dartford, the county seat most convenient to Estwich. + +Spring was early; the Estwich hills bloomed in May; and Helene d'Enver +moved her numerous household from the huge Castilione Apartment House +to Estwich and settled down for a summer of mental and physical +recuperation. + +Valerie, writing to Neville the first week in May, said: + +"Louis, the country here is divine. I thought the shaggy, unkempt hills +of Delaware County were heavenly--and they _were_ when you came and made +them so--but this rich, green, well-ordered country with its hills and +woods and meadows of emerald--its calm river, its lovely little brooks, +its gardens, hedges, farms, is to me the most wonderful land I ever +looked upon. + +"Helene has a pretty house, white with green blinds and verandas, and +the loveliest lawns you ever saw--unless the English lawns are lovelier. + +"To my city-wearied eyes the region is celestial in its horizon-wide +quiet. Only the ripple of water in leafy ravines--only the music of +birds breaks the silence that is so welcome, so blessed. + +"To-day Helene and I picked strawberries for breakfast, then filled the +house with great fragrant peonies, some of which are the colour of +Brides' roses, some of water-lilies. + +"I'm quite mad with delight; I love the farm with its ducks and hens and +pigeons; I adore the cattle in the meadow. They are fragrant. Helene +laughs at me because I follow the cows about, sniffing luxuriously. They +smell like the clover they chew. + +"Louis, dear, I have decided to remain a week here, if you don't mind. +I'm a little tired, I think. John Burleson, poor boy, does not need me. +I'm terribly worried about him. Rita writes that there is no danger of +pneumonia, but that Dr. Colbert is making a careful examination. I hope +it is not lung trouble. It would be too tragic. He is only twenty-seven. +Still, they cure such things now, don't they? Rita is hoping he will go +to Arizona, and has offered to go with him as his model. That means--if +she does go--that she'll nurse him and take care of him. She is devoted +to him. What a generous girl she is! + +"Dear, if you don't need me, or are not too lonely without seeing me +come fluttering into your studio every evening at tea-time, I would +really like to remain here a few days longer. I have arranged business +so that I can stay if it is agreeable to you. Tell me exactly how you +feel about it and I will do exactly as you wish--which, please God--I +shall always do while life lasts. + +"Sam came up over Sunday, lugging Harry Annan and a bulldog--a present +for Helene. Sam is _so_ sentimental about Helene! + +"And he's so droll about it. But I've seen him that way before; haven't +you? And Helene, bless her heart, lets him make eyes at her and just +laughs in that happy, wholesome way of hers. + +"She's a perfect dear, Louis; so sweet and kind to me, so unaffected, so +genuine, so humorous about herself and her funny title. She told me that +she would gladly shed it if she were not obliged to shed her legacy with +it. I don't blame her. What an awful title--when you translate it! + +"Sam is temporarily laid up. He attempted to milk a cow and she kicked +him; and he's lying in a hammock and Helene is reading to him, while +Harry paints her portrait. Oh, dear--I _love_ Harry Annan, but he can't +paint! + +"Dearest--as I sit here in my room with the chintz curtains blowing and +the sun shining on the vines outside my open windows, I am thinking of +you; and my girl's heart is very full--very humble in the wonder of your +love for me--a miracle ever new, ever sweeter, ever holier. + +"I pray that it be given to me to see the best way for your happiness +and your welfare; I pray that I may not be confused by thought of self. + +"Dear, the spring is going very swiftly. I can scarcely believe that May +is already here--is already passing--and that the first of June is so +near. + +"Will you _always_ love me? Will you always think tenderly of +me--happily--! Alas, it is a promise nobody can honestly make. One can +be honest only in wishing it may be so. + +"Dearest of men, the great change is near at hand--nearer than I can +realise. Do you still want me? Is the world impossible without me? Tell +me so, Louis; tell me so now--and in the years to come--very +often--very, very often. I shall need to hear you say it; I understand +now how great my need will be to hear you say it in the years to come." + +Writing to him in a gayer mood a week later: + +"It is perfectly dear of you to tell me to remain. I _do_ miss you; I'm +simply wild to see you; but I am getting so strong, so well, so +deliciously active and vigorous again. I _was_ rather run down in town. +But in the magic of this air and sunshine I have watched the +reincarnation of myself. I swim, I row, I am learning to sit a horse; I +play tennis--_and_ I flirt, Monsieur--shamelessly, with Sam and Harry. +Do you object-- + +"We had such a delightful time--a week-end party, perfectly informal and +crazy; Mrs. Hind-Willet--who is such a funny woman, considering the +position she might occupy in society--and Jose Querida--just six of us, +until--and this I'm afraid you may not like--Mrs. Hind-Willet telephoned +Penrhyn Cardemon to come over. + +"You know, Louis, he _seems_ a gentleman, though it is perfectly certain +that he isn't. I hate and despise him; and have been barely civil to +him. But in a small company one has to endure such things with outward +equanimity; and I am sure that nobody suspects my contempt for him and +that my dislike has not caused one awkward moment." + +She wrote again: + +"I beg of you not to suggest to your sister that she call on me. Try to +be reasonable, dear. Mrs. Collis does not desire to know me. Why should +she? Why should you wish to have me meet her? If you have any vague +ideas that my meeting her might in any possible way alter a situation +which must always exist between your family and myself, you are utterly +mistaken, dearest. + +"And my acquaintance with Miss Swift is so slight--I never saw her but +once, and then only for a moment!--that it would be only painful and +embarrassing to her if you asked her to call on me. Besides, you are a +man and you don't understand such things. Also, Mrs. Collis and Miss +Swift have only the slightest and most formal acquaintance with Helene; +and it is very plain that they are as content with that acquaintance as +is Helene. And in addition to that, you dear stupid boy, your family has +carefully ignored Mr. Cardemon for years, although he is their +neighbour; and Mr. Cardemon is here. And to cap the climax, your father +and mother are at Ashuelyn. _Can't_ you understand? + +"Dearest of men, don't put your family and yourself--and me--into such a +false position. I know you won't when I have explained it; I know you +trust me; I know you love me dearly. + +"We had a straw ride. There's no new straw, of course, so we had a wagon +filled with straw from one of the barns and we drove to Lake Gentian and +Querida was glorious in the moonlight with his guitar. + +"He's so nice to me now--so like himself. But I _hate_ Penrhyn Cardemon +and I wish he would go; and he's taken a fancy to me, and for Helene's +sake I don't snub him--the unmitigated cad! + +"However, it takes all kinds to make even the smallest of house parties; +and I continue to be very happy and to write to you every day. + +"Sam is queer. I'm beginning to wonder whether he is really in love with +Helene. If he isn't he ought to have his knuckles rapped. Of course, +Helene will be sensible about it. But, Louis, when a really nice man +behaves as though he were in love with a woman, no matter how gaily she +laughs over it, it is bound to mean _something_ to her. And men don't +seem to understand that." + +"Mrs. Hind-Willet departs to-morrow. Sam and Harry go to Ashuelyn; Mr. +Cardemon to his rural palace, I devoutly trust; which will leave Jose to +Helene and me; and he's equal to it. + +"How long may I stay, dear? I am having a heavenly time--which is odd +because heaven is in New York just now." + +Another letter in answer to one of his was briefer: + +"My Darling: + +"Certainly you must go to Ashuelyn if your father and mother wish it. +They are old, dear; and it is a heartless thing to thwart the old. + +"Don't think of attempting to come over here to see me. The chances are +that your family would hear of it and it would only pain them. Any +happiness that you and I are ever to have must not be gained at any +expense to them. + +"So keep your distance, Monsieur; make your parents and your sister +happy for the few days you are to be there; and on Thursday I will meet +you on the 9.30 train and we will go back to town together. + +"I am going anyway, for two reasons; I have been away from you entirely +too long, and--the First of June is very, very near. + +"I love you with all my heart, Louis. + +"Valerie West." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +He never doubted that, when at length the time came for the great +change--though perhaps not until the last moment--Valerie would consent +to marry him. Because, so far in his life of twenty-eight years, +everything he had desired very much had come true--everything he had +really believed in and worked for, had happened as he foresaw it would, +in spite of the doubts, the fears, the apprehensions that all creators +of circumstances and makers of their own destiny experience. + +Among his fellow-men he had forged a self-centred, confident way to the +front; and had met there not ultimate achievement, but a young girl, +Valerie West. Through her, somehow, already was coming into his life and +into his work that indefinite, elusive quality--that _something_, the +existence of which, until the last winter, he had never even admitted. +But it was coming; he first became conscious of it through his need of +it; suspected its existence as astronomers suspect the presence of a +star yet uncharted and unseen. Suddenly it had appeared in his portrait +of Valerie; and he knew that Querida had recognised it. + +In his picture "A Bride," the pale, mysterious glow of it suffused his +canvas. It was penetrating into his own veins, too, subtle, indefinable, +yet always there now; and he was sensitive to its presence not only +when absorbed in his work but, more or less in his daily life. + +And it was playing tricks on him, too, as when one morning, absorbed by +the eagerness of achievement, and midway in the happiness of his own +work, suddenly and unbidden the memory of poor Annan came to him--the +boy's patient, humorous face bravely confronting failure on the canvas, +before him, from which Neville had turned away without a word, because +he had no good word to say of it. + +And Neville, scarcely appreciating the reason for any immediate +self-sacrifice, nevertheless had laid aside his brushes as at some +unheard command, and had gone straight to Annan's studio. And there he +had spent the whole morning giving the discouraged boy all that was best +in him of strength and wisdom and cheerful sympathy, until, by noon, an +almost hopeless canvas was saved; and Annan, going with him to the door, +said unsteadily, "Kelly, that is the kindest thing one man ever did for +another, and I'll never forget it." + +Yes, the _something_ seemed to have penetrated to his own veins now; he +felt its serene glow mounting when he spent solemn evenings in John +Burleson's room, the big sculptor lying in his morris-chair, sometimes +irritable, sometimes morose, but always now wearing the vivid patch of +colour on his flat and sunken cheeks. + +Once John said: "Why on earth do you waste a perfectly good afternoon +dawdling in this place with me?" + +And Neville, for a second, wondered, too; then he laughed: + +"I get all that I give you, John, and more, too. Shut up and mind your +business." + +"_What_ do you get from me?" demanded the literal one, astonished. + +"All that you are, Johnny; which is much that I am not--but ought to +be--may yet be." + +"That's some sort of transcendental philosophy, isn't it?" grumbled the +sculptor. + +"You ought to know better than I, John. The sacred codfish never +penetrated to the Hudson. _Inde irac!_" + +Yes, truly, whatever it was that had crept into his veins had +imperceptibly suffused him, enveloped him--and was working changes. He +had a vague idea, sometimes, that Valerie had been the inception, the +source, the reagent in the chemistry which was surely altering either +himself or the world of men around him; that the change was less a +synthesis than a catalysis--that he was gradually becoming different +because of her nearness to him--her physical and spiritual nearness. + +He had plenty of leisure to think of her while she was away; but thought +of her was now only an active ebullition of the ceaseless consciousness +of her which so entirely possessed him. When a selfish man loves--if he +_really_ loves--his disintegration begins. + +Waking, sleeping, in happiness, in perplexity, abroad, at home, active +or at rest, inspired or weary, alone or with others, an exquisite sense +of her presence on earth invaded him, subtly refreshing him with every +breath he drew. He walked abroad amid the city crowds companioned by her +always; at rest the essence of her stole through and through him till +the very air around seemed sweetened. + +He heard others mention her, and remained silent, aloof, wrapped in his +memories, like one who listens to phantoms in a dream praising +perfection. + +Lying back in his chair before his canvas, he thought of her often--of +odd little details concerning their daily life--details almost +trivial--gestures, a glance, a laugh--recollections which surprised him +with the very charm of their insignificance. + +He remembered that he had never known her to be ungenerous--had never +detected in her a wilfully selfish motive. In his life he had never +before believed in a character so utterly unshackled by thought of self. + +He remembered that he had never known her to fail in sympathy for any +living thing; had never detected in her an indifference to either the +happiness or the sorrow of others. In his life he had never before +believed that the command to love one's neighbour had in it anything +more significant than the beauty of an immortal theory. He believed it +now because, in her, he had seen it in effortless practice. He was even +beginning to understand how it might be possible for him to follow where +she led--as she, unconsciously, was a follower of a precept given to +lead the world through eternities. + +Leaning on the closed piano, thinking of her in the still, sunny +afternoons, faintly in his ears her voice seemed to sound; and he +remembered her choice of ballads:-- + + --"For even the blind distinguisheth + The king with his robe and crown; + But only the humble eye of faith + Beholdeth Jesus of Nazareth + In the beggar's tattered gown. + + "I saw Him not in the mendicant + And I heeded not his cry; + Now Christ in His infinite mercy grant + That the prayer I say in my day of want, + Be not in scorn put by." + +No; he had never known her to be unkind, uncharitable, unforgiving; he +had never known her to be insincere, untruthful, or envious. But the +decalogue is no stronger than its weakest link. Was it in the heart of +such a woman--this woman he loved--was it in the heart of this young +girl to shatter it? + +He went on to Ashuelyn, confident of her and of himself, less confident +of his sister--almost appalled at the prospect of reconciling his father +and mother to this marriage that must surely be. Yet--so far in +life--life had finally yielded to him what he fought for; and it must +yield now; and in the end it would surely give him the loyalty and +sympathy of his family. Which meant that Valerie would listen to him; +and, in the certainty of his family's ultimate acquiescence, she would +wear his ring and face with him the problems and the sorrows that must +come to all. + +Cameron drove down to the station in the motor-car to meet him: + +"Hello, Genius," he said, patting Neville on the back with a pudgy hand. +"How's your twin brother, Vice?" + +"Hello, you large and adipose object!" retorted Neville, seating himself +in the tonneau. "How is that overworked, money-grubbing intellect of +yours staggering along?" + +"Handicapped with precious thoughts; Ogilvy threw 'em into me when he +was here. How's the wanton Muse, Louis? Sitting on your knees as usual?" + +"One arm around my neck," admitted Neville, "and the band playing +'Sweethearts.'" + +"Waiting for you to order inspiration cocktails. You're looking fit." + +"Am I? I haven't had one." + +"Oh, I thought you threw one every time you painted that pretty model of +yours--" He looked sideways at Neville, but seeing that he was +unreceptive, shrugged. + +"You're a mean bunch, you artists," he said. "I'd like to meet that +girl, but because I'm a broker anybody'd think I had rat-plague from the +way you all quarantine her--yes, the whole lot of you--Ogilvy, Annan, +Querida. Why, even Penrhyn Cardemon has met her; he told me so; and if +he has why can't I--" + +"For heaven's sake let up!" said Neville, keeping his temper, "and tell +me how everybody is at Ashuelyn." + +"Huh! I'm ridden off as usual," grunted Cameron. "All right, then; I'll +fix it myself. What was it you were gracious enough to inquire of me?" + +"How the people are at Ashuelyn?" repeated Neville. + +"How they are? How the deuce do I know? Your mother embroiders and reads +_The Atlantic Monthly_; your father tucks his hands behind him and +critically inspects the landscape; and when he doesn't do that he reads +Herbert Spencer. Your efficient sister nourishes her progeny and does +all things thoroughly and well; Gordon digs up some trees and plants +others and squirts un-fragrant mixtures over the shrubbery, and sits on +fences talking to various Rubes. Stephanie floats about like a well-fed +angel, with a fox-terrier, and makes a monkey of me at tennis whenever +I'm lunatic enough to let her, and generally dispenses sweetness, +wholesomeness, and light upon a worthy household. I wouldn't mind +marrying that girl," he added casually. "What do you think?" + +Neville laughed: "Why don't you? She's the nicest girl I ever +knew--almost." + +"I'd ask her to marry me," said Cameron facetiously; "only I'm afraid +such a dazzling prospect would turn her head and completely spoil her." + +He spoke gaily and laughed loudly--almost boisterously. Neville glanced +at him with a feeling that Cameron was slightly overdoing it--rather +forcing the mirth without any particular reason. + +After a moment he said: "Sandy, you don't have to be a clown if you +don't want to be, you know." + +"Can't help it," said Cameron, reddening; "everybody expects it now. +When Ogilvy was here we played in a double ring to crowded houses. Every +seat on the veranda was taken; we turned 'em away, my boy. _What_ was it +you started to say about Stephanie?" + +"I didn't start to say anything about Stephanie." + +"Oh, I thought you were going to"--his voice died into an uncertain +grumble. Neville glanced at him again, thoughtfully. + +"You know, Sandy," he said, "that there's another side to you--which, +for some occult reason you seem to hide--even to be ashamed of." + +"Sure I'm ashamed to be a broker with all you highbrows lining out +homers for the girls while I have to sit on the bleachers and score 'em +up. If I try to make a hit with the ladies it's a bingle; and it's the +bench and the bush-league for muh--" + +"You great, overgrown kid! It's a pity people can't see you down town. +Everybody knows you're the cleverest thing south of Broad and Wall. Look +at all the boards, all the committees, all the directorates you're mixed +up with! Look at all the time you give freely to others--look at all +your charities, all your: civic activities, all--" + +"All the hell I raise!" said Cameron, very red. "Don't forget that, +Louis!" + +"You never did--that's the wonder and the eternal decency of you, +Cameron. You're a good citizen and a good man, and you do more for the +world than we painters ever could do! That's the real truth of it; and +why you so persistently try to represent yourself as a commonplace +something else is beyond me--and probably beyond Stephanie Swift," he +added carelessly. + +They whizzed along in silence for some time, and it was only when +Ashuelyn was in sight that Cameron suddenly turned and held out his +hand: + +"Thank you, Louis; you've said some very kind things." + +Neville shrugged: "I hear you are financing that New Idea Home. I tell +you that's a fine conception." + +But Cameron only looked modest. At heart he was a very shy man and he +deprecated any idea that he was doing anything unusual in giving most of +his time to affairs that paid dividends only in happiness and in the +consciousness of moral obligation fulfilled. + +The household was occupying the pergola as they arrived and sprang out +upon the clipped lawn. + +Neville kissed his mother tenderly, shook hands cordially with his +father, greeted Lily with a fraternal hug and Stephanie with a firm +grasp of both hands. + +"How perfectly beautiful it is here!" he exclaimed, looking out over the +green valley beyond--and unconsciously his gaze rested on the Estwich +hills, blue and hazy and soft as dimpled velvet. Out there, somewhere, +was Valerie; heart and pulse began to quicken. Suddenly he became aware +that his mother's eyes were on him, and he turned away toward the south +as though there was also something in that point of the compass to +interest him. + +Gordon Collis, following a hand-cart full of young trees wrapped in +burlap, passed across the lawn below and waved a greeting at Neville. + +"How are you, Louis!" he called out. "Don't you want to help us set +these hybrid catalpas?" + +"I'll be along by and by," he replied, and turned to the group under the +pergola who desired to know how it was in town--the first question +always asked by New Yorkers of anybody who has just arrived from that +holy spot. + +"It's not too warm," said Neville; "the Park is charming, most of the +houses on Fifth Avenue are closed--" + +"Have you chanced to pass through Tenth Street?" asked his father +solemnly. + +But Neville confessed that he had not set foot in those sanctified +precincts, and his father's personal interest in Manhattan Island ceased +immediately. + +They chatted inconsequentially for a while; then, in reply to a question +from Stephanie, he spoke of his picture, "A Bride," and, though it was +still unfinished, he showed them a photograph of it. + +[Illustration: "'It is very beautiful, Louis,' said his mother, with a +smile of pride."] + +The unmounted imprint passed from hand to hand amid various comments. + +"It is very beautiful, Louis," said his mother, with a smile of pride; +and even as she spoke the smile faded and her sad eyes rested on him +wistfully. + +"Is it a sacred picture?" asked his father, examining it through his +glasses without the slightest trace of interest. + +"It is an Annunciation, isn't it?" inquired Lily, calmly. But her heart +was failing her, for in the beauty of the exquisite, enraptured face, +she saw what might have been the very soul of Valerie West. + +His father, removing his spectacles, delivered himself of an opinion +concerning mysticism, and betrayed an illogical tendency to drift toward +the Concord School of Philosophy. However, there seemed to be +insufficient incentive; he glanced coldly toward Cameron and resumed +Herbert Spencer and his spectacles. + +"Mother, don't you want to stroll on the lawn a bit?" he asked +presently. "It looks very inviting to a city man's pavement-worn feet." + +She drew her light wool shawl around her shoulders and took her tall +son's arm. + +For a long while they strolled in silence, passed idly through the +garden where masses of peonies hung over the paths, and pansies, iris, +and forget-me-nots made the place fragrant. + +It was not until they came to the plank bridge where the meadow rivulet, +under its beds of cress and mint, threaded a shining way toward the +woods, that his mother said in a troubled voice: + +"You are not happy, Louis." + +"Why, mother--what an odd idea!" + +"Am I mistaken?" she asked, timidly. + +"Yes, indeed, you are. I am very happy." + +"Then," she said, "what is it that has changed you so?" + +[Illustration: "'You are not happy, Louis.'"] + +"Changed me?" + +"Yes, dear." + +"I am not changed, mother." + +"Do you think a mother can be mistaken in her only son? You are so +subdued, so serious. You are like men who have known sorrow.... What +sorrow have you ever known, Louis?" + +"None. No great one, mother. Perhaps, lately, I have +developed--recognised--become aware of the sombre part of life--become +sensitive to it--to unhappiness in others--and have cared more--" + +"You speak like a man who has suffered." + +"But I haven't, mother," he insisted. "Of course, every painter worries. +I did last winter--last winter--" He hesitated, conscious that last +winter--on the snowy threshold of the new year--sorrow and pain and +happiness and pity had, in an instant, assumed for him a significance +totally new. + +"Mother," he said slowly, "if I have changed it is only in a better +understanding of the world and those who live in it. I have cared very +little about people; I seem to have come to care more, lately. What they +did, what they thought, hoped, desired, endured, suffered, interested me +little except as it concerned my work. And somehow, since then, I am +becoming interested in people for their own sakes. It's a--new +sensation." + +He smiled and laid his hand over hers: + +"Do you know I never even appreciated what a good man Alexander Cameron +is until recently. Why, mother, that man is one of the most generous, +modest, kind, charitable, unselfish fellows in the world!" + +"His behaviour is sometimes a little extraordinary," said his +mother--"isn't it?" + +"Oh, that's all on the surface! He's full of boyish spirits. He dearly +loves a joke--but the greater part of that interminable funny business +is merely to mask the modesty of a man whose particular perversity is a +fear that people might discover how kind and how clever he really is!" + +They walked on in silence for a while, then his mother said: + +"Mr. Querida was here. Is he a friend of yours?" + +Neville hesitated: "I'll tell you, mother," he said, "I don't find +Querida personally very congenial. But I have no doubt he's an +exceedingly nice fellow. And he's far and away the best painter in +America.... When did he go back to town?" + +"Last week. I did not care for him." + +"You and father seldom do care for new acquaintances," he rejoined, +smiling. "Don't you think it is about time for you to emerge from your +shells and make up your minds that a few people have been born since you +retired?" + +"People have been born in China, too, but that scarcely interests your +father and me." + +"Let it interest you, mother. You have no idea how amusing new people +are. That's the way to keep young, too." + +"It is a little too late for us to think of youth--or to think as youth +thinks--even if it were desirable." + +"It _is_ desirable. Youth--which will be age to-morrow--may venture to +draw a little consideration in advance--" + +"My children interest me--and I give their youth my full consideration. +But I can scarcely be expected to find any further vital interest in +youth--and in the complexity of its modern views and ideas. You ask +impossibilities of two very old people." + +"I do not mean to. I ask only, then, that you and father take a vital +and intelligent interest in me. Will you, mother?" + +"Intelligent? What do you mean, Louis?" + +"I mean," he said, "that you might recognise my right to govern my own +conduct; that you might try to sympathise with views which are not your +own--with the ideas, ideals, desires, convictions which, if modern, are +none the less genuine--and are mine." + +There was a brief silence; then: + +"Louis, are you speaking with any thought of--that woman in your mind?" +she asked in a voice that quivered slightly. + +"Yes, mother." + +"I knew it," she said, under her breath; "I knew it was that--I knew +what had changed you--was changing you." + +"Have I altered for the worse?" + +"I don't know--I don't know, Louis!" She was leaning heavily on his +elbow now; he put one arm around her and they walked very slowly over +the fragrant grass. + +"First of all, mother, please don't call her, 'that woman.' Because she +is a very sweet, innocent, and blameless girl.... Will you let me tell +you a little about her?" + +His mother bent her head in silence; and for a long while he talked to +her of Valerie. + +The sun still hung high over the Estwich hills when he ended. His +mother, pale, silent, offered no comment until, in his trouble, he urged +her. Then she said: + +"Your father will never consent." + +"Let me talk to father. Will _you_ consent?" + +"I--Louis--it would break our hearts if--" + +"Not when you know her." + +"Lily knows her and is bitterly opposed to her--" + +"What!" he exclaimed, astounded. "You say that my sister knows Valerie +West?" + +"I--forgot," faltered his mother; "I ought not to have said anything." + +"Where did Lily meet her?" he asked, bewildered. + +"Don't ask me, Louis. I should not have spoken--" + +"Yes, you should have! It is my affair; it concerns me--and it concerns +Valerie--her future and mine--our happiness. Where did Lily meet her?" + +"You must ask that of Lily. I cannot and will not discuss it. I will say +only this: I have seen the--this Miss West. She is at present a guest at +the villa of a--countess--of whom neither your father nor I ever before +heard--and whom even Lily knows so slightly that she scarcely bows to +her. And yesterday, while motoring, we met them driving on the Estwich +road and your sister told us who they were." + +After a moment he said slowly: "So you have actually seen the girl I am +in love with?" + +"I saw--Miss West." + +"Can't you understand that I _am_ in love with her?" + +"Even if you are it is better for you to conquer your inclination--" + +"Why?" + +"Because all your life long you will regret such a marriage." + +"Why?" + +"Because nobody will care to receive a woman for whom you can make no +explanation--even if you are married to her." + +He kept his patience. + +"Will _you_ receive her, mother?" + +She closed her eyes, drew a quick, painful breath: "My son's +wife--whoever she may be--will meet with no discourtesy under my roof." + +"Is that the best you can offer us?" + +"Louis! Louis!--if it lay only with me--I would do what you wished--even +this--if it made you happy--" + +He took her in his arms and kissed her in silence. + +"You don't understand," she said,--"it is not I--it is the family--our +entire little world against her. It would be only an eternal, hopeless, +heart-breaking struggle for you, and for her;--pain for you--deep pain +and resentment and bitterness for those who did not--perhaps could +not--take your views of--" + +"I don't care, mother, as long as you and father and Lily stand by her. +And Valerie won't marry me unless you do. I didn't tell you that, but it +is the truth. And I'm fighting very hard to win her--harder than you +know--or will ever know. Don't embitter me; don't let me give up. +Because, if I do, it means desperation--and things which you never could +understand.... And _I_ want you to talk to father. Will you? And to +Lily, too. Its fairer to warn her that I have learned of her meeting +Valerie. Then I'll talk to them both and see what can be done.... And, +mother, I am very happy and very grateful and very proud that you are +going to stand by me--and by the loveliest girl in all the world." + +That night Lily came to his room. Her eyes were red, but there was fire +in them. She seated herself and surveyed her brother with ominous +self-possession. + +"Well, Lily," he said pleasantly, prepared to keep his temper at all +hazards. + +"Well, Louis, I understand from mother that you have some questions to +ask me." + +"No questions, little sister; only your sympathetic attention while I +tell you how matters stand with me." + +"You require too much!" she said shortly. + +"If I ask for your sympathy?" + +"Not if you ask it for yourself, Louis. But if you include that--" + +"Please, dear!" he interrupted, checking her with a slight gesture--for +an instant only; then she went on in a determined voice: + +"Louis, I might as well tell you at once that I have no sympathy for +her. I wrote to her, out of sheer kindness, for her own good--and she +replied so insolently that--that I am not yet perfectly recovered--" + +"What did you write?" + +Mrs. Collis remained disdainfully silent, but her eyes sparkled. + +"Won't you tell me," he asked, patiently, "what it was you wrote to +Valerie West?" + +"Yes, I'll tell you if you insist on knowing!--even if you do +misconstrue it! I wrote to her--for her own sake--and to avoid +ill-natured comment,--suggesting that she be seen less frequently with +you in public. I wrote as nicely, as kindly, as delicately as I knew +how. And her reply was a practical request that I mind my business!... +Which was vulgar and outrageous, considering that she had given me her +promise--" Mrs. Collis checked herself in her headlong and indignant +complaint; then she coloured painfully, but her mouth settled into +tight, uncompromising lines. + +"What promise had Valerie West made you?" he asked, resolutely subduing +his amazement and irritation. + +For a moment Mrs. Collis hesitated; then, realising that matters had +gone too far for concealment, she answered almost violently: + +"She promised me not to marry you,--if you must know! I can't help what +you think about it; I realised that you were infatuated--that you were +making a fatal and terrible mistake--ruining life for yourself and for +your family--and I went to her and told her so! I've done all I could to +save you. I suppose I have gained your enmity by doing it. She promised +me not to marry you--but she'll probably break her word. If you mean to +marry her you'll do so, no doubt. But, Louis, if you do, such a step +will sever all social relations between you and your family. Because I +will _not_ receive her! Nor will my friends--nor yours--nor father's and +mother's friends! And that settles it." + +He spoke with great care, hesitating, picking and choosing his words: + +"Is it--possible that you did--such a thing--as to write to Valerie +West--threatening her with my family's displeasure if she married me?" + +"I did not write her at first. The first time I went to see her. And I +told her kindly but plainly what I had to tell her! It was my duty to do +it and I didn't flinch." + +Lily was breathing fast; her eyes narrowed unpleasantly. + +He managed to master his astonishment and anger; but it was a heavy +draught on his reserve of self-discipline, good temper, and common sense +to pass over this thing that had been done to him and to concentrate +himself upon the main issue. When he was able to speak again, calmly and +without resentment, he said: + +"The first thing for us to do, as a family, is to eliminate all personal +bitterness from this discussion. There must be no question of our +affection for one another; no question but what we wish to do the best +by each other. I accept that as granted. If you took the step which you +did take it was because you really believed it necessary for my +happiness--" + +"I still believe it!" she insisted; and her lips became a thin, hard +line. + +"Then we won't discuss it. But I want to ask you one thing; have you +talked with mother about it?" + +"Yes--naturally." + +"Has she told you all that I told her this afternoon?" + +"I suppose so. It does not alter my opinion one particle," she replied, +her pretty head obstinately lowered. + +He said: "Valerie West will not marry me if my family continues hostile +to her." + +Lily slowly lifted her eyes: + +"Then will you tell me why she permits herself to be seen so constantly +with you? If she is not going to marry you what _is_ she going to do? +Does she care what people are saying about her?--and about you?" + +"No decent people are likely to say anything unpleasant about either of +us," he said, keeping a tight rein on himself--but the curb was biting +deeply now. "Mother will stand by me, Lily. Will you?" + +His sister's face reddened: "Louis," she said, "I am married; I have +children, friends, a certain position to maintain. You are unmarried, +careless of conventions, uninterested in the kind of life that I and my +friends have led, and will always lead. The life, the society, the +formalities, the conventional observances are all part of our lives, and +make for our happiness and self-respect; but they mean absolutely +nothing to you. And you propose to invade our respectable and +inoffensive seclusion with a conspicuous wife who has been a notorious +professional model; and you demand of your family that they receive her +as one of them! Louis, I ask you, is this fair to us?" + +He said very gravely: "You have met Valerie West. Do you really believe +that either the dignity or the morals of the family circle would suffer +by her introduction to it?" + +"I know nothing about her morals!" said his sister, excitedly. + +"Then why condemn them?" + +"I did not; I merely reminded you that she is a celebrated professional +model." + +"It is not necessary to remind me. My mother knows it and will stand by +her. Will you do less for your own brother?" + +"Louis! You are cruel, selfish, utterly heartless--" + +"I am trying to think of everybody in the family who is concerned; but, +when a man's in love he can't help thinking a little of the woman he +loves--especially if nobody else does." He turned his head and looked +out of the window. Stars were shining faintly in a luminous sky. His +face seemed to have grown old and gray and haggard: + +"I don't know what to do," he said, as though speaking to himself;--"I +don't know where to turn. She would marry me if you'd let her; she will +never marry me if my family is unkind to her--" + +"What _will_ she do, then?" asked Lily, coolly. + +For a moment he let her words pass, then, turned around. The expression +of his sister's brightly curious eyes perplexed him. + +"What do you mean?" he asked, disturbed. + +"What I say, Louis. I asked you what Miss West means to do if she does +not marry you? Discontinue her indiscreet intimacy with you?" + +"Why should she?" + +Lily said, sharply: "I would not have to put that question to a modest +girl." + +"I have to put it to _you_!" he retorted, beginning to lose his +self-command. "Why should Valerie West discontinue her friendship with +me because my family's stupid attitude toward her makes it impossible +for a generous and proud girl to marry me?" + +Lily, pale, infuriated, leaned forward in her chair. + +"Because," she retorted violently, "if that intimacy continues much +longer a stupid world and your stupid family will believe that the girl +is your mistress! But in that event, thank God, the infamy will rest +where it belongs--not on us!" + +A cold rage paralysed his speech; she saw its ghastly reflection on his +white and haggard face--saw him quiver under the shock; rose +involuntarily, terrified at the lengths to which passion had scourged +her: + +"Louis," she faltered--"I--I didn't mean that!--I was beside myself; +forgive me, please! Don't look like that; you are frightening me--" + +She caught his arm as he passed her, clung to it, pallid, fearful, +imploring,--"W-what are you going to do, Louis! Don't go, dear, please. +I'm sorry, I'm very, very humble. Won't you speak to me? I said too +much; I was wrong;--I--I will try to be different--try to reconcile +myself to--to what--you--wish--" + +He looked down at her where she hung to him, tearful face lifted to his: + +"I didn't know women could feel that way about another woman," he said, +in a dull voice. "There's no use--no use--" + +"But--but I love you dearly, Louis! I couldn't endure it to have +anything come between us--disrupt the family--" + +"Nothing will, Lily.... I must go now." + +"Don't you believe I love you?" + +He drew a deep, unconscious breath. + +"I suppose so. Different people express love differently. There's no use +in asking you to be different--" + +She said, piteously: "I'm trying. Don't you see I'm trying? Give me +time, Louis! Make allowances. You can't utterly change people in a few +hours." + +He gazed at her intently for a moment. + +"You mean that you are trying to be fair to--her?" + +"I--if you call it that;--yes! But a family can not adapt itself, +instantaneously, to such a cataclysm as threatens--I mean--I mean--oh, +Louis! Try to understand us and sympathise a little with us!" + +His arms closed around her shoulders: + +"Little sister, we both have the family temper--and beneath it, the +family instinct for cohesion. If we are also selfish it is not +individual but family selfishness. It is the family which has always +said to the world, '_Noli me tangere_!' while we, individually, are +really inclined to be kinder, more sympathetic, more curious about the +neighbours outside our gate. Let it be so now. Once inside the family, +what can harm Valerie?" + +"Dearest, dearest brother," she murmured, "you talk like a foolish man. +Women understand better. And if it is a part of your program that this +girl is to be accepted by an old-fashioned society, now almost obsolete, +but in which this family is merely a single superannuated unit, that +program can never be carried out." + +"I think you are mistaken," he said. + +"I know I am not. It is inevitable that if you marry this girl she will +be more or less ignored, isolated, humiliated, overlooked outside our +own little family circle. Even in that limited mob which the newspapers +call New York Society--in that modern, wealthy, hard-witted, +over-jewelled, self-sufficient league which is yet too eternally +uncertain of its own status to assume any authority or any +responsibility for a stranger without credentials,--it would not be +possible to make Valerie West acceptable in the slightest sense of the +word. Because she is too well known; her beauty is celebrated; she has +become famous. Her only chance there--or with us--would have been in her +absolute anonymity. Then lies _might_ have done the rest. But lying is +now useless in regard to her." + +"Perfectly," he said. "She would not permit it." + +In his vacant gaze there was something changed--a fixedness born of a +slow and hopeless enlightenment. + +"If that is the case, there is no chance," he said thoughtfully. "I had +not considered that aspect." + +"I had." + +He shook his head slightly, gazing through the window at the starry +lustre overhead. + +"I wouldn't care," he said, "if she would only marry me. If she'd do +that I'd never bother anybody--nor embarrass the family--" + +"Louis!" + +"I mean make any social demands on you.... And, as for the world--" He +slowly shook his head again: "We could make our own friends and our own +way--if she would only consent to do it. But she never will." + +"Do you mean to say she will not marry you if you ask her?" began Lily +incredulously. + +"Absolutely." + +"Why?" + +"For your sakes--yours, and mother's, and father's--and for mine." + +There was a long silence, then Lily said unsteadily: + +"There--there seems to be a certain--nobility--about her.... It is a +pity--a tragedy--that she is what she is!" + +"It is a tragedy that the world is what it is," he said. "Good night." + + * * * * * + +His father sent for him in the morning; Louis found him reading the +_Tribune_ in his room and sipping a bowl of hot milk and toast. + +[Illustration: "'What have you been saying to your mother?' he asked."] + +"What have you been saying to your mother?" he asked, looking up through +his gold-rimmed spectacles and munching toast. + +"Has she not told you, father?" + +"Yes, she has.... I think you had better make a trip around the world." + +"That would not alter matters." + +"I differ with you," observed his father, leisurely employing his +napkin. + +"There is no use considering it," said his son patiently. + +"Then what do you propose to do?" + +"There is nothing to do." + +"By that somewhat indefinite expression I suppose that you intend to +pursue a waiting policy?" + +"A waiting policy?" His son laughed, mirthlessly. "What am I to wait +for? If you all were kind to Valerie West she might, perhaps, consent to +marry me. But it seems that even our own family circle has not +sufficient authority to protect her from our friends' neglect and +humiliation.... + +"She warned me that it would be so, long ago. I did not believe it; I +could not comprehend it. But, somehow, Lily has made me believe it. And +so have you. I guess it must be true. And if that's all I have to offer +my wife, it's not enough to compensate her for her loss of freedom and +happiness and self-respect among those who really care for her." + +"Do you give me to understand that you renounce all intentions of +marrying this girl?" asked his father, breaking more toast into his bowl +of milk. + +"Yes," said his son, listlessly. + +"Thank God!" said his father; "come here, my son." + +They shook hands; the son's lifeless arm fell to his side and he stood +looking at the floor in silence. The father took a spoonful of hot milk +with satisfaction, and, after the younger man had left the room, he +resumed his newspaper. He was particularly interested in the "Sunshine +Column," which dispensed sweetness and light under a poetic caption too +beautiful to be true in a coldly humorous world. + + * * * * * + +That afternoon Gordon Collis said abruptly to Neville: + +"You look like the devil, Louis." + +"Do I?" + +"You certainly do." And, in a lower voice: "I guess I've heard what's +the matter. Don't worry. It's a thing about which nobody ever ought to +give anybody any advice--so I'll give you some. Marry whoever you damn +please. It'll be all the same after that oak I planted this morning is +half grown." + +"Gordon," he said, surprised, "I didn't suppose _you_ were liberal." + +"Liberal! Why, man alive! Do you think a fellow can live out of doors as +I have lived, and see germs sprout, and see mountain ranges decay, and +sit on a few glaciers, and swing a pick into a mother-lode--and _not_ be +liberal? Do you suppose ten-cent laws bother me when I'm up against the +blind laws that made the law-makers?--laws that made life itself before +Christ lived to conform to them?... I married where I loved. It chanced +that my marriage with your sister didn't clash with the sanctified order +of things in Manhattan town. But if your sister had been the maid who +dresses her, and I had loved her, I'd have married her all the same and +have gone about the pleasures and duties of procreation and conservation +exactly as I go about 'em now.... I wonder how much the Almighty was +thinking about Tenth Street when the first pair of anthropoids mated? +_Nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus_. If you love each other--_Noli +pugnare duobus._ ... And I'm going into the woods to look for ginseng. +Want to come?" + +Neville went. Cameron and Stephanie, equipped with buckskin gloves, a +fox terrier, and digging apparatus, joined them just where the slender +meadow brook entered the woods. + +"There are mosquitoes here!" exclaimed Cameron wrathfully. "All day and +every day I'm being stung down town, and I'm not going to stand for it +here!" + +Stephanie let him aid her to the top of a fallen log, glancing back once +or twice toward Neville, who was sauntering forward among the trees, +pretending to look for ginseng. + +"Do you notice how Louis has changed?" she said, keeping her balance on +the log. "I cannot bear to see him so thin and colourless." + +Cameron now entertained a lively suspicion how matters stood, and knew +that Stephanie also suspected; but he only said, carelessly: "It's +probably dissipation. You know what a terrible pace he's been going from +the cradle onward." + +She smiled quietly. "Yes, I know, Sandy. And I know, too, that you are +the only man who has been able to keep up that devilish pace with him." + +"I've led a horrible life," muttered Cameron darkly. + +Stephanie laughed; he gave her his hand as she stood balanced on the big +log; she laid her fingers in his confidently, looked into his honest +face, still laughing, then sprang lightly to the ground. + +"What a really good man you are!" she said tormentingly. + +"Oh, heaven! If you call me that I'm really done for!" + +"Done for?" she exclaimed in surprise. "How?" + +"Done for as far as you are concerned." + +"I? Why how, and with what am I concerned, Sandy? I don't understand +you." + +But he only turned red and muttered to himself and strolled about with +his hands in his pockets, kicking the dead leaves as though he expected +to find something astonishing under them. And Stephanie glanced at him +sideways once or twice, thoughtfully, curiously, but questioned him no +further. + +Gordon Collis pottered about in a neighbouring thicket; the fox terrier +was chasing chipmunks. As for Neville he had already sauntered out of +sight among the trees. + +Stephanie, seated on a dry and mossy stump, preoccupied with her own +ruminations, looked up absently as Cameron came up to her bearing floral +offerings. + +"Thank you, Sandy," she said, as he handed her a cluster of wild +blossoms. Then, fastening them to her waist, she glanced up +mischieviously: + +"How funny you are! You look and act like a little boy at a party +presenting his first offering to the eternal feminine." + +"It's my first offering," he said coolly. + +"Oh, Sandy! With _your_ devilish record!" + +"Do you know," he said, "that I'm thirty-two years old? And that you are +twenty-two? And that since you were twelve and I was twenty odd I've +been in love with you?" + +She looked at him in blank dismay for a moment, then forced a laugh: + +"Of course I know it, Sandy. It's the kind of love a girl cares most +about--" + +"It's really love," said Cameron, un-smiling--"the kind I'm afraid she +doesn't care very much about." + +[Illustration: "'If you'll place a lump of sugar on my nose, and say +"when," I'll perform.'"] + +She hesitated, then met his gaze with a distressed smile: + +"You don't really mean that, Sandy--" + +"I've meant it for ten years.... But it doesn't matter--" + +"Sandy!... It _does_ matter--if--" + +"No, it doesn't.... Come on and kick these leaves about and we'll make a +million dollars in ginseng!" + +But she remained seated, mute, her gaze a sorrowful interrogation which +at length he could not pretend to ignore: + +"Stephanie child, don't worry. I'm not worrying. I'm glad I told you.... +Now just let me go on as I've always gone--" + +"How _can_ we?" + +"Easily. Shut your eyes, breathe deeply, lifting both arms and lowering +them while counting ten in German--" + +"Sandy, don't be so foolish at--such a time." + +"Such a time? What time is it?" pretending to consult his watch with +great anxiety. Then a quick smile of relief spread over his features: +"It's all right, Stephanie; it's my hour to be foolish. If you'll place +a lump of sugar on my nose, and say 'when,' I'll perform." + +There was no answering smile on her face. + +"It's curious," she said, "how a girl can make a muddle of life without +even trying." + +"But just think what you might have done if you'd tried! You've much to +be thankful for," he said gravely. + +She raised her eyes, considering him: + +"I wonder," she said, under her breath. + +"Sure thing, Stephanie. You might have done worse; you might have +married me. Throw away those flowers--there's a good girl--and forget +what they meant." + +Slowly, deliberately, blossom by blossom she drew them from her girdle +and laid them on the moss beside her. + +"There's one left," he said cheerfully. "Raus mit it!" + +But she made no motion to detach it; appeared to be unconscious of it +and of him as she turned her face and looked silently toward the place +where Neville had disappeared. + +An hour or two later, when Gordon was ready to return to the house, he +shouted for Neville. Cameron also lifted up his voice in a series of +prolonged howls. + +But Neville was far beyond earshot, and still walking through woods and +valleys and pleasant meadows in the general direction of the Estwich +hills. + +Somewhere there amid that soft rolling expanse of green was the woman +who would never marry him. And it was now, at last, he decided that he +would never take her on any other terms even though they were her own +terms; that he must give her up to chance again as innocent as chance +had given her into his brief keeping. No, she would never accept his +terms and face the world with him as his wife. And so he must give her +up. For he believed that, in him, the instinct of moral law had been too +carefully developed ever to be deliberately ignored; he still believed +marriage to be not only a rational social procedure, not only a human +compromise and a divine convention, but the only possible sanctuary +where love might dwell, and remain, and permanently endure inviolate. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The Countess Helene had taken her maid and gone to New York on business +for a day or two, leaving Valerie to amuse herself until her return. + +Which was no hardship for Valerie. The only difficulty lay in there +being too much to do. + +In the first place she had become excellent friends with the farmer and +had persuaded him to delegate to her a number of his duties. She had to +collect the newly laid eggs, hunt up stolen nests, inspect and feed the +clucking, quacking, gobbling personnel of the barnyard which came +crowding to her clear-voiced call. + +As for the cattle, she was rather timid about venturing to milk since +the Ogilvy's painful and undignified debut as an amateur Strephon. + +However, she assisted at pasture call accompanied by a fat and lazy +collie; and she petted and salted the herd to her heart's content. + +Then there were books and magazines to be read, leisurely; and hammocks +to lie in, while her eyes watched the sky where clouds sailed in snowy +squadrons out of the breezy west. + +And what happier company for her than her thoughts--what tenderer +companionship than her memories; what more absorbing fellowship than the +little busy intimate reflections that came swarming around her, more +exciting, more impetuous, more exquisitely disturbing as the hurrying, +sunny hours sped away and the first day of June drew nigh? + +She spent hours alone on the hill behind the house, lying full length in +the fragrant, wild grasses, looking across a green and sunlit world +toward Ashuelyn. + +[Illustration: "And what happier company for her than her thoughts--what +tenderer companionship than her memories?"] + +She had told him not to attempt to come to Estwich; and, though she knew +she had told him wisely, often and often there on her breezy hilltop she +wished that she hadn't--wished that he would disregard her +request--hoped he would--lay there, a dry grass stem between her lips, +thinking how it would be if, suddenly, down there by--well, say down by +that big oak, for example, a figure should stroll into view along the +sheep-path.... And at first--just to prolong the tension--perhaps she +wouldn't recognise him--just for a moment. Then, suddenly-- + +But she never got beyond that first blissful instant of recognition--the +expression of his face--his quick spring forward--and she, amazed, +rising to her feet and hastening forward to meet him. For she never +pictured herself as standing still to await the man she loved. + +When Helene left, Valerie had the place to herself; and, without any +disloyalty to the little countess, she experienced a new pleasure in the +liberty of an indolence which exacted nothing of her. + +She prowled around the library, luxuriously, dipping into inviting +volumes; she strolled at hazard from veranda to garden, from garden to +lawn, from lawn to farmyard. + +About luncheon time she arrived at the house with her arms full of +scented peonies, and spent a long while selecting the receptacles for +them. + +Luncheon was a deliciously lazy affair at which she felt at liberty to +take her own time; and she did so, scanning the morning paper, which had +just been delivered; making several bites of every cherry and +strawberry, and being good to the three cats with asparagus ends and a +saucer of chicken bouillon. + +Later, reclining in the hammock, she mended a pair of brier-torn +stockings; and when that thrifty and praiseworthy task was finished, +she lay back and thought of Neville. + +[Illustration: "She prowled around the library, luxuriously, dipping +into inviting volumes"] + +But at what moment in any day was she ever entirely unconscious of him? +Besides, she could always think of him better--summon him +nearer--visualise him more clearly, when she was afield, the blue sky +above her, the green earth under foot, and companioned only by memory. + +So she went to her room, put on her stout little shoes and her walking +skirt; braided her hair and made of it a soft, light, lustrous turban; +and taking her dog-whip, ran down stairs. + +The fat old collie came wagging up to the whistle, capered clumsily as +in duty bound; but before she had entirely traversed the chestnut woods +he basely deserted her and waddled back to the kitchen door where a +thoughtful cook and a succulent bone were combinations not unknown. + +Valerie missed him presently, and whistled; but the fat sybarite, if +within earshot, paid no attention; and she was left to swing her +dog-whip and stroll on alone. + +Her direction lay along the most inviting by-roads and paths; and she +let chance direct her feet through this friendly, sunny land where one +little hill was as green as another, and one little brook as clear and +musical as another, and the dainty, ferny patches of woodlands resembled +one another. + +It was a delight to scramble over stone walls; she adored lying flat and +wriggling under murderous barbed-wire, feeling the weeds brush her face. +When a brook was a little too wide to jump, it was ecstasy to attempt +it. She got both shoes wet and loved it. Brambles plucked boldly at her +skirt; wild forest blossoms timidly summoned her aside to kneel and +touch them, but to let them live; squirrels threatened her and rushed +madly up and down trees defying her; a redstart in vermilion and black, +fussed about her where she sat, closing and spreading its ornamental +tail for somebody's benefit--perhaps for hers. + +[Illustration: "'Miss West!' he exclaimed. 'How on earth did you ever +find your way into my woods?'"] + +She was not tired; she did not suppose that she had wandered very far, +but, glancing at her watch, she was surprised to find how late it was. +And she decided to return. + +After she had been deciding to return for about an hour it annoyed her +to find that she could not get clear of the woods. It seemed +preposterous; the woods could not be very extensive. As for being +actually lost it seemed too absurd. Life is largely composed of +absurdities. + +There was one direction which she had not tried, and it lay along a +bridle path, but whether north or south or east or west she was utterly +unable to determine. She felt quite certain that Estwich could not lie +either way along that bridle-path which stretched almost a straight, +dark way under the trees as far as she could see. + +Vexed, yet amused, at her own stupid plight, she was standing in the +road, trying to make up her mind to try it, when, far down the vista, a +horseman appeared, coming on at a leisurely canter; and with a sigh of +relief she saw her troubles already at an end. + +He drew bridle abreast of her, stared, sprang from his saddle and, cap +in hand, came up to her holding out his hand: + +"Miss West!" he exclaimed. "How on earth did you ever find your way into +my woods?" + +"I don't know, Mr. Cardemon," she said, thankful to encounter even him +in her dilemma. "I must have walked a great deal farther than I meant +to." + +"You've walked at least five miles if you came by road; and nobody knows +how far if you came across country," he said, staring at her out of his +slightly prominent eyes. + +"I did come across country. And if you will be kind enough to start me +toward home--" + +"You mean to _walk_ back!" + +"Of course I do." + +"I won't permit it!" he exclaimed. "It's only a little way across to the +house and we'll just step over and I'll have a car brought around for +you--" + +"Thank you, I am not tired--" + +"You are on my land, therefore you are my guest," he insisted. "I am not +going to let you go back on foot--" + +"Mr. Cardemon, if you please, I very much prefer to return in my own +way." + +"What an obstinate girl you are!" he said, with his uncertain laugh, +which never came until he had prejudged its effect on the situation; but +the puffy flesh above his white riding-stock behind his lobeless ears +reddened, and a slow, thickish colour came into his face and remained +under the thick skin. + +"If you won't let me send you back in a car," he said, "you at least +won't refuse a glass of sherry and a biscuit--" + +"Thank you--I haven't time--" + +"My housekeeper, Mrs. Munn, is on the premises," he persisted. + +"You are very kind, but--" + +"Oh, don't turn a man down so mercilessly, Miss West!" + +"You are exceedingly amiable," she repeated, "but I must go at once." + +He switched the weeds with his crop, then the uncertain laugh came: + +"I'll show you a short cut," he said. His prominent eyes rested on her, +passed over her from head to foot, then wandered askance over the young +woodland. + +"In which direction lies Estwich?" she asked, lifting her gaze to meet +his eyes; but they avoided her as he answered, busy fumbling with a +girth that required no adjustment: + +"Over yonder,"--making a slight movement with his head. Then taking his +horse by the head he said heartily: + +"Awfully sorry you won't accept my hospitality; but if you won't you +won't, and we'll try to find a short cut." + +He led his horse out of the path straight ahead through the woods, and +she walked beside him. + +"Of course you know the way, Mr. Cardemon?" she said pleasantly. + +"I ought to--unless the undergrowth has changed the looks of things +since I've been through." + +"How long is it since you've been through?" + +"Oh, I can't just recollect," he said carelessly. "I guess it will be +all right." + +For a while they walked steadily forward among the trees; he talking to +her with a frank and detached amiability, asking about the people at +Estwich, interested to hear that the small house-party had +disintegrated, surprised to learn that the countess had gone to town. + +"Are you entirely alone in the house?" he asked; and his eyes seemed to +protrude a little more than usual. + +"Entirely," she said carelessly; "except for Binns and his wife and the +servants." + +"Why didn't you 'phone a fellow to stop over to lunch?" he asked, +suddenly assuming a jovial manner which their acquaintance did not +warrant. "We country folk don't stand on ceremony you know." + +"I did not know it," she said quietly. + +His bold gaze rested on her again; again the uncertain laugh followed: + +"If you'd ask me to dine with you to-night I'd take it as a charming +concession to our native informality. What do you say, Miss West?" + +She forced a smile, making a sign of negation with her head, but he +began to press her until his importunities and his short, abrupt +laughter embarrassed her. + +"I couldn't ask anybody without permission from my hostess," she said, +striving to maintain the light, careless tone which his changing manner +toward her made more difficult for her. + +"Oh, come, Miss West!" he said in a loud humorous voice; "don't pass me +the prunes and prisms but be a good little sport and let a fellow come +over to see you! You never did give me half a chance to know you, but +you're hands across the table with that Ogilvy artist and Jose +Querida--" + +"I've known them rather longer than I have you, Mr. Cardemon." + +"That's my handicap! I'm not squealing. All I want is to start in the +race--" + +"What race?" she asked coolly, turning on him a level gaze that, in +spite of her, she could not maintain under the stare with which he +returned it. And again the slight uneasiness crept over her and +involuntarily she looked around her at the woods. + +"How far is it now?" she inquired. + +"Are you tired?" + +"No. But I'm anxious to get back. Could you tell me how near to some +road we are?" + +He halted and looked around; she watched him anxiously as he tossed his +bridle over his horse's neck and walked forward into a little glade +where the late rays of the sun struck ruddy and warm on the dry grass. + +"That's singular," he said as she went forward into the open where he +stood; "I don't seem to remember this place." + +"But you know about where we are, don't you?" she asked, resolutely +suppressing the growing uneasiness and anxiety. + +"Well--I am not perfectly certain." He kept his eyes off her while he +spoke; but when she also turned and gazed helplessly at the woods +encircling her, his glance stole toward her. + +"You're not scared, are you?" he asked, and then laughed abruptly. + +"Not in the slightest." + +"Sure! You're a perfectly good sport.... I'll tell you--I'll leave my +horse for one of my men to hunt up later, and we'll start off together +on a good old-fashioned hike! Are you game?" + +"Yes--if I only knew--if you were perfectly sure how to get to the edge +of the woods. I don't see how you _can_ be lost in your own woods--" + +"I don't believe I am!" he said, laughing violently. "The Estwich road +_must_ be over in that direction. Come ahead, Miss West; the birds can +cover us up if worst comes to worst!" + +She went with him, entering the thicker growth with a quick, vigorous +little stride as though energy and rapidity of motion could subdue the +misgiving that threatened to frighten her sooner or later. + +Over logs, boulders, gulleys, she swung forward, he supporting her from +time to time in spite of her hasty assurance that she did not require +aid. + +Once, before she could prevent it, he grasped her and fairly swung her +across a gulley; and again, as she gathered herself to jump, his +powerful arm slipped around her body and he lowered her to the moss +below, leaving her with red cheeks and a rapid heart to climb the +laurel-choked ravine beside him. + +It was breathless work; again and again, before she could prevent it, he +forced his assistance on her; and in the abrupt, almost rough contact +there was something that began at last to terrify her--weaken her--so +that, at the top of the slope, she caught breathless at a tree and +leaned against the trunk for a moment, closing her eyes. + +"You poor little girl," he breathed close to her ear; and as her +startled eyes flew open, he drew her into his arms. + +For a second his congested face and prominent, pale eyes swam before +her; then with a convulsive gasp she wrenched herself partly free and +strained away from his grasp, panting. + +"Let me go, Mr. Cardemon!" + +"Look here, Valerie, you know I'm crazy about you--" + +"Will you let me go?" + +"Oh, come, little girl, I know who you are, all right! Be a good little +sport and--" + +"Let me go," she whispered between her teeth. Then his red, perspiring +features--the prominent eyes and loose mouth drew nearer--nearer--and +she struck blindly at the face with her dog-whip--twice with the lash +and once with the stag-horn handle. And the next instant she was +running. + +He caught her at the foot of the slope; she saw blood on his cheek and +puffy welts striping his distorted features, strove to strike him again, +but felt her arm powerless in his grasp. + +"Are you mad!" she gasped. + +"Mad about _you_! For God's sake listen to me, Valerie! Batter me, tear +me to pieces--and I won't care, if you'll listen to me a moment--" + +She struggled silently, fiercely, to use her whip, to wrench herself +free. + +"I tell you I love you!" he said; "I'd go through hell for you. You've +got to listen--you've got to _know_--" + +"You coward!" she sobbed. + +"I don't care what you say to me if you'll listen a moment--" + +"As Rita Tevis listened to you!" she said, white to the lips--"you +murderer of souls!" And, as his grasp relaxed for a second, she tore her +arm free, sprang forward and slashed him across the mouth with the lash. + +Behind her she heard his sharp cry of pain, heard him staggering about +in the underbrush. Terror winged her feet and she fairly flew along the +open ridge and down through the dead leaves across a soft, green, marshy +hollow, hearing him somewhere in the woods behind her, coming on at a +heavy run. + +For a long time she ran; and suddenly collapsed, falling in a huddled +desperate heap, her slender hands catching at her throat. + +At the foot of the hill she saw him striding hither and thither, +examining the soft forest soil or halting to listen--then as though +scourged into action, running aimlessly toward where she lay, casting +about on every side like a burly dog at fault. + +Once, when he stood not very far away, and she had hidden her face in +her arms, trembling like a doomed thing--she heard him call to +her--heard the cry burst from him as though in agony: + +"Valerie, don't be afraid! I was crazy to touch you;--I'll let you cut +me to pieces if you'll only answer me." + +And again he shouted, in a voice made thin by fright: "For God's sake, +Valerie, think of _me_ for a moment. Don't run off like that and let +people know what's happened to you!" + +Then, in a moment, his heavy, hurried tread resounded; and he must have +run very near to where she crouched, because she could hear him +whimpering in his fear; but he ran on past where she lay, calling to her +at intervals, until his frightened voice sounded at a distance and she +could scarcely hear the rustle of the dead leaves under his hurrying +tread. + +Even then terror held her chained, breathing fast like a wounded thing, +eyes bright with the insanity of her fear. She lay flat in the leaves, +not stirring. + +The last red sunbeams slanted through the woods, painting tree trunks +crimson and running in fiery furrows through, the dead leaves; the sky +faded to rose-colour, to mauve; faintly a star shone. + +For a long time now nothing had stirred in the woodland silence. And, as +the star glimmered brighter through the branches, she shivered, moved, +lay listening, then crawled a little way. Every sound that she made was +a terror to her, every heart beat seemed to burst the silence. + +It was dusk when she crept out at last into a stony road, dragging her +limbs; a fine mist had settled over the fields; the air grew keener. +Somewhere in the darkness cow-bells tinkled; overhead, through the damp +sheet of fog, the veiled stars were still shining. + +Her senses were not perfectly clear; she remembered falling once or +twice--remembered seeing the granite posts and iron gates of a drive, +and that lighted windows were shining dimly somewhere beyond. And she +crept toward them, still stupid with exhaustion and fright. Then she was +aware of people, dim shapes in the darkness--of a dog barking--of +voices, a quick movement in the dusk--of a woman's startled exclamation. + +Suddenly she heard Neville's voice--and a door opened, flooding her with +yellow light where she stood swaying, dazed, deathly pale. + +"Louis!" she said. + +He sprang to her, caught her in his arms + +"Good God! What is the matter?" + +She rested against him, her eyes listlessly watching the people swiftly +gathering in the dazzling light. + +"Where in the world--how did you get here!--where have you been--" His +stammered words made him incoherent as he caught sight of the mud and +dust on her torn waist and skirt. + +Her eyes had closed a moment; they opened now with an effort. Once more +she looked blindly at the people clustering around her--recognised his +sister and Stephanie--divined that it was his mother who stood gazing at +her in pallid consternation--summoned every atom of her courage to spare +him the insult which a man's world had offered to her--found strength to +ignore it so that no shadow of the outrage should fall through her upon +him or upon those nearest to him. + +"I lost my way," she said. Her white lips tried to smile; she strove to +stand upright, alone; caught mechanically at his arm, the fixed smile +still stamped on her lips. "I am sorry to--disturb anybody.... I was +lost--and it grew dark.... I don't know my way--very well--" + +She turned, conscious of some one's arm supporting her; and Stephanie +said, in a low, pitiful voice: + +"Lean back on me. You must let me help you to the house." + +"Thank you--I won't go in.... If I could rest--a moment--perhaps +somebody--Mr. Neville--would help me to get home again--" + +[Illustration: "'Dearest,' he whispered, putting his arm around her, +'you must come with us'"] + +"Come with me, Miss West," whispered Stephanie, "I _want_ you. Will you +come to my room with me for a little while?" + +She looked into Stephanie's eyes, turned and looked at Neville. + +"Dearest," he whispered, putting his arm around her, "you must come with +us." + +She nodded and moved forward, steadily, between them both, and entered +the house, head-carried high on the slender neck, but her face was +colourless under the dark masses of her loosened hair, and she swayed at +the foot of the stairs, reaching out blindly at nothing--falling +forward. + +It was a dead weight that Neville bore into Stephanie's room. When his +mother turned him out and closed the door behind him he stood stupidly +about until his sister, who had gone into the room, opened the door and +bade him telephone for Dr. Ogilvy. + +"What has happened to her?" he asked, as though dazed. + +"I don't know. I think you'd better tell Quinn to bring around the car +and go for Dr. Ogilvy yourself." + +It was a swift rush to Dartford through the night; bareheaded he bent +forward beside the chauffeur, teeth set, every nerve tense and straining +as though his very will power was driving the machine forward. Then +there came a maddening slowing down through Dartford streets, a +nerve-racking delay until Sam Ogilvy's giant brother had stowed away +himself and his satchel in the tonneau; then slow speed to the town +limits; a swift hurling forward into space that whirled blackly around +them as the great acetylenes split the darkness and chaos roared in +their ears. + +Under the lighted windows the big doctor scrambled out and stamped +upstairs; and Neville waited on the landing. + +His father appeared below, looking up at him, and started to say +something; but apparently changed his mind and went back into the living +room, rattling his evening paper and coughing. + +Cameron passed through the hallway, looked at him, but let him alone. + +After a while the door opened and Lily came out. + +"I'm not needed," she said; "your mother and Stephanie have taken +charge." + +"Is she going to be very ill?" + +"Billy Ogilvy hasn't said anything yet." + +"Is she conscious?" + +"Yes, she is now." + +"Has she said anything more?" + +"No." + +Lily stood silent a moment, gazing absently down at the lighted hall +below, then she looked at her brother as though she, too, were about to +speak, but, like her father, she reconsidered the impulse, and went away +toward the nursery. + +Later his mother opened the door very softly, let herself and Stephanie +out, and stood looking at him, one finger across her lips, while +Stephanie hurried away downstairs. + +"She's asleep, Louis. Don't raise your voice--" as he stepped quickly +toward her. + +"Is it anything serious?" he asked in a low voice. + +"I don't know what Dr. Ogilvy thinks. He is coming out in a moment...." +She placed one hand on her son's shoulder, reddening a trifle. "I've +told William Ogilvy that she is a friend of--the family. He may have +heard Sam talking about her when he was here last. So I thought it +safer." + +Neville brought a chair for his mother, but she shook her head, +cautioning silence, and went noiselessly downstairs. + +[Illustration: "'Well, Louis, what do you know about this?'"] + +Half an hour later Dr. Ogilvy emerged, saw Neville--walked up and +inspected him, curiously. + +"Well, Louis, what do you know about this?" he asked, buttoning his big +thick rain-coat to the throat. + +"Absolutely nothing, Billy, except that Miss West, who is a guest of +the Countess d'Enver at Estwich, lost her way in the woods. How is she +now?" + +"All right," said the doctor, dryly. + +"Is she conscious?" + +"Perfectly." + +"Awake?" + +"Yes. She won't be--long." + +"Did she talk to you?" + +"A little." + +"What _is_ the matter?" + +"Fright. And I'm wondering whether merely being lost in the woods is +enough to have terrified a girl like that? Because, apparently, she is +as superb a specimen of healthy womanhood as this world manufactures +once in a hundred years. How well do you know her?" + +"We are very close friends." + +"H'm. Did you suppose she was the kind of woman to be frightened at +merely being lost in a civilised country?" + +"No. She has more courage--of all kinds--than most women." + +"Because," said the big doctor thoughtfully, "while she was unconscious +it took me ten minutes to pry open her fingers and disengage a rather +heavy dog-whip from her clutch.... And there was some evidences of blood +on the lash and on the bone handle." + +"What!" exclaimed Neville, amazed. + +The doctor shrugged: "I don't know of any fierce and vicious dogs +between here and Estwich, either," he mused. + +"No, Cardemon keeps none. And its mostly his estate." + +"Oh ... Any--h'm!--vicious _men_--in his employment?" + +"My God!" whispered Neville, "what do you mean, Billy?" + +"Finger imprints--black and blue--on both arms. Didn't Miss West say +anything that might enlighten _you_?" + +"No ... She only said she had been lost.... Wait a moment; I'm trying to +think of the men Cardemon employs--" + +He was ashy white and trembling, and the doctor laid a steadying hand on +his arm. + +"Hold on, Louis," he said sharply, "it was no _worse_ than a fright. _Do +you understand_?... And do you understand, too, that an innocent and +sensitive and modest girl would rather die than have such a thing made +public through your well-meant activity? So there's nothing for anybody +to do--yet." + +Neville could scarcely speak. + +"Do you mean--she was attacked by some--man!" + +"It looks like it. And--you'd better keep it from your family--because +_she_ did. She's game to the core--that little girl." + +"But she--she'll tell me!" stammered Neville--she's _got_ to tell me--" + +"She won't if she can help it. Would it aid her any if you found out who +it was and killed him?--ran for a gun and did a little murdering some +pleasant morning--just to show your chivalrous consideration and +devotion to her?" + +"Are you asking me to let a beast like that go unpunished?" demanded +Neville violently. + +"Oh, use your brains, Louis. He frightened her and she slashed him well +for it. And, womanlike--after there was no more danger and no more +necessity for pluck--she got scared and ran; and the farther she ran the +more scared she became. Look here, Louis; look at me--squarely." He laid +both ponderous hands on Neville's shoulders: + +"Sam has told me all about you and Miss West--and I can guess how your +family takes it. Can't you see why she had the pluck to remain silent +about this thing? It was because she saw in it the brutal contempt of +the world toward a woman who stood in that world alone, unsupported, +unprotected. And she would not have you and your family know how lightly +the world held the woman whom you love and wish to marry--not for her +own sake alone--but for the sake of your family's pride--and yours." + +His hands dropped from Neville's shoulders; he stood considering him for +a moment in silence. + +"I've told _you_ because, if you are the man I think you are, you ought +to know the facts. Forcing her to the humiliation of telling you will +not help matters; filling this pup full of lead means an agony of +endless publicity and shame for her, for your family, and for you.... +He'll never dare remain in the same county with her after this. He's +probably skedaddled by this time anyway." ... Dr. Ogilvy looked narrowly +at Neville. "Are you pretty sane, now?" + +"Yes." + +"You realise that gun-play is no good in this matter?" + +"Y-yes." + +"And you really are going to consider Miss West before your own natural +but very primitive desire to do murder?" + +Neville nodded. + +"Knowing," added the doctor, "that the unspeakable cur who affronted her +has probably taken to his heels?" + +Neville, pale and silent, raised his eyes: + +"Do you suspect anybody?" + +"I don't know," said the doctor carelessly;--"I'll just step over to the +telephone and make an inquiry of Penrhyn Cardemon--" + +He walked to the end of the big hall, unhooked the receiver, asked for +Cardemon's house, got it. + +Neville heard him say: + +"This is Dr. Ogilvy. Is that you, Gelett? Isn't your master at home?" + + * * * * * + +"What? Had to catch a train?" + + * * * * * + +"Oh! A sudden matter of business." + + * * * * * + +"I see. He's had a cable calling him to London. How long will he be +away, Gelett?" + + * * * * * + +"Oh, I see. You don't know. Very well. I only called up because I +understood he required medical attention." + + * * * * * + +"Yes--I understood he'd been hurt about the head and face, but I didn't +know he had received such a--battering." + + * * * * * + +"You say that his horse threw him in the big beech-woods? Was he really +very much cut up?" + + * * * * * + +"Pretty roughly handled, eh! All right. When you communicate with him +tell him that Dr. Ogilvy and Mr. Neville, Jr., were greatly interested +to know how badly he was injured. Do you understand? Well, don't forget. +And you may tell him, Gelett, that as long as the scars remain, he'd +better remain, too. Get it straight, Gelett; tell him it's my medical +advice to remain away as long as he can--and a little longer. This +climate is no good for him. Good-bye." + +He turned from the telephone and sauntered toward Neville, who regarded +him with a fixed stare. + +"You see," he remarked with a shrug; and drew from his pocket a slightly +twisted scarf pin--a big horse-shoe set with sapphires and diamonds--the +kind of pin some kinds of men use in their riding-stocks. + +"I've often seen him wearing it," he said carelessly. "Curious how it +could have become twisted and entangled in Miss West's lace waist." + +He held out the pin, turning it over reflectively as the facets of the +gems caught and flashed back the light from the hall brackets. + +"I'll drop it into the poor-box I think," he mused. "Cardemon will +remain away so long that this pin will be entirely out of fashion when +he returns." + +After a few moments Neville drew a long, deep breath, and his clenched +hands relaxed. + +"Sure," commented the burly doctor. "That's right--feeling better--rush +of common sense to the head. Well, I've got to go." + +"Will you be here in the morning?" + +"I think not. She'll be all right. If she isn't, send over for me." + +"You don't think that the shock--the exhaustion--" + +"Naw," said the big doctor with good-natured contempt; "she's going to +be all right in the morning.... She's a lovely creature, isn't she? Sam +said so. Sam has an eye for beauty. But, by jinks! I was scarcely +prepared for such physical perfection--h'm!--or such fine and nice +discrimination--or for such pluck.... God knows what people's families +want these days. If the world mated properly our best families would be +extinct in another generation.... You're one of 'em; you'd better get +diligent before the world wakes up with a rush of common sense to its +doddering old head." He gave him both hands, warmly, cordially: +"Good-bye, Louis." + +Neville said: "I want you to know that I'd marry her to-morrow if she'd +have me, Billy." + +The doctor lifted his eyebrows. + +"Won't she?" + +"No." + +"Then probably you're not up to sample. A girl like that is no fool. +She'll require a lot in a man. However, you're young; and you may make +good yet." + +"You don't understand, Billy--" + +"Yes, I do. She wears a dinky miniature of you against her naked heart. +Yes, I guess I understand.... And I guess she's that kind of a girl all +unselfishness and innocence, and generous perversity and--quixotic +love.... It's too bad, Louis. I guess you're up against it for fair." + +He surveyed the younger man, shook his head: + +"They can't stand for her, can they?" + +"No." + +"And she won't stand for snaking you out of the fold. That's it, I +fancy?" + +"Yes." + +"Too bad--too bad. She's a fine woman--a very fine little woman. That's +the kind a man ought to marry and bother the Almighty with gratitude all +the rest of his life. Well--well! Your family is your own after all; and +I live in Dartford, thank God!--not on lower Fifth Avenue or Tenth +Street." + +He started away, halted, came back: + +"Couldn't you run away with her?" he asked anxiously. + +"She won't," replied Neville, unsmiling. + +"I mean, violently. But she's too heavy to carry, I fancy--and I'll bet +she's got the vigour of little old Diana herself. No--you couldn't do +the Sabine act with her--only a club and the cave-man's gentle +persuasion would help either of you.... Well--well, if they see her at +breakfast it may help some. You know a woman makes or breaks herself at +breakfast. That's why the majority of woman take it abed. I'm serious, +Louis; no man can stand 'em--the majority." + +Once more he started away, hesitated, came back. + +"Who's this Countess that Sam is so crazy about?" + +"A sweet little woman, well-bred, and very genuine and sincere." + +"Never heard of her in Dartford," muttered the doctor. + +Neville laughed grimly: + +"Billy, Tenth Street and lower Fifth Avenue and Greenwich Village and +Chelsea and Stuyvesant Square--and Syringa Avenue, Dartford, are all +about alike. Bird Centre is just as stupid as Manhattan; and there never +was and never will be a republic and a democracy in any country on the +face of this snob-cursed globe." + +The doctor, very red, stared at him. + +"By jinks!" he said, "I guess I'm one after all. Now, who in hell would +suspect that!--after all the advice I've given you!" + +"It was another fellow's family, that's all," said Neville wearily. +"Theories work or they don't; only few care to try them on themselves or +their own families--particularly when they devoutly believe in them." + +"Gad! That's a stinger! You've got me going all right," said the doctor, +wincing, "and you're perfectly correct. Here I've been practically +counselling you to marry where your inclination led you, and let the +rest go to blazes; and when it's a question of Sam doing something +similar, I retire hastily across the river and establish a residence in +Missouri. What a rotten, custom-ridden bunch of snippy-snappy-snobbery +we are after all!... All the same--who _is_ the Countess?" + +Neville didn't know much about her. + +"Sam's such an ass," said his brother, "and it isn't all snobbery on my +part." + +"The safest thing to do," said Neville bitterly, "is to let a man in +love alone." + +"Right. Foolish--damned foolish--but right! There is no greater ass than +a wise one. Those who don't know anything at all are the better +asses--and the happier." + +And he went away down the stairs, muttering and gesticulating. + +Mrs. Neville came to the door as he opened it to go out. They talked in +low voices for a few moments, then the doctor went out and Mrs. Neville +called to Stephanie. + +The girl came from the lighted drawing-room, and, together, the two +women ascended the stairs. + +Stephanie smiled and nodded to Neville, then continued on along the +hall; but his mother stopped to speak to him. + +"Go and sit with your father a little while," she said. "And don't be +impatient with him, dear. He is an old man--a product of a different age +and a simpler civilisation--perhaps a narrower one. Be patient and +gentle with him. He really is fond of you and proud of you." + +"Very well, mother.... Is anybody going to sit up with Valerie?" + +"Stephanie insists on sleeping on the couch at the foot of her bed. I +offered to sit up but she wouldn't let me.... You'll see that I'm called +if anything happens, won't you?" + +"Yes. Good-night, mother." + +He kissed her, stood a moment looking at the closed door behind which +lay Valerie--tried to realise that she did lie there under the same +roof-tree that sheltered father, mother, and sister--then, with a +strange thrill in his heart, he went downstairs. + +Cameron passed him, on his upward way to slumberland. + +"How's Miss West?" he asked cheerfully. + +"Asleep, I think. Billy Ogilvy expects her to be all right in the +morning." + +"Good work! Glad of it. Tell your governor; he's been inquiring." + +"Has he?" said Neville, with another thrill, and went into the living +room where his father sat alone before the whitening ashes of the fire. + +"Well, father!" he said, smiling. + +The older man turned his head, then turned it away as his son drew up a +chair and laid a stick across the andirons. + +"It's turned a little chilly," he said. + +"I have known of many a frost in May," said his father. + +There was a silence; then his father slowly turned and gazed at him. + +"How is--Miss West?" he asked stiffly. + +"Billy Ogilvy says she will be all right to-morrow, father." + +"Was she injured by her unfortunate experience?" + +"A little briar-torn, I'm afraid. Those big beech woods are rather a +puzzle to anybody who is not familiar with the country. No wonder she +became frightened when it grew dark." + +"It was--very distressing," nodded his father. + +They remained silent again until Mr. Neville rose, took off his +spectacles, laid aside _The Evening Post_, and held out his hand. + +"Good-night, my son." + +"Good-night, father." + +"Yes--yes--good-night--good-night--to many, many things, my son; +old-fashioned things of no value any more--of no use to me, or you, or +anybody any more." + +He retained his son's hand in his, peering at him, dim-eyed, without his +spectacles: + +"The old order passes--the old ideas, the old beliefs--and the old +people who cherished them--who know no others, needed no others.... +Good-night, my son." + +But he made no movement to leave, and still held to his son's hand: + +"I've tried to live as blamelessly as my father lived, Louis--and as God +has given me to see my way through life.... But--the times change +so--change so. The times are perplexing; life grows noisier, and +stranger and more complex and more violent every day around us--and the +old require repose, Louis. Try to understand that." + +"Yes, father." + +The other looked at him, wearily: + +"Your mother seems to think that your happiness in life depends on--what +we say to you--this evening. Stephanie seems to believe it, too.... Lily +says very little.... And so do I, Louis--very little ... only enough +to--to wish you--happiness. And so--good-night." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +It was barely daylight when Valerie awoke. She lay perfectly still, +listening, remembering, her eyes wandering over the dim, unfamiliar +room. Through thin silk curtains a little of the early light penetrated; +she heard the ceaseless chorus of the birds, cocks crowing near and far +away, the whimpering flight of pigeons around the eaves above her +windows, and their low, incessant cooing. + +Suddenly, through the foot-bars of her bed she caught sight of Stephanie +lying sound asleep on the couch, and she sat up--swiftly, noiselessly, +staring at her out of wide eyes from which the last trace of dreams had +fled. + +For a long while she remained upright among her pillows, looking at +Stephanie, remembering, considering; then, with decision, she slipped +silently out of bed, and went about her dressing without a sound. + +In the connecting bath-room and dressing-room beyond she found her +clothing gathered in a heap, evidently to be taken away and freshened +early in the morning. She dared not brush it for fear of awakening +Stephanie; her toilet was swift and simple; she clothed herself rapidly +and stepped out into the hall, her rubber-soled walking shoes making no +noise. + +Below, the side-lights of the door made unbolting and unchaining easy; +it would be hours yet before even the servants were stirring, but she +moved with infinite caution, stepping out onto the veranda and closing +the door behind her without making the slightest noise. + +Dew splashed her shoes as she hastened across the lawn. She knew the +Estwich road even if there had been no finger-posts to point out her +way. + +The sun had not yet risen; woods were foggy; the cattle in the fields +stood to their shadowy flanks in the thin mist; and everywhere, like the +cheery rush of a stream, sounded the torrent of bird-music from bramble +patch and alder-swale, from hedge and orchard and young woodland. + +It was not until she had arrived in sight of Estwich Corners that she +met the first farmer afield; and, as she turned into the drive, the edge +of the sun sent a blinding search-light over a dew-soaked world, and her +long-shadow sprang into view, streaming away behind her across the lawn. + +To her surprise the front door was open and a harnessed buck-board stood +at the gate; and suddenly she recollected with a hot blush that the +household must have been amazed and probably alarmed by her +non-appearance the night before. + +Helene's farmer and her maid came out as she entered the front walk, +and, seeing her, stood round-eyed and gaping. + +"I got lost and remained over night at Mrs. Collis's," she said, +smiling. "Now, I'd like a bath if you please and some fresh clothing for +travelling, because I am obliged to go to the city, and I wish to catch +the earliest train." + +When at last it was plain to them that she was alive and well, Helene's +maid, still trembling, hastened to draw a bath for her and pack the +small steamer trunk; and the farmer sat down on the porch and waited, +still more or less shaken by the anxiety which had sent him pottering +about the neighbouring woods and fields with a lantern the night before, +and had aroused him to renewed endeavour before sunrise. + +Bathed and freshly clothed, Valerie hastened into the pretty library, +seated herself at the desk, pushed up her veil, and wrote rapidly: + +"MY DEAR MRS. COLLIS: My gratitude to you, to Mrs. Neville, and to Miss +Swift is none the less real because I am acknowledging it by letter. +Besides, I am very certain that you would prefer it so. + +"You and your family have been kindness itself to me in my awkward and +painful dilemma; you have sheltered me and provided medical attendance; +and I am deeply in your debt. + +"Had matters been different I need scarcely say that it would have been +a pleasure for me to personally acknowledge to you and your family my +grateful appreciation. + +"But I am very sure that I could show my gratitude in no more welcome +manner than by doing what I have done this morning and by expressing +that obligation to you in writing. + +"Before I close may I ask you to believe that I had no intention of +seeking shelter at your house? Until I heard Mr. Neville's voice I had +no idea where I was. I merely made my way toward the first lighted +windows that I saw, never dreaming that I had come to Ashuelyn. + +"I am sorry that my stupid misadventure has caused you and your family +so much trouble and annoyance. I feel it very keenly--more keenly +because of your kindness in making the best of what must have been to +you and your family a most disagreeable episode. + +"May I venture to express to you my thanks to Miss Swift who so +generously remained in my room last night? I am deeply sensible of her +sweetness to an unwelcome stranger--and of Mrs. Neville's gentle manner +toward one who, I am afraid, has caused her much anxiety. + +"To the very amiable physician who did so much to calm a foolish and +inexcusable nervousness, I am genuinely grateful. If I knew his name and +address I would write and properly acknowledge my debt. + +"There is one thing more before I close: I am sorry that I wrote you so +ungraciously after receiving your last letter. It would have been +perfectly easy to have thanked you courteously, whatever private opinion +I may have entertained concerning a matter about which there may be more +than my own opinion. + +"And now, please believe that I will never again voluntarily cause you +and your family the slightest uneasiness or inconvenience; and believe +me, too, if you care to. Very gratefully yours, + +"VALERIE WEST." + +She directed and sealed the letter, then drew toward her another sheet +of paper: + +"DEAREST: I could die of shame for having blundered into your family +circle. I dare not even consider what they must think of me now. _You_ +will know how innocently and unsuspiciously it was done--how utterly +impossible it would have been for me to have voluntarily committed such +an act even in the last extremity. But what _they_ will think of my +appearance at your door last night, I don't know and I dare not surmise. +I have done all I could; I have rid them of me, and I have written to +your sister to thank her and your family for their very real kindness to +the last woman in the world whom they would have willingly chosen to +receive and entertain. + +"Dear, I didn't know I had nerves; but this experience seems to have +developed them. I am perfectly well, but the country here has become +distasteful to me, and I am going to town in a few minutes. I want to +get away--I want to go back to my work--earn my living again--live in +blessed self-respect where, as a worker, I have the right to live. + +"Dearest, I am sorry about not meeting you at the station and going back +to town with you. But I simply cannot endure staying here after last +night. I suppose it is weak and silly of me, but I feel now as though +your family would never be perfectly tranquil again until I am out of +their immediate vicinity. I cannot convey to you or to them how sorry +and how distressed I am that this thing has occurred. + +"But I can, perhaps, make you understand that I love you, dearly--love +you enough to give myself to you--love you enough to give you up +forever. + +"And it is to consider what is best, what to do, that I am going away +quietly somewhere by myself to think it all out once more--and to come +to a final decision before the first of June. + +"I want to search my heart, and let God search it for any secret +selfishness and unworthiness that might sway me in my choice--any +overmastering love for you that might blind me. When I know myself, you +shall know me. Until then I shall not write you; but sometime before the +first of June--or on that day, you shall know and I shall know how I +have decided wherein I may best serve you--whether by giving or +withholding--whether by accepting or refusing forever all that I care +for in the world--you, Louis, and the love you have given me. + +"VALERIE WEST." + +She sealed and directed this, laid it beside the other, and summoned the +maid: + +"Have these sent at once to Ashuelyn," she said; "let Jimmy go on his +bicycle. Are my things ready? Is the buck-board still there? Then I will +leave a note for the Countess." + +And she scribbled hastily: + +"HELENE DEAR: I've got to go to town in a hurry on matters of +importance, and so I am taking a very unceremonious leave of you and of +your delightful house. + +"They'll tell you I got lost in the woods last night, and I did. It was +too stupid of me; but no harm came of it--only a little embarrassment in +accepting a night's shelter at Ashuelyn among people who were everything +that was hospitable, but who must have been anything but delighted to +entertain me. + +"In a few weeks I shall write you again. I have not exactly decided what +to do this summer. I may go abroad for a vacation as I have saved enough +to do so in an economical manner; and I should love to see the French +cathedrals. Perhaps, if I so decide, you might be persuaded to go with +me. + +"However, it is too early to plan yet. A matter of utmost importance is +going to keep me busy and secluded for a week or so. After that I shall +come to some definite decision; and then you shall hear from me. + +"In the meanwhile--I have enjoyed Estwich and you immensely. It was kind +and dear of you to ask me. I shall never forget my visit. + +"Good-bye, Helene dear. + +"VALERIE WEST." + +This note she left on Helene's dresser, then ran downstairs and sprang +into the buck-board. + +They had plenty of time to catch the train; and on the train she had +plenty of leisure for reflection. But she could not seem to think; a +confused sensation of excitement invaded her mind and she sat in her +velvet armed chair alternately shivering with the memory of Cardemon's +villainy, and quivering under the recollection of her night at Ashuelyn. + +Rita was not at home when she came into their little apartment. The +parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and shrieking from his +perch; the goldfish goggled his eyes and swam 'round and 'round. She +stood still in the centre of her room looking vacantly about her. An +immense, overwhelming sense of loneliness came over her; she turned as +the rush of tears blinded her and flung herself full length among the +pillows of her bed. + + * * * * * + +Her first two or three days in town were busy ones; she had her accounts +to balance, her inventories to take, her mending to do, her modest +summer wardrobe to acquire, letters to write and to answer, engagements +to make, to fulfill, to postpone; friends to call on and to receive, +duties in regard to the New Idea Home to attend to. + +[Illustration: "The parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and +shrieking from his perch."] + +Also, the morning after her arrival came a special delivery letter from +Neville: + +"It was a mistake to go, dear, because, although you could not have +known it, matters have changed most happily for us. You were a welcome +guest in my sister's house; you would have been asked to remain after +your visit at Estwich was over. My family's sentiments are +changing--have changed. It requires only you yourself to convince them. +I wish you had remained, although your going so quietly commanded the +respect of everybody. They all are very silent about it and about you, +yet I can see that they have been affected most favourably by their +brief glimpse of you. + +"As for your wishing to remain undisturbed for a few days, I can see no +reason for it now, dear, but of course I shall respect your wishes. + +"Only send me a line to say that the month of June will mean our +marriage. Say it, dear, because there is now no reason to refuse." + +To which she answered: + +"Dearest among all men, no family's sentiments change over night. Your +people were nice to me and I have thanked them. But, dear, I am not +likely to delude myself in regard to their real sentiments concerning +me. Too deeply ingrained, too basic, too essentially part of themselves +and of their lives are the creeds, codes, and beliefs which, in spite of +themselves, must continue to govern their real attitude toward such a +girl as I am. + +"It is dear of you to wish for us what cannot be; it is kind of them to +accept your wish with resignation. + +"But I have told you many times, my darling, that I would not accept a +status as your wife at any cost to you or to them--and I can read +between the lines, even if I did not know, what it would cost them and +you. And so, very gently, and with a heart full of gratitude and love +for you, I must decline this public honour. + +"But, God willing, I shall not decline a lifetime devoted to you when +you are not with them. That is all I can hope for; and it is so much +more than I ever dreamed of having, that, to have you at all--even for a +part of the time--even for a part of my life, is enough. And I say it +humbly, reverently, without ignoble envy or discontent for what might +have been had you and I been born to the same life amid the same +surroundings. + +"Don't write to me again, dear, until I have determined what is best for +us. Before the first day of summer, or on that day, you will know. And +so will I. + +"My life is such a little thing compared to yours--of such slight value +and worth that sometimes I think I am considering matters too +deeply--that if I simply fling it in the scales the balance will +scarcely be altered--the splendid, even tenor of your career will +scarcely swerve a shade. + +"Yet my life is already something to you; and besides it is all I have +to give you; and if I am to give it--if it is adding an iota to your +happiness for me to give it--then I must truly treat it with respect, +and deeply consider the gift, and the giving, and if it shall be better +for you to possess it, or better that you never shall. + +"And whatever I do with myself, my darling, be certain that it is of you +I am thinking and not of the girl, who loves you. + +"V." + +By degrees she cleared up her accounts and set her small house in order. + +Rita seemed to divine that something radical was in progress of +evolution, but Valerie offered no confidence, and the girl, already +deeply worried over John Burleson's condition, had not spirit enough to +meddle. + +"Sam Ogilvy's brother is a wonder on tubercular cases," she said to +Valerie, "and I'm doing my best to get John to go and see him at +Dartford." + +"Won't he?" + +"He says he will, but you know how horridly untruthful men are. And now +John is slopping about with his wet clay again as usual--an order for a +tomb in Greenwood--poor boy, he had better think how best to keep away +from tombs." + +"Why, Rita!" said Valerie, shocked. + +"I can't help it; I'm really frightened, dear. And you know well enough +I'm no flighty alarmist. Besides, somehow, I feel certain that Sam's +brother would tell John to go to Arizona"--she pointed piteously to her +trunk: "It's packed; it has been packed for weeks. I'm all ready to go +with him. Why can't a man mould clay and chip marble and cast bronze as +well in Arizona as in this vile pest-hole?" + +Valerie sat with folded hands looking at her. + +"How do you think _you_ could stand that desolation?" + +"Arizona?" + +"Yes." + +"There is another desolation I dread more." + +"Do you really love him so?" + +Rita slowly turned from the window and looked at her. + +"Yes," she said. + +[Illustration: "'And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just +men.'"] + +"Does he know it, Rita?" + +"No, dear." + +"Do you think--if he did--" + +"No.... How could it be--after what has happened to me?" + +"You would tell him?" + +"Of course. I sometimes wonder whether he has not already +heard--something--from that beast--" + +"Does John know him?" + +"He has done two fountains for his place at El Nauar. He had several +other things in view--" she shrugged--"but _The Mohave_ sailed suddenly +with its owner for a voyage around the world--so John was +told;--and--Valerie, it's the first clear breath of relief I've drawn +since Penrhyn Cardemon entered John's studio." + +"I didn't know he had ever been there." + +"Yes; twice." + +"Did you see him there?" + +"Yes. I nearly dropped. At first he did not recognise me--I was very +young--when--" + +"Did he speak to you?" + +"Yes. I managed to answer. John was not looking at me, fortunately.... +After that he wrote to me--and I burned the letter.... It was horrible; +he said that Jose Querida was his guest at El Nauar, and he asked me to +get you because you knew Querida, and be his guest for a week end.... I +cried that night; you heard me." + +"Was _that_ it!" asked Valerie, very pale. + +"Yes; I was too wretched to tell you," + +Valerie sat silent, her teeth fixed in her lower lip. Then: + +"Jose could not have known what kind of a man the--other--is." + +"I hope not." + +"Oh, he _couldn't_ have known! Rita, he wouldn't have let him ask us--" + +"Men seldom deceive one another." + +"You _don't_ think Jose Querida _knew_?" + +"I--don't--think.... Valerie, men are very--very unlike women.... +Forgive me if I seem to be embittered.... Even you have had your +experience with men--the men that all the world seems to like--kind, +jolly, generous, jovial, amusing men--and clever men; men of attainment, +of distinction. And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just +men, Valerie, just men in a world made for men, a world into which we +come like timid intruders; uncertain through generations of +uncertainty--innocently stupid through ages of stupid innocence, ready +to please though not knowing exactly how; ready to be pleased, God +knows, with pleasures as innocent as the simple minds that dream of +them. + +"Valerie, I do not believe any evil first came into this world of men +through any woman." + +Valerie looked down at her folded hands--small, smooth, white hands, +pure of skin and innocent as a child's. + +"I don't know," she said, troubled, "how much more unhappiness arises +through men than through women, if any more ... I like men. Some are +unruly--like children; some have the sense and the morals of marauding +dogs. + +"But, at worst, the unruly and the marauders seem so hopelessly beneath +one, intellectually, that a girl's resentment is really more of +contempt than of anger--and perhaps more of pity than of either." + +Rita said: "I cannot feel as charitably.... _You_ still have that +right." + +"Rita! Rita!" she said softly, "we both have loved men, you with the +ignorance and courage of a child--I with less ignorance and with my +courage as yet untested. Where is the difference between us--if we love +sincerely?" + +Rita leaned forward and looked at her searchingly: + +"Do you mean to do--what you said you would?" + +"Yes." + +"Why?" + +"Because he wants me." + +Rita sprang to her feet and began pacing the floor. + +"I will not have it so!" she said excitedly, "I will not have it so! If +he is a man--a real man--he will not have it so, either. If he will, he +does not love you; mark what I say, Valerie--he does not love you +enough. No man can love a woman enough to accept that from her; it would +be a paradox, I tell you!" + +"He loves me enough," said Valerie, very pale. "He could not love me as +I care for him; it is not in a man to do it, nor in any human being to +love as I love him. You don't understand, Rita. I _must_ be a part of +him--not very much, because already there is so much to him--and I am +so--so unimportant." + +"You are more important than he is," said Rita fiercely--"with all your +fineness and loyalty and divine sympathy and splendid humility--with +your purity and your loveliness; and in spite of his very lofty +intellect and his rather amazing genius, and his inherited social +respectability--_you_ are the more important to the happiness and +welfare of this world--even to the humblest corner in it!" + +"Rita! Rita! What wild, partisan nonsense you are talking!" + +[Illustration: "His thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie."] + +"Oh, Valerie, Valerie, if you only knew! If you only knew!" + + * * * * * + +Querida called next day. Rita was at home but flatly refused to see him. + +"Tell Mr. Querida," she said to the janitor, "that neither I nor Miss +West are at home to him, and that if he is as nimble at riddles as he is +at mischief he can guess this one before his friend Mr. Cardemon +returns from a voyage around the world." + +Which reply slightly disturbed Querida. + +All during dinner--and he was dining alone--he considered it; and his +thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie. + +Somehow, some way or other he must come to an understanding with Valerie +West. Somehow, some way, she must be brought to listen to him. Because, +while he lived, married or single, poor or wealthy, he would never rest, +never be satisfied, never wring from life the last drop that life must +pay him, until this woman's love was his. + +He loved her as such a man loves; he had no idea of letting that love +for her interfere with other ambitions. + +Long ago, when very poor and very talented and very confident that the +world, which pretended to ignore him, really knew in its furtive heart +that it owed him fame and fortune and social position, he had determined +to begin the final campaign with a perfectly suitable marriage. + +That was all years ago; and he had never swerved in his +determination--not even when Valerie West surprised his life in all the +freshness of her young beauty. + +And, as he sat there leisurely over his claret, he reflected, easily, +that the time had come for the marriage, and that the woman he had +picked out was perfectly suitable, and that the suitable evening to +inform her was the present evening. + +Mrs. Hind-Willet was prepossessing enough to interest him, clever enough +to stop gaps in a dinner table conversation, wealthy enough to permit +him a liberty of rejecting commissions, which he had never before dared +to exercise, and fashionable enough to carry for him what could not be +carried through his own presentable good looks and manners and fame. + +This last winter he had become a frequenter of her house on Sixty-third +Street; and so carelessly assiduous, and so delightfully casual had +become his attentions to that beautifully groomed widow, that his +footing with her was already an intimacy, and his portrait of her, which +he had given her, had been the sensation of the loan exhibition at the +great Interborough Charity Bazaar. + +He was neither apprehensive nor excited as he calmly finished his +claret. He was to drop in there after dinner to discuss with her several +candidates as architects for the New Idea Home. + +So when he was entirely ready he took his hat and stick and departed in +a taxicab, pleasantly suffused with a gentle glow of anticipation. He +had waited many years for such an evening as this was to be. He was a +patient and unmoral man. He could wait longer for Valerie,--and for the +first secret blow at the happiness and threatened artistic success of +Louis Neville. + +So he rolled away in his taxi very comfortably, savouring his cigarette, +indolently assured of his reception in a house which it would suit him +perfectly to inhabit when he cared to. + +Only one thing worried him a little--the short note he had received from +his friend Penrhyn Cardemon, saying rather brusquely that he'd made up +his mind not to have his portrait painted for five thousand dollars, and +that he was going off on _The Mohave_ to be gone a year at least. + +Which pained Querida, because Cardemon had not only side-stepped what +was almost a commission, but he had, also, apparently forgotten his +invitation to spend the summer on _The Mohave_--with the understanding +that Valerie West was also to be invited. + +However, everything comes in its season; and this did not appear to be +the season for ripe commissions and yachting enterprises; but it +certainly seemed to be the season for a judicious matrimonial +enterprise. + +And when Mrs. Hind-Willet received him in a rose-tinted reception +corner, audaciously intimate and secluded, he truly felt that he was +really missing something of the pleasures of the chase, and that it was +a little too easy to be acutely enjoyable. + +However, when at last he had gently retained her hand and had whispered, +"Alma," and had let his big, dark, velvet eyes rest with respectful +passion upon her smaller and clearer and blacker ones, something +somewhere in the machinery seemed to go wrong--annoyingly wrong. + +Because Mrs. Hind-Willet began to laugh--and evidently was trying not +to--trying to remain very serious; but her little black eyes were +glistening with tears of suppressed mirth, and when, amazed and +offended, he would have withdrawn his hand, she retained it almost +convulsively: + +"Jose! I _beg_ your pardon!--I truly do. It is perfectly horrid and +unspeakable of me to behave this way; but listen, child! I am forty; I +am perfectly contented not to marry again; _and_ I don't love you. So, +my poor Jose, what on earth am I to do if I don't laugh a little. I +_can't_ weep over it you know." + +The scarlet flush faded from his olive skin. "Alma," he began +mournfully, but she only shook her head, vigorously. + +"Nonsense," she said. "You like me for a sufficient variety of reasons. +And to tell you the truth I suspect that I am quite as madly in love +with you as you actually are with me. No, no, Jose. There are too +many--discrepancies--of various kinds. I have too little to gain!--to be +horribly frank--and you--alas!--are a very cautious, very clever, and +admirably sophisticated young man.... There, there! I am not really +accusing you--or blaming you--very much.... I'd have tried the same +thing in your place--yes, indeed I would.... But, Jose dear, if you'll +take the mature advice of fair, plump, and forty, you'll let the lesser +ambition go. + +"A clever wealthy woman nearer your age, and on the edge of things--with +you for a husband, ought to carry you and herself far enough to suit +you. And there'd be more amusement in it, believe me.... And now--you +may kiss my hand--very good-humoredly and respectfully, and we'll talk +about those architects. Shall we?" + + * * * * * + +For twenty-four hours Querida remained a profoundly astonished man. +Examine, in retrospective, as he would, the details of the delicately +adjusted machinery which for so many years had slowly but surely turned +the interlocking cog-wheels of destiny for him, he could not find where +the trouble had been--could discover no friction caused by neglect of +lubricants; no over-oiling, either; no flaw. + +Wherein lay the trouble? Based on what error was his theory that the +average man could marry anybody he chose? Just where had he +miscalculated? + +He admitted that times changed very fast; that the world was spinning at +a rate that required nimble wits to keep account of its revolutions. But +his own wits were nimble, almost feminine in the rapid delicacy of their +intuition--_almost_ feminine, but not quite. And he felt, vaguely, that +there lay his mistake in engaging a woman with a woman's own weapons; +and that the only chance a man has is to perplex her with his own. + +The world was spinning rapidly; times changed very fast, but not as fast +as women were changing in the Western World. For the self-sufficient +woman--the self-confident, self-sustaining individual, not only content +but actually preferring autonomy of mind and body, was a fact in which +Jose Querida had never really ever believed. No sentimentalist does or +really can. And all creators of things artistic are, basically, +sentimentalists. + +Querida's almond-shaped, velvet eyes had done their share for him in his +time; they were merely part of a complex machinery which, included many +exquisitely adjusted parts which could produce at will such phenomena as +temporary but genuine sympathy and emotion: a voice controlled and +modulated to the finest nuances; a grace of body and mind that resembled +inherent delicacy; a nervous receptiveness and intelligence almost +supersensitive in its recognition of complicated ethical problems. It +was a machinery which could make of him any manner of man which the +opportunism of the particular moment required. Yet, with all this, in +every nerve and bone and fibre he adored material and intellectual +beauty, and physical suffering in others actually distressed him. + +Now, reviewing matters, deeply interested to find the microscopic +obstruction which had so abruptly stopped the machinery of destiny for +him, he was modest enough and sufficiently liberal-minded to admit to +himself that Alma Hind-Willet was the exception that proved this rule. +There _were_ women so constructed that they had become essentially +unresponsive. Alma was one. But, he concluded that if he lived a +thousand years he was not likely to encounter another. + +And the following afternoon he called upon Mrs. Hind-Willet's +understudy, the blue-eyed little Countess d'Enver. + +Helene d'Enver was superintending the definite closing of her beautiful +duplex apartments--the most beautiful in the great chateau-like, +limestone building. And Jose Querida knew perfectly well what the rents +were. + +"Such a funny time to come to see me," she had said laughingly over the +telephone; "I'm in a dreadful state with skirts pinned up and a +motor-bonnet over my hair, but I will _not_ permit my maids to touch the +porcelains; and if you really wish to see me, come ahead." + +He really wished to. Besides he adored her Ming porcelains and her +Celedon, and the idea of any maid touching them almost gave him +heart-failure. He himself possessed one piece of Ming and a broken +fragment of Celedon. Women had been married for less. + +She was very charming in her pinned-up skirts and her dainty head-gear, +and she welcomed him and intrusted him with specimens which sent +pleasant shivers down his flexible spine. + +And, together, they put away many scores of specimens which were +actually priceless, inasmuch as any rumour of a public sale would have +excited amateurs to the verge of lunacy, and almost any psychopathic +might have established a new record for madness at an auction of this +matchless collection. + +They breathed easier when the thrilling task was ended; but emotion +still enchained them as they seated themselves at a tea-table--an +emotion so deep on Helene's part that she suffered Querida to retain the +tips of her fingers for an appreciable moment when transferring sugar to +his cup. And she listened, with a smile almost tremulous, to the +fascinating music of his voice, charmingly attuned and modulated to a +pitch which, somehow, seemed to harmonise with the very word, Celedon. + +"I am so surprised," she said softly--but his dark eyes noted that she +was still busy with her tea paraphernalia--"I scarcely know what to +think, Mr. Querida--" + +"Think that I love you--" breathed Querida, his dark and beautiful head +very near to her blond one. + +"I--am--thinking of it.... But--" + +"Helene," he whispered musically;--and suddenly stiffened in his chair +as the maid came clattering in over the rugless and polished parquet to +announce Mr. Ogilvy, followed _san facon_ by that young man, swinging a +straw hat and a malacca stick. + +"Sam!" said the pretty Countess, changing countenance. + +"Hello, Helene! How-do, Querida! I heard you were temporarily in town, +dear lady--" He kissed a hand that was as faltering and guilty as the +irresolute eyes she lifted to his. + +Ten minutes later Querida took his leave. He dismissed the expensive +taxi which had been devouring time outside, and walked thoughtfully away +down the fashionable street. + +Because the machinery had chanced to clog twice did not disturb his +theory; but the trouble with him was local; he was intensely and +personally annoyed, nervous, irritated unspeakably. Because, except for +Valerie, these two, Alma Hind-Willet and Helene d'Enver, were the only +two socially and financially suitable women in whom he took the +slightest physical interest. + +There is, in all women, one moment--sometimes repeated--in which a +sudden yielding to caprice sometimes overturns the logical plans laid +out and inexorably followed for half a lifetime. And there was much of +the feminine about Querida. + +And it chanced to happen on this day--when no doubt all unsuspected and +unperceived some lurking jettatura had given him the evil eye--that he +passed by hazard through the block where Valerie lived, and saw her +mounting the steps. + +"Why, Jose!" she exclaimed, a trifle confused in her smiling cordiality +as he sprang up the steps behind her--for Rita's bitterness, if it had +not aroused in her suspicions, had troubled her in spite of her +declaration of unbelief. + +He asked for a cup of tea, and she invited him. Rita was in the room +when they entered; and she stood up coolly, coolly returned Querida's +steady glance and salutation with a glance as calm, as detached, and as +intelligent as a surgeon's. + +Neither he nor she referred to his recent call; he was perfectly +self-possessed, entirely amiable with that serene and level good-humour +which sometimes masks a defiance almost contemptuous. + +But Rita's engagements required her to leave very shortly after his +advent; and before she went out she deliberately waited to catch +Valerie's eye; and Valerie coloured deeply under her silent message. + +Then Rita went away with a scarcely perceptible nod to Querida; and +when, by the clock, she had been gone twenty minutes, Querida, without +reason, without preparation, and perfectly aware of his moment's +insanity, yielded to a second's flash of caprice--the second that comes +once in the lives of all women--and now, in the ordered symmetry of his +life, had come to him. + +"Valerie," he said, "I love you. Will you marry me?" + +She had been leaning sideways on the back of her chair, one hand +supporting her cheek, gazing almost listlessly out of the open window. + +She did not stir, nor did her face alter, but, very quietly she turned +her head and looked at him. + +He spoke, breathlessly, eloquently, persuasively, and well; the perfect +machinery was imitating for him a single-minded, ardent, honourable +young man, intelligent enough to know his own mind, manly enough to +speak it. The facsimile was flawless. + +He had finished and was waiting, long fingers gripping the arms of his +chair; and her face had altered only to soften divinely, and her eyes +were very sweet and untroubled. + +"I am glad you have spoken this way to me, Jose. Something has been said +about you--in connection with Mr. Cardemon--which disturbed me and made +me very sad and miserable, although I would not permit myself to believe +it.... And now I know it was a mistake--because you have asked me to be +your wife." + +She sat looking at him, the sadness in her eyes emphasised by the +troubled smile curving her lips: + +"I couldn't marry you, Jose, because I am not in love with you. If I +were I would do it.... But I do not care for you that way." + +For an instant some inner flare of madness blinded his brain and vision. +There was, in his face, something so terrible that Valerie unconsciously +rose to her feet, bewildered, almost stunned. + +"I want you," he said slowly. + +"Jose! What in the world--" + +His dry lips moved, but no articulate sound came from them. Suddenly he +sprang to his feet, and out of his twisted, distorted mouth poured a +torrent of passion, of reproach, of half-crazed pleading--incoherency +tumbling over incoherency, deafening her, beating in upon her, till she +swayed where she stood, holding her arms up as though to shield herself. + +The next instant she was straining, twisting in his arms, striving to +cry out, to wrench herself free to keep her feet amid the crash of the +overturned table and a falling chair. + +"Jose! Are you insane?" she panted, tearing herself free and springing +toward the door. Suddenly she halted, uttered a cry as he jumped back to +block her way. The low window-ledge caught him under both knees; he +clutched at nothing, reeled backward and outward and fell into space. + +For a second she covered her white face with both hands, then turned, +dragged herself to the open window, forced herself to look out. + +He lay on his back on the grass in the rear yard, and the janitor was +already bending over him. And when she reached the yard Querida had +opened both eyes. + +Later the ambulance came, and with its surgeon came a policeman. +Querida, lying with his head on her lap, opened his eyes again: + +"I was--seated--on the window-ledge," he said with difficulty--"and +overbalanced myself.... Caught the table--but it fell over.... That's +all." + +The eyes in his ghastly face closed wearily, then fluttered: + +"Awfully sorry, Valerie--make such a mess--in your house." + +"Oh-h--Jose," she sobbed. + +After that they took him away to the Presbyterian Hospital; and nobody +seemed to find very much the matter with him except that he'd been badly +shocked. + +But the next day all sensation ceased in his body from the neck +downward. + +And they told Valerie why. + +For ten days he lay there, perfectly conscious, patient, good-humored, +and his almond-shaped and hollow eyes rested on Valerie and Rita with a +fatalistic serenity subtly tinged with irony. + +John Burleson came to see him, and cried. After he left, Querida said to +Valerie: + +"John and I are destined to remain near neighbours; his grief is well +meant, but a trifle premature." + +"You are not going to die, Jose!" she said gently. + +But he only smiled. + +Ogilvy came, Annan came, the Countess Helene, and even Mrs. +Hind-Willet. He inspected them all with his shadowy and mysterious +smile, answered them gently deep in his sunken eyes a sombre amusement +seemed to dwell. But there was in it no bitterness. + +Then Neville came. Valerie and Rita were absent that day but their roses +filled the private ward-room with a hint of the coming summer. + +Querida lay looking at Neville, the half smile resting on his pallid +face like a slight shadow that faintly waxed and waned with every breath +he drew. + +"Well," he said quietly, "you are the man I wished to see." + +"Querida," he said, deeply affected, "this thing isn't going to be +permanent--" + +"No; not permanent. It won't last, Neville. Nothing does last.... unless +you can tell me whether my pictures are going to endure. Are they? I +know that you will be as honest with me as I was--dishonest with you. I +will believe what you say. Is my work destined to be permanent?" + +"Don't you know it is?" + +"I thought so.... But _you_ know. Because, Neville, you are the man who +is coming into what was mine, and what will be your own;--and you are +coming into more than that, Neville, more than I ever could have +attained. Now answer me; will my work live?" + +"Always," said Neville simply. + +Querida smiled: + +"The rest doesn't matter then.... Even Valerie doesn't matter.... But +you may hand me one of her roses.... No, a bud, if you don't +mind--unopened." + +When it was time for Neville to go Querida's smile had faded and the +pink rose-bud lay wilted in his fingers. + +"It is just as well, Neville," he said. "I couldn't have endured your +advent. Somebody _has_ to be first; I was--as long as I lived.... It is +curious how acquiescent a man's mind becomes--when he's like this. I +never believed it possible that a man really could die without regret, +without some shadow of a desire to live. Yet it is that way, Neville.... +But a man must lie dying before he can understand it." + + * * * * * + +A highly tinted uncle from Oporto arrived in New York just in time to +see Querida alive. He brought with him a parrot. + +"Send it to Mrs. Hind-Willet," whispered Querida with stiffening lips; +"_uno lavanta la caca y otro la nata_." + +A few minutes later he died, and his highly coloured uncle from Oporto +sent the bird to Mrs. Hind-Willet and made the thriftiest arrangement +possible to transport what was mortal of a great artist to Oporto--where +a certain kind of parrot comes from. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +On the morning of the first day of June Neville came into his studio and +found there a letter from Valerie: + +"DEAREST: I am not keeping my word to you; I am asking you for more +time; and I know you will grant it. + +"Jose Querida's death has had a curious effect on me. I was inclined to +care very sincerely for him; I comprehended him better than many people, +I think. Yet there was much in him that I never understood. And I doubt +that he ever entirely understood himself. + +"I believe that he was really a great painter, Louis--and have sometimes +thought that his character was mediaeval at the foundations--with five +centuries of civilisation thinly deposited over the bed-rock.... In him +there seemed to be something primitive; something untamable, and utterly +irreconcilable with, the fundamental characteristics of modern man. + +"He was my friend.... Friendship, they say, is a record of +misunderstandings; and it was so with us But may I tell you something? +Jose Querida loved me--in his own fashion. + +"What kind of a love it was--of what value--I can not tell you. I do not +think it was very high in the scale. Only he felt it for me, and for no +other woman, I believe. + +"It never was a love that I could entirely understand or respect; +yet,--it is odd but true--I cared something for it--perhaps because, in +spite of its unfamiliar and sometimes repellent disguises--it _was_ love +after all. + +"And now, as at heart and in mind you and I are one; and as I keep +nothing of real importance from you--perhaps _can_ not; I must tell you +that Jose Querida came that day to ask me to marry him. + +"I tried to make him understand that I could not think of such a thing; +and he lost his head and became violent. That is how the table fell:--I +had started toward the door when he sprang back to block me, and the low +window-sill caught him under the knees, and he fell outward into the +yard. + +"I know of course that no blame could rest on me, but it was a terrible +and dreadful thing that happened there in one brief second; and somehow +it seems to have moved in me depths that have never before been stirred. + +"The newspapers, as you know, published it merely as an accident--which +it really was. But they might have made it, by innuendo, a horror for +me. However, they put it so simply and so unsuspiciously that Jose +Querida might have been any nice man calling on any nice woman. + +"Louis, I have never been so lonely in my life as I have been since Jose +Querida died; alas! not because he has gone out of my life forever, but +because, somehow, the manner of his death has made me realise how +difficult it is for a woman alone to contend with men in a man's own +world. + +"Do what she may to maintain her freedom, her integrity, there is +always,--sometimes impalpable, sometimes not--a steady, remorseless +pressure on her, forcing her unwillingly to take frightened cognisance +of men;--take into account their inexorable desire for domination; the +subtle cohesion existent among them which, at moments, becomes like a +wall of adamant barring, limiting, inclosing and forcing women toward +the deep-worn grooves which women have trodden through the sad +centuries;--and which they tread still--and will tread perhaps for years +to come before the real enfranchisement of mankind begins. + +"I do not mean to write bitterly, dear; but, somehow, all this seems to +bear significantly, ominously, upon my situation in the world. + +"When I first knew you I felt so young, so confident, so free, so +scornful of custom, so wholesomely emancipated from silly and unjust +conventions, that perhaps I overestimated my own vigour and ability to +go my way, unvexed, unfettered in this man's world, and let the world +make its own journey in peace. But it will not. + +"Twice, now, within a month,--and not through any conscious fault of +mine--this man's world has shown its teeth at me; I have been menaced by +its innate scorn of woman, and have, by chance, escaped a publicity +which would have damned me so utterly that I would not have cared to +live. + +"And dear, for the first time I really begin to understand now what the +shelter of a family means; what it is to have law on my side,--and a man +who understands his man's world well enough to fight it with its own +weapons;--well enough to protect a woman from things she never dreamed +might menace her. + +"When that policeman came into my room,--dear, you will think me a +perfect coward--but suddenly I seemed to realise what law meant, and +that it had power to protect me or destroy me.... And I was +frightened,--and the table lay there with the fragments of broken +china--and there was that dreadful window--and I--I who knew how he +died!--Louis! Louis! guiltless as I was,--blameless in thought and +deed--I died a thousand deaths there while the big policeman and the +reporters were questioning me. + +"If it had not been for what Jose was generous enough to say, I could +never have thought out a lie to tell them; I should have told them how +it had really happened.... And what the papers would have printed about +him and about me, God only knows. + +"Never, never had I needed you as I needed you at that moment.... Well; +I lied to them, somehow; I said to them what Jose had said--that he was +seated on the window-ledge, lost his balance, clutched at the table, +overturned it, and fell. And they believed me.... It is the first lie +since I was a little child, that I have ever knowingly told.... And I +know now that I could never contrive to tell another. + +"Dear, let me try to think out what is best for us.... And forgive me, +Louis, if I can not help a thought or two of self creeping in. I am so +terribly alone. Somehow I am beginning to believe that it may sometimes +be a weakness to totally ignore one's self.... Not that I consider +myself of importance compared to you, my darling; not that I would fail +to set aside any thought of self where your welfare is concerned. You +know that, don't you? + +"But I have been wondering how it would be with you if I passed quietly +and absolutely out of your life. That is what I am trying to determine. +Because it must be either that or the tie unrecognised by civilisation. +And which would be better for you? I do not know yet. I ask more time. +Don't write me. Your silence will accord it. + +"You are always in my thoughts. + +"VALERIE." + +Ogilvy came into the studio that afternoon, loquacious, in excellent +humour, and lighting a pipe, detailed what news he had while Neville +tried to hide his own deep perplexity and anxiety under a cordial +welcome. + +"You know," said Ogilvy, "that all the time you've given me and all your +kindness and encouragement has made a corker of that picture of mine." + +"You did it yourself," said Neville. "It's good work, Sam." + +"Sure it's good work--being mostly yours. And what do you think, Kelly; +it's sold!" + +"Good for you!" + +"Certainly it's good for me. I need the mazuma. A courteous multi +purchased it for his Long Branch cottage--said cottage costing a +million. What?" + +"Oh, you're doing very well," laughed Neville. + +"I've _got_ to.... I've--h'm!--undertaken to assume obligations toward +civilisation--h'm!--and certain duties to my--h'm--country--" + +"What on earth are you driving at?" asked Neville, eying him. + +"Huh! Driving single just at present; practising for tandem--h'm!--and a +spike--h'm--some day--I hope--of course--" + +"Sam!" + +"Hey?" + +"Are you trying to say something?" + +"Oh, Lord, no! Why, Kelly, did you suspect that I was really attempting +to convey anything to you which I was really too damned embarrassed to +tell you in the patois of my native city?" + +"It sounded that way," observed Neville, smiling. + +"Did it?" Ogilvy considered, head on one side. "Did it sound anything +like a--h'm!--a man who was trying to--h'm!--to tell you that he was +going to--h'm!--to try to get somebody to try to let him try to tell her +that he wanted to--marry her?" + +"Good heavens!" exclaimed Neville, bewildered, "what do you mean?" + +Ogilvy pirouetted, picked up a mahl-stick, and began a lively fencing +bout with an imaginary adversary. + +"I'm going to get married," he said amiably. + +"What!" + +"Sure." + +"To whom?" + +"To Helene d'Enver. Only she doesn't know it yet." + +"What an infernal idiot you are, Sam!" + +"Ya-as, so they say. Some say I'm an ass, others a bally idiot, others +merely refer to me as imbecile. And so it goes, Kelly,--so it goes." + +He flourished his mahl-stick, neatly punctured the air, and cried "Hah!" +very fiercely. + +Then he said: + +"I've concluded to let Helene know about it this afternoon." + +"About what?--you monkey?" + +"About our marriage. _Won't_ it surprise her though! Oh, no! But I +think I'll let her into the secret before some suspicious gink gets wind +of it and tells her himself." + +Neville looked at the boy, perplexed, undecided, until he caught his +eye. And over Sam's countenance stole a vivid and beauteous blush. + +"Sam! I--upon my word I believe you mean it!" + +"Sure I do!" + +Neville grasped his hand: + +"My dear fellow!" he said cordially, "I was slow, not unsympathetic. I'm +frightfully glad--I'm perfectly delighted. She's a charming and sincere +woman. Go in and win and God bless you both!" + +Ogilvy wrung his hand, then, to relieve his feelings, ran all over the +floor like a spider and was pretending to spin a huge web in a corner +when Harry Annan and Rita Tevis came in and discovered him. + +"Hah!" he exclaimed, "flies! Two nice, silly, appetising flies. Pretend +to fall into my web, Rita, and begin to buzz like mad!" + +Rita's dainty nose went up into the air, but Annan succumbed to the +alluring suggestion, and presently he was buzzing frantically in a +corner while Sam spun an imaginary web all over him. + +Rita and Neville looked on for a while. + +"Sam never will grow up," she said disdainfully. + +"He's fortunate," observed Neville. + +"_You_ don't think so." + +"I wish I knew what I did think, Rita. How is John?" + +"I came to tell you. He has gone to Dartford." + +"To see Dr. Ogilvy? Good! I'm glad, Rita. Billy Ogilvy usually makes +people do what he tells them to do." + +[Illustration: "Ogilvy ... began a lively fencing bout with an imaginary +adversary."] + +The girl stood silent, eyes lowered. After a while she looked up at him; +and in her unfaltering but sorrowful gaze he read the tragedy which he +had long since suspected. + +Neither spoke for a moment; he held out both hands; she laid hers in +them, and her gaze became remote. + +After a while she said in a low voice: + +"Let me be with you now and then while he's away; will you, Kelly?" + +"Yes. Would you like to pose for me? I haven't anything pressing on +hand. You might begin now if it suits you." + +"May I?" she asked gratefully. + +"Of course, child.... Let me think--" He looked again into her dark blue +eyes, absently, then suddenly his attention became riveted upon +something which he seemed to be reading in her face. + +Long before Sam and Harry had ended their puppy-like scuffling and had +retired to woo their respective deputy-muses, Rita was seated on the +model-stand, and Neville had already begun that strange and sombre +picture afterward so famous, and about which one of the finest of our +modern poets wrote: + + "Her gold hair, fallen about her face + Made light within that shadowy place, + But on her garments lay the dust + Of many a vanished race. + + "Her deep eyes, gazing straight ahead, + Saw years and days and hours long dead, + While strange gems glittered at her feet, + Yellow, and green, and red. + + "And ever from the shadows came + Voices to pierce her heart like flame, + The great bats fanned her with their wings, + The voices called her name. + + "But yet her look turned not aside + From the black deep where dreams abide, + Where worlds and pageantries lay dead + Beneath that viewless tide. + + "Her elbow on her knee was set, + Her strong hand propt her chin, and yet + No man might name that look she wore, + Nor any man forget." + +All day long in the pleasant June weather they worked together over the +picture; and if he really knew what he was about, it is uncertain, for +his thoughts were of Valerie; and he painted as in a dream, and with a +shadowy splendour that seemed even to him unreal. + +They scarcely spoke; now and then Rita came silently on sandalled feet +to stand behind him and look at what he had done. + +The first time she thought to herself, "Querida!" But the second time +she remained mute; and when the daylight was waning to a golden gloom in +the room she came a third time and stood with one hand on his arm, her +eyes fixed upon the dawning mystery on the canvas--spellbound under the +sombre magnificence already vaguely shadowed forth from infinite depth +of shade. + +Gladys came and rubbed and purred around his legs; the most recent +progeny toddled after her, ratty tails erect; sportive, casual little +optimists frisking unsteadily on wavering legs among the fading sunbeams +on the floor. + +The sunbeams died out on wall and ceiling; high through the glass roof +above, a shoal of rosy clouds paled to saffron, then to a cinder gray. +And the first night-hawk, like a huge, erratic swallow, sailed into +view, soaring, tumbling aloft, while its short raucous cry sounded +incessantly above the roofs and chimneys. + +Neville was still seated before his canvas, palette flat across his left +arm, the sheaf of wet brushes held loosely. + +"I suppose you are dining with Valerie," he said. + +"No." + +He turned and looked at her, inquiringly. + +"Valerie has gone away." + +"Where?" + +"I don't know, Kelly.... I was not to know." + +"I see." He picked up a handful of waste and slowly began to clean the +brushes, one by one. Then he drove them deep into a bowl of black soap. + +"Shall we dine together here, Rita?" + +"If you care to have me." + +"Yes, I do." + +He laid aside his palette, rang up the kitchen, gave his order, and +slowly returned to where Rita was seated. + +Dinner was rather a silent affair. They touched briefly and formally on +Querida and his ripening talent prematurely annihilated; they spoke of +men they knew who were to come after him--a long, long way after him. + +"I don't know who is to take his place," mused Neville over his claret. + +"You." + +"Not his place, Rita. He thought so; but that place must remain his." + +"Perhaps. But you are carving out your own niche in a higher tier. You +are already beginning to do it; and yesterday his niche was the +higher.... Yet, after all--after all--" + +[Illustration: "Then Rita came silently on sandalled feet to stand +behind him and look at what he had done."] + +He nodded. "Yes," he said, "what does it matter to him, now? A man +carves out his resting place as you say, but he carves it out in vain. +Those who come after him will either place him in his proper sepulchre +... or utterly neglect him.... And neglect or transfer will cause him +neither happiness nor pain.... Both are ended for Querida;--let men +exalt him above all, or bury him and his work out of sight--what does he +care about it now? He has had all that life held for him, and what +another life may promise him no man can know. All reward for labour is +here, Rita; and the reward lasts only while the pleasure in labour +lasts. Creative work--even if well done--loses its savour when it is +finished. Happiness in it ends with the final touch. It is like a dead +thing to him who created it; men's praise or blame makes little +impression; and the aftertaste of both is either bitter or flat and +lasts but a moment." + +"Are you a little morbid, Kelly?" + +"Am I?" + +"It seems to me so." + +"And you, Rita?" + +She shook her pretty head in silence. + +After a while Gladys jumped up into her lap, and she lay back in her +arm-chair smoothing the creature's fur, and gazing absently into space. + +"Kelly," she said, "how many, many years ago it seems when you came up +to Delaware County to see us." + +"It seems very long ago to me, too." + +She lifted her blue eyes: + +"May I speak plainly? I have known you a long while. There is only one +man I like better. But there is no woman in the world whom I love as I +love Valerie West.... May I speak plainly?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--be fair to her, Kelly. Will you?" + +"I will try." + +"Try very hard. For after all it _is_ a man's world, and she doesn't +understand it. Try to be fair to her, Kelly. For--whether or not the +laws that govern the world are man-made and unjust--they are, +nevertheless, the only laws. Few men can successfully fight them; no +woman can--yet.... I am not angering you, am I?" + +"No. Go on." + +"I have so little to say--I who feel so deeply--deeply.... And the laws +are always there, Kelly, always there--fair or unfair, just or +unjust--they are always there to govern the world that framed them. And +a woman disobeys them at her peril." + +She moved slightly in her chair and sat supporting her head on one +pretty ringless hand. + +"Yet," she said, "although a woman disobeys any law at her peril--laws +which a man may often ignore with impunity--there is one law to which no +woman should dare subscribe. And it is sometimes known as 'The Common +Law of Marriage.'" + +She sat silent for a while, her gaze never leaving his shadowy face. + +"That is the only law--if it is truly a law--that a woman must ignore. +All others it is best for her to observe. And if the laws of marriage +are merely man-made or divine, I do not know. There is a din in the +world to-day which drowns the voices preaching old beliefs.... And a +girl is deafened by the clamour.... And I don't know. + +"But, it seems to me, that back of the laws men have made--if there be +nothing divine in their inspiration--there is another foundation solid +enough to carry them. Because it seems to me that the world's laws--even +when unjust--are built on natural laws. And how can a girl say that +these natural laws are unjust because they have fashioned her to bear +children and feed them from her own body? + +"And another thing, Kelly; if a man breaks a man-made law--founded, we +believe, on a divine commandment--he suffers only in a spiritual and +moral sense.... And with us it may be more than that. For women, at +least, hell is on earth." + +He stirred in his chair, and his sombre gaze rested on the floor at her +feet. + +"What are we to do?" he said dully. + +Rita shook her head: + +"I don't know. I am not instructing you, Kelly, only recalling to your +mind what you already know; what all men know, and find so convenient to +forget. Love is not excuse enough; the peril is unequally divided. The +chances are uneven; the odds are unfair. If a man really loves a woman, +how can he hazard her in a game of chance that is not square? How can he +let her offer more than he has at stake--even if she is willing? How can +he permit her to risk more than he is even able to risk? How can he +accept a magnanimity which leaves him her hopeless debtor? But men have +done it, men will continue to do it; God alone knows how they reconcile +it with their manhood or find it in their hearts to deal so unfairly by +us. But they do.... And still we stake all; and proudly overlook the +chances against us; and face the contemptible odds with a smile, +dauntless and--damned!" + +He leaned forward in the dusk; she could see his bloodless features now +only as a pale blot in the twilight. + +"All this I knew, Rita. But it is just as well, perhaps, that you remind +me." + +"I thought it might be as well. The world has grown very clever; but +after all there is no steadier anchor for a soul than a platitude." + +Ogilvy and Annan came mincing in about nine o'clock, disposed for +flippancy and gossip; but neither Neville nor Rita encouraged them; so +after a while they took their unimpaired cheerfulness and horse-play +elsewhere, leaving the two occupants of the studio to their own silent +devices. + +It was nearly midnight when he walked back with Rita to her rooms. + +And now day followed day in a sequence of limpid dawns and cloudless +sunsets. Summer began with a clear, hot week in June, followed by three +days' steady downpour which freshened and cooled the city and unfolded, +in square and park, everything green into magnificent maturity. + +Every day Neville and Rita worked together in the studio; and every +evening they walked together in the park or sat in the cool, dusky +studio, companionably conversational or permitting silence to act as +their interpreter. + +Then John Burleson came back from Dartford after remaining there ten +days under Dr. Ogilvy's observation; and Rita arrived at the studio next +day almost smiling. + +"We're' going to Arizona," she said. "_What_ do you think of that, +Kelly?" + +"You poor child!" exclaimed Neville, taking her hands into his and +holding them closely. + +"Why, Kelly," she said gently, "I knew he had to go. This has not taken +me unawares." + +"I hoped there might be some doubt," he said. + +"There was none in my mind. I foresaw it. Listen to me: twice in a +woman's life a woman becomes a prophetess. That fatal clairvoyance is +permitted to a woman twice in her life--and the second time it is +neither for herself that she foresees the future, nor for him whom she +loves...." + +"I wish--I wish--" he hesitated; and she flushed brightly. + +"I know what you wish, Kelly dear. I don't think it will ever happen. +But it is so much for me to be permitted to remain near him--so +much!--Ah, you don't know, Kelly! You don't know!" + +"Would you marry him?" + +Her honest blue eyes met his: + +"If he asked me; and if he still wished it--after he knew." + +"Could you ever be less to him--and perhaps more, Rita?" + +"Do you mean--" + +He nodded deliberately. + +She hung her head. + +"Yes," she said, "if I could be no more I would be what I could." + +"And you tell _me_ that, after all that you have said?" + +"I did not pretend to speak for men, Kelly. I told you that women had, +and women still would overlook the chances menacing them and face the +odds dauntlessly.... Because, whatever a man is--if a woman loves him +enough--he is worth to her what she gives." + +"Rita! Rita! Is it _you_ who content yourself with such sorry +philosophy?" + +"Yes, it is I. You asked me and I answer you. Whatever I said--I know +only one thing now. And you know what that is." + +"And where am I to look for sympathy and support in my own decision? +What can I think now about all that you have said to me?" + +"You will never forget it, Kelly--whatever becomes of the girl who said +it. Because it's the truth, no matter whose lips uttered it." + +He released her hands and she went away to dress herself for the pose. +When she returned and seated herself he picked up his palette and +brushes and began in silence. + + * * * * * + +That evening he went to see John Buries on and found him smoking +tranquilly in the midst of disorder. Packing cases, trunks, bundles, +boxes were scattered and piled up in every direction, and the master of +the establishment, apparently in excellent health, reclined on a lounge +in the centre of chaos, the long clay stem of a church-warden pipe +between his lips, puffing rings at the ceiling. + +"Hello, Kelly!" he exclaimed, sitting up; "I've got to move out of this +place. Rita told you all about it, didn't she? Isn't it rotten hard +luck?" + +"Not a bit of it. What did Billy Ogilvy say?" + +"Oh, I've got _it_ all right. Not seriously yet. What's Arizona like, +anyway?" + +"Half hell, half paradise, they say." + +"Then me for the celestial section. Ogilvy gave me the name of a +place"--he fumbled about--"Rita has it, I believe.... Isn't she a corker +to go? My conscience, Kelly, what a Godsend it will be to have a +Massachusetts girl out there to talk to!" + +"Isn't she going as your model?" + +"My Lord, man! Don't you talk to a model? Is a nice girl who poses for +a fellow anything extra-human or superhuman or--or unhuman or +inhuman--so that intelligent conversation becomes impossible?" + +"No," began Neville, laughing, but Burleson interrupted excitedly: + +"A girl can be anything she chooses if she's all right, can't she? And +Rita comes from Massachusetts, doesn't she?" + +"Certainly." + +"Not only from Massachusetts, but from Hitherford!" added Burleson +triumphantly. "I came from Hitherford. My grandfather knew hers. Why, +man alive, Rita Tevis is entitled to do anything she chooses to do." + +"That's one way of looking at it, anyway," admitted Neville gravely. + +"I look at it that way. _You_ can't; you're not from Massachusetts; but +you have a sort of a New England name, too. It's Yankee, isn't it?" + +"Southern." + +"Oh," said Burleson, honestly depressed; "I _am_ sorry. There were +Nevilles in Hitherford Lower Falls two hundred years ago. I've always +liked to think of you as originating, somehow or other, in Massachusetts +Bay." + +"No, John: unlike McGinty, I am unfamiliar with the cod-thronged ocean +deeps.... When are you going?" + +"Day after to-morrow. Rita says you don't need her any longer on that +picture--" + +"Lord, man! If I did I wouldn't hold you up. But don't worry, John; she +wouldn't let me.... She's a fine specimen of girl," he added casually. + +[Illustration: "'You'd better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as +well born as I am.'"] + +"Do you suppose that is news to me?" + +"Oh, no; I'm sure you find her amusing--" + +"What!" + +"Amusing," repeated Neville innocently. "Don't you?" + +"That is scarcely the word I would have chosen, Kelly. I have a very +warm admiration and a very sincere respect for Rita Tevis--" + +"John! You sound like a Puritan making love!" + +Burleson was intensely annoyed: + +"You'd better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as well born as I +am, and that there would be nothing at all incongruous in any +declaration that any decent man might make her!" + +"Why, I know that." + +"I'm glad you do. And I'm gratified that what you said has given me the +opportunity to make myself very plain on the subject of Rita Tevis. It +may amaze you to know that her great grandsire carried a flintlock with +the Hitherford Minute Men, and fell most respectably at Boston Neck." + +"Certainly, John. I knew she was all right. But I wasn't sure you knew +it--" + +"Confound it! Of course I did. I've always known it. Do you think I'd +care for her so much if she wasn't all right?" + +Neville smiled at him gravely, then held out his hand: + +"Give my love to her, John. I'll see you both again before you go." + +For nearly two weeks he had not heard a word from Valerie West. Rita and +John Burleson had departed, cheerful, sure of early convalescence and a +complete and radical cure. + +Neville went with them to the train, but his mind was full of his own +troubles and he could scarcely keep his attention on the ponderous +conversation of Burleson, who was admonishing him and Ogilvy impartially +concerning the true interpretation of creative art. + +He turned aside to Rita when opportunity offered and said in a low +voice: + +"Before you go, tell me where Valerie is." + +"I can't, Kelly." + +"Did you promise her not to?" + +"Yes." + +He said, slowly: "I haven't had one word from her in nearly two weeks. +Is she well?" + +"Yes. She came into town this morning to say good-bye to me." + +"I didn't know she was out of town," he said, troubled. + +"She has been, and is now. That's all I can tell you, Kelly dear." + +"She _is_ coming back, isn't she?" + +"I hope so." + +"Don't you know?" + +She looked into his anxious and miserable face and gently shook her +head: + +"I _don't_ know, Kelly." + +"Didn't she say--intimate anything--" + +"No.... I don't think she knows--yet." + +He said, very quietly: "If she ever comes to any conclusion that it is +better for us both never to meet again--I might be as dead as Querida +for any work I should ever again set hand to. + +"If she will not marry me, but will let things remain as they are, at +least I can go on caring for her and working out this miserable problem +of life. But if she goes out of my life, life will go out of me. I know +that now." + +Rita looked at him pitifully: + +"Valerie's mind is her own, Kelly. It is the most honest mind I have +ever known; and nothing on earth--no pain that her decision might +inflict upon her--would swerve it a hair's breath from what she +concludes is the right thing to do." + +"I know it," he said, swallowing a sudden throb of fear. + +"Then what can I say to you?" + +"Nothing. I must wait." + +"Kelly, if you loved her enough you would not even wait." + +"What!" + +"Because her return to you will mean only one thing. Are you going to +accept it of her?" + +"What can I do? I can't live without her!" + +"_Her_ problem is nobler, Kelly. She is asking herself not whether she +can live life through without _you_--but whether you can live life well, +and to the full, without _her_?" + +Neville flushed painfully. + +"Yes," he said, "_that is_ Valerie. I'm not worth the anxiety, the +sorrow that I have brought her. I'm not worth marrying; and I'm not +worth a heavier sacrifice.... I'm trying to think less of myself, Rita, +and more of her.... Perhaps, if I knew she were happy, I could +stand--losing her.... If she could be--without me--" He checked himself, +for the struggle was unnerving him; then he set his face firmly and +looked straight at Rita. + +"Do you believe she could forget me and be contented and tranquil--if I +gave her the chance?" + +"Are _you_ talking of self-sacrifice for _her_ sake?" + +He drew a deep, uneven breath: + +"I--suppose it's--that." + +"You mean that you're willing to eliminate yourself and give her an +opportunity to see a little of the world--a little of its order and +tranquillity and quieter happiness?--a chance to meet interesting women +and attractive men of her own age--as she is certain to do through her +intimacy with the Countess d'Enver?" + +"Yes," he said, "that is what must be done.... I've been blind--and +rottenly selfish. I did not mean to be.... I've tried to force her--I +have done nothing else since I fell in love with her, but force her +toward people whom she has a perfect right not to care for--even if they +happen to be my own people. She has felt nothing but a steady and stupid +pressure from me;--heard from me nothing except importunities--the +merciless, obstinate urging of my own views--which, God forgive me, I +thought were the only views because they were respectable!" + +He stood, head lowered, nervously clenching and unclenching his hands. + +"It was not for her own sake--that's the worst of it! It was for my +sake--because I've had respectability inculcated until I can't conceive +of my doing anything not respectable.... Once, something else got away +with me--and I gave it rein for a moment--until checked.... I'm really +no different from other men." + +"I think you are beginning to be, Kelly." + +"Am I? I don't know. But the worst of it was my selfishness--my fixed +idea that her marrying me was the _only_ salvation for her.... I never +thought of giving her a chance of seeing other people--other men--better +men--of seeing a tranquil, well-ordered world--of being in it and of it. +I behaved as though my world--the fragment inhabited by my friends and +family--was the only alternative to this one. I've been a fool, Rita; +and a cruel one." + +"No, only an average man, Kelly.... If I give you Valerie's address, +would you write and give her her freedom--for her own sake?--the freedom +to try life in that well-ordered world we speak of?... Because she is +very young. Life is all before her. Who can foretell what friends she +may be destined to make; what opportunities she may have. I care a great +deal for you, Kelly; but I love Valerie.... And, there _are_ other men +in the world after all;--but there is only one Valerie.... And--_how +truly do you love her_?" + +"Enough," he said under his breath. + +"Enough to--leave her alone?" + +"Yes." + +"Then write and tell her so. Here is the address." + +She slipped a small bit of folded paper into Neville's land. + +"We must join the others, now," she said calmly. + +Annan had come up, and he and Ogilvy were noisily baiting Burleson amid +shouts of laughter and a protesting roar from John. + +"Stop it, you wretches," said Rita amiably, entering the little group. +"John, are you never going to earn not to pay any attention to this pair +of infants?" + +"Are you going to kiss me good-bye, Rita, when the train departs?" +inquired Sam, anxiously. + +"Certainly; I kissed Gladys good-bye--" + +"Before all this waiting room full of people?" persisted Sam. "_Are_ +you?" + +"Why I'll do it now if you like, Sammy dear." + +"They'll take you for my sister," said Sam, disgusted. + +"Or your nurse; John, what _is_ that man bellowing through the +megaphone?" + +"Our train," said Burleson, picking up the satchels. He dropped them +again to shake the hands that were offered: + +"Good-bye, John, dear old fellow! You'll get all over this thing in a +jiffy out there You'll be back in no time at all! Don't worry, and get +well!" + +He smiled confidently and shook all their hands Rita's pretty face was +pale; she let Ogilvy kiss her cheek, shook hands with Annan, and then, +turning to Neville, put both hands on his shoulders and kissed him on +the mouth. + +"Give her her chance, Kelly," she whispered ... "And it shall be +rendered unto you seven-fold." + +"No, Rita; it never will be now." + +"Who knows?" + +"Rita! Rita!" he said under his breath, "when I am ending, she must +begin.... You are right: this world needs her. Try as I might, I never +could be worth what she is worth without effort. It is my life which +does not matter, not hers. I will do what ought to be done. Don't be +afraid. I will do it. And thank God that it is not too late." + +That night, seated at his desk in the studio, he looked at the +calendar. It was the thirteenth day since he had heard from her; the +last day but two of the fifteen days she had asked for. The day after +to-morrow she would have come, or would have written him that she was +renouncing him forever for his own sake. Which might it have been? He +would never know now. + +He wrote her: + +"Dearest of women, Rita has been loyal to you. It was only when I +explained to her for what purpose I wished your address that she wisely +gave it to me. + +"Dearest, from the beginning of our acquaintance and afterward when it +ripened into friendship and finally became love, upon you has rested the +burden of decision; and I have permitted it. + +"Even now, as I am writing here in the studio, the burden lies heavily +upon your girl's shoulders and is weighting your girl's heart. And it +must not be so any longer. + +"I have never, perhaps, really meant to be selfish; a man in love really +doesn't know what he means. But now I know what I have done; and what +must be undone. + +"You were perfectly right. It was for you to say whether you would marry +me or not. It was for you to decide whether it was possible or +impossible for you to appear as my wife in a world in which you had had +no experience. It was for you to generously decide whether a rupture +between that world and myself--between my family and myself--would +render me--and yourself--eternally unhappy. + +"You were free to decide; you used your own intellect, and you so +decided. And I had no right to question you--I have no right now. I +shall never question you again. + +"Then, because you loved me, and because it was the kind of love that +ignored self, you offered me a supreme sacrifice. And I did not refuse; +I merely continued to fight for what I thought ought to be--distressing, +confusing, paining you with the stupid, obstinate reiterations of my +importunities. And you stood fast by your colours. + +"Dear, I _was_ wrong. And so were you. Those were not the only +alternatives. I allowed them to appear so because of selfishness.... +Alas, Valerie, in spite of all I have protested and professed of love +and passion for you, to-day, for the first time, have I really loved you +enough to consider you, alone. And with God's help I will do so always. + +"You have offered me two alternatives: to give yourself and your life to +me without marriage; or to quietly slip out of my life forever. + +"And it never occurred to you--and I say, with shame, that it never +occurred to me--that I might quietly efface myself and my demands from +_your_ life: leave you free and at peace to rest and develop in that new +and quieter world which your beauty and goodness has opened to you. + +"Desirable people have met you more than half-way, and they like you. +Your little friend, Helene d'Enver is a genuine and charming woman. +Your friendship for her will mean all that you have so far missed in +life all that a girl is entitled to. + +"Through her you will widen the circle of your acquaintances and form +newer and better friendships You will meet men and women of your own +age and your own tastes which is what ought to happen. + +"And it is right and just and fair that you enter into the beginning of +your future with a mind unvexed and a heart untroubled by conflicts +which can never solve for you and me any future life together. + +"I do not believe you will ever forget me, or wish to, wholly. Time +heals--otherwise the world had gone mad some centuries ago. + +"But whatever destiny is reserved for you, I know you will meet it with +the tranquillity and the sweet courage which you have always shown. + +"What kind of future I wish for you, I need not write here. You know. +And it is for the sake of that future--for the sake of the girl whose +unselfish life has at last taught me and shamed me, that I give you up +forever. + +"Dear, perhaps you had better not answer this for a long, long time. +Then, when that clever surgeon, Time, has effaced all scars--and when +not only tranquillity is yours but, perhaps, a deeper happiness is in +sight, write and tell me so. And the great god Kelly, nodding before his +easel, will rouse up from his Olympian revery and totter away to find a +sheaf of blessings to bestow upon the finest, truest, and loveliest girl +in all the world. + +"_Halcyonii dies! Fortem posce animum! Forsan et haec olim meminisse +juvabit. Vale!_ + +"LOUIS NEVILLE." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +The fifteenth day of her absence had come and gone and there had been no +word from her. + +Whether or not he had permitted himself to expect any, the suspense had +been none the less almost unendurable. He walked the floor of the studio +all day long, scarcely knowing what he was about, insensible to fatigue +or to anything except the dull, ceaseless beating of his heart. He +seemed older, thinner:--a man whose sands were running very swiftly. + +With the dawn of the fifteenth day of her absence a gray pallor had come +into his face; and it remained there. Ogilvy and Annan sauntered into +the studio to visit him, twice, and the second time they arrived bearing +gifts--favourite tonics, prescriptions, and pills. + +"You look like hell, Kelly," observed Sam with tactful and +characteristic frankness. "Try a few of this assorted dope. Harry and I +dote on dope: + + _"'After the bat is over, + After the last cent's spent, + And the pigs have gone from the clover + And the very last gent has went; + After the cards are scattered, + After I've paid the bill, + Weary and rocky and battered + I swallow my liver pill!_'" + +--he sang, waltzing slowly around the room with Annan until, +inadvertently, they stepped upon the tail of Gladys who went off like a +pack of wet fire-crackers; whereupon they retired in confusion to their +respective abodes above. + +Evening came, and with evening, letters; but none from her. And slowly +the stealthy twilight hours dragged their heavy minutes toward darkness; +and night crawled into the room like some sinister living thing, and +found him still pacing the floor. + +Through the dusky June silence far below in the street sounded the +clatter of wheels; but they never stopped before his abode. Voices rose +faintly at moments in the still air, borne upward as from infinite +depths; but her voice would never sound again for him: he knew it +now--never again for him. And yet he paced the floor, listening. The +pain in his heart grew duller at intervals, benumbed by the tension; but +it always returned, sickening him, almost crazing him. + +Late in the evening he gave way under the torture--turned coward, and +started to write to her. Twice he began letters--pleading with her to +forget his letter; begging her to come back. And destroyed them with +hands that shook like the hands of a sick man. Then the dull +insensibility to pain gave him a little respite, but later the misery +and terror of it drove him out into the street with an insane idea of +seeking her--of taking the train and finding her. + +He throttled that impulse; the struggle exhausted him; and he returned, +listlessly, to the door and stood there, vacant-eyed, staring into the +lamp-lit street. + +Once he caught sight of a shadowy, graceful figure crossing the +avenue--a lithe young silhouette against the gas-light--and his heart +stood still for an instant but it was not she, and he swayed where he +stood, under the agony of reaction, dazed by the rushing recession of +emotion. + +Then a sudden fear seized him that she might have come while he had been +away. He had been as far as the avenue. Could she have come? + +But when he arrived at his door he had scarce courage enough to go in. +She had a key; she might have entered. Had she entered: was she there, +behind the closed door? To go in and find the studio empty seemed almost +more than he could endure. But, at last, he went in; and he found the +studio empty. + +Confused, shaken, tortured, he began again his aimless tour of the +place, ranging the four walls like a wild creature dulled to insanity by +long imprisonment--passing backward, forward, to and fro, across, around +his footsteps timing the dreadful monotone of his heart, his pulse +beating, thudding out his doom. + +She would never come; never come again. She had determined what was best +to do; she had arrived at her decision. Perhaps his letter had convinced +her,--had cleared her vision;--the letter which he had been man enough +to write--fool enough--God!--perhaps brave enough.... But if what he had +done in his madness was bravery, it was an accursed thing; and he set +his teeth and cursed himself scarce knowing what he was saying. + +It promised to be an endless night for him; and there were other nights +to come--interminable nights. And now he began to watch the +clock--strained eyes riveted on the stiff gilded hands--and on the +little one jerkily, pitilessly recording the seconds and twitching them +one by one into eternity. + +Nearer and nearer to midnight crept the gilded, flamboyant hour-hand; +the gaunter minute-hand was slowly but inexorably overtaking it. Nearer, +nearer, they drew together; then came the ominous click; a moment's +suspense; the high-keyed gong quivered twelve times under the impact of +the tiny steel hammer. + +And he never would hear her voice again. And he dropped to his knees +asking mercy on them both. + +In his dulled ears still lingered the treble ringing echo of the +bell--lingered, reiterated, repeated incessantly, until he thought he +was going mad. Then, of a sudden, he realised that the telephone was +ringing; and he reeled from his knees to his feet, and crept forward +into the shadows, feeling his way like a blind man. + +"Louis?" + +But he could not utter a sound. + +"Louis, is it you?" + +"Yes," he whispered. + +"What is the matter? Are you ill? Your voice is so strange. _Are_ you?" + +"No!--Is it _you_, Valerie?" + +"You know it is!" + +"Where--are you?" + +"In my room--where I have been all day." + +"You have been--_there_! You have been _here_--in the city--all this +time--" + +"I came in on the morning train. I wanted to be sure. There _have_ been +such things as railroad delays you know." + +"Why--_why_ didn't you let me know--" + +"Louis! You will please to recollect that I had until midnight ... +I--was busy. Besides, midnight has just sounded--and here I am." + +He waited. + +"I received your letter." Her voice had the sweet, familiar, rising +inflection which seemed to invite an answer. + +"Yes," he muttered, "I wrote to you." + +"Do you wish to know what I thought of your letter?" + +"Yes," he breathed. + +"I will tell you some other time; not now.... Have you been perfectly +well, Louis? But I heard all about you, every day,--through Rita. Do you +know I am quite mad to see that picture you painted of her,--the new +one--'Womanhood.' She says it is a great picture--really great. Is it?" + +He did not answer. + +"Louis!" + +"Yes." + +"I would like to see that picture." + +"Valerie?" + +"Yes?"--sweetly impatient. + +"Are we to see each other again?" + +She said calmly: "I didn't ask to see _you_, Louis: I asked to see a +picture which you recently painted, called 'Womanhood.'" + +He remained silent and presently she called him again by name: "You say +that you are well--or rather Rita said so two days ago--and I'm +wondering whether in the interim you've fallen ill? Two days without +news from you is rather disquieting. Please tell me at once exactly how +you are?" + +He succeeded in forcing something resembling a laugh: "I am all right," +he said. + +"I don't see how you could be--after the letter you wrote me. How much +of it did you mean?" + +He was silent. + +"Louis! Answer me!" + +"All--of it," he managed to reply. + +[Illustration: "She knelt down beside the bed and ... said whatever +prayer she had in mind"] + +"_All!_" + +"Yes." + +"Then--perhaps you scarcely expected me to call up to-night. Did you?" + +"No." + +"Suppose I had not done so." + +He shivered slightly, but remained mute. + +"Answer me, Louis?" + +"It would have been--better." + +"For you?" + +"For--both." + +"Do you believe it?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--have I any choice except to say--good-night?" + +"No choice. Good-night." + +"Good-night." + +He crept, shaking, into his bed-room, sat down, resting his hands on his +knees and staring at vacancy. + +Valerie, in her room, hung up the receiver, buried her face in her hands +for a moment, then quietly turned, lowering her hands from her face, and +looked down at the delicate, intimate garments spread in order on the +counterpane beside her. There was a new summer gown there, too--a light, +dainty, fragile affair on which she had worked while away. Beside it lay +a big summer hat of white straw and white lilacs. + +She stood for a moment, reflecting; then she knelt down beside the bed +and covered her eyes again while she said whatever prayer she had in +mind. + +It was not a very short petition, because it concerned Neville. She +asked nothing for herself except as it regarded him or might matter to +his peace of mind. Otherwise what she said, asked, and offered, related +wholly to Neville. + +Presently she rose and went lightly and silently about her ablutions; +and afterward she dressed herself in the fragile snowy garments ranged +so methodically upon the white counterpane, each in its proper place. + +She was longer over her hair, letting it fall in a dark lustrous cloud +to her waist, then combing and gathering it and bringing it under +discipline. + +She put on her gown, managing somehow to fasten it, her lithe young body +and slender arms aiding her to achieve the impossible between neck and +shoulders. Afterward she pinned on her big white hat. + +At the door she paused for a second; took a last look at the quiet, +white little room tranquil and silent in the lamplight; then she turned +off the light and went out, softly, holding in her hands a key which +fitted no door of her own. + +One o'clock sounded heavily from Saint Hilda's as she left her house; +the half hour was striking as she stooped in the dark hallway outside +the studio and fitted the key she held--the key that was to unlock for +her the mystery of the world. + +He had not heard her. She groped her way into the unlighted studio, +touched with caressing finger-tips the vague familiar shapes that the +starlight, falling through the glass above, revealed to her as she +passed. + +In the little inner room she paused. There was a light through the +passageway beyond, but she stood here a moment, looking around her while +memories of the place deepened the colour in her cheeks. + +Then she went forward, timidly, and stood at his closed door, listening. + +A sudden fright seized her; one hand flew to her breast, her +throat--covered her eyes for a moment--and fell limp by her side. + +[Illustration: "She was longer over her hair ... gathering it and +bringing it under discipline."] + +"Louis!" she faltered. She heard him spring to his feet and stand as +though transfixed. + +"Louis," she said, "it is I. Will you open your door to me?" + +The sudden flood of electric light dazzled her; then she saw him +standing there, one hand still resting on the door knob. + +"I've come," she said, with a faint smile. + +"Valerie! My God!" + +She stood, half smiling, half fearful, her dark eyes meeting his, two +friendly little hands outstretched. Then, as his own caught them, almost +crushed them: + +"Oh, it was _your_ letter that ended all for me, Louis! It settled every +doubt I had. I _knew_ then--you darling!" + +She bent and touched his hands with her lips, then lifted her sweet, +untroubled gaze to his: + +"I had been away from you so long, so long. And the time was approaching +for me to decide, and I didn't know what was best for us, any more than +when I went away. And _then_!--your letter came!" + +She shook her head, slowly: + +"I don't know what I might have decided if you never had written that +letter to me; probably I would have come back to you anyway. I think so; +I can't think of my doing anything else: though I _might_ have +decided--against myself. But as soon as I read your letter I _knew_, +Louis.... And I am here." + +He said with drawn lips quivering: + +"Did you read in that letter one single word of cowardly appeal?--one +infamous word of self? If you did, I wrote in vain." + +"It was because I read nothing in it of self that I made up my mind, +Louis." She stepped nearer. "Why are you so dreadfully pale and worn? +Your face is so haggard--so terrible--" + +She laid one hand on his shoulder, looking up at him; then she smoothed +his forehead and hair, lightly. + +"As though I could ever live without you," she said under her breath. +Then she laughed, releasing her hands, and went over to the dresser +where there was a mirror. + +"I have come, at one in the morning, to pay you a call," she said, +withdrawing the long pins from her hat and taking it off. "Later I +should like a cup of chocolate, please.... Oh, there is Gladys! You +sweet thing!" she cried softly, kneeling to embrace the cat who came +silently into the room, tail waving aloft in gentle greeting. + +The girl lifted Gladys onto the bed and rolled her over into a fluffy +ball and rubbed her cheeks and her ears until her furry toes curled, and +her loud and grateful purring filled the room. + +Valerie, seated sideways on the edge of the bed, looked up at Neville, +laughing: + +"I _must_ tell you about Sam and Helene," she said. "They are too funny! +Helene was furious because Sam wrote her a letter saying that he +intended to marry her but had not the courage to notify her, personally, +of his decision; and Helene was wild, and wrote him that he might save +himself further trouble in the matter. And they've been telephoning to +each other at intervals all day, and Sam is so afraid of her that he +dare not go to see her; and Helene was in tears when I saw her--and I +_think_ it was because she was afraid Sam wouldn't come and resume the +quarrel where she could manage it and him more satisfactorily." + +She threw back her head and laughed at the recollection, stroking Gladys +the while: + +"It will come out all right, of course," she added, her eyes full of +laughter; "she's been in love with Sam ever since he broke a Ming jar +and almost died of fright. But isn't it funny, Louis?--the way people +fall in love, and their various manners of informing each other!" + +He was trying to smile, but the gray constraint in his face made it only +an effort. Valerie pretended not to notice it, and she rattled on gaily, +detailing her small budget of gossip and caressing Gladys--behaving as +irresponsibly and as capriciously as though her heart were not singing a +ceaseless hymn of happiness too deep, too thankful to utter by word or +look. + +"Dear little Rita," she exclaimed, suddenly and tenderly solemn--"I saw +her the morning of the day she departed with John. And first of all I +asked about you of course--you spoiled thing!--and then I asked about +John. And we put our arms around each other and had a good, +old-fashioned cry.... But--_don't_ you think he is going to get well, +Louis?" + +"Sam's brother--Billy Ogilvy--wrote me that he would always have to live +in Arizona. He _can_ live there. But the East would be death to him." + +"Can't he ever come back?" she asked pitifully. + +"No, dear." + +"But--but what will Rita do?" + +He said: "I think that will depend on Rita. I think it depends on her +already." + +"Why?" she asked, wide-eyed. "Do you believe that John cares for her?" + +"I know he does.... And I haven't much doubt that he wants to marry +her." + +"Do you think so? Oh, Louis--if that is true, what a heavenly future +for Rita!" + +"Heavenly? Out in that scorching desert?" + +"Do you think she'd care _where_ she was? Kelly, you're ridiculous!" + +"Do you believe that any woman could stand that for the rest of her +life, Valerie?" + +She smiled, head lowered, fondling the cat who had gone ecstatically to +sleep. + +She said, still smiling: "If a girl is loved she endures some things; if +she loves she endures more. But to a girl who is loved, and who loves, +nothing else matters ... And it would be that way with Rita"--she lifted +her eyes--"as it is with me." + +He was standing beside her now; she made room on the side of the bed for +him with a little gesture of invitation: + +"People who die for each other are less admirable than people who live +for each other. The latter requires the higher type of courage ... If I +go out of your life I am like a dead person to you--a little worse in +fact. Besides, I've shown the white feather and run away. That's a +cowardly solution of a problem, isn't it?" + +"Am I a coward if I decide to stand back and give you a chance?" + +"You haven't decided to do it," she said cheerfully, lifting the +somnolent cat and hugging it. + +"I'm afraid I have, dear." + +"Why?" + +"You read my letter?" + +"Yes and kissed every line in it." + +He retained sufficient self-control to keep his hands off her--but that +was all; and her eyes, which were looking into his, grew serious and +beautiful. + +"I love you so," she breathed. + +"I love you, Valerie." + +"Yes.... I know it.... I know you do...." She sat musing a moment, then: +"And I thought that I knew what it was to love, before you wrote that +letter." She shook her head, murmuring something to herself. Then the +swift smile curved her lips again, she dumped Gladys out of her lap +without ceremony, and leaned her shoulder on Neville's, resting her +cheek lightly against his: + +"It doesn't seem possible that the problem of life has really been +solved for us, Louis. I can scarcely realise it--scarcely understand +what this heavenly relief means--this utterly blissful relaxation and +untroubled confidence. There isn't anything in the world that can harm +me, now; is there?" + +"Nothing." + +"Nor my soul?" + +"It has always been beyond danger." + +"There are those who might tell me differently." + +"Let them talk. I _know_." + +"Do you?--you darling!" Her soft, fragrant mouth touched his cheek, +lingered, then she laughed to herself for the very happiness of living. + +"Isn't it wonderful how a word sometimes shatters the fixed ideas that a +girl has arrived at through prayer and fasting? I am beginning to think +that no real intelligence can remain very long welded to any one fixed +belief." + +"What do you mean, Valerie?" She rested her head on his shoulder and +sat considering, eyes remote; then her white fingers crept into his: + +"We won't talk about it now. I was wrong in some ways. You or common +sense--or something--opened my eyes.... But we won't talk about it +now.... Because there are still perplexities--some few.... We'll go over +them together--and arrange matters--somehow." + +"What matters?" + +But she placed a soft hand over his lips, imposing silence, and drew his +arm around her with a little sigh of content. + +Presently she said: "Have you noticed my gown? I made it." + +He smiled and bent forward to look. + +"I made _everything_ that I am wearing--except the shoes and stockings. +But they are perfectly new.... I wanted to come to you--perfectly new. +There was a Valerie who didn't really love you. She thought she did, but +she didn't.... So I left her behind when I came--left everything about +her behind me. I am all new, Louis.... Are you afraid to love me?" + +He drew her closer; she turned, partly, and put both arms around his +neck, and their lips touched and clung. + +Then, a little pale, she drew away from him, a vague smile tremulous on +her lips. The confused sweetness of her eyes held him breathless with +their enchantment; the faint fragrance of her dazed him. + +In silence she bent her head, remained curbed, motionless for a few +moments, then slowly lifted her eyes to his. + +"How much do you want me, Louis?" + +"You know." + +"Enough to--give me up?" + +His lips stiffened and refused at first, then: + +"Yes," they motioned. And she saw the word they formed. + +"I knew it," she breathed; "I only wanted to hear you say it again.... I +don't know why I'm crying;--do you?... What a perfect ninny a girl can +be when she tries to.... _All_ over your 'collar, too.... And now you're +what Mr. Mantalini would call 'demned moist and unpleasant!' ... I--I +don't want to--s-sob--this way! I do-don't wish to ... M-make me stop, +Louis!... I'd like a handkerchief--anything--give me Gladys and I'll +staunch my tears on her!" + +She slipped from the bed's edge to the floor, and stood with her back +toward him. Then she glanced sideways at the mirror to inspect her nose. + +"Thank goodness _that_ isn't red," she said gaily.... "Kelly, I'm +hungry.... I've fasted since dawn--on this day--because I wanted to +break bread with you on the first day of our new life together." + +He looked at her, appalled, but she laughed and went into the studio. +There was a beautiful old sideboard there always well stocked. + +He turned on the lights, brought peaches and melons and strawberries and +milk from the ice-chest, and found her already preparing chocolate over +the electric grill and buttering immense slices of peasant bread. + +"It's after two o'clock," she said, delighted. "Isn't this divinely +silly? I wonder if there happens to be any salad in the ice-chest?" + +"Cold chicken, too," he nodded, watching her set the table. + +She glanced at him over her shoulder from time to time: + +"Louis, are you going to enjoy all this? _All of_ it? +You--somehow--don't look entirely happy--" + +"I am.... All I wanted was to see you--hear your voice.... I shall be +contented now." + +"With just a view of me, and the sound of my voice?" + +"You know there is--nothing more for us." + +"I know nothing of the kind. The idea! And don't you dare struggle and +kick and scream when I kiss you. Do you hear me, Louis?" + +He laughed and watched her as she went swiftly and gracefully about the +table arrangement, glancing up at him from moment to moment. + +"The idea," she repeated, indignantly. "I guess I'll kiss you when I +choose to. You are not in holy orders, are you? You haven't made any +particular vows, have you--?" + +"One." + +She halted, looked at him, then went on with her labours, a delicate +colour flushing face and neck. + +"Where in the world is that salad, Louis? A hungry girl asks you! Don't +drive me to desperation--" + +"Are we going to have coffee?" + +"No, it will keep us awake all night! I believe you _are_ bent on my +destruction." And, as she hovered over the table, she hummed the latest +popular summer-roof ballad: + + "'Stand back! Go 'way! + I can no longer stay + Although you are a Marquis or a Earl! + You may tempt the upper classes + With your villainous demi-tasses + But-- + Heaven will protect the Working Girl!'" + +At length everything was ready. He had placed two chairs opposite one +another, but she wouldn't have it, and made him lug up a bench, lay a +cushion on it, and sit beside her. + +They behaved foolishly; she fed him strawberries at intervals, +discreetly, on a fork--and otherwise. + +"Think of it! Fruit--at three in the morning, Louis! I hope Heaven will +protect _this_ working girl.... No, dear, I'd rather not have any +champagne.... You forget that this is a brand-new girl you're supping +with ... And, for reasons of her own--perhaps as an example to +you--there is never again to be anything like that--not even a +cigarette." + +"Nonsense--" + +"Oh, it's on account of my voice, not my morals, goose! I have rather a +nice voice you know, and, if we can afford it, it would be a jolly good +idea to have it cultivated ...Isn't this melon divine! What fun, +Louis!... I believe you _are_ a little happier. That crease between your +eyes has quite disappeared--There! Don't dare let it come back! It has +no business there I tell you. I _know_ it hasn't--and you must trust my +word. Will you?" + +She leaned swiftly toward him, placed both hands on his shoulders. + +"You've a perfectly new girl to deal with," she said, looking him in +the eyes;--"a miracle of meekness and patience that is rather certain to +turn into a dreadful, frowsy old hausfrau some day. But that's the kind +you wanted.... It's none of my doings--" + +"Valerie!" + +"What?" + +"You darling!--do you mean--" + +She closed his lips with hers. + +"Silence," she said; "we have plenty to talk over before the hour +arrives for me to be a door-mat. I _won't_ be a door-mat when I'm trying +to be happy over a perfectly good supper!... Besides I want to torture +you while there's still time. I want to make you miserable by reminding +you how disgracefully unmoral we are, here in your studio together at +three in the morning--" She stretched out a slim, white ringless hand, +and lifted the third finger for his inspection: + +"Not a sign of a ring! Shame!" She turned her pretty, daring face to +his, eyes sparkling with audacity: + +"Besides, I'm not going back to-night." + +He said tranquilly: "I should think not." + +"I mean it, Kelly, I simply won't go. And you may ring up the police and +every ambulance in town--and the fire department--" + +"I've done it," he said, "but the fire department refuses to put you +out.... You don't mean to say you've finished!--after fasting all day +like a little idiot," he exclaimed as she sprang to her feet and pushed +away her chair. + +"I have. I am _not_ an anaconda!" ... She passed swiftly into the outer +room where her own toilet necessaries were always ready, and presently +came back, leisurely, her hands behind her back, sauntering toward, +him with a provoking smile edging her lips: + +[Illustration: "'Yes,' she said, 'it is really great.'"] + +"You may retire when you like, Kelly, and tie your red cotton night-cap +under your chin. _I_ shall sit up for the sun. It's due in about an +hour, you know." + +"Nonsense," he said. "We'll both, be dead in the morning." + +"You offer me your guest-room?" she said in pretence of surprise. "How +_very_ nice of you, Mr. Neville. I--ah--will condescend to occupy +it--for this evening only--" Her eyes brightened into laughter: "Oh, +isn't it delicious, Louis! Isn't it perfectly heavenly to _know_ that we +are utterly and absolutely all right,--and to know that the world +outside would be perfectly certain that we are not? What a darling you +are!" + +Still holding her hands behind her back she bent forward and touched her +lips to his, daintily, fastidious in the light contact, + +"Where is that picture of 'Womanhood'?" she asked. + +He drew out the easel, adjusting the canvas to the light, and rolled a +big chair up in front of it. + +"Please sit there," she said; and seated herself on the padded arm, +still keeping her hands behind her back. + +"Are you concealing anything from me?" he asked. + +"Never mind. I want to look at your picture," she added slowly as her +eyes fell upon the canvas. + +Minute after minute she sat there in silence, neither stirring nor +offering comment. And after a long time he moved restlessly in the +depths of the chair beside her. + +Then she turned and looked down at him: + +"Yes," she said, "it is really great.... And, _somehow_, I am lonely. +Take me, Louis." + +He drew her into his arms. She lay very silent against his breast for a +while, and at last raised her curiously troubled eyes. + +"You are going to be a very, very great painter, aren't you, Louis?" + +He laughed and kissed her, watching her face. + +"Don't be too great--so great that I shall feel too--too lonely," she +whispered. + +Then his eyes fell upon the ring which he had given her--and which she +had gently put aside. She was wearing it on her betrothal finger. + +"Where did you--find it?" he said unsteadily. + +"In its box on your dresser." + +"Do you realise what it means?" + +"Yes.... And I am wearing it." + +"Valerie!" + +Her head nestled closer: + +"Because I am going to marry you, Louis.... You were right.... If I +fail, as your wife, to win my way in your world, then it will be because +I have attempted the impossible. Which is no crime.... Who was it said +'Not failure, but low aim is crime'?" + +She sighed, nestling closer like a child seeking rest: + +"I am not coward enough to run away from you and destiny.... And if I +stay, only two ways remain.... And the lawful is the better for us +both...." She laid her flushed cheek against his: "Because," she said +dreamily, "there is one thing of which I never thought--children.... And +I don't, perhaps, exactly understand, but I realise that--such things +have happened;--and that it could happen to--us." + +She lay silent for a while, her fingers restless on his shoulder; then +she spoke again in the same dreamy voice of a half-awakened child: + +"Each for the other's sake is not enough. It must be broader, wider, +more generous ... it must be for the sake of all.... I have learned +this.... We can learn it better together.... Louis, can you guess what I +did the day your letter came to me at Estwich?" + +"What did you do, my darling?" + +"I went to Ashuelyn." + +"What?" + +"Yes, dear. If it had not been for your letter which I could feel +against my breast I should have been frightened.... Because all your +family were together under the pergola.... As it was I could scarcely +speak; I gave your mother the letter, and when she had read it and your +father and your sister had read it, I asked them what I was to do. + +"It was so strange and still there under the pergola; and I scarcely +knew what I was saying--and I didn't realise that there were tears in my +eyes--until I saw them in your mother's, too. + +"Louis! Louis! I wonder if she can really ever care for me!--she was so +good--so sweet to me.... And Mrs. Collis took me away to her own +room--after your father had shaken hands with me--very stiffly but I +think kindly--and I behaved very badly, dear--and your sister let me +cry--all that I needed to." + +She said nothing more for a while, resting in his arms, dark eyes fixed +on space. Then: + +"They asked me to remain; your brother-in-law is a dear!--but I still +had a long day of self-examination before me. Your father and mother +walked with me to the gate. Your mother kissed me." + +His eyes, blinded by tears, scarcely saw her; and she turned her head +and smiled at him. + +"What they said to me was _very_ sweet and patient, Louis.... I +believe--I sometimes believe that I may, in time, win more than their +consent, I believe that, some day, they will care to think of me as your +wife--and think of me as such, kindly, without regret for what might +have been if I had never known you." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Helene d'Enver had gone back to the country, and Ogilvy dared not pursue +her thither. + +From her fastness at Estwich she defied him in letters, but every letter +of hers seemed to leave some loophole open for further argument, and +Ogilvy replied valiantly from a perfectly safe distance, vowing that he +meant to marry her some day in spite of herself and threatening to go up +and tell her so to her face, until she became bored to death waiting for +him to fulfil this threat. + +"There's a perfectly good inn here," she wrote,--"for of course, under +the circumstances, you would scarcely have the impudence to expect the +hospitality of my own roof. But if you are determined to have a final +'No' for your answer, I am entirely competent to give it to you by word +of mouth--" + +"And such a distractingly lovely mouth," sighed Ogilvy, perusing the +letter in his studio. He whistled a slow waltz, thoughtfully, and as +slowly and solemnly kept step to it, turning round and round, buried in +deepest reflection. He had a habit of doing this when profoundly +perplexed. + +Annan discovered him waltzing mournfully all by himself: + +"What's up?" he inquired cheerfully. + +"It's all up, I suppose." + +"With you and your countess?" + +"Yes, Harry." + +"Rot! Why don't you go and talk to her?" + +"Because if I remain invisible she might possibly forget my face. I +stand a better chance by letter, Harry." + +"Now you're not bad-looking," insisted Annan, kindly. "And besides, a +man's face doesn't count with a girl. Half of 'em are neurotics, anyway, +and they adore the bizarre--" + +"Damn it," snapped Sam, "do you mean that my countenance resembles a +gargoyle? If you do, say so in English." + +"No, no, no," said Annan soothingly,--"I've seen more awful +mugs--married mugs, too. What woman has done woman may do again. Buck +up! Beauty and the beast is no idle jest--" + +"I'll punch you good and plenty," began Sam wrathfully, but Annan fled, +weak with laughter. + +"There's no vainer man than an ugly one!" he called back, and slammed +the door to escape a flight of paint brushes hurled by a maddened man. + +"I'll go! By jinks, I'll go, anyway!" he exclaimed; "and I don't care +what she thinks of my face ... only I think I'll take Annan with +me--just for company--or--dummy bridge on the way up.... Harry!" he +shouted. + +Annan cautiously appeared, ready for rapid flight. + +"Aw come on in! My face suits me. Besides, thank Heaven I've got a +reputation back of it; but yours breaks the speed laws. Will you go up +there with me--like a man?" + +"Where?" + +"To Estwich?" + +"When?" inquired Annan, sceptically. + +"Now!--b' jinks!" + +"Have _you_ sufficient nerve, _this_ time?" + +"Watch me." + +And he dragged out a suit-case and began wildly throwing articles of +toilet and apparel into it, + +"Come on, Harry!" he shouted, hurling a pair of tennis shoes at the +suit-case; "I've got to go while I'm excited or I'll never budge!" + +But when, ten minutes later, Annan arrived, suit-case in hand, ready for +love's journey, he could scarcely contrive to kick and drag Sam into the +elevator, and, later, into a taxicab. + +Ogilvy sat there alternately shivering and attempting to invent +imperative engagements in town which he had just remembered, but Annan +said angrily: + +"No, you don't. This makes the seventh time I've started with you for +Estwich, and I'm going to put it through or perish in a hand-to-hand +conflict with you." + +And he started for the train, dragging Sam with him, talking angrily all +the time. + +He talked all the way to Estwich, too, partly to reassure Ogilvy and +give him no time for terrified reflection, partly because he liked to +talk. And when they arrived at the Estwich Arms he shoved Ogilvy into a +room, locked the door, and went away to telephone to the Countess +d'Enver. + +"Yes?" she inquired sweetly, "who is it?" + +"Me," replied Annan, regardless of an unpopular grammatical convention. +"I'm here with Ogilvy. May we come to tea?" + +"Is Mr. Ogilvy _here_?" + +"Yes, here at the Estwich Arms. May I--er--may _he_ bring _me_ over to +call on you?" + +"Y-yes. Oh, with pleasure, Mr. Annan.... When may I expect hi--you?" + +"In about ten minutes," replied Annan firmly. + +Then he went back and looked into Ogilvy's room. Sam was seated, his +head clasped in his hands. + +"I thought you _might_ tear up your sheets and let yourself out of the +window," said Annan sarcastically. "You're a fine specimen! Why you're +actually lantern-jawed with fright. But I don't care! Come on; we're +expected to tea! Get into your white flannels and pretty blue coat and +put on your dinkey rah-rah, and follow me. Or, by heaven!--I'll do +murder right now!" + +Ogilvy's knees wavered as they entered the gateway. + +"Go on!" hissed Annan, giving him a violent shove. + +Then, to Ogilvy, came that desperate and hysterical courage that comes +to those whose terrors have at last infuriated them. + +"By jinks!" he said with an unearthly smile, "I _will_ come on!" + +And he did, straight through the door and into the pretty living room +where Helene d'Enver rose in some slight consternation to receive this +astonishingly pale and rather desperate-faced young man. + +"Harry," said Ogilvy, calmly retaining Helene's hand, "you go and play +around the yard for a few moments. I have something to tell the Countess +d'Enver; and then we'll all have tea." + +"Mr. Ogilvy!" she said, amazed. + +But Annan had already vanished; and she looked into a pair of steady +eyes that suddenly made her quail. + +"Helene," he said, "I really do love you." + +[Illustration: "'I am scared blue. That's why I'm holding on to your +hand so desperately.'"] + +"Please--" + +"No! I love you! Are you going to let me?" + +"I--how on earth--what a perfectly senseless--" + +"I know it. I'm half senseless from fright. Yes, I am, Helene! Now! +here! at this very minute, I am scared blue. That's why I'm holding on +to your hand so desperately; I'm afraid to let go." + +She flushed brightly with annoyance, or something or other--but he held +fast to her hand and put one arm around her waist. + +"Sam!" she said, exasperated. That was the last perfectly coherent word +she uttered for several minutes. And, later, she was too busy to say +very much. + + * * * * * + +When Annan returned, Helene rose from the couch where she and Ogilvy had +been seated and came across the floor, blushing vividly. + +"I don't know what on earth you think of me, Mr. Annan, and I suppose I +will have to learn to endure the consequences of Mr. Ogilvy's +eccentricities--" + +"Oh, I'm terribly glad!" said Annan, grinning, and taking her hand in +both of his. + +They had tea on the veranda. Ogilvy was too excited and far too happy to +be dignified, and Helene was so much embarrassed by his behaviour and so +much in love that she made a distractingly pretty picture between the +two young men who, as Rita had said, would never, never be old enough to +grow up. + +"Do you know," said Helene, "that your friends the Nevilles have +recently been very nice to me? They have called, and have returned my +call, and have asked me to dinner. I suppose cordiality takes longer to +arrive at maturity in New York State than in any other part of the +Union. But when New York people make up their minds to be agreeable, +they certainly are delightful." + +"They're a bunch of snobs," said Ogilvy, calmly. + +"Oh!" said Helene with a distressed glance at Annan. + +"He's one, too," observed her affianced, coolly nodding toward Annan. +"We're a sickening lot, Helene--until some charming and genuine person +like you comes along to jounce us out of our smiling and imbecile +self-absorption." + +"I," said Annan gravely, "am probably the most frightful snob that ever +wandered, in a moment of temporary aberration, north of lower Fifth +Avenue." + +"I'm worse," observed Sam gloomily. "Help us, Helene, toward loftier +aspirations. Be our little uplift girl--" + +"You silly things!" she said indignantly. + +Later two riders passed the house, Cameron and Stephanie Swift, who +saluted Helene most cordially, and waved airy recognition to the two +men. + +"More snobs," commented Sam. + +"They are very delightful people!" retorted Helene hotly. + +"Most snobs are when they like you." + +"Sam! I won't have you express such sentiments!" + +He bent nearer to her: + +"Dearest, I never had any sentiments except for you. And only the +inconvenient propinquity of that man Annan prevents me from expressing +them." + +"Please, Sam--" + +"Don't be afraid; I won't. He wouldn't care;--but I won't.... Hello! Why +look who's here!" he exclaimed, rising. "Why it's the great god Kelly +and little Sunshine!"--as Neville and Valerie sprang out of Mrs. +Collis's touring car and came up the walk. + +Helene went forward to meet them, putting one arm around Valerie and +holding out the other to Neville. + +"When did you arrive, darling?" she exclaimed. "How do you do, Mr. +Neville? Valerie, child, I'm perfectly enchanted to see you. But where +in the world are you stopping?" + +"At Ashuelyn," said the girl, looking straight into Helene's eyes. A +faint flash of telepathy passed between them; then, slowly, Helene +turned and looked at Neville. + +"Will you wish us happiness?" he said, smiling. + +"Oh-h," whispered Helene under her breath--"I do--I do--God knows. I +wish you everything that makes for happiness in all the world!" she +stammered, for the wonder of it was still on her. + +Then Sam's voice sounded close at hand: + +"Why," he said admiringly, "it _looks_ like lovey and dovey!" + +"It is," said Valerie, laughing. + +"You!--_and_ Kelly!" + +"We two." + +Sam in his excitement became a little wild and incongruous: + + "'My wife's gone to the country! + Hooray! Hooray!'" + +he shouted, holding hands with Annan and swinging back and forth. + +"Sam!" exclaimed Helene, mortified. + +"Darling?--oh, gee! I forgot what is due to decorum! Please, _please_ +forgive me, Helene! And kindly inform these ladies and gentlemen that +you have consented to render me eternally and supremely happy; because +if I tried to express to them that delirious fact I'd end by standing on +my head in the grass--" + +"You dear!" whispered Valerie, holding tightly to Helene's hands. + +"Isn't it dreadful?" murmured Helene, turning her blue eyes on the man +who never would grow old enough to grow up. "I had no such intention, I +can assure you; and I don't even understand myself yet." + +"Don't you?" said Valerie, laughing tenderly;--"then you are like all +other women. What is the use of our ever trying to understand +ourselves?" + +Helene laughed, too: + +"No use, dear. Leave it to men who say _they_ understand us. It's a +mercy somebody does." + +"Isn't it," nodded Valerie; and they kissed each other, laughing. + +"My goodness, it's like the embrace of the two augurs!" said Ogilvy. +"They're laughing at _us_, Kelly!--at you, and me and Harry!--and at man +in general!--innocent man!--so charmingly and guilelessly symbolised by +us! Stop it, Helene! You make me shiver. You'll frighten Annan so that +he'll _never_ marry if you and Valerie laugh that way at each other." + +"I wonder," said Helene, quieting him with a fair hand laid lightly on +his sleeve, "whether you all would remain and dine with me this +evening--just as you are I mean;--and I won't dress--" + +"I insist _proh pudeur_," muttered Sam. "I can't countenance any such +saturnalia--" + +"Oh, Sam, do be quiet, dear--" She caught herself up with a blush, and +everybody smiled. + +"What do we care!" said Sam. "I'm tired of convention! If I want to +call you darling in public, b'jinks! I will! +Darling--darling--darling--there!--" + +"Sam!" + +"Dearest--" + +"_Sam!_" + +"Ma'am?" + +Helene looked at Valerie: + +"There's no use," she sighed, "is there?" + +"No use," sighed Valerie, smiling at the man she loved. + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Common Law, by Robert W. Chambers + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMMON LAW *** + +***** This file should be named 13813.txt or 13813.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/8/1/13813/ + +Produced by Gene Smethers and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading +Team. 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