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+*Project Gutenberg Etext of The Lion and the Unicorn, by Davis*
+#10 in our series by Richard Harding Davis
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+The Lion and the Unicorn
+
+by Richard Harding Davis
+
+January, 1999  [Etext #1620]
+
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+*Project Gutenberg Etext of The Lion and the Unicorn, by Davis*
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+
+THE LION AND THE UNICORN
+
+by RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
+
+
+
+
+IN MEMORY OF MANY HOT DAYS AND SOME HOT CORNERS
+THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
+LT.-COL. ARTHUR H. LEE, R.A.
+British Military Attache with the United States Army
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+THE LION AND THE UNICORN
+
+ON THE FEVER SHIP
+
+THE MAN WITH ONE TALENT
+
+THE VAGRANT
+
+THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
+
+
+
+
+THE LION AND THE UNICORN
+
+Prentiss had a long lease on the house, and because it stood in
+Jermyn Street the upper floors were, as a matter of course,
+turned into lodgings for single gentlemen; and because Prentiss
+was a Florist to the Queen, he placed a lion and unicorn over his
+flowershop, just in front of the middle window on the first
+floor.  By stretching a little, each of them could see into the
+window just beyond him, and could hear all that was said inside;
+and such things as they saw and heard during the reign of Captain
+Carrington, who moved in at the same time they did!  By day the
+table in the centre of the room was covered with maps, and the
+Captain sat with a box of pins, with different-colored flags
+wrapped around them, and amused himself by sticking them in the
+maps and measuring the spaces in between, swearing meanwhile to
+himself.  It was a selfish amusement, but it appeared to be the
+Captain's only intellectual pursuit, for at night, the maps were
+rolled up, and a green cloth was spread across the table, and
+there was much company and popping of soda-bottles, and little
+heaps of gold and silver were moved this way and that across the
+cloth.  The smoke drifted out of the open windows, and the
+laughter of the Captain's guests rang out loudly in the empty
+street, so that the policeman halted and raised his eyes
+reprovingly to the lighted windows, and cabmen drew up beneath
+them and lay in wait, dozing on their folded arms, for the
+Captain's guests to depart.  The Lion and the Unicorn were rather
+ashamed of the scandal of it, and they were glad when, one day,
+the Captain went away with his tin boxes and gun-cases piled high
+on a four-wheeler.
+
+Prentiss stood on the sidewalk and said:  "I wish you good luck,
+sir."  And the Captain said:  "I'm coming back a Major,
+Prentiss."  But he never came back.  And one day--the Lion
+remembered the day very well, for on that same day the
+newsboys ran up and down Jermyn Street shouting out the news of
+"a 'orrible disaster" to the British arms.  It was then that a
+young lady came to the door in a hansom, and Prentiss went out to
+meet her and led her upstairs.  They heard him unlock the
+Captain's door and say, "This is his room, miss," and after he
+had gone they watched her standing quite still by the centre
+table.  She stood there for a very long time looking slowly about
+her, and then she took a photograph of the Captain from the frame
+on the mantel and slipped it into her pocket, and when she went
+out again her veil was down, and she was crying.  She must have
+given Prentiss as much as a sovereign, for he called her "Your
+ladyship," which he never did under a sovereign.
+
+And she drove off, and they never saw her again either, nor could
+they hear the address she gave the cabman.  But it was somewhere
+up St. John's Wood way.
+
+After that the rooms were empty for some months, and the Lion and
+the Unicorn were forced to amuse themselves with the beautiful
+ladies and smart-looking men who came to Prentiss to buy
+flowers and "buttonholes," and the little round baskets of
+strawberries, and even the peaches at three shillings each, which
+looked so tempting as they lay in the window, wrapped up in
+cotton-wool, like jewels of great price.
+
+Then Philip Carroll, the American gentleman, came, and they heard
+Prentiss telling him that those rooms had always let for five
+guineas a week, which they knew was not true; but they also knew
+that in the economy of nations there must always be a higher
+price for the rich American, or else why was he given that
+strange accent, except to betray him into the hands of the London
+shopkeeper, and the London cabby?
+
+The American walked to the window toward the west, which was the
+window nearest the Lion, and looked out into the graveyard of St.
+James's Church, that stretched between their street and
+Piccadilly.
+
+"You're lucky in having a bit of green to look out on," he said
+to Prentiss.  "I'll take these rooms--at five guineas.  That's
+more than they're worth, you know, but as I know it, too, your
+conscience needn't trouble you."
+
+Then his eyes fell on the Lion, and he nodded to him gravely. 
+"How do you do?" he said.  "I'm coming to live with you for a
+little time.  I have read about you and your friends over there. 
+It is a hazard of new fortunes with me, your Majesty, so be kind
+to me, and if I win, I will put a new coat of paint on your
+shield and gild you all over again."
+
+Prentiss smiled obsequiously at the American's pleasantry, but
+the new lodger only stared at him.
+
+"He seemed a social gentleman," said the Unicorn, that night,
+when the Lion and he were talking it over.  "Now the Captain, the
+whole time he was here, never gave us so much as a look.  This
+one says he has read of us."
+
+"And why not?" growled the Lion.  "I hope Prentiss heard what he
+said of our needing a new layer of gilt.  It's disgraceful.  You
+can see that Lion over Scarlett's, the butcher, as far as Regent
+Street, and Scarlett is only one of Salisbury's creations.  He
+received his Letters-Patent only two years back.  We date from
+Palmerston."
+
+The lodger came up the street just at that moment, and stopped
+and looked up at the Lion and the Unicorn from the sidewalk,
+before he opened the door with his night-key.  They heard him
+enter the room and feel on the mantel for his pipe, and a moment
+later he appeared at the Lion's window and leaned on the sill,
+looking down into the street below and blowing whiffs of smoke up
+into the warm night-air.
+
+It was a night in June, and the pavements were dry under foot and
+the streets were filled with well-dressed people, going home from
+the play, and with groups of men in black and white, making their
+way to supper at the clubs.  Hansoms of inky-black, with shining
+lamps inside and out, dashed noiselessly past on mysterious
+errands, chasing close on each other's heels on a mad race, each
+to its separate goal.  From the cross streets rose the noises of
+early night, the rumble of the 'buses, the creaking of their
+brakes, as they unlocked, the cries of the "extras," and the
+merging of thousands of human voices in a dull murmur.  The great
+world of London was closing its shutters for the night, and
+putting out the lights; and the new lodger from across the sea
+listened to it with his heart beating quickly, and laughed to
+stifle the touch of fear and homesickness that rose in him.
+
+"I have seen a great play to-night," he said to the Lion, "nobly
+played by great players.  What will they care for my poor wares? 
+I see that I have been over-bold.  But we cannot go back now--not
+yet."
+
+He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and nodded "good-night" to
+the great world beyond his window.  "What fortunes lie with ye,
+ye lights of London town?" he quoted, smiling.  And they heard
+him close the door of his bedroom, and lock it for the night.
+
+The next morning he bought many geraniums from Prentiss and
+placed them along the broad cornice that stretched across the
+front of the house over the shop window.  The flowers made a band
+of scarlet on either side of the Lion as brilliant as a Tommy's
+jacket.
+
+"I am trying to propitiate the British Lion by placing flowers
+before his altar," the American said that morning to a
+visitor.
+
+"The British public you mean," said the visitor; "they are each
+likely to tear you to pieces."
+
+"Yes, I have heard that the pit on the first night of a bad play
+is something awful," hazarded the American.
+
+"Wait and see," said the visitor.
+
+"Thank you," said the American, meekly.
+
+Every one who came to the first floor front talked about a play. 
+It seemed to be something of great moment to the American.  It
+was only a bundle of leaves printed in red and black inks and
+bound in brown paper covers.  There were two of them, and the
+American called them by different names: one was his comedy and
+one was his tragedy.
+
+"They are both likely to be tragedies," the Lion heard one of the
+visitors say to another, as they drove away together.  "Our young
+friend takes it too seriously."
+
+The American spent most of his time by his desk at the window
+writing on little blue pads and tearing up what he wrote, or in
+reading over one of the plays to himself in a loud voice.  In
+time the number of his visitors increased, and to some of these
+he would read his play; and after they had left him he was
+either depressed and silent or excited and jubilant.  The Lion
+could always tell when he was happy because then he would go to
+the side table and pour himself out a drink and say, "Here's to
+me," but when he was depressed he would stand holding the glass
+in his hand, and finally pour the liquor back into the bottle
+again and say, "What's the use of that?"
+
+After he had been in London a month he wrote less and was more
+frequently abroad, sallying forth in beautiful raiment, and
+coming home by daylight.
+
+And he gave suppers too, but they were less noisy than the
+Captain's had been, and the women who came to them were much more
+beautiful, and their voices when they spoke were sweet and low. 
+Sometimes one of the women sang, and the men sat in silence while
+the people in the street below stopped to listen, and would say,
+"Why, that is So-and-So singing," and the Lion and the Unicorn
+wondered how they could know who it was when they could not see
+her.
+
+The lodger's visitors came to see him at all hours.  They
+seemed to regard his rooms as a club, where they could always
+come for a bite to eat or to write notes; and others treated it
+like a lawyer's office and asked advice on all manner of strange
+subjects.  Sometimes the visitor wanted to know whether the
+American thought she ought to take Lœ10 a week and go on tour, or
+stay in town and try to live on Lœ8; or whether she should paint
+landscapes that would not sell, or racehorses that would; or
+whether Reggie really loved her and whether she really loved
+Reggie; or whether the new part in the piece at the Court was
+better than the old part at Terry's, and wasn't she getting too
+old to play "ingenues" anyway.
+
+The lodger seemed to be a general adviser, and smoked and
+listened with grave consideration, and the Unicorn thought his
+judgment was most sympathetic and sensible.
+
+Of all the beautiful ladies who came to call on the lodger the
+one the Unicorn liked the best was the one who wanted to know
+whether she loved Reggie and whether Reggie loved her.  She
+discussed this so interestingly while she consumed tea and
+thin slices of bread that the Unicorn almost lost his balance in
+leaning forward to listen.  Her name was Marion Cavendish and it
+was written over many photographs which stood in silver frames in
+the lodger's rooms.  She used to make the tea herself, while the
+lodger sat and smoked; and she had a fascinating way of doubling
+the thin slices of bread into long strips and nibbling at them
+like a mouse at a piece of cheese.  She had wonderful little
+teeth and Cupid's-bow lips, and she had a fashion of lifting her
+veil only high enough for one to see the two Cupid-bow lips. 
+When she did that the American used to laugh, at nothing
+apparently, and say, "Oh, I guess Reggie loves you well enough."
+    
+"But do I love Reggie?" she would ask sadly, with her tea-cup
+held poised in air.
+    
+" I am sure I hope not," the lodger would reply, and she
+would put down the veil quickly, as one would drop a curtain over
+a beautiful picture, and rise with great dignity and say, "if you
+talk like that I shall not come again."
+    
+She was sure that if she could only get some work to do her
+head would be filledwith more important matters than whether
+Reggie loved her or not.
+
+"But the managers seem inclined to cut their cavendish very fine
+just at present," she said.  "If I don't get a part soon," she
+announced, "I shall ask Mitchell to put me down on the list for
+recitations at evening parties."
+
+"That seems a desperate revenge," said the American; "and
+besides, I don't want you to get a part, because some one might
+be idiotic enough to take my comedy, and if he should, you must
+play Nancy."
+
+"I would not ask for any salary if I could play Nancy," Miss
+Cavendish answered.
+
+They spoke of a great many things, but their talk always ended by
+her saying that there must be some one with sufficient sense to
+see that his play was a great play, and by his saying that none
+but she must play Nancy.
+
+The Lion preferred the tall girl with masses and folds of brown
+hair, who came from America to paint miniatures of the British
+aristocracy.  Her name was Helen Cabot, and he liked her because
+she was so brave and fearless, and so determined to be
+independent of every one, even of the lodger--especially of
+the lodger, who it appeared had known her very well at home.  The
+lodger, they gathered, did not wish her to be independent of him
+and the two Americans had many arguments and disputes about it,
+but she always said, "It does no good, Philip; it only hurts us
+both when you talk so.  I care for nothing, and for no one but my
+art, and, poor as it is, it means everything to me, and you do
+not, and, of course, the man I am to marry, must."  Then Carroll
+would talk, walking up and down, and looking very fierce and
+determined, and telling her how he loved her in such a way that
+it made her look even more proud and beautiful.  And she would
+say more gently, "It is very fine to think that any one can care
+for like that, and very helpful.  But unless I cared in the same
+way it would be wicked of me to marry you, and besides--"  She
+would add very quickly to prevent his speaking again--"  I don't
+want to marry you or anybody, and I never shall.  I want to be
+free and to succeed in my work, just as you want to succeed in
+your work.  So please never speak of this again."  When she
+went away the lodger used to sit smoking in the big arm-chair and
+beat the arms with his hands, and he would pace up and down the
+room while his work would lie untouched and his engagements pass
+forgotten.
+
+Summer came and London was deserted, dull, and dusty, but the
+lodger stayed on in Jermyn Street.  Helen Cabot had departed on a
+round of visits to country houses in Scotland, where, as she
+wrote him, she was painting miniatures of her hosts and studying
+the game of golf.  Miss Cavendish divided her days between the
+river and one of the West End theatres.  She was playing a small
+part in a farce-comedy.
+
+One day she came up from Cookham earlier than usual, looking very
+beautiful in a white boating frock and a straw hat with a Leander
+ribbon.  Her hands and arms were hard with dragging a punting
+pole and she was sunburnt and happy, and hungry for tea.
+
+"Why don't you come down to Cookham and get out of this heat?"
+Miss Cavendish asked.  "You need it; you look ill."
+
+"I'd like to, but I can't," said Carroll.  "The fact is, I paid
+in advance for these rooms, and if I lived anywhere else I'd be
+losing five guineas a week on them."
+
+Miss Cavendish regarded him severely.  She had never quite
+mastered his American humor.
+
+"But five guineas--why that's nothing to you," she said. 
+Something in the lodger's face made her pause.  "You don't
+mean----"
+
+"Yes, I do," said the lodger, smiling.  "You see, I started in to
+lay siege to London without sufficient ammunition.  London is a
+large town, and it didn't fall as quickly as I thought it would. 
+So I am economizing.  Mr. Lockhart's Coffee Rooms and I are no
+longer strangers."
+
+Miss Cavendish put down her cup of tea untasted and leaned toward
+him
+
+"Are you in earnest?" she asked.  "For how long?"
+
+"Oh, for the last month," replied the lodger; "they are not at
+all bad--clean and wholesome and all that."
+
+"But the suppers you gave us, and this," she cried, suddenly,
+waving her hands over the pretty tea-things, "and the cake
+and muffins?"
+
+"My friends, at least," said Carroll, "need not go to
+Lockhart's."
+
+"And the Savoy?" asked Miss Cavendish, mournfully shaking her
+head.
+
+"A dream of the past," said Carroll, waving his pipe through the
+smoke.  "Gatti's?  Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity,
+the Chancellor's, where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef
+of Old England, from Chicago, and potatoes for ninepence--a pot
+of bitter twopence-halfpenny, and a penny for the waiter.  It's
+most amusing on the whole.  I am learning a little about London,
+and some things about myself.  They are both most interesting
+subjects."
+
+"Well, I don't like it," Miss Cavendish declared helplessly. 
+"When I think of those suppers and the flowers, I feel--I feel
+like a robber."
+
+"Don't," begged Carroll.  "I am really the most happy of men--
+that is, as the chap says in the play, I would be if I wasn't so
+damned miserable.  But I owe no man a penny and I have assets--I
+have Lœ80 to last me through the winter and two marvellous
+plays; and I love, next to yourself, the most wonderful woman God
+ever made.  That's enough."
+
+"But I thought you made such a lot of money by writing?" asked
+Miss Cavendish.
+
+"I do--that is, I could," answered Carroll, "if I wrote the
+things that sell; but I keep on writing plays that won't."
+
+"And such plays!" exclaimed Marion, warmly; "and to think that
+they are going begging."  She continued indignantly, "I can't
+imagine what the managers do want."
+
+"I know what they don't want," said the American.  Miss Cavendish
+drummed impatiently on the tea-tray.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't be so abject about it," she said.  "If I
+were a man I'd make them take those plays."
+
+"How?" asked the American; "with a gun?"
+
+"Well, I'd keep at it until they read them," declared Marion. 
+"I'd sit on their front steps all night and I'd follow them in
+cabs, and I'd lie in wait for them at the stage-door.  I'd just
+make them take them."
+
+Carroll sighed and stared at the ceiling.  "I guess I'll give up
+and go home," he said.
+
+"Oh, yes, do, run away before you are beaten," said Miss
+Cavendish, scornfully.  "Why, you can't go now.  Everybody will
+be back in town soon, and there are a lot of new plays coming on,
+and some of them are sure to be failures, and that's our chance. 
+You rush in with your piece and somebody may take it sooner than
+close the theatre."
+
+"I'm thinking of closing the theatre myself," said Carroll. 
+"What's the use of my hanging on here?" he exclaimed.  "It
+distresses Helen to know I am in London, feeling about her as I
+do--and the Lord only knows how it distresses me.  And, maybe, if
+I went away," he said, consciously, "she might miss me.  She
+might see the difference."
+
+Miss Cavendish held herself erect and pressed her lips together
+with a severe smile.  "If Helen Cabot doesn't see the difference
+between you and the other men she knows now," she said, "I doubt
+if she ever will.  Besides--" she continued, and then hesitated. 
+"Well, go on," urged Carroll.
+
+"Well, I was only going to say," she explained, "that leaving the
+girl alone never did the man any good unless he left her alone
+willingly.  If she's sure he still cares, it's just the same to
+her where he is.  He might as well stay on in London as go to
+South Africa.  It won't help him any.  The difference comes when
+she finds he has stopped caring.  Why, look at Reggie.  He tried
+that.  He went away for ever so long, but he kept writing me from
+wherever he went, so that he was perfectly miserable--and I went
+on enjoying myself.  Then when he came back, he tried going about
+with his old friends again.  He used to come to the theatre with
+them--oh, with such nice girls--but he always stood in the back
+of the box and yawned and scowled--so I knew.  And, anyway, he'd
+always spoil it all by leaving them and waiting at the stage
+entrance for me.  But one day he got tired of the way I treated
+him and went off on a bicycle tour with Lady Hacksher's girls and
+some men from his regiment, and he was gone three weeks and never
+sent me even a line; and I got so scared; I couldn't sleep, and
+I stood it for three days more, and then I wired him to come
+back or I'd jump off London Bridge; and he came back that very
+night from Edinburgh on the express, and I was so glad to see him
+that I got confused, and in the general excitement I promised to
+marry him, so that's how it was with us."
+
+"Yes," said the American, without enthusiasm; "but then I still
+care, and Helen knows I care."
+
+"Doesn't she ever fancy that you might care for some one else? 
+You have a lot of friends, you know."
+
+"Yes, but she knows they are just that--friends," said the
+American.
+
+Miss Cavendish stood up to go, and arranged her veil before the
+mirror above the fireplace.
+
+"I come here very often to tea," she said.
+
+"It's very kind of you," said Carroll.  He was at the open
+window, looking down into the street for a cab.
+
+"Well, no one knows I am engaged to Reggie," continued Miss
+Cavendish, "except you and Reggie, and he isn't so sure.  SHE
+doesn't know it."
+
+"Well?" said Carroll.
+
+Miss Cavendish smiled a mischievous kindly smile at him from the
+mirror.
+
+"Well?" she repeated, mockingly.  Carroll stared at her and
+laughed.  After a pause he said:  "It's like a plot in a comedy. 
+But I'm afraid I'm too serious for play-acting."
+
+"Yes, it is serious," said Miss Cavendish.  She seated herself
+again and regarded the American thoughtfully.  "You are too good
+a man to be treated the way that girl is treating you, and no one
+knows it better than she does.  She'll change in time, but just
+now she thinks she wants to be independent.  She's in love with
+this picture-painting idea, and with the people she meets.  It's
+all new to her--the fuss they make over her and the titles, and
+the way she is asked about.  We know she can't paint.  We know
+they only give her commissions because she's so young and pretty,
+and American.  She amuses them, that's all.  Well, that cannot
+last; she'll find it out.  She's too clever a girl, and she is
+too fine a girl to be content with that long.  Then--then she'll
+come back to you.  She feels now that she has both you and the
+others, and she's making you wait: so wait and be cheerful. 
+She's worth waiting for; she's young, that's all.  She'll see the
+difference in time.  But, in the meanwhile, it would hurry
+matters a bit if she thought she had to choose between the new
+friends and you."
+
+"She could still keep her friends, and marry me," said Carroll;
+"I have told her that a hundred times.  She could still paint
+miniatures and marry me.  But she won't marry me."
+
+"She won't marry you because she knows she can whenever she wants
+to;" cried Marion.  "Can't you see that?  But if she thought you
+were going to marry some one else now?"
+
+"She would be the first to congratulate me," said Carroll.  He
+rose and walked to the fireplace, where he leaned with his arm on
+the mantel.  There was a photograph of Helen Cabot near his hand,
+and he turned this toward him and stood for some time staring at
+it.  "My dear Marion," he said at last, "I've known Helen ever
+since she was as young as that.  Every year I've loved her more,
+and found new things in her to care for; now I love her more
+than any other man ever loved any other woman."
+
+Miss Cavendish shook her head sympathetically.
+
+"Yes, I know," she said; "that's the way Reggie loves me, too."
+
+Carroll went on as though he had not heard her.
+
+"There's a bench in St. James's Park," he said, "where we used to
+sit when she first came here, when she didn't know so many
+people.  We used to go there in the morning and throw penny buns
+to the ducks.  That's been my amusement this summer since you've
+all been away--sitting on that bench, feeding penny buns to the
+silly ducks--especially the black one, the one she used to like
+best.  And I make pilgrimages to all the other places we ever
+visited together, and try to pretend she is with me.  And I
+support the crossing sweeper at Lansdowne Passage because she
+once said she felt sorry for him.  I do all the other absurd
+things that a man in love tortures himself by doing.  But to what
+end?  She knows how I care, and yet she won't see why we
+can't go on being friends as we once were.  What's the use of it
+all? "
+
+"She is young, I tell you," repeated Miss Cavendish, "and she's
+too sure of you.  You've told her you care; now try making her
+think you don't care."
+
+Carroll shook his head impatiently.
+
+"I will not stoop to such tricks and pretence, Marion," he cried
+impatiently.  "All I have is my love for her; if I have to cheat
+and to trap her into caring, the whole thing would be degraded."
+
+Miss Cavendish shrugged her shoulders and walked to the door. 
+"Such amateurs!" she exclaimed, and banged the door after her.
+
+Carroll never quite knew how he had come to make a confidante of
+Miss Cavendish.  Helen and he had met her when they first arrived
+in London, and as she had acted for a season in the United
+States, she adopted the two Americans--and told Helen where to go
+for boots and hats, and advised Carroll about placing his plays. 
+Helen soon made other friends, and deserted the artists, with
+whom her work had first thrown her.  She seemed to prefer the
+society of the people who bought her paintings, and who
+admired and made much of the painter.  As she was very beautiful
+and at an age when she enjoyed everything in life keenly and
+eagerly, to give her pleasure was in itself a distinct
+pleasure; and the worldly tired people she met were considering
+their own entertainment quite as much as hers when they asked her
+to their dinners and dances, or to spend a week with them in the
+country.  In her way, she was as independent as was Carroll in
+his, and as she was not in love, as he was, her life was not
+narrowed down to but one ideal.  But she was not so young as to
+consider herself infallible, and she had one excellent friend on
+whom she was dependent for advice and to whose directions she
+submitted implicitly.  This was Lady Gower, the only person to
+whom Helen had spoken of Carroll and of his great feeling for
+her.  Lady Gower, immediately after her marriage, had been a
+conspicuous and brilliant figure in that set in London which
+works eighteen hours a day to keep itself amused, but after the
+death of her husband she had disappeared into the country as
+completely as though she had entered a convent, and after
+several years had then re-entered the world as a professional
+philanthropist.  Her name was now associated entirely with
+Women's Leagues, with committees that presented petitions to
+Parliament, and with public meetings, at which she spoke with
+marvellous ease and effect.  Her old friends said she had taken
+up this new pose as an outlet for her nervous energies, and as an
+effort to forget the man who alone had made life serious to her. 
+Others knew her as an earnest woman, acting honestly for what she
+thought was right.  Her success, all admitted, was due to her
+knowledge of the world and to her sense of humor, which taught
+her with whom to use her wealth and position, and when to demand
+what she wanted solely on the ground that the cause was just.
+
+She had taken more than a fancy for Helen, and the position of
+the beautiful, motherless girl had appealed to her as one filled
+with dangers.  When she grew to know Helen better, she recognized
+that these fears were quite unnecessary, and as she saw more of
+her she learned to care for her deeply.  Helen had told her much
+of Carroll and of his double purpose in coming to London; of
+his brilliant work and his lack of success in having it
+recognized; and of his great and loyal devotion to her, and of
+his lack of success, not in having that recognized, but in her
+own inability to return it.  Helen was proud that she had been
+able to make Carroll care for her as he did, and that there was
+anything about her which could inspire a man whom she admired so
+much, to believe in her so absolutely and for so long a time. 
+But what convinced her that the outcome for which he hoped was
+impossible, was the very fact that she could admire him, and see
+how fine and unselfish his love for her was, and yet remain
+untouched by it.
+
+She had been telling Lady Gower one day of the care he had taken
+of her ever since she was fourteen years of age, and had quoted
+some of the friendly and loverlike acts he had performed in her
+service, until one day they had both found out that his attitude
+of the elder brother was no longer possible, and that he loved
+her in the old and only way.  Lady Gower looked at her rather
+doubtfully and smiled.
+
+"I wish you would bring him to see me, Helen" she said; "I think
+I should like your friend very much.  From what you tell me of
+him I doubt if you will find many such men waiting for you in
+this country.  Our men marry for reasons of property, or they
+love blindly, and are exacting and selfish before and after they
+are married.  I know, because so many women came to me when my
+husband was alive to ask how it was that I continued so happy in
+my married life."
+
+"But I don't want to marry any one," Helen remonstrated gently. 
+"American girls are not always thinking only of getting married."
+
+"What I meant was this," said Lady Gower, "that, in my
+experience, I have heard of but few men who care in the way this
+young man seems to care for you.  You say you do not love him;
+but if he had wanted to gain my interest, he could not have
+pleaded his cause better than you have done.  He seems to see
+your faults and yet love you still, in spite of them--or on
+account of them.  And I like the things he does for you.  I like,
+for instance, his sending you the book of the moment every
+week for two years.  That shows a most unswerving spirit of
+devotion.  And the story of the broken bridge in the woods is a
+wonderful story.  If I were a young girl, I could love a man for
+that alone.  It was a beautiful thing to do."
+
+Helen sat with her chin on her hands, deeply considering this new
+point of view.
+
+"I thought it very foolish of him," she confessed questioningly,
+"to take such a risk for such a little thing."
+
+Lady Gower smiled down at her from the height of her many years.
+
+"Wait," she said dryly, "you are very young now--and very rich;
+every one is crowding to give you pleasure, to show his
+admiration.  You are a very fortunate girl.  But later, these
+things which some man has done because he loved you, and which
+you call foolish, will grow large in your life, and shine out
+strongly, and when you are discouraged and alone, you will take
+them out, and the memory of them will make you proud and happy. 
+They are the honors which women wear in secret."
+
+Helen came back to town in September, and for the first few days
+was so occupied in refurnishing her studio and in visiting the
+shops that she neglected to send Carroll word of her return. 
+When she found that a whole week had passed without her having
+made any effort to see him, and appreciated how the fact would
+hurt her friend, she was filled with remorse, and drove at once
+in great haste to Jermyn Street, to announce her return in
+person.  On the way she decided that she would soften the blow of
+her week of neglect by asking him to take her out to luncheon. 
+This privilege she had once or twice accorded him, and she felt
+that the pleasure these excursions gave Carroll were worth the
+consternation they caused to Lady Gower.
+
+The servant was uncertain whether Mr. Carroll was at home or not,
+but Helen was too intent upon making restitution to wait for the
+fact to be determined, and, running up the stairs, knocked
+sharply at the door of his study.
+
+A voice bade her come in, and she entered, radiant and smiling
+her welcome.  But Carroll was not there to receive it, and
+instead, Marion Cavendish looked up at her from his desk where
+she was busily writing.  Helen paused with a surprised laugh, but
+Marion sprang up and hailed her gladly.  They met half way across
+the room and kissed each other with the most friendly feeling.
+
+Philip was out, Marion said, and she had just stepped in for a
+moment to write him a note.  If Helen would excuse her, she would
+finish it, as she was late for rehearsal.
+
+But she asked over her shoulder, with great interest, if Helen
+had passed a pleasant summer.  She thought she had never seen her
+looking so well.  Helen thought Miss Cavendish herself was
+looking very well also, but Marion said no; that she was too
+sunburnt, she would not be able to wear a dinner-dress for a
+month.  There was a pause while Marion's quill scratched
+violently across Carroll's note-paper.  Helen felt that in some
+way she was being treated as an intruder; or worse, as a guest. 
+She did not sit down, it seemed impossible to do so, but she
+moved uncertainly about the room.  She noted that there were
+many changes, it seemed more bare and empty; her picture was
+still on the writing-desk, but there were at least six new
+photographs of Marion.  Marion herself had brought them to the
+room that morning, and had carefully arranged them in conspicuous
+places.  But Helen could not know that.  She thought there was an
+unnecessary amount of writing scribbled over the face of each.
+
+Marion addressed her letter and wrote "Immediate" across the
+envelope, and placed it before the clock on the mantelshelf. 
+"You will find Philip looking very badly," she said, as she
+pulled on her gloves.  "He has been in town all summer, working
+very hard--he has had no holiday at all.  I don't think he's
+well.  I have been a great deal worried about him," she added. 
+Her face was bent over the buttons of her glove, and when she
+raised her blue eyes to Helen they were filled with serious
+concern.
+
+"Really," Helen stammered, "I--I didn't know--in his letters he
+seemed very cheerful."
+
+Marion shook her head and turned and stood looking
+thoughtfully out of the window.  "He's in a very hard place," she
+began abruptly, and then stopped as though she had thought better
+of what she intended to say.  Helen tried to ask her to go on,
+but could not bring herself to do so.  She wanted to get away.
+
+"I tell him he ought to leave London," Marion began again; "he
+needs a change and a rest."
+
+"I should think he might," Helen agreed, "after three months of
+this heat.  He wrote me he intended going to Herne Bay or over to
+Ostend."
+
+"Yes, he had meant to go," Marion answered.  She spoke with the
+air of one who possessed the most intimate knowledge of Carroll's
+movements and plans, and change of plans.  "But he couldn't," she
+added.  "He couldn't afford it.  Helen," she said, turning to the
+other girl, dramatically, "do you know--I believe that Philip is
+very poor."
+
+Miss Cabot exclaimed incredulously, "Poor!"  She laughed.  "Why,
+what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that he has no money," Marion answered, sharply.  "These
+rooms represent nothing.  He only keeps them on because he paid
+for them in advance.  He's been living on three shillings a day. 
+That's poor for him.  He takes his meals at cabmen's shelters and
+at Lockhart's, and he's been doing so for a month."
+
+Helen recalled with a guilty thrill the receipt of certain boxes
+of La France roses--cut long, in the American fashion--which had
+arrived within the last month at various country houses.  She
+felt indignant at herself, and miserable.  Her indignation was
+largely due to the recollection that she had given these flowers
+to her hostess to decorate the dinner-table.
+
+She hated to ask this girl of things which she should have known
+better than any one else.  But she forced herself to do it.  She
+felt she must know certainly and at once.
+
+"How do you know this?" she asked.  "Are you sure there is no
+mistake?"
+
+"He told me himself," said Marion, "when he talked of letting the
+plays go and returning to America.  He said he must go back;
+that his money was gone."
+
+"He is gone to America!" Helen said, blankly.
+
+"No, he wanted to go, but I wouldn't let him," Marion went on. 
+"I told him that some one might take his play any day.  And this
+third one he has written, the one he finished this summer in
+town, is the best of all, I think.  It's a love-story.  It's
+quite beautiful."  She turned and arranged her veil at the glass,
+and as she did so, her eyes fell on the photographs of herself
+scattered over the mantelpiece, and she smiled slightly.  But
+Helen did not see her--she was sitting down now, pulling at the
+books on the table.  She was confused and disturbed by emotions
+which were quite strange to her, and when Marion bade her good-by
+she hardly noticed her departure.  What impressed her most of all
+in what Marion had told her, was, she was surprised to find, that
+Philip was going away.  That she herself had frequently urged him
+to do so, for his own peace of mind, seemed now of no
+consequence.  Now that he seriously contemplated it, she
+recognized that his absence meant to her a change in
+everything.  She felt for the first time the peculiar place he
+held in her life.  Even if she had seen him but seldom, the fact
+that he was within call had been more of a comfort and a
+necessity to her than she understood.
+
+That he was poor, concerned her chiefly because she knew that,
+although this condition could only be but temporary, it would
+distress him not to have his friends around him, and to entertain
+them as he had been used to do.  She wondered eagerly if she
+might offer to help him, but a second thought assured her that,
+for a man, that sort of help from a woman was impossible.
+
+She resented the fact that Marion was deep in his confidence;
+that it was Marion who had told her of his changed condition and
+of his plans.  It annoyed her so acutely that she could not
+remain in the room where she had seen her so complacently in
+possession.  And after leaving a brief note for Philip, she went
+away.  She stopped a hansom at the door, and told the man to
+drive along the Embankment--she wanted to be quite alone, and she
+felt she could see no one until she had thought it all out,
+and had analyzed the new feelings.
+
+So for several hours she drove slowly up and down, sunk far back
+in the cushions of the cab, and staring with unseeing eyes at the
+white enamelled tariff and the black dash-board.
+
+She assured herself that she was not jealous of Marion, because,
+in order to be jealous, she first would have to care for Philip
+in the very way she could not bring herself to do.
+
+She decided that his interest in Marion hurt her, because it
+showed that Philip was not capable of remaining true to the one
+ideal of his life.  She was sure that this explained her
+feelings--she was disappointed that he had not kept up to his own
+standard; that he was weak enough to turn aside from it for the
+first pretty pair of eyes.  But she was too honest and too just
+to accept that diagnosis of her feelings as final--she knew there
+had been many pairs of eyes in America and in London, and that
+though Philip had seen them, he had not answered them when they
+spoke.  No, she confessed frankly, she was hurt with herself
+for neglecting her old friend so selfishly and for so long a
+time; his love gave him claims on her consideration, at least,
+and she had forgotten that and him, and had run after strange
+gods and allowed others to come in and take her place, and to
+give him the sympathy and help which she should have been the
+first to offer, and which would have counted more when coming
+from her than from any one else.  She determined to make amends
+at once for her thoughtlessness and selfishness, and her brain
+was pleasantly occupied with plans and acts of kindness.  It was
+a new entertainment, and she found she delighted in it.  She
+directed the cabman to go to Solomons's, and from there sent
+Philip a bunch of flowers and a line saying that on the following
+day she was coming to take tea with him.  She had a guilty
+feeling that he might consider her friendly advances more
+seriously than she meant them, but it was her pleasure to be
+reckless: her feelings were running riotously, and the sensation
+was so new that she refused to be circumspect or to consider
+consequences.  Who could tell, she asked herself with a
+quick, frightened gasp, but that, after all, it might be that she
+was learning to care?  From Solomons's she bade the man drive to
+the shop in Cranbourne Street where she was accustomed to
+purchase the materials she used in painting, and Fate, which uses
+strange agents to work out its ends, so directed it that the
+cabman stopped a few doors below this shop, and opposite one
+where jewelry and other personal effects were bought and sold. 
+At any other time, or had she been in any other mood, what
+followed might not have occurred, but Fate, in the person of the
+cabman, arranged it so that the hour and the opportunity came
+together.
+
+There were some old mezzotints in the window of the loan shop, a
+string of coins and medals, a row of new French posters; and far
+down to the front a tray filled with gold and silver cigarette-
+cases and watches and rings.  It occurred to Helen, who was still
+bent on making restitution for her neglect, that a cigarette-case
+would be more appropriate for a man than flowers, and more
+lasting.  And she scanned the contents of the window with the
+eye of one who now saw in everything only something which might
+give Philip pleasure.  The two objects of value in the tray upon
+which her eyes first fell were the gold seal-ring with which
+Philip had sealed his letters to her, and, lying next to it, his
+gold watch!  There was something almost human in the way the ring
+and watch spoke to her from the past--in the way they appealed to
+her to rescue them from the surroundings to which they had been
+abandoned.  She did not know what she meant to do with them nor
+how she could return them to Philip; but there was no question of
+doubt in her manner as she swept with a rush into the shop. 
+There was no attempt, either, at bargaining in the way in which
+she pointed out to the young woman behind the counter the
+particular ring and watch she wanted.  They had not been left as
+collateral, the young woman said; they had been sold outright.
+
+"Then any one can buy them?" Helen asked eagerly.  "They are for
+sale to the public--to any one?"
+
+
+The young woman made note of the customer's eagerness, but
+with an unmoved countenance.
+
+"Yes, miss, they are for sale.  The ring is four pounds and the
+watch twenty-five."
+
+"Twenty-nine pounds!" Helen gasped.
+
+That was more money than she had in the world, but the fact did
+not distress her, for she had a true artistic disregard for ready
+money, and the absence of it had never disturbed her.  But now it
+assumed a sudden and alarming value.  She had ten pounds in her
+purse and ten pounds at her studio--these were just enough to pay
+for a quarter's rent and the rates, and there was a hat and cloak
+in Bond Street which she certainly must have.  Her only assets
+consisted of the possibility that some one might soon order a
+miniature, and to her mind that was sufficient.  Some one always
+had ordered a miniature, and there was no reasonable doubt but
+that some one would do it again.  For a moment she questioned if
+it would not be sufficient if she bought the ring and allowed the
+watch to remain.  But she recognized that the ring meant more to
+her than the watch, while the latter, as an old heirloom which
+had been passed down to him from a great-grandfather, meant
+more to Philip.  It was for Philip she was doing this, she
+reminded herself.  She stood holding his possessions, one in each
+hand, and looking at the young woman blankly.  She had no doubt
+in her mind that at least part of the money he had received for
+them had paid for the flowers he had sent to her in Scotland. 
+The certainty of this left her no choice.  She laid the ring and
+watch down and pulled the only ring she possessed from her own
+finger.  It was a gift from Lady Gower.  She had no doubt that it
+was of great value.
+
+"Can you lend me some money on that?" she asked.  It was the
+first time she had conducted a business transaction of this
+nature, and she felt as though she were engaging in a burglary.
+
+"We don't lend money, miss," the girl said, "we buy outright.  I
+can give you twenty-eight shillings for this," she added.
+
+"Twenty-eight shillings," Helen gasped; "why, it is worth--oh,
+ever so much more than that!"
+
+"That is all it is worth to us," the girl answered.  She regarded
+the ring indifferently and laid it away from her on the counter. 
+The action was final.
+
+Helen's hands rose slowly to her breast, where a pretty watch
+dangled from a bowknot of crushed diamonds.  It was her only
+possession, and she was very fond of it.  It also was the gift of
+one of the several great ladies who had adopted her since her
+residence in London.  Helen had painted a miniature of this
+particular great lady which had looked so beautiful that the
+pleasure which the original of the portrait derived from the
+thought that she still really looked as she did in the miniature
+was worth more to her than many diamonds.
+
+But it was different with Helen, and no one could count what it
+cost her to tear away her one proud possession.
+
+"What will you give me for this?" she asked defiantly.
+
+The girl's eyes showed greater interest.  "I can give you twenty
+pounds for that," she said.
+
+"Take it, please," Helen begged, as though she feared if she
+kept it a moment longer she might not be able to make the
+sacrifice.
+
+"That will be enough now," she went on, taking out her ten-pound
+note.  She put Lady Gower's ring back upon her finger and picked
+up Philip's ring and watch with the pleasure of one who has come
+into a great fortune.  She turned back at the door.
+
+"Oh," she stammered, "in case any one should inquire, you are not
+to say who bought these."
+
+"No, miss, certainly not," said the woman.  Helen gave the
+direction to the cabman and, closing the doors of the hansom, sat
+looking down at the watch and the ring, as they lay in her lap. 
+The thought that they had been his most valued possessions, which
+he had abandoned forever, and that they were now entirely hers,
+to do with as she liked, filled her with most intense delight and
+pleasure.  She took up the heavy gold ring and placed it on the
+little finger of her left hand; it was much too large, and she
+removed it and balanced it for a moment doubtfully in the palm of
+her right hand.  She was smiling, and her face was lit with
+shy and tender thoughts.  She cast a quick glance to the left and
+right as though fearful that people passing in the street would
+observe her, and then slipped the ring over the fourth finger of
+her left hand.  She gazed at it with a guilty smile and then,
+covering it hastily with her other hand, leaned back, clasping it
+closely, and sat frowning far out before her with puzzled eyes.
+
+To Carroll all roads led past Helen's studio, and during the
+summer, while she had been absent in Scotland it was one of his
+sad pleasures to make a pilgrimage to her street and to pause
+opposite the house and look up at the empty windows of her rooms.
+
+It was during this daily exercise that he learned, through the
+arrival of her luggage, of her return to London, and when day
+followed day without her having shown any desire to see him or to
+tell him of her return he denounced himself most bitterly as a
+fatuous fool.
+
+At the end of the week he sat down and considered his case quite
+calmly.  For three years he had loved this girl, deeply and
+tenderly.  He had been lover, brother, friend, and guardian. 
+During that time, even though she had accepted him in every
+capacity except as that of the prospective husband, she had never
+given him any real affection, nor sympathy, nor help; all she had
+done for him had been done without her knowledge or intent.  To
+know her, to love her, and to scheme to give her pleasure had
+been its own reward, and the only one.  For the last few months
+he had been living like a crossing-sweeper in order to be able to
+stay in London until she came back to it, and that he might still
+send her the gifts he had always laid on her altar.  He had not
+seen her in three months.  Three months that had been to him a
+blank, except for his work--which like all else that he did, was
+inspired and carried on for her.  Now at last she had returned
+and had shown that, even as a friend, he was of so little account
+in her thoughts, of so little consequence in her life, that after
+this long absence she had no desire to learn of his welfare or to
+see him--she did not even give him the chance to see her.  And
+so, placing these facts before him for the first time since
+he had loved her, he considered what was due to himself.  "Was it
+good enough?" he asked.  "Was it just that he should continue to
+wear out his soul and body for this girl who did not want what he
+had to give, who treated him less considerately than a man whom
+she met for the first time at dinner?  He felt he had reached the
+breaking-point; that the time had come when he must consider what
+he owed to himself.  There could never be any other woman save
+Helen, but as it was not to be Helen, he could no longer, with
+self-respect, continue to proffer his love only to see it
+slighted and neglected.  He was humble enough concerning himself,
+but of his love he was very proud.  Other men could give her more
+in wealth or position, but no one could ever love her as he did. 
+"He that hath more let him give," he had often quoted to her
+defiantly, as though he were challenging the world, and now he
+felt he must evolve a make-shift world of his own--a world in
+which she was not his only spring of acts; he must begin all over
+again and keep his love secret and sacred until she
+understood it and wanted it.  And if she should never want it he
+would at least have saved it from many rebuffs and insults.
+
+With this determination strong in him, the note Helen had left
+for him after her talk with Marion, and the flowers, and the note
+with them, saying she was coming to take tea on the morrow,
+failed to move him except to make him more bitter.  He saw in
+them only a tardy recognition of her neglect--an effort to make
+up to him for thoughtlessness which, from her, hurt him worse
+than studied slight.
+
+A new regime had begun, and he was determined to establish it
+firmly and to make it impossible for himself to retreat from it;
+and in the note in which he thanked Helen for the flowers and
+welcomed her to tea, he declared his ultimatum.
+
+"You know how terribly I feel," he wrote; "I don't have to tell
+you that, but I cannot always go on dragging out my love and
+holding it up to excite your pity as beggars show their sores.  I
+cannot always go on praying before your altar, cutting myself
+with knives and calling upon you to listen to me.  You know
+that there is no one else but you, and that there never can be
+any one but you, and that nothing is changed except that after
+this I am not going to urge and torment you.  I shall wait as I
+have always waited--only now I shall wait in silence.  You know
+just how little, in one way, I have to offer you, and you know
+just how much I have in love to offer you.  It is now for you to
+speak--some day, or never.  But you will have to speak first. 
+You will never hear a word of love from me again.  Why should
+you?  You know it is always waiting for you.  But if you should
+ever want it, you must come to me, and take off your hat and put
+it on my table and say, 'Philip, I have come to stay.'  Whether
+you can ever do that or not can make no difference in my love for
+you.  I shall love you always, as no man has ever loved a woman
+in this world, but it is you who must speak first; for me, the
+rest is silence."
+
+The following morning as Helen was leaving the house she found
+this letter lying on the hall-table, and ran back with it to her
+rooms.  A week before she would have let it lie on the table
+and read it on her return.  She was conscious that this was what
+she would have done, and it pleased her to find that what
+concerned Philip was now to her the thing of greatest interest. 
+She was pleased with her own eagerness--her own happiness was a
+welcome sign, and she was proud and glad that she was learning to
+care.
+
+She read the letter with an anxious pride and pleasure in each
+word that was entirely new.  Philip's recriminations did not hurt
+her, they were the sign that he cared; nor did his determination
+not to speak of his love to her hurt her, for she believed him
+when he said that he would always care.  She read the letter
+twice, and then sat for some time considering the kind of letter
+Philip would have written had he known her secret--had he known
+that the ring he had abandoned was now upon her finger.
+
+She rose and, crossing to a desk, placed the letter in a drawer,
+and then took it out again and re-read the last page.  When she
+had finished it she was smiling.  For a moment she stood
+irresolute, and then, moving slowly toward the centre-table, cast
+a guilty look about her and, raising her hands, lifted her
+veil and half withdrew the pins that fastened her hat.
+
+"Philip," she began in a frightened whisper, "I have--I have come
+to--"
+
+The sentence ended in a cry of protest, and she rushed across the
+room as though she were running from herself.  She was blushing
+violently.
+
+"Never!" she cried, as she pulled open the door; "I could never
+do it--never!"
+
+The following afternoon, when Helen was to come to tea, Carroll
+decided that he would receive her with all the old friendliness,
+but that he must be careful to subdue all emotion.
+
+He was really deeply hurt at her treatment, and had it not been
+that she came on her own invitation he would not of his own
+accord have sought to see her.  In consequence, he rather
+welcomed than otherwise the arrival of Marion Cavendish, who came
+a half-hour before Helen was expected, and who followed a hasty
+knock with a precipitate entrance.
+
+"Sit down," she commanded breathlessly; "and listen.  I've been
+at rehearsal all day, or I'd have been here before you were
+awake."  She seated herself nervously and nodded her head at
+Carroll in an excited and mysterious manner.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.  "Have you and Reggie--"
+
+"Listen," Marion repeated, "our fortunes are made; that is what's
+the matter--and I've made them.  If you took half the interest in
+your work I do, you'd have made yours long ago.  Last night," she
+began impressively, "I went to a large supper at the Savoy, and I
+sat next to Charley Wimpole.  He came in late, after everybody
+had finished, and I attacked him while he was eating his supper. 
+He said he had been rehearsing 'Caste' after the performance;
+that they've put it on as a stop-gap on account of the failure of
+the 'Triflers,' and that he knew revivals were of no use; that he
+would give any sum for a good modern comedy.  That was my cue,
+and I told him I knew of a better comedy than any he had produced
+at his theatre in five years, and that it was going begging.  He
+laughed, and asked where was he to find this wonderful comedy,
+and I said,  'It's been in your safe for the last two months
+and you haven't read it.'  He said, 'Indeed, how do you know
+that?' and I said, 'Because if you'd read it, it wouldn't be in
+your safe, but on your stage.'  So he asked me what the play was
+about, and I told him the plot and what sort of a part his was,
+and some of his scenes, and he began to take notice.  He forgot
+his supper, and very soon he grew so interested that he turned
+his chair round and kept eying my supper-card to find out who I
+was, and at last remembered seeing me in 'The New Boy'--and a
+rotten part it was, too--but he remembered it, and he told me to
+go on and tell him more about your play.  So I recited it, bit by
+bit, and he laughed in all the right places and got very much
+excited, and said finally that he would read it the first thing
+this morning."  Marion paused, breathlessly.  "Oh, yes, and he
+wrote your address on his cuff," she added, with the air of
+delivering a complete and convincing climax.
+
+Carroll stared at her and pulled excitedly on his pipe.
+
+"Oh, Marion!" he gasped, "suppose he should?  He won't
+though," he added, but eying her eagerly and inviting
+contradiction.
+
+"He will," she answered, stoutly, "if he reads it."
+
+"The other managers read it," Carroll suggested, doubtfully.
+
+"Yes, but what do they know?" Marion returned, loftily.  "He
+knows.  Charles Wimpole is the only intelligent actor-manager in
+London."
+
+There was a sharp knock at the door, which Marion in her
+excitement had left ajar, and Prentiss threw it wide open with an
+impressive sweep, as though he were announcing royalty:  "Mr.
+Charles Wimpole," he said.
+
+The actor-manager stopped in the doorway bowing gracefully, his
+hat held before him and his hand on his stick as though it were
+resting on a foil.  He had the face and carriage of a gallant of
+the days of Congreve, and he wore his modern frock-coat with as
+much distinction as if it were of silk and lace.  He was
+evidently amused.  "I couldn't help overhearing the last line,"
+he said, smiling.  "It gives me a good entrance."
+
+Marion gazed at him blankly: "Oh," she gasped, "we--we--were just
+talking about you."
+
+"If you hadn't mentioned my name," the actor said, "I should
+never have guessed it.  And this is Mr. Carroll, I hope."
+
+The great man was rather pleased with the situation.  As he read
+it, it struck him as possessing strong dramatic possibilities:
+Carroll was the struggling author on the verge of starvation:
+Marion, his sweetheart, flying to him gave him hope; and he was
+the good fairy arriving in the nick of time to set everything
+right and to make the young people happy and prosperous.  He
+rather fancied himself in the part of the good fairy, and as he
+seated himself he bowed to them both in a manner which was
+charmingly inclusive and confidential.
+
+"Miss Cavendish, I imagine, has already warned you that you might
+expect a visit from me," he said tentatively.  Carroll nodded. 
+He was too much concerned to interrupt.
+
+"Then I need only tell you," Wimpole continued, "that I got up at
+an absurd hour this morning to read your play; that I did
+read it; that I like it immensely--and that if we can come to
+terms I shall produce it I shall produce it at once, within a
+fortnight or three weeks."
+
+Carroll was staring at him intently and continued doing so after
+Wimpole had finished speaking.  The actor felt he had somehow
+missed his point, or that Carroll could not have understood him,
+and repeated, "I say I shall put it in rehearsal at once."
+
+Carroll rose abruptly, and pushed back his chair.  "I should be
+very glad," he murmured, and strode over to the window, where he
+stood with his back turned to his guests.  Wimpole looked after
+him with a kindly smile and nodded his head appreciatively.  He
+had produced even a greater effect than his lines seemed to
+warrant.  When he spoke again, it was quite simply, and
+sincerely, and though he spoke for Carroll's benefit, he
+addressed himself to Marion.
+
+"You were quite right last night," he said, "it is a most
+charming piece of work.  I am really extremely grateful to you
+for bringing it to my notice."  He rose, and going to
+Carroll, put his hand on his shoulder.  "My boy," he said, "I
+congratulate you.  I should like to be your age, and to have
+written that play.  Come to my theatre to-morrow and we will talk
+terms.  Talk it over first with your friends, so that I sha'n't
+rob you.  Do you think you would prefer a lump sum now, and so be
+done with it altogether, or trust that the royalties may--"
+
+"Royalties," prompted Marion, in an eager aside.
+
+The men laughed.  "Quite right," Wimpole assented, good-
+humoredly; "it's a poor sportsman who doesn't back his own horse.
+
+Well, then, until to-morrow."
+
+"But," Carroll began, "one moment please.  I haven't thanked
+you."
+
+"My dear boy," cried Wimpole, waving him away with his stick, "it
+is I who have to thank you."
+
+"And--and there is a condition," Carroll said, "which goes with
+the play.  It is that Miss Cavendish is to have the part of
+Nancy."
+
+Wimpole looked serious and considered for a moment.
+
+"Nancy," he said, "the girl who interferes--a very good part. 
+I have cast Miss Maddox for it in my mind, but, of course, if the
+author insists--"
+
+Marion, with her elbows on the table, clasped her hands
+appealingly before her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Wimpole!" she cried, "you owe me that, at least."
+
+Carroll leaned over and took both of Marion's hands in one of
+his.
+
+"It's all right," he said; "the author insists."
+
+Wimpole waved his stick again as though it were the magic wand of
+the good fairy.
+
+"You shall have it," he said.  "I recall your performance in 'The
+New Boy' with pleasure.  I take the play, and Miss Cavendish
+shall be cast for Nancy.  We shall begin rehearsals at once.  I
+hope you are a quick study."
+
+"I'm letter-perfect now{,}" laughed Marion.
+
+Wimpole turned at the door and nodded to them.  They were both so
+young, so eager, and so jubilant that he felt strangely old and
+out of it.  "Good-by, then," he said.
+
+"Good-by, sir," they both chorussed.  And Marion cried after
+him, "And thank you a thousand times."
+
+He turned again and looked back at them, but in their rejoicing
+they had already forgotten him.  "Bless you, my children," he
+said, smiling.  As he was about to close the door a young girl
+came down the passage toward it, and as she was apparently going
+to Carroll's rooms, the actor left the door open behind him.
+
+Neither Marion nor Carroll had noticed his final exit.  They were
+both gazing at each other as though, could they find speech, they
+would ask if it were true.
+
+"It's come at last, Marion," Philip said, with an uncertain
+voice.
+
+"I could weep," cried Marion.  " Philip," she exclaimed, "I would
+rather see that play succeed than any play ever written, and I
+would rather play that part in it than--Oh, Philip," she ended. 
+"I'm so proud of you!" and rising, she threw her arms about his
+neck and sobbed on his shoulder.
+
+Carroll raised one of her hands and kissed the tips of her
+fingers gently.  "I owe it to you, Marion," he said--"all to
+you."
+
+This was the tableau that was presented through the open door to
+Miss Helen Cabot, hurrying on her errand of restitution and good-
+will, and with Philip's ring and watch clasped in her hand.  They
+had not heard her, nor did they see her at the door, so she drew
+back quickly and ran along the passage and down the stairs into
+the street.
+
+She did not need now to analyze her feelings.  They were only too
+evident.  For she could translate what she had just seen as
+meaning only one thing--that she had considered Philip's love so
+lightly that she had not felt it passing away from her until her
+neglect had killed it--until it was too late.  And now that it
+was too late she felt that without it her life could not go on. 
+She tried to assure herself that only the fact that she had lost
+it made it seem invaluable, but this thought did not comfort
+her--she was not deceived by it, she knew that at last she cared
+for him deeply and entirely.  In her distress she blamed herself
+bitterly, but she also blamed Philip no less bitterly for having
+failed to wait for her.  "He might have known that I must love
+him in time," she repeated to herself again and again.  She
+was so unhappy that her letter congratulating Philip on his good
+fortune in having his comedy accepted seemed to him cold and
+unfeeling, and as his success meant for him only what it meant to
+her, he was hurt and grievously disappointed.
+
+He accordingly turned the more readily to Marion, whose interests
+and enthusiasm at the rehearsals of the piece seemed in contrast
+most friendly and unselfish.  He could not help but compare the
+attitude of the two girls at this time, when the failure or
+success of his best work was still undecided.  He felt that as
+Helen took so little interest in his success he could not dare to
+trouble her with his anxieties concerning it, and she attributed
+his silence to his preoccupation and interest in Marion.  So the
+two grew apart, each misunderstanding the other and each troubled
+in spirit at the other's indifference.
+
+The first night of the play justified all that Marion and Wimpole
+had claimed for it, and was a great personal triumph for the new
+playwright.  The audience was the typical first-night
+audience of the class which Charles Wimpole always commanded.  It
+was brilliant, intelligent, and smart, and it came prepared to be
+pleased.
+
+From one of the upper stage-boxes Helen and Lady Gower watched
+the successful progress of the play with an anxiety almost as
+keen as that of the author.  To Helen it seemed as though the
+giving of these lines to the public--these lines which he had so
+often read to her, and altered to her liking--was a desecration. 
+It seemed as though she were losing him indeed--as though he now
+belonged to these strange people, all of whom were laughing and
+applauding his words, from the German Princess in the Royal box
+to the straight-backed Tommy in the pit.  Instead of the painted
+scene before her, she saw the birch-trees by the river at home,
+where he had first read her the speech to which they were now
+listening so intensely--the speech in which the hero tells the
+girl he loves her.  She remembered that at the time she had
+thought how wonderful it would be if some day some one made such
+a speech to her--not Philip--but a man she loved.  And now? 
+If Philip would only make that speech to her now!
+
+He came out at last, with Wimpole leading him, and bowed across a
+glaring barrier of lights at a misty but vociferous audience that
+was shouting the generous English bravo! and standing up to
+applaud.  He raised his eyes to the box where Helen sat, and saw
+her staring down at the tumult, with her hands clasped under her
+chin.  Her face was colorless, but lit with the excitement of the
+moment; and he saw that she was crying.
+
+Lady Gower, from behind her, was clapping her hands delightedly.
+
+"But, my dear Helen," she remonstrated breathlessly, "you never
+told me he was so good-looking."
+
+"Yes," said Helen, rising abruptly, "he is--very good-looking."
+
+She crossed the box to where her cloak was hanging, but instead
+of taking it down buried her face in its folds.
+
+"My dear child!" cried Lady Gower, in dismay.  "What is it?  The
+excitement has been too much for you."
+
+"No, I am just happy," sobbed Helen.  "I am just happy for him."
+
+"We will go and tell him so then," said Lady Gower.  "I am sure
+he would like to hear it from you to-night."
+
+Philip was standing in the centre of the stage, surrounded by
+many pretty ladies and elderly men.  Wimpole was hovering over
+him as though he had claims upon him by the right of discovery.
+
+But when Philip saw Helen, he pushed his way toward her eagerly
+and took her hand in both of his.
+
+"I am so glad, Phil," she said.  She felt it all so deeply that
+she was afraid to say more, but that meant so much to her that
+she was sure he would understand.
+
+He had planned it very differently.  For a year he had dreamed
+that, on the first night of his play, there would be a supper,
+and that he would rise and drink her health, and tell his friends
+and the world that she was the woman he loved, and that she had
+agreed to marry him, and that at last he was able, through the
+success of his play, to make her his wife.
+
+And now they met in a crowd to shake hands, and she went her way
+with one of her grand ladies, and he was left among a group of
+chattering strangers.  The great English playwright took him by
+the hand and in the hearing of all, praised him gracefully and
+kindly.  It did not matter to Philip whether the older playwright
+believed what he said or not; he knew it was generously meant.
+
+"I envy you this," the great man was saying.  "Don't lose any of
+it, stay and listen to all they have to say.  You will never live
+through the first night of your first play but once."
+
+"Yes, I hear them," said Philip, nervously; "they are all too
+kind.  But I don't hear the voice I have been listening for," he
+added in a whisper.  The older man pressed his hand again
+quickly.  "My dear boy," he said, "I am sorry."
+
+"Thank you," Philip answered.
+
+Within a week he had forgotten the great man's fine words of
+praise, but the clasp of his hand he cherished always.
+
+Helen met Marion as she was leaving the stage door and stopped to
+congratulate her on her success in the new part.  Marion was
+radiant.  To Helen she seemed obstreperously happy and jubilant.
+
+"And, Marion," Helen began bravely, "I also want to congratulate
+you on something else.  You--you--neither of you have told me
+yet," she stammered, "but I am such an old friend of both that I
+will not be kept out of the secret."  At these words Marion's air
+of triumphant gayety vanished; she regarded Helen's troubled eyes
+closely and kindly.
+
+"What secret, Helen?" she asked.
+
+"I came to the door of Philip's room the other day when you did
+not know I was there," Helen answered; "and I could not help
+seeing how matters were.  And I do congratulate you both--and
+wish you--oh, such happiness!"  Without a word Marion dragged her
+back down the passage to her dressing-room, and closed the door.
+
+"Now tell me what you mean," she said.
+
+"I am sorry if I discovered anything you didn't want known yet,"
+said Helen, "but the door was open.  Mr. Wimpole had just left
+you and had not shut it, and I could not help seeing."
+
+Marion interrupted her with an eager exclamation of
+enlightenment.
+
+"Oh, you were there, then," she cried.  "And you?" she asked
+eagerly--"you thought Phil cared for me--that we are engaged, and
+it hurt you; you are sorry?  Tell me," she demanded, "are you
+sorry?"
+
+Helen drew back and stretched out her hand toward the door.
+
+"How can you! she exclaimed, indignantly.  "You have no right."
+
+Marion stood between her and the door.
+
+"I have every right," she said, "to help my friends, and I want
+to help you and Philip.  And indeed I do hope you ARE sorry. 
+I hope you are miserable.  And I'm glad you saw me kiss him. 
+That was the first and the last time, and I did it because I was
+happy and glad for him; and because I love him too, but not in
+the least in the way he loves you.  No one ever loved any one as
+he loves you.  And it's time you found it out.  And if I have
+helped to make you find it out I'm glad, and I don't care how
+much I hurt you."
+
+"Marion!" exclaimed Helen," what does it mean?  Do you mean
+that you are not engaged; that--"
+
+"Certainly not," Marion answered.  "I am going to marry Reggie. 
+It is you that Philip loves, and I am very sorry for you that you
+don't love him."
+
+Helen clasped Marion's hands in both of hers.
+
+"But, Marion!" she cried, "I do, oh, I do!"
+
+
+There was a thick yellow fog the next morning, and with it rain
+and a sticky, depressing dampness which crept through the window-
+panes, and which neither a fire nor blazing gas-jets could
+overcome.
+
+Philip stood in front of the fireplace with the morning papers
+piled high on the centre-table and scattered over the room about
+him.
+
+He had read them all, and he knew now what it was to wake up
+famous, but he could not taste it.  Now that it had come it meant
+nothing, and that it was so complete a triumph only made it the
+harder.  In his most optimistic dreams he had never imagined
+success so satisfying as the reality had proved to be; but in
+his dreams Helen had always held the chief part, and without her,
+success seemed only to mock him.
+
+He wanted to lay it all before her, to say, "If you are pleased,
+I am happy.  If you are satisfied, then I am content.  It was
+done for you, and I am wholly yours, and all that I do is yours."
+
+And, as though in answer to his thoughts, there was an instant
+knock at the door, and Helen entered the room and stood smiling
+at him across the table.
+
+Her eyes were lit with excitement, and spoke with many emotions,
+and her cheeks were brilliant with color.  He had never seen her
+look more beautiful.
+
+"Why, Helen!" he exclaimed, "how good of you to come.  Is there
+anything wrong?  Is anything the matter?"
+
+She tried to speak, but faltered, and smiled at him appealingly.
+
+"What is it?" he asked in great concern.
+
+Helen drew in her breath quickly, and at the same moment motioned
+him away--and he stepped back and stood watching her in much
+perplexity.
+
+With her eyes fixed on his she raised her hands to her head,
+and her fingers fumbled with the knot of her veil.  She pulled it
+loose, and then, with a sudden courage, lifted her hat proudly,
+as though it were a coronet, and placed it between them on his
+table.
+
+"Philip," she stammered, with the tears in her voice and eyes,
+"if you will let me--I have come to stay."
+
+The table was no longer between them.  He caught her in his arms
+and kissed her face and her uncovered head again and again.  From
+outside the rain beat drearily and the fog rolled through the
+street, but inside before the fire the two young people sat close
+together, asking eager questions or sitting in silence, staring
+at the flames with wondering, happy eyes.
+
+
+The Lion and the Unicorn saw them only once again.  It was a
+month later when they stopped in front of the shop in a four-
+wheeler, with their baggage mixed on top of it, and steamer-
+labels pasted over every trunk.
+
+"And, oh, Prentiss!" Carroll called from the cab-window.  "I came
+near forgetting.  I promised to gild the Lion and the Unicorn
+if I won out in London.  So have it done, please, and send the
+bill to me.  For I've won out all right."  And then he shut the
+door of the cab, and they drove away forever.
+
+"Nice gal, that," growled the Lion.  "I always liked her.  I am
+glad they've settled it at last."
+
+The Unicorn sighed, sentimentally.  "The other one's worth two of
+her," he said.
+
+
+
+ON THE FEVER SHIP
+
+There were four rails around the ship's sides, the three lower
+ones of iron and the one on top of wood, and as he looked between
+them from the canvas cot he recognized them as the prison-bars
+which held him in.  Outside his prison lay a stretch of blinding
+blue water which ended in a line of breakers and a yellow coast
+with ragged palms.  Beyond that again rose a range of mountain-
+peaks, and, stuck upon the loftiest peak of all, a tiny block-
+house.  It rested on the brow of the mountain against the naked
+sky as impudently as a cracker-box set upon the dome of a great
+cathedral.
+
+As the transport rode on her anchor-chains, the iron bars around
+her sides rose and sank and divided the landscape with parallel
+lines.  From his cot the officer followed this phenomenon with
+severe, painstaking interest.  Sometimes the wooden rail swept up
+to the very block-house itself, and for a second of time
+blotted it from sight.  And again it sank to the level of the
+line of breakers, and wiped them out of the picture as though
+they were a line of chalk.
+
+The soldier on the cot promised himself that the next swell of
+the sea would send the lowest rail climbing to the very top of
+the palm-trees or, even higher, to the base of the mountains; and
+when it failed to reach even the palm-trees he felt a distinct
+sense of ill use, of having been wronged by some one.  There was
+no other reason for submitting to this existence, save these
+tricks upon the wearisome, glaring landscape; and, now, whoever
+it was who was working them did not seem to be making this effort
+to entertain him with any heartiness.
+
+It was most cruel.  Indeed, he decided hotly, it was not to be
+endured; he would bear it no longer, he would make his escape. 
+But he knew that this move, which could be conceived in a
+moment's desperation, could only be carried to success with great
+strategy, secrecy, and careful cunning.  So he fell back upon his
+pillow and closed his eyes, as though he were asleep, and
+then opening them again, turned cautiously, and spied upon his
+keeper.  As usual, his keeper sat at the foot of the cot turning
+the pages of a huge paper filled with pictures of the war printed
+in daubs of tawdry colors.  His keeper was a hard-faced boy
+without human pity or consideration, a very devil of obstinacy
+and fiendish cruelty.  To make it worse, the fiend was a person
+without a collar, in a suit of soiled khaki, with a curious red
+cross bound by a safety-pin to his left arm.  He was intent upon
+the paper in his hands; he was holding it between his eyes and
+his prisoner.  His vigilance had relaxed, and the moment seemed
+propitious.  With a sudden plunge of arms and legs, the prisoner
+swept the bed sheet from him, and sprang at the wooden rail and
+grasped the iron stanchion beside it.  He had his knee pressed
+against the top bar and his bare toes on the iron rail beneath
+it.  Below him the blue water waited for him.  It was cool and
+dark and gentle and deep.  It would certainly put out the fire in
+his bones, he thought; it might even shut out the glare of the
+sun which scorched his eyeballs. 
+
+But as he balanced for the leap, a swift weakness and nausea
+swept over him, a weight seized upon his body and limbs.  He
+could not lift the lower foot from the iron rail, and he swayed
+dizzily and trembled.  He trembled.  He who had raced his men and
+beaten them up the hot hill to the trenches of San Juan.  But now
+he was a baby in the hands of a giant, who caught him by the
+wrist and with an iron arm clasped him around his waist and
+pulled him down, and shouted, brutally, "Help, some of you'se,
+quick; he's at it again.  I can't hold him."
+
+More giants grasped him by the arms and by the legs.  One of them
+took the hand that clung to the stanchion in both of his, and
+pulled back the fingers one by one, saying, "Easy now,
+Lieutenant--easy."
+
+The ragged palms and the sea and block-house were swallowed up in
+a black fog, and his body touched the canvas cot again with a
+sense of home-coming and relief and rest.  He wondered how he
+could have cared to escape from it.  He found it so good to be
+back again that for a long time he wept quite happily, until the
+fiery pillow was moist and cool.
+
+The world outside of the iron bars was like a scene in a theatre
+set for some great event, but the actors were never ready.  He
+remembered confusedly a play he had once witnessed before that
+same scene.  Indeed, he believed he had played some small part in
+it; but he remembered it dimly, and all trace of the men who had
+appeared with him in it was gone.  He had reasoned it out that
+they were up there behind the range of mountains, because great
+heavy wagons and ambulances and cannon were emptied from the
+ships at the wharf above and were drawn away in long lines behind
+the ragged palms, moving always toward the passes between the
+peaks.  At times he was disturbed by the thought that he should
+be up and after them, that some tradition of duty made his
+presence with them imperative.  There was much to be done back of
+the mountains.  Some event of momentous import was being carried
+forward there, in which he held a part; but the doubt soon passed
+from him, and he was content to lie and watch the iron bars
+rising and falling between the block-house and the white
+surf.
+
+If they had been only humanely kind, his lot would have been
+bearable, but they starved him and held him down when he wished
+to rise; and they would not put out the fire in the pillow, which
+they might easily have done by the simple expedient of throwing
+it over the ship's side into the sea.  He himself had done this
+twice, but the keeper had immediately brought a fresh pillow
+already heated for the torture and forced it under his head.
+
+His pleasures were very simple, and so few that he could not
+understand why they robbed him of them so jealously.  One was to
+watch a green cluster of bananas that hung above him from the
+awning twirling on a string.  He could count as many of them as
+five before the bunch turned and swung lazily back again, when he
+could count as high as twelve; sometimes when the ship rolled
+heavily he could count to twenty.  It was a most fascinating
+game, and contented him for many hours.  But when they found this
+out they sent for the cook to come and cut them down, and the
+cook carried them away to his galley.
+
+Then, one day, a man came out from the shore, swimming through
+the blue water with great splashes.  He was a most charming man,
+who spluttered and dove and twisted and lay on his back and
+kicked his legs in an excess of content and delight.  It was a
+real pleasure to watch him; not for days had anything so amusing
+appeared on the other side of the prison-bars.  But as soon as
+the keeper saw that the man in the water was amusing his
+prisoner, he leaned over the ship's side and shouted, "Sa-ay,
+you, don't you know there's sharks in there?"
+
+And the swimming man said, "The h--ll there is!" and raced back
+to the shore like a porpoise with great lashing of the water, and
+ran up the beach half-way to the palms before he was satisfied to
+stop.  Then the prisoner wept again.  It was so disappointing. 
+Life was robbed of everything now.  He remembered that in a
+previous existence soldiers who cried were laughed at and mocked.
+
+But that was so far away and it was such an absurd superstition
+that he had no patience with it.  For what could be more
+comforting to a man when he is treated cruelly than to cry. 
+It was so obvious an exercise, and when one is so feeble that one
+cannot vault a four-railed barrier it is something to feel that
+at least one is strong enough to cry.
+
+He escaped occasionally, traversing space with marvellous
+rapidity and to great distances, but never to any successful
+purpose; and his flight inevitably ended in ignominious recapture
+and a sudden awakening in bed.  At these moments the familiar and
+hated palms, the peaks and the block-house were more hideous in
+their reality than the most terrifying of his nightmares.
+
+These excursions afield were always predatory; he went forth
+always to seek food.  With all the beautiful world from which to
+elect and choose, he sought out only those places where eating
+was studied and elevated to an art.  These visits were much more
+vivid in their detail than any he had ever before made to these
+same resorts.  They invariably began in a carriage, which carried
+him swiftly over smooth asphalt.  One route brought him across a
+great and beautiful square, radiating with rows and rows of
+flickering lights; two fountains splashed in the centre of the
+square, and six women of stone guarded its approaches.  One of
+the women was hung with wreaths of mourning.  Ahead of him the
+late twilight darkened behind a great arch, which seemed to rise
+on the horizon of the world, a great window into the heavens
+beyond.  At either side strings of white and colored globes hung
+among the trees, and the sound of music came joyfully from
+theatres in the open air.  He knew the restaurant under the trees
+to which he was now hastening, and the fountain beside it, and
+the very sparrows balancing on the fountain's edge; he knew every
+waiter at each of the tables, he felt again the gravel crunching
+under his feet, he saw the maitre d'hotel coming forward
+smiling to receive his command, and the waiter in the green apron
+bowing at his elbow, deferential and important, presenting the
+list of wines.  But his adventure never passed that point, for he
+was captured again and once more bound to his cot with a close
+burning sheet.
+
+Or else, he drove more sedately through the London streets in
+the late evening twilight, leaning expectantly across the doors
+of the hansom and pulling carefully at his white gloves.  Other
+hansoms flashed past him, the occupant of each with his mind
+fixed on one idea--dinner.  He was one of a million of people who
+were about to dine, or who had dined, or who were deep in dining.
+
+He was so famished, so weak for food of any quality, that the
+galloping horse in the hansom seemed to crawl.  The lights of the
+Embankment passed like the lamps of a railroad station as seen
+from the window of an express; and while his mind was still torn
+between the choice of a thin or thick soup or an immediate attack
+upon cold beef, he was at the door, and the chasseur touched
+his cap, and the little chasseur put the wicker guard over the
+hansom's wheel.  As he jumped out he said, "Give him half-a-
+crown," and the driver called after him, "Thank you, sir."
+
+It was a beautiful world, this world outside of the iron bars. 
+Every one in it contributed to his pleasure and to his comfort. 
+In this world he was not starved nor manhandled.  He thought
+of this joyfully as he leaped up the stairs, where young men with
+grave faces and with their hands held negligently behind their
+backs bowed to him in polite surprise at his speed.  But they had
+not been starved on condensed milk.  He threw his coat and hat at
+one of them, and came down the hall fearfully and quite weak with
+dread lest it should not be real.  His voice was shaking when he
+asked Ellis if he had reserved a table.  The place was all so
+real, it must be true this time.  The way Ellis turned and ran
+his finger down the list showed it was real, because Ellis always
+did that, even when he knew there would not be an empty table for
+an hour.  The room was crowded with beautiful women; under the
+light of the red shades they looked kind and approachable, and
+there was food on every table, and iced drinks in silver buckets.
+
+It was with the joy of great relief that he heard Ellis say to
+his underling, "Numero cinq, sur la terrace, un couvert."  It was
+real at last.  Outside, the Thames lay a great gray shadow.  The
+lights of the Embankment flashed and twinkled across it, the
+tower of the House of Commons rose against the sky, and here,
+inside, the waiter was hurrying toward him carrying a smoking
+plate of rich soup with a pungent intoxicating odor.
+
+And then the ragged palms, the glaring sun, the immovable peaks,
+and the white surf stood again before him.  The iron rails swept
+up and sank again, the fever sucked at his bones, and the pillow
+scorched his cheek.
+
+One morning for a brief moment he came back to real life again
+and lay quite still, seeing everything about him with clear eyes
+and for the first time, as though he had but just that instant
+been lifted over the ship's side.  His keeper, glancing up, found
+the prisoner's eyes considering him curiously, and recognized the
+change.  The instinct of discipline brought him to his feet with
+his fingers at his sides.
+
+"Is the Lieutenant feeling better?"
+
+The Lieutenant surveyed him gravely.
+
+"You are one of our hospital stewards."
+
+"Yes, Lieutenant."
+
+"Why ar'n't you with the regiment?"
+
+"I was wounded, too, sir.  I got it same time you did,
+Lieutenant."
+
+"Am I wounded?  Of course, I remember.  Is this a hospital ship?"
+
+The steward shrugged his shoulders.  "She's one of the
+transports.  They have turned her over to the fever cases."
+
+The Lieutenant opened his lips to ask another question; but his
+own body answered that one, and for a moment he lay silent.
+
+"Do they know up North that I--that I'm all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes, the papers had it in--there was pictures of the
+Lieutenant in some of them."
+
+"Then I've been ill some time?"
+
+"Oh, about eight days."
+
+The soldier moved uneasily, and the nurse in him became
+uppermost.
+
+"I guess the Lieutenant hadn't better talk any more," he said. 
+It was his voice now which held authority.
+
+The Lieutenant looked out at the palms and the silent gloomy
+mountains and the empty coast-line, where the same wave was
+rising and falling with weary persistence.
+
+"Eight days," he said.  His eyes shut quickly, as though with a
+sudden touch of pain.  He turned his head and sought for the
+figure at the foot of the cot.  Already the figure had grown
+faint and was receding and swaying.
+
+"Has any one written or cabled?" the Lieutenant spoke, hurriedly.
+
+He was fearful lest the figure should disappear altogether before
+he could obtain his answer.  "Has any one come?"
+
+"Why, they couldn't get here, Lieutenant, not yet."
+
+The voice came very faintly.  "You go to sleep now, and I'll run
+and fetch some letters and telegrams.  When you wake up, may be
+I'll have a lot for you."
+
+But the Lieutenant caught the nurse by the wrist, and crushed his
+hand in his own thin fingers.  They were hot, and left the
+steward's skin wet with perspiration.  The Lieutenant laughed
+gayly.
+
+"You see, Doctor," he said, briskly, "that you can't kill me.  I
+can't die.  I've got to live, you understand.  Because, sir, she
+said she would come.  She said if I was wounded, or if I was ill,
+she would come to me.  She didn't care what people thought.  She
+would come any way and nurse me--well, she will come.
+
+"So, Doctor--old man--"  He plucked at the steward's sleeve, and
+stroked his hand eagerly, "old man--" he began again,
+beseechingly, "you'll not let me die until she comes, will you? 
+What?  No, I know I won't die.  Nothing made by man can kill me. 
+No, not until she comes.  Then, after that--eight days, she'll be
+here soon, any moment?  What?  You think so, too?  Don't you? 
+Surely, yes, any moment.  Yes, I'll go to sleep now, and when you
+see her rowing out from shore you wake me.  You'll know her; you
+can't make a mistake.  She is like--no, there is no one like
+her--but you can't make a mistake."
+
+That day strange figures began to mount the sides of the ship,
+and to occupy its every turn and angle of space.  Some of them
+fell on their knees and slapped the bare deck with their hands,
+and laughed and cried out, "Thank God, I'll see God's country
+again!"  Some of them were regulars, bound in bandages; some were
+volunteers, dirty and hollow-eyed, with long beards on boys'
+faces.  Some came on crutches; others with their arms around
+the shoulders of their comrades, staring ahead of them with a
+fixed smile, their lips drawn back and their teeth protruding. 
+At every second step they stumbled, and the face of each was
+swept by swift ripples of pain.
+
+They lay on cots so close together that the nurses could not walk
+between them.  They lay on the wet decks, in the scuppers, and
+along the transoms and hatches.  They were like shipwrecked
+mariners clinging to a raft, and they asked nothing more than
+that the ship's bow be turned toward home.  Once satisfied as to
+that, they relaxed into a state of self-pity and miserable
+oblivion to their environment, from which hunger nor nausea nor
+aching bones could shake them.
+
+The hospital steward touched the Lieutenant lightly on the
+shoulder.
+
+"We are going North, sir," he said.  "The transport's ordered
+North to New York, with these volunteers and the sick and
+wounded.  Do you hear me, sir?"
+
+The Lieutenant opened his eyes.  "Has she come?" he asked.
+
+"Gee!" exclaimed the hospital steward.  He glanced impatiently at
+the blue mountains and the yellow coast, from which the transport
+was drawing rapidly away.
+
+"Well, I can't see her coming just now," he said.  "But she
+will," he added.
+
+"You let me know at once when she comes."
+
+"Why, cert'nly, of course," said the steward.
+
+Three trained nurses came over the side just before the transport
+started North.  One was a large, motherly-looking woman, with a
+German accent.  She had been a trained nurse, first in Berlin,
+and later in the London Hospital in Whitechapel, and at Bellevue.
+
+The nurse was dressed in white, and wore a little silver medal at
+her throat; and she was strong enough to lift a volunteer out of
+his cot and hold him easily in her arms, while one of the
+convalescents pulled his cot out of the rain.  Some of the men
+called her "nurse;" others, who wore scapulars around their
+necks, called her "Sister;" and the officers of the medical staff
+addressed her as Miss Bergen.
+
+Miss Bergen halted beside the cot of the Lieutenant and
+asked, "Is this the fever case you spoke about, Doctor--the one
+you want moved to the officers' ward?"  She slipped her hand up
+under his sleeve and felt his wrist.
+
+"His pulse is very high," she said to the steward.  "When did you
+take his temperature?"  She drew a little morocco case from her
+pocket and from that took a clinical thermometer, which she shook
+up and down, eying the patient meanwhile with a calm, impersonal
+scrutiny.  The Lieutenant raised his head and stared up at the
+white figure beside his cot.  His eyes opened and then shut
+quickly, with a startled look, in which doubt struggled with
+wonderful happiness.  His hand stole out fearfully and warily
+until it touched her apron, and then, finding it was real, he
+clutched it desperately, and twisting his face and body toward
+her, pulled her down, clasping her hands in both of his, and
+pressing them close to his face and eyes and lips.  He put them
+from him for an instant, and looked at her through his tears.
+
+"Sweetheart," he whispered, "sweetheart, I knew you'd come."
+
+As the nurse knelt on the deck beside him, her thermometer
+slipped from her fingers and broke, and she gave an exclamation
+of annoyance.  The young Doctor picked up the pieces and tossed
+them overboard.  Neither of them spoke, but they smiled
+appreciatively.  The Lieutenant was looking at the nurse with the
+wonder and hope and hunger of soul in his eyes with which a dying
+man looks at the cross the priest holds up before him.  What he
+saw where the German nurse was kneeling was a tall, fair girl
+with great bands and masses of hair, with a head rising like a
+lily from a firm, white throat, set on broad shoulders above a
+straight back and sloping breast--a tall, beautiful creature,
+half-girl, half-woman, who looked back at him shyly, but
+steadily.
+
+"Listen," he said.
+
+The voice of the sick man was so sure and so sane that the young
+Doctor started, and moved nearer to the head of the cot. 
+"Listen, dearest," the Lieutenant whispered.  "I wanted to tell
+you before I came South.  But I did not dare; and then I was
+afraid something might happen to me, and I could never tell you,
+and you would never know.  So I wrote it to you in the will I
+made at Baiquiri, the night before the landing.  If you hadn't
+come now, you would have learned it in that way.  You would have
+read there that there never was any one but you; the rest were
+all dream people, foolish, silly--mad. There is no one else in
+the world but you; you have been the only thing in life that has
+counted.  I thought I might do something down here that would
+make you care.  But I got shot going up a hill, and after that I
+wasn't able to do anything.  It was very hot, and the hills were
+on fire; and they took me prisoner, and kept me tied down here,
+burning on these coals.  I can't live much longer, but now that I
+have told you I can have peace.  They tried to kill me before you
+came; but they didn't know I loved you, they didn't know that men
+who love you can't die.  They tried to starve my love for you, to
+burn it out of me; they tried to reach it with their knives.  But
+my love for you is my soul, and they can't kill a man's soul. 
+Dear heart, I have lived because you lived.  Now that you
+know--now that you understand--what does it matter?"
+
+Miss Bergen shook her head with great vigor.  "Nonsense," she
+said, cheerfully.  "You are not going to die.  As soon as we move
+you out of this rain, and some food cook--"
+
+"Good God!" cried the young Doctor, savagely.  "Do you want to
+kill him?"
+
+When she spoke the patient had thrown his arms heavily across his
+face, and had fallen back, lying rigid on the pillow.
+
+The Doctor led the way across the prostrate bodies, apologizing
+as he went.  "I am sorry I spoke so quickly," he said, "but he
+thought you were real.  I mean he thought you were some one he
+really knew--"
+
+"He was just delirious," said the German nurse, calmly.
+
+The Doctor mixed himself a Scotch and soda and drank it with a
+single gesture.
+
+"Ugh!" he said to the ward-room.  "I feel as though I'd been
+opening another man's letters."
+
+
+The transport drove through the empty seas with heavy, clumsy
+upheavals, rolling like a buoy.  Having been originally
+intended for the freight-carrying trade, she had no sympathy
+with hearts that beat for a sight of their native land, or for
+lives that counted their remaining minutes by the throbbing of
+her engines.  Occasionally, without apparent reason, she was
+thrown violently from her course: but it was invariably the case
+that when her stern went to starboard, something splashed in the
+water on her port side and drifted past her, until, when it had
+cleared the blades of her propeller, a voice cried out, and she
+was swung back on her home-bound track again.
+
+The Lieutenant missed the familiar palms and the tiny block-
+house; and seeing nothing beyond the iron rails but great wastes
+of gray water, he decided he was on board a prison-ship, or that
+he had been strapped to a raft and cast adrift.  People came for
+hours at a time and stood at the foot of his cot, and talked with
+him and he to them--people he had loved and people he had long
+forgotten, some of whom he had thought were dead.  One of them he
+could have sworn he had seen buried in a deep trench, and covered
+with branches of palmetto.  He had heard the bugler, with
+tears choking him, sound "taps;" and with his own hand he had
+placed the dead man's campaign hat on the mound of fresh earth
+above the grave.  Yet here he was still alive, and he came with
+other men of his troop to speak to him; but when he reached out
+to them they were gone--the real and the unreal, the dead and the
+living--and even She disappeared whenever he tried to take her
+hand, and sometimes the hospital steward drove her away.
+
+"Did that young lady say when she was coming back again?" he
+asked the steward.
+
+"The young lady!  What young lady?" asked the steward, wearily.
+
+"The one who has been sitting there," he answered.  He pointed
+with his gaunt hand at the man in the next cot.
+
+"Oh, that young lady.  Yes, she's coming back.  She's just gone
+below to fetch you some hard-tack."
+
+The young volunteer in the next cot whined grievously.
+
+"That crazy man gives me the creeps," he groaned.  "He's always
+waking me up, and looking at me as though he was going to eat
+me."
+
+"Shut your head," said the steward.  "He's a better man crazy
+than you'll ever be with the little sense you've got.  And he has
+two Mauser holes in him.  Crazy, eh?  It's a damned good thing
+for you that there was about four thousand of us regulars just as
+crazy as him, or you'd never seen the top of the hill."
+
+One morning there was a great commotion on deck, and all the
+convalescents balanced themselves on the rail, shivering in their
+pajamas, and pointed one way.  The transport was moving swiftly
+and smoothly through water as flat as a lake, and making a great
+noise with her steam-whistle.  The noise was echoed by many more
+steam-whistles; and the ghosts of out-bound ships and tugs and
+excursion steamers ran past her out of the mist and disappeared,
+saluting joyously.  All of the excursion steamers had a heavy
+list to the side nearest the transport, and the ghosts on them
+crowded to that rail and waved handkerchiefs and cheered.  The
+fog lifted suddenly, and between the iron rails the
+Lieutenant saw high green hills on either side of a great harbor.
+
+Houses and trees and thousands of masts swept past like a
+panorama; and beyond was a mirage of three cities, with curling
+smoke-wreaths and sky-reaching buildings, and a great swinging
+bridge, and a giant statue of a woman waving a welcome home.
+
+The Lieutenant surveyed the spectacle with cynical disbelief.  He
+was far too wise and far too cunning to be bewitched by it.  In
+his heart he pitied the men about him, who laughed wildly, and
+shouted, and climbed recklessly to the rails and ratlines.  He
+had been deceived too often not to know that it was not real.  He
+knew from cruel experience that in a few moments the tall
+buildings would crumble away, the thousands of columns of white
+smoke that flashed like snow in the sun, the busy, shrieking tug-
+boats, and the great statue would vanish into the sea, leaving it
+gray and bare.  He closed his eyes and shut the vision out.  It
+was so beautiful that it tempted him; but he would not be mocked,
+and he buried his face in his hands.  They were carrying the
+farce too far, he thought.  It was really too absurd; for now
+they were at a wharf which was so real that, had he not known by
+previous suffering, he would have been utterly deceived by it. 
+And there were great crowds of smiling, cheering people, and a
+waiting guard of honor in fresh uniforms, and rows of police
+pushing the people this way and that; and these men about him
+were taking it all quite seriously, and making ready to
+disembark, carrying their blanket-rolls and rifles with them.
+
+A band was playing joyously, and the man in the next cot, who was
+being lifted to a stretcher, said, "There's the Governor and his
+staff; that's him in the high hat."  It was really very well
+done.  The Custom-house and the Elevated Railroad and Castle
+Garden were as like to life as a photograph, and the crowd was as
+well handled as a mob in a play.  His heart ached for it so that
+he could not bear the pain, and he turned his back on it.  It was
+cruel to keep it up so long.  His keeper lifted him in his arms,
+and pulled him into a dirty uniform which had belonged,
+apparently, to a much larger man--a man who had been killed
+probably, for there were dark-brown marks of blood on the
+tunic and breeches.  When he tried to stand on his feet, Castle
+Garden and the Battery disappeared in a black cloud of night,
+just as he knew they would; but when he opened his eyes from the
+stretcher, they had returned again.  It was a most remarkably
+vivid vision.  They kept it up so well.  Now the young Doctor and
+the hospital steward were pretending to carry him down a gang-
+plank and into an open space; and he saw quite close to him a
+long line of policemen, and behind them thousands of faces, some
+of them women's faces--women who pointed at him and then shook
+their heads and cried, and pressed their hands to their cheeks,
+still looking at him.  He wondered why they cried.  He did not
+know them, nor did they know him.  No one knew him; these people
+were only ghosts.
+
+There was a quick parting in the crowd.  A man he had once known
+shoved two of the policemen to one side, and he heard a girl's
+voice speaking his name, like a sob; and She came running out
+across the open space and fell on her knees beside the
+stretcher, and bent down over him, and he was clasped in two
+young, firm arms.
+
+"Of course it is not real, of course it is not She," he assured
+himself.  "Because She would not do such a thing.  Before all
+these people She would not do it."
+
+But he trembled and his heart throbbed so cruelly that he could
+not bear the pain.
+
+She was pretending to cry.
+
+"They wired us you had started for Tampa on the hospital ship,"
+She was saying, "and Aunt and I went all the way there before we
+heard you had been sent North.  We have been on the cars a week. 
+That is why I missed you.  Do you understand?  It was not my
+fault.  I tried to come.  Indeed, I tried to come."
+
+She turned her head and looked up fearfully at the young Doctor.
+
+"Tell me, why does he look at me like that?" she asked.  "He
+doesn't know me.  Is he very ill?  Tell me the truth."  She drew
+in her breath quickly.  "Of course you will tell me the truth."
+
+When she asked the question he felt her arms draw tight about his
+shoulders.  It was as though she was holding him to herself,
+and from some one who had reached out for him.  In his trouble he
+turned to his old friend and keeper.  His voice was hoarse and
+very low.
+
+"Is this the same young lady who was on the transport--the one
+you used to drive away?"
+
+In his embarrassment, the hospital steward blushed under his tan,
+and stammered.
+
+"Of course it's the same young lady," the Doctor answered
+briskly.  "And I won't let them drive her away."  He turned to
+her, smiling gravely.  "I think his condition has ceased to be
+dangerous, madam," he said.
+
+People who in a former existence had been his friends, and Her
+brother, gathered about his stretcher and bore him through the
+crowd and lifted him into a carriage filled with cushions, among
+which he sank lower and lower.  Then She sat beside him, and he
+heard Her brother say to the coachman, "Home, and drive slowly
+and keep on the asphalt."
+
+The carriage moved forward, and She put her arm about him and his
+head fell on her shoulder, and neither of them spoke.  The
+vision had lasted so long now that he was torn with the joy that
+after all it might be real.  But he could not bear the awakening
+if it were not, so he raised his head fearfully and looked up
+into the beautiful eyes above him.  His brows were knit, and he
+struggled with a great doubt and an awful joy.
+
+"Dearest," he said, "is it real?"
+
+"Is it real?" she repeated.
+
+Even as a dream, it was so wonderfully beautiful that he was
+satisfied if it could only continue so, if but for a little
+while.
+
+"Do you think," he begged again, trembling, "that it is going to
+last much longer?"
+
+She smiled, and, bending her head slowly, kissed him.
+
+"It is going to last--always," she said.
+
+
+
+THE MAN WITH ONE TALENT
+
+The mass-meeting in the Madison Square Garden which was to help
+set Cuba free was finished, and the people were pushing their way
+out of the overheated building into the snow and sleet of the
+streets.  They had been greatly stirred and the spell of the last
+speaker still hung so heavily upon them that as they pressed down
+the long corridor they were still speaking loudly in his praise.
+
+A young man moved eagerly amongst them, and pushed his way to
+wherever a voice was raised above the rest.  He strained forward,
+listening openly, as though he tried to judge the effect of the
+meeting by the verdict of those about him.
+
+But the words he overheard seemed to clash with what he wished
+them to be, and the eager look on his face changed to one of
+doubt and of grave disappointment.  When he had reached the
+sidewalk he stopped and stood looking back alternately into the
+lighted hall and at the hurrying crowds which were dispersing
+rapidly.  He made a movement as though he would recall them, as
+though he felt they were still unconvinced, as though there was
+much still left unsaid.
+
+A fat stranger halted at his elbow to light his cigar, and
+glancing up nodded his head approvingly.
+
+"Fine speaker, Senator Stanton, ain't he?" he said.
+
+The young man answered eagerly.  "Yes," he assented, "he is a
+great orator, but how could he help but speak well with such a
+subject?"
+
+"Oh, you ought to have heard him last November at Tammany Hall,"
+the fat stranger answered.  "He wasn't quite up to himself to-
+night.  He wasn't so interested.  Those Cubans are foreigners,
+you see, but you ought to heard him last St. Patrick's day on
+Home Rule for Ireland.  Then he was talking!  That speech made
+him a United States senator, I guess.  I don't just see how
+he expects to win out on this Cuba game.  The Cubans haven't got
+no votes."
+
+The young man opened his eyes in some bewilderment.
+
+"He speaks for the good of Cuba, for the sake of humanity," he
+ventured.
+
+"What?" inquired the fat stranger.  "Oh, yes, of course.  Well, I
+must be getting on.  Good-night, sir."
+
+The stranger moved on his way, but the young man still lingered
+uncertainly in the snow-swept corridor shivering violently with
+the cold and stamping his feet for greater comfort.  His face was
+burned to a deep red, which seemed to have come from some long
+exposure to a tropical sun, but which held no sign of health. 
+His cheeks were hollow and his eyes were lighted with the fire of
+fever and from time to time he was shaken by violent bursts of
+coughing which caused him to reach toward one of the pillars for
+support.
+
+As the last of the lights went out in the Garden, the speaker of
+the evening and three of his friends came laughing and talking
+down the long corridor.  Senator Stanton was a conspicuous
+figure at any time, and even in those places where his portraits
+had not penetrated he was at once recognized as a personage. 
+Something in his erect carriage and an unusual grace of movement,
+and the power and success in his face, made men turn to look at
+him.  He had been told that he resembled the early portraits of
+Henry Clay, and he had never quite forgotten the coincidence.
+
+The senator was wrapping the collar of his fur coat around his
+throat and puffing contentedly at a fresh cigar, and as he
+passed, the night watchman and the ushers bowed to the great man
+and stood looking after him with the half-humorous, half-envious
+deference that the American voter pays to the successful
+politician.  At the sidewalk, the policemen hurried to open the
+door of his carriage and in their eagerness made a double line,
+through which he passed nodding to them gravely.  The young man
+who had stood so long in waiting pushed his way through the line
+to his side.
+
+"Senator Stanton," he began timidly, "might I speak to you a
+moment?  My name is Arkwright; I am just back from Cuba, and
+I want to thank you for your speech.  I am an American, and I
+thank God that I am since you are too, sir.  No one has said
+anything since the war began that compares with what you said to-
+night.  You put it nobly, and I know, for I've been there for
+three years, only I can't make other people understand it, and I
+am thankful that some one can.  You'll forgive my stopping you,
+sir, but I wanted to thank you.  I feel it very much."
+
+Senator Stanton's friends had already seated themselves in his
+carriage and were looking out of the door and smiling with mock
+patience.  But the senator made no move to follow them.  Though
+they were his admirers they were sometimes skeptical, and he was
+not sorry that they should hear this uninvited tribute.  So he
+made a pretence of buttoning his long coat about him, and nodded
+encouragingly to Arkwright to continue.  "I'm glad you liked it,
+sir," he said with the pleasant, gracious smile that had won him
+a friend wherever it had won him a vote.  "It is very
+satisfactory to know from one who is well informed on the
+subject that what I have said is correct.  The situation there is
+truly terrible.  You have just returned, you say?  Where were
+you--in Havana?"
+
+"No, in the other provinces, sir," Arkwright answered.  "I have
+been all over the island, I am a civil engineer.  The truth has
+not been half told about Cuba, I assure you, sir.  It is massacre
+there, not war.  It is partly so through ignorance, but
+nevertheless it is massacre.  And what makes it worse is, that it
+is the massacre of the innocents.  That is what I liked best of
+what you said in that great speech, the part about the women and
+children."
+
+He reached out his hands detainingly, and then drew back as
+though in apology for having already kept the great man so long
+waiting in the cold.  "I wish I could tell you some of the
+terrible things I have seen," he began again, eagerly as Stanton
+made no movement to depart.  "They are much worse than those you
+instanced to-night, and you could make so much better use of them
+than any one else.  I have seen starving women nursing dead
+babies, and sometimes starving babies sucking their dead mother's
+breasts; I have seen men cut down in the open roads and while
+digging in the fields--and two hundred women imprisoned in one
+room without food and eaten with small-pox, and huts burned while
+the people in them slept--"
+
+The young man had been speaking impetuously, but he stopped as
+suddenly, for the senator was not listening to him.  He had
+lowered his eyes and was looking with a glance of mingled
+fascination and disgust at Arkwright's hands.  In his earnestness
+the young man had stretched them out, and as they showed behind
+the line of his ragged sleeves the others could see, even in the
+blurred light and falling snow, that the wrists of each hand were
+gashed and cut in dark-brown lines like the skin of a mulatto,
+and in places were a raw red, where the fresh skin had but just
+closed over.  The young man paused and stood shivering, still
+holding his hands out rigidly before him.
+
+The senator raised his eyes slowly and drew away.
+
+"What is that?" he said in a low voice, pointing with a gloved
+finger at the black lines on the wrists.
+
+A sergeant in the group of policemen who had closed around the
+speakers answered him promptly from his profound fund of
+professional knowledge.
+
+"That's handcuffs, senator," he said importantly, and glanced at
+Stanton as though to signify that at a word from him he would
+take this suspicious character into custody.  The young man
+pulled the frayed cuffs of his shirt over his wrists and tucked
+his hands, which the cold had frozen into an ashy blue, under his
+armpits to warm them.
+
+"No, they don't use handcuffs in the field," he said in the same
+low, eager tone; "they use ropes and leather thongs; they
+fastened me behind a horse and when he stumbled going down the
+trail it jerked me forward and the cords would tighten and tear
+the flesh.  But they have had a long time to heal now.  I have
+been eight months in prison."
+
+The young men at the carriage window had ceased smiling and were
+listening intently.  One of them stepped out and stood
+beside the carriage door looking down at the shivering
+figure before him with a close and curious scrutiny.
+
+"Eight months in prison!" echoed the police sergeant with a note
+of triumph; "what did I tell you?"
+
+"Hold your tongue!" said the young man at the carriage door. 
+There was silence for a moment, while the men looked at the
+senator, as though waiting for him to speak.
+
+"Where were you in prison, Mr. Arkwright?" he asked.
+
+"First in the calaboose at Santa Clara for two months, and then
+in Cabanas.  The Cubans who were taken when I was, were shot by
+the fusillade on different days during this last month.  Two of
+them, the Ezetas, were father and son, and the Volunteer band
+played all the time the execution was going on, so that the other
+prisoners might not hear them cry 'Cuba Libre' when the order
+came to fire.  But we heard them."
+
+The senator shivered slightly and pulled his fur collar up
+farther around his face.  "I'd like to talk with you," he said,
+"if you have nothing to do to-morrow.  I'd like to go into
+this thing thoroughly.  Congress must be made to take some
+action."
+
+The young man clasped his hands eagerly.  "Ah, Mr. Stanton, if
+you would," he cried, "if you would only give me an hour!  I
+could tell you so much that you could use.  And you can believe
+what I say, sir--it is not necessary to lie--God knows the truth
+is bad enough.  I can give you names and dates for everything I
+say.  Or I can do better than that, sir.  I can take you there
+yourself--in three months I can show you all you need to see,
+without danger to you in any way.  And they would not know me,
+now that I have grown a beard, and I am a skeleton to what I was.
+
+I can speak the language well, and I know just what you should
+see, and then you could come back as one speaking with authority
+and not have to say, 'I have read,' or 'have been told,' but you
+can say, 'These are the things I have seen'--and you could free
+Cuba."
+
+The senator coughed and put the question aside for the moment
+with a wave of the hand that held his cigar.  "We will talk of
+that to-morrow also.  Come to lunch with me at one.  My
+apartments are in the Berkeley on Fifth Avenue.  But aren't you
+afraid to go back there?" he asked curiously.  "I should think
+you'd had enough of it.  And you've got a touch of fever, haven't
+you?"  He leaned forward and peered into the other's eyes.
+
+"It is only the prison fever," the young man answered; "food and
+this cold will drive that out of me.  And I must go back.  There
+is so much to do there," he added.  "Ah, if I could tell them, as
+you can tell them, what I feel here."  He struck his chest
+sharply with his hand, and on the instant fell into a fit of
+coughing so violent that the young man at the carriage door
+caught him around the waist, and one of the policemen supported
+him from the other side.
+
+"You need a doctor," said the senator kindly.  "I'll ask mine to
+have a look at you.  Don't forget, then, at one o'clock to-
+morrow.  We will go into this thing thoroughly."  He shook
+Arkwright warmly by the hand and stooping stepped into the
+carriage.  The young man who had stood at the door followed him
+and crowded back luxuriously against the cushions.  The
+footman swung himself up beside the driver, and said "Uptown
+Delmonico's," as he wrapped the fur rug around his legs, and with
+a salute from the policemen and a scraping of hoofs on the
+slippery asphalt the great man was gone.
+
+"That poor fellow needs a doctor," he said as the carriage rolled
+up the avenue, "and he needs an overcoat, and he needs food.  He
+needs about almost everything, by the looks of him."
+
+But the voice of the young man in the corner of the carriage
+objected drowsily--
+
+"On the contrary," he said, "it seemed to me that he had the one
+thing needful."
+
+By one o'clock of the day following, Senator Stanton, having read
+the reports of his speech in the morning papers, punctuated with
+"Cheers," "Tremendous enthusiasm" and more "Cheers," was still in
+a willing frame of mind toward Cuba and her self-appointed envoy,
+young Mr. Arkwright.
+
+Over night he had had doubts but that the young man's enthusiasm
+would bore him on the morrow, but Mr. Arkwright, when he
+appeared, developed, on the contrary, a practical turn of mind
+which rendered his suggestions both flattering and feasible.  He
+was still terribly in earnest, but he was clever enough or
+serious enough to see that the motives which appealed to him
+might not have sufficient force to move a successful statesman
+into action.  So he placed before the senator only those
+arguments and reasons which he guessed were the best adapted to
+secure his interest and his help.  His proposal as he set it
+forth was simplicity itself.
+
+"Here is a map of the island," he said; "on it I have marked the
+places you can visit in safety, and where you will meet the
+people you ought to see.  If you leave New York at midnight you
+can reach Tampa on the second day.  From Tampa we cross in
+another day to Havana.  There you can visit the Americans
+imprisoned in Morro and Cabanas, and in the streets you can see
+the starving pacificos.  From Havana I shall take you by rail to
+Jucaro, Matanzas, Santa Clara and Cienfuegos.  You will not be
+able to see the insurgents in the fields--it is not necessary
+that you should--but you can visit one of the sugar
+plantations and some of the insurgent chiefs will run the forts
+by night and come in to talk with you.  I will show you burning
+fields and houses, and starving men and women by the thousands,
+and men and women dying of fevers.  You can see Cuban prisoners
+shot by a firing squad and you can note how these rebels meet
+death.  You can see all this in three weeks and be back in New
+York in a month, as any one can see it who wishes to learn the
+truth.  Why, English members of Parliament go all the way to
+India and British Columbia to inform themselves about those
+countries, they travel thousands of miles, but only one member of
+either of our houses of Congress has taken the trouble to cross
+these eighty miles of water that lie between us and Cuba.  You
+can either go quietly and incognito, as it were, or you can
+advertise the fact of your going, which would be better.  And
+from the moment you start the interest in your visit will grow
+and increase until there will be no topic discussed in any of our
+papers except yourself, and what you are doing and what you mean
+to do. 
+
+"By the time you return the people will be waiting, ready and
+eager to hear whatever you may have to say.  Your word will be
+the last word for them.  It is not as though you were some
+demagogue seeking notoriety, or a hotel piazza correspondent at
+Key West or Jacksonville.  You are the only statesman we have,
+the only orator Americans will listen to, and I tell you that
+when you come before them and bring home to them as only you can
+the horrors of this war, you will be the only man in this
+country.  You will be the Patrick Henry of Cuba; you can go down
+to history as the man who added the most beautiful island in the
+seas to the territory of the United States, who saved thousands
+of innocent children and women, and who dared to do what no other
+politician has dared to do--to go and see for himself and to come
+back and speak the truth.  It only means a month out of your
+life, a month's trouble and discomfort, but with no risk.  What
+is a month out of a lifetime, when that month means immortality
+to you and life to thousands?  In a month you would make a half
+dozen after-dinner speeches and cause your friends to laugh
+and applaud.  Why not wring their hearts instead, and hold this
+thing up before them as it is, and shake it in their faces?  Show
+it to them in all its horror--bleeding, diseased and naked, an
+offence to our humanity, and to our prated love of liberty, and
+to our God."
+
+The young man threw himself eagerly forward and beat the map with
+his open palm.  But the senator sat apparently unmoved gazing
+thoughtfully into the open fire, and shook his head.
+
+While the luncheon was in progress the young gentleman who the
+night before had left the carriage and stood at Arkwright's side,
+had entered the room and was listening intently.  He had invited
+himself to some fresh coffee, and had then relapsed into an
+attentive silence, following what the others said with an amused
+and interested countenance.  Stanton had introduced him as Mr.
+Livingstone, and appeared to take it for granted that Arkwright
+would know who he was.  He seemed to regard him with a certain
+deference which Arkwright judged was due to some fixed position
+the young man held, either of social or of political value.
+
+"I do not know," said Stanton with consideration, "that I am
+prepared to advocate the annexation of the island.  It is a
+serious problem."
+
+"I am not urging that," Arkwright interrupted anxiously; "the
+Cubans themselves do not agree as to that, and in any event it is
+an afterthought.  Our object now should be to prevent further
+bloodshed.  If you see a man beating a boy to death, you first
+save the boy's life and decide afterward where he is to go to
+school.  If there were any one else, senator," Arkwright
+continued earnestly, "I would not trouble you.  But we all know
+your strength in this country.  You are independent and fearless,
+and men of both parties listen to you.  Surely, God has given you
+this great gift of oratory, if you will forgive my speaking so,
+to use only in a great cause.  A grand organ in a cathedral is
+placed there to lift men's thoughts to high resolves and
+purposes, not to make people dance.  A street organ can do that. 
+Now, here is a cause worthy of your great talents, worthy of
+a Daniel Webster, of a Henry Clay."
+
+The senator frowned at the fire and shook his head doubtfully.
+
+"If they knew what I was down there for," he asked, "wouldn't
+they put me in prison too?"
+
+Arkwright laughed incredulously.
+
+"Certainly not," he said; "you would go there as a private
+citizen, as a tourist to look on and observe.  Spain is not
+seeking complications of that sort.  She has troubles enough
+without imprisoning United States senators."
+
+"Yes; but these fevers now," persisted Stanton, "they're no
+respecter of persons, I imagine.  A United States senator is not
+above smallpox or cholera."
+
+Arkwright shook his head impatiently and sighed.
+
+"It is difficult to make it clear to one who has not been there,"
+he said.  "These people and soldiers are dying of fever because
+they are forced to live like pigs, and they are already sick with
+starvation.  A healthy man like yourself would be in no more
+danger than you would be in walking through the wards of a New
+York hospital."
+
+Senator Stanton turned in his armchair, and held up his hand
+impressively.
+
+"If I were to tell them the things you have told me," he said
+warningly, "if I were to say I have seen such things--American
+property in flames, American interests ruined, and that five
+times as many women and children have died of fever and
+starvation in three months in Cuba as the Sultan has massacred in
+Armenia in three years--it would mean war with Spain."
+
+"Well?" said Arkwright.
+
+Stanton shrugged his shoulders and sank back again in his chair.
+
+"It would either mean war," Arkwright went on, "or it might mean
+the sending of the Red Cross army to Cuba.  It went to
+Constantinople, five thousand miles away, to help the Armenian
+Christians--why has it waited three years to go eighty miles to
+feed and clothe the Cuban women and children?  It is like sending
+help to a hungry peasant in Russia while a man dies on your
+doorstep."
+
+"Well," said the senator, rising, "I will let you know to-morrow.
+
+If it is the right thing to do, and if I can do it, of course it
+must be done.  We start from Tampa, you say?  I know the
+presidents of all of those roads and they'll probably give me a
+private car for the trip down.  Shall we take any newspaper men
+with us, or shall I wait until I get back and be interviewed? 
+What do you think?"
+
+"I would wait until my return," Arkwright answered, his eyes
+glowing with the hope the senator's words had inspired, "and then
+speak to a mass-meeting here and in Boston and in Chicago.  Three
+speeches will be enough.  Before you have finished your last one
+the American warships will be in the harbor of Havana."
+
+"Ah, youth, youth!" said the senator, smiling gravely, "it is no
+light responsibility to urge a country into war."
+
+"It is no light responsibility," Arkwright answered, "to know you
+have the chance to save the lives of thousands of little children
+and helpless women and to let the chance pass."
+
+"Quite so, that is quite true," said the senator.  "Well, good-
+morning.  I shall let you know to-morrow."
+
+Young Livingstone went down in the elevator with Arkwright, and
+when they had reached the sidewalk stood regarding him for a
+moment in silence.
+
+"You mustn't count too much on Stanton, you know," he said
+kindly; "he has a way of disappointing people."
+
+"Ah, he can never disappoint me," Arkwright answered confidently,
+"no matter how much I expected.  Besides, I have already heard
+him speak."
+
+"I don't mean that, I don't mean he is disappointing as a
+speaker.  Stanton is a great orator, I think.  Most of those
+Southerners are, and he's the only real orator I ever heard.  But
+what I mean is, that he doesn't go into things impulsively; he
+first considers himself, and then he considers every other side
+of the question before he commits himself to it.  Before he
+launches out on a popular wave he tries to find out where it is
+going to land him.  He likes the sort of popular wave that
+carries him along with it where every one can see him; he
+doesn't fancy being hurled up on the beach with his mouth full of
+sand."
+
+"You are saying that he is selfish, self-seeking?" Arkwright
+demanded with a challenge in his voice.  "I thought you were his
+friend."
+
+"Yes, he is selfish, and yes, I am his friend," the young man
+answered, smiling; "at least, he seems willing to be mine.  I am
+saying nothing against him that I have not said to him.  If
+you'll come back with me up the elevator I'll tell him he's a
+self-seeker and selfish, and with no thought above his own
+interests.  He won't mind.  He'd say I cannot comprehend his
+motives.  Why, you've only to look at his record.  When the
+Venezuelan message came out he attacked the President and
+declared he was trying to make political capital and to drag us
+into war, and that what we wanted was arbitration; but when the
+President brought out the Arbitration Treaty he attacked that too
+in the Senate and destroyed it.  Why?  Not because he had
+convictions, but because the President had refused a foreign
+appointment to a friend of his in the South.  He has been a
+free silver man for the last ten years, he comes from a free
+silver state, and the members of the legislature that elected him
+were all for silver, but this last election his Wall Street
+friends got hold of him and worked on his feelings, and he
+repudiated his party, his state, and his constituents and came
+out for gold."
+
+"Well, but surely," Arkwright objected, "that took courage?  To
+own that for ten years you had been wrong, and to come out for
+the right at the last."
+
+Livingstone stared and shrugged his shoulders.  "It's all a
+question of motives," he said indifferently.  "I don't want to
+shatter your idol; I only want to save you from counting too much
+on him."
+
+When Arkwright called on the morrow Senator Stanton was not at
+home, and the day following he was busy, and could give him only
+a brief interview.  There were previous engagements and other
+difficulties in the way of his going which he had not foreseen,
+he said, and he feared he should have to postpone his visit to
+Cuba indefinitely.  He asked if Mr. Arkwright would be so
+kind as to call again within a week; he would then be better able
+to give him a definite answer.
+
+Arkwright left the apartment with a sensation of such keen
+disappointment that it turned him ill and dizzy.  He felt that
+the great purpose of his life was being played with and put
+aside.  But he had not selfish resentment on his own account; he
+was only the more determined to persevere.  He considered new
+arguments and framed new appeals; and one moment blamed himself
+bitterly for having foolishly discouraged the statesman by too
+vivid pictures of the horrors he might encounter, and the next,
+questioned if he had not been too practical and so failed because
+he had not made the terrible need of immediate help his sole
+argument.  Every hour wasted in delay meant, as he knew, the
+sacrifice of many lives, and there were other, more sordid and
+more practical, reasons for speedy action.  For his supply of
+money was running low and there was now barely enough remaining
+to carry him through the month of travel he had planned to take
+at Stanton's side.  What would happen to him when that
+momentous trip was over was of no consequence.  He would have
+done the work as far as his small share in it lay, he would have
+set in motion a great power that was to move Congress and the
+people of the United States to action.  If he could but do that,
+what became of him counted for nothing.
+
+But at the end of the week his fears and misgivings were
+scattered gloriously and a single line from the senator set his
+heart leaping and brought him to his knees in gratitude and
+thanksgiving.  On returning one afternoon to the mean lodging
+into which he had moved to save his money, he found a telegram
+from Stanton and he tore it open trembling between hope and fear.
+
+"Have arranged to leave for Tampa with you Monday, at midnight"
+it read.  "Call for me at ten o'clock same evening.--STANTON."
+
+Arkwright read the message three times.  There was a heavy,
+suffocating pressure at his heart as though it had ceased
+beating.  He sank back limply upon the edge of his bed and
+clutching the piece of paper in his two hands spoke the words
+aloud triumphantly as though to assure himself that they
+were true.  Then a flood of unspeakable relief, of happiness and
+gratitude, swept over him, and he turned and slipped to the
+floor, burying his face in the pillow, and wept out his thanks
+upon his knees.
+
+A man so deeply immersed in public affairs as was Stanton and
+with such a multiplicity of personal interests, could not prepare
+to absent himself for a month without his intention becoming
+known, and on the day when he was to start for Tampa the morning
+newspapers proclaimed the fact that he was about to visit Cuba. 
+They gave to his mission all the importance and display that
+Arkwright had foretold.  Some of the newspapers stated that he
+was going as a special commissioner of the President to study and
+report; others that he was acting in behalf of the Cuban legation
+in Washington and had plenipotentiary powers.  Opposition organs
+suggested that he was acting in the interests of the sugar trust,
+and his own particular organ declared that it was his intention
+to free Cuba at the risk of his own freedom, safety, and even
+life.
+
+The Spanish minister in Washington sent a cable for
+publication to Madrid, stating that a distinguished American
+statesman was about to visit Cuba, to investigate, and, later, to
+deny the truth of the disgraceful libels published concerning the
+Spanish officials on the island by the papers of the United
+States.  At the same time he cabled in cipher to the captain-
+general in Havana to see that the distinguished statesman was
+closely spied upon from the moment of his arrival until his
+departure, and to place on the "suspect" list all Americans and
+Cubans who ventured to give him any information.
+
+The afternoon papers enlarged on the importance of the visit and
+on the good that would surely come of it.  They told that Senator
+Stanton had refused to be interviewed or to disclose the object
+of his journey.  But it was enough, they said, that some one in
+authority was at last to seek out the truth, and added that no
+one would be listened to with greater respect than would the
+Southern senator.  On this all the editorial writers were agreed.
+
+The day passed drearily for Arkwright.  Early in the morning he
+packed his valise and paid his landlord, and for the
+remainder of the day walked the streets or sat in the hotel
+corridor waiting impatiently for each fresh edition of the
+papers.  In them he read the signs of the great upheaval of
+popular feeling that was to restore peace and health and plenty
+to the island for which he had given his last three years of
+energy and life.
+
+He was trembling with excitement, as well as with the cold, when
+at ten o'clock precisely he stood at Senator Stanton's door.  He
+had forgotten to eat his dinner, and the warmth of the dimly lit
+hall and the odor of rich food which was wafted from an inner
+room touched his senses with tantalizing comfort.
+
+"The senator says you are to come this way, sir," the servant
+directed.  He took Arkwright's valise from his hand and parted
+the heavy curtains that hid the dining-room, and Arkwright
+stepped in between them and then stopped in some embarrassment. 
+He found himself in the presence of a number of gentlemen seated
+at a long dinner-table, who turned their heads as he entered and
+peered at him through the smoke that floated in light layers
+above the white cloth.  The dinner had been served, but the
+senator's guests still sat with their chairs pushed back from a
+table lighted by candles under yellow shades, and covered with
+beautiful flowers and with bottles of varied sizes in stands of
+quaint and intricate design.  Senator Stanton's tall figure
+showed dimly through the smoke, and his deep voice hailed
+Arkwright cheerily from the farther end of the room.  "This way,
+Mr. Arkwright," he said.  "I have a chair waiting for you here." 
+He grasped Arkwright's hand warmly and pulled him into the vacant
+place at his side.  An elderly gentleman on Arkwright's other
+side moved to make more room for him and shoved a liqueur glass
+toward him with a friendly nod and pointed at an open box of
+cigars.  He was a fine-looking man, and Arkwright noticed that he
+was regarding him with a glance of the keenest interest.  All of
+those at the table were men of twice Arkwright's age, except
+Livingstone, whom he recognized and who nodded to him pleasantly
+and at the same time gave an order to a servant, pointing at
+Arkwright as he did so.  Some of the gentlemen wore their
+business suits, and one opposite Arkwright was still in his
+overcoat, and held his hat in his hand.  These latter seemed to
+have arrived after the dinner had begun, for they formed a second
+line back of those who had places at the table; they all seemed
+to know one another and were talking with much vivacity and
+interest.
+
+Stanton did not attempt to introduce Arkwright to his guests
+individually, but said:  "Gentlemen, this is Mr. Arkwright, of
+whom I have been telling you, the young gentleman who has done
+such magnificent work for the cause of Cuba."  Those who caught
+Arkwright's eye nodded to him, and others raised their glasses at
+him, but with a smile that he could not understand.  It was as
+though they all knew something concerning him of which he was
+ignorant.  He noted that the faces of some were strangely
+familiar, and he decided that he must have seen their portraits
+in the public prints.  After he had introduced Arkwright, the
+senator drew his chair slightly away from him and turned in what
+seemed embarrassment to the man on his other side.  The
+elderly gentleman next to Arkwright filled his glass, a servant
+placed a small cup of coffee at his elbow, and he lit a cigar and
+looked about him.
+
+"You must find this weather very trying after the tropics," his
+neighbor said.
+
+Arkwright assented cordially.  The brandy was flowing through his
+veins and warming him; he forgot that he was hungry, and the
+kind, interested glances of those about him set him at his ease. 
+It was a propitious start, he thought, a pleasant leave-taking
+for the senator and himself, full of good will and good wishes.
+
+He turned toward Stanton and waited until he had ceased speaking.
+
+"The papers have begun well, haven't they?" he asked, eagerly.
+
+He had spoken in a low voice, almost in a whisper, but those
+about the table seemed to have heard him, for there was silence
+instantly and when he glanced up he saw the eyes of all turned
+upon him and he noticed on their faces the same smile he had seen
+there when he entered.
+
+"Yes," Stanton answered constrainedly.  "Yes, I--" he
+lowered his voice, but the silence still continued.  Stanton had
+his eyes fixed on the table, but now he frowned and half rose
+from his chair.
+
+"I want to speak with you, Arkwright," he said.  "Suppose we go
+into the next room.  I'll be back in a moment," he added, nodding
+to the others.
+
+But the man on his right removed his cigar from his lips and said
+in an undertone, "No, sit down, stay where you are;" and the
+elderly gentleman at Arkwright's side laid his hand detainingly
+on his arm.  "Oh, you won't take Mr. Arkwright away from us,
+Stanton?" he asked, smiling.
+
+Stanton shrugged his shoulders and sat down again, and there was
+a moment's pause.  It was broken by the man in the overcoat, who
+laughed.
+
+"He's paying you a compliment, Mr. Arkwright," he said.  He
+pointed with his cigar to the gentleman at Arkwright's side.
+
+"I don't understand," Arkwright answered doubtfully.
+
+"It's a compliment to your eloquence--he's afraid to leave you
+alone with the senator.  Livingstone's been telling us that
+you are a better talker than Stanton."  Arkwright turned a
+troubled countenance toward the men about the table, and then
+toward Livingstone, but that young man had his eyes fixed gravely
+on the glasses before him and did not raise them.
+
+Arkwright felt a sudden, unreasonable fear of the circle of
+strong-featured, serene and confident men about him.  They seemed
+to be making him the subject of a jest, to be enjoying something
+among themselves of which he was in ignorance, but which
+concerned him closely.  He turned a white face toward Stanton.
+
+"You don't mean," he began piteously, "that--that you are not
+going?  Is that it--tell me--is that what you wanted to say?"
+
+Stanton shifted in his chair and muttered some words between his
+lips, then turned toward Arkwright and spoke quite clearly and
+distinctly.
+
+"I am very sorry, Mr. Arkwright," he said, "but I am afraid I'll
+have to disappoint you.  Reasons I cannot now explain have arisen
+which make my going impossible--quite impossible," he added
+firmly--"not only now, but later," he went on quickly, as
+Arkwright was about to interrupt him.
+
+Arkwright made no second attempt to speak.  He felt the muscles
+of his face working and the tears coming to his eyes, and to hide
+his weakness he twisted in his chair and sat staring ahead of him
+with his back turned to the table.  He heard Livingstone's voice
+break the silence with some hurried question, and immediately his
+embarrassment was hidden in a murmur of answers and the moving of
+glasses as the men shifted in their chairs and the laughter and
+talk went on as briskly as before.  Arkwright saw a sideboard
+before him and a servant arranging some silver on one of the
+shelves.  He watched the man do this with a concentrated interest
+as though the dull, numbed feeling in his brain caught at the
+trifle in order to put off, as long as possible, the
+consideration of the truth.
+
+And then beyond the sideboard and the tapestry on the wall above
+it, he saw the sun shining down upon the island of Cuba, he saw
+the royal palms waving and bending, the dusty columns of
+Spanish infantry crawling along the white roads and leaving
+blazing huts and smoking cane-fields in their wake; he saw
+skeletons of men and women seeking for food among the refuse of
+the street; he heard the order given to the firing squad, the
+splash of the bullets as they scattered the plaster on the prison
+wall, and he saw a kneeling figure pitch forward on its face,
+with a useless bandage tied across its sightless eyes.
+
+Senator Stanton brought him back with a sharp shake of the
+shoulder.  He had also turned his back on the others, and was
+leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.  He spoke rapidly,
+and in a voice only slightly raised above a whisper.
+
+"I am more than sorry, Arkwright," he said earnestly.  "You
+mustn't blame me altogether.  I have had a hard time of it this
+afternoon.  I wanted to go.  I really wanted to go.  The thing
+appealed to me, it touched me, it seemed as if I owed it to
+myself to do it.  But they were too many for me," he added with a
+backward toss of his head toward the men around his table.
+
+"If the papers had not told on me I could have got well away," he
+went on in an eager tone, "but as soon as they read of it, they
+came here straight from their offices.  You know who they are,
+don't you?" he asked, and even in his earnestness there was an
+added touch of importance in his tone as he spoke the name of his
+party's leader, of men who stood prominently in Wall Street and
+who were at the head of great trusts.
+
+"You see how it is," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. 
+"They have enormous interests at stake.  They said I would drag
+them into war, that I would disturb values, that the business
+interests of the country would suffer.  I'm under obligations to
+most of them, they have advised me in financial matters, and they
+threatened--they threatened to make it unpleasant for me."  His
+voice hardened and he drew in his breath quickly, and laughed. 
+"You wouldn't understand if I were to tell you.  It's rather
+involved.  And after all, they may be right, agitation may be bad
+for the country.  And your party leader after all is your party
+leader, isn't he, and if he says 'no' what are you to do? 
+My sympathies are just as keen for these poor women and children
+as ever, but as these men say, 'charity begins at home,' and we
+mustn't do anything to bring on war prices again, or to send
+stocks tumbling about our heads, must we?"  He leaned back in his
+chair again and sighed.  "Sympathy is an expensive luxury, I
+find," he added.
+
+Arkwright rose stiffly and pushed Stanton away from him with his
+hand.  He moved like a man coming out of a dream.
+
+"Don't talk to me like that," he said in a low voice.  The noise
+about the table ended on the instant, but Arkwright did not
+notice that it had ceased.  "You know I don't understand that,"
+he went on; "what does it matter to me!"  He put his hand up to
+the side of his face and held it there, looking down at Stanton. 
+He had the dull, heavy look in his eyes of a man who has just
+come through an operation under some heavy drug.  "'Wall Street,'
+'trusts,' 'party leaders,'" he repeated, "what are they to me? 
+The words don't reach me, they have lost their meaning, it is a
+language I have forgotten, thank God!" he added.  He turned
+and moved his eyes around the table, scanning the faces of the
+men before him.
+
+"Yes, you are twelve to one," he said at last, still speaking
+dully and in a low voice, as though he were talking to himself. 
+"You have won a noble victory, gentlemen.  I congratulate you. 
+But I do not blame you, we are all selfish and self-seeking.  I
+thought I was working only for Cuba, but I was working for
+myself, just as you are.  I wanted to feel that it was I who had
+helped to bring relief to that plague-spot, that it was through
+my efforts the help had come.  Yes, if he had done as I asked, I
+suppose I would have taken the credit."
+
+He swayed slightly, and to steady himself caught at the back of
+his chair.  But at the same moment his eyes glowed fiercely and
+he held himself erect again.  He pointed with his finger at the
+circle of great men who sat looking up at him in curious silence.
+
+"You are like a ring of gamblers around a gaming table," he cried
+wildly, "who see nothing but the green cloth and the wheel and
+the piles of money before them, who forget in watching the
+money rise and fall, that outside the sun is shining, that human
+beings are sick and suffering, that men are giving their lives
+for an idea, for a sentiment, for a flag.  You are the money-
+changers in the temple of this great republic and the day will
+come, I pray to God, when you will be scourged and driven out
+with whips.  Do you think you can form combines and deals that
+will cheat you into heaven?  Can your 'trusts' save your souls--
+is 'Wall Street' the strait and narrow road to salvation?"
+
+The men about the table leaned back and stared at Arkwright in as
+great amazement as though he had violently attempted an assault
+upon their pockets, or had suddenly gone mad in their presence. 
+Some of them frowned, and others appeared not to have heard, and
+others smiled grimly and waited for him to continue as though
+they were spectators at a play.
+
+The political leader broke the silence with a low aside to
+Stanton.  "Does the gentleman belong to the Salvation Army?" he
+asked.
+
+Arkwright whirled about and turned upon him fiercely.
+
+"Old gods give way to new gods," he cried.  "Here is your
+brother.  I am speaking for him.  Do you ever think of him?  How
+dare you sneer at me?" he cried.  "You can crack your whip over
+that man's head and turn him from what in his heart and
+conscience he knows is right; you can crack your whip over the
+men who call themselves free-born American citizens and who have
+made you their boss--sneer at them if you like, but you have no
+collar on my neck.  If you are a leader, why don't you lead your
+people to what is good and noble?  Why do you stop this man in
+the work God sent him here to do?  You would make a party hack of
+him, a political prostitute, something lower than the woman who
+walks the streets.  She sells her body--this man is selling his
+soul."
+
+He turned, trembling and quivering, and shook his finger above
+the upturned face of the senator.
+
+"What have you done with your talents, Stanton?" he cried.  "What
+have you done with your talents?"
+
+The man in the overcoat struck the table before him with his
+fist so that the glasses rang.
+
+"By God," he laughed, "I call him a better speaker than Stanton! 
+Livingstone's right, he IS better than Stanton--but he lacks
+Stanton's knack of making himself popular," he added.  He looked
+around the table inviting approbation with a smile, but no one
+noticed him, nor spoke to break the silence.
+
+Arkwright heard the words dully and felt that he was being
+mocked.  He covered his face with his hands and stood breathing
+brokenly; his body was still trembling with an excitement he
+could not master.
+
+Stanton rose from his chair and shook him by the shoulder.  "Are
+you mad, Arkwright?" he cried.  "You have no right to insult my
+guests or me.  Be calm--control yourself."
+
+"What does it matter what I say?" Arkwright went on desperately. 
+"I am mad.  Yes, that is it, I am mad.  They have won and I have
+lost, and it drove me beside myself.  I counted on you.  I knew
+that no one else could let my people go.  But I'll not
+trouble you again.  I wish you good-night, sir, and good-bye.  If
+I have been unjust, you must forget it."
+
+He turned sharply, but Stanton placed a detaining hand on his
+shoulder.  "Wait," he commanded querulously; "where are you
+going?  Will you, still--?"
+
+Arkwright bowed his head.  "Yes," he answered.  "I have but just
+time now to catch our train--my train, I mean."
+
+He looked up at Stanton and taking his hand in both of his, drew
+the man toward him.  All the wildness and intolerance in his
+manner had passed, and as he raised his eyes they were full of a
+firm resolve.
+
+"Come," he said simply; "there is yet time.  Leave these people
+behind you.  What can you answer when they ask what have you done
+with your talents?"
+
+"Good God, Arkwright," the senator exclaimed angrily, pulling his
+hand away; "don't talk like a hymn-book, and don't make another
+scene.  What you ask is impossible.  Tell me what I can do to
+help you in any other way, and--"
+
+"Come," repeated the young man firmly.
+
+"The world may judge you by what you do to-night."
+
+Stanton looked at the boy for a brief moment with a strained and
+eager scrutiny, and then turned away abruptly and shook his head
+in silence, and Arkwright passed around the table and on out of
+the room.
+
+A month later, as the Southern senator was passing through the
+reading-room of the Union Club, Livingstone beckoned to him, and
+handing him an afternoon paper pointed at a paragraph in silence.
+
+The paragraph was dated Sagua la Grande, and read:
+
+"The body of Henry Arkwright, an American civil engineer, was
+brought into Sagua to-day by a Spanish column.  It was found
+lying in a road three miles beyond the line of forts.  Arkwright
+was surprised by a guerilla force while attempting to make his
+way to the insurgent camp, and on resisting was shot.  The body
+has been handed over to the American consul for interment.  It is
+badly mutilated."
+
+Stanton lowered the paper and stood staring out of the window at
+the falling snow and the cheery lights and bustling energy
+of the avenue.
+
+"Poor fellow," he said, "he wanted so much to help them.  And he
+didn't accomplish anything, did he?"
+
+Livingstone stared at the older man and laughed shortly.
+
+"Well, I don't know," he said.  "He died.  Some of us only
+live."
+
+
+
+THE VAGRANT
+
+His Excellency Sir Charles Greville, K. C  M. G., Governor of the
+Windless Islands, stood upon the veranda of Government House
+surveying the new day with critical and searching eyes.  Sir
+Charles had been so long absolute monarch of the Windless Isles
+that he had assumed unconsciously a mental attitude of suzerainty
+over even the glittering waters of the Caribbean Sea, and the
+coral reefs under the waters, and the rainbow skies that floated
+above them.  But on this particular morning not even the critical
+eye of the Governor could distinguish a single flaw in the
+tropical landscape before him.
+
+The lawn at his feet ran down to meet the dazzling waters of the
+bay, the blue waters of the bay ran to meet a great stretch of
+absinthe green, the green joined a fairy sky of pink and
+gold and saffron.  Islands of coral floated on the sea of
+absinthe, and derelict clouds of mother-of-pearl swung low above
+them, starting from nowhere and going nowhere, but drifting
+beautifully, like giant soap-bubbles of light and color.  Where
+the lawn touched the waters of the bay the cocoanut-palms reached
+their crooked lengths far up into the sunshine, and as the sea-
+breeze stirred their fronds they filled the hot air with whispers
+and murmurs like the fluttering of many fans.  Nature smiled
+boldly upon the Governor, confident in her bountiful beauty, as
+though she said, "Surely you cannot but be pleased with me to-
+day."  And, as though in answer, the critical and searching
+glance of Sir Charles relaxed.
+
+The crunching of the gravel and the rattle of the sentry's musket
+at salute recalled him to his high office and to the duties of
+the morning.  He waved his hand, and, as though it were a wand,
+the sentry moved again, making his way to the kitchen-garden, and
+so around Government House and back to the lawn-tennis court,
+maintaining in his solitary pilgrimage the dignity of her
+Majesty's representative, as well as her Majesty's power
+over the Windless Isles.
+
+The Governor smiled slightly, with the ease of mind of one who
+finds all things good.  Supreme authority, surroundings of
+endless beauty, the respectful, even humble, deference of his
+inferiors, and never even an occasional visit from a superior,
+had in four years lowered him into a bed of ease and self-
+satisfaction.  He was cut off from the world, and yet of it. 
+Each month there came, via Jamaica, the three weeks' old copy
+of The Weekly Times; he subscribed to Mudie's Colonial Library;
+and from the States he had imported an American lawn-mower, the
+mechanism of which no one as yet understood.  Within his own
+borders he had created a healthy, orderly seaport out of what had
+been a sink of fever and a refuge for all the ne'er-do-wells and
+fugitive revolutionists of Central America.
+
+He knew, as he sat each evening on his veranda, looking across
+the bay, that in the world beyond the pink and gold sunset men
+were still panting, struggling, and starving; crises were rising
+and passing; strikes and panics, wars and the rumors of
+wars, swept from continent to continent; a plague crept through
+India; a filibuster with five hundred men at his back crossed an
+imaginary line and stirred the world from Cape Town to London;
+Emperors were crowned; the good Queen celebrated the longest
+reign; and a captain of artillery imprisoned in a swampy island
+in the South Atlantic caused two hemispheres to clamor for his
+rescue, and lit a race war that stretched from Algiers to the
+boulevards.
+
+And yet, at the Windless Isles, all these happenings seemed to
+Sir Charles like the morning's memory of a dream.  For these
+things never crossed the ring of the coral reefs; he saw them
+only as pictures in an illustrated paper a month old.  And he was
+pleased to find that this was so.  He was sufficient to himself,
+with his own responsibilities and social duties and public works.
+
+He was a man in authority, who said to others, "Come!" and "Go!" 
+Under him were commissioners, and under the commissioners
+district inspectors and boards of education and of highways.  For
+the better health of the colony he had planted trees that
+sucked the malaria from the air; for its better morals he had
+substituted as a Sunday amusement cricket-matches for cock-
+fights; and to keep it at peace he had created a local
+constabulary of native negroes, and had dressed them in the cast-
+off uniforms of London policemen.  His handiwork was everywhere,
+and his interest was all sunk in his handiwork.  The days passed
+gorgeous with sunshine, the nights breathed with beauty.  It was
+an existence of leisurely occupation, and one that promised no
+change, and he was content.
+
+As it was Thursday, the Council met that morning, and some
+questions of moment to the colony were to be brought up for
+consideration.  The question of the dog-tax was one which
+perplexed Sir Charles most particularly.  The two Councillors
+elected by the people and the three appointed by the crown had
+disagreed as to this tax.  Of the five hundred British subjects
+at the seaport, all but ten were owners of dogs, and it had
+occurred to Sassoon, the chemist, that a tax of half-a-crown a
+year on each of these dogs would meet the expense of
+extending the oyster-shell road to the new cricket-grounds.  To
+this Snellgrove, who held the contract for the narrow-gauge
+railroad, agreed; but the three crown Councillors opposed the tax
+vigorously, on the ground that as scavengers alone the dogs were
+a boon to the colony and should be encouraged.  The fact that
+each of these gentlemen owned not only one, but several dogs of
+high pedigree made their position one of great delicacy.
+
+There was no way by which the Governor could test the popular
+will in the matter, except through his secretary, Mr. Clarges,
+who, at the cricket-match between the local eleven and the
+officers and crew of H. M. S.  Partridge, had been informed by
+the other owners of several fox-terriers that, in their opinion,
+the tax was a piece of "condemned tommy-rot."  From this the
+Governor judged that it would not prove a popular measure.  As he
+paced the veranda, drawing deliberately on his cigar, and
+considering to which party he should give the weight of his final
+support, his thoughts were disturbed by the approach of a
+stranger, who advanced along the gravel walk, guarded on
+either side by one of the local constabulary.  The stranger was
+young and of poor appearance.  His bare feet were bound in a pair
+of the rope sandals worn by the natives, his clothing was of torn
+and soiled drill, and he fanned his face nonchalantly with a
+sombrero of battered and shapeless felt.
+
+Sir Charles halted in his walk, and holding his cigar behind his
+back, addressed himself to the sergeant.
+
+"A vagrant?" he asked.
+
+The words seemed to bear some amusing significance to the
+stranger, for his face lit instantly with a sweet and charming
+smile, and while he turned to hear the sergeant's reply, he
+regarded him with a kindly and affectionate interest.
+
+"Yes, your Excellency."
+
+The Governor turned to the prisoner.
+
+"Do you know the law of this colony regarding vagrants?"
+
+"I do not," the young man answered.  His tone was politely
+curious, and suggested that he would like to be further informed
+as to the local peculiarities of a foreign country.
+
+"After two weeks' residence," the Governor recited, impressively,
+"all able-bodied persons who will not work are put to work or
+deported.  Have you made any effort to find work?"
+
+Again the young man smiled charmingly.  He shook his head and
+laughed.  "Oh dear no," he said.
+
+The laugh struck the Governor as impertinent.
+
+"Then you must leave by the next mail-steamer, if you have any
+money to pay your passage, or, if you have no money, you must go
+to work on the roads.  Have you any money?"
+
+"If I had, I wouldn't--be a vagrant," the young man answered. 
+His voice was low and singularly sweet.  It seemed to suit the
+indolence of his attitude and the lazy, inconsequent smile.  "I
+called on our consular agent here," he continued, leisurely, "to
+write a letter home for money, but he was disgracefully drunk, so
+I used his official note-paper to write to the State Department
+about him, instead."
+
+The Governor's deepest interest was aroused.  The American
+consular agent was one of the severest trials he was forced to
+endure.
+
+"You are not a British subject, then?  Ah, I see--and--er--your
+representative was unable to assist you?"
+
+"He was drunk," the young man repeated, placidly.  "He has been
+drunk ever since I have been here, particularly in the mornings."
+
+He halted, as though the subject had lost interest for him, and
+gazed pleasantly at the sunny bay and up at the moving palms.
+
+"Then," said the Governor, as though he had not been interrupted,
+"as you have no means of support, you will help support the
+colony until you can earn money to leave it.  That will do,
+sergeant."
+
+The young man placed his hat upon his head and turned to move
+away, but at the first step he swayed suddenly and caught at the
+negro's shoulder, clasping his other hand across his eyes.  The
+sergeant held him by the waist, and looked up at the Governor
+with some embarrassment.
+
+"The young gentleman has not been well, Sir Charles," he said,
+apologetically.
+
+The stranger straightened himself up and smiled vaguely. 
+"I'm all right," he murmured.  "Sun's too hot."
+
+"Sit down," said the Governor.
+
+He observed the stranger more closely.  He noticed now that
+beneath the tan his face was delicate and finely cut, and that
+his yellow hair clung closely to a well-formed head.
+
+"He seems faint.  Has he had anything to eat?" asked the
+Governor.
+
+The sergeant grinned guiltily.  "Yes, Sir Charles; we've been
+feeding him at the barracks.  It's fever, sir."
+
+Sir Charles was not unacquainted with fallen gentlemen, "beach-
+combers," "remittance men," and vagrants who had known better
+days, and there had been something winning in this vagrant's
+smile, and, moreover, he had reported that thorn in his flesh,
+the consular agent, to the proper authorities.
+
+He conceived an interest in a young man who, though with naked
+feet, did not hesitate to correspond with his Minister of Foreign
+Affairs.
+
+"How long have you been ill?" he asked.
+
+The young man looked up from where he had sunk on the steps, and
+roused himself with a shrug.  "It doesn't matter," he said. 
+"I've had a touch of Chagres ever since I was on the Isthmus.  I
+was at work there on the railroad."
+
+"Did you come here from Colon?"
+
+"No; I worked up the Pacific side.  I was clerking with Rossner
+Brothers at Amapala for a while, because I speak a little German,
+and then I footed it over to Puerto Cortez and got a job with the
+lottery people.  They gave me twenty dollars a month gold for
+rolling the tickets, and I put it all in the drawing, and won as
+much as ten."  He laughed, and sitting erect, drew from his
+pocket a roll of thin green papers.  "These are for the next
+drawing," he said.  "Have some?" he added.  He held them towards
+the negro sergeant, who, under the eye of the Governor, resisted,
+and then spread the tickets on his knee like a hand at cards.  "I
+stand to win a lot with these," he said, with a cheerful sigh. 
+"You see, until the list's published I'm prospectively worth
+twenty thousand dollars.  And," he added, "I break stones in the
+sun."  He rose unsteadily, and saluted the Governor with a
+nod.  "Good-morning, sir," he said, "and thank you."
+
+"Wait," Sir Charles commanded.  A new form of punishment had
+suggested itself, in which justice was tempered with mercy.  "Can
+you work one of your American lawn-mowers?" he asked.
+
+The young man laughed delightedly.  "I never tried," he said,
+"but I've seen it done."
+
+"If you've been ill, it would be murder to put you on the shell
+road."  The Governor's dignity relaxed into a smile.  "I don't
+desire international complications," he said.  "Sergeant, take
+this--him--to the kitchen, and tell Corporal Mallon to give him
+that American lawn-mowing machine.  Possibly he may understand
+its mechanism.  Mallon only cuts holes in the turf with it."  And
+he waved his hand in dismissal, and as the three men moved away
+he buried himself again in the perplexities of the dog-tax.
+
+Ten minutes later the deliberations of the Council were disturbed
+by a loud and persistent rattle, like the whir of a Maxim gun,
+which proved, on investigation, to arise from the American lawn-
+mower.  The vagrant was propelling it triumphantly across
+the lawn, and gazing down at it with the same fond pride with
+which a nursemaid leans over the perambulator to observe her
+lusty and gurgling charge.
+
+
+The Councillors had departed, Sir Charles was thinking of
+breakfast, the Maxim-like lawn-mower still irritated the silent
+hush of midday, when from the waters of the inner harbor there
+came suddenly the sharp report of a saluting gun and the rush of
+falling anchor-chains.  There was still a week to pass before the
+mail-steamer should arrive, and H. M. S.  Partridge had
+departed for Nassau.  Besides these ships, no other vessel had
+skirted the buoys of the bay in eight long smiling months.  Mr.
+Clarges, the secretary, with an effort to appear calm, and the
+orderly, suffocated with the news, entered through separate doors
+at the same instant.
+
+The secretary filed his report first.  "A yacht's just anchored
+in the bay, Sir Charles," he said.
+
+The orderly's face fell.  He looked aggrieved.  "An American
+yacht," he corrected.
+
+"And much larger than the Partridge," continued the secretary.
+
+The orderly took a hasty glance back over his shoulder.  "She has
+her launch lowered already, sir," he said.
+
+Outside the whir of the lawn-mower continued undisturbed.  Sir
+Charles reached for his marine-glass, and the three men hurried
+to the veranda.
+
+"It looks like a man-of-war," said Sir Charles.  "No," he added,
+adjusting the binocular; "she's a yacht.  She flies the New York
+Yacht Club pennant--now she's showing the owner's absent pennant.
+
+He must have left in the launch.  He's coming ashore now."
+
+"He seems in a bit of a hurry," growled Mr. Clarges.
+
+"Those Americans always--" murmured Sir Charles from behind the
+binocular.  He did not quite know that he enjoyed this sudden
+onslaught upon the privacy of his harbor and port.
+
+It was in itself annoying, and he was further annoyed to find
+that it could in the least degree disturb his poise.
+
+The launch was growing instantly larger, like an express train
+approaching a station at full speed; her flags flew out as flat
+as pieces of painted tin; her bits of brass-work flashed like
+fire.  Already the ends of the wharves were white with groups of
+natives.
+
+"You might think he was going to ram the town," suggested the
+secretary.
+
+"Oh, I say," he exclaimed, in remonstrance, "he's making in for
+your private wharf."
+
+The Governor was rearranging the focus of the glass with nervous
+fingers.  "I believe," he said, "no--yes--upon my word, there
+are--there are ladies in that launch!"
+
+"Ladies, sir!"  The secretary threw a hasty glance at the
+binocular, but it was in immediate use.
+
+The clatter of the lawn-mower ceased suddenly, and the relief of
+its silence caused the Governor to lower his eyes.  He saw the
+lawn-mower lying prostrate on the grass.  The vagrant had
+vanished.
+
+There was a sharp tinkle of bells, and the launch slipped up to
+the wharf and halted as softly as a bicycle.  A man in a
+yachting-suit jumped from her, and making some laughing
+speech to the two women in the stern, walked briskly across the
+lawn, taking a letter from his pocket as he came.  Sir Charles
+awaited him gravely; the occupants of the launch had seen him,
+and it was too late to retreat.
+
+"Sir Charles Greville, I believe," said the yachtsman.  He bowed,
+and ran lightly up the steps.  "I am Mr. Robert Collier, from New
+York," he said.  "I have a letter to you from your ambassador at
+Washington.  If you'll pardon me, I'll present it in person.  I
+had meant to leave it, but seeing you--"  He paused, and gave the
+letter in his hand to Sir Charles, who waved him towards his
+library.
+
+Sir Charles scowled at the letter through his monocle, and then
+shook hands with his visitor.  "I am very glad to see you, Mr.
+Collier," he said.  "He says here you are preparing a book on our
+colonies in the West Indies."  He tapped the letter with his
+monocle.  "I am sure I shall be most happy to assist you with any
+information in my power."
+
+"Well, I am writing a book--yes," Mr. Collier observed,
+doubtfully, "but it's a logbook.  This trip I am on pleasure
+bent, and I also wish to consult with you on a personal matter. 
+However, that can wait."  He glanced out of the windows to where
+the launch lay in the sun.  "My wife came ashore with me, Sir
+Charles," he said, "so that in case there was a Lady Greville,
+Mrs. Collier could call on her, and we could ask if you would
+waive etiquette and do us the honor to dine with us to-night on
+the yacht--that is, if you are not engaged."
+
+Sir Charles smiled.  "There is no Lady Greville," he said, "and I
+personally do not think I am engaged elsewhere."  He paused in
+thought, as though to make quite sure he was not.  "No," he
+added, "I have no other engagement.  I will come with pleasure."
+
+Sir Charles rose and clapped his hands for the orderly. 
+"Possibly the ladies will come up to the veranda?" he asked.  "I
+cannot allow them to remain at the end of my wharf."  He turned,
+and gave directions to the orderly to bring limes and bottles of
+soda and ice, and led the way across the lawn.
+
+Mrs. Collier and her friend had not explored the grounds of
+Government House for over ten minutes before Sir Charles felt
+that many years ago he had personally arranged their visit, that
+he had known them for even a longer time, and that, now that they
+had finally arrived, they must never depart.
+
+To them there was apparently nothing on his domain which did not
+thrill with delightful interest.  They were as eager as two
+children at a pantomime, and as unconscious.  As a rule, Sir
+Charles had found it rather difficult to meet the women of his
+colony on a path which they were capable of treading
+intelligently.  In fairness to them, he had always sought out
+some topic in which they could take an equal part--something
+connected with the conduct of children, or the better ventilation
+of the new school-house and chapel.  But these new-comers did not
+require him to select topics of conversation; they did not even
+wait for him to finish those which he himself introduced.  They
+flitted from one end of the garden to the other with the
+eagerness of two midshipmen on shore leave, and they found
+something to enjoy in what seemed to the Governor the most
+commonplace of things.  The Zouave uniform of the sentry, the old
+Spanish cannon converted into peaceful gate-posts, the aviary
+with its screaming paroquets, the botanical station, and even the
+ice-machine were all objects of delight.
+
+On the other hand, the interior of the famous palace, which had
+been sent out complete from London, and which was wont to fill
+the wives of the colonials with awe or to reduce them to
+whispers, for some reason failed of its effect.  But they said
+they "loved" the large gold V. R.'s on the back of the
+Councillors' chairs, and they exclaimed aloud over the red
+leather despatch-boxes and the great seal of the colony, and the
+mysterious envelopes marked "On her Majesty's service."
+
+"Isn't it too exciting, Florence?" demanded Mrs. Collier.  "This
+is the table where Sir Charles sits and writes letters' on her
+Majesty's service,' and presses these buttons, and war-ships
+spring up in perfect shoals.  Oh, Robert," she sighed, "I do wish
+you had been a Governor!"
+
+The young lady called Florence stood looking down into the great
+arm-chair in front of the Governor's table.
+
+"May I?" she asked.  She slid fearlessly in between the oak arms
+of the chair and smiled about her.  Afterwards Sir Charles
+remembered her as she appeared at that moment with the red
+leather of the chair behind her, with her gloved hands resting on
+the carved oak, and her head on one side, smiling up at him.  She
+gazed with large eyes at the blue linen envelopes, the stiff
+documents in red tape, the tray of black sand, and the goose-
+quill pens.
+
+"I am now the Countess Zika," she announced; "no, I am Diana of
+the Crossways, and I mean to discover a state secret and sell it
+to the Daily Telegraph.  Sir Charles," she demanded, "if I
+press this electric button is war declared anywhere, or what
+happens?"
+
+"That second button," said Sir Charles, after deliberate
+scrutiny, "is the one which communicates with the pantry."
+
+The Governor would not consider their returning to the yacht for
+luncheon.
+
+"You might decide to steam away as suddenly as you came," he
+said, gallantly, "and I cannot take that chance.  This is
+Bachelor's Hall, so you must pardon my people if things do not go
+very smoothly."  He himself led them to the great guest-chamber,
+where there had not been a guest for many years, and he noticed,
+as though for the first time, that the halls through which they
+passed were bare, and that the floor was littered with unpacked
+boxes and gun-cases.  He also observed for the first time that
+maps of the colony, with the coffee-plantations and mahogany belt
+marked in different inks, were not perhaps so decorative as
+pictures and mirrors and family portraits.  And he could have
+wished that the native servants had not stared so admiringly at
+the guests, nor directed each other in such aggressive whispers. 
+On those other occasions, when the wives of the Councillors came
+to the semi-annual dinners, the native servants had seemed
+adequate to all that was required of them.  He recollected with a
+flush that in the town these semi-annual dinners were described
+as banquets.  He wondered if to these visitors from the
+outside world it was all equally provincial.
+
+But their enjoyment was apparently unfeigned and generous.  It
+was evident that they had known each other for many years, yet
+they received every remark that any of them made as though it had
+been pronounced by a new and interesting acquaintance.  Sir
+Charles found it rather difficult to keep up with the talk across
+the table, they changed the subject so rapidly, and they half
+spoke of so many things without waiting to explain.  He could not
+at once grasp the fact that people who had no other position in
+the world save that of observers were speaking so authoritatively
+of public men and public measures.  He found, to his delight,
+that for the first time in several years he was not presiding at
+his own table, and that his guests seemed to feel no awe of him.
+
+"What's the use of a yacht nowadays?" Collier was saying--"
+what's the use of a yacht, when you can go to sleep in a wagon-
+lit at the Gare du Nord, and wake up at Vladivostok?  And look at
+the time it saves; eleven days to Gib, six to Port Said, and
+fifteen to Colombo--there you are, only half-way around, and
+you're already sixteen days behind the man in the wagon-lit."
+
+"But nobody wants to go to Vladivostok," said Miss Cameron, "or
+anywhere else in a wagon-lit.  But with a yacht you can explore
+out-of-the-way places, and you meet new and interesting people. 
+We wouldn't have met Sir Charles if we had waited for a wagon-
+lit."  She bowed her head to the Governor, and he smiled with
+gratitude.  He had lost Mr. Collier somewhere in the Indian
+Ocean, and he was glad she had brought them back to the Windless
+Isles once more.
+
+"And again I repeat that the answer to that is, 'Why not? said
+the March Hare,'" remarked Mr. Collier, determinedly.
+
+The answer, as an answer, did not strike Sir Charles as a very
+good one.  But the ladies seemed to comprehend, for Miss Cameron
+said:  "Did I tell you about meeting him at Oxford just a few
+months before his death--at a children's tea-party?  He was so
+sweet and understanding with them!  Two women tried to lionize
+him, and he ran away and played with the children.  I was
+more glad to meet him than any one I can think of.  Not as a
+personage, you know, but because I felt grateful to him."
+
+"Yes, that way, distinctly," said Mrs. Collier.  "I should have
+felt that way towards Mrs. Ewing more than any one else."
+
+"I know, 'Jackanapes,'" remarked Collier, shortly; "a brutal
+assault upon the feelings, I say."
+
+"Some one else said it before you, Robert," Mrs. Collier
+commented, calmly.  "Perhaps Sir Charles met him at Apia."  They
+all turned and looked at him.  He wished he could say he had met
+him at Apia.  He did not quite see how they had made their way
+from a children's tea party at Oxford to the South Pacific
+islands, but he was anxious to join in somewhere with a clever
+observation.  But they never seemed to settle in one place
+sufficiently long for him to recollect what he knew of it.  He
+hoped they would get around to the west coast of Africa in time. 
+He had been Governor of Sierra Leone for five years.
+
+His success that night at dinner on the yacht was far better. 
+The others seemed a little tired after the hours of sight-seeing
+to which he had treated them, and they were content to listen. 
+In the absence of Mr. Clarges, who knew them word by word, he
+felt free to tell his three stories of life at Sierra Leone.  He
+took his time in the telling, and could congratulate himself that
+his efforts had never been more keenly appreciated.  He felt that
+he was holding his own.
+
+The night was still and warm, and while the men lingered below at
+the table, the two women mounted to the deck and watched the
+lights of the town as they vanished one by one and left the moon
+in unchallenged possession of the harbor.  For a long time Miss
+Cameron stood silent, looking out across the bay at the shore and
+the hills beyond.  A fish splashed near them, and the sound of
+oars rose from the mist that floated above the water, until they
+were muffled in the distance.  The palms along the shore
+glistened like silver, and overhead the Southern Cross shone
+white against a sky of purple.  The silence deepened and
+continued for so long a time that Mrs. Collier felt its
+significance, and waited for the girl to end it.
+
+Miss Cameron raised her eyes to the stars and frowned.  "I am not
+surprised that he is content to stay here," she said.  "Are you? 
+It is so beautiful, so wonderfully beautiful."
+
+For a moment Mrs. Collier made no answer.  "Two years is a long
+time, Florence," she said; "and he is all I have; he is not only
+my only brother, he is the only living soul who is related to me.
+
+That makes it harder."
+
+The girl seemed to find some implied reproach in the speech, for
+she turned and looked at her friend closely.  "Do you feel it is
+my fault, Alice?" she asked.
+
+The older woman shook her head.  "How could it be your fault?"
+she answered.  "If you couldn't love him enough to marry him, you
+couldn't, that's all.  But that is no reason why he should have
+hidden himself from all of us.  Even if he could not stand being
+near you, caring as he did, he need not have treated me so. 
+We have done all we can do, and Robert has been more than fine
+about it.  He and his agents have written to every consul and
+business house in Central America, and I don't believe there is a
+city that he hasn't visited.  He has sent him money and letters
+to every bank and to every post-office--"
+
+The girl raised her head quickly.
+
+"--but he never calls for either," Mrs. Collier continued, "for I
+know that if he had read my letters he would have come home."
+
+The girl lifted her head as though she were about to speak, and
+then turned and walked slowly away.  After a few moments she
+returned, and stood, with her hands resting on the rail, looking
+down into the water.  "I wrote him two letters," she said.  In
+the silence of the night her voice was unusually clear and
+distinct.  "I--you make me wonder--if they ever reached him."
+
+Mrs. Collier, with her eyes fixed upon the girl, rose slowly from
+her chair and came towards her.  She reached out her hand and
+touched Miss Cameron on the arm.
+
+"Florence," she said, in a whisper, "have you--"
+
+The girl raised her head slowly, and lowered it again.  "Yes,"
+she answered; "I told him to come back--to come back to me. 
+Alice," she cried, "I--I begged him to come back!"  She tossed
+her hands apart and again walked rapidly away, leaving the older
+woman standing motionless.
+
+A moment later, when Sir Charles and Mr. Collier stepped out upon
+the deck, they discovered the two women standing close together,
+two white, ghostly figures in the moonlight, and as they advanced
+towards them they saw Mrs. Collier take the girl for an instant
+in her arms.
+
+Sir Charles was asking Miss Cameron how long she thought an
+immigrant should be made to work for his freehold allotment, when
+Mr. Collier and his wife rose at the same moment and departed on
+separate errands.  They met most mysteriously in the shadow of
+the wheel-house.
+
+"What is it?  Is anything wrong with Florence?" Collier asked,
+anxiously.  "Not homesick, is she?"
+
+Mrs. Collier put her hands on her husband's shoulders and shook
+her head.
+
+"Wrong?  No, thank Heaven! it's as right as right can be!" she
+cried.  "She's written to him to come back, but he's never
+answered, and so--and now it's all right."
+
+Mr. Collier gazed blankly at his wife's upturned face.  "Well, I
+don't see that," he remonstrated.  "What's the use of her being
+in love with him now when he can't be found?  What?  Why didn't
+she love him two years ago when he was where you could get at
+him--at her house, for instance.  He was there most of his time. 
+She would have saved a lot of trouble.  However," he added,
+energetically, "this makes it absolutely necessary to find that
+young man and bring him to his senses.  We'll search this place
+for the next few days, and then we'll try the mainland again.  I
+think I'll offer a reward for him, and have it printed in
+Spanish, and paste it up in all the plazas.  We might add a line
+in English, 'She has changed her mind.'  That would bring him
+home, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Don't be unfeeling, Robert," said Mrs. Collier.
+
+Her husband raised his eyes appealingly, and addressed himself to
+the moon.  "I ask you now," he complained, "is that fair to a man
+who has spent six months on muleback trying to round up a
+prodigal brother-in-law?"
+
+That same evening, after the ladies had gone below, Mr. Collier
+asked Sir Charles to assist him in his search for his wife's
+brother, and Sir Charles heartily promised his most active co-
+operation.  There were several Americans at work in the interior,
+he said, as overseers on the coffee-plantations.  It was possible
+that the runaway might be among them.  It was only that morning,
+Sir Charles remembered, that an American had been at work
+"repairing his lawn-mower," as he considerately expressed it.  He
+would send for him on the morrow.
+
+But on the morrow the slave of the lawn-mower was reported on the
+list of prisoners as "missing," and Corporal Mallon was grieved,
+but refused to consider himself responsible.  Sir Charles himself
+had allowed the vagrant unusual freedom, and the vagrant had
+taken advantage of it, and probably escaped to the hills, or up
+the river to the logwood camp.
+
+"Telegraph a description of him to Inspector Garrett," Sir
+Charles directed, "and to the heads of all up stations.  And when
+he returns, bring him to me."
+
+So great was his zeal that Sir Charles further offered to join
+Mr. Collier in his search among the outlying plantations; but Mr.
+Collier preferred to work alone.  He accordingly set out at once,
+armed with letters to the different district inspectors, and in
+his absence delegated to Sir Charles the pleasant duty of caring
+for the wants of Miss Cameron and his wife.  Sir Charles regarded
+the latter as deserving of all sympathy, for Mr. Collier, in his
+efforts to conceal the fact from the Governor that Florence
+Cameron was responsible, or in any way concerned, in the
+disappearance of the missing man, had been too mysterious.  Sir
+Charles was convinced that the fugitive had swindled his brother-
+in-law and stolen his sister's jewels.
+
+The days which followed were to the Governor days and nights of
+strange discoveries.  He recognized that the missionaries
+from the great outside world had invaded his shores and disturbed
+his gods and temples.  Their religion of progress and activity
+filled him with doubt and unrest.
+
+"In this century," Mr. Collier had declared, "nothing can stand
+still.  It's the same with a corporation, or a country, or a man.
+
+We must either march ahead or fall out.  We can't mark time. 
+What?"
+
+"Exactly--certainly not," Sir Charles had answered.  But in his
+heart he knew that he himself had been marking time under these
+soft tropical skies while the world was pushing forward.  The
+thought had not disturbed him before.  Now he felt guilty.  He
+conceived a sudden intolerance, if not contempt, for the little
+village of whitewashed houses, for the rafts of mahogany and of
+logwood that bumped against the pier-heads, for the sacks of
+coffee piled high like barricades under the corrugated zinc sheds
+along the wharf.  Each season it had been his pride to note the
+increase in these exports.  The development of the resources of
+his colony had been a work in which he had felt that the
+Colonial Secretary took an immediate interest.  He had believed
+that he was one of the important wheels of the machinery which
+moved the British Empire: and now, in a day, he was undeceived. 
+It was forced upon him that to the eyes of the outside world he
+was only a greengrocer operating on a large scale; he provided
+the British public with coffee for its breakfast, with drugs for
+its stomach, and with strange woods for its dining-room furniture
+and walking-sticks.  He combated this ignominious
+characterization of his position indignantly.  The new arrivals
+certainly gave him no hint that they considered him so lightly. 
+This thought greatly comforted him, for he felt that in some way
+he was summoning to his aid all of his assets and resources to
+meet an expert and final valuation.  As he ranged them before him
+he was disturbed and happy to find that the value he placed upon
+them was the value they would have in the eyes of a young girl--
+not a girl of the shy, mother-obeying, man-worshipping English
+type, but a girl such as Miss Cameron seemed to be, a girl who
+could understand what you were trying to say before you said
+it, who could take an interest in rates of exchange and preside
+at a dinner table, who was charmingly feminine and clever, and
+who was respectful of herself and of others.  In fact, he
+decided, with a flush, that Miss Cameron herself was the young
+girl he had in his mind.
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+The question came to him in his room, the sixth night of their
+visit, and he strode over to the long pier-glass and stood
+studying himself critically for the first time in years.  He was
+still a fine-looking, well-kept man.  His hair was thin, but that
+fact did not show; and his waist was lost, but riding and tennis
+would set that right.  He had means outside of his official
+salary, and there was the title, such as it was.  Lady Greville
+the wife of the birthday knight sounded as well as Lady Greville
+the marchioness.  And Americans cared for these things.  He
+doubted whether this particular American would do so, but he was
+adding up all he had to offer, and that was one of the assets. 
+He was sure she would not be content to remain mistress of
+the Windless Isles.  Nor, indeed, did he longer care to be master
+there, now that he had inhaled this quick, stirring breath from
+the outer world.  He would resign, and return and mix with the
+world again.  He would enter Parliament; a man so well acquainted
+as himself with the Gold Coast of Africa and with the trade of
+the West Indies must always be of value in the Lower House.  This
+value would be recognized, no doubt, and he would become at first
+an Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and then, in time, Colonial
+Secretary and a cabinet minister.  She would like that, he
+thought.  And after that place had been reached, all things were
+possible.  For years he had not dreamed such dreams--not since he
+had been a clerk in the Foreign Office.  They seemed just as
+possible now as they had seemed real then, and just as near.  He
+felt it was all absolutely in his own hands.
+
+He descended to the dining-room with the air of a man who already
+felt the cares of high responsibility upon his shoulders.  His
+head was erect and his chest thrown forward.  He was ten
+years younger; his manner was alert, assured, and gracious.  As
+he passed through the halls he was impatient of the familiar
+settings of Government House; they seemed to him like the
+furnishings of a hotel where he had paid his bill, and where his
+luggage was lying strapped for departure in the hallway.
+
+In his library he saw on his table a number of papers lying open
+waiting for his signature, the dog-tax among the others.  He
+smiled to remember how important it had seemed to him in the
+past--in that past of indolence and easy content.  Now he was on
+fire to put this rekindled ambition to work, to tell the woman
+who had lighted it that it was all from her and for her, that
+without her he had existed, that now he had begun to live.
+
+They had never found him so delighful{sic} as he appeared that
+night.  He was like a man on the eve of a holiday.  He made a
+jest of his past efforts; he made them see, as he now saw it for
+the first time, that side of the life of the Windless Isles which
+was narrow and petty, even ridiculous.  He talked of big men in a
+big way; he criticised, and expounded, and advanced his own
+theories of government and the proper control of an empire.
+
+Collier, who had returned from his unsuccessful search of the
+plantations, shook his head.
+
+"It's a pity you are not in London now," he said, sincerely. 
+"They need some one there who has been on the spot.  They can't
+direct the colonies from what they know of them in Whitehall."
+
+Sir Charles fingered the dinner cloth nervously, and when he
+spoke, fixed his eyes anxiously upon Miss Cameron.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "I have been thinking of doing that very
+thing, of resigning my post here and going back, entering
+Parliament, and all the rest of it."
+
+His declaration met with a unanimous chorus of delight.  Miss
+Cameron nodded her head with eager approval.
+
+"Yes, if I were a man, that is where I should wish to be," she
+said, "at the heart of it.  Why, whatever you say in the House of
+Commons is heard all over the world the next morning."
+
+Sir Charles felt the blood tingle in his pulses.  He had not been
+so stirred in years.  Her words ran to his head like wine.
+
+Mr. Collier raised his glass.
+
+"Here's to our next meeting," he said, "on the terrace of the
+House of Commons."
+
+But Miss Cameron interrupted.  "No; to the Colonial Secretary,"
+she amended.
+
+"Oh yes," they assented, rising, and so drank his health, smiling
+down upon him with kind, friendly glances and good-will.
+
+"To the Colonial Secretary," they said.  Sir Charles clasped the
+arms of his chair tightly with his hands; his eyes were half
+closed, and his lips pressed into a grim, confident smile.  He
+felt that a single word from her would make all that they
+suggested possible.  If she cared for such things, they were
+hers; he had them to give; they were ready lying at her feet.  He
+knew that the power had always been with him, lying dormant in
+his heart and brain.  It had only waited for the touch of the
+Princess to wake it into life.
+
+The American visitors were to sail for the mainland the next day,
+but he had come to know them so well in the brief period of
+their visit that he felt he dared speak to her that same night. 
+At least he could give her some word that would keep him in her
+mind until they met again in London, or until she had considered
+her answer.  He could not expect her to answer at once.  She
+could take much time.  What else had he to do now but to wait for
+her answer?  It was now all that made life.
+
+Collier and his wife had left the veranda and had crossed the
+lawn towards the water's edge.  The moonlight fell full upon them
+with all the splendor of the tropics, and lit the night with a
+brilliant, dazzling radiance.  From where Miss Cameron sat on the
+veranda in the shadow, Sir Charles could see only the white
+outline of her figure and the indolent movement of her fan. 
+Collier had left his wife and was returning slowly towards the
+step.  Sir Charles felt that if he meant to speak he must speak
+now, and quickly.  He rose and placed himself beside her in the
+shadow, and the girl turned her head inquiringly and looked up at
+him.
+
+But on the instant the hush of the night was broken by a
+sharp challenge, and the sound of men's voices raised in anger;
+there was the noise of a struggle on the gravel, and from the
+corner of the house the two sentries came running, dragging
+between them a slight figure that fought and wrestled to be free.
+
+Sir Charles exclaimed with indignant impatience, and turning,
+strode quickly to the head of the steps.
+
+"What does this mean?" he demanded.  "What are you doing with
+that man?  Why did you bring him here?"
+
+As the soldiers straightened to attention, their prisoner ceased
+to struggle, and stood with his head bent on his chest.  His
+sombrero was pulled down low across his forehead.
+
+"He was crawling through the bushes, Sir Charles," the soldier
+panted, "watching that gentleman, sir,"--he nodded over his
+shoulder towards Collier.  "I challenged, and he jumped to run,
+and we collared him.  He resisted, Sir Charles."
+
+The mind of the Governor was concerned with other matters than
+trespassers.
+
+"Well, take him to the barracks, then," he said.  "Report to
+me in the morning.  That will do."
+
+The prisoner wheeled eagerly, without further show of resistance,
+and the soldiers closed in on him on either side.  But as the
+three men moved away together, their faces, which had been in
+shadow, were now turned towards Mr. Collier, who was advancing
+leisurely, and with silent footsteps, across the grass.  He met
+them face to face, and as he did so the prisoner sprang back and
+threw out his arms in front of him, with the gesture of a man who
+entreats silence.  Mr. Collier halted as though struck to stone,
+and the two men confronted each other without moving.
+
+"Good God!" Mr. Collier whispered.
+
+He turned stiffly and slowly, as though in a trance, and beckoned
+to his wife, who had followed him.
+
+"Alice!" he called.  He stepped backwards towards her, and taking
+her hand in one of his, drew her towards the prisoner.  "Here he
+is!" he said.
+
+They heard her cry "Henry!" with the fierceness of a call for
+help, and saw her rush forward and stumble into the arms of
+the prisoner, and their two heads were bent close together.
+
+Collier ran up the steps and explained breathlessly.
+
+"And now," he gasped, in conclusion, "what's to be done?  What's
+he arrested for?  Is it bailable?  What?"
+
+"Good heavens!" exclaimed Sir Charles, miserably.  "It is my
+fault entirely.  I assure you I had no idea.  How could I?  But I
+should have known, I should have guessed it."  He dismissed the
+sentries with a gesture.  "That will do," he said.  "Return to
+your posts."
+
+Mr. Collier laughed with relief.
+
+"Then it is not serious?" he asked.
+
+"He--he had no money, that was all," exclaimed Sir Charles. 
+"Serious?  Certainly not.  Upon my word, I'm sorry--"
+
+The young man had released himself from his sister's embrace, and
+was coming towards them; and Sir Charles, eager to redeem
+himself, advanced hurriedly to greet him.  But the young man did
+not see him; he was looking past him up the steps to where Miss
+Cameron stood in the shadow.
+
+Sir Charles hesitated and drew back.  The young man stopped at
+the foot of the steps, and stood with his head raised, staring up
+at the white figure of the girl, who came slowly forward.
+
+It was forced upon Sir Charles that in spite of the fact that the
+young man before them had but just then been rescued from arrest,
+that in spite of his mean garments and ragged sandals, something
+about him--the glamour that surrounds the prodigal, or possibly
+the moonlight--gave him an air of great dignity and distinction.
+
+As Miss Cameron descended the stairs, Sir Charles recognized for
+the first time that the young man was remarkably handsome, and he
+resented it.  It hurt him, as did also the prodigal's youth and
+his assured bearing.  He felt a sudden sinking fear, a weakening
+of all his vital forces, and he drew in his breath slowly and
+deeply.  But no one noticed him; they were looking at the tall
+figure of the prodigal, standing with his hat at his hip and his
+head thrown back, holding the girl with his eyes.
+
+Collier touched Sir Charles on the arm, and nodded his head
+towards the library.  "Come," he whispered, "let us old people
+leave them together.  They've a good deal to say."  Sir Charles
+obeyed in silence, and crossing the library to the great oak
+chair, seated himself and leaned wearily on the table before him. 
+He picked up one of the goose quills and began separating it into
+little pieces.  Mr. Collier was pacing up and down, biting
+excitedly on the end of his cigar.  "Well, this has
+certainly been a great night," he said.  "And it is all due to
+you, Sir Charles--all due to you.  Yes, they have you to thank
+for it."
+
+"They? " said Sir Charles.  He knew that it had to come.  He
+wanted the man to strike quickly.
+
+"They?  Yes--Florence Cameron and Henry," Mr. Collier answered. 
+"Henry went away because she wouldn't marry him.  She didn't care
+for him then, but afterwards she cared.  Now they're reunited,--
+and so they're happy; and my wife is more than happy, and I won't
+have to bother any more; and it's all right, and all through
+you."
+
+"I am glad," said Sir Charles.  There was a long pause, which the
+men, each deep in his own thoughts, did not notice.
+
+"You will be leaving now, I suppose?" Sir Charles asked.  He was
+looking down, examining the broken pen in his hand.
+
+Mr. Collier stopped in his walk and considered.  "Yes, I suppose
+they will want to get back," he said.  "I shall be sorry myself. 
+And you?  What will you do?"
+
+Sir Charles started slightly.  He had not yet thought what he
+would do.  His eyes wandered over the neglected work, which had
+accumulated on the desk before him.  Only an hour before he had
+thought of it as petty and little, as something unworthy of his
+energy.  Since that time what change had taken place in him?
+
+For him everything had changed, he answered, but in him there had
+been no change; and if this thing which the girl had brought into
+his life had meant the best in life, it must always mean that. 
+She had been an inspiration; she must remain his spring of
+action.  Was he a slave, he asked himself, that he should rebel? 
+Was he a boy, that he could turn his love to aught but the
+best account?  He must remember her not as the woman who had
+crushed his spirit, but as she who had helped him, who had lifted
+him up to something better and finer.  He would make sacrifice in
+her name; it would be in her name that he would rise to high
+places and accomplish much good.
+
+She would not know this, but he would know.
+
+He rose and brushed the papers away from him with an impatient
+sweep of the hand.
+
+"I shall follow out the plan of which I spoke at dinner," he
+answered.  "I shall resign here, and return home and enter
+Parliament."
+
+Mr. Collier laughed admiringly.  "I love the way you English take
+your share of public life," he said, "the way you spend
+yourselves for your country, and give your brains, your lives,
+everything you have--all for the empire."
+
+Through the open window Sir Charles saw Miss Cameron half hidden
+by the vines of the veranda.  The moonlight falling about
+her transformed her into a figure which was ideal, mysterious,
+and elusive, like a woman in a dream.  He shook his head wearily.
+
+"For the empire?" he asked.
+
+
+
+THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
+
+A SKETCH CONTAINING THREE POINTS OF VIEW
+
+What the Poet Laureate wrote.
+
+    "There are girls in the Gold Reef City
+        There are mothers and children too!
+    And they cry 'Hurry up for pity!'
+        So what can a brave man do?
+
+    "I suppose we were wrong, were mad men,
+        Still I think at the Judgment Day,
+    When God sifts the good from the bad men,
+        There'll be something more to say."
+
+What more the Lord Chief Justice found to say.
+
+
+"In this case we know the immediate consequence of your crime. 
+It has been the loss of human life, it has been the
+disturbance of public peace, it has been the creation of a
+certain sense of distrust of public professions and of public
+faith. . . .  The sentence of this Court therefore is that, as to
+you, Leander Starr Jameson, you be confined for a period of
+fifteen months without hard labor; that you, Sir John Willoughby,
+have ten months' imprisonment; and that you, etc., etc."
+
+                        London Times, July 29th.
+
+        What the Hon. "Reggie" Blake thought about it.
+
+                            "H. M. HOLLOWAY PRISON,
+                                    "July 28th.
+
+"I am going to keep a diary while I am in prison, that is, if
+they will let me.  I never kept one before because I hadn't the
+time; when I was home on leave there was too much going on to
+bother about it, and when I was up country I always came back
+after a day's riding so tired that I was too sleepy to write
+anything.  And now that I have the time, I won't have anything to
+write about.  I fancy that more things happened to me today
+than are likely to happen again for the next eight months, so I
+will make this day take up as much room in the diary as it can. 
+I am writing this on the back of the paper the Warder uses for
+his official reports, while he is hunting up cells to put us in. 
+We came down on him rather unexpectedly and he is nervous.
+    
+"Of course, I had prepared myself for this after a fashion,
+but now I see that somehow I never really did think I would be in
+here, and all my friends outside, and everything going on just
+the same as though I wasn't alive somewhere.  It's like telling
+yourself that your horse can't possibly pull off a race, so that
+you won't mind so much if he doesn't, but you always feel just as
+bad when he comes in a loser.  A man can't fool himself into
+thinking one way when he is hoping the other.
+    
+"But I am glad it is over, and settled.  It was a great bore
+not knowing your luck and having the thing hanging over your head
+every morning when you woke up.  Indeed it was quite a relief
+when the counsel got all through arguing over those
+proclamations, and the Chief Justice summed up, but I nearly
+went to sleep when I found he was going all over it again to the
+jury.  I didn't understand about those proclamations myself and
+I'll lay a fiver the jury didn't either.  The Colonel said he
+didn't.  I couldn't keep my mind on what Russell was explaining
+about, and I got to thinking how much old Justice Hawkins looked
+like the counsel in 'Alice in Wonderland' when they tried the
+knave of spades for stealing the tarts.  He had just the same
+sort of a beak and the same sort of a wig, and I wondered why he
+had his wig powdered and the others didn't.  Pollock's wig had a
+hole in the top; you could see it when he bent over to take
+notes.  He was always taking notes.  I don't believe he
+understood about those proclamations either; he never seemed to
+listen, anyway.
+
+"The Chief Justice certainly didn't love us very much, that's
+sure; and he wasn't going to let anybody else love us either.  I
+felt quite the Christian Martyr when Sir Edward was speaking in
+defence.  He made it sound as though we were all a lot of Adelphi
+heroes and ought to be promoted and have medals, but when
+Lord Russell started in to read the Riot Act at us I began to
+believe that hanging was too good for me.  I'm sure I never knew
+I was disturbing the peace of nations; it seems like such a large
+order for a subaltern.
+
+"But the worst was when they made us stand up before all those
+people to be sentenced.  I must say I felt shaky about the knees
+then, not because I was afraid of what was coming, but because it
+was the first time I had ever been pointed out before people, and
+made to feel ashamed.  And having those girls there, too, looking
+at one.  That wasn't just fair to us.  It made me feel about ten
+years old, and I remembered how the Head Master used to call me
+to his desk and say, 'Blake Senior, two pages of Horace and keep
+in bounds for a week.'  And then I heard our names and the
+months, and my name and 'eight months' imprisonment,' and there
+was a bustle and murmur and the tipstaves cried, 'Order in the
+Court,' and the Judges stood up and shook out their big red
+skirts as though they were shaking off the contamination of our
+presence and rustled away, and I sat down, wondering how
+long eight months was, and wishing they'd given me as much as
+they gave Jameson.
+
+"They put us in a room together then, and our counsel said how
+sorry they were, and shook hands, and went off to dinner and left
+us.  I thought they might have waited with us and been a little
+late for dinner just that once; but no one waited except a lot of
+costers outside whom we did not know.  It was eight o'clock and
+still quite light when we came out, and there was a line of four-
+wheelers and a hansom ready for us.  I'd been hoping they would
+take us out by the Strand entrance, just because I'd like to have
+seen it again, but they marched us instead through the main
+quadrangle--a beastly, gloomy courtyard that echoed, and out,
+into Carey Street--such a dirty, gloomy street.  The costers and
+clerks set up a sort of a cheer when we came out, and one of them
+cried, 'God bless you, sir,' to the doctor, but I was sorry they
+cheered.  It seemed like kicking against the umpire's decision. 
+The Colonel and I got into a hansom together and we trotted
+off into Chancery Lane and turned into Holborn.  Most of the
+shops were closed, and the streets looked empty, but there was a
+lighted clock-face over Mooney's public-house, and the hands
+stood at a quarter past eight.  I didn't know where Holloway was,
+and was hoping they would have to take us through some decent
+streets to reach it; but we didn't see a part of the city that
+meant anything to me, or that I would choose to travel through
+again.
+
+"Neither of us talked, and I imagined that the people in the
+streets knew we were going to prison, and I kept my eyes on the
+enamel card on the back of the apron.  I suppose I read, 'Two-
+wheeled hackney carriage: if hired and discharged within the
+four-mile limit, 1s.' at least a hundred times.  I got more
+sensible after a bit, and when we had turned into Gray's Inn Road
+I looked up and saw a tram in front of us with 'Holloway Road and
+King's X,' painted on the steps, and the Colonel saw it about the
+same time I fancy, for we each looked at the other, and the
+Colonel raised his eyebrows.  It showed us that at least the
+cabman knew where we were going.
+
+"'They might have taken us for a turn through the West End first,
+I think,' the Colonel said.  'I'd like to have had a look around,
+wouldn't you?  This isn't a cheerful neighborhood, is it?'
+
+"There were a lot of children playing in St. Andrew's Gardens,
+and a crowd of them ran out just as we passed, shrieking and
+laughing over nothing, the way kiddies do, and that was about the
+only pleasant sight in the ride.  I had quite a turn when we came
+to the New Hospital just beyond, for I thought it was Holloway,
+and it came over me what eight months in such a place meant.  I
+believe if I hadn't pulled myself up sharp, I'd have jumped out
+into the street and run away.  It didn't last more than a few
+seconds, but I don't want any more like them.  I was afraid,
+afraid--there's no use pretending it was anything else.  I was in
+a dumb, silly funk, and I turned sick inside and shook, as I have
+seen a horse shake when he shies at nothing and sweats and
+trembles down his sides.
+
+"During those few seconds it seemed to be more than I could
+stand; I felt sure that I couldn't do it--that I'd go mad if they
+tried to force me.  The idea was so terrible--of not being master
+over your own legs and arms, to have your flesh and blood and
+what brains God gave you buried alive in stone walls as though
+they were in a safe with a time-lock on the door set for eight
+months ahead.  There's nothing to be afraid of in a stone wall
+really, but it's the idea of the thing--of not being free to move
+about, especially to a chap that has always lived in the open as
+I have, and has had men under him.  It was no wonder I was in a
+funk for a minute.  I'll bet a fiver the others were, too, if
+they'll only own up to it.  I don't mean for long, but just when
+the idea first laid hold of them.  Anyway, it was a good lesson
+to me, and if I catch myself thinking of it again I'll whistle,
+or talk to myself out loud and think of something cheerful.  And
+I don't mean to be one of those chaps who spends his time in jail
+counting the stones in his cell, or training spiders, or
+measuring how many of his steps make a mile, for madness
+lies that way.  I mean to sit tight and think of all the good
+times I've had, and go over them in my mind very slowly, so as to
+make them last longer and remember who was there and what we
+said, and the jokes and all that; I'll go over house-parties I
+have been on, and the times I've had in the Riviera, and scouting
+parties Dr. Jim led up country when we were taking Matabele Land.
+
+"They say that if you're good here they give you things to read
+after a month or two, and then I can read up all those
+instructive books that a fellow never does read until he's laid
+up in bed.
+
+"But that's crowding ahead a bit; I must keep to what happened
+to-day.  We struck York Road at the back of the Great Western
+Terminus, and I half hoped we might see some chap we knew coming
+or going away: I would like to have waved my hand to him.  It
+would have been fun to have seen his surprise the next morning
+when he read in the paper that he had been bowing to jail-birds,
+and then I would like to have cheated the tipstaves out of just
+one more friendly good-by.  I wanted to say good-by to
+somebody, but I really couldn't feel sorry to see the last of any
+one of those we passed in the streets--they were such a dirty,
+unhappy-looking lot, and the railroad wall ran on forever
+apparently, and we might have been in a foreign country for all
+we knew of it.  There were just sooty gray brick tenements and
+gas-works on one side, and the railroad cutting on the other, and
+semaphores and telegraph wires overhead, and smoke and grime
+everywhere, it looked exactly like the sort of street that should
+lead to a prison, and it seemed a pity to take a smart hansom and
+a good cob into it.
+
+"It was just a bit different from our last ride together--when we
+rode through the night from Krugers-Dorp with hundreds of horses'
+hoofs pounding on the soft veldt behind us, and the carbines
+clanking against the stirrups as they swung on the sling belts. 
+We were being hunted then, harassed on either side, scurrying for
+our lives like the Derby Dog in a race-track when every one hoots
+him and no man steps out to help--we were sick for sleep, sick
+for food, lashed by the rain, and we knew that we were
+beaten; but we were free still, and under open skies with the
+derricks of the Rand rising like gallows on our left, and
+Johannesburg only fifteen miles away."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Lion and the Unicorn, by Davis
+