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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Foolish Virgin, by Thomas Dixon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Foolish Virgin
+
+Author: Thomas Dixon
+
+Posting Date: October 5, 2008 [EBook #1634]
+Release Date: February, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOOLISH VIRGIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FOOLISH VIRGIN
+
+By Thomas Dixon
+
+
+
+
+TO GERTRUDE ATHERTON WITH GRATITUDE AND ADMIRATION
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I.      A FRIENDLY WARNING
+     II.     TEMPTATION
+     III.    FATE
+     IV.     DOUBTS AND FEARS
+     V.      WINGS OF STEEL
+     VI.     BESIDE THE SEA
+     VII.    A VAIN APPEAL
+     VIII.   JIM'S TRIAL
+     IX.     ELLA'S SECRET
+     X.      THE WEDDING
+     XI.     "UNTIL DEATH"
+     XII.    THE LOTOS-EATERS
+     XIII.   THE REAL MAN
+     XIV.    UNWELCOME GUESTS
+     XV.     A LITTLE BLACK BAG
+     XVI.    THE AWAKENING
+     XVII.   THE SURRENDER
+     XVIII.  TO THE NEW GOD
+     XIX.    NANCE'S STOREHOUSE
+     XX.     TRAPPED
+     XXI.    THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE
+     XXII.   DELIVERANCE
+     XXIII.  THE DOCTOR
+     XXIV.   THE CALL DIVINE
+     XXV.    THE MOTHER
+     XXVI.   A SOUL IS BORN
+     XXVII.  THE BABY
+     XXVIII. WHAT IS LOVE?
+     XXIX.   THE NEW MAN
+
+
+
+
+LEADING CHARACTERS OF THE STORY
+
+     MARY ADAMS, An Old-Fashioned Girl.
+     JIM ANTHONY, A Modern Youth.
+     JANE ANDERSON, An Artist.
+     ELLA, A Scrubwoman.
+     NANCE OWENS, Jim Anthony's Mother.
+     A DOCTOR, Whose Call was Divine.
+     THE BABY, A Mascot.
+
+
+
+
+THE FOOLISH VIRGIN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. A FRIENDLY WARNING
+
+"Mary Adams, you're a fool!"
+
+The single dimple in a smooth red cheek smiled in answer.
+
+"You're repeating yourself, Jane----"
+
+"You won't give him one hour's time for just three sittings?"
+
+"Not a second for one sitting----"
+
+"Hopeless!"
+
+Mary smiled provokingly, her white teeth gleaming in obstinate good
+humor.
+
+"He's the most distinguished artist in America----"
+
+"I've heard so."
+
+"It would be a liberal education for a girl of your training to know
+such a man----"
+
+"I'll omit that course of instruction."
+
+The younger woman was silent a moment, and a flush of anger slowly
+mounted her temples. The blue eyes were fixed reproachfully on her
+friend.
+
+"You really thought that I would pose?"
+
+"I hoped so."
+
+"Alone with a man in his studio for hours?"
+
+Jane Anderson lifted her dark brows.
+
+"Why, no, I hardly expected that! I'm sure he would take his easel and
+palette out into the square in front of the Plaza Hotel and let you sit
+on the base of the Sherman monument. The crowds would cheer and inspire
+him--bah! Can't you have a little common-sense? There are a few
+brutes among artists, as there are in all professions--even among the
+superintendents of your schools. Gordon's a great creative genius. If
+you'd try to flirt with him, he'd stop his work and send you home. You'd
+be as safe in his studio as in your mother's nursery. I've known him
+for ten years. He's the gentlest, truest man I've ever met. He's doing a
+canvas on which he has set his whole heart."
+
+"He can get professional models."
+
+"For his usual work, yes--but this is the head of the Madonna. He saw
+you walking with me in the Park last week and has been to my studio a
+half-dozen times begging me to take you to see him. Please, Mary dear,
+do this for my sake. I owe Gordon a debt I can never pay. He gave me
+the cue to the work that set me on my feet. He was big and generous
+and helpful when I needed a friend. He asked nothing in return but the
+privilege of helping me again if I ever needed it. You can do me an
+enormous favor--please."
+
+Mary Adams rose with a gesture of impatience, walked to her window and
+gazed on the torrent of humanity pouring through Twenty-third Street
+from the beehives of industry that have changed this quarter of New York
+so rapidly in the last five years. She turned suddenly and confronted
+her friend.
+
+"How could you think that I would stoop to such a thing?"
+
+"Stoop!"
+
+"Yes," she snapped, "--pose for an artist! I'd as soon think of rushing
+stark naked through Twenty-third Street at noon!"
+
+The older woman looked at her flushed face, suppressed a sharp answer,
+broke into a fit of laughter and threw her arms around Mary's neck.
+
+"Honey, you're such a hopeless little fool, you're delicious! You know
+that I love you--don't you?"
+
+The pretty lips quivered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Could I possibly ask you to do a thing that would harm a single brown
+hair of your head?"
+
+The firm hand of the older girl touched a rebellious lock with
+tenderness.
+
+"Of course not, from your point of view, Jane dear," the stubborn lips
+persisted. "But you see it's not my point of view. You're older than
+I----"
+
+Jane smiled.
+
+"Hoity toity, Miss! I'm just twenty-eight and you're twenty-four. Age is
+not measured by calendars these days."
+
+"I didn't mean that," the girl apologized. "But you're an artist. You're
+established and distinguished. You belong to a different world."
+
+Jane Anderson laid her hand softly on her friend's.
+
+"That's just it, dear. I do belong to a different world--a big new world
+of whose existence you are not quite conscious. You are living in the
+old, old world in which women have groped for thousands of years. I
+don't mind confessing that I undertook this job of getting you to pose
+for Gordon for a double purpose. I wished to do something to repay
+the debt I owe him--but I wished far more to be of help to you. You're
+living in the Dark Ages, and it's a dangerous thing for a pretty girl to
+live in the Dark Ages and date her letters from New York to-day----"
+
+"I don't understand you in the least."
+
+"And I'm afraid you never will."
+
+She paused suddenly and changed her tone.
+
+"Tell me now, are you happy in your work?"
+
+"I'm earning sixty dollars a month--my position is secure----"
+
+"But are you happy in it?"
+
+"I don't expect to teach school all my life," was the vague answer.
+
+"Exactly. You loathe the sight of a school-room. You do the task they
+set you because your father's a clergyman and can't support his
+big family. You're waiting and longing for the day of your
+deliverance--isn't it so?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"And that day of deliverance?"
+
+"Will come when I meet my Fate!"
+
+"You'll meet him, too!"
+
+"I will----"
+
+Jane Anderson shook her fine head.
+
+"And may the Lord have mercy on your poor little soul when you do!"
+
+"And why, pray?"
+
+"Because you're the most helpless and defenseless of all the things He
+created."
+
+Mary smiled.
+
+"I've managed to take pretty good care of myself so far."
+
+"And you will--until the thunderbolt falls."
+
+"The thunderbolt?"
+
+"Until you meet your Fate."
+
+"I'll have someone to look after me then."
+
+"We'll hope so anyhow," was the quick retort.
+
+"But can't you see, Jane dear, that we look at life from such utterly
+different angles. You glory in your work. It's your inspiration--the
+breath you breathe. I don't believe in women working for money. I don't
+believe God ever meant us to work when He made us women. He made
+us women for something more wonderful. I don't see anything good or
+glorious in the fact that half the torrent of humanity you see down
+there pouring through the street from those factories and offices is
+made up of women. They are wage-earners--so much the worse. They are
+forcing the scale of wages for men lower and lower. They are paying for
+it in weakened bodies and sickly, hopeless children. We should not shout
+for joy; we should cry. God never meant for woman to be a wage-earner!"
+
+A sob caught her voice and she paused.
+
+The artist watched her emotion with keen interest.
+
+"Neither do I believe that God means to force woman at last to do the
+tasks of man. But she's doing them, dear--and it must be so until a
+brighter day dawns for humanity. The new world that opens before us
+will never abolish marriage, but it has opened our eyes to know what it
+means. You refuse to open yours. You refuse to see this new world about
+you. I've begged you to join one of my clubs. You refuse. I beg you to
+meet and know such men of genius as Gordon----"
+
+"As an artist's model!"
+
+"It's the only way on earth you can meet him. You stick to your narrow,
+hide-bound conventional life and dream of the Knight who will suddenly
+appear some day out of the mists and clouds. You dream of the Fate God
+has prepared for you in His mysterious Providence. It's funny how that
+idea persists even today in novels. As a matter of fact we know that the
+old-fashioned girl met her Fate because her shrewd mother planned the
+meeting--planned it with cunning and stratagem. You're alone in a great
+modern city, with all the conditions of the life of the old regime
+reversed or blotted out. Your mother is not here. And if she were, her
+schemes to bring about the mysterious meeting of the Fates would be
+impossible. You outgrew the limits of your village life. Your highly
+trained mind landed you in New York. You've fought your way to a
+competent living in five years and kept yourself clean and unspotted
+from the world. Granted. But how many men have you met who are your
+equals in culture and character?"
+
+Jane paused and held Mary's gaze with steady persistence.
+
+"How many--honest?"
+
+"None as yet," she confessed.
+
+"But you live in the one fond, imperishable hope! It's the only
+thing that keeps you alive and going--this idea of your Fate. It's an
+obsession--this mysterious Knight somewhere in the future riding to meet
+you----"
+
+"I'll find him, never fear," the girl laughed.
+
+"Of course you will. You'll make him out of whole cloth if it's
+necessary. Our ideals are really the same when you come to analyze my
+wider outlook."
+
+The artist paused and laughed softly.
+
+"The same?" the girl asked incredulously.
+
+"Certainly. Mine is based on intelligence, however--yours on blind
+instinct perverted and twisted by the idiotic fiction you read morning,
+noon and night."
+
+"I don't see it," Mary answered emphatically. "Your ideal is fame,
+achievement, the applause of the world--mine just a home and a baby----"
+
+Jane laughed softly.
+
+"And that's all you know about me?"
+
+"Isn't it true?"
+
+"You've been in this room five years, haven't you?" the older girl asked
+musingly.
+
+"Yes----"
+
+"And though you've kept your lamp trimmed and burning, you haven't yet
+seen a man whom you could recognize as your equal."
+
+"I'm only twenty-four."
+
+"In these five years I've met a hundred men my equal."
+
+"And smashed the conventions of Society whenever you saw fit."
+
+"Without breaking a single law of reason or common-sense. In the
+meantime I've met two men who have really made love to me. I thought I
+loved one of them--until I met the other. The second proved himself to
+be an unprincipled scoundrel. If I had held your views of life and hated
+my work, I would have married this man and lived to awake in a prison
+whose only door was Death. But I loved my work. Life meant more than
+one man who was not worth an hour's tears. I turned to my studio and he
+slipped back into the gutter where he belonged. I'll meet MY Fate
+some day, too, dear. I'm waiting and watching--but with clear eyes
+and unafraid. I'll know mine when he comes, I shall not be blinded by
+passion or the fear of drudgery. Can't you see this bigger world of
+realities?"
+
+The dimple flashed again in the smooth red cheek.
+
+"It's not for me, Jane. I'm just a modest little home body. I'll bide my
+time----"
+
+"And eat your foolish heart out here between the narrow walls of this
+cell you've built for yourself. I should think you'd die living here
+alone."
+
+The girl flushed.
+
+"I'm not lonely----"
+
+"Don't fib! I know better. Your birds and kitten occupy daily about
+thirty minutes of the time that's your own. What do you do with the rest
+of it?"
+
+"Sit by my window, watch the crowds stream through the streets below,
+read and dream and think----"
+
+"Yes--read love stories and dream about your Knight."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It's morbid and unhealthy. You've hedged yourself about with the old
+conventions and imagine you're safe--and you are--until you meet HIM!"
+
+"I'll know how to behave--never fear."
+
+"You mean you'll know how instantly to blindfold, halter and lead him to
+the Little Church Around the Corner?"
+
+Mary moved uneasily.
+
+"And what else should I do with him?"
+
+"Compare him with other men. Weigh him in the balances of a remorseless
+common-sense. Study him under a microscope and keep your reason clear.
+The girl who rushes into marriage in a great city under the conditions
+in which you and I live is a fool. More girls are ruined in New York
+by marriage than by any other process. The thunderbolt out of the blue
+hasn't struck you yet, but when it does----"
+
+"I'll tell you, Jane."
+
+"Will you, honestly?"
+
+The question was asked with wistful tenderness.
+
+"I promise. And you mustn't think I don't appreciate this visit and the
+chance you've given again to enter the `big world' you're always telling
+me about. I just can't do it, dear. It's not my world."
+
+"All right, my little foolish virgin, have it your own way. When you're
+lonely, run up to my studio to see me. I won't ask you to pose or meet
+any of the dangerous men of my circle. We'll lock the doors and have a
+snug time all by ourselves."
+
+"I'll remember."
+
+The clock in the Metropolitan Tower chimed the hour of five, and Jane
+Anderson rose with a quick, business-like movement.
+
+"Don't hurry," Mary protested. "I know I've been stubborn, but I've
+been so happy in your coming. I do get lonely--frightfully lonely,
+sometimes--don't think I'm ungrateful----"
+
+"You're dangerously beautiful, child," the artist said, with enthusiasm.
+"And remember that I love you--no matter how silly you are--good-by."
+
+"You won't stay for a cup of tea? I meant to ask you an hour ago."
+
+"No, I've an engagement with a dreadful man whom I've no idea of ever
+marrying. I'm going to dinner with him--just to study the animal at dose
+range."
+
+With a jolly laugh and quick, firm step she was gone.
+
+Mary snatched the kitten from his snug bed between the pillows of the
+window-seat and pressed his fuzzy head under her chin.
+
+"She tempted us terribly, Kitty darling, but we didn't let her find
+out--did we? You know deep down in your cat's soul that I was just dying
+to meet the distinguished Gordon--but such high honors are not for home
+bodies like you and me----"
+
+She dropped on the seat and closed her eyes for a long time. The kitten
+watched her wonderingly sure of a sudden outbreak with each passing
+moment. Two soft paws at last touched her cheeks and two bright eyes
+sought in vain for hers. The little nose pressed closer and kissed the
+drooping eyelids until they opened. He curled himself on her bosom and
+began to sing a gentle lullaby. For a long while she lay and listened to
+the music of love with which her pet sought to soothe the ache within.
+
+The clock in the tower chimed six.
+
+She lifted her body and placed her head on a pillow beside the window.
+The human torrent below was now at its flood. Two streams of humanity
+flowed eastward along each broad sidewalk. Hundreds were pouring in
+endless procession across Madison Square. The cars in Broadway north and
+South were jammed. Every day she watched this crowd hurrying, hurrying
+away into the twilight--and among all its hundreds of thousands not
+an eye was ever lifted to hers--not one man or woman among them cared
+whether she lived or died.
+
+It was horrible, this loneliness of the desert in an ocean of humanity!
+For the past year it had become an increasing horror to look into the
+silent faces of this crowd of men and women and never feel the touch of
+a friendly hand or hear the sound of a human voice in greeting.
+
+And yet this endless procession held for her a supreme fascination.
+Somewhere among its myriads of tramping feet, walked the one man created
+for her. She no more doubted this than she doubted God Himself. It was
+His law. He had ordained it so. She had grown so used to the throngs
+below her window and so loved the little park with its splashing
+fountain that she had refused to follow her landlady uptown when the
+brownstone boarding-house facing the Square had been turned into a
+studio building.
+
+Instead of moving she had wheedled the landlord into allowing her to
+cut off a small space from her room for a private bath and kitchenette,
+built a box couch across the window large enough for a three-quarter
+mattress and covered it with velour. For five dollars a week she
+had thus secured a little home in which was combined a sitting-room,
+bed-room, bath and kitchenette.
+
+It had its drawbacks, of course. The Professor downstairs who taught
+music sometimes gave a special lesson at night, and the Italian sculptor
+who worked on the top floor used a hammer at the most impossible hours.
+But on the whole she liked it better than the tiresome routine of
+boarding. She was not afraid at night. The stamp-and-coin man who
+occupied the first floor, lived with his wife and baby in the rear. The
+janitress had a room on the floor above hers. Two elderly women workers
+of ability in the mechanical arts occupied the rear of her floor, and
+a dear little fat woman of fifty who drew designs for the New England
+weavers of cotton goods lived in the room adjoining hers.
+
+She had never spoken to any of these people, but Ella, the janitress,
+who cleaned up her place every morning, had told her their history.
+Ella was a sociable soul, her face an eternal study and an inscrutable
+mystery. She spoke both German and English and yet never a word of her
+own life's history passed her lips. She had loved Mary from the moment
+she cocked her queer drawn face to one side and looked at her with the
+one good eye she possessed. She was always doing little things for her
+comfort--and never asked tips for it. If Mary offered to pay she smiled
+quietly and spoke in the softest drawl: "Oh, that's nothing, child--Ach,
+Gott im Himmel--nein!"
+
+This one-eyed, homely woman who cleaned up her room for three dollars
+a month, and Jane Anderson, were the only friends she had among the six
+million people whose lives centered on Manhattan Island.
+
+Man had yet to darken her door. The little room had been carefully
+fitted, however, to receive her Knight when the great event of his
+coming should be at hand.
+
+The box couch was built of hard wood paneling and was covered with
+pillows of soft leather and silk. The bed-clothes were carefully stored
+in the locker beneath the mattress cushion. No one would ever suspect
+its use as a bed. The bathroom was fitted with a bureau and no signs of
+a sleeping apartment disfigured the effect of her one library, parlor,
+and reception-room. A desk and bookcase stood at either end of the box
+couch. The bookcase was filled with fiction--love stories exclusively.
+
+A large birdcage swung from a staple in the window and two canaries
+peered cautiously from their perches at the kitten in her lap. She had
+trained him to ignore this cage.
+
+The crowds below were thinning down. A light snow was falling. The girl
+lifted her pet and kissed his cold nose.
+
+"We must get our own dinner tonight, Mr. Thomascat--it's snowing
+outside. And did you hear what she said, Kitty dear--`More girls are
+ruined by marriage in New York than by any other process!' A good joke,
+Kitty!--You and I know better than that if we do live in our own tiny
+world! We'll risk it some day, anyhow, won't we?"
+
+The kitten purred his assent and Mary bustled over the little gas stove
+humming an old love song her mother had taught her in a far-off village
+in Kentucky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. TEMPTATION
+
+
+Her kitchenette was a model of order and cleanliness. The carpenter
+who built its neat cupboard and fitted the drawers beneath the tiny
+gas range, had outdone himself in its construction. He had given the
+wood-work four coats of immaculate white paint without extra charge.
+Mary had insisted on paying for it, but he waved the proffered money
+aside with a gesture that spoke louder than words:
+
+"Pooh! That's nothing to what I'd like to do for you."
+
+She was not surprised when he called the following Saturday and stood
+at her door awkwardly fumbling his hat, trying to ask her to spend the
+afternoon and evening at Coney Island with him. There was no mistaking
+the manner in which he made this request.
+
+She had refused him as gently as possible--a big, awkward, good-natured,
+ignorant boy he was, with the eyes of a St. Bernard dog. He apologized
+for his presumption and never repeated the offense.
+
+Somehow her conquests had all been in this class.
+
+The tall, blushing German youth from the butcher's around the corner
+had been slipping extra cuts into her bundle and making awkward advances
+until she caught him red-handed with a pound of lamb chops which he
+failed to explain. She read him a lecture on honesty that discouraged
+him. It was not so much what she said, as the way she said it, that
+wounded his sensitive nature.
+
+The ice man she had not yet entirely subdued. Tony Bonelli had the
+advantage of pretending not to understand her orders of dismissal. He
+merely smiled in his sad Italian way and continued to pack her ice-box
+so full the lid would never close.
+
+She was reminded at every turn tonight of these futile conquests of the
+impossible. They all smelled of the back stairs and the kitchen. Her
+people had been slaveholders in the old regime of southern Kentucky. A
+kindly tolerant contempt for the pretensions of a servant class was bred
+in the bone of her being.
+
+And yet their tribute to her beauty had its compensations. It was the
+promise of triumph when he for whom she waited should step from the
+throng and lift his hat. Just how he was going to do this without a
+breach of the proprieties of life, she couldn't see. It would come. It
+must come. It was Fate.
+
+In twenty minutes her coffee-pot was boiling, the lamb chops broiled to
+perfection and she was seated before the dainty, snow-white table, the
+kitten softly begging at her feet. Half an hour later, every dish and
+pot and pan was back in its place in perfect order. She prided herself
+on her mastery of the details of cooking and the most economical
+administration of every dollar devoted to housekeeping. She studied
+cooking in the best schools the city afforded. She meant to show her
+Knight a thing or two in this line when the time came. His wife would
+not be an ignorant slattern, the victim of incompetent servants. No
+servant could fool her. She would know the business of the house down to
+its minutest detail.
+
+Not that she loved dish-washing and pot-polishing and scrubbing. It was
+simply a part of the Game of Life she must play in the ideal home she
+would build. There was no drudgery in it for this reason. She was a
+soldier on the drill grounds preparing for the battle on the successful
+issue of which hung her happiness and the happiness of the one of
+whom she dreamed. She might miss some of the dangerous fun which Jane
+Anderson could enjoy without a scratch, but she would make sure of the
+fundamental things which Jane would never stop to consider.
+
+She threw herself on the couch in her favorite position against the
+pillows, drew the kitten into her arms and hugged him violently.
+
+"It's all right, Mr. Thomascat; we'll show them," she purred softly.
+"We'll see who wins at last, the eagle who soars or the little wren in
+the hedge close beside the garden wall--we'll see, Kitty--we'll see!"
+
+The room was still, the noise of the street-cars below muffled with the
+first soft blanket of snow. The street lamps flickered in the wind with
+a pale subdued light that scarcely brought out the furnishings of her
+nest. She was in the habit of dreaming in this window for hours with
+only the light from the lamps on the street.
+
+The Square, deserted by its tramp lovers, lay white and still and cold.
+The old battle with the Blue Devils was on again within. The fight with
+Jane had been easy. She had always found it easy to face temptation in
+the concrete. The moment Satan appeared in human shape she was up in
+arms and ready for the fray. It was this silent hour she dreaded when
+the defenses of the soul were down.
+
+There was no use to lie to herself. She was utterly lonely and
+heartsick.
+
+She had guarded the portals of life with religious care--with a care
+altogether unnecessary as events had proved. There had been no crush of
+rude men to assault her. Only an awkward carpenter, a butcher's boy
+and the ice man! It was incredible. Of all the men whose restless
+feet pressed the pavements of New York, not one, save these three, had
+apparently cared whether she lived or died.
+
+The men whom she met in her duties in the schoolroom she had found
+utterly devoid of imagination and beneath contempt. They had each
+been obviously on guard against the machinations of the female of the
+species. They had, each of them, shown plainly their fear and hatred of
+women teachers. The feeling was mutual. God knows she had no desire to
+encroach on their domain any longer than absolutely necessary.
+
+Perhaps she was making a mistake. The thought was strangling. Only the
+girl who waived conventions in the rushing tide of the modern city's
+life seemed to live at all. The others merely existed. Jane Anderson
+lived! There could be no mistake about that. She had mastered the ugly
+mob. Its cruel loneliness was to her a thing unknown. But Jane was an
+exception--the one woman in a thousand who could defy conventions and
+yet keep her soul and body clean.
+
+The offer she had made had proved a terrible temptation. The artist who
+had asked with such eagerness to use her head for his portrait of the
+Madonna on the canvas he was executing for the new cathedral, had long
+appealed to her vivid imagination. Two prints of his famous work hung on
+her walls. She had always wished to know him. He had married a Southern
+girl.
+
+That was just the point--he WAS married!
+
+No girl could afford to be shut up alone in a studio with a fascinating
+married man for three hours--or half an hour. What if she should fall
+in love with him at first sight! Such things had happened. They could
+happen again. Only tragedy could be the end of such an event. It was too
+dangerous to consider for a moment.
+
+She would have consented had it been possible for Jane to chaperon
+her. That would have been obviously ridiculous. No artist with any
+self-respect would tolerate such a reflection on his honesty. No girl
+could afford to confess her fears in this brazen fashion.
+
+The necessity for her refusal had depressed her beyond any experience
+she had passed through in the dreary desert of the past five years.
+
+She lifted the sleeping kitten and whispered passionately:
+
+"Am I a silly fool, Kitty? Am I?"
+
+The tears came at last. She lay back on the pillows and let them pour
+down her cheeks without protest or effort at self-control. Every nerve
+of her strong, healthy body ached for the love and companionship of men
+which she had denied herself with an iron will. At nineteen it had been
+easy. The sheer animal joy in life had been enough. With the growth of
+each year the ache within had become more and more insistent. With each
+ripening season of body and mind, the hunger of love had grown more
+and more maddening. How long could she keep up this battle with every
+instinct of her being?
+
+She rose at last, determined to go to Jane, confess that she had been
+a fool, and step out into the new world, New York's world, and begin to
+live.
+
+She seized her hat and furs and put them on with feverish haste.
+
+"God knows it's time I began--I'll be an old maid in another year and
+dry up--ugh!"
+
+She looked in the quaint oval mirror that hung beside her door and
+lifted her head with a touch of pride.
+
+She had reached the street and started for the Broadway car before she
+suddenly remembered that Jane was "dining with a dangerous man."
+
+She couldn't turn back to that little room tonight without new courage.
+Her decision was instantaneous. She couldn't surrender to the flesh and
+the devil by yielding to Jane.
+
+She would go to prayer-meeting!
+
+Religion had always been a very real thing in her life. Her father was a
+Methodist presiding elder. She would have gone to the meeting tonight
+in the first place but for the snow. Dr. Craddock, the new sensational
+pastor of the Temple, was giving a series of Wednesday-night talks that
+had aroused wide interest and drawn immense crowds.
+
+His theme tonight was one that promised all sorts of sensations--"The
+Woman of the Future." The only trouble with the Doctor was that the
+substance of his discourses sometimes failed to make good the startling
+suggestions of his titles. No matter--she would go. She felt a sense of
+righteous pride infighting her way to the church through the first storm
+of the winter.
+
+In spite of the snow the church was crowded. The subject announced had
+evidently touched a vital spot in modern life. More people were thinking
+about "The Woman of the Future" than she had suspected. The crowd sat
+with eager, upturned faces.
+
+The first half-hour's prayer and song service had just begun.
+Mary joined in the singing of the stirring evangelistic hymns with
+enthusiasm. Something in their battle-cry melody caught her spirit
+instantly tonight and her whole being responded. In ten minutes she was
+a good shouting Methodist and supremely happy without knowing why. She
+never paused to ask. Her nature was profoundly religious and she had
+been born and bred in the atmosphere of revivals. Her father was an
+aggressive evangelist both in his character and methods of work, and she
+was his own daughter--a child of emotion.
+
+The individuals in the eager crowd which packed the popular church meant
+nothing to her personally. They had passed before her unseeing eyes
+Sunday after Sunday the past five years as mere shadows of an unknown
+world which swallowed them up the moment they reached the street. She
+had never seen the inside of one of their homes. Not one of them had
+drawn close enough to her to venture an invitation.
+
+Two of the stewards she knew personally--one a bricklayer, the other a
+baker on Eighth Avenue. The preacher she had met in a purely formal way
+as the bishop of the flock. She liked Dr. Craddock. He was known in the
+ministry as a live wire. He was a man of vigorous physique--just turning
+fifty, magnetic, eloquent and popular with the masses.
+
+Mary was curious tonight as to what the preacher would say on "The Woman
+of the Future." The Methodist Church had been a pioneer in the modern
+Feminist movement, having long ago admitted women to the full ordination
+of the ministry. Craddock, however, had been known for his conservatism
+in the woman movement. He abhorred the idea of woman's suffrage as a
+dangerous revolution and the fact that he consented to treat the topic
+at all was a reluctant confession of its menacing importance.
+
+With keen interest, the girl saw him rise at last. A breathless hush
+fell on the crowd. He walked deliberately to the edge of the platform
+and gazed into the faces of the people.
+
+"I have often been asked," he slowly began, "where I get my sermons." He
+paused and laughed. "I'll be perfectly honest with you. Sometimes I get
+them from the Bible--sometimes from the book of life. The genesis of
+this talk tonight is very definite. I found it in the liquid depths of
+a little girl's eyes. She asked a simple question that set me
+thinking--not only about the subject of her query but on the vaster
+issues that grew out of it. She looked up into my face the other night
+after my call for volunteers for the new mission we are beginning in the
+slums of the East Side, and asked me if the girls were not going to be
+given the chance to do something worth while in this church's work.
+
+"I couldn't honestly answer her off-hand and in my groping I forgot the
+child and her question. I saw a vision--a vision of that broader, nobler
+future toward which human civilization is now swiftly moving.
+
+"I say deliberately that it is swiftly moving, because the progress of
+the world during the last fifty years has been greater than in any five
+hundred years of the past.
+
+"The older I grow the stronger becomes my conviction that the problems
+of the age in which we now live cannot be solved by masculine brain
+and brawn alone. The problems of the city and the nation and the great
+fundamental social questions that involve the foundations of modern life
+will find no solution until the heart and brain of woman are poured into
+the crucible of our test.
+
+"They talk about a woman's sphere As though it had a limit: There's not
+a place in earth or heaven, There's not a task to mankind given, There's
+not a blessing or a woe, There's not a whisper yes or no, There's not a
+life, or death, or birth That has a feather's weight of worth Without a
+woman in it!
+
+"The difference between a man and a woman is one that makes them
+the complementary parts of a perfect unit. God made man in His own
+image--male and female. The person of God therefore combines these two
+elements unseparated. The mind of God is both male and female. In man we
+have the strength which lifts and tugs and fights the elements. This is
+the aspect turned primarily toward matter. In woman we have the finer
+qualities of the Spirit turned toward the source of all spirit in God.
+The idea of a masculine deity is a false assumption of the Dark Ages.
+God is both male and female.
+
+"I used to wonder why Jesus Christ was a man, until I realized that
+the Incarnation expressed the depth of human need. God stooped lower
+in assuming the form of man. The form of the divine revelation through
+Jesus Christ was determined solely by this depth of human need----"
+
+For half an hour in impetuous eloquence, in telling incidents wet with
+tears and winged with hope, he held his listeners in a spell. It was not
+until the burst of applause which greeted his closing sentence had died
+away that Mary Adams realized that another landmark had toppled before
+the onrushing flood of modern Feminism. The conservatism of Doctor
+Craddock had yielded at last to the inevitable. He, too, had joined the
+ranks of the prophets who preach of a Woman's Day of Emancipation.
+
+And yet it never occurred to her that this fact had the slightest
+bearing on her personal outlook on life. On the contrary she felt in the
+spiritual elation of the triumphant eloquence of her favorite preacher
+a renewal of her simple religious faith. At the bottom of that religion
+lay the foundation of life itself--her conception of marriage as the
+supreme and only expression of woman's power in the world.
+
+She walked back to her home on the Square, in a glow of ecstatic
+emotion.
+
+Surely God had miraculously saved her this night from the wiles of the
+Devil! No matter what this eloquent discourse had meant to others, it
+had renewed her faith in the old-fashioned woman and the old-fashioned
+ways of the old-fashioned home. Her vision was once more clear. She was
+glad Jane Anderson had come to put her to the test. She had been tried
+in the fires of hell and came forth unscorched.
+
+She stood beside her window dreaming again of the home she would build
+when her Knight should stand before her revealed in beauty no words
+could describe. The moon was shining now in solemn glory on the
+white-shrouded Square. Temptation had only strengthened the fiber of her
+soul. She knelt in the moonlight beside her couch and prayed that God
+should ever keep her faith serene. She rose with a sense of peace and
+joy. God would hear and answer the cry of her heart. The City might be
+the Desert--it was still God's world and not a sparrow that twittered in
+those bare trees or chattered on her window-ledge in the morning could
+fall to the ground without His knowledge. God had put this deathless
+passion in her heart; He could not deny it expression. She could bide
+His time. If the day of her deliverance were near, it was good. If God
+should choose to try her faith in loneliness and tears, it was His way
+to make the revelation of glory the more dazzling when it came.
+
+She drew the covering about her warm young body with the firm faith that
+her hour was close at hand, and fell asleep to dream of her Knight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. FATE
+
+Mary waked next morning with the delicious sense of impending happiness.
+A wonderful dream had come to thrill her half-conscious moments,
+repeating itself in increasing vividness and beauty with each awakening.
+The vision had been interrupted by the unusual noise of the snow
+machines on the car tracks, and yet she had fallen asleep after each
+break and picked up the rapturous scene at the exact moment of its
+interruption.
+
+She was married and madly in love with her husband. His face she could
+never see quite clearly. His business kept him away from home on long
+trips. But his baby was always there--a laughing, wonderful boy whose
+chubby hands persisted in pulling her hair down into her face each time
+she bent over his cradle to kiss him.
+
+Ella was chattering in German to someone on the stairs. She wondered
+again for the hundredth time how this poor, slovenly, one-eyed,
+ill-kempt creature, scrub-woman and janitress, could speak two languages
+with such ease. Her English, except in excitement, seemed equally fluent
+with her German. How did such a woman fall so low? She was industrious
+and untiring in her work. She never touched liquor or drugs. She was
+kind and thoughtful and watched over her tenants with a motherly care
+for which no landlord could pay in dollars and cents. She was on her
+knees on the stairs now, scrubbing down the steps to be crowded again
+with muddy feet from the street below.
+
+Mary lay for half an hour snuggling under the warm blankets, weaving a
+romance about Ella's life. A great love for some heroic man who died and
+left her in poverty could alone explain the mystery that hung about her.
+She never spoke of her life or people. Mary had ventured once to ask
+her. A wan smile flitted across the haggard face for a moment, and she
+answered in low tones that closed the subject.
+
+"I haven't any people, dear," she said slowly. "They are dead long ago."
+
+The girl wondered if it were really true. In her joy this morning she
+felt her heart go out to the pathetic, drooping figure on the stairs.
+She wished that every living creature might share the secret joy that
+filled her soul.
+
+She drew the kitten from his nest beside her pillow and rubbed her cheek
+against his little cold nose. He always waked her with a kiss on her
+eyelids and then coiled himself back for a tiny cat-nap until she could
+make up her mind to rise.
+
+She sprang from the couch with sudden energy and stretched her dainty
+figure with a prodigious yawn.
+
+"Gracious, Kitty, we must hurry!" she cried, thrusting her bare feet
+into a pair of embroidered slippers and throwing her blue flannel kimono
+on over her night-dress.
+
+The coffee-pot was boiling busily when she had bathed and dressed. Each
+detail of her domestic schedule was given an extra care this morning.
+The stove was carefully polished, each pot and pan placed in its rack
+with a precision that spoke an unusual joy within the heart of the
+housewife.
+
+And through it all she hummed a lullaby that haunted her from the
+memories of a happy childhood.
+
+Breakfast over, the kitten fed, the birds given their bath, their sand
+and seed, she couldn't stop until the whole place had been thoroughly
+cleaned and dusted. Exactly why she had done this on Thursday morning it
+was impossible to say. Some hidden force within had impelled her.
+
+Then back into the dream world her mind flew on joyous wings. It was a
+sign from God in answer to prayer. Why not? The Bible was full of such
+revelations in ancient times. God was not dead because the world was
+modern and we had steam and electricity. The routine of school was no
+longer dull. Around each commonplace child hung a halo of romance. They
+were love-children today. She wove a dream of tenderness, of chivalry,
+and heroic deeds about them all. She searched each face for some line
+of beauty caught in the vision of her own baby who had looked into her
+heart from the mists of eternity.
+
+Three days passed in a sort of trance. Never had she felt surer of life
+and the full fruition of every hope and faith. Just how this marvelous
+blossoming would come, she could not guess. Her chances of meeting
+her Fate were no better than at any moment of the past years of drab
+disillusionment, and yet, for some reason, her foolish heart kept
+singing.
+
+Why?
+
+There could be but one answer. The event was impending. Such things
+could be felt--not reasoned out.
+
+She applied herself to her teaching with a new energy and thoroughness.
+She must do this work well and carry into the real life that must soon
+begin the consciousness of every duty faithfully performed.
+
+A boy asked her a question about a little flower which grew in a warm
+crevice of the stone wall on which the iron fence of the school yard
+rested. She blushed at her failure to enlighten him and promised to tell
+him on Monday.
+
+Botany was not one of her tasks but she felt the tribute to her
+personality in his question, and she would take pains to make her answer
+full and interesting.
+
+Saturday afternoon she hurried to the Public Library, on Fifth Avenue
+and Forty-second Street, to look up every reference to this flower.
+
+The boulevard of the Metropolis was thronged with eager thousands.
+Handsome men and beautifully dressed women passed each other in endless
+procession on its crowded pavements. The cabs and automobiles, two
+abreast on either side, moved at a snail's pace, so dense were the
+throngs at each crossing. Her fancy was busy weaving about each
+throbbing tonneau and limousine a story of love. Not a wheel was turning
+in all that long line of shining vehicles that didn't carry a woman or
+was hurrying to do a woman's bidding.
+
+Her hero was coming, too, somewhere in the crowd with his gloved hand on
+one of those wheels. She could feel his breath on her cheek as he handed
+her into the seat by his side and then the sudden leap of the car into
+space and away on the wings of lightning into the future!
+
+She ascended the broad steps of the majestic building with quick,
+springing strength. She loved this glorious library, with its lofty,
+arched ceilings. The sense of eternity that brooded over it and filled
+the stately rooms rested and inspired her.
+
+Besides, she forgot her poverty in this temple of all time. Within its
+walls she belonged to the great aristocracy of brains and culture of
+which this palace was the supreme expression. And it was hers. Andrew
+Carnegie had given the millions to build it and the city of New York
+granted the site on land that was worth many millions more. But it was
+all built for her convenience, her comfort and inspiration. Every volume
+of its vast and priceless collection was hers--hers to hold in her
+hands, read and ponder and enjoy. Every officer and manager in its
+inclosure was her servant--to come at her beck and call and do her
+bidding. The little room on Twenty-third Street was the symbol of the
+future. This magnificent building was the realization of the present.
+
+She smiled pleasantly to the polite assistant who received her order
+slip, and took her seat on the waiting line until her books were
+delivered.
+
+This magnificent room with its lofty ceilings of golden panels and
+drifting clouds had always brought to her a peculiar sense of restful
+power. The consciousness of its ownership had from the first been most
+intimate. No man can own what he cannot appreciate. He may possess it by
+legal documents, but he cannot own it unless he has eyes to see, ears
+to hear, and a heart to feel its charm. This appreciation Mary Adams
+possessed by inheritance from her student father who devoured books with
+an insatiate hunger. Nowhere in all New York's labyrinth did she feel
+as perfectly at home as in this reading-room. The quiet which reigned
+without apparent sign or warning seemed to belong to the atmosphere of
+the place. It was unthinkable that any man or woman should be rude or
+thoughtless enough to break it by a loud word.
+
+This room was hers day or night, winter or summer, always heated and
+lighted, and a hundred swift, silent servants at hand to do her bidding.
+Around the room on serried shelves, dressed in leather aprons, stood
+twenty-five thousand more servants of the centuries of the past ready
+to answer any question her heart or brain might ask of the world's life
+since the dawn of Time.
+
+In the stack-room below, on sixty-three miles of shelves, stood a
+million others ready to come at her slightest nod. She loved to dream
+here of the future, in the moments she must wait for these messengers
+she had summoned. In this magic room the past ceased to be. These
+myriads of volumes made the past a myth. It was all the living,
+throbbing present--with only the golden future to be explored.
+
+Her number flashed in red letters on the electric blackboard.
+
+She rose and carried her books to the seat number assigned her near the
+center of the southern division of the room on the extreme left beside
+the bookcases containing the dictionaries of all languages.
+
+Her seat was on the aisle which skirted the shelves. She found the full
+description of the flower in which she was interested, made her notes
+and closed the volume with a lazy movement of her slender, graceful
+hand.
+
+She lifted her eyes and they rested on a remarkable-looking young man
+about her own age who stood gazing in an embarrassed, helpless sort of
+way at the row of ponderous volumes marked "The Century Dictionary."
+
+He was evidently a newcomer. By his embarrassment she could easily tell
+that it was the first time he had ever ventured into this room.
+
+He looked at the books, apparently puzzled by their number. He raised
+his hand and ran his fingers nervously through the short, thick, red
+hair which covered his well-shaped head.
+
+The girl's attention was first fixed by the strange contrast between his
+massive jaw and short neck which spoke the physical strength of an ox,
+and the slender gracefully tapering fingers of his small hand. The wrist
+was small, the fingers almost feminine in their lines.
+
+He caught her look of curious interest and to her horror, smiled and
+walked straight to her seat.
+
+There was no mistaking his determination to speak. It was useless to
+drop her eyes or turn aside. He would certainly follow.
+
+She blushed and gazed at him in a timid, helpless fashion while he bent
+over her seat and whispered awkwardly:
+
+"You look kind and obliging, miss--could you help me a little?"
+
+His tone was so genuine in its appeal, so distressed and hesitating, it
+was impossible to resent his question.
+
+"If I can--yes," was the prompt answer.
+
+"You won't mind?" he asked, fumbling his hat.
+
+"No--what is it?"
+
+Mary had recovered her composure as his distress had increased and
+looked steadily into his steel blue eyes inquiringly.
+
+"You see," he went on, in low hurried tones, "I'm all worked up about
+the mountains of North Carolina--thinkin' o' goin' down there to
+Asheville in a car, an' I want to look the bloomin' place up and kind o'
+get my bearin's before I start. A lawyer friend o' mine told me to come
+here and I'd find all the maps in the Century Dictionary. The man at the
+desk out there told me to come in this room and look in the shelves
+on the left and take it right out. Gee, the place is so big, I get all
+rattled. I found the Century Dictionary on that shelf----"
+
+He paused and smiled helplessly.
+
+"I thought a dictionary was one book--there's a dozen of 'em marked
+alike. I'm afraid to pull 'em all down an' I don't know where to
+begin--COULD you help me--please?"
+
+"Certainly, with pleasure," she answered, quickly rising and leading the
+way back to the shelf at which he had been gazing.
+
+"You want the atlas volume," she explained, drawing the book from the
+shelf and returning to the seat.
+
+He followed promptly and bent over her shoulder while she pointed out
+the map of North Carolina, the position of Asheville and the probable
+route he must follow to get there.
+
+"Thanks!" he exclaimed gratefully.
+
+"Not at all," she replied simply. "I'm only too glad to be of service to
+you."
+
+Her answer emboldened him to ask another question.
+
+"You don't happen to know anything about that country down there, do
+you?"
+
+"Why, yes. I know a great deal about it----"
+
+"Sure enough?"
+
+"I've been through Asheville many times and spent a summer there once."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+His tones implied that he plainly regarded her as a prodigy of
+knowledge. His whole attitude suggested at once the mind of an alert,
+interested boy asking his teacher for information on a subject near to
+his heart. It was impossible to resist his appeal.
+
+"Why, yes," Mary went on in low, rapid tones. "My people live in the
+Kentucky mountains."
+
+He bent low and gently touched her arm.
+
+"Say, we can't talk in here--I'm afraid. Would it be asking too much of
+you to come out in the park, sit down on a bench and tell me about it?
+I'll never know how to thank you, if you will?"
+
+It was absurd, of course, such a request, and yet his interest was so
+keen, his deference to her superior knowledge so humble and appealing,
+to refuse seemed ungracious. She hesitated and rose abruptly.
+
+"Just a moment--I'll return my books and then we'll go. You can replace
+this volume on the shelf where we got it."
+
+"Thank yoo, miss," he responded gratefully. "You're awfully kind."
+
+"Don't mention it," she laughed.
+
+In a moment she was walking by his side down the smooth marble stairs
+and out through the grand entrance into Fifth Avenue. The strange
+part about it was, she was not in the least excited over a very
+unconventional situation. She had allowed a handsomely groomed, young,
+red-haired adventurer to pick her up without the formality of an
+introduction, in the Public Library. She hadn't the remotest idea of his
+name--nor had he of hers--yet there was something about him that seemed
+oddly familiar. They must have known one another somewhere in childhood
+and forgotten each other's faces.
+
+The sun was shining in clear, steady brilliancy in a cloudless sky. The
+snow had quickly melted and it was unusually warm for early December.
+They turned into the throng of Fifth Avenue and at the corner of
+Forty-second Street he paused and hesitated and looked at her timidly:
+
+"Say," he began haltingly, "there's an awful crowd of bums on those
+seats in the Square behind the building--you know Central Park, don't
+you?"
+
+Mary smiled.
+
+"Quite well--I've spent many happy hours in its quiet walks."
+
+"You know that place the other side of the Mall--that ragged hill
+covered with rocks and trees and mountain laurel?"
+
+"I've been there often."
+
+"Would you mind going there where it's quiet--I've such a lot o' things
+I want to ask you--you won't mind the walk, will you?"
+
+"Certainly not--we'll go there," Mary responded in even, business-like
+tones.
+
+"Because, if you don't want to walk I'll call a cab, if you'll let
+me----"
+
+"Not at all," was the quick answer. "I love to walk."
+
+It was impossible for the girl to repress a smile at her ridiculous
+situation! If any human being had told her yesterday that she, Mary
+Adams, an old-fashioned girl with old-fashioned ideas of the proprieties
+of life, would have allowed herself to be picked up by an utter stranger
+in this unceremonious way, she would have resented the assertion as a
+personal insult--yet the preposterous and impossible thing had happened
+and she was growing each moment more and more deeply interested in the
+study of the remarkable youth by her side.
+
+He was not handsome in the conventional sense. His features were too
+strong for that. An enemy might have called them coarse. Their first
+impression was of enormous strength and exhaustless vitality. He walked
+with a quick, military precision and planted his small feet on the
+pavement with a soft, sure tread that suggested the strength of a young
+tiger.
+
+The one feature that puzzled her was the size of his hands and feet.
+They were remarkably small and remarkable for their slender, graceful
+lines.
+
+His eyes were another interesting feature. The lids drooped with a
+careless Oriental languor, as though he would shut out the glare of the
+full daylight, and yet the pupils flashed with a cold steel-blue fire.
+One look into his eyes and there could be no doubt that the man behind
+them was an interesting personality.
+
+She wondered what his business could be. Not a lawyer or doctor or
+teacher certainly. His timidity in handling books was clear proof on
+that point. He was well groomed. His clothes were made by a first-class
+tailor.
+
+Her heart thumped with a sudden fear. Perhaps he was some sort of
+criminal. His questions may have been a trick to lure her away....
+
+They had just crossed the broad plaza at Fifty-ninth Street and entered
+the walkway that leads to the Mall.
+
+She stopped suddenly.
+
+"It's too far to the hill beyond the Mall," she began hesitatingly.
+"We'll find a seat in one of the little rustic houses along the
+Fifty-ninth Street side----"
+
+"Sure, if you say so," he agreed.
+
+He accepted the suggestion so simply, she regretted her suspicions,
+instantly changed her mind and said, smiling:
+
+"No, we'll go on where we started. The long walk will do me good."
+
+"All right," he laughed; "whatever you say's the law. I'm the little boy
+that does just what his teacher says."
+
+She blushed and shot him a surprised look.
+
+"Who told you that I was a teacher?" she asked, with a smile.
+
+"Lord, nobody! I had no idea of such a thing. It never popped into my
+head that you do anything at all. You know, I was awful scared when I
+spoke to you?"
+
+"Were you?" she laughed.
+
+"Surest thing you know! I'd 'a' never screwed up my courage to do it
+if you hadn't 'a' looked so kind and gentle and sweet. I just knew you
+couldn't turn me down----"
+
+There was no mistaking the genuineness of the apology for his
+presumption. She smiled a gracious answer, and threw the last ugly
+suspicion to the winds.
+
+He broke into a laugh and lifted his hand in the sudden gesture of a
+traffic policeman commanding a halt.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"You know I was so excited I clean forgot to introduce myself! What do
+you think o' that? You'll excuse me, won't you? My name's Jim Anthony.
+I'm sorry I can't give you any references to my folks. I haven't
+any--I'm a lost sheep in New York--no father or mother. That's why I'm
+so excited about this trip I'm plannin' down South. I hear I've got some
+people down there."
+
+He stopped suddenly as if absorbed in the thought. Her heart went out to
+him in sympathy for this confession of his orphaned life.
+
+"I'm Mary Adams," she smiled in answer. "I'm a teacher in the public
+schools."
+
+"Gee--that accounts for it! I thought you looked like you knew
+everything in those books. And you've been to Asheville, too?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Suppose it's not as big a burg as New York?"
+
+"Hardly--it's just a hustling mountain town of about twenty-five
+thousand people."
+
+"Lot o' swells from around New York live down there, they tell me."
+
+"Yes, the Vanderbilts have a beautiful castle just outside."
+
+"Some mountains near Asheville?"
+
+"Hundreds of square miles."
+
+"Mountains in every direction?"
+
+"As far as the eye can reach, one blue range piled above another until
+they're lost in the dim skies on the horizon."
+
+"Gee, it may be pretty hard to find your folks if they just live in the
+mountains near Asheville?"
+
+"Unless your directions are more explicit--I should think so."
+
+"You know, I thought the mountains near Asheville was a bunch o' hills
+off one side like the Palisades, that you couldn't miss if you tried.
+I've never been outside of New York--since I can remember. I'd love to
+see real mountains."
+
+The last sentence was spoken in a wistful pathos that touched Mary with
+its irresistible appeal. Her mother instincts responded to it in quick
+sympathy.
+
+"You've missed a lot," she answered gravely.
+
+"I'll bet I have. It's a rotten old town, this New York----"
+
+He paused, and a queer light flashed from his steel eyes.
+
+"Until you get your hand on its throat," he added, bringing his square
+jaws together.
+
+Mary lifted her face with keen interest.
+
+"And you've got it by the throat?"
+
+"That's just what--little girl!" he cried, with a ring of pride. "You
+see, I'm an inventor and I won a little pile on my first trick. I've got
+a machine-shop in a room eight-by-ten over on the East Side."
+
+"A machine-shop all your own?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"I'd like to see it some day."
+
+He shook his head emphatically.
+
+"It's too dirty. I couldn't let a pretty girl like you in such a place."
+He paused and resumed the tone of his narrative where she interrupted
+him. "You see, I've just put a new crimp in a carburetor for the
+automobile folks. They're tickled to death over it and I've got
+automobiles to burn. Will you go to ride with me tomorrow?"
+
+The teacher broke into a joyous laugh.
+
+"Why do you laugh?" he asked awkwardly.
+
+"Well, in the language of New York, that would be going some, wouldn't
+it?"
+
+"And why not, I'd like to know?" he cried with scorn. "Who's to tell us
+we can't? You've no kids to bother you tomorrow. I'm my own boss. You've
+seen Asheville, but you've never seen New York until you sit down beside
+me in a big six-cylinder racing car I'm handlin' next week. Let me
+show it to you. I'll swing her around to your door at eight o'clock. In
+twenty-five minutes we'll clear the Bronx and shoot into New Rochelle.
+There'll be no cops out to bother us, and not a wheel in sight. It'll do
+you good. Let me take you! I owe you that much for bein' so nice to me
+today. Will you go with me?"
+
+Mary hesitated.
+
+"I'll think it over and let you know."
+
+"Got a telephone?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then you'll have to tell me before I go--won't you?"
+
+"I suppose so," she answered demurely.
+
+They passed the big fountain beyond the Mall and skirted the lake to
+the bridge, crossed, walked along the water's edge to the laurel-covered
+crags and found a seat alone in the summer house that hides among the
+trees on its highest point.
+
+The roar of the city was dim and far away. The only sounds to break
+the stillness were the laughter of lovers along the walks below and the
+distant cry of steamers in the harbor and rivers.
+
+"You'd almost think you're in the mountains up here, now wouldn't you?"
+he asked, after a moment's silence.
+
+"Yes. I call this park my country estate. It costs me nothing to keep it
+in perfect order. The city pays for it all. But I own it. Every tree and
+shrub and flower and blade of grass, every statue and bird and animal in
+it is mine. I couldn't get more joy out of them if I had them inclosed
+behind an iron fence, and the deed to the land in my pocket--not half as
+much, for I'd be lonely and miserable without someone to see and enjoy
+it all with me."
+
+"Gee, that's so, ain't it? I never looked at it like that before."
+
+He gazed at her a long time in silent admiration, and then spoke
+briskly.
+
+"Now tell me about this North Carolina and all those miles and square
+miles of mountains."
+
+"You've a piece of paper and pencil?"
+
+He lifted his hand school-boy fashion:
+
+"Johnny on the spot, teacher!"
+
+A blank-book and pencil he threw in her lap and leaned close.
+
+"Tear the leaves out, if you like."
+
+"No, I'll just draw the maps on the pages and leave them for you to
+study."
+
+With deft touch she outlined in rough on the first page, the states of
+New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina, tracing
+his possible route by Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Dover, Norfolk
+and Raleigh, or by Washington, Richmond, and Danville to Greensboro.
+
+"Either route you see," she said softly, "leads to Salisbury, where you
+strike the foothills of the mountains. It's about two hundred miles from
+there to Asheville and `The Land of the Sky.'"
+
+For two hours she answered his eager, boyish questions about the country
+and its people, his eyes wide with admiration at her knowledge.
+
+The sun was sinking in a sea of scarlet and purple clouds behind the
+tall buildings beside the Park before she realized that they had been
+talking for more than two hours.
+
+She sprang to her feet, blushing and confused.
+
+"Mercy, I had no idea it was so late."
+
+"Why--is it late?" he asked incredulously.
+
+"We must hurry----"
+
+She brushed the stray ringlets of hair from her forehead, laughed and
+hurried down the pathway.
+
+They crossed the Park and took the Madison Avenue line to Twenty-third
+Street. They were silent in the car. The roar of the traffic was
+deafening after the quiet of the summer house among the trees.
+
+"I can see you home?" he inquired appealingly.
+
+"We get off at Twenty-third Street."
+
+They stood on the steps at her door beside the Square and there was a
+moment's awkward silence.
+
+He lifted his hat with a little chivalrous bow.
+
+"Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock in my car?"
+
+She smiled and hesitated.
+
+"You'll have a bully time!"
+
+"It's Sunday," she stammered.
+
+"Sure, that's why I asked you."
+
+"I don't like to miss my church."
+
+"You go to church every Sunday?" he asked in amazement.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, just this once then. It'll do you good. And I'll drive as careful
+as a farmer."
+
+"All right," she said in low tones, and extended her hand:
+
+"Good night----"
+
+"Good night, teacher!" he responded with a boyish wave of his slender
+hand and quickly disappeared in the crowd.
+
+She rushed up the stairs, her cheeks aflame, her heart beating a tattoo
+of foolish joy.
+
+She snatched the kitten from sleep and whispered in his tiny ear:
+
+"Oh, Kitty dear, I've had such an adventure! I've spent the happiest,
+silliest afternoon of my life! I'm going to have a more wonderful day
+tomorrow. I just feel it. In a big racing automobile if you please, Mr.
+Thomascat! Sorry I can't take you but the dust would blind you, Kitty
+dear. I'm sorry to tell you that you'll have to stay at home all day
+alone and keep house. It's too bad. But I'll fix your milk and bread
+before I go and you must promise me on your sacred Persian cat's honor
+not to look at my birds!"
+
+She hugged him violently and he purred his soft answer in song.
+
+"Oh, Kitty, I'm so happy--so foolishly happy!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. DOUBTS AND FEARS
+
+Mary attempted no analysis of her emotions. It was all too sudden,
+too stunning. She was content to feel and enjoy the first overwhelming
+experience of life. Hour after hour she lay among the pillows of her
+couch in the dim light of the street lamps and lazily watched the
+passing Saturday evening crowds. The world was beautiful.
+
+She undressed at last and went to bed, only to toss wide-eyed for hours.
+
+A hundred times she reenacted the scene in the Library and recalled
+her first impression of Jim's personality. What could such an utterly
+unforeseen and extraordinary meeting mean except that it was her Fate?
+Certainly he could not have planned it. Certainly she had not foreseen
+such an event. It had never occurred to her in the wildest flights of
+fancy that she could meet and speak to a man under such conditions,
+to say nothing of the walk in the Park and the hours she spent in the
+little summer house.
+
+And the strangest part of it all was that she could see nothing wrong
+in it from beginning to end. It had happened in the simplest and most
+natural way imaginable. By the standards of conventional propriety her
+act was the maddest folly; and yet she was still happy over it.
+
+There was one disquieting trait about him that made her a little uneasy.
+He used the catch-words of the street gamins of New York without any
+consciousness of incongruity. She thought at first that he did this as
+the Southern boy of culture and refinement unconsciously drops into the
+tones and dialect of the negro, by daily association. His constant use
+of the expressive and characteristic "Gee" was startling, to say the
+least. And yet it came from his lips in such a boyish way she felt sure
+that it was due to his embarrassment in the unusual position in which he
+had found himself with her.
+
+His helplessness with the dictionary was proof, of course, that he was
+no scholar. And yet a boy might have a fair education in the schools of
+today and be unfamiliar with this ponderous and dignified encyclopedia
+of words. It was impossible to believe that he was illiterate. His
+clothes, his carriage, even his manners made such an idea preposterous.
+
+Besides, no inventor could be really illiterate. He may have been forced
+to work and only attended night schools. But if he were a mechanic,
+capable of making a successful improvement on one of the most delicate
+and important parts of an automobile, he must have studied the
+principles involved in his inventions.
+
+His choice of a profession appealed to her imagination, too. It showed
+independence and initiative. It opened boundless possibilities. He might
+be an obscure and poorly educated boy today. In five years he could be
+a millionaire and the head of some huge business whose interests circled
+the world.
+
+The tired brain wore itself out at last in eager speculations, and she
+fell into a fitful stupor. The roar of the street-cars waked her at
+daylight, and further sleep was out of the question. She rose, dressed
+quickly and got her breakfast in a quiver of nervous excitement over the
+adventure of the coming automobile.
+
+As the hour of eight drew nearer, her doubts of the propriety of going
+became more acute.
+
+"What on earth has come over me in the past twenty-four hours?" she
+asked of herself. "I've known this man but a day. I don't KNOW him
+at all, and yet I'm going to put my life in his hands in that racing
+machine. Have I gone crazy?"
+
+She was not in the least afraid of him. His face and voice and
+personality all seemed familiar. Her brain and common-sense told her
+that such a trip with an utter stranger was dangerous and foolish beyond
+words. In his automobile, unaccompanied by a human soul and unacquainted
+with the roads over which they would travel, she would be absolutely in
+his power.
+
+She set her teeth firmly at last, her mind made up.
+
+"It's too mad a risk. I was crazy to promise. I won't go!"
+
+She had scarcely spoken her resolution when the soft call of the
+auto-horn echoed below. She stood irresolute for a moment, and the call
+was repeated in plaintive, appealing notes.
+
+She tried to hold fast to her resolutions, but the impulse to open the
+window and look out was resistless. She turned the old-fashioned brass
+knob, swung her windows wide on their hinges and leaned out.
+
+His keen eyes were watching. He lifted his cap and waved. She answered
+with the flutter of her handkerchief--and all resolutions were off.
+
+"Of course, I'll go," she cried, with a laugh. "It's a glorious day--I
+may never have such a chance again."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. WINGS OF STEEL
+
+She threw on her furs and hurried downstairs. Her surrender was too
+sudden to realize that she was being driven by a power that obscured
+reason and crushed her will.
+
+Reason made one more vain cry as she paused at the door below to draw on
+her gloves.
+
+"You have refused every invitation to see or know the unconventional
+world into which thousands of women in New York, clear-eyed and
+unafraid, enter daily. You'd sooner die than pose an hour in Gordon's
+studio, and on a Sabbath morning you cut your church and go on a day's
+wild ride with a man you have known but fifteen hours!"
+
+And the voice inside quickly answered:
+
+"But that's different! Gordon's a married man. My chevalier is not! I
+have the right to go, and he has the right."
+
+It was settled anyhow before this little controversy arose at the street
+door, but the ready answer she gave eased her conscience and cleared the
+way for a happy, exciting trip.
+
+He leaped from the big, ugly racer to help her in, stopped and looked at
+her light clothing.
+
+"That's your heaviest coat?"
+
+"Yes. It isn't cold."
+
+"I've one for you."
+
+He drew an enormous fur coat from the car and held it up for her arms.
+
+"You think I'll need that?" she asked.
+
+His white teeth gleamed in a friendly smile.
+
+"Take it from me, Kiddo, you certainly will!"
+
+She winced just a little at the common expression, but he said it with
+such a quick, boyish enthusiasm, she wondered whether he were quoting
+the expression from the Bowery boy's vocabulary or using it in a
+facetious personal way.
+
+"I knew you'd need it. So I brought it for you," he added genially.
+
+"Thanks," she murmured, lifting her arms and drawing the coat about her
+trim figure.
+
+He helped her into the car and drew from his pocket a light pair of
+goggles.
+
+"Now these, and you're all hunky-dory!"
+
+"Will I need these, too?" she asked incredulously.
+
+"Will you!" he cried. "You wouldn't ask that question if you knew
+the horse we've got hitched to this benzine buggy today. He's got
+wings--believe me! It's all I can do to hold him on the ground
+sometimes."
+
+"You'll drive carefully?" she faltered.
+
+He lifted his hand.
+
+"With you settin' beside me, my first name's `Caution.'"
+
+She fumbled the goggles in a vain effort to lift her arms over her head
+to fasten them on. He sprang into the seat by her side and promptly
+seized them.
+
+"Let me fix 'em."
+
+His slender, skillful fingers adjusted the band and brushed a stray
+ringlet of hair back under the furs. The thrill of his touch swept her
+with a sudden dizzy sense of excitement. She blushed and drew her head
+down into the collar of the shaggy coat.
+
+He touched the wheel, and the gray monster leaped from the curb and shot
+down the street. The single impulse carried them to the crossing. He had
+shut off the power as the machine gracefully swung into Fourth Avenue.
+The turn made, another leap and the car swept up the Avenue and swung
+through Twenty-sixth Street into Fifth Avenue. Again the power was off
+as he made the turn into Fifth Avenue at a snail's pace.
+
+"Can't let her out yet," he whispered apologetically. "Had to make these
+turns. There's no room for her inside of town."
+
+Mary had no time to answer. He touched the wheel, and the car shot up
+the deserted Avenue. She gasped for breath and braced her feet, her
+whole being tingling with the first exhilarating consciousness that she
+too was possessed of the devil of speed madness. It was glorious! For
+the first time in her life, space and distance lost their meaning. She
+was free as the birds in the heavens. She was flying on the wings
+of this gray, steel monster through space. The palaces on the Avenue
+whirled by in dim ghost-like flashes. They flew through Central Park
+into Seventy-second Street and out into the Drive. The waters of the
+river, broad and cool, flashing in the morning sun, rested her eyes a
+moment and then faded in a twinkling. They had leaped the chasm beyond
+Grant's Tomb, plunged into Broadway and before she could get her
+bearings, swept up the hill at One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street,
+slipped gracefully across the iron bridge and in a jiffy were lost in a
+gray cloud of dust on the Boston Turnpike.
+
+When the first intoxicating joy of speed had spent itself, she found
+herself shuddering at the daring turns he made, missing a curb by a
+hair's breadth--grazing a trolley by half an inch. Her fears were soon
+forgotten.
+
+The hand on the wheel was made of steel, too.
+
+The throbbing demon encased within the hood obeyed his slightest whim.
+She glanced at the square, massive jaw with furtive admiration.
+
+Without turning his head he laughed.
+
+"You like it, teacher?"
+
+"I'm in Heaven!"
+
+"You won't worry about church then, will you?"
+
+"Not today."
+
+They stopped at a road-house, and he put in more gasoline, lifted the
+casing from the engine, touched each vital part, examined his tires, and
+made sure that his machine was at its best.
+
+She watched him with a growing sense of his strength of character, his
+poise and executive ability. He was an awkward, stammering boy in the
+Library yesterday. Today with this machine in his hand he was the master
+of Time and Space.
+
+She yielded herself completely to the delicious sense of his protection.
+The extraordinary care he was giving the machine was a plain avowal of
+his deep regard for her comfort and happiness. She had been in one or
+two moderately moving cars driven by careful chauffeurs through Central
+Park. She had always felt on those trips with Jane Anderson like a poor
+relation from the country imposing on a rich friend.
+
+This trip was all her own. The car and its master were there solely for
+her happiness. Her slightest whim was law for both. It was sweet, this
+sense of power. She began to lift her body with a touch of pride.
+
+She laughed now at fears. What nonsense! No Knight of the Age of
+Chivalry could treat her with more deference. He had tried already to
+get her to stop for a bite of lunch.
+
+"Don't you want a thing to eat?" he persisted.
+
+"Not a thing. I've just had my breakfast. It's only nine o'clock----"
+
+"I know, but we've come thirty miles and the air makes you hungry. We
+ought to eat about six good meals a day."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No--not yet. I'm too happy with these new wings. I want to fly some
+more--come on----"
+
+He lifted his hand in his favorite gesture of obedience.
+
+"'Nuff said--we'll streak it back now by another road, hump it through
+town and jump over the Brooklyn Bridge. I'll show you Coney Island and
+then I know you'll want a hot dog anyhow."
+
+He crossed the country and darted into Broadway. Before she could
+realize it, the last tree and field were lost behind in a cloud of dust,
+and they were again in the crowded streets of the city. The deep growl
+of his horn rang its warnings for each crossing and Mary watched the
+timid women scramble to the sidewalks five and six blocks ahead.
+
+It was delicious. She had always been the one to scramble before. Her
+heart went out in a wave of tenderness to the man by her side, strong,
+daring, masterful, her chevalier, her protector and admirer.
+
+Yes, her admirer! There was no doubt on that point. The moment he
+relaxed the tension of his hand on the wheel, his deep, mysterious
+eyes beneath the drooping lids were fixed on hers in open, shameless
+admiration. Their cold fire burned into her heart and thrilled to her
+finger-tips.
+
+In spite of his deference and his obedience to her whim, she felt the
+iron grip of his personality on her imagination. Whatever his education,
+his origin or his environment, he was a power to be reckoned with.
+
+No other type of man had ever appealed to her. Her conception of a real
+man had always been one who did his own thinking and commanded rather
+than asked the respect of others.
+
+She had thrown the spell of her beauty over this headstrong, masterful
+man. He was wax in her hands. A delicious sense of power filled her. She
+had never known what happiness meant before. She floated through space.
+The spinning lines of towering buildings on Broadway passed as mists in
+a dream.
+
+As the velvet feet of the car touched the great bridge she lazily opened
+her eyes for a moment and gazed through the lace-work of steel at the
+broad sweep of the magnificent harbor. The dark blue hills of Staten
+Island framed the picture.
+
+He was right. She had never seen New York before. Never before had
+its immense panorama been swept within two hours. Never before had she
+realized its dimensions. She had always felt stunned and crushed in the
+effort to conceive it. Today she had wings. The city lay at her feet,
+conquered. She was mistress of Time and Space.
+
+Again her sidelong glance swept the lines of Jim Anthony's massive jaw.
+She laughed softly.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing. I'm just happy."
+
+She blushed and wondered if he had read her thoughts by some subtle
+power of clairvoyance. She was speculating on the effects of love at
+first sight on such a man. Would he hesitate, back and fill and hang
+on for months trying in vain to gain the courage to speak? Or would he
+spring with the leap of a young tiger the moment he realized what he
+wanted?
+
+Her own attitude was purely one of joyous expectancy. It would, of
+course, be a long time before her feelings could take any definite
+attitude toward a man. For the moment she was supremely happy. It was
+enough. She made no effort to probe her feelings. She might return to
+earth tomorrow. Today she was in Heaven. She would make the most of it.
+
+They skimmed the wooded cliffs of Bay Ridge, her heart beating in
+ecstasy at the revelation of beauty of whose existence she had not
+dreamed.
+
+"I bet you never saw this drive before, now did you?" he asked with
+boyish enthusiasm.
+
+"No--it's wonderful."
+
+"Some view--eh?"
+
+"Entrancing!"
+
+"You know when I make my pile, I'd like a palace of white marble perched
+on this cliff with the windows on the south looking out over Sandy Hook,
+and the windows on the west looking over that fort on the top of Staten
+Island with its black eyes gazing over the sea. How would you like
+that?"
+
+She turned away to mask the smile she couldn't repress.
+
+"That would be splendid, wouldn't it?"
+
+"I like the water, don't you?"
+
+"I love it."
+
+"Water and hills both right together! I reckon my father must 'a' been a
+sea-captain and my mother from the mountains----"
+
+He said this with a pathos that found the girl's heart. What a pitiful,
+lonely life, a boy's without even the memory of a mother or father!
+The mother instinct rose in a resistless flood of pity. Her eyes grew
+suddenly dim.
+
+"Well," he said briskly, "now for the dainty job! I've got to jump my
+way through that Coney Island bunch. You see my low speed's a racing
+pace for an everyday car. All I can do in a crowd is to jump from one
+crossing to the next and cut her power off every time. You can bet I'll
+make a guy or two jump with me----"
+
+"You won't hurt anyone?" she pleaded.
+
+"Lord, no! I wouldn't dare to put her through that mob in the afternoon.
+I'd kill a regiment of 'em. But it's early--just the shank of the
+morning. There's nobody down here yet."
+
+The car suddenly leaped into the Avenue that runs through the heart of
+Coney Island, the deep-throated horn screaming its warning. The crowd
+scattered like sheep before a lion.
+
+The girl laughed in spite of her effort at self-control.
+
+"Watch 'em hump!" Jim grunted.
+
+"It's funny, isn't it?"
+
+"When you're in the car--yes. It don't seem so funny when you're on
+foot. Well, some people were made to walk and some to ride. I had to
+hoof it at first. I like riding better--don't you?"
+
+"To be perfectly honest--yes!"
+
+The car leaped forward again, the horn screaming. The wheel passed
+within a foot of a fat woman's skirt. With a cry of terror she fled to
+the sidewalk and shook her fist at Jim, her face purple with anger.
+
+He waved his hand back at her:
+
+"Never touched you, dearie! Never touched you!"
+
+Mary lost all fear of accident and watched him handle the machine with
+the skill of a master. She could understand now the spirit of deviltry
+in a chauffeur who knows his business. It seemed a wicked, cruel thing
+from the ground--this swift plunge of a car as if bent on murder. But
+now that she felt the sure, velvet grip of the brake in a master's hand,
+she saw that the danger was largely a myth.
+
+It was fun to see people jump at the approach of an avalanche of steel
+that always stopped just short of harm. Of course, it took a steady
+nerve and muscle to do the trick. The man by her side had both. He was
+always smiling. Nothing rattled him.
+
+Her trust was now implicit. She relaxed the tension of the first two
+hours of doubt and fear, and yielded to the spell of his strength. It
+seemed inseparable from the throbbing will of the giant machine. He was
+its incarnate spirit. She was being swept through space now on the wings
+of omnipotent power--but power always obedient to her whim.
+
+With steady, even pulse they glided down the long, broad Avenue to
+Prospect Park, swung through its winding lanes, on through the streets
+of Brooklyn and once more into the open road.
+
+"Now for Long Beach and a good lunch!" he cried. "I'll show you
+something--but you'll have to shut your eyes to see it."
+
+With a sudden bound, the car leaped into the air, and shot through the
+sky with the hiss and shriek of a demon.
+
+The girl caught her breath and instinctively gripped his arm.
+
+"Look out, Kiddo!" he shouted. "Don't touch me--or we'll both land in
+Kingdom Come. I ain't ready for a harp just yet. I'd rather fool with
+this toy for a while down here."
+
+She braced her feet and gripped the sides of the car, gasping for
+breath, steadied herself at last and crouched low among the furs to
+guard her throat from the icy daggers of the wind.
+
+The landscape whirled in a circle of trees and sky, while above the dark
+line of hills hung the boiling cauldron of cloud-banked heavens.
+
+"Are you game?" he called above the roar.
+
+"Yes," she gasped. "Don't stop----"
+
+Her soul had risen at last to the ecstasy of the mania for speed that
+fired the man's spirit and nerved his hand. It was inconceivable
+until experienced--this awful joy! Her spirit sank with childish
+disappointment as he slowly lowered the power.
+
+"Got to take a sharp curve down there," he explained. "We turn to the
+right for the meadows and the Beach--how was that?"
+
+"Wonderful," she cried, with dancing eyes. "Let her go again if you want
+to--I'm game--now."
+
+Jim laughed.
+
+"A little rattled at first?"
+
+"Yes----"
+
+"Well, we can't let her out on this road. It's too narrow--have to take
+a ditch sometimes to pass. That wouldn't do for an eighty-mile clip, you
+know--now would it?"
+
+"Hardly."
+
+"I might risk it alone--but my first name's `Old Man Caution' today--you
+get me?"
+
+Mary nodded and turned her head away again.
+
+"I got you the first time, sir," she answered playfully taking his tone.
+
+He ran the car into the garage at the Beach, sprang out and lifted Mary
+to the ground with quick, firm hand. They threw off their heavy coats
+and left them.
+
+"Look out for this junk now, sonny," he cried to the attendant, tossing
+him a half dollar.
+
+"Sure, Mike!"
+
+"Fill her up to the chin by the time we get back."
+
+"Righto!"
+
+Quickly they walked to the hotel and in five minutes were seated beside
+a window in the dining-room, watching the lazy roll of the sea sweep in
+on the sands at low tide.
+
+"I'm hungry as a wolf!" he whispered.
+
+"So am I----"
+
+"We'll eat everything in sight--start at the top and come down."
+
+He handed her the menu card and watched her from the depths beneath the
+drooping eyelids.
+
+Conscious of his gaze and rejoicing in its frank admiration, she ordered
+the dinner with instinctive good taste. No effort at conversation was
+made by either. They were both too hungry. As Jim lighted his cigarette
+when the coffee was served, he leaned back in his chair and watched the
+breakers in silence.
+
+"That's the best dinner I ever had in my life," he said slowly.
+
+"It was good. We were hungry."
+
+"I've been hungry before, many a time. It was something else, too." He
+paused and rose abruptly. "Let's walk up the Beach."
+
+"I'd love to," she answered, slowly rising.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. BESIDE THE SEA
+
+They strolled leisurely along the board-walk, found the sand, walked in
+the firm, dry line of the high-water mark for a mile to the east, and
+sat down on a clump of sea-grass on the top of a sand dune.
+
+"I like this!" she cried joyously.
+
+"So do I," he answered soberly, and lapsed into silence.
+
+The sun was warm and genial. The wind had died, and the waves of the
+rising tide were creeping up the long, sloping stretches of the sand
+with a lazy, soothing rush. A winter gull poised above their heads and
+soared seaward. The smoke of an ocean liner streaked the horizon as she
+swept toward the channel off Sandy Hook.
+
+Jim looked at the girl by his side and tried to speak. She caught the
+strained expression in his strong face and lowered her eyes.
+
+He began to trace letters in the sand.
+
+She knew with unerring instinct that he had made his first desperate
+effort to speak his love and failed. Would he give it up and wait for
+weeks and possibly months--or would he storm the citadel in one mad rush
+at the beginning?
+
+He found his voice at last. He had recovered from the panic of his first
+impulse.
+
+"Well, how do you like my idea of a good day as far as you've gone?" he
+asked lightly.
+
+She met his gaze with perfect frankness. "The happiest day I ever spent
+in my life," she confessed.
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"Honest."
+
+"Oh, shucks--what's the use!" he cried, with sudden fierce resolution.
+"You've got me, Kiddo, you've got me! I've been eatin' out of your hand
+since the minute I laid my eyes on you in that big room. I'm all yours.
+You can do anything you want with me. For God's sake, tell me that you
+like me a little."
+
+The blood slowly mounted to her cheeks in red waves of tremulous
+emotion.
+
+"I like you very much," she said in low tones.
+
+He seized her hand and held it in a desperate grip.
+
+"I love you, Kiddo," he went on passionately. "You don't mind me calling
+you Kiddo? You're so dainty and pretty and sweet, and that dimple keeps
+coming in your cheek, it just seems like that's the word--you don't
+mind?"
+
+"No----"
+
+"You don't know how I've been starvin' all my life for the love of a
+pure girl like you. You're the first one I ever spoke to. I was scared
+to death yesterday when I saw you. But I'd 'a' spoke to you if it killed
+me in my tracks. I couldn't help it. It just looked like an angel had
+dropped right down out of the gold clouds from that ceilin'. I was
+afraid I'd lose you in the crowd and never see you again. It didn't seem
+you were a stranger anyhow--I didn't seem strange to you, did I?"
+
+Her lips quivered, and she was silent.
+
+"Didn't you feel like you'd known me somewhere before?" he pleaded.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I just felt you did, and that's what give me courage. Oh, Kiddo, you've
+got to love me a little--I've never been loved by a human soul in all my
+life. The first thing I remember was hidin' under a stoop from a brute
+who beat me every night. I ran away and slept in barrels and crawled
+into coal shutes till I was big enough to earn a livin' sellin' papers.
+For years I never knew what it meant to have enough to eat. I just
+scratched and fought my way through the streets like a little hungry
+wolf till I got in a blacksmith's shop down on South Street and learned
+to handle tools. I was quick and smart, and the old man liked me and let
+me sleep in the shop. I had enough to eat then and got strong as an ox.
+I went to the night schools and learned to read and write. I don't know
+anything, but I'm quick and you can teach me--you will, won't you?"
+
+"I'll try," was the low answer.
+
+"You do like me, Kiddo? Say it again!"
+
+She rose to her feet and looked out over the sea, her face scarlet.
+
+"Yes, I do," she said at last.
+
+With a sudden resistless sweep he clasped her in his arms and kissed her
+lips.
+
+Her heart leaped in mad response to the first kiss a lover had ever
+given. Her body quivered and relaxed in his embrace. It was sweet--it
+was wonderful beyond words.
+
+He kissed her again, and she clung to him, lifting her eyes to his at
+last in a long, wondering gaze and then pressed her own lips to his.
+
+"Oh, my God, Kiddo, you love me! It beats the world, don't it? Love at
+first sight for both of us! I've heard about it, but I didn't think it
+would ever happen to me like this--did you?"
+
+She shook her head and bit her lips as the tears slowly dimmed her eyes.
+
+"It takes my breath," she murmured. "I can't realize what it all means.
+It seems too wonderful to be true."
+
+"And you won't turn me down because I don't know who my father and
+mother was?"
+
+"No--my heart goes out to you in a great pity for your lonely, wretched
+boyhood."
+
+"I couldn't help that--now could I?"
+
+"Of course not. It's wonderful that you've made your way alone and won
+the fight of life."
+
+He gripped her hands and held her at arms' length, devouring her with
+his deep, slumbering eyes.
+
+"Gee, but you're a brick, little girl! I thought you were an angel when
+I first saw you. Now I know it. Just watch me work for you! I'll show
+you a thing or two. You'll marry me right away, won't you?"
+
+He bent close, his breath on her lips.
+
+Her eyes drooped under his passionate gaze, and the tears slowly stole
+down her cheeks. Her hour of life had struck! So suddenly, so utterly
+unexpectedly, it rang a thunderbolt from the clear sky.
+
+"You will, won't you?" he pleaded.
+
+She smiled at him through her tears and slowly said:
+
+"I can't say yes today."
+
+"Why--why?"
+
+"You've swept me off my feet--I--I can't think."
+
+"I don't want you to think--I want you to marry me right now."
+
+"I must have a little time."
+
+His face fell in despair.
+
+"Say, little girl, don't turn me down--you'll kill me."
+
+"I'm not turning you down," she protested tenderly. "I only want time to
+see that I'm not crazy. I have to pinch myself to see if I'm awake. It
+all seems a dream"--she paused and lifted her radiant face to his--"a
+beautiful dream--the most wonderful my soul has ever seen. I must be
+sure it's real!"
+
+He drew her into his arms, and her body again relaxed in surrender as
+his lips touched hers.
+
+"Isn't that the real thing?" he laughed.
+
+She lay very still, her eyes closed, her face a scarlet flame. She was
+frightened at the swift realization of its overwhelming reality. The
+touch of his hand thrilled to the last fiber and nerve of her body. Her
+own trembling fingers clung to him with desperate longing tenderness.
+She roused herself with an effort and drew away.
+
+"That's enough now. I must have a little common-sense. Let's go----"
+
+He clung to her hand.
+
+"You'll let me come to see you, tomorrow night?"
+
+"Yes----"
+
+"And the next night--and every night this week--what's the difference?
+There's nobody to say no, is there?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"You'll let me?"
+
+"Tomorrow sure. Maybe you won't want to come the next night."
+
+"Maybe I won't! Just wait and see!"
+
+He seized both hands again and held her at arms' length.
+
+"Don't go yet--just let me look at you a minute more! The only girl I
+ever had in my life--and she's the prettiest thing God ever made on this
+earth. Ain't I the lucky boy?"
+
+"We must go now," she cried, blushing again under his burning eyes.
+
+He dropped her hands suddenly and saluted military fashion.
+
+"All right, teacher! I'm the little boy that does exactly what he's
+told."
+
+They strolled leisurely along the shining sands in silence. Now and then
+his slender hand caught hers and crushed it. The moment he touched her
+a living flame flashed through her body--and through every moment of
+contact her nerves throbbed and quivered as if a musician were sweeping
+the strings of a harp. If this were not love, what could it be?
+
+Her whole being, body and soul, responded to his. Her body moved
+instinctively toward his, drawn by some hidden, resistless power. Her
+hands went out to meet his; her lips leaped to his.
+
+She must test it with time, of course. And yet she knew by a deep inner
+sense that time could only fan the flame that had been kindled into
+consuming fire that must melt every barrier between them.
+
+She had asked him nothing of himself, his business or his future, and
+knew nothing except what he had told her in the first impetuous rush of
+his confession of love. No matter. The big thing today was the fact
+of love and the new radiance with which it was beginning to light the
+world. The effect was stunning. Their conversation had been the simplest
+of commonplace questions and answers--and yet the day was the one
+miracle of her life--her happiness something unthinkable until realized.
+
+She had not asked time in order to know him better. She had only asked
+time to see herself more clearly in the new experience. Not for a moment
+did she raise the question of the worthiness of the man she loved. It
+was inconceivable that she should love a man not worthy of her. The only
+questions asked were soul-searching ones put to herself.
+
+Through the sweet, cool drive homeward, a hundred times she asked
+within:
+
+"Is this love?"
+
+And each time the answer came from the depths:
+
+"Yes--yes--a thousand times yes. It's the voice of God. I feel it and I
+know it."
+
+He throttled the racer down to the lowest speed and took the longest
+road home.
+
+Again and again he slipped his left hand from the wheel and pressed
+hers.
+
+"You won't let anybody knock me behind my back, now will you, little
+girl?"
+
+She pressed his hand in answer.
+
+"I ain't got a single friend in all God's world to stand up for me but
+just you."
+
+"You don't need anyone," she whispered.
+
+"You'll give me a chance to get back at 'em if any of your friends knock
+me, won't you?"
+
+"Why should they dislike you?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well, I ain't exactly one o' the high-flyers now am I?"
+
+"I'm glad you're not."
+
+"Sure enough?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then it's me for you, Kiddo, for this world and the next."
+
+The car swung suddenly to the curb and Mary lifted her eyes with a start
+to find herself in front of her home.
+
+Jim sprang to the ground and lifted her out.
+
+"Keep this coat," he whispered. "We'll need it tomorrow. What time is
+your school out?"
+
+"At three o'clock."
+
+"I can come at four?"
+
+"You don't have to work tomorrow?"
+
+He hesitated a moment.
+
+"No, I'm on a vacation till after Christmas. They're putting through my
+new patent."
+
+He followed her inside the door and held her hand in the shadows of the
+hall.
+
+"All right, at four," she said.
+
+"I'll be here."
+
+He stooped and kissed her, turned and passed quickly out.
+
+She stood for a moment in the shadows and listened to the throb of the
+car until it melted into the roar of the city's life, her heart beating
+with a joy so new it was pain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. A VAIN APPEAL
+
+A week passed on the wings of magic.
+
+Every day at four o'clock the car was waiting at her door. The drab
+interior of the school-room had lost its terror. No annoyance could
+break the spell that reigned within. Her patience was inexhaustible, her
+temper serene.
+
+Walking with swift step down the Avenue to her home she wondered vaguely
+how she could have been lonely in all the music and the wonder of New
+York's marvelous life. The windows of the stores were already crowded
+with Christmas cheer, and busy thousands passed through their doors.
+Each man or woman was a swift messenger of love. Somewhere in the
+shadows of the city's labyrinth a human heart would beat with quickened
+joy for every step that pressed about these crowded counters. Love had
+given new eyes to see, new ears to hear and a new heart to feel the joys
+and sorrows of life.
+
+She hadn't given her consent yet. She was still asking her silly heart
+to be sure of herself. Of her lover, the depth and tenderness, the
+strength and madness of his love, there could be no doubt. Each day he
+had given new tokens.
+
+For Saturday afternoon she had told him not to bring the car.
+
+When they reached Fifth Avenue, across the Square, he stopped abruptly
+and faced her with a curious, uneasy look:
+
+"Say, tell me why you wanted to walk?"
+
+"I had a good reason," she said evasively.
+
+"Yes, but why? It's a sin to lay that car up a day like this. Look
+here----"
+
+He stopped and tried to gulp down his fears.
+
+"Look here--you're not going to throw me down after leading me to the
+very top of the roof, are you?"
+
+She looked up with tender assurance.
+
+"Not today----"
+
+"Then why hoof it? Let me run round to the garage and shoot her out. You
+can wait for me at the Waldorf. I've always wanted to push my buzz-wagon
+up to that big joint and wait for my girl to trip down the steps."
+
+"No. I've a plan of my own today. Let me have my way."
+
+"All righto--just so you're happy."
+
+"I am happy," she answered soberly.
+
+At the foot of the broad stairs of the Library she paused and looked up
+smilingly at its majestic front.
+
+"Come in a moment," she said softly.
+
+He followed her wonderingly into the vaulted hall and climbed the grand
+staircase to the reading-room. She walked slowly to the shelf on which
+the Century Dictionary rested and looked laughingly at the seat in which
+she sat Saturday afternoon a week ago at exactly this hour.
+
+Jim smiled, leaned close and whispered:
+
+"I got you, Kiddo--I got you! Get out of here quick or I'll grab you and
+kiss you!"
+
+She started and blushed.
+
+"Don't you dare!"
+
+"Beat it then--beat it--or I can't help it!"
+
+She turned quickly and they passed through the catalogue room and
+lightly down the stairs.
+
+He held her soft, round arm with a grip that sent the blood tingling to
+the roots of her brown hair.
+
+"You understand now?" she whispered.
+
+"You bet! We walk the same way up the Avenue, through the Park to the
+little house on the laurel hill. And you're goin' to be sweet to me
+today, my Kiddo--I just feel it. I----"
+
+"Don't be too sure, sir!" she interrupted, solemnly.
+
+He laughed aloud.
+
+"You can't fool me now--and I'm crazy as a June bug! You know I like to
+walk--if I can be with you!"
+
+At the Park entrance she stopped again and smiled roguishly.
+
+"We'll find a seat in one of the summer houses along the Fifty-ninth
+Street side."
+
+"All right," he responded.
+
+"No--we'll go on where we started!"
+
+With a laugh, she slipped her hand through his arm.
+
+"You were a little scared of me last Saturday about this time, weren't
+you?"
+
+"Just a little----"
+
+"It hurt me, too, but I didn't let you know."
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"It's all right now--it's all right. Gee I but we've traveled some in a
+week, haven't we?"
+
+"I've known you more than a week," she protested gayly.
+
+"Sure--I've known you since I was born."
+
+They walked through the stately rows of elms on the Mall in joyous
+silence. Crowds of children and nurses, lovers and loungers, filled the
+seats and thronged the broad promenade.
+
+Scarcely a word was spoken until they reached the rustic house nestling
+among the trees on the hill.
+
+"Just a week by the calendar," she murmured. "And I've lived a
+lifetime."
+
+"It's all right then--little girl? You'll marry me right away?
+When--tonight?"
+
+"Hardly!"
+
+"Tomorrow, then?"
+
+She drew the glove from her hand and held the slender fingers up before
+him.
+
+"You can get the ring----"
+
+"Gee! I do have to get a ring, don't I?"
+
+"Yes----"
+
+"Why didn't you tell me? You know I never got married before."
+
+"I should hope not!"
+
+He seized her hand and kissed it, drew her into his arms, held her
+crushed and breathless and released her with a quick, impulsive
+movement.
+
+"You'll help me get it?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"If you like."
+
+"A big white sparkler?"
+
+"No--no----"
+
+"No?"
+
+"A plain little gold band."
+
+"Let me get you a big diamond!"
+
+"No--a plain gold band."
+
+"It's all settled then?"
+
+"We're engaged. You're my fiance."
+
+"But for God's sake, Kiddo--how long do I have to be a fiance?"
+
+A ripple of laughter rang through the trees.
+
+"Don't you think we've done pretty well for seven days?"
+
+"I could have settled it in seven minutes after we met," he answered
+complainingly. "You won't tell me the day yet?"
+
+"Not yet----"
+
+"All right, we'll just have to take blessings as they come, then."
+
+Through the beautiful afternoon they sat side by side with close-pressed
+hands and planned the future which love had given. A modest flat far up
+among the trees on the cliffs overlooking the Hudson, they decided on.
+
+"We'll begin with that," he cried enthusiastically, "but we won't stay
+there long. I've got big plans. I'm going to make a million. The white
+house down by the sea for me, a yacht out in the front yard and a
+half-dozen thundering autos in the garage. If this deal I'm on now goes
+through, I'll make my pile in a year----"
+
+They rose as the shadows lengthened.
+
+"I must go home and feed my pets," she sighed.
+
+"All right," he responded heartily. "I'll get the car and be there in a
+jiffy. We'll take a spin out to a road-house for dinner."
+
+She lifted her eyes tenderly.
+
+"You can come right up to my room--now that we're engaged."
+
+He swept her into his arms again, and held her in unresisting happiness.
+
+It was dark when he swung the gray car against the curb and sprang out.
+He didn't blow his horn for her to come down. The privilege she had
+granted was too sweet and wonderful. He wouldn't miss it for the world.
+
+The stairs were dark. Ella was late this afternoon getting back to her
+work. His light footstep scarcely made a sound. He found each step with
+quick, instinctive touch. The building seemed deserted. The tenants were
+all on trips to the country and the seashore. The day was one of rare
+beauty and warmth. Someone was fumbling in the dark on the third floor
+back.
+
+He made his way quickly to her room, and softly knocked, waited a moment
+and knocked again. There was no response. He couldn't be mistaken. He
+had seen her lean out of that window every day the past week.
+
+Perhaps she was busy in the kitchenette and the noise from the street
+made it impossible to hear.
+
+He placed his hand on the doorknob.
+
+From the darkness of the hall, in a quick, tiger leap, Ella threw
+herself on him and grappled for his throat.
+
+"What are you doing at that door, you dirty thief?" she growled.
+
+"Here! Here! What'ell--what's the matter with you?" he gasped, gripping
+her hands and tearing them from his neck. "I'm no thief!"
+
+"You are! You are, too!" she shrieked. "I heard you sneak in the door
+downstairs--heard you slippin' like a cat upstairs! Get out of here
+before I call a cop!"
+
+She was savagely pushing him back to the landing of the stairs. With a
+sudden lurch, Jim freed himself and gripped her hands.
+
+"Cut it! Cut it! Or I'll knock your block off! I've come to take my girl
+to ride----"
+
+He drew a match and quickly lighted the gas as Mary's footstep echoed on
+the stairs below.
+
+"Well, she's coming now--we'll see," was the sullen answer.
+
+Ella surveyed him from head to foot, her one eye gleaming in angry
+suspicion.
+
+Mary sprang up the last step and saw the two confronting each other. She
+had heard the angry voices from below.
+
+"Why, Ella, what's the matter?" she gasped.
+
+"He was trying to break into your room----"
+
+Jim threw up his hands in a gesture of rage, and Mary broke into a
+laugh.
+
+"Why, nonsense, Ella, I asked him to come! This is Mr. Anthony,"--her
+voice dropped,--"my fiance."
+
+Ella's figure relaxed with a look of surprise.
+
+"Oh, ja?" she murmured, as if dazed.
+
+"Yes--come in," she said to Jim. "Sorry I was out. I had to run to the
+grocer's for the Kitty."
+
+Ella glared at Jim, turned and began to light the other hall lamps
+without any attempt at apology.
+
+Jim entered the room with a look of awe, took in its impression of
+sweet, homelike order and recovered quickly his composure.
+
+"Gee, you're the dandy little housekeeper! I could stay here forever."
+
+"You like it?"
+
+"It's a bird's nest." He glanced in the mirror and saw the print of
+Ella's fingers on his collar. "Will you look at that?" he growled.
+
+"It's too bad," she said, sympathetically.
+
+"You know I thought a she-tiger had got loose from the Bronx and jumped
+on me."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," she apologized. "Ella's very fond of me. She was
+trying to protect me. She couldn't see who it was in the dark."
+
+"No; I reckon not," Jim laughed.
+
+"I've changed our plans for the evening," she announced. "We won't go
+to ride tonight. I want you to bring my best friend to dinner with us at
+Mouquin's. Go after her in the car. I want to impress her----"
+
+"I got you, Kiddo! She's goin' to look me over--eh? All right, I'll
+stop at the store and get a clean collar. I wouldn't like her to see the
+print of that tiger's claw on my neck."
+
+"There's her address the Gainsborough Studios. Drop me at Mouquin's and
+I'll have the table set in one of the small rooms upstairs. I'll meet
+you at the door."
+
+Jim glanced at the address, put it in his pocket and helped her draw on
+her heavy coat.
+
+"You'll be nice to Jane? I want her to like you. She's the only real
+friend I've ever had in New York."
+
+"I'll do my best for you, little girl," he promised.
+
+He dropped her at the wooden cottage-front on Sixth Avenue near
+Twenty-eighth Street, and returned in twenty minutes with Jane.
+
+As the tall artist led the way upstairs, Jim whispered:
+
+"Say, for God's sake, let me out of this!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"She's a frost. If I have to sit beside her an hour I'll catch cold and
+die. I swear it; save me! Save my life!"
+
+"Sh! It's all right. She's fine and generous when you know her."
+
+They had reached the door and Mary pushed him in. There was no help for
+it. He'd have to make the most of it.
+
+The dinner was a dismal failure.
+
+Jane Anderson was polite and genial, but there was a straight look of
+wonder in her clear gray eyes that froze the blood in Jim's veins.
+
+Mary tried desperately for the first half-hour to put him at his
+ease. It was useless. The attack of Ella had upset his nerves, and the
+unexpressed hostility of Jane had completely crushed his spirits. He
+tried to talk once, stammered and lapsed into a sullen silence from
+which nothing could stir him.
+
+The two girls at last began to discuss their own affairs and the dinner
+ended in a sickening failure that depressed and angered Mary.
+
+The agony over at last, she rose and turned to Jim:
+
+"You can go now, sir--I'll take Jane home with me for a friendly chat."
+
+"Thank God!" he whispered, grinning in spite of his effort to keep a
+straight face.
+
+"Tomorrow?" he asked in low tones.
+
+"At eight o'clock."
+
+Jim bowed awkwardly to Jane, muttered something inarticulate and rushed
+to his car.
+
+The two girls walked in silence through Twenty-eighth Street to Broadway
+and thence across the Square.
+
+Seated in her room, Mary could contain her pent-up rage no longer.
+
+"Jane Anderson, I'm furious with you! How could you be so rude--so
+positively insulting!"
+
+"Insulting?"
+
+"Yes. You stared at him in cold disdain as if he were a toad under your
+feet!"
+
+"I assure you, dear----"
+
+"Why did you do it?"
+
+The artist rose, walked to the window, looked out on the Square for a
+moment, extended her hand and laid it gently on Mary's shoulder.
+
+"You've made up your mind to marry this man, honey?"
+
+"I certainly have," was the emphatic answer.
+
+Jane paused.
+
+"And all in seven days?"
+
+"Seven days or seven years--what does it matter? He's my mate--we
+love--it's Fate."
+
+"It's incredible!"
+
+"What's incredible?"
+
+"Such madness."
+
+"Perhaps love is madness--the madness that makes life worth the candle.
+I've never lived before the past week."
+
+"And you, the dainty, cultured, pious little saint, will marry
+this--this----"
+
+"Say it! I want you to be frank----"
+
+"Perfectly frank?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"This coarse, ugly, illiterate brute----"
+
+"Jane Anderson, how dare you!" Mary sprang to her feet, livid with rage.
+
+"I asked if I might be frank. Shall I lie to you? Or shall I tell you
+what I think?"
+
+"Say what you please; it doesn't matter," Mary interrupted angrily.
+
+"I only speak at all because I love you. Your common-sense should tell
+you that I speak with reluctance. But now that I have spoken, let me
+beg of you for your father's sake, for your dead mother's sake, for my
+sake--I'm your one disinterested friend and you know that my love is
+real--for the sake of your own soul's salvation in this world and the
+next--don't marry that brute! Commit suicide if you will--jump off the
+bridge--take poison, cut your throat, blow your brains out--but, oh dear
+God, not this!"
+
+"And why, may I ask?" was the cold question.
+
+"He's in no way your equal in culture, in character, in any of the
+essentials on which the companionship of marriage must be based----"
+
+"He's a diamond in the rough," Mary staunchly asserted.
+
+"He's in the rough, all right! The only diamond about him is the one in
+his red scarf--`Take it from me, Kiddo! Take it from me!'"
+
+Her last sentence was a quotation from Jim, her imitation of his slang
+so perfect Mary's cheeks flamed anew with anger.
+
+"I'll teach him to use good English--never fear. In a month he'll forget
+his slang and his red scarf."
+
+"You mean that in a month you'll forget to use good English and his
+style of dress will be yours. Oh, honey, can't you see that such a man
+will only drag you down, down to his level? Can it be possible that
+you--that you really love him?"
+
+"I adore him and I'm proud of his love!"
+
+"Now listen! You believe in an indissoluble marriage, don't you?"
+
+"Yes----"
+
+"It's the first article of your creed--that marriage is a holy
+sacrament, that no power on earth or in hell can ever dissolve its
+bonds? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, my dear! They always
+have--they always will, I suppose. This is peculiarly true of your type
+of woman--the dainty, clinging girl of religious enthusiasm. You're
+peculiarly susceptible to the physical power of a brutal lover. Your
+soul glories in submission to this force. The more coarse and brutal its
+attraction the more abject and joyful the surrender. Your religion can't
+save you because your religion is purely emotional--it is only another
+manifestation of your sex emotions."
+
+"How can you be so sacrilegious!" the girl interrupted with a look of
+horror.
+
+"It may shock you, dear, but I'm telling you one of the simplest truths
+of Nature. You'd as well know it now as later. The moment you wake to
+realize that your emotions have been deceived and bankrupted, your faith
+will collapse. At least keep, your grip on common-sense. Down in the
+cowardly soul of every weak woman--perhaps of every woman--is the insane
+desire to be dominated by a superior brute force. The woman of the lower
+classes--the peasant of Russia, for example, whose sex impulses are of
+all races the most violent--refuses with scorn the advances of the man
+who will not strike her. The man who can't beat his wife is beneath
+contempt--he is no man at all----"
+
+Mary broke into a laugh.
+
+"Really, Jane, you cease to be serious you're a joke. For Heaven's sake
+use a little common-sense yourself. You can't be warning me that my
+lover is marrying me in order to use his fists on me?"
+
+"Perhaps not, dear,"--the artist smiled; "there might be greater depths
+for one of your training and character. I'm just telling you the plain
+truth about the haste with which you're rushing into this marriage.
+There's nothing divine in it. There's no true romance of lofty
+sentiment. It's the simplest and most elemental of all the brutal facts
+of animal life. That it is resistless in a woman of your culture and
+refinement makes it all the more pathetic----"
+
+The girl rose with a gesture of impatience.
+
+"It's no use, Jane dear; we speak a different language. I don't in the
+least know what you're talking about, and what's more, I'm glad I don't.
+I've a vague idea that your drift is indecent. But we're different. I
+realize that. I don't sit in judgment on you. You're wasting your breath
+on me. I'm going into this marriage with my eyes wide open. It's the
+fulfillment of my brightest hopes and aspirations. That I shall be happy
+with this man and make him supremely happy I know by an intuition
+deeper and truer than reason. I'm going to trust that intuition without
+reservation."
+
+"All right, honey," the artist agreed with a smile. "I won't say
+anything more, except that you're fooling yourself about the depth of
+this intuitive knowledge. Your infatuation is not based on the verdict
+of your deepest and truest instincts."
+
+"On what, then?"
+
+"The crazy ideals of the novels you've been reading--that's all."
+
+"Ridiculous!"
+
+"You're absolutely sure, for instance, that God made just one man the
+mate of one woman, aren't you?"
+
+"As sure as that I live."
+
+"Where did you learn it?"
+
+"So long ago I can't remember."
+
+"Not in your Bible?"
+
+"No."
+
+"The Sunday school?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Craddock didn't tell you that, did he?"
+
+"Hardly----"
+
+"I thought not. He has too much horse-sense in spite of his emotional
+gymnastics. You learned it in the first dime-novel you read."
+
+"I never read a dime-novel in my life," she interrupted, indignantly.
+
+"I know--you paid a dollar and a quarter for it--but it was a
+dime-novel. The philosophy of this school of trash you have built into
+a creed of life. How can you be so blind? How can you make so tragic a
+blunder?"
+
+"That's just it, Jane: I couldn't if your impressions of his character
+were true. I couldn't make a mistake about so vital a question. I
+couldn't love him if he really were a coarse, illiterate brute. What you
+see is only on the surface. He hasn't had his chance yet----"
+
+"Who is he? What does he do? Who are his people?"
+
+"He has no people----"
+
+"I thought not."
+
+"I love him all the more deeply," she went on firmly, "because of his
+miserable childhood. I'll do my best to make up for the years of cruelty
+and hunger and suffering through which he passed. What right have you
+to sit in judgment on him without a hearing? You've known him two
+hours----"
+
+Jane shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Two minutes was quite enough."
+
+"And you judge by what standard?"
+
+"My five senses, and my sixth sense above all. One look at his square
+bulldog jaw, his massive neck and the deformity of his delicate hands
+and feet! I hear the ignorant patois of the East Side underworld.
+I smell the brimstone in his suppressed rage at my dislike. There's
+something uncanny in the sensuous droop of his heavy eyelids and the
+glitter of his steel-blue eyes. There's something incongruous in his
+whole personality. I was afraid of him the moment I saw him."
+
+Mary broke into hysterical laughter.
+
+"And if my five senses and my intuitions contradict yours? Who is to
+decide? If I loved him on sight----If I looked into his eyes and saw
+the soul of my mate? If their cold fires thrill me with inexpressible
+passion? If I see in his massive neck and jaw the strength of an
+irresistible manhood, the power to win success and to command the
+world? If I see in his slender hands and small feet lines of exquisite
+beauty--am I to crush my senses and strangle my love to please your
+idiotic prejudice?"
+
+Jane threw up her hands in despair.
+
+"Certainly not! If you're blind and deaf I can't keep you from
+committing suicide. I'd lock you up in an asylum for the insane if I had
+the power to save you from the clutches of the brute."
+
+Mary drew herself erect and faced her friend.
+
+"Please don't repeat that word in my hearing--there's a limit to
+friendship. I think you'd better go----"
+
+Jane rose and walked quickly to the door, her lips pressed firmly.
+
+"As you like--our lives will be far apart from tonight. It's just as
+well."
+
+She closed the door with a bang and reached the head of the stairs
+before Mary threw her arms around her neck.
+
+"Please, dear, forgive me--don't go in anger."
+
+The older woman kissed her tenderly, glad of the dim light to hide her
+own tears.
+
+"There, it's all right, honey--I won't remember it. Forgive me for my
+ugly words."
+
+"I love him, Jane--I love him! It's Fate. Can't you understand?"
+
+"Yes, dear, I understand, and I'll love you always--good-by."
+
+"You'll come to my wedding?"
+
+"Perhaps----"
+
+"I'll let you know----"
+
+Another kiss, and Jane Anderson strode down the stairs and out into the
+night with a sickening, helpless fear in her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. JIM'S TRIAL
+
+The quarrel had left Mary in a quiver of exalted rage. How dare a friend
+trample her most sacred feelings! She pitied Jane Anderson and her
+tribe--these modern feminine leaders of a senseless revolution against
+man--they were crazy. They had all been disappointed in some individual
+and for that reason set themselves up as the judges of mankind.
+
+"Thank God my soul has not been poisoned!" she exclaimed aloud with
+fervor. "How strange that these women who claim such clear vision can be
+so stupidly blind!"
+
+She busied herself with her little household, and made up her mind once
+and for all time to be done with such friendships. The friendship of
+such women was a vain thing. They were vicious cats at heart--not like
+her gentle Persian kitten whose soul was full of sleepy sunlight. These
+modern insurgents were wild, half-starved stray cats that had been
+hounded and beaten until they had lapsed into their elemental brute
+instincts. They were so aggravating, too, they deserved no sympathy.
+
+Again she thanked God that she was not one of them--that her heart was
+still capable of romantic love--a love so sudden and so overwhelming
+that it could sweep life before it in one mad rush to its glorious end.
+
+She woke next morning with a dull sense of depression. The room was damp
+and chilly. It was storming. The splash of rain against the window and
+the muffled roar from the street below meant that the wind was high and
+the day would be a wretched one outside.
+
+They couldn't take their ride.
+
+It was a double disappointment. She had meant to have him dash down to
+Long Beach and place the ring on her finger seated on that same bright
+sand-dune overlooking the sea. Instead, they must stay indoors. Jim was
+not at his best indoors. She loved him behind the wheel with his hand
+on the pulse of that racer. The machine seemed a part of his being. He
+breathed his spirit into its steel heart, and together they swept her on
+and on over billowy clouds through the gates of Heaven.
+
+There was no help for it. They would spend the time together in her room
+planning the future. It would be sweet--these intimate hours in her home
+with the man she loved.
+
+Should she spend a whole day alone there with him? Was it just proper?
+Was it really safe? Nonsense! The vile thoughts which Jane had uttered
+had poisoned her, after all. She hated her self that she could remember
+them. And yet they filled her heart with dread in spite of every effort
+to laugh them off.
+
+"How could Jane Anderson dare say such things?" she muttered angrily.
+"`A coarse, illiterate brute!' It's a lie! a lie! a lie!" She stamped
+her foot in rage. "He's strong and brave and masterful--a man among
+men--he's my mate and I love him!"
+
+And yet the frankness with which her friend had spoken had in reality
+disturbed her beyond measure. Through every hour of the day her
+uneasiness increased. After all she was utterly alone and her life
+had been pitifully narrow. Her knowledge of men she had drawn almost
+exclusively from romantic fiction.
+
+It was just a little strange that Jim persisted in living so completely
+in the present and the future. He had told her of his pitiful childhood.
+He had told her of his business. It had been definite--the simple
+statement he made--and she accepted it without question until Jane
+Anderson had dropped these ugly suspicions. She hated the meddler for
+it.
+
+In the light of such suspicions the simplest, bravest man might seem a
+criminal. How could her friend be blind to the magnetism of this man's
+powerful personality? Bah! She was jealous of their perfect happiness.
+Why are women so contemptible?
+
+She began a careful study of every trait of her lover's character,
+determined to weigh him by the truest standards of manhood. Certainly
+he was no weakling. The one abomination of her soul was the type of the
+city degenerate she saw simpering along Broadway and Fifth Avenue at
+times. Jim was brave to the point of rashness. No man with an ounce of
+cowardice in his being could handle a car in every crisis with such cool
+daring and perfect control. He was strong. He could lift her body as if
+it were a feather. His arms crushed her with terrible force. He could
+earn a living for them both. There could be no doubt about that. His
+faultless clothes, the ease with which he commanded unlimited credit
+among the automobile manufacturers and dealers--every supply store on
+Broadway seemed to know him--left no doubt on that score.
+
+There was just a bit of mystery and reserve about his career as an
+inventor. His first success that had given him a start he had not
+explained. The big deal about the new carburetor she could, of course,
+understand. He had a workshop all his own. He had told her this the
+first day they met. She would ask him to take her to see it this
+afternoon. The storm would prevent the trip to the Beach. She would ask
+this, not because she doubted his honesty, but because she really wished
+to see the place in which he worked. It was her workshop now, as well as
+his.
+
+For a moment her suspicions were sickening. Suppose he had romanced
+about his workshop and his room? Supposed he lived somewhere in the
+squalid slums of the lower East Side and his people, after all, were
+alive? Perhaps a drunken father and a coarse, brutal mother--and
+sisters----
+
+She stopped with a frown and clenched her fists.
+
+She would ask Jim to show her his workshop. That would be enough. If
+he had told her the truth about that she would make up to him in tender
+abandonment of utter trust for every suspicion she harbored.
+
+The car was standing in front of her door. He waved for her to come
+down.
+
+"Jump right in!" he called gayly. "I've got an extra rubber blanket for
+you."
+
+"In the storm, Jim?" she faltered.
+
+"Surest thing you know. It's great to fly through a storm. You can just
+ride on its wings. Throw on your raincoat and come on quick! I'm going
+to run down to the Beach. Who's afraid of an old storm with this thing
+under us?"
+
+Her heart gave a bound. Her longing had reached her lover and brought
+him through the storm to do her bidding. It was wonderful--this oneness
+of soul and body.
+
+She was happy again--supremely, divinely happy. The man by her side knew
+and understood. She knew and understood. She loved this daring spirit
+that rose to the wind--this iron will that brooked no interference with
+his plans, even from Nature, when it crossed his love.
+
+The sting of the raindrops against her cheek was exhilarating. The car
+glided over the swimming roadway like a great gray gull skimming the
+beach at low tide. Her soul rose. The sun of a perfect faith and love
+was shining now behind the clouds.
+
+She nestled close to his side and watched him tenderly from the corners
+of her half-closed eyes, her whole being content in his strength. The
+idea of dashing through a blinding rain to the Beach on such a day would
+have been to her mind an unthinkable piece of madness. She was proud
+of his daring. It would be hers to shield from the storms of life. She
+loved the rugged lines of his massive jaw in profile. How could Jane be
+such a fool as to call him ugly!
+
+The weather, of course, prevented them from walking up the Beach to
+their sand-dune. The walk would have been all right--but it was out
+of the question to sit down there and give her the ring in the pouring
+rain. She knew this as well as he. She knew, too, that he had the ring
+in his pocket, though he had carefully refrained from referring to it in
+any way.
+
+He led her to a secluded nook behind a pillar in the little parlor. The
+hotel was deserted. They had the building almost to themselves. A log
+fire crackled in the open fireplace, and he drew a settee close. The
+wind had moderated and the rain was pouring down in straight streams,
+rolling in soft music on the roof.
+
+He drew the ring from his pocket. "Well, Kiddo, I got it. The fellow
+said this was all right."
+
+He held the tiny gold band before her shining eyes.
+
+"Slip it on!" she whispered.
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"This one, silly!"
+
+She extended her third finger, as he pressed the ring slowly on.
+
+"Seems to me a mighty little one and a mighty cheap one, but he said it
+was the thing."
+
+"It's all right, dear," she whispered. "Kiss me!"
+
+He pressed his lips to hers and held them until she sank back and lifted
+her hand in warning.
+
+"Be careful!"
+
+"Whose afraid?" Jim muttered, glancing over his shoulder toward the
+door. "Now tell me what day--tomorrow?"
+
+"Nonsense, man!" she cried. "Give me time to breathe----"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Just to realize that I'm engaged--to plan and think and dream of the
+wonderful day."
+
+"We're losing time----"
+
+"We'll never live these wonderful hours over again, dear."
+
+Jim's face fell and his voice was pitiful in its funereal notes: "Lord,
+I thought the ring settled it."
+
+"And so it does, dear--it does-----"
+
+"Not if that long-legged spider that took dinner with us the other night
+gets in her fine work. I'll bet that she handed me a few when you got
+home?"
+
+Mary was silent.
+
+"Now didn't she?"
+
+"To the best of her ability--yes--but I didn't mind her silly talk."
+
+"Gee, but I'd love to give her a bouquet of poison ivy!"
+
+"We had an awful quarrel----"
+
+"And you stood up for me?"
+
+"You know I did!"
+
+"All right, I don't give a tinker's damn what anybody says if you stand
+by me! In all this world there's just you--for me. There's never been
+anybody else--and there never will be. I'm that kind."
+
+"And I love you for it!" she cried, with rapture pressing his hand in
+both of hers.
+
+"What did she say about me, anyhow?"
+
+"Nothing worth repeating. I've forgotten it."
+
+Jim held her gaze.
+
+"It's funny how you love anybody the minute you lay eyes on 'em--or hate
+'em the same way. I wanted to choke her the minute she opened her yap to
+me."
+
+"Forget it, dear," she broke in briskly. "I want you to take me to see
+your workshop tomorrow--will you?"
+
+A flash of suspicion shot from the depths of his eyes.
+
+"Did she tell you to ask me that?"
+
+"Of course not! I'm just interested in everything you do. I want to see
+where you work."
+
+"It's no place for a sweet girl to go--that part of town."
+
+"But I'll be with you."
+
+"I don't want you to go down there," he sullenly maintained.
+
+"But why, dear?"
+
+"It's a low, dirty place. I had to locate the shop there to get the room
+I needed for the rent I could pay. It's not fit for you. I'm going to
+move uptown in a little while."
+
+"Please let me go," she pleaded.
+
+He shook his head emphatically.
+
+"No."
+
+She turned away to hide the tears. The first real, hideous fear she had
+ever had about him caught her heart in spite of every effort to fight it
+down. His workshop might be a myth after all. He had failed in the first
+test to which she had put him. It was horrible. All the vile suggestions
+of Jane Anderson rushed now into her memory.
+
+She struggled bravely to keep her head and not break down. It was beyond
+her strength. A sob strangled her, and she buried her face in her hands.
+
+Jim looked at her in helpless anguish for a moment, started to gather
+her in his arms and looked around the room in terror.
+
+He leaned over her and whispered tensely:
+
+"For God's sake, Kiddo--don't--don't do that! I didn't mean to hurt
+you--honest, I didn't. Don't cry any more and I'll take you right down
+to the black hole, and let you sleep on the floor if you want to. Gee!
+I'll give you the whole place, tools, junk and all----"
+
+She lifted her head.
+
+"Will you, Jim?"
+
+"Sure I will! We start this minute if you want to go."
+
+She glanced over his shoulder to see that no one was looking, threw her
+arms around his neck and kissed him again and again.
+
+"It was the first time you ever said no, dear, and it hurt. I'm happy
+again now. If you'll just let me see you in the shop for five minutes
+I'll never ask you again."
+
+"All right--tomorrow when you get out of school. I'll take you down.
+Holy Mike, that was a dandy kiss! Let's quarrel again--start something
+else."
+
+She rose laughing and brushed the last trace of tears from her eyes.
+
+"Let's eat dinner now--I'm hungry."
+
+"By George, I'd forgot all about the feed!"
+
+By eight o'clock the storm had abated; the rain suddenly stopped, and
+the moon peeped through the clouds.
+
+He drove the big racer back at a steady, even stride on her lowest notch
+of speed--half the time with only his right hand on the wheel and his
+left gripping hers.
+
+As the lights of Manhattan flashed from the hills beyond the
+Queensborough Bridge, he leaned close and whispered:
+
+"Happy?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+The car was waiting the next day at half-past three.
+
+"It's not far," he said, nodding carelessly. "You needn't put on the
+coat. Be there in a jiffy."
+
+Down Twenty-third Street to Avenue A, down the avenue to Eighteenth
+Street, and then he suddenly swung the machine through Eighteenth into
+Avenue B and stopped below a low, red brick building on the corner.
+
+He set his brakes with a crash, leaped out and extended his hands.
+
+"I didn't like to take you up these stairs at the back of that saloon,
+little girl, but you would come. Now don't blame me----"
+
+She pressed his arm tenderly.
+
+"Of course I won't blame you. I'm proud and happy to share your life and
+help you. I'm surprised to see everything so quiet down here. I thought
+all the East Side was packed with crowded tenements."
+
+"No," he answered, in a matter-of-fact way. "About the only excitement
+we have in this quarter is an occasional gas explosion in the plant over
+there, and the noise of the second-hand material men unloading iron. The
+tenements haven't been built here yet."
+
+He led her quickly past the back door of the saloon and up two narrow
+flights of stairs to the top of the building, drew from his pocket the
+key to a heavy padlock and slipped the crooked bolt from the double
+staples. He unlocked the door with a second key and pushed his way in.
+
+"All righto," he cried.
+
+The straight, narrow hall inside was dark. He fumbled in his pocket and
+lit the gas.
+
+"The workshop first, or my sleeping den?"
+
+"The workshop first!" she whispered excitedly.
+
+She had made the reality of this shop the supreme test of Jim's word
+and character. She was in a fever of expectant uncertainty as to its
+equipment and practical use.
+
+He unlocked the door leading to the front.
+
+"That's my den--we'll come back here."
+
+He passed quickly to the further end of the hall and again used two keys
+to open the door, and held it back for her to enter.
+
+"I'm sorry it's so dirty--if you get your pretty dress all ruined--it's
+not my fault, you know."
+
+Mary surveyed the room with an exclamation of delight.
+
+"Oh, what a wonderful place! Why, Jim, you're a magician!"
+
+There could be no doubt about the practical use to which the shop was
+being put. Its one small window opened on a fire escape in the narrow
+court in the rear. A skylight in the middle opened with a hinge on the
+roof and flooded the space with perfect light. An iron ladder swung from
+the skylight and was hooked up against the ceiling by a hasp fastened
+to a staple over a work-bench. On one side of the room was a tiny
+blacksmith's forge, an anvil, hammers and a complete set of tools for
+working in rough iron. A small gasoline engine supplied the power which
+turned his lathe and worked the drills, saw and plane. On the other
+side of the room was arranged a fairly complete chemical laboratory with
+several retorts, and an oxyhydrogen blow-pipe capable of developing the
+powerful heat used in the melting and brazing of metals. Beneath the
+benches were piled automobile supplies of every kind.
+
+"You know how to use all these machines, Jim?" she asked in wonder.
+
+"Sure, and then some!" he answered with a wave of his slender hand.
+
+"You're a wizard----"
+
+"Now the den?" he said briskly.
+
+She followed him through the hall and into the large front corner room
+overlooking Avenue B and Eighteenth Street. The morning sun flooded the
+front and the afternoon sun poured into the side windows. The furniture
+was solid mahogany--a bed, bureau, chiffonier, couch and three chairs.
+The windows were fitted with wood-paneled shutters, shades and heavy
+draperies. A thick, soft carpet of faded red covered the floor.
+
+"It's a nice room, Jim, but I'd like to dust it for you," she said with
+a smile.
+
+"Sure. I'm for giving you the right to dust it every morning, Kiddo,
+beginning now. Let's find a preacher tonight!"
+
+She blushed and moved a step toward the door.
+
+"Just a little while. You know it's been only ten days since we met----"
+
+"But we've lived some in that time, haven't we?"
+
+"An eternity, I think," she said reverently.
+
+"I want to marry right now, girlie!" he pleaded desperately. "If that
+spider gets you in her den again, I just feel like it's good night for
+me."
+
+"Nonsense. You can't believe me such a silly child. I'm a woman. I love
+you. Do you think the foolish prejudice of a friend could destroy my
+love for the man whom I have chosen for my mate?"
+
+"No, but I want it fixed and then it's fixed--and they can say what
+they please. Marry me tonight! You've got the ring. You're going to in a
+little while, anyhow. What's the use to wait and lose these days out of
+our life? What's the sense of it? Don't you know me by this time? Don't
+you trust me by this time?"
+
+She slipped her hand gently into his.
+
+"I trust you utterly. And I feel that I've known you since the day I was
+born----"
+
+"Then why--why wait a minute?"
+
+"You can't understand a girl's feelings, dear--only a little while and
+it's all right."
+
+He sat down on the couch in silence, rose and walked to the window. She
+watched him struggling with deep emotion.
+
+He turned suddenly.
+
+"Look here, Kiddo, I've got to leave on that trip to the mountains of
+North Carolina. I've got to get down there before Christmas. I must be
+back here by the first of the year. Gee--I can't go without you! You
+don't want to stay here without me, do you?"
+
+A sudden pallor overspread her face. For the first time she realized how
+their lives had become one in the sweet intimacy of the past ten days.
+
+"You must go now?" she gasped.
+
+"Yes. I've made my arrangements. I've business back here the first
+of the year that can't wait. Marry me and go with me. We'll take our
+honeymoon down there. By George, we'll go together in the car! Every day
+by each other's side over hundreds and hundreds of miles! Say, ain't you
+game? Come on! It's a crime to send me away without you. How can you do
+it?"
+
+"I can't--I'm afraid," she faltered.
+
+"You'll marry me, then?"
+
+"Yes!" she whispered. "What is the latest day you can start?"
+
+"Next Saturday, if we go in the car----"
+
+"All right,"--she was looking straight into the depths of his soul
+now--"next Saturday."
+
+He clasped her in his arms and held her with desperate tenderness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. ELLA'S SECRET
+
+The consummation of her life's dream was too near, too sweet and
+wonderful for Jane's croakings to distress Mary Adams beyond the moment.
+She had, of course, wished her friend to be present at the wedding--yet
+the curt refusal had only aroused anew her pity at stupid prejudices.
+It was out of the question to ask her father to leave his work in the
+Kentucky mountains and come all the way to New York. She would surprise
+him with the announcement. After all, she was the one human being
+vitally concerned in this affair, and the only one save the man whose
+life would be joined to hers.
+
+In five minutes after the painful scene with Jane she had completely
+regained her composure, and her face was radiant with happiness when
+she waved to Jim. He was standing before the door in the car, waiting to
+take her to the City Hall to get the marriage license.
+
+"Gee!" he cried, "you're the prettiest, sweetest thing that ever walked
+this earth, with those cheeks all flaming like a rose! Are you happy?"
+
+"Gloriously."
+
+She motioned him to keep his seat and sprang lightly to his side.
+
+"Aren't you happy, sir?" she added gayly.
+
+"I am, yes--but to tell you the truth, I'm beginning to get scared. You
+know what to do, don't you, when we get before that preacher?"
+
+"Of course, silly----"
+
+"I never saw a wedding in my life."
+
+She pressed his hand tenderly.
+
+"Honestly, Jim?"
+
+"I swear it. You'll have to tell me how to behave."
+
+"We'll rehearse it all tonight. I'll show you. I've seen hundreds of
+people married. My father's a preacher, you know."
+
+"Yes, I know that," he went on solemnly; "that's what gives me courage.
+I knew you'd understand everything. I'm counting on you, Kiddo--if you
+fall down, we're gone. I'll run like a turkey."
+
+"It's easy," she laughed.
+
+"And this license business--how do we go about that? What'll they do to
+us?"
+
+"Nothing, goose! We just march up to the clerk and demand the license.
+He asks us a lot of questions----"
+
+"Questions! What sort of questions?"
+
+"The names of your father and mother--whether you've been married before
+and where you live and how old you are----"
+
+"Ask you about your business?" he interrupted, sharply.
+
+"No. They think if you can pay the license fee you can support your
+wife, I suppose."
+
+"How much is it?"
+
+"I don't know, here. It used to be two dollars in Kentucky."
+
+"That's cheap--must come higher in this burg. I brought along a
+hundred."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"There's a lot of graft in this town. I'll be ready. I've got to get
+'em--don't care how high they come."
+
+"There'll be no graft in this, Jim," she protested gayly.
+
+"Well, it'll be the first time I ever got by without it--believe me!"
+
+The ease with which the license was obtained was more than Jim could
+understand. All the way back from the City Hall he expected to be held
+up at every corner. He kept looking over his shoulder to see if they
+were being followed.
+
+Arrived in her room, they discussed their plans for the day of days.
+
+"I'll come round soon in the morning, and we'll spend the whole day at
+the Beach," he suggested.
+
+She lifted her hands in protest.
+
+"No--no!"
+
+"No?"
+
+"Not on our wedding-day, Jim!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It's not good form. The groom should not see the bride that day until
+they meet at the altar."
+
+"Let's change it!"
+
+"No, sir, the old way's the best. I'll spend the day in saying good-by
+to the past. You'll call for me at six o'clock. We'll go to Dr.
+Craddock's house and be married in time for our wedding dinner."
+
+The lover smiled, and his drooping eyelids fell still lower as he
+watched her intently.
+
+"I want that dinner here in this little place, Kiddo----"
+
+She blushed and protested.
+
+"I thought we'd go to the Beach and spend the night there."
+
+"Here, girlie, here! I love this little place--it's so like you. Get
+the old wild-cat who cleans up for you to fix us a dinner here all by
+ourselves--wouldn't she?"
+
+"She'd do anything for me--yes."
+
+"Then fix it here--I want to be just with you--don't you understand?"
+
+"Yes," she whispered. "But I'd rather spend that first day of our new
+life in a strange place--and the Beach we both love--hadn't you just as
+leave go there, Jim?"
+
+"No. The waiters will stare at us, and hear us talk----"
+
+"We can have our meals served in our room.
+
+"This is better," he insisted. "I want to spend one day here alone with
+you, before we go--just to feel that you're all mine. You see, if I walk
+in here and own the place, I'll know that better than any other way.
+I've just set my heart on it, Kiddo--what's the difference?"
+
+She lifted her lips to his.
+
+"All right, dear. It shall be as you wish. Tomorrow I will be all
+yours--in life, in death, in eternity. Your happiness will be the one
+thing for which I shall plan and work."
+
+Ella was very happy in the honor conferred on her. She was given entire
+charge of the place, and spent the day in feverish preparation for the
+dinner. She insisted on borrowing a larger table from the little fat
+woman next door, to hold the extra dishes. She dressed herself in her
+best. Her raven black hair was pressed smooth and shining down the sides
+of her pale temples.
+
+The work was completed by three o'clock in the afternoon, and Mary lay
+in her window lazily watching the crowds scurrying home. The offices
+closed early on Saturday afternoons.
+
+Ella was puttering about the room, adding little touches here and there
+in a pretense of still being busy. As a matter of fact, she was watching
+the girl from her one eye with a wistful tenderness she had not dared
+as yet to express in words. Twice Mary had turned suddenly and seen her
+thus. Each time Ella had started as if caught in some act of mischief
+and asked an irrelevant question to relieve her embarrassment.
+
+Mary could feel her single eye fixed on her now in a deep, brooding
+look. It made her uncomfortable.
+
+She turned slowly and spoke in gentle tones.
+
+"You've been so sweet to me today, Ella--father and mother and best
+friend. I'll never forget your kindness. You'd better rest awhile now
+until we go to Dr. Craddock's. I want you to be there, too----"
+
+"To see the marriage--ja?" she asked softly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, no, my dear, no--I stay here and wait for you to come. I keep the
+lights burning bright. I welcome the bride and groom to their little
+home--ja."
+
+A quick glance of suspicion shot from Mary's blue eyes. Could it be
+possible that this forlorn scrubwoman would carry her hostility to her
+lover to the same point of ungracious refusal to witness the ceremony?
+It was nonsense, of course. Ella would feel out of place in the
+minister's parlor, that was all. She wouldn't insist.
+
+"All right, Ella; you can receive us here with ceremony. You'll be our
+maid, butler, my father, my mother and my friends!"
+
+There was a moment's silence and still no move on Ella's part to go. The
+girl felt her single eye again fixed on her in mysterious, wistful
+gaze. She would send her away if it were possible without hurting her
+feelings.
+
+Mary lifted her eyes suddenly, and Ella stirred awkwardly and smiled.
+
+"I hope you are very happy, meine liebe--ja?"
+
+"I couldn't be happier if I were in Heaven," was the quick answer.
+
+"I'm so glad----"
+
+Again an awkward pause.
+
+"I was once young and pretty like you, meine liebe," she began dreamily,
+"--slim and straight and jolly--always laughing."
+
+Mary held her breath in eager expectancy. Ella was going to lift the
+veil from the mystery of her life, stirred by memories which the coming
+wedding had evoked.
+
+"And you had a thrilling romance--Ella? I always felt it."
+
+Again silence, and then in low tones the woman told her story.
+
+"Ja--a romance, too. I was so young and foolish--just a baby myself--not
+sixteen. But I was full of life and fun, and I had a way of doing what I
+pleased.
+
+"The man was older than me--Oh, a lot older--with gray hairs on the side
+of his head. I was wild about him. I never took to kids. They didn't
+seem to like me----"
+
+She paused as if hesitating to give her full confidence, and quickly
+went on:
+
+"My folks were German. They couldn't speak English. I learned when I was
+five years old. They didn't like my lover. We quarrel day and night. I
+say they didn't like him because they could not speak his language. They
+say he was bad. I fight for him, and run away and marry him----"
+
+Again she paused and drew a deep breath.
+
+"Ah, I was one happy little fool that year! He make good wages on the
+docks--a stevedore. They had a strike, and he got to drinking. The baby
+came----"
+
+She stopped suddenly.
+
+"You had a little baby, Ella?" the girl asked in a tender whisper.
+
+"Ja--ja," she sobbed--"so sweet, so good--so quiet--so beautiful she was.
+I was very happy--like a little girl with a doll--only she laugh and
+cry and coo and pull my hair! He stop the drink a little while when she
+come, and he got work. And then he begin worse and worse. It seem like
+he never loved me any more after the baby. He curse me, he quarrel. He
+begin to strike me sometimes. I laugh and cry at first and make up and
+try again----"
+
+Again she paused as if for courage to go on, and choked into silence.
+
+"Yes--and then?" the girl asked.
+
+"And then he come home one night wild drunk. He stumble and fall
+across the cradle and hurt my baby so she never cry--just lie still and
+tremble--her eyes wide open at first and then they droop and close and
+she die!
+
+"He laugh and curse and strike me, and I fight him like a tiger. He was
+strong--he throw me down on the floor and gouge my eye out with his big
+claw----"
+
+"Oh, my God," Mary sobbed.
+
+Ella sprang to her feet and bent over the girl with trembling eagerness.
+
+"You keep my secret, meine liebe?"
+
+"Yes--yes----"
+
+"I never tell a soul on earth what I tell you now--I just eat my heart
+out and keep still all the years, I can tell you--ja?"
+
+"Yes, I'll keep it sacred--go on----"
+
+"When I know he gouge my eye out, I go wild. I get my hand on his throat
+and choke him still. I drag him to the stairs and throw him head first
+all the way down to the bottom. He fall in a heap and lie still. I run
+down and drag him to the door. I kick his face and he never move. He was
+dead. I kick him again--and again. And then I laugh--I laugh--I laugh in
+his dead face--I was so glad I kill him!"
+
+She sank in a paroxysm of sobs on the floor, and the girl touched her
+smooth black hair tenderly, strangled with her own emotions.
+
+Ella rose at last and brushed the tears from her hollow cheeks.
+
+"Now, you know, meine liebe! Why I tell you this today, I don't
+know--maybe I must! I dream once like you dream today----"
+
+The girl slipped her arms around the drooping, pathetic figure and
+stroked it tenderly.
+
+"The sunshine is for some, maybe," Ella went on pathetically; "for some
+the clouds and the storms. I hope you are very, very happy today and all
+the days----"
+
+"I will be, Ella, I'm sure. I'll always love you after this."
+
+"Maybe I make you sad because I tell you----"
+
+"No--no! I'm glad you told me. The knowledge of your sorrow will make my
+life the sweeter. I shall be more humble in my joy."
+
+It never occurred to the girl for a moment that this lonely, broken
+woman had torn her soul's deepest secret open in a last pathetic effort
+to warn her of the danger of her marriage. The wistful, helpless look
+in her eye meant to Mary only the anguish of memories. Each human heart
+persists in learning the big lessons of life at first hand. We refuse to
+learn any other way. The tragedies of others interest us as fiction. We
+make the application to others--never to ourselves.
+
+Jim's familiar footstep echoed through the hall, and Mary sprang to the
+door with a cry of joy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE WEDDING
+
+Ella hurried into the kitchenette and busied herself with dinner. Jim's
+unexpectedly early arrival broke the spell of the tragedy to which Mary
+had listened with breathless sympathy. Her own future she faced without
+a shadow of doubt or fear.
+
+Her reproaches to Jim were entirely perfunctory, on the sin of his early
+call on their wedding-day.
+
+"Naughty boy!" she cried with mock severity. "At this unseemly hour!"
+
+He glanced about the room nervously.
+
+"Anybody in there?"
+
+He nodded toward the kitchenette.
+
+"Only Ella----"
+
+"Send her away."
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Quick, Kiddo--quick!"
+
+Mary let Ella out from the little private hall without her seeing Jim,
+and returned.
+
+"For heaven's sake, man, what ails you?" she asked excitedly.
+
+"Say--I forgot that thing already. We got to go over it again. What if I
+miss it?"
+
+"The ceremony?"
+
+"Yep----"
+
+He mopped his brow and looked at his watch.
+
+"By the time we get to that preacher's house, I won't know my first name
+if you don't help me."
+
+Mary laughed softly and kissed him.
+
+"You can't miss it. All you've got to do is say, `I will' when he asks
+you the question, put the ring on my finger when he tells you, and
+repeat the words after him--he and I will do the rest."
+
+"Say my question over again."
+
+"`Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after
+God's ordinance, in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love
+her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and,
+forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall
+live?'"
+
+She looked at him and laughed.
+
+"Why don't you answer?"
+
+"Now?"
+
+"Yes--that's the end of the question. Say, `I will.'"
+
+"Oh, I will all right! What scares me is that I'll jump in on him and
+say `I will' before he gets halfway through. Seems to me when he says,
+`Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?' I'll just have to
+choke myself there to keep from saying, `You bet your life I will,
+Parson!'"
+
+"It won't hurt anything if you say, `I will' several times," she assured
+him.
+
+"It wouldn't queer the job?"
+
+"Not in the least. I've often heard them say, `I will' two or three
+times. Wait until you hear the words, `so long as ye both shall
+live----'"
+
+"`So long as ye both shall live,'" he repeated solemnly.
+
+"The other speech you say after the minister."
+
+"He won't bite off more than I can chew at one time, will he?"
+
+"No, silly--just a few words----"
+
+"Because if he does, I'll choke."
+
+Jim drew his watch again, mopped his brow, and gazed at Mary's serene
+face with wonder.
+
+"Say, Kiddo, you're immense--you're as cool as a cucumber!"
+
+"Of course. Why not? It's my day of joy and perfect peace--the day I've
+dreamed of since the dawn of maidenhood. I'm marrying the man of
+my choice--the one man God made for me of all men on earth. I know
+this--I'm content."
+
+"Let me hang around here till time--won't you?" he asked helplessly.
+
+"We must have Ella come back to fix the table."
+
+"Sure. I just didn't want her to hear me tell you that I had cold feet.
+I'm better now."
+
+Ella moved about the room with soft tread, watching Jim with sullen,
+concentrated gaze when he was not looking.
+
+The lovers sat on the couch beside the window, holding each other's
+hands and watching in silence the hurrying crowds pass below. Now that
+his panic was over, Jim began to breathe more freely, and the time
+swiftly passed.
+
+As the shadows slowly fell, they rang the bell at the parson's house
+beside the church, and his good wife ushered them into the parlor. The
+little Craddocks crowded in--six of them, two girls and four boys, their
+ages ranging from five to nineteen.
+
+Sweet memories crowded the girl's heart from her happy childhood. She
+had never missed one of these affairs at home. Her father was a very
+popular minister and his home the Mecca of lovers for miles around.
+
+Craddock, like her father, was inclined to be conservative in his forms.
+Marriage he held with the old theologians to be a holy sacrament. He
+never used the new-fangled marriage vows. He stuck to the formula of the
+Book of Common Prayer.
+
+When she stood before the preacher in this beautiful familiar scene
+which she had witnessed so many times at home, Mary's heart beat with a
+joy that was positively silly. She tried to be serious, and the dimple
+would come in her cheek in spite of every effort.
+
+As Craddock's musical voice began the opening address, the memory of a
+foolish incident in her father's life flashed through her mind, and
+she wondered if Jim in his excitement had forgotten his pocket-book and
+couldn't pay the preacher.
+
+"Dearly beloved," he began, "we are gathered together here in the sight
+of God----"
+
+Mary tried to remember that she was in the sight of God, but she was so
+foolishly happy she could only remember that funny scene. A long-legged
+Kentucky mountain bridegroom at the close of the ceremony had turned to
+her father and drawled:
+
+"Well, parson, I ain't got no money with me--but I want to give ye five
+dollars. I've got a fine dawg. He's worth ten. I'll send him to ye fur
+five--if it's all right?"
+
+The children had giggled and her father blushed.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," he had answered. "Money's no matter. Forget the
+five. I hope you'll be very happy."
+
+Two weeks later a crate containing the dog had come by express. On the
+tag was scrawled:
+
+
+Dear Parson:--I like Nancy so well, I send ye the hole dawg, anyhow.
+
+
+She hadn't a doubt that Jim would feel the same way--but she hoped he
+hadn't forgotten his pocketbook.
+
+The scene had flashed through her mind in a single moment. She had
+bitten her lips and kept from laughing by a supreme effort. Not a word
+of the solemn ceremonial, however, had escaped her consciousness.
+
+"And in the face of this company," the preacher's rich voice was saying,
+"to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is
+commended of St. Paul to be honorable among all men: and therefore is
+not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently,
+discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God. Into this holy
+estate these two persons present come now to be joined. If any man can
+show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him
+now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace."
+
+Craddock paused, and his piercing eyes searched the man and woman before
+him.
+
+"I require to charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day
+of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that
+if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined
+together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it----"
+
+Again he paused. The perspiration stood in beads on Jim's forehead, and
+he glanced uneasily at Mary from the corners of his drooping eyes. A
+smile was playing about her mouth, and Jim was cheered.
+
+"For be ye well assured," the preacher continued, "that if any persons
+are joined together otherwise than as God's Word doth allow, their
+marriage is not lawful."
+
+He turned with deliberation to Jim and transfixed him with the first
+question of the ceremony. The groom was hypnotized into a state of
+abject terror. His ears heard the words; the mind recorded but the
+vaguest idea of what they meant.
+
+"Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after
+God's ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her,
+comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and,
+forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall
+live?"
+
+Jim's mouth was open; his lower jaw had dropped in dazed awe, and he
+continued to stare straight into the preacher's face until Mary pressed
+his arm and whispered:
+
+"Jim!"
+
+"I will--yes, I will--you bet I will!" he hastened to answer.
+
+The children giggled, and the preacher's lips twitched.
+
+He turned quickly to Mary.
+
+"Wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded husband, to live together after
+God's ordinance, in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him,
+and serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health; and,
+forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall
+live?"
+
+With quick, clear voice, Mary answered:
+
+"I will."
+
+"Please join your right hands and repeat after me:"
+
+He fixed Jim with his gaze and spoke with deliberation, clause by
+clause:
+
+"I, James, take thee, Mary, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from
+this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
+sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part,
+according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth."
+
+Jim's throat at first was husky with fear, but he caught each clause
+with quick precision and repeated them without a hitch.
+
+He smiled and congratulated himself: "I got ye that time, old cull!"
+
+The preacher's eyes sought Mary's:
+
+"I, Mary, take thee, James, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold
+from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in
+sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death do
+us part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my
+troth."
+
+In the sweetest musical voice, quivering with happiness, the girl
+repeated the words.
+
+Again the preacher's eyes sought Jim's:
+
+AND THE MAN SHALL GIVE UNTO THE WOMAN A RING----
+
+The groom fumbled in his pocket and found at last the ring, which he
+handed to Mary. The minister at once took it from her hand and handed it
+back to Jim.
+
+The bride lifted her left hand, deftly extending the fourth finger, and
+the groom slipped the ring on, and held it firmly gripped as he had been
+instructed.
+
+"With this ring I thee wed----"
+
+"With this ring I thee wed----" Jim repeated firmly.
+
+"----and with all my worldly goods I thee endow----"
+
+"----and with all my worldly goods I thee endow----"
+
+"In the Name of the Father----"
+
+"In the Name of the Father----"
+
+"----and of the Son----"
+
+"----and of the Son----"
+
+"----and of the Holy Ghost----"
+
+"----and of the Holy Ghost----"
+
+"Amen!"
+
+"Amen!"
+
+The voice of the preacher's prayer that followed rang far-away and
+unreal to the heart of the girl. Her vivid imagination had leaped the
+years. Her spirit did not return to earth and time and place until the
+minister seized her right hand and joined it to Jim's.
+
+"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder!
+
+"Forasmuch as James Anthony and Mary Adams have consented together in
+holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company,
+and thereto have given and pledged their troth, each to the other, and
+have declared the same by giving and receiving a Ring, and by joining
+hands; I pronounce that they are Man and Wife, In the Name of the
+Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
+
+The preacher lifted his hands solemnly above their heads.
+
+"God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless, preserve, and
+keep you; the Lord mercifully with His favor look upon you, and fill you
+with all spiritual benediction and grace; that ye may so live together
+in this life, that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting.
+AMEN."
+
+The preacher took Mary's hand.
+
+"Your father is my friend, child. This is for him----"
+
+He bent quickly and kissed her lips, while Jim gasped in astonishment.
+
+The minister's wife congratulated them both. The two older children
+smilingly advanced and added their voices in good wishes.
+
+Mary whispered to Jim:
+
+"Don't forget the preacher's fee!"
+
+"Lord, how much? Will fifty be enough? It's all I've got."
+
+"Give him twenty. We'll need the rest."
+
+It was not until they were seated in the waiting cab and sank back among
+the shadows, that Jim crushed her in his arms and kissed her until she
+cried for mercy.
+
+"The gall of that preacher, kissing you!" he muttered savagely. "You
+know, I come within an ace of pasting him one on the nose!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. "UNTIL DEATH"
+
+The lights burned in the hall with unusual brightness. Ella stood in the
+open door of the room, through which the light was streaming. With its
+radiance came the perfume of roses--the scrub-woman's gift of love. The
+room was a bower of gorgeous flowers. She had spent her last cent in
+this extravagance. Mary swept the place with a look of amazement.
+
+"Oh, Ella," she cried, "how could you be so silly!"
+
+"You like them, ja?" Ella asked softly.
+
+"They're glorious--but you should not have made such a sacrifice for
+me."
+
+"For myself, maybe, I do it--all for myself to make me happy, too,
+tonight."
+
+She dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand and placed the chairs
+beside the beautifully set table.
+
+"Dinner is all ready," she announced cheerfully. "And shall I go now and
+leave you? Or will you let me serve your dinner first?"
+
+A sudden panic seized the bride.
+
+"Stay and serve the dinner, Ella, if you will," she quickly answered.
+
+Jim frowned, but seated himself in business-like fashion.
+
+"All right; I'm ready for it, old girl!"
+
+With soft tread and swift, deft touch, Ella served the dinner, standing
+prim and stiff and ghost-like behind Jim's chair between the courses.
+
+The bride watched her, fascinated by the pallor of her haggard face and
+the queer suggestion of Death which her appearance made in spite of the
+background of flowers. She had dressed herself in a simple skirt and
+shirtwaist of spotless white. The material seemed to be draped on her
+tall figure, thin to emaciation. The chalk-like pallor of her face
+brought out with startling sharpness the deep, hollow caverns beneath
+her straight eyebrows. Her single eye shone unusually bright.
+
+Gradually the grim impression grew that Death was hovering over her
+bridal feast--a foolish fancy which persisted in her highly-wrought
+nervous state. Yet the idea, once fixed, could not be crushed. In
+vain she used her will to bring her wandering mind back to the joyous
+present. Each time she lifted her eyes they rested upon the silent,
+white figure with its single eye piercing the depths of her soul.
+
+She could endure it no longer. She nodded and smiled wanly at Ella.
+
+"You may go now!"
+
+The woman gazed at the bride in surprise.
+
+"I shall come again--yes?"
+
+"Tomorrow morning, Ella, you may help me."
+
+The white figure paused uncertainly at the door, and her drawling voice
+breathed her parting word tenderly:
+
+"Good night!"
+
+The bride closed her eyes and answered.
+
+"Good night, Ella!"
+
+The door closed. Jim rose quickly and bolted it.
+
+"Thank God!" he exclaimed fervently. He fixed his slumbering eyes on his
+wife for a moment, saw the frightened look, walked quickly back to the
+table and took his seat.
+
+"Now, Kiddo, we can eat in peace."
+
+"Yes, I'd rather be alone," she sighed.
+
+"I must say," Jim went on briskly, "that parson of yours did give us a
+run for our money."
+
+"I like the old, long ceremony best."
+
+"Well, you see, I ain't never had much choice--but do you know what I
+thought was the best thing in it?"
+
+"No--what?"
+
+"UNTIL DEATH DO US PART! Gee how he did ring out on that! His voice
+sounded to me like a big bell somewhere away up in the clouds. Did you
+hear me sing it back at him?"
+
+Mary smiled nervously.
+
+"You had found your voice then."
+
+"You bet I had! I muffed that first one, though, didn't I?"
+
+"A little. It didn't matter." She answered mechanically.
+
+He fixed his eyes on her again.
+
+"Hungry, Kiddo?"
+
+"No," she gasped.
+
+"What's the use!" he cried in low, vibrant tones, springing to his feet.
+"I don't want to eat this stuff--I just want to eat you!"
+
+Mary rose tremblingly and moved instinctively to meet him.
+
+He clasped her form in his arms and crushed with cruel strength.
+
+"Until death do us part!" he whispered passionately.
+
+She answered with a kiss.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. THE LOTOS-EATERS
+
+It was eleven o'clock next morning before Ella ventured to rap softly
+on the door. They had just finished breakfast. The bride was clearing up
+the table, humming a song of her childhood.
+
+Jim caught her in his arms.
+
+"Once more before she comes!"
+
+"Don't kill me!" she laughed.
+
+Jim lounged in the window and smoked his cigarette while Ella and Mary
+chattered in the kitchenette.
+
+In half an hour the scrub-woman had made her last trip with the extra
+dishes, and the little home was spick and span.
+
+Mary sprang on the couch and snuggled into Jim's arms.
+
+"I've changed our plans----" he began thoughtfully.
+
+"We won't give up our honeymoon trip?" she cried in alarm. "That's one
+dream we MUST live, Jim, dear. I've set my heart on it."
+
+"Sure we will--sure," he answered quickly. "But not in that car."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Jim grinned.
+
+"Because I like you better--you get me, Kiddo?"
+
+She pressed close and whispered:
+
+"I think so."
+
+"You see, that fool car might throw a tire or two. Believe me, it'll
+be a job to have her on my hands for a thousand miles. Of course, if I
+didn't know you, little girl, it would be all sorts of fun. But, honest
+to God, this game beats the world."
+
+He bent low and kissed her again.
+
+"Where'll we go, then?" she murmured.
+
+"That's what I'm tryin' to dope out. I like the sea. It lulls me just
+like whisky puts a drunkard to sleep. I wish we could get where it's
+bright and warm and the sun shines all the time. We could stay two
+weeks and then jump on the train and be in Asheville the day before
+Christmas."
+
+Mary sprang up excitedly.
+
+"I have it! We'll go to Florida--away down to the Keys. It's the dream
+of my life to go there!"
+
+"The Keys what's that?" he asked, puzzled.
+
+"The Keys are little sand islands and reefs that jut out into the warm
+waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The railroad takes us right there."
+
+"It's warm and sunny there now?"
+
+"Just like summer up here. We can go in bathing in the surf every day."
+
+Jim sprang to his feet.
+
+"Got a bathing suit?"
+
+"Yes--a beauty. I've never worn it here."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It seemed so bold."
+
+"All right. Maybe we can get a Key all by ourselves for two weeks."
+
+"Wouldn't it be glorious!"
+
+"We'll try it, anyhow. I'll buy the doggoned thing if they don't ask too
+much. Pack your traps. I'll go down to the shop and get my things. We'll
+be ready to start in an hour."
+
+By four o'clock they were seated in the drawing-room of a Pullman car
+on the Florida Limited, gazing entranced at the drab landscape of the
+Jersey meadows.
+
+Three days later, Jim had landed his boat on a tiny sand reef a
+half-mile off the coast of Florida with a tent and complete outfit for
+camping. Like two romping children, they tied the boat to a stake and
+rushed over the sand-dunes to the beach. They explored their domain from
+end to end within an hour. Not a tree obscured the endless panorama of
+sea and bay and waving grass on the great solemn marshes. Piles of soft,
+warm seaweed lay in long, dark rows along the high-tide mark.
+
+Mary selected a sand-dune almost exactly the height and shape of the one
+on which they sat at Long Beach the day he told her of his love.
+
+"Here's the spot for our home!" she cried. "Don't you recognize it?"
+
+"Can't say I've ever been here before. Oh, I got you--I got you! Long
+Beach--sure! What do you think of that?"
+
+He hurried to the boat and brought the tent. Mary carried the spade, the
+pole and pegs.
+
+In half an hour the little white home was shining on the level sand at
+the foot of their favorite dune. The door was set toward the open sea,
+and the stove securely placed beneath an awning which shaded it from the
+sun's rays.
+
+"Now, Kiddo, a plunge in that shining water the first thing. I'll give
+you the tent. I'll chuck my things out here."
+
+In a fever of joyous haste she threw off her clothes and donned the
+dainty, one-piece bathing suit. She flew over the sand and plunged into
+the water before Jim had finished changing to his suit.
+
+She was swimming and diving like a duck in the lazy, beautiful waters of
+the Gulf when he reached the beach.
+
+"Come on! Come on!" she shouted.
+
+He waved his hand and finished his cigarette.
+
+"It's glorious! It's mid-summer!" she called.
+
+With a quick plunge he dived into the water, disappeared and stayed
+until she began to scan the surface uneasily. With a splash he rose by
+her side, lifting her screaming in his arms. Her bathing-cap was brushed
+off, and he seized her long hair in his mouth, turned and with swift,
+strong beat carried her unresisting body to the beach.
+
+He drew her erect and looked into her smiling face.
+
+"That's the way I'd save you if you had called for help. How'd you like
+it?"
+
+"It was sweet to give up and feel myself in your power, dear!"
+
+His drooping eyes were devouring her exquisite figure outlined so
+perfectly in the clinging suit.
+
+"I was afraid to wear this in New York," she said demurely.
+
+"I can't blame you. If you'd ever have gone on the beach at Coney Island
+in that, there'd have been a riot."
+
+He lifted her in his arms and kissed her.
+
+"And you're all mine, Kiddo! It's too good to be true! I'm afraid to
+wake up mornings now for fear I'll find I've just been dreaming."
+
+They plunged again in the water, and side by side swam far out from the
+shore, circled gracefully and returned.
+
+Hours they spent snuggling in the warm sand. Not a sound of the world
+beyond the bay broke the stillness. The music of the water's soft
+sighing came on their ears in sweet, endless cadence. The wind was
+gentle and brushed their cheeks with the softest caress. Far out at sea,
+white-winged sails were spread--so far away they seemed to stand in one
+spot forever. The deep cry of an ocean steamer broke the stillness at
+last.
+
+"We must dress for dinner, Jim!" she sighed.
+
+"Why, Kiddo?"
+
+"We must eat, you know."
+
+"But why dress? I like that style on you. It's too much trouble to
+dress."
+
+"All right!" she cried gayly. "We'll have a little informal dinner this
+evening. I love to feel the sand under my feet."
+
+He gathered the wood from the dry drifts above the waterline and kindled
+a fire. The salt-soaked sticks burned fiercely, and the dinner was
+cooked in a jiffy--a fresh chicken he had bought, sweet potatoes, and
+delicious buttered toast.
+
+They sat in their bathing suits on camp-stools beside the folding table
+and ate by moonlight.
+
+The dinner finished, Mary cleared the wooden dishes while Jim brought
+heaps of the dry, spongy sea grass and made a bed in the tent. He piled
+it two feet high, packed it down to a foot, and then spread the sheets
+and blankets.
+
+"All ready for a stroll down the avenue, Kiddo?" he called from the
+door.
+
+"Fifth Avenue or Broadway?" she laughed.
+
+"Oh, the Great White Way--you couldn't miss it! Just look at the shimmer
+of the moon on the sands! Ain't it great?"
+
+Hand in hand, they strolled on the beach and bathed in the silent flood
+of the moonlit night--no prying eyes near save the stars of the friendly
+southern skies.
+
+"The moon seems different down here, Jim!" she whispered.
+
+"It is different," he answered with boyish enthusiasm. "It's all so
+still and white!"
+
+"Could we stay here forever?"
+
+He shook his head emphatically.
+
+"Not on your life. This little boy has to work, you know. Old man John
+D. Rockefeller might, but it's early for a young financier to retire."
+
+"A whole week, then?"
+
+"Sure! For a week we'll forget New York."
+
+They sat down on the sand-dune behind the tent and watched the waters
+flash in the silvery light, the world and its fevered life forgotten.
+
+"You're the only thing real tonight, Jim!" she sighed.
+
+"And you're the world for me, Kiddo!"
+
+She waked at dawn, with a queer feeling of awe at the weird, gray light
+which filtered through the cotton walls. A sense of oneness with Nature
+and the beat of Her eternal heart filled her soul. The soft wash of the
+water on the sands seemed to be keeping time to the throb of her own
+pulse.
+
+She peered curiously into the face of her sleeping lover. She had never
+seen him asleep before. She started at the transformation wrought by
+the closing of his heavy eyelids and the complete relaxation of his
+features. The strange, steel-blue coloring of his eyes had always given
+his face an air of mystery and charm. The complete closing of the
+heavy lids and the slight droop of the lower jaw had worked a frightful
+change. The romance and charm had gone, and instead she saw only the
+coarse, brutal strength.
+
+She frowned like a spoiled child, put her dainty hand under his chin and
+pressed his mouth together.
+
+"Wake up, sir!" she whispered. "I don't like your expression!"
+
+He refused to stir, and she drew the tips of her fingers across his ears
+and eyelids.
+
+He rubbed his eyes and muttered:
+
+"What t'ell?"
+
+"Let's take a bath in the sea before sunrise--come on!"
+
+The sleeper groaned heavily, turned over, and in a moment was again dead
+to the world.
+
+Mary's eyes were wide now with excitement. The hours were too marvelous
+to be lost in sleep. She could sleep when they must return to the
+tiresome world with its endless crowds of people.
+
+She rose softly, ran barefoot to the beach, threw her night-dress on
+the sand and plunged, her white, young body trembling with joy, into the
+water.
+
+It was marvelous--this wonderful hush of the dawn over the infinite sea.
+The air and water melted into a pearl gray. Far out toward the east,
+the waters began to blush at the kiss of the coming sun. The pearl
+gray slowly turned into purple. So startling was the vision, she swam
+in-shore and stood knee-deep in the shallows to watch the magic changes.
+In breathless wonder she saw the sea and sky and shore turn into a
+trembling cloud of dazzling purple. A moment before, she had caught the
+water up in her hand and poured it out in a stream of pearls. She lifted
+a handful and poured it out now, each drop a dazzling amethyst. And even
+while she looked, the purple was changing to scarlet--the amethyst into
+rubies!
+
+A great awe filled her in the solemn hush. She stood in Nature's vast
+cathedral, close to God's heart--her life in harmony with His eternal
+laws.
+
+How foolish and artificial were the ways of the far-away, drab, prosaic
+world of clothes and houses and furnishings! If she could only live
+forever in this dream-world!
+
+Even while the thought surged through her heart, she lifted her head and
+saw the red rim of the sun suddenly break through the sea, and started
+lest the white light of day had revealed her to some passing boatman
+hurrying to his nets.
+
+Her keen eye quickly swept the circle of the wide, silent world of
+sand-dunes, marsh and waters. No prying eye was near. Only the morning
+star still gleaming above saw. And they were twin sisters.
+
+Four days flew on velvet wings before the first cloud threw its shadow
+across her life. Jim always slept until nine o'clock, and refused with
+dogged good-natured indifference to stir when she had asked him to get
+the wood for breakfast. It was nothing, of course, to walk a hundred
+yards to the beach and pick up the wood, and she did it. The hurt that
+stung was the feeling that he was growing indifferent.
+
+She felt for the first time an impulse to box his lazy jaws as he yawned
+and turned over for the dozenth time without rising. He looked for all
+the world like a bulldog curled up on his bed of grass.
+
+She shook him at last.
+
+"Jim, dear, you must get up now! Breakfast is almost ready and it won't
+be fit to eat if you don't come on."
+
+He opened his heavy eyelids and gazed at her sleepily.
+
+"All righto----! Just as you say--just as you say."
+
+"Hurry! Breakfast will be ready before you can dress."
+
+"Gee! Breakfast all ready! You're one smart little wifie, Kiddo."
+
+The compliment failed to please. She was sure that he had been fully
+awake twice before and pretended to be asleep from sheer laziness and
+indifference.
+
+The thought hurt.
+
+When they sat down at last to breakfast, she looked into his half-closed
+eyes with a sudden start.
+
+"Why, Jim, your eyes are red!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You're ill--what is it?"
+
+He grinned sheepishly.
+
+"You couldn't guess now, could you?"
+
+"You haven't been drinking!" she gasped.
+
+"No," he drawled lazily, "I wouldn't say drinking--I just took one
+big swallow last night--makes you sleep good when you're tired. Good
+medicine! I always carry a little with me."
+
+A sickening wave went over her. Not that she felt that he was going
+to be a drunkard. But the utter indifference with which he made the
+announcement was a painful revelation of the fact that her opinion on
+such a question was not of the slightest importance. That he was now
+master of the situation he evidently meant that she should see and
+understand at once.
+
+She refused to accept the humiliating position without a struggle and
+made up her mind to try at once to mold his character. She would begin
+by getting him to cut the slang from his conversation.
+
+"You remember the promise you made me one day before we were married,
+Jim?" she asked brightly.
+
+"Which one? You know a fellow's not responsible for what he promises to
+get his girl. All's fair in love and war, they say----"
+
+"I'm going to hold you to this one, sir," she firmly declared.
+
+"All right, little bright eyes," he responded cheerfully as he lit a
+cigarette and sent the smoke curling above his red head.
+
+She sat for a while in silence, studying the man before her. The task
+was delicate and difficult. And she had thought it a mere pastime of
+love! As her fiance, he had been wax in her hands. As her husband, he
+was a lazy, headstrong, obstinate young animal grinning good-naturedly
+at her futile protests. How long would he grin and bear her suggestions
+with patience? The transition from this lazy grin to the growl of an
+angry bulldog might be instantaneous.
+
+She would move with the utmost caution--but she would move and at once.
+It would be a test of character between them. She edged her chair close
+to his, drew his head down in her lap and ran her fingers through his
+thick, red hair.
+
+"Still love me, Jim?" she smiled.
+
+"Crazier over you every day--and you know it, too, you sly little puss,"
+he answered dreamily.
+
+"You WILL make good your promises?"
+
+"Sure, I will--surest thing you know!"
+
+"You see, Jim dear," she went on tenderly, "I want to be proud of
+you----"
+
+"Well, ain't you?"
+
+"Of course I am, silly. I know you and understand you. But I want all
+the world to respect you as I do." She paused and breathed deeply.
+"They've got to do it, too, they've got to----"
+
+"Sure, I'll knock their block off--if they don't!" he broke in.
+
+She raised her finger reprovingly and shook her head.
+
+"That's just the trouble: you can't do it with your fists. You can't
+compel the respect of cultured men and women by physical force. We've
+got to win with other weapons."
+
+"All right, Kiddo--dope it out for me," he responded lazily. "Dope it
+out----"
+
+Her lips quivered with the painful recognition of the task before her.
+Yet when she spoke, her voice was low and sweet and its tones even. She
+gave no sign to the man whose heavy form rested in her arms.
+
+"Then from today we must begin to cut out every word of slang--it's a
+bargain?"
+
+"Sure, Mike--I promised!"
+
+"Cut `Sure Mike!'"
+
+She raised her finger severely.
+
+"All right, teacher," he drawled. "What'll we put in Sure Mike's place?
+I've found him a handy man!"
+
+"Say `certainly.'"
+
+Jim grinned good-naturedly.
+
+"Aw hell, Kiddo--that sounds punk!"
+
+"And HELL, Jim, isn't a nice word----"
+
+"Gee, Kid, now look here--can't get along with out HELL--leave me that
+one just a little while."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No."
+
+"No?"
+
+"And PUNK is expressive, but not suited to parlor use."
+
+"All right--t'ell with PUNK!" He turned and looked. "What's the matter
+now?" he asked.
+
+"Don't you realize what you've just said?"
+
+"What did I say?"
+
+She turned away to hide a tear.
+
+He threw his arms around her neck and drew her lips down to his.
+
+"Ah, don't worry, Kiddo--I'll do better next time. Honest to God, I
+will. That's enough for today. Just let's love now. T'ell with the
+rest."
+
+She smiled in answer.
+
+"You promise to try honestly?"
+
+He raised his hand in solemn vow.
+
+"S'help me!"
+
+Each day's trial ended in a laugh and a kiss until at last Jim refused
+to promise any more. He grinned in obstinate, good-natured silence and
+let her do the worrying.
+
+She watched him with growing wonder and alarm. He gradually lapsed into
+little coarse, ugly habits at the table. She tried playfully to
+correct them. He took it good-naturedly at first and then ignored her
+suggestions as if she were a kitten complaining at his feet.
+
+She studied him with baffling rage at the mystery of his personality.
+The long silences between them grew from hour to hour. She could see
+that he was restless now at the isolation of their sand-island home. The
+queer lights and shadows that played in his cold blue eyes told only
+too plainly that his mind was back again in the world of battle. He was
+fighting something, too.
+
+She was glad of it. She could manage him better there. She would
+throw him into the company of educated people and rouse his pride and
+ambition. She heard his announcement of their departure on the eighth
+day with positive joy.
+
+"Well, Kiddo," he began briskly, "we've got to be moving. Time to get
+back to work now. The old town and the little shop down in Avenue B have
+been calling me."
+
+"Today, Jim?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Right away. We'll catch the first train north, stop two days, Christmas
+Eve and Christmas, in Asheville, and then for old New York!"
+
+The journey along the new railroad built on concrete bridges over miles
+of beautiful waters was one of unalloyed joy. They had passed over this
+stretch of marvelous engineering at night on their trip down and had not
+realized its wonders. For hours the train seemed to be flying on velvet
+wings through the ocean.
+
+She sat beside her lover and held his hand. In spite of her enthusiasm,
+he would doze. At every turn of entrancing view she would pinch his arm:
+
+"Look, Jim! Look!"
+
+He would lift his heavy eyelids, grunt good-naturedly and doze again.
+
+In the dining-car she was in mortal terror at first lest he should lapse
+into the coarse table manners into which he had fallen in camp. She laid
+his napkin conspicuously on his plate and saw that he had opened and put
+it in place across his lap before ordering the meals.
+
+The moment he found himself in a crowd, the lights began to flash in his
+eyes, his broad shoulders lifted and his whole being was at once alert
+and on guard. He followed his wife's lead with unerring certainty.
+
+She renewed her faith in his early reformation, though his character
+was a puzzle. He seemed to be forever watching out of the corners of his
+slumbering eyes. She wondered what it meant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. THE REAL MAN
+
+They arrived in Asheville the night before Christmas Eve. Jim listened
+to his wife's prattle about the wonderful views with quiet indifference.
+
+They stopped at the Battery Park Hotel, and she hoped the waning moon
+would give them at least a glimpse of the beautiful valley of the French
+Broad and Swannanoa rivers and the dark, towering ranges of mountains
+among the stars. She made Jim wait on the balcony of the room for half
+an hour, but the clouds grew denser and he persisted in nodding.
+
+His head dipped lower than usual, and she laughed.
+
+"Poor old sleepy-head!"
+
+"For the love o' Mike, Kiddo--me for the hay. Won't them mountains wait
+till morning?"
+
+"All right!" she answered cheerily. "I'll pull you out at sunrise. The
+sunrise from our window will be glorious."
+
+He rose and stretched his body like a young, well fed tiger.
+
+"I think it's prettier from the bed. But have it your own way--have it
+your own way. I'll agree to anything if you lemme go to sleep now."
+
+She rose as the first gray fires of dawn began to warm the cloud-banks
+on the eastern horizon, stood beside her window and watched in silent
+ecstasy. Jim was sleeping heavily. She would not wake him until the
+glory of the sunrise was at its height. She loved to watch the changing
+lights and shadows in sky and valley and on distant mountain peaks as
+the light slowly filtered over the eastern hills.
+
+She had recovered from the depression of the last days of their camp.
+The journey back into the world had improved Jim's manners. There could
+be no doubt about his ambitions. His determination to be a millionaire
+was the lever she now meant to work in raising his social aspirations.
+
+Why should she feel depressed?
+
+Their married life had just begun. The two weeks they had passed on
+their honeymoon had been happy beyond her dreams of happiness. Somehow
+her imagination had failed to give any conception of the wonder and
+glory of this revelation of life. His little lapses of selfishness on
+their sand island no doubt came from ignorance of what was expected of
+him.
+
+For one thing she felt especially thankful. There had been no ugly
+confessions of a shady past to cloud the joy of their love. Her lover
+might be ignorant of the ways of polite society. He was equally free of
+its sinister vices. She thanked God for that. The soul of the man she
+had married was clean of all memories of women. The love he gave was
+fierce in its unrestrained passion--but it was all hers. She gloried in
+its strength.
+
+She made up her mind, standing there in the soft light of the dawn, that
+she would bend his iron will to her own in the growing, sweet intimacy
+of their married life and threw her fears to the winds.
+
+The thin, fleecy clouds that hung over the low range of the eastern
+foreground were all aglow now, with every tint of the rainbow, while the
+sun's bed beyond the hills was flaming in scarlet and gold.
+
+She clapped her hands in ecstasy.
+
+"Jim! Jim, dear!"
+
+He made no response, and she rushed to his side and whispered:
+
+"You must see this sunrise--get up quick, quick, dear. It's wonderful."
+
+"What's the matter?" he muttered.
+
+"The sunrise over the mountains--quick--it's glorious."
+
+His heavy eyelids drooped and closed. He dropped on the pillow and
+buried his face out of sight.
+
+"Ah, Jim dear, do come--just to please me."
+
+"I'm dead, Kiddo--dead to the world," he sighed. "Don't like to see the
+sun rise. I never did. Come on back and let's sleep----"
+
+His last words were barely audible. He was breathing heavily as his lips
+ceased to move.
+
+She gave it up, returned to the window and watched the changing colors
+until the white light from the sun's face had touched with life the
+last shadows of the valleys and flashed its signals from the farthest
+towering peaks.
+
+Her whole being quivered in response to the beauty of this glorious
+mountain world. The air was wine. She loved the sapphire skies and the
+warm, lazy, caressing touch of the sun of the South.
+
+A sense of bitterness came, just for a moment, that the man she had
+chosen for her mate had no eye to see these wonders and no ear to hear
+their music. During the madness of his whirlwind courtship she had
+gotten the impression that his spirit was sensitive to beauty--to the
+waters of the bay, the sea and the wooded hills. She must face the
+facts. Their stay on the island had convinced her that he had eyes only
+for her. She must make the most of it.
+
+It was ten o'clock before Jim could be persuaded to rise and get
+breakfast. She literally pulled him up the stairs to the observatory on
+the tower of the hotel.
+
+"What's the game, Kiddo? What's the game?" he grumbled.
+
+"Ask me no questions. But do just as I tell you; come on!"
+
+Her face was radiant, her hair in a tangle of riotous beauty about her
+forehead and temples, her eyes sparkling.
+
+"Don't look till I tell you!" she cried, as they emerged on the little
+minaret which crowns the tower.
+
+"Now open and see the glory of the Lord!" she cried with joyous awe.
+
+The day was one of matchless beauty. The clouds that swung low in
+the early morning had floated higher and higher till they hung now in
+shining billows above the highest balsam-crowned peaks in the distance.
+
+In every direction, as far as the eye could reach, north, south, east,
+west, the dark ranges mounted in the azure skies until the farthest dim
+lines melted into the heavens.
+
+"Oh, Jim dear, isn't it wonderful! We're lucky to get this view on our
+first day. It's such a good omen."
+
+Jim opened his eyes lazily and puffed his cigarette in a calm,
+patronizing way.
+
+"Tough sledding we'd have had with an automobile over those hills," he
+said. "We'll try it after lunch, though."
+
+"We'll go for a ride?" she cried joyfully.
+
+"Yep. Got to hunt up the folks. The mountains near Asheville!" he said
+with disgust. "I should say they are near--and far, too. Holy smoke,
+I'll bet we get lost!"
+
+"Nonsense----"
+
+"Where's the Black Mountains, I wonder?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"Over there!" She pointed to the giant peaks projecting here and there
+in dim, blue waves beyond the Great Craggy Range in the foreground.
+
+"Holy Moses! Do we have to climb those crags before we start?"
+
+"To go to Black Mountain?"
+
+"Yes. That's where the lawyer said they lived, under Cat-tail Peak in
+the Black Mountain Range--wherever t'ell that is."
+
+"No, no! You don't climb the Great Craggy; you go around this end of it
+and follow the Swannanoa River right up to the foot of Mount Mitchell,
+the highest peak this side of the Rockies. The Cat-tail is just beyond
+Mount Mitchell."
+
+"You've been there?" he asked in surprise.
+
+"Once, with a party from Asheville. We spent three days and slept in
+caves."
+
+"Suppose you'd know the way now?"
+
+"We couldn't miss it. We follow the bed of the Swannanoa to its
+source-----"
+
+"Then that settles it. We'll go by ourselves. I don't want any mutt
+along to show us the way. We couldn't get lost nohow, could we?"
+
+"Of course not--all the roads lead to Asheville. We can ask the way to
+the house you want, when we reach the little stopping place at the foot
+of Mount Mitchell."
+
+"Gee, Kid, you're a wonder!" he exclaimed admiringly. "Couldn't get
+along without you, now could I?"
+
+"I hope not, sir!"
+
+"You bet I couldn't! We'll start right away. The roads will give us a
+jolt----"
+
+He turned suddenly to go.
+
+"Wait--wait a minute, dear," she pleaded. "You haven't seen this
+gorgeous view to the southwest, with Mount Pisgah looming in the center
+like some vast cathedral spire--look, isn't it glorious?"
+
+"Fine! Fine!" he responded in quick, businesslike tones.
+
+"You can look for days and weeks and not begin to realize the changing
+beauty of these mountains, clothed in eternal green! Just think, dear,
+Mount Pisgah, there, is forty miles away, and it looks as if you
+could stroll over to it in an hour's walk. And there are twenty-three
+magnificent peaks like that, all of them more than six thousand feet
+high----"
+
+She paused with a frown. He was neither looking nor listening. He had
+fallen into a brown study; his mind was miles away.
+
+"You're not listening, Jim--nor seeing anything," she said
+reproachfully.
+
+"No--Kiddo, we must get ready for that trip. I've got a letter for a
+lawyer downtown. I'll find him and hire a car. I'll be back here for you
+in an hour. You'll be ready?"
+
+"Right away, in half an hour----"
+
+"Just pack a suit-case for us both. We'll stay one night. I'll take a
+bag, too, that I have in my trunk."
+
+It was noon before he returned with a staunch touring car ready for the
+trip. He opened the little steamer trunk which he had always kept locked
+and took from it a small leather bag. He placed it on the floor, and, in
+spite of careful handling, the ring of metal inside could be distinctly
+heard.
+
+"What on earth have you got in that queer black bag?" she asked in
+surprise.
+
+"Oh, just a lot o' junk from the shop. I thought I might tinker with
+it at odd times. I don't want to leave it here. It's got one of my new
+models in it."
+
+He carried the bag in his hand, refusing to allow the porter who came
+for the suit-case to touch it.
+
+He threw the suit-case in the bottom of the tonneau. The bag he stowed
+carefully under the cushions of the rear seat. The moment he placed his
+hand on the wheel of the machine, he was at his best. Every trace of the
+street gamin fell from him. Again he was the eagle-eyed master of
+time and space. The machine answered his touch with more than human
+obedience. He knew how to humor its mood. He conserved its power for a
+hill with unerring accuracy and threw it over the grades with rarely
+a pause to change his speeds. He could turn the sharp curves with such
+swift, easy grace that he scarcely caused Mary's body to swerve an inch.
+He could sense a rough place in the road and glide over it with velvet
+touch.
+
+A tire blew out, five miles up the stream from Asheville, and the easy,
+business-like deliberation with which he removed the old and adjusted
+the new, was a revelation to Mary of a new phase of his character.
+
+He never once grunted, or swore, or lost his poise, or manifested
+the slightest impatience. He set about his task coolly, carefully,
+skillfully, and finished it quickly and silently.
+
+His long silences at last began to worry her. An invisible barrier had
+reared itself between them. The impression was purely mental--but it was
+none the less real and distressing.
+
+There was a look of aloof absorption about him she had never seen
+before. At first she attributed it to the dread of meeting his kinsfolk
+for the first time, his fear of what they might be like or what they
+might think of him.
+
+He answered her questions cheerfully but mechanically. Sometimes he
+stared at her in a cold, impersonal way and gave no answer, as if her
+questions were an impertinence and she were not of sufficient importance
+to waste his breath on.
+
+Unable at last to endure the strain, she burst out impatiently:
+
+"What on earth's the matter with you, Jim?"
+
+"Why?" he asked softly.
+
+"You haven't spoken to me in half an hour, and I've asked you two
+questions."
+
+"Just studying about something, Kiddo, something big. I'll tell you
+sometime, maybe--not now."
+
+Slowly a great fear began to shape itself in her heart. The real man
+behind those slumbering eyes she had never known. Who was he?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. UNWELCOME GUESTS
+
+While she was yet puzzling over the strange mood of absorbed brooding
+into which Jim had fallen, his face suddenly lighted, and he changed
+with such rapidity that her uneasiness was doubled.
+
+They had reached the stretches of deep forest at the foot of the Black
+Mountain ranges. The Swannanoa had become a silver thread of laughing,
+foaming spray and deep, still pools beneath the rocks. The fields were
+few and small. The little clearings made scarcely an impression in the
+towering virgin forests.
+
+"Great guns, Kiddo!" he exclaimed, "this is some country! By George, I
+had no idea there was such a place so close to New York!"
+
+She looked at him with uneasy surprise. What could be in his mind? The
+solemn gorge through which they were passing gave no entrancing views
+of clouds or sky or towering peaks. Its wooded cliffs hung ominously
+overhead in threatening shadows. The scene had depressed her after the
+vast sunlit spaces of sky, of shining valleys and cloud-capped, sapphire
+peaks on which they had turned their backs.
+
+"You like this, Jim?" she asked.
+
+"It's great--great!"
+
+"I thought that waterfall we just passed was very beautiful."
+
+"I didn't see it. But this is something like it. You're clean out of the
+world here--and there ain't a railroad in twenty miles!"
+
+The deeper the shadows of tree and threatening crag, the higher Jim's
+strange spirit seemed to rise.
+
+She watched him with increasing fear. How little she knew the real man!
+Could it be possible that this lonely, unlettered boy of the streets
+of lower New York, starved and stunted in childhood, had within him the
+soul of a great poet? How else could she explain the sudden rapture over
+the threatening silences and shadows of these mountain gorges which
+had depressed her? And yet his utter indifference to the glories of
+beautiful waters, his blindness at noon before the most wonderful
+panorama of mountains and skies on which she had ever gazed,
+contradicted the theory of the poetic soul. A poet must see beauty where
+she had seen it--and a thousand wonders her eyes had not found.
+
+His elation was uncanny. What could it mean?
+
+He was driving now with a skill that was remarkable, a curious
+smile playing about his drooping, Oriental eyelids. A wave of fierce
+resentment swept her heart. She was a mere plaything in this man's life.
+The real man she had never seen. What was he thinking about? What grim
+secret lay behind the mysterious smile that flickered about the corners
+of those eyes? He was not thinking of her. The mood was new and cold and
+cynical, for all the laughter he might put in it.
+
+She asked herself the question of his past, his people, his real
+life-history. The only answer was his baffling, mysterious smile.
+
+A frown suddenly clouded his face.
+
+"Hello! Ye're running right into a man's yard!"
+
+Mary lifted her head with quick surprise.
+
+"Why yes, it's the stopping place for the parties that climb Mount
+Mitchell. I remember it. We stayed all night here, left our rig, and
+started next morning at sunrise on horseback to climb the trail."
+
+"Pretty near the jumping-off place, then," he remarked. "We'll ask the
+way to Cat-tail Peak."
+
+He stopped the car in front of the low-pitched, weather-stained frame
+house and blew the horn.
+
+A mountain woman with three open-eyed, silent children came slowly to
+meet them.
+
+She smiled pleasantly, and without embarrassment spoke in a pleasant
+drawl:
+
+"Won't you 'light and look at your saddle?"
+
+The expression caught Jim's fancy, and he broke into a roar of laughter.
+The woman blushed and laughed with him. She couldn't understand what was
+the matter with the man. Why should he explode over the simple greeting
+in which she had expressed her pleasure at their arrival?
+
+Anyhow, she was an innkeeper's wife, and her business was to make folks
+feel at home--so she laughed again with Jim.
+
+"You know that's the funniest invitation I ever got in a car," he cried
+at last. "We fly in these things sometimes. And when you said, `Won't
+you 'light,'"--he paused and turned to his wife--"I could just feel
+myself up in the air on that big old racer's back."
+
+"Won't you-all stay all night with us?" the soft voice drawled again.
+
+"Thank you, not tonight," Mary answered.
+
+She waited for Jim to ask the way.
+
+"No--not tonight," he repeated. "You happen to know an old woman by the
+name of Owens who lives up here?"
+
+"Nance Owens?"
+
+"That's her name."
+
+"Lord, everybody knows old Nance!" was the smiling answer.
+
+"She ain't got good sense!" the tow-headed boy spoke up.
+
+"Sh!" the mother warned, boxing his ears.
+
+"She's a little queer, that's all. Everybody knows her in Buncombe and
+Yancey counties. Her house is built across the county line. She eats in
+Yancey and sleeps in Buncombe----"
+
+"Yes," broke in the boy joyously, "an' when the Sheriff o' Yancey comes,
+she moves back into Buncombe. She's some punkin's on a green gourd vine,
+she is--if she ain't got good sense."
+
+His mother struck at him again, but he dodged the blow and finished his
+speech without losing a word.
+
+"Could you tell us the way to her house?"
+
+"Keep right on this road, and you can't miss it."
+
+"How far is it?"
+
+"Oh, not far."
+
+"No; right at the bottom o' the Cat's-tail," the boy joyfully explained.
+
+"He means the foot o' Cat-tail Peak!" the mother apologized.
+
+"How many miles?"
+
+"Just a little ways--ye can't miss it; the third house you come to on
+this road."
+
+"You'll be there in three shakes of a sheep's tail--in that thing!" the
+boy declared.
+
+Jim waved his thanks, threw in his gear, and the car shot forward on
+the level stretch of road beyond the house. He slowed down when out of
+sight.
+
+"Gee! I'd love to have that kid in a wood-shed with a nice shingle all
+by ourselves for just ten minutes."
+
+"The people spoil him," Mary laughed. "The people who stop there for the
+Mount Mitchell climb. He was a baby when I was there six years ago"--she
+paused and a rapt look crept into her eyes--"a beautiful little baby,
+her first-born, and she was the happiest thing I ever saw in my life."
+
+Her voice sank to a whisper.
+
+A vision suddenly illumined her own soul, and she forgot her anxiety
+over Jim's queer moods.
+
+Deeper and deeper grew the shadows of crag, gorge, and primeval forest.
+The speedometer on the foot-board registered five miles from the Mount
+Mitchell house. They had passed two cabins by the way, and still no sign
+of the third.
+
+"Why couldn't she tell us how many miles, I'd like to know?" Jim
+grumbled.
+
+"It's the way of the mountain folk. They're noncommittal on distances."
+
+He stopped the car and lighted the lamps.
+
+"Going to be dark in a minute," he said. "But I like this place," he
+added.
+
+He picked his way with care over the narrow road. They crossed the
+little stream they were trailing, and the car crawled over the rocks
+along the banks at a snail's pace.
+
+An owl called from a dead tree-top silhouetted against an open space of
+sky ahead.
+
+"Must be a clearing there," Jim muttered.
+
+He stopped the car and listened for the sounds of life about a house.
+
+A vast, brooding silence filled the world. A wolf howled from the edge
+of a distant crag somewhere overhead.
+
+"For God's sake!" Jim shivered. "What was that?"
+
+"Only a mountain wolf crying for company."
+
+"Wolves up here?" he asked in surprise.
+
+"A few--harmless, timid, lonesome fellows. It makes me sorry for them
+when I hear one."
+
+"Great country! I like it!" Jim responded.
+
+Again she wondered why. What a queer mixture of strength and
+mystery--this man she had married!
+
+He started the car, turned a bend in the road, and squarely in
+front, not more than a hundred yards away, gleamed a light in a cabin
+window--four tiny panes of glass.
+
+"By Geeminy, we come near stopping in the front yard without knowing
+it!" he exclaimed. "Didn't we?"
+
+"I'm glad she's at home!" Mary exclaimed. "The light shines with a
+friendly glow in these deep shadows."
+
+"Afraid, Kiddo?" he asked lightly.
+
+"I don't like these dark places."
+
+"All right when you get used to 'em--safer than daylight."
+
+Again her heart beat at his queer speech. She shivered at the thought of
+this uncanny trait of character so suddenly developed today. She made
+an effort to throw off her depression. It would vanish with the sun
+tomorrow morning.
+
+He picked his way carefully among the trees and stopped in front of the
+cabin door. The little house sat back from the road a hundred feet or
+more.
+
+He blew his horn twice and waited.
+
+A sudden crash inside, and the light went out. He waited a moment for it
+to come back.
+
+Only darkness and dead silence.
+
+"Suppose she dropped dead and kicked over the lamp?" Jim laughed.
+
+"She probably took the lamp into another room."
+
+"No; it went out too quick--and it went out with a crash."
+
+He blew his horn again.
+
+Still no answer.
+
+"Hello! Hello!" he called loudly.
+
+Someone stirred at the door. Jim's keen ear was turned toward the house.
+
+"I heard her bar the door, I'll swear it."
+
+"How foolish, Jim!" Mary whispered. "You couldn't have heard it."
+
+"All the same I did. Here's a pretty kettle of fish! The old hellion's
+not even going to let us in."
+
+He seized the lever of his horn and blew one terrific blast after
+another, in weird, uncanny sobs and wails, ending in a shriek like the
+last cry of a lost soul.
+
+"Don't, Jim!" Mary cried, shivering. "You'll frighten her to death."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Go up and speak to her--and knock on the door."
+
+He waited again in silence, scrambled out of the car, and fumbled his
+way through the shadows to the dark outlines of the cabin. He found the
+porch on which the front door opened.
+
+His light foot touched the log with sure step, and he walked softly to
+the cabin wall. The door was not yet visible in the pitch darkness. His
+auto lights were turned the other way and threw their concentrated rays
+far down into the deep woods.
+
+He listened intently for a moment and caught the cat-like tread of the
+old woman inside.
+
+"I say--hello, in there!" he called.
+
+Again the sound of her quick, furtive step told him that she was on the
+alert and determined to defend her castle against all comers. What if
+she should slip an old rifle through a crack and blow his head off?
+
+She might do it, too!
+
+He must make her open the door.
+
+"Say, what's the matter in there?" he asked persuasively.
+
+A moment's silence, and then a gruff voice slowly answered:
+
+"They ain't nobody at home!"
+
+"The hell they ain't!" Jim laughed.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+She hesitated and then growled back:
+
+"None o' your business. Who are you?"
+
+"We're strangers up here--lost our way. It's cold--we got to stop for
+the night."
+
+"Ye can't--they's nobody home, I tell ye!" she repeated with sullen
+emphasis.
+
+Jim broke into a genial laugh.
+
+"Ah! Come on, old girl! Open up and be sociable. We're not revenue
+officers or sheriffs. If you've got any good mountain whiskey, I'll help
+you drink it."
+
+"Who are ye?" she repeated savagely.
+
+"Ah, just a couple o' gentle, cooing turtle-doves--a bride and groom.
+Loosen up, old girl; it's Christmas Eve--and we're just a couple o'
+gentle cooin' doves----"
+
+Jim kept up his persuasive eloquence until the light of the candle
+flashed through the window, and he heard her slip the heavy bar from the
+door.
+
+He lost no time in pushing his way inside.
+
+Nance threw a startled look at his enormous, shaggy fur coat--at the
+shining aluminum goggles almost completely masking his face. She gave
+a low, breathless scream, hurled the door-bar crashing to the floor
+and stared at him like a wild, hunted animal at bay, her thin hands
+trembling, the iron-gray hair tumbling over her forehead.
+
+"Oh, my God!" she wailed, crouching back.
+
+Jim gazed at her in amazement. He had forgotten his goggles and fur
+coat.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked in high-keyed tones of surprise.
+
+Nance made no answer but crouched lower and attempted to put the table
+between them.
+
+"What t'ell Bill ails you--will you tell me?" he asked with rising
+wrath.
+
+"I THOUGHT you wuz the devil," the old woman panted. "Now I KNOW it!"
+
+Jim suddenly remembered his goggles and coat, and broke into a laugh.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+He removed his goggles and cap, threw back his big coat and squared his
+shoulders with a smile.
+
+"How's that?"
+
+Nance glowered at him with ill-concealed rage, looked him over from head
+to foot, and answered with a snarl:
+
+"'Tain't much better--ef ye ax ME!"
+
+"Gee! But you're a sociable old wild-cat!" he exclaimed, starting back
+as if she had struck him a blow.
+
+His eye caught the dried skin of a young wildcat hanging on the log
+wall.
+
+"No wonder you skinned your neighbor and hung her up to dry," he added
+moodily.
+
+He took in the room with deliberate insolence while the old woman stood
+awkwardly watching him, shifting her position uneasily from one foot to
+the other.
+
+In all his miserable life in New York he could not recall a room more
+bare of comforts. The rough logs were chinked with pieces of wood and
+daubed with red clay. The door was made of rough boards, the ceiling
+of hewn logs with split slabs laid across them. An old-fashioned, tall
+spinning wheel, dirty and unused, sat in the corner. A rough pine table
+was in the middle of the floor and a smaller one against the wall.
+On this side table sat two rusty flat-irons, and against it leaned an
+ironing board. A dirty piece of turkey-red calico hung on a string for
+a portiere at the opening which evidently led into a sort of kitchen
+somewhere in the darkness beyond.
+
+The walls were decorated at intervals. A huge bunch of onions hung on
+a wooden peg beside the wild-cat skin. Over the window was slung an
+old-fashioned muzzle-loading musket. The sling which held it was made of
+a pair of ancient home-made suspenders fastened to the logs with nails.
+Beneath the gun hung a cow's horn, cut and finished for powder, and with
+it a dirty game-bag. Strings of red peppers were strung along each of
+the walls, with here and there bunches of popcorn in the ears. A pile of
+black walnuts lay in one corner of the cabin and a pile of hickory nuts
+in another.
+
+A three-legged wooden stool and a split-bottom chair stood beside the
+table, and a haircloth couch, which looked as if it had been saved from
+the Ark, was pushed near the wall beside the door.
+
+Across this couch was thrown a ragged patchwork quilt, and a pillow
+covered with calico rested on one end, with the mark of a head dented
+deep in the center.
+
+Jim shrugged his shoulders with a look of disgust, stepped quickly to
+the door and called:
+
+"Come on in, Kid!"
+
+Nance fumbled her thin hands nervously and spoke with the faintest
+suggestion of a sob in her voice.
+
+"I ain't got nothin' for ye to eat----"
+
+"We've had dinner," he answered carelessly.
+
+He stepped to the door and called:
+
+"Bring that little bag from under the seat, Kiddo."
+
+He held the door open, and the light streamed across the yard to the
+car. He watched her steadily while she raised the cushion of the rear
+seat, lifted the bag and sprang from the car. His keen eye never left
+her for an instant until she placed it in his hands.
+
+"Mercy, but it's heavy!" she panted, as she gave it to him.
+
+He took it without a word and placed it on the table in the center of
+the room.
+
+Nance glared at him sullenly.
+
+"There's no place for ye, I tell ye----"
+
+Jim faced her with mock politeness.
+
+"For them kind words--thanks!"
+
+He bowed low and swept the room with a mocking gesture.
+
+"There ain't no room for ye," the old woman persisted.
+
+Jim raised his voice to a squeaking falsetto with deliberate purpose to
+torment her.
+
+"I got ye the first time, darlin'!" he exclaimed, lifting his hands
+above her as if to hold her down. "We must linger awhile for your
+name--anyhow, we mustn't forget that. This is Mrs. Nance Owens?"
+
+The old woman started and watched him from beneath her heavy eyebrows,
+answering with sullen emphasis:
+
+"Yes."
+
+Again Jim lifted his hands above his head and waved her to earth.
+
+"Well! Don't blame me! I can't help it, you know----"
+
+He turned to his wife and spoke with jolly good humor.
+
+"It's the place, all right. Set down, Kiddo--take off your hat and
+things. Make yourself at home."
+
+Nance flew at him in a sudden frenzy at his assumption of insolent
+ownership of her cabin.
+
+"There's no place for ye to sleep!" she fairly shrieked in his face.
+
+Again Jim's arms were over her head, waving her down.
+
+"All right, sweetheart! We're from New York. We don't sleep. We've come
+all the way down here to the mountains of North Carolina just to see
+you. And we're goin' to sit up all night and look at ye----"
+
+He sat down deliberately, and Nance fumbled her hands with a nervous
+movement.
+
+Mary's heart went out in sympathy to the forlorn old creature in her
+embarrassment. Her dress was dirty and ragged, an ill-fitting gingham,
+the elbows out and her bare, bony arms showing through. The waist was
+too short and always slipping from the belt of wrinkled cloth beneath
+which she kept trying to stuff it.
+
+Mary caught her restless eye at last and held it in a friendly look.
+
+"Please let us stay!" she pleaded. "We can sleep on the
+floor--anywhere."
+
+"You bet!" Jim joined in. "Married two weeks--and I don't care whether
+it rains or whether it pours or how long I have to stand outdoors--if I
+can be with you, Kid."
+
+The old woman hesitated until Mary's smile melted its way into her
+heart.
+
+Her lips trembled, and her watery blue eyes blinked.
+
+"Well," she began grumblingly, "thar's a little single bed in that
+shed-room thar for you--ef he'll sleep in here on the sofy."
+
+Jim leaped to his feet.
+
+"What do ye think of that? Bully for the old gal! Kinder slow at first.
+As the poet sings of the little bed-bug, she ain't got no wings--but she
+gets there just the same!"
+
+He drew the electric torch from his pocket and advanced on Nance.
+
+"By Golly--I'll have another look at you."
+
+Nance backed in terror at the sight of the revolver-like instrument.
+
+"What's that?" she gasped.
+
+"Just a little Gatlin' gun!" he cried jokingly. He pressed the button,
+and the light flashed squarely in the old woman's eyes.
+
+"God 'lmighty--don't shoot!" she screamed.
+
+Jim doubled with laughter.
+
+"For the love o' Mike!"
+
+Nance leaned against the side table and wiped the perspiration from her
+brow.
+
+"Lord! I thought you'd kilt me!" she panted, still trembling.
+
+"Ah, don't be foolish!" Jim said persuasively. "It can't hurt you. Here,
+take it in your hand--I'll show you how to work it. It's to nose round
+dark places under the buzz-wagon."
+
+He held it out to Nance.
+
+"Here, take it and press the button."
+
+The old woman drew back.
+
+"No--no--I'm skeered! No----"
+
+Jim thrust the torch into her hand and forced her to hold it.
+
+"Oh, come on, it's easy. Push your finger right down on the button."
+
+Nance tried it gingerly at first, and then laughed at the ease with
+which it could be done. She flashed it on the floor again and again.
+
+"Why, it's like a big lightnin' bug, ain't it?"
+
+She turned the end of it up to examine more closely, pushed the button
+unconsciously, and the light flashed in her eyes. She jumped and handed
+it quickly to Jim.
+
+"Or a jack o' lantern--here, take it," she cried, still trembling.
+
+Jim threw his hands up with a laugh.
+
+"Can you beat it!"
+
+Backing quickly to the door, Nance called nervously to Mary:
+
+"I'll get your room ready in a minute, ma'am." She paused and glanced at
+Jim.
+
+"And thar's a shed out thar you can put your devil wagon in----"
+
+She slipped through the dirty calico curtains, and Mary saw her go with
+wondering pity in her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. A LITTLE BLACK BAG
+
+Mary watched Nance, with a quick glance at Jim. Again he had forgotten
+that he had a wife. She had studied this strange absorption with
+increasing uneasiness. During the long, beautiful drive of the afternoon
+beside laughing waters, through scenes of unparalleled splendor, through
+valleys of entrancing peace, the still, sapphire skies bending above
+with clear, Southern Christmas benediction, he had not once pressed her
+hand, he had not once bent to kiss her.
+
+Each time the thought had come, she fought back the tears. She had
+made excuses for him. He was absorbed in the memories of his miserable
+childhood in New York, perhaps. The approaching meeting with his
+relatives had awakened the old hunger for a mother's love that had
+been denied him. The scenes through which they were passing had perhaps
+stirred the currents of his subconscious being.
+
+And yet why should such memories estrange his spirit from hers? The
+effect should be the opposite. In the remembrance of his loneliness and
+suffering, he should instinctively turn to her. The love with which she
+had unfolded his life should redeem the past.
+
+He was standing now with his heavy chin silhouetted against the
+flickering light of the candle on the table. His hand closed suddenly
+on the handle of the bag with the swift clutch of an eagle's claw. She
+started at the ugly picture it made in the dim rays of the candle.
+
+What were the thoughts seething behind the mask of his face? She watched
+him, spellbound by his complete surrender to the mood that had dominated
+him from the moment he had touched the deep forests of the Black
+Mountain range. A grim elation ruled even his silences. The man standing
+there rigid, his face a smiling, twitching mask, was a stranger. This
+man she had never known, or loved. And yet they were bound for life in
+the tenderest and strongest ties that can hold the human soul and body.
+
+She tossed her head and threw off the ugly thought. It was morbid
+nonsense! She was just hungry for a kiss, and in his new environment he
+had forgotten himself as many thoughtless men had forgotten before and
+would forget again.
+
+"Jim!" she whispered tenderly.
+
+He made no answer. His thick lips were drawn in deep, twisted lines
+on one side, as if he had suddenly reached a decision from which there
+could be no appeal.
+
+She raised her voice slightly.
+
+"Jim?"
+
+Not a muscle of his body moved. The drawn lines of the mouth merely
+relaxed. His answer was scarcely audible.
+
+"Yep----"
+
+"She's gone!"
+
+"Yep----"
+
+She moved toward him wistfully.
+
+"Aren't you forgetting something?"
+
+His square jaw still held its rigid position silhouetted in sharp
+profile against the candle's light. He answered slowly and mechanically.
+
+"What?"
+
+His indifference was more than the sore heart could bear. The pent-up
+tears of the afternoon dashed in flood against the barriers of her will.
+
+"You--haven't--kissed--me--today," she stammered, struggling with each
+word to save a break.
+
+Still he stood immovable. This time his answer was tinged with the
+slightest suggestion of amusement.
+
+"No?"
+
+She staggered against the table beside the door and gripped its edge
+desperately.
+
+"Oh--" she gasped. "Don't you love me any more?"
+
+With his sullen head still holding its position of indifference, his
+absorption in the idea which dominated his mind still unbroken, he threw
+out one hand in a gesture of irritation.
+
+"Cut it, Kid! Cut it!"
+
+His tones were not only indifferent; they were contemptuously
+indifferent.
+
+With a sob, she sank into the chair and buried her face in her arms.
+
+"You're tired! I see it now; you've tired of me. Oh--it's not
+possible--it's not possible!"
+
+The torrent came at last in a flood of utter abandonment.
+
+Jim turned, looked at her and threw up his hands in temporary surrender.
+
+"Oh, for God's sake!" he muttered, crossing deliberately to her side. He
+stood and let her sob.
+
+With a quick change of mood, he drew her to her feet, swept her swaying
+form into his arms, crushed her and covered her lips with kisses.
+
+"How's that?"
+
+She smiled through her tears.
+
+"I feel better----"
+
+Jim laughed.
+
+"For better or worse--`until Death do us part'--that's what you said,
+Kid, and you meant it, too, didn't you?"
+
+He seized both of her arms, held them firmly and gazed into her eyes
+with steady, stern inquiry.
+
+She looked up with uneasy surprise.
+
+"Of course--I meant it," she answered slowly.
+
+He held her arms gripped close and said:
+
+"Well--we'll see!"
+
+His hands relaxed, and he turned away, rubbing his square chin
+thoughtfully.
+
+She watched him in growing amazement. What could be the mystery back of
+this new twist of his elusive mind?
+
+He laid his hand on the black bag again, smiled, and turned and faced
+her with expanding good humor.
+
+"Great scheme, this marryin', Kid! And you believe in it exactly as I
+do, don't you?"
+
+"How do you mean?" she faltered.
+
+"That it binds and holds both our lives as only Almighty God can bind
+and hold?"
+
+"Yes--nothing else IS marriage."
+
+"That's what I say, too!"
+
+He placed his hands on her shoulders.
+
+"Great scheme!" he repeated. "I get a pretty girl to work for me for
+nothing for the balance of my life." He paused and lifted the slender
+forefinger of his right hand. "And you pledged your pious soul--I
+memorized the words, every one of them: `I, Mary, take thee, James,
+to my wedded husband--TO HAVE AND TO HOLD from this day forward, FOR
+BETTER, FOR WORSE, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,
+to love, cherish AND OBEY, TIL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY
+ORDINANCE; AND THEREUNTO I GIVE THEE MY TROTH----'"
+
+He paused, lifted his head and smiled grimly: "That's some promise,
+believe me, Kiddo! `AND OBEY'--you meant it all, didn't you?"
+
+She would have hedged lightly over that ugly old word which still
+survived in the ceremony Craddock had used, but for the sinister
+suggestion in his voice back of the playful banter. He had asked it half
+in jest, half in earnest. She had caught by the subtle sixth sense the
+tragic idea in that one word that he was going to hold her to it. The
+thought was too absurd!
+
+"OBEY--you meant it, didn't you?" he repeated grimly.
+
+A smile played about the corners of her mouth as she answered dreamily:
+
+"Yes--I--I--PROMISED!"
+
+"That's why I set my head on you from the first--you're good and
+sweet--you're the real thing."
+
+Again she caught the sinister suggestion in his tone and threw him a
+startled look.
+
+"What has come over you today, Jim?" she asked.
+
+He hesitated and answered carelessly.
+
+"Oh, nothing, Kiddo--just been thinking a little about business. Got
+to go to work, you know." He returned to the table and touched the bag
+lightly.
+
+"Watch out now for this bag while I put up the car--and don't forget
+that curiosity killed the cat."
+
+Quick as a flash, she asked:
+
+"What's in it?"
+
+Jim threw up his hands and laughed.
+
+"Didn't I tell you that curiosity killed a cat?" He pointed to the skin
+on the wall. "That's what stretched that wild-cat's hide up there! She
+got too near the old musket!"
+
+"Anyhow, I'm not afraid of her end--what's in it?"
+
+Jim scratched his red head and looked at her thoughtfully.
+
+"You asked me that once before today, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes----"
+
+"Well, it's a little secret of mine. Take my advice--put your hand on
+it, but not in it."
+
+Again the sinister look and tone chilled her.
+
+"I don't like secrets between us, Jim," she said.
+
+She looked at the bag reproachfully, and he watched her keenly--then
+laughed.
+
+"I'd as well tell you and be done with it; you'll go in it anyhow."
+
+She tossed her head with a touch of angry pride. He took her hand, led
+her across the room and placed it on the valise.
+
+"I've got five thousand dollars in gold in that bag."
+
+She drew back, surprised beyond the power of speech.
+
+"And I'm going to give it to this old woman----"
+
+"To her--why?" she gasped.
+
+"She's my mother."
+
+"Your MOTHER?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I--I--thought--you told me she was dead."
+
+"No. I said that I didn't know who she was."
+
+He paused, and a queer brooding look crept into his face.
+
+"I haven't seen her since I was a little duffer three years old. This
+room and these wild crags and trees come back to me now--just a glimpse
+of them here and there. I've always remembered them. I thought I'd
+dreamed it----"
+
+"You remember--how wonderful!" she breathed reverently. She understood
+now, and the clouds lifted.
+
+"The skunk I called my daddy," Jim went on thoughtfully, "took me to New
+York. He said that my mother deserted me when I was a kid. I believed
+him at first. But when he beat me and kicked me into the streets, I knew
+he was a liar. When I got grown I began to think and wonder about her. I
+hired a lawyer that knew my daddy, and he found her here----"
+
+With a cry of joy, she seized his arms:
+
+"Tell her quick! Oh, you're big and fine and generous, Jim--and I knew
+it! They said that you were a brute. I knew they lied. Tell her quick!"
+
+He lifted his hand in protest.
+
+"Nope--I'm going to put up a little job on the old girl--show her the
+money tonight, get her wild at the sight of it--and give it to her
+Christmas morning. We've only a few hours to wait----"
+
+"Oh, give it to her now--Jim! Give it to her now!"
+
+He shook his head and walked to the door.
+
+"I want to say something to her first and give her time to think it
+over. Look out for the bag, and I'll bring in the things."
+
+He swung the rough board door wide, slammed it and disappeared in the
+darkness.
+
+The young wife watched the bag a moment with consuming curiosity. She
+had fiercely resented his insulting insinuations at her curiosity, and
+yet she was wild to look at that glowing pile of gold inside and picture
+the old woman's joyous surprise.
+
+Her hand touched the lock carelessly and drew back as if her finger had
+been burned. She put her hands behind her and crossed the room.
+
+"I won't be so weak and silly!" she cried fiercely.
+
+She heard Jim cranking the car. It would take him five minutes more to
+start it, get it under the shed and bring in the suit-case and robes.
+
+"Why shouldn't I see it!" she exclaimed. "He has told me about it." She
+hesitated and struggled for a moment, quickly walked back to the bag and
+touched the spring. It yielded instantly.
+
+"Why, it's not even locked!" she cried in tones of surprise at her silly
+scruples.
+
+Her hand had just touched the gold when Nance entered.
+
+She snapped the bag and smiled at the old woman carelessly. What a sweet
+surprise she would have tomorrow morning!
+
+Nance crossed slowly, glancing once at the girl wistfully as if she
+wanted to say something friendly, and then, alarmed at her presumption,
+hurried on into the little shed-room.
+
+Mary waited until she returned.
+
+"Room's all ready in thar, ma'am," she drawled, passing into the kitchen
+without a pause.
+
+"All right--thank you," Mary answered.
+
+She quickly opened the bag, thrust her hand into the gold and
+withdrew it, holding a costly green-leather jewelry-case of exquisite
+workmanship. There could be no mistake about its value.
+
+With a cry of joy, she started back, staring at the little box.
+
+"Another surprise! And for me! Oh, Jim, man, you're glorious! My
+Christmas present, of course! I mustn't look at it--I won't!"
+
+She pushed the case from her toward the bag and drew it back again.
+
+"What's the difference? I'll take one little, tiny peep."
+
+She touched the spring and caught her breath. A string of pearls fit for
+the neck of a princess lay shining in its soft depths. She lifted them
+with a sigh of delight. Her eye suddenly rested on a stanza of poetry
+scrawled on the satin lining in the trembling hand of an old man she had
+known.
+
+She dropped the pearls with a cry of terror. Her face went white, and
+she gasped for breath. The jewel-case in her hand she had seen before.
+It had belonged to the old gentleman who lived in the front room on the
+first floor of her building in the days when it was a boarding house.
+The wife he had idolized was long ago dead. This string of pearls from
+her neck the old man had worshiped for years. The stanza from "The
+Rosary" he had scrawled in the lining one day in Mary's presence. He had
+moved uptown with the landlady. Two months ago a burglar had entered his
+room, robbed and shot him.
+
+"It's impossible--impossible!" she gasped. "Oh, dear God--it's
+impossible! Of course the burglar pawned them, and Jim bought them
+without knowing. Of course! My nerves are on edge today--how silly of
+me----"
+
+Jim's footsteps suddenly sounded on the porch, and she thrust the
+jewel-case back into the bag with desperate effort to pull herself
+together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. THE AWAKENING
+
+For a moment she felt the foundations of the moral and physical world
+sinking beneath her feet. Dizziness swept her senses. She gripped
+the table, leaning heavily against it, her eye watching the door with
+feverish terror for Jim's appearance.
+
+She had never fainted in her life. It was absurd, but the room was
+swimming now in a dim blur. Again she gripped the table and set her
+teeth. She simply would not give up. Why should she leap to the worst
+possible explanation of the jewels? The hatred of old Ella for Jim and
+the furious antagonism of Jane Anderson had poisoned her mind, after
+all. It was infamous that she could suspect her husband of crime merely
+because two silly women didn't like him.
+
+He could explain the jewels. He, of course, asked no questions of the
+pawn-broker. They were probably sold at auction and he bought them.
+
+It seemed an eternity from the time Jim's foot step echoed on the little
+porch until he pushed the door open and hastily entered, his arms piled
+with lap-robes, coats and the dress-suit case in his hand.
+
+He walked with quick, firm step, threw the coats and robes on the couch
+and placed the suit-case at its head. He hadn't turned toward her and
+his face was still in profile while he removed the gloves from his
+pockets, threw them on the robes, and drew the scarlet woolen neckpiece
+from his throat.
+
+She was studying him now with new terror-stricken eyes. Never had she
+seen his jaw look so big and brutal. Never had the droop of his eyelids
+suggested such menace. Never had the contrast of his slender hands and
+feet suggested such hideous possibilities.
+
+"Merciful God! No! No!" she kept repeating in her soul while her dilated
+eyes stared at him in sheer horror of the suggestion which the jewels
+had roused.
+
+She drew a deep breath and strangled the idea by her will.
+
+"I'll at least be as fair as a jury," she thought grimly. "I'll not
+condemn him without a hearing."
+
+Jim suddenly became aware of the menace of her silence. She had not
+moved a muscle, spoken or made the slightest sound since he had entered.
+He had merely taken in the room at a glance and had seen her standing in
+precisely the same place beside the table.
+
+He saw now that she was leaning heavily against it.
+
+He raised his head and faced her with a sudden, bold stare, and his
+voice rang in tones of sharp command.
+
+"Well?"
+
+She tried to speak and failed. She had not yet sufficiently mastered her
+emotions.
+
+"What's the matter?" he growled.
+
+"Jim----" she gasped.
+
+He took a step toward her with set teeth.
+
+"You've been in that bag--Well?"
+
+Her face was white, her voice husky.
+
+"Those jewels, Jim----"
+
+A cunning smile played about his mouth and he shook his head.
+
+"I tried to keep my little secret from you till Christmas morning; but
+you're on to my curves now, Kiddo, and I'll have to 'fess up----"
+
+"You bought them for me?" she asked with trembling eagerness.
+
+"Who else do you reckon I'd buy 'em for? I was going to surprise you,
+too, tomorrow morning. You've spoiled the fun."
+
+She had slipped close to his side and he could hear her quick intake of
+breath.
+
+"That's--so--sweet of you, Jim. I'm sorry--I--spoiled the
+surprise--you'd--planned----"
+
+"Oh, what's the difference!" he broke in carelessly. "It's all the same
+five minutes after, anyhow. Well, don't you like 'em? Why don't you say
+something?"
+
+"They're wonderful, Jim. Where--where--did you buy them?"
+
+He held her gaze in silence for an instant and fenced.
+
+"Isn't that a funny question, Kiddo?" he said in low tones. "I once
+heard the old man I worked with in the shop say that you shouldn't look
+a gift horse in the mouth."
+
+"I just want to know," she insisted.
+
+"I'm not going to tell you!" he said with a dry laugh.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you keep asking."
+
+"You wish to tease me?"
+
+"Maybe."
+
+"Please!"
+
+"Why do you want to know? Are you afraid they're fakes?"
+
+"No, they're beautiful--they're wonderful."
+
+"Well, if you don't want them," he broke in angrily, "I'll keep them.
+I'll sell them."
+
+"Don't tease me, Jim!" she begged. "I don't mind if you bought them at
+a pawn-shop--if that's why you won't tell me. That is the reason, isn't
+it? Honestly, isn't it?"
+
+She asked the question with eager intensity. She had persuaded herself
+that it was so and the horror had been lifted. She pressed close with
+smiling, trembling lips:
+
+"I don't mind that, Jim! You got them from a pawn-broker, of course,
+didn't you?"
+
+He looked at her with a puzzled expression and hesitated.
+
+"Didn't you?" she repeated.
+
+"No--I didn't!" was the curt answer.
+
+"You didn't?" she echoed feebly.
+
+"No!"
+
+With a quick breath she unconsciously drew back and he glared at her
+angrily.
+
+"Say, what'ell's the matter with you, anyhow? Have you gone crazy?"
+
+"You--won't--tell me--where you bought them?" she asked slowly.
+
+He faced her squarely and spoke with deliberate contempt:
+
+"It's--none--of your business!"
+
+She held his gaze with steady determination.
+
+"That string of pearls belongs to the man who once lived in the front
+room of my old building in New York. He moved uptown with my landlady. A
+few months ago a burglar robbed and shot him----"
+
+She stopped, seized his arm and cried with strangling horror:
+
+"Jim! Jim! Where did you get them?"
+
+"Now I know you've gone crazy! You don't suppose that's the only string
+of pearls in the world, do you? Did you count 'em? Did you weigh 'em?"
+
+"Where did you get them?" she demanded.
+
+"What put it into your head that that string of pearls belonged to your
+old boarder?"
+
+"I saw him write the stanza of poetry on the satin lining of that case.
+I've heard him recite it over and over again in his piping voice: `Each
+bead a pearl--my rosary!' I KNOW that they belonged to him!"
+
+His mouth twitched angrily and he faced her, speaking with cold, brutal
+frankness.
+
+"I might keep on lying to you, Kiddo, and get away with it. But
+what's the use? You've got to know. It's just as well now--I did that
+job----Yes!"
+
+Her face blanched.
+
+"You--a--burglar--a murderer!"
+
+Jim followed her with quick, angry gestures.
+
+"All I wanted was his money! He fought--it was his life or mine----"
+
+"A murderer!"
+
+"I just went after his money--I tell you--besides, he didn't die; he
+got well. If he'd kept still he wouldn't have lost his pearls and he
+wouldn't have been hurt----"
+
+"And I stood up for you against them all!" she answered in a dazed
+whisper. "They told me--Jane Anderson with brutal frankness, Ella with
+the heart-rending, timid confession of her own tragic life--they told me
+that you were bad. I said they were liars. I said that they envied our
+happiness. I believed that you were big and brave and fine. I stood by
+you and married you!"
+
+She paused and looked at him steadily. In a rush of suppressed passion
+she seized his arm with a violence that caused his heavy eyelids to lift
+in amused surprise.
+
+"Oh, Jim--it's not true! It's not true--it's not true! For God's sake,
+tell me that you're joking!--that you're teasing me! You can't mean it!
+I won't believe it--I won't believe it!"
+
+Her head sank until it rested piteously against his breast. He stood
+with his face turned awkwardly away and then moved his body until she
+was forced to stand erect.
+
+He touched her shoulder gently and spoke soothingly:
+
+"Come, now, Kid, don't take on so. I'll quit the business when I make my
+pile."
+
+She drew back instinctively and he followed:
+
+"I'll never touch another penny of yours. There's blood on it!"
+
+"Rot!" he went on soothingly. "It's good Wall Street cash--got it
+exactly like they got theirs--got it because I was quicker and smarter
+than the fellow that had it. I use a jimmy, they use a ticker--that's
+all the difference."
+
+She drew her figure to its full height.
+
+"I'm going--Jim----"
+
+"Where?"
+
+His voice rasped like a file against steel.
+
+"Home!"
+
+"Your home's with me."
+
+"I won't live with a thief!"
+
+He stepped squarely before her and spoke with deliberate menace.
+
+"You're--not--going!"
+
+"Get out of my way!" she cried defiantly.
+
+His big jaw closed with a snap and his figure became rigid. The candle's
+yellow light threw a strange glare on his face, convulsed. The blue
+flames of hell were in the glitter of his steel eyes.
+
+Her heart sank in a dull wave of terror. She tried to gauge the depth of
+his brutal rage. There was no standard by which to measure it. She had
+never seen that look in his face before. His whole being was transformed
+by some sinister power.
+
+She was afraid to move, but her mind was alert in this moment of supreme
+trial. She hadn't used her last weapon yet. The fact that he held her
+with such terrible determination was proof of the spell she had cast
+over him. She might save him. He couldn't have been a criminal long. She
+formed her new battle-line with quick decision.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. THE SURRENDER
+
+How long she gazed into the convulsed face of the man who had squared
+himself before her, mattered little measured by the tick of the watch
+in her belt. Into the mental anguish endured a life's agony had been
+pressed. It could not have been more than twenty seconds, and yet it
+marked the birth of a new being within the soul of a woman. She had been
+searching only for her own happiness. The search had entangled another
+in the meshes of her life. Too much had been lived in the past two
+weeks to be undone by a word and forgotten in a day. She had attempted,
+coward-like, to run.
+
+She saw now in the consuming flame of a great sorrow that the man before
+her had some rights which the purest woman must reckon with. He might be
+a burglar. At least it was her duty to try to save him from himself. Her
+surrender of the past weeks was a tie that would bind them through all
+eternity. There was no chemistry of earth or heaven or hell that could
+erase its memories. Her life was no longer her own--this man's was bound
+with hers. She must face the facts. She would make one honest,
+brave effort to save him. To do this she would give all without
+reservation--pride must be cast to the winds.
+
+Her voice suddenly changed to tears.
+
+"Oh, Jim, you do love me, don't you?"
+
+His body slowly relaxed, his eyes shifted, and he shrugged his square
+shoulders.
+
+"What'ell did I marry you for?"
+
+"Tell me--do you?" she demanded.
+
+"You know that I love you. What do you ask me such a fool question for?
+I love you with a love that can kill. Do you hear me? That's why you're
+not going anywhere without me."
+
+There was no mistaking the depth of his passion. She trembled to realize
+its power and yet it was the lever by which she must move him.
+
+"Then you've got to give this life up. You're young and brave and
+strong. You can earn an honest living. You haven't been in this long--I
+feel it, I know it. Have you?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Eight months."
+
+"Oh, Jim, dear, you must give it up now for my sake. I'll work with you
+and work for you. I'll teach, I'll sew, I'll scrub, I'll slave for you
+day and night--if you're only clean and honest."
+
+He turned on her fiercely.
+
+"Cut it, Kid--cut it! I'm out for the stuff now. I'm going to get rich
+and I'm going to get rich QUICK--that's all that's the matter with me!"
+
+"But, Jim," she broke in tenderly--"you did earn an honest living. Your
+workshop proves that."
+
+"I've used that to improve my tools and melt the swag the past year. The
+shop's all right."
+
+"But you did make a successful invention?"
+
+"You bet I did," he answered savagely, "and that's why I quit the
+business. Three years ago I took down a big automobile and worked out an
+improvement in the transmission that settled the question of heavy draft
+machines. I took it to a lawyer in Wall Street and he took it to a man
+that had money. Between the two of 'em, they didn't do a thing to
+me! They were going to put my patent on the market and make me a
+millionaire. God, I was crazy----"
+
+He paused and squared his shoulders with a deep breath.
+
+"They put it on the market all right and they made some
+millionaires--but I wasn't one of 'em, Kiddo! They got me to sign a
+paper that skinned me out of every dollar as slick as you can pull an
+eel through your fingers. I hired another lawyer and gave him half he
+could get to beat 'em. He fought like a tiger and two days before I
+met you he got his verdict and they paid it--just ten thousand dollars.
+Think of it--ten thousand dollars! And each of them got a million cash.
+They sold it outright for two millions and a half. My lawyer got five
+thousand dollars, and I got five thousand dollars. That's mine, anyhow.
+It's in that bag there. I'm working on a new set of tools now in my
+shop. I'm going to get that money back from the two thieves who stole
+it from me by law. I'll take it by force, the way they took it. If I can
+croak them both in the fight--well, there'll be two thieves less to rob
+honest men and women, that's all."
+
+"Oh, Jim!" Mary gasped, lifting a trembling hand to her throat as if
+to tear open her collar. "You're mad. You don't know what you're
+saying----"
+
+"Don't fool yourself, Kiddo," he interrupted fiercely. "My eyes are open
+now, and I've got a level head back of 'em, too. I've doped it all out.
+You ought to 'a' heard that lawyer give me a few lessons in business
+when he'd skinned me and salted my hide. He was good-natured and
+confidential. He seemed to love me. `Business is war, sonny,' he piped,
+between the puffs of the big Havana cigar he was smoking--`war! war to
+the knife! We got you off your guard and put the knife into you at the
+right minute--that's all. Don't take it so hard! Invent something
+else and keep your eyes peeled. You ought to love us for giving you an
+education in business early in life. You're young. You won't have to
+learn your lesson again. Go to work, sonny, in your shop, and turn out
+another new tool for the advancement of trade!'"
+
+He paused and smiled grimly.
+
+"I've done it, too! I've just finished a little invention that'll crack
+any safe in New York in twenty minutes after I touch it."
+
+He broke into a dry laugh, sat down and deliberately lighted a fresh
+cigarette.
+
+She studied his face with beating heart. Was he lost beyond all hope
+of reformation? Or was this the boyish bravado of an amateur criminal
+poisoned by the consciousness of wrong? She tried to think. She felt the
+red blood pounding through her heart and beating against her brain in
+suffocating waves of despair.
+
+In vivid flashes the scene of her marriage but two weeks ago, came back
+in tormenting memories. The solemn words she had spoken kept ringing
+like the throb of a funeral bell far up in the star-lit heavens----
+
+
+"I, MARY ADAMS, TAKE THEE, JAMES ANTHONY, TO MY WEDDED HUSBAND, TO HAVE
+AND TO HOLD... FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS
+AND IN HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH, AND TO OBEY, TILL DEATH DO US PART,
+ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE; AND THERETO I GIVE THEE MY TROTH."
+
+
+The last solemn prayer kept ringing its deep-toned message over all----
+
+
+"GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON, GOD THE HOLY GHOST, BLESS, PRESERVE, AND
+KEEP YOU; THE LORD MERCIFULLY WITH HIS FAVOR LOOK UPON YOU, AND FILL YOU
+WITH ALL SPIRITUAL BENEDICTION AND GRACE; THAT YE MAY SO LIVE TOGETHER
+IN THIS LIFE, THAT IN THE WORLD TO COME YE MAY HAVE LIFE EVERLASTING.
+AMEN."
+
+
+In a sudden rush of desperate pity for herself and the man to whom she
+was bound, she dropped on her knees by his side, slipped her arms about
+his neck and clung to him, sobbing.
+
+"Oh, Jim, Jim, man," she whispered hoarsely. "I can't see you sink into
+hell like this! Have you no real love in your heart for the woman who
+has given all? Have mercy on me! Have mercy! You can't mean the hideous
+things you've just said! You've been crazed by your losses. You're just
+a boy yet. Life is all before you. You're only twenty-four. I'm just
+twenty-four. We can both begin anew. I've never lived until these
+past weeks--neither have you. You couldn't drag me down into a life of
+crime----"
+
+Her head sank and her voice choked into silence. He made no movement of
+his hand to soothe her. His voice was not persuasive. It was hard and
+cold.
+
+"I'm not asking you to help me on any of my jobs," he said. "I'm the
+financier of the family. You can say the prayers and keep house."
+
+"Knowing that you are a criminal? That your hands are stained with human
+blood?"
+
+"Why not?" he snapped, the blue blaze flashing again in his eyes.
+"Suppose you were the wife of the gentlemanly lawyer-thief who robbed
+me, using the law instead of a jimmy--would you bother your little head
+about my business? Does his wife ask him where he got it? Does anybody
+know or care? He lives on Fifth Avenue now. He bought a palace up there
+the day after he got my money. We passed it on the way to the Park the
+day I met you. A line of carriages was standing in front and finely
+dressed women were running up the red carpet that led down the stoop and
+under the canopy to the curb. Did any of the gay dames who smiled and
+smirked at that thief's wife ask how he got the money to buy the house?
+Not much. Would they have cared if they had known? They'd have called
+him a shrewd lawyer--that's all! Do you reckon his wife worries about
+such tricks of trade? Why should mine worry?"
+
+She gripped his hand with desperate pleading.
+
+"Oh, Jim, dear, you can't be a criminal at heart! I wouldn't have loved
+you if it had been true. I can't believe it! I won't believe it. You're
+posing. You don't mean this. You can't mean it. You're going to return
+every dishonest dollar that you've taken."
+
+"You don't know what you're talking about!"
+
+He closed his jaw with a snap and leaned close in eager, tense
+excitement.
+
+"Do you know how much junk I've piled into a little box in my shop the
+past three months?"
+
+"I don't care--I don't want to know!"
+
+"You've got to care--you've got to know now! It's worth a hundred
+thousand dollars, do you hear? A hundred thousand dollars! It would take
+me a life-time to earn that on a salary. In two weeks after we get back
+to New York with my new invention that lawyer advised me to make, I'll
+go through his house--I'll open his safe, I'll take every diamond, every
+pearl and every scrap of stolen jewelry his wife's wearing. And I won't
+leave a fingerprint on the window sill. I've got two of his servants
+working for me.
+
+"In six months I'll be worth half a million. In a year I'll pull off
+the big haul I'm planning and I'll be a millionaire. We'll retire from
+business then--just like they did. We'll build our marble palace down at
+Bay Ridge and our yacht will nod in the harbor. We'll spend our summers
+in Europe when we like and every snob and fool in New York will fall
+over himself to meet me. And every woman will envy my wife. I'm young,
+Kiddo, but I've cut my eye teeth. You've just been born. I'm running the
+business end of this thing. You think you can reform me. You can--AFTER
+I'VE MADE OUR PILE. I'll join the church then and sing louder than that
+lawyer. But if you think you're going to stop my business career at this
+stage of the game--forget it, forget it!"
+
+He sprang up with a quick movement of his tense body and threw her off.
+She rose and watched his restless steps as he paced the floor. Her mind
+was numb as if from a mortal blow. She brushed the tangled ringlets of
+brown hair back from her forehead, drew the handkerchief from her belt
+and wiped the perspiration from her brow.
+
+Before she could gather the strength to speak, he wheeled suddenly and
+confronted her:
+
+"I've known from the first, Kiddo, that you're not the kind to help in
+this business. I don't expect it. I don't ask it. I need a ranch
+like this down here for storage. I'm going to take the old woman into
+partnership with me."
+
+She started back in an instinctive recoil of horror.
+
+"Your MOTHER?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Yep!"
+
+She drew a step nearer and peered into his set face.
+
+"YOU WILL MAKE YOUR OWN MOTHER A CRIMINAL?"
+
+"Sure!" he growled. "That's what I came down here for."
+
+"She won't do it!"
+
+"She won't, eh?" he sneered. "Look at this hog pen!"
+
+He swept the bare, wretched cabin with a gesture of contempt and
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Look at the rags she's wearing," he went on savagely. "When we talk
+it over tonight with that five thousand dollars in gold shining in
+her eyes--I'm going to show her a lot o' things she never saw before,
+Kiddo--take it from me!"
+
+She answered in slow, even tones:
+
+"I can't live with you, Jim."
+
+The blue flames beneath the drooping eyelids were leaping now in the
+yellow glare of the candle's rays. The muscles of his body were knotted.
+His voice came from his throat a low growl.
+
+"Do you know who you're fooling with?"
+
+The blood of a clean life flamed in her cheeks and nerved her with
+reckless daring. Her figure stiffened and her voice rang with defiant
+scorn:
+
+"Yes. I know at last--a thief who would drag his own mother down to hell
+with him!"
+
+Not a muscle of his powerful body moved; his face was a stolid mask. He
+threw his words slowly through his teeth:
+
+"Now you listen to me. You're my wife. I didn't invent this marriage
+game. I played it as I found it. And that's the way you're going to play
+it. You're good and sweet and clean--I like that kind, and I won't
+have no other. You're mine. MINE, do you hear! Mine for life--body and
+soul--`FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS AND IN
+HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH'----"
+
+He paused and thrust his massive jaw squarely into her face:
+
+"`----AND OBEY!'" he hissed, "`UNTIL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO
+GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE'--you said it, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+She turned from him with sudden aversion:
+
+"I didn't know what you were----"
+
+"Nobody ever knows BEFORE they're married!" he broke in savagely. "You
+took your chances. I took mine--`FOR BETTER FOR WORSE.' We'll just say
+now it's for worse and let it go at that!"
+
+The little body stiffened.
+
+"I'll die first!"
+
+He held her gaze without words, searching the depths of her being with
+the cold, blue flame in his drooping eyes. If she were bluffing, it was
+easy. She could talk her head off for all he cared. If she meant it, he
+might have his hands full unless he mastered the situation at once and
+for all time.
+
+There was no sign of yielding to his iron will. An indomitable soul had
+risen in her frail body and defied him. His decision was instantaneous.
+
+"Oh, you'll die sooner than live with me--eh?"
+
+There was something hideous in the cold venom with which he drawled
+the words. Her heart fairly stopped its beating. With the last ounce of
+courage left, she held her place and answered:
+
+"Yes!"
+
+With the sudden crouch of a tiger he drew his clenched fist to strike.
+
+"Forget it!"
+
+She sprang back with terror, her body trembling in pitiful weakness.
+
+"You snivelling little coward!" he growled.
+
+"Oh, Jim, Jim," she faltered,--"you--you--couldn't strike me!"
+
+A step nearer and he stood over her, his big, flat head thrust forward,
+his eyes gleaming, his muscles knotted in blind rage.
+
+"No--I won't STRIKE you," he whispered. "I'll just KILL you--that's
+all!"
+
+With the leap of an infuriated beast he sprang on her and his sharp
+fingers gripped her throat.
+
+
+The world went black and she felt herself sinking into a bottomless
+abyss. With maniac energy she tore his hands from her throat and the
+warm blood streamed from the gash his nails had torn.
+
+"Jim! Jim! For God's sake!" she moaned in abject terror.
+
+With a sullen growl, his fingers, sharp as a leopard's claw, found her
+neck again and closed with a grip that sent the blood surging to her
+brain and her eyes starting from their sockets.
+
+The one hideous thought that flashed through her mind was that he was
+going to plunge his claws into her eyes and blind her for life. He
+could hold her his prisoner then. She made a last desperate struggle
+for breath, her hands relaxed, she drooped and sank to the couch toward
+which he had hurled her in the first rush of his assault.
+
+He lifted her and choked the slender neck again to make sure, loosed his
+hands and the limp body dropped on the couch and was still.
+
+He stood watching her in silence, his arms at his side.
+
+"Damned little fool!" he muttered. "I had to give you that lesson. The
+sooner the better!"
+
+He waited with contemptuous indifference until she slowly recovered
+consciousness. She lay motionless for a long time and then slowly opened
+her eyes.
+
+Thank God! They had not been gouged out as poor Ella's. She didn't mind
+the warm blood that soaked her collar and ran down her neck. If he would
+only spare her eyes. Blindness had been her one unspeakable terror. She
+closed her eyes again and silently prayed for strength. Her strength was
+gone. Wave after wave of sickening, cowardly terror swept her prostrate
+soul. She could feel his sullen presence--his body with its merciless
+strength towering above her. She dared not look. She knew that he was
+watching her with cruel indifference. A single cry, a single word and he
+might thrust his claw into her eyes and the light of the world would go
+out forever.
+
+Her terror was too hideous; she could endure it no longer. She must
+move. She must try to save herself. She lifted her head and caught his
+steady, venomous gaze.
+
+A quick, sliding movement of abject fear and she was erect, facing him
+and backing away silently.
+
+He followed with even step, his gaze holding her as the eyes of a snake
+its victim. She would not let him know her terror of blindness. She
+preferred death a thousand times. If he would only kill her outright it
+was all the mercy she would ask.
+
+"You--won't--kill--me--Jim!" she sobbed. "Please--please, don't kill
+me!"
+
+He lifted his sharp finger and followed her toward the shed-room door,
+his voice the triumphant cry of an eagle above his prey.
+
+"`FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE--UNTIL DEATH DO US PART!'"
+
+Her heart gave a bound of cowardly joy. He had relented. He would not
+blind her. She could live. She was young and life was sweet.
+
+She tried to smile her surrender through her tears as she backed slowly
+away from his ominous finger.
+
+"Yes, I'll try--Jim. I'll try--`UNTIL DEATH DO US PART--UNTIL
+DEATH--UNTIL DEATH----'"
+
+Her voice broke into a flood of tears as she blindly felt her way
+through the door and into the darkened room.
+
+He paused on the threshold, held the creaking board shutter in his hand
+and broke into a laugh.
+
+"The world ain't big enough for you to get away from me, Kiddo. Good
+night--a good little wife now and it's all right!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. TO THE NEW GOD
+
+Jim closed the door of the little shed-room with a bang, and stood
+listening a moment to the sobs inside.
+
+"`UNTIL DEATH DO US PART,' Kiddo!" he laughed grimly.
+
+He turned back into the room and saw Nance standing at the opposite
+entrance between the calico curtains, an old, battered, flickering
+lantern in her hand. A white wool shawl was thrown over the gray head
+and fell in long, filmy waves about her thin figure. Her deep-sunken
+eyes were exaggerated in the dim light of lantern and candle. She smiled
+wanly.
+
+He stopped short at the apparition; a queer shiver of superstitious fear
+shook him. The white form of Death suddenly and noiselessly appearing
+from the darkness could not have been more uncanny. He had wondered
+vaguely while the quarrel with his wife was progressing, what had become
+of his mother. As the fight had reached its height, he had forgotten
+her.
+
+She looked at him, blinking her eyes and trying to smile.
+
+"Where the devil have you been, old gal?" he asked nervously.
+
+"Nowhere," she answered evasively.
+
+"You've been mighty quiet on the trip anyhow. I see you've brought
+something back from nowhere."
+
+Nance glanced down at the jug she carried in her left hand and laughed.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Nothin'----"
+
+"Nothin' from nowhere sounds pretty good to me when I see it in a brown
+jug on Christmas Eve. You're all right, old gal! I was just going to
+ask if you had a little mountain dew. You're a mind reader. I'll bet the
+warehouse you keep that stored in is some snug harbor--eh?"
+
+"They ain't never found it yit!" she giggled.
+
+"And I'll bet they won't--bully for you!"
+
+She took down a tin cup from a shelf and placed it beside the jug.
+
+"Another glass, sweetheart----"
+
+The old woman stared at him in surprise, walked to the shelf and brought
+another tin cup.
+
+"What do ye want with two?" she asked in surprise.
+
+Jim moved toward the stool beside the table.
+
+"Sit down."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Sure. Let's be sociable. It's Christmas Eve, isn't it?"
+
+"Yeah!" Nance answered cheerfully, taking her seat and glancing timidly
+at her guest.
+
+Jim seized the jug, poured out two drinks of corn whiskey, handed her
+one and raised his:
+
+"Well, here's lookin' at you, old girl."
+
+He paused, lowered his cup and smiled.
+
+"But say, give me a toast." He nodded toward the shed-room. "I'm on my
+honeymoon, you know."
+
+His hostess laughed timidly and glanced at him from the corners of her
+eyes. She wished to be sociable and make up as best she could for her
+rudeness on their arrival.
+
+"I ain't never heard but one fur honeymooners," she said softly.
+
+"Let's have it. I've never heard a toast for honeymooners in my life.
+It'll be new to me--fire away!"
+
+Nance fumbled her faded dress with her left hand and laughed again.
+
+"'May ye live long and prosper an' all yer troubles be LITTLE ONES!'"
+
+She laughed aloud at the old, worm-eaten joke and Jim joined.
+
+"Bully! Bully, old girl--bully!"
+
+He lifted his cup and drained it at one draught and Nance did the same.
+
+He seized the jug and poured another drink for each.
+
+"Once more----"
+
+He leaned across the table.
+
+"And here's one for you." He squared his body and lifted his cup:
+
+"To all your little ones--no matter how big they are!"
+
+Jim drained his liquor without apparently noticing her agitation, though
+he was watching her keenly from the corner of his eye.
+
+The cup she held was lowered slowly until the whiskey poured over her
+dress and on the floor. Her thin figure drooped pathetically and her
+voice was the faintest sob:
+
+"I--I--ain't got--none!"
+
+"I heard you had a boy," Jim said carelessly.
+
+The drooping figure shot upright as if a bolt of lightning had swept
+her. She stared at him in tense silence, trying to gather her wits
+before she answered.
+
+"Who told you anything about me?" she demanded sternly.
+
+"A fellow in New York," Jim continued with studied carelessness--"said
+he used to live down here."
+
+"He LIVED down here?" she repeated blankly.
+
+"Yep--come now, loosen up and tell us about the kid."
+
+"There ain't nuthin' ter tell--he's dead," she cried pathetically.
+
+"He said you deserted the child and left him to starve."
+
+"He said that?" she growled.
+
+"Yep."
+
+He was silent again and watched her keenly.
+
+She fumbled her dress and glanced nervously across the table as if
+afraid to ask more. Unable to wait for him to speak, she cried nervously
+at last:
+
+"Well--well--what else did he say?"
+
+"That he took the little duffer to New York and raised him."
+
+"RAISED him?"
+
+She fairly screamed the words, springing to her feet trembling from head
+to foot.
+
+"Till he was big enough to kick into the streets to shuffle for
+himself."
+
+"The scoundrel said he was dead."
+
+Her voice was far away and sank into dreamy silence. She was living the
+hideous, lonely years again with a heart starved for love.
+
+Jim's voice broke the spell:
+
+"Then you didn't desert him?" The man's eyes held hers steadily.
+
+She stared at him blankly and spoke with rushing indignation:
+
+"Desert him--my baby--my own flesh and blood? There's never been a
+minute since I looked into his eyes that I wouldn't 'a' died fur him."
+
+She paused and sobbed.
+
+"He had such pretty eyes, stranger. They looked like your'n--only they
+wuz puttier and bluer."
+
+She lifted her faded dress, brushed the tears from her cheeks and went
+on rapidly:
+
+"When I found his drunken brute of a daddy was a liar and had another
+wife, I wouldn't live with him. He tried to make me but I kicked him
+out of the house--and he stole the boy to get even with me." Her voice
+broke, she dropped her head and choked back the tears. "He did get even
+with me, too--he did," she sobbed.
+
+Jim watched her in silence until the paroxysm had spent itself.
+
+"You think you'd know this boy now if you found him?"
+
+She bent close, her breath coming in quick gasps.
+
+"My God, mister, do you think I COULD find him?"
+
+"He lives in New York; his name is Jim Anthony."
+
+"Yes--yes?" she said in a dazed way. "He called hisself Walter
+Anthony--he wuz a stranger from the North and my boy's name was Jim."
+She paused and bent eagerly across the table. "New York's an awful big
+place, ain't it?"
+
+"Some town, old gal, take it from me."
+
+"COULD I find him?"
+
+"If you've got money enough. You said you'd know him. How?"
+
+"I'd know him!" she answered eagerly. "The last quarrel we had was about
+a mark on his neck. He wuz a spunky little one. You couldn't make him
+cry. His devil of a daddy used to stick pins in him and laugh because
+he wouldn't cry. The last dirty trick he tried was what ended it all. He
+pushed a live cigar agin his little neck until I smelled it burnin' in
+the next room. I knocked him down with a chair, drove him from the house
+and told him I'd kill him if he ever put his foot inside the door agin.
+He stole my boy the next night--but he'll carry that scar to his grave."
+
+"You'd love this boy now if you found him in New York as bad as his
+father ever was?" Jim asked with a curious smile.
+
+"Yes--he's mine!" was the quick, firm answer.
+
+Jim watched her intently.
+
+"I looked Death in the face for him," she went on fiercely. "I'd dive
+to the bottom o' hell to find him if I knowed he wuz thar---- But what's
+the use to talk; that devil killed him! I've waked up many a night
+stranglin' with a dream when I seed the drunken brute burnin' an'
+beatin' an' torturin' him to death. The feller you've heard about ain't
+him. 'Tain't no use to make me hope an' then kill me----"
+
+"He's not dead, I tell you. I know."
+
+Jim's voice rang with conviction so positive the old woman's breath came
+in quick gasps and she smiled through her eager tears.
+
+"And I MIGHT find him?"
+
+"IF you've got money enough! Money can do anything in this world."
+
+He opened the black bag, thrust both hands into it and threw out a
+handful of yellow coin which he allowed to pour through his fingers and
+rattle into a tin plate which had been left on the table.
+
+Her eyes sparkled with avarice.
+
+"It's your'n--all your'n?" she breathed hungrily.
+
+"I'm taking it down South to invest for a fool who thinks"--he stopped
+and laughed--"who thinks it's bad luck to keep money that's stained with
+blood----"
+
+Nance started back.
+
+"Got blood on it?"
+
+Jim spoke in confidential appeal.
+
+"That wouldn't make any difference to you, would it?"
+
+She shook her gray locks and glanced at the pile of yellow metal,
+hungrily.
+
+"I--I wouldn't like it with blood marks!"
+
+He lifted a handful of coin, clinked it musically in his hands and held
+it in his open palms before her.
+
+"Look! Look at it close! You don't see any blood marks on it, do you?"
+
+Her eyes devoured it.
+
+"No."
+
+He seized her hand, thrust a half-dozen pieces into it and closed her
+thin fingers over it.
+
+"Feel of it--look at it!"
+
+Her hands gripped the gold. She breathed quickly, broke into a laugh,
+caught herself in the middle of it, and lapsed suddenly into silence.
+
+"Feels good, don't it?" he laughed.
+
+Nance grinned, her uneven, discolored gleaming ominously in the flicker
+of the candle.
+
+"Don't it?" he repeated.
+
+"Yeah!"
+
+He lifted another handful and threw it in the air, catching it again.
+
+"That's the stuff that makes the world go 'round. There's your only
+friend, old girl! Others promise well--but in the scratch they fail."
+
+"Yeah--when the scratch comes they fail!" Nance echoed.
+
+"Money never fails!" Jim continued eagerly. "It's the god that knows no
+right or wrong----"
+
+He touched the pile in the plate and drew the bag close for her to see.
+
+"How much do you guess is there?"
+
+Nance gazed greedily into the open bag and looked again at the shining
+heap in the plate.
+
+"I dunno--a million, I reckon."
+
+The man laughed.
+
+"Not quite that much! But enough to make you rich for life--IF you had
+it."
+
+The old woman turned away pathetically and shook her gray head.
+
+"I wouldn't have to work no more, would I?"
+
+Her thin hands touched the faded, dirty dress.
+
+"And I could buy me a decent dress," her voice sank to a whisper, "and I
+could find my boy."
+
+"You bet you could!" Jim exclaimed. "There's just one god in this world
+now, old girl--the Almighty Dollar!"
+
+He paused and leaned close, persuasively:
+
+"Suppose now, the man that got that money had to kill a fool to take
+it--what of it? You don't get big money any other way. A burglar watches
+his chance, takes his life in his hands and drills his way into a house.
+He finds a fool there who fights. It's not his fault that the man was
+born a fool, now is it?"
+
+"Mebbe not----"
+
+"Of course not. A burglar kills but one to get his pile, and then only
+because he must, in self-defence. A big gambling capitalist corners
+wheat, raises the price of bread and starves a hundred thousand children
+to death to make his. It's not stained with blood. Every dollar is
+soaked in it! Who cares?"
+
+"Yeah--who cares?" Nance growled fiercely.
+
+Jim smiled at his easy triumph.
+
+"It's dog eat dog and the devil take the hindmost now!"
+
+"That's so--ain't it?" she agreed.
+
+"You bet! Business is business and the best man's the man that gets
+there. Steal a hundred dollars, you go to the penitentiary--foolish!
+Don't do it. Steal a million and go to the Senate!"
+
+"Yeah!" Nance laughed.
+
+"Money--money for its own sake," he rushed on savagely--"right or wrong.
+That's all there is in it today, old girl--take it from me!"
+
+He paused and his smile ended in a sneer.
+
+"Man shall eat bread in the sweat of his brow? Only fools SWEAT!"
+
+Nance turned her face away, sighed softly, glancing back at Jim
+furtively.
+
+"I reckon that's so, too. Have another drink, stranger?"
+
+She poured another cup of whiskey and one for herself. She raised hers
+as if to drink and deftly threw the contents over her shoulder.
+
+Jim seized the jug and poured again.
+
+"Once more. Come, I've another toast for you. You'll drink this one I
+know."
+
+He lifted his cup and rose a little unsteadily. Nance stood with
+uplifted cup watching him.
+
+"As the poet sings," he began with a bow to the old woman:
+
+     "France has her lily, England the rose,
+     Everybody knows where the shamrock grows--
+     Scotland has her thistle flowerin' on the hill,
+     But the American Emblem--is a One Dollar Bill!"
+
+He broke into a boisterous laugh.
+
+"How's that, old girl?"
+
+"That's bully, stranger!"
+
+He lifted high his cup.
+
+"We drink to the Almighty Dollar!"
+
+"To the Almighty Dollar!" Nance echoed, clinking her cup against his.
+
+He drained it while she again emptied hers over her shoulder.
+
+"By golly, you're all right, old girl. You're a good fellow!" he cried
+jovially.
+
+"Yeah--have another?" she urged.
+
+She filled his cup and placed it on his side of the table. His eye had
+rested on the gold. He ignored the invitation, lifted a handful of gold
+and dropped it with musical clinking into the plate.
+
+"Blood marks--tommyrot!" he sneered.
+
+"Yeah--tommyrot!" she echoed. "That's what I say, too!"
+
+Jim wagged his head sagely:
+
+"Now you're talking sense, old girl!"
+
+He leaned across the table and pointed his finger straight into her
+face.
+
+"And don't you forget what I'm tellin' ye tonight--get money, get
+money!"
+
+He stopped suddenly and a sneer curled his lips.
+
+"Oh I Get it `fairly'--get it `squarely'--but whatever you do--by
+God!--GET IT!"
+
+His uplifted hand crashed downward and gripped the gold. His fingers
+slowly relaxed and the coin clinked into the plate.
+
+Nance watched him eagerly.
+
+"Yeah, that's it--get it," she breathed slowly.
+
+Jim lifted his drooping eyes to hers.
+
+"If you've GOT it, you're a god--you can do no wrong. Nobody's goin' to
+ask you HOW you got it; all they want to know is HAVE you got it!"
+
+"Yeah, nobody's goin' to ask you HOW you got it," Nance repeated, "they
+just want to know HAVE you got it! Yeah--yeah!"
+
+"You bet!"
+
+Jim's head sank in the first stupor of liquor and he dropped into the
+chair.
+
+The old woman leaned eagerly over the plate of gold and clutched the
+coin with growing avarice. Her fingers opened and closed like a bird
+of prey. She touched it lovingly and held it in her hands a long time
+watching Jim's nodding head with furtive glances. She dropped a handful
+of coin into the plate and watched its effect on the drooping head.
+
+He looked up and his eyes fell again.
+
+"Bed-time, I reckon," Nance said.
+
+"Yep--pretty tired. I'll turn in."
+
+The old woman glided sidewise to the table near the kitchen door, picked
+up the lantern and started to feel her way backwards through the calico
+curtains.
+
+"See you in the mornin', old gal," Jim drawled--"Christmas mornin'--an'
+I got somethin' else to tell ye in the mornin'----"
+
+Again his head sank to the table.
+
+"All right, mister--good night!" Nance answered, slowly feeling her way
+through the opening, watching him intently.
+
+Jim lifted his head and nodded heavily for a moment. His hand slipped
+from the table and he drew himself up sharply and rose, holding to the
+table for support.
+
+He picked up the plate of coin, poured it back in the bag, snapped the
+lock and walked with the bag unsteadily to the couch. He placed the bag
+under the pillow and pressed the soft feathers down over it, turned back
+to the table and extinguished the candle by a quick, square blow of his
+open palm on the flame.
+
+He staggered to the couch, pushed the coats to the floor, dropped
+heavily, drew the lap-robe over him and in five minutes was sound
+asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. NANCE'S STOREHOUSE
+
+
+The cabin was still. Only the broken sobbing of the woman in the little
+shed-room came faint and low on old Nance's ears.
+
+She slipped from the kitchen into the shadows of a tree near the house
+and listened until the sobbing ceased.
+
+She crept close to the shed and stood silent and ghost-like beside its
+daubed walls. Immovable as a cat crouching in the hedge to spring on her
+prey, she waited until the waning moon had sunk behind the crags. She
+laid her ear close to a crack in the logs from which she had once pushed
+the red mud to let in the light. All was still at last. The sobbing had
+stopped. The young wife was sound asleep.
+
+She had wondered vaguely at first about the crying, but quickly made
+up her mind that it was only a lover's quarrel. She was glad of it. The
+girl would bar her door and sulk all night. So much the better. There
+would be no danger of her entering the living-room where Jim slept.
+
+She would wait a little longer to make sure she was asleep. A half hour
+passed. The white-shrouded figure stood immovable, her keen ears tuned
+for the slightest sounds from within.
+
+The stars were shining in unusual brilliance. She could see her way
+through the shadows even better than in full moon. A wolf was crying
+again for his mate from a distant crag. She had grown used to his howls.
+He had come close to her cabin once in the day-time. She had tried to
+creep on him and show her friendliness. But he had fled in terror at the
+first glimpse of her dress through the parting underbrush.
+
+An owl was calling from his dead tree-top down the valley. She smiled at
+his familiar, tremulous call. Her own eyes were wide as his tonight.
+No sight or sound of Nature among the crags about her cabin had for her
+spirit any terror. The night was her mantle.
+
+She added to the meager living which she had wrung from her mountain
+farm by trading with the illicit distillers of the backwoods of Yancey
+County. Too ignorant to run a distillery of her own, she had stored
+their goods with such skill that the hiding-place had never been
+discovered. She loved good whiskey herself. She had tried to find in its
+fiery depths the dreams of happiness life had so cruelly denied her.
+
+The hiding-place of this whiskey had puzzled the revenue officers of
+every administration for years. They had watched her house day and
+night. Not one of them had ever struck the trail to her storehouse.
+
+The game had excited her imagination. She loved its daring and
+danger. That there was the slightest element of wrong or crime in her
+association with the moonshiners of her native heath had never for a
+moment entered her mind. It was no crime to make whiskey. This was the
+first article of the creed of the true North Carolina mountaineer.
+They had from the first declared that the tax levied by the Federal
+Government on the product of their industry was an infamous act of
+tyranny. They had fought this tyranny for two generations. They would
+fight it as long as there was breath in their bodies and a single load
+of powder and buckshot for their rifles.
+
+Nance considered herself a heroine in the pride of her soul for the
+shrewd and successful defiance she had given the revenue officers for so
+many years.
+
+She had been too cunning to even allow one of her own people to know the
+secret of her store house. For that reason it had never been discovered.
+She always stored the whiskey temporarily in the potato shed or under
+the cabin floor until night and then alone carried it to the place she
+had discovered.
+
+She laughed softly at the thought of this deep hiding-place tonight.
+Its temperature never varied winter or summer. Not a track had ever been
+left at its door. She might live a hundred years and, unless some spying
+eye should see her enter, its existence could never be suspected.
+
+She tipped softly into the kitchen, walked to the door of the
+living-room and listened to the even, heavy breathing of the man on the
+couch.
+
+Once more the faint echo of a sob in the shed beyond came to her keen
+ears. She stood for five minutes. It was not repeated. She had only
+imagined it. The girl was still asleep.
+
+She turned noiselessly back into the kitchen, put a box of matches in
+her pocket, felt her way to the low shelf on which she had placed the
+battered lantern, picked it up and shook it to make sure the oil was
+sufficient.
+
+She stepped lightly into the yard, pushed open the gate of the
+split-board garden fence, walked along the edge to the corner and
+selected a spade from the tools that leaned against the boards.
+
+Carrying the spade and unlighted lantern in her left hand, she glided
+from the yard into the woods. Her right hand before her to feel for
+underbrush or overhanging bough, she made her way rapidly to the
+swift-flowing mountain brook.
+
+Arrived at the water whose musical ripple had guided her steps, she
+removed her shoes and placed them beside a tree. She wore no stockings.
+The faded skirt she raised and tucked into her belt. She could wade knee
+deep now without hindrance.
+
+Seizing the spade and lantern, she made her way slowly and carefully
+downstream for three hundred yards and paused beside a shelving ledge
+which projected half-way across the brook.
+
+She paused and listened again for full ten minutes, immovable as the
+rock on which her thin, bony hand rested. The stars were looking, but
+they could only peep through the network of overhanging trees.
+
+Feeling her way along the rock until the ledge rose beyond her reach,
+she bent low and waded through a still pool of eddying water straight
+under the mountain-side for more than a hundred feet. Her extended right
+hand had felt for the stone ceiling above her head until it ran abruptly
+out of reach.
+
+She straightened her body and took a deep breath. Ten steps she counted
+carefully and placed her bare feet on the dry rock beyond the water.
+
+Carefully picking her way up the sloping bank until she reached a
+stretch of soft earth, she sank to her hands and knees and crawled
+through an opening less than three feet in height.
+
+"Thar now!" she laughed. "Let 'em find me if they can!"
+
+She lighted her lantern and seated herself on a boulder to rest--one
+hundred and fifty feet in the depths of a mountain. The cavern was ten
+feet in height and fifty feet in length. The projecting ledges of rock
+made innumerable shelves on which a merchant might have displayed his
+wares.
+
+The old woman was too shrewd for that. Her jugs were carefully planted
+in the ground behind two fallen boulders, and their hiding-place
+concealed by a layer of drift which she had gathered from the edge
+of the water. She had taken this precaution against the day when some
+curious explorer might stumble on her secret as she had found it hunting
+ginsing roots in the woods overhead. Her foot had slipped suddenly
+through a hole in the soft mould. She peered cautiously below and could
+see no bottom. She dropped a stone and heard it strike in the depths.
+She made her way down the side of the crag and found the opening through
+the still eddying waters. The hole through the roof she had long ago
+plugged and covered with earth and dry leaves.
+
+She carried her lantern and spade to the further end of her storehouse
+and dug a hole in the earth about two feet in depth. The earth she
+carefully placed in a heap.
+
+"That's the place!" she giggled excitedly.
+
+She left her lantern burning, dropped again on the soft, mould-covered
+earth and quickly emerged on the stone banks of the wide, still pool.
+Her hand high extended above her head, she waded through the water until
+she touched the heavy ceiling, lowered her body again to a stooping
+position and rapidly made her way out into the bed of the brook.
+
+She passed eagerly along the babbling path and stopped with sure
+instinct at the tree beside whose trunk she had placed her shoes.
+
+In five minutes she had made her way through the woods and reached
+the house. She tipped into the kitchen and stood in the doorway or the
+living-room watching her sleeping guest. The even breathing assured her
+that all was well. Her plan couldn't fail. She listened again for the
+sobs in the shed-room.
+
+She was sure once that she heard them. Five minutes passed and still she
+was uncertain. To avoid any possible accident she tipped back through
+the kitchen, circled the house and placed her ear against the crack in
+the logs.
+
+The girl was sobbing--or was she praying? She crouched beside the wall,
+waited and listened. The night wind stirred the dead leaves at her feet.
+She lifted her head with a sudden start, laughed softly and bent again
+to listen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. TRAPPED
+
+The sobbing in the little room was the only sound that came from one of
+the grimmest battle-fields from which the soul of a woman ever emerged
+alive.
+
+To the first rush of cowardly tears Mary had yielded utterly. She had
+fallen across the high-puffed feather mattress of the bed, shivering in
+humble gratitude at her escape from the horror of blindness. The grip
+of his claw-like fingers on her throat came back to her now in sickening
+waves. The blood was still trickling from the wound which his nails had
+made when she tore them loose in her first mad fight for breath.
+
+She lifted her body and breathed deeply to make sure her throat was
+free. God in heaven! Could she ever forget the hideous sinking of body
+and soul down into the depths of the black abyss! She had seen the face
+of Death and it was horrible. Life, warm and throbbing, was sweet. She
+loved it. She hated Death.
+
+Yes--she was a coward. She knew it now, and didn't care.
+
+She sprang to her feet with sudden fear. He might attack her again to
+make sure that her soul had been completely crushed.
+
+She crept to the door and felt its edges.
+
+"Yes, thank God, there's a place for the bar!" She shivered.
+
+She ran her trembling fingers carefully along the rough logs and found
+it in the corner. She slipped it cautiously into the iron sockets,
+staggered to the bed and dropped in grateful assurance of safety for the
+moment. She buried her face in the pillow to fight back the sobs. How
+great her fall! She could crawl on her hands and knees to Jane Anderson
+now and beg for protection. The last shred of pretense was gone. The
+bankrupt soul stood naked and shivering, the last rag torn from pride.
+
+What a miserable fight she had made, too, when put to the test! Ella had
+at least proved herself worthy to live. The scrub-woman had risen in the
+strength of desperation and killed the beast who had maimed her. She had
+only sunk a limp mass of shivering, helpless cowardice and fled from the
+room whining and pleading for mercy.
+
+She could never respect herself again. The scene came back in vivid
+flashes. His eyes, glowing like two balls of blue fire, froze the blood
+in her veins--his voice the rasping cold steel of a file. And this
+coarse, ugly beast had held her in the spell of love. She had clung to
+him, kissed him in rapture and yielded herself to him soul and body. And
+he had gripped her delicate throat and choked her into insensibility,
+dropping her limp form from his hands like a strangled rat. She could
+remember the half-conscious moment that preceded the total darkness as
+she felt his grip relax.
+
+He would choke and beat her again, too. He had said it in the sneering
+laughter at the door.
+
+"A good little wife now and it's all right!"
+
+And if you're not obedient to my whims I'll choke you until you are!
+That was precisely what he meant. That he was capable of any depth of
+degradation, and that he meant to drag her with him, there could be no
+longer the shadow of a doubt.
+
+She could not endure another scene like that. She sprang to her feet
+again, shivering with terror. She could hear the hum of the conversation
+in the next room. He was persuading his mother to join in his criminal
+career. He was busy with his oily tongue transforming the simple,
+ignorant, lonely old woman into an avaricious fiend who would receive
+his blood-stained booty and rejoice in it.
+
+He was laughing again. She put her trembling hands over her ears to shut
+out the sound. He had laughed at her shame and cowardice. It made her
+flesh creep to hear it.
+
+She would escape. The mountain road was dark and narrow and crooked. She
+would lose her way in the night, perhaps. No matter. She could keep
+warm by walking. At dawn she would find her way to a cabin and ask
+protection. If she could reach Asheville, a telegram would bring
+her father. She wouldn't lose a minute. Her hat and coat were in the
+living-room. She would go bareheaded and without a coat. In the morning
+she could borrow one from the woman at the Mount Mitchell house.
+
+She crept cautiously along the walls of the room searching for a door or
+window. There must be a way out. She made the round without discovering
+an opening of any kind. There must be a window of some kind high up for
+ventilation. There was no glass in it, of course. It was closed by a
+board shutter--if she could reach it.
+
+She began at the door, found the corner of the room and stretched her
+arms upward until they touched the low, rough joist. Over every foot of
+its surface she ran her fingers, carefully feeling for a window. There
+was none!
+
+She found an open crack and peered through. The stars were shining cold
+and clear in the December sky. The twinkling heavens reminded her that
+it was Christmas Eve. The dawn she hoped to see in the woods, if she
+could escape, would be Christmas morning. There was no time for idle
+tears of self-pity.
+
+The one thought that beat in every throb of her heart now was to escape
+from her cell and put a thousand miles between her body and the beast
+who had strangled her. She might break through the roof! As a rule the
+shed-rooms of these rude mountain cabins were covered with split boards
+lightly nailed to narrow strips eighteen inches apart. If there were
+no ceiling, or if the ceiling were not nailed down and she should
+move carefully, she might break through near the eaves and drop to the
+ground. The cabin was not more than nine feet in height.
+
+She raised herself on the footrail of the bed and felt the ceiling.
+There could be no mistake. It was there. She pressed gently at first and
+then with all her might against each board. They were nailed hard and
+fast.
+
+She sank to the bed again in despair. She had barred herself in a prison
+cell. There was no escape except by the door through which the beast had
+driven her. And he would probably draw the couch against it and sleep
+there.
+
+And then came the crushing conviction that such flight would be of no
+avail in a struggle with a man of Jim's character. His laughing words of
+triumph rang through her soul now in all their full, sinister meaning.
+
+"The world ain't big enough for you to get away from me, Kiddo!"
+
+It wasn't big enough. She knew it with tragic and terrible certainty. In
+his blind, brutal way he loved her with a savage passion that would halt
+at nothing. He would follow her to the ends of the earth and kill any
+living thing that stood in his way. And when he found her at last he
+would kill her.
+
+How could she have been so blind! There was no longer any mystery about
+his personality. The slender hands and feet, which she had thought
+beautiful in her infatuation, were merely the hands and feet of a thief.
+The strength of jaw and neck and shoulders had made him the most daring
+of all thieves--a burglar.
+
+His strange moods were no longer strange. He laughed for joy at the wild
+mountain gorges and crags because he saw safety for the hiding-place of
+priceless jewels he meant to steal.
+
+There could be no escape in divorce from such a brute. He was happy in
+her cowardly submission. He would laugh at the idea of divorce. Should
+she dare to betray the secrets of his life of crime, he would kill her
+as he would grind a snake under his heel.
+
+A single clause from the marriage ceremony kept ringing its
+knell--"until DEATH DO US PART!"
+
+She knelt at last and prayed for Death.
+
+"Oh, dear God, let me die, let me die!"
+
+Suicide was a crime unthinkable to her pious mind. Only God now could
+save her in his infinite mercy.
+
+She lay for a long time on the floor where she had fallen in utter
+despair. The tears that brought relief at first had ceased to flow.
+She had beaten her bleeding wings against every barrier, and they were
+beyond her strength.
+
+Out of the first stupor of complete surrender, her senses slowly
+emerged. She felt the bare boards of the floor and wondered vaguely why
+she was there.
+
+The hum of voices again came to her ears. She lay still and listened.
+A single terrible sentence she caught. He spoke it with such malignant
+power she could see through the darkness the flames of hell leaping in
+his eyes.
+
+"Nobody's going to ask you HOW you got it--all they want to know is HAVE
+you got it!"
+
+She laughed hysterically at the idea of reformation that had stirred her
+to such desperate appeal in the first shock of discovery. As well dream
+of reforming the Devil as the man who expressed his philosophy of
+life in that sentence! Blood dripped from every word, the blood of the
+innocent and the helpless who might consciously or unconsciously stand
+in his way. The man who had made up his mind to get rich quick, no
+matter what the cost to others, would commit murder without the quiver
+of an eyelid. If she had ever had a doubt of this fact, she could have
+none after her experience of tonight.
+
+She wondered vaguely of the effects he was producing on his ignorant
+old mother. Her words were too low and indistinct to be heard. But she
+feared the worst. The temptation of the gold he was showing her would be
+more than she could resist.
+
+She staggered to her feet and fell limp across the bed. The iron walls
+of a life prison closed about her crushed soul. The one door that could
+open was Death and only God's hand could lift its bars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE
+
+
+Hour after hour Nance stood beside the wall of the shed-room and with
+the patience of a cat waited for the sobs to cease and the girl to be
+quiet.
+
+Mary had risen from the bed once and paced the floor in the dark for
+more than an hour, like a frightened, wild animal, trapped and caged for
+the first time in life. With growing wonder, Nance counted the beat
+of her foot-fall, five steps one way and five back--round after round,
+round after round, in ceaseless repetition.
+
+"Goddlemighty, is she gone clean crazy!" she exclaimed.
+
+The footsteps stopped at last and the low sobs came once more from the
+bed. The old woman crouched down on a stone beside the log wall and drew
+the shawl about her shoulders.
+
+A rooster crowed for midnight. Still the restless thing inside was
+stirring. Nance rose uneasily. Her lantern was still burning in her
+storehouse under the cliff. The wick might eat so low it would explode.
+She had heard that such things happened to lamps. It was foolish to have
+left it burning, anyhow.
+
+She glided noiselessly from the house into the woods, entered her hidden
+door exactly as she had done before, extinguished the lantern, placed it
+on a shelving rock and put a dozen matches beside it.
+
+In ten minutes she had returned to the house and crouched once more
+against the wall of the shed.
+
+The low, pleading voice was praying. She pressed her ear to the crack
+and heard distinctly. She must be patient. Her plan was sure to succeed
+if she were only patient. No woman could sob and pray and walk all
+night. She must fall down unconscious from sheer exhaustion before day.
+
+The old woman slipped into the kitchen, took up the quilt which she had
+spread on the floor for her bed, wrapped it about her thin shoulders and
+returned to her watch.
+
+Again and again she rose, believing her patience had won, and placed
+her ear to the crack only to hear a sound within which told her only too
+plainly that the girl was yet awake. Sometimes it was a sigh, sometimes
+she cleared her throat, sometimes she tossed restlessly. One spoken
+sentence she heard again and again:
+
+"Oh, dear God, have mercy on my lost soul!"
+
+"What can be the matter with the fool critter!" Nance muttered. "Is she
+moanin' for sin? To be shore, they don't have no revival meetings this
+time o' year!"
+
+She had known sinners to mourn through a whole summer sometimes, but
+never in all her experience in religious revivals had a mourner carried
+it over into winter. The dancing had always eased the tension and
+brought a relapse to sinful thoughts.
+
+The hours dragged until the roosters began to crow for day. It would
+soon be light.
+
+She must act now. There was no time to lose. She pressed her ear to the
+crack once more and held it five minutes.
+
+Not a sound came from within. The broken spirit had yielded to the
+stupor of exhaustion at last.
+
+With swift, cat's tread Nance circled the cabin and entered the kitchen.
+The quilt she carefully spread on the floor leading to the entrance to
+the living-room, crossed it softly and stood in the doorway with her
+long hands on the calico hangings.
+
+For five minutes she remained immovable and listened to the deep,
+regular breathing of the sleeping man. Her wits were keen, her eyes
+wide. She could see the dim outlines of the furniture by the starlight
+through the window. Small objects in the room were, of course,
+invisible. To light a candle was not to be thought of. It might wake the
+sleeper.
+
+She knew how to make the light without a noise or its rays reaching
+his face. He had startled her with the electric torch because of its
+novelty. She was no longer afraid. She would know how to press the
+button. He had left the thing lying on the table beside the black bag.
+He might have hidden the gold. He would not remember in his drunken
+stupor to move the electric torch.
+
+She glided ghost-like into the room. Her bare feet were velvet. She knew
+every board in the floor. There was one near the table that creaked. She
+counted her steps and cleared the spot without a sound.
+
+Her thin fingers found the edge of the table and slipped with uncanny
+touch along its surface until her hand closed on the rounded form of the
+torch.
+
+Without moving in her tracks she turned the light on the table and in
+every nook and corner of the room beyond. She slowly swung her body on a
+pivot, flashing the light into each shadow and over every inch of floor,
+turning always in a circle toward the couch.
+
+Satisfied that the object she sought was nowhere in the circle she had
+covered, she moved a step from the table and winked the light beneath
+it. She squatted on the floor and flashed it carefully over every inch
+of its boards from one corner of the room to the other and under the
+couch.
+
+She rose softly, glided behind the head of the sleeping man and stood
+back some six feet, lest the flash of the torch might disturb him.
+She threw its rays behind the couch and slowly raised them until they
+covered the dirty pillow on which Jim was sleeping. There beneath the
+pillow lay the bag with its precious treasure. He was sleeping on it.
+She had feared this, but felt sure that the whiskey he had drunk would
+hold him in its stupor until late next morning.
+
+She crouched low and fixed the light's ray slowly on the bag that her
+hand might not err the slightest in its touch. She laid her bony fingers
+on it with a slow, imperceptible movement, held them there a moment and
+moved the bag the slightest bit to test the sleeper's wakefulness. To
+her surprise he stirred instantly.
+
+"What'ell!" he growled sleepily.
+
+She stood motionless until he was breathing again with deep, even, heavy
+throb. Gliding back to the table, she flashed the light again on the
+bag and studied its position. His big neck rested squarely across it. To
+move it without waking him was a physical impossibility.
+
+Here was a dilemma she had not fully faced. She had not believed it
+possible for him to place the bag where she could not get it. Her
+only purpose up to this moment had been to take it and store it safely
+beneath the soft earth in the inner recess of the cave. He would miss
+it in the morning, of course. She would express her amazement. The bar
+would be down from the front door. Someone had robbed him. The money
+could never be found.
+
+She had made up her mind to take it the moment he had convinced her that
+his philosophy of life was true. His eloquence had transformed her
+from an ignorant old woman, content with her poverty and dirt, into a
+dangerous and daring criminal.
+
+There was no such thing as failure to be thought of now for a moment.
+The spade in the inner room of her store-house could be put to larger
+use if necessary. With the strength of the madness now on her she could
+carry his body on her back through the woods. The world would be none
+the wiser. He had quarreled with his wife, and left her in a rage that
+night. That was all she knew. The sheriff of neither county could
+afford to bother his head long over an insolvable mystery. Besides, both
+sheriffs were her friends.
+
+Her decision was instantaneous when once she saw that it was safe.
+
+She smiled over the grim irony of the thing--his words kept humming in
+her ears, his voice, low and persuasive:
+
+"Suppose now the man that got that money had to kill a fool to take
+it--what of it? You don't get big money any other way!"
+
+On the shelf beside the door was a butcher knife which she also used for
+carving. She had sharpened its point that night to carve her Christmas
+turkey next day.
+
+She raised the torch and flashed its rays on the shelf to guide her
+hand, crept to the wall, took down the knife and laid the electric torch
+in its place.
+
+Steadying her body against the wall, her arms outspread, she edged
+her way behind the couch and bent over the sleeping man until by his
+breathing she had located his heart.
+
+She raised her tall figure and brought the knife down with a crash into
+his breast. With a sudden wrench she drew it from the wound and crouched
+among the shadows watching him with wide-dilated eyes.
+
+The stricken sleeper gasped for breath, his writhing body fairly
+leaped into the air, bounded on the couch and stood erect. He staggered
+backward and lurched toward her. The crouching figure bent low, gripping
+the knife and waiting for her chance to strike the last blow.
+
+Strangling with blood, Jim opened his eyes and saw the old woman
+creeping nearer through the gray light of the dawn.
+
+He threw his hands above his head and tried to shout his warning. She
+was on him, her trembling hand feeling for his throat, before he could
+speak.
+
+Struggling, in his weakened condition, to tear her fingers away, he
+gasped:
+
+"Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you're doing?"
+
+"I just want yer money," she whispered. "That's all, and I'm a-goin' ter
+have it!"
+
+Her fingers closed and the knife sank into his neck.
+
+She sprang back and watched him lurch and fall across the couch. His
+body writhed a moment in agony and was still.
+
+Holding the knife in her hand, she tore open the bag and thrust her
+itching fingers into the gold, gripping it fiercely.
+
+"Nobody's goin' to ask ye how ye got it--they just want to know HAVE ye
+got it--yeah! Yeah----"
+
+The last word died on her lips. The door of the shed-room suddenly
+opened and Mary stood before her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. DELIVERANCE
+
+The first dim noises of the tragedy in the living-room Mary's stupefied
+senses had confused with a nightmare which she had been painfully
+fighting.
+
+The torch in Nance's hand had flashed through a crack into her face
+once. It was the flame of a revolver in the hands of a thief in Jim's
+den in New York. She merely felt it. Her eyes had been gouged out and
+she was blind. A gang of his coarse companions were holding a council,
+cursing, drinking, fighting. Jim had sprung between two snarling brutes
+and knocked the revolver into the air. The flame had scorched her face.
+
+With an oath he had slapped her.
+
+"Get out, you damned little fool!" he growled. "You're always in the way
+when you're not wanted. Nobody can ever find you when there's work to be
+done----"
+
+"But I can't see, Jim dear," she pleaded. "I do not know when things are
+out of place----"
+
+"You're a liar!" he roared. "You know where every piece of junk stands
+in this room better than I do. I can't bring a friend into that door
+that you don't know it. You can hear the swish of a woman's skirt on the
+stairs four stories below----"
+
+"I only asked you who the woman was who came in with you, Jim----"
+
+His fingers gripped her throat and stopped her breath. Through the roar
+of surging blood she could barely hear the vile words he was dinning
+into her ears.
+
+"I know you just asked me, you nosing little devil, and it's none of
+your business! She's a pal of mine, if you want to know, the slickest
+thief that ever robbed a flat. She's got more sense in a minute than
+you'll ever have in a lifetime. She's going to live here with me now.
+You can sleep on the cot in the kitchen. And you come when she calls,
+if you know what's good for your lazy hide. I've told her to thrash the
+life out of you if you dare to give her any impudence."
+
+She had cowered at his feet and begged him not to beat her again. The
+fumes of whiskey and stale beer filled the place.
+
+Jim turned from her to quell a new fight at the other end of the room.
+Another woman was there, coarse, dirty, beastly. She drew a knife and
+demanded her share of the night's robberies. She was trying to break
+from the men who held her to stab Jim. They were all fighting and
+smashing the furniture----
+
+She sprang from the bed with a cry of horror. The noise was real! It was
+not a dream. The beast inside was stumbling in the dark. His passions
+fired by liquor, he was fumbling to find his way into her room.
+
+She rushed to the door and put her shoulder against the bar, panting in
+terror.
+
+She heard his strangling cry:
+
+"Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you're doing?"
+
+And then his mother's voice, mad with greed, cruel, merciless:
+
+"I just want yer money--that's all, an' I'm goin' to have it!"
+
+She heard the clinch in the struggle and the dull blow of the knife.
+In a sudden flash she saw it all. He had succeeded in rousing Nance's
+avarice and transforming her into a fiend. Without knowing it she was
+stabbing her own son to death in the room in which he had been born!
+
+She tried to scream and her lips refused to move. She tried to hurry to
+the rescue and her knees turned to water.
+
+Gasping for breath, she drew the bar from her prison door and walked
+slowly into the room.
+
+Nance's tall, bony figure was still crouched over the open bag, her
+left hand buried in the gold, her right gripping the knife, her face
+convulsed with greed--avarice and murder blended into perfect hell-lit
+unity at last.
+
+Jim lay on his back, limp and still, obliquely across the couch, his
+breast bared in the struggle, the blood oozing a widening scarlet blot
+on his white shirt. His head had fallen backward over the edge and could
+not be seen.
+
+Without moving a muscle, her body crouching, Nance spoke:
+
+"You wuz awake--you heered?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+The gleaming eyes burned through the gray dawn, two points of
+scintillating, hellish light fixed in purpose on the intruder.
+
+She had only meant to take the money. The fool had fought. She killed
+him because she had to. And now the sobbing, sniveling little idiot who
+had kept her waiting all night had stuck her nose into some thing that
+didn't concern her. If she opened her mouth, the gallows would be the
+end.
+
+She would open it too. Of course she would. She was his wife. They had
+quarreled, but the simpleton would blab. Nance knew this with unerring
+instinct. It was no use to offer her half the money. She didn't have
+sense enough to take it. She knew those pious, baby faces--well, there
+was room for two in the cave under the cliff. It was daylight now. No
+matter; it was Christmas morning. No man or woman ever darkened her door
+on Christmas day. She could hide their bodies until dark, and then it
+was easy. She would be in New York herself before anyone could suspect
+the meaning of that automobile in the shed or the owners would trouble
+themselves to come after it.
+
+Again her decision was quick and fierce. Her hand was on the bag. She
+would hold it against the world, all hell and heaven.
+
+With the leap of a tigress she was on the girl, the bag gripped in her
+left hand, the knife in her right.
+
+To her amazement the trembling figure stood stock still gazing at her
+with a strange look of pity.
+
+"Well!" Nance growled. "I ain't goin' ter be took now I've got this
+money--I'm goin' to New York ter find my boy!"
+
+She lifted the knife and stopped in sheer stupor of surprise at the
+girl's immovable body and staring eyes. Had she gone crazy? What on
+earth could it mean? No girl of her youth and beauty could look death
+in the face without a tremor. No woman in her right senses could see
+the body of her dead husband lying there red and yet quivering without a
+sign. It was more than even Nance's nerves could endure.
+
+She lowered the knife and peered into the girl's set face and glanced
+quickly about the room. Could she have called help? Was the house
+surrounded? It was impossible. She couldn't have escaped. What did it
+mean?
+
+The old woman drew back with a terror she couldn't understand.
+
+"What are you looking at me like that for?" she panted.
+
+Mary held her gaze in lingering pity. Her heart went out now to the
+miserable creature trembling in the presence of her victim. The blow
+must fall that would crush the soul out of her body at one stroke. The
+gray hair had tumbled over her distorted features, the ragged dress had
+been torn from her throat in the struggle and her flat, bony breast was
+exposed.
+
+"You don't--have--to--go--to--New York--to--find--your--boy!" the
+strained voice said at last.
+
+Nance frowned in surprise and flew back at her in rage.
+
+"Yes I do, too--he lives thar!"
+
+The little figure straightened above the crouching form.
+
+"He's here!"
+
+Nance sank slowly against the table and rested the bag on the edge of
+the chair. Its weight was more than she could bear. She tried to glance
+over her shoulder at the body on the couch and her courage failed. The
+first suspicion of the hideous truth flashed through her stunned mind.
+She couldn't grasp it at once.
+
+"Whar?" she whispered hoarsely.
+
+Mary lifted her arm slowly and pointed to the couch.
+
+"There!"
+
+Nance glared at her a moment and broke into a hysterical laugh.
+
+"It's a lie--a lie--a lie!"
+
+"It's true----"
+
+"Yer're just a lyin' ter me ter get away an give me up--but ye won't do
+it--little Miss--old Nance is too smart for ye this time. Who told you
+that?"
+
+"He told me tonight!"
+
+"He told you?" she repeated blankly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're a liar!" she growled. "And I'll prove it--you move out o' your
+tracks an' I'll cut your throat. My boy's got a scar on his neck--I know
+right whar to look for it. Don't you move now till I see--I know you're
+a liar----"
+
+She turned and with the quick trembling fingers of her right hand tore
+the shirt back from the neck and saw the scar. She still held the bag
+in her left hand. The muscles slowly relaxed and the bag fell endwise to
+the floor, the gold crashing and rolling over the boards. She stared in
+stupor and threw both hands above her streaming gray hair.
+
+"Lord God Almighty!" she shrieked. "Why didn't I think that he wuz
+somebody else's boy if he weren't mine!"
+
+The thin body trembled and crumpled beside the couch.
+
+The girl lifted her head in a look of awe as if in prayer.
+
+"And God has set me free! free! free!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. THE DOCTOR
+
+Mary stood overwhelmed by the tragedy she had witnessed. For the time
+her brain refused to record sensations. She had seen too much, felt too
+much in the past eight hours. Soul and body were numb.
+
+The first impressions of returning consciousness were fixed on Nance.
+She had risen suddenly from the floor and smoothed the hair back from
+Jim's forehead with tender touch as if afraid to wake him. She drew the
+quilt from the kitchen floor, spread it over the body, and lifted her
+eyes to Mary's. It was only too plain.
+
+Reason had gone.
+
+She tipped close and put her fingers on her lips.
+
+"Sh! We mustn't wake him. He's tired. Let him sleep. It's my boy. He's
+come home. We'll fix him a fine Christmas dinner. I've got a turkey.
+I'll bake a cake----" she paused and laughed softly. "I've got eggs too,
+fresh laid yesterday. We'll make egg-nog all day and all night. I ain't
+had no Christmas since that devil stole him. We'll have one this time,
+won't we?"
+
+The girl's wits were again alert. She must run for help. A minute to
+humor the old woman's delusion and she might return before any harm
+came to her. Jim had not moved a muscle. It was plain that he was beyond
+help.
+
+"Yes," Mary answered cheerfully. "You fix the cake--and I'll get the
+wood to make a fire."
+
+Nance laughed again.
+
+"We'll have the dinner all ready for him when he wakes, won't we?"
+
+"Yes. I'll be back in a few minutes."
+
+Nance hurried into the kitchen humming an old song in a faltering voice
+that sent the cold chills down the girl's spine.
+
+Mary slipped quietly through the door and ran with swift, sure foot down
+the narrow road along which the machine had picked its way the afternoon
+before. The cabin they had passed last could not be more than a mile.
+
+She made no effort to find the logs for pedestrians when the road
+crossed the brook. She plunged straight through the babbling waters with
+her shoes, regardless of skirts.
+
+Panting for breath, she saw the smoke curling from the cabin chimney a
+quarter of a mile away.
+
+"Thank God!" she cried. "They're awake!"
+
+She was so glad to have reached her goal, her strength suddenly gave way
+and she dropped to a boulder by the wayside to rest. In two minutes she
+was up and running with all her might.
+
+She rushed to the door and knocked.
+
+A mountaineer in shirt-sleeves and stockings answered with a look of
+mild wonder.
+
+"For God's sake come and help me. I must have a doctor quick. We spent
+the night at Mrs. Owens'. She's lost her mind completely--a terrible
+thing has happened--you'll help me?"
+
+"Cose I will, honey," the mountaineer drawled. "Jest ez quick ez I get
+on my shoes."
+
+"Is there a doctor near?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+He answered without looking up:
+
+"The best one that God ever sent to a sick bed. He don't charge nobody
+a cent in these parts. He just heals the sick because hit's his callin'.
+Come from somewhar up North and built hisself a fine log house up on
+the side of the mountains. Hit's full of all the medicines in the world,
+too----"
+
+"Will you ask him to come for me?" Mary broke in.
+
+"I'll jump on my hoss an' have him thar in half a' hour. You can run
+right back, honey, and look out for the po' ole critter till we get
+thar."
+
+"Thank you! Thank you!" she answered grate fully.
+
+"Not at all, not at all!" he protested as he swung through the door
+and hurried to the low-pitched sheds in which his horse and cow were
+stabled. "Be thar in no time!"
+
+When Mary returned, Nance was still busy in the kitchen. She had built a
+fire and put the turkey in the oven.
+
+Mary was counting the minutes now until the doctor should come. The old
+woman's prattle about the return of her lost boy, so big and strong and
+handsome, had become unendurable. She felt that she should scream and
+collapse unless help came at once. She looked at her watch. It was just
+thirty-five minutes from the time she had left the cabin in the valley
+below.
+
+She sprang to her feet with a smothered cry of joy. The beat of a
+horse's hoof at full gallop was ringing down the road.
+
+In two minutes the Doctor's firm footstep was heard at the kitchen door.
+
+Nance turned with a look of glad surprise.
+
+"Well, fur the land sake, ef hit ain't Doctor Mulford! Come right in!"
+she cried.
+
+The Doctor seized her hand.
+
+"And how is my good friend, Mrs. Owens, this morning?" he asked
+cheerfully.
+
+Mary was studying him with deep interest. She had asked herself the
+question a hundred times how much she could tell him--what to say and
+what to leave unsaid. One glance at his calm, intellectual face was
+enough. He was a man of striking appearance, six feet tall, forty-five
+years of age, hair prematurely gray and a slight stoop to his broad
+shoulders. His brown eyes seemed to enfold the old woman in their
+sympathy.
+
+Nance was chattering her answer to his greeting.
+
+"Oh, I'm feelin' fine, Doctor--" she dropped her voice
+confidentially--"and you're just in time for a good dinner. My boy that
+was lost has come home. He's a great big fellow, wears fine clothes and
+come up the mountain all the way in a devil wagon." She put her hand
+to her mouth. "Sh! He's asleep! We won't wake him till dinner! He's all
+tired out."
+
+The Doctor nodded understandingly and turned toward Mary.
+
+"And this young lady?"
+
+"Oh, that's his wife from New York--ain't she purty?"
+
+The Doctor saw the delicate hands trembling and extended his.
+
+No word was spoken. None was needed. There was healing in his touch,
+healing in his whole being. No man or woman could resist the appeal of
+his personality. Their secrets were yielded with perfect faith.
+
+"Come with me quickly," Mary whispered.
+
+"I understand," he answered carelessly.
+
+Turning again to Nance, he said with easy confidence:
+
+"I'll not disturb you with your cooking, Mrs. Owens. Go right on with
+it. I'll have a little chat with your son's wife. If she's from New York
+I want to ask her about some of my people up there----"
+
+"All right," Nance answered, "but don't you wake HIM! Go with her inter
+the shed-room."
+
+"We'll go on tip-toe!" the Doctor whispered.
+
+Nance nodded, smiled and bent again over the oven.
+
+Mary led him quickly through the living-room, head averted from the
+couch, and into the prison cell in which she had passed the night. The
+physician glanced with a startled look at the gold still scattered on
+the floor.
+
+She seized his hand and swayed.
+
+He touched the brown hair of her bared head gently and pressed her hand.
+
+"Steady, now, child, tell me quickly."
+
+"Yes, yes," she gasped, "I'll tell you the truth----"
+
+He held her gaze.
+
+"And the whole truth--it's best."
+
+Mary nodded, tried to speak and failed. She drew her breath and steadied
+herself, still gripping his hand.
+
+"I will," she began faintly. "He's dead----"
+
+She paused and nodded toward the living-room.
+
+"The man--her son?"
+
+"Yes. We came last night from Asheville. We were on our honeymoon. We
+haven't been married but three weeks. I never knew the truth about his
+life and character until last night when he told me that this old woman
+was his mother. I found a case of jewels in the bag he carried--jewels
+that belonged to a man in New York who was robbed and shot. I recognized
+the case. He confessed to me at last in cold, brutal words that he was
+a thief. I couldn't believe it at first. I tried to make him give up his
+criminal career. He laughed at me. He gloried in it. I tried to leave
+him. He choked me into insensibility and drove me into this cell, where
+I spent the night. He brought the gold that you saw on the floor which
+he had honestly made to give to his old mother--but for a devilish
+purpose. He showed it to her last night to rouse her avarice and make
+her first agree to hide his stolen goods. He succeeded too well. Before
+he had revealed himself she slipped into the room at daylight while he
+slept in a drunken stupor, murdered him and took the money. The struggle
+waked me and I rushed in. She gripped her knife to kill me. I told her
+that she had murdered her own son and she went mad----"
+
+She paused for breath and her lips trembled piteously.
+
+"You know what to do, Doctor?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"And you'll help me?"
+
+He smiled tenderly and nodded his head.
+
+"God knows you need it, child!"
+
+The nerves snapped at last, and she sank a limp heap at his feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. THE CALL DIVINE
+
+The Doctor threw off his coat and took charge of the stricken house. He
+sent his waiting messenger for a faithful nurse, a mountain woman whom
+he had trained, and began the fight for Mary's life. The collapse into
+which she had fallen would require weeks of patient care. There was no
+immediate danger of death, and while he awaited the arrival of help, he
+turned into the living-room to examine the body of the slain husband.
+
+The head had fallen backward over the side of the lounge and a pool of
+blood, still warm and red, lay on the floor in a widening circle beneath
+it. His quick eye took in its significance at a glance. He sprang
+forward, ripped the shirt wide open and applied his ear to the breast.
+
+"He's still alive!" he cried excitedly.
+
+He examined the ugly wound in the left side and found that the knife
+had penetrated the lung. The heart had not been touched. The blow on the
+neck had not been fatal. The shock of the final stroke had merely choked
+the wounded man into collapse from the hemorrhage of the left lung. The
+position into which the body had fallen across the couch had gradually
+cleared the accumulated blood. There was a chance to save his life.
+
+In ten minutes he had applied stimulants and restored respiration,
+but the deep wheeze from the stricken lung told only too plainly the
+dangerous character of the wound. It would be a bitter fight. His
+enormous vitality might win. The chances were against him.
+
+Jim's lips moved and he tried to speak.
+
+The Doctor placed his hand on his mouth and shook his head. The drooping
+eyelids closed in grateful obedience.
+
+The beat of horses' hoofs echoed down the mountain road. His nurse and
+messenger were coming. He decided at once to move Mary to his own house.
+She must regain consciousness in new surroundings or her chance of
+survival would be slender. To awake in this miserable cabin, the scene
+of the tragedy she had witnessed, might be instantly fatal. Besides she
+must not yet know that the brute who had choked her was alive and might
+still hold the power of life and death over her frail body. She believed
+him dead. It was best so. He might be dead and buried before she
+recovered consciousness. The fever that burned her brain would
+completely cloud reason for days.
+
+He hastily improvised a stretcher with a blanket and two strong
+quilting-poles which stood in the corner of the room. Nance helped him
+without question. She obeyed his slightest suggestion with childlike
+submission.
+
+He placed Mary on the stretcher, wrapped her body in another warm
+blanket and turned to his nurse and messenger:
+
+"Carry her to my house. Walk slowly and rest whenever you wish.
+Don't wake her. Tell Aunt Abbie to put her to bed in the south room
+overlooking the valley. Don't leave her a minute, Betty. She's in the
+first collapse of brain fever. You know what to do. I'll be there in an
+hour. You come back here, John. I want you."
+
+The mountaineer nodded and seized one end of the stretcher. The nurse
+took up the other and the Doctor held wide the cabin door as they passed
+out.
+
+For three weeks he fought the grim battle with Death for the two young
+lives the Christmas tragedy had thrust into his hands. He gave his
+entire time day and night to the desperate struggle.
+
+When pneumonia had developed and Jim's life hung by a hair, he slept on
+the couch in the living-room of the cabin and had Nance make for herself
+a bed on the floor of the kitchen.
+
+The old woman remained an obedient child. She cooked the Doctor's meals
+and did the work about the house and yard as if nothing had disturbed
+her habits of lonely plodding. She believed implicitly all that was told
+her. Her son had pneumonia from cold he had taken in the long drive from
+Asheville. The house must be kept quiet. John Sanders was helping her
+nurse him. She was sure the Doctor would save him.
+
+Even the knife with which she had stabbed him made no impression on
+her numbed senses. The Doctor had scoured every trace of blood from the
+blade and put it back in its place on the shelf, lest she should miss it
+and ask questions. She used it daily without the slightest memory of the
+frightful story it might tell.
+
+Each morning before going to the cabin the Doctor watched with patience
+for the first signs of returning consciousness in Mary's fever-wracked
+body. The day she lifted her grateful eyes to his and her lips moved in
+a tremulous question he raised his hand gently.
+
+"Sh! Child--don't talk! It's all right. You're getting better. I've
+been with you every day. You're in my house now. You'll soon be yourself
+again."
+
+She smiled wanly, put her delicate hand on his and pressed it
+gratefully.
+
+"I understand. You thank me--you say that I am good to you. But I'm
+not. This is my life. I heal the sick because I must. I love this battle
+royal with Death. He beats me sometimes--but I never quit. I'm always
+tramping on his trail, and I've won this fight!"
+
+The calm brown eyes held her in a spell and she smiled again.
+
+"Sleep now," he said soothingly. "Sleep day and night. Just wake to take
+a little food--that's all and Nature will do the rest."
+
+He stroked her hand gently until her eyelids closed.
+
+Two days later Jim clung to the Doctor's hand and insisted on talking.
+
+"Better wait a little longer, boy," the physician answered kindly.
+"You're not out of the woods yet----"
+
+"I can't wait--Doc----" Jim pleaded. "I've just got to ask you
+something."
+
+"All right. You can talk five minutes."
+
+"My wife, Doc, how is she? You took her to your house, John told me.
+She'll get well?"
+
+"Yes. She's rapidly recovering now."
+
+"What does she say about me?"
+
+"She thinks you're dead."
+
+"You haven't told her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"She had all she could stand----"
+
+Jim stared in silence.
+
+"You think she'd be sorry to know I am alive?" he asked slowly.
+
+"It would be a great shock."
+
+The steel blue eyes slowly filled with tears.
+
+"God! I am rotten, ain't I?"
+
+"There's no doubt about that, my son," was the firm answer.
+
+"Why did you fight so hard to save me--I wonder?"
+
+"An old feud between Death and me."
+
+Jim suddenly seized the Doctor's hand.
+
+"Say, you can't fool me--you're a good one, Doc. You've been a friend to
+me and you've got to help now--you've just got to. You're the only one
+on earth who can. You've a great big heart and you can't go back on a
+fellow that's down and out. Give me a chance! You will--won't you?"
+
+The hot fingers gripped the Doctor's hand with pleading tenderness.
+
+The brown eyes searched Jim's soul.
+
+"If you can show me it's worth while----"
+
+The fingers tightened their grip in silence.
+
+"Just give me a chance, Doc," he said at last, "and I'll show you! I
+ain't never had a chance to really know what was right and what was
+wrong. If I'd a lived here with my old mother she'd have told me. You
+know what it is to be a stray dog on the streets of New York? Even then,
+I'd have kept straight if I hadn't been robbed by a lawyer and his
+pal. I didn't know what I was doin' till that night here in this
+cabin--honest to God, I didn't----"
+
+He paused for breath and a tear stole down his cheek. He fought for
+control of his emotions and went on in low tones.
+
+"I didn't know--till I saw my old mother creepin' on me in the shadows
+with that big knife gleamin' in her hand! I tried to stop her and I
+couldn't. I tried to yell and strangled with blood. I saw the flames of
+hell in her eyes and I had kindled them there--God! I never knew until
+that minute! I'm broken and bruised lyin' on the rocks now in the
+lowest pit---- Give me your hand, Doc! You're my only friend--I'm goin'
+straight from now on--so help me God!"
+
+He paused again for breath and sought the actor's eyes.
+
+"You'll stand by me, won't you?"
+
+A friendly grip closed on the trembling fingers.
+
+"Yes--I'll help you--if I can."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. THE MOTHER
+
+Mary was resting in the chair beneath the southern windows of the
+sun-parlor of the Doctor's bungalow. He had built his home of logs
+cut from the mountainside. Its rooms were supplied with every modern
+convenience and comfort. Clear spring water from the cliff above poured
+into the cypress tank constructed beneath the roof. An overflow pipe
+sent a sparkling, bubbling and laughing through the lawn, refreshing the
+wild flowers planted along its edges.
+
+The view from the window looking south was one of ravishing beauty and
+endless charm. Perched on a rising spur of the Black Mountain the house
+commanded a view of the long valley of the Swannanoa opening at
+the lower end into the wide, sunlit sweep of the lower hills around
+Asheville. Upward the balsam-crowned peaks towered among the clouds and
+stars.
+
+No two hours of the day were just alike. Sometimes the sun was raining
+showers of diamonds on the trembling tree-tops of the valleys while the
+blackest storm clouds hung in ominous menace around Mount Mitchell and
+the Cat-tail. Sometimes it was raining in the valley--the rain cloud a
+level sheet of gray cloth stretching from the foot of the lawn across to
+the crags beyond, while the sun wrapped the little bungalow in a warm,
+white mantle.
+
+Mary had never tired of this enchanted world during the days of her
+convalescence. The Doctor, with firm will, had lifted every care from
+her mind. She had gratefully submitted to his orders, and asked no
+questions.
+
+She began to wonder vaguely about his life and people and why he had
+left the world in which a man of his culture and power must have moved,
+to bury himself in these mountain wilds. She wondered if he had married,
+separated from his wife and chosen the life of a recluse. He volunteered
+no information about himself.
+
+When not attending his patients he spent his hours in the greenhouse
+among his flowers or in the long library extension of the bungalow.
+More than five thousand volumes filled the solid shelves. A massive oak
+table, ten feet in length and four feet wide, stood in the center of the
+room, always generously piled with books, magazines and papers. At the
+end of this table he kept the row of books which bore immediately on the
+theme he was studying.
+
+Beside the window opening on the view of the valley stood his
+old-fashioned desk--six feet long, its top a labyrinth of pigeon-holes
+and tiny drawers.
+
+He pursued his studies with boyish enthusiasm and chattered of them to
+Mary by the hour--with never a word passing his lips about himself.
+
+Aunt Abbie, the cook, brought her a cup of tea, and Mary volunteered a
+question.
+
+"Do you know the Doctor's people, Auntie?" she asked hesitatingly.
+
+"Lord, child, he's a mystery to everybody! All we know is that he's
+the best man that ever walked the earth. He won't talk and the mountain
+folks are too polite to nose into his business. He saved my boy's life
+one summer, and when he was strong and well and went back to Asheville
+to his work, I had nothin' to do but to hold my hands, and I come here
+to cook for him. He tries to pay me wages but I laugh at him. I told him
+if he could save my boy's life for nothin' I reckon I could cook him a
+few good meals without pay----"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them off, laughed and added:
+
+"He lets me alone now and don't pester me no more about money."
+
+Her tea and toast finished, Mary placed the tray on the table, rose with
+a sudden look of pain, and made her way slowly to the library.
+
+A warm fire of hardwood logs sparkled in the big stone fireplace. The
+Doctor was out on a visit to a patient. He had given her the freedom of
+the place and had especially insisted that she use his books and make
+his library her resting place whenever her mind was fagged. She had
+spent many quiet hours in its inspiring atmosphere.
+
+She seated herself at his desk and studied the calendar which hung above
+it. A sudden terror overwhelmed her; she buried her face in her arms and
+burst into tears.
+
+She was still lying across the desk, sobbing, when the Doctor walked
+into the room.
+
+He touched her hair reproachfully with his firm hand.
+
+"Why, what's this? My little soldier has disobeyed orders?"
+
+"I don't want to live now," she sobbed.
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"I--I--am going to be a mother," she whispered.
+
+"So?"
+
+"The mother of a criminal! Oh, Doctor, it's horrible! Why did you let me
+live? The hell I passed through that night was enough--God knows! This
+will be unendurable. I've made up my mind--I'll die first----"
+
+"Rubbish, child! Rubbish!" he answered with a laugh. "Where did you get
+all this misinformation?"
+
+"You know what my husband was. How can you ask?"
+
+"Because I happen to know also his wife--the mother-to-be of this
+supposed criminal who has just set sail for the shores of our
+planet--and I know that she is one of the purest and sweetest souls who
+ever lost her way in the jungles of the world. If you were the criminal,
+dear heart, the case might be hopeless. But you're not. You are only
+the innocent victim of your own folly. That doesn't count in the game of
+Nature----"
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"Simply this: The part which the male plays in the reproduction of the
+race is small in comparison with the role of the female. He is merely
+a supernumerary who steps on the stage for a moment and speaks one word
+announcing the arrival of the queen. The queen is the mother. She plays
+the star role in the drama of Heredity. She is never off the stage for a
+single moment. We inherit the most obvious physical traits from our male
+ancestors but even these may be modified by the will of the mother."
+
+"Modified by the will of the mother?" she repeated blankly.
+
+"Certainly. There are yet long days and weeks and months before your
+babe will be born--at least seven months. There's not a sight or sound
+of earth or heaven that can reach or influence this coming human being
+save through your eyes and ears and touch and soul. Almighty God can
+speak His message only through you. You are his ambassador on earth in
+this solemn hour. What your husband was, is of little importance. There
+is not a moment, waking or sleeping, day or night, that does not bring
+to you its divine opportunity. This human life is yours--absolutely to
+mold and fashion in body and mind as you will."
+
+"You're just saying this to keep me from suicide," Mary interrupted.
+
+"I am telling you the simplest truth of physical life. You can even
+change the contour of your baby's head if you like. You think in your
+silly fears that the bull neck and jaw of the father will reappear
+in the child. It might be so unless you see fit to change it. All any
+father can do is to transmit general physical traits unless modified by
+the will of the mother."
+
+"You mean that I can choose even the personal appearance of my child?"
+she asked in blank amazement.
+
+"Exactly that. Choose the type of man you wish your babe to be and it
+shall be so. Who in all the world would you prefer that he resemble?"
+
+"You," she answered promptly.
+
+He smiled gently.
+
+"That pays me for all my trouble, child! No doctor ever got a bigger
+fee than that. Banks may fail, but I'll never lose it. Your choice
+simplifies that matter very much. You won't need a picture in your
+room----"
+
+"A picture could determine the features of an unborn babe?" she asked
+incredulously.
+
+"Beyond a doubt, and it will determine character sometimes. I knew a
+mother in the mountains of Vermont who hung the picture of a ship under
+full sail in her living-room. She bore seven sons. Not one of them ever
+saw the ocean until he was grown and yet all of them became sailors.
+This was not an accident. In her age and loneliness she blamed God for
+taking her children from her. Yet she had made sailors of them all by
+the selection of a single piece of furniture in her room. Nature has a
+way of starting her children on their journey through this world very
+nearly equal--each a bundle of possibilities in the hands of a mother.
+A father may transmit physical disease, if his body is unsound. Such
+marriages should be prohibited by law. But nine-tenths of the spiritual
+traits out of which character is formed are the work of the mother. A
+criminal mother will bring into the world only criminals. A criminal
+male may be the father of a saint. The responsibility of shaping the
+destiny of the race rests with the mother----"
+
+The Doctor sprang to his feet and paced the floor, his arms gripped
+behind his back in deep thought. He paused before the enraptured
+listener and hesitated to speak the thought in his mind.
+
+He lifted his hand suddenly, his decision apparently made.
+
+"It is of the utmost importance to the race that our mothers shall
+be pure. Better certainly if both father and mother are so. It is
+indispensable that the mother shall be! On this elemental fact rests the
+dual standard of sex morals. On this fact rests the hope of a glorified
+humanity through the development of an intelligent motherhood. Stay here
+with me until your child is born and I'll prove the truth of every word
+I've spoken----"
+
+"Oh, if I only could!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I couldn't impose such a burden on you!" she faltered.
+
+"You would confer on me the highest honor, if you will allow me to
+direct you in this experiment."
+
+There was no mistaking his honesty and earnestness. There was no
+refusing the appeal.
+
+"You really wish me to stay?" she asked.
+
+"I beg of you to stay! You will bring to me a new inspiration--new
+faith--new courage to fight. Will you?"
+
+She extended her hand.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you will agree to follow my instructions?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Good. We begin from this moment. I give you my first orders. Forget
+that James Anthony ever lived. Forget the tragedy of Christmas Eve.
+You are going to be a mother. All other events in life pale before this
+fact. God has conferred on you the highest honor He can give to
+mortal. Keep your soul serene, your body strong. You are to worry about
+nothing----"
+
+"I must pay you for this extra expense I impose, Doctor. I have a
+thousand dollars in bank in New York," she interrupted.
+
+"Certainly, if you will be happier. My home is now your sanitarium. You
+are my patient. Your board will cost me about eight dollars a week. All
+right. You can pay that if you wish.
+
+"Take no thought now except on the business of being a mother. I will
+make myself your father, your brother, your guardian, your physician,
+your friend and companion. I will give you at once a course of reading.
+You are to think only beautiful thoughts, see beautiful things, dream
+beautiful dreams, hear beautiful music. I'm going to make you climb
+these mountain peaks with me for the next three months and live among
+the clouds. I'm going to refit your room with new furniture and pictures
+and place in it a phonograph with the best music. When you are strong
+enough you can work for me three hours a day as my secretary. You use
+the typewriter?"
+
+"I'm an expert----"
+
+"Good! I'm writing a book which I'm going to call `The Rulers of the
+World.' It is a study of Motherhood. I am one who believes that the
+redemption of humanity awaits the realization by woman of her divine
+call. When woman knows that she is really a co-creator with God in the
+reproduction of the race, a new era will dawn for mankind. You promise
+me faithfully to obey my instructions?"
+
+"Faithfully."
+
+"You're a wonderful subject on which to make an experiment. You are
+young--in the first dawn of the glory of womanhood. Your body is
+beautiful, your mind singularly pure and sweet. You must give me at once
+the full power of your will in its concentration on Truth and Beauty.
+The success or failure of this experiment will depend almost entirely on
+your mentality and the use you make of it during these months in which
+your babe is being formed. Whatever the shape of the body there is one
+eternal certainty--only YOUR mind can reach the soul of this child.
+If the father were the veriest fiend who ever existed and should
+concentrate his mind to the task, not one thought from his darkened soul
+could reach your babe! YOUR mind will be the ever-brooding, enfolding
+spirit forming and fashioning character."
+
+He paused and his deep brown eyes flashed with enthusiasm.
+
+"Think of it! You are now creating an immortal being whose word may bend
+a million wills to his. And you are doing this mighty work solely by
+your mind. The physical processes are simple and automatic.
+
+"The first lesson you must learn and hold with deathless grip is that
+thoughts are things. A thought can kill the body. A thought can heal the
+body. If I am successful as a physician it is because I use this power
+with my patients. With some I use drugs, with others none. With all
+I use every ounce of mental power which God has given me. You will
+remember this?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He walked to the shelves and drew down a volume of poetry.
+
+"Read these poems until you are tired today--then sleep. I'll give you
+a good novel tomorrow and when you've read it, a volume of philosophy.
+When we climb the peaks, I'll give you a study of these rocks that will
+tell you the story of their birth, their life, and their coming death.
+We'll learn something of the birds and flowers next spring. We'll dream
+great dreams and think great thoughts--you and I--in these wonderful
+days and weeks and months which God shall give us together."
+
+She looked up at him through her tears:
+
+"Oh, Doctor, you have not only saved a miserable life: you have saved my
+soul!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. A SOUL IS BORN
+
+It was more than a month after the experiment began before the Doctor
+ventured to hint of Jim's survival. He had waited patiently until
+Mary's strength had been fully restored and her mind filled with the new
+enthusiasm for motherhood. He could tell her now with little risk. And
+yet he ventured on the task with reluctance. He found her seated at her
+favorite window overlooking the deep blue valley of the Swannanoa, a
+volume of poetry in her lap.
+
+He touched her shoulder and she smiled in cheerful response.
+
+"You are content?" he asked.
+
+"A strange peace is slowly stealing into my heart," she responded
+reverently. "I shall learn to love life again when my baby comes to help
+me."
+
+"You remember your solemn promise?"
+
+"Have I not kept it?" she murmured.
+
+"Faithfully--and I remind you of it that you may not forget today for a
+moment that your work is too high and holy to allow a shadow to darken
+your spirit even for an hour. I have something to tell you that may
+shock a little unless I warn you----"
+
+She lifted her eyes with a quick look of uneasiness, and studied his
+immovable face.
+
+"You couldn't guess?" he laughed.
+
+She shook her head in puzzled silence.
+
+"Suppose I were to tell you," he went on evenly, "that I found a spark
+of life in your husband's body that morning and drew him back from the
+grave?"
+
+Her eyes closed and she stretched her hand toward the Doctor.
+
+He clasped the fingers firmly between both his palms, held and stroked
+them gently.
+
+"You did save him?" she breathed.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Thank God his poor old mother is not a murderer! But he is dead to me.
+I shall never see him again--never!"
+
+"I thought you would feel that way," the Doctor quietly replied.
+
+"You won't let him come here?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"He won't try unless you consent----"
+
+Mary shuddered.
+
+"You don't know him----"
+
+The Doctor smiled.
+
+"I'm afraid you don't know him now, my child."
+
+"He has changed?"
+
+"The old, old miracle over again. He has been literally born again--this
+time of the spirit."
+
+"It's incredible!"
+
+"It's true. He's a new man. I think his reformation is the real thing.
+He's young. He's strong. He has brains. He has personality----"
+
+Mary lifted her hand.
+
+"All I ask of him is to keep out of my sight. The world is big enough
+for us both. The past is now a nightmare. If I live to be a hundred
+years old, with my dying breath I shall feel the grip of his fingers on
+my throat----"
+
+She paused and closed her eyes.
+
+"Forget it! Forget it!" the Doctor laughed. "We have more important
+things to think of now."
+
+"He wishes to see me?"
+
+"Begs every day that I ask you."
+
+"And you have hesitated these long weeks?"
+
+"Your strength and peace of mind were of greater importance than his
+happiness, my dear. Let him wait until you please to see him."
+
+"He'll wait forever," was the firm answer.
+
+Jim smiled grimly when his friend bore back the message.
+
+"I'll never give up as long as there's breath in my body," he cried,
+bringing his square jaws together with a snap.
+
+"That's the way to talk, my boy," the Doctor responded.
+
+"Anyhow you believe in me, Doc, don't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you'll help me a little on the way if it gets dark--won't you?"
+
+"If I can--you may always depend on me."
+
+Jim clasped his outstretched hand gratefully.
+
+"Well, I'm going to make good."
+
+There was something so genuine and manly in the tones of his voice, he
+compelled the Doctor's respect. A smaller man might have sneered. The
+healer of souls and bodies had come to recognize with unerring instinct
+the true and false note in the human voice.
+
+His heart went out in a wave of sympathy for the lonely, miserable young
+animal who stood before him now, trembling with the first sharp pains
+of the immortal thing that had awaked within. He slipped his arm about
+Jim's shoulders and whispered:
+
+"I'll tell you something that may help you when the way gets dark--the
+wife is going to bear you a child."
+
+"No!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"God!---- That's great, ain't it?"
+
+Jim choked into silence and looked up at the Doctor with dimmed eyes.
+
+"Say, Doc, you hit me hard when you brought what she said--but that's
+good news! Watch me work my hands to the bone--you know it's my kid and
+she can't keep me from workin' for it if she tries now can she?"
+
+"No."
+
+"There's just one thing that'll hang over me like a black cloud," he
+mused sorrowfully.
+
+"I know, boy--your mother's darkened mind."
+
+Jim nodded.
+
+"When I see that queer glitter in her eyes it goes through me like a
+knife. Will she ever get over it?"
+
+"We can't tell yet. It takes time. I believe she will."
+
+"You'll do the best you can for her, Doc?" he pleaded pathetically. "You
+won't forget her a single day? If you can't cure her, nobody can."
+
+"I'll do my level best, boy."
+
+Jim pressed his hand again.
+
+"Gee, but you've been a friend to me! I didn't know that there were such
+men in the world as you!"
+
+For six months the Doctor watched the transplanted child of the slums
+grow into a sturdy manhood in his new environment. He snapped at every
+suggestion his friend gave and with quick wit improved on it. He not
+only discovered and developed a mica mine on his mother's farm, he
+invented new machinery for its working that doubled the market output.
+Within six weeks from the time he began his shipments the mine was
+paying a steady profit of more than five hundred dollars a month. He had
+made just one trip to New York and secretly returned to the police every
+stolen jewel and piece of plunder taken, with a full confession of the
+time and place of the crime. He had shipped his tools and machinery from
+the workshop on the east side before his sensational act and made good
+his departure for the South.
+
+The tools and machinery he installed in a new workshop which he built
+in the yard of Nance's cabin. Here he worked day and night at his
+blacksmith forge making the iron hinges, and irons, shovels, tongs, fire
+sets and iron work complete for a log bungalow of seven rooms which
+he was building on the sunny slope of the mountain which overlooks the
+valley toward Asheville.
+
+The Doctor had lent Jim the blue-prints of his own home and he was
+quietly duplicating it with loving care. His wife might refuse to see
+him but he could build a home for their boy. For his sake she couldn't
+refuse it.
+
+With childlike obedience Nance followed him every day and watched the
+workmen rear the beautiful structure under Jim's keen eyes and skillful
+hands. The man's devotion to his mother was pathetic. Only the Doctor
+knew the secret of his pitiful care, and he kept his own counsel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. THE BABY
+
+The last roses of summer were bursting their topmost buds into full
+bloom on the lawn of the Doctor's bungalow. The martins that built each
+year in the little boxes he had set on poles around his garden were
+circling and chattering far up in the sapphire skies of a late September
+day. Their leaders had sensed the coming frost and were drilling for
+their long march across the world to their winter home. The chestnut
+burrs were bursting in the woods. The silent sun-wrapped Indian Summer
+had begun. Not a cloud flecked the skies.
+
+A quiet joy filled the soul of the woman who smiled and heard her
+summons.
+
+"You are not afraid?" the Doctor asked.
+
+She turned her grateful eyes to his.
+
+"The peace of God fills the world--and I owe it all to you."
+
+"Nonsense. Your sturdy will and cultivated mind did the work. I merely
+made the suggestion."
+
+"You are not going to give me an anesthetic, are you?" she said evenly.
+
+"Why did you ask that?"
+
+"Because I wish to feel and know the pain and glory of it all."
+
+"You don't wish to take it?"
+
+"Not unless you say I should."
+
+"What a wonderful patient you are, child! What a beautiful spirit!" He
+looked at her intently. "Well, I'm older and wiser in experience than
+you. I'm glad you added that clause `unless you say I should.' I'm going
+to say it. After all my talks to you on our return to the truths and
+simplicity of Nature you are perhaps surprised. You needn't be. I'm
+going to put you into a gentle sleep. Nature will then do her physical
+work automatically. I do this because our daughters are the inheritors
+of the sins of their mothers for centuries. The over-refinement of
+nerves, the hothouse methods of living, and the maiming of their bodies
+with the inventions of fashion have made the pains of this supreme hour
+beyond endurance. This should not be. It will not be so when our race
+has come into its own. But it will take many generations and perhaps
+many centuries before we reach the ideal. No physician who has a soul
+could permit a woman of your physique, your culture and refinement to
+walk barefoot and blindfolded into such a hell of physical torture. I
+will not permit it."
+
+He walked quietly into his laboratory, prepared the sleeping powders and
+gave them to her.
+
+Six hours later she opened her eyes with eager wonder. Aunt Abbie was
+busy over a bundle of fluffy clothes. The Doctor was standing with his
+arms folded behind his back, his fine, clean-shaven face in profile
+looking thoughtfully over the sun-lit valley. There was just one moment
+of agonized fear. If they had failed! If her child were hideous--or
+deformed! Her lips moved in silent prayer.
+
+"Doctor?" she whispered.
+
+In a moment he was bending over her, a look of exaltation in his brown
+eyes.
+
+"Tell me quick!"
+
+"A wonderful boy, little mother! The most beautiful babe I have ever
+seen. He didn't even cry--just opened his big, wide eyes and grunted
+contentedly."
+
+"Give him to me."
+
+Aunt Abbie laid the warm bundle in her arms and she pressed it gently
+until the sweet, red flesh touched her own. She lay still for a moment,
+a smile on her lips.
+
+"Lift him and let me look!"
+
+"What a funny little pug nose," she laughed.
+
+"Yes--exactly like his mother's!" the Doctor replied.
+
+She gazed with breathless reverence.
+
+"He is beautiful, isn't he?" she sighed.
+
+"And you have observed the chin and mouth?"
+
+"Exactly like yours. It's wonderful!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. WHAT IS LOVE?
+
+Eighteen months swiftly passed with the little mother and her boy still
+in Dr. Mulford's sanitarium. She had allowed herself to be persuaded
+that he had the right to be her guide and helper in the first year's
+training of the child.
+
+The boy had steadily grown in strength and beauty of body and mind. The
+Doctor persuaded her to spend one more winter basking in his sun-parlor
+and finishing the final chapters of his book. Her mind was singularly
+clever and helpful in the interpretation of the experiences and emotions
+of motherhood.
+
+She had stubbornly resisted every suggestion to see her husband or allow
+him to see the child. The Doctor had managed twice to give Jim an hour
+with the baby while she had gone to Asheville on shopping trips. He was
+rewarded for his trouble in the devotion with which the young father
+worshiped his son. The Doctor watched the slumbering fires kindle in
+the man's deep blue eyes with increasing wonder at the strength and
+tenderness of his newfound soul.
+
+Jim had completed the furnishing of the bungalow with the advice and
+guidance of his friend, and every room stood ready and waiting for its
+mistress. He had insisted on making every piece of furniture for Mary's
+room and the nursery adjoining. The Doctor was amazed at the mechanical
+genius he displayed in its construction. He had taken a month's
+instruction at a cabinet maker's in Asheville and the bed, bureau,
+tables and chairs which he had turned out were astonishingly beautiful.
+Their lines were copied from old models and each piece was a work of
+art. The iron work was even more tastefully and beautifully wrought. He
+had toiled day and night with an enthusiasm and patience that gave the
+physician a new revelation in the possibility of the development of
+human character.
+
+His friend came at last with a cheering message. He began smilingly:
+
+"I'm going to make the big fight today, boy, to get her to see you."
+
+"You think she will?"
+
+"There's a good chance. Her savings have all been used up from her bank
+account in New York. She is determined to go to her father in Kentucky.
+I'll have a talk with her, bring her over to the bungalow, show her
+through it on the pretext of its model construction and then you can
+tell her that you built it with your own hands for her and the baby. You
+might be loafing around the place about that time."
+
+Jim's hand was suddenly lifted.
+
+"I got ye, Doc, I got ye! I'll be there--all day."
+
+"Don't let her see you until I give the signal."
+
+"Caution's my name."
+
+"We'll see what happens."
+
+Jim pressed close.
+
+"Say, Doc, if you know how to pray, I wish you'd send up a little word
+for me while you're talkin' to her. Could ye now?"
+
+"I'll do my best for you, boy--and I think you've got a chance. She's
+been watching the blue eyes of that baby lately with a rather curious
+look of unrest."
+
+"They're just like mine, ain't they?" Jim broke in with pride.
+
+"Time has softened the old hurt," the Doctor went on. "The boy may win
+for you----"
+
+The square jaw came together with a smash.
+
+"Gee--I hope so. I'll wait there all day for you and I'm goin' to try my
+own hand at a little prayer or two on the side while I'm waiting. Maybe
+God'll think He's hit me hard enough by this time to give me another
+trial."
+
+With a friendly wave of his hand the Doctor hurried home.
+
+He found Mary seated under the rose trellis beside the drive, watching
+for his coming. The day was still and warm for the end of April. Birds
+were singing and chattering in every branch and tree. A quail on the top
+fence-rail of the wheat field called loudly to his mate.
+
+The boy was screaming his joy over a new wagon to which Aunt Abbie had
+hitched his goat. He drove by in style, lifted his chubby hand to his
+mother and shouted:
+
+"Dood-by, Doc-ter!"
+
+The Doctor waved a smiling answer, and lapsed into a long silence.
+
+He waked at last from his absorption to notice that Mary was
+day-dreaming. The fair brow was drawn into deep lines of brooding.
+
+"Why shadows in your eyes a day like this, little mother?" he asked
+softly.
+
+"Just thinking----"
+
+"About a past that you should forget?"
+
+"Yes and no," she answered thoughtfully. "I was just thinking in this
+flood of spring sunlight of the mystery of my love for such a man as the
+one I married. How could it have been possible to really love him?"
+
+"You are sure that you loved him?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"By all the signs. I trembled at his footstep. The touch of his hand,
+the sound of his voice thrilled me. I was drawn by a power that was
+resistless. I was mad with happiness those wonderful days that preceded
+our marriage. I was madder still during our honeymoon--until the
+shadows began to fall that fatal Christmas Eve." She paused and her lips
+trembled. "Oh, Doctor, what is love?"
+
+The drooping shoulders of the man bent lower. He picked up a pebble from
+the ground and flicked it carelessly across the drive, lifted his head
+at last and asked earnestly:
+
+"Shall I tell you the truth?"
+
+"Yes--your own particular brand, please--the truth, the whole truth and
+nothing but the truth."
+
+"I'll try," he began soberly. "If I were a poet, naturally I would use
+different language. As I'm only a prosaic doctor and physiologist I may
+shock your ideals a little."
+
+"No matter," she interrupted. "They couldn't well get a harder jolt than
+they have had already."
+
+He nodded and went on:
+
+"There are two elemental human forces that maintain life--hunger
+and love. They are both utterly simple, otherwise they could not be
+universal. Hunger compels the race to live. Love compels it to reproduce
+itself. There has never been anything mysterious about either of
+these forces and there never will be--except in the imagination of
+sentimentalists.
+
+"Nature begins with hunger. For about thirteen years she first applies
+this force to the development of the body before she begins to lay the
+foundation of the second. Until this second development is complete the
+passion known as love cannot be experienced.
+
+"What is this second development? Very simple again. At the base of the
+brain of every child there is a vacant space during the first twelve or
+fifteen years. During the age of twelve to fourteen in girls, thirteen
+to fifteen in boys, this vacant space is slowly filled by a new lobe
+of the brain and with its growth comes the consciousness of sex and the
+development of sex powers.
+
+"This new nerve center becomes on maturity a powerful physical magnet.
+The moment this magnet comes into contact with an organization which
+answers its needs, as certain kinds of food answer the needs of hunger,
+violent desire is excited. If both these magnets should be equally
+powerful, the disturbance to both will be great. The longer the personal
+association is continued the more violent becomes this disturbance,
+until in highly sensitive natures it develops into an obsession which
+obscures reason and crushes the will.
+
+"The meaning of this impulse is again very simple--the unconscious
+desire of the male to be a father, of the female to become a mother."
+
+"And there is but one man on earth who could thus affect me?" Mary asked
+excitedly.
+
+"Rubbish! There are thousands."
+
+"Thousands?"
+
+"Literally thousands. The reason you never happen to meet them is purely
+an accident of our poor social organization. Every woman has thousands
+of true physical mates if she could only meet them. Every man has
+thousands of true physical mates if he could only meet them. And in
+every such meeting, if mind and body are in normal condition, the same
+violent disturbance would result--whether married or single, free or
+bound.
+
+"Marriage therefore is not based merely on the passion of love. It is
+a crime for any man or woman to marry without love. It is the sheerest
+insanity to believe that this passion within itself is sufficient to
+justify marriage. All who marry should love. Many love who should not
+marry.
+
+"The institution of marriage is the great SOCIAL ordinance of the race.
+Its sanctity and perpetuity are not based on the violence of the passion
+of love, but something else."
+
+He paused and listened to the call of the quail again from the field.
+
+"You hear that bob white calling his mate?"
+
+"Yes--and she's answering him now very softly. I can hear them both."
+
+"They have mated this spring to build a home and rear a brood of young.
+Within six months their babies will all be full grown and next spring
+a new alignment of lovers will be made. Their marriage lasts during the
+period of infancy of their offspring. This is Nature's law.
+
+"It happens in the case of man that the period of infancy of a human
+being is about twenty-four years. This is the most wonderful fact in
+nature. It means that the capacity of man for the improvement of his
+breed is practically limitless. A quail has a few months in which to
+rear her young. God gives to woman a quarter of a century in which to
+mold her immortal offspring. Because the period of infancy of one child
+covers the entire period of motherhood capacity, marriage binds for
+life, and the sanctity of marriage rests squarely on this law of
+Nature."
+
+He paused again and looked over the sunlit valley.
+
+"I wish our boys and girls could all know these simple truths of their
+being. It would save much unhappiness and many tragic blunders.
+
+"You were swept completely off your feet by the rush of the first
+emotion caused by meeting a man who was your physical mate. You imagined
+this emotion to be a mysterious revelation which can come but once.
+Your imagination in its excited condition, of course, gave to your
+first-found mate all sorts of divine attributes which he did not
+possess. You were `in love' with a puppet of your own creation, and
+hypnotized yourself into the delusion that James Anthony was your one
+and only mate, your knight, your hero.
+
+"In a very important sense this was true. Your intuitions could not make
+a mistake on so vital an issue. But you immediately rushed into marriage
+and your union has been perfected by the birth of a child. Whether you
+are happy or unhappy in marriage does not depend on the reality of love.
+Happiness in marriage is based on something else."
+
+"On what?"
+
+"The joy and peace that comes from oneness of spirit, tastes, culture
+and character. I know this from the deepest experiences of life and the
+widest observation."
+
+"You have loved?" she asked softly.
+
+"Twice----"
+
+A silence fell between them.
+
+"Shall I tell you, little mother?" he finally asked quietly.
+
+"Please."
+
+He seated himself and looked into the skies beyond the peaks across the
+valley.
+
+"Ten years ago I met my first mate. The meeting was fortunate for both.
+She was a woman of gentle birth, of beautiful spirit. Our courtship was
+ideal. We thought alike, we felt alike, she loved my profession even--an
+unusual trait in a woman. She thought it so noble in its aims that
+the petty jealousy that sometimes wrecks a doctor's life was to her an
+unthinkable crime. The first year was the nearest to heaven that I had
+ever gotten down here.
+
+"And then, little mother, by one of those inexplicable mysteries of
+nature she died when our baby was born. For a while the light of the
+world went out. I quit New York, gave up my profession and came here
+just to lie in the sun on this mountainside and try to pull myself
+together. I didn't think life could ever be worth living again. But
+it was. I found about me so much of human need--so much ignorance and
+helplessness--so much to pity and love, I forgot the ache in my own
+heart in bringing joy to others.
+
+"I had money enough. I gave up the ambitions of greed and strife and set
+my soul to higher tasks. For nine years I've devoted my leisure hours
+to the study of Motherhood as the hope of a nobler humanity. But for the
+great personal sorrow that came to me in the death of my wife and baby I
+should never have realized the truths I now see so clearly.
+
+"And then the other woman suddenly came into my life. I never expected
+to love again--not because I thought it impossible, but because I
+thought it improbable in my little world here that I could ever again
+meet a woman I would ask to be my wife. But she dropped one day out of
+the sky."
+
+He paused and took a deep breath.
+
+"I recognized her instantly as my mate, gentle and pure and capable
+of infinite joy or infinite pain. She did not realize the secret of my
+interest in her. I didn't expect it. I knew that under the conditions
+she could not. But I waited."
+
+He paused and searched for Mary's eyes.
+
+"And you married her?" she asked in even tones.
+
+"I have never allowed her to know that I love her."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"She was married."
+
+Mary threw him a startled look and he went on evenly:
+
+"I could have used my power over mind and body to separate her from
+her husband. I confess that I was tempted. But there was a child. Their
+union had been sealed with the strongest tie that can bind two human
+beings. I have never allowed her to realize that she might love me. Had
+I chosen to break the silence between us I could have revealed this to
+her, taken her and torn her from the man to whom she had borne a babe.
+I had no right to commit that crime, no matter how deep the love that
+cried for its own. Marriage is based on the period of infancy of the
+child which spans the maternal life of woman. God had joined these two
+people together and no man had the right to put them asunder!"
+
+"And you gave her up?"
+
+"I had to, little mother. On the recognition of this eternal law the
+whole structure of our civilization rests."
+
+Mary bent her gaze steadily on his face for a moment in silence.
+
+"And you are telling me that I should be reconciled to the man who
+choked me into insensibility?"
+
+"I am telling you that he is the father of your son--that he has rights
+which you cannot deny; that when you gave yourself to him in the first
+impulse of love a deed was done which Almighty God can never undo.
+Your tragic blunder was the rush into marriage with a man about whose
+character you knew so little. It's the timid, shrinking, home-loving
+girl that makes this mistake. You must face it now. You are responsible
+as deeply and truly as the man who married you. That he happened at that
+moment to be a brute and a criminal is no more his fault than yours. It
+was YOUR business to KNOW before you made him the father of your child."
+
+"I tried to appeal to his better nature that awful night," Mary
+interrupted, "but he only laughed at me!"
+
+"You owe him another trial, little mother--you owe it to his boy, too."
+
+Mary shook her head bitterly.
+
+"I can't--I just can't!"
+
+"You won't see him once?"
+
+She sprang to her feet trembling.
+
+"No--no!"
+
+"I don't think it's fair."
+
+"I'm afraid of him! You can't understand his power over my will."
+
+"Come, come, this is sheer cowardice--give the devil his dues. Face him
+and fight it out. Tell him you're done forever with him and his life, if
+you will--but don't hedge and trim and run away like this. I'm ashamed
+of you."
+
+"I won't see him--I've made up my mind."
+
+The Doctor threw up both hands.
+
+"All right. If you won't, you won't. We'll let it go at that."
+
+He paused and changed his tones to friendly personal interest.
+
+"And you're determined to leave me and take my kid away tomorrow?"
+
+"We must go. I've no money to pay my board. I can't impose on you----"
+
+"It's going to be awfully lonely."
+
+He looked at her with a strange, deep gaze, lifted his stooping
+shoulders with sudden resolution and changed his manner to light banter.
+
+"I suppose I couldn't persuade you to give me that boy?"
+
+She smiled tenderly.
+
+"You know his father did leave his mark on him after all! The eyes are
+all his. Of course, I will admit that those drooping lids have often
+been the mark of genius--perhaps a genius for evil in this case. If you
+don't want to take the risk--now's your chance. I will----"
+
+Mary shook her head in reproachful protest.
+
+"Don't tease me, dear doctor man. I've just this one day more with you.
+I'm counting each precious hour."
+
+"Forgive me!" he cried gayly. "I won't tease you any more. Come, we'll
+run over now and see our neighbor's new bungalow before you go. You
+admire this one and threaten to duplicate it. He has built a better
+one."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"You'll go?"
+
+"If you wish it----"
+
+"Good. We'll take the boy, too. He can drive his new wagon the whole
+way. It's only half a mile."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. THE NEW MAN
+
+The door of the bungalow stood wide open. Mary paused in rapture over
+the rich beds of wood violets that carpeted the spaces between the drive
+and the log walls.
+
+"Aren't they beautiful!" she cried. "A perfect carpet of dazzling green
+and purple!"
+
+"Come right in," the Doctor urged from the steps. "My neighbor's a
+patient of mine. He hasn't moved in yet but he told me always to make
+myself at home."
+
+Mary lifted the boy from his wagon, tied the goat and led the child
+into the house. The Doctor showed her through without comment. None was
+needed. The woman's keen eye saw at a glance the perfection of care with
+which the master builder had wrought the slightest detail of every
+room. The floors were immaculate native hard-wood--its grain brought out
+through shining mirrors of clean varnish. There was not one shoddy piece
+of work from the kitchen sink to the big open fireplace in the spacious
+hall and living-room.
+
+"It's exquisite!" she exclaimed at last. "It seems all
+hand-made--doesn't it?"
+
+"It is, too. The owner literally built it with his own hands--a work of
+love."
+
+"For himself?" Mary asked with a smile.
+
+"For the woman he loves, of course! My neighbor's a sort of crank and
+insisted on expressing himself in this way. Come, I want you to see two
+rooms upstairs."
+
+He led her into the room Jim had built for his wife.
+
+"Observe this furniture, if you please."
+
+"Don't tell me that he built that too?" she laughed.
+
+"That's exactly what I'm going to tell you."
+
+"Impossible!" she protested. "Why, the line and finish would do credit
+to the finest artisan in America."
+
+"So I say. Look at the perfect polish of that table! It's like the
+finish of a rosewood piano." He touched the smooth surface.
+
+"Of course you're joking?" Mary answered. "No amateur could have done
+such work."
+
+"So I'd have said if I had not seen him do it."
+
+"What on earth possessed him to undertake such a task?"
+
+"The love of a beautiful woman--what else?"
+
+"He learned a trade--just to furnish this room with his own hand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"His love must be the real thing," she mused.
+
+"That's what I've said. Look at this iron work, too--the stately
+andirons in that big fireplace, the shovel, the tongs, and the massive
+strop-hinges on the doors."
+
+"He did that, too?" she asked in amazement.
+
+"Every piece of iron on the place he beat out with his own hand at his
+forge."
+
+"And all for the love of a woman? The age of romance hasn't passed after
+all, has it?"
+
+"No."
+
+Mary paused before the window looking south.
+
+"What a glorious view!" she cried. "It's even grander than yours,
+Doctor."
+
+"Yes. I claim some of the credit, though, for that. I helped him lay out
+the grounds."
+
+"Who is this remarkable man?" she asked at last.
+
+"A friend of mine. I'll introduce him directly. He should be here at any
+moment now."
+
+"We're intruding," Mary whispered. "We must go. I mustn't look any more.
+I'll be coveting my neighbor's house."
+
+The doctor turned to the window and signaled to someone on the lawn, as
+Mary hurried down the stairs.
+
+She fairly ran into Jim, who was being pulled into the house by the boy.
+
+"'Ook, Mamma! 'Ook! I found a Daddy! He says he be my Daddy if you let
+him. Please let him. I want a Daddy, an' I like him. Please!"
+
+Jim blushed and trembled and lifted his eyes appealingly, while Mary
+stood white and still watching him in a sort of helpless terror.
+
+The child moved on to his wagon.
+
+"Say, little girl," Jim began in low tones, "it's been a thousand years
+since I saw you. Don't drive me away--just give me one chance for God's
+sake and this baby's that He sent us! I've gone straight. I've sent back
+every dishonest dollar. I'm earning a clean living down here and a good
+one. I've practiced for two years cutting out the slang, too."
+
+He paused for breath and she turned her head away.
+
+"Just listen a minute! I know I was a beast that night. I'm not the same
+now. I've been through the fires of hell and I've come out a cleaner
+man. Let me show you how much I love you! Life's too short, but just
+give me a chance. If I could undo that awful hour when I hurt you so,
+I'd crawl 'round the world on my hands and knees--and I'll show you that
+I mean it! I built this house for you and the baby."
+
+Mary turned suddenly with wide dilated eyes.
+
+"You--YOU built this house?" she gasped.
+
+"I've worked on it every hour, day and night, the past two years when
+I wasn't earning a living in the mine. I made every stick of that
+furniture in the rooms up there--for you and my boy. The house is
+yours--whether you let me stay or not."
+
+"I--I can't take it, Jim," she faltered.
+
+"You've got to, girlie. You can't throw a gift like this back in a
+fellow's face--it cost too much! Your money's all gone. You've got to
+bring up that kid. He's mine, too. I'm man enough to support my wife and
+baby and I'm going to do it. I don't care what you say. You've got to
+let me. I'm going to work for you, live for you and die for you--whether
+you stay with me or not. I've got the right to do that, you know."
+
+She lifted her head and faced him squarely for the first time, amazed at
+the new dignity and strength of his quiet bearing.
+
+"You HAVE changed, Jim----"
+
+Her eyes sought the depths of his soul in a moment's silence, and she
+slowly extended her hand:
+
+"We'll try again!"
+
+He bent and kissed the tips of her fingers reverently.
+
+They stood for a moment hand in hand and looked over the sunlit valley
+of the Swannanoa shimmering in peace and beauty between its sheltering
+walls of blue mountains. The bees were humming spring music among the
+flowers at their feet and the faint odor of fruit trees in blossom came
+from the orchard Jim had planted two years before.
+
+"I'll show you, little girl--I'll show you!" he whispered tensely.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Foolish Virgin, by Thomas Dixon
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