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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gay Cockade, by Temple Bailey
+
+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 Gay Cockade
+
+Author: Temple Bailey
+
+Illustrator: C. E. Chambers
+
+Release Date: August 4, 2005 [EBook #16433]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GAY COCKADE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Laura Wisewell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: AND HERE, DAY AFTER DAY, HE SAT ALONE]
+
+
+
+
+                                  THE
+                              GAY COCKADE
+
+
+                                   BY
+                             TEMPLE BAILEY
+
+                               AUTHOR OF
+                          THE TRUMPETER SWAN,
+                          THE TIN SOLDIER, Etc.
+
+
+                            FRONTISPIECE BY
+                             C.E. CHAMBERS
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+
+                            GROSSET & DUNLAP
+                          PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
+                  Made in the United States of America
+
+
+
+                               COPYRIGHT
+                                1921 BY
+                                THE PENN
+                               PUBLISHING
+                                COMPANY
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                             Manufacturing
+                                 Plant
+                              Camden, N.J.
+
+Made in U.S.A.
+
+
+                            The Gay Cockade
+
+
+
+For permission to reprint some of the stories in this volume, the author
+is indebted to the courtesy of the editors of _Harper's Magazine_,
+_Scribner's Magazine_, _Collier's Magazine_, _Ladies' Home Journal_,
+_Saturday Evening Post_, _Good Housekeeping_, and _Harper's Bazar_.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+THE GAY COCKADE                 7
+
+THE HIDDEN LAND                33
+
+WHITE BIRCHES                  84
+
+THE EMPEROR'S GHOST           118
+
+THE RED CANDLE                132
+
+RETURNED GOODS                149
+
+BURNED TOAST                  165
+
+PETRONELLA                    187
+
+THE CANOPY BED                205
+
+SANDWICH JANE                 223
+
+LADY CRUSOE                   272
+
+A REBELLIOUS GRANDMOTHER      310
+
+WAIT--FOR PRINCE CHARMING     327
+
+BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK          351
+
+
+
+
+                            THE GAY COCKADE
+
+
+
+
+THE GAY COCKADE
+
+
+From the moment that Jimmie Harding came into the office, he created an
+atmosphere. We were a tired lot. Most of us had been in the government
+service for years, and had been ground fine in the mills of departmental
+monotony.
+
+But Jimmie was young, and he wore his youth like a gay cockade. He
+flaunted it in our faces, and because we were so tired of our dull and
+desiccated selves, we borrowed of him, remorselessly, color and
+brightness until, gradually, in the light of his reflected glory, we
+seemed a little younger, a little less tired, a little less petrified.
+
+In his gay and gallant youth there was, however, a quality which partook
+of earlier times. He should, we felt, have worn a feather in his
+cap--and a cloak instead of his Norfolk coat. He walked with a little
+swagger, and stood with his hand on his hip, as if his palm pressed the
+hilt of his sword. If he ever fell in love, we told one another, he
+would, without a doubt, sing serenades and apostrophize the moon.
+
+He did fall in love before he had been with us a year. His love-affair
+was a romance for the whole office. He came among us every morning
+glorified; he left us in the afternoon as a knight enters upon a quest.
+
+He told us about the girl. We pictured her perfectly before we saw her,
+as a little thing, with a mop of curled brown hair; an oval face,
+pearl-tinted; wide, blue eyes. He dwelt on all her small
+perfections--the brows that swept across her forehead in a thin black
+line, the transparency of her slender hands, the straight set of her
+head on her shoulders, the slight halt in her speech like that of an
+enchanting child.
+
+Yet she was not in the least a child. "She holds me up to my best, Miss
+Standish," Jimmie told me; "she says I can write."
+
+We knew that Jimmie had written a few things, gay little poems that he
+showed us now and then in the magazines. But we had not taken them at
+all seriously. Indeed, Jimmie had not taken them seriously himself.
+
+But now he took them seriously. "Elise says that I can do great things.
+That I must get out of the Department."
+
+To the rest of us, getting out of the government service would have
+seemed a mad adventure. None of us would have had the courage to
+consider it. But it seemed a natural thing that Jimmie should fare forth
+on the broad highway--a modern D'Artagnan, a youthful Quixote, an Alan
+Breck--!
+
+We hated to have him leave. But he had consolation. "Of course you'll
+come and see us. We're going back to my old house in Albemarle. It's a
+rotten shack, but Elise says it will be a corking place for me to write.
+And you'll all come down for week-ends."
+
+We felt, I am sure, that it was good of him to ask us, but none of us
+expected that we should ever go. We had a premonition that Elise
+wouldn't want the deadwood of Jimmie's former Division. I know that for
+myself, I was content to think of Jimmie happy in his old house. But I
+never really expected to see it. I had reached the point of expecting
+nothing except the day's work, my dinner at the end, a night's sleep,
+and the same thing over again in the morning.
+
+Yet Jimmie got all of us down, not long after he was married, to what he
+called a housewarming. He had inherited a few pleasant acres in
+Virginia, and the house was two hundred years old. He had never lived in
+it until he came with Elise. It was in rather shocking condition, but
+Elise had managed to make it habitable by getting it scrubbed very
+clean, and by taking out everything that was not in keeping with the
+oldness and quaintness. The resulting effect was bare but beautiful.
+There were a great many books, a few oil-portraits, mahogany sideboards
+and tables and four-poster beds, candles in sconces and in branched
+candlesticks. They were married in April, and when we went down in June
+poppies were blowing in the wide grass spaces, and honeysuckle rioting
+over the low stone walls. I think we all felt as if we had passed
+through purgatory and had entered heaven. I know I did, because this was
+the kind of thing of which I had dreamed, and there had been a time when
+I, too, had wanted to write.
+
+The room in which Jimmie wrote was in a little detached house, which had
+once been the office of his doctor grandfather. He had his typewriter
+out there, and a big desk, and from the window in front of his desk he
+could look out on green slopes and the distant blue of mountain ridges.
+
+We envied him and told him so.
+
+"Well, I don't know," Jimmie said. "Of course I'll get a lot of work
+done. But I'll miss your darling old heads bending over the other
+desks."
+
+"You couldn't work, Jimmie," Elise reminded him, "with other people in
+the room."
+
+"Perhaps not. Did I tell you old dears that I am going to write a play?"
+
+That was, it seems, what Elise had had in mind for him from the
+beginning--a great play!
+
+"She wouldn't even, have a honeymoon"--Jimmie's arm was around her; "she
+brought me here, and got this room ready the first thing."
+
+"Well, he mustn't be wasting time," said Elise, "must he? Jimmie's
+rather wonderful, isn't he?"
+
+They seemed a pair of babies as they stood there together. Elise had on
+a childish one-piece pink frock, with sleeves above the elbow, and an
+organdie sash. Yet, intuitively, the truth came to me--she was ages
+older than Jimmie in spite of her twenty years to his twenty-four. Here
+was no Juliet, flaming to the moon--no mistress whose steed would gallop
+by wind-swept roads to midnight trysts. Here was, rather, the cool blood
+that had sacrificed a honeymoon--_and, oh, to honeymoon with Jimmie
+Harding_!--for the sake of an ambitious future.
+
+She was telling us about it "We can always have a honeymoon, Jimmie and
+I. Some day, when he is famous, we'll have it. But now we must not."
+
+"I picked out the place"--Jimmie was eager--"a dip in the hills, and big
+pines--And then Elise wouldn't."
+
+We went in to lunch after that. The table was lovely and the food
+delicious. There was batter-bread, I remember, and an omelette, and peas
+from the garden.
+
+Duncan Street and I talked all the way home of Jimmie and his wife. He
+didn't agree with me in the least about Elise. "She'll be the making of
+him. Such wives always are."
+
+But I held that he would lose something,--that he would not be the same
+Jimmie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jimmie wrote plays and plays. In between he wrote pot-boiling books. The
+pot-boilers were needed, because none of his plays were accepted. He
+used to stop in our office and joke about it.
+
+"If it wasn't for Elise's faith in me, Miss Standish, I should think
+myself a poor stick. Of course, I can make money enough with my books
+and short stuff to keep things going, but it isn't just money that
+either of us is after."
+
+Except when Jimmie came into the office we saw very little of him. Elise
+gathered about her the men and women who would count in Jimmie's future.
+The week-ends in the still old house drew not a few famous folk who
+loathed the commonplaceness of convivial atmospheres. Elise had
+old-fashioned flowers in her garden, delectable food, a library of old
+books. It was a heavenly change for those who were tired of cocktail
+parties, bridge-madness, illicit love-making. I could never be quite
+sure whether Elise really loved dignified living for its own sake, or
+whether she was sufficiently discriminating to recognize the kind of
+bait which would lure the fine souls whose presence gave to her
+hospitality the stamp of exclusiveness.
+
+They had a small car, and it was when Jimmie motored up to Washington
+that we saw him. He had a fashion of taking us out to lunch, two at a
+time. When he asked me, he usually asked Duncan Street. Duncan and I
+have worked side by side for twenty-five years. There is nothing in the
+least romantic about our friendship, but I should miss him if he were to
+die or to resign from office. I have little fear of the latter
+contingency. Only death, I feel, will part us.
+
+In our moments of reunion Jimmie always talked a great deal about
+himself. The big play was, he said, in the back of his mind. "Elise says
+that I can do it," he told us one day over our oysters, "and I am
+beginning to think that I can. I say, why can't you old dears in the
+office come down for Christmas, and I'll read you what I've written."
+
+We were glad to go. There were to be no other guests, and I found out
+afterward that Elise rarely invited any of their fashionable friends
+down in winter. The place showed off better in summer with the garden,
+and the vines hiding all deficiencies.
+
+We arrived in a snow-storm on Christmas Eve, and when we entered the
+house there was a roaring fire on the hearth. I hadn't seen a fire like
+that for thirty years. You may know how I felt when I knelt down in
+front of it and warmed my hands.
+
+The candles in sconces furnished the only other illumination. Elise,
+moving about the shadowy room, seemed to draw light to herself. She wore
+a flame-colored velvet frock and her curly hair was tucked into a golden
+net. I think that she had planned the medieval effect deliberately, and
+it was a great success. As she flitted about like a brilliant bird, our
+eyes followed her. My eyes, indeed, drank of her, like new wine. I have
+always loved color, and my life has been drab.
+
+I spoke of her frock when she showed me my room.
+
+"Oh, do you like it?" she asked. "Jimmie hates to see me in dark things.
+He says that when I wear this he can see his heroine."
+
+"Is she like you?"
+
+"Not a bit. She is rather untamed. Jimmie does her very well. She
+positively gallops through the play."
+
+"And do you never gallop?"
+
+She shook her head. "It's a good thing that I don't. If I did, Jimmie
+would never write. He says that I keep his nose to the grindstone. It
+isn't that, but I love him too much to let him squander his talent. If
+he had no talent, I should love him without it. But, having it, I must
+hold him up to it."
+
+She was very sure of herself, very sure of the rightness of her attitude
+toward Jimmie. "I know how great he is," she said, as we went down, "and
+other people don't. So I've got to prove it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at dinner that I first noticed a change in Jimmie. It was a
+change which was hard to define. Yet I missed something in him--the
+enthusiasm, the buoyancy, the almost breathless radiance with which he
+had rekindled our dying fires. Yet he looked young enough and happy
+enough as he sat at the table in his velvet studio coat, with his crisp,
+burnt-gold hair catching the light of the candles. He and his wife were
+a handsome pair. His manner to her was perfect. There could be no
+question of his adoration.
+
+After dinner we had the tree. It was a young pine set up at one end of
+the long dining-room, and lighted in the old fashion by red wax candles.
+There were presents on it for all of us. Jimmie gave me an adorably
+illustrated _Mother Goose_.
+
+"You are the only other child here, Miss Standish," he said, as he
+handed it to me. "I saw this in a book-shop, and couldn't resist it."
+
+We looked over the pictures together. They were enchanting. All the
+bells of old London rang out for a wistful Whittington in a ragged
+jacket; Bo-Peep in panniers and pink ribbons wailed for her historic
+sheep; Mother Hubbard, quaint in a mammoth cap, pursued her fruitless
+search for bones. There was, too, an entrancing Boy Blue who wound his
+horn, a sturdy darling with his legs planted far apart and distended
+rosy cheeks.
+
+"That picture is worth the price of the whole book," said Jimmie, and
+hung over it. Then suddenly he straightened up. "There should be
+children in this old house."
+
+I knew then what I had missed from the tree. Elise had a great many
+gifts--exquisite trifles sent to her by sophisticated friends--a
+wine-jug of seventeenth-century Venetian glass, a bag of Chinese brocade
+with handles of carved ivory, a pair of ancient silver buckles, a box of
+rare lacquer filled with Oriental sweets, a jade pendant, a crystal ball
+on a bronze base--all of them lovely, all to be exclaimed over; but the
+things I wanted were drums and horns and candy canes, and tarletan bags,
+and pop-corn chains, and things that had to be wound up, and things that
+whistled, and things that squawked, and things that sparkled. And Jimmie
+wanted these things, but Elise didn't. She was perfectly content with
+her elegant trifles.
+
+It was late when we went out finally to the studio. There was snow
+everywhere, but it was a clear night with a moon above the pines. A
+great log burned in the fireplace, a shaded lamp threw a circle of gold
+on shining mahogany. It seemed to me that Jimmie's writing quarters were
+even more attractive in December than in June.
+
+Yet, looking back, I can see that to Jimmie the little house was a sort
+of prison. He loved men and women, contact with his own kind. He had
+even liked our dingy old office and our dreary, dried-up selves. And
+here, day after day, he sat alone--as an artist must sit if he is to
+achieve--_es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille_.
+
+We sat around the fire in deep leather chairs, all except Elise, who had
+a cushion on the floor at Jimmie's feet.
+
+He read with complete absorption, and when he finished he looked at me.
+"What do you think of it?"
+
+I had to tell the truth. "It isn't your masterpiece."
+
+He ran his fingers through his hair with a nervous gesture. "I told
+Elise that it wasn't."
+
+"But the girl"--Elise's gaze held hot resentment--"is wonderful. Surely
+you can see that."
+
+"She doesn't seem quite real."
+
+"Then Jimmie shall make her real." Elise laid her hand lightly on her
+husband's shoulder. Her gown and golden net were all flame and sparkle,
+but her voice was cold. "He shall make her real."
+
+"No"--it seemed to me that as he spoke Jimmie drew away from her
+hand--"I am not going to rewrite it, Elise. I'm tired of it."
+
+"Jimmie!"
+
+"I'm tired of it--"
+
+"Finish it, and then you'll be free--"
+
+"Shall I ever be free?" He stood up and turned his head from side to
+side, as if he sought some way of escape. "Shall I ever be free? I
+sometimes think that you and I will stick to this old house until we
+grow as dry as dust. I want to live, Elise! I want to live--!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Elise was not ready to let Jimmie live. To her, Jimmie the artist was
+more than Jimmie the lover. I may have been unjust, but she seemed to me
+a sort of mental vampire, who was sucking Jimmie's youth. Duncan Street
+snorted when I told him what I thought. Elise was a pretty woman, and a
+pretty woman in the eyes of men can do no wrong.
+
+"You'll see," I said, "what she'll do to him."
+
+The situation was to me astounding. Here was Life holding out its hands
+to Elise, glory of youth demanding glorious response, and she,
+incredibly, holding back. In spite of my gray hair and stiff figure, I
+am of the galloping kind, and my soul followed Jimmie Harding's in its
+quest for freedom.
+
+But there was one thing that Elise could not do. She could not make
+Jimmie rewrite his play. "I'll come to it some day," he said, "but not
+yet. In the meantime I'll see what I can do with books."
+
+He did a great deal with books, so that he wrote several best-sellers.
+This eased the financial situation and they might have had more time for
+things. But Elise still kept him at it. She wanted to be the wife of a
+great man.
+
+Yet as the years went on, Duncan and I began to wonder if her hopes
+would be realized. Jimmie wrote and wrote. He was successful in a
+commercial sense, but fame did not come to him. There was gray in his
+burnt-gold hair; his shoulders acquired a scholarly droop, and he wore
+glasses on a black ribbon. It was when he put on glasses that I began to
+feel a thousand years old. Yet always when he was away from me I thought
+of him as the Jimmie whose youth had shone with blinding radiance.
+
+His constancy to Duncan and to me began to take on a rather pathetic
+quality. The others in the office drifted gradually out of his life.
+Some of them died, some of them resigned, some of them worked on, plump
+or wizened parodies of their former selves. I was stouter than ever, and
+stiffer, and the top of Duncan's head was a shining cone. And the one
+interesting thing in our otherwise dreary days was Jimmie.
+
+"You're such darling old dears," was his pleasant way of putting it.
+
+But Duncan dug up the truth for me. "We knew him before he wrote. He
+gets back to that when he is with us."
+
+I had grown to hate Elise. It was not a pleasant emotion, and I am not
+sure that she really deserved it. But Duncan hated her, too. "You're
+right," he said one day when we had lunched with Jimmie; "she's sucked
+him dry." Jimmie had been unusually silent. He had laughed little. He
+had tapped the table with his finger, and had kept his eyes on his
+finger. He had been absent-minded. "She has sucked him dry," said
+Duncan, with great heat.
+
+But she hadn't. That was the surprising thing. Just as we were all
+giving up hope of Jimmie's proving himself something more than a hack,
+he did the great thing and the wonderful thing that years ago Elise had
+prophesied. His play, "The Gay Cockade," was accepted by a New York
+manager, and after the first night the world went wild about it.
+
+I had helped Jimmie with the name. I had spoken once of youth as a gay
+cockade. "That's a corking title," Jimmie had said, and had written it
+in his note-book.
+
+When his play was put in rehearsal, Duncan and I were there to see. We
+took our month's leave, traveled to New York, and stayed at an
+old-fashioned boarding-house in Washington Square. Every day we went to
+the theatre. Elise was always there, looking younger than ever in the
+sables bought with Jimmie's advance royalty, and with various gowns and
+hats which were the by-products of his best-sellers.
+
+The part of the heroine of "The Gay Cockade" was taken by Ursula Simms.
+She was, as those of you who have seen her know, a Rosalind come to
+life. With an almost boyish frankness she combined feminine witchery.
+She had glowing red hair, a voice that was gay and fresh, a temper that
+was hot. She galloped through the play as Jimmie had meant that she
+should gallop in that first poor draft which he had read to us in
+Albemarle, and it was when I saw Ursula in rehearsal that I realized
+what Jimmie had done--he had embodied in his heroine all the youth that
+he had lost--she stood for everything that Elise had stolen from
+him--for the wildness, the impetuosity, the passion which swept away
+prudence and went neck to nothing to fulfilment.
+
+Indeed, the whole play partook of the madness of youth. It bubbled over.
+Everybody galloped to a rollicking measure. We laughed until we cried.
+But there was more than laughter in it. There was the melancholy which
+belongs to tender years set in exquisite contrast to the prevailing
+mirth.
+
+Jimmie had a great deal to do with the rehearsals. Several times he
+challenged Ursula's reading of the part.
+
+"You must not give your kisses with such ease," he told her upon one
+occasion; "the girl in the play has never been kissed."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders and ignored him. Again he remonstrated.
+"She's frank and free," he said. "Make her that. Make her that. Men must
+fight for her favors."
+
+She came to it at last, helped by that Rosalind-like quality in herself.
+She was young, as he had wanted Elise to be, clean-hearted,
+joyous--girlhood at its best.
+
+Gradually Jimmie ceased to suggest. He would sit beside us in the
+dimness of the empty auditorium, and watch her as if he drank her in.
+Now and then he would laugh a little, and say, under his breath: "How
+did I ever write it? How did it ever happen?"
+
+Elise, on the other side of him, said, at last, "I knew you could do it,
+Jimmie."
+
+"You thought I could do great things. You never knew I could do--this--"
+
+It was toward the end of the month that Duncan said to me one night as
+we rode home on the top of a 'bus, "You don't suppose that he--"
+
+"Elise thinks it," I said. "It's waking her up."
+
+Elise and Jimmie had been married fifteen years, and had never had a
+honeymoon, not in the sense that Jimmie wanted it--an adventure in
+romance, to some spot where they could forget the world of work, the
+world of sordid things, the world that was making Jimmie old. Every
+summer Jimmie had asked for it, and always Elise had said, "Wait."
+
+But now it was Elise who began to plan. "When your play is produced,
+we'll run away somewhere. Do you remember the place you always talked
+about--up in the hills?"
+
+He looked at her through his round glasses. "I can't get away from
+this"--he waved his hand toward the stage.
+
+"If it's a success you can, Jimmie."
+
+"It will be a success. Ursula Simms is a wonder. Look at her, Elise.
+Look at her!"
+
+Duncan and I could look at nothing else. As many times as I had seen her
+in the part, I came to it always eagerly. It was her great scene--where
+the girl, breaking free from all that has bound her, takes the hand of
+her vagabond lover and goes forth, leaving behind wealth and a marriage
+of distinction, that she may wander across the moors and down on the
+sands, with the wild wind in her face, the stars for a canopy!
+
+It tugged at our hearts. It would tug, we knew, at the heart of any
+audience. It was the human nature in us all which responded. Not one of
+us but would have broken bonds. Oh, youth, youth! Is there anything like
+it in the whole wide world?
+
+I do not think that it tugged at the heart of Elise. Her heart was not
+like that. It was a stay-at-home heart. A workaday-world heart. Elise
+would never under any circumstance have gone forth with a vagabond on a
+wild night.
+
+But here was Ursula doing it every day. On the evening of the first
+dress-rehearsal she wore clothes that showed her sense of fitness. As if
+in casting off conventional restraints, she renounced conventional
+attire; she came down to her lover wrapped in a cloak of the deep-purple
+bloom of the heather of the moor, and there was a pheasant's feather in
+her cap.
+
+"_May you never regret it, my dear, my dear_," said the lover on the
+stage.
+
+"_I shall love you for a million years_," said Ursula, and we felt that
+she would, and that love was eternal, and that any woman might have it
+if she would put her hand in her lover's and run away with him on a
+wild night!
+
+And it was the genius of Jimmie Harding that made us feel that the thing
+could be done. He sat forward in his chair, his arms on the back of the
+seat in front of him. "Jove!" he kept saying under his breath. "It's the
+real thing. It's the real thing--"
+
+When the scene was over, he went on the stage and stood by Ursula. Elise
+from her seat watched them. Ursula had taken off the cap with the
+pheasant's feather. Her glorious hair shone like copper, her hand was on
+her hip, her little swagger matched the swagger that we remembered in
+the old Jimmie. I wondered if Elise remembered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am not sure what made Ursula care for Jimmie Harding. He was no longer
+a figure for romance. But she did care. It was, perhaps, that she saw in
+him the fundamental things which belonged to both of them, and which did
+not belong to Elise.
+
+As the days went on I was sorry for Elise. I should never have believed
+that I could be sorry, but I was. Jimmie was always punctiliously polite
+to her. But he was only that.
+
+"She's getting what she deserves," Duncan said, but I felt that she was,
+perhaps, getting more than she deserved. For, after all, it was she who
+had kept Jimmie at it, and it was her keeping him at it which had
+brought success.
+
+Neither Duncan nor I could tell how Jimmie felt about Ursula. But the
+thought of her troubled my sleep. Stripped of her art, she was not in
+the least the heroine of Jimmie's play. She was of coarser clay,
+commoner. And Jimmie was fine. The fear I had was that he might clothe
+her with the virtues which he had created, and the thought, as I have
+said, troubled me.
+
+At last Duncan and I had to go home, although we promised to return for
+the opening night. Ursula gave a farewell supper for us. She lived alone
+with a housekeeper and maid. Her apartment was furnished in good taste,
+with, perhaps, a touch of over-emphasis. The table had unshaded purple
+candles and heather in glass dishes. Ursula wore woodland green, with a
+chaplet of heather about her glorious hair. Elise was in white with
+pearls. She was thirty-five, but she did not look it. Ursula was older,
+but she would always be in a sense ageless, as such women are--one would
+thrill to Sara Bernhardt were she seventeen or seventy.
+
+Jimmie seemed to have dropped the years from him. He was very confident
+of the success of his play. "It can't fail," he said, "with Ursula to
+make it sure--"
+
+I wondered whether it was Ursula or Elise who had made it sure. Could he
+ever have written it if Elise had not kept him at it? Yet she had stolen
+his youth!
+
+And now Ursula was giving his youth back to him! As I saw the cock of
+his head, heard the ring of his gay laughter, I felt that it might be
+so. And suddenly I knew that I didn't want Jimmie to be young again. Not
+if he had to take his youth from the hands of Ursula Simms!
+
+There were many toasts before the supper ended--and the last one Jimmie
+drank "To Ursula"! As he stood up to propose it, his glasses dangled
+from their ribbon, his shoulders were squared. In the soft and shaded
+light we were spared the gray in his hair--it was the old Jimmie, gay
+and gallant!
+
+"To Ursula!" he said, and the words sparkled. "To Ursula!"
+
+I looked at Elise. She might have been the ghost of the woman who had
+flamed in the old house in Albemarle. In her white and pearls she was
+shadowy, unsubstantial, almost spectral, but she raised her glass. "To
+Ursula!" she said.
+
+All the way home on the train Duncan and I talked about it. We were
+scared to death. "Oh, he mustn't, he must not," I kept saying, and
+Duncan snorted.
+
+"He's a young fool. She's not the woman for him--"
+
+"Neither of them is the woman," I said, "but Elise has made him--"
+
+"No man was ever held by gratitude."
+
+"He'd hate Ursula in a year."
+
+"He thinks he'd live--"
+
+"And lose his soul--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jimmie's play opened to a crowded house. There had been extensive
+advertising, and Ursula had a great following.
+
+Elise and Duncan and I had seats in an upper box. Elise sat where she
+was hidden by the curtains. Jimmie came and went unseen by the audience.
+Between acts he was behind the scenes. Elise had little to say. Once she
+reached over and laid her hand on mine.
+
+"I--I think I'm frightened," she said, with a catch of her breath.
+
+"It can't fail, my dear--"
+
+"No, of course. But it's very different from what I expected."
+
+"What is different?"
+
+"Success."
+
+As the great scene came closer, I seemed to hold my breath. I was so
+afraid that the audience might not see it as we had seen it at
+rehearsal. But they did see it, and it was a stupendous thing to sit
+there and watch the crowd, and know that Jimmie's genius was making its
+heart beat fast and faster. When Ursula in her purple cloak and
+pheasant's feather spoke her lines at the end of the third act, "_I
+shall love you for a million years_," the house went wild. Men and women
+who had never loved for a moment roared for this woman who had made them
+think they could love until eternity. They wanted her back and they got
+her. They wanted Jimmie and they got him. Ursula made a speech; Jimmie
+made a speech. They came out for uncounted curtain-calls, hand-in-hand.
+The play was a success!
+
+The last act was, of course, an anti-climax. Before it was finished,
+Elise said to me, in a, stifled voice, "I've got to get back to Jimmie."
+
+It seemed significant that Jimmie had not come to her. Surely he had not
+forgotten the part she had played. For fifteen years she had worked for
+this.
+
+We found ourselves presently behind the scenes. The curtain was down,
+the audience was still shouting, everybody was excited, everybody was
+shaking hands. The stage-people caught at Elise as she passed, and held
+her to offer congratulations. I was not held and went on until I came to
+where Jimmie and Ursula stood, a little separate from the rest. Although
+I went near enough to touch them, they were so absorbed in each other
+that they did not see me. Ursula was looking up at Jimmie and his head
+was bent to her.
+
+"Jimmie," she said, and her rich voice above the tumult was clear as a
+bell, "do you know how great you are?"
+
+"Yes," he said. "I--I feel a little drunk with it, Ursula."
+
+"Oh," she said, and now her words stumbled, "I--I love you for it. Oh,
+Jimmie, Jimmie, let's run away and love for a million years--"
+
+All that he had wanted was in her words--the urge of youth, the beat of
+the wind, the song of the sea. My heart stood still.
+
+He drew back a little. He had wanted this. But he did not want it
+now--with Ursula. I saw it and she saw it.
+
+"What a joke it would be," he said, "but we have other things to do, my
+dear."
+
+"What things?"
+
+The roar of the crowd came louder to their ears. "Harding, Harding!
+Jimmie Harding!"
+
+"Listen," he said, and the light in his eyes was not for her. "Listen,
+Ursula, they're calling me."
+
+She stood alone after he had left her. I am sure that even then she did
+not quite believe it was the end. She did not know how, in all the
+years, his wife had molded him.
+
+When he had satisfied the crowd, Jimmie fought his way to where Elise
+and Duncan and I stood together.
+
+Elise was wrapped in a great cloak of silver brocade. There was a touch
+of silver, too, in her hair. But she had never seemed to me so small, so
+childish.
+
+"Oh, Jimmie," she said, as he came up, "you've done it!"
+
+"Yes"--he was flushed and laughing, his head held high--"you always said
+I could do it. And I shall do it again. Did you hear them shout, Elise?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Jove! I feel like the old woman in the nursery rhyme, 'Alack-a-daisy,
+do this be I?'" He was excited, eager, but it was not the old eagerness.
+There was an avidity, a greediness.
+
+She laid her hand on his arm. "You've earned a rest, dearest. Let's go
+up in the hills."
+
+"In the hills? Oh, we're too old, Elise."
+
+"We'll grow young."
+
+"To-night I've given youth to the world. That's enough for me"--the
+light in his eyes was not for her--"that's enough for me. We'll hang
+around New York for a week or two, and then we'll go back to Albemarle.
+I want to get to work on another play. It's a great game, Elise. It's a
+great game!"
+
+She knew then what she had done. Here was a monster of her own making.
+She had sacrificed her lover on the altar of success. Jimmie needed her
+no longer.
+
+I would not have you think this an unhappy ending. Elise has all that
+she had asked, and Jimmie, with fame for a mistress, is no longer an
+unwilling captive in the old house. The prisoner loves his prison,
+welcomes his chains.
+
+But Duncan and I talk at times of the young Jimmie who came years ago
+into our office. The Jimmie Harding who works down in Albemarle, and who
+struts a little in New York when he makes his speeches, is the ghost of
+the boy we knew. But he loves us still.
+
+
+
+
+THE HIDDEN LAND
+
+
+The mystery of Nancy Greer's disappearance has never been explained. The
+man she was to have married has married another woman. For a long time
+he mourned Nancy. He has always held the theory that she was drowned
+while bathing, and the rest of Nancy's world agrees with him. She had
+left the house one morning for her usual swim. The fog was coming in,
+and the last person to see her was a fisherman returning from his nets.
+He had stopped and watched her flitting wraith-like through the mist. He
+reported later that Nancy wore a gray bathing suit and cap and carried a
+blue cloak.
+
+"You are sure she carried a cloak?" was the question which was
+repeatedly asked. For no cloak had been found on the sands, and it was
+unlikely that she had worn it into the water. The disappearance of the
+blue cloak was the only point which seemed to contradict the theory of
+accidental drowning. There were those who held that the cloak might have
+been carried off by some acquisitive individual. But it was not likely;
+the islanders are, as a rule, honest, and it was too late in the season
+for "off-islanders."
+
+I am the only one who knows the truth. And as the truth would have been
+harder for Anthony Peak to bear than what he believed had happened, I
+have always withheld it.
+
+There was, too, the fear that if I told they might try to bring Nancy
+back. I think Anthony would have searched the world for her. Not,
+perhaps, because of any great and passionate need of her, but because he
+would have thought her unhappy in what she had done, and would have
+sought to save her.
+
+I am twenty years older than Nancy, her parents are dead, and it was at
+my house that she always stayed when she came to Nantucket. She has
+island blood in her veins, and so has Anthony Peak. Back of them were
+seafaring folk, although in the foreground was a generation or two of
+cosmopolitan residence. Nancy had been educated in France, and Anthony
+in England. The Peaks and the Greers owned respectively houses in Beacon
+Street and in Washington Square. They came every summer to the island,
+and it was thus that Anthony and Nancy grew up together, and at last
+became engaged.
+
+As I have said, I am twenty years older than Nancy, and I am her cousin.
+I live in the old Greer house on Orange Street, for it is mine by
+inheritance, and was to have gone to Nancy at my death. But it will not
+go to her now. Yet I sometimes wonder--will the ship which carried her
+away ever sail back into the harbor? Some day, when she is old, will she
+walk up the street and be sorry to find strangers in the house?
+
+I remember distinctly the day when the yacht first anchored within the
+Point. It was a Sunday morning and Nancy and I had climbed to the top of
+the house to the Captain's Walk, the white-railed square on the roof
+which gave a view of the harbor and of the sea.
+
+Nancy was twenty-five, slim and graceful. She wore that morning a short
+gray-velvet coat over white linen. Her thick brown hair was gathered
+into a low knot and her fine white skin had a touch of artificial color.
+Her eyes were a clear blue. She was really very lovely, but I felt that
+the gray coat deadened her--that if she had not worn it she would not
+have needed that touch of color in her cheeks.
+
+She lighted a cigarette and stood looking off, with her hand on the
+rail. "It is a heavenly morning, Ducky. And you are going to church?"
+
+I smiled at her and said, "Yes."
+
+Nancy did not go to church. She practiced an easy tolerance. Her people
+had been, originally, Quakers. In later years they had turned to
+Unitarianism. And now in this generation, Nancy, as well as Anthony
+Peak, had thrown off the shackles of religious observance.
+
+"But it is worth having the churches just for the bells," Nancy conceded
+on Sunday mornings when their music rang out from belfry and tower.
+
+It was worth having the churches for more than the bells. But it was
+useless to argue with Nancy. Her morals and Anthony's were
+irreproachable. That is, from the modern point of view. They played
+cards for small stakes, drank when they pleased, and, as I have
+indicated, Nancy smoked. She was, also, not unkissed when Anthony asked
+her to marry him. These were not the ideals of my girlhood, but Anthony
+and Nancy felt that such small vices as they cultivated saved them from
+the narrow-mindedness of their forebears.
+
+"Anthony and I are going for a walk," she said. "I will bring you some
+flowers for your bowls, Elizabeth."
+
+It was just then that the yacht steamed into the harbor--majestically,
+like a slow-moving swan. I picked out the name with my sea-glasses, _The
+Viking_.
+
+I handed the glasses to Nancy. "Never heard of it," she said. "Did you?"
+
+"No," I answered. Most of the craft which came in were familiar, and I
+welcomed them each year.
+
+"Some new-rich person probably," Nancy decided. "Ducky, I have a feeling
+that the owner of _The Viking_ bought it from the proceeds of pills or
+headache powders."
+
+"Or pork."
+
+I am not sure that Nancy and I were justified in our disdain--whale-oil
+has perhaps no greater claim to social distinction than bacon and ham
+or--pills.
+
+The church bells were ringing, and I had to go down. Nancy stayed on the
+roof.
+
+"Send Anthony up if he's there," she said; "we will sit here aloft like
+two cherubs and look down on you, and you will wish that you were with
+us."
+
+But I knew that I should not wish it; that I should be glad to walk
+along the shaded streets with my friends and neighbors, to pass the
+gardens that were yellow with sunlight, and gay with larkspur and
+foxglove and hollyhocks, and to sit in the pew which was mine by
+inheritance.
+
+Anthony was down-stairs. He was a tall, perfectly turned out youth, and
+he greeted me in his perfect manner.
+
+"Nancy is on the roof," I told him, "and she wants you to come up."
+
+"So you are going to church? Pray for me, Elizabeth."
+
+Yet I knew he felt that he did not need my prayers. He had Nancy, more
+money than he could spend, and life was before him. What more, he would
+ask, could the gods give?
+
+I issued final instructions to my maids about the dinner and put on my
+hat. It was a rather superlative hat and had come from Fifth Avenue. I
+spend the spring and fall in New York and buy my clothes at the smartest
+places. The ladies of Nantucket have never been provincial in their
+fashions. Our ancestors shopped in the marts of the world. When our
+captains sailed the seas they brought home to their womenfolk the
+treasures of loom and needle from Barcelona and Bordeaux, from Bombay
+and Calcutta, London and Paris and Tokio.
+
+And perhaps because of my content in my new hat, perhaps because of the
+pleasant young pair of lovers which I had left behind me in the old
+house, perhaps because of the shade and sunshine, and the gardens,
+perhaps because of the bells, the world seemed more than ever good to me
+as I went on my way.
+
+My pew in the church is well toward the middle. My ancestors were
+modest, or perhaps they assumed that virtue. They would have neither the
+highest nor the lowest seat in the synagogue.
+
+It happens, therefore, that strangers who come usually sit in front of
+me. I have a lively curiosity, and I like to look at them. In the winter
+there are no strangers, and my mind is, I fancy, at such times, more
+receptive to the sermon.
+
+I was early and sat almost alone in the great golden room whose
+restraint in decoration suggests the primitive bareness of early days.
+Gradually people began to come in, and my attention was caught by the
+somewhat unusual appearance of a man who walked up the aisle preceded by
+the usher.
+
+He was rather stocky as to build, but with good, square military
+shoulders and small hips. He wore a blue reefer, white trousers, and
+carried a yachtsman's cap. His profile as he passed into his pew showed
+him young, his skin slightly bronzed, his features good, if a trifle
+heavy.
+
+Yet as he sat down and I studied his head, what seemed most significant
+about him was his hair. It was reddish-gold, thick, curled, and
+upstanding, like the hair on the head of a lovely child, or in the
+painting of a Titian or a Tintoretto.
+
+In a way he seemed out of place. Young men of his type so rarely came to
+church alone. Indeed, they rarely came to church at all. He seemed to
+belong to the out-of-doors--to wide spaces. I was puzzled, too, by a
+faint sense of having seen him before.
+
+It was in the middle of the sermon that it all connected up. Years ago a
+ship had sailed into the harbor, and I had been taken down to see it. I
+had been enchanted by the freshly painted figurehead--a strong young god
+of some old Norse tale, with red-gold hair and a bright blue tunic. And
+now in the harbor was _The Viking_, and here, in the shadow of a
+perfectly orthodox pulpit, sat that strong young god, more glorious even
+than my memory of his wooden prototype.
+
+He seemed to be absolutely at home--sat and stood at the right places,
+sang the hymns in a delightful barytone which was not loud, but which
+sounded a clear note above the feebler efforts of the rest of us.
+
+It has always been my custom to welcome the strangers within our gates,
+and I must confess to a preference for those who seem to promise
+something more than a perfunctory interchange.
+
+So as my young viking came down the aisle, I held out my hand. "We are
+so glad to have you with us."
+
+He stopped at once, gave me his hand, and bent on me his clear gaze.
+"Thank you." And then, immediately: "You live here? In Nantucket?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"All the year round?"
+
+"Practically."
+
+"That is very interesting." Again his clear gaze appraised me. "May I
+walk a little way with you? I have no friends here, and I want to ask a
+lot of questions about the island."
+
+The thing which struck me most as we talked was his utter lack of
+self-consciousness. He gave himself to the subject in hand as if it were
+a vital matter, and as if he swept all else aside. It is a quality
+possessed by few New Englanders; it is, indeed, a quality possessed by
+few Americans. So when he offered to walk with me, it seemed perfectly
+natural that I should let him. Not one man in a thousand could have made
+such a proposition without an immediate erection on my part of the
+barriers of conventionality. To have erected any barrier in this
+instance would have been an insult, to my perception of the kind of man
+with whom I had to deal.
+
+He was a gentleman, individual, and very much in earnest; and more than
+all, he was immensely attractive. There was charm in that clear blue
+gaze of innocence. Yet it was innocence plus knowledge, plus something
+which as yet I could not analyze.
+
+He left me at my doorstep. I found that he had come to the island not to
+play around for the summer at the country clubs and on the bathing
+beach, but to live in the past--see it as it had once been--when its men
+went down to the sea in ships. And because there was still so much that
+we had to say to each other, I asked him to have a cup of tea with me,
+"this afternoon at four."
+
+He accepted at once, with his air of sweeping aside everything but the
+matter in hand. I entered the house with a sense upon me of high
+adventure. I could not know that I was playing fate, changing in that
+moment the course of Nancy's future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dinner was at one o'clock. It seems an impossible hour to people who
+always dine at night. But on the Sabbath we Nantucketers eat our
+principal meal when we come home from church.
+
+Nancy and Anthony protested as usual. "Of course you can't expect us to
+dress."
+
+Nancy sat down at the table with her hat on, and minus the velvet coat.
+She was a bit disheveled and warm from her walk. She had brought in a
+great bunch of blue vetch and pale mustard, and we had put it in the
+center of the table in a bowl of gray pottery. My dining-room is in gray
+and white and old mahogany, and Nancy had had an eye to its coloring
+when she picked the flowers. They would not have fitted in with the
+decorative scheme of my library, which is keyed up, or down, to an
+antique vase of turquoise glaze, or to the drawing-room, which is in
+English Chippendale with mulberry brocade.
+
+We had an excellent dinner, served by my little Portuguese maid. Nancy
+praised the lobster bisque and Anthony asked for a second helping of
+roast duck. They had their cigarettes with their coffee.
+
+Long before we came to the coffee, however, Anthony had asked in his
+pleasant way of the morning service.
+
+"Tell us about the sermon, Elizabeth."
+
+"And the text," said Nancy.
+
+I am apt to forget the text, and they knew it. It was always a sort of
+game between us at Sunday dinner, in which they tried to prove that my
+attention had strayed, and that I might much better have stayed at home,
+and thus have escaped the bondage of dogma and of dressing up.
+
+I remembered the text, and then I told them about Olaf Thoresen.
+
+Nancy lifted her eyebrows. "The pills man? Or was it--pork?"
+
+"It was probably neither. Don't be a snob, Nancy."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "It was you who said 'pork,' Elizabeth."
+
+"He is coming to tea."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Sorry," said Nancy. "I'd like to see him, but I have promised to drive
+Bob Needham to 'Sconset for a swim."
+
+Anthony had made the initial engagement--to play tennis with Mimi Sears,
+"Provided, of course, that you have no other plans for me," he had told
+Nancy, politely.
+
+She had no plans, nor would she, under the circumstances, have urged
+them. That was their code--absolute freedom. "We'll be a lot happier if
+we don't tie each other up."
+
+It was to me an amazing attitude. In my young days lovers walked out on
+Sunday afternoons to the old cemetery, or on the moor, or along the
+beach, and came back at twilight together, and sat together after
+supper, holding hands.
+
+I haven't the slightest doubt that Anthony held Nancy's hands, but there
+was nothing fixed about the occasions. They had done away with billing
+and cooing in the old sense, and what they had substituted seemed to
+satisfy them.
+
+Anthony left about three, and I went up to get into something thin and
+cool, and to rest a bit before receiving my guest. I heard Nancy at the
+telephone making final arrangements with the Drakes. After that I fell
+asleep, and knew nothing more until Anita came up to announce that Mr.
+Thoresen was down-stairs.
+
+Tea was served in the garden at the back of the house, where there were
+some deep wicker chairs, and roses in a riot of bloom.
+
+"This is--enchanting--" said Olaf. He did not sit down at once. He stood
+looking about him, at the sun-dial, and the whale's jaw lying bleached
+on a granite pedestal, and at the fine old houses rising up around us.
+"It is enchanting. Do you know, I have been thinking myself very
+fortunate since you spoke to me in church this morning."
+
+After that it was all very easy. He asked and I answered. "You see," he
+explained, finally, "I am hungry for anything that tells me about the
+sea. Three generations back we were all sailors--my great-grandfather
+and his fathers before him in Norway--and far back of that--the
+vikings." He drew a long breath. "Then my grandfather came to America.
+He settled in the West--in Dakota, and planted grain. He made money, but
+he was a thousand miles away from the sea. He starved for it, but he
+wanted money, and, as I have said, he made it. And my father made more
+money. Then I came. The money took me to school in the East--to
+college. My mother died and my father. And now the money is my own. I
+bought a yacht, and I have lived on the water. I can't get enough of it.
+I think that I am making up for all that my father and my grandfather
+denied themselves."
+
+I can't in the least describe to you how he said it. There was a
+tenseness, almost a fierceness, in his brilliant blue eyes. Yet he
+finished up with a little laugh. "You see," he said, "I am a sort of
+Flying Dutchman--sailing the seas eternally, driven not by any sinister
+force but by my own delight in it."
+
+"Do you go alone?"
+
+"Oh, I have guests--at times. But I am often my own--good company--"
+
+He stopped and rose. Nancy had appeared in the doorway. She crossed the
+porch and came down toward us. She was in her bathing suit and cap, gray
+again, with a line of green on the edges, and flung over her shoulders
+was a gray cloak. She was on her way to the stables--it was before the
+day of motor-cars on the island, those halcyon, heavenly days. The door
+was open and her horse harnessed and waiting for her. She could not, of
+course, pass us without speaking, and so I presented Olaf.
+
+Anita had brought the tea, and Nancy stayed to eat a slice of thin bread
+and butter. "In this air one is always hungry," she said to Olaf, and
+smiled at him.
+
+He did not smile back. He was surveying her with a sort of frowning
+intensity. She spoke of it afterward, "Does he always stare like that?"
+But I think that, in a way, she was pleased.
+
+She drove her own horse, wrapped in her cloak and with an utter
+disregard to the informality of her attire. She would, I knew, gather up
+the Drakes and Bob Needham, likewise attired in bathing costumes, and
+they would all have tea on the other side of the island, naiad-like and
+utterly unconcerned. I did not approve of it, but Nancy did not cut her
+life to fit my pattern.
+
+When she had gone, Olaf said to me, abruptly, "Why does she wear gray?"
+
+"Oh, she has worked out a theory that repression in color is an evidence
+of advanced civilization. The Japanese, for example--"
+
+"Why should civilization advance? It has gone far enough--too far--And
+she should wear a blue cloak--sea-blue--the color of her eyes--"
+
+"And of yours." I smiled at him.
+
+"Yes. Are they like hers?"
+
+They were almost uncannily alike. I had noticed it when I saw them
+together. But there the resemblance stopped.
+
+"She belongs to the island?"
+
+"She lives in New York. But every drop of blood in her is seafaring
+blood."
+
+"Good!" He sat for a moment in silence, then spoke of something else.
+But when he was ready to go, he included Nancy in an invitation. "If you
+and Miss Greer could lunch with me to-morrow on my yacht--"
+
+I was not sure about Nancy's engagements, but I thought we might. "You
+can call us up in the morning."
+
+Nancy brought the Drakes and Bob Needham back with her for supper, and
+Mimi Sears was with Anthony. Supper on Sunday is an informal
+meal--everything on the table and the servants out.
+
+Nancy, clothed in something white and exquisite, served the salad. "So
+your young viking didn't stay, Elizabeth?"
+
+"I didn't ask him."
+
+It was then that she spoke of his frowning gaze. "Does he always stare
+like that?"
+
+Anthony, breaking in, demanded, "Did he stare at Nancy?"
+
+I nodded. "It was her eyes."
+
+They all looked at me. "Her eyes?"
+
+"Yes. He said that her cloak should have matched them."
+
+Anthony flushed. He has a rather captious code for outsiders. Evidently
+Olaf had transgressed it.
+
+"Is the man a dressmaker?"
+
+"Of course not, Anthony."
+
+"Then why should he talk of Nancy's clothes?"
+
+"Well," Nancy remarked, "perhaps the less said about my clothes the
+better. I was in my bathing suit."
+
+Anthony was irritable. "Well, why not? You had a right to wear what you
+pleased, but he did not have a right to make remarks about it."
+
+I came to Olaf's defense. "You would understand better if you could see
+him. He is rather different, Anthony."
+
+"I don't like different people," and in that sentence was a summary of
+Anthony's prejudices. He and Nancy mingled with their own kind.
+Anthony's friends were the men who had gone to the right schools, who
+lived in the right streets, belonged to the right clubs, and knew the
+right people. Within those limits, humanity might do as it pleased;
+without them, it was negligible, and not to be considered.
+
+After supper the five of them were to go for a sail. There was a moon,
+and all the wonder of it.
+
+Anthony was not keen about the plan. "Oh, look here, Nancy," he
+complained, "we have done enough for one day--"
+
+"I haven't."
+
+Of course that settled it. Anthony shrugged his shoulders and submitted.
+He did not share Nancy's almost idolatrous worship of the sea. It was
+the one fundamental thing about her. She bathed in it, swam in it,
+sailed on it, and she was never quite happy away from it.
+
+I heard Anthony later in the hall, protesting. I had gone to the library
+for a book, and their voices reached me.
+
+"I thought you and I might have one evening without the others."
+
+"Oh, don't be silly, Anthony."
+
+I think my heart lost a beat. Here was a lover asking his mistress for a
+moment--and she laughed at him. It did not fit in with my ideas of young
+romance.
+
+Yet late that night I heard the murmur of their voices and looked out
+into the white night. They stood together by the sun-dial, and his arm
+was about her, her head on his shoulder. And it was not the first time
+that a pair of lovers had stood by that dial under the moon.
+
+I went back to bed, but I could not sleep. I lighted my bedside lamp,
+and read _Vanity Fair_. I find Thackeray an excellent corrective when I
+am emotionally keyed up.
+
+Nancy, too, was awake; I could see her light shining across the hall.
+She came in, finally, and sat on the foot of my bed.
+
+"Your viking was singing as we passed his boat--"
+
+"Singing?"
+
+"Yes, hymns, Elizabeth. The others laughed, Anthony and Mimi, but I
+didn't laugh. His voice is--wonderful--"
+
+She had on a white-crepe _peignoir_, and there was no color in her
+cheeks. Her skin had the soft whiteness of a rose petal. Her eyes were
+like stars. As I lay there and looked at her I wondered if it was
+Anthony's kisses or the memory of Olaf's singing which had made her eyes
+shine like that.
+
+I had heard him sing, and I said so, "in church."
+
+Her arms clasped her knees. "Isn't it queer that he goes to church and
+sings hymns?"
+
+"Why queer? I go to church."
+
+"Yes. But you are different. You belong to another generation,
+Elizabeth, and he doesn't look it."
+
+I knew what she meant. I had thought the same thing when I first saw him
+walking up the aisle. "He has asked us to lunch with him to-morrow on
+his boat."
+
+It was the first time that I had mentioned it. Somehow I had not cared
+to speak of it before Anthony.
+
+She showed her surprise. "So soon? Doesn't that sound a
+little--pushing?"
+
+"It sounds as if he goes after a thing when he wants it."
+
+"Yes, it does. I believe I should like to accept. But I can't to-morrow.
+There's a clambake, and I have promised the crowd."
+
+"He will ask you again."
+
+"Will he? You can say 'yes' for Wednesday then. And I'll keep it."
+
+"I am not sure that we had better accept."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, there's Anthony."
+
+She slid from the bed and stood looking down at me. "You think he
+wouldn't like it?"
+
+"I am afraid he wouldn't. And, after all, you are engaged to him,
+Nancy."
+
+"Of course I am, but he is not my jailer. He does as he pleases and I do
+as I please."
+
+"In my day lovers pleased to do the same thing."
+
+"Did they? I don't believe it. They just pretended, and there is no
+pretense between Anthony and me"--she stooped and kissed me--"they just
+pretended, Elizabeth, and the reason that I love Anthony is because we
+don't pretend."
+
+After that I felt that I need fear nothing. Nancy and Anthony--freedom
+and self-confidence--why should I try to match their ideals with my own
+of yesterday? Yet, as I laid my book aside, I resolved that Olaf should
+know of Anthony.
+
+I had my opportunity the next day. Olaf came over to sit in my garden
+and again we had tea. He was much pleased when he knew that Nancy and I
+would be his guests on Wednesday.
+
+"Come early. Do you swim? We can run the launch to the beach--or, better
+still, dive in the deeper water near my boat."
+
+"Nancy swims," I told him. "I don't. And I am not sure that we can come
+early. Nancy and Anthony usually play golf in the morning."
+
+"Who is Anthony?"
+
+"Anthony Peak. The man she is going to marry."
+
+He hesitated a moment, then said, "Bring him, too." His direct gaze met
+mine, and his direct question followed. "Does she love him?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"It is not always 'of course.'" He stopped and talked of other things,
+but in some subtle fashion I was aware that my news had been a shock to
+him, and that he was trying to adjust himself to it, and to the
+difference that it must make in his attitude toward Nancy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I told Nancy that Anthony had been invited, she demanded, "How did
+Olaf Thoresen know about him?"
+
+"I told him you were engaged."
+
+"But why, Elizabeth? Why shout it from the housetops?"
+
+"Well, I didn't want him to be hurt."
+
+"You are taking a lot for granted."
+
+I shrugged my shoulders. "We won't quarrel, and a party of four is much
+nicer than three."
+
+As it turned put, however, Anthony could not go. He was called back to
+Boston on business. That was where Fate again stepped in. It was, I am
+sure, those three days of Anthony's absence which turned the scale of
+Nancy's destiny. If he had been with us that first morning on the boat
+Olaf would not have dared....
+
+Nancy wore her white linen and her gray-velvet coat, and a hat with a
+gull's wing. She carried her bathing suit. "He intends, evidently, to
+entertain us in his own way."
+
+Olaf's yacht was modern, but there was a hint of the barbaric in its
+furnishings. The cabin into which we were shown and in which Nancy was
+to change was in strangely carved wood, and there was a wolfskin on the
+floor in front of the low bed. The coverlet was of a fine-woven red-silk
+cloth, weighed down by a border of gold and silver threads. On the wall
+hung a square of tapestry which showed a strange old ship with sails of
+blue and red and green, and with golden dragon-heads at stem and stern.
+
+Nancy, crossing the threshold, said to Olaf, who had opened the door for
+us, "It is like coming into another world; as if you had set the stage,
+run up the curtain, and the play had begun."
+
+"You like it? It was a fancy of mine to copy a description I found in
+an old book. King Olaf, the Thick-set, furnished a room like this for
+his bride."
+
+Olaf, the Thick-set! The phrase fitted perfectly this strong, stocky,
+blue-eyed man, who smiled radiantly upon us as he shut the door and left
+us alone.
+
+Nancy stood in the middle of the room looking about her. "I like it,"
+she said, with a queer shake in her voice. "Don't you, Elizabeth?"
+
+I liked it so much that I felt it wise to hide my pleasure in a pretense
+of indifference. "Well, it is original to say the least."
+
+But it was more than original, it was poetic. It was--Melisande in the
+wood--one of Sinding's haunting melodies, an old Saga caught and fixed
+in color and carving.
+
+In this glowing room Nancy in her white and gray was a cold and
+incongruous figure, and when at last she donned her dull cap, and the
+dull cloak that she wore over her swimming costume, she seemed a ghostly
+shadow of the bright bride whom that other Olaf had brought--a thousand
+years before--to his strange old ship.
+
+I realize that what comes hereafter in this record must seem to the
+unimaginative overdrawn. Even now, as I look back upon it, it has a
+dream quality, as if it might never have happened, or as if, as Nancy
+had said, it was part of a play, which would be over when the curtain
+was rung down and the actors had returned to the commonplace.
+
+But the actors in this drama have never returned to the commonplace. Or
+have they? Shall I ever know? I hope I may never know, if Nancy and Olaf
+have lost the glamour of their dreams.
+
+Well, we found Olaf on deck waiting for us. In a sea-blue tunic, with
+strong white arms, and the dazzling fairness of his strong neck, he was
+more than ever like the figurehead on the old ship that I had seen in my
+childhood. He carried over his arm a cloak of the same sea-blue. It was
+this cloak which afterward played an important part in the mystery of
+Nancy's disappearance.
+
+His quick glance swept Nancy--the ghostly Nancy in gray, with only the
+blue of her eyes, and that touch of artificial pink in her cheeks to
+redeem her from somberness. He shook his head with a gesture of
+impatience.
+
+"I don't like it," he said, abruptly. "Why do you deaden your beauty
+with dull colors?"
+
+Nancy's eyes challenged him. "If it is deadened, how do you know it is
+beauty?"
+
+"May I show you?" Again there was that tense excitement which I had
+noticed in the garden.
+
+"I don't know what you mean," yet in that moment the color ran up from
+her neck to her chin, the fixed pink spots were lost in a rush of lovely
+flaming blushes.
+
+For with a sudden movement he had snatched off her cap, and had thrown
+the cloak around her. The transformation was complete. It was as if he
+had waved a wand. There she stood, the two long, thick braids, which she
+had worn pinned close under her cap, falling heavily like molten metal
+to her knees, the blue cloak covering her--heavenly in color, matching
+her eyes, matching the sea, matching the sky, matching the eyes of Olaf.
+
+I think I must have uttered some sharp exclamation, for Olaf turned to
+me. "You see," he said, triumphantly, "I have known it all the time. I
+knew it the first time that I saw her in the garden."
+
+Nancy had recovered herself. "But I can't stalk around the streets in a
+blue cloak with my hair down."
+
+He laughed with her. "Oh, no, no. But the color is only a symbol. Modern
+life has robbed you of vivid things. Even your emotions. You
+are--afraid--" He caught himself up. "We can talk of that after our
+swim. I think we shall have a thousand things to talk about."
+
+Nancy held out her hand for her cap, but he would not give it to her.
+"Why should you care if your hair gets wet? The wind and the sun will
+dry it--"
+
+I was amazed when I saw that she was letting him have his way. Never for
+a moment had Anthony mastered her. For the first time in her life Nancy
+was dominated by a will that was stronger than her own.
+
+I sat on deck and watched them as they swam like two young sea gods,
+Nancy's bronze hair bright under the sun. Olaf's red-gold crest....
+
+The blue cloak lay across my knee. Nancy had cast it off as she had
+descended into the launch. I had examined it and had found it of soft,
+thick wool, with embroidery of a strange and primitive sort in faded
+colors. Yet the material of the cloak had not faded, or, if it had,
+there remained that clear azure, like the Virgin's cloak in old
+pictures.
+
+I knew now why Olaf had wanted Nancy on board, why he had wanted to swim
+with her in the sea which was as blue as her eyes and his own. It was to
+reveal her to himself as the match of the women of the Sagas. I found
+this description later in one of the old books in the ship's library:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then Hallgerd was sent for, and came with two women. She wore a blue
+woven mantle ... her hair reached down to her waist on both sides, and
+she tucked it under her belt.
+
+And there was, too, this account of a housewife in her "kyrtil":
+
+    The dress-train was trailing,
+    The skirt had a blue tint;
+    Her brow was brighter,
+    Her neck was whiter
+    Than pure new fallen snow.
+
+In other words, that one glance at Nancy in the garden, when he had
+risen at her entrance, had disclosed to Olaf the fundamental in her. He
+had known her as a sea-maiden. And she had not known it, nor I, nor
+Anthony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Luncheon was served on deck. We were waited on by fair-haired, but very
+modern Norsemen. The crew on _The Viking_ were all Scandinavians. Most
+of them spoke English, and there seemed nothing uncommon about any of
+them. Yet, in the mood of the moment, I should have felt no surprise had
+they served us in the skins of wild animals, or had set sail like
+pirates with the two of us captive on board.
+
+I will confess, also, to a feeling of exaltation which clouded my
+judgment. I knew that Olaf was falling in love with Nancy, and I half
+guessed that Nancy might be falling in love with Olaf, yet I sat there
+and let them do it. If Anthony should ever know! Yet how can he know? As
+I weigh it now, I am not sure that I have anything with which to
+reproach myself, for the end, at times, justifies the means, and the
+Jesuitical theory had its origin, perhaps, in the profound knowledge
+that Fate does not always use fair methods in gaining her ends.
+
+I can't begin to tell you what we talked about. Nancy had dried her
+hair, and it was wound loosely, high on her head. The blue cloak was
+over her shoulders, and she was the loveliest thing that I ever hope to
+see. By the flame in her cheeks and the light in her eyes, I was made
+aware of an exaltation which matched my own. She, too, was caught up
+into the atmosphere of excitement which Olaf created. He could not take
+his eyes from her. I wondered what Anthony would have said could he have
+visioned for the moment this blue-and-gold enchantress.
+
+When coffee was served there were no cigarettes or cigars. Nancy had her
+own silver case hanging at her belt. I knew that she would smoke, and I
+did not try to stop her. She always smoked after her meals and she was
+restless without it.
+
+It was Olaf who stopped her. "You will hate my bad manners," he said,
+with his gaze holding hers, "but I wish you wouldn't."
+
+She was lighting her own little wax taper and she looked her surprise.
+
+"My cigarette?"
+
+He nodded. "You are too lovely."
+
+"But surely you are not so--old-fashioned."
+
+"No. I am perhaps so--new-fashioned that my reason might take your
+breath away." He laughed but did not explain.
+
+Nancy sat undecided while the taper burned out futilely. Then she said,
+"Of course you are my host--"
+
+"Don't do it for that reason. Do it because"--he stopped, laughed again,
+and went on--"because you are a goddess--a woman of a new race--"
+
+With parted lips she looked at him, then tried to wrench herself back to
+her attitude of light indifference.
+
+"Oh, we've grown beyond all that."
+
+"All what?"
+
+"Goddess-women. We are just nice and human together."
+
+"You are nice and human. But you are more than that."
+
+Nancy put her unlighted cigarette back in its case. "I'll keep it for
+next time," she said, with a touch of defiance.
+
+"There will be no next time," was his secure response, and his eyes held
+hers until, with an effort, she withdrew her gaze.
+
+Then he rose, and his men placed deep chairs for us in a sheltered
+corner, where we could look out across the blue to the low hills of the
+moor. There was a fur rug over my chair, and I sank gratefully into the
+warmth of it.
+
+"With a wind like this in the old days," Olaf said, as he stood beside
+me looking out over the sparkling water, "how the sails would have been
+spread, and now there is nothing but steam and gasoline and
+electricity."
+
+"Why don't you have sails then," Nancy challenged him, "instead of
+steam?"
+
+"I have a ship. Shall I show you the picture of it?"
+
+He left to get it, and Nancy said to me, "Ducky, will you pinch me?"
+
+"You mean that it doesn't seem real?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Well, maybe it isn't. He said he was a sort of Flying Dutchman."
+
+"I should hate to think that he wasn't real, Elizabeth. He is as alive
+as a--burning coal."
+
+Olaf came back with the pictures of his ship, a clean-cut, beautiful
+craft, very up-to-date, except for the dragon-heads at prow and stem.
+
+"If I could have had my way," he told us, "I should have built it like
+the ship on the tapestry in there--but it wasn't practical--we haven't
+manpower for the oars in these days."
+
+He had other pictures--of a strange house, or, rather, of a collection
+of buildings set in the form of a quadrangle, and inclosed by low walls.
+There were great gateways of carved wood with ironwork and views of the
+interior--a wide hall with fireplaces--a raised platform, with carved
+seats that gave a throne-like effect. The house stood on a sort of high
+peninsula with a forest back of it, and the sea spreading out beyond.
+
+"The house looks old," Olaf said, "but I planned it."
+
+He had, he explained, during one of his voyages, come upon a hidden
+harbor. "There is only a fishing village and a few small boats at the
+landing place, but the people claim to be descendants of the vikings.
+They are utterly isolated, but a God-fearing, hardy folk.
+
+"It is strangely cut off from the rest of the world. I call it 'The
+Hidden Land.' It is not on any map. I have looked and have not found
+it."
+
+"But why," was Nancy's demand, "did you build there?"
+
+It was a question, I think, for which he had waited. "Some day I may
+tell you, but not now, except this--that I love the sea, and I shall end
+my days where, when I open my gates, my eyes may rest upon it ... where
+its storms may beat upon my roof, and where the men about me shall sail
+it, and get their living from it.
+
+"I have told your cousin," he went on, "something of the life of my
+grandfather and of my father. With all of their sea-blood, they were
+shut away for two generations from the sea. Can you grasp the meaning of
+that to me?--the heritage of suppressed longings? I think my father must
+have felt it as I did, for he drank heavily before he died. My
+grandfather sought an outlet in founding the family fortunes. But when I
+came, there was not the compelling force of poverty to make me work, and
+I had before me the warning of my father's excesses. But this
+sea-madness! It has driven me on and on, and at last it has driven me
+here." He stopped, then took up the theme again in his tense, excited
+fashion, "It will drive me on again."
+
+"Why should it drive you on?"
+
+When Nancy asked that question, I knew what had happened. The thrill of
+her voice was the answer of a bird to its mate. When I think of her, I
+see her always as she was then, the blue cloak falling about her, her
+hair blowing, her cheeks flaming with lovely color.
+
+I saw his fingers clench the arm of his chair as if in an effort of
+self-control. Then he said: "Perhaps I shall tell you that, too. But not
+now." He rose abruptly. "It is warmer inside, and we can have some
+music. I am sure you must be tired of hearing me talk about myself."
+
+He played for us, in masterly fashion, the Peer Gynt suite, and after
+that a composition of his own. At last he sang, with all the swing of
+the sea in voice and accompaniment, and the song drew our hearts out of
+us.
+
+Nancy was very quiet as we drove from the pier, and it was while I was
+dressing for dinner that she came into my room.
+
+"Elizabeth," she said, "I am not sure whether we have been to a
+Methodist revival or to a Wagner music-drama--"
+
+"Neither," I told her. "There's nothing artificial about him. You asked
+me back there if he was real. I believe that he is utterly real, Nancy.
+It is not a pose. I am convinced that it is not a pose."
+
+"Yes," she said, "that's the queer thing. He's not--putting it
+on--and he makes everybody else seem--stale and shallow--like
+ghosts--or--shadow-shapes--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I read _Vanity Fair_ late into the night, and the morning was coming on
+before I tried to sleep. I waked to find Nancy standing by my bed.
+
+"His boat is gone."
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"Yes. It went an hour ago. I saw it from the roof."
+
+"From the roof?"
+
+"Yes. I got up--early. I--I could not sleep. And when I looked--it was
+gone--your glasses showed it almost out of sight."
+
+She was wrapped in the blue cloak. Olaf had made her bring it with her.
+She had protested. But he had been insistent.
+
+"I found this in the pocket," Nancy said, and held out a card on which
+Olaf had written, "When she lifted her arms, opening the door, a light
+shone on them from the sea, and the air and all the world were
+brightened for her."
+
+"What does it mean, Elizabeth?"
+
+"I think you know, my dear."
+
+"That he cares?"
+
+"What do you think?"
+
+Her eyes were like stars. "But how can he? He has seen me--twice--"
+
+"Some men are like that."
+
+"If you only hadn't told him about Anthony."
+
+"I am glad that I told him."
+
+"Oh, but he might have stayed."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And I might have loved him." She was still glowing with the fires that
+Olaf had lighted in her.
+
+"But you are going to marry Anthony."
+
+"Yes," she said, "I am going to marry Anthony. I am going to flirt and
+smoke cigarettes and let him--flirt--when I might have been a--goddess."
+
+It was after breakfast on the same day that a letter came to me,
+delivered into my own hands by messenger. It was from Olaf, and he left
+it to me whether Nancy should see it. It covered many pages and it shook
+my soul, but I did not show it to Nancy.
+
+There were nights after that when I found it hard to sleep, nights in
+which I thought of Olaf sailing toward the hidden land, holding in his
+heart a hope which it was in my power to crown with realization or dash
+to the ground. Yet I had Nancy's happiness to think of, and, in a sense,
+Anthony's. It seemed almost incredible that I must carry, too, on my
+heart, the burden of the happiness of Olaf Thoresen.
+
+When Anthony came back, he and Nancy were caught in a net of
+engagements, and I saw very little of them. Of course they romped in now
+and then with their own particular crowd, and treated me, as it were,
+to a cross-section of modern life. Except for two things, I should have
+judged that Nancy had put away all thoughts of Olaf, but these two
+things were significant. She had stopped smoking, and she no longer
+touched her cheeks with artificial bloom.
+
+Anthony's amazement, when he offered her a cigarette and she refused,
+had in it a touch of irritation. "But, my dear girl, why not?"
+
+"Well, I have to think of my complexion, Tony."
+
+I think he knew it was not that and was puzzled. "I never saw you
+looking better in my life."
+
+She was wearing a girdle of blue with her clear, crisp white, and her
+fairness was charming. She had, indeed, the look which belongs to young
+Catholic girls dedicated to the Virgin who wear her colors.
+
+It was not, however, until Anthony had been home for a week that he saw
+the blue cloak. We were all on the beach--Mimi Sears and Bob Needham and
+the Drakes, myself and Anthony. Nancy was late, having a foursome to
+finish on the golf grounds. She came at last, threading her way gayly
+through the crowd of bathers. She was without her cap, and her hair was
+wound in a thick braid about her head. I saw people turning to look at
+her as they had never turned to look when she had worn her shadowy gray.
+
+"Great guns!" said a man back of me. "What a beauty!"
+
+A deep flush stained Anthony's face, and I knew at once that he did not
+like it. It was as if, having attuned his taste to the refinement of a
+Japanese print, he had been called upon to admire a Fra Angelico. He
+hated the obvious, and Nancy's loveliness at this moment was as definite
+as the loveliness of the sky, the sea, the moon, the stars. Later I was
+to learn that Anthony's taste was for a sophisticated Nancy, a mocking
+Nancy, a slim, mysterious creature, with charms which were caviar to the
+mob.
+
+But Bob Needham spoke from the depths of his honest and undiscriminating
+soul. "Heavens! Nancy. Where did you get it?"
+
+"Get what?"
+
+"That cloak."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"Like it--! I wish Tony would run away while I tell you."
+
+Anthony, forcing a smile, asked, "Where did you get it, Nan?"
+
+"It was given to me." She sat down on the sand and smiled at him.
+
+Mrs. Drake, feeling the thickness and softness, exclaiming over the
+embroidery, said finally: "It is a splendid thing. Like a queen's robe."
+
+"You haven't told us yet," Anthony persisted, "where you got it."
+
+"No? Well, Elizabeth will tell you. It's rather a long story. I am going
+into the water. Come on, Bob."
+
+She left the cloak with me. Anthony followed her and the others. I sat
+alone under a great orange umbrella and wondered if Anthony would ask me
+about the cloak.
+
+He did not, and when Nancy came back finally with her hair down and
+blowing in the wind to dry, Anthony was with her. The cloud was gone
+from his face, in the battle with the wares he had forgotten his
+vexation.
+
+But he remembered when he saw the cloak. "Tell me about it, Nancy."
+
+"I got it from Elizabeth's viking."
+
+That was the calm way in which she put it.
+
+"He isn't my viking," I told her.
+
+"Well, you were responsible for him."
+
+"Do you mean to say," Anthony demanded, "that you accepted a gift like
+that from a man you didn't know?"
+
+Nancy, hugging herself in the cloak, said, "I felt that I knew him very
+well."
+
+"How long was he here?"
+
+"Three days. I saw him twice."
+
+"I don't think I quite like the--idea--" Anthony began, then broke off.
+"Of course you have a right to do as you please."
+
+"Of course," said Nancy, with a flame in her cheek.
+
+"But it would please me very much if you would send it back to him."
+
+"If I wanted to," she told him, "I couldn't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Can you mail parcel post packages to the--Flying Dutchman? Or express
+things to--to Odin?"
+
+"I don't in the least know what you are talking about, Nancy."
+
+"Well, he sailed in and he sailed out. He didn't leave any address. He
+left the cloak--and a rather intriguing memory, Anthony."
+
+That was all the satisfaction she would give him. And I am not sure that
+he deserved more at her hands. The agreement between them had
+been--absolute freedom.
+
+I am convinced that if it had not been for the garden party I should
+never have shown Olaf's letter to Nancy. The garden party is an annual
+event. We always hold it in August, when the "off-islanders" crowd the
+hotels, and when money is more plentiful than at any other time during
+the year.
+
+Nancy had charge of the fish pond. I had helped her to make the fish,
+which were gay objects of painted paper, numbered to indicate a
+corresponding prize package, and to be caught with a dangling line from
+a lily-wreathed artificial pool.
+
+The day of the garden party was a glorious one--with the air so clear
+that the flying pennants of the decorated booths, and the gowns of the
+women, gained brilliancy and beauty from the shining atmosphere.
+
+Nancy wore a broad blue hat which matched her eyes, one of her clear
+white dresses, and a silken scarf of the same blue as her hat. She loved
+children, and as she stood in a circle of them all the afternoon,
+untiring, eager--bending down to them, hooking the fish on the dangling
+line--handing out the prizes, smiling into the flushed eager faces,
+helping the very littlest ones to achieve a catch, I sat in a chair not
+far away from her and watched. I saw Anthony come and go, urging her to
+let some one else take her place, pressing a dozen reasons upon her for
+desertion of her task, and coming back, when she refused, to complain to
+me:
+
+"Such things are a deadly bore."
+
+"Not to Nancy."
+
+"But they used to be. She's changed, Elizabeth."
+
+"Beautifully changed."
+
+"I am not sure. She was always such, a good sport."
+
+"And isn't she now?"
+
+"She is different," he caught himself up, "but of course--adorable."
+
+Mimi Sears joined us, and she and Anthony went off together. Bob Needham
+hung around Nancy until she sent him away. At last the hour arrived for
+the open-air play which was a special attraction, and the crowds surged
+toward the inclosure. The booths were deserted, and only one
+rapturous child remained by the fish pond.
+
+Nancy sat down and lifted the baby to her lap. She had taken off her
+hat, and her blue scarf fell about her. Something tugged at my heart as
+I looked at her. With that little head in the hollow of her arm she was
+the eternal mother.
+
+I saw Anthony approaching. He stopped, and I caught his words. "You must
+come now, Nancy. I am saving a seat for you."
+
+She shook her head, and looked down at the child. "I told his nurse to
+go and he is almost asleep."
+
+He flung himself away from her and came over to me. "I have good seats
+for both of you in the enclosure. But Nancy won't go."
+
+I rose and went with him, although I should have been content to sit
+there by the fish pond and feast my eyes on Nancy.
+
+"It is perfectly silly of her to stay," Anthony fumed as we walked on
+together.
+
+"But she loves the children."
+
+"I hate children."
+
+I am sure that he did not mean it. What he hated was the fact that the
+child had for the moment held Nancy from him. It was as if, looking
+forward into the future, he could see like moments, and set himself
+against the thought of any interruption of what might be otherwise an
+untrammeled and independent partnership. He had, I think, little
+jealousy where men were concerned. He was willing to give Nancy the
+reins and let her go, believing that she would inevitably come back to
+him. He was not, perhaps, so willing to trust her with ties which might
+prove more absorbing than himself.
+
+If I had not had Olaf's letter, I might not have weighed Anthony's
+attitude so carefully, but against those burning words and their
+comprehension of the divinity and beauty of my Nancy's nature, Anthony's
+querulous complaint struck cold.
+
+I think it was then, as we walked toward the inclosure, that I made
+up my mind to let Nancy hear what Olaf had to say to her.
+
+She stayed out late that night--there was a dinner and a dance--and
+Anthony brought her home. I confess that I felt like a traitor as I
+heard the murmur of his voice in the hall.
+
+But when he had gone, and Nancy passed my door on her way to her room, I
+called her, and she came in.
+
+I was in bed, and I had the letter in my hand. "I want you to read it,"
+I said. "It is from Olaf Thoresen."
+
+She looked at it, and asked, "When did it come?"
+
+"Two months ago. The day that he left."
+
+"Why haven't you shown it to me?"
+
+"I couldn't make up my mind. I do not know even now that I am right in
+letting you see it. But I feel that you have a right to see it. It is
+you who must answer it. Not I."
+
+When she had gone, I turned to the chapter in my book where Becky weeps
+crocodile tears over poor Rawdon Crawley on the night before Waterloo.
+There is no scene in modern literature to match it. But I couldn't get
+my mind on it. Nancy was reading Olaf's letter!
+
+I kept a copy of it, and here it is:
+
+     "I knew when I first saw her in the garden that she was the One
+     Woman. I had wanted sea-blood, and when she came, ready for a dip
+     in the sea, it seemed a sign. One knows these things somehow, and I
+     knew. I shan't attempt to explain it.
+
+     "When you told me of her lover, I felt that Fate had played a trick
+     on me. I could not now with honor pursue the woman who was promised
+     to another. Yet I permitted myself that one day--the day on my
+     boat.
+
+     "I learned in those hours that I spent with her that she had been
+     molded by the man she is to marry and that in the years to come she
+     will shrink to the measure of his demands upon her. She is feminine
+     enough to be swayed by masculine will. That is at once her strength
+     and her weakness. Loving a man who will love her for the wonder of
+     her womanhood, she will fulfill her greatest destiny. Loving, on
+     the other hand, one who aspires only to fit her into some
+     attenuated social scheme, she will wither and fade. I think you
+     know that this is true, that you will not accuse me of being unfair
+     to any one.
+
+     "And now may I tell you what my dreams have been for her?
+
+     "I am not young. I mean I am past those hot and early years when
+     men play--Romeo. The dream that is mine is one which has come to a
+     man of thirty, who, having seen the world, has weighed it and
+     wants--something more.
+
+     "I have told you of my house in that hidden land which is washed by
+     the sea. I want to spend the rest of my days there, and I had hoped
+     that some woman might be found whose love of life, whose love of
+     adventure, whose love of me, might be so strong that she would see
+     nothing strange in my demand that she forsake all others and cleave
+     only to me.
+
+     "By forsaking all others, I mean, literally, what I say. I should
+     want to cut her off entirely from all former ties. To let any one
+     into our secret, to reveal that hidden land to a gaping world,
+     would be to destroy it. We should be followed, tracked by the
+     newspapers, written up, judged eccentric--mad. And I do not wish to
+     be judged at all. My separation from my kind would have in it more
+     than a selfish whim, an obsession for solitude. I want to get back
+     to primitive civilization. I want my children to face a simpler
+     world than the one I faced. Do you know what it means for a man to
+     inherit money, with nothing back of it for two generations but hard
+     work, although back of that there were, perhaps, kings? It means
+     that I had, unaided, to fit myself into a social scheme so complex
+     that I have not yet mastered its intricacies. I do not want to
+     master them. I do not want my sons to master them. I want them to
+     find life a thing of the day's work, the day's worship, the day's
+     out-of-door delights. I want them to have time to think and to
+     dream. And then some day they shall come back if they wish to
+     challenge civilization--young prophets, perhaps, out of the
+     wilderness--seeing a new vision of God and man because of their
+     detachment from all that might have blinded them.
+
+     "I have a feeling that your Nancy might, if she knew this, dream
+     with me of a new race, rising to the level of the needs of a new
+     world. She might see herself as the mother of such a
+     race--sheltered in my hidden land, sailing the seas with me, held
+     close to my heart. I think I am a masterful man, but I should be
+     masterful only to keep her to her best. If she faltered I should
+     strengthen her. And I should make her happy. I know that I could
+     make her happy. And for me there will never be another.
+
+     "I am leaving it to you to decide whether you will show her this. I
+     want her to see it, because it seems to me that she has a right to
+     decide between the life that I can offer her and the life she must
+     live if she marries Anthony Peak. But it all involves a point of
+     honor which I feel that I am not unprejudiced enough to decide. So
+     to-morrow I shall go away. I shall sail far in the two months that
+     I shall give myself before I come back. And when I come, you will
+     let me know whether I am to turn once more to the trackless seas,
+     or stay to find my happiness."
+
+This letter when I had first read it had stirred me profoundly, as I
+think it must have stirred any man or woman who has yearned amid the
+complexities of modern existence to find some land of dreams. Even to my
+island, comparatively untouched by the problems of existence in crowded
+centers, come the echoes of discord, of social unrest, of political
+upheavals, of commercial greed. In this hidden land of Olaf's would be
+life stripped of its sordidness, love free from the blight of cynicism
+and disillusion--faith, firm in its nearness to God and the wonder of
+His works. I envied Olaf his hidden land as I envied Nancy her
+opportunity. My blood is the same as Nancy's, and I love the sea. And as
+we grow older our souls adventure!
+
+When Nancy came in to me, she had put on her white _peignoir_, and she
+had Olaf's letter in her hand.
+
+"Ducky," she said, and her voice shook, "I have read it twice--and--I
+shouldn't dare to think he was in earnest."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I should want to go, Elizabeth."
+
+"And leave the world behind you?"
+
+"Oh, I haven't any world. It might be different if mother were alive, or
+daddy. There'd be only you, Ducky, my dear, dear Ducky." She caught my
+hand and held it.
+
+"And Anthony--"
+
+"Anthony would get over it"--sharply. "Wouldn't he, Elizabeth? You know
+he would."
+
+"My dear, I don't know."
+
+"But I know. If I hadn't been in his life, Mimi Sears would have been,
+just as Bob Needham would have been in my life if it hadn't been for
+Anthony. There isn't any question between Anthony and me of--one woman
+for one man. You know that, Elizabeth. But with Olaf--if he doesn't have
+me, there will be no one else--ever. He--he will go sailing on--alone--"
+
+"My dear, how do you know?"
+
+She flung herself down beside me, a white rose, all fragrance. "I don't
+know"--she began to cry. "How silly I am," she sobbed against my
+shoulder. "I--I don't know anything about him, do I, Elizabeth--? But it
+would be wonderful to be loved--like that."
+
+All through the night she slept on my arm, with her hand curled in the
+hollow of my neck as she had slept as a child. But I did not sleep. My
+mind leaped forward into the future, and I saw my world without her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nancy stayed with me through September. Anthony's holiday was up the
+day after the garden party, and he went back to Boston, keeping touch
+with Nancy in the modern way by wire, special delivery, and
+long-distance telephone.
+
+It was on a stormy night with wind and beating rain that Nancy told me
+Anthony was insisting that she marry him in December.
+
+"But I can't, Elizabeth. I am going to write to him to-night."
+
+"When will it be?"
+
+"Who knows? I--I'm not ready. If he can't wait--he can let me go."
+
+She did not stay to listen to my comment on her mutiny--she swept out of
+the library and sat down at the piano in the other room, making a
+picture of herself between the tall white candles which illumined the
+dark mahogany and the mulberry brocades.
+
+I leaned back in my chair and watched her, her white fingers straying
+over the keys, her thin blue sleeves flowing back from her white arms.
+Now and then I caught a familiar melody among the chords, and once I was
+aware of the beat and the swing of the waves in the song which Olaf had
+once sung.
+
+She did not finish it. She rose and wandered to the window, parting the
+curtain and looking out into the streaming night.
+
+"It's an awful storm, Ducky."
+
+"Yes, my dear. On nights like this I always think of the old days when
+the men were on the sea, and the women waited."
+
+"I'd rather think of my man on the sea, even if I had to wait for him,
+Ducky, than shut up in office, stagnating."
+
+The door-bell rang suddenly. It was a dreadful night for any one to be
+out, but Anita, undisturbed and crisp in her white apron and cap, came
+through the hall. A voice asked a question, and the blood began to pound
+in my body. Things were blurred for a bit, and when my vision cleared--I
+saw Olaf in the shine of the candles in the room beyond, with Nancy
+crushed to him, his bright head bent, the sheer blue of her frock
+infolding him--the archway of the door framing them like the figures of
+saints in the stained glass of a church window!
+
+I knew then that I had lost her. But she did not yield at once.
+
+"I love him, of course. But a woman couldn't do a thing like that," was
+the way she put it to me the next morning.
+
+I felt, however, that Olaf would master her. Will was set against will,
+mind against mind. And at last she showed him the way. "A thousand years
+ago you would have carried me off."
+
+I can see him now as he caught the idea and laughed at her. "Whether you
+go of your own accord or I carry you, you will be happy." He lifted her
+in his strong hands as if she were a feather, held her, kissed her, and
+flashed a glance at me. "You see how easy it would be, and there's a
+chaplain on board."
+
+There is not much more to tell. Nancy went down one morning to the beach
+for her bath--and the fog swallowed her up. I have often wondered
+whether she planned it, or whether, knowing that she would be there, he
+had come in his launch and had borne her away struggling, but not, I am
+sure, unwilling. However it happened, the cloak went with her, and I
+like to think that she was held in his arms, wrapped in it, when they
+reached the ship.
+
+I like to think, too, of my Nancy in the glowing room with the wolfskins
+and the strange old tapestry--and the storms beating helpless against
+her happiness.
+
+I like to think of her as safe in that hidden land, where most of us
+fain would follow her--the mistress of that guarded mansion, the wife of
+a young sea god, the mother of a new race.
+
+But, most of all, I like to think of the children. And I have but one
+wish for a long life, which might otherwise weigh upon me, that the
+years may bring back to the world those prophets from a hidden land,
+those young voices crying from the wilderness--the children of Olaf and
+of Nancy Greer.
+
+
+
+
+WHITE BIRCHES
+
+I
+
+
+A woman, who under sentence of death could plan immediately for a trip
+to the circus, might seem at first thought incredibly light-minded.
+
+You had, however, to know Anne Dunbar and the ten years of her married
+life to understand. Her husband was fifteen years her senior, and he had
+few illusions. He had fallen in love with Anne because of a certain gay
+youth in her which had endured throughout the days of a dreadful
+operation and a slow convalescence. He had been her surgeon, and,
+propped up in bed, Anne's gray eyes had shone upon him, the red-gold
+curls of her cropped hair had given her a look of almost boyish beauty,
+and this note of boyishness had been emphasized by the straight
+slenderness of the figure outlined beneath the white covers.
+
+Anne had married Ridgeley Dunbar because she loved him. And love to Anne
+had been all fire and flame and spirit. It did not take her long to
+learn that her husband looked upon love and life as matters of flesh and
+blood--and bones. By degrees his materialism imposed itself upon Anne.
+She admired Ridgeley immensely. She worshiped, in fact, the wonder of
+his day's work. He healed the sick, he cured the halt and blind, and he
+scoffed at Anne's superstitions--"I can match every one of your Bible
+miracles. There's nothing to it, my dear. Death is death and life is
+life--so make the most of it."
+
+Anne tried to make the most of it. But she found it difficult. In the
+first place her husband was a very busy man. He seemed to be perfectly
+happy with his cutting people up, and his medical books, and the
+articles which he wrote about the intricate clockwork inside of us which
+ticks off the hours from birth to death. Now and then he went out to the
+theatre with his wife or to dine with friends. But, as a rule, she went
+alone. She had a limousine, a chauffeur, a low swung touring car--and an
+electric. Her red hair was still wonderful, and she dressed herself
+quite understanding in grays and whites and greens. If she did not wear
+habitually her air of gay youth, it was revived in her now and then when
+something pleased or excited her. And her eyes would shine as they had
+shone in the hospital when Ridgeley Dunbar had first bent over her bed.
+
+They shone on Christopher Carr when he came home from the war. He was a
+friend of her husband. Or rather, as a student in the medical school, he
+had listened to the lectures of the older man, and had made up his mind
+to know him personally, and had thus, by sheer persistence, linked their
+lives together.
+
+Anne had never met him. He had been in India When she had married
+Ridgeley, and then there had been a few years in Egypt where he had
+studied some strange germ, of which she could never remember the name.
+He had plenty of money, hence he was not tied to a practice. But when
+the war began, he had offered his services, and had made a great record.
+"He is one of the big men of the future," Ridgeley Dunbar had said.
+
+But when Christopher came back with an infected arm, which might give
+him trouble, it was not the time to talk of futures. He was invited to
+spend July at the Dunbars' country home in Connecticut, and Ridgeley
+brought him out at the week-end.
+
+The Connecticut estate consisted of a rambling stone house, an
+old-fashioned garden, and beyond the garden a grove of white birches.
+
+"What a heavenly place," Christopher said, toward the end of dinner;
+"how did you happen to find it?"
+
+"Oh, Anne did it. She motored for weeks, and she bought it because of
+the birches."
+
+Anne's eyes were shining. "I'll show them to you after dinner."
+
+She had decided at once that she liked Christopher. He still wore his
+uniform, and had the look of a soldier. But it wasn't that--it was the
+things he had been saying ever since the soup was served. No one had
+talked of the war as he talked of it. There had been other doctors whose
+minds had been on arms and legs--amputated; on wounds and shell
+shock--And there had been a few who had sentimentalized. But Christopher
+had seemed neither to resent the frightfulness nor to care about the
+moral or spiritual consequences. He had found in it all a certain beauty
+of which he spoke with enthusiasm--"A silver dawn, and a patch of Blue
+Devils like smoke against it--;" ... "A blood-red sunset, and a lot of
+airmen streaming across--"
+
+He painted pictures, so that Anne saw battles as if a great brush had
+splashed them on an invisible canvas. There were just four at the
+table--the two men, Anne, and her second cousin, Jeanette Ware, who
+lived the year round in the Connecticut house, and was sixty and
+slightly deaf, but who wore modern clothes and had a modern mind.
+
+It was not yet dark, and the light of the candles in sconces and on the
+table met the amethyst light that came through, the wide-flung lattice.
+Anne's summer gown was something very thin in gray, and she wore an
+Indian necklace of pierced silver beads. Christopher had sent it to her
+as a wedding-present and she had always liked it.
+
+When they rose from the table, Christopher said, "Now for the birches."
+
+Somewhere in the distance the telephone rang, and a maid came in to say
+that Dr. Dunbar was wanted. "Don't wait for me," he said, "I'll follow
+you."
+
+Jeanette Ware hated the night air, and took her book to the lamp on the
+screened porch, and so it happened that Anne and Christopher came alone
+to the grove where the white bodies of the birches shone like slender
+nymphs through the dusk. A little wind shook their leaves.
+
+"No wonder," said Christopher, looking down at Anne, "that you wanted
+this--but tell me precisely why."
+
+She tried to tell him, but found it difficult. "I seem to find something
+here that I thought I had lost."
+
+"What things?"
+
+"Well--guardian angels--do you believe in them?" She spoke lightly, as
+if it were not in the least serious, but he felt that it was serious.
+
+"I believe in all beautiful things--"
+
+"I used to think when I was a little girl that they were around me when
+I was asleep--
+
+   'Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--
+    Bless the bed that I lie on--'"
+
+her laugh was a bit breathless--"but I don't believe in them any more.
+Ridgeley doesn't, you know. And it does seem silly--"
+
+"Oh, no, it isn't--"
+
+"Ridgeley feels that it is a bit morbid--and perhaps he is right. He
+says that we must eat and drink and--be merry," she flung out her hands
+with a little gesture of protest, "but he really isn't merry--"
+
+"I see. He just eats and drinks?" He smiled at her.
+
+"And works. And his work is--wonderful."
+
+They sat down on a stone bench which had been hewn out of solid gray
+rock. "I wish Ridgeley had time to play," Anne said; "it would be nice
+for both of us--"
+
+The amethyst light had gone, and the dusk descended. Anne's gray dress
+was merged into the gray of the rock. She seemed just voice, and phantom
+outline, and faint rose fragrance. Christopher recognized the scent. He
+had sent her a precious vial in a sandalwood box. Nothing had seemed too
+good for the wife of his old friend Dunbar.
+
+"Life for you and Ridgeley," he told her, "should be something more than
+work or play--it should be infinite adventure."
+
+"Yes. But Ridgeley hasn't time for adventure."
+
+"Oh, he thinks he hasn't--"
+
+As Christopher talked after that, Anne was not sure that he was in
+earnest. He complained that romance had fallen into disrepute. "With all
+the modern stories--you know the formula--an ounce of sordidness, a
+flavor of sensationalism, a dash of sex--" One had to look back for the
+real thing--Aucassin and Nicolette, and all the rest. "That's why I
+haven't married."
+
+"Well, I have often wondered."
+
+"If I loved a woman, I should want to make her life all glow and
+color--and mine--with her--"
+
+Anne's eyes were shining. What a big pleasant boy he was. He seemed so
+young. He had a way of running his fingers up through his hair. She was
+aware of the gesture in the dark. Yes, she liked him. And she felt
+suddenly gay and light-hearted, as she had felt in the days when she
+first met Ridgeley.
+
+They talked until the stars shone in the tips of the birch trees.
+Ridgeley did not come, and when they went back to the house, they found
+that he had been called to New York on an urgent case. He would not
+return until the following Friday.
+
+Anne and Christopher were thus left together for a week to get
+acquainted. With only old Jeanette Ware to play propriety.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It did not take Christopher long to decide that Ridgeley was no longer
+in love with his wife. "Of course he would call it love. But he could
+live just as well without her. He has made a machine of himself."
+
+He spoke to Dunbar one night about Anne. "Do you think she is perfectly
+well?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"There's a touch of breathlessness when we walk. Are you sure about her
+heart?"
+
+"She has never been strong--" and that had seemed to be the end of it.
+
+But it was not the end of it for Christopher. He watched Anne closely,
+and once when they climbed a hill together and she gave out, he carried
+her to the top. He managed to get his ear against her heart, and what he
+heard drained the blood from his face.
+
+As for Anne, she thought how strong he was--and how fair his hair was
+with the sun upon it, for he had tucked his cap in his pocket.
+
+That night Christopher again spoke to Ridgeley. "Anne's in a bad way."
+He told of the walk to the top of the hill.
+
+Ridgeley listened this time, and the next day he took Anne down into his
+office, and did things to her. "But I don't see why you are doing all
+this," she complained, as he stuck queer instruments in his ears, and
+made her draw long breaths while he listened.
+
+"Christopher says you get tired when you walk."
+
+"Well, I do. But there's nothing really the matter, is there?"
+
+There was a great deal the matter, but there was no hint of it in his
+manner. If she had not been his wife, he would probably have told her
+the truth--that she had a few months, perhaps a few years ahead of her.
+He was apt to be frank with his patients. But he was not frank with
+Anne. He had intended to tell Christopher at once. But Christopher was
+away for a week.
+
+In the week that he was separated from her, Christopher learned that he
+loved Anne; that he had been in love with her from the moment that she
+had stood among the birches--like one of them in her white
+slenderness--and had talked to him of guardian angels;--"_Matthew, Mark,
+Luke, and John_!"
+
+He did not believe in saints, nor in the angels whose wings seemed to
+enfold Anne, but he believed in beauty--and Anne's seemed lighted from
+within, like an alabaster lamp.
+
+Yet she was very human--and the girl in her and the boy in him had met
+in the weeks that he had spent with her. They had found a lot of things
+to do--they had fished in shallow brown streams, they had ridden
+through miles of lovely country. They had gone forth in search of
+adventure, and they had found it; in cherries on a tree by the road, and
+he had climbed the tree and had dropped them down to her, and she had
+hung them over her ears--He had milked a cow in a pasture as they
+passed, and they had drunk it with their sandwiches, and had tied up a
+bill in Anne's fine handkerchief and had knotted it to the halter of the
+gentle, golden-eared Guernsey.
+
+But they had found more than adventure--they had found romance--shining
+upon them everywhere. "If I were a gipsy to follow the road, and she
+could follow it with me," Christopher meditated as he sat in the train
+on his way back to Anne.
+
+But there was Anne's husband, and Christopher's friend--and more than
+all there were all the specters of modern life--all the hideous wheels
+which must turn if Anne were ever to be his--treachery to Ridgeley--the
+divorce court--and then, himself and Anne, living the aftermath, of it
+all, facing, perhaps, disillusion--
+
+"Oh, not _that_," Christopher told himself, "she'd never grow
+less--never anything less than she is--if she could once--care--"
+
+For he did not know whether Anne cared or not. He might guess as he
+pleased--but there had not been a word between them.
+
+Once more the thought flashed, "If I were a gipsy to follow the road--"
+
+As his train sped through the countryside, he became aware of flaming
+bill-boards--a circus was showing in the towns--the fences fairly blazed
+with golden chariots, wild beasts, cheap gods and goddesses, clowns in
+frilled collars and peaked hats. He remembered a glorious day that he
+had spent as a boy!
+
+"I'll take Anne," was his sudden decision.
+
+He laughed to himself, and spent the rest of the way in seeing her at
+it. They would drink pink lemonade, and there would be pop-corn
+balls--the entrancing smell of sawdust--the beat of the band. He hoped
+there would be a tom-tom, and some of the dark people from the Far East.
+
+He reached his destination at seven o'clock. Dunbar met him at the
+station. Anne sat with her husband, and Jeanette was in the back seat.
+Christopher had, therefore, a side view of Anne as she turned a little
+that she might talk to him. The glint of her bright hair under her gray
+sports hat, the light of welcome in her eyes--!
+
+"I am going to take you to the circus to-morrow. Ridgeley, you'll go
+too?"
+
+Dunbar shook his head. "I've got to get back to town in the morning. And
+I'm not sure that the excitement will be good for Anne."
+
+"Why not?" quickly. "Aren't you well, Anne?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "Ridgeley seems to think I'm not. But the
+circus can't hurt me."
+
+Nothing more was said about it. Christopher decided to ask Ridgeley
+later. But the opportunity did not come until Anne had gone up-stairs,
+and Dunbar and Christopher were smoking a final cigar on the porch.
+
+"What's the matter with her?" Christopher asked.
+
+Dunbar told him, "She can't get well."
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Anne, getting ready for bed, on the evening of Christopher's arrival,
+felt unaccountably tired. His presence had been, perhaps, a bit
+over-stimulating. It was good to have him back. She scarcely dared admit
+to herself how good. After dinner she and Ridgeley and Christopher had
+walked down to the grove of birches. There had been a new moon, and she
+and Ridgeley had sat on the stone bench with Christopher at their feet.
+She had leaned her head against her husband's shoulder, and he had put
+his arm about her in the dark and had drawn her to him. He was rarely
+demonstrative, and his tenderness had to-night for some reason hurt her.
+She had learned to do without it.
+
+She had talked very little, but Christopher had talked a great deal. She
+had been content to listen. He really told such wonderful things--he
+gave her to-night the full story of her silver beads, and how they had
+been filched from an ancient temple--and he had bought them from the
+thief. "Until I saw you wear them, I always had a feeling that they
+ought to go back to the temple--to the god who had perhaps worn them for
+a thousand years. If I had known which god, I might have carried them
+back. But the thief wouldn't tell me."
+
+"It would have done no good to carry them back," Ridgeley had said, "and
+they are nice for Anne." His big hand had patted his wife's shoulder.
+
+"Oh," Christopher had been eager, "I want you to hear those temple bells
+some day, Anne. Why won't you take her, Dunbar? Next winter--drop your
+work, and we'll all go--"
+
+"I've a fat chance of going."
+
+"Haven't you made money enough?"
+
+"It isn't money. You know that. But my patients would set up a howl--"
+
+"Let 'em howl. You've got a life of your own to live, and so has Anne."
+
+Dunbar had hesitated for a moment--then, "Anne's better off here."
+
+Anne, thinking of these things as she got out of her dinner dress and
+into a sheer negligee of lace and faint blue, wondered why Ridgeley
+should think she was better off. She wanted to see the things of which
+Christopher had told her--to hear the temple bells in the dusk--the beat
+of the tom-tom on white nights.
+
+She stood at the window looking out at the moon. She decided that she
+could not sleep. She would go down and get a book that she had left on
+the table. The men were out-of-doors, on the porch; she heard the murmur
+of their voices.
+
+The voices were distinct as she stood in the library, and Christopher's
+words came to her, "What's the matter with Anne?"
+
+Then her husband's technical explanation, the scientific name which
+meant nothing to her, then the crashing climax, "She can't get well."
+
+She gave a quick cry, and when the men got into the room, she was
+crumpled up on the floor.
+
+Her husband reached her first. "My dear," he said, "you heard?"
+
+"Yes. Do you mean that I am--going to die, Ridgeley?"
+
+There was, of course, no way out of it. "It means, my dear, that I've
+got to take awfully good care of you. Your heart is bad."
+
+Christopher interposed. "People live for years with a heart like that."
+
+But her eyes sought her husband's. "How long do they live?"
+
+"Many months--perhaps years--without excitement--"
+
+This then had been the reason for his tenderness. He had known that she
+was going to die, and was sorry. But for ten years she had wanted what
+he might have given her--what he couldn't give her now--life as she had
+dreamed of it.
+
+She drew a quivering breath--"It isn't quite fair--is it?"
+
+It didn't seem fair. The two doctors had faced much unfairness of the
+kind of which she complained. But it was the first time that, for either
+of them, it had come so close.
+
+They had little comfort to give her, although they attempted certain
+platitudes, and presently Ridgeley carried her to her room.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+She insisted the next morning on going to the circus with Christopher.
+She had not slept well, and there were shadows under her eyes. The
+physician in Christopher warred with the man. "You ought to rest," he
+said at breakfast. Dunbar had gone to New York in accordance with his
+usual schedule. There were other lives to think of; and Anne, when he
+had looked in upon her that morning, had seemed almost shockingly
+callous.
+
+"No, I don't want to stay in bed, Ridgeley. I am going to the circus. I
+shall follow your prescription--to eat and drink and be merry--"
+
+"I don't think I have put it quite that way, Anne."
+
+"You have. Quite. 'Death is death and life is life--so make the most of
+it.'"
+
+Perhaps she was cruel. But he knew, too, that she was afraid. "My dear,"
+he said gently, "if you can get any comfort out of your own ideas, it
+might be better."
+
+"But you believe they are just my own ideas--you don't believe they are
+true?"
+
+"I should like to think they were true."
+
+"You ought to rest," said Christopher at the breakfast table.
+
+"I ought not. There are to be no more oughts--ever--"
+
+He nodded as if he understood, leaning elbows on the table.
+
+"I am going to pack the days full"--she went on. "Why not? I shall have
+only a few months--and then--annihilation--" She flung her question
+across the table. "You believe that, don't you?"
+
+He evaded. "We sleep--'perchance to dream.'"
+
+"I don't want to dream. They might be horrid dreams--"
+
+And then Jeanette came down, and poured their coffee, and asked about
+the news in the morning paper.
+
+Dressed for her trip to the circus, Anne looked like a girl in her
+teens--white skirt and short green coat--stout sports shoes and white
+hat. She wore her silver beads, and Christopher said, "I'm not sure that
+I would if I were you."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"In such a crowd."
+
+But she kept them on.
+
+They motored to the circus grounds, and came in out of the white glare
+to the cool dimness of the tent as if they had dived from the sun-bright
+surface of the sea. But there the resemblance ceased. Here was no
+silence, but blatant noise--roar and chatter and shriek, the beat of the
+tom-tom, the thin piping of a flute--the crash of a band. But it was the
+thin piping which Christopher followed, guiding Anne with his hand on
+her arm.
+
+Following the plaintive note, they came at last to the snake-charmer--an
+old man in a white turban. The snakes were in a covered basket. He sat
+with his feet under him and piped.
+
+Christopher spoke to him in a strange tongue. The piping broke off
+abruptly and the man answered with eagerness. There was a quick
+interchange of phrases.
+
+"I know his village," Christopher said; "he is going to show you his
+snakes."
+
+A crowd gathered, but the snake-charmer saw only the big man who had
+spoken to his homesick heart, and the girl with the silver beads. He
+knew another girl who had had a string of beads like that--and they had
+brought her luck--a dark-skinned girl, his daughter. Her husband had
+bestowed the beads on her marriage night, and her first child had been a
+son.
+
+He put the thin reed to his lips, and blew upon it. The snakes lifted
+their heads. He drew them up and out of the basket, and put them through
+their fantastic paces. Then he laid aside his pipe, shut them in their
+basket, and spoke to Christopher.
+
+"He says that no evil can teach you while you wear the beads,"
+Christopher told Anne.
+
+The old man, with his eyes on her intent face, spoke again. "What you
+think is evil--cannot be evil," Christopher interpreted. "The gods know
+best."
+
+They moved toward the inner tent.
+
+"Are you tired?" Christopher asked. "We don't have to stay."
+
+"I want to stay," and so they went in, and presently with a blare of
+trumpets the great parade began. They looked down on men and women in
+Roman chariots, men on horseback, women on horseback, on elephants, on
+camels--painted ladies in howdahs, painted ladies in sedan
+chairs--Cleopatra, Pompadour--history reduced to pantomime, color
+imposed upon color, glitter upon glitter, the beat of the tom-tom, the
+crash of the band, the thin piping, as the white-turbaned snake-charmer
+showed in the press of the crowd.
+
+Christopher's eyes went to Anne. She was leaning forward, one hand
+clasping the silver beads. He would have given much to know what was in
+her mind. How little she was and how young. And how he wanted to get her
+away from the thing which hung suspended over her like a keen-edged
+sword.
+
+But to get her away--how? He could never get her away from her thoughts.
+Unless....
+
+Suddenly he heard her laughing. Two clowns were performing with a lot of
+little dogs. One of the dogs was a poodle who played the fool. "What a
+darling," Anne was saying.
+
+There was more than they could look at--each ring seemed a separate
+circus--one had to have more than a single pair of eyes. Christopher was
+blind to it all--except when Anne insisted, "Look--look!"
+
+Six acrobats were in the ring--four men and two women. Their tights were
+of a clear shimmering blue, with silver trunks. One could not tell the
+women from the men, except by their curled heads, and their smaller
+stature. They were strong, wholesome, healthy. Christopher knew the
+quality of that health--hearts that pumped like machines--obedient
+muscles under satin skins. One of the women whirled in a series of
+handsprings, like a blue balloon--her body as fluid as quicksilver. If
+he could only borrow one-tenth of that endurance for Anne--he might keep
+her for years.
+
+Then came Pantaloon, and Harlequin and Columbine. The old man was funny,
+but the youth and the girl were exquisite--he, diamond-spangled and lean
+as a lizard, she in tulle skirts and wreath of flowers. They did all the
+old tricks of masks and slapping sticks, of pursuit and retreat, but
+they did them so beautifully that Anne and Christopher sat
+spellbound--what they were seeing was not two clever actors on a sawdust
+stage, but love in its springtime--girl and boy--dreams, rapture,
+radiance.
+
+Then, in a moment, Columbine was dead, and Harlequin wept over
+her--frost had killed the flower--love and life were at an end.
+
+Christopher was drawing deep breaths. Anne was tense. But
+now--Columbine was on her feet, and Harlequin was blowing kisses to the
+audience!
+
+"Let's get out of this," Christopher said, almost roughly, and led Anne
+down the steps and into the almost deserted outer tent. They looked for
+the snake-charmer, but he was gone. "Eating rice somewhere or saying his
+prayers," Christopher surmised.
+
+"How could he know about the gods?" Anne asked, as they drove home.
+
+"They know a great deal--these old men of the East," Christopher told
+her, and talked for the rest of the way about the strange people among
+whom he had spent so many years.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Ridgeley did not come home to dinner. He telephoned that he would be
+late. It was close and warm. Christopher, sitting with Anne and Jeanette
+on the porch, decided that a storm was brewing.
+
+Anne was restless. She went down into the garden, and Christopher
+followed her. She wore white, and he was aware of the rose scent. He
+picked a rose for her as he passed through the garden. "Bend your head,
+and I'll put it in your hair."
+
+"I can't wear pink."
+
+"It is white in the dusk--" He put his hands on her shoulders, stopped
+her, and stuck the rose behind her ear. Then he let her go.
+
+They came to the grove of birches, and sat down on the stone seat. It
+had grown dark, and the lightning flashing up from the horizon gave to
+the birches a spectral whiteness--Anne was a silver statue.
+
+"It was queer," she said, "about the old man at the circus."
+
+"About the beads?"
+
+"Yes. I wonder what he meant, Christopher? _'What you think is
+evil--cannot be evil'?_ Do you think he meant--Death?"
+
+He did not answer at once, then he said, abruptly, "Anne, how did it
+happen that you and Ridgeley drifted apart?"
+
+"Oh, it's hard to tell."
+
+"But tell me."
+
+"Well, when we were first married, I expected so much ... things that
+girls dream about--that he would always have me in his thoughts, and
+that our lives would be knit together. I think we both tried hard to
+have it that way. I used to ride with him on his rounds, and he would
+tell me about his patients. And at night I'd wait up for him, and have
+something to eat, and it was--heavenly. Ridgeley was so ... fine. But
+his practice got so big, and sometimes he wouldn't say a word when I
+rode with him.... And he would be so late coming in at night, and he'd
+telephone that I'd better go to bed.... And, well, that was the
+beginning. I don't think it is really his fault or mine ... it's just
+... life."
+
+"It isn't life, and you know it," passionately. "Anne, if you had
+married me ... do you think...?" He reached out in the dark and took
+her hand. "Oh, my dear, we might as well talk it out."
+
+She withdrew her hand. "Talk what out?"
+
+"You know. I've learned to care for you an awful lot. I had planned to
+go away. But I can't go now ... not and leave you to face things alone."
+
+He heard her quick breath. "But I've got to face them."
+
+"But not alone. Anne, do you remember what you said ... this morning?
+That you were going to pack the days full? And you can't do that without
+some one to help you. And Ridgeley won't help. Anne, let me do it. Let
+me take you away from here ... away from Ridgeley. We will go where we
+can hear the temple bells. We'll ride through the desert ... we'll set
+our sails for strange harbors. We'll love until we forget everything,
+but the day, the hour,--the moment! And when the time comes for endless
+dreams...."
+
+"Christopher...."
+
+"Anne, listen."
+
+"You mustn't say things like that to me ... you must not...!"
+
+"I must. I want you to have happiness. We'll crowd more in to a few
+short months than some people have in a lifetime. And you have a right
+to it."
+
+"Would it be happiness?"
+
+"Why not? In a way we are all pushing death ahead of us. Who knows that
+he will be alive to-morrow? There's this arm of mine ... there's every
+chance that I'll have trouble with it. And an automobile accident may
+wreck a honeymoon. You've as much time as thousands who are counting on
+more."
+
+The lightning flashed and showed the birches writhing.
+
+"But afterward, Christopher, _afterward_...?"
+
+"Well, if it is Heaven, we'll have each other. And if it is Hell ...
+there were Paolo and Francesca ... and if it is sleep, I'll dream
+eternally of you! Anne ... Anne, do you love me enough to do it?"
+
+"Christopher, please!"
+
+But the storm was upon them--rain and wind, and the thunder a cannonade.
+Christopher, brought at last to the knowledge of its menace, picked Anne
+up in his arms, and ran for shelter. When they reached the house, they
+found Ridgeley there. He was stern. "It was a bad business to keep her
+out. She's afraid of storms."
+
+"Were you afraid?" Christopher asked her, as Ridgeley went to look after
+the awnings.
+
+"I forgot the storm," she said, and did not meet his eyes.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Lying awake in her wide bed, Anne thought it over. She was still shaken
+by Christopher's vehemence. She had believed him her friend, and had
+found him her lover--and oh, he had brought back youth to her. If he
+left her now, how could she stand it--the days with no one but Jeanette
+Ware, and the soul-shaking knowledge of what was ahead?
+
+And Ridgeley would not care--much. In a week be swallowed up by his
+work....
+
+She tried to read, but found it difficult. Across each page flamed
+Christopher's sentences.... "We'll ride through the desert.... We'll set
+our sails for strange harbors...."
+
+Was that what the old man had meant at the circus.... "What you think is
+evil--cannot be evil"? Would Christopher give her all that she had hoped
+of Ridgeley? If she lived to be eighty, she and Ridgeley would--jog. Was
+Christopher right--"You'll have more happiness in a few months than some
+people in a lifetime?"
+
+She heard her husband moving about in the next room, the water booming
+in his bath. A thin line of light showed under his door.
+
+She shut her book and turned out her lamp. The storm had died down and
+the moon was up. Through the open window she could see beyond the garden
+to the grove of birches.
+
+Hitherto, the thought of the little grove had been as of a sanctuary.
+She was aware, suddenly, that it had become a place of contending
+forces. Were the guardian angels driven out...?
+
+_But there weren't any guardian angels_! Ridgeley had said that they
+were silly. And Christopher didn't believe in them. She wished that her
+mother might have lived to talk it over. Her mother had had no doubts.
+
+The door of her husband's room opened, and he was silhouetted against
+the light. Coming up to the side of her bed, he found her wide-eyed.
+
+"Can't you sleep, my dear?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I don't want to give you anything."
+
+"I don't want anything."
+
+He sat down by the side of the bed. He had on his blue bathrobe, and the
+open neck showed his strong white throat. "My dear," he said, "I've been
+thinking of what you said this morning--about my lack of belief and the
+effect it has had on yours. And--I'm sorry."
+
+"Being sorry doesn't help any, does it, Ridgeley?"
+
+"I should like to think that you had your old faiths to--comfort you."
+
+She had no answer for that, and presently he said, "Are you warm
+enough?" and brought an extra blanket, because the air was cool after
+the storm, and then he bent and kissed her forehead. "Shut your eyes and
+sleep if you can."
+
+But of course she couldn't sleep. She lay there for hours, weighing what
+he had said to her against what Christopher had said. Each man was
+offering her something--Christopher, life at the expense of all her
+scruples. Ridgeley, the resurrection of burnt-out beliefs.
+
+She shivered a bit under the blanket. It would be heavenly to hear the
+temple bells--with youth beside her. To drink the wine of life from a
+brimming cup. But all the time she would be afraid, nothing could take
+away that fear.--Nothing, nothing, _nothing_.
+
+She was glad that her husband was awake. The thin line of light still
+showed beneath his door. It would be dreadful to be alone--in the dark.
+At last she could stand it no longer. She got out of bed, wrapped
+herself in a robe that lay at the foot of it, and opened the door.
+
+"May I leave it open?"
+
+As her husband turned in his chair, she saw his hand go quickly, as if
+to cover the paper on which he was writing. "Of course, my dear. Are you
+afraid?"
+
+"I am always afraid, Ridgeley. Always--"
+
+She put her hands up to her face and began to cry. He came swiftly
+toward her and took her in his arms. "Hush," he said, "nothing can hurt
+you, Anne."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+When she waked in the morning, it was with, the remembrance of his
+tenderness. Well, of course he was sorry for her. Anybody would be. But
+Christopher was sorry, too. And Christopher had something to offer
+her--more than Ridgeley--yes, it was more--
+
+She was half afraid to go down-stairs. Christopher would be at breakfast
+on the porch. Jeanette would be there, pouring coffee, and perhaps
+Ridgeley if he had no calls. And Christopher would talk in his gay young
+voice--and Ridgeley would read the newspaper, and she and Christopher
+would make their plans for the day--
+
+She rose and began to dress, but found herself suddenly panic-stricken
+at the thought of the plans that Christopher might make. If they motored
+off together, he would talk to her as he had talked in the grove of
+birches--of the temple bells, and of the desert, and the strange
+harbors--and how could she be sure that she would be strong enough to
+resist--and what if she listened, and let him have his way?
+
+She decided to eat her breakfast in bed, and rang for it. A note came up
+from Christopher. "Don't stay up-stairs. Ridgeley left hours ago, and I
+shan't enjoy my toast and bacon if you aren't opposite me. I have picked
+a white rose to put by your plate. And I have a thousand things to say
+to you--"
+
+His words had a tonic effect. Oh, why not--? What earthly difference
+would it make? And hadn't Browning said something like that--"_Who knows
+but the world may end to-night_?"
+
+She was not sure that was quite the way that Browning had put it, and
+she thought she would like to be sure--she could almost see herself
+saying it to Christopher.
+
+So she went into her husband's room to get the book.
+
+Ridgeley's books were on the shelf above his desk. They had nothing to
+do with his medical library--that was down-stairs in his office, and now
+and then he would bring up a great volume. But he had a literary side,
+and he had revealed some of it to Anne in the days before he had been
+too busy. His Browning was marked, and it was not hard to find "The Last
+Ride." She opened at the right page, and stood reading--an incongruous
+figure amid Ridgeley's masculine belongings in her sheer negligee of
+faint blue.
+
+She closed the book, put it back on the shelf, and was moving away, when
+her eyes were caught by two words--"For Anne," at the top of a sheet of
+paper which lay on Ridgeley's desk. The entire page was filled with
+Ridgeley's neat professional script, and in a flash the gesture which he
+had made the night before returned to her, as if he were trying to hide
+something from her gaze.
+
+She bent and read....
+
+Oh, was this the way he had spent the hours of the night? Searching for
+words which might comfort her, might clear away her doubts, might bring
+hope to her heart?
+
+And he had found things like this: "_My little sister, Death_," said
+good St. Francis; ... "_The darkness is no darkness with thee, but the
+night is as clear as day; the darkness and light to thee are both
+alike_..." "_Yea, though I Walk through the Valley of the Shadow_ ..."
+These and many others, truths which had once been a part of her.
+
+She read, avidly. Oh, she had been thirsty--for this! Hungry for this!
+And _Ridgeley_--! The tears dripped so that she could hardly see the
+lines. She laid her cheek against the paper, and her tears blistered it.
+
+She carried it into her room. Christopher's note still lay on her
+pillow. She read it again, but she had no ears now for its call. She
+rang for her maid. "I shall stay in bed and write some letters."
+
+She wrote to Christopher, after many attempts. "We have been such good,
+_good_ friends. And we mustn't spoil it. Perhaps if you could go away
+for a time, it would be best for both of us. I am going to believe that
+some day you will find great happiness. And you would never have found
+happiness with me, you would have found only--fear. And I know now what
+the old man meant about the beads--'What you think is evil--cannot be
+evil.' Christopher, death isn't evil, if it isn't the end of things. And
+I am going to believe that it is not the end ..."
+
+Christopher went into town before lunch, and later Anne sat alone on
+the stone bench in her grove of birches. They were serene and still in
+the gold of the afternoon. Yet last night they had writhed in the storm.
+She, too, had been swept by a storm.... She missed her playmate--but she
+had a sense of relief in the absence of her tempestuous lover.
+
+Ridgeley came home that night with news of Christopher's sudden
+departure. "He found telegrams. He told me to say 'good-bye' to you."
+
+"I am sorry," Anne said, and meant it. Sorry that it had to be--but
+being sorry could not change it.
+
+After dinner Ridgeley had a call to make, and Anne went up to bed. But
+she was awake when her husband came in, and the thin line of light
+showed. She waited until she heard the boom of water in his bath, and
+then she slipped out of bed and opened the door between. She was propped
+up in her pillows when he reappeared in his blue bathrobe.
+
+"Hello," he called, "did you want me?"
+
+"Yes, Ridgeley."
+
+He came in. "Anything the matter?"
+
+"No. I'm not sick. But I want to talk."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"This--" She showed him the paper with its caption, "For Anne."
+
+"Ridgeley, did you write it because I was--afraid?" her hand went out to
+him.
+
+His own went over it. "I think I wrote it because I was afraid."
+
+"You?"
+
+His grip almost hurt her. "My dear, my dear, I haven't believed in
+things. How could I ... with all the facts that men like me have to deal
+with? But when I faced ... losing you...! love's _got_ to be eternal..."
+
+"Ridgeley."
+
+"I won't ... lose you. Oh, I know. We've grown apart. I don't know how a
+man is going to help it ... in this darned whirlpool.... But you've
+always been right ... here.... I've felt I might ... have you, if I ever
+had time ..." his voice broke.
+
+"And I thought you didn't care."
+
+"I was afraid of that, and somehow I couldn't get ... back ... to where
+we began. I was always thinking I would.... And then this came....
+
+"I always hated to kill the things that you believed, Anne. I thought I
+had to be honest ... that it would be better for you to face the
+truth.... But which one of us knows the Truth? Not a man among us. And I
+came across this ... '_Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not
+quickened except it die_....' We are all fools--the wisest of us...."
+
+She held out her arms to him, and he gathered her close. She felt that
+it had been a thousand years since she had prayed, yet she heard herself
+speaking.... And when he laid her back upon her pillows, she was aware
+that together they had approached some height from which they would
+never again descend.
+
+"I'll leave the door open," he said, as he left her. "I shall be
+reading, and you can see the light."
+
+It seemed as if the light from his room flooded the world. The four
+posts of her bed once more were tipped with shining saints! She turned
+on her pillow--beyond the garden, the grove of white birches was steeped
+in celestial radiance.
+
+"_My little sister, Death_," said good St. Francis.
+
+With her hand under her cheek, she slept at last, as peacefully as a
+child.
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPEROR'S GHOST
+
+I
+
+
+I had not known Tom Randolph a week before I was aware that life was not
+real to him. All his world was a stage, with himself as chief player. He
+dramatized everything--actions, emotions, income. Thus he made poverty
+picturesque, love a thing of the stars, the day's work a tragedy, or, if
+the professors proved kind, a comedy. He ate and drank, as it were, to
+music, combed his hair and blacked his boots in the glare of footlights;
+made exits and entrances of a kind unknown to men like myself who lacked
+his sense of the histrionic.
+
+He was Southern and chivalric. His traditions had to do with the doffed
+hat and the bent knee. He put woman on a pedestal and kept her there. No
+man, he contended, was worthy of her--what she gave was by the grace of
+her own sweet charity!
+
+It will be seen that in all this he missed the modern note. As a boy he
+had been fed upon Scott, and his later reading had not robbed him of his
+sense of life as a flamboyant spectacle.
+
+He came to us in college with a beggarly allowance from an impoverished
+estate owned by his grandfather, a colonel of the Confederacy, who after
+the war had withdrawn with his widowed daughter to his worthless acres.
+In due time the daughter had died, and her child had grown up in a world
+of shadows. On nothing a year the colonel had managed, in some
+miraculous fashion, to preserve certain hospitable old customs.
+Distinguished guests still sat at his table and ate ducks cooked to the
+proper state of rareness, and terrapin in a chafing-dish, with a dash of
+old sherry. If between these feasts there was famine the world never
+knew.
+
+It was perhaps from the colonel that Randolph had learned to make
+poverty picturesque. His clothes were old and his shoes were shabby. But
+his strength lay in the fact that he did not think of himself as poor.
+He had so much, you see, that the rest of us lacked. He was a Randolph.
+He had name, position, ancestry. He was, in short, a gentleman!
+
+I do not think he looked upon any of us as gentlemen, not in the Old
+Dominion sense. He had come to our small Middle-Western college because
+it was cheap and his finances would not compass education anywhere else.
+
+In an older man his prejudices would have been insufferable, but his
+youth and charm made us lenient. We contented ourselves with calling him
+"Your Highness," and were always flattered when he asked us to his
+rooms.
+
+His strong suit was hospitality. It was in his blood, of course. When
+his allowance came he spent it in giving the rest of us a good time. His
+room was as shabby as himself--a table, an ink-spotted desk, a couch
+with a disreputable cover, a picture of Washington, a half-dozen books,
+and a chafing-dish.
+
+The chafing-dish was the hump and the hoof of his festivities. He made
+rarebits and deviled things with an air that had been handed down from
+generations of epicures. I can see him now with his black hair in a
+waving lock on his forehead, in worn slippers and faded corduroy coat,
+sitting on the edge of the table smoking a long pipe, visualizing
+himself as the lord of a castle--the rest of us as vassals of a rather
+agreeable and intelligent sort!
+
+It was perfectly natural that he should stage his first love-affair, and
+when he was jilted that he should dramatize his despair. For days after
+Madge Ballou had declared her preference for Dicky Carson, Randolph
+walked with melancholy. He came to my rooms and sat, a very young and
+handsome Hamlet, on my fire-bench, with his chin in his hand.
+
+"Why should she like Dicky best?"
+
+"She has no imagination."
+
+"But Dicky's a--beast--"
+
+"With a fat bank-account."
+
+"Money wouldn't count with Madge."
+
+"I'm not so sure--"
+
+"Women are not like that, MacDonald."
+
+I saw, as he went on with his arguments, that she had become to him an
+Ophelia, weakly led. Women in his lexicon of romance might be weak but
+never mercenary. I think he finally overthrew her in his mind with "_Get
+thee to a nunnery!_" I know that he burned her picture; he showed me the
+ashes in a silver stamp-box.
+
+He had, of course, his heroes--there were moments when unconsciously he
+aped them. It was after a debate that the boys began to call him
+"Bonaparte." He had defended the Little Corporal, and in defending him
+had personified him. With that dark lock over his forehead, his arms
+folded, he had flung defiance to the deputies, and for that moment he
+had been not Tom Randolph but the Emperor himself.
+
+He won the debate, amid much acclaim, and when he came down to us I will
+confess to a feeling, which I think the others shared, of a soul within
+his body which did not belong there. Tom Randolph was, of course, Tom
+Randolph, but the voice which had spoken to us had rung with the power
+of that other voice which had been stilled at St. Helena!
+
+The days that followed dispelled the illusion, but the name clung to
+him. I think he liked it, and emphasized the resemblance. He let his
+hair grow long, sunk his head between his shoulders, was quick and
+imperious in his speech.
+
+Then came the war. Belgium devastated, France invaded. Randolph was
+fired at once.
+
+"I'm going over."
+
+"But, my dear fellow--"
+
+"There's our debt to Lafayette."
+
+With his mind made up there was no moving him. The rest of us held back.
+Our imaginations did not grasp at once the world's need of us.
+
+But Randolph saw himself a Henry of Navarre--_white plumes_; a Richard
+of the Lion Heart--_crusades and red crosses_; a Cyrano without the
+nose--"_These be cadets of Gascony_--"
+
+"You see, MacDonald," he said, flaming, "we Randolphs have always done
+it."
+
+"Done what?"
+
+"Fought. There's been a Randolph in every war over here, and before that
+in a long line of battles--"
+
+He told me a great deal about the ancient Randolphs, and the way they
+had fought on caparisoned steeds with lances.
+
+"War to-day is different," I warned him. "Not so pictorial."
+
+But I knew even then that he would make it pictorial. He would wear his
+khaki like chain armor.
+
+He gave us a farewell feast in his room. It was the season for young
+squirrels, and he made us a Brunswick stew. It was the best thing I had
+ever tasted, with red peppers in it and onions, and he served it with
+an old silver ladle which he had brought from home.
+
+While we ate he talked of war, of why men should fight--"for your own
+honor and your country's."
+
+There were pacifists among us and they challenged him. He flung them
+off; their protests died before his passion.
+
+"We are men, not varlets!"
+
+Nobody laughed at him. It showed his power over us that none of us
+laughed. We simply sat there and listened while he told us what he
+thought of us.
+
+At last one who was braver than the rest cried out: "Go to it,
+Bonaparte!"
+
+In a sudden flashing change Randolph hunched his shoulders, set his
+slouched hat sidewise low on his brows, wrapped the couch-cover like a
+cloak about him. His glance swept the room. There was no anger in it,
+just a sort of triumphant mockery as he gave the famous speech to
+Berthier.
+
+"They send us a challenge in which our honor is at stake--a thing a
+Frenchman has never refused--and since a beautiful queen wishes to be a
+witness to the combat, let us be courteous, and in order not to keep her
+waiting, _let us march without sleeping as far as Saxony--_!"
+
+I can't tell you of the effect it had on us. We were gripped by the
+throats, and the room was so still that we heard ourselves breathe. Four
+of the fellows left next day with Randolph. I think he might have taken
+us all if we had not been advised and held back by the protests of our
+professors, who spoke of war with abhorrence.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Three years later I saw him again, in France. Our own country had gotten
+into the fight by that time, and I was caught in the first draft. I had
+heard now and then from Randolph. He had worked for nearly three years
+with the Ambulance Corps, and was now fighting for democracy with his
+fellows.
+
+We had been shivering in the rain for a week in one of the recaptured
+French towns when a group of seasoned officers were sent to lick us into
+shape. Among the other officers was Randolph, and when he came upon me
+he gave a shout of welcome.
+
+"Good old MacDonald--at last!"
+
+I'll confess that his "at last" carried a sting, and I remember feeling
+the injustice of our equal rank, as I set his years of privation and
+hardship against my few weeks in a training camp.
+
+He was very glad to see me, and the very first night he made me a
+Brunswick stew. This time there were no squirrels, but he begged young
+rabbits from the old couple who had once been servants in the chateau
+where we were billeted. They had trudged back at once on the retirement
+of the Boches, and were making the best of the changed conditions.
+
+There was, of course, no chafing-dish, and the stew was cooked in an
+iron pot which hung over an open fire in the ancient kitchen. Before
+they sold the rabbits the old people had made one condition:
+
+"If we may have a bit for mademoiselle--?"
+
+"For mademoiselle?"
+
+"She is here with us, monsieur. She had not been well. We have been
+saving the rabbits for her."
+
+Randolph made the grand gesture that I so well remembered.
+
+"My good people--if she would dine with us--?"
+
+The old woman shook her head. She was not sure. She would see.
+
+Perhaps she said pleasant things of us, perhaps mademoiselle was lonely.
+But whatever the reason, mademoiselle consented to dine, coming out of
+her seclusion, very thin and dark and small, but self-possessed.
+
+I have often wondered what she thought, in those first moments of
+meeting, of Randolph, as with a spoon for a sceptre, the manner of a
+king, he presided over the feast. She spoke very good English, but
+needed to have many things explained.
+
+"Do gentlemen cook in your country?"
+
+Randolph sketched life as he had known it on his grandfather's
+plantation--negroes to do it all, except when gentlemen pleased.
+
+She drew the mantle of her distaste about her. "Black men? I shouldn't
+like it."
+
+Well, I saw before the evening ended that Randolph had met his peer. For
+every one of his aristocratic prejudices she matched him with a dozen.
+And he loved her for it! At last here was a lady who would buckle on his
+armor, watch his shield, tie her token on his sleeve!
+
+He sat on the edge of the table in his favorite attitude--hunched-up
+shoulders, folded arms. His hair was cut too short now for the dark
+lock, but even without it I saw her glance at him now and then in a
+puzzled fashion, as if she weighed some familiar memory.
+
+But it was one of the peasants who voiced it--the old man carrying away
+the remains of the stew muttered among the shadows to his wife:
+
+"C'est Napoleon."
+
+Mademoiselle caught her breath. "Oui, Gaston." Then to me, in English:
+"Do you see it?"
+
+"Yes. We called him that at school."
+
+"Bonaparte?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She was thin and dark no longer--illumined, the color staining her
+cheeks. "Oh, if he were here--to save France!"
+
+I protested. "An emperor against an emperor?"
+
+"He was a great democrat--he loved the common people. For a little while
+power spoiled him--but he loved the people. And the Bourbons did not
+love them--Louis laughed at them--and lost his head. And Napoleon never
+laughed. He loved France--if he had lived he would have saved us."
+
+Out of the shadows the old woman spoke. "They say he will come again."
+
+"Oui, Margot." Mademoiselle was standing, with her hand on her heart.
+Randolph's eyes devoured her. He had taken no part in the conversation.
+It was almost uncanny to see him sitting there, silent, arms folded,
+shoulders hunched, sparkling eyes missing nothing. "It is true,"
+mademoiselle told us earnestly, "that the tra-dee-tion says he will come
+back--when France needs him--the soldiers talk of it."
+
+"In almost every country," I said, "there is a story like that, of
+heroes who will come again."
+
+"But Napoleon, monsieur--surely he would not fail France?"
+
+The thing that followed was inevitable. Randolph and Mademoiselle Julie
+fell in love with each other. He drew her as he had drawn us at school.
+She was not a Madge Ballou, mundane and mercenary; she was rather a
+Heloise, a Nicolette, a Jeanne d'Arc, self-sacrificing, impassioned. She
+met Randolph on equal ground. They soared together--mixed love of
+country with love of lovers. They rose at dawn to worship the sun, they
+walked forth at twilight to adore together the crescent moon.
+
+And all the while war was at the gates; we could hear the boom of big
+guns. The spring drive was on and the Germans were coming back.
+
+I shall never forget the night that Randolph and I were ordered to the
+front. Mademoiselle had come in with her hands full of violets.
+Randolph, meeting her for the first time after a busy day, took her
+hands and the frail blossoms in his eager clasp. He was an almost
+perfect lover--Aucassin if you will--Abelard at his best.
+
+"Violets," he said. "May I have three?"
+
+"Why three, monsieur?"
+
+"For love, mademoiselle, and truth and constancy."
+
+He took his prayer-book from his pocket, and she gave him the violets.
+He touched them to her lips, then crushed them to his own. I saw
+it--sitting back in the shadows. I should never have thought of kissing
+a girl like that. But it was rather wonderful.
+
+He shut the violets in the little book.
+
+They sat very late that night by the fire. I went in and out, not
+disturbing them. I saw him kneel at her feet as he left her, and she
+bent forward and kissed his forehead.
+
+He talked of her a great deal after that. More than I would have talked
+of love, but his need of an audience drove him to confidences. He felt
+that he must make himself worthy of her--to go back to her as anything
+less than a hero might seem to belittle her. I am not sure that he was
+braver than other men, but his feeling for effect gave him a sort of
+reckless courage. Applause was a part of the game--he could not do
+without it.
+
+And so came that night when a small band of us were cut off from the
+rest. We were intrenched behind a small eminence which hid us from our
+enemies, with little hope of long escaping their observation. It had
+been wet and cold, and there had been no hot food for days. We, French
+and Americans, had fought long and hard; we were in no state to stand
+suspense, yet there was nothing to do but wait for a move on the other
+side, a move which could end in only one way--bayonets and bare hands,
+and I, for one, hated it.
+
+I think the others hated it, too, all but Randolph. The rain had stopped
+and the moon flooded the world. He turned his face up to it and dreamed.
+
+The knowledge came to us before midnight that the Huns had found us. It
+became only a matter of moments before they would be upon us, the thing
+would happen which we hated--bayonets and bare hands, with the chances
+in favor of the enemy!
+
+Somewhere among our men rose a whimper of fear, and then another. You
+see, they were cold and hungry and some of them were wounded, and they
+were cut off from hope. It wasn't cowardice. I call no man a coward.
+They had faced death a thousand times, some of them. Yet there was
+danger in their fears.
+
+Randolph was next to me. "My God, MacDonald," he said, "they've lost
+their nerve--"
+
+There wasn't a second to spare. I saw him doing something to his hat.
+
+As I have said, there was a moon. It lighted that battle-scarred world
+with a sort of wild beauty, and suddenly in a clear space above us on
+the little hill a figure showed, motionless against the still white
+night--a figure small yet commanding, three-cornered hat pulled low--oh,
+you have seen it in pictures a thousand times--Napoleon of Marengo, of
+Austerlitz, of Jena, of Friedland--but over and above everything,
+Napoleon of France!
+
+Of course the Germans shot him. But when they came over the top they
+were met by Frenchmen who had seen a ghost. "C'est l'Empereur! C'est
+l'Empereur!" they had gasped. "He returns to lead us."
+
+They fought like devils, and--well, the rest of us fought, too, and all
+the time, throughout the bloody business, I had before me that vision of
+Randolph alone in the moonlight. Or was it Randolph? Who knows? Do great
+souls find time for such small business? And was it small?
+
+His medals were, of course, sent to the colonel. But the violets in the
+little book went back to mademoiselle. And the old hat, crushed into
+three-cornered shape, went back. And I told her what he had done.
+
+She wrote to me in her stiff English:
+
+"I have loved a great man. For me, monsieur, it is enough. Their souls
+unite in victory!"
+
+
+
+
+THE RED CANDLE
+
+
+It was so cold that the world seemed as stiff and stark as a poet's
+hell. A little moon was frozen against a pallid sky. The old dark houses
+with their towers and gables wore the rigid look of iron edifices. The
+saint over the church door at the corner had an icicle on his nose.
+Even the street lights shone faint and benumbed through clouded glass.
+
+Ostrander, with his blood like ice within his veins, yearned for a
+Scriptural purgatory with red fire and flame. To be warm would be
+heaven. It was a wise old Dante who had made hell cold!
+
+As he crossed the threshold of his filthy tenement he felt for the first
+time a sense of its shelter. Within its walls there was something that
+approached warmth, and in his room at the top there was a bed with a
+blanket.
+
+Making his way toward the bed and its promise of comfort, he was stopped
+on the second stairway by a voice which came out of the dark.
+
+"Mr. Tony, you didn't see our tree."
+
+Peering down, he answered the voice: "I was going up to get warm."
+
+"Milly said to tell you that we had a fire."
+
+"A real fire, Pussy? I didn't know that there was one in the world."
+
+He came down again to the first floor. Pussy was waiting--a freckled dot
+of a child tied up in a man's coat.
+
+The fire was in a small round stove. On top of the stove something was
+boiling. The room was neat but bare, the stove, a table, and three
+chairs its only furnishing. In a room beyond were two beds covered with
+patchwork quilts.
+
+On the table was a tree. It was a Christmas tree--just a branch of pine
+and some cheap spangly things. The mother of the children sewed all day
+and late into the night. She had worked a little longer each night for a
+month that the children might have the tree.
+
+There was no light in the room but that of a small and smoky lamp.
+
+Milly spoke of it. "We ought to have candles."
+
+Ostrander, shrugged close to the stove, with his hands out to its heat,
+knew that they ought to have electric lights, colored ones, a hundred
+perhaps, and a tree that touched the stars!
+
+But he said: "When I go out I'll bring you a red candle--a long one--and
+we'll put it on the shelf over the table."
+
+Milly, who was resting her tired young body in a big rocker with the
+baby in her arms, asked: "Can we put it in a bottle or stand it in a
+cup? We haven't any candlestick."
+
+"We can do better than that," he told her, "with a saucer turned upside
+down and covered with salt to look like snow."
+
+Pussy, economically anxious, asked, "Can we eat the salt afterward?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Then, may we do it, Milly?"
+
+"Darling, yes. How nice you always fix things, Mr. Tony!"
+
+Long before he had known them he had fixed things--things which would
+have turned this poor room into an Aladdin's palace. There was that
+Christmas Eve at the Daltons'. It had been his idea to light the great
+hall with a thousand candles when they brought in the Yule log, and to
+throw perfumed fagots on the fire.
+
+He came back to the round stove and the tiny tree. "I like to fix
+things," he said. "Once upon a time--"
+
+They leaned forward eagerly to this opening.
+
+"Of course you know it isn't true," he prefaced.
+
+"Of course it couldn't be true"--Pussy was reassuringly sceptical--"the
+things that you tell us couldn't really happen--ever--"
+
+"Well, once upon a time, there was a tree in a great house by a great
+river, and it was set in a great room with squares of black-and-white
+marble for a floor, and with a fountain with goldfish swimming in its
+basin, and there were red-and-blue parrots on perches, and orange-trees
+in porcelain pots, and the tree itself wasn't a pine-tree or a fir or a
+cedar; it was a queer round, clipped thing of yew, and it had red and
+blue and orange balls on it, and in the place of a wax angel on top
+there was a golden Buddha, and there were no candles--but the light
+shone out and out of it, like the light shines from the moon."
+
+"Was it a Christmas tree?" Pussy asked, as he paused.
+
+"Yes, but the people who trimmed it and the ones who came to see it
+didn't believe in the Wise Men, or the Babe in the Manger, or the
+shepherds who watched their flocks by night--they just worshiped beauty
+and art--and other gods--but it was a corking tree--"
+
+"You use such funny words," Pussy crowed ecstatically. "Who ever heard
+of a corking tree?"
+
+He smiled at her indulgently. He was warmer now, and as he leaned back
+in his chair and unbuttoned his coat he seemed to melt suddenly into
+something that was quite gentlemanly in pose and outline. "Well, it
+really was a corking tree, Pussy."
+
+"What's a Buddha?" Milly asked, making a young Madonna of herself as she
+bent over the baby.
+
+"A gentle god that half of the world worships," Ostrander said, "but the
+people who put him on the tree didn't worship anything--they put him
+there because he was of gold and ivory and was a lovely thing to look
+at--"
+
+"Oh," said Pussy, with her mouth round to say it, "oh, how funny you
+talk, Mr. Tony!" She laughed, with her small hands beating her knees.
+
+She was presently, however, very serious, as she set the table. There
+was little formality of service. Just three plates and some bread.
+
+Milly, having carried the baby into the other room, was hesitatingly
+hospitable. "Won't you have supper with us, Mr. Tony?"
+
+He wanted it. There was a savory smell as Milly lifted the pot from the
+stove. But he knew there would be only three potatoes--one for Pussy and
+one for Milly and one for the mother who was almost due, and there would
+be plenty of gravy. How queer it seemed that his mind should dwell on
+gravy!
+
+"Onions are so high," Milly had said, as she stirred it. "I had to put
+in just a very little piece."
+
+He declined hastily and got away.
+
+In the hall he met their mother coming in. She was a busy little mother,
+and she did not approve of Ostrander. She did not approve of any human
+being who would not work.
+
+"A merry Christmas," he said to her, standing somewhat wistfully above
+her on the stairs.
+
+She smiled at that. "Oh, Mr. Tony, Mr. Tony, they want a man in the
+shop. It would be a good way to begin the New Year."
+
+"Dear lady, I have never worked in a shop--and they wouldn't want me
+after the first minute--"
+
+Her puzzled eyes studied him. "Why wouldn't they want you?"
+
+"I am not--dependable--"
+
+"How old are you?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"Twice your age--"
+
+"Nonsense--"
+
+"Not in years, perhaps--but I have lived--oh, how I have lived--!"
+
+He straightened his shoulders and ran his fingers through his hair. She
+had a sudden vision of what he might be if shorn of his poverty. There
+was something debonair--finished--an almost youthful grace--a hint of
+manner--
+
+She sighed. "Oh, the waste of it!"
+
+"Of what?"
+
+She flamed. "Of you!"
+
+Then she went in and shut the door.
+
+He stood uncertainly in the hall. Then once again he faced the cold.
+
+Around the corner was a shop where he would buy the red candle. The ten
+cents which he would pay was to have gone for his breakfast. He had
+sacrificed his supper that he might not go hungry on Christmas morning.
+He had planned a brace of rolls and a bottle of milk. It had seemed to
+him that he could face a lean night with the promise of these.
+
+There were no red candles in the shop. There were white ones, but a red
+candle was a red candle--with a special look of Christmas cheer. He
+would have no other.
+
+The turn of a second corner brought him to the great square. Usually he
+avoided it. The blaze of gold on the west side was the club.
+
+A row of motors lined the curb. There was Baxter's limousine and
+Fenton's French car. He knew them all. He remembered when his own French
+car had overshadowed Fenton's Ford.
+
+There were wreaths to-night in the club windows, and when Sands opened
+the doors there was a mass of poinsettia against the hall mirror.
+
+How warm it looked with all that gold and red!
+
+In the basement was the grill. It was a night when one might order
+something heavy and hot. A planked steak--with deviled oysters at the
+start and a salad at the end.
+
+And now another motor-car was poking its nose against the curb. And
+Whiting climbed out, a bear in a big fur coat.
+
+Whiting's car was a closed one. And it would stay there for an hour.
+Ostrander knew the habits of the man. From the office to the club, and
+from the club--home. Whiting was methodical to a minute. At seven sharp
+the doors would open and let him out.
+
+The clock on the post-office tower showed six!
+
+There was a policeman on the east corner, beating his arms against the
+cold. Ostrander did not beat his arms. He cowered frozenly in the shadow
+of a big building until the policeman passed on.
+
+Then he darted across the street and into Whiting's car!
+
+Whiting, coming out in forty minutes, found his car gone. Sands, the
+door man, said that he had noticed nothing. The policeman on the corner
+had not noticed.
+
+"I usually stay longer," Whiting said, "but to-night I wanted to get
+home. I have a lot of things for the kids."
+
+"Were the things in your car?" the policeman asked.
+
+"Yes. Toys and all that--"
+
+Ostrander, with his hand on the wheel, his feet on the brakes, slipped
+through the crowded streets unchallenged. It had been easy to unlock the
+car. He had learned many things in these later years.
+
+It was several minutes before he was aware of faint fragrances--warm
+tropical fragrances of flowers and fruits and spices--Christmas
+fragrances which sent him back to the great kitchen where his
+grandmother's servants had baked and brewed.
+
+He stopped the car and touched a button. The light showed booty. He had
+not expected this. He had wanted the car for an hour, to feel the thrill
+of it under his fingers, to taste again the luxury of its warmth and
+softness. He had meant to take it back unharmed--with nothing more than
+the restless ghost of his poor desires to haunt Whiting when again he
+entered it.
+
+But now here were toys and things which Whiting, in a climax of
+generosity, had culled from bake-shop and grocer, from flower-shop,
+fruit-shop, and confectioner.
+
+He snapped out the light and drove on. He had still a half-hour for his
+adventure.
+
+It took just three of the thirty minutes to slide up to the curb in
+front of the tall tenement. He made three trips in and up to the top
+floor. He risked much, but Fate was with him and he met no one.
+
+Fate was with him, too, when he left the car at a corner near the club,
+and slipped out of it like a shadow, and thence like a shadow back to
+the shop whence his steps had tended before his adventures.
+
+When he returned to the tall tenement the small family on the first
+floor had finished supper, and the mother had gone back to work. The
+baby was asleep. Milly and Pussy, wrapped up to their ears, were hugging
+the waning warmth of the little stove.
+
+"Mr. Tony, did you get the candle?" Pussy asked as he came in.
+
+"Yes. But I've been thinking"--his manner was mysterious--"I don't want
+to put it on the shelf. I want it in the window--to shine out--"
+
+"To shine out--why?"
+
+"Well, you know, there's St. Nicholas."
+
+"Oh--"
+
+"He ought to come here, Pussy. Why shouldn't he come here? Why should he
+go up-town and up-town, and take all the things to children who have
+more than they want?"
+
+Milly was philosophic. "St. Nicholas is fathers and mothers--"
+
+But Pussy was not so sure. "Do you think he'd come--if we did? Do you
+really and truly think he would?"
+
+"I think he might--"
+
+The candle set in the window made a fine show from the street. They all
+went out to look at it. Coming in, they sat around the stove together.
+
+Pussy drew her chair very close to Ostrander. She laid her hand on his
+knee. It was a little hand with short, fat fingers. In spite of lean
+living, Pussy had managed to keep fat. She was adorably dimpled.
+
+Ostrander, looking down at the fat little hand, began: "Once upon a
+time--there was a doll--a Fluffy Ruffles doll, in a rosy gown--"
+
+"Oh!" Pussy beat the small, fat hand upon his knee.
+
+"And pink slippers--and it traveled miles to find some one to--love it.
+And at last it said to St. Nicholas, 'Oh, dear St. Nick, I want to find
+a little girl who hasn't any doll--'"
+
+"Like me?" said Pussy.
+
+"Like you--"
+
+"And St. Nicholas said, 'Will you keep your pink slippers clean and
+your nice pink frock clean if I give you to a poor little girl?' and the
+Fluffy Ruffles doll said 'Yes,' so St. Nicholas looked and looked for a
+poor little girl, and at last he came to a window--with a red candle--"
+
+The fat little hand was still and Pussy was breathing hard.
+
+"With a red candle, and there was a little girl who--didn't have any
+doll--"
+
+Pussy threw herself on him bodily. "Is it true? Is it true?" she
+shrieked.
+
+Milly, a little flushed and excited by the story, tried to say sedately:
+"Of course it isn't true. It couldn't be--true--"
+
+"Let's wish it to be true--" Ostrander said, "all three of us, with our
+eyes shut--"
+
+With this ceremony completed the little girls were advised gravely to go
+to bed. "If Fluffy Ruffles and old St. Nick come by and find you up they
+won't stop--"
+
+"Won't they?"
+
+"Of course not. You must shut the door and creep under your quilt and
+cover up your head, and if you hear a noise you mustn't look."
+
+Milly eyed him dubiously. "I think it is a shame to tell Pussy such--"
+
+"Corking things?" He lifted her chin with a light finger and looked into
+her innocent eyes. "Oh, Milly, Milly, once upon a time there was a
+Princess, with eyes like yours, and she lived in a garden where black
+swans swam on a pool, and she wore pale-green gowns and there were
+poppies in the garden. And a Fool loved her. But she shut him out of the
+garden. He wasn't good enough even to kneel at her feet, so she shut him
+out and married a Prince with a white feather in his cap."
+
+He had a chuckling sense of Whiting as the white-feathered Prince. But
+Milly's eyes were clouded. "I don't like to think that she shut the poor
+Fool out of the garden."
+
+For a moment he cupped her troubled face in his two hands. "You dear
+kiddie." Then as he turned away he found his own eyes wet.
+
+As he started up-stairs Pussy peeped out at him.
+
+"Wouldn't it be--corking--to see a Fluffy Ruffles doll--a-walking up the
+street?"
+
+In a beautiful box up-stairs the Fluffy Ruffles doll stared at him. She
+was as lovely as a dream, and as expensive as they make 'em. There was
+another doll in blue, also as expensive, also as lovely. Ostrander could
+see Milly with the blue doll matching her eyes.
+
+There were toys, too, for the baby. And there was a bunch of violets.
+And boxes of candy. And books. And there were things to eat. Besides the
+fruits a great cake, and a basket of marmalades and jellies and
+gold-sealed bottles and meat pastes in china jars, and imported things
+in glass, and biscuits in tins.
+
+Ostrander, after some consideration, opened the tin of biscuits and,
+munching, he wrote a note. Having no paper, he tore a wrapper from one
+of the boxes. He had the stub of a pencil, and the result was a scrawl.
+
+     "MY DEAR WHITING:
+
+     "It was I who borrowed your car--and who ran away with your junk. I
+     am putting my address at the head of this, so that if you want it
+     back you can come and get it. But perhaps you won't want it back.
+
+     "I have a feeling that to you and your wife I am as good as dead.
+     If you have any thought of me it is, I am sure, to pity me. Yet I
+     rather fancy that you needn't. I am down and out, and living on ten
+     dollars a month. That's all I got when the crash came--it is all I
+     shall ever get. I pay four dollars a month for my room and twenty
+     cents a day for food. Sometimes I pay less than twenty cents when I
+     find myself in need of other--luxuries. Yet there's an adventure in
+     it, Whiting. A good little woman who lives in this house begs me to
+     work. But I have never worked. And why begin? I've a heritage of
+     bad habits, and one does not wish to seem superior to one's
+     ancestors.
+
+     "The winters are the worst. I spend the summers on the open road.
+     Ask Marion if she remembers the days when we read Stevenson
+     together in the garden? Tell her it is like that--under the
+     stars--Tell her that I am getting more out of it than she is--with
+     you--
+
+     "But the winters send me back to town--and this winter Fate has
+     brought me to an old house in a shabby street just a bit back from
+     the Club. On the first floor there is a little family. Three
+     kiddies and a young mother who works to keep the wolf from the
+     door. There's a Pussy-Kiddie, and a Milly-Kiddie, and a baby, and
+     they have adopted me as a friend.
+
+     "And this Christmas I had nothing to give them--but a red candle to
+     light their room.
+
+     "When I got into your car it was just for the adventure. To breathe
+     for a moment the air I once breathed--to fancy that Marion's ghost
+     might sit beside me for one little moment, as she will sit beside
+     you to the end of your days.
+
+     "I have played all roles but that of robber--but when I saw the
+     things that you had bought with Marion's money for Marion's
+     children--it went to my head--and I wanted them in the worst way
+     for those poor kiddies--who haven't any dolls or Christmas dinners.
+
+     "I am playing Santa Claus for them to-night. I shall take the
+     things down and leave them in their poor rooms. It will be up to
+     you to come and take them away. It will be up to you, too, to give
+     this note to the police and steal my freedom.
+
+     "You used to be a good sport, Whiting. I have nothing against you
+     except that you stole Marion--perhaps this will square our
+     accounts. And if your children are, because of me, without their
+     dolls to-morrow, you can remember this, that the kiddies are happy
+     below stairs--since Dick Turpin dwells aloft!
+
+     "From among the rest I have chosen for myself a squat bottle, a box
+     of biscuits, and a tin of the little imported sausages that you
+     taught me to like.
+
+     "Well, my dear fellow, happy days! To-morrow morning I shall
+     breakfast at your expense, unless you shall decide that I must
+     breakfast behind bars.
+
+     "If you should come to-night, you will find in the window a red
+     candle shining. They have put it there to guide St. Nicholas and a
+     certain Fluffy Ruffles doll!
+
+                              "Ever yours,
+                                                  "Tony."
+
+
+He found an envelope, sealed, and addressed it. Then he went to work.
+
+Four trips he made down the stairs. Four times he tiptoed into the
+shadowed room, where the long red candle burned. And when he turned to
+take a last look there on the table beside the tree stood the blue doll
+for Milly and the Fluffy Ruffles doll for Pussy and the rattles and
+rings and blocks for the baby, and on the chairs and the shelf above the
+tree were the other things--the great cake and the fruit and the big
+basket and the boxes of candy.
+
+And for the little mother there were the violets and a note:
+
+"The red candle winked at your window and brought me in. It is useless
+to search for me--for now and then a Prince passes and goes on. And he
+is none the less a Prince because you do not know him."
+
+And now there was that other note to deliver. Out in the cold once more,
+he found the moon gone and the snow falling. As he passed the saint on
+the old church, it seemed to smile down at him. The towers and gables
+were sheeted with white. His footsteps made no sound on the padded
+streets.
+
+He left the note at Whiting's door. He fancied that, as the footman held
+it open, he saw Marion shining on the stairs!
+
+He was glad after that to get home and to bed, and to the warmth of his
+blanket. There was the warmth, too, of the wine.
+
+In a little while he was asleep. On the table by his untidy bed was the
+box of biscuits and the bottle and the tin of tiny sausages.
+
+If all went well he would feast like a lord on Christmas morning!
+
+
+
+
+RETURNED GOODS
+
+
+Perhaps the most humiliating moment of Dulcie Cowan's childhood had been
+when Mary Dean had called her Indian giver. Dulcie was a child of
+affluence. She had always had everything she wanted; but she had not
+been spoiled. She had been brought up beautifully and she had been
+taught to consider the rights of others. She lived in an old-fashioned
+part of an old city, and her family was churchly and conscientious.
+Indeed, so well-trained was Dulcie's conscience that it often caused her
+great unhappiness. It seemed to her that her life was made up largely of
+denying herself the things she wanted. She was tied so rigidly to the
+golden rule that her own rights were being constantly submerged in the
+consideration of the rights of others.
+
+So it had happened that when she gave to Mary Dean a certain lovely
+doll, because her mother had suggested that Dulcie had so many and Mary
+so few, Dulcie had spent a night of agonized loneliness. Then she had
+gone to Mary.
+
+"I want my Peggy back."
+
+"You gave her to me."
+
+"But I didn't know how much I loved her, Mary. I'll buy you a nice new
+doll, but I want my Peggy back."
+
+It was then that Mary had called her Indian giver. Mary had been a
+sturdy little thing with tight-braided brown hair. She had worn on that
+historic occasion a plain blue gingham with a white collar. To the
+ordinary eye she seemed just an every-day freckled sort of child, but to
+Dulcie she had been a little dancing devil, as she had stuck out her
+forefinger and jeered "Indian giver!"
+
+Dulcie had held to her point and had carried her Peggy off in triumph.
+Mary, with characteristic independence, had refused to accept the
+beautiful doll which Dulcie bought with the last cent of her allowance
+and brought as a peace offering. In later years they grew to be rather
+good friends. They might, indeed, have been intimate, if it had not been
+for Dulcie's money and Mary's dislike of anything which savored of
+patronage.
+
+It was Mary's almost boyish independence that drew Mills Richardson to
+her. Mills wrote books and was the editor of a small magazine. He came
+to board with Mary's mother because of the quiet neighborhood. He was
+rather handsome in a dark slender fashion. He had the instincts of a
+poet, and he was not in the least practical. He needed a prop to lean
+on, and Mary gradually became the prop.
+
+She was teaching by that time, but she helped her mother with the
+boarders. When Mills came in late at night she would have something for
+him in the dining-room--oysters or a club sandwich or a pot of
+coffee--and she and her mother and Mills would have a cozy time of it.
+In due season Mills asked her to marry him, and his dreams had to do
+with increased snugness and with shelter from the outside world.
+
+They had been engaged three months when Dulcie came home from college.
+There was nothing independent or practical about Dulcie. She was a real
+romantic lady, and she appealed to Mills on the aesthetic side. He saw
+her first in church with the light shining on her from a stained-glass
+window. In the middle of that same week Mrs. Cowan gave a garden party
+as a home-coming celebration for her daughter. Dulcie wore embroidered
+white and a floppy hat, and her eyes when she talked to Mills were
+worshipful.
+
+He found himself swayed at last by a grand passion. He thought of Dulcie
+by day and dreamed of her by night. Then he met her by accident one
+afternoon on Connecticut Avenue, and they walked down together to the
+Speedway, where the willows were blowing in the wind and the water was
+ruffled; and there with the shining city back of them and the Virginia
+hills ahead, Mills, flaming, declared his passion, and Dulcie,
+trembling, confessed that she too cared.
+
+Mills grew tragic: "Oh, my beloved, have you come too late?"
+
+Dulcie had not heard of his engagement to Mary. Mills told her, and that
+settled it. She had very decided ideas on such matters. A man had no
+right to fall in love with two women. If such a thing happened, there
+was only one way out of it. He had given his promise and he must keep
+it. He begged, but could not shake her. She cared a great deal, but she
+would not take him away from Mary.
+
+Mary knew nothing of what had occurred; she thought that Mills was
+working too hard. She was working hard herself, but she was very happy.
+She had a hope chest and sat up sewing late o' nights.
+
+Before Mary and Mills were married Dulcie's mother died, and Dulcie went
+abroad to live with an aunt. Five years later she married an American
+living in Paris. He was much older than she, and it was rumored that she
+was not happy. Ten years after her marriage she returned to Washington a
+widow.
+
+It was at once apparent that she had changed. She wore charming but
+sophisticated clothes, made on youthful lines so that she seemed nearer
+twenty-five than thirty-five. Her hair was still soft and shining. She
+had been a pretty girl, she was a beautiful woman. But the greatest
+change was in her attitude toward life. In Paris her golden-rule
+philosophy had been turned topsy-turvy.
+
+Hence when she met Mills and found the old flames lighted in his eyes,
+she stirred the ashes of her dead romance and discovered a spark. It was
+pleasant after that to talk with him in dim corners at people's houses.
+Now and then she invited him and Mary to her own big house with plenty
+of other guests, so that she was not missed if she walked with Mills in
+the garden. She meant no harm and she was really fond of Mary.
+
+The years had not been so kind to Mills as to Dulcie. They had stolen
+some of his slenderness, and his hair was thin at the back. But he wrote
+better books, and it was Mary who had helped him write them. She had
+made of his house a home. She was still the same sturdy soul. Her bright
+color had faded and her hair was gray. Life with Mills had not been an
+easy road to travel. She had traveled it with loss of youth, perhaps,
+but with no loss of self-respect. She knew that her husband was in some
+measure what he was because of her. She had kept the children away from
+his study door; she had seen that he was nourished and sustained. She
+had prodded him at times to increased activities. He had resented the
+prodding, but it had resulted in a continuity of effort which had added
+to his income.
+
+Dulcie came into Mary's life as something very fresh and stimulating.
+She spoke of it to Mills.
+
+"It is almost as if I had been abroad to hear her talk. She has had such
+interesting experiences."
+
+It was not Dulcie's experiences which interested Mills; it was the
+loveliness of her profile, the glint of her hair, the youth in her, the
+renewed urge of youth in himself.
+
+Priscilla Dodd saw what had happened. Priscilla was the aunt with whom
+Dulcie had lived in Paris; and she was a wise, if worldly, old woman.
+She saw rocks ahead for Dulcie.
+
+"He's in love with you, my dear."
+
+Dulcie, in a rose satin house coat which shone richly in the flame of
+Aunt Priscilla's open fire, was not disconcerted.
+
+"I know. Mary doesn't satisfy him, Aunt Cilla."
+
+"And you do?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The less you see of him the better."
+
+"I'm not sure of that."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I can inspire him, be the torch to illumine his path."
+
+"So that's the way you are putting it to yourself! But how will Mary
+like that?"
+
+"Oh, Mary"--Dulcie moved restlessly--"I don't want to hurt Mary. I
+don't want to hurt Mary," she said again, out of a long silence, "but
+after all I have a right to save Mills' soul for him, haven't I, Aunt
+Cilla?"
+
+"Saving souls had better be left to those who make a business of it."
+
+"I mean his poetic soul." Dulcie studied the toes of her rosy slippers.
+"A man can't live by bread alone."
+
+Yet Mills had thrived rather well on the bread that Mary had given him,
+and there was this to say for Mills, he was very fond of his wife. She
+was not the love of his life, but she had been a helpmate for many
+years. He felt that he owed many things to her affection and strength.
+Like Dulcie, he shrank from making her unhappy.
+
+It was because of Mary, therefore, that the lovers dallied. Otherwise,
+they said to each other, Mills would cast off his shackles, ask for his
+freedom, and then he and Dulcie would fly to Paris, where nobody probed
+into pasts and where they could make their dreams come true.
+
+They found many ways in which to see each other. Dulcie had a little
+town car, and she picked Mills up at all hours and took him on long and
+lovely rides, from which he returned ecstatic, with wild flowers in his
+coat and a knowledge of work left undone.
+
+Gossip began to fly about. Aunt Priscilla warned Dulcie.
+
+"It is a dangerous thing to do, my dear. People will talk."
+
+"What do Mills and I care for people? Oh, if it were not for Mary--" She
+had just come in from a ride with Mills, and her eyes were shining.
+
+"I wish we were not dining there to-night," said Aunt Priscilla. "I
+wonder how Mary manages a dinner of eight with only one servant."
+
+"She is so splendid and competent, Aunt Cilla. Mills says so. Everybody
+says it. Things are easy for her that would be hard for other people."
+
+"I wonder what she thinks of you?"
+
+Dulcie, drawing off her gloves, meditated.
+
+"I fancy she likes me. I know I love her, but not so much as I love
+Mills."
+
+Fifteen years ago Dulcie would have died rather than admit her love for
+a married man. But since then she had seen life through the eyes of a
+worldly-minded old husband, and it had made a difference.
+
+At dinner that night Dulcie was exquisite in orchid tulle with a string
+of pearls that hung to her knees. Her hair was like ripe corn, waved and
+parted on the side with a girlish knot behind. Her skin was as fresh as
+a baby's. Mary was in black net. She had been very busy helping the
+cook, and she had had little time to spend on her hair. She looked ten
+years older than Dulcie, and her mind was absolutely on the dinner. The
+dinner was really very good. Mills had been extremely anxious about it.
+He had called up Mary from down-town to tell her that he was bringing
+home fresh asparagus. He wanted it served as an extra course with
+Hollandaise sauce. Mary protested, but gave in. It was the Hollandaise
+sauce that had kept her from curling her hair.
+
+There were orchids for a centerpiece--in harmony with Dulcie's gown. In
+fact, the whole dinner seemed keyed up to Dulcie. The guests were for
+the most part literary folk, to whom Mills wanted to display his Egeria.
+After dinner Dulcie sang for them. She had set to music the words of one
+of Mills' poems, and she was much applauded.
+
+After everybody had gone Mary went to bed with a headache. She was glad
+that it was Saturday, for Sunday promised a rest. She decided to send
+the children over to her mother and to have a quiet day with Mills. She
+wouldn't even go to church in the morning. There was an afternoon
+service; perhaps she and Mills might go together.
+
+But Mills had other plans. He walked as far as the church door with
+Mary, and left her there. Mary wasn't sorry to be left; her headache had
+returned, and she was glad to sit alone in the peaceful dimness. But the
+pain proved finally too much for her, so she slipped out quietly and
+went home.
+
+Clouds had risen, and she hurried before the shower. It was a real April
+shower, wind with a rush and a silver downpour. Mary, coming into the
+dark living-room, threw herself on the couch in a far corner and drew a
+rug over her. The couch was backed up against a table which held a lamp
+and a row of books. Mary had a certain feeling of content in the way the
+furniture seemed to shut her in. There was no sound but the splashing of
+rain against the windows.
+
+She fell asleep at last, and waked to find that Mills and Dulcie had
+come in. No lights were on; the room was in twilight dimness.
+
+Mills had met Dulcie at her front door. "How dear of you to come," she
+had told him.
+
+He had spoken of his desertion of Mary. "But this day was made for you,
+Dulcie."
+
+They had walked on together, not heeding where they went, and when the
+storm had caught them they were nearer Mills' house than Dulcie's and so
+he had taken her there. They had entered the apparently empty room.
+
+"Mary is still at church. Come and dry your little feet by my fire,
+Dulcie." Mills knelt and fanned the flame.
+
+Mary, coming slowly back from her dreams, heard this and other things,
+and at last Dulcie's voice in protest:
+
+"Dear, we must think of Mary."
+
+"Poor Mary!"
+
+Now the thing that Mary hated more than anything else in the whole world
+was pity. Through all the shock of the astounding revelation that Mills
+and Dulcie cared for each other came the sting of their sympathy. She
+sat up, a shadow among the shadows.
+
+"I mustn't stay, Mills," Dulcie was declaring.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I feel like a--thief--"
+
+"Nonsense, we are only taking our own, Dulcie. We should have taken it
+years ago. Loving you I should never have married Mary."
+
+"I had a conscience then, Mills, and you had promised."
+
+"But now you see it differently, Dulcie?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+Mills was on his knees beside Dulcie's chair, kissing her hands. The
+fire lighted them. It was like a play, with Mary a forlorn spectator in
+the blackness of the pit.
+
+"Let me go now, Mills."
+
+"Wait till Mary comes--we'll tell her."
+
+"No, oh, poor Mary!"
+
+Poor Mary indeed!
+
+"Anyhow you've got to stay, Dulcie, and sing for me, and when Mary comes
+back she'll get us some supper and I'll read you my new verses."
+
+Among the shadows Mary had a moment of tragic mirth. Then she set her
+feet on the floor and spoke:
+
+"I'm sorry, Mills, but I couldn't cook supper to-night if I died for
+it--"
+
+From their bright circle of light they peered at her.
+
+"Oh, my poor dear!" Dulcie said.
+
+"I'm not poor," Mary told her, "but I'm tired, dead tired, and my head
+aches dreadfully, and if you want Mills you can have him."
+
+"Have him?" Dulcie whispered.
+
+"Yes. I don't want him."
+
+Mills exploded.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I don't want you, Mills. I'm tired of being a prop; I'm tired of
+planning your meals, I'm tired of deciding whether you shall have
+mushrooms with your steak or--onions. You can have him, Dulcie. I know
+you think I've lost my mind." She came forward within the radius of the
+light. "But I haven't. As long as I thought Mills cared I could stick it
+out. But I have learned to-night that he loved you before he married me.
+You gave him to me, Dulcie, and now you want him back."
+
+Indian giver! Like a flash Dulcie's mind went to the little Mary of the
+pigtails and pointing forefinger.
+
+"You want him and you can have him. Perhaps if you had taken him years
+ago he might have been different. I don't know. Perhaps even now he can
+live up to all the lovely, lovely things that you and he are always
+talking about. But I've had to talk to Mills about what he likes to eat
+and what we have to pay for things; I've had to push him and prod him
+and praise him, and it has been hard work. If you want him you can have
+him, Dulcie."
+
+Mills had a stunned look.
+
+"Don't you love me, Mary?"
+
+"I think I've proved it," she said quietly; "but I couldn't possibly go
+on loving you now. You have Dulcie to love you, and one woman is enough
+for any man. I don't know what you are planning to do, but you needn't
+run away or do anything spectacular. I'll make it as easy for you as
+possible. And now if you don't mind I'll go up and take a headache
+powder; my head is splitting."
+
+Left alone, they tried to regain their air of high romance.
+
+"Poor Mary!"
+
+But the words rang hollow. One couldn't possibly call a woman poor who
+had given away so much with a single gesture.
+
+They tried to talk it over but found nothing to say. At last Mills took
+Dulcie home. She asked him in and he went. Aunt Priscilla was out, and
+tea was served for the two of them from a lacquered tea cart--Orange
+Pekoe and Japanese wafers. It was delicious but unsubstantial. Dulcie
+with her coat off was like a wood sprite in leaf green. Her hair was
+gold, her eyes wet violets; but Mills missed something. He had a feeling
+that he wanted to get home and talk things over with Mary.
+
+At last he rose, and it was then that Dulcie laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"Mills, I can't."
+
+"Can't what?"
+
+"Let you leave Mary."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It wouldn't be right."
+
+"It would be as right as it has ever been, Dulcie."
+
+"I know how it must look to you, but--but I knew all the time that wrong
+is wrong. I thought I was a different Dulcie from the girl of long ago,
+but I'm not. I still have a conscience; I can't take you away from
+Mary."
+
+"You're not taking me away. You heard what she said--she doesn't want
+me."
+
+And Dulcie didn't want him! He saw it in that moment! The things that
+Mary had said had scared her. She didn't want to prod and push and
+praise. She didn't want to decide what he should have for dinner. She
+didn't want to weigh the merits of beefsteak and mushrooms or beefsteak
+and onions--onions!
+
+He felt suddenly old, fat, bald-headed! The glow had faded from
+everything. He did not protest or attempt to persuade her. He took his
+hat, kissed her hand and got away.
+
+Aunt Priscilla coming in found Dulcie in tears by the fire.
+
+"I've given him up, Aunt Cilla."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, it wouldn't be right."
+
+She came into Aunt Priscilla's bedroom later to talk it over. She had
+on the rosy house coat. She spoke of going back to Paris.
+
+"It will be better for both of us. After all, Aunt Cilla, we are what we
+are fundamentally, and we Puritans can't get away from our consciences,
+can we?"
+
+"Some of us," said Aunt Priscilla, "can't."
+
+The old woman lay awake a long time that night, thinking it out. She was
+glad that Dulcie had stopped the thing in time. But she had a feeling
+that the solution of the situation could not be laid to an awakened
+conscience. She hoped that some day Dulcie would tell her the truth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was still raining when Mills reached home. The house was dark, the
+fire had died down. He went up-stairs. The boys were in bed. There was a
+light in Mary's room. He opened the door. Mary was propped up on her
+pillows reading a book.
+
+He stopped, uncertain, on the threshold.
+
+"Come in," she said, "my head's better."
+
+He crossed the room and stood beside her.
+
+"Oh, Mary," he said, and his face worked. He dropped on his knees by the
+bed and cried like a child.
+
+She laid her hand on his head and smoothed his thin hair.
+
+"Poor Mills!" she said softly; "poor old Mills!" Then after a moment,
+brightly: "It will do us both good to have some coffee. Run along,
+Mills, and start the percolator; I'll be down in a minute to get the
+supper."
+
+
+
+
+BURNED TOAST
+
+I
+
+
+Perry Cunningham and I had been friends for years. I was older than he,
+and I had taught him in his senior year at college. After that we had
+traveled abroad, frugally, as befitted our means. The one quarrel I had
+with fate was that Perry was poor. Money would have given him the
+background that belonged to him--he was a princely chap, with a
+high-held head. He had Southern blood in his veins, which accounted
+perhaps for an almost old-fashioned charm of manner, as if he carried on
+a gentlemanly tradition.
+
+We went through the art galleries together. There could have been
+nothing better than those days with him--the Louvre, the Uffizi, the
+Pitti Palace. Perry's search for beauty was almost breathless. We swept
+from Filippo Lippi to Botticelli and Bellini, then on to Ghirlandajo,
+Guido Reni, Correggio, Del Sarto--the incomparable Leonardo.
+
+"If I had lived then," Perry would say, glowing, "in Florence or in
+Venice!"
+
+And I, smiling at his enthusiasm, had a vision of him among those golden
+painters, his own young beauty enhanced by robes of clear color, his
+thirst for loveliness appeased by the sumptuous settings of that age of
+romance.
+
+Then when the great moderns confronted us--Sorolla and the rest--Perry
+complained, "Why did I study law, Roger, when I might be doing things
+like this?"
+
+"It is not too late," I told him.
+
+I felt that he must not be curbed, that his impassioned interest might
+blossom and bloom into genius if it were given a proper outlet.
+
+So it came about that he decided to paint. He would stay in Paris a year
+or two in a studio, and test his talent.
+
+But his people would not hear of it. There had been lawyers in his
+family for generations. Since the Civil War they had followed more or
+less successful careers. Perry's own father had made no money, but
+Perry's mother was obsessed by the idea that the fortunes of the family
+were bound up in her son's continuance of his father's practice.
+
+So Perry went home and opened an office. His heart was not in it, but he
+made enough to live on, and at last he made money enough to marry a
+wife. He would have married her whether he had enough to live on or not.
+She was an artist, and she was twenty when Perry met her. We had been
+spending a month in Maine, on an island as charming as it was cheap.
+Rosalie was there with a great-aunt and uncle. She was painting the sea
+on the day that Perry first saw her, and she wore a jade-green smock.
+Her hair was red, drawn back rather tightly from her forehead, but
+breaking into waves over her ears. With the red of her cheeks and the
+red of her lips she had something of the look of Lorenzo Lotto's lovely
+ladies, except for a certain sharp slenderness, a slenderness which
+came, I was to learn later, from an utter indifference to the claims of
+appetite. She was one of those who sell bread to buy hyacinths.
+
+I speak of this here because Rosalie's almost ascetic indifference to
+material matters, in direct contrast to Perry's vivid enjoyment of the
+good things of life, came to have a tragic significance in later days.
+Perry loved a warm hearth in winter, a cool porch in summer. He had the
+Southerner's epicurean appreciation of the fine art of feasting. The
+groaning board had been his inheritance from a rollicking, rackety set
+of English ancestors, to whom dining was a rather splendid ceremony. On
+his mother's table had been fish and game from Chesapeake, fruits and
+vegetables in season and out--roast lamb when prices soared high in the
+spring, strawberries as soon as they came up from Florida. There had
+always been money for these in the Cunningham exchequer, when there had
+been money for nothing else.
+
+Rosalie, on the other hand, ate an orange in the morning, a square of
+toast at noon, a chop and perhaps a salad for dinner. One felt that she
+might have fared equally well on dew and nectar. She had absolutely no
+interest in what was set before her, and after she married Perry this
+attitude of mind remained unchanged.
+
+She was a wretched cook, and made no effort to acquire expertness. She
+and Perry lived in a small but well-built bungalow some miles out from
+town, and they could not afford a maid. When I dined with them I made up
+afterward for the deficiencies of their menu by a square meal at the
+club. There was no chance for Perry to make up, and I wondered as the
+years went on how he stood it.
+
+He seemed to stand it rather well, except that in time he came to have
+that same sharpened look of delicacy which added a spiritual note to
+Rosalie's rich bloom. He always lighted up when he spoke of his wife,
+and he was always urging me to come and see them. I must admit that
+except for the meals I liked to go. Rosalie's success at painting had
+been negligible, but her love of beauty was expressed in the atmosphere
+she gave to her little home; she had achieved rather triumphant results
+in backgrounds and in furnishing.
+
+I remember one spring twilight. I was out for the week-end, and we dined
+late. The little house was on a hill, and with the French windows wide
+open we seemed to hang above an abyss of purple sky, cut by a thin
+crescent. White candles lighted the table, and there were white lilacs.
+There was a silver band about Rosalie's red hair.
+
+There was not much to eat, and Perry apologized, "Rose hates to fuss
+with food in hot weather."
+
+Rosalie, as mysterious in that light as the young moon, smiled dreamily.
+
+"Why should one think about such things--when there is so much else in
+the world?"
+
+Perry removed the plates and made the coffee. Rosalie did not drink
+coffee. She wandered out into the garden, and came back with three
+violets, which she kissed and stuck in Perry's coat.
+
+The next morning when I came down Rosalie was cutting bread for toast.
+She was always exquisitely neat, and in her white linen and in her
+white-tiled kitchen she seemed indubitably domestic. I was hungry and
+had hopes of her efforts.
+
+"Peer is setting the table", she told me.
+
+She always called him "Peer". She had her own way of finding names for
+people. I was never "Roger", but "Jim Crow". When questioned as to her
+reason for the appellation she decided vaguely that it might be some
+connection of ideas--dances--Sir Roger de Coverley--and didn't somebody
+"dance Jim Crow"?
+
+"You don't mind, do you?" she had asked, and I had replied that I did
+not.
+
+I did not confess how much I liked it. I had always been treated in a
+distinctly distant and dignified fashion by my family and friends, so
+that Rosalie's easy assumption of intimacy was delightful.
+
+Well, I went out on the porch and left Rosalie to her culinary devices.
+I found the morning paper, and fifteen minutes later there came up
+across the lawn a radiant figure.
+
+Rosalie, hearing the garden call, had chucked responsibility--and her
+arms were full of daffodils!
+
+We had burned toast for breakfast! Rosalie had forgotten it and Perry
+had not rescued it until it was well charred. There was no bread to make
+more, so we had to eat it.
+
+For the rest we had coffee and fruit. It was an expensive season for
+eggs, and Rosalie had her eye on a bit of old brocade which was to light
+a corner of her studio. She breakfasted contentedly on grapefruit, but
+Perry was rather silent, and I saw for the first time a shadow on his
+countenance. I wondered if for the moment his mind had wandered to the
+past, and to his mother's table, with Sunday waffles, omelet, broiled
+bacon. Yet--there had been no bits of gay brocade to light the
+mid-Victorian dullness of his mother's dining-room, no daffodils on a
+radiant morning, no white lilacs on a purple twilight, no slender
+goddess, mysterious as the moon.
+
+It was in the middle of the following winter that I began to realize
+that Perry was not well. He had come home on a snowy night, tired and
+chilled to the bone. He was late and Rosalie had kept dinner waiting for
+him. It was a rather sorry affair when it was served. Perry pushed his
+chair back and did not eat. I had as little appetite for it as he, but I
+did my best. I had arrived on an earlier train, with some old prints
+that I wanted to show him. Rosalie and I looked at them after dinner,
+but Perry crouched over the fire and coughed at intervals.
+
+At last I couldn't stand it any longer.
+
+"He needs some hot milk, a foot bath, and to be tucked up in bed."
+
+Rosalie stared at me above the prints. "Perry?"
+
+"Yes. He isn't well."
+
+"Don't croak, Jim Crow."
+
+But I knew what I was talking about. "I am going to get him to bed. You
+can have the milk ready when I come down."
+
+It developed that there was no milk. I walked half a mile to a road
+house and brought back oysters and a bottle of cream. I cooked them
+myself in the white-tiled kitchen, and served them piping hot in a bowl
+with crackers.
+
+Perry, propped up in bed, ate like a starved bird.
+
+"I've never tasted anything better," he said; and, warmed and fed, he
+slept after a bit as soundly as a satisfied baby.
+
+It was while he was eating the oysters that Rosalie came to the door and
+looked at him. He was not an aesthetic object--I must admit that no sick
+man is--and I saw distaste in her glance, as if some dainty instinct in
+her shrank from the spectacle.
+
+When I went down I found her sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in a
+Chinese robe of black and gold. You can imagine the effect of that with
+the red of her hair and the red of her cheeks and lips. Her feet, in
+black satin slippers, were on a jade-green cushion, and back of her head
+was the strip of brocade that she had bought with her housekeeping
+money. It was a gorgeous bit, repeating the color of the cushion, and
+with a touch of blue which matched her eyes.
+
+She wanted me to show her the rest of the prints. I tried to talk to her
+of Perry's health, but she wouldn't.
+
+"Don't croak, Jim Crow," she said again.
+
+As I look back at the two of us by the fire that night I feel as one
+might who had been accessory to a crime. Rosalie's charm was undoubted.
+Her quickness of mind, her gayety of spirit, her passion for all that
+was lovely in art and Nature--made her indescribably interesting. I
+stayed late. And not once, after my first attempt, did we speak of
+Perry.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It was in March that I made Perry see a doctor. "Nothing organic," was
+Perry's report. Beyond that he was silent. So I went to the doctor
+myself.
+
+"What's the matter with him?"
+
+"He is not getting the proper nourishment," the doctor told me. "He must
+have plenty of milk and eggs, and good red meat."
+
+It sounded easy enough, but it wasn't. Rosalie couldn't grasp the fact
+that diet in Perry's case was important. For the first time I saw a
+queer sort of obstinacy in her.
+
+"Oh, my poor Peer!" And she laughed lightly. "Do they want to make a
+stuffed pig of you?"
+
+Well, you simply couldn't get it into her head that Perry needed the
+bread that she sold for hyacinths. She cooked steaks and chops for him,
+and served them with an air of protest that took away his appetite.
+
+Of course there remained the eggs and milk, but he didn't like them.
+What Perry really needed was three good meals a day according to the
+tradition of his mother's home.
+
+But he couldn't have them. His mother was dead, and the home broken up.
+The little bungalow, with its old brocades, its Venetian glass, its
+Florentine carvings, its sun-dial and its garden, was the best that life
+could offer him. And I must confess that he seemed to think it very
+good. He adored Rosalie. When in moments of rebellion against her
+seeming indifference I hinted that she lacked housewifely qualities he
+smiled and shifted the subject abruptly.
+
+Once he said, "She feeds--my soul."
+
+Of course she loved him. But love to her meant what it had meant in
+those first days on the Maine coast when she had seen him, slender and
+strong, his brown hair blowing back from his sun-tanned skin; it meant
+those first days in their new home when, handsome and debonair in the
+velvet coat which she had made him wear, he had added a high light to
+the picture she had made of her home.
+
+This new Perry, pale and coughing--shivering in the warmth of the
+fire--did not fit into the picture. Her dreams of the future had not
+included a tired man who worked for his living, and who was dying for
+lack of intelligent care.
+
+To put it into cold words makes it sound ghoulish. But of course Rosalie
+was not really that. She was merely absorbed in her own exalted theories
+and she was not maternal. I think when I compared her, unthinking, to
+the young moon, that I was subconsciously aware of her likeness to the
+"orbed maiden" whose white fire warms no one.
+
+She tried to do her best, and I am quite sure that Perry never knew the
+truth--that he might have been saved if she could have left her heights
+for a moment and had become womanly and wifely. If she had mothered him
+a bit--poured out her tenderness upon him--oh, my poor Perry. He loved
+her too much to ask it, but I knew what it would have meant to him.
+
+All through his last illness Rosalie clung to me. I think it grew to be
+a horror to her to see him, gaunt and exhausted, in the west room. He
+had a good nurse, toward the last, and good food. I had had a small
+fortune left to me, too late, by a distant relative. I paid for the cook
+and the nurse, and I sent flowers to Rosalie that she might take them to
+Perry and let his hungry eyes feed upon her.
+
+It was in the winter that he died, and after all was over Rosalie and I
+went out and stood together on the little porch. There was snow on the
+ground and the bright stars seemed caught in the branches of the pines.
+
+Rosalie shook and sobbed.
+
+"I hate--death," she said. "Oh, Jim Crow, why did God let my poor Peer
+die?" She was completely unstrung. "Death is so--ugly."
+
+I said, "It is not ugly. Peer will live again--like the daffodils in
+the spring."
+
+"Do you believe that, Jim Crow?"
+
+I did believe it, and I told her so--that even now her Peer was strong
+and well; and I think it comforted her. It gave her lover back to her,
+as it were, in the glory of his youth.
+
+She did not wear mourning, or, rather, she wore mourning which was like
+that worn by no other woman. Her robes were of purple. She kept Perry's
+picture on the table, and out of the frame his young eyes laughed at us,
+so that gradually the vision of that ravaged figure in the west room
+faded.
+
+I went to see her once a week. It seemed the only thing to do. She was
+utterly alone, with no family but the great-aunt and uncle who had been
+with her when she met Perry. She was a child in business matters, and
+Perry had left it to me to administer the affairs of his little estate.
+Rosalie had her small bungalow, Perry's insurance, and she turned her
+knowledge of painting to practical account. She made rather special
+things in lamp-shades and screens, and was well paid for them.
+
+I went, as I have said, once a week. A woman friend shared part of her
+house, but was apt to be out, and so I saw Rosalie usually alone. I
+lived now at the club and kept a car. Rosalie often dined with me, but I
+rarely ate at the bungalow. Now and then in the afternoon she made me a
+cup of tea, rather more, I am sure, for the picturesque service with
+her treasured Sheffield than for any desire to contribute to my own
+cheer or comfort.
+
+And so, gradually, I grew into her life and she grew into mine. I was
+forty-five, she twenty-five. In the back of my mind was always a sense
+of the enormity of her offense against Perry. In my hottest moments I
+said to myself that she had sacrificed his life to her selfishness; she
+might have been a Borgia or a Medici.
+
+Yet when I was with her my resentment faded; one could as little hold
+rancor against a child.
+
+Thus the months passed, and it was in the autumn, I remember, that a
+conversation occurred which opened new vistas. She had been showing me a
+parchment lamp-shade which she had painted. There was a peacock with a
+spreading tail, and as she held the shade over the lamp the light shone
+through and turned every feathered eye into a glittering jewel. Rosalie
+wore one of her purple robes, and I can see her now as I shut my eyes,
+as glowing and gorgeous as some of those unrivaled masterpieces in the
+Pitti Palace.
+
+"Jim Crow," she said, "I shall do a parrot next--all red and blue, with
+white rings round his eyes."
+
+"You will never do anything better than that peacock."
+
+"Shan't I?" She left the shade over the lamp and sat down. "Do you think
+I shall paint peacocks and parrots for the rest of my life, Jim Crow?"
+
+"What would you like to do?" I asked her.
+
+"Travel." She was eager. "Do you know, I have never been to Europe?
+Perry used to tell me about it--Botticelli and Raphael--and
+Michaelangelo--"
+
+"We had a great time," I said, remembering it all--that breathless
+search for beauty.
+
+"He promised that some day he and I would go--together."
+
+"Poor Perry!"
+
+She rose restlessly.
+
+"Oh, take me out somewhere, Jim Crow! I feel as if this little house
+would stifle me."
+
+We motored to the country club. She wore the color which she now
+affected, a close little hat and a straight frock. People stared at her.
+I think she was aware of their admiration and liked it.
+
+She smiled at me as she sat down at the table. "I always love to come
+with you, Jim Crow."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You do things so well, and you're such a darling."
+
+I do not believe that it was intended as flattery. I am sure that she
+meant it. She was happy because of the lights and the lovely old room
+with its cavernous fireplace and its English chintzes; and out of her
+happiness she spoke.
+
+She could not, of course, know the effect of her words on me. No one had
+ever called me a darling or had thought that I did things well.
+
+She used, too, to tell me things about my looks. "You'd be like one of
+those distinguished gentlemen of Vandyke's if you'd wear a ruff and
+leave off your eye-glasses."
+
+I wonder if you know how it seemed to have a child like that saying such
+things. For she was more than a child, she was a beautiful woman, and
+everything surrounding her was beautiful. And there had been a great
+many gray years before I met Perry and before the money came which made
+pleasant living possible.
+
+"I like you because you are strong," was another of her tributes.
+
+"How do you know I am strong?"
+
+"Well, you look it. And not many men could have carried me so easily
+up-stairs."
+
+She had sprained her ankle in getting out of my car on the night that we
+had dined at the country club. She had worn high-heeled slippers and had
+stepped on a pebble.
+
+It was on that night that I first faced the fact that I cared for her.
+In my arms she had clung to me like a child, her hair had swept my
+cheek, there had been the fragrance of violets.
+
+I did not want to care for her. I remembered Perry--the burned toast
+which had seemed to mark the beginning of their tragedy--those last
+dreadful days. I knew that Perry's fate would not be mine; there would
+be no need to sell bread to buy hyacinths. There was money enough and to
+spare, money to let her live in the enjoyment of the things she craved;
+money enough to--travel.
+
+The more I thought of it the more I was held by the thought of what such
+a trip would mean to me. It would be like that pilgrimage with young
+Perry. There would be the same impassioned interest--there would be more
+than that--there would be youth and loveliness--all mine.
+
+I felt that I was mad to think of it. Yet she made me think of it. It
+was what she wanted. She was not in the least unwomanly, but she was
+very modern in her frank expression of the pleasure she felt in my
+companionship.
+
+"Oh, what would I do without you, Jim Crow?" was the way she put it.
+
+I grew young in my months of association with her. I had danced a little
+in my college days, but I had given it up. She taught me the new
+steps--and we would set the phonograph going and take up the rugs.
+
+When I grew expert we danced together at the country club and at some of
+the smart places down-town. It was all very delightful. I made up my
+mind that I should marry her.
+
+I planned to ask her on Christmas Eve. I had a present for her, an
+emerald set in antique silver with seed pearls. It was hung on a black
+ribbon, and I could fancy it shining against the background of her
+velvet smock. I carried flowers, too, and a book. I was keen with
+anticipation. The years seemed to drop from me. I was a boy of twenty
+going to meet the lady of my first romance.
+
+When I arrived at the bungalow I found that Rosalie had with her the old
+great-aunt and uncle who had been with her when we first met in Maine.
+They had come on for Christmas unexpectedly, anticipating an eager
+welcome, happy in their sense of surprise.
+
+Rosalie, when we had a moment alone, expressed her dismay.
+
+"They are going to stay until to-morrow night, Jim Crow. And I haven't
+planned any Christmas dinner."
+
+"We'll take them to the country club."
+
+"How heavenly of you to think of it!"
+
+I gave her the flowers and the book. But I kept the jewel for the high
+moment when I should ask her for a greater gift in exchange.
+
+But the high moment did not come that night. The old uncle and aunt sat
+up with us. They had much to talk about. They were a comfortable
+pair--silver-haired and happy in each other--going toward the end of the
+journey hand in hand.
+
+The old man went to the door with me when I left, and we stood for a
+moment under the stars.
+
+"Mother and I miss hanging up the stockings for the kiddies," he said.
+
+"Were there many kiddies?"
+
+"Three. Two dead and one married and out West. Rosalie seemed the
+nearest that we had, and that's why we came. I thought mother might be
+lonely in our big old house."
+
+The next day at the country club the old gentleman was genial but
+slightly garrulous. The old lady talked about her children and her
+Christmas memories. I saw that Rosalie was frankly bored.
+
+As for myself, I was impatient for my high moment.
+
+But I think I gave the old folks a good time and that they missed
+nothing in my manner. And, indeed, I think that they missed nothing in
+Rosalie's. They had the gentle complacency of the aged who bask in their
+own content.
+
+It was toward the end of dinner that I caught a look in Rosalie's eyes
+which almost made my heart stop beating. I had not seen it since Perry's
+death. I had seen it first when she had stood in the door of his room on
+the night that I tucked him up in bed and gave him the hot oysters. It
+was that look of distaste--that delicate shrinking from an unpleasant
+spectacle.
+
+Following her gaze I saw that the old gentleman had sunk in his chair
+and was gently nodding. His wife leaned toward me.
+
+"Milton always takes a cat nap after meals," she said, smiling. And I
+smiled back, she was so rosy and round and altogether comfortable.
+
+Rosalie and I went with them to the train, and it was as we drove back
+that I spoke of them.
+
+"They are rather great dears, aren't they?"
+
+Rosalie was vehement. "I hate old people!"
+
+A chill struck to my bones. "You hate them? Why?"
+
+"They're--ugly, Jim Crow. Did you see how they had shrunk since I last
+saw them--and the veins in their hands--and the skull showing through
+his forehead?"
+
+She was twenty-five, and I was almost twice her age. When I was old she
+would still be young--young enough to see my shrunken body and the
+skull showing through!
+
+The look that had been in her eyes for Perry would some day be in her
+eyes for me. And I knew that if I ever saw it it would strike me dead.
+It might not kill me physically, but it would wither like a flame all
+joy and hope forever.
+
+When we reached the bungalow I built up a fire, and Rosalie, leaving me
+for a little, came back in something sheer and lovely in green. It was
+the first time since Perry's death that she had discarded her purple
+robes. She sank into a big chair opposite me and put her
+silver-slippered feet on the green cushion.
+
+"Isn't it heavenly to be alone, Jim Crow?"
+
+It was the high moment which I had planned, but I could not grasp it.
+Between me and happiness stood the shadow of that other Rosalie,
+shrinking from me when I was old as she had shrunk from Perry.
+
+"My dear," I said, and I did not look at her, "I've been thinking a lot
+about you."
+
+Her chin was in her hand. "I know."
+
+But she didn't know.
+
+"I've been thinking, Rosalie; and I want to give you something for
+Christmas which will make you happy throughout the year."
+
+"You are such a darling, Jim Crow."
+
+"And I have thought of this--a trip to Europe. You'll let me do it,
+won't you? There'll be the art galleries, and you can stay as long as
+you like."
+
+I could see that she was puzzled. "Do you mean that I am to go--alone?"
+she asked slowly.
+
+"There may be some one going. I'll find out."
+
+There was dead silence.
+
+"You will let me do it?" I asked finally.
+
+She came over to my chair and stood looking down at me.
+
+"Why are you sending me alone, Jim Crow?"
+
+I think, then, that she saw the anguish in my eyes. She sank on her
+knees beside my chair.
+
+"I don't want to go alone, Jim Crow. I want to stay--with--you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, the jewel is on her breast and a ring to match is on her finger.
+And when the spring comes we are to sail for Italy, for France.
+
+Perhaps we shall never come back. And I am going to give Rosalie all
+the loveliness that life can hold for her. Now and then she whispers
+that she never knew love until I taught it to her. That what she felt
+for Perry was but the echo of his own need of her.
+
+"But I'd tramp the muddy roads with you, Jim Crow."
+
+I wonder if she really means it. I wish with all my heart that I might
+know it true. I have never told her of my fears and I believe that I can
+make her happy. I shall try not to look too far beyond the days we shall
+have in the Louvre and the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. We shall search
+for beauty, and perhaps I can teach her to find it, before it is too
+late, in the things that count.
+
+
+
+
+PETRONELLA
+
+
+"If you loved a man, and knew that he loved you, and he wouldn't ask you
+to marry him, what would you do?"
+
+The Admiral surveyed his grand-niece thoughtfully. "What do you expect
+to do, my dear?"
+
+Petronella stopped on the snowy top step and looked down at him. "Who
+said I had anything to do with it?" she demanded.
+
+The Admiral's old eyes twinkled. "Let me come in, and tell me about
+it."
+
+Petronella smiled at him over her big muff. "If you'll promise not to
+stay after five, I'll give you a cup of tea."
+
+"Who's coming at five?"
+
+The color flamed into Petronella's cheeks. In her white coat and white
+furs, with her wind-blown brown hair, her beauty satisfied even the
+Admiral's critical survey, and he hastened to follow his question by the
+assertion, "Of course I'll come in."
+
+Petronella, with her coat off, showed a slenderness which was enhanced
+by the straight lines of her white wool gown, with the long sleeves
+fur-edged, and with fur at the top of the high, transparent collar. She
+wore her hair curled over her ears and low on her forehead, which made
+of her face a small and delicate oval. In the big hall, with a roaring
+fire in the wide fireplace, she dispensed comforting hospitality to the
+adoring Admiral. And when she had given him his tea she sat on a stool
+at his feet. "Oh, wise great-uncle," she said, "I am going to tell you
+about the Man!"
+
+"Have I ever seen him?"
+
+"No. I met him in London last year, and--well, you know what a trip home
+on shipboard means, with all the women shut up in their cabins, and with
+moonlight nights, and nobody on deck--"
+
+"So it was an affair of moonlight and propinquity?"
+
+After a pause: "No, it was an affair of the only man in the world for
+me."
+
+"My dear child--!"
+
+Out of a long silence she went on: "He thought I was poor. You know how
+quietly I traveled with Miss Danvers. And he didn't associate Nell
+Hewlett with Petronella Hewlett of New York and Great Rock. And
+so--well, you know, uncle, he let himself go, and I let myself go, and
+then--"
+
+She drew a long breath. "When we landed, things stopped. He had found
+out who I was, and he wrote me a little note, and said he would never
+forget our friendship--and that's--all."
+
+She finished drearily, and the bluff old Admiral cleared his throat.
+There was something wrong with the scheme of things when his Petronella
+couldn't have the moon if she wanted it!
+
+"And what can I do--what can any woman do?" Petronella demanded, turning
+on him. "I can't go to him and say, 'Please marry me.' I can't even
+think it"; her cheeks burned. "And he'd die before _he'd_ say another
+word, and I suppose that now we'll go on growing old, and I'll get
+thinner and thinner, and he'll get fatter and fatter, and I'll be an old
+maid, and he'll marry some woman who's poor enough to satisfy his pride,
+and--well, that will be the end of it, uncle."
+
+"The end of it?" said the gentleman who had once commanded a squadron.
+"Well, I guess not, Petronella, if you want him. Oh, the man's a fool!"
+
+"He's not a fool, uncle." The sparks in Petronella's eyes matched the
+sparks in the Admiral's.
+
+"Well, if he's worthy of you--"
+
+Petronella laid her cheek against his hand. "The question is not," she
+said, faintly, "of his worthiness, but of mine, dear uncle."
+
+Dumbly the Admiral gazed down at that drooping head. Could this be
+Petronella--confident, imperious, the daughter of a confident and
+imperious race?
+
+He took refuge in the question, "But who is coming at five?"
+
+"He is coming. He is passing through Boston on his way to visit his
+mother in Maine. I asked him to come. I told him I was down here by the
+sea, and intended to spend Christmas at Great Rock because you were
+here, and because this was the house I lived in when I was a little
+girl, and that I wanted him to see it; and--I told him the truth,
+uncle."
+
+"The truth?"
+
+"That I missed him. That was all I dared say, and I wish you had read
+his note of assent. Such a stiff little thing. It threw me back upon
+myself, and I wished that I hadn't written him--I wished that he
+wouldn't come. Oh, uncle, if I were a man, I'd give a woman the right to
+choose. That's the reason there are so many unhappy marriages. Nine
+wrong men ask a woman, and the tenth right one _won't_. And finally she
+gets tired of waiting for the tenth right one, and marries one of the
+nine wrong ones."
+
+"There are women to-day," said the Admiral, "who are preaching a woman's
+right to propose."
+
+Petronella gazed at him, thoughtfully. "I could preach a doctrine like
+that--but I couldn't practice it. It's easy enough to say to some other
+woman, 'Ask him,' but it's different when you are the woman."
+
+"Yet if he asked you," suggested the Admiral, "the world might say that
+he wanted your money."
+
+"Why should we care what the world would say?" Petronella was on her
+feet now, defending her cause vigorously. "Why should we care? Why, it's
+our love against the world, uncle! Why should we care?"
+
+The Admiral stood up, too, and paced the rug as in former days he had
+paced the decks. "There must be some way out," he said at last, and
+stopped short. "Suppose I speak to him--"
+
+"And spoil it all! Oh, uncle!" Petronella shook him by the lapels of
+his blue coat. "A man never knows how a woman feels about such things.
+Even you don't, you old darling. And now will you please go; and take
+this because I love you," and she kissed him on one cheek, "and this
+because it is a quarter to five and you'll have to hurry," and she
+kissed him on the other cheek.
+
+The Admiral, being helped into his big cape in the hall, called back, "I
+forgot to give you your Christmas present," and he produced a small
+package.
+
+"Come here and let me open it," Petronella insisted. And the Admiral,
+without a glance at the accusing clock, went back. And thus it happened
+that he was there to meet the Man.
+
+It must be confessed that the Admiral suffered a distinct shock as he
+was presented to the hero of Petronella's romance. Here was no courtly
+youth of the type of the military male line of Petronella's family, but
+a muscular young giant of masterful bearing. The Hewlett men had
+commanded men; one could see at a glance that Justin Hare had also
+commanded women. This, the wise old Admiral decided at once, was the
+thing which had attracted Petronella--Petronella, who had held her own
+against all masculine encroachments, and who was heart-free at
+twenty-five!
+
+"Look what this dearest dear of an uncle has given me," said Petronella,
+and held up for the young surgeon's admiration a string of pearls with a
+sapphire clasp. "They belonged to my great-aunt. I was named for her,
+and uncle says I look like her."
+
+"You have her eyes, my dear, and some of her ways. But she was less
+independent. In her time women leaned more, as it were, on man's
+strength."
+
+Justin Hare looked at them with interest--at the slender girl in her
+white gown, at the tall, straight old man with his air of command.
+
+"Women in these days do not lean," he said, with decision; "they lead."
+
+A spark came into Petronella's eyes. "And do you like the modern type
+best?" she challenged.
+
+He answered with smiling directness, "I like you."
+
+The Admiral was pleased with that, though he was still troubled by this
+man's difference from the men of his own race. Yet if back of that
+honest bluntness there was a heart which would enshrine her--well, that
+was all he would ask for this dearest of girls.
+
+He glanced at the clock, and spoke hurriedly: "I must be going, my dear;
+it is long after five."
+
+"Must you really go?" asked the mendacious Petronella.
+
+An hour later she was alone. The visit had been a failure. She admitted
+that, as she gazed with a sort of agonized dismay through the wide
+window to where the sea was churned by the wildness of the northeast
+gale. Snow had come with the wind, shutting out the view of the great
+empty hotels on the Point, shutting out, too, the golden star of hope
+which gleamed from the top of the lighthouse.
+
+Petronella turned away from the blank scene with a little shudder. Thus
+had Justin Hare shut her out of his life. He had talked of his mother in
+Maine, of his hospital plans for the winter, but not a word had he said
+of those moonlight nights when he had masterfully swayed her by the
+force of his own passion, had wooed her, won her.
+
+And now there was nothing that she could do. There was never anything
+that a woman could do! And so she must bear it. Oh, if she could bear
+it!
+
+A little later, when a maid slipped in to light the candles, Petronella
+said out of the shadows, "When Jenkins goes to the post-office, I have a
+parcel for the mail."
+
+"He's been, miss, and there won't be any train out to-night; the snow
+has stopped the trains."
+
+"Not any train!" At first the remark held little significance, but
+finally the fact beat against her brain. If the one evening train could
+not leave, then Justin Hare must stay in town, and he would have to stay
+until Christmas morning!
+
+Petronella went at once to the telephone, and called up the only hotel
+which was open at that season. Presently she had Hare at the other end
+of the line.
+
+"You must come to my house to dinner," she said. "Jenkins has told me
+about your train. Please don't dress--there'll be only Miss Danvers and
+uncle; and you shall help me trim my little tree."
+
+Although she told him not to dress, she changed her gown for one of dull
+green velvet, built on the simple lines of the white wool she had worn
+in the afternoon. The square neck was framed by a collar of Venetian
+point, and there was a queer old pin of pearls.
+
+The Admiral, arriving early, demanded: "My dear, what is this? I was
+just sitting down to bread and milk and a handful of raisins, and now I
+must dine in six courses, and drink coffee, which will keep me awake."
+
+She laid her cheek against his arm. "Mr. Hare's train couldn't get out
+of town on account of the snow."
+
+"And he's coming?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But what of this afternoon, my dear?"
+
+She slipped her hand into his, and they stood gazing into the fire. "It
+was dreadful, uncle. I had a feeling that I had compelled him to
+come--against his will."
+
+"Yet you have asked him to come again to-night?"
+
+She shivered a little, and her hand was cold. "Perhaps I shall regret
+it--but oh, uncle, can't I have for this one evening the joy of his
+presence? And if to-morrow my heart dies--"
+
+"Nella, my dear child--"
+
+The Admiral's own Petronella had never drawn in this way upon his
+emotions. She had been gentle, perhaps a little cold. But then he had
+always worshiped at her shrine. Perhaps a woman denied the lore she
+yearns for learns the value of it. At any rate, here in his arms was the
+dearest thing in his lonely life, sobbing as if her heart would break.
+
+When Justin came, a half-hour later, he found them still in front of the
+fire in the great hall, and as she rose to welcome him he saw that
+Petronella had been sitting on a stool at her uncle's feet.
+
+"When I was a little girl," she explained, when Hare had taken a chair
+on the hearth and she had chosen another with, a high, carved back, in
+which she sat with her silken ankles crossed and the tips of her slipper
+toes resting on a leopard-skin which the Admiral had brought back from
+India--"when I was a little girl we always spent Christmas Eve in this
+house by the sea instead of in town. We were all here then--mother and
+dad and dear Aunt Pet, and we hung our stockings at this very
+fireplace--and now there is no one but Miss Danvers and me, and uncle,
+who lives up aloft in his big house across the way, where he has a
+lookout tower. I always feel like calling up to him when I go there,
+'Oh, Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anybody coming?'"
+
+She was talking nervously, with her cheeks as white as a lily, but with
+her eyes shining. The Admiral glanced at Hare. The young man was
+drinking in her beauty. But suddenly he frowned and turned away his
+eyes.
+
+"It was very good of you to ask me over," he said, formally.
+
+That steadied Petronella. Her nervous self-consciousness fled, and she
+was at once the gracious, impersonal hostess.
+
+The Admiral glowed with pride of her. "She'll carry it off," he said to
+himself; "it's in her blood."
+
+"Dinner is served," announced Jenkins from the doorway, and then Miss
+Danvers came down and greeted Justin, and they all went out together.
+
+There was holly for a centerpiece, and four red candles in silver
+holders. The table was of richly carved mahogany, and the Admiral,
+following an old custom, served the soup from a silver tureen, upheld by
+four fat cupids. From the wide arch which led into the great hall was
+hung a bunch of mistletoe; beyond the arch, the roaring fire made a
+background of gleaming, golden light.
+
+To the young surgeon it seemed a fairy scene flaming with the color and
+glow of a life which he had never known. He had lived so long surrounded
+by the bare, blank walls of a hospital. Even Petronella's soft green
+gown seemed made of some mystical stuff which had nothing in common with
+the cool white or blue starchiness of the uniforms of nurses.
+
+They talked of many things, covering with, their commonplaces the
+tenseness of the situation. Then suddenly the conversation took a
+significant turn.
+
+"I love these stormy nights," Petronella had said, "with the snow
+blowing, and the wind, and the house all warm and bright."
+
+"Think of the poor sailors at sea," Hare had reminded her.
+
+"Please--I don't want to think of them. We have done our best for them,
+uncle and I. We have opened a reading-room down by the docks, so that
+all who are ashore can have soup and coffee and sandwiches, and there's
+a big stove, and newspapers and magazines."
+
+"You dispense charity?"
+
+"Why not?" she asked him, confidently. "We have plenty--why shouldn't we
+give?"
+
+"Because it takes away from their manhood to receive."
+
+The Admiral spoke bluntly. "The men don't feel it that way. This
+charity, as you call it, is a memorial to my wife. The grandfathers of
+these boys used to see her light in the window of the old house on
+stormy nights, and they knew that it was an invitation to good cheer.
+More than one crew coming in half frozen were glad of the soup and
+coffee which were sent down to them in cans with baskets of bread. And
+this little coffee-room has been the outgrowth of just such hospitality.
+There are too many of the men to have in my house. I simply entertain
+them elsewhere, and I like to go and talk to them, and sometimes
+Petronella goes."
+
+"There's a picture of dear Aunt Pet hanging there," said Petronella,
+"and you can't imagine how it softens the manners of the men. It is as
+if her spirit brooded over the place. They have made it into a sort of
+shrine, and they bring shells and queer carved things to put on the
+shelf below it."
+
+"In the city we are beginning to think that such methods weaken
+self-respect."
+
+"That's because," said the wise old Admiral, "in the city there isn't
+any real democracy. You give your friend a cup of coffee and think
+nothing of it, yet when I give a cup of coffee to a sailor whose
+grandfather and mine fished together on the banks, you warn me that my
+methods tend to pauperize. In the city the poor are never your
+friends--in this little town no man would admit that he is less than I.
+They like my coffee and they drink it."
+
+Petronella, seeing her chance, took it. "I think people are horrid to
+let money make a difference."
+
+"You say that," said Hare, "because you have never had to accept
+favors--you have, in other words, never been on the other side."
+
+The Admiral, taking up cudgels for his niece, answered, "If she had been
+on the other side, she would have taken life as she takes it now--like a
+gentleman and a soldier," and he smiled at Petronella.
+
+Hare had a baffled sense that the Admiral was right--that Petronella's
+fineness and delicacy would never go down in defeat or despair. She
+would hold her head high though the heavens fell. But could any man make
+such demands upon her? For himself, he would not.
+
+So he answered, doggedly, "We shall hope she need never be tested." And
+Petronella's heart sank like lead.
+
+But presently she began to talk about the little tree. "We have always
+had it in uncle's lookout tower. That was another of dear Aunt Pet's
+thoughts for the sailors. On clear nights they looked through their
+glasses for the little colored lights, and on stormy nights they knew
+that back of all the snow was the Christmas brightness."
+
+"I never had a tree," said Justin. "When I was a kiddie we had pretty
+hard times, and the best Christmas I remember was one when mother made
+us boys put up a shelf for our books, and she started our collection
+with 'Treasure Island' and 'Huckleberry Finn.'"
+
+In the adjoining room, volumes reached from floor to ceiling, from end
+to end. Petronella had a vision of this vivid young giant gloating over
+his two books on a rude shelf. And all her life she had had the things
+she wanted! Somehow the thought took the bitterness out of her attitude
+toward him. How strong he must be to deny himself now the one great
+thing that he craved when his life had held so little.
+
+"How lovely to begin with just those two books," she said, softly, and
+the radiance of her smile was dazzling.
+
+When she showed him her presents she was still radiant. There was a
+queer opera-bag of Chinese needlework, with handles of jade, a Damascus
+bowl of pierced brass, a tea-caddy in quaint Dutch _repousse_; there was
+a silver-embroidered altar-cloth for a cushion, a bit of Copenhagen
+faience, all the sophisticated artistry which is sent to those who have
+no need for the commonplace. There were jewels, too: a bracelet of
+topazes surrounded by brilliants, a pair of slipper buckles of
+turquoises set in silver, a sapphire circlet for her little finger, a
+pendant of seed pearls.
+
+As she opened the parcels and displayed her riches Justin felt
+bewildered. His gifts to his mother had included usually gloves and a
+generous check; if he had ventured to choose anything for Petronella he
+would not have dared go beyond a box of candy or a book; he had given
+his nurses pocketbooks and handkerchiefs. And the men of Petronella's
+world bestowed on her brass bowls and tea-caddies!
+
+Miss Danvers vanished up-stairs. The Admiral, having admired, slipped
+away to the library, encouraged by Petronella's whispered: "Oh, uncle
+dear, leave us alone for just a little minute. I've found a way!"
+
+Then Petronella, with that radiance still upon her, sat down on her
+little stool in front of the fire, and looked at Justin on the other
+side of the hearth.
+
+"You haven't given me anything," she began, reproachfully.
+
+"What could I give that would compare with these?" His hand swept toward
+the exquisite display. "What could I give--"
+
+"There's one thing," softly.
+
+"What?"
+
+"That copy of 'Treasure Island' that your mother gave you long ago."
+
+Dead silence. Then, unsteadily: "Why should you want that?"
+
+"Because your mother--loved you."
+
+Again dead silence. Hare did not look at her. His hand clenched the arm
+of his chair. His face was white. Then, very low, "Why do you--make it
+hard for me?"
+
+"Because I want--the book"; she was smiling at him with her eyes like
+stars. "I want to read it with the eyes of the little boy--with the eyes
+of the little boy who looked into the future and saw life as a great
+adventure; who looked into the future--and dreamed."
+
+He had a vision, too, of that little boy, reading, in the old house in
+the Maine woods, by the light of an oil-lamp, on Christmas Eve, with the
+snow blowing outside as it blew to-night.
+
+"And your mother loved you because she loved your father," the girl's
+voice went on, "and you were all very happy up there in the forest. Do
+you remember that you told me about it on the ship?--you were happy,
+although you were poor, and hadn't any books but 'Treasure Island' and
+'Huckleberry Finn.' But your mother was happy--because she--loved your
+father."
+
+As she repeated it, she leaned forward. "Could you think of your mother
+as having been happy with any one else but your father?" she asked.
+"Could you think of her as having never married him, of having gone
+through the rest of her days a half-woman, because he would not--take
+her--into his life? Can you think that all the money in the world--all
+the money in the whole world--would--would have made up--"
+
+The room seemed to darken. Hare was conscious that her face was hidden
+in her hands, that he stumbled toward her, that he knelt beside
+her--that she was in his arms.
+
+"Hush," he was saying in that beating darkness of emotion. "Hush, don't
+cry--I--I will never let you go--"
+
+When the storm had spent itself and when at last she met his long gaze,
+he whispered, "I'm not sure now that it is right--"
+
+"You will be sure as the years go on," she whispered back; then,
+tremulously: "but I--I could never have--talked that way if I had
+thought of you as the man. I had to think of you as the little boy--who
+dreamed."
+
+
+
+
+THE CANOPY BED
+
+
+"My great-grandfather slept in it," Van Alen told the caretaker, as she
+ushered him into the big stuffy bedroom.
+
+The old woman set her candlestick down on the quaint dresser. "He must
+have been a little man," she said; "none of my sons could sleep in it.
+Their feet would hang over."
+
+Van Alen eyed the big bed curiously. All his life he had heard of it,
+and now he had traveled far to see it. It was a lumbering structure of
+great width and of strangely disproportionate length. And the coverlet
+and the canopy were of rose-colored chintz.
+
+"I think I shall fit it," he said slowly.
+
+Mrs. Brand's critical glance weighed his smallness, his immaculateness,
+his difference from her own great sons.
+
+"Yes," she said, with the open rudeness of the country-bred; "yes, you
+ain't very big."
+
+Van Alen winced. Even from the lips of this uncouth woman the truth
+struck hard. But he carried the topic forward with the light ease of a
+man of the world.
+
+"My grandfather had the bed sawed to his own length," he explained; "did
+you ever hear the story?"
+
+"No," she said; "I ain't been here long. They kept the house shut up
+till this year."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you when I come down," and Van Alen opened his bag with
+a finality that sent the old woman to the door.
+
+"Supper's ready," she told him, "whenever you are."
+
+At the supper table the four big sons towered above Van Alen. They ate
+with appetites like giants, and they had big ways and hearty laughs
+that seemed to dwarf their guest into insignificance.
+
+But the insignificance was that of body only, for Van Alen, fresh from
+the outside world and a good talker at all times, dominated the table
+conversationally.
+
+To what he had to say the men listened eagerly, and the girl who waited
+on the table listened.
+
+She was a vivid personality, with burnished hair, flaming cheeks, eyes
+like the sea. Her hands, as she passed the biscuits, were white, and the
+fingers went down delicately to little points. Van Alen, noting these
+things keenly, knew that she was out of her place, and wondered how she
+came there.
+
+At the end of the meal he told the story of the Canopy Bed.
+
+"My great-grandfather was a little man, and very sensitive about his
+height. In the days of his early manhood he spent much time in devising
+ways to deceive people into thinking him taller. He surrounded himself
+with big things, had a big bed made, wore high-heeled boots, and the
+crown of his hat was so tall that he was almost overbalanced.
+
+"But for all that, he was a little man among the sturdy men of his
+generation, and if it had not been for the Revolution I think he would
+have died railing at fate. But the war brought him opportunity. My
+little great-grandfather fought in it, and won great honors, and
+straight back home he came and had the bed sawed off! He wanted future
+generations to see what a little man could do, and his will provided
+that this house should not be sold, and that, when his sons and
+grandsons had proved themselves worthy of it by some achievement, they
+should come here and sleep. I think he swaggered a little when he wrote
+that will, and he has put his descendants in an embarrassing position.
+We can never sleep in the canopy bed without taking more upon ourselves
+than modesty permits!"
+
+He laughed, and instinctively his eyes sought those of the girl who
+waited on the table. Somehow he felt that she was the only one who could
+understand.
+
+She came back at him with a question: "What have you done?"
+
+"I have written a book," he told her.
+
+She shook her head, and there were little sparks of light in her eyes.
+"I don't believe that was what your grandfather meant," she said,
+slowly.
+
+They stared at her--three of the brothers with their knives and forks
+uplifted, the fourth, a blond Titanic youngster, with his elbows on the
+table, his face turned up to her, as to the sun.
+
+"I don't believe he meant something done with your brains, but something
+fine, heroic--" There was a hint of scorn in her voice.
+
+Van Alen flushed. He was fresh from the adulation of his bookish world.
+
+"I should not have come," he explained, uncomfortably, "if my mother had
+not desired that I preserve the tradition of the family."
+
+"It is a great thing to write a book"--she was leaning forward, aflame
+with interest--"but I don't believe he meant just that--"
+
+He laughed. "Then I am not to sleep in the canopy bed?"
+
+The girl laughed too. "Not unless you want to be haunted by his ghost."
+
+With a backward flashing glance, she went into the kitchen, and Van
+Alen, lighting a cigarette, started to explore the old house.
+
+Except for the wing, occupied by the caretaker, nothing had been
+disturbed since the family, seeking new fortunes in the city, had left
+the old homestead to decay among the desolate fields that yielded now a
+meagre living for Mrs. Brand and her four strapping sons.
+
+In the old parlor, where the ancient furniture showed ghostlike shapes
+in the dimness, and the dead air was like a tomb, Van Alen found a
+picture of his great-grandfather.
+
+The little man had been painted without flattery. There he
+sat--Lilliputian on the great charger! At that moment Van Alen hated
+him--that Hop-o'-my-Thumb of another age, founder of a pigmy race, who,
+by his braggart will, had that night brought upon this one of his
+descendants the scorn of a woman.
+
+And even as he thought of her, she came in, with the yellow flare of a
+candle lighting her vivid face.
+
+"I thought you might need a light," she said; "it grows dark so soon."
+
+As he took the candle from her, he said abruptly: "I shall not sleep in
+the canopy bed; there is a couch in the room."
+
+"Oh," her tone was startled, "you shouldn't have taken all that I said
+in earnest."
+
+"But you meant it?"
+
+"In a way, yes. I have been in here so often and have looked at your
+grandfather's picture. He was a great little man--you can tell from his
+eyes--they seem to speak at times."
+
+"To you?"
+
+"Yes. Of how he hated to be little, and how he triumphed when fame came
+at last."
+
+"I hate to be little--"
+
+It was the first time that he had ever owned it. Even as a tiny boy he
+had brazened it out, boasting of his mental achievements and slurring
+the weakness of his stunted body.
+
+"I know," she had shut the kitchen door behind her, and they were
+standing in the hallway alone, "I know. Every man must want to be big."
+
+She was only the girl who had waited on the table, but as she stood
+there, looking at him with luminous eyes, he burned with dull
+resentment, envying the blond boy who had sprawled at the head of the
+supper table. After all, it was to such a man as Otto Brand that this
+woman would some day turn.
+
+He spoke almost roughly: "Size isn't everything." She flushed. "How rude
+you must think me," she said; "but I have been so interested in
+dissecting your grandfather that I forgot--you--"
+
+Van Alen was moved by an impulse that he could not control, a primitive
+impulse that was not in line with his usual repression.
+
+"I am tempted to make you remember me," he said slowly, and after that
+there was a startled silence. And then she went away.
+
+As he passed the sitting-room on his way up-stairs, he looked in, and
+spoke to Otto Brand.
+
+More than any of the other brothers, Otto typified strength and beauty,
+but in his eyes was never a dream, his brain had mastered nothing. He
+was playing idly with the yellow cat, but he stopped at Van Alen's
+question.
+
+"Her great-grandfather and yours were neighbors," the boy said, with his
+cheeks flushing; "they own the next farm."
+
+"The Wetherells?" Van Alen inquired.
+
+The boy nodded. "They ain't got a cent. They're land poor. That's why
+she's here. But she don't need to work."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"There's plenty that wants to marry her round about," was the boy's
+self-conscious summing up.
+
+With a sense of revolt, Van Alen left him, and, undressing in the room
+with the canopy bed, he called up vaguely the vision of a little girl
+who had visited them in the city. She had had green eyes and freckles
+and red hair. Beyond that she had made no impression on his callowness.
+And her name was Mazie Wetherell.
+
+He threw himself on the couch, and the night winds, coming in through
+the open window, stirred the curtains of the canopy bed with the light
+touch of a ghostly hand.
+
+Then dreams came, and through them ran the thread of his hope of seeing
+Mazie Wetherell in the morning.
+
+But even with such preparation, her beauty seemed to come upon him
+unawares when he saw her at breakfast. And again at noon, and again at
+night. But it was the third day before he saw her alone.
+
+All that day he had explored the length and breadth of the family
+estate, finding it barren, finding that the population of the little
+village at its edge had decreased to a mere handful of laggards, finding
+that there was no lawyer within miles and but one doctor; gaining a
+final impression that back here in the hills men would come no more
+where once men had thronged.
+
+It was almost evening when he followed a furrowed brown road that led
+westward. Above the bleak line of the horizon the sun hung, a red gold
+disk. There were other reds, too, along the way--the sumac flaming
+scarlet against the gray fence-rails; the sweetbrier, crimson-spotted
+with berries; the creeper, clinging with ruddy fingers to dead
+tree-trunks; the maple leaves rosy with first frosts.
+
+And into this vividness came the girl who had waited on the table, and
+her flaming cheeks and copper hair seemed to challenge the glow of the
+autumn landscape.
+
+She would have passed him with a nod, but he stopped her.
+
+"You must not run away, Mazie Wetherell," he said; "you used to treat me
+better than that when you were a little girl."
+
+She laughed. "Do you remember my freckles and red hair?"
+
+"I remember your lovely manners."
+
+"I had to have nice manners. It is only pretty children who can afford
+to be bad."
+
+"And pretty women?" he asked, with his eyes on the color that came and
+went.
+
+She flung out her hands in a gesture of protest "I have seen so few."
+
+His lips were opened to tell her of her own beauty, but something
+restrained him, some perception of maidenly dignity that enfolded her
+and made her more than the girl who had waited on the table.
+
+"You were a polite little boy," she recalled, filling the breach made by
+his silence. "I remember that you carried me across the street, to save
+my slippers from the wet. I thought you were wonderful. I have never
+forgotten."
+
+Neither had Van Alen forgotten. It had been a great feat for his little
+strength. There had been other boys there, bigger boys, but he had
+offered, and had been saved humiliation by her girlish slimness and
+feather weight.
+
+"I was a strong little fellow then," was his comment: "I am a strong
+little fellow now."
+
+She turned on him reproachful eyes. "Why do you always harp on it?" she
+demanded.
+
+"On what?"
+
+"Your size. You twist everything, turn everything, so that we come back
+to it."
+
+He tried to answer lightly, but his voice shook. "Perhaps it is because
+in your presence I desire more than ever the full stature of a man."
+
+He was in deadly earnest. Hitherto he had been willing to match his
+brain, his worldly knowledge, his ancestry, against the charms of the
+women he had met; but here with this girl, standing like a young goddess
+under the wide, sunset sky, he felt that only for strength and beauty
+should she choose her mate.
+
+He wondered what he must seem in her eyes; with his shoulder on a level
+with hers, with his stocky build that saved him from effeminacy, his
+carefulness of attire--which is at once the burden and the salvation of
+the small man.
+
+As for his face, he knew that its homeliness was redeemed by a certain
+strength of chin, by keen gray eyes, and by a shock of dark hair that
+showed a little white at the temples. There were worse-looking men, he
+knew, but that, at the present moment, gave little comfort.
+
+She chose to receive his remark in silence, and, as they came to a path
+that branched from the road, she said:
+
+"I am going to help take care of a child who is sick. You see I am
+mistress of all trades--nurse, waitress, charwoman, when there is
+nothing else."
+
+He glanced at her hands. "I cannot believe that you scrub," he said.
+
+"I sit up at night to care for my hands"--there was a note of bitterness
+in her tone--"and I wear gloves when I work. There are some things that
+one desires to hold on to, and my mother and my grandmother were ladies
+of leisure."
+
+"Would you like that--to be a lady of leisure?"
+
+She turned and smiled at him. "How can I tell?" she asked; "I have never
+tried it."
+
+She started to leave him as she said it, but he held her with a
+question: "Shall you sit up all night?"
+
+She nodded. "His mother has had no sleep for two nights."
+
+"Is he very ill?"
+
+The girl shrugged her shoulders. "Who knows? There is no doctor near,
+and his mother is poor. We are fighting it out together."
+
+There was something heroic in her cool acceptance of her hard life. He
+was silent for a moment, and then he said: "Would you have time to read
+my book to-night?"
+
+"Oh, if I might," she said eagerly, "but you haven't it with you."
+
+"I will bring it," he told her, "after supper."
+
+"But," she protested.
+
+"There are no 'buts,'" he said, smiling; "if you will read it, I will
+get it to you."
+
+The sky had darkened, and, as he went toward home, he faced clouds in
+the southeast.
+
+"It is going to rain," Otto Brand prophesied as they sat down to supper.
+
+The other three men hoped that it would not. Already the ground was
+soaked, making the cutting of corn impossible, and another rain with a
+frost on top of it would spoil all chance of filling the silo.
+
+Van Alen could not enter into their technical objections. He hoped it
+would not rain, because he wanted to take a book to Mazie Wetherell, and
+he had not brought a rain-coat.
+
+But it did rain, and he went without a rain-coat!
+
+The house, as he neared it, showed no light, and under the thick canopy
+of the trees there was no sound but the drip, drip of the rain. By
+feeling and instinct he found the front door, and knocked.
+
+There was a movement inside, and then Mazie Wetherell asked softly:
+"Who's there?"
+
+"I have brought the book."
+
+The bolt was withdrawn, and in the hall, scarcely lighted by the shaded
+lamp in the room beyond, stood the girl, in a loose gray gown, with
+braided shining hair--a shadowy being, half-merged into the shadows.
+
+"I thought you would not come," in a hushed tone, "in such a storm."
+
+"I said I should come. The book may help you through the long night."
+
+She caught her breath quickly. "The child is awfully ill."
+
+"Are you afraid? Let me stay."
+
+"Oh, no, no. His mother is sleeping, and I shall have your book."
+
+She did not ask him in, and so he went away at once, beating his way
+back in the wind and rain, fording a little stream where the low
+foot-bridge was covered, reaching home soaking wet, but afire with
+dreams.
+
+Otto Brand was waiting for him, a little curious as to what had taken
+him out so late, but, getting no satisfaction, he followed Van Alen
+up-stairs, and built a fire for him in the big bedroom. And presently,
+in the light of the leaping flames, the roses on the canopy of the bed
+glowed pink.
+
+"Ain't you goin' to sleep in the bed?" Otto asked, as he watched Van
+Alen arrange the covers on the couch.
+
+"No," said Van Alen shortly, "the honor is too great. It might keep me
+awake."
+
+"My feet would hang over," Otto said. "Funny thing, wasn't it, for a man
+to make a will like that?"
+
+"I suppose every man has a right to do as he pleases," Van Alen
+responded coldly. He was not inclined to discuss the eccentricities of
+his little old ancestor with this young giant.
+
+"Of course," Otto agreed, and his next remark was called forth by Van
+Alen's pale blue pajamas.
+
+"Well, those are new on me."
+
+Van Alen explained that in the city they were worn, and that silk was
+cool, but while he talked he was possessed by a kind of fury. For the
+first time the delicate garments, the luxurious toilet articles packed
+in his bag, seemed foppish, unnecessary, things for a woman. With all of
+them, he could not compete with this fair young god, who used a rough
+towel and a tin basin on the kitchen bench.
+
+"Maybe I'd better go," the boy offered. "You'll want to go to bed."
+
+But Van Alen held him. "I always smoke first," he said, and, wrapped in
+his dressing-gown, he flung himself into a chair on the opposite side of
+the fireplace.
+
+And after a time he brought the conversation around to Mazie Wetherell.
+
+He found the boy rather sure of his success with her.
+
+"All women are alike," he said; "you've just got to keep after them long
+enough."
+
+To Van Alen the idea of this hulking youngster as a suitor for such a
+woman seemed preposterous. He was not fit to touch the hem of her
+garment. He was unmannerly, uneducated; he was not of her class--and
+even as he analyzed, the boy stood up, perfect in his strong young
+manhood.
+
+"I've never had much trouble making women like me," he said; "and I
+ain't goin' to give up, just because she thinks she's better than the
+rest round about here."
+
+He went away, and Van Alen stared long into the fire, until the flames
+left a heart of opal among the ashes.
+
+He had not been unsuccessful with women himself. Many of them had liked
+him, and might have loved him if he had cared to make them. But until
+he met Mazie Wetherell he had not cared.
+
+Desperately he wished for some trial of courage where he might be
+matched against Otto Brand. He grew melodramatic in his imaginings, and
+saw himself at a fire, fighting the flames to reach Mazie, while Otto
+Brand shrank back. He stood in the path of runaway horses, and Otto
+showed the white feather. He nursed her through the plague, and Otto
+fled fearfully from the disease.
+
+And then having reached the end of impossibilities, he stood up and
+shook himself.
+
+"I'm a fool," he said to the flames, shortly, and went to bed, to lie
+awake, wondering whether Mazie Wetherell had reached that chapter of his
+book where he had written of love, deeply, reverently, with a
+foreknowledge of what it might mean to him some day. It was that chapter
+which had assured the success of his novel. Would it move her, as it had
+moved him when he reread it? That was what love ought to be--a thing
+fine, tender, touching the stars! That was what love might be to him, to
+Mazie Wetherell, what it could never be to Otto Brand.
+
+At breakfast the next morning he found Mrs. Brand worrying about her
+waitress.
+
+"I guess she couldn't get back, and I've got a big day's work."
+
+"I'll go and look her up," Van Alen offered; but he found that he was
+not to go alone, for Otto was waiting for him at the gate.
+
+"I ain't got nothin' else to do," the boy said; "everything is held up
+by the rain."
+
+It was when they came to the little stream that Van Alen had forded the
+night before that they saw Mazie Wetherell.
+
+"I can't get across," she called from the other side.
+
+The bridge, which had been covered when Van Alen passed, was now washed
+away, and the foaming brown waters overflowed the banks.
+
+"I'll carry you over," Otto called, and straightway he waded through the
+stream, and the water came above his high boots to his hips.
+
+He lifted her in his strong arms and brought her back, with her bright
+hair fluttering against his lips, and Van Alen, raging impotently, stood
+and watched him.
+
+It seemed to him that Otto's air was almost insultingly triumphant as he
+set the girl on her feet and smiled down at her. And as she smiled back,
+Van Alen turned on his heel and left them.
+
+Presently he heard her running after him lightly over the sodden ground.
+
+And when she reached his side she said: "Your book was wonderful."
+
+"But he carried you over the stream."
+
+Her eyes flashed a question, then blazed. "There, you've come back to
+it," she said. "What makes you?"
+
+"Because I wanted to carry you myself."
+
+"Silly," she said; "any man could carry me across the stream--but only
+you could write that chapter in the middle of the book."
+
+"You liked it?" he cried, radiantly.
+
+"Like it?" she asked. "I read it once, and then I read it again--on my
+knees."
+
+Her voice seemed to drop away breathless. Behind them Otto Brand
+tramped, whistling; but he might have been a tree, or the sky, or the
+distant hills, for all the thought they took of him.
+
+"I wanted to beg your pardon," the girl went on, "for what I said the
+other day--it is a great thing to write a book like that--greater than
+fighting a battle or saving a life, for it saves people's ideals;
+perhaps in that way it saves their souls."
+
+"Then I may sleep in the canopy bed?" His voice was calm, but inwardly
+he was much shaken by her emotion.
+
+Her eyes, as she turned to him, had in them the dawn of that for which
+he had hoped.
+
+"Why not?" she said, quickly. "You are greater than your
+grandfather--you are--" She stopped and laughed a little, and, in this
+moment of her surrender, her beauty shone like a star.
+
+"Oh, little great man," she said, tremulously, "your head touches the
+skies!"
+
+
+
+
+SANDWICH JANE
+
+I
+
+
+"No man," said O-liver Lee, "should earn more than fifteen dollars a
+week. After that he gets--soft."
+
+"Soft nothing!"
+
+O-liver sat on a box in front of the post-office. He was lean and young
+and without a hat. His bare head was one of the things that made him
+unique. The other men within doors and without wore hats--broad hats
+that shielded them from the California sun; or, as in the case of Atwood
+Jones, who came from the city, a Panama of an up-to-the-minute model.
+
+But O-liver's blond mane waved in every passing breeze. It was only when
+he rode forth on his mysterious journeys that he crowned himself with a
+Chinese straw helmet.
+
+Because he wore no hat his skin was tanned. He had blue eyes that
+twinkled and, as I have said, a blond mane.
+
+"Fifteen dollars a week," he reaffirmed, "is enough."
+
+Fifteen dollars was all that O-liver earned. He was secretary to an
+incipient oil king. As the oil king's monarchy was largely on paper he
+found it hard at times to compass even the fifteen dollars that went to
+his secretary.
+
+The other men scorned O-liver's point of view and told him so. They were
+a rather prosperous bunch, all except Tommy Drew, who dealt in a
+dilettante fashion in insurance, and who sat at O-liver's feet and
+worshiped him.
+
+It was Saturday and some of the men had drifted in from the surrounding
+ranches; others from the cities, from the mountains, from the valleys,
+from the desert, from the sea. Tinkersfield had assumed a sudden
+importance as an oil town. All of the men had business connected in some
+way with Tinkersfield. And all of them earned more than fifteen dollars
+a week.
+
+Therefore they disputed O-liver's statement. "If you had a wife--" said
+one.
+
+"Ah," said O-liver, "if I had--"
+
+"Ain't you got any ambition?" Henry Bittinger demanded. Henry was
+pumping out oil in prodigious quantities. He had bought a motor car and
+a fur coat. It was too hot most of the time for the coat, but the car
+stood now at rest across the road--long and lovely--much more of an
+aristocrat than the man who owned it.
+
+"Ambition for what?" O-liver demanded.
+
+Henry's eyes went to the pride of his heart.
+
+"Well, I should think you'd want a car."
+
+"I'd give," said O-liver, "my kingdom for a horse, but not for a car."
+
+O-liver's little mare stood quite happily in the shade; she was slim as
+to leg, shining as to coat, and with the eyes of a loving woman.
+
+"I should think you'd want to get ahead," said Atwood Jones, who sold
+shoes up and down the coast. He was a junior member of the firm, but
+still liked to go on the road. He liked to lounge like this in front of
+the post-office and smoke in the golden air with a lot of men sitting
+round. Atwood had been raised on a ranch. He had listened to the call of
+the city, but he was still a small-town man.
+
+"Ahead of what?" asked O-liver.
+
+Atwood was vague. He felt himself a rising citizen. Some day he expected
+to marry and set his wife up in a mansion in San Francisco, with
+seasons of rest and recreation at Del Monte and Coronado and the East.
+If the shoe business kept to the present rate of prosperity he would
+probably have millions to squander in his old age.
+
+He tried to say something of this to O-liver.
+
+"Well, will you be any happier?" asked the young man with the bare head.
+"I'll wager my horse against your car that when you're drunk with
+dollars you'll look back to a day like this and envy yourself. It's
+happiness I'm talking about."
+
+"Well, are you happy?" Atwood challenged.
+
+"Why not?" asked the young man lightly. "I have enough to eat, money for
+tobacco, a book or two--an audience." He waved his hand to include the
+listening group and smiled.
+
+It was O-liver's lightness which gave him the whip hand in an argument.
+They were most of them serious men; not serious in a Puritan sense of
+taking thought of their souls' salvation and the world's redemption, but
+serious in their pursuit of wealth. They had to be rich. If they weren't
+they couldn't marry, or if they were married they had to be rich so that
+their wives could keep up with the wives of the other fellows who were
+getting rich. They had to have cars and money to spend at big hotels and
+for travel, money for diamonds and furs, money for everything.
+
+But here was O-liver Lee, who said lightly that money weighed upon him.
+He didn't want it. He'd be darned if he wanted it. Money brought
+burdens. As for himself, he'd read and ride Mary Pick.
+
+"Anyhow," said Henry, with his hands folded across his stomach--Henry
+had grown fat riding in his car--"anyhow, when you get old you'll be
+sorry."
+
+"I shall never grow old," said O-liver, and stood up. "I shall be
+young--till I--die."
+
+They laughed at him outwardly, but in their hearts they did not laugh.
+They could not think of him as old. They felt that in a hundred years he
+would still be strong and sure, his blond mane untouched by gray, his
+clear blue eyes unblurred.
+
+Atwood rounding them all up for a drink found that O-liver wouldn't
+drink.
+
+"Drank too much, once upon a time," he confessed frankly. "But I'll give
+you a toast."
+
+He gave it, poised on his box like a young god on the edge of the world.
+
+"Here's to poverty! May we learn to love her for the favors she denies!"
+
+"Queer chap," said Atwood to Henry later.
+
+Henry nodded. "He's queer, but he's great company. Always has a crowd
+round him. But no ambition."
+
+"Pity," said Atwood. "How'd he get that name--O-liver?"
+
+"One of the fellows got gay and called him 'Ollie.' Lee stopped him. 'My
+name is Oliver Lee. If you want a nickname you can say "O-liver." But
+I'm not "Ollie" from this time on, understand?' And I'm darned if the
+fellow didn't back down. There was something about O-liver that would
+have made anybody back down. He didn't have a gun; it was just something
+in his voice."
+
+"Say, he's wasted," said Atwood. "A man with his line of talk might be
+President of the United States."
+
+"Sure he might," Henry agreed. "I've told him a lot of times he's
+throwing away his chance."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The office of the incipient oil king was on the main street of the
+straggling town. At the back there was a window which gave a view of a
+hill or two and a mountain beyond. The mountain stuck its nose into the
+clouds and was whitecapped.
+
+It was this view at the back which O-liver faced when he sat at his
+machine. When he rested he liked to fix his eyes on that white mountain.
+O-liver had acquired of late a fashion of looking up. There had been a
+time when he had kept his eyes on the ground. He did not care to
+remember that time. The work that he did was intermittent, and between
+his industrious spasms he read a book. He had a shelf at hand where he
+kept certain volumes--Walt Whitman, Vanity Fair, Austin Dobson, Landor's
+Imaginary Conversations, and a rather choice collection of Old Mission
+literature. He had had it in mind that he might some day write a play
+with Santa Barbara as a background, but he had stopped after the first
+act. He had ridden down one night and had reached the mission at dawn.
+The gold cross had flamed as the sun rose over the mountain. After that
+it had seemed somehow a desecration to put it in a painted scene.
+O-liver had rather queer ideas as to the sacredness of certain things.
+
+Tommy Drew, who had a desk in the same office, read Vanity Fair and
+wanted to talk about it. "Say, I don't like that girl, O-liver."
+
+"What girl?"
+
+"Becky."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, she's a grafter. And her husband was a poor nut."
+
+"I'm afraid he was," said O-liver.
+
+"He oughta of dragged her round by the hair of her head."
+
+"They don't do it, Tommy," O-liver was thoughtful. "After all a woman's
+a woman. It's easier to let her go."
+
+An astute observer might have found O-liver cynical about women. If he
+said nothing against them he certainly never said anything for them. And
+he kept strictly away from everything feminine in Tinkersfield, in spite
+of the fact that his good looks won him more than one glance from
+sparkling eyes.
+
+"He acts afraid of skirts," Henry had said to Tommy on one occasion.
+
+"He?" Tommy was scornful. "He ain't afraid of anything!"
+
+Henry knew it. "Maybe it's because you can't do much with women on
+fifteen a week."
+
+"Well, I guess that's so," said Tommy, who made twenty and who had a
+hopeless passion.
+
+His hopeless passion was Jane. Jane lived with her mother in a small
+rose-bowered bungalow at the edge of the town. She and her mother owned
+the bungalow, which was fortunate; they hadn't a penny for rent. Jane's
+father had died of a weak lung and the failure of his oil well. He had
+left the two women without an income. Jane's mother was delicate and
+Jane couldn't leave her to go out to work. So Jane dug in the little
+garden, and they lived largely on vegetables. She sewed for the
+neighbors, and bought medicine and now and then a bit of meat. She was
+young and strong and she had wonderful red hair. Tommy thought it was
+the most beautiful hair in the world. Jane was for him a sort of goddess
+woman. She was, he felt, infinitely above him. She knew a great deal
+that he didn't, about books and things--like O-liver. She sewed for his
+mother, and that was the way he had met her. He would go over and sit on
+her front steps and talk. He felt that she treated him like a little dog
+that she wouldn't harm, but wouldn't miss if it went away. He told her
+of Vanity Fair and of how he felt about Becky.
+
+"If she had been content to earn an honest living," Jane stated
+severely, "the story would have had a different ending."
+
+"Well, she wanted things," Tommy said.
+
+"Most women do." Jane jabbed her needle into a length of pink gingham
+which, when finished, would be rompers for a youngster across the
+street. "I do; and I intend to have them."
+
+"How?" asked the interested Tommy.
+
+"Work for them."
+
+"O-liver says that fifteen dollars a week is enough for anybody to
+earn."
+
+Jane had heard of O-liver. Tommy sang his constant praises.
+
+"Why fifteen?"
+
+"After that you get soft."
+
+Jane laid down the length of pink gingham and looked at him. She hated
+to sew on pink; it clashed dreadfully with her hair.
+
+"I should say," she stated with scorn, "that your O-liver's lazy."
+
+"No, he isn't. He only wants enough to eat and enough to smoke and
+enough to read."
+
+"That sounds all right, but it isn't. What's he going to do when he's
+old?"
+
+"He ain't ever going to grow old. He said so, and if you'd see him you'd
+know."
+
+Jane felt within her the stirring of curiosity. But she put it down
+sternly. She had no time for it.
+
+"Tommy," she said, "I've been thinking. I've got to earn more money, and
+I want your help."
+
+Tommy's faithful eyes held a look of doglike affection.
+
+"Oh, if I can--" he quavered.
+
+"I've got to get ahead." Jane was breathless. Her eyes shone.
+
+"I've got to get ahead, Tommy. I can't live all my life like this." She
+held up the pink strip. "Even if I am a woman, there ought to be
+something more than making rompers for the rest of my days."
+
+"You might," said the infatuated Tommy, "marry."
+
+"Marry? Marry whom?"
+
+Tommy wished that he might shout "Me!" from the housetops. But he knew
+the futility of it.
+
+"I shall never marry," she said, "until I find somebody different from
+anything I've ever seen."
+
+Jane's ideas of men were bounded largely by the weakness of her father
+and the crudeness of men like Henry Bittinger, Atwood Jones and others
+of their kind. She didn't consider Tommy at all. He was a nice boy and a
+faithful friend. His mother, too, was a faithful friend. She classed
+them together.
+
+Her plan, told with much coming and going of lovely color, was this: She
+had read that the way to make money was to find the thing that a
+community lacked and supply it. Considering it seriously she had decided
+that in Tinkersfield there was need of good food.
+
+"There's just one horrid little eating house," she told Tommy, "when the
+men come in from out of town."
+
+"Nothing fit to eat either," Tommy agreed; "and they make up on booze."
+
+She nodded. "Tommy," she said, and leaned toward him, "I had thought of
+sandwiches--home-made bread and slices of ham--wrapped in waxed paper;
+and of taking them down and selling them in front of the post-office on
+Saturday nights."
+
+Tommy's eyes bulged. "You take them down?"
+
+"Why not? Any work is honorable, Tommy."
+
+Tommy felt that it wouldn't be a goddess role.
+
+"I can't see it." The red crept up into his honest freckled face. "You
+know the kind of women that's round on Saturday nights."
+
+"I am not that kind of woman." She was suddenly austere.
+
+He found himself stammering. "I didn't mean--"
+
+"Of course you didn't. But it's a good plan, Tommy. Say you think it's a
+good plan."
+
+He would have said anything to please her. "Well, you might try."
+
+The next day he found himself talking it over with O-liver. "She wants
+to sell them on Saturday nights."
+
+"Tell her," said O-liver, "to stay at home."
+
+"But she's got to have some money."
+
+"Money," said O-liver, "is the root of evil. You say she has a garden.
+Let her live on leeks and lettuce."
+
+"Leeks and lettuce?" said poor Tommy, who had never heard of leeks.
+
+"Her complexion will be better," said O-liver, "and her peace of mind
+great."
+
+"Her complexion is perfect," Tommy told him, "and she isn't the peaceful
+kind. Her hair is red."
+
+"Red-haired women"--O-liver had his eye on Vanity Fair--"red-haired
+women always flaunt themselves."
+
+Tommy, softening O-liver's words a bit, gave them in the form of advice
+to Jane: "He thinks you'd better live on leeks and lettuce than go
+down-town like that."
+
+Jane gasped. "Leeks and lettuce? Me? He doesn't know what he's talking
+about! And anyhow, what can you expect of a man like that?"
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+A week later Jane in a white shirt-waist and white apron came down with
+her white-covered basket into the glare of the town's white lights. The
+night was warm and she wore no hat. Her red hair was swept back from her
+forehead with a droop over the ears. She had white skin and strong white
+teeth. Her eyes were as gray as the sea on stormy days. Tommy came after
+her with a wooden box, which he set on end, and she placed her basket on
+it. The principal stores of the small town, the one hotel and the
+post-office were connected by a covered walk which formed a sort of
+arcade, so that the men lounging against doorways or tip-tilted in
+chairs seemed in a sort of gallery from which they surveyed the
+Saturday-night crowd which paraded the street.
+
+Jane folded up the cloth which covered her basket and displayed her
+wares. "Don't stick round, Tommy," she said. "I shall do better alone."
+
+But as she raised her head and saw the eyes of the men upon her a rich
+color surged into her cheeks.
+
+She put out her little sign bravely:
+
+     HOME-MADE SANDWICHES--TWENTY CENTS
+
+With a sense of adventure upon them the men flocked down at once. They
+bought at first because the wares were offered by a pretty girl. They
+came back to buy because never had there been such sandwiches.
+
+Jane had improved upon her first idea. There were not only ham
+sandwiches; there were baked beans between brown bread, thin slices of
+broiled bacon in hot baking-powder biscuit. Henry Bittinger said to
+Atwood Jones afterward: "The food was so good that if she had been as
+ugly as sin she'd have got away with it."
+
+"She isn't ugly," said Atwood, and had a fleeting moment of speculation
+as to whether Jane with her red hair would fit into his plutocratic
+future.
+
+Jane had made fifty sandwiches. She sold them all, and took ten dollars
+home with her.
+
+"I shall make a hundred next time," she said to Tommy, whom she picked
+up on the way back. "And--it wasn't so dreadful, Tommy."
+
+But that night as she lay in bed looking out toward the mountain,
+silver-tipped in the moonlight, she had a shivering sense of the eyes of
+some of the men--of Tillotson, who kept the hotel, and of others of his
+kind.
+
+O-liver had stayed at home that Saturday night to write a certain weekly
+letter. He had stayed at home also because he didn't approve of Jane.
+
+"But you haven't seen her," Tommy protested.
+
+"I know the type."
+
+On Sunday morning Tommy brought him a baked-bean sandwich. "It isn't as
+fresh as it might be. But you can see what she's giving us."
+
+There were months of O-liver's life which had been spent with a
+grandmother in Boston. His grandmother had made brown bread and she had
+baked beans. And now as he ate his sandwich there was the savor of all
+the gastronomic memories of a healthy and happy childhood.
+
+"It's delicious," he said, "but she'd better not mix with that crowd."
+
+"She doesn't mix," said Tommy.
+
+"She'll have to." O-liver had in mind a red-haired woman, raw-boned,
+with come-hither eyes. Her kind was not uncommon. Tommy's infatuation
+would of course elevate her to a pedestal.
+
+"She's going to make a hundred sandwiches next week," Tommy vouchsafed.
+
+O-liver's mind could scarcely compass one hundred sandwiches. "She'd
+better stick to her leeks and lettuce."
+
+He rode away the next Saturday night. It was his protest against the
+interest roused in the community by this Jane who sold sandwiches. He
+heard of her everywhere. Some of the men were respectful and some were
+not. It depended largely on the nature of the particular male.
+
+O-liver rode Mary Pick and wore his straw helmet. His way led down into
+the valley and up again and down, until at last he came to the sea. Then
+he followed the water's edge, letting Mary Pick dance now and then on
+the hard beach, with the waves curling up like cream, and beyond the
+waves a stretch of pale azure to the horizon.
+
+He reached finally a fantastic settlement. Against the sky towered walls
+which might have inclosed an ancient city--walls built of cloth and wood
+instead of stone. Beyond these walls were thatched cottages which had no
+occupants; a quaint church which had no congregation; a Greek temple
+which had no vestals, no sacred fire, no altar; hedges which had no
+roots. O-liver weighing the hollowness of it all had thought whimsically
+of an old nursery rime:
+
+    The first sent a goose without a bone;
+    The second sent a cherry without a stone;
+    The third sent a blanket without a thread;
+    The fourth sent a book that no man could read.
+
+At the end of the settlement was a vast studio lighted by a glass roof.
+Entering, O-liver was transported at once to the dance hall on the
+Barbary Coast--a great room with a bar at one end, the musicians on a
+platform at the other, a stairway leading upward. Groups of people
+waited for a signal to dance, to drink, to act whatever part had been
+assigned them--people with unearthly pink complexions. The heat was
+intense.
+
+With her face upturned to the director, who was mounted on a chair,
+stood a childish creature who was pinker, if possible, than the rest.
+She had fluffy hair of pale gold. She ran up the stairway presently, and
+the light was turned on her. It made of her fluffy hair a halo. In the
+strong glare everything about her was overemphasized, but O-liver knew
+that when she showed up on the screen she would be entrancing.
+
+He had first seen her on the screen. He had met her afterward at her
+hotel. She had seemed as ingenuous as the parts she played. Perhaps she
+was. He could never be quite sure. Perhaps the money she had made
+afterward had spoiled her. She had jumped from fifty dollars a week to a
+thousand.
+
+After that O-liver could give her nothing. He had an allowance from his
+mother of three thousand a year. Fluffy Hair made as much as that in
+three weeks. Where he had been king of his own domain he became a sort
+of gentleman footman, carrying her sables and her satchels. But that was
+not the worst of it. He found that they had not a taste in common. She
+laughed at his books, at his love of sea and sky. She even laughed at
+his Mary Pick, whose name suggested a hated rival.
+
+And so he left her--laughing.
+
+A certain sense of responsibility, however, took him to her once a
+month, and a letter went to her every week. She was his wife. He
+continued in a sense to watch over her. Yet she resented his watching.
+
+From her stairway she had seen him, and when a rest was granted she came
+down to him.
+
+"I'll be through presently," she said. "We can go to my hotel."
+
+Her rooms in the hotel overlooked the sea. There was a balcony, and they
+sat on it in long lazy chairs and had iced things to drink.
+
+O-liver drank lemonade. His wife had something stronger.
+
+"I have not been well," she said; "it's a part of the doctor's
+prescription."
+
+She had removed the pink from her face, and he saw that she was pale.
+
+"You are working too hard," he told her. "You'd better take a month in
+the desert, out of doors."
+
+She shivered. She hated the out-of-doors that he raved about. They had
+spent their honeymoon in a tent. She had been wild to get back to
+civilization. It had been their first moment of disillusion.
+
+She showed him before he went some of the things she had acquired since
+his last visit--an ermine coat, a string of pearls.
+
+"I saw them in your last picture," he told her. "You really visit me by
+proxy. I find your name on the boards, and walk in with a lot of other
+men and look at you. And not one of them dreams that I've ever seen the
+woman on the screen."
+
+"Well, they wouldn't of course." She had never taken his name. Her own
+was too valuable.
+
+When he told her good-bye he asked a question: "Are you happy?"
+
+For a moment her face clouded. "I'm not quite sure. Is anybody? But I
+like the way I am living, Ollie."
+
+He had a sense of relief. "So do I," he said. "I earn fifteen dollars a
+week. The papers say that you earn fifteen hundred--and you're not quite
+twenty."
+
+"There isn't a man in this hotel that makes so much," she told him
+complacently. "The women try to snub me, but they can't. Money talks."
+
+It seemed to him that in her case it shouted. As he rode back on Mary
+Pick he thought seriously of his fifteen dollars a week and her fifteen
+hundred; and of how little either weighed in the balance of happiness.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+It was not until the following Saturday that he saw Jane. She had made
+two hundred sandwiches. She had got Tommy's mother to help her. She had
+invented new combinations, always holding to the idea of satisfying the
+substantial appetites of men.
+
+There would be no use, she argued, in offering five-o'clock-tea
+combinations.
+
+She was very busy and very happy and very hopeful.
+
+"If this keeps up," she told her mother, "I shall rent a little shop and
+sell them over the counter."
+
+Her mother had an invalid's pessimism. "They may tire of them."
+
+They were not yet tired. They gave Jane and her basket vociferous
+greeting, crowding round her and buying eagerly. Atwood and Henry having
+placed orders hung back, content to wait for a later moment when she
+might have leisure to talk to them.
+
+Tommy helped Jane to hand out sandwiches and make change. He felt like
+the faithful squire of a great lady. He had read much romantic
+literature, and he served as well if not as picturesquely as a page in
+doublet and hose.
+
+So O-liver saw them. He had been riding all the afternoon on Mary Pick.
+He had gone up into the Canon of the Honey Pots. No one knew it by that
+name but O-liver, but at all the houses one could buy honey. Up and down
+the road were little stands on which were set forth glasses and jars of
+amber sweet. The bees flashed like motes in the sunlight, the air was
+heavy with the fragrance of the flowers which yielded their largess to
+the marauders.
+
+It was dark when he rode down toward the town. It lay before him, all
+twinkling lights. Above it hung a thin moon and countless stars. It
+might have been a fairy town under the kindly cover of the night.
+
+But when he reached the central square the illusion ceased. It was what
+men had made it--sordid, cheap. He stopped Mary Pick under a pepper tree
+and surveyed the scene.
+
+Jane and her basket were the center of an excited group. She had almost
+reached the end of her supplies, and some one had suggested auctioning
+off the remainder. Jane had protested, but her protests had not availed.
+She had turned to Tommy for help, to Henry, to Atwood. They had done
+their best. But the man who led the crowd had an object in his
+leadership. It was Tillotson of the little hotel--red-faced,
+whisky-soaked.
+
+"Sandwich Jane, Sandwich Jane!" he shouted. "That's the name for her,
+boys."
+
+And they took it up and shouted "Sandwich Jane!"
+
+It was at this moment that O-liver stopped under the pepper tree. The
+bright light fell directly on Jane's distressed face. He saw the
+swept-back brightness of her hair, her clear-cut profile, her white
+skin, her white teeth. But he saw more than this. "By Jove," he said,
+"she's a lady!"
+
+If he had been talking to the men he would have said "Gosh!" It was only
+when he was alone that he permitted himself the indulgence of more
+formal language.
+
+That Jane was harried he could see. And suddenly he rode forward on Mary
+Pick.
+
+The crowd made way for him expectantly. There were always interesting
+developments when O-liver was on the scene.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "let the lady speak for herself. I am not sure
+what you are trying to do, but it is evidently something she doesn't
+want done."
+
+Jane flashed a grateful glance up at him. He was the unknown knight
+throwing down the gauntlet in her defense. He was different from the
+others--his voice was different.
+
+"They want to auction off my sandwiches," she explained, "and they won't
+listen."
+
+"I'm sure they will listen." O-liver on Mary Pick, with his hat off and
+his mane tossed back, might have been Henry of the white plumes. "Of
+course they'll listen."
+
+And they did!
+
+Jane stood on her box and addressed them.
+
+"I don't want to get any more for my sandwiches than they are worth,"
+she said earnestly. "I make good ones, and I sell them for twenty cents
+because they are the best of their kind. I am glad you like them. I want
+to earn my living and my mother's. She is sick, and I have to stay at
+home with her. And I don't mind being called 'Sandwich Jane.' It's a
+good name and I shall use it in my business. But I don't like being
+treated as you have treated me to-night. If it happens again I shall
+have to stop selling sandwiches; and I'd be sorry to have that happen,
+and I hope you'd be sorry too."
+
+Her little speech was over. She stepped down composedly from the box,
+folded her cloth and picked up her basket. She said "Thank you" to
+O-liver, "Come on" to Tommy, and walked from among them with her light
+step and free carriage; and they stared after her.
+
+O-liver sitting later in front of the post-office with his satellites
+round him found himself compelled to listen to praise of Jane.
+
+"She's made a hit," Atwood said earnestly. "When a woman talks like that
+it's the straight goods."
+
+Henry agreed. "She's got grit. It's her kind that get ahead. But it's a
+pity that she's got to work to make a living."
+
+Atwood, too, thought it was a pity. And presently he and Henry fell into
+silence as they fitted Jane into various dreams. Atwood's dream had to
+do with a mansion high on Frisco's hills. But Henry saw her beside him
+in his long and lovely car. He saw her, too, in a fur coat.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+"I feel," said Jane, "like a murderer." Tommy and O-liver had stopped at
+her front gate to leave her some books.
+
+"Why?" It was O-liver who asked it.
+
+"Come and see." She led them round the house. Death and destruction
+reigned.
+
+"I poured gasoline into the ants' nests and set them on fire--and now
+look at them!"
+
+There were a few survivors toiling among the ruins.
+
+"They are taking out the dead bodies," Jane explained. "It's so human
+that it's tragic. I'll never do it again."
+
+"You can't let them eat you up."
+
+"I know. It's one of the puzzles." She sat looking down at them. "How
+busy they are!"
+
+"Too busy," O-liver stated. "They are worse than bees. There are at
+least some drones in the hive."
+
+"Poor drones," said Jane.
+
+"Why?" quickly.
+
+"To miss the best."
+
+"Is work the best?"
+
+She said "Yes," adding after a little: "I don't just mean making
+sandwiches. That's just a beginning. There's everything ahead."
+
+She said it as if the world were hers. O-liver, in spite of himself, was
+thrilled. "How do you know that everything is ahead?"
+
+"I shall make it come"--securely.
+
+They sat in silence for a while; then O-liver said: "I have brought you
+a book."
+
+It was an old copy of Punch.
+
+"I shall like it," she said. "Sometimes the evenings are dull when my
+work is over."
+
+"Dullness comes for me when work begins."
+
+Her straight gaze met his. "You say that with your lips; you don't mean
+it."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I'm not sure how I know. But you haven't found the thing yet that you
+like--the incentive."
+
+"Tommy wants me to go into politics. He and Henry Bittinger. Henry says
+I ought to be President." O-liver chuckled.
+
+But she took it seriously. "Why not? You've the brains and the
+magnetism. Can't you see how the crowd draws to you on Saturday nights?"
+
+"Like bees round a honey pot? Yes." His face grew suddenly stern. "But
+so will mosquitoes buzz round a stagnant pool."
+
+"You're not a stagnant pool and you know it."
+
+"What am I?"
+
+She made a sudden gesture as if she gave him up. "Sometimes I think you
+are like the sea--on a lazy day--with a storm brewing."
+
+He wondered as he went home--what storm?
+
+He had seen a good deal of Jane since that Saturday night when he had
+championed her cause. It had been fall then, with the hills brown and
+the berries red on the pepper trees. It was spring now, with all the
+world green and growing.
+
+She had spoken of him to Tommy, and Tommy had been a faithful
+go-between. He had played upon their mutual love of books. At first
+O-liver had sent her books, then he had taken them. He had met her
+mother, had seen her in her home doing feminine things, sewing on
+lengths of pink and blue--filling the vases with the flowers that he
+brought.
+
+And as they had met and talked his veins had been filled with new wine.
+He had never known intimately such a woman. His mother transplanted from
+the East by her marriage to a Western man had turned her eyes always
+backward. Her son had been born in the East, he had spent his holidays
+and vacations with his Eastern relatives. He had gone to an Eastern
+school to prepare for an Eastern college. Except for this one obsession
+with regard to her son's education his mother was self-centered. She was
+an idolized wife, a discontented woman--- she had shown O-liver no
+heights to which to aspire.
+
+And so he had not aspired. He had spent his days in what might be
+termed, biblically, riotous living. His mother had hoped for an
+aristocratic and Eastern marriage. When he married Fluffy Hair she had
+allowed him three thousand a year and had asked him not to bring his
+wife to see her. His father had refused to give him a penny. O-liver's
+wild oats and wilfulness cut him off, he ruled, from parental
+consideration. "You are not my son," he had said sternly. "If the time
+ever comes when you can say you are sorry, I'll see you."
+
+O-liver having married Fluffy Hair had found her also
+self-centered--not a lady like his mother, but fundamentally of the same
+type. Neither of them had made him feel that he might be more than he
+was. They had always shrunk him to their own somewhat small patterns.
+
+Jane's philosophy came to him therefore like a long-withheld stimulant.
+"You might be President of the United States."
+
+When Henry or Atwood or Tommy had said it to him he had laughed. When
+Jane said it he did not laugh.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+And so it came about that one day he rose and went to his father. And he
+said: "Dad, will you kill the fatted calf?"
+
+His father lived in a great Tudor house which gave the effect of age but
+was not old. It had a minstrels' gallery, a big hall and a little hall,
+mullioned windows and all the rest of it. It had been built because of a
+whim of his wife's. But O-liver's father in the ten years he had lived
+in it had learned to love it. But more than he loved the house he loved
+the hills that sloped away from it, the mountains that towered above it,
+the sea that lay at the foot of the cliff.
+
+"It is God's country," he would say with long-drawn breath. He had been
+born and bred in this golden West. All the passion he might have given
+to his alien wife and alien son was lavished on this land which was
+bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.
+
+And now his son had ridden up to him over those low hills at the foot of
+the mountain and had said: "Father, I have sinned."
+
+O-liver had not put it scripturally. He had said: "I'm sorry, dad. You
+said I needn't come back until I admitted the husks and swine."
+
+There was a light on the fine face of the older man. "Oliver, I never
+hoped to hear you say it." His hand dropped lightly on the boy's
+shoulders. "My son which was dead is alive again?"
+
+"Yes, dad."
+
+"What brought you to life?"
+
+"A woman."
+
+The hand dropped. "Not--"
+
+"Not my wife. Put your hand back, dad. Another woman."
+
+He sat down beside his father on the terrace. The sea far below them was
+sapphire, the cliffs pink with moss--gorgeous color. Orange umbrellas
+dotted the distant beach.
+
+"Your mother is down there," Jason Lee said. "Sun baths and all that.
+You said there was another woman, Oliver."
+
+"Yes." Quite simply and honestly he told him about Sandwich Jane. "She's
+made me see things."
+
+"What things?"
+
+"Well, she thinks I've got it in me to get anywhere. She insists that if
+I'd put my heart into it I might be--President."
+
+One saw their likeness to each other in their twinkling eyes!
+
+"She says that men follow me; and they do. I've found that out since I
+went to Tinkersfield. She wants me to go into politics--there's a gang
+down there that rules the town--rotten crowd. It would be some fight if
+I did."
+
+His father was interested at once. "It was what I wanted--when I was
+young--politics--clean politics, with a chance at statesmanship. Yes, I
+wanted it. But your mother wanted--money."
+
+"Money hasn't any meaning to me now, dad. If I slaved until I dropped I
+couldn't make fifteen hundred a week."
+
+"Does--your wife make that now?"
+
+"Yes. She's making it and spending it, I fancy."
+
+Silence. Then: "What of this--other woman. What are you going to do
+about her?"
+
+O-liver leaned forward, speaking earnestly. "I love her. But I'm not
+free. It's all a muddle."
+
+"Does she know you're married?"
+
+"No. I've got to tell her. But I'll lose her if I do. Her comradeship, I
+mean. And I don't want to give it up."
+
+"There is of course a solution."
+
+"What solution?"
+
+"Divorce."
+
+"It wouldn't be a solution for Jane. She's not that kind. Marriage with
+her means till death parts. I'll have to lose her. But it hurts."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+It was when Jane rented an empty room fronting on the arcade and set up
+a sandwich shop that Tillotson saw how serious the thing was going to
+be.
+
+He had had all the restaurant and hotel trade. Men coming up in motors
+or on horseback, dusty and tired, had eaten and drunk at his squalid
+tables, swearing at the food but unable to get anything better. And now
+here was a woman who covered her counters with snowy oilcloth--who had
+shining urns of coffees, delectable pots of baked beans, who put up in
+neat boxes lunches that made men rush back for more and more and
+more--and whose sandwiches were the talk of the coast!
+
+It had to be stopped.
+
+The only way to stop it was to make it uncomfortable for Jane. There
+were many ways in which the thing could be done--by small and subtle
+persecutions, by insinuations, by words bandied from one man's evil
+mouth to another. Tillotson had done the thing before. But he found as
+the days went on that he had not before had a Jane to deal with. She was
+linked in the minds of most of the men with a whiteness like that of her
+own spotless shop.
+
+Gradually Jane became aware of a sinister undercurrent. She found
+herself dealing with forces that threatened her. There were men who came
+into her shop to buy, and who stayed to say things that set her cheeks
+flaming. She mentioned none of these things to Henry or Atwood or Tommy.
+But she spoke once to O-liver.
+
+"Tillotson must be at the bottom of it. Two drunken loafers stumbled in
+the other day, straight from the hotel. And when I telephoned to
+Tillotson to come and get them he laughed at me."
+
+Tillotson was the sheriff. It was an office which he did not honor. In a
+month or two his term would be up. O-liver riding alone into the
+mountains stated the solution: "I've got to beat Tillotson."
+
+But first he had things to say to Jane. Since his talk with his father
+he had known that it must come. He had stayed away from her as much as
+possible. It had not been a conspicuous withdrawal, for she was very
+busy and had little time for him. Tommy's mother kept her little home in
+order and looked after the invalid, so that Jane could give undivided
+attention to her growing business. O-liver saw her most often at the
+shop, when he stopped in for a pot of beans--eating them on the spot and
+discoursing on many things.
+
+"My Boston grandmother baked beans like this," he told her on one
+occasion. "She was a great little woman, Jane, as essentially of the
+East as you are of the West. She held to the traditions of the past; you
+are blazing new ways for women, selling sandwiches in the market-place.
+By Jove, it was superb the way you did it, Jane!"
+
+She was always in a glow when he left her. Here was a man different from
+her father, different from Henry Bittinger and Atwood Jones. She smiled
+a little as she thought of Atwood. He had asked her to marry him. He had
+told her of the things he had ahead of him that he wanted her to share.
+And he had been much downcast when she had refused him. She had, he
+felt, smudged the brightness of his splendid future. He couldn't
+understand a woman throwing away a thing like that.
+
+But he bore her no grudge and was still her friend. Henry, too, was her
+friend. He had not yet tried his fate with Jane, but he still dreamed of
+her as lovely in his long car and a fur coat. And he hoped to make his
+dreams come true.
+
+Tommy had set aside all selfish hopes. He had a feeling that Jane liked
+O-liver. He loved them both. If he could not have Jane he wanted O-liver
+to have her. He kept a wary eye therefore on Henry and Atwood.
+
+It was Tommy who found out first about Fluffy Hair. She had never cared
+to have the world know of her marriage. She had felt that those who
+loved her on the screen would prefer her fancy free. But it was known at
+the studio, and some one drifting up to Tinkersfield recognized O-liver
+and told Tommy.
+
+Tommy for once in his life was stern. "He oughta of told Jane.
+Somebody's got to tell her."
+
+So the next day he took it on himself--feeling a traitor to his friend.
+
+"Jane," he said, sitting on a high stool in her little sandwich
+shop--"Jane, O-liver's married."
+
+Jane on the other side of the spotless counter gave him her earnest
+glance. "Yes," she said; "he told me."
+
+"He did? Well, I'm glad. It wasn't a thing to keep, was it?"
+
+"No," said Jane; "it wasn't. But you mustn't blame him, Tommy, and now
+that we both know, everything is all right, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," Tommy agreed; "if Tillotson doesn't get hold of it."
+
+For it had been decided that O-liver was to run against Tillotson in the
+next election, and beat him if he could.
+
+O-liver had told Jane about his marriage on the night before Tommy came
+to her. He had asked her to ride with him. "If you'll go this afternoon
+at four you shall have Mary Pick, and I'll take Tommy's horse."
+
+They had carried their lunch with them and had eaten it at sunset in a
+lovely spot where the canon opened out to show a shining yellow stretch
+of sea, with the hills like black serpents running into it.
+
+Yet it was dark, with the stars above them and the sea a faint gray
+below, before O-liver said to her what he had brought her there to say.
+
+He told her of his father and mother. Of Fluffy Hair.
+
+"I waked up at last to the fact that I was letting two women support me.
+So I came here and began to work at fifteen dollars a week. And for the
+first time in my life I respected myself--and was content. And then I
+met you and saw things ahead. You made me see them."
+
+He turned toward her in the dark. "Jane, I'm finding that I love
+you--mightily." He tried to speak lightly. "And I'm not free. And
+because I love you I've got to keep away. But I want you to understand
+that my friendship is the same--that it will always be the same. But
+I've got to keep away."
+
+She was very honest about it. "I didn't dream that you felt like
+that--about me."
+
+"No, you wouldn't. That's a part of your splendidness. Never taking
+anything to yourself. Jane, will you believe this--that what I may be
+hereafter will be because of you? If I ever do a big thing or a fine
+thing it will be because I came upon you that night with your head high
+and that rabble round you. You were light shining into the darkness of
+Tinkersfield. Jove, I wish I were a painter to put you on canvas as you
+were that night!"
+
+They had ridden down later under the stars, and as they had stood for a
+moment overlooking the lights of the little town O-liver had said: "I
+make my big speech to-morrow night to beat Tillotson. I want you to be
+there. Will you? If I know you are there somewhere in the dark I shall
+pour out my soul--to you."
+
+Was it any wonder that Jane, talking to Tommy the next morning about
+O-liver, felt her pulses pounding, her cheeks burning? She had lain
+awake all night thinking of the things he had said to her. It seemed a
+very big and wonderful thing that a man could love her like that. As
+toward morning the moonlight streamed in and she still lay awake she
+permitted herself to let her mind dwell for a moment on what her future
+might mean if he were in it. She was too busy and healthy to indulge in
+useless regrets. But she knew in that moment in the moonlight if he was
+not to be in her future no other man would ever be.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+O-liver's speech was made in the open. There was a baseball park in
+Tinkersfield, bounded at the west end by a grove of eucalyptus. With
+this grove as a background a platform had been erected. From the
+platform the rival candidates would speak. At this time of the year it
+would be daylight when the meeting opened. Tillotson was not to speak
+for himself. He had brought a man down from San Francisco, a big
+politician with an oily tongue. O-liver would of course present his own
+case. The thing, as Atwood told Henry, promised to be exciting.
+
+Jane came with Tommy. There was a sort of rude grand stand opposite the
+platform, and she had a seat well up toward the top. She wore a white
+skirt, a gray sweater and a white hat. She had a friendly smile for the
+people about her. And they smiled back. They liked Jane.
+
+O-liver spoke first. Bare-headed, slender, with his air of eternal
+youth, he was silhouetted against the rose red of the afterglow.
+
+When he began he led them lightly along paths of easy thought. He got
+their attention as he had so often got it in front of the post-office.
+He made them smile, he made them laugh, he led them indeed finally into
+roaring laughter. And when he had brought them thus into sympathy he
+began with earnestness to speak of Tinkersfield.
+
+Jane, leaning forward, not missing a word, felt his magnetism. He spoke
+of the future of Tinkersfield. Of what must be done if it was to fulfill
+its destiny as a decent town. He did not mince his words.
+
+"It will be just what you make up your minds now to have it--good and
+honest and clean, a place that the right kind of people will want to
+live in, or the place that will attract loungers and loafers."
+
+He laid upon them the burden of individual responsibility. If a town was
+honest, he said, it was because the men in it were honest; if it was
+clean it was because its men were clean. It was for each man to decide
+at this election whether Tinkersfield should have a future of darkness
+or of light. There were men in that crowd who squared their shoulders to
+meet the blows of his eloquence, who kept them squared as they made
+their decision to do their part in the upbuilding of Tinkersfield.
+
+Yet it was not perhaps so much the things that O-liver said as the way
+he said them. He had the qualities of leadership--a sincerity of the
+kind that sways men level with their leaders--the sincerity of a
+Lincoln, a Roosevelt. For him a democracy meant all the people. Not
+merely plain people, not indeed selected classes. Rich man, poor man,
+one, working together for the common good.
+
+Back of his sincerity there was fire--and gradually his audience was
+lighted by his flame. They listened in a tense silence, which broke now
+and then into cheers. To Jane sitting high up on the benches he was a
+prophet--the John the Baptist of Tinkersfield.
+
+"And he's mine, he's mine!" she exulted. This fineness of spirit, the
+fire and flame were hers. "If I know you are there somewhere in the dark
+I shall pour out my soul--to you--"
+
+The darkness had not yet fallen, but the dusk had come. The platform was
+illumined by little lights like stars. Back of the platform the
+eucalyptus trees were now pale spectres, their leaves hanging nerveless
+in the still air.
+
+O-liver sitting down amid thunders of applause let his eyes go for the
+moment to Jane. A lamp hung almost directly over her head. She had taken
+off her wide hat and her hair was glorious. She was leaning forward a
+little, her lips parted, her hands clasped, as if he still spoke to her.
+
+As Tillotson's sponsor rose Jane straightened up, smiled at Tommy, and
+again set herself to listen.
+
+The unctuous voice of the speaker was a contrast to O-liver's crisp
+tones. There were other contrasts not so apparent. This man was in the
+game for what he could get out of it. He wanted Tillotson to win because
+Tillotson's winning would strengthen his own position politically. He
+meant indeed that Tillotson should win. He was not particular as to
+methods.
+
+He said the usual things: Tinkersfield was no Sunday school; and they
+weren't slaves to have their liberty taken from them by a lot of
+impractical reformers. And Lee was that kind. What had he ever done to
+prove that he'd make good? They knew Tillotson. They didn't know Lee.
+Who was Lee anyhow?
+
+He flung the interrogation at them. "What do you know about Lee?"
+
+The pebble that he threw had widening circles. People began to ask
+themselves what, after all, they knew of O-liver. From somewhere in the
+darkness went up the words of an evil chant:
+
+    What's the matter with O-liver, O-liver,
+    White-livered O-liver?
+    Ask Jane, Sandwich Jane,
+    O-liver, white liver,
+    Jane, Jane, Jane.
+
+Jane felt her heart stand still. Back of her she heard Tommy swearing:
+"It's all their damned wickedness!" She saw O-liver start from his chair
+and sink back, helpless against the insidiousness of this attack.
+
+The speaker went on. It would seem, he said, from what he could learn,
+that Tillotson's honorable opponent was sailing under false colors. He
+was a married man. He had deserted his wife. He sat among them as a
+saint, when he was really a sinner.
+
+"A sinner, gentlemen." The speaker paused for the effect, then proceeded
+with his argument. Of course they were all sinners, but they weren't
+hypocrites. Tillotson wasn't a hypocrite. He was a good fellow. He
+didn't want Tinkersfield to be a Sunday school. He wanted it to be a
+town. You know--a town that every fellow would want to hit on
+Saturday night.
+
+There were those in the crowd who began to feel that a weak spot had
+been found in O-liver's armor. Secrecy! They didn't like it. There were
+signs of wavering among some who had squared their shoulders. After all,
+they didn't want to make a Sunday school of Tinkersfield. They wondered,
+too, if there wasn't some truth in the things that were being hinted by
+that low chant in the darkness:
+
+    Ask Jane, Sandwich Jane,
+    O-liver, white liver,
+    Jane, Jane, Jane.
+
+
+O-liver was restless, his hands clenched at his sides. Atwood and Henry
+were restless. Tommy was restless. They couldn't let such insults go
+unnoticed. Somebody had to fight for Jane!
+
+Tillotson's supporters kept the thing stirring. If the meeting could end
+in a brawl the odds would be in favor of Tillotson. The effect of
+O-liver's uplift would be lost. Even his friends couldn't sway a
+fighting crowd back to him.
+
+But they had forgotten to reckon with Jane!
+
+She had seen in a sudden crystal flash the thing which might happen. A
+fight would end it all for O-liver. She had seen his efforts at
+self-control. She knew his agony of soul. She knew that at any moment he
+might knock somebody down--Tillotson or Tillotson's sponsor. And it
+would all be in the morning papers. There would be innuendo--the hint of
+scandalous things. And O-liver's reputation would pay the price. It was
+characteristic that she did not at the moment think of her own
+reputation. It was O-liver who must be saved!
+
+And so when Tillotson's backer sat down Jane stood up.
+
+"Please, listen!" she said; and the crowd turned toward her. "Please,
+listen, and stop singing that silly song. I never heard anything so
+silly as that song in my life!"
+
+Before her scorn the chant died away in a gasp!
+
+"The thing you've got to think about," she went on, "isn't Tillotson or
+O-liver Lee. It's Tinkersfield. You want an honest man. And O-liver
+Lee's honest. He doesn't want your money. He's got enough of his own.
+His father's the richest man in his part of the state and his wife's a
+movie actress and makes as much as the President. It sounds like a fairy
+tale, but it isn't. If O-liver Lee wanted to live on his father or his
+wife he could hold out his hand and let things drop into it. But he'd
+rather earn fifteen dollars a week and own his soul. And he isn't a
+hypocrite. His friends knew about his marriage. Tommy Drew knew, and I
+knew. And there wasn't any particular reason why he should tell the rest
+of you, was there? There wasn't any particular reason why he should tell
+Tillotson?"
+
+A murmur of laughter followed her questions. There was a feeling in the
+crowd that the joke was on Tillotson.
+
+"I wonder how many of you have told your pasts to Tinkersfield! How many
+of you have made Tillotson your father confessor?
+
+"As for me"--her head was high--"I sell sandwiches. I am very busy. I
+hardly have time to think. But when I do think it is of something
+besides village gossip."
+
+She grew suddenly earnest; leaned down to them. "You haven't time to
+think of it either," she told them; "have you, men of Tinkersfield?"
+
+Her appeal was direct, and the answer came back to her in a roar from
+the men who knew courage when they saw it; who knew, indeed, innocence!
+
+"No!"
+
+And it was that "No" which beat Tillotson.
+
+"The way she put it over," Atwood exulted afterward, "to a packed crowd
+like this!"
+
+"The thing about Jane"--Henry was very seriously trying to say the thing
+as he saw it--"the thing about Jane is that she sees things straight.
+And she makes other people see."
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Well, Tillotson was beaten, and the men who supported O-liver came out
+of the fight feeling as if they had killed something unclean.
+
+And the morning after the election O-liver had a little note from Jane.
+
+"I've got to go away. I didn't want to worry you with it before this. I
+have saved enough money to start in at some college where I can work for
+a part of my tuition. I have had experience in my little lunch room that
+ought to be a help somewhere.
+
+"When I finish college I'm going into some sort of occupation that will
+provide a pleasant home for mother and me. I want books, and lovely
+things, and a garden; and I'd like to speak a language or two and have
+cultured friends. Then some day when you are made President you can say
+to yourself: 'I am proud of my friend, Jane.' And I'll come to your
+inauguration and watch you ride to the White House, and I'll say to
+myself as I see you ride, 'I've loved him all these years.'
+
+"But I shan't let myself say it now. And that's why I'm going away. And
+I'm going without saying good-bye because I think it will be easier for
+both of us. You and I can't be friends. What we feel is too big. I found
+that out about myself that night when you sat there on the platform, and
+I wanted to save you from Tillotson. If I'm going to work and be happy
+in my work I've got to get away. And you will work better because I am
+gone. I mustn't be here--O-liver."
+
+Jane had indeed seen straight. O-liver laid the note down on his desk
+and looked up at the mountain. He needed to look up. If he had looked
+down for a moment he would have followed Jane.
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+And now there was no sandwich stand in Tinkersfield. But there was a
+good hotel. O-liver saw to that. He got Henry Bittinger to put up the
+money, with Tommy and his mother in charge. O-liver lived in the hotel
+in a suite of small rooms, and when Atwood Jones passed that way the
+four men dined together as O-liver's guests.
+
+"Some day we'll eat with you in Washington," was Atwood's continued
+prophecy.
+
+They always drank "To Jane." Now and then Atwood brought news of her.
+First from the college, and then as the years passed from the beach
+resort where she had opened a tea room. She was more beautiful than
+ever, more wonderful. Her tea room and shop were most exclusive and
+artistic.
+
+"Sandwich Jane!" said O-liver. "How long ago it seems!"
+
+It was five years now and he had not seen her. And next month he was to
+go to Washington. Not as President, but representing his district in
+Congress. Tommy's hotel had outgrown the original modest building and
+was now modern and fireproof. Henry was married, he had had several new
+cars, and his wife wore sables and seal.
+
+The old arcade was no more; nor the old post-office. But O-liver still
+talked to admiring circles in the hotel lobby or to greater crowds in
+the town hall.
+
+He still would take no money from his father, but he saw much of him,
+for Mrs. Lee was dead. The Tudor house was without a mistress. It seemed
+a pity that O-liver had no wife to grace its halls.
+
+The newspapers stated that Fluffy Hair's income had doubled. Whether
+this was true or not it sounded well, and Fluffy Hair still seemed young
+on the screen. Jane would go now and then and look at her and wonder
+what sort of woman this was who had laughed at O-liver.
+
+Then one day a telegram came to O-liver in his suite of rooms. And that
+day and for two nights he rode Mary Pick over the hills and through the
+canon and down to the sea, and came to a place where Jane's tea room was
+met in the center of a Japanese garden--a low lovely building, with its
+porches open to the wide Pacific.
+
+He had not seen her for so long that he was not quite prepared for the
+change. She was thinner and paler and more beautiful, with an air of
+distinction that was new. It was as if in visualizing his future she had
+pictured herself in it--as first lady of the land. Such a silly dream
+for Sandwich Jane!
+
+They were quite alone when he came to her. It was morning, and the
+porches were empty of guests. Jane was in a long wicker chair, with her
+pot of coffee on an hour-glass table. Far down on the terrace two Jap
+gardeners clipped and cut and watered and saw nothing.
+
+"You are younger than ever," Jane said when they had clasped hands.
+"Will you ever grow old, O-liver?"
+
+"The men say not." He seated himself opposite her. "Jane, Jane, it's
+heavenly to see you. I've been--starved!"
+
+She had hungered and thirsted for him. Her hand shook a little as she
+poured him a cup of coffee.
+
+"I told you not to come, O-liver."
+
+He laid the telegram before her. Fluffy Hair was dead!
+
+The yellow sheet lay between, defying them to speak so soon of
+happiness.
+
+"To-morrow," O-liver said, "I go to Washington. When will you come to
+me, Jane?"
+
+Her hand went out to him. Her breath was quick. "In time to hear your
+first speech, O-liver. I'll sit in the gallery, and lean over and listen
+and say to myself, 'He's mine, he's mine!'"
+
+She heard many speeches in the months that followed, and sometimes Tommy
+or Atwood or Henry, traveling across the continent, came and sat beside
+her. And Atwood always clung to his prophecy: "He'll be governor next;
+and then it'll be the White House. Why not?"
+
+And Jane, dreaming, asked herself "Why?"
+
+The East had had its share. Had the time not come for a nation to seek
+its leader in the golden West?
+
+
+
+
+LADY CRUSOE
+
+
+Billy and I came down from the North and opened a grocery store at
+Jefferson Corners. It is a little store and there aren't many houses
+near it--just the railroad station and a big shed or two. Beyond the
+sheds a few cabins straggle along the road, and then begin the great
+plantations, which really aren't plantations any more, because nobody
+around here raises much of anything in these days. They just sit and
+sigh over the things that are different since the war.
+
+That's what Billy says about them. Billy is up-to-date and he has a
+motor-cycle. He made up his mind when he came that he was going to put
+some ginger into the neighborhood. So he rides miles every morning on
+his motor-cycle to get orders, and he delivers the things himself unless
+it is barrels of flour or cans of kerosene or other heavy articles, and
+then he hires somebody to help him. At first he had William Watters and
+his mule. William is black and his mule is gray, and they are both old.
+It took them hours to get anywhere, and I used to feel sorry for them.
+But when I found out that compared to Billy and me they lived on flowery
+beds of ease, I stopped sympathizing. They both have enough, to eat, and
+they work only when they want to. Billy and I work all the time. We have
+our way to make in the world, and we feel that it all depends on
+ourselves. We started out with nothing ahead of us but my ambitions and
+Billy's energy, and a few hundred dollars which my guardian turned over
+to me when I married Billy on my twenty-first birthday.
+
+As soon as we were married, we came to Virginia. Billy and I had an idea
+that everything south of the Mason and Dixon line was just waiting for
+us, and we wanted to earn the eternal gratitude of the community by
+helping it along. But after we had lived at Jefferson Corners for a
+little while, we began to feel that there wasn't any community. There
+didn't seem to be any towns like our nice New England ones, with
+sociable trolley-cars connecting them and farmhouses in a lovely line
+between. You can ride for miles through this country and never pass
+anything but gates. Then way up in the hills you will see a clump of
+trees, and in the clump you can be pretty sure there is a house. In the
+winter when the leaves are off the trees you can see the house, but in
+the summer there is no sign of it. In the old days they seemed to feel
+that they were lacking somewhat in delicacy if they exposed their
+mansions to the rude gaze of the public.
+
+There was one mansion that Billy took me to now and then. It was empty,
+and that was why we went. The big houses which were occupied were not
+open to us, except in a trades-person sort of fashion, and Billy and I
+are not to be condescended to--we had a pair of grandfathers in the
+_Mayflower_. But that doesn't count down here, where everybody goes back
+to William the Conqueror.
+
+That great big empty house was a fine place for our Sunday afternoon
+outings. We always went to church in the morning, and people were very
+kind, but it was kindness with a question-mark. You see Billy and I live
+over the store, and none of them had ever lived on anything but
+ancestral acres.
+
+So our Sunday mornings were a bit stiff and disappointing, but our
+afternoons were heavenly. We discovered the Empty House in the spring,
+and there was laurel on the mountains and the grass was young and green
+on the slopes, and the sky was a faint warm blue with the sailing
+buzzards black against it. Billy and I used to stop at the second gate,
+which was at the top of the hill, and look off over the other hills
+where the pink sheep were pastured. I am perfectly sure that there are
+no other sheep in the whole wide world like those Albemarle sheep. The
+spring rains turn the red clay into a mud which sticks like paint, and
+the sheep are colored a lovely terra-cotta which fades gradually to
+pink.
+
+The effect is impressionistic, like purple cows. Billy doesn't care for
+it, but I do. And I adore the brilliant red of the roads. Billy says
+he'll take good brown earth and white flocks. He might be reconciled to
+black sheep but never to pink ones.
+
+We used to eat our supper on the porch of the Empty House. It had great
+pillars, and it was rather awe-inspiring to sit on the front steps and
+look up the whole length, of those Corinthian columns. Billy and I felt
+dwarfed and insignificant, but we forgot it when we turned our eyes to
+the hills.
+
+The big door behind us and the blank windows were shut and shuttered
+close. There were flying squirrels on the roof and little blue-tailed
+lizards on the stone flagging in front of the house; and there was an
+old toad who used to keep us company. I called him Prince Charming, and
+I am sure he was as old as Methuselah, and lived under that stone in
+some prehistoric age.
+
+We just loved our little suppers. We had coffee in our thermos bottle,
+and cold fried chicken and bread and butter sandwiches and chocolate
+cake. We never changed, because we were always afraid that we shouldn't
+like anything else so well, and we were sure of the chicken and the
+chocolate cake.
+
+And after we had eaten our suppers we would talk about what kind of
+house we would build when our ship came in. Billy and I both have nice
+tastes, and we know what we want; and we feel that the grocery store is
+just a stepping-stone to better things.
+
+The sunsets were late in those spring days, and there would be pink and
+green and pale amethyst in the western sky, and after that deep sapphire
+and a silver moon. And as it grew darker the silver would turn to gold,
+and there would be a star--and then more stars until the night came on.
+
+I can't tell you how we used to feel. You see we were young and in
+love, and life was a pretty good thing to us. There was one perfect
+night when the hills were flooded with moonlight. We seemed all alone in
+a lovely world and I whispered:
+
+"Oh, Billy, Billy, and some folks think that there isn't any God--"
+
+And Billy put his arm around me and patted my cheek, and we didn't say
+anything for a long time.
+
+It was just a week later that Lady Crusoe came. I knew that some one was
+in the house as soon as we passed the second gate. The door was still
+closed, and the shutters were not opened, but I heard a clock strike--a
+ship's clock--with bells.
+
+I clutched Billy. "Listen," I said.
+
+He heard it, too; "Who in the dickens?" he demanded.
+
+"There's somebody in the house--"
+
+"Nonsense--"
+
+"Billy, there must be, and we can't sit on the porch."
+
+"You stay here, and I'll go around to the back."
+
+But I wouldn't let him go alone. At the back of the house a window was
+open, and then we were sure.
+
+"We'd better leave," I said, but Billy insisted that we stay. "If they
+are new people, I'll find out their names, and come up to-morrow and get
+their orders."
+
+We went around to the front door and knocked and knocked, but nobody
+answered. So we sat down on the front step and presently Billy said that
+we might as well eat our supper, for very evidently nobody was at home.
+
+I didn't feel a bit comfortable about it, but I opened our basket and
+got out our cups and plates, and Billy poured the coffee and passed the
+chicken and the bread and butter sandwiches. And just then the door
+creaked and the knob turned!
+
+My first impulse was to gather up the lunch and tumble it into the
+basket; but I didn't. I just sat there looking up as calmly as if I were
+serving tea at my own table, and Billy sat there too looking up.
+
+The door opened and a voice said, "Oh, if you are eating supper, may I
+have some?"
+
+It was a lovely voice, and Billy jumped to his feet. A lovely head came
+after the voice. Just the head, peeping around--the body was hidden by
+the door. On the head was a lace cap with a gold rose, and the hair
+under the cap was gold.
+
+"You see, I just got up," said the voice, "and I haven't had any
+breakfast--"
+
+Billy and I gasped. It was seven P.M., and the meal that we were
+serving was supper!
+
+"Do you mind my coming out?" said the voice. "I am not exactly clothed
+and in my right mind, but perhaps I'll do."
+
+She opened the door wider and stepped down. I saw that her slippers had
+gold roses and that they were pale pink like the sunset. She wore a
+motor coat of tan cloth which covered her up, but I had a glimpse of a
+pink silk negligee underneath.
+
+She sat quite sociably on the steps with us. "I am famished," she said.
+"I haven't had a thing to eat for twenty-four hours."
+
+We gasped again. "How did it happen?"
+
+"I was--shipwrecked," she said, "in a motor-car--I am the only
+survivor--"
+
+Her eyes twinkled. "I'll tell you all about it presently." Then she
+broke off and laughed.
+
+"But first will you feed a starving castaway?"
+
+Yet she didn't really tell us anything. She ate and ate, and it was the
+prettiest thing to see her. She was dainty and young and eager like a
+child at a party.
+
+"How good everything is!" she said, at last with a sigh. "I don't think
+I was ever so hungry in my life."
+
+Billy and I didn't eat much. You see we were too interested, and
+besides we had had our dinner.
+
+As I have said, she didn't really tell us anything. "It was an accident,
+and I came up here. And the old clock that you heard strike belonged to
+my grandfather. He was an admiral, and it was his clock. I used to
+listen to it as a child."
+
+"What happened to the rest--?" Billy asked, bluntly. He was more
+concerned about the automobile accident than about her ancestors.
+
+"Oh, do you mean the others in the car?" she came reluctantly back from
+the admiral and his ship's clock. "I am sure I don't know. And I am very
+sure that I don't care."
+
+"But were any of them killed?"
+
+"No--they are all alive--but you see--it was a shipwreck--and I floated
+away--by myself--and this is my island, and you are the nice friendly
+savages--" she touched Billy on the arm. He drew away a bit. I knew that
+he was afraid she had lost her mind, but I had seen her twinkling eyes.
+"Oh, it's all a joke!" I said.
+
+She shook her head. "It isn't exactly a joke, but it might look like
+that to other people."
+
+"Are you going to stay?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll come up in the morning for orders," said Billy promptly. "I keep
+the grocery store at Jefferson Corners."
+
+"Oh," she said, and seemed to hesitate; "there won't be any orders."
+
+Billy stared at her. "But there isn't any other store."
+
+"Robinson Crusoe didn't have stores, did he? He found things and lived
+on the land. And I am Lady Crusoe."
+
+"Really?" I asked her.
+
+"I've another name--but--if people around here question you--you won't
+tell them, will you, that I am here--?"
+
+She said it in such a pretty pleading fashion that of course we
+promised. It was late when we had to go. I insisted that we should leave
+what remained of the supper, and she seemed glad to get it. "You are
+nice friendly savages," she said, with that twinkle in her eyes, "and I
+am very grateful. Come into the house and let me show you my clock--"
+
+She showed us more than the clock. I hadn't dreamed in those days when
+Billy and I sat alone on the steps of the treasures that were shut up
+behind us. The old furniture was dusty, but all the dust in the world
+couldn't hide its beauty. The dining-room was hung with cobwebs, but
+when the candles were lighted we saw the Sheffield on the old
+sideboard, the Chinese porcelains, the Heppelwhite chairs, the painted
+sheepskin screen--
+
+She picked out a lovely little pitcher and gave it to me. I did not
+learn until afterward that it was pink lustre and worth a pretty penny.
+She paid in that way, you see, for her supper, and something in her
+manner made me feel that I must not refuse it.
+
+She did not ask us to come again, yet I was sure that she liked us. I
+felt that perhaps it was the grocery store which had made her hesitate.
+But whatever it was, I must confess that I was a little lonely as I went
+away. You see we had come to look forward to our welcome at the Empty
+House. We had known that we were the honored guests of the flying
+squirrels and the lizards and of old Prince Charming. But now that the
+house was no longer empty, we would not be welcome. I was sorry that I
+had accepted the pink pitcher. I should have preferred to feel that I
+owed no favor to the lady with the twinkling eyes.
+
+It wasn't long after our adventure at the Empty House that Billy asked
+William Watters to take a big load to a customer two miles out. But
+William couldn't. He was working, he said, at a regular place. We
+couldn't imagine William as being regular about anything. He and his
+mule were so irregular in their habits. They came and went as they
+pleased, and they would take naps whenever the spirit moved them. But
+now, as William said, he was "wukin' regular," and he refused to say for
+whom he worked. But we found out one day when he drove Lady Crusoe down
+in a queer old carriage with his mule as a prancing steed.
+
+He helped her descend as if she had been a queen, and she came in and
+talked to Billy. "You see, I've hunted up my friendly savages," she
+said. "I've reached the end of my resources." She gave a small order,
+and told Billy that she wasn't at all sure when she could pay her bill,
+but that there were a lot of things in her old house which he could have
+for security.
+
+Billy said gallantly that he didn't need any security, and that her
+account could run as long as she wished and that he was glad to serve
+her. And he got out his pad and pencil and stood in that nice way of his
+at attention.
+
+I listened and looked through a window at the back. I had seen her drive
+up, and she was stunning in the same tan motor-coat that she had worn
+when we first saw her. But she had on a brown hat and veil and brown
+shoes instead of the lace cap and rosy slippers.
+
+She asked about me, and Billy told her that I was in the garden. And I
+was in the garden when she came out; but I had to run. She sat down in a
+chair on the other side of my little sewing-table and talked to me. It
+is such a scrap of a garden that there is only room for a tiny table and
+two chairs, but a screen of old cedars hides it from the road, and
+there's a twisted apple-tree, and the fields beyond and a glimpse of the
+mountains.
+
+"How is the island?" Billy asked her.
+
+She twinkled. "I have a man Friday."
+
+"William Watters?"
+
+She nodded. "The Watters negroes have been our servants for generations.
+And William thinks that he belongs to me. He cooks for me and forages.
+He shot two squirrels one morning and made me a Brunswick stew. But I
+couldn't stand that. You see the squirrels are my friends."
+
+I thought of the flying squirrels and the blue-tailed lizards and the
+old toad, and I knew how she felt. And I said so. She looked at me
+sharply, and then she laid her hand over mine: "Are you lonely, my
+dear?"
+
+I said that I was--a little. Billy had gone in to wait on a customer, so
+I dared say it. I told her that nobody had called.
+
+"But why not?" she demanded.
+
+"I think," I said slowly, "it is because we live--over the store."
+
+"I see." And she did see; it was in her blood as well as in the blood of
+the rest of them.
+
+Presently she stood up and said that she must go, and it was then that
+she noticed the work that was in my basket on the table. She lifted out
+a little garment and the red came into her cheeks. "Oh, oh!" she said,
+and stood looking at it. When she laid it down, she came around the
+table and kissed me. "What a dear you are!" she said, and then she went
+away.
+
+William Watters came in very often after that; but he said very little
+about Lady Crusoe. He was a faithful old thing, and he had evidently had
+instructions. But one morning he brought a fine old Sheffield tray to
+Billy and asked him to take his pay out of it, and let Lady Crusoe have
+the rest in cash. William Watters didn't call her "Lady Crusoe," he
+called her "Miss Lily," which didn't give us the key to the situation in
+the least. Billy didn't know how to value the tray, so he asked me. I
+knew more than he did, but I wasn't sure. I told him to advance what he
+thought was best, and to send it to the city and have it appraised, or
+whatever they call it, so he did; and when the check from the antique
+shop came it was a big one.
+
+It wasn't long after that that Lady Crusoe called on me. It was a real
+call, and she left a card. And she said as she laid it on the table: "As
+I told you, I'd rather the rest of the natives didn't know--they haven't
+seen me since I was a child, and they think that I am just some stranger
+who rents the old place and who wants to be alone."
+
+After she had gone I picked up the card, and what I read there nearly
+took my breath away. There are certain names which mean so much that we
+get to look upon them as having special significance. The name that was
+on Lady Crusoe's card had always stood in my mind for money--oceans of
+it. I simply couldn't believe my eyes, and I took it down to Billy.
+
+"Look at that," I said, and laid it before him, "and she has asked us to
+supper for next Sunday!"
+
+Well, we couldn't make anything of it. Why was a woman with a name like
+that down here with nothing to eat but the things that William Watters
+could forage for, and that Billy could supply from his little store, and
+that she paid for with Sheffield trays?
+
+We had supper that Sunday night in the great dining-room. There was a
+five-branched candlestick with tall white candles in the center of the
+shining mahogany table and William Watters acted as butler. You never
+would have believed how well he did it. And after supper we had coffee
+on the front porch and looked out over the hills at the sunset, and the
+silver moon and the old toad came out from under his stone and sat with
+us.
+
+Lady Crusoe was in a thin white dress which she had made for herself,
+and she talked of the old place and of her childhood there. But not a
+word did she say of why she had come back to live alone on the Davenant
+ancestral acres.
+
+It was her mother, we learned, who was a Davenant, and it was her
+mother's father who was the old admiral. She said nothing of the man
+whose name was on her card. It was as if she stopped short when she came
+to that part of her life, or as if it had never been.
+
+She took me up-stairs after a while and left Billy to smoke on the
+porch. She said that she had something that she wanted me to see. Her
+room was a huge square one at the southwest corner of the house. There
+was a massive four-poster bed with faded blue satin curtains, and there
+was a fireplace with fire-dogs and an Adam screen. Lady Crusoe carried a
+candle, and as she stood in the center of the room she seemed to gather
+all of the light to her, like the saints in the old pictures. She was so
+perfectly lovely that I almost wanted to cry. I can't explain it, but
+there was something pathetic about her beauty.
+
+She set the candle down and opened an old brass-bound chest. She took
+out a roll of cloth and brought it over and laid it on the table beside
+the candle.
+
+"I bought it with some of the money that your Billy got for my Sheffield
+tray," she said. Then she turned to me with a quick motion and laid her
+hands on my shoulders. "Oh, you very dear--when I saw you making those
+little things--I knew that--that the good Lord had led me. Will
+you--will you--show me--how?"
+
+I told Billy about it on the way home.
+
+"She doesn't know anything about sewing, and she hasn't any patterns,
+and I am to go up every day, and William Watters will come for me with
+his mule--"
+
+Then I cried about her a little, because it seemed so dreadful that she
+should be there all alone, without any one to sustain her and cherish
+her as Billy did me.
+
+"Oh, Billy, Billy," I said to him, "I'd rather live over a grocery store
+with you than live in a palace with anybody else--"
+
+And Billy said, "Don't cry, lady love, you are not going to live with
+anybody else."
+
+And he put his arm around me, and as we walked along together in the
+April night it was like the days when we had been young lovers, only our
+joy in each other was deeper and finer, for then we had only guessed at
+happiness, and now we knew--
+
+Well, I went up every day. William Watters came for me, and I carried my
+patterns and we sat in the big west room, and right under the window a
+pair of robins were building a nest.
+
+We watched them as they worked, and it seemed to us that no matter how
+hard we toiled those two birds kept ahead. "I never dreamed," Lady
+Crusoe remarked one morning, "that they were at it all the time like
+this."
+
+"You wait until they begin to feed their young," I told her. "People
+talk about being as free as a bird. But I can tell you that they slave
+from dawn until dark. I have seen a mother bird at dusk giving a last
+bite to one squalling baby while the father fed another."
+
+Lady Crusoe laid down her work and looked out over the hills. "The
+father," she said, and that was all for a long time, and we stitched and
+stitched, but at last she spoke straight from her thoughts: "How dear
+your husband is to you!"
+
+"That's what husbands are made for."
+
+"Some of them are not, dear," her voice was hard, "some of them expect
+so much and give so little--"
+
+I kept still and presently she began again. "They give money--and they
+think that is--enough. They give jewels--and think we ought to be
+profoundly grateful."
+
+"Well, my experience," I told her, "is that the men give as much love as
+the women--"
+
+She looked at me. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Love costs them a lot."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"They work for us. Now there's Billy's grocery store. If Billy didn't
+have me, he'd be doing things that he likes better. You wouldn't believe
+it, but Billy wanted to study law, but it meant years of hard work
+before he could make a cent, and he and I would have wasted our youth in
+waiting--and so he went into business--and that's a big thing for a man
+to do for a woman--to give up a future that he has hoped for--and that's
+why I feel that I can't do enough for Billy--"
+
+"I don't see why you should look at it in that way," she said, and her
+eyes were big and bright. "Women are queens, and they honor men when
+they marry them--"
+
+"If women are queens," I told her, "men are kings--Billy honored me--"
+
+She smiled at me. "Oh, you blessed dear--" she said, and all of a sudden
+she came over and knelt beside me. "What would you think of a man who
+married a woman whom the world called beautiful and brilliant, and
+whom--whom princes wanted to marry--And he was a very plain man, except
+that he had a lot of money--millions and millions--and after he married
+the woman whom he had said that he worshiped, he wanted to make just an
+every-day wife of her. He wanted her to stay at home and look after his
+house. He told her one night that it would be a great happiness for him
+if he could come in and find her warming--his slippers. And he said that
+his ideal of a woman was one who--who--held a child in her arms--"
+
+I looked down at her. "Well, right in the beginning," I said, "I should
+like to know if the woman loved the man--"
+
+She stared at me and then she stood up. "If she did, what then? She had
+not married to be--his slave--"
+
+I pointed to the mother robin on the branch below. "I wonder if she
+calls it slavery! You see--she is so busy--building her nest she hasn't
+time to think whether Cock Robin is singing fewer love songs than he
+sang early in the spring."
+
+She laughed and was down on her knees beside me again. "Oh, you funny
+little practical thing! But it wasn't because I missed the love songs.
+He sang them. But because I couldn't be an every-day wife--"
+
+"What kind of wife did you want to be?"
+
+"I wanted to travel with him alone--I planned a honeymoon in the desert,
+and we had it--and I planned after that to sail the seas to the land of
+Nowhere--and we sailed--and then--I wanted to go to the high plains--and
+ride and camp--and into the forests to hunt and fish--but he wouldn't.
+He said that we had wandered enough. He wanted to build a house--and
+have me warm--his slippers--"
+
+"And so you quarreled?"
+
+"We quarreled--great hot heavy quarrels--and we said things--horrid
+things--that we can't forgive--"
+
+She was sobbing on my shoulder and I said softly: "Things that _you_
+can't forgive?"
+
+"Yes. And that _he_ can't. That's why I ran away from him."
+
+I waited.
+
+"I couldn't stand it to see him going around with his face stern and set
+and not like my lover's. And he didn't speak to me except to be polite.
+And he asked people to go with us--everywhere. And we were never
+alone--"
+
+"What had you said to make him--like that?"
+
+She raised her head. "I told him that I--hated him--"
+
+"Oh, oh--"
+
+She knelt back on her heels.
+
+"It was a dreadful thing to say, wasn't it? That's why I ran away. I
+couldn't stand it. I knew it was a thing no man--could--forgive--"
+
+I smoothed her hair and rocked her back and forth while she cried. It
+was strange how much of a child she seemed to me. And I was only the
+wife of a country grocer and lived over the store, and she was the wife
+of a man whose name was known from east to west, and all around the
+world. But you see she hadn't learned to live. Neither have I, really.
+But Billy has taught me a lot.
+
+I think it was a comfort for her to feel that she had confided in me.
+But she made me promise that whatever happened I wouldn't let him know.
+
+"Unless I--die," she said, and she was as white as a lily, "unless I
+die, and then you can--set him--free--"
+
+Billy was sorry that I had promised. "Somehow I feel responsible,
+sweetheart, and I'll bet her poor husband is almost crazy."
+
+"Would you be, Billy?"
+
+He caught me to him so quickly that he almost shook the breath out of
+me. "Don't ask a thing like that," he said, and his voice didn't sound
+like his own. "If anything should happen to you--if anything should
+happen--I should--I should--oh, why will women ask things like that--?"
+
+In the days that followed, Billy didn't want me out of his sight. He
+even hated to have me go up to the Davenant house with William Watters.
+"Take care of her, William," he would say, and stand looking after us.
+
+William and I got to be very good friends. He was a wise old darky, and
+he was devoted to Lady Crusoe. He usually served tea for us out under
+the trees, unless it was a rainy day, and then we had it in the library.
+
+It was on a rainy day that Lady Crusoe said: "I wonder what has become
+of William. I haven't seen him since you came. I have hunted and called,
+and I can't find him."
+
+He appeared at tea time, however, with a plate of hot waffles with
+powdered sugar between. When his mistress asked him about his mysterious
+disappearance, he said that he had cleaned the attic.
+
+"But, William, on such a day?"
+
+"I kain't wuk out in the rain, Miss Lily, so I wuks in--"
+
+That was all he would say about it, and after we had had our tea, she
+said to me, "There are a lot of interesting things in the attic. Let's
+go up and see what Willie has been doing--"
+
+The dim old place was as shining as soap and water could make it, and
+there was the damp smell of suds. There was the beat of the rain on the
+roof, and the splash of it against the round east window. Through the
+west window came a pale green light, and there was a view over the
+hills. As we became accustomed to the dimness our eyes picked out the
+various objects--an old loom like a huge spider under a peaked gable, a
+chest of drawers which would have set a collector crazy, Chippendale
+chairs with the seats out, Windsor chairs with the backs broken, gilt
+mirror frames with no glass in them--boxes--books--bottles--all the
+flotsam and jetsam of such old establishments. Most of the things had
+been set back against the wall, but right in the middle of the floor was
+an object which I took at first for a small trunk.
+
+Lady Crusoe reached it first, and knelt beside it. She gave a little
+cry. "My dear, come here!" and I went to her, and in another moment, I,
+too, was on my knees. For the dark object was a cradle--a lovely hooded
+thing of mahogany, in which the Davenants had been rocked for
+generations.
+
+"William got it out," Lady Crusoe said, "ready to be carried down. Oh,
+my good old man Friday! Do you mind if I cry a little, you very dear?"
+
+It rained a great deal that summer, and it was hot and humid. Billy and
+I longed for the cold winds that sweep across the sea on the North
+Shore, but we didn't complain, for we had each other, and I wouldn't
+exchange Billy for any breeze that blows.
+
+Lady Crusoe suffered less than I, for she was on her native heath, and
+in the afternoon when we sewed together William Watters made lemonade,
+and in the evening when Billy came up for me we sat out under the stars
+until whispers of wind stirred the trees, and then we went away and left
+our dear lady alone.
+
+As the time went on we hated more and more to leave her, but she was
+very brave about it. "I have my good man Friday," she told us, "to
+protect me, and my grandfather's revolver."
+
+So the summer passed, and the fall came, and the busy robin and all of
+her red-breasted family started for the South, and there was rain and
+more rain, so that when October rolled around the roads were perfect
+rivers of red mud, and the swollen streams swept under the bridges in
+raging torrents of terra-cotta, and the sheep on the hills were pinker
+than ever. There was no lack of color in those gray days, for the trees
+burst through the curtain of mist in great splashes of red and green and
+gold. But now I did not go abroad with William Watters behind his old
+gray mule, for things had happened which kept me at home.
+
+It was on a rainy November night that I came down to the store to call
+Billy to supper. I had brought a saucer for old Tid, the store cat, and
+when he had finished Billy had cut him a bit of cheese and he was
+begging for it. We had taught Tid to sit up and ask, and he looked so
+funny, for he is fat and black and he hates to beg, but he loves cheese.
+We were laughing at him when a great flash of light seemed to sweep
+through the store, and a motor stopped.
+
+Billy went forward at once. The front door opened, and a man in a
+rain-coat was blown in by the storm.
+
+"Jove, it's a wet night!" I heard him say, and I knew it wasn't any of
+Billy's customers from around that part of the country. This was no
+drawling Virginia voice. It was crisp and clear-cut and commanding.
+
+He took off his hat, and even at that distance I could see his shining
+blond head. He towered above Billy, and Billy isn't short. "I wonder if
+you could help me," he began, and then he hesitated, "it is a rather
+personal matter."
+
+"If you'll come up-stairs," Billy told him, "there'll be only my wife
+and me, and I can shut up the store for the night."
+
+"Good!" he said, and I went ahead of them with old Tid following, and
+presently the men arrived and Billy presented the stranger to me.
+
+He told us at once what he wanted. "I thought that as you kept the
+store, you might hear the neighborhood news. I have lost--my wife--"
+
+"Dead?" Billy inquired solicitously.
+
+"No. Several months ago we motored down into this part of the country.
+Some miles from here I had trouble with my engine, and I had to walk to
+town for help. When I came back my wife was gone--"
+
+I pinched Billy under the table. "Gone?" I echoed.
+
+"Yes. She left a note. She said that she could catch a train at the
+station and that she would take it. Some one evidently gave her a lift,
+for she had her traveling bag with her. She said that she would sail at
+once for France, and that I must not try to follow her. Of course I did
+follow her, and I searched through Europe, but I found no trace, and
+then it occurred to me that after all she might still be in this part of
+the country--"
+
+I held on to Billy. "Had you quarreled or anything?"
+
+He ran his fingers through his hair. "Things had gone wrong somehow,"
+he said, uncertainly, "I don't know why. I love her."
+
+If you could have heard him say it! If _she_ could have heard him! There
+was a silence out of which I said: "Did you ask her to warm your
+slippers?"
+
+He stared at me, then he reached out his hands across the table and
+caught hold of mine in such a strong grip that it hurt. "You've seen
+her," he said, "_you've seen her_--?"
+
+Then I remembered. "I can't say any more. You see--I've promised--"
+
+"That you wouldn't tell me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He threw back his head and laughed. "If she's in this part of the
+country, I'll find her." And I knew that he would. He was the kind of
+man you felt wouldn't know there were obstacles in the way when he went
+after the thing he wanted.
+
+I made him stay to supper. It was a drizzly cold night and he looked
+very tired.
+
+"Jove," he said, "you're comfortable here, with your fire and your
+pussy-cat, and your teakettle on the hearth! This is the sort of thing I
+like--"
+
+"You wouldn't like living over a grocery store," I told him.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, nobody around here ever has, and they are all descended from
+signers of the Declaration of Independence and back of that from William
+the Conqueror, and they stick their noses in the air."
+
+"Shades of Jefferson!--why should they?"
+
+"They shouldn't. But they do--"
+
+He came back to the subject of his wife. "I didn't want her to warm my
+slippers. It was only that I wanted her to feel like warming them," he
+appealed to Billy, and Billy nodded. Billy positively purrs when I make
+him comfortable after his day's work. He says that it is the homing
+instinct in men and that women ought to encourage it.
+
+"Does she warm yours?" he asked Billy.
+
+"Not now, she's too busy--" and then as if the stage were set for it,
+there came from the next room a little, little cry.
+
+I went in and brought out--Junior! He was only a month old, but you know
+how heavenly sweet they are with their rose-leaf skins, and their little
+crumpled hands and their downy heads--Junior's down was brown, for Billy
+and I are both dark.
+
+"You see he keeps me busy," I said.
+
+I was so proud I am perfectly sure it stuck out all over me, and as for
+Billy he beamed on us in a funny fatherly fashion that he had adopted
+from the moment that he first called me "Little Mother."
+
+"Do you wonder that she hasn't time to warm my slippers?" was his
+question.
+
+The stranger held out his arms--"Let me hold the little chap." And he
+sat there, without a smile, looking down at my baby. When he raised his
+head he said in a dry sort of fashion, "I thought the pussy-cat and the
+teakettle were enough--but this seems almost too good to be true--"
+
+I can't tell you how much I liked him. He seemed so big and fine--and
+tender. I came across a poem the other day, and he made me think of it:
+
+              "... the strong"
+    The Master whispered, "are the tenderest!"
+
+Before he went away, he took my hand in his. "I want you to play a game
+with me. Do you remember when we were children that we used to hide
+things, and then guide the ones who hunted by saying 'warmer' when we
+were near them, and 'colder' when they wandered away? Will you say
+'warm' and 'cold' to me? That won't be breaking your promise, will it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then let's begin now. To-morrow morning I shall go to the north and
+east--"
+
+"Cold!"
+
+"To the south and west--"
+
+"Warmer."
+
+"Up a hill?"
+
+"Very warm. But you mustn't ask me any more."
+
+"All right. But I am coming again, and we will play the game."
+
+Billy went down with him, and when he came back we stood looking into
+the fire, and he said, "You didn't tell him?"
+
+"Of course not. That's the lovely, lovely thing that he must find out
+for himself--"
+
+The next day I went to see Lady Crusoe. William Watters took me. "They's
+a man been hangin' round this mawnin'," he complained, "an' a dawg--"
+
+"What kind of man, William?"
+
+"He's huntin', and Miss Lily she doan' like things killed--"
+
+Half-way up, we passed the man. His hat came off when he saw me. "It's
+cold weather we're having," he said pleasantly.
+
+"It's getting warmer," I flung back at him, and William drove on with a
+grunt.
+
+I had Junior with me, and when I reached the house I went straight
+up-stairs. In the very center of the room in the hooded mahogany cradle
+was another crumpled rose-leaf of a child. But this was not a "Junior."
+
+"Robin-son," Lady Crusoe had whispered, when I had first bent over her
+and had asked the baby's name.
+
+"Because of the robins?" I had asked.
+
+She shook her head. "I couldn't call him Crusoe, could I?"
+
+So there he lay, little Robinson Crusoe, in a desert expanse of polished
+floor, and there he crowed a welcome to my own beautiful baby!
+
+Lady Crusoe was in a big chair. She was not strong, and William Watters
+had brought his sister Mandy to wait on her. She was very pale, this
+lovely lady, and there were shadows under her eyes. As I sat down beside
+her, she said: "I shall have to have your Billy sell some more things
+for me. You see the servants must be paid, and my Robin must be comfy.
+There's a console-table that ought to bring a lot from a city dealer."
+
+"I wish that you needn't be worried," I said. "I wish--I wish--that
+you'd let me send for Robin's father--"
+
+"Robin's father!" she drew a quick breath, "how funny it
+sounds!--_Robin's father_--"
+
+I waited for that to sink in, and then I said: "I know how you feel.
+When I think of Billy as Junior's father it is different from thinking
+of him as my husband, and it makes a funny sensation in my throat as if
+I wanted to cry--"
+
+"You've nothing to cry about," she told me fiercely, "nothing, but I
+sometimes feel as if I could weep rivers of tears!"
+
+I realized that I must be careful, so I changed the subject. "William,"
+I said after a pause, "is worrying about a man who is hunting over the
+grounds."
+
+"He told me. I can't understand why any one should trespass when the
+place is posted. I sent William to tell him, but it didn't seem to have
+any effect. I haven't heard him shoot. When I do, I shall go out and
+speak to him myself."
+
+I wondered if Fate were going to settle it in that way, and I wondered
+too if it would be breaking my promise to tell him to shoot! We sewed in
+silence for a while, but Lady Crusoe was restless. At last she wandered
+to the window. It was a long French window which opened on a balcony.
+She parted the velvet curtains and looked out. "There he is again," she
+said, with irritation, "by the gate with his gun and dog--"
+
+I rose and joined her. The man stood by the gate-post, and the dog sat
+at his feet. They might have been a pair of statues planted on the round
+top of the hill, with the valleys rolling away beneath them and the
+mountain peaks and the golden sky beyond. Lady Crusoe was much stirred
+up over it.
+
+"I'll send William again, when he comes with our tea. I won't have my
+wild things shot. There was a covey of partridges on the lawn this
+morning, and my squirrels come up to the porch to be fed. Men are cruel
+creatures with their guns and their traps."
+
+"Women are cruel, too," I told her, and now I took my courage in my
+hands. "Suppose, oh, suppose, that the mother robin had stolen her nest
+and had never let the father robin share her happiness, wouldn't you
+call that cruel?"
+
+"What do you mean?" her voice shook.
+
+"You have stolen your--nest--"
+
+"Why shouldn't I steal it? I had always felt that when I wanted a real
+home it would be here. And the time had come when I wanted a--home. So I
+planned to come--with him. It was to be my surprise--he doesn't even
+know that the old place belongs to me. He thought it was just another of
+my restless demands, but he let me have my way. We had friends with us
+when we started; they left us at Washington. It was after we were alone
+that--we quarreled--and I ran away. I left a note and told him that I
+had gone to France. I suppose he followed and didn't find me. I am not
+even sure that he wants to find me."
+
+"Do you want to be found?"
+
+"I don't know. I'd rather not talk about it."
+
+William came in with the tea and was told to send the intruder off.
+
+"I done sent him, Miss Lily," he said, with dignity, "but he ain't gwine
+to go. He say he ain't, and I kain't make him."
+
+She went again to the window, and this time she drew back the faded
+hangings and stepped out on the balcony.
+
+I heard her utter a cry; then the whole room seemed to whirl about me as
+she came in, dragging the curtains together behind her. Every drop of
+blood was drained from her face.
+
+"William," she said, sharply, "that man--is coming toward the house! If
+he asks for me--I am not--at home."
+
+"Nawm," and William went down to answer the blows of the brass knocker.
+
+We heard him open the door, we heard the crisp, quick voice. We heard
+William's stately response. Then the quick voice said: "Will you tell
+your mistress that I shall wait?"
+
+William came up with the message. "He's settin' on the po'ch, an' he
+looks like he was makin' out to set there all night."
+
+"Let him sit," said Lady Crusoe inelegantly. "Lock all of the doors,
+William, and serve the tea."
+
+She sat there and drank a cup of it scalding hot, with her head in the
+air and her foot tapping the floor. But I couldn't drink a drop. I was
+just sick with the thought of how he loved her, and of how she had
+hardened her heart.
+
+At last I couldn't stand it any longer. The tears rolled down my cheeks.
+Lady Crusoe set her cup on the tray and stared at me in amazement.
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Oh, how can you--when he loves you?"
+
+I don't know how I dared say it, for her eyes were blazing in her white
+face, and my heart was thumping, but there was Robinson Crusoe crowing
+in his hooded cradle, and Robin's father was on the front step, with the
+old oak door shut and barred against him.
+
+She leaned forward, and I knew what was coming. "How did you know it
+was--my husband?"
+
+My eyes met hers squarely. "He came to the store. He was looking for
+you."
+
+"And you told him that I was here?"
+
+"No. I wanted to. But I had promised."
+
+For a little while neither of us spoke. The silence was broken by a
+thud, as if a flying squirrel had dropped from the roof to the balcony.
+A stick of wood fell apart in the grate, and the crow of the baby in the
+hooded cradle was answered by the baby on my lap.
+
+Lady Crusoe hugged her knees with her white arms as if she were cold,
+although the room was hot with the blazing fire. "I think you might have
+told me. It would have been the friendly thing to have told me--"
+
+"Billy thought it wasn't best."
+
+"What had Billy to do with it?"
+
+"Billy has everything to do with me. I talked it over with him--and--and
+Billy's such a darling to talk things over--"
+
+I broke down and sobbed and sobbed, and the tears dripped on Junior's
+precious head. And at last she said, her face softened, "You silly
+little thing, what do you want me to do?"
+
+"If it were Billy, I should ask him in--and show him--the baby--"
+
+"If it were Billy, you would set your heart under his heel for him to
+step on. I am not like that--"
+
+Another squirrel dropped to the balcony. The sun was setting, and
+between the velvet curtains I could see it blood-red behind the hills.
+
+Lady Crusoe rose, pacing the room restlessly. The wind rising rattled
+the long windows. A shadow blotted out the sun.
+
+"I suppose if you were I," she said at last, "you'd take your baby in
+your arms, and go down and say to that man on the steps, 'Come in and be
+lord of the manor and the ruler of your wife and child.'"
+
+I held Junior close and my voice trembled. "I should never say a thing
+like that to--Billy--"
+
+"What would you say?"
+
+"I should say"--I choked over it, and broke down at the end--"oh, lover,
+lover, this is your son--and I am his happy mother--"
+
+She stopped in front of me and stood looking down, with the anger all
+gone from her eyes. Then, before she could turn or cry out, the long
+windows were struck open by something that was stronger than the wind.
+There had been no flying squirrels on the balcony, and the shadow which
+had hidden the sun was the breadth and height of the big man who stood
+between the velvet curtains! He crossed the room at a stride.
+
+"Did you think that bolts and bars could keep me from you?" he asked,
+and took Lady Crusoe's hands in a tight grip and drew her toward him.
+She resisted for a moment. Then her white slenderness was crushed in his
+hungry arms.
+
+Well, as soon as I could gather up Junior and his belongings, I went
+down to wait for Billy. But before I went I saw her drop on her knees
+beside the hooded cradle and lift out little Robin, and, still kneeling,
+hold him up toward his father, as the nun holds up Galahad in the Holy
+Grail.
+
+And what do you think I heard her say?
+
+_"Oh, lover, lover, this is your son--and I am his happy mother!"_
+
+Billy came in glowing from his walk in the sharp air, and I can't tell
+you how good it seemed to feel his cold cheek against my cheek, and his
+warm lips on mine. We were a rapturous trio in front of the library
+fire, and there we were joined presently by the rapturous trio from
+above stairs. They treated Billy and me as if we were a pair of guardian
+angels. Then we had dinner together, with Mandy and William in the
+background beaming.
+
+And that night I told Billy all about it. "Isn't it beautiful, Billy?
+They are going to live on the old Davenant place, and it is to be their
+home."
+
+Everybody calls on us now. You see, Lady Crusoe's family is older than
+any of the others, and then there's her husband's money. And I shine in
+her reflected light, for our friendship, as she says, is founded on a
+rock. But Billy says it is founded on a wreck. Yet while he jokes about
+it, I know that he is proud of his friendship with Robin's father. And
+when the spring comes, we are to take old Tid and our blessed Junior and
+our family effects to an adorable cottage with a garden on all four
+sides of it and set well back from the road. You see, we feel that we
+can afford it, for we have the exclusive business of supplying the needs
+of the Davenant estate, and we are thus financially on our feet.
+
+
+
+
+A REBELLIOUS GRANDMOTHER
+
+
+Mrs. Cissy Beale and her daughter Cecily sat together in the latter's
+bedroom--a bewitching apartment, in which pale-gray paper and pale-gray
+draperies formed an effective background for the rosewood furniture and
+the French mirrors and tapestried screens.
+
+Between the two women was a bassinet and a baby.
+
+"You act," said Cecily, "as if you were sorry about--the baby."
+
+Her mother, who lay stretched at ease on a pillowed couch, shook her
+head.
+
+"I'm not sorry about the baby--she's a darling--but you needn't think
+I'm going to be called 'grandmother,' Cecily. A grandmother is a person
+who settles down. I don't expect to settle down. My life has been hard.
+I struggled and strove through all those awful years after your
+father--left me. I educated you and Bob. And now you've both married
+well, and I've a bit of money ahead from my little book. For the first
+time in my life I can have leisure and pretty clothes; for the first
+time in my life I feel young; and then, absolutely without warning, you
+come back from Europe with your beautiful Surprise, and expect me to
+live up to it--"
+
+"Oh, no!" Cecily protested.
+
+"Yes, you do," insisted little Mrs. Beale. She sat up and gazed at her
+daughter accusingly. With the lace of her boudoir cap framing her small,
+fair face, she looked really young--as young almost as the demure
+Cecily, who, in less coquettish garb, was taking her new motherhood very
+seriously.
+
+"Yes, you do," Mrs. Beale repeated. "I know just what you expect of me.
+You expect me to put on black velvet and old lace and diamonds. I shan't
+dare to show you my new afternoon frock--it's _red_, Cecily, geranium
+_red_; I shan't dare to wear even the tiniest slit in my skirts; I
+shan't dare to wear a Bulgarian sash or a Russian blouse, or a low
+neck--without expecting to hear some one say, disapprovingly, 'And
+she's a _grandmother_!'" She paused, and Cecily broke in tumultuously:
+
+"I should think you'd be proud of--the baby."
+
+"No, I'm not proud." Mrs. Beale thrust her toes into a pair of
+silver-embroidered Turkish slippers and stood up. "I'm not proud just at
+this moment, Cecily. You see--there's Valentine Landry."
+
+"Mother--!"
+
+"Now please don't say it that way, Cecily. He's half in love with me,
+and I'm beginning to like him, awfully. I've never had a bit of romance
+in my life. I married your father when I was too young to know my own
+mind, and he was much older than I. Then came the years of struggle
+after he went away.... I was a good wife and a good mother. I worshiped
+you and Bob, and I gave my youth for you. I never thought of any other
+man while your father lived, even though he did not belong to me. And
+now he is dead. You'll never know--I hope you may _never_ know--what
+drudgery means as I have known it. I've written my poor little screeds
+when I was half-dead with fatigue; I've been out in cold and rain to get
+news; I've interviewed all sorts of people when I've hated them and
+hated the work. And if now I want to have my little fling, why not?
+Everybody effervesces some time. This is my moment--and you can't expect
+me to spoil it by playing the devoted grandmother."
+
+The baby was wailing, a little hungry call, which made her mother take
+her up and say, hastily: "It's time to feed her. You won't mind,
+mother?"
+
+"Yes, I _do_ mind," said the little lady. "I don't like that Madonna
+effect, with the baby in your arms. It makes me feel horribly frivolous
+and worldly, Cecily. But it doesn't change my mind a bit."
+
+After a pause, the Madonna-creature asked, "Who is Valentine Landry?"
+
+Mrs. Beale had her saucy little cap off, and was brushing out her thin,
+light locks in which the gray showed slightly. But she stopped long
+enough to explain. "He isn't half as sentimental as his name. I met him
+in Chicago at the Warburtons', just before I made a success of my book.
+I was very tired, and he cheered me a lot. He's from Denver, and he made
+his money in mines. He hasn't married, because he hasn't had time. We're
+awfully good friends, but he doesn't know my age. He knows that I have a
+daughter, but not a grand-daughter. He thinks of me as a young
+woman--not as a grandmother-creature in black silk and mitts--"
+
+"_Mother_! nobody expects you to wear black silk and mitts--"
+
+"Well, you expect me to have a black-silk-and-mitt mind. You know you
+are thinking this very minute that there is no idiot like an old
+one--Cecily--"
+
+The girl flushed. "I don't think you are quite kind, mother."
+
+Mrs. Beale laughed and forgot to be cynical. "I know what you'd like to
+have me, dearie, but this is my moment of emancipation." She crossed the
+room and looked down at the tiny bit of humanity curled like a kitten in
+the curve of her daughter's arm. "I'm not going to be your grandmother,
+yet, midget," she announced, with decision. Then, "Cecily, I think when
+she's old enough I shall have her call me--Cupid--"
+
+And laughing in the face of her daughter's horrified protest, the
+mutinous grandparent retired precipitately to her own room.
+
+Three hours later, Mrs. Cissy Beale went forth to conquer, gowned in a
+restaurant frock of shadow lace topped by a black tulle hat.
+
+Valentine Landry, greeting her in Cecily's white-and-gold drawing-room,
+was breezy and radiant. "You're as lovely as ever," he said, as he took
+her hand; "perhaps a bit lovelier because you are glad to see me."
+
+"I am glad," she assured him; "and it is so nice to have you come before
+the summer is at an end. We can have a ride out into Westchester, and
+come back by daylight to dinner."
+
+"And no chaperons?"
+
+"No." She was looking up at him a little wistfully. "We know each other
+too well to have to drag in a lot of people, don't we? It is the men
+whom women trust with whom they go alone."
+
+He met her glance gravely. "Do you know," he said, "that you have the
+sweetest way of putting things? A man simply has to come up to your
+expectations. He'd as soon think of disappointing a baby as of
+disappointing you."
+
+His selection of a simile was unfortunate. Mrs. Beale's eyes became
+fixed upon a refractory button of her glove.
+
+"Please help me," she said; "your fingers are stronger," and as he bent
+above her hand she forgot the baby, forgot her new estate, forgot
+everything except the joy she felt at having his smooth gray head so
+close to her own.
+
+When he had her safely beside him in his big car he asked, "What made
+you run away from me in Chicago?"
+
+"My daughter came home from Europe."
+
+"I can't quite think of you with a grown daughter."
+
+"Cecily's a darling." Mrs. Beale's voice held no enthusiasm.
+
+Landry, noting her tone, looked faintly surprised. "You and she must
+have great good times together."
+
+"Oh, yes--"
+
+Mrs. Beale wished that he wouldn't talk about Cecily. Cecily had married
+before good times were possible. They had never played together--she and
+the little daughter for whom she had toiled and sacrificed.
+
+Landry's voice broke in upon her meditations: "I should like to meet
+Cecily."
+
+Mrs. Beale switched him away from the topic expeditiously. He should not
+see her as yet in the bosom of her family. _He should not_. He should
+not see Cecily with her air of mature motherliness. He should not see
+Victor, Cecily's husband, who was ten years older than Cecily and only
+ten years younger than herself. He should not hear her big son Bob call
+her "Grandma." He should not gaze upon the pretty deference of Bob's
+little wife toward the queen-dowager!
+
+Dining later opposite Landry in a great golden palace, Cissy seemed like
+some gay tropical bird. In her new and lovely clothes she was very
+pretty, very witty, almost girlishly charming. Yet Landry was conscious
+of a vague feeling of disappointment. She had been more serenely
+satisfying in Chicago--not so brilliantly hard, not so persistently
+vivacious. How could he know that the change was one of desperation?
+Cissy, as grandmother, felt that she must prove, even to herself, that
+she was not yet a back number.
+
+With this rift in the lute of their budding romance, they ate and drank
+and went to the play and had what might otherwise have been an
+enchanted ride home in the moonlight. But when Landry said "Good-night"
+Cissy felt the loss of something in his manner. His greeting that
+afternoon had had in it something almost of tenderness; his farewell was
+commonplace and slightly constrained.
+
+As Mrs. Beale went through the dimly lighted hall to her room, she met
+Cecily in a flowing garment, pacing back and forth with the baby in her
+arms.
+
+"She isn't well," Cecily whispered, as the little lady in the lace frock
+questioned her. "I don't know whether I ought to call a doctor or not."
+
+Mrs. Beale poked the tiny mite with an expert finger. "I'll give her a
+drink of hot water with a drop of peppermint in it," she said, "as soon
+as I get my hat off, and you'd better go back to bed, Cecily; you aren't
+well enough to worry with her."
+
+Cecily looked relieved. "I was worried," she confessed. "It's nurse's
+night out and Victor had to go to a board meeting unexpectedly--and with
+you away--I lost my nerve. It seemed dreadful to be alone, mother."
+
+Mrs. Beale knew how dreadful it was. She had carried the wailing Cecily
+in her arms night after night in the weeks which followed the crushing
+knowledge of her husband's infidelity. But she had carried a heavier
+burden than the child--the burden of poverty, of desertion, of an
+unknown future.
+
+But these things were not to be voiced. "You go to bed, Cecily," she
+said. "I'll look after her."
+
+Walking the floor later with the baby in her arms, Mrs. Beale's mind was
+on Landry. "Heavens! if he could see me now!" was her shocked thought,
+as she stopped in front of a mirror to survey the picture she made.
+
+Her hair was down and the grayest lock of all showed plainly. She had
+discarded frills and furbelows and wore a warm gray wrapper. She looked
+nice and middle-aged, yet carried, withal, a subtle air of
+girlishness--would carry it, in spite of storm or stress, until the end,
+as the sign and seal of her undaunted spirit.
+
+The baby stirred in her arms, and again Mrs. Beale went back and forth,
+crooning the lullaby with which she had once put her own babies to bed.
+
+In the morning the baby was much better, but Mrs. Beale was haggard. She
+stayed in bed until eleven o'clock, however. Cecily, coming in at
+twelve, found her ready to go out. In response to an inquiry, Mrs. Beale
+spoke of a luncheon engagement with Valentine Landry.
+
+"Mother--are you going to marry him?"
+
+Cissy, studying the adjustment of her veil, confessed, "He hasn't asked
+me."
+
+"But he will--"
+
+Mrs. Beale shrugged her shoulders. "Who knows?"
+
+In the weeks which followed, the little lady was conscious that things
+were not drawing to a comfortable climax. By all the rules of the game,
+Landry should long ago have declared himself. But he seemed to be
+slipping more and more into the fatal role of good friend and comrade.
+
+Cissy's pride would not let her admit, even to herself, that she had
+failed to attract at the final moment. But there was something deeper
+than her pride involved, and she found her days restless and her nights
+sleepless. One night in the dense darkness she faced the truth
+relentlessly. "You're in love, Cissy Beale," she told herself,
+scornfully. "You're in love for the first time in your life--and you
+a--grandmother!"
+
+Then she turned over on her pillow, hid her face in its white warmth,
+and cried as if her heart would break.
+
+In the meantime the baby drooped. Cecily, worried, consulted her mother
+continually. Thus it came about that Mrs. Beale lived a double life.
+From noon until midnight she was of to-day--smartly gowned, girlish;
+from midnight until dawn she was of yesterday--waking from her fitful
+slumbers at the first wailing note, presiding in gray gown and slippers
+over strange brews of catnip and of elderflower.
+
+Cecily's doctor, being up-to-date, remonstrated at this return to the
+primitive, but was forced to admit, after the baby had come triumphantly
+through a half-dozen critical attacks, that Cissy's back-to-grandma
+methods were effective.
+
+It was on a morning following one of these struggles that Cissy said to
+her daughter, wearily, "I can't escape it--"
+
+"Escape what?" demanded Cecily, who, in the pale-gray bedroom was
+endeavoring to observe the doctor's injunction to let the wailing baby
+stay in her bassinet, instead of walking the floor with her.
+
+"The black-silk-and-mitt destiny," said the depressed lady.
+
+"What has happened?" Cecily demanded.
+
+"Nothing has happened," responded her weary little mother, and refused
+to discuss the matter further.
+
+But to herself she was beginning to admit that she had lost Landry. An
+hour later she had a telephone message from him.
+
+"I want you to go with me for a last ride together," he said. "I leave
+to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow!" Her voice showed her dismay.
+
+"But why this sudden decision--"
+
+"I have played long enough," he said; "business calls--"
+
+As Mrs. Beale made ready for the ride she surveyed herself wistfully in
+her mirror. There were shadows under her eyes, and faint little lines
+toward the corners of her lips--it even seemed to her that her chin
+sagged. She had a sudden sense of revolt. "If I were young, _really_
+young," she thought, "he would not be going away--"
+
+With this idea firmly fixed in her mind, she exerted herself to please
+him; and her little laugh made artificial music in his ears, her fixed
+smile wore upon his nerves, her staccato questions irritated him.
+
+Again they had dinner together, and as she sat opposite him, gorgeous
+and gay in her gown of geranium red, he began to talk with her of her
+daughter.
+
+"I've never met her. It has seemed to me that you might have let me see
+her--"
+
+Cissy flushed. "She's such a great grown-up," she said. "Somehow when
+I'm with her I feel--old--"
+
+"You will never seem old," he said, with the nearest approach to
+tenderness that had softened his voice for days. "You have in you the
+spirit of eternal youth--"
+
+Then he floundered on. "But a mother and a daughter--when you used to
+speak of her in Chicago, it seemed to me that I could see you together,
+and I liked the sweetness and womanliness of the thought; but I have
+never seen you together."
+
+With a sense of recklessness upon her, Cissy suddenly determined to tell
+him the truth. "Cecily hasn't been going out much. You see, there's the
+baby--"
+
+He stared. "The baby--?"
+
+"Her baby--Cecily's--"
+
+"_Then you're a grandmother_?"
+
+It seemed to Cissy that the whole restaurant rang with the emphasis of
+the words. Yet he had not spoken loudly; not a head was turned in their
+direction; even the waiter stood unmoved.
+
+When she came to herself Landry was laughing softly. "When are you going
+to let me see--the baby--?"
+
+"Never--"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Cissy went on to her doom. "Because you'll want to put me on the shelf
+like all the rest of them. You'll want to see me with--my
+hair--parted--and spectacles. And my eyes are perfectly good--and my
+hair is my own--"
+
+She stopped. Landry was surveying her with hard eyes.
+
+"Don't you love--the baby--?"
+
+Cissy shrugged. "Perhaps. I don't know yet. Some day I may when I
+haven't anything to do but sit in a chimney-corner."
+
+Thus spoke Cissy Beale, making of herself a heartless creature, flinging
+back into the face of Valentine Landry his most cherished ideals.
+
+But what did it matter? She had known from the moment of her confession
+that he would be repelled. What man could stand up in the face of the
+world and marry a grandmother!--the idea was preposterous.
+
+She finished dinner with her head in the air; she was hypocritically
+lively during the drive home; she said "Good-night" and "Good-bye"
+without feeling, and went up-stairs with her heart like lead to find the
+nurse weeping wildly on the first landing.
+
+The baby, it appeared, was very ill. And the baby's father and mother,
+having left the little cherub sleeping peacefully, were motoring
+somewhere in the wide spaces of the world. The family doctor was out.
+She had called up another doctor, and he would come as soon as he could.
+But in the meantime the baby was dying--
+
+"Nonsense, Kate," said Cissy Beale, and pulling off her gloves as she
+ran, she made for the pale-gray room.
+
+Now, as it happened, Valentine Landry, driving away in a priggish state
+of mind, was suddenly overwhelmed by miserable remorse. Reviewing the
+evening, he seemed to see, for the first time, the unhappiness in the
+eyes of the little woman who had borne herself so bravely. In a sudden
+moment of illumination he realized all that she must have been feeling.
+Perhaps it had not been heartlessness; perhaps it had been--heart
+hunger.
+
+Leaning forward, he spoke to his chauffeur. They stopped at the first
+drug-store, and Landry called up Cissy. Her voice from the other end
+answered, sharply, then broke as he gave his name.
+
+"I thought it was the doctor," she said. "Can you come back, please? The
+baby, oh, the baby is very ill!"
+
+Five minutes later the nurse let him into the house. He followed her up
+the stairs and into the nursery. Cissy sat with the baby in her arms.
+The baby was in a blanket and Cissy was in her gray wrapper. She had
+donned it while the nurse held the baby in the hot bath which saved its
+life. Cissy's hair was out of curl and the color was out of her cheeks.
+But to Valentine Landry she was beautiful.
+
+"It was a convulsion," she told him, simply. "I am afraid she will have
+another. We haven't been able to get a doctor--will you get one for us?"
+
+Out he went on his mission for the lady of his heart, and the lady of
+his heart, sitting wet and worried in the pale-gray bedroom, was saying
+to herself, monotonously, "It's all over now--no man could see me like
+this and love me--"
+
+Cecily and her husband and the doctor and Landry came in out of the
+darkness together. They went up-stairs together, then stopped on the
+threshold as Cissy held up a warning hand.
+
+She continued to croon softly the lullaby which had belonged to her own
+babies: "Hushaby, sweet, my own--"
+
+It was Cecily and the doctor who went in to her, and Landry, standing
+back in the shadows, waited. He spoke to Cissy as she came out.
+
+"I am going so early in the morning," he said, "will you give me just
+one little minute now?"
+
+In that minute he told her that he loved her.
+
+And Cissy, standing in the library in all the disorder of uncurled locks
+and gray kimono, demanded, after a rapturous pause, "But why didn't you
+tell me before?"
+
+He found it hard to explain. "I didn't quite realize it--until I saw you
+there so tender and sweet, with the baby in your arms--"
+
+"A Madonna-creature," murmured Cissy Beale.
+
+But he did not understand. "It isn't because I want you to sit in a
+chimney-corner--it wasn't fair of you to say that--"
+
+Then in just one short speech Cissy Beale showed him her heart. She told
+of the years of devotion, always unrewarded by the affection she craved.
+"And here was the baby," she finished, "to grow up--and find somebody
+else, and forget me--"
+
+As he gathered her into his protecting embrace, his big laugh comforted
+her.
+
+"I'm yours till the end of the world, little grandmother," he whispered.
+"I shall never find any one else--and I shall never forget."
+
+
+
+
+WAIT--FOR PRINCE CHARMING
+
+
+Kingdon Knox was not conscious of any special meanness of spirit. He was
+a lawyer and a good one. He was fifty, and wore his years with an effect
+of youth. He exercised persistently and kept his boyish figure. He had
+keen, dark eyes, and silver in his hair. He was always well groomed and
+well dressed, and his income provided him with the proper settings. His
+home in the suburb was spacious and handsome and presided over by a
+handsome and socially successful wife. His office was presided over by
+Mary Barker, who was his private secretary. She was thirty-five and had
+been in his office for fifteen years. She had come to him an unformed
+girl of twenty; she was now a perfect adjunct to his other office
+appointments. She wore tailored frocks, her hair was exquisitely dressed
+in shining waves, her hands were white and her nails polished, her
+slender feet shod in unexceptional shoes.
+
+Nannie Ashburner, who was also in the office and who now and then took
+Knox's dictation, had an immense admiration for Mary. "I wish I could
+wear my clothes as you do," she would say as they walked home together.
+
+"Clothes aren't everything."
+
+"Well, they are a lot."
+
+"I would give them all to be as young as you are."
+
+"You don't look old, Mary."
+
+"Of course I take care of myself," said Mary, "but if I were as young as
+you I'd begin over again."
+
+"How do you mean 'begin,' Mary?"
+
+But Mary was not communicative. "Oh, well, I'd have some things that I
+might have had and can't get now," was all the satisfaction that she
+gave Nannie.
+
+It was through Mary that Nannie had obtained her position in Kingdon
+Knox's office. Mary had boarded with Nannie's mother for five years.
+Nannie was fourteen when Mary came. She had finished high school and had
+had a year in a business college, and then Mrs. Ashburner had asked Mary
+if there was any chance for her in Kingdon Knox's office.
+
+Mary had considered it, but had seemed to hesitate. "We need another
+typist, but I am not sure it is the place for her."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Mary did not say why. "I wish she didn't have to work at all. She ought
+to get married."
+
+"Dick McDonald wants her. But she's too young, Mary."
+
+"You were married at nineteen."
+
+"Yes, and a lot I got out of it." Mrs. Ashburner was sallow and cynical.
+"I kept boarders to make a living for my husband, Mary; and since he
+died I've kept boarders to make a living for Nannie and me."
+
+"But Dick gets good wages."
+
+"Well, he can wait till he saves something."
+
+"Don't make him wait too long."
+
+It was against her better judgment that Mary Barker spoke to her
+employer about Nannie. "I should want her to help me. She is not expert
+enough to take your dictation, but she could relieve me of a lot of
+detail."
+
+"Well, let me have a look at her," Kingdon Knox had said.
+
+So Nannie had come to be looked over, and she had blushed a little and
+had been rather breathless as she had talked to Mr. Kingdon, and he had
+been aware of the vividness of her young beauty; for Nannie had red hair
+that curled over her ears, and her skin was warm ivory, and her eyes
+were gray.
+
+Her clothes were not quite up to the office standard, but Knox, having
+hired her, referred the matter to Mary. "You might suggest that she cut
+out thin waists and high heels," he had said; "you know what I like."
+
+Mary knew, and Nannie's first month's salary had been spent in the
+purchase of a serge one-piece frock.
+
+Mrs. Ashburner had rebelled at the expense. But Mary had been firm. "Mr.
+Knox won't have anybody around the office who looks slouchy or sloppy.
+It will pay in the end."
+
+Nannie thought Mr. Knox wonderful. "He says that he wants me to work
+hard so that I can handle some of his letters."
+
+"When did he tell you that?"
+
+"Last night, while you were taking testimony in the library."
+
+The office library was lined with law books. There were a handsome long
+mahogany table, green covered, and six handsome mahogany chairs. Mary,
+shut in with three of Knox's clients and a consulting partner, had had a
+sense of uneasiness. It was after hours. Nannie was waiting for her in
+the outer office. Everybody else had gone home except Knox, who was
+waiting for his clients.
+
+Mary remembered how, when she was Nannie's age, she had often sat in
+that outer office after hours, and Knox had talked to her. He had been
+thirty-five and she, twenty. He had a wife and a handsome home; she had
+nothing but a hall room. And he had made her feel that she was very
+necessary to him. "I don't know how we should ever get along without
+you," he had said.
+
+He had said other things.
+
+It was because he had spoken of her lovely hair that she had kept it
+brushed and shining. It was because his eyes had followed her pencil
+that she had rubbed cold cream on her hands at night and had looked well
+after her nails. It was because she had learned his taste that she wore
+simple but expensive frocks. It was because of her knowledge that
+nothing escaped him that she shod her pretty feet in expensive shoes.
+
+He had set standards for her, and she had followed them. And now he
+would set standards for Nannie!
+
+She spoke abruptly. "Is Dick McDonald coming to-night?"
+
+"Yes. He has had a raise, Mary. He telephoned--"
+
+The two girls were in Mary's room. Dinner was over and Mary had slipped
+on a Chinese coat of dull blue and had settled down for an evening with
+her books. Mary's room was charming. In fifteen years she had had gifts
+of various kinds from Knox. They had always been well chosen and
+appropriate. Nothing could have been in better taste as an offering from
+an employer to an employee than the embossed leather book ends and desk
+set, the mahogany reading lamp with its painted parchment shade, the
+bronze Buddha, the antique candlesticks, the Chelsea teacups, the
+Sheffield tea caddy. Mary's comfortable salary had permitted her to buy
+the book shelves and the tea table and the mahogany day bed. There was a
+lovely rug which Mrs. Knox had sent her on the tenth anniversary of her
+association with the office. Mrs. Knox looked upon Mary as a valuable
+business asset. She invited her once a year to dinner.
+
+Nannie wore her blue serge one-piece frock and a new winter hat. The hat
+was a black velvet tam.
+
+"You need something to brighten you up," Mary said; "take my beads."
+
+The beads were jade ones which Mr. Knox had brought to Mary when he came
+back from a six months' sojourn in the Orient. Mary had looked after the
+office while he was away. He had clasped the beads about her neck. "Bend
+your head while I put them on, Mary," he had commanded. He had been at
+his desk in his private office while she sat beside him with her
+note-book. And when he had clasped the beads and she had lifted her
+head, he had said with a quick intake of his breath: "I've been a long
+time away from you, Mary."
+
+Nannie with the jade beads and her red hair and her velvet tam was
+rather rare and wonderful. "Dick is going to take me to the show to
+celebrate. He's got tickets to Jack Barrymore."
+
+"Dick is such a nice boy," said Mary. "I'm glad you are going to marry
+him, Nannie."
+
+"Who said I was going to marry him?"
+
+"That's what he wants, Nannie, and you know it."
+
+"Mr. Knox says it is a pity for a girl like me to get married."
+
+Mary's heart seemed to stop beating. She knew just how Knox had said it.
+
+She spoke quietly. "I think it would be a pity for you not to marry,
+Nannie."
+
+"I don't see why. You aren't married, Mary."
+
+"No."
+
+"And Mr. Knox says that unless a girl can marry a man who can lift her
+up she had better stay single."
+
+The same old arguments! "What does he mean by 'lift her up,' Nannie?"
+
+"Well"--Nannie laughed self-consciously--"he says that any one as pretty
+and refined as I might marry anybody; that I must be careful not to
+throw myself away."
+
+"Would it be throwing yourself away to marry Dick?"
+
+"It might be. He looked all right to me before I went into the office.
+But after you've seen men like Mr. Knox--well, our kind seem--common."
+
+Mrs. Ashburner was calling that Dick McDonald was down-stairs. Nannie,
+powdering her nose with Mary's puff, was held by the earnestness of the
+other woman's words.
+
+"Let Dick love you, Nannie. He's such a dear."
+
+Dick was, Nannie decided before the evening was over, a dear and a
+darling. He had brought her a box of candy and something else in a box.
+Mrs. Ashburner had shown him into the dining-room, which she and Nannie
+used as a sitting-room when the meals were over. The boarders occupied
+the parlor and were always in the way.
+
+"Say, girlie, see here," Dick said as he brought out the box; and Nannie
+had gazed upon a ring which sparkled and shone and which looked, as Dick
+said proudly, "like a million dollars."
+
+"I wanted you to have the best." His arm went suddenly around her. "I
+always want you to have the best, sweetheart."
+
+He kissed her in his honest, boyish fashion, and she took the ring and
+wore it; and they went to the play in a rosy haze of happiness, and when
+they came home he kissed her again.
+
+"The sooner you get out of that office the better," he said. "We'll get
+a little flat, and I've saved enough to furnish it."
+
+Nannie was lighting the lamp under the percolator. Mrs. Ashburner had
+left a plate of sandwiches on one end of the dining-room table. Nannie
+was young and Mrs. Ashburner was old-fashioned. Her daughter was not
+permitted to eat after-the-theatre suppers in restaurants. "You can
+always have something here."
+
+"Don't let's settle down yet," Nannie said, standing beside the
+percolator like a young priestess beside an altar. "There's plenty of
+time---"
+
+"Plenty of time for what?" asked her lover. "We've no reason to wait,
+Nannie."
+
+So Dick kissed her, and she let him kiss her. She loved him, but she
+would make no promises as to the important day. Dick went away a bit
+puzzled by her attitude. He wanted her at once in his home. It hurt him
+that she did not seem to care to come to him.
+
+It was a cold night, with white flakes falling, and the policeman on the
+beat greeted Dick as he passed him. "It is a nice time in the morning
+for you to be getting home."
+
+"Oh, hello, Tommy! I'm going to be married. How's that?"
+
+"Who's the girl?"
+
+"Nannie Ashburner."
+
+"That little redhead?"
+
+"You're jealous, Tommy."
+
+"I am; she'll cook sausages for you when you come home on cold nights,
+and kiss you at your front door, and set the talking machine going, with
+John McCormack shouting love songs as you come in."
+
+Dick laughed. "Some picture, Tommy. And a lot you know about it. Why
+don't you get married and try it out?"
+
+Tommy, who was tall and ruddy and forty, plus a year or two, gave a
+short laugh. "I might find somebody to cook the sausages, but there's
+only one that I'd care to kiss."
+
+"So that's it. She turned you down, Tommy?"
+
+"She did, and we won't talk about it."
+
+"Oh, very well. Good-night, Tommy."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+So Dick passed on, and Tommy Jackson beat his hands against his breast
+as he made his way through the whirling snow, his footsteps deadened by
+the frozen carpet which the storm had spread.
+
+Mary Barker was delighted when Nannie told of her engagement to Dick.
+She talked it over with Mrs. Ashburner. "It will be the best thing for
+her."
+
+Mrs. Ashburner was not sure. "I've drudged all my life and I hate to see
+her drudge."
+
+"She won't have it as hard as you have had it," Mary said. "Dick will
+always make a good income."
+
+"She will have a harder time than you've had, Mary," said Mrs.
+Ashburner, and her eyes swept the pretty room wistfully. "Many a time
+when I've been down in my steaming old kitchen I have thought of you up
+here in your blue coat and your pretty slippers, with your hair
+shining, and I've wished to heaven that I had never married."
+
+"Things haven't been easy for you," said Mary gently.
+
+"They have been harder than nails, Mary. You've escaped all that."
+
+"Yes." Mary's eyes did not meet Mrs. Ashburner's. "I have
+escaped--that."
+
+Nannie and her mother slept in the back parlor of the boarding-house.
+They had single beds and it was in the middle of the night that Mrs.
+Ashburner said: "Are you awake, Nannie?"
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"Well, I can't seem to get to sleep. Maybe it's the coffee and maybe
+it's because I have you on my mind. I keep thinking that I hate to have
+you get married, honey."
+
+"Oh, mother, don't you like Dick?"
+
+"Yes. It ain't that. But it's nice for you in the office and you don't
+have to slave."
+
+Nannie sat up in bed, and the light from the street lamp shone in and
+showed her wide-eyed, with her hair in a red glory. "I shan't slave,"
+she said. "I told Dick."
+
+"Men don't know." Mrs. Ashburner spoke with a sort of weary bitterness.
+"They'll promise anything."
+
+"And I am not going to be married in a hurry, mother. Dick's got to wait
+for me if he wants me."
+
+It sounded very worldly-minded and decisive and Mrs. Ashburner gained an
+envious comfort in her daughter's declaration. She had never set herself
+against a man's will in that way. Perhaps, after all, Nannie would make
+a success of marriage.
+
+But Nannie was not so resolute as her words might have seemed to imply.
+Long after her mother slept she lay awake in the dark and thought of
+Dick, of the break in his voice when he had made his plea, the light in
+his eyes when he had won a response, his flaming youth, his fine boy's
+reverence for her own youth and innocence. It would be--rather
+wonderful, she whispered to her heart, and fell asleep, dreaming.
+
+The next morning was very cold, and Nannie, coming early into Kingdon
+Knox's office to take his letters, was in a glow after her walk through
+the snowy streets. Her cheeks were red, her eyes sparkled, and the ring
+on her finger sparkled.
+
+Knox at once noticed the ring. "So that's it," he said, and leaned back
+in his chair. "Let's talk about it a little."
+
+They talked about it more than a little, and the burden of Kingdon
+Knox's argument was that it was a pity. She was too young and pretty to
+marry a poor man and live in a funny little flat and do her own work
+and spoil her nails with dishwashing. "Personally, I think it's rather
+dreadful. A waste of you, if you want the truth."
+
+Poor Nannie, listening, saw her castles falling. It would be rather
+dreadful--dishwashing and a gas stove and getting meals.
+
+"He is awfully in love with me," she managed to say at last.
+
+"And you?" He leaned forward a little. Nannie was aware of the feeling
+of excitement which he could always rouse in her. When he spoke like
+that she saw herself as something rather perfect and princesslike.
+
+"Wait--for Prince Charming," he said.
+
+Nannie was sure that when Prince Charming came he would be like Mr.
+Knox; younger perhaps, but with that same lovely manner.
+
+"Of course," Mr. Knox said gently, "I suppose I ought not to advise, but
+if I were you"--he touched the sparkling ring--"I should give it back to
+him."
+
+So after several absorbing talks with her employer on the subject,
+Nannie gave the ring back, and when poor Dick passed his friend the
+policeman on his way home he stopped and told his story.
+
+"They are all like that," Tommy said, "but if I were you I wouldn't
+take 'no' for an answer."
+
+Dick brightened. "Wouldn't you?"
+
+"Not if I had to carry her off under my arm," said Tommy between his
+teeth.
+
+"But I can't carry her off, Tommy--and she won't go."
+
+"She'll go if you ain't afraid of her," Tommy told him with solemn
+emphasis. "I was afraid."
+
+They were under the street lamp, and Dick stared at him in astonishment.
+"I didn't know you were afraid of anything."
+
+"I didn't know it either," was Tommy's grim response, "until I met her.
+But I've known it ever since."
+
+"Well, it's hard luck."
+
+"It is hardest at Christmas time," said Tommy, "and my beat ain't the
+best one to make me cheerful. There are too many stores. And dolls in
+the windows. And drums. And horns. And Santa Claus handing out things to
+kids. And I've got to see it, with money just burning in my pocket to
+buy things and to have a tree of my own and a turkey in my oven and a
+table with some one who cares at the other end. And all I'll get out of
+the merry season is a table d'hote at Nitti's and a box of cigars from
+the boys."
+
+"Ain't women the limit, Tommy?"
+
+"Well"--Tommy's tone held a note of forced cheerfulness--"that little
+redhead must have had some reason for not wanting you, Dick. Maybe we
+men ain't worth it."
+
+"Worth what?"
+
+"Marrying. A woman's got a square deal coming to her, and she doesn't
+always get it."
+
+"She'd get it with you, and she'd get it with me; you know that, Tommy."
+
+"She might," said Tommy pessimistically, "if the good Lord helped us."
+
+Nannie on the day after her break with Dick was blushingly aware of the
+bareness of her third finger as she took Kingdon Knox's dictation. When
+he had finished his letters, Knox smiled at her. "So you gave it back,"
+he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good little girl. You'll find something much better if you wait. And I
+don't want you wasted." He opened a drawer and took out a long box. He
+opened it and lifted a string of beads. They were of carved ivory, and
+matched the cream of Nannie's complexion. They were strung strongly on a
+thick thread of scarlet silk, and there was a scarlet tassel at the end.
+
+"They are for you," he said. "It is my first Christmas present to you;
+but I hope it won't be the last."
+
+Nannie's heart beat so that she could almost hear it. "Oh, thank you,"
+she said breathlessly; "they're so beautiful."
+
+But she did not know how rare they were, nor how expensive until she
+wore them in Mary's room that night.
+
+"Where did you get them, Nannie?"
+
+"Mr. Knox gave them to me."
+
+There was dead silence, then Mary said: "Nannie, you ought not to take
+them."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"They cost such an awful lot, Nannie. They look simple, but they aren't.
+The carving is exquisite."
+
+"Well, he gave you beads, Mary."
+
+Mary's face was turned away. "It was different. I have been such a long
+time in the office."
+
+"I don't think it is much different, and I don't see how I can give them
+back, Mary."
+
+Mary did not argue, but when a little later Nannie told of her broken
+engagement, Mary said sharply: "But, Nannie--why?"
+
+"Well, mother doesn't care much for the idea. She--she thinks a girl is
+much better off to keep on at the office."
+
+Mary was lying in her long chair under the lamp. She had a cushion under
+her head, and her hand shaded her eyes. "Did--Mr. Knox have anything to
+do with it?"
+
+"What makes you ask that, Mary?"
+
+"Did he?"
+
+"Well, yes. You know what I told you; he thinks I'd be--wasted."
+
+"On Dick?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mary lay for a long time with her hand over her eyes; then she said: "If
+you don't marry Dick, what about your future, Nannie?"
+
+"There's time enough to think about that. And--and I can wait."
+
+"For what?"
+
+Nannie blushed and laughed a little. "Prince Charming."
+
+After that there was a silence, out of which Nannie asked: "Does your
+head ache, Mary?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"Can't I get you something?"
+
+"No. After I've rested a bit I'll take a walk."
+
+Mary's walk led her by the lighted shop windows. The air was keen and
+cold and helped her head. But it did not help her heart. She had a sense
+of suffocation when she thought of Nannie.
+
+She stopped in front of one of the shops. There were dolls in the
+window, charming, round-eyed, ringleted. One of them was especially
+captivating, with fat blond curls, fat legs, blue silk socks and
+slippers, crisp frills and a broad blue hat.
+
+"How I should have loved her when I was a little girl," was Mary's
+thought as she stood looking in. Then: "How a child of my own would have
+loved her."
+
+She made up her mind that she would buy the doll--in the morning when
+the shop opened. It was a whimsical thing to do, to give herself a doll
+at her time of life. But it would be in a sense symbolic. She had no
+child to which to give it; she would give it to the child who was once
+herself.
+
+She came home with a lighter heart and with the knowledge of what she
+had to do. She put on her blue house coat and sat down to her desk with
+its embossed leather fittings, and there under the lovely, lamp which
+Kingdon Knox had given her she wrote to Nannie.
+
+She gave the letter to Nannie the next morning. "I want you to read it
+when you are all alone. Then tear it up. It must always be just between
+you and me, Nannie."
+
+Nannie read the letter in the lunch hour. She got her lunch at a
+cafeteria and there was a rest room. It was very quiet and she had a
+corner to herself. She wondered what Mary had to say to her, and why she
+didn't talk it out instead of writing about it.
+
+But Mary had felt that she could not trust herself to speak. There would
+have been Nannie's eyes to meet, questions to answer; and this meant so
+much. Paper and pen were impersonal.
+
+     "It isn't easy to talk such things out, Nannie. I should never have
+     written this if I had not realized last night that your feet were
+     following the path which my own have followed for fifteen years.
+     And I knew that you were envying me and wanting to be like me; and
+     I am saying what I shall say in this letter so that I may save you,
+     Nannie.
+
+     "When I first came into Mr. Knox's office I was young like you, and
+     I had a lover, young and fine like Dick, and he satisfied me. We
+     had our plans--of a home and the happiness we should have together.
+     If I had married him, I should now have sons and daughters growing
+     up about me, and when Christmas came there would be a tree and
+     young faces smiling, and my husband, smiling.
+
+     "But Mr. Knox talked to me as he talked to you. He told me, too, to
+     wait--for Prince Charming. He told me I was too fine to be wasted.
+     He hinted that the man I was planning to marry was a plain fellow,
+     not good enough for me. He talked and I listened. He opened vistas.
+     I saw myself raised to a different sphere by some man like Mr.
+     Knox--just as well groomed, just as distinguished, just as rich and
+     wonderful.
+
+     "But such men don't come often into the lives of girls like you and
+     me, Nannie. I know that now. I did not know it then. But Mr. Knox
+     should have known it. Yet he held out the hope; and at last he
+     robbed me of my future, of the little home, my fine, strong
+     husband. He robbed me of my woman's heritage of a child in my arms.
+
+     "And in return he gave me--nothing. I have found in the years that
+     I have been with him that he likes to be admired and looked up to
+     by pretty women. He likes to mold us into something exquisite and
+     ornamental, he likes to feel that he has molded us. He likes to see
+     our blushes. All these years that I have been with him, he has
+     liked to feel that I looked upon him as the ideal toward which all
+     my girlish dreams tended.
+
+     "He is not in love with me, and I am not in love with him. But he
+     has always known that if he had been free and had wooed me, I
+     should have felt that King Cophetua had come to the beggar maid.
+     Yet, too late, I can see that if he had been free he would never
+     have wooed me. His ambition would have carried him up and beyond
+     anything I can ever hope to be, and he would have sought some woman
+     of his own circle who would have contributed to his material
+     success.
+
+     "And now he is trying to spoil your life, Nannie--to make you
+     discontented with your future with Dick. You look at him and see in
+     your life some day a Prince Charming. But I tell you this, Nannie,
+     that Prince Charming will never come. And after a time all you will
+     have to show for the years that you have spent in the office will
+     be just a pretty room, a few bits of wood and leather and bronze in
+     exchange for warm, human happiness, clinging hands, a husband like
+     Dick, who adores you, who comes home at night, eager--for you!
+
+     "You can have all this--and I have lost it. And there isn't much
+     ahead of me. I shan't always be ornamental, and then Mr. Knox will
+     let me drop out of his life, as he has let others drop out. And
+     there'll be loneliness and old age and--nothing else.
+
+     "Oh, Nannie, I want you to marry Dick. I want you to know that all
+     the rest is dust and ashes. I feel tired and old; and when I think
+     of your youth, and beauty, I want Dick to have it, not Mr. Knox,
+     who will flatter and--forget.
+
+     "Tear this letter up, Nannie. It hasn't been easy to write. I don't
+     want anybody but you to read it."
+
+
+But Nannie did not tear it up.
+
+She tucked it in her bag and went to telephone to Dick.
+
+And would he meet her on the corner under the street lamp that night
+when she came home from the office? She had something to tell him.
+
+Dick met Nannie, and presently they pursued their rapturous way. A
+little later Tommy Jackson passed by. Something caught his eye.
+
+A bit of white paper.
+
+He stooped and picked it up. It was Mary's letter to Nannie. Nannie had
+cried into her little handkerchief while she talked to Dick, and in
+getting the handkerchief out of the bag the letter had come with it and
+had dropped unnoticed to the ground.
+
+It had been years since Tommy had seen any of Mary's writing. A sentence
+caught his eye, and he read straight through. After all, there are
+things permitted an officer of the law which might be unseemly in the
+average citizen.
+
+And when he had read, Tommy began to say things beneath his breath. And
+the chances are that had Kingdon Knox appeared at that moment things
+would have fared badly with him.
+
+But it was Mary Barker who came. She had under her arm in a paper
+parcel the fat doll with the blond curls and the blue socks. She did not
+see Tommy until she was almost upon him.
+
+Then she said: "What are you doing here, Tommy?"
+
+"Why shouldn't I be here?"
+
+"This isn't your beat."
+
+"It has been my beat since two weeks ago. I've seen you go by every
+night, Mary."
+
+She stood looking up at him. And he looked down at her; and so, of
+course, their gaze met, and something that she saw in Tommy's eyes made
+Mary's overflow.
+
+"Mary, darling," said Tommy tenderly.
+
+"You said you wouldn't forgive me."
+
+"That was fifteen years ago."
+
+"Tommy, I'm sorry."
+
+Tommy stood very straight as became an officer of the law with, the eyes
+of the world upon him.
+
+"May," he said, "I just read your letter to Nannie. She dropped it. If
+I'd known the things in that letter fifteen years ago I'd have stayed on
+my job until I got you. But I thought you didn't care."
+
+"I thought so too," said Mary.
+
+"But the letter told me that you wanted a husband's loving heart and a
+strong arm," said Tommy, "and, please God, you are going to have them,
+Mary. And now you run along, girl, dear. I can't be making love when I'm
+on duty. But I'll come and kiss you at nine."
+
+So Mary ran along, and her heart sang. And when she got home she
+unwrapped the fat doll and kissed every curl of her, and she set her
+under the lovely lamp; and then she got a long box and put something in
+it and wrapped it and addressed it to Kingdon Knox.
+
+And after that she went to the window and stood there, watching until
+she saw Tommy coming.
+
+And the next morning when Kingdon Knox found the long box on his desk,
+addressed in Mary's handwriting, he thought it was a Christmas present,
+and he opened it, smiling.
+
+But his smile died as he read the note which lay on top of a string of
+jade beads:
+
+     "I am sending them back, Mr. Knox, with my resignation. I should
+     never have taken them. But somehow you made me feel that I was a
+     sort of fairy princess, and that jade beads belonged to me, and
+     everything beautiful, and that some day life would bring them. But
+     life isn't that, and you knew it and I didn't. Life is just warm
+     human happiness, and a home, and work for those we love. And so,
+     after all, I am going to marry Tommy. And Nannie is going to marry
+     Dick. In a way it is a happy ending, and in a way it isn't, because
+     I've grown away from the kind of life I must live with Tommy, and I
+     am afraid that in some ways I am not fitted for it. But Tommy says
+     that I am silly to be afraid. And in the future I am going to trust
+     Tommy."
+
+
+And so Mary went out of Kingdon Knox's life. And on Christmas Day at the
+head of a great table, with servants to the right of him and servants to
+the left, he carved a mammoth turkey; and there was silver shining, and
+glass sparkling and lovely women smiling, all in honor of the merry
+season.
+
+But Kingdon Knox was not merry as he thought of the jade beads and of
+Mary's empty desk.
+
+
+
+
+BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
+
+I
+
+
+With the Merryman girls economy was a fine art. Money was spent by them
+to preserve the family traditions. Nothing else counted. Everything was
+sacrificed to the gods of yesterday.
+
+Little Anne Merryman had shivered all her short life in the bleakness
+of this domestic ideal.
+
+"Why can't I have butter on my bread?" she had demanded in her
+long-legged schoolgirl days, when she had worn her fair hair in a fat
+braid down her back.
+
+The answers had never been satisfying. Well-bred people might, Amy
+indicated, go without butter. Their income was not elastic, and there
+were things more important.
+
+"What things? Amy, I'm so hungry I could eat a house."
+
+It was these expressions of Anne's about food which shocked Amy and
+Ethel.
+
+"I'd sell my soul for a slice of roast beef."
+
+"Anne!"
+
+"Well, I would!"
+
+"I--I don't see how you can be so ordinary, Anne."
+
+"Ordinary" in the lexicon of Amy and Ethel meant "plebeian." No one in
+the Merryman family had ever been so ordinary as Anne. Hitherto the
+Merrymans had been content to warm themselves by the fires of their own
+complacency, to feed themselves on past splendors; for the Merrymans
+were as old as Norman rule in England. They had come to America with
+grants from the king, they had family portraits and family silver and
+family diamonds, and now in this generation of orphaned girls, two of
+them at least were fighting the last battles of family pride. The
+fortunes of the Merrymans had declined, and Amy and Ethel, with their
+backs, as it were, to the wall, were making a final stand.
+
+"We must have evening clothes, we must entertain our friends, we must
+pay for the family pew"; this was their nervous litany. The Merrymans
+had always dressed and entertained and worshiped properly; hence it was
+for lace or tulle or velvet, as the case might be, that their money
+went. It went, too, for the very elegant and exclusive little dinners to
+which, on rare occasions, their friends were bidden; and it went for the
+high place in the synagogue from which they prayed their pharisaical
+prayers.
+
+"We thank thee, Lord, that we are not as others," prayed Amy and Ethel
+fervently.
+
+But Anne prayed no such prayers. She wanted to be like other people. She
+wanted to eat and drink with the multitude, she wanted a warm, warm
+heart, a groaning board. She wanted snugness and coziness and comfort.
+And she grew up loving these things, and hating the pale walls of their
+old house in Georgetown, the family portraits, the made-over dinner
+gowns that her sisters wore, her own made-over party frocks.
+
+"Can't I have a new one, Amy?"
+
+"It's Ethel's turn."
+
+So it was when Anne went to a certain diplomatic reception in a
+made-over satin slip, hidden by a cloud of snowy tulle, that Murray
+Flint first waked to the fact of her loveliness.
+
+He had waked ten years earlier to the loveliness of Amy, and five years
+later to the beauty of Ethel.
+
+And now here was Anne!
+
+"She's different though," he told old Molly Winchell; "more spiritual
+than the others."
+
+It was Anne's thinness which deceived him. It was an attractive
+thinness. She was pale, with red lips, and the fat fair braids had given
+way to a shining knot. She wore the family pearls, and the effect was,
+as Murray had said, spiritual. Anne had the look, indeed, of one who
+sees heavenly visions.
+
+Amy had never had that look. She was dark and vivid. If at thirty the
+vividness was emphasized by artificial means the fault lay in Amy's
+sacrifice to her social ideals, She needed the butter which she denied
+herself. She needed cream, and eggs, and her doctor had told her so. And
+Amy had kept the knowledge to herself.
+
+Ethel, eating as little as Amy--or even less--had escaped, miraculously,
+attenuation. At twenty she had been a plump little beauty. She was still
+plump. Her neck in her low-cut gown was lovely. Her figure was not
+fashionable, and she lacked Amy's look of race.
+
+"They are all charming," Molly Winchell said. "Why don't you marry one
+of them, Murray?"
+
+"Marriage," said Murray, "would spoil it."
+
+"Spoil what?"
+
+Murray turned on her his fine dark eyes. "They are such darlings--the
+three of them."
+
+"You Turk!" Molly surveyed him over the top of her sapphire feather fan.
+"So that's it, is it? You want them all."
+
+Murray thought vaguely it was something like that. For ten years he had
+had Amy and Ethel--Amy at twenty, fire and flame, Ethel at fifteen, with
+bronze locks and lovely color. In those years Anne had promised little
+in the way of beauty or charm. She had read voraciously, curled up in
+chairs or on rugs, and had waked now and then to his presence and a hot
+argument.
+
+"Why don't you like Dickens, Murray?"
+
+"Oh, his people, Anne--clowns."
+
+"They're not!"
+
+"Boors; beggars." He made a gesture of distaste.
+
+"They're darlings--Mark Tapley and Ruth Pinch. Murray, if I had a
+beefsteak I'd make a beefsteak pie."
+
+There was more of pathos in this than Murray imagined. There had been no
+beef on the Merryman table for many moons.
+
+"Murray, did you ever eat tripe?"
+
+"My dear child---"
+
+"It sounds dee-licious when Toby Veck has it on a cold morning. And
+there's the cricket on the hearth and the teakettle singing. I'd love to
+hear a kettle sing like that, Murray; wouldn't you?"
+
+But Murray wouldn't. He had the same kind of mind as Amy and Ethel. He
+did not like robust and hearty things or robust and hearty people. He
+wore a corset to keep his hips small, and stood up at teas and
+receptions with an almost military carriage. Of course he had to sit
+down at dinners, but he sat very straight. He, too, had family portraits
+and family silver, and he lived scrupulously up to them. His fortunes,
+unlike the Merrymans', had not declined. He had money enough and to
+spare. He could have made Amy or Ethel very comfortable if he had
+married either of them. But he had not wanted to marry. There had been a
+time when he had liked to think of Amy as presiding over his table. She
+would have fitted in perfectly with the old portraits and old silver and
+the family diamonds. Then Ethel had come along. She had not fitted in
+with the diamonds and portraits and silver, but she had stirred his
+pulses.
+
+"Anywhere else but in Georgetown," old Molly Winchell was saying, "those
+girls would have been snapped up long ago. It's a poor matrimonial
+market."
+
+Murray was complacently aware that he was geographically the only
+eligible man on the Merryman horizon. Unless Amy and Ethel could marry
+with distinction they would not marry at all. It was not lack of
+attraction which kept them single, but lack of suitors in their own set.
+
+And now here was Anne, with Ethel's loveliness and Amy's look of race.
+There was also that look of angelic detachment from the things of earth.
+
+So Murray's eyes rested on Anne with great content as she came and sat
+beside Molly Winchell.
+
+Other eyes rested on her--Amy's with quick jealousy. "So now it's Anne,"
+she said to herself as she perceived Murray's preoccupation. Five years
+ago she had said, "Now it's Ethel," as she had seen him turn to the
+fresher beauty. Before that she had dreamed of herself as loving and
+beloved. It had been hard to shut her eyes to that vision.
+
+Yet--better Anne than an outsider. Amy had a fierce sense of
+proprietorship in Murray. If she gave him to Ethel, to Anne, he would be
+still in a sense hers. With Anne or Ethel she would share his future,
+partake of his present.
+
+A third pair of eyes surveyed Anne with interest as she sat by Molly.
+
+"Corking kid," said the owner of the eyes to himself.
+
+His name was Maxwell Sears. He was not in the least like Murray Flint.
+He was from the Middle West, he was red-blooded, and he cared nothing
+for the past. He held it as a rather negligible honor that he had a
+Declaration-signing ancestor. The important things to Maxwell were that
+he was representing his district in Congress; that he was still young
+enough to carry his college ideals into politics, and that he had just
+invested a small portion of the fortune which his father had left him in
+a model stock farm in Illinois.
+
+For the rest, he was big, broad-shouldered, clean-minded. Now and then
+he looked up at the stars, and what he saw there swayed him level with
+the men about him. Because of the stars he called no man a fool, except
+such as deemed himself wiser than the rest. Because he believed in the
+people they believed in him. It was that which had elected him. It was
+that which would elect him again.
+
+"Corking kid," said Maxwell Sears, with his smiling eyes on Anne.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+In the course of the evening Maxwell managed an introduction. He found
+Anne quaint and charming. That she was reading Dickens amused him. He
+had thought that no one read Dickens in these days. How did it happen?
+
+She said that she had discovered him for herself--many years ago.
+
+How many years?
+
+Well, to be explicit, ten. She had been eleven when she had found a new
+world in the fat little books. They had a lot of old books. She loved
+them all. But Dickens more than any. Didn't he?
+
+He did. "His heart beat with the heart of the common people. It was that
+which made him great."
+
+"Murray hates him."
+
+"Who is Murray?"
+
+Anne pondered. "Well, he's a family friend. We girls were brought up on
+him."
+
+"Brought up on him?"
+
+"Yes. Anything Murray likes we are expected to like. If he doesn't like
+things we don't."
+
+"Oh."
+
+"He's over there by Mrs. Winchell."
+
+Maxwell looked and knew the type. "But you don't agree about Dickens?"
+
+"No. And Amy says that Murray's wiser than I. But I'm not sure. Amy
+thinks that all men are wiser than women."
+
+Maxwell chuckled. Anne was refreshing. She was far from modern in her
+modes of thought. She was--he hunted for the word and found
+it--mid-Victorian in her attitude of mind.
+
+He wondered what Winifred Reed would think of her. Winifred lived in
+Chicago. She was athletic and intellectual. She wrote tabloid dramas,
+drove her own car, dressed smartly, and took a great interest in
+Maxwell's career. She wrote to him once a week, and he always answered
+her letters. Now and then she failed to write, and he missed her letters
+and told her so. It was altogether a pleasant friendship.
+
+She hated the idea of Maxwell's farm. She thought it a backward step.
+"Are you going to spend the precious years ahead of you in the company
+of cows?"
+
+"There'll be pigs too, Winifred; and chickens. And, of course, my
+horses."
+
+"You belong in a world of men. It's the secret of your success that men
+like you."
+
+"My cows like me--and there's great comfort after the stress of a
+stormy session in the reposefulness of a pig."
+
+"I wish you'd be serious."
+
+"I am serious. Perhaps it's a throwback, Winifred. There is farmer blood
+in my veins."
+
+It was something deeper than that. It was his virile joy in
+fundamentals. He loved his golden-eared Guernseys and his black
+Berkshires and his White Wyandottes--not because of their choiceness but
+because they were cows and pigs and chickens; and he kept a pair of
+pussy cats, half a dozen dogs, and as many horses, because man
+primitively had made friends of the dumb brutes upon whom the ease and
+safety of his life depended.
+
+There was, rather strangely, something about Anne which fitted in with
+this atavistic idea. She was, more than Winifred, a hearthstone woman. A
+man might carry her over his threshold and find her when he came home o'
+nights. It was hard to visualize Winifred as waiting or watching or
+welcoming. She was always going somewhere with an air of having
+important things to do, and coming back with an air of having done them.
+Maxwell felt that these important things were not connected in any way
+with domestic matters. One did not, indeed, expect domesticity of
+Winifred.
+
+Thus Anne, drawing upon him by mysterious forces, drew him also by her
+beauty and a certain wistfulness in her eyes. He had once had a dog,
+Amber Witch, whose eyes had held always a wistful question. He had
+tried to answer it. She had grown old on his hearth, yet always to the
+end of her eyes had asked. He hoped now that in some celestial hunting
+ground she had found an answer to that subtle need.
+
+He told Anne about Amber Witch. "I have one of her puppies on my farm."
+
+She was much interested. "I've never had a dog; or a cat."
+
+He had, he said, a big pair of tabbies who slept in the hay and came up
+to the dairy when the milk was strained. There were two blue porcelain
+dishes for their sacred use. There was, he said, milk and to spare. He
+grew eloquent as he told of the number of quarts daily. He bragged of
+his butter. His cheeses had won prizes at county fairs. As for
+chickens--they had fresh eggs and broilers without end. He had his own
+hives, too, white-clover honey. And his housekeeper made hot biscuit. In
+a month or two there'd be asparagus and strawberries. Say! Yes, he was
+eloquent.
+
+Anne was hungry. There had been a meagre dinner that evening. The other
+girls had not seemed to care. But Anne had cared.
+
+"I'm starved," she had said as she had surveyed the table. "Let's pawn
+the spoons and have one square meal."
+
+"Anne!"
+
+"Oh, we're beggars on horseback"--bitterly--"and I hate it."
+
+It was her moment of rebellion against the tyranny of tradition. Amy had
+had such a moment years ago when her mother had taken her away from
+school. Amy had a brilliant mind, and she had loved study, but her
+mother had brought her to see that there was no money for college.
+"You'd better have a year or two in society, Amy. And this craze for
+higher education is rather middle-class."
+
+Ethel's rebellion had come when she had wanted to marry a round-faced
+chap who lived across the street. They had played together from
+childhood. His people were pleasant folks but lacked social background.
+So Ethel's romance had been nipped in the bud. The round-faced chap had
+married another girl. And now Amy at thirty and Ethel at twenty-five
+were crystallizing into something rather hard and brilliant, as Anne
+would perhaps crystallize if something didn't happen.
+
+The something which happened was Maxwell Sears. Anne listened to the
+things he said about his farm and felt that they couldn't be true.
+
+"It sounds like a fairy tale."
+
+"It isn't. And it's all tremendously interesting."
+
+He looked very much alive as he said it, and Anne felt the thrill of his
+energy and enthusiasm. Murray was never enthusiastic; neither were Amy
+and Ethel. They were all indeed a bit petrified.
+
+Before he left her Maxwell asked Anne if he could call. He came promptly
+two nights later and brought with him a bunch of violets and a box of
+chocolates. Anne pinned the violets in the front of the gray frock that
+gave her the look of a cloistered nun, and ate up the chocolates.
+
+Amy was shocked. "Anne, you positively gobbled--"
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"Well, you ate a pound at least."
+
+Anne protested. Maxwell had eaten a lot, and Ethel and Amy had eaten a
+few, and Murray had come in.
+
+"You remember, Amy, Murray came in."
+
+"He didn't touch one, Anne. He never eats chocolates."
+
+"He's afraid of getting fat."
+
+"Anne!"
+
+"He is. When he takes me out to lunch he thinks of himself, not of me.
+The last time we had grapefruit and broiled mushrooms and lettuce; and I
+wanted chops."
+
+Maxwell had been glad to see Anne eat the chocolates. She had seemed as
+happy as a child, and he had liked that. There was nothing childish
+about Winifred. She had been always grown-up and competent and helpful.
+He felt that he owed Winifred a great deal. They were not engaged, but
+he rather hoped that some day they might marry. Of course that would
+depend upon Winifred. She would probably make him give up the farm and
+he would hate that. But a man might give up a farm for a woman like
+Winifred and still have more than he deserved.
+
+It will be seen that Maxwell was modest, especially where women were
+concerned. The complacency of Murray Flint, weighing Amy against Ethel
+and Ethel against Amy and Anne against both, would have seemed infamous
+to Maxwell. He felt that it was only by the grace of God that any woman
+gave herself to any man. He had a sense of honor which was founded on
+decency rather than on convention. He had also a sense of high romance
+which belonged more fittingly to the fifteenth than to the twentieth
+century. He was not, however, aware of it. He looked upon himself as a
+plain and practical chap who had a few things to work out politically
+before he settled down to the serious business of farming. Of course if
+he married Winifred he wouldn't settle down to the farm, but he would
+settle down to something.
+
+In the meantime here was Anne, reading Dickens, eating chocolates, and
+leaning over the rail of the House Gallery to listen to his speeches.
+
+It was rather wonderful to have her there. She wore a gray cape with a
+chinchilla collar made out of Amy's old muff. A straight sailor hat of
+rough straw came well down over her forehead and showed fluffs of
+shining hair at the sides. Her little gray-gloved hands clasped the
+violets he had given her. Above the violets her eyes were a deeper blue.
+
+She came always alone. "Amy doesn't know," she had told him frankly;
+"she wouldn't let me, come if she did."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I am supposed to be chaperoned."
+
+"My dear child, I told you to bring either or both of your sisters."
+
+"I don't want them. They would spoil it."
+
+"How?"
+
+She tried to explain. He and she could see things in the old Capitol
+that Amy and Ethel couldn't.
+
+He laughed, but knew it true. Anne's imagination met his in a rather
+remarkable fashion. When they walked through Statuary Hall they saw not
+Fulton and Pere Marquette and Carroll of Carrollton; they saw, rather, a
+thousand ships issuing forth on the steam of a teakettle; they saw
+civilization following a black-frocked prophet; they saw aristocracy
+raising its voice in the interest of democracy.
+
+As for the mysterious whispering echo, they repudiated all talk of
+acoustics. It was for them an eerie thing, like the laughter of elves or
+the shriek of a banshee.
+
+"Don't say every-day things to me," Anne had instructed Maxwell when he
+had first placed her behind a mottled marble pillar before leaving for
+the spot where he could speak to her by this unique wireless.
+
+There came to her, therefore, a part of a famous speech; the murmured
+words flung back by that strange sounding board rang like a bell:
+
+"Give me liberty or give me death!"
+
+She emerged from her corner, starry-eyed. "It was as if I heard him say
+it."
+
+"Perhaps it was he, and I was only a mouthpiece."
+
+"I should think they'd like to come back. Will you come?"
+
+He laughed. "Who knows? I'll come if you are here."
+
+To have brought a third into these adventures would have robbed them of
+charm. Knowing this he argued that the child was safe with him. Why
+worry?
+
+They always lunched together before he took her up to the Members'
+Gallery, and went himself to the floor of the House. He let her order
+what she pleased and liked The definite way in which she did it. They
+had usually, chops and peas, or steak, and ice-cream at the end.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Then suddenly; things stopped. The reason that they stopped was Murray.
+He saw Anne one day in the House Gallery and asked Amy about it.
+
+"How did she happen to be up there alone?"
+
+Amy asked Anne. Anne told the truth.
+
+"I've had lunch three times with Mr. Sears, and I've listened to his
+speeches. It's something about the League of Nations. He believes in it,
+but thinks we've got to be careful about tying ourselves up."
+
+Amy did not care in the least what Maxwell Sears believed. The thing
+that worried her was Murray. She wanted him to approve of Anne. If Amy
+had thought in a less limited circle she might have worked the thing out
+that if Maxwell married Anne it would narrow Murray's choice down to
+herself and Ethel. But there was always that vague fear of some outside
+siren who would capture Murray. If he had Anne, he would then be safely
+in the family.
+
+She realized, in the days following the revelation of the clandestine
+meetings with Maxwell, that Murray was depending upon her to see that
+Anne's affections did not stray into forbidden paths. He said as much
+one afternoon when he found Amy alone in an atmosphere of old portraits,
+old books, old bronzes. She sat in a Jacobean chair and poured tea for
+him. The massive lines of the chair made her proportions seem
+wraithlike. Her white face with its fixed spots of red was a high light
+among the shadows.
+
+"Where's Anne?"
+
+"She and Ethel have gone to the matinee with Molly Winchell."
+
+"Why didn't you go?"
+
+"Molly never takes but two of us and, of course, this is Anne's first
+winter out. I have to step back--and let her have her chance."
+
+He chose to be gallant. "You are always lovely, Amy."
+
+His compliment fell cold. Amy felt old and tired. She had a pain in her
+side. It had been getting very bad of late, and she coughed at night.
+She had been to her doctor, and again he had emphasized the need of a
+change of climate and of nourishing food. Amy had come away unconvinced.
+
+She would have a chance in July when she and her sisters would go to
+the Eastern Shore for their annual visit to their Aunt Elizabeth. As for
+different food, she ate enough--all the doctors in the world couldn't
+make her spend any more money on the table.
+
+Murray stood up very straight by the mantelpiece, under the portrait of
+one of the Merryman great-grandfathers in a bag wig, and talked of Anne:
+
+"I believe I am falling in love with her, Amy."
+
+Amy's heart said, "It has come at last." Her brain said, "He has
+discovered it because of Maxwell Sears." Her lips said, "I don't wonder.
+She's a dear child, Murray."
+
+"She's beautiful."
+
+Murray swayed up a little on his toes. It made him seem thinner and
+taller. He could see himself reflected in the long mirror on the
+opposite wall. He liked the reflection of the thin tall man.
+
+"She's beautiful, Amy. I am going to ask her to marry me. I can't have
+some other fellow running off with her. She belongs to Georgetown."
+
+He seemed to think that settled it. The pain in Amy's side was sharper.
+She felt that she couldn't quite stand seeing Murray happy with Anne.
+"She's--she's such a child." Her voice shook.
+
+"Well," said Murray, glancing at the tall thin man in the mirror, "of
+course she is young. But Maxwell Sears is coming here a lot. Is he in
+love with her?"
+
+"I'm not sure. She amuses him. She isn't in love with him or with
+anybody."
+
+"Not even with me?" Murray laughed a little. "But we can remedy that,
+can't we, Amy? But you might hint at what I'm expecting of her. I don't
+want to startle her." He came and sat down beside her. "You are always a
+great dear about doing things for me."
+
+The pain stabbed her like a knife. "I'll do my best."
+
+She had a nervous feeling that she must keep Murray from talking to her
+like that. She rang for hot water, and their one maid, Charlotte,
+brought it in a Sheffield jug. Then Ethel and Anne and Molly Winchell
+arrived, and once more Murray stood up, tall and self-conscious as he
+stole side glances at himself in the mirror.
+
+Maxwell Sears had brought the three women home. He had a fashion of
+following up Anne's engagements and putting his car at her disposal.
+When Amy had vetoed any more adventures at the Capitol he had conceded
+good-naturedly that she was right. After that he had always included Amy
+or Ethel in his invitations.
+
+"They are very pretty dragons," he had written to Winifred, "and little
+Anne is like a princess shut in a tower."
+
+Winifred, reading the letter, had brooded upon it. "He's falling in
+love. A child like that--she'll spoil his future."
+
+Congress was having night sessions. "If I could only have you up there,"
+Maxwell had said to Anne as he had driven her home from the matinee,
+with old Molly and Ethel on the back seat. "I should steal you if I
+dared."
+
+"Please dare."
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+"Yes. To-night. Ethel and Amy are going to a Colonial Dames meeting with
+Molly Winchell. I never go. I hate ancestors."
+
+"I shouldn't let you do it," he hesitated, "but ghosts walk after dark
+in the Capitol corridors."
+
+"I know," she nodded. "Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln."
+
+"Yes. Then you'll come?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+It was the thought of her rendezvous with him that lighted her eyes when
+she talked to Murray. But Murray did not know. So he swayed up on his
+toes and glanced in the glass and was glad of his thinness and
+tallness.
+
+Maxwell came for Anne promptly. "You must get me back by ten," she told
+him. "I have a key, and Charlotte's out."
+
+It was a night of nights, never to be forgotten. Maxwell did not take
+Anne into the Gallery. He had not brought her there to hear speeches or
+to be conspicuous in the glare of lights. He led her through shadowy
+corridors--up wide dim stairways.
+
+At one turn he touched her arm. "Look!" he whispered.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Lafayette passed us--on the stairs."
+
+It was a great game! On the east front Columbus spoke to them of ships
+that sailed toward the sunset; in the Rotunda they kept a tryst with
+William Penn; from the west-front portico they saw a city beautiful--the
+streets under the moon were rivers of light--the great monument reached
+like the soul of Washington toward the stars!
+
+Out there in the moonlight Maxwell spoke of another great soul, gone of
+late to join a glorious company.
+
+"It was he who taught me that life is an adventure."
+
+"Greatheart?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You loved him too?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Anne caught her breath. "To think of him dead--to think of them
+all--dead."
+
+Maxwell looked down at her. "They live somewhere. You believe that,
+don't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He was silent for a moment; then he laid his hand lightly on her
+shoulder. "I feel to-night as if they pressed close."
+
+Oh, it was a rare game to meet great souls in odd corners! They could
+scarcely tear themselves away. But he got her home before her sisters
+arrived, and Anne went to bed soberly, and lay long awake, thinking it
+out. She had never before had such a playmate. In all these years she
+had starved for other things than food.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+In due time Congress adjourned, but Maxwell did not go home. He
+continued to see Anne. Amy was at last driven to her duty by Murray. She
+could not forbid Maxwell the house. There was nothing to do but talk to
+Anne.
+
+Having made up her mind she sought Anne's room at once. Anne, in a
+cheap cotton kimono, was braiding her hair for the night. The sleeves of
+the kimono were short and showed her thin white arms. Amy had on a
+blanket wrapper. Her hair was in metal curlers. She looked old and
+tired, and now and then she coughed.
+
+Anne got into bed and drew the covers up to her chin. "I'm so cold, I
+believe there are icicles on my eyebrows. Amy, my idea of heaven is a
+place where it is as hot as--Hades."
+
+"I don't see where you get such ideas. Ethel and I don't talk that way.
+We don't even think that way, Anne."
+
+"Maybe when I am as old as you---" Anne began, and was startled at the
+look on Amy's face.
+
+"I'm not old!" Amy said passionately. "Anne, I haven't lived at all, and
+I'm only thirty."
+
+Anne stared at her. "Oh, my darling, I didn't mean---"
+
+"Of course you didn't. And it was silly of me to say such a thing. Anne,
+I'm cold. I'm going to sit on the foot of your bed and wrap up while I
+talk to you."
+
+Anne's bed had four pineapple posts and a pink canopy. The governor of a
+state had slept in that bed for years. He was one of the Merryman
+grandfathers. Amy could have bought mountains of food for the price of
+that bed. But she would have starved rather than sell it.
+
+Anne under the pink canopy was like a rose--a white rose with a faint
+flush. The color in Amy's cheeks was fixed and hard. Yet even with her
+oldness and tiredness and metal curlers she had the look of race which
+attracted Murray.
+
+"Anne," she said, "Murray and I had a long talk about you the other
+day."
+
+"Murray always talks--long." Anne was yawning.
+
+"Please be serious, Anne. He wants to marry you."
+
+"Marry me!" incredulously. "I thought it was you; or Ethel."
+
+"Well, it isn't," wearily. "And it's a great opportunity--for you,
+Anne."
+
+"Opportunity for what?"
+
+Amy had a sense of the futility of trying to explain.
+
+"There aren't many men like him."
+
+"Fortunately."
+
+"Anne, how can you? He's really paying you a great compliment."
+
+"Why didn't he ask me himself?"
+
+"He didn't want to startle you. You're so young. Murray has extreme
+fineness of feeling."
+
+Anne tilted her chin. "I don't see what he finds in me."
+
+"You're young"--with a tinge of bitterness--"and he says you are
+beautiful."
+
+Anne threw off the covers and set her bare feet on the floor.
+"Beautiful!" she scoffed, but went to the mirror. "I'm thin," she
+meditated, "but I've got nice hair."
+
+"We all have nice hair," said Amy; "but you've got Ethel's complexion
+and my figure."
+
+"I don't think I want to be loved for my complexion." Anne turned
+suddenly and faced her sister. "Or my figure. I'd rather be loved for my
+mind."
+
+"Men don't love women for their minds," said Amy wearily. "You'll learn
+that when you have lived as long as I have. Get back into bed, Anne.
+You'll freeze."
+
+But Anne, shivering in the cotton kimono, argued the question hotly: "I
+should think Murray would want to marry someone with congenial tastes.
+He hates everything that I like."
+
+"He'll make an excellent husband. You ought to be happy to know that
+he--cares."
+
+She began to cough--a racking cough that left her exhausted.
+
+Anne, bending over her, said, "Why, Amy, are you sick?"
+
+"I'm--I'm rather wretched, Anne."
+
+"Are you taking anything for your cough?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You ought to have a doctor."
+
+"I have had one."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+Amy put her off. "I'll feel better in the morning, Anne. Don't worry."
+Again the cough tore her. Anne flew to Ethel.
+
+"See what you can do for her. There is blood on her handkerchief! I am
+going to call a doctor."
+
+The doctor, arriving, checked the cough. Later he told Anne that Amy
+must have a change and strengthening food.
+
+"At once. She's in a very serious state. I've told her, but she won't
+listen."
+
+In the days that followed Anne arraigned herself hotly. "I've been a
+selfish pig--eating up everything--and Amy needed it."
+
+In this state of mind she fasted--and was famished.
+
+Maxwell, noting her paleness, demanded, "What's the matter? Aren't you
+well?"
+
+She wanted to cry out, "I'm hungry." But she, too, had her pride.
+
+"Amy's ill."
+
+He got it out of her finally. "The doctor is much worried about her. He
+says she needs a change."
+
+"You need it too."
+
+She needed food, but she couldn't tell him that. The state of their
+exchequer was alarming. It had been revealed to her since Amy's illness
+that there was really nothing coming in until the next quarter.
+
+"Why didn't you let Charlotte go, Ethel?"
+
+"We've always had a maid. What would people think?"
+
+"And because of what people think, Amy is to starve?"
+
+"Anne, how can you?"
+
+"Well, it comes to that. She needs things; and we don't need Charlotte."
+
+But when they spoke to Amy of sending Charlotte away she was feverishly
+excited. "There's nobody to do the work."
+
+"I can do it," said Anne.
+
+"We Merrymans have never worked," Amy began to cry. "I'd rather die,"
+she said, "than have people think we are--poor."
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Maxwell was a man of action. When he saw Anne pale he sought a remedy.
+"Look here, why can't you and your sisters come out to my farm?"
+
+Anne, remembering certain things--broilers and fresh eggs--was thrilled
+by the invitation. "I'd love it! But Amy won't accept."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"She's terribly stiff."
+
+He laughed. "Perhaps I can talk her over."
+
+Amy, lying on her couch, very weary, facing a shadowy future, felt his
+magnetism as he talked to her. It was as if life spoke through his lips.
+Murray had sat there beside her only an hour before. He had brought her
+roses but he had brought no hope.
+
+Fear had for weeks kept Amy company. Through her nights and days it had
+stalked, a pale spectre. And now Maxwell was saying: "You'll be well in
+a month. Of course you'll come! There's room for half a dozen. You three
+won't half fill the house."
+
+It was decided, however, that Ethel must stay in town. Amy had a nervous
+feeling that with the house closed Murray might slip away from them.
+
+Old Molly Winchell, summing up the situation, said to Murray: "Of course
+Anne will marry Maxwell Sears. There's nothing like propinquity."
+
+Murray, startled, admitted the danger. "It would be an awful thing for
+Anne."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He's rather a bounder."
+
+Old Molly Winchell hit him on the arm with her fan. Her eyes twinkled
+maliciously. "He's nothing of the sort, and you know it. You're jealous,
+Murray."
+
+Murray's jealousy was, quite uniquely, not founded on any great depth of
+love for Anne. His appropriation of the three sisters had been a pretty
+and pleasant pastime. When he had finally decided upon Anne as the
+pivotal center of his universe he had contemplated a future in which the
+other sisters also figured--especially Amy. He had, indeed, not thought
+of a world without Amy.
+
+Her illness had troubled him, but not greatly. Things had always come to
+him as he had wanted them, and he was quite sure that if Anne was to be
+the flame to light his future, Providence would permit Amy to be, as it
+were, the keeper of the light.
+
+He felt it necessary to warn Anne: "Don't fall in love with Sears."
+
+"Don't be silly, Murray."
+
+"Is it silly to say that I love you, Anne?"
+
+They were alone in the old library, with its books and bronzes and
+bag-wigged ancestors. And Murray sat down beside Anne and took her hand
+in his and said, "I love you, Anne."
+
+It was a proposal which was not to be treated lightly. In spite of
+herself, Anne was flattered. Murray had always loomed on her horizon as
+something of a bore but none the less a person of importance.
+
+She caught her breath quickly. "Please, Murray"--her blushes were
+bewitching--"I'm too young to think about such things. And I'm not in
+love with anybody."
+
+Murray raised her hand to his lips. "Keep yourself for me, little Anne."
+He rose and stood looking down at her. "You're a very charming child,"
+he said. "Do you know it?"
+
+Anne, gazing at herself in the glass later, wondered if it were true. It
+was nice of Murray to say it. But she was not in the least in love with
+Murray. He was too old. And Maxwell was too old. Anne's dreams of
+romance had to do with glorified youth. She wanted a young Romeo
+shouting his passion to the stars!
+
+She packed her bag, however, in high anticipation. Maxwell was a
+splendid playmate, and she thought of his farm as flowing with milk and
+honey!
+
+Maxwell wrote to Winifred that he was coming home and bringing guests.
+
+"Run down and meet them. Anne's a corking kid."
+
+Winifred knew what had happened. Some girl had got hold of Maxwell. It
+was always the way with men like that--big men; they were credulous
+creatures where women were concerned, and it would make such a
+difference to Maxwell's future if he married the wrong woman.
+
+She decided to go down as soon as she could. She felt that she ought to
+hurry, but there were things that held her. And so it happened that
+before she reached the farm Maxwell had asked Anne to marry him. There
+had been a cool evening when the scent of lilacs had washed in great
+waves through the open windows. Amy had gone to bed and he and Anne had
+dined alone with the flare of candles between them, and the rest of the
+room in pleasant shadow. And then their coffee had been served, and Aunt
+Mittie, his housekeeper, had asked if there was anything else, and had
+withdrawn, and he had risen and had walked round to Anne's place and had
+laid his hands on her shoulders.
+
+"Little Anne," he had said, "I should like to see you here always."
+
+"Here?"
+
+"As my wife."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+She had had a rapturous week at the farm. She had never known anything
+like it. Aunt Elizabeth, of the Eastern Shore, lived in a sleepy town,
+and Anne's other brief vacations had been spent in more or less
+fashionable resorts. But here was a paradise of plenty; the big wide
+house, the spreading barns, the opulent garden, the rolling fields, the
+enchanting creatures who were sheltered by the barns and fed by the
+fields, and who in return gave payment of yellow cream and warm white
+eggs, and who lowed at night and cackled in the morning, and whose days
+were measured by the rising and the setting of the sun.
+
+She loved it all--the purring pussies, the companionable pups, the
+steady, faithful older dogs, the lambs in the pasture, the good things
+to eat.
+
+She was glowing with gratitude, and Maxwell was asking insistently,
+"Won't you, Anne?"
+
+She had never been so happy, and he was the source of her happiness.
+Against this background of vivid life the thought of Murray was a pale
+memory.
+
+So her wistful eyes met Maxwell's. "It would be lovely--to live
+here--always."
+
+Later, when she had started up-stairs with her candle, he had kissed
+her, leaning over the rail to watch her as she went up, and Anne had
+gone to sleep tremulous with the thought that her future would lie here
+in this great house with this fine and kindly man.
+
+Winifred, coming down at last, found that she had come too late. Maxwell
+told her as they motored up from the station.
+
+"Wish me happiness, Win. I am going to marry little Anne."
+
+It did not enter his head for a moment that the woman by his side loved
+him. He had thought that if she ever married him it would be a sort of
+concession on her part, a sacrifice to her interest in his future. He
+had a feeling that she would be glad if such a sacrifice were not
+demanded.
+
+But Winifred was not glad. "You are sure you are making no mistake,
+Max?"
+
+"Wait till you see her."
+
+Winifred waited and saw. "She's not in the least in love with him. She
+likes the warm nest she has fallen into. And she'll spoil his future.
+He'll settle down here, and he belongs to the world."
+
+He belonged at least to his constituency.
+
+"I've got to make a speech," he told the three women one morning, "in a
+town twenty miles away. If you girls would like the ride you can motor
+over with me. You needn't listen to my speech if you don't want to."
+
+Amy and Winifred said that of course they wanted to listen. Anne smiled
+happily and said nothing. She was, of course, glad to go, but Maxwell's
+speeches were to her the abstract things of life; the concrete things at
+this moment were the delicious dinner which was before her and the fact
+that in the barn, curled up in the hay, was a new family of
+kittens--little tabbies like their adoring mother.
+
+"Isn't it a lovely world?" she had said to her lover as she had sat in
+the loft with the cuddly cats in her lap.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He knew that it was not all lovely, that somewhere there were lean and
+hungry kittens and lean and hungry folks--but why remind her at such a
+moment?
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+On the way over Anne sat with Winifred. She had insisted that Amy should
+have the front seat with Max. Amy was much better. Life had begun to
+flow into her veins like wine. She had written to Murray: "It is as if a
+miracle had happened."
+
+Winifred, on the back seat, talked to Anne. She had a great deal to say
+about Maxwell's future. "I am sorry he bought the farm."
+
+"Oh, not really." Anne's attention strayed. She had one of the puppies
+in her lap. He kept peeping out from between the folds of her cape with
+his bright eyes. "Isn't he a darling, Winifred?"
+
+"He ought to sell it." Winifred liked dogs, but at this moment she
+wanted Anne's attention. "He ought to sell the farm. He has a great
+future before him. Everybody says it. He simply must not settle down."
+
+"Oh, well, he won't," said Anne easily.
+
+"He will if you let him."
+
+"If I let him?"
+
+"If he thinks you like it."
+
+There was a deep flush on Winifred's cheeks. She was really a very
+handsome girl, with bright brown hair and brown eyes. She wore a small
+brown hat and a sable collar. The collar was open and showed her strong
+white throat.
+
+"If he thinks you like it," she repeated, "he will stay; and he belongs
+to the world; nobody must hold him back. He's the biggest man in his
+party to-day. There is no limit to his powers."
+
+Anne stared at her. "Of course there isn't." She wondered why Winifred
+seemed so terribly in earnest about it. She pulled the puppy's ears.
+"But I should hate to have him sell the farm."
+
+Winifred settled back with a sharp sigh and gazed at the long gray road
+ahead of her. She gazed indeed into a rather blank future. Her talents
+would be, she felt, to some extent wasted. If Max rose to greater
+heights of fame it would be because of his own unaided efforts. This
+child would be no help to him.
+
+The speech Max made to his constituents was not cool and clear-cut like
+the speeches which Anne had heard him make to his colleagues in the
+House. He spoke now with warmth and persuasiveness. Anne, sitting in the
+big car on the edge of the crowd, found herself listening intently. She
+was aware, as he went on, of a new Max. The mass of men who had gathered
+were largely foreigners who knew little of the real meanings of
+democracy. Max was telling them what it meant to be a good American. He
+told it simply, but he was in dead earnest. Anne felt that this
+earnestness was the secret of his power. He wanted men to be good
+Americans, he wanted them to know the privileges they might enjoy in a
+free country, and he was telling them how to keep it free-not by
+violence and mob rule but by remembering their obligations as citizens.
+He told them that they must be always on the side of law and order, that
+they must fight injustice not with the bomb and the red flag but with
+their votes.
+
+"Vote for the man you trust, and not for the man who inflames your
+passions. Your vote is a sacred thing; when you sell it you dishonor
+yourself. Respect yourself, and you'll respect the country that has made
+a man of you."
+
+The response was immediate, the applause tumultuous. After his speech
+they crowded about him. They knew him for their friend. But they knew
+him for more than that. He asked nothing of their manhood but the best.
+He preached honesty and practiced it.
+
+Yet as he climbed into the car Anne had little to say to him. Winifred,
+leaning forward, was emphatic in her praise:
+
+"You have no right to bury yourself, Max."
+
+"My dear girl, I'm not dead yet." He was a bit impatient. He had hoped
+for a word from Anne. But she sat silent, pulling the puppy's ears.
+
+"He's asleep," she said finally as she caught the inquiry in her lover's
+eyes. "He's tired out, poor darling."
+
+She seemed indifferent, but she was not. She had been much stirred. She
+had a strange feeling that something had happened to her while she had
+listened to Maxwell's speech. Some string had broken and her romance was
+out of tune.
+
+She lay awake for a long time that night, thinking it over. She grew hot
+with the thought of the limitations of her previous conception of her
+lover. She had considered him a sort of background for the pleasant
+things he could do for her. She had fitted him to the measure of the
+boxes of candy that he had brought her, the luncheons in the House
+restaurant, the bountiful hospitality of the farm. How lightly she had
+looked down on him as he had stood below her on the stairs with her
+candle in his hand. How casually she had accepted his kiss. She had a
+sudden feeling that she must not let him kiss her again!
+
+Early in the morning she went into Amy's room. "Amy," she said, "how
+soon do you think we can go to Aunt Elizabeth's?"
+
+"Aunt Elizabeth's? Why, Anne?"
+
+"I want to leave here."
+
+"To leave here?" Amy sat up. Even in the bright light of the morning her
+face looked young. Good food and fresh air had done much for her. It had
+been quite heavenly, too, to let care slip away, to have no thought of
+what she should eat or what she should drink or what she should wear.
+"To leave here? I thought you loved it, Anne."
+
+"I've got to get away. I'm not going to marry Maxwell, Amy."
+
+"Anne! What made you change your mind?"
+
+"I can't tell you. Please don't ask me. But I wish you would write to
+Aunt Elizabeth."
+
+"I had a letter from her yesterday. She says we can come at any time.
+But--have you told Max?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Has he done anything?"
+
+"No. It's just--that I can't marry him. Don't ask me, Amy." She broke
+down in a storm of tears.
+
+Amy, soothing her, wondered if after all Anne cared for Murray Flint. It
+was, she felt, the only solution possible. Surely a girl would not throw
+away a chance to marry a man like Maxwell Sears for nothing.
+
+For Amy had learned in the days that she had spent at the farm that
+Maxwell Sears was a man to reckon with. She was very grateful for what
+he had done for her, and she had been glad of Anne's engagement. Murray
+would perhaps be disappointed, but there would still be herself and
+Ethel.
+
+It was not easy to explain things to Maxwell.
+
+"Why are you going now?" he demanded, and was impatient when they told
+him that Aunt Elizabeth expected them. "I don't understand it at all. It
+upsets all of my plans for you, Anne."
+
+That night when he brought Anne's candle she was not on the stairs.
+Winifred and Amy had gone up.
+
+"Anne! Anne!" he called softly.
+
+She came to the top rail and leaned over. "I'm going to bed in the dark.
+There's a wonderful moon."
+
+"Come down--for a minute."
+
+"No."
+
+"Then I'll come up," masterfully.
+
+He mounted the stairs two at a time; but when he reached the landing the
+door was shut!
+
+In the morning he asked her about it. "Why, dearest?"
+
+"Max dear, I can't marry you."
+
+"Nonsense!" His voice was sharp. He laid his hands heavily on her
+shoulders. "Why not? Look at me, Anne. Why not?"
+
+"I'm not going to marry--anybody."
+
+That was all he could get out of her. He pleaded, raged, and grew at
+last white and still with anger. "You might at least tell me your
+reasons."
+
+She said that she would write. Perhaps she could say it better on paper.
+And she was very, very sorry, but she couldn't.
+
+Winifred knew that something was up, but made no comment. Amy, carrying
+out their program of departure, had a sense of regret.
+
+After all, it had been a lovely life, and there were worse things than
+being a sister to Maxwell Sears. Her voice broke a little as she tried
+to thank him on their last morning.
+
+He wrung her hand. "Say a good word for me with Anne. I don't know
+what's the matter with her."
+
+Neither did Amy. And if she was Maxwell's advocate how could she be
+Murray's? She flushed a little.
+
+"Anne's such a child."
+
+He remembered how he had called her a corking kid. She was more than
+that to him now. She stood in the doorway in her gray sailor hat and
+gray cape.
+
+"Anne," he said, "you must have a last bunch of pansies from the
+garden. Come out and help me pick them."
+
+In the garden he asked, "Are you going to kiss me good-bye?"
+
+"No, Max. Please--"
+
+"Then it's 'God bless you, dearest.'"
+
+He forgot the pansies and they went back to where the car waited.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Anne's letter, written from the Eastern Shore, was a long and childish
+screed. "We have always been beggars on horseback," she said. "Of course
+you couldn't know that, Max. We have gone without bread so that we could
+be grand and elegant. We have gone without fire so that we could buy our
+satin gowns for fashionable functions. We went without butter for a year
+so that Amy could entertain the Strangeways, whom she had met years ago
+in Europe. I wouldn't dare tell you what that dinner cost us, but we had
+a cabinet member or two, and the British Ambassador.
+
+"You wondered why I liked Dickens. Well, I read him so that I could get
+a good meal by proxy. I used to gloat over the feasts at Wardle's, and
+Mr. Stiggins' hot toast. And when I met you you gave me--everything.
+Murray Flint thinks that because I am thin and pale I am all spirit,
+and I'm afraid you have the same idea. You didn't dream, did you, that I
+was pale because I hadn't had enough to eat? And when you told me that
+you wanted me to be your wife I looked ahead and saw the good food and
+the roaring fires, and I didn't think of anything else. I honestly
+didn't think of you for a moment, Max.
+
+"There were days, though, when you meant more to me than just that. When
+we played at the Capitol--that night when we met Lafayette on the
+stairs! Nobody had ever played with me. But after we went to the farm I
+was smothered in ease. And I loved it. And I didn't love you. You were
+just--the man who gave me things. Do you see what I mean? And when you
+kissed me on the stairs it was as if I were being kissed by a nice old
+Santa Claus.
+
+"Everybody saw it but you. I am sure Amy knew--and Winifred Reed.
+You--you ought to marry Winifred, Max. Perhaps you will. You won't want
+me after you read this letter. And Winifred is splendid.
+
+"It was your speech to the men that waked me. I saw how big you were,
+and I just--shriveled up.
+
+"And you mustn't worry about me. I am not hungry any more. I feel as if
+I should never want anything to eat. Perhaps it is because I am older
+and haven't a growing appetite. And I am not any of the things you
+thought me. And of course you would be disappointed, and it wouldn't be
+fair."
+
+Having posted this, Anne had other things to do. She wrote mysterious
+letters, and finally came into a room where her sisters and Aunt
+Elizabeth were sewing, with an important-looking paper in her hand.
+
+"I am going to work, Amy."
+
+"To work!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Amy and Ethel and Aunt Elizabeth wore white frocks, and looked very cool
+and feminine and high-bred. Aunt Elizabeth had a nose like Amy's and the
+same look of race.
+
+It was Aunt Elizabeth who said in her commanding voice: "What are you
+talking about, Anne?"
+
+"I am going to work in the War Risk Bureau, Aunt Elizabeth. I wrote to
+two senators, and they helped me."
+
+No woman of the Merryman family had ever worked in an office.
+
+Anne faced a storm of disapproval, but she stood there slim and defiant,
+and stated her reasons.
+
+"We need money. I don't see how we can get through a winter like the
+last. I can't keep my self-respect if we go on living as we did last
+winter."
+
+"Haven't you any pride, Anne?"
+
+"I have self-respect."
+
+She left the room a conqueror. After she had gone the three women talked
+about her. They did not say it openly, but they felt that there was
+really an ordinary streak in Anne. Otherwise she would not have wanted
+to work in an office.
+
+There was, however, nothing to be done. Anne was twenty-one. She was to
+get a hundred dollars a month. In spite of herself, Amy felt a throb of
+the heart as she thought of what that hundred dollars would mean to
+them.
+
+Murray Flint was much perturbed when he heard of Anne's decision. He
+wrote to her that of course she knew that there was no reason why she
+should go into an office--his home and hearthstone were hers. She wrote
+back that she should never marry! After that, Murray felt, with Amy and
+Ethel and Aunt Elizabeth, that there was an ordinary streak in Anne!
+
+When he arrived in August at Aunt Elizabeth's he was astonished at the
+change in Amy. She looked really very young as she came to meet him, and
+Aunt Elizabeth's house was a perfect setting for her charms. Murray was
+very fond of Aunt Elizabeth's house. It was an ancient, stately edifice,
+and within there were the gold-framed portraits of men and women with
+noses like Amy's and Aunt Elizabeth's.
+
+Murray had missed Amy very much and he told her so.
+
+"It was a point of honor for me to ask Anne again. But when I thought I
+was going to lose you I learned that my life would be empty without
+you."
+
+He really believed what he was telling her. If Amy did not believe it
+she made no sign. She was getting much more than she expected, and she
+accepted him graciously and elegantly, as became a daughter of the
+Merrymans.
+
+It was when he told Anne of his engagement to Amy that Murray again
+offered her a home. "There will always be a place for Amy's sisters,
+Anne."
+
+"You are very good, Murray--but I can't."
+
+She had said the same thing to Maxwell, who had come hot-footed to tell
+her that her letter had made no difference in his feeling for her.
+
+"How could you think it, Anne? My darling, you are making a mountain of
+a molehill!"
+
+She had been tremulous but firm. "I've got to have my--self-respect,
+Max."
+
+Because he understood men he understood her. And when he had left her he
+had said to himself with long-drawn breath, "She's a corking kid."
+
+And this time there had been no laughter in his eyes.
+
+All that winter Anne worked, a little striving creature, with her head
+held high!
+
+Maxwell was in town, for Congress had convened. But he had not come to
+see her. Now and then when there was a night session she went up to the
+House and sat far back in the Gallery, where, unperceived, she could
+listen to her lover's voice. Then she would steal away, a little ghost,
+down the shadowy stairway; but there were no games now with Lafayette!
+
+Amy and Murray were to be married in June. They had enjoyed a dignified
+and leisurely engagement, and Amy had bloomed in the sunshine of
+Murray's approbation. Anne's salary had helped a great deal in getting
+the trousseau together. Most of the salary, indeed, had been spent for
+that. The table was, as usual, meagre, but Anne had not seemed to care.
+
+She was therefore rather white and thin when, on the day that Congress
+adjourned, Maxwell came out to Georgetown to see her. It had been a long
+session, and it was spring.
+
+There were white lilacs in a great blue jar in the Merryman library, and
+through the long window a glimpse of a thin little moon in a faint green
+sky.
+
+As he looked at Anne, Maxwell felt a lump in his throat. She had given
+him her hand and had smiled at him. "How are the kittens?" she had asked
+in an effort to be gay.
+
+He did not answer her question. He went, rather, directly to the point.
+"Anne, why wouldn't you kiss me on that last night?"
+
+She flushed to the roots of her hair. "It--it was because I loved you,
+Max."
+
+"I thought so. But you had to prove it to yourself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Anne, that's why I've let you alone all winter--so that you might prove
+it. But--I can't go on. It has been an awful winter for me, Anne."
+
+It had been an awful winter for her. But she had come out of it knowing
+herself. And even when at last his arms were about her and he was
+telling her that he would never let her go, she had a plea to make:
+
+"Don't let me live too softly, Max. Life isn't a feather bed--You belong
+to the world. I must go with you toward the big things. But now and then
+we'll run back to the farm."
+
+"What do I care where we run, so that we run--together!"
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NOVELS OF TEMPLE BAILEY
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+"Although my ancestry is all of New England, I was born in the old town
+of Petersburg, Virginia. I went later to Richmond and finally at the age
+of five to Washington, D.C., returning to Richmond for a few years in a
+girl's school, which was picturesquely quartered in General Lee's
+mansion."
+
+
+PEACOCK FEATHERS
+
+The eternal conflict between wealth and love. Jerry, the idealist who is
+poor, loves Mimi, a beautiful, spoiled society girl.
+
+
+THE DIM LANTERN
+
+The romance of little Jane Barnes who is loved by two men.
+
+
+THE GAY COCKADE
+
+Unusual short stories where Miss Bailey shows her keen knowledge of
+character and environment, and how romance comes to different people.
+
+
+THE TRUMPETER SWAN
+
+Randy Paine comes back from France to the monotony of every-day
+affairs. But the girl he loves shows him the beauty in the commonplace.
+
+
+THE TIN SOLDIER
+
+A man who wishes to serve his country, but is bound by a tie he cannot
+in honor break--that's Derry. A girl who loves him, shares his
+humiliation and helps him to win--that's Jean. Their love is the story.
+
+
+MISTRESS ANNE
+
+A girl in Maryland teaches school, and believes that work is worthy
+service. Two men come to the little community: one is weak, the other
+strong, and both need Anne.
+
+
+CONTRARY MARY
+
+An old-fashioned love story that is nevertheless modern.
+
+
+GLORY OF YOUTH
+
+A novel that deals with a question, old and yet ever new--how far should
+an engagement of marriage bind two persons who discover they no longer
+love.
+
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gay Cockade, by Temple Bailey
+
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