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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Third Violet, by Stephen Crane
+
+
+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 Third Violet
+
+
+Author: Stephen Crane
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2006  [eBook #19593]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THIRD VIOLET***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Janet Blenkinship and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/thirdviolet00cranarch
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRD VIOLET
+
+by
+
+STEPHEN CRANE
+
+Author of The Red Badge of Courage,
+The Little Regiment, and Maggie
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+D. Appleton and Company
+1897
+
+Copyright, 1897,
+by D. Appleton and Company.
+Copyright, 1896, by Stephen Crane.
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRD VIOLET.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The engine bellowed its way up the slanting, winding valley. Grey crags,
+and trees with roots fastened cleverly to the steeps looked down at the
+struggles of the black monster.
+
+When the train finally released its passengers they burst forth with the
+enthusiasm of escaping convicts. A great bustle ensued on the platform
+of the little mountain station. The idlers and philosophers from the
+village were present to examine the consignment of people from the city.
+These latter, loaded with bundles and children, thronged at the stage
+drivers. The stage drivers thronged at the people from the city.
+
+Hawker, with his clothes case, his paint-box, his easel, climbed
+awkwardly down the steps of the car. The easel swung uncontrolled and
+knocked against the head of a little boy who was disembarking backward
+with fine caution. "Hello, little man," said Hawker, "did it hurt?" The
+child regarded him in silence and with sudden interest, as if Hawker had
+called his attention to a phenomenon. The young painter was politely
+waiting until the little boy should conclude his examination, but a
+voice behind him cried, "Roger, go on down!" A nursemaid was conducting
+a little girl where she would probably be struck by the other end of the
+easel. The boy resumed his cautious descent.
+
+The stage drivers made such great noise as a collection that as
+individuals their identities were lost. With a highly important air, as
+a man proud of being so busy, the baggageman of the train was thundering
+trunks at the other employees on the platform. Hawker, prowling through
+the crowd, heard a voice near his shoulder say, "Do you know where is
+the stage for Hemlock Inn?" Hawker turned and found a young woman
+regarding him. A wave of astonishment whirled into his hair, and he
+turned his eyes quickly for fear that she would think that he had
+looked at her. He said, "Yes, certainly, I think I can find it." At the
+same time he was crying to himself: "Wouldn't I like to paint her,
+though! What a glance--oh, murder! The--the--the distance in her eyes!"
+
+He went fiercely from one driver to another. That obdurate stage for
+Hemlock Inn must appear at once. Finally he perceived a man who grinned
+expectantly at him. "Oh," said Hawker, "you drive the stage for Hemlock
+Inn?" The man admitted it. Hawker said, "Here is the stage." The young
+woman smiled.
+
+The driver inserted Hawker and his luggage far into the end of the
+vehicle. He sat there, crooked forward so that his eyes should see the
+first coming of the girl into the frame of light at the other end of the
+stage. Presently she appeared there. She was bringing the little boy,
+the little girl, the nursemaid, and another young woman, who was at once
+to be known as the mother of the two children. The girl indicated the
+stage with a small gesture of triumph. When they were all seated
+uncomfortably in the huge covered vehicle the little boy gave Hawker a
+glance of recognition. "It hurted then, but it's all right now," he
+informed him cheerfully.
+
+"Did it?" replied Hawker. "I'm sorry."
+
+"Oh, I didn't mind it much," continued the little boy, swinging his
+long, red-leather leggings bravely to and fro. "I don't cry when I'm
+hurt, anyhow." He cast a meaning look at his tiny sister, whose soft
+lips set defensively.
+
+The driver climbed into his seat, and after a scrutiny of the group in
+the gloom of the stage he chirped to his horses. They began a slow and
+thoughtful trotting. Dust streamed out behind the vehicle. In front, the
+green hills were still and serene in the evening air. A beam of gold
+struck them aslant, and on the sky was lemon and pink information of the
+sun's sinking. The driver knew many people along the road, and from time
+to time he conversed with them in yells.
+
+The two children were opposite Hawker. They sat very correctly mucilaged
+to their seats, but their large eyes were always upon Hawker, calmly
+valuing him.
+
+"Do you think it nice to be in the country? I do," said the boy.
+
+"I like it very well," answered Hawker.
+
+"I shall go fishing, and hunting, and everything. Maybe I shall shoot a
+bears."
+
+"I hope you may."
+
+"Did you ever shoot a bears?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I didn't, too, but maybe I will. Mister Hollanden, he said he'd
+look around for one. Where I live----"
+
+"Roger," interrupted the mother from her seat at Hawker's side, "perhaps
+every one is not interested in your conversation." The boy seemed
+embarrassed at this interruption, for he leaned back in silence with an
+apologetic look at Hawker. Presently the stage began to climb the hills,
+and the two children were obliged to take grip upon the cushions for
+fear of being precipitated upon the nursemaid.
+
+Fate had arranged it so that Hawker could not observe the girl with
+the--the--the distance in her eyes without leaning forward and
+discovering to her his interest. Secretly and impiously he wriggled in
+his seat, and as the bumping stage swung its passengers this way and
+that way, he obtained fleeting glances of a cheek, an arm, or a
+shoulder.
+
+The driver's conversation tone to his passengers was also a yell. "Train
+was an hour late t'night," he said, addressing the interior. "It'll be
+nine o'clock before we git t' th' inn, an' it'll be perty dark
+travellin'."
+
+Hawker waited decently, but at last he said, "Will it?"
+
+"Yes. No moon." He turned to face Hawker, and roared, "You're ol' Jim
+Hawker's son, hain't yeh?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I thort I'd seen yeh b'fore. Live in the city now, don't yeh?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Want t' git off at th' cross-road?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come up fer a little stay doorin' th' summer?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"On'y charge yeh a quarter if yeh git off at cross-road. Useter charge
+'em fifty cents, but I ses t' th' ol' man. 'Tain't no use. Goldern 'em,
+they'll walk ruther'n put up fifty cents.' Yep. On'y a quarter."
+
+In the shadows Hawker's expression seemed assassinlike. He glanced
+furtively down the stage. She was apparently deep in talk with the
+mother of the children.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+When Hawker pushed at the old gate, it hesitated because of a broken
+hinge. A dog barked with loud ferocity and came headlong over the grass.
+
+"Hello, Stanley, old man!" cried Hawker. The ardour for battle was
+instantly smitten from the dog, and his barking swallowed in a gurgle of
+delight. He was a large orange and white setter, and he partly expressed
+his emotion by twisting his body into a fantastic curve and then dancing
+over the ground with his head and his tail very near to each other. He
+gave vent to little sobs in a wild attempt to vocally describe his
+gladness. "Well, 'e was a dreat dod," said Hawker, and the setter,
+overwhelmed, contorted himself wonderfully.
+
+There were lights in the kitchen, and at the first barking of the dog
+the door had been thrown open. Hawker saw his two sisters shading their
+eyes and peering down the yellow stream. Presently they shouted, "Here
+he is!" They flung themselves out and upon him. "Why, Will! why, Will!"
+they panted.
+
+"We're awful glad to see you!" In a whirlwind of ejaculation and
+unanswerable interrogation they grappled the clothes case, the
+paint-box, the easel, and dragged him toward the house.
+
+He saw his old mother seated in a rocking-chair by the table. She had
+laid aside her paper and was adjusting her glasses as she scanned the
+darkness. "Hello, mother!" cried Hawker, as he entered. His eyes were
+bright. The old mother reached her arms to his neck. She murmured soft
+and half-articulate words. Meanwhile the dog writhed from one to
+another. He raised his muzzle high to express his delight. He was always
+fully convinced that he was taking a principal part in this ceremony of
+welcome and that everybody was heeding him.
+
+"Have you had your supper?" asked the old mother as soon as she
+recovered herself. The girls clamoured sentences at him. "Pa's out in
+the barn, Will. What made you so late? He said maybe he'd go up to the
+cross-roads to see if he could see the stage. Maybe he's gone. What
+made you so late? And, oh, we got a new buggy!"
+
+The old mother repeated anxiously, "Have you had your supper?"
+
+"No," said Hawker, "but----"
+
+The three women sprang to their feet. "Well, we'll git you something
+right away." They bustled about the kitchen and dove from time to time
+into the cellar. They called to each other in happy voices.
+
+Steps sounded on the line of stones that led from the door toward the
+barn, and a shout came from the darkness. "Well, William, home again,
+hey?" Hawker's grey father came stamping genially into the room. "I
+thought maybe you got lost. I was comin' to hunt you," he said,
+grinning, as they stood with gripped hands. "What made you so late?"
+
+While Hawker confronted the supper the family sat about and contemplated
+him with shining eyes. His sisters noted his tie and propounded some
+questions concerning it. His mother watched to make sure that he should
+consume a notable quantity of the preserved cherries. "He used to be so
+fond of 'em when he was little," she said.
+
+"Oh, Will," cried the younger sister, "do you remember Lil' Johnson?
+Yeh? She's married. Married las' June."
+
+"Is the boy's room all ready, mother?" asked the father.
+
+"We fixed it this mornin'," she said.
+
+"And do you remember Jeff Decker?" shouted the elder sister. "Well, he's
+dead. Yep. Drowned, pickerel fishin'--poor feller!"
+
+"Well, how are you gitting along, William?" asked the father. "Sell many
+pictures?"
+
+"An occasional one."
+
+"Saw your illustrations in the May number of Perkinson's." The old man
+paused for a moment, and then added, quite weakly, "Pretty good."
+
+"How's everything about the place?"
+
+"Oh, just about the same--'bout the same. The colt run away with me last
+week, but didn't break nothin', though. I was scared, because I had out
+the new buggy--we got a new buggy--but it didn't break nothin'. I'm
+goin' to sell the oxen in the fall; I don't want to winter 'em. And then
+in the spring I'll get a good hoss team. I rented th' back five-acre to
+John Westfall. I had more'n I could handle with only one hired hand.
+Times is pickin' up a little, but not much--not much."
+
+"And we got a new school-teacher," said one of the girls.
+
+"Will, you never noticed my new rocker," said the old mother, pointing.
+"I set it right where I thought you'd see it, and you never took no
+notice. Ain't it nice? Father bought it at Monticello for my birthday. I
+thought you'd notice it first thing."
+
+When Hawker had retired for the night, he raised a sash and sat by the
+window smoking. The odour of the woods and the fields came sweetly to
+his nostrils. The crickets chanted their hymn of the night. On the black
+brow of the mountain he could see two long rows of twinkling dots which
+marked the position of Hemlock Inn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Hawker had a writing friend named Hollanden. In New York Hollanden had
+announced his resolution to spend the summer at Hemlock Inn. "I don't
+like to see the world progressing," he had said; "I shall go to Sullivan
+County for a time."
+
+In the morning Hawker took his painting equipment, and after
+manoeuvring in the fields until he had proved to himself that he had
+no desire to go toward the inn, he went toward it. The time was only
+nine o'clock, and he knew that he could not hope to see Hollanden before
+eleven, as it was only through rumour that Hollanden was aware that
+there was a sunrise and an early morning.
+
+Hawker encamped in front of some fields of vivid yellow stubble on which
+trees made olive shadows, and which was overhung by a china-blue sky and
+sundry little white clouds. He fiddled away perfunctorily at it. A
+spectator would have believed, probably, that he was sketching the
+pines on the hill where shone the red porches of Hemlock Inn.
+
+Finally, a white-flannel young man walked into the landscape. Hawker
+waved a brush. "Hi, Hollie, get out of the colour-scheme!"
+
+At this cry the white-flannel young man looked down at his feet
+apprehensively. Finally he came forward grinning. "Why, hello, Hawker,
+old boy! Glad to find you here." He perched on a boulder and began to
+study Hawker's canvas and the vivid yellow stubble with the olive
+shadows. He wheeled his eyes from one to the other. "Say, Hawker," he
+said suddenly, "why don't you marry Miss Fanhall?"
+
+Hawker had a brush in his mouth, but he took it quickly out, and said,
+"Marry Miss Fanhall? Who the devil is Miss Fanhall?"
+
+Hollanden clasped both hands about his knee and looked thoughtfully
+away. "Oh, she's a girl."
+
+"She is?" said Hawker.
+
+"Yes. She came to the inn last night with her sister-in-law and a small
+tribe of young Fanhalls. There's six of them, I think."
+
+"Two," said Hawker, "a boy and a girl."
+
+"How do you--oh, you must have come up with them. Of course. Why, then
+you saw her."
+
+"Was that her?" asked Hawker listlessly.
+
+"Was that her?" cried Hollanden, with indignation. "Was that her?"
+
+"Oh!" said Hawker.
+
+Hollanden mused again. "She's got lots of money," he said. "Loads of it.
+And I think she would be fool enough to have sympathy for you in your
+work. They are a tremendously wealthy crowd, although they treat it
+simply. It would be a good thing for you. I believe--yes, I am sure she
+could be fool enough to have sympathy for you in your work. And now, if
+you weren't such a hopeless chump----"
+
+"Oh, shut up, Hollie," said the painter.
+
+For a time Hollanden did as he was bid, but at last he talked again.
+"Can't think why they came up here. Must be her sister-in-law's health.
+Something like that. She----"
+
+"Great heavens," said Hawker, "you speak of nothing else!"
+
+"Well, you saw her, didn't you?" demanded Hollanden. "What can you
+expect, then, from a man of my sense? You--you old stick--you----"
+
+"It was quite dark," protested the painter.
+
+"Quite dark," repeated Hollanden, in a wrathful voice. "What if it was?"
+
+"Well, that is bound to make a difference in a man's opinion, you know."
+
+"No, it isn't. It was light down at the railroad station, anyhow. If you
+had any sand--thunder, but I did get up early this morning! Say, do you
+play tennis?"
+
+"After a fashion," said Hawker. "Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothing," replied Hollanden sadly. "Only they are wearing me out at
+the game. I had to get up and play before breakfast this morning with
+the Worcester girls, and there is a lot more mad players who will be
+down on me before long. It's a terrible thing to be a tennis player."
+
+"Why, you used to put yourself out so little for people," remarked
+Hawker.
+
+"Yes, but up there"--Hollanden jerked his thumb in the direction of the
+inn--"they think I'm so amiable."
+
+"Well, I'll come up and help you out."
+
+"Do," Hollanden laughed; "you and Miss Fanhall can team it against the
+littlest Worcester girl and me." He regarded the landscape and
+meditated. Hawker struggled for a grip on the thought of the stubble.
+
+"That colour of hair and eyes always knocks me kerplunk," observed
+Hollanden softly.
+
+Hawker looked up irascibly. "What colour hair and eyes?" he demanded. "I
+believe you're crazy."
+
+"What colour hair and eyes?" repeated Hollanden, with a savage gesture.
+"You've got no more appreciation than a post."
+
+"They are good enough for me," muttered Hawker, turning again to his
+work. He scowled first at the canvas and then at the stubble. "Seems to
+me you had best take care of yourself, instead of planning for me," he
+said.
+
+"Me!" cried Hollanden. "Me! Take care of myself! My boy, I've got a past
+of sorrow and gloom. I----"
+
+"You're nothing but a kid," said Hawker, glaring at the other man.
+
+"Oh, of course," said Hollanden, wagging his head with midnight wisdom.
+"Oh, of course."
+
+"Well, Hollie," said Hawker, with sudden affability, "I didn't mean to
+be unpleasant, but then you are rather ridiculous, you know, sitting up
+there and howling about the colour of hair and eyes."
+
+"I'm not ridiculous."
+
+"Yes, you are, you know, Hollie."
+
+The writer waved his hand despairingly. "And you rode in the train with
+her, and in the stage."
+
+"I didn't see her in the train," said Hawker.
+
+"Oh, then you saw her in the stage. Ha-ha, you old thief! I sat up here,
+and you sat down there and lied." He jumped from his perch and
+belaboured Hawker's shoulders.
+
+"Stop that!" said the painter.
+
+"Oh, you old thief, you lied to me! You lied---- Hold on--bless my life,
+here she comes now!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+One day Hollanden said: "There are forty-two people at Hemlock Inn, I
+think. Fifteen are middle-aged ladies of the most aggressive
+respectability. They have come here for no discernible purpose save to
+get where they can see people and be displeased at them. They sit in a
+large group on that porch and take measurements of character as
+importantly as if they constituted the jury of heaven. When I arrived at
+Hemlock Inn I at once cast my eye searchingly about me. Perceiving this
+assemblage, I cried, 'There they are!' Barely waiting to change my
+clothes, I made for this formidable body and endeavoured to conciliate
+it. Almost every day I sit down among them and lie like a machine.
+Privately I believe they should be hanged, but publicly I glisten with
+admiration. Do you know, there is one of 'em who I know has not moved
+from the inn in eight days, and this morning I said to her, 'These long
+walks in the clear mountain air are doing you a world of good.' And I
+keep continually saying, 'Your frankness is so charming!' Because of the
+great law of universal balance, I know that this illustrious corps will
+believe good of themselves with exactly the same readiness that they
+will believe ill of others. So I ply them with it. In consequence, the
+worst they ever say of me is, 'Isn't that Mr. Hollanden a peculiar man?'
+And you know, my boy, that's not so bad for a literary person." After
+some thought he added: "Good people, too. Good wives, good mothers, and
+everything of that kind, you know. But conservative, very conservative.
+Hate anything radical. Can not endure it. Were that way themselves once,
+you know. They hit the mark, too, sometimes. Such general volleyings
+can't fail to hit everything. May the devil fly away with them!"
+
+Hawker regarded the group nervously, and at last propounded a great
+question: "Say, I wonder where they all are recruited? When you come to
+think that almost every summer hotel----"
+
+"Certainly," said Hollanden, "almost every summer hotel. I've studied
+the question, and have nearly established the fact that almost every
+summer hotel is furnished with a full corps of----"
+
+"To be sure," said Hawker; "and if you search for them in the winter,
+you can find barely a sign of them, until you examine the boarding
+houses, and then you observe----"
+
+"Certainly," said Hollanden, "of course. By the way," he added, "you
+haven't got any obviously loose screws in your character, have you?"
+
+"No," said Hawker, after consideration, "only general poverty--that's
+all."
+
+"Of course, of course," said Hollanden. "But that's bad. They'll get on
+to you, sure. Particularly since you come up here to see Miss Fanhall so
+much."
+
+Hawker glinted his eyes at his friend. "You've got a deuced open way of
+speaking," he observed.
+
+"Deuced open, is it?" cried Hollanden. "It isn't near so open as your
+devotion to Miss Fanhall, which is as plain as a red petticoat hung on a
+hedge."
+
+Hawker's face gloomed, and he said, "Well, it might be plain to you, you
+infernal cat, but that doesn't prove that all those old hens can see
+it."
+
+"I tell you that if they look twice at you they can't fail to see it.
+And it's bad, too. Very bad. What's the matter with you? Haven't you
+ever been in love before?"
+
+"None of your business," replied Hawker.
+
+Hollanden thought upon this point for a time. "Well," he admitted
+finally, "that's true in a general way, but I hate to see you managing
+your affairs so stupidly."
+
+Rage flamed into Hawker's face, and he cried passionately, "I tell you
+it is none of your business!" He suddenly confronted the other man.
+
+Hollanden surveyed this outburst with a critical eye, and then slapped
+his knee with emphasis. "You certainly have got it--a million times
+worse than I thought. Why, you--you--you're heels over head."
+
+"What if I am?" said Hawker, with a gesture of defiance and despair.
+
+Hollanden saw a dramatic situation in the distance, and with a bright
+smile he studied it. "Say," he exclaimed, "suppose she should not go to
+the picnic to-morrow? She said this morning she did not know if she
+could go. Somebody was expected from New York, I think. Wouldn't it
+break you up, though! Eh?"
+
+"You're so dev'lish clever!" said Hawker, with sullen irony.
+
+Hollanden was still regarding the distant dramatic situation. "And
+rivals, too! The woods must be crowded with them. A girl like that, you
+know. And then all that money! Say, your rivals must number enough to
+make a brigade of militia. Imagine them swarming around! But then it
+doesn't matter so much," he went on cheerfully; "you've got a good play
+there. You must appreciate them to her--you understand?--appreciate them
+kindly, like a man in a watch-tower. You must laugh at them only about
+once a week, and then very tolerantly--you understand?--and kindly,
+and--and appreciatively."
+
+"You're a colossal ass, Hollie!" said Hawker. "You----"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," replied the other peacefully; "a colossal ass. Of
+course." After looking into the distance again, he murmured: "I'm
+worried about that picnic. I wish I knew she was going. By heavens, as a
+matter of fact, she must be made to go!"
+
+"What have you got to do with it?" cried the painter, in another sudden
+outburst.
+
+"There! there!" said Hollanden, waving his hand. "You fool! Only a
+spectator, I assure you."
+
+Hawker seemed overcome then with a deep dislike of himself. "Oh, well,
+you know, Hollie, this sort of thing----" He broke off and gazed at the
+trees. "This sort of thing---- It----"
+
+"How?" asked Hollanden.
+
+"Confound you for a meddling, gabbling idiot!" cried Hawker suddenly.
+
+Hollanden replied, "What did you do with that violet she dropped at the
+side of the tennis court yesterday?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Mrs. Fanhall, with the two children, the Worcester girls, and Hollanden,
+clambered down the rocky path. Miss Fanhall and Hawker had remained on
+top of the ledge. Hollanden showed much zeal in conducting his
+contingent to the foot of the falls. Through the trees they could see
+the cataract, a great shimmering white thing, booming and thundering
+until all the leaves gently shuddered.
+
+"I wonder where Miss Fanhall and Mr. Hawker have gone?" said the younger
+Miss Worcester. "I wonder where they've gone?"
+
+"Millicent," said Hollander, looking at her fondly, "you always had such
+great thought for others."
+
+"Well, I wonder where they've gone?"
+
+At the foot of the falls, where the mist arose in silver clouds and the
+green water swept into the pool, Miss Worcester, the elder, seated on
+the moss, exclaimed, "Oh, Mr. Hollanden, what makes all literary men so
+peculiar?"
+
+"And all that just because I said that I could have made better
+digestive organs than Providence, if it is true that he made mine,"
+replied Hollanden, with reproach. "Here, Roger," he cried, as he dragged
+the child away from the brink, "don't fall in there, or you won't be the
+full-back at Yale in 1907, as you have planned. I'm sure I don't know
+how to answer you, Miss Worcester. I've inquired of innumerable literary
+men, and none of 'em know. I may say I have chased that problem for
+years. I might give you my personal history, and see if that would throw
+any light on the subject." He looked about him with chin high until his
+glance had noted the two vague figures at the top of the cliff. "I might
+give you my personal history----"
+
+Mrs. Fanhall looked at him curiously, and the elder Worcester girl
+cried, "Oh, do!"
+
+After another scanning of the figures at the top of the cliff, Hollanden
+established himself in an oratorical pose on a great weather-beaten
+stone. "Well--you must understand--I started my career--my career, you
+understand--with a determination to be a prophet, and, although I have
+ended in being an acrobat, a trained bear of the magazines, and a
+juggler of comic paragraphs, there was once carved upon my lips a smile
+which made many people detest me, for it hung before them like a banshee
+whenever they tried to be satisfied with themselves. I was informed from
+time to time that I was making no great holes in the universal plan, and
+I came to know that one person in every two thousand of the people I saw
+had heard of me, and that four out of five of these had forgotten it.
+And then one in every two of those who remembered that they had heard of
+me regarded the fact that I wrote as a great impertinence. I admitted
+these things, and in defence merely builded a maxim that stated that
+each wise man in this world is concealed amid some twenty thousand
+fools. If you have eyes for mathematics, this conclusion should interest
+you. Meanwhile I created a gigantic dignity, and when men saw this
+dignity and heard that I was a literary man they respected me. I
+concluded that the simple campaign of existence for me was to delude
+the populace, or as much of it as would look at me. I did. I do. And now
+I can make myself quite happy concocting sneers about it. Others may do
+as they please, but as for me," he concluded ferociously, "I shall never
+disclose to anybody that an acrobat, a trained bear of the magazines, a
+juggler of comic paragraphs, is not a priceless pearl of art and
+philosophy."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it is true," said Miss Worcester.
+
+"What do you expect of autobiography?" demanded Hollanden, with
+asperity.
+
+"Well, anyhow, Hollie," exclaimed the younger sister, "you didn't
+explain a thing about how literary men came to be so peculiar, and
+that's what you started out to do, you know."
+
+"Well," said Hollanden crossly, "you must never expect a man to do what
+he starts to do, Millicent. And besides," he went on, with the gleam of
+a sudden idea in his eyes, "literary men are not peculiar, anyhow."
+
+The elder Worcester girl looked angrily at him. "Indeed? Not you, of
+course, but the others."
+
+"They are all asses," said Hollanden genially.
+
+The elder Worcester girl reflected. "I believe you try to make us think
+and then just tangle us up purposely!"
+
+The younger Worcester girl reflected. "You are an absurd old thing, you
+know, Hollie!"
+
+Hollanden climbed offendedly from the great weather-beaten stone. "Well,
+I shall go and see that the men have not spilled the luncheon while
+breaking their necks over these rocks. Would you like to have it spread
+here, Mrs. Fanhall? Never mind consulting the girls. I assure you I
+shall spend a great deal of energy and temper in bullying them into
+doing just as they please. Why, when I was in Brussels----"
+
+"Oh, come now, Hollie, you never were in Brussels, you know," said the
+younger Worcester girl.
+
+"What of that, Millicent?" demanded Hollanden. "This is autobiography."
+
+"Well, I don't care, Hollie. You tell such whoppers."
+
+With a gesture of despair he again started away; whereupon the
+Worcester girls shouted in chorus, "Oh, I say, Hollie, come back! Don't
+be angry. We didn't mean to tease you, Hollie--really, we didn't!"
+
+"Well, if you didn't," said Hollanden, "why did you----"
+
+The elder Worcester girl was gazing fixedly at the top of the cliff.
+"Oh, there they are! I wonder why they don't come down?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Stanley, the setter, walked to the edge of the precipice and, looking
+over at the falls, wagged his tail in friendly greeting. He was braced
+warily, so that if this howling white animal should reach up a hand for
+him he could flee in time.
+
+The girl stared dreamily at the red-stained crags that projected from
+the pines of the hill across the stream. Hawker lazily aimed bits of
+moss at the oblivious dog and missed him.
+
+"It must be fine to have something to think of beyond just living," said
+the girl to the crags.
+
+"I suppose you mean art?" said Hawker.
+
+"Yes, of course. It must be finer, at any rate, than the ordinary
+thing."
+
+He mused for a time. "Yes. It is--it must be," he said. "But then--I'd
+rather just lie here."
+
+The girl seemed aggrieved. "Oh, no, you wouldn't. You couldn't stop.
+It's dreadful to talk like that, isn't it? I always thought that
+painters were----"
+
+"Of course. They should be. Maybe they are. I don't know. Sometimes I
+am. But not to-day."
+
+"Well, I should think you ought to be so much more contented than just
+ordinary people. Now, I----"
+
+"You!" he cried--"you are not 'just ordinary people.'"
+
+"Well, but when I try to recall what I have thought about in my life, I
+can't remember, you know. That's what I mean."
+
+"You shouldn't talk that way," he told her.
+
+"But why do you insist that life should be so highly absorbing for me?"
+
+"You have everything you wish for," he answered, in a voice of deep
+gloom.
+
+"Certainly not. I am a woman."
+
+"But----"
+
+"A woman, to have everything she wishes for, would have to be
+Providence. There are some things that are not in the world."
+
+"Well, what are they?" he asked of her.
+
+"That's just it," she said, nodding her head, "no one knows. That's
+what makes the trouble."
+
+"Well, you are very unreasonable."
+
+"What?"
+
+"You are very unreasonable. If I were you--an heiress----"
+
+The girl flushed and turned upon him angrily.
+
+"Well!" he glowered back at her. "You are, you know. You can't deny it."
+
+She looked at the red-stained crags. At last she said, "You seemed
+really contemptuous."
+
+"Well, I assure you that I do not feel contemptuous. On the contrary, I
+am filled with admiration. Thank Heaven, I am a man of the world.
+Whenever I meet heiresses I always have the deepest admiration." As he
+said this he wore a brave hang-dog expression. The girl surveyed him
+coldly from his chin to his eyebrows. "You have a handsome audacity,
+too."
+
+He lay back in the long grass and contemplated the clouds.
+
+"You should have been a Chinese soldier of fortune," she said.
+
+He threw another little clod at Stanley and struck him on the head.
+
+"You are the most scientifically unbearable person in the world," she
+said.
+
+Stanley came back to see his master and to assure himself that the clump
+on the head was not intended as a sign of serious displeasure. Hawker
+took the dog's long ears and tried to tie them into a knot.
+
+"And I don't see why you so delight in making people detest you," she
+continued.
+
+Having failed to make a knot of the dog's ears, Hawker leaned back and
+surveyed his failure admiringly. "Well, I don't," he said.
+
+"You do."
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Yes, you do. You just say the most terrible things as if you positively
+enjoyed saying them."
+
+"Well, what did I say, now? What did I say?"
+
+"Why, you said that you always had the most extraordinary admiration for
+heiresses whenever you met them."
+
+"Well, what's wrong with that sentiment?" he said. "You can't find
+fault with that!"
+
+"It is utterly detestable."
+
+"Not at all," he answered sullenly. "I consider it a tribute--a graceful
+tribute."
+
+Miss Fanhall arose and went forward to the edge of the cliff. She became
+absorbed in the falls. Far below her a bough of a hemlock drooped to the
+water, and each swirling, mad wave caught it and made it nod--nod--nod.
+Her back was half turned toward Hawker.
+
+After a time Stanley, the dog, discovered some ants scurrying in the
+moss, and he at once began to watch them and wag his tail.
+
+"Isn't it curious," observed Hawker, "how an animal as large as a dog
+will sometimes be so entertained by the very smallest things?"
+
+Stanley pawed gently at the moss, and then thrust his head forward to
+see what the ants did under the circumstances.
+
+"In the hunting season," continued Hawker, having waited a moment, "this
+dog knows nothing on earth but his master and the partridges. He is lost
+to all other sound and movement. He moves through the woods like a
+steel machine. And when he scents the bird--ah, it is beautiful!
+Shouldn't you like to see him then?"
+
+Some of the ants had perhaps made war-like motions, and Stanley was
+pretending that this was a reason for excitement. He reared aback, and
+made grumbling noises in his throat.
+
+After another pause Hawker went on: "And now see the precious old fool!
+He is deeply interested in the movements of the little ants, and as
+childish and ridiculous over them as if they were highly
+important.--There, you old blockhead, let them alone!"
+
+Stanley could not be induced to end his investigations, and he told his
+master that the ants were the most thrilling and dramatic animals of his
+experience.
+
+"Oh, by the way," said Hawker at last, as his glance caught upon the
+crags across the river, "did you ever hear the legend of those rocks
+yonder? Over there where I am pointing? Where I'm pointing? Did you ever
+hear it? What? Yes? No? Well, I shall tell it to you." He settled
+comfortably in the long grass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+"Once upon a time there was a beautiful Indian maiden, of course. And
+she was, of course, beloved by a youth from another tribe who was very
+handsome and stalwart and a mighty hunter, of course. But the maiden's
+father was, of course, a stern old chief, and when the question of his
+daughter's marriage came up, he, of course, declared that the maiden
+should be wedded only to a warrior of her tribe. And, of course, when
+the young man heard this he said that in such case he would, of course,
+fling himself headlong from that crag. The old chief was, of course,
+obdurate, and, of course, the youth did, of course, as he had said. And,
+of course, the maiden wept." After Hawker had waited for some time, he
+said with severity, "You seem to have no great appreciation of
+folklore."
+
+The girl suddenly bent her head. "Listen," she said, "they're calling.
+Don't you hear Hollie's voice?"
+
+They went to another place, and, looking down over the shimmering
+tree-tops, they saw Hollanden waving his arms. "It's luncheon," said
+Hawker. "Look how frantic he is!"
+
+The path required that Hawker should assist the girl very often. His
+eyes shone at her whenever he held forth his hand to help her down a
+blessed steep place. She seemed rather pensive. The route to luncheon
+was very long. Suddenly he took a seat on an old tree, and said: "Oh, I
+don't know why it is, whenever I'm with you, I--I have no wits, nor good
+nature, nor anything. It's the worst luck!"
+
+He had left her standing on a boulder, where she was provisionally
+helpless. "Hurry!" she said; "they're waiting for us."
+
+Stanley, the setter, had been sliding down cautiously behind them. He
+now stood wagging his tail and waiting for the way to be cleared.
+
+Hawker leaned his head on his hand and pondered dejectedly. "It's the
+worst luck!"
+
+"Hurry!" she said; "they're waiting for us."
+
+At luncheon the girl was for the most part silent. Hawker was
+superhumanly amiable. Somehow he gained the impression that they all
+quite fancied him, and it followed that being clever was very easy.
+Hollanden listened, and approved him with a benign countenance.
+
+There was a little boat fastened to the willows at the edge of the black
+pool. After the spread, Hollanden navigated various parties around to
+where they could hear the great hollow roar of the falls beating against
+the sheer rocks. Stanley swam after sticks at the request of little
+Roger.
+
+Once Hollanden succeeded in making the others so engrossed in being
+amused that Hawker and Miss Fanhall were left alone staring at the white
+bubbles that floated solemnly on the black water. After Hawker had
+stared at them a sufficient time, he said, "Well, you are an heiress,
+you know."
+
+In return she chose to smile radiantly. Turning toward him, she said,
+"If you will be good now--always--perhaps I'll forgive you."
+
+They drove home in the sombre shadows of the hills, with Stanley padding
+along under the wagon. The Worcester girls tried to induce Hollanden to
+sing, and in consequence there was quarrelling until the blinking lights
+of the inn appeared above them as if a great lantern hung there.
+
+Hollanden conveyed his friend some distance on the way home from the inn
+to the farm. "Good time at the picnic?" said the writer.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Picnics are mainly places where the jam gets on the dead leaves, and
+from thence to your trousers. But this was a good little picnic." He
+glanced at Hawker. "But you don't look as if you had such a swell time."
+
+Hawker waved his hand tragically. "Yes--no--I don't know."
+
+"What's wrong with you?" asked Hollanden.
+
+"I tell you what it is, Hollie," said the painter darkly, "whenever I'm
+with that girl I'm such a blockhead. I'm not so stupid, Hollie. You know
+I'm not. But when I'm with her I can't be clever to save my life."
+
+Hollanden pulled contentedly at his pipe. "Maybe she don't notice it."
+
+"Notice it!" muttered Hawker, scornfully; "of course she notices it. In
+conversation with her, I tell you, I am as interesting as an iron dog."
+His voice changed as he cried, "I don't know why it is. I don't know why
+it is."
+
+Blowing a huge cloud of smoke into the air, Hollanden studied it
+thoughtfully. "Hits some fellows that way," he said. "And, of course, it
+must be deuced annoying. Strange thing, but now, under those
+circumstances, I'm very glib. Very glib, I assure you."
+
+"I don't care what you are," answered Hawker. "All those confounded
+affairs of yours--they were not----"
+
+"No," said Hollanden, stolidly puffing, "of course not. I understand
+that. But, look here, Billie," he added, with sudden brightness, "maybe
+you are not a blockhead, after all. You are on the inside, you know, and
+you can't see from there. Besides, you can't tell what a woman will
+think. You can't tell what a woman will think."
+
+"No," said Hawker, grimly, "and you suppose that is my only chance?"
+
+"Oh, don't be such a chump!" said Hollanden, in a tone of vast
+exasperation.
+
+They strode for some time in silence. The mystic pines swaying over the
+narrow road made talk sibilantly to the wind. Stanley, the setter, took
+it upon himself to discover some menacing presence in the woods. He
+walked on his toes and with his eyes glinting sideways. He swore half
+under his breath.
+
+"And work, too," burst out Hawker, at last. "I came up here this season
+to work, and I haven't done a thing that ought not be shot at."
+
+"Don't you find that your love sets fire to your genius?" asked
+Hollanden gravely.
+
+"No, I'm hanged if I do."
+
+Hollanden sighed then with an air of relief. "I was afraid that a
+popular impression was true," he said, "but it's all right. You would
+rather sit still and moon, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Moon--blast you! I couldn't moon to save my life."
+
+"Oh, well, I didn't mean moon exactly."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+The blue night of the lake was embroidered with black tree forms. Silver
+drops sprinkled from the lifted oars. Somewhere in the gloom of the
+shore there was a dog, who from time to time raised his sad voice to the
+stars.
+
+"But still, the life of the studios----" began the girl.
+
+Hawker scoffed. "There were six of us. Mainly we smoked. Sometimes we
+played hearts and at other times poker--on credit, you know--credit. And
+when we had the materials and got something to do, we worked. Did you
+ever see these beautiful red and green designs that surround the common
+tomato can?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well," he said proudly, "I have made them. Whenever you come upon
+tomatoes, remember that they might once have been encompassed in my
+design. When first I came back from Paris I began to paint, but nobody
+wanted me to paint. Later, I got into green corn and asparagus----"
+
+"Truly?"
+
+"Yes, indeed. It is true."
+
+"But still, the life of the studios----"
+
+"There were six of us. Fate ordained that only one in the crowd could
+have money at one time. The other five lived off him and despised
+themselves. We despised ourselves five times as long as we had
+admiration."
+
+"And was this just because you had no money?"
+
+"It was because we had no money in New York," said Hawker.
+
+"Well, after a while something happened----"
+
+"Oh, no, it didn't. Something impended always, but it never happened."
+
+"In a case like that one's own people must be such a blessing. The
+sympathy----"
+
+"One's own people!" said Hawker.
+
+"Yes," she said, "one's own people and more intimate friends. The
+appreciation----"
+
+"'The appreciation!'" said Hawker. "Yes, indeed!"
+
+He seemed so ill-tempered that she became silent. The boat floated
+through the shadows of the trees and out to where the water was like a
+blue crystal. The dog on the shore thrashed about in the reeds and waded
+in the shallows, mourning his unhappy state in an occasional cry. Hawker
+stood up and sternly shouted. Thereafter silence was among the reeds.
+The moon slipped sharply through the little clouds.
+
+The girl said, "I liked that last picture of yours."
+
+"What?"
+
+"At the last exhibition, you know, you had that one with the cows--and
+things--in the snow--and--and a haystack."
+
+"Yes," he said, "of course. Did you like it, really? I thought it about
+my best. And you really remembered it? Oh," he cried, "Hollanden perhaps
+recalled it to you."
+
+"Why, no," she said. "I remembered it, of course."
+
+"Well, what made you remember it?" he demanded, as if he had cause to be
+indignant.
+
+"Why--I just remembered it because--I liked it, and because--well, the
+people with me said--said it was about the best thing in the exhibit,
+and they talked about it a good deal. And then I remember that Hollie
+had spoken of you, and then I--I----"
+
+"Never mind," he said. After a moment, he added, "The confounded picture
+was no good, anyhow!"
+
+The girl started. "What makes you speak so of it? It was good. Of
+course, I don't know--I can't talk about pictures, but," she said in
+distress, "everybody said it was fine."
+
+"It wasn't any good," he persisted, with dogged shakes of the head.
+
+From off in the darkness they heard the sound of Hollanden's oars
+splashing in the water. Sometimes there was squealing by the Worcester
+girls, and at other times loud arguments on points of navigation.
+
+"Oh," said the girl suddenly, "Mr. Oglethorpe is coming to-morrow!"
+
+"Mr. Oglethorpe?" said Hawker. "Is he?"
+
+"Yes." She gazed off at the water.
+
+"He's an old friend of ours. He is always so good, and Roger and little
+Helen simply adore him. He was my brother's chum in college, and they
+were quite inseparable until Herbert's death. He always brings me
+violets. But I know you will like him."
+
+"I shall expect to," said Hawker.
+
+"I'm so glad he is coming. What time does that morning stage get here?"
+
+"About eleven," said Hawker.
+
+"He wrote that he would come then. I hope he won't disappoint us."
+
+"Undoubtedly he will be here," said Hawker.
+
+The wind swept from the ridge top, where some great bare pines stood in
+the moonlight. A loon called in its strange, unearthly note from the
+lakeshore. As Hawker turned the boat toward the dock, the flashing rays
+from the boat fell upon the head of the girl in the rear seat, and he
+rowed very slowly.
+
+The girl was looking away somewhere with a mystic, shining glance. She
+leaned her chin in her hand. Hawker, facing her, merely paddled
+subconsciously. He seemed greatly impressed and expectant.
+
+At last she spoke very slowly. "I wish I knew Mr. Oglethorpe was not
+going to disappoint us."
+
+Hawker said, "Why, no, I imagine not."
+
+"Well, he is a trifle uncertain in matters of time. The children--and
+all of us--shall be anxious. I know you will like him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+"Eh?" said Hollanden. "Oglethorpe? Oglethorpe? Why, he's that friend of
+the Fanhalls! Yes, of course, I know him! Deuced good fellow, too! What
+about him?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, only he's coming here to-morrow," answered Hawker. "What
+kind of a fellow did you say he was?"
+
+"Deuced good fellow! What are you so---- Say, by the nine mad
+blacksmiths of Donawhiroo, he's your rival! Why, of course! Glory, but I
+must be thick-headed to-night!"
+
+Hawker said, "Where's your tobacco?"
+
+"Yonder, in that jar. Got a pipe?"
+
+"Yes. How do you know he's my rival?"
+
+"Know it? Why, hasn't he been---- Say, this is getting thrilling!"
+Hollanden sprang to his feet and, filling a pipe, flung himself into the
+chair and began to rock himself madly to and fro. He puffed clouds of
+smoke.
+
+Hawker stood with his face in shadow. At last he said, in tones of deep
+weariness, "Well, I think I'd better be going home and turning in."
+
+"Hold on!" Hollanden exclaimed, turning his eyes from a prolonged stare
+at the ceiling, "don't go yet! Why, man, this is just the time when----
+Say, who would ever think of Jem Oglethorpe's turning up to harrie you!
+Just at this time, too!"
+
+"Oh," cried Hawker suddenly, filled with rage, "you remind me of an
+accursed duffer! Why can't you tell me something about the man, instead
+of sitting there and gibbering those crazy things at the ceiling?"
+
+"By the piper----"
+
+"Oh, shut up! Tell me something about Oglethorpe, can't you? I want to
+hear about him. Quit all that other business!"
+
+"Why, Jem Oglethorpe, he--why, say, he's one of the best fellows going.
+If he were only an ass! If he were only an ass, now, you could feel easy
+in your mind. But he isn't. No, indeed. Why, blast him, there isn't a
+man that knows him who doesn't like Jem Oglethorpe! Excepting the
+chumps!"
+
+The window of the little room was open, and the voices of the pines
+could be heard as they sang of their long sorrow. Hawker pulled a chair
+close and stared out into the darkness. The people on the porch of the
+inn were frequently calling, "Good-night! Good-night!"
+
+Hawker said, "And of course he's got train loads of money?"
+
+"You bet he has! He can pave streets with it. Lordie, but this is a
+situation!"
+
+A heavy scowl settled upon Hawker's brow, and he kicked at the dressing
+case. "Say, Hollie, look here! Sometimes I think you regard me as a bug
+and like to see me wriggle. But----"
+
+"Oh, don't be a fool!" said Hollanden, glaring through the smoke. "Under
+the circumstances, you are privileged to rave and ramp around like a
+wounded lunatic, but for heaven's sake don't swoop down on me like that!
+Especially when I'm--when I'm doing all I can for you."
+
+"Doing all you can for me! Nobody asked you to. You talk as if I were an
+infant."
+
+"There! That's right! Blaze up like a fire balloon just because I said
+that, will you? A man in your condition--why, confound you, you are an
+infant!"
+
+Hawker seemed again overwhelmed in a great dislike of himself. "Oh,
+well, of course, Hollie, it----" He waved his hand. "A man feels
+like--like----"
+
+"Certainly he does," said Hollanden. "That's all right, old man."
+
+"And look now, Hollie, here's this Oglethorpe----"
+
+"May the devil fly away with him!"
+
+"Well, here he is, coming along when I thought maybe--after a while, you
+know--I might stand some show. And you are acquainted with him, so give
+me a line on him."
+
+"Well, I should advise you to----"
+
+"Blow your advice! I want to hear about Oglethorpe."
+
+"Well, in the first place, he is a rattling good fellow, as I told you
+before, and this is what makes it so----"
+
+"Oh, hang what it makes it! Go on."
+
+"He is a rattling good fellow and he has stacks of money. Of course, in
+this case his having money doesn't affect the situation much. Miss
+Fanhall----"
+
+"Say, can you keep to the thread of the story, you infernal literary
+man!"
+
+"Well, he's popular. He don't talk money--ever. And if he's wicked, he's
+not sufficiently proud of it to be perpetually describing his sins. And
+then he is not so hideously brilliant, either. That's great credit to a
+man in these days. And then he--well, take it altogether, I should say
+Jem Oglethorpe was a smashing good fellow."
+
+"I wonder how long he is going to stay?" murmured Hawker.
+
+During this conversation his pipe had often died out. It was out at this
+time. He lit another match. Hollanden had watched the fingers of his
+friend as the match was scratched. "You're nervous, Billie," he said.
+
+Hawker straightened in his chair. "No, I'm not."
+
+"I saw your fingers tremble when you lit that match."
+
+"Oh, you lie!"
+
+Hollanden mused again. "He's popular with women, too," he said
+ultimately; "and often a woman will like a man and hunt his scalp just
+because she knows other women like him and want his scalp."
+
+"Yes, but not----"
+
+"Hold on! You were going to say that she was not like other women,
+weren't you?"
+
+"Not exactly that, but----"
+
+"Well, we will have all that understood."
+
+After a period of silence Hawker said, "I must be going."
+
+As the painter walked toward the door Hollanden cried to him: "Heavens!
+Of all pictures of a weary pilgrim!" His voice was very compassionate.
+
+Hawker wheeled, and an oath spun through the smoke clouds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+"Where's Mr. Hawker this morning?" asked the younger Miss Worcester. "I
+thought he was coming up to play tennis?"
+
+"I don't know. Confound him! I don't see why he didn't come," said
+Hollanden, looking across the shining valley. He frowned questioningly
+at the landscape. "I wonder where in the mischief he is?"
+
+The Worcester girls began also to stare at the great gleaming stretch of
+green and gold. "Didn't he tell you he was coming?" they demanded.
+
+"He didn't say a word about it," answered Hollanden. "I supposed, of
+course, he was coming. We will have to postpone the _mźlée_."
+
+Later he met Miss Fanhall. "You look as if you were going for a walk?"
+
+"I am," she said, swinging her parasol. "To meet the stage. Have you
+seen Mr. Hawker to-day?"
+
+"No," he said. "He is not coming up this morning. He is in a great fret
+about that field of stubble, and I suppose he is down there sketching
+the life out of it. These artists--they take such a fiendish interest in
+their work. I dare say we won't see much of him until he has finished
+it. Where did you say you were going to walk?"
+
+"To meet the stage."
+
+"Oh, well, I won't have to play tennis for an hour, and if you
+insist----"
+
+"Of course."
+
+As they strolled slowly in the shade of the trees Hollanden began,
+"Isn't that Hawker an ill-bred old thing?"
+
+"No, he is not." Then after a time she said, "Why?"
+
+"Oh, he gets so absorbed in a beastly smudge of paint that I really
+suppose he cares nothing for anything else in the world. Men who are
+really artists--I don't believe they are capable of deep human
+affections. So much of them is occupied by art. There's not much left
+over, you see."
+
+"I don't believe it at all," she exclaimed.
+
+"You don't, eh?" cried Hollanden scornfully. "Well, let me tell you,
+young woman, there is a great deal of truth in it. Now, there's
+Hawker--as good a fellow as ever lived, too, in a way, and yet he's an
+artist. Why, look how he treats--look how he treats that poor setter
+dog!"
+
+"Why, he's as kind to him as he can be," she declared.
+
+"And I tell you he is not!" cried Hollanden.
+
+"He is, Hollie. You--you are unspeakable when you get in these moods."
+
+"There--that's just you in an argument. I'm not in a mood at all. Now,
+look--the dog loves him with simple, unquestioning devotion that fairly
+brings tears to one's eyes----"
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"And he--why, he's as cold and stern----"
+
+"He isn't. He isn't, Holly. You are awf'ly unfair."
+
+"No, I'm not. I am simply a liberal observer. And Hawker, with his
+people, too," he went on darkly; "you can't tell--you don't know
+anything about it--but I tell you that what I have seen proves my
+assertion that the artistic mind has no space left for the human
+affections. And as for the dog----"
+
+"I thought you were his friend, Hollie?"
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"No, not the dog's. And yet you--really, Hollie, there is something
+unnatural in you. You are so stupidly keen in looking at people that you
+do not possess common loyalty to your friends. It is because you are a
+writer, I suppose. That has to explain so many things. Some of your
+traits are very disagreeable."
+
+"There! there!" plaintively cried Hollanden. "This is only about the
+treatment of a dog, mind you. Goodness, what an oration!"
+
+"It wasn't about the treatment of a dog. It was about your treatment of
+your friends."
+
+"Well," he said sagely, "it only goes to show that there is nothing
+impersonal in the mind of a woman. I undertook to discuss broadly----
+
+"Oh, Hollie!"
+
+"At any rate, it was rather below you to do such scoffing at me."
+
+"Well, I didn't mean--not all of it, Hollie."
+
+"Well, I didn't mean what I said about the dog and all that, either."
+
+"You didn't?" She turned toward him, large-eyed.
+
+"No. Not a single word of it."
+
+"Well, what did you say it for, then?" she demanded indignantly.
+
+"I said it," answered Hollanden placidly, "just to tease you." He looked
+abstractedly up to the trees.
+
+Presently she said slowly, "Just to tease me?"
+
+At this time Hollanden wore an unmistakable air of having a desire to
+turn up his coat collar. "Oh, come now----" he began nervously.
+
+"George Hollanden," said the voice at his shoulder, "you are not only
+disagreeable, but you are hopelessly ridiculous. I--I wish you would
+never speak to me again!"
+
+"Oh, come now, Grace, don't--don't---- Look! There's the stage coming,
+isn't it?"
+
+"No, the stage is not coming. I wish--I wish you were at the bottom of
+the sea, George Hollanden. And--and Mr. Hawker, too. There!"
+
+"Oh, bless my soul! And all about an infernal dog," wailed Hollanden.
+"Look! Honest, now, there's the stage. See it? See it?"
+
+"It isn't there at all," she said.
+
+Gradually he seemed to recover his courage. "What made you so
+tremendously angry? I don't see why."
+
+After consideration, she said decisively, "Well, because."
+
+"That's why I teased you," he rejoined.
+
+"Well, because--because----"
+
+"Go on," he told her finally. "You are doing very well." He waited
+patiently.
+
+"Well," she said, "it is dreadful to defend somebody so--so excitedly,
+and then have it turned out just a tease. I don't know what he would
+think."
+
+"Who would think?"
+
+"Why--he."
+
+"What could he think? Now, what could he think? Why," said Hollanden,
+waxing eloquent, "he couldn't under any circumstances think--think
+anything at all. Now, could he?"
+
+She made no reply.
+
+"Could he?"
+
+She was apparently reflecting.
+
+"Under any circumstances," persisted Hollanden, "he couldn't think
+anything at all. Now, could he?"
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Well, why are you angry at me, then?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+"John," said the old mother, from the profound mufflings of the pillow
+and quilts.
+
+"What?" said the old man. He was tugging at his right boot, and his tone
+was very irascible.
+
+"I think William's changed a good deal."
+
+"Well, what if he has?" replied the father, in another burst of
+ill-temper. He was then tugging at his left boot.
+
+"Yes, I'm afraid he's changed a good deal," said the muffled voice from
+the bed. "He's got a good many fine friends, now, John--folks what put
+on a good many airs; and he don't care for his home like he did."
+
+"Oh, well, I don't guess he's changed very much," said the old man
+cheerfully. He was now free of both boots.
+
+She raised herself on an elbow and looked out with a troubled face.
+"John, I think he likes that girl."
+
+"What girl?" said he.
+
+"What girl? Why, that awful handsome girl you see around--of course."
+
+"Do you think he likes 'er?"
+
+"I'm afraid so--I'm afraid so," murmured the mother mournfully.
+
+"Oh, well," said the old man, without alarm, or grief, or pleasure in
+his tone.
+
+He turned the lamp's wick very low and carried the lamp to the head of
+the stairs, where he perched it on the step. When he returned he said,
+"She's mighty good-look-in'!"
+
+"Well, that ain't everything," she snapped. "How do we know she ain't
+proud, and selfish, and--everything?"
+
+"How do you know she is?" returned the old man.
+
+"And she may just be leading him on."
+
+"Do him good, then," said he, with impregnable serenity. "Next time
+he'll know better."
+
+"Well, I'm worried about it," she said, as she sank back on the pillow
+again. "I think William's changed a good deal. He don't seem to care
+about--us--like he did."
+
+"Oh, go to sleep!" said the father drowsily.
+
+She was silent for a time, and then she said, "John?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Do you think I better speak to him about that girl?"
+
+"No."
+
+She grew silent again, but at last she demanded, "Why not?"
+
+"'Cause it's none of your business. Go to sleep, will you?" And
+presently he did, but the old mother lay blinking wild-eyed into the
+darkness.
+
+In the morning Hawker did not appear at the early breakfast, eaten when
+the blue glow of dawn shed its ghostly lights upon the valley. The old
+mother placed various dishes on the back part of the stove. At ten
+o'clock he came downstairs. His mother was sweeping busily in the
+parlour at the time, but she saw him and ran to the back part of the
+stove. She slid the various dishes on to the table. "Did you oversleep?"
+she asked.
+
+"Yes. I don't feel very well this morning," he said. He pulled his chair
+close to the table and sat there staring.
+
+She renewed her sweeping in the parlour. When she returned he sat still
+staring undeviatingly at nothing.
+
+"Why don't you eat your breakfast?" she said anxiously.
+
+"I tell you, mother, I don't feel very well this morning," he answered
+quite sharply.
+
+"Well," she said meekly, "drink some coffee and you'll feel better."
+
+Afterward he took his painting machinery and left the house. His younger
+sister was at the well. She looked at him with a little smile and a
+little sneer. "Going up to the inn this morning?" she said.
+
+"I don't see how that concerns you, Mary?" he rejoined, with dignity.
+
+"Oh, my!" she said airily.
+
+"But since you are so interested, I don't mind telling you that I'm not
+going up to the inn this morning."
+
+His sister fixed him with her eye. "She ain't mad at you, is she, Will?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Mary." He glared hatefully at her and
+strode away.
+
+Stanley saw him going through the fields and leaped a fence jubilantly
+in pursuit. In a wood the light sifted through the foliage and burned
+with a peculiar reddish lustre on the masses of dead leaves. He frowned
+at it for a while from different points. Presently he erected his easel
+and began to paint. After a a time he threw down his brush and swore.
+Stanley, who had been solemnly staring at the scene as if he too was
+sketching it, looked up in surprise.
+
+In wandering aimlessly through the fields and the forest Hawker once
+found himself near the road to Hemlock Inn. He shied away from it
+quickly as if it were a great snake.
+
+While most of the family were at supper, Mary, the younger sister, came
+charging breathlessly into the kitchen. "Ma--sister," she cried, "I know
+why--why Will didn't go to the inn to-day. There's another fellow come.
+Another fellow."
+
+"Who? Where? What do you mean?" exclaimed her mother and her sister.
+
+"Why, another fellow up at the inn," she shouted, triumphant in her
+information. "Another fellow come up on the stage this morning. And she
+went out driving with him this afternoon."
+
+"Well," exclaimed her mother and her sister.
+
+"Yep. And he's an awful good-looking fellow, too. And she--oh, my--she
+looked as if she thought the world and all of him."
+
+"Well," exclaimed her mother and her sister again.
+
+"Sho!" said the old man. "You wimen leave William alone and quit your
+gabbling."
+
+The three women made a combined assault upon him. "Well, we ain't
+a-hurting him, are we, pa? You needn't be so snifty. I guess we ain't
+a-hurting him much."
+
+"Well," said the old man. And to this argument he added, "Sho!"
+
+They kept him out of the subsequent consultations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+The next day, as little Roger was going toward the tennis court, a large
+orange and white setter ran effusively from around the corner of the inn
+and greeted him. Miss Fanhall, the Worcester girls, Hollanden, and
+Oglethorpe faced to the front like soldiers. Hollanden cried, "Why,
+Billie Hawker must be coming!" Hawker at that moment appeared, coming
+toward them with a smile which was not overconfident.
+
+Little Roger went off to perform some festivities of his own on the
+brown carpet under a clump of pines. The dog, to join him, felt obliged
+to circle widely about the tennis court. He was much afraid of this
+tennis court, with its tiny round things that sometimes hit him. When
+near it he usually slunk along at a little sheep trot and with an eye of
+wariness upon it.
+
+At her first opportunity the younger Worcester girl said, "You didn't
+come up yesterday, Mr. Hawker."
+
+Hollanden seemed to think that Miss Fanhall turned her head as if she
+wished to hear the explanation of the painter's absence, so he engaged
+her in swift and fierce conversation.
+
+"No," said Hawker. "I was resolved to finish a sketch of a stubble field
+which I began a good many days ago. You see, I was going to do such a
+great lot of work this summer, and I've done hardly a thing. I really
+ought to compel myself to do some, you know."
+
+"There," said Hollanden, with a victorious nod, "just what I told you!"
+
+"You didn't tell us anything of the kind," retorted the Worcester girls
+with one voice.
+
+A middle-aged woman came upon the porch of the inn, and after scanning
+for a moment the group at the tennis court she hurriedly withdrew.
+Presently she appeared again, accompanied by five more middle-aged
+women. "You see," she said to the others, "it is as I said. He has come
+back."
+
+The five surveyed the group at the tennis court, and then said: "So he
+has. I knew he would. Well, I declare! Did you ever?" Their voices were
+pitched at low keys and they moved with care, but their smiles were
+broad and full of a strange glee.
+
+"I wonder how he feels," said one in subtle ecstasy.
+
+Another laughed. "You know how you would feel, my dear, if you were him
+and saw yourself suddenly cut out by a man who was so hopelessly
+superior to you. Why, Oglethorpe's a thousand times better looking. And
+then think of his wealth and social position!"
+
+One whispered dramatically, "They say he never came up here at all
+yesterday."
+
+Another replied: "No more he did. That's what we've been talking about.
+Stayed down at the farm all day, poor fellow!"
+
+"Do you really think she cares for Oglethorpe?"
+
+"Care for him? Why, of course she does. Why, when they came up the path
+yesterday morning I never saw a girl's face so bright. I asked my
+husband how much of the Chambers Street Bank stock Oglethorpe owned, and
+he said that if Oglethorpe took his money out there wouldn't be enough
+left to buy a pie."
+
+The youngest woman in the corps said: "Well, I don't care. I think it is
+too bad. I don't see anything so much in that Mr. Oglethorpe."
+
+The others at once patronized her. "Oh, you don't, my dear? Well, let me
+tell you that bank stock waves in the air like a banner. You would see
+it if you were her."
+
+"Well, she don't have to care for his money."
+
+"Oh, no, of course she don't have to. But they are just the ones that
+do, my dear. They are just the ones that do."
+
+"Well, it's a shame."
+
+"Oh, of course it's a shame."
+
+The woman who had assembled the corps said to one at her side: "Oh, the
+commonest kind of people, my dear, the commonest kind. The father is a
+regular farmer, you know. He drives oxen. Such language! You can really
+hear him miles away bellowing at those oxen. And the girls are shy,
+half-wild things--oh, you have no idea! I saw one of them yesterday when
+we were out driving. She dodged as we came along, for I suppose she was
+ashamed of her frock, poor child! And the mother--well, I wish you
+could see her! A little, old, dried-up thing. We saw her carrying a pail
+of water from the well, and, oh, she bent and staggered dreadfully, poor
+thing!"
+
+"And the gate to their front yard, it has a broken hinge, you know. Of
+course, that's an awful bad sign. When people let their front gate hang
+on one hinge you know what that means."
+
+After gazing again at the group at the court, the youngest member of the
+corps said, "Well, he's a good tennis player anyhow."
+
+The others smiled indulgently. "Oh, yes, my dear, he's a good tennis
+player."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+One day Hollanden said, in greeting, to Hawker, "Well, he's gone."
+
+"Who?" asked Hawker.
+
+"Why, Oglethorpe, of course. Who did you think I meant?"
+
+"How did I know?" said Hawker angrily.
+
+"Well," retorted Hollanden, "your chief interest was in his movements, I
+thought."
+
+"Why, of course not, hang you! Why should I be interested in his
+movements?"
+
+"Well, you weren't, then. Does that suit you?"
+
+After a period of silence Hawker asked, "What did he--what made him go?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Why--Oglethorpe."
+
+"How was I to know you meant him? Well, he went because some important
+business affairs in New York demanded it, he said; but he is coming
+back again in a week. They had rather a late interview on the porch last
+evening."
+
+"Indeed," said Hawker stiffly.
+
+"Yes, and he went away this morning looking particularly elated. Aren't
+you glad?"
+
+"I don't see how it concerns me," said Hawker, with still greater
+stiffness.
+
+In a walk to the lake that afternoon Hawker and Miss Fanhall found
+themselves side by side and silent. The girl contemplated the distant
+purple hills as if Hawker were not at her side and silent. Hawker
+frowned at the roadway. Stanley, the setter, scouted the fields in a
+genial gallop.
+
+At last the girl turned to him. "Seems to me," she said, "seems to me
+you are dreadfully quiet this afternoon."
+
+"I am thinking about my wretched field of stubble," he answered, still
+frowning.
+
+Her parasol swung about until the girl was looking up at his inscrutable
+profile. "Is it, then, so important that you haven't time to talk to
+me?" she asked with an air of what might have been timidity.
+
+A smile swept the scowl from his face. "No, indeed," he said, instantly;
+"nothing is so important as that."
+
+She seemed aggrieved then. "Hum--you didn't look so," she told him.
+
+"Well, I didn't mean to look any other way," he said contritely. "You
+know what a bear I am sometimes. Hollanden says it is a fixed scowl from
+trying to see uproarious pinks, yellows, and blues."
+
+A little brook, a brawling, ruffianly little brook, swaggered from side
+to side down the glade, swirling in white leaps over the great dark
+rocks and shouting challenge to the hillsides. Hollanden and the
+Worcester girls had halted in a place of ferns and wet moss. Their
+voices could be heard quarrelling above the clamour of the stream.
+Stanley, the setter, had sousled himself in a pool and then gone and
+rolled in the dust of the road. He blissfully lolled there, with his
+coat now resembling an old door mat.
+
+"Don't you think Jem is a wonderfully good fellow?" said the girl to the
+painter.
+
+"Why, yes, of course," said Hawker.
+
+"Well, he is," she retorted, suddenly defensive.
+
+"Of course," he repeated loudly.
+
+She said, "Well, I don't think you like him as well as I like him."
+
+"Certainly not," said Hawker.
+
+"You don't?" She looked at him in a kind of astonishment.
+
+"Certainly not," said Hawker again, and very irritably. "How in the wide
+world do you expect me to like him as well as you like him?"
+
+"I don't mean as well," she explained.
+
+"Oh!" said Hawker.
+
+"But I mean you don't like him the way I do at all--the way I expected
+you to like him. I thought men of a certain pattern always fancied their
+kind of men wherever they met them, don't you know? And I was so sure
+you and Jem would be friends."
+
+"Oh!" cried Hawker. Presently he added, "But he isn't my kind of a man
+at all."
+
+"He is. Jem is one of the best fellows in the world."
+
+Again Hawker cried "Oh!"
+
+They paused and looked down at the brook. Stanley sprawled panting in
+the dust and watched them. Hawker leaned against a hemlock. He sighed
+and frowned, and then finally coughed with great resolution. "I suppose,
+of course, that I am unjust to him. I care for you myself, you
+understand, and so it becomes----"
+
+He paused for a moment because he heard a rustling of her skirts as if
+she had moved suddenly. Then he continued: "And so it becomes difficult
+for me to be fair to him. I am not able to see him with a true eye." He
+bitterly addressed the trees on the opposite side of the glen. "Oh, I
+care for you, of course. You might have expected it." He turned from the
+trees and strode toward the roadway. The uninformed and disreputable
+Stanley arose and wagged his tail.
+
+As if the girl had cried out at a calamity, Hawker said again, "Well,
+you might have expected it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+At the lake, Hollanden went pickerel fishing, lost his hook in a gaunt,
+gray stump, and earned much distinction by his skill in discovering
+words to express his emotion without resorting to the list ordinarily
+used in such cases. The younger Miss Worcester ruined a new pair of
+boots, and Stanley sat on the bank and howled the song of the forsaken.
+At the conclusion of the festivities Hollanden said, "Billie, you ought
+to take the boat back."
+
+"Why had I? You borrowed it."
+
+"Well, I borrowed it and it was a lot of trouble, and now you ought to
+take it back."
+
+Ultimately Hawker said, "Oh, let's both go!"
+
+On this journey Hawker made a long speech to his friend, and at the end
+of it he exclaimed: "And now do you think she cares so much for
+Oglethorpe? Why, she as good as told me that he was only a very great
+friend."
+
+Hollanden wagged his head dubiously. "What a woman says doesn't amount
+to shucks. It's the way she says it--that's what counts. Besides," he
+cried in a brilliant afterthought, "she wouldn't tell you, anyhow, you
+fool!"
+
+"You're an encouraging brute," said Hawker, with a rueful grin.
+
+Later the Worcester girls seized upon Hollanden and piled him high with
+ferns and mosses. They dragged the long gray lichens from the chins of
+venerable pines, and ran with them to Hollanden, and dashed them into
+his arms. "Oh, hurry up, Hollie!" they cried, because with his great
+load he frequently fell behind them in the march. He once positively
+refused to carry these things another step. Some distance farther on the
+road he positively refused to carry this old truck another step. When
+almost to the inn he positively refused to carry this senseless rubbish
+another step. The Worcester girls had such vivid contempt for his
+expressed unwillingness that they neglected to tell him of any
+appreciation they might have had for his noble struggle.
+
+As Hawker and Miss Fanhall proceeded slowly they heard a voice ringing
+through the foliage: "Whoa! Haw! Git-ap, blast you! Haw! Haw, drat your
+hides! Will you haw? Git-ap! Gee! Whoa!"
+
+Hawker said, "The others are a good ways ahead. Hadn't we better hurry a
+little?"
+
+The girl obediently mended her pace.
+
+"Whoa! haw! git-ap!" shouted the voice in the distance. "Git over there,
+Red, git over! Gee! Git-ap!" And these cries pursued the man and the
+maid.
+
+At last Hawker said, "That's my father."
+
+"Where?" she asked, looking bewildered.
+
+"Back there, driving those oxen."
+
+The voice shouted: "Whoa! Git-ap! Gee! Red, git over there now, will
+you? I'll trim the shin off'n you in a minute. Whoa! Haw! Haw! Whoa!
+Git-ap!"
+
+Hawker repeated, "Yes, that's my father."
+
+"Oh, is it?" she said. "Let's wait for him."
+
+"All right," said Hawker sullenly.
+
+Presently a team of oxen waddled into view around the curve of the road.
+They swung their heads slowly from side to side, bent under the yoke,
+and looked out at the world with their great eyes, in which was a mystic
+note of their humble, submissive, toilsome lives. An old wagon creaked
+after them, and erect upon it was the tall and tattered figure of the
+farmer swinging his whip and yelling: "Whoa! Haw there! Git-ap!" The
+lash flicked and flew over the broad backs of the animals.
+
+"Hello, father!" said Hawker.
+
+"Whoa! Back! Whoa! Why, hello, William, what you doing here?"
+
+"Oh, just taking a walk. Miss Fanhall, this is my father. Father----"
+
+"How d' you do?" The old man balanced himself with care and then raised
+his straw hat from his head with a quick gesture and with what was
+perhaps a slightly apologetic air, as if he feared that he was rather
+over-doing the ceremonial part.
+
+The girl later became very intent upon the oxen. "Aren't they nice old
+things?" she said, as she stood looking into the faces of the team.
+"But what makes their eyes so very sad?"
+
+"I dunno," said the old man.
+
+She was apparently unable to resist a desire to pat the nose of the
+nearest ox, and for that purpose she stretched forth a cautious hand.
+But the ox moved restlessly at the moment and the girl put her hand
+apprehensively behind herself and backed away. The old man on the wagon
+grinned. "They won't hurt you," he told her.
+
+"They won't bite, will they?" she asked, casting a glance of inquiry at
+the old man and then turning her eyes again upon the fascinating
+animals.
+
+"No," said the old man, still grinning, "just as gentle as kittens."
+
+She approached them circuitously. "Sure?" she said.
+
+"Sure," replied the old man. He climbed from the wagon and came to the
+heads of the oxen. With him as an ally, she finally succeeded in patting
+the nose of the nearest ox. "Aren't they solemn, kind old fellows? Don't
+you get to think a great deal of them?"
+
+"Well, they're kind of aggravating beasts sometimes," he said. "But
+they're a good yoke--a good yoke. They can haul with anything in this
+region."
+
+"It doesn't make them so terribly tired, does it?" she said hopefully.
+"They are such strong animals."
+
+"No-o-o," he said. "I dunno. I never thought much about it."
+
+With their heads close together they became so absorbed in their
+conversation that they seemed to forget the painter. He sat on a log and
+watched them.
+
+Ultimately the girl said, "Won't you give us a ride?"
+
+"Sure," said the old man. "Come on, and I'll help you up." He assisted
+her very painstakingly to the old board that usually served him as a
+seat, and he clambered to a place beside her. "Come on, William," he
+called. The painter climbed into the wagon and stood behind his father,
+putting his hand on the old man's shoulder to preserve his balance.
+
+"Which is the near ox?" asked the girl with a serious frown.
+
+"Git-ap! Haw! That one there," said the old man.
+
+"And this one is the off ox?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"Well, suppose you sat here where I do; would this one be the near ox
+and that one the off ox, then?"
+
+"Nope. Be just same."
+
+"Then the near ox isn't always the nearest one to a person, at all? That
+ox there is always the near ox?"
+
+"Yep, always. 'Cause when you drive 'em a-foot you always walk on the
+left side."
+
+"Well, I never knew that before."
+
+After studying them in silence for a while, she said, "Do you think they
+are happy?"
+
+"I dunno," said the old man. "I never thought." As the wagon creaked on
+they gravely discussed this problem, contemplating profoundly the backs
+of the animals. Hawker gazed in silence at the meditating two before
+him. Under the wagon Stanley, the setter, walked slowly, wagging his
+tail in placid contentment and ruminating upon his experiences.
+
+At last the old man said cheerfully, "Shall I take you around by the
+inn?"
+
+Hawker started and seemed to wince at the question. Perhaps he was about
+to interrupt, but the girl cried: "Oh, will you? Take us right to the
+door? Oh, that will be awfully good of you!"
+
+"Why," began Hawker, "you don't want--you don't want to ride to the inn
+on an--on an ox wagon, do you?"
+
+"Why, of course I do," she retorted, directing a withering glance at
+him.
+
+"Well----" he protested.
+
+"Let 'er be, William," interrupted the old man. "Let 'er do what she
+wants to. I guess everybody in th' world ain't even got an ox wagon to
+ride in. Have they?"
+
+"No, indeed," she returned, while withering Hawker again.
+
+"Gee! Gee! Whoa! Haw! Git-ap! Haw! Whoa! Back!"
+
+After these two attacks Hawker became silent.
+
+"Gee! Gee! Gee there, blast--s'cuse me. Gee! Whoa! Git-ap!"
+
+All the boarders of the inn were upon its porches waiting for the dinner
+gong. There was a surge toward the railing as a middle-aged woman passed
+the word along her middle-aged friends that Miss Fanhall, accompanied
+by Mr. Hawker, had arrived on the ox cart of Mr. Hawker's father.
+
+"Whoa! Ha! Git-ap!" said the old man in more subdued tones. "Whoa there,
+Red! Whoa, now! Wh-o-a!"
+
+Hawker helped the girl to alight, and she paused for a moment conversing
+with the old man about the oxen. Then she ran smiling up the steps to
+meet the Worcester girls.
+
+"Oh, such a lovely time! Those dear old oxen--you should have been with
+us!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+"Oh, Miss Fanhall!"
+
+"What is it, Mrs. Truscot?"
+
+"That was a great prank of yours last night, my dear. We all enjoyed the
+joke so much."
+
+"Prank?"
+
+"Yes, your riding on the ox cart with that old farmer and that young Mr.
+What's-his-name, you know. We all thought it delicious. Ah, my dear,
+after all--don't be offended--if we had your people's wealth and
+position we might do that sort of unconventional thing, too; but, ah, my
+dear, we can't, we can't! Isn't the young painter a charming man?"
+
+Out on the porch Hollanden was haranguing his friends. He heard a step
+and glanced over his shoulder to see who was about to interrupt him. He
+suddenly ceased his oration, and said, "Hello! what's the matter with
+Grace?" The heads turned promptly.
+
+As the girl came toward them it could be seen that her cheeks were very
+pink and her eyes were flashing general wrath and defiance.
+
+The Worcester girls burst into eager interrogation. "Oh, nothing!" she
+replied at first, but later she added in an undertone, "That wretched
+Mrs. Truscot----"
+
+"What did she say?" whispered the younger Worcester girl.
+
+"Why, she said--oh, nothing!"
+
+Both Hollanden and Hawker were industriously reflecting.
+
+Later in the morning Hawker said privately to the girl, "I know what
+Mrs. Truscot talked to you about."
+
+She turned upon him belligerently. "You do?"
+
+"Yes," he answered with meekness. "It was undoubtedly some reference to
+your ride upon the ox wagon."
+
+She hesitated a moment, and then said, "Well?"
+
+With still greater meekness he said, "I am very sorry."
+
+"Are you, indeed?" she inquired loftily. "Sorry for what? Sorry that I
+rode upon your father's ox wagon, or sorry that Mrs. Truscot was rude
+to me about it?"
+
+"Well, in some ways it was my fault."
+
+"Was it? I suppose you intend to apologize for your father's owning an
+ox wagon, don't you?"
+
+"No, but----"
+
+"Well, I am going to ride in the ox wagon whenever I choose. Your
+father, I know, will always be glad to have me. And if it so shocks you,
+there is not the slightest necessity of your coming with us."
+
+They glowered at each other, and he said, "You have twisted the question
+with the usual ability of your sex."
+
+She pondered as if seeking some particularly destructive retort. She
+ended by saying bluntly, "Did you know that we were going home next
+week?"
+
+A flush came suddenly to his face. "No. Going home? Who? You?"
+
+"Why, of course." And then with an indolent air she continued, "I meant
+to have told you before this, but somehow it quite escaped me."
+
+He stammered, "Are--are you, honestly?"
+
+She nodded. "Why, of course. Can't stay here forever, you know."
+
+They were then silent for a long time.
+
+At last Hawker said, "Do you remember what I told you yesterday?"
+
+"No. What was it?"
+
+He cried indignantly, "You know very well what I told you!"
+
+"I do not."
+
+"No," he sneered, "of course not! You never take the trouble to remember
+such things. Of course not! Of course not!"
+
+"You are a very ridiculous person," she vouchsafed, after eying him
+coldly.
+
+He arose abruptly. "I believe I am. By heavens, I believe I am!" he
+cried in a fury.
+
+She laughed. "You are more ridiculous now than I have yet seen you."
+
+After a pause he said magnificently, "Well, Miss Fanhall, you will
+doubtless find Mr. Hollanden's conversation to have a much greater
+interest than that of such a ridiculous person."
+
+Hollanden approached them with the blithesome step of an untroubled man.
+"Hello, you two people, why don't you--oh--ahem! Hold on, Billie, where
+are you going?"
+
+"I----" began Hawker.
+
+"Oh, Hollie," cried the girl impetuously, "do tell me how to do that
+slam thing, you know. I've tried it so often, but I don't believe I hold
+my racket right. And you do it so beautifully."
+
+"Oh, that," said Hollanden. "It's not so very difficult. I'll show it to
+you. You don't want to know this minute, do you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+"Well, come over to the court, then. Come ahead, Billie!"
+
+"No," said Hawker, without looking at his friend, "I can't this morning,
+Hollie. I've got to go to work. Good-bye!" He comprehended them both in
+a swift bow and stalked away.
+
+Hollanden turned quickly to the girl. "What was the matter with Billie?
+What was he grinding his teeth for? What was the matter with him?"
+
+"Why, nothing--was there?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"Why, he was grinding his teeth until he sounded like a stone crusher,"
+said Hollanden in a severe tone. "What was the matter with him?"
+
+"How should I know?" she retorted.
+
+"You've been saying something to him."
+
+"I! I didn't say a thing."
+
+"Yes, you did."
+
+"Hollie, don't be absurd."
+
+Hollanden debated with himself for a time, and then observed, "Oh, well,
+I always said he was an ugly-tempered fellow----"
+
+The girl flashed him a little glance.
+
+"And now I am sure of it--as ugly-tempered a fellow as ever lived."
+
+"I believe you," said the girl. Then she added: "All men are. I declare,
+I think you to be the most incomprehensible creatures. One never knows
+what to expect of you. And you explode and go into rages and make
+yourselves utterly detestable over the most trivial matters and at the
+most unexpected times. You are all mad, I think."
+
+"I!" cried Hollanden wildly. "What in the mischief have I done?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+"Look here," said Hollanden, at length, "I thought you were so
+wonderfully anxious to learn that stroke?"
+
+"Well, I am," she said.
+
+"Come on, then." As they walked toward the tennis court he seemed to be
+plunged into mournful thought. In his eyes was a singular expression,
+which perhaps denoted the woe of the optimist pushed suddenly from its
+height. He sighed. "Oh, well, I suppose all women, even the best of
+them, are that way."
+
+"What way?" she said.
+
+"My dear child," he answered, in a benevolent manner, "you have
+disappointed me, because I have discovered that you resemble the rest of
+your sex."
+
+"Ah!" she remarked, maintaining a noncommittal attitude.
+
+"Yes," continued Hollanden, with a sad but kindly smile, "even you,
+Grace, were not above fooling with the affections of a poor country
+swain, until he don't know his ear from the tooth he had pulled two
+years ago."
+
+She laughed. "He would be furious if he heard you call him a country
+swain."
+
+"Who would?" said Hollanden.
+
+"Why, the country swain, of course," she rejoined.
+
+Hollanden seemed plunged in mournful reflection again. "Well, it's a
+shame, Grace, anyhow," he observed, wagging his head dolefully. "It's a
+howling, wicked shame."
+
+"Hollie, you have no brains at all," she said, "despite your opinion."
+
+"No," he replied ironically, "not a bit."
+
+"Well, you haven't, you know, Hollie."
+
+"At any rate," he said in an angry voice, "I have some comprehension and
+sympathy for the feelings of others."
+
+"Have you?" she asked. "How do you mean, Hollie? Do you mean you have
+feeling for them in their various sorrows? Or do you mean that you
+understand their minds?"
+
+Hollanden ponderously began, "There have been people who have not
+questioned my ability to----"
+
+"Oh, then, you mean that you both feel for them in their sorrows and
+comprehend the machinery of their minds. Well, let me tell you that in
+regard to the last thing you are wrong. You know nothing of anyone's
+mind. You know less about human nature than anybody I have met."
+
+Hollanden looked at her in artless astonishment. He said, "Now, I wonder
+what made you say that?" This interrogation did not seem to be addressed
+to her, but was evidently a statement to himself of a problem. He
+meditated for some moments. Eventually he said, "I suppose you mean that
+I do not understand you?"
+
+"Why do you suppose I mean that?"
+
+"That's what a person usually means when he--or she--charges another
+with not understanding the entire world."
+
+"Well, at any rate, it is not what I mean at all," she said. "I mean
+that you habitually blunder about other people's affairs, in the belief,
+I imagine, that you are a great philanthropist, when you are only making
+an extraordinary exhibition of yourself."
+
+"The dev----" began Hollanden. Afterward he said, "Now, I wonder what
+in blue thunder you mean this time?"
+
+"Mean this time? My meaning is very plain, Hollie. I supposed the words
+were clear enough."
+
+"Yes," he said thoughtfully, "your words were clear enough, but then you
+were of course referring back to some event, or series of events, in
+which I had the singular ill fortune to displease you. Maybe you don't
+know yourself, and spoke only from the emotion generated by the event,
+or series of events, in which, as I have said, I had the singular ill
+fortune to displease you."
+
+"How awf'ly clever!" she said.
+
+"But I can't recall the event, or series of events, at all," he
+continued, musing with a scholarly air and disregarding her mockery. "I
+can't remember a thing about it. To be sure, it might have been that
+time when----"
+
+"I think it very stupid of you to hunt for a meaning when I believe I
+made everything so perfectly clear," she said wrathfully.
+
+"Well, you yourself might not be aware of what you really meant," he
+answered sagely. "Women often do that sort of thing, you know. Women
+often speak from motives which, if brought face to face with them, they
+wouldn't be able to distinguish from any other thing which they had
+never before seen."
+
+"Hollie, if there is a disgusting person in the world it is he who
+pretends to know so much concerning a woman's mind."
+
+"Well, that's because they who know, or pretend to know, so much about a
+woman's mind are invariably satirical, you understand," said Hollanden
+cheerfully.
+
+A dog ran frantically across the lawn, his nose high in the air and his
+countenance expressing vast perturbation and alarm. "Why, Billie forgot
+to whistle for his dog when he started for home," said Hollanden. "Come
+here, old man! Well, 'e was a nice dog!" The girl also gave invitation,
+but the setter would not heed them. He spun wildly about the lawn until
+he seemed to strike his master's trail, and then, with his nose near to
+the ground, went down the road at an eager gallop. They stood and
+watched him.
+
+"Stanley's a nice dog," said Hollanden.
+
+"Indeed he is!" replied the girl fervently.
+
+Presently Hollanden remarked: "Well, don't let's fight any more,
+particularly since we can't decide what we're fighting about. I can't
+discover the reason, and you don't know it, so----"
+
+"I do know it. I told you very plainly."
+
+"Well, all right. Now, this is the way to work that slam: You give the
+ball a sort of a lift--see!--underhanded and with your arm crooked and
+stiff. Here, you smash this other ball into the net. Hi! Look out! If
+you hit it that way you'll knock it over the hotel. Let the ball drop
+nearer to the ground. Oh, heavens, not on the ground! Well, it's hard to
+do it from the serve, anyhow. I'll go over to the other court and bat
+you some easy ones."
+
+Afterward, when they were going toward the inn, the girl suddenly began
+to laugh.
+
+"What are you giggling at?" said Hollanden.
+
+"I was thinking how furious he would be if he heard you call him a
+country swain," she rejoined.
+
+"Who?" asked Hollanden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+Oglethorpe contended that the men who made the most money from books
+were the best authors. Hollanden contended that they were the worst.
+Oglethorpe said that such a question should be left to the people.
+Hollanden said that the people habitually made wrong decisions on
+questions that were left to them. "That is the most odiously
+aristocratic belief," said Oglethorpe.
+
+"No," said Hollanden, "I like the people. But, considered generally,
+they are a collection of ingenious blockheads."
+
+"But they read your books," said Oglethorpe, grinning.
+
+"That is through a mistake," replied Hollanden.
+
+As the discussion grew in size it incited the close attention of the
+Worcester girls, but Miss Fanhall did not seem to hear it. Hawker, too,
+was staring into the darkness with a gloomy and preoccupied air.
+
+"Are you sorry that this is your last evening at Hemlock Inn?" said the
+painter at last, in a low tone.
+
+"Why, yes--certainly," said the girl.
+
+Under the sloping porch of the inn the vague orange light from the
+parlours drifted to the black wall of the night.
+
+"I shall miss you," said the painter.
+
+"Oh, I dare say," said the girl.
+
+Hollanden was lecturing at length and wonderfully. In the mystic spaces
+of the night the pines could be heard in their weird monotone, as they
+softly smote branch and branch, as if moving in some solemn and
+sorrowful dance.
+
+"This has been quite the most delightful summer of my experience," said
+the painter.
+
+"I have found it very pleasant," said the girl.
+
+From time to time Hawker glanced furtively at Oglethorpe, Hollanden, and
+the Worcester girl. This glance expressed no desire for their
+well-being.
+
+"I shall miss you," he said to the girl again. His manner was rather
+desperate. She made no reply, and, after leaning toward her, he subsided
+with an air of defeat.
+
+Eventually he remarked: "It will be very lonely here again. I dare say I
+shall return to New York myself in a few weeks."
+
+"I hope you will call," she said.
+
+"I shall be delighted," he answered stiffly, and with a dissatisfied
+look at her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hawker," cried the younger Worcester girl, suddenly emerging
+from the cloud of argument which Hollanden and Oglethorpe kept in the
+air, "won't it be sad to lose Grace? Indeed, I don't know what we shall
+do. Sha'n't we miss her dreadfully?"
+
+"Yes," said Hawker, "we shall of course miss her dreadfully."
+
+"Yes, won't it be frightful?" said the elder Worcester girl. "I can't
+imagine what we will do without her. And Hollie is only going to spend
+ten more days. Oh, dear! mamma, I believe, will insist on staying the
+entire summer. It was papa's orders, you know, and I really think she is
+going to obey them. He said he wanted her to have one period of rest at
+any rate. She is such a busy woman in town, you know."
+
+"Here," said Hollanden, wheeling to them suddenly, "you all look as if
+you were badgering Hawker, and he looks badgered. What are you saying to
+him?"
+
+"Why," answered the younger Worcester girl, "we were only saying to him
+how lonely it would be without Grace."
+
+"Oh!" said Hollanden.
+
+As the evening grew old, the mother of the Worcester girls joined the
+group. This was a sign that the girls were not to long delay the
+vanishing time. She sat almost upon the edge of her chair, as if she
+expected to be called upon at any moment to arise and bow "Good-night,"
+and she repaid Hollanden's eloquent attention with the placid and
+absent-minded smiles of the chaperon who waits.
+
+Once the younger Worcester girl shrugged her shoulders and turned to
+say, "Mamma, you make me nervous!" Her mother merely smiled in a still
+more placid and absent-minded manner.
+
+Oglethorpe arose to drag his chair nearer to the railing, and when he
+stood the Worcester mother moved and looked around expectantly, but
+Oglethorpe took seat again. Hawker kept an anxious eye upon her.
+
+Presently Miss Fanhall arose.
+
+"Why, you are not going in already, are you?" said Hawker and Hollanden
+and Oglethorpe. The Worcester mother moved toward the door followed by
+her daughters, who were protesting in muffled tones. Hollanden pitched
+violently upon Oglethorpe. "Well, at any rate----" he said. He picked
+the thread of a past argument with great agility.
+
+Hawker said to the girl, "I--I--I shall miss you dreadfully."
+
+She turned to look at him and smiled. "Shall you?" she said in a low
+voice.
+
+"Yes," he said. Thereafter he stood before her awkwardly and in silence.
+She scrutinized the boards of the floor. Suddenly she drew a violet from
+a cluster of them upon her gown and thrust it out to him as she turned
+toward the approaching Oglethorpe.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Hawker," said the latter. "I am very glad to have met
+you, I'm sure. Hope to see you in town. Good-night."
+
+He stood near when the girl said to Hawker: "Good-bye. You have given us
+such a charming summer. We shall be delighted to see you in town. You
+must come some time when the children can see you, too. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye," replied Hawker, eagerly and feverishly, trying to interpret
+the inscrutable feminine face before him. "I shall come at my first
+opportunity."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+Down at the farmhouse, in the black quiet of the night, a dog lay curled
+on the door-mat. Of a sudden the tail of this dog began to thump, thump,
+on the boards. It began as a lazy movement, but it passed into a state
+of gentle enthusiasm, and then into one of curiously loud and joyful
+celebration. At last the gate clicked. The dog uncurled, and went to the
+edge of the steps to greet his master. He gave adoring, tremulous
+welcome with his clear eyes shining in the darkness. "Well, Stan, old
+boy," said Hawker, stooping to stroke the dog's head. After his master
+had entered the house the dog went forward and sniffed at something
+that lay on the top step. Apparently it did not interest him greatly,
+for he returned in a moment to the door-mat.
+
+But he was again obliged to uncurl himself, for his master came out of
+the house with a lighted lamp and made search of the door-mat, the
+steps, and the walk, swearing meanwhile in an undertone. The dog wagged
+his tail and sleepily watched this ceremony. When his master had again
+entered the house the dog went forward and sniffed at the top step, but
+the thing that had lain there was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+It was evident at breakfast that Hawker's sisters had achieved
+information. "What's the matter with you this morning?" asked one. "You
+look as if you hadn't slep' well."
+
+"There is nothing the matter with me," he rejoined, looking glumly at
+his plate.
+
+"Well, you look kind of broke up."
+
+"How I look is of no consequence. I tell you there is nothing the matter
+with me."
+
+"Oh!" said his sister. She exchanged meaning glances with the other
+feminine members of the family. Presently the other sister observed, "I
+heard she was going home to-day."
+
+"Who?" said Hawker, with a challenge in his tone.
+
+"Why, that New York girl--Miss What's-her-name," replied the sister,
+with an undaunted smile.
+
+"Did you, indeed? Well, perhaps she is."
+
+"Oh, you don't know for sure, I s'pose."
+
+Hawker arose from the table, and, taking his hat, went away.
+
+"Mary!" said the mother, in the sepulchral tone of belated but
+conscientious reproof.
+
+"Well, I don't care. He needn't be so grand. I didn't go to tease him. I
+don't care."
+
+"Well, you ought to care," said the old man suddenly. "There's no sense
+in you wimen folks pestering the boy all the time. Let him alone with
+his own business, can't you?"
+
+"Well, ain't we leaving him alone?"
+
+"No, you ain't--'cept when he ain't here. I don't wonder the boy grabs
+his hat and skips out when you git to going."
+
+"Well, what did we say to him now? Tell us what we said to him that was
+so dreadful."
+
+"Aw, thunder an' lightnin'!" cried the old man with a sudden great
+snarl. They seemed to know by this ejaculation that he had emerged in an
+instant from that place where man endures, and they ended the
+discussion. The old man continued his breakfast.
+
+During his walk that morning Hawker visited a certain cascade, a
+certain lake, and some roads, paths, groves, nooks. Later in the day he
+made a sketch, choosing an hour when the atmosphere was of a dark blue,
+like powder smoke in the shade of trees, and the western sky was burning
+in strips of red. He painted with a wild face, like a man who is
+killing.
+
+After supper he and his father strolled under the apple boughs in the
+orchard and smoked. Once he gestured wearily. "Oh, I guess I'll go back
+to New York in a few days."
+
+"Um," replied his father calmly. "All right, William."
+
+Several days later Hawker accosted his father in the barnyard. "I
+suppose you think sometimes I don't care so much about you and the folks
+and the old place any more; but I do."
+
+"Um," said the old man. "When you goin'?"
+
+"Where?" asked Hawker, flushing.
+
+"Back to New York."
+
+"Why--I hadn't thought much about---- Oh, next week, I guess."
+
+"Well, do as you like, William. You know how glad me an' mother and the
+girls are to have you come home with us whenever you can come. You know
+that. But you must do as you think best, and if you ought to go back to
+New York now, William, why--do as you think best."
+
+"Well, my work----" said Hawker.
+
+From time to time the mother made wondering speech to the sisters. "How
+much nicer William is now! He's just as good as he can be. There for a
+while he was so cross and out of sorts. I don't see what could have come
+over him. But now he's just as good as he can be."
+
+Hollanden told him, "Come up to the inn more, you fool."
+
+"I was up there yesterday."
+
+"Yesterday! What of that? I've seen the time when the farm couldn't hold
+you for two hours during the day."
+
+"Go to blazes!"
+
+"Millicent got a letter from Grace Fanhall the other day."
+
+"That so?"
+
+"Yes, she did. Grace wrote---- Say, does that shadow look pure purple
+to you?"
+
+"Certainly it does, or I wouldn't paint it so, duffer. What did she
+write?"
+
+"Well, if that shadow is pure purple my eyes are liars. It looks a kind
+of slate colour to me. Lord! if what you fellows say in your pictures is
+true, the whole earth must be blazing and burning and glowing and----"
+
+Hawker went into a rage. "Oh, you don't know anything about colour,
+Hollie. For heaven's sake, shut up, or I'll smash you with the easel."
+
+"Well, I was going to tell you what Grace wrote in her letter. She
+said----"
+
+"Go on."
+
+"Gimme time, can't you? She said that town was stupid, and that she
+wished she was back at Hemlock Inn."
+
+"Oh! Is that all?"
+
+"Is that all? I wonder what you expected? Well, and she asked to be
+recalled to you."
+
+"Yes? Thanks."
+
+"And that's all. 'Gad, for such a devoted man as you were, your
+enthusiasm and interest is stupendous."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The father said to the mother, "Well, William's going back to New York
+next week."
+
+"Is he? Why, he ain't said nothing to me about it."
+
+"Well, he is, anyhow."
+
+"I declare! What do you s'pose he's going back before September for,
+John?"
+
+"How do I know?"
+
+"Well, it's funny, John. I bet--I bet he's going back so's he can see
+that girl."
+
+"He says it's his work."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+Wrinkles had been peering into the little dry-goods box that acted as a
+cupboard. "There are only two eggs and half a loaf of bread left," he
+announced brutally.
+
+"Heavens!" said Warwickson from where he lay smoking on the bed. He
+spoke in a dismal voice. This tone, it is said, had earned him his
+popular name of Great Grief.
+
+From different points of the compass Wrinkles looked at the little
+cupboard with a tremendous scowl, as if he intended thus to frighten the
+eggs into becoming more than two, and the bread into becoming a loaf.
+"Plague take it!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, shut up, Wrinkles!" said Grief from the bed.
+
+Wrinkles sat down with an air austere and virtuous. "Well, what are we
+going to do?" he demanded of the others.
+
+Grief, after swearing, said: "There, that's right! Now you're happy.
+The holy office of the inquisition! Blast your buttons, Wrinkles, you
+always try to keep us from starving peacefully! It is two hours before
+dinner, anyhow, and----"
+
+"Well, but what are you going to do?" persisted Wrinkles.
+
+Pennoyer, with his head afar down, had been busily scratching at a
+pen-and-ink drawing. He looked up from his board to utter a plaintive
+optimism. "The Monthly Amazement will pay me to-morrow. They ought to.
+I've waited over three months now. I'm going down there to-morrow, and
+perhaps I'll get it."
+
+His friends listened with airs of tolerance. "Oh, no doubt, Penny, old
+man." But at last Wrinkles giggled pityingly. Over on the bed Grief
+croaked deep down in his throat. Nothing was said for a long time
+thereafter.
+
+The crash of the New York streets came faintly to this room.
+
+Occasionally one could hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors
+of the begrimed building which squatted, slumbering, and old, between
+two exalted commercial structures which would have had to bend afar
+down to perceive it. The northward march of the city's progress had
+happened not to overturn this aged structure, and it huddled there, lost
+and forgotten, while the cloud-veering towers strode on.
+
+Meanwhile the first shadows of dusk came in at the blurred windows of
+the room. Pennoyer threw down his pen and tossed his drawing over on the
+wonderful heap of stuff that hid the table. "It's too dark to work." He
+lit a pipe and walked about, stretching his shoulders like a man whose
+labour was valuable.
+
+When the dusk came fully the youths grew apparently sad. The solemnity
+of the gloom seemed to make them ponder. "Light the gas, Wrinkles," said
+Grief fretfully.
+
+The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with
+sketches, the tousled bed in one corner, the masses of boxes and trunks
+in another, a little dead stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover,
+there were wine-coloured draperies flung in some places, and on a shelf,
+high up, there were plaster casts, with dust in the creases. A long
+stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction and then turned
+impulsively toward a hole in the wall. There were some elaborate cobwebs
+on the ceiling.
+
+"Well, let's eat," said Grief.
+
+"Eat," said Wrinkles, with a jeer; "I told you there was only two eggs
+and a little bread left. How are we going to eat?"
+
+Again brought face to face with this problem, and at the hour for
+dinner, Pennoyer and Grief thought profoundly. "Thunder and turf!" Grief
+finally announced as the result of his deliberations.
+
+"Well, if Billie Hawker was only home----" began Pennoyer.
+
+"But he isn't," objected Wrinkles, "and that settles that."
+
+Grief and Pennoyer thought more. Ultimately Grief said, "Oh, well, let's
+eat what we've got." The others at once agreed to this suggestion, as if
+it had been in their minds.
+
+Later there came a quick step in the passage and a confident little
+thunder upon the door. Wrinkles arranging the tin pail on the gas stove,
+Pennoyer engaged in slicing the bread, and Great Grief affixing the
+rubber tube to the gas stove, yelled, "Come in!"
+
+The door opened, and Miss Florinda O'Connor, the model, dashed into the
+room like a gale of obstreperous autumn leaves.
+
+"Why, hello, Splutter!" they cried.
+
+"Oh, boys, I've come to dine with you."
+
+It was like a squall striking a fleet of yachts.
+
+Grief spoke first. "Yes, you have?" he said incredulously.
+
+"Why, certainly I have. What's the matter?"
+
+They grinned. "Well, old lady," responded Grief, "you've hit us at the
+wrong time. We are, in fact, all out of everything. No dinner, to
+mention, and, what's more, we haven't got a sou."
+
+"What? Again?" cried Florinda.
+
+"Yes, again. You'd better dine home to-night."
+
+"But I'll--I'll stake you," said the girl eagerly. "Oh, you poor old
+idiots! It's a shame! Say, I'll stake you."
+
+"Certainly not," said Pennoyer sternly.
+
+"What are you talking about, Splutter?" demanded Wrinkles in an angry
+voice.
+
+"No, that won't go down," said Grief, in a resolute yet wistful tone.
+
+Florinda divested herself of her hat, jacket, and gloves, and put them
+where she pleased. "Got coffee, haven't you? Well, I'm not going to stir
+a step. You're a fine lot of birds!" she added bitterly, "You've all
+pulled me out of a whole lot of scrape--oh, any number of times--and now
+you're broke, you go acting like a set of dudes."
+
+Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he had to
+watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was
+balanced on a trunk, and two bundles of kindling was balanced on the
+chair, and the gas stove was balanced on the kindling. Coffee-making was
+here accounted a feat.
+
+Pennoyer dropped a piece of bread to the floor. "There! I'll have to go
+shy one."
+
+Wrinkles sat playing serenades on his guitar and staring with a frown at
+the table, as if he was applying some strange method of clearing it of
+its litter.
+
+Florinda assaulted Great Grief. "Here, that's not the way to make
+coffee!"
+
+"What ain't?"
+
+"Why, the way you're making it. You want to take----" She explained some
+way to him which he couldn't understand.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Wrinkles, tackle that table! Don't sit there like a
+music box," said Pennoyer, grappling the eggs and starting for the gas
+stove.
+
+Later, as they sat around the board, Wrinkles said with satisfaction,
+"Well, the coffee's good, anyhow."
+
+"'Tis good," said Florinda, "but it isn't made right. I'll show you how,
+Penny. You first----"
+
+"Oh, dry up, Splutter," said Grief. "Here, take an egg."
+
+"I don't like eggs," said Florinda.
+
+"Take an egg," said the three hosts menacingly.
+
+"I tell you I don't like eggs."
+
+"Take--an--egg!" they said again.
+
+"Oh, well," said Florinda, "I'll take one, then; but you needn't act
+like such a set of dudes--and, oh, maybe you didn't have much lunch. I
+had such a daisy lunch! Up at Pontiac's studio. He's got a lovely
+studio."
+
+The three looked to be oppressed. Grief said sullenly, "I saw some of
+his things over in Stencil's gallery, and they're rotten."
+
+"Yes--rotten," said Pennoyer.
+
+"Rotten," said Grief.
+
+"Oh, well," retorted Florinda, "if a man has a swell studio and
+dresses--oh, sort of like a Willie, you know, you fellows sit here like
+owls in a cave and say rotten--rotten--rotten. You're away off.
+Pontiac's landscapes----"
+
+"Landscapes be blowed! Put any of his work alongside of Billie Hawker's
+and see how it looks."
+
+"Oh, well, Billie Hawker's," said Florinda. "Oh, well."
+
+At the mention of Hawker's name they had all turned to scan her face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+"He wrote that he was coming home this week," said Pennoyer.
+
+"Did he?" asked Florinda indifferently.
+
+"Yes. Aren't you glad?"
+
+They were still watching her face.
+
+"Yes, of course I'm glad. Why shouldn't I be glad?" cried the girl with
+defiance.
+
+They grinned.
+
+"Oh, certainly. Billie Hawker is a good fellow, Splutter. You have a
+particular right to be glad."
+
+"You people make me tired," Florinda retorted. "Billie Hawker doesn't
+give a rap about me, and he never tried to make out that he did."
+
+"No," said Grief. "But that isn't saying that you don't care a rap about
+Billie Hawker. Ah, Florinda!"
+
+It seemed that the girl's throat suffered a slight contraction. "Well,
+and what if I do?" she demanded finally.
+
+"Have a cigarette?" answered Grief.
+
+Florinda took a cigarette, lit it, and, perching herself on a divan,
+which was secretly a coal box, she smoked fiercely.
+
+"What if I do?" she again demanded. "It's better than liking one of you
+dubs, anyhow."
+
+"Oh, Splutter, you poor little outspoken kid!" said Wrinkle in a sad
+voice.
+
+Grief searched among the pipes until he found the best one. "Yes,
+Splutter, don't you know that when you are so frank you defy every law
+of your sex, and wild eyes will take your trail?"
+
+"Oh, you talk through your hat," replied Florinda. "Billie don't care
+whether I like him or whether I don't. And if he should hear me now, he
+wouldn't be glad or give a hang, either way. I know that." The girl
+paused and looked at the row of plaster casts. "Still, you needn't be
+throwing it at me all the time."
+
+"We didn't," said Wrinkles indignantly. "You threw it at yourself."
+
+"Well," continued Florinda, "it's better than liking one of you dubs,
+anyhow. He makes money and----"
+
+"There," said Grief, "now you've hit it! Bedad, you've reached a point
+in eulogy where if you move again you will have to go backward."
+
+"Of course I don't care anything about a fellow's having money----"
+
+"No, indeed you don't, Splutter," said Pennoyer.
+
+"But then, you know what I mean. A fellow isn't a man and doesn't stand
+up straight unless he has some money. And Billie Hawker makes enough so
+that you feel that nobody could walk over him, don't you know? And there
+isn't anything jay about him, either. He's a thoroughbred, don't you
+know?"
+
+After reflection, Pennoyer said, "It's pretty hard on the rest of us,
+Splutter."
+
+"Well, of course I like him, but--but----"
+
+"What?" said Pennoyer.
+
+"I don't know," said Florinda.
+
+Purple Sanderson lived in this room, but he usually dined out. At a
+certain time in his life, before he came to be a great artist, he had
+learned the gas-fitter's trade, and when his opinions were not identical
+with the opinions of the art managers of the greater number of New York
+publications he went to see a friend who was a plumber, and the opinions
+of this man he was thereafter said to respect. He frequented a very neat
+restaurant on Twenty-third Street. It was known that on Saturday nights
+Wrinkles, Grief, and Pennoyer frequently quarreled with him.
+
+As Florinda ceased speaking Purple entered. "Hello, there, Splutter!" As
+he was neatly hanging up his coat, he said to the others, "Well, the
+rent will be due in four days."
+
+"Will it?" asked Pennoyer, astounded.
+
+"Certainly it will," responded Purple, with the air of a superior
+financial man.
+
+"My soul!" said Wrinkles.
+
+"Oh, shut up, Purple!" said Grief. "You make me weary, coming around
+here with your chin about rent. I was just getting happy."
+
+"Well, how are we going to pay it? That's the point," said Sanderson.
+
+Wrinkles sank deeper in his chair and played despondently on his
+guitar. Grief cast a look of rage at Sanderson, and then stared at the
+wall. Pennoyer said, "Well, we might borrow it from Billie Hawker."
+
+Florinda laughed then.
+
+"Oh," continued Pennoyer hastily, "if those Amazement people pay me when
+they said they would I'll have the money."
+
+"So you will," said Grief. "You will have money to burn. Did the
+Amazement people ever pay you when they said they would? You are
+wonderfully important all of a sudden, it seems to me. You talk like an
+artist."
+
+Wrinkles, too, smiled at Pennoyer. "The Eminent Magazine people wanted
+Penny to hire models and make a try for them, too. It would only cost
+him a stack of blues. By the time he has invested all his money he
+hasn't got, and the rent is three weeks overdue, he will be able to tell
+the landlord to wait seven months until the Monday morning after the day
+of publication. Go ahead, Penny."
+
+After a period of silence, Sanderson, in an obstinate manner, said,
+"Well, what's to be done? The rent has got to be paid."
+
+Wrinkles played more sad music. Grief frowned deeper. Pennoyer was
+evidently searching his mind for a plan.
+
+Florinda took the cigarette from between her lips that she might grin
+with greater freedom.
+
+"We might throw Purple out," said Grief, with an inspired air. "That
+would stop all this discussion."
+
+"You!" said Sanderson furiously. "You can't keep serious a minute. If
+you didn't have us to take care of you, you wouldn't even know when they
+threw you out into the street."
+
+"Wouldn't I?" said Grief.
+
+"Well, look here," interposed Florinda, "I'm going home unless you can
+be more interesting. I am dead sorry about the rent, but I can't help
+it, and----"
+
+"Here! Sit down! Hold on, Splutter!" they shouted. Grief turned to
+Sanderson: "Purple, you shut up!"
+
+Florinda curled again on the divan and lit another cigarette. The talk
+waged about the names of other and more successful painters, whose work
+they usually pronounced "rotten."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Pennoyer, coming home one morning with two gigantic cakes to accompany
+the coffee at the breakfast in the den, saw a young man bounce from a
+horse car. He gave a shout. "Hello, there, Billie! Hello!"
+
+"Hello, Penny!" said Hawker. "What are you doing out so early?" It was
+somewhat after nine o'clock.
+
+"Out to get breakfast," said Pennoyer, waving the cakes. "Have a good
+time, old man?"
+
+"Great."
+
+"Do much work?"
+
+"No. Not so much. How are all the people?"
+
+"Oh, pretty good. Come in and see us eat breakfast," said Pennoyer,
+throwing open the door of the den. Wrinkles, in his shirt, was making
+coffee. Grief sat in a chair trying to loosen the grasp of sleep. "Why,
+Billie Hawker, b'ginger!" they cried.
+
+"How's the wolf, boys? At the door yet?"
+
+"'At the door yet?' He's halfway up the back stairs, and coming fast. He
+and the landlord will be here to-morrow. 'Mr. Landlord, allow me to
+present Mr. F. Wolf, of Hunger, N. J. Mr. Wolf--Mr. Landlord.'"
+
+"Bad as that?" said Hawker.
+
+"You bet it is! Easy Street is somewhere in heaven, for all we know.
+Have some breakfast?--coffee and cake, I mean."
+
+"No, thanks, boys. Had breakfast."
+
+Wrinkles added to the shirt, Grief aroused himself, and Pennoyer brought
+the coffee. Cheerfully throwing some drawings from the table to the
+floor, they thus made room for the breakfast, and grouped themselves
+with beaming smiles at the board.
+
+"Well, Billie, come back to the old gang again, eh? How did the country
+seem? Do much work?"
+
+"Not very much. A few things. How's everybody?"
+
+"Splutter was in last night. Looking out of sight. Seemed glad to hear
+that you were coming back soon."
+
+"Did she? Penny, did anybody call wanting me to do a ten-thousand-dollar
+portrait for them?"
+
+"No. That frame-maker, though, was here with a bill. I told him----"
+
+Afterward Hawker crossed the corridor and threw open the door of his own
+large studio. The great skylight, far above his head, shed its clear
+rays upon a scene which appeared to indicate that some one had very
+recently ceased work here and started for the country. A distant closet
+door was open, and the interior showed the effects of a sudden pillage.
+
+There was an unfinished "Girl in Apple Orchard" upon the tall Dutch
+easel, and sketches and studies were thick upon the floor. Hawker took a
+pipe and filled it from his friend the tan and gold jar. He cast himself
+into a chair and, taking an envelope from his pocket, emptied two
+violets from it to the palm of his hand and stared long at them. Upon
+the walls of the studio various labours of his life, in heavy gilt
+frames, contemplated him and the violets.
+
+At last Pennoyer burst impetuously in upon him. "Hi, Billie! come over
+and---- What's the matter?"
+
+Hawker had hastily placed the violets in the envelope and hurried it to
+his pocket. "Nothing," he answered.
+
+"Why, I thought--" said Pennoyer, "I thought you looked rather rattled.
+Didn't you have--I thought I saw something in your hand."
+
+"Nothing, I tell you!" cried Hawker.
+
+"Er--oh, I beg your pardon," said Pennoyer. "Why, I was going to tell
+you that Splutter is over in our place, and she wants to see you."
+
+"Wants to see me? What for?" demanded Hawker. "Why don't she come over
+here, then?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," replied Pennoyer. "She sent me to call you."
+
+"Well, do you think I'm going to---- Oh, well, I suppose she wants to be
+unpleasant, and knows she loses a certain mental position if she comes
+over here, but if she meets me in your place she can be as infernally
+disagreeable as she---- That's it, I'll bet."
+
+When they entered the den Florinda was gazing from the window. Her back
+was toward the door.
+
+At last she turned to them, holding herself very straight. "Well, Billie
+Hawker," she said grimly, "you don't seem very glad to see a fellow."
+
+"Why, heavens, did you think I was going to turn somersaults in the
+air?"
+
+"Well, you didn't come out when you heard me pass your door," said
+Florinda, with gloomy resentment.
+
+Hawker appeared to be ruffled and vexed. "Oh, great Scott!" he said,
+making a gesture of despair.
+
+Florinda returned to the window. In the ensuing conversation she took no
+part, save when there was an opportunity to harry some speech of
+Hawker's, which she did in short contemptuous sentences. Hawker made no
+reply save to glare in her direction. At last he said, "Well, I must go
+over and do some work." Florinda did not turn from the window. "Well,
+so-long, boys," said Hawker, "I'll see you later."
+
+As the door slammed Pennoyer apologetically said, "Billie is a trifle
+off his feed this morning."
+
+"What about?" asked Grief.
+
+"I don't know; but when I went to call him he was sitting deep in his
+chair staring at some----" He looked at Florinda and became silent.
+
+"Staring at what?" asked Florinda, turning then from the window.
+
+Pennoyer seemed embarrassed. "Why, I don't know--nothing, I guess--I
+couldn't see very well. I was only fooling."
+
+Florinda scanned his face suspiciously. "Staring at what?" she demanded
+imperatively.
+
+"Nothing, I tell you!" shouted Pennoyer.
+
+Florinda looked at him, and wavered and debated. Presently she said,
+softly: "Ah, go on, Penny. Tell me."
+
+"It wasn't anything at all, I say!" cried Pennoyer stoutly. "I was only
+giving you a jolly. Sit down, Splutter, and hit a cigarette."
+
+She obeyed, but she continued to cast the dubious eye at Pennoyer. Once
+she said to him privately: "Go on, Penny, tell me. I know it was
+something from the way you are acting."
+
+"Oh, let up, Splutter, for heaven's sake!"
+
+"Tell me," beseeched Florinda.
+
+"No."
+
+"Tell me."
+
+"No."
+
+"Pl-e-a-se tell me."
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, go on."
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah, what makes you so mean, Penny? You know I'd tell you, if it was the
+other way about."
+
+"But it's none of my business, Splutter. I can't tell you something
+which is Billie Hawker's private affair. If I did I would be a chump."
+
+"But I'll never say you told me. Go on."
+
+"No."
+
+"Pl-e-a-se tell me."
+
+"No."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+When Florinda had gone, Grief said, "Well, what was it?" Wrinkles looked
+curiously from his drawing-board.
+
+Pennoyer lit his pipe and held it at the side of his mouth in the manner
+of a deliberate man. At last he said, "It was two violets."
+
+"You don't say!" ejaculated Wrinkles.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged!" cried Grief. "Holding them in his hand and moping
+over them, eh?"
+
+"Yes," responded Pennoyer. "Rather that way."
+
+"Well, I'm hanged!" said both Grief and Wrinkles. They grinned in a
+pleased, urchin-like manner. "Say, who do you suppose she is? Somebody
+he met this summer, no doubt. Would you ever think old Billie would get
+into that sort of a thing? Well, I'll be gol-durned!"
+
+Ultimately Wrinkles said, "Well, it's his own business." This was spoken
+in a tone of duty.
+
+"Of course it's his own business," retorted Grief. "But who would ever
+think----" Again they grinned.
+
+When Hawker entered the den some minutes later he might have noticed
+something unusual in the general demeanour. "Say, Grief, will you loan
+me your---- What's up?" he asked.
+
+For answer they grinned at each other, and then grinned at him.
+
+"You look like a lot of Chessy cats," he told them.
+
+They grinned on.
+
+Apparently feeling unable to deal with these phenomena, he went at last
+to the door. "Well, this is a fine exhibition," he said, standing with
+his hand on the knob and regarding them. "Won election bets? Some good
+old auntie just died? Found something new to pawn? No? Well, I can't
+stand this. You resemble those fish they discover at deep sea.
+Good-bye!"
+
+As he opened the door they cried out: "Hold on, Billie! Billie, look
+here! Say, who is she?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Who is who?"
+
+They laughed and nodded. "Why, you know. She. Don't you understand?
+She."
+
+"You talk like a lot of crazy men," said Hawker. "I don't know what you
+mean."
+
+"Oh, you don't, eh? You don't? Oh, no! How about those violets you were
+moping over this morning? Eh, old man! Oh, no, you don't know what we
+mean! Oh, no! How about those violets, eh? How about 'em?"
+
+Hawker, with flushed and wrathful face, looked at Pennoyer. "Penny----"
+But Grief and Wrinkles roared an interruption. "Oh, ho, Mr. Hawker! so
+it's true, is it? It's true. You are a nice bird, you are. Well, you old
+rascal! Durn your picture!"
+
+Hawker, menacing them once with his eyes, went away. They sat cackling.
+
+At noon, when he met Wrinkles in the corridor, he said: "Hey, Wrinkles,
+come here for a minute, will you? Say, old man, I--I----"
+
+"What?" said Wrinkles.
+
+"Well, you know, I--I--of course, every man is likely to make an
+accursed idiot of himself once in a while, and I----"
+
+"And you what?" asked Wrinkles.
+
+"Well, we are a kind of a band of hoodlums, you know, and I'm just
+enough idiot to feel that I don't care to hear--don't care to
+hear--well, her name used, you know."
+
+"Bless your heart," replied Wrinkles, "we haven't used her name. We
+don't know her name. How could we use it?"
+
+"Well, I know," said Hawker. "But you understand what I mean, Wrinkles."
+
+"Yes, I understand what you mean," said Wrinkles, with dignity. "I don't
+suppose you are any worse of a stuff than common. Still, I didn't know
+that we were such outlaws."
+
+"Of course, I have overdone the thing," responded Hawker hastily.
+"But--you ought to understand how I mean it, Wrinkles."
+
+After Wrinkles had thought for a time, he said: "Well, I guess I do.
+All right. That goes."
+
+Upon entering the den, Wrinkles said, "You fellows have got to quit
+guying Billie, do you hear?"
+
+"We?" cried Grief. "We've got to quit? What do you do?"
+
+"Well, I quit too."
+
+Pennoyer said: "Ah, ha! Billie has been jumping on you."
+
+"No, he didn't," maintained Wrinkles; "but he let me know it was--well,
+rather a--rather a--sacred subject." Wrinkles blushed when the others
+snickered.
+
+In the afternoon, as Hawker was going slowly down the stairs, he was
+almost impaled upon the feather of a hat which, upon the head of a lithe
+and rather slight girl, charged up at him through the gloom.
+
+"Hello, Splutter!" he cried. "You are in a hurry."
+
+"That you, Billie?" said the girl, peering, for the hallways of this old
+building remained always in a dungeonlike darkness.
+
+"Yes, it is. Where are you going at such a headlong gait?"
+
+"Up to see the boys. I've got a bottle of wine and some--some pickles,
+you know. I'm going to make them let me dine with them to-night. Coming
+back, Billie?"
+
+"Why, no, I don't expect to."
+
+He moved then accidentally in front of the light that sifted through the
+dull, gray panes of a little window.
+
+"Oh, cracky!" cried the girl; "how fine you are, Billie! Going to a
+coronation?"
+
+"No," said Hawker, looking seriously over his collar and down at his
+clothes. "Fact is--er--well, I've got to make a call."
+
+"A call--bless us! And are you really going to wear those gray gloves
+you're holding there, Billie? Say, wait until you get around the corner.
+They won't stand 'em on this street."
+
+"Oh, well," said Hawker, depreciating the gloves--"oh, well."
+
+The girl looked up at him. "Who you going to call on?"
+
+"Oh," said Hawker, "a friend."
+
+"Must be somebody most extraordinary, you look so dreadfully correct.
+Come back, Billie, won't you? Come back and dine with us."
+
+"Why, I--I don't believe I can."
+
+"Oh, come on! It's fun when we all dine together. Won't you, Billie?"
+
+"Well, I----"
+
+"Oh, don't be so stupid!" The girl stamped her foot and flashed her eyes
+at him angrily.
+
+"Well, I'll see--I will if I can--I can't tell----" He left her rather
+precipitately.
+
+Hawker eventually appeared at a certain austere house where he rang the
+bell with quite nervous fingers.
+
+But she was not at home. As he went down the steps his eyes were as
+those of a man whose fortunes have tumbled upon him. As he walked down
+the street he wore in some subtle way the air of a man who has been
+grievously wronged. When he rounded the corner, his lips were set
+strangely, as if he were a man seeking revenge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+"It's just right," said Grief.
+
+"It isn't quite cool enough," said Wrinkles.
+
+"Well, I guess I know the proper temperature for claret."
+
+"Well, I guess you don't. If it was buttermilk, now, you would know, but
+you can't tell anything about claret."
+
+Florinda ultimately decided the question. "It isn't quite cool enough,"
+she said, laying her hand on the bottle. "Put it on the window ledge,
+Grief."
+
+"Hum! Splutter, I thought you knew more than----"
+
+"Oh, shut up!" interposed the busy Pennoyer from a remote corner. "Who
+is going after the potato salad? That's what I want to know. Who is
+going?"
+
+"Wrinkles," said Grief.
+
+"Grief," said Wrinkles.
+
+"There," said Pennoyer, coming forward and scanning a late work with an
+eye of satisfaction. "There's the three glasses and the little tumbler;
+and then, Grief, you will have to drink out of a mug."
+
+"I'll be double-dyed black if I will!" cried Grief. "I wouldn't drink
+claret out of a mug to save my soul from being pinched!"
+
+"You duffer, you talk like a bloomin' British chump on whom the sun
+never sets! What do you want?"
+
+"Well, there's enough without that--what's the matter with you? Three
+glasses and the little tumbler."
+
+"Yes, but if Billie Hawker comes----"
+
+"Well, let him drink out of the mug, then. He----"
+
+"No, he won't," said Florinda suddenly. "I'll take the mug myself."
+
+"All right, Splutter," rejoined Grief meekly. "I'll keep the mug. But,
+still, I don't see why Billie Hawker----"
+
+"I shall take the mug," reiterated Florinda firmly.
+
+"But I don't see why----"
+
+"Let her alone, Grief," said Wrinkles. "She has decided that it is
+heroic. You can't move her now."
+
+"Well, who is going for the potato salad?" cried Pennoyer again. "That's
+what I want to know."
+
+"Wrinkles," said Grief.
+
+"Grief," said Wrinkles.
+
+"Do you know," remarked Florinda, raising her head from where she had
+been toiling over the _spaghetti_, "I don't care so much for Billie
+Hawker as I did once?" Her sleeves were rolled above the elbows of her
+wonderful arms, and she turned from the stove and poised a fork as if
+she had been smitten at her task with this inspiration.
+
+There was a short silence, and then Wrinkles said politely, "No."
+
+"No," continued Florinda, "I really don't believe I do." She suddenly
+started. "Listen! Isn't that him coming now?"
+
+The dull trample of a step could be heard in some distant corridor, but
+it died slowly to silence.
+
+"I thought that might be him," she said, turning to the _spaghetti_
+again.
+
+"I hope the old Indian comes," said Pennoyer, "but I don't believe he
+will. Seems to me he must be going to see----"
+
+"Who?" asked Florinda.
+
+"Well, you know, Hollanden and he usually dine together when they are
+both in town."
+
+Florinda looked at Pennoyer. "I know, Penny. You must have thought I was
+remarkably clever not to understand all your blundering. But I don't
+care so much. Really I don't."
+
+"Of course not," assented Pennoyer.
+
+"Really I don't."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Listen!" exclaimed Grief, who was near the door. "There he comes now."
+Somebody approached, whistling an air from "Traviata," which rang loud
+and clear, and low and muffled, as the whistler wound among the
+intricate hallways. This air was as much a part of Hawker as his coat.
+The _spaghetti_ had arrived at a critical stage. Florinda gave it her
+complete attention.
+
+When Hawker opened the door he ceased whistling and said gruffly,
+"Hello!"
+
+"Just the man!" said Grief. "Go after the potato salad, will you,
+Billie? There's a good boy! Wrinkles has refused."
+
+"He can't carry the salad with those gloves," interrupted Florinda,
+raising her eyes from her work and contemplating them with displeasure.
+
+"Hang the gloves!" cried Hawker, dragging them from his hands and
+hurling them at the divan. "What's the matter with you, Splutter?"
+
+Pennoyer said, "My, what a temper you are in, Billie!"
+
+"I am," replied Hawker. "I feel like an Apache. Where do you get this
+accursed potato salad?"
+
+"In Second Avenue. You know where. At the old place."
+
+"No, I don't!" snapped Hawker.
+
+"Why----"
+
+"Here," said Florinda, "I'll go." She had already rolled down her
+sleeves and was arraying herself in her hat and jacket.
+
+"No, you won't," said Hawker, filled with wrath. "I'll go myself."
+
+"We can both go, Billie, if you are so bent," replied the girl in a
+conciliatory voice.
+
+"Well, come on, then. What are you standing there for?"
+
+When these two had departed, Wrinkles said: "Lordie! What's wrong with
+Billie?"
+
+"He's been discussing art with some pot-boiler," said Grief, speaking
+as if this was the final condition of human misery.
+
+"No, sir," said Pennoyer. "It's something connected with the now
+celebrated violets."
+
+Out in the corridor Florinda said, "What--what makes you so ugly,
+Billie?"
+
+"Why, I am not ugly, am I?"
+
+"Yes, you are--ugly as anything."
+
+Probably he saw a grievance in her eyes, for he said, "Well, I don't
+want to be ugly." His tone seemed tender. The halls were intensely dark,
+and the girl placed her hand on his arm. As they rounded a turn in the
+stairs a straying lock of her hair brushed against his temple. "Oh!"
+said Florinda, in a low voice.
+
+"We'll get some more claret," observed Hawker musingly. "And some cognac
+for the coffee. And some cigarettes. Do you think of anything more,
+Splutter?"
+
+As they came from the shop of the illustrious purveyors of potato salad
+in Second Avenue, Florinda cried anxiously, "Here, Billie, you let me
+carry that!"
+
+"What infernal nonsense!" said Hawker, flushing. "Certainly not!"
+
+"Well," protested Florinda, "it might soil your gloves somehow."
+
+"In heaven's name, what if it does? Say, young woman, do you think I am
+one of these cholly boys?"
+
+"No, Billie; but then, you know----"
+
+"Well, if you don't take me for some kind of a Willie, give us peace on
+this blasted glove business!"
+
+"I didn't mean----"
+
+"Well, you've been intimating that I've got the only pair of gray gloves
+in the universe, but you are wrong. There are several pairs, and these
+need not be preserved as unique in history."
+
+"They're not gray. They're----"
+
+"They are gray! I suppose your distinguished ancestors in Ireland did
+not educate their families in the matter of gloves, and so you are not
+expected to----"
+
+"Billie!"
+
+"You are not expected to believe that people wear gloves only in cold
+weather, and then you expect to see mittens."
+
+On the stairs, in the darkness, he suddenly exclaimed, "Here, look out,
+or you'll fall!" He reached for her arm, but she evaded him. Later he
+said again: "Look out, girl! What makes you stumble around so? Here,
+give me the bottle of wine. I can carry it all right. There--now can you
+manage?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+"Penny," said Grief, looking across the table at his friend, "if a man
+thinks a heap of two violets, how much would he think of a thousand
+violets?"
+
+"Two into a thousand goes five hundred times, you fool!" said Pennoyer.
+"I would answer your question if it were not upon a forbidden subject."
+
+In the distance Wrinkles and Florinda were making Welsh rarebits.
+
+"Hold your tongues!" said Hawker. "Barbarians!"
+
+"Grief," said Pennoyer, "if a man loves a woman better than the whole
+universe, how much does he love the whole universe?"
+
+"Gawd knows," said Grief piously. "Although it ill befits me to answer
+your question."
+
+Wrinkles and Florinda came with the Welsh rarebits, very triumphant.
+"There," said Florinda, "soon as these are finished I must go home. It
+is after eleven o'clock.--Pour the ale, Grief."
+
+At a later time, Purple Sanderson entered from the world. He hung up his
+hat and cast a look of proper financial dissatisfaction at the remnants
+of the feast. "Who has been----"
+
+"Before you breathe, Purple, you graceless scum, let me tell you that we
+will stand no reference to the two violets here," said Pennoyer.
+
+"What the----"
+
+"Oh, that's all right, Purple," said Grief, "but you were going to say
+something about the two violets, right then. Weren't you, now, you old
+bat?"
+
+Sanderson grinned expectantly. "What's the row?" said he.
+
+"No row at all," they told him. "Just an agreement to keep you from
+chattering obstinately about the two violets."
+
+"What two violets?"
+
+"Have a rarebit, Purple," advised Wrinkles, "and never mind those
+maniacs."
+
+"Well, what is this business about two violets?"
+
+"Oh, it's just some dream. They gibber at anything."
+
+"I think I know," said Florinda, nodding. "It is something that concerns
+Billie Hawker."
+
+Grief and Pennoyer scoffed, and Wrinkles said: "You know nothing about
+it, Splutter. It doesn't concern Billie Hawker at all."
+
+"Well, then, what is he looking sideways for?" cried Florinda.
+
+Wrinkles reached for his guitar, and played a serenade, "The silver moon
+is shining----"
+
+"Dry up!" said Pennoyer.
+
+Then Florinda cried again, "What does he look sideways for?"
+
+Pennoyer and Grief giggled at the imperturbable Hawker, who destroyed
+rarebit in silence.
+
+"It's you, is it, Billie?" said Sanderson. "You are in this two-violet
+business?"
+
+"I don't know what they're talking about," replied Hawker.
+
+"Don't you, honestly?" asked Florinda.
+
+"Well, only a little."
+
+"There!" said Florinda, nodding again. "I knew he was in it."
+
+"He isn't in it at all," said Pennoyer and Grief.
+
+Later, when the cigarettes had become exhausted, Hawker volunteered to
+go after a further supply, and as he arose, a question seemed to come to
+the edge of Florinda's lips and pend there. The moment that the door was
+closed upon him she demanded, "What is that about the two violets?"
+
+"Nothing at all," answered Pennoyer, apparently much aggrieved. He sat
+back with an air of being a fortress of reticence.
+
+"Oh, go on--tell me! Penny, I think you are very mean.--Grief, you tell
+me!"
+
+  "The silver moon is shining;
+    Oh, come, my love, to me!
+  My heart----"
+
+"Be still, Wrinkles, will you?--What was it, Grief? Oh, go ahead and
+tell me!"
+
+"What do you want to know for?" cried Grief, vastly exasperated. "You've
+got more blamed curiosity---- It isn't anything at all, I keep saying to
+you."
+
+"Well, I know it is," said Florinda sullenly, "or you would tell me."
+
+When Hawker brought the cigarettes, Florinda smoked one, and then
+announced, "Well, I must go now."
+
+"Who is going to take you home, Splutter?"
+
+"Oh, anyone," replied Florinda.
+
+"I tell you what," said Grief, "we'll throw some poker hands, and the
+one who wins will have the distinguished honour of conveying Miss
+Splutter to her home and mother."
+
+Pennoyer and Wrinkles speedily routed the dishes to one end of the
+table. Grief's fingers spun the halves of a pack of cards together with
+the pleased eagerness of a good player. The faces grew solemn with the
+gambling solemnity. "Now, you Indians," said Grief, dealing, "a draw,
+you understand, and then a show-down."
+
+Florinda leaned forward in her chair until it was poised on two legs.
+The cards of Purple Sanderson and of Hawker were faced toward her.
+Sanderson was gravely regarding two pair--aces and queens. Hawker
+scanned a little pair of sevens. "They draw, don't they?" she said to
+Grief.
+
+"Certainly," said Grief. "How many, Wrink?"
+
+"Four," replied Wrinkles, plaintively.
+
+"Gimme three," said Pennoyer.
+
+"Gimme one," said Sanderson.
+
+"Gimme three," said Hawker. When he picked up his hand again Florinda's
+chair was tilted perilously. She saw another seven added to the little
+pair. Sanderson's draw had not assisted him.
+
+"Same to the dealer," said Grief. "What you got, Wrink?"
+
+"Nothing," said Wrinkles, exhibiting it face upward on the table.
+"Good-bye, Florinda."
+
+"Well, I've got two small pair," ventured Pennoyer hopefully. "Beat
+'em?"
+
+"No good," said Sanderson. "Two pair--aces up."
+
+"No good," said Hawker. "Three sevens."
+
+"Beats me," said Grief. "Billie, you are the fortunate man. Heaven guide
+you in Third Avenue!"
+
+Florinda had gone to the window. "Who won?" she asked, wheeling about
+carelessly.
+
+"Billie Hawker."
+
+"What! Did he?" she said in surprise.
+
+"Never mind, Splutter. I'll win sometime," said Pennoyer. "Me too,"
+cried Grief. "Good night, old girl!" said Wrinkles. They crowded in the
+doorway. "Hold on to Billie. Remember the two steps going up," Pennoyer
+called intelligently into the Stygian blackness. "Can you see all
+right?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Florinda lived in a flat with fire-escapes written all over the front of
+it. The street in front was being repaired. It had been said by imbecile
+residents of the vicinity that the paving was never allowed to remain
+down for a sufficient time to be invalided by the tramping millions, but
+that it was kept perpetually stacked in little mountains through the
+unceasing vigilance of a virtuous and heroic city government, which
+insisted that everything should be repaired. The alderman for the
+district had sometimes asked indignantly of his fellow-members why this
+street had not been repaired, and they, aroused, had at once ordered it
+to be repaired. Moreover, shopkeepers, whose stables were adjacent,
+placed trucks and other vehicles strategically in the darkness. Into
+this tangled midnight Hawker conducted Florinda. The great avenue behind
+them was no more than a level stream of yellow light, and the distant
+merry bells might have been boats floating down it. Grim loneliness hung
+over the uncouth shapes in the street which was being repaired.
+
+"Billie," said the girl suddenly, "what makes you so mean to me?"
+
+A peaceful citizen emerged from behind a pile of _débris_, but he might
+not have been a peaceful citizen, so the girl clung to Hawker.
+
+"Why, I'm not mean to you, am I?"
+
+"Yes," she answered. As they stood on the steps of the flat of
+innumerable fire-escapes she slowly turned and looked up at him. Her
+face was of a strange pallour in this darkness, and her eyes were as
+when the moon shines in a lake of the hills.
+
+He returned her glance. "Florinda!" he cried, as if enlightened, and
+gulping suddenly at something in his throat. The girl studied the steps
+and moved from side to side, as do the guilty ones in country
+schoolhouses. Then she went slowly into the flat.
+
+There was a little red lamp hanging on a pile of stones to warn people
+that the street was being repaired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+"I'll get my check from the Gamin on Saturday," said Grief. "They bought
+that string of comics."
+
+"Well, then, we'll arrange the present funds to last until Saturday
+noon," said Wrinkles. "That gives us quite a lot. We can have a _table
+d'hōte_ on Friday night."
+
+However, the cashier of the Gamin office looked under his respectable
+brass wiring and said: "Very sorry, Mr.--er--Warwickson, but our pay-day
+is Monday. Come around any time after ten."
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Grief.
+
+When he plunged into the den his visage flamed with rage. "Don't get my
+check until Monday morning, any time after ten!" he yelled, and flung a
+portfolio of mottled green into the danger zone of the casts.
+
+"Thunder!" said Pennoyer, sinking at once into a profound despair
+
+"Monday morning, any time after ten," murmured Wrinkles, in astonishment
+and sorrow.
+
+While Grief marched to and fro threatening the furniture, Pennoyer and
+Wrinkles allowed their under jaws to fall, and remained as men smitten
+between the eyes by the god of calamity.
+
+"Singular thing!" muttered Pennoyer at last. "You get so frightfully
+hungry as soon as you learn that there are no more meals coming."
+
+"Oh, well----" said Wrinkles. He took up his guitar.
+
+  Oh, some folks say dat a niggah won' steal,
+    'Way down yondeh in d' cohn'-fiel';
+  But Ah caught two in my cohn'-fiel',
+    Way down yondeh in d' cohn'-fiel'.
+
+"Oh, let up!" said Grief, as if unwilling to be moved from his despair.
+
+"Oh, let up!" said Pennoyer, as if he disliked the voice and the ballad.
+
+In his studio, Hawker sat braced nervously forward on a little stool
+before his tall Dutch easel. Three sketches lay on the floor near him,
+and he glared at them constantly while painting at the large canvas on
+the easel.
+
+He seemed engaged in some kind of a duel. His hair dishevelled, his eyes
+gleaming, he was in a deadly scuffle. In the sketches was the landscape
+of heavy blue, as if seen through powder-smoke, and all the skies burned
+red. There was in these notes a sinister quality of hopelessness,
+eloquent of a defeat, as if the scene represented the last hour on a
+field of disastrous battle. Hawker seemed attacking with this picture
+something fair and beautiful of his own life, a possession of his mind,
+and he did it fiercely, mercilessly, formidably. His arm moved with the
+energy of a strange wrath. He might have been thrusting with a sword.
+
+There was a knock at the door. "Come in." Pennoyer entered sheepishly.
+"Well?" cried Hawker, with an echo of savagery in his voice. He turned
+from the canvas precisely as one might emerge from a fight. "Oh!" he
+said, perceiving Pennoyer. The glow in his eyes slowly changed. "What is
+it, Penny?"
+
+"Billie," said Pennoyer, "Grief was to get his check to-day, but they
+put him off until Monday, and so, you know--er--well----"
+
+"Oh!" said Hawker again.
+
+When Pennoyer had gone Hawker sat motionless before his work. He stared
+at the canvas in a meditation so profound that it was probably
+unconscious of itself.
+
+The light from above his head slanted more and more toward the east.
+
+Once he arose and lighted a pipe. He returned to the easel and stood
+staring with his hands in his pockets. He moved like one in a sleep.
+Suddenly the gleam shot into his eyes again. He dropped to the stool and
+grabbed a brush. At the end of a certain long, tumultuous period he
+clinched his pipe more firmly in his teeth and puffed strongly. The
+thought might have occurred to him that it was not alight, for he looked
+at it with a vague, questioning glance. There came another knock at the
+door. "Go to the devil!" he shouted, without turning his head.
+
+Hollanden crossed the corridor then to the den.
+
+"Hi, there, Hollie! Hello, boy! Just the fellow we want to see. Come
+in--sit down--hit a pipe. Say, who was the girl Billie Hawker went mad
+over this summer?"
+
+"Blazes!" said Hollanden, recovering slowly from this onslaught.
+"Who--what--how did you Indians find it out?"
+
+"Oh, we tumbled!" they cried in delight, "we tumbled."
+
+"There!" said Hollanden, reproaching himself. "And I thought you were
+such a lot of blockheads."
+
+"Oh, we tumbled!" they cried again in their ecstasy. "But who is she?
+That's the point."
+
+"Well, she was a girl."
+
+"Yes, go on."
+
+"A New York girl."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A perfectly stunning New York girl."
+
+"Yes. Go ahead."
+
+"A perfectly stunning New York girl of a very wealthy and rather
+old-fashioned family."
+
+"Well, I'll be shot! You don't mean it! She is practically seated on top
+of the Matterhorn. Poor old Billie!"
+
+"Not at all," said Hollanden composedly.
+
+It was a common habit of Purple Sanderson to call attention at night to
+the resemblance of the den to some little ward in a hospital. Upon this
+night, when Sanderson and Grief were buried in slumber, Pennoyer moved
+restlessly. "Wrink!" he called softly into the darkness in the direction
+of the divan which was secretly a coal-box.
+
+"What?" said Wrinkles in a surly voice. His mind had evidently been
+caught at the threshold of sleep.
+
+"Do you think Florinda cares much for Billie Hawker?"
+
+Wrinkles fretted through some oaths. "How in thunder do I know?" The
+divan creaked as he turned his face to the wall.
+
+"Well----" muttered Pennoyer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+The harmony of summer sunlight on leaf and blade of green was not known
+to the two windows, which looked forth at an obviously endless building
+of brownstone about which there was the poetry of a prison. Inside,
+great folds of lace swept down in orderly cascades, as water trained to
+fall mathematically. The colossal chandelier, gleaming like a Siamese
+headdress, caught the subtle flashes from unknown places.
+
+Hawker heard a step and the soft swishing of a woman's dress. He turned
+toward the door swiftly, with a certain dramatic impulsiveness. But when
+she entered the room he said, "How delighted I am to see you again!"
+
+She had said, "Why, Mr. Hawker, it was so charming in you to come!"
+
+It did not appear that Hawker's tongue could wag to his purpose. The
+girl seemed in her mind to be frantically shuffling her pack of social
+receipts and finding none of them made to meet this situation. Finally,
+Hawker said that he thought Hearts at War was a very good play.
+
+"Did you?" she said in surprise. "I thought it much like the others."
+
+"Well, so did I," he cried hastily--"the same figures moving around in
+the mud of modern confusion. I really didn't intend to say that I liked
+it. Fact is, meeting you rather moved me out of my mental track."
+
+"Mental track?" she said. "I didn't know clever people had mental
+tracks. I thought it was a privilege of the theologians."
+
+"Who told you I was clever?" he demanded.
+
+"Why," she said, opening her eyes wider, "nobody."
+
+Hawker smiled and looked upon her with gratitude. "Of course, nobody.
+There couldn't be such an idiot. I am sure you should be astonished to
+learn that I believed such an imbecile existed. But----"
+
+"Oh!" she said.
+
+"But I think you might have spoken less bluntly."
+
+"Well," she said, after wavering for a time, "you are clever, aren't
+you?"
+
+"Certainly," he answered reassuringly.
+
+"Well, then?" she retorted, with triumph in her tone. And this
+interrogation was apparently to her the final victorious argument.
+
+At his discomfiture Hawker grinned.
+
+"You haven't asked news of Stanley," he said. "Why don't you ask news of
+Stanley?"
+
+"Oh! and how was he?"
+
+"The last I saw of him he stood down at the end of the pasture--the
+pasture, you know--wagging his tail in blissful anticipation of an
+invitation to come with me, and when it finally dawned upon him that he
+was not to receive it, he turned and went back toward the house 'like a
+man suddenly stricken with age,' as the story-tellers eloquently say.
+Poor old dog!"
+
+"And you left him?" she said reproachfully. Then she asked, "Do you
+remember how he amused you playing with the ants at the falls?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why, he did. He pawed at the moss, and you sat there laughing. I
+remember it distinctly."
+
+"You remember distinctly? Why, I thought--well, your back was turned,
+you know. Your gaze was fixed upon something before you, and you were
+utterly lost to the rest of the world. You could not have known if
+Stanley pawed the moss and I laughed. So, you see, you are mistaken. As
+a matter of fact, I utterly deny that Stanley pawed the moss or that I
+laughed, or that any ants appeared at the falls at all."
+
+"I have always said that you should have been a Chinese soldier of
+fortune," she observed musingly. "Your daring and ingenuity would be
+prized by the Chinese."
+
+"There are innumerable tobacco jars in China," he said, measuring the
+advantages. "Moreover, there is no perspective. You don't have to walk
+two miles to see a friend. No. He is always there near you, so that you
+can't move a chair without hitting your distant friend. You----"
+
+"Did Hollie remain as attentive as ever to the Worcester girls?"
+
+"Yes, of course, as attentive as ever. He dragged me into all manner of
+tennis games----"
+
+"Why, I thought you loved to play tennis?"
+
+"Oh, well," said Hawker, "I did until you left."
+
+"My sister has gone to the park with the children. I know she will be
+vexed when she finds that you have called."
+
+Ultimately Hawker said, "Do you remember our ride behind my father's
+oxen?"
+
+"No," she answered; "I had forgotten it completely. Did we ride behind
+your father's oxen?"
+
+After a moment he said: "That remark would be prized by the Chinese. We
+did. And you most graciously professed to enjoy it, which earned my deep
+gratitude and admiration. For no one knows better than I," he added
+meekly, "that it is no great comfort or pleasure to ride behind my
+father's oxen."
+
+She smiled retrospectively. "Do you remember how the people on the porch
+hurried to the railing?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+Near the door the stout proprietress sat intrenched behind the cash-box
+in a Parisian manner. She looked with practical amiability at her
+guests, who dined noisily and with great fire, discussing momentous
+problems furiously, making wide, maniacal gestures through the cigarette
+smoke. Meanwhile the little handful of waiters ran to and fro wildly.
+Imperious and importunate cries rang at them from all directions.
+"Gustave! Adolphe!" Their faces expressed a settled despair. They
+answered calls, commands, oaths in a semi-distraction, fleeting among
+the tables as if pursued by some dodging animal. Their breaths came in
+gasps. If they had been convict labourers they could not have surveyed
+their positions with countenances of more unspeakable injury. Withal,
+they carried incredible masses of dishes and threaded their ways with
+skill. They served people with such speed and violence that it often
+resembled a personal assault. They struck two blows at a table and left
+there a knife and fork. Then came the viands in a volley. The clatter of
+this business was loud and bewilderingly rapid, like the gallop of a
+thousand horses.
+
+In a remote corner a band of mandolins and guitars played the long,
+sweeping, mad melody of a Spanish waltz. It seemed to go tingling to the
+hearts of many of the diners. Their eyes glittered with enthusiasm, with
+abandon, with deviltry. They swung their heads from side to side in
+rhythmic movement. High in air curled the smoke from the innumerable
+cigarettes. The long, black claret bottles were in clusters upon the
+tables. At an end of the hall two men with maudlin grins sang the waltz
+uproariously, but always a trifle belated.
+
+An unsteady person, leaning back in his chair to murmur swift
+compliments to a woman at another table, suddenly sprawled out upon the
+floor. He scrambled to his feet, and, turning to the escort of the
+woman, heatedly blamed him for the accident. They exchanged a series of
+tense, bitter insults, which spatted back and forth between them like
+pellets. People arose from their chairs and stretched their necks. The
+musicians stood in a body, their faces turned with expressions of keen
+excitement toward this quarrel, but their fingers still twinkling over
+their instruments, sending into the middle of this turmoil the
+passionate, mad, Spanish music. The proprietor of the place came in
+agitation and plunged headlong into the argument, where he thereafter
+appeared as a frantic creature harried to the point of insanity, for
+they buried him at once in long, vociferous threats, explanations,
+charges, every form of declamation known to their voices. The music, the
+noise of the galloping horses, the voices of the brawlers, gave the
+whole thing the quality of war.
+
+There were two men in the _café_ who seemed to be tranquil. Hollanden
+carefully stacked one lump of sugar upon another in the middle of his
+saucer and poured cognac over them. He touched a match to the cognac and
+the blue and yellow flames eddied in the saucer. "I wonder what those
+two fools are bellowing at?" he said, turning about irritably.
+
+"Hanged if I know!" muttered Hawker in reply. "This place makes me
+weary, anyhow. Hear the blooming din!"
+
+"What's the matter?" said Hollanden. "You used to say this was the one
+natural, the one truly Bohemian, resort in the city. You swore by it."
+
+"Well, I don't like it so much any more."
+
+"Ho!" cried Hollanden, "you're getting correct--that's it exactly. You
+will become one of these intensely---- Look, Billie, the little one is
+going to punch him!"
+
+"No, he isn't. They never do," said Hawker morosely. "Why did you bring
+me here to-night, Hollie?"
+
+"I? I bring you? Good heavens, I came as a concession to you! What are
+you talking about?--Hi! the little one is going to punch him, sure!"
+
+He gave the scene his undivided attention for a moment; then he turned
+again: "You will become correct. I know you will. I have been watching.
+You are about to achieve a respectability that will make a stone saint
+blush for himself. What's the matter with you? You act as if you thought
+falling in love with a girl was a most extraordinary circumstance.--I
+wish they would put those people out.--Of course I know that you----
+There! The little one has swiped at him at last!"
+
+After a time he resumed his oration. "Of course, I know that you are not
+reformed in the matter of this uproar and this remarkable consumption of
+bad wine. It is not that. It is a fact that there are indications that
+some other citizen was fortunate enough to possess your napkin before
+you; and, moreover, you are sure that you would hate to be caught by
+your correct friends with any such _consommé_ in front of you as we had
+to-night. You have got an eye suddenly for all kinds of gilt. You are in
+the way of becoming a most unbearable person.--Oh, look! the little one
+and the proprietor are having it now.--You are in the way of becoming a
+most unbearable person. Presently many of your friends will not be fine
+enough.--In heaven's name, why don't they throw him out? Are you going
+to howl and gesticulate there all night?"
+
+"Well," said Hawker, "a man would be a fool if he did like this dinner."
+
+"Certainly. But what an immaterial part in the glory of this joint is
+the dinner! Who cares about dinner? No one comes here to eat; that's
+what you always claimed.--Well, there, at last they are throwing him
+out. I hope he lands on his head.--Really, you know, Billie, it is such
+a fine thing being in love that one is sure to be detestable to the rest
+of the world, and that is the reason they created a proverb to the other
+effect. You want to look out."
+
+"You talk like a blasted old granny!" said Hawker. "Haven't changed at
+all. This place is all right, only----"
+
+"You are gone," interrupted Hollanden in a sad voice. "It is very
+plain--you are gone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+The proprietor of the place, having pushed to the street the little man,
+who may have been the most vehement, came again and resumed the
+discussion with the remainder of the men of war. Many of these had
+volunteered, and they were very enduring.
+
+"Yes, you are gone," said Hollanden, with the sobriety of graves in his
+voice. "You are gone.--Hi!" he cried, "there is Lucian Pontiac.--Hi,
+Pontiac! Sit down here."
+
+A man with a tangle of hair, and with that about his mouth which showed
+that he had spent many years in manufacturing a proper modesty with
+which to bear his greatness, came toward them, smiling.
+
+"Hello, Pontiac!" said Hollanden. "Here's another great painter. Do you
+know Mr. Hawker?--Mr. William Hawker--Mr. Pontiac."
+
+"Mr. Hawker--delighted," said Pontiac. "Although I have not known you
+personally, I can assure you that I have long been a great admirer of
+your abilities."
+
+The proprietor of the place and the men of war had at length agreed to
+come to an amicable understanding. They drank liquors, while each
+firmly, but now silently, upheld his dignity.
+
+"Charming place," said Pontiac. "So thoroughly Parisian in spirit. And
+from time to time, Mr. Hawker, I use one of your models. Must say she
+has the best arm and wrist in the universe. Stunning figure--stunning!"
+
+"You mean Florinda?" said Hawker.
+
+"Yes, that's the name. Very fine girl. Lunches with me from time to time
+and chatters so volubly. That's how I learned you posed her
+occasionally. If the models didn't gossip we would never know what
+painters were addicted to profanity. Now that old Thorndike--he told me
+you swore like a drill-sergeant if the model winked a finger at the
+critical time. Very fine girl, Florinda. And honest, too--honest as the
+devil. Very curious thing. Of course honesty among the girl models is
+very common, very common--quite universal thing, you know--but then it
+always strikes me as being very curious, very curious. I've been much
+attracted by your girl Florinda."
+
+"My girl?" said Hawker.
+
+"Well, she always speaks of you in a proprietary way, you know. And then
+she considers that she owes you some kind of obedience and allegiance
+and devotion. I remember last week I said to her: 'You can go now. Come
+again Friday.' But she said: 'I don't think I can come on Friday. Billie
+Hawker is home now, and he may want me then.' Said I: 'The devil take
+Billie Hawker! He hasn't engaged you for Friday, has he? Well, then, I
+engage you now.' But she shook her head. No, she couldn't come on
+Friday. Billie Hawker was home, and he might want her any day. 'Well,
+then,' said I, 'you have my permission to do as you please, since you
+are resolved upon it anyway. Go to your Billie Hawker.' Did you need her
+on Friday?"
+
+"No," said Hawker.
+
+"Well, then, the minx, I shall scold her. Stunning figure--stunning! It
+was only last week that old Charley Master said to me mournfully:
+'There are no more good models. Great Scott! not a one.' 'You're 'way
+off, my boy,' I said; 'there is one good model,' and then I named your
+girl. I mean the girl who claims to be yours."
+
+"Poor little beggar!" said Hollanden.
+
+"Who?" said Pontiac.
+
+"Florinda," answered Hollanden. "I suppose----"
+
+Pontiac interrupted. "Oh, of course, it is too bad. Everything is too
+bad. My dear sir, nothing is so much to be regretted as the universe.
+But this Florinda is such a sturdy young soul! The world is against her,
+but, bless your heart, she is equal to the battle. She is strong in the
+manner of a little child. Why, you don't know her. She----"
+
+"I know her very well."
+
+"Well, perhaps you do, but for my part I think you don't appreciate her
+formidable character and stunning figure--stunning!"
+
+"Damn it!" said Hawker to his coffee cup, which he had accidentally
+overturned.
+
+"Well," resumed Pontiac, "she is a stunning model, and I think, Mr.
+Hawker, you are to be envied."
+
+"Eh?" said Hawker.
+
+"I wish I could inspire my models with such obedience and devotion. Then
+I would not be obliged to rail at them for being late, and have to
+badger them for not showing up at all. She has a beautiful
+figure--beautiful."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+When Hawker went again to the house of the great window he looked first
+at the colossal chandelier, and, perceiving that it had not moved, he
+smiled in a certain friendly and familiar way.
+
+"It must be a fine thing," said the girl dreamily. "I always feel
+envious of that sort of life."
+
+"What sort of life?"
+
+"Why--I don't know exactly; but there must be a great deal of freedom
+about it. I went to a studio tea once, and----"
+
+"A studio tea! Merciful heavens---- Go on."
+
+"Yes, a studio tea. Don't you like them? To be sure, we didn't know
+whether the man could paint very well, and I suppose you think it is an
+imposition for anyone who is not a great painter to give a tea."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"Well, he had the dearest little Japanese servants, and some of the cups
+came from Algiers, and some from Turkey, and some from---- What's the
+matter?"
+
+"Go on. I'm not interrupting you."
+
+"Well, that's all; excepting that everything was charming in colour, and
+I thought what a lazy, beautiful life the man must lead, lounging in
+such a studio, smoking monogrammed cigarettes, and remarking how badly
+all the other men painted."
+
+"Very fascinating. But----"
+
+"Oh! you are going to ask if he could draw. I'm sure I don't know, but
+the tea that he gave was charming."
+
+"I was on the verge of telling you something about artist life, but if
+you have seen a lot of draperies and drunk from a cup of Algiers, you
+know all about it."
+
+"You, then, were going to make it something very terrible, and tell how
+young painters struggled, and all that."
+
+"No, not exactly. But listen: I suppose there is an aristocracy who,
+whether they paint well or paint ill, certainly do give charming teas,
+as you say, and all other kinds of charming affairs too; but when I
+hear people talk as if that was the whole life, it makes my hair rise,
+you know, because I am sure that as they get to know me better and
+better they will see how I fall short of that kind of an existence, and
+I shall probably take a great tumble in their estimation. They might
+even conclude that I can not paint, which would be very unfair, because
+I can paint, you know."
+
+"Well, proceed to arrange my point of view, so that you sha'n't tumble
+in my estimation when I discover that you don't lounge in a studio,
+smoke monogrammed cigarettes, and remark how badly the other men paint."
+
+"That's it. That's precisely what I wish to do."
+
+"Begin."
+
+"Well, in the first place----"
+
+"In the first place--what?"
+
+"Well, I started to study when I was very poor, you understand. Look
+here! I'm telling you these things because I want you to know, somehow.
+It isn't that I'm not ashamed of it. Well, I began very poor, and I--as
+a matter of fact--I--well, I earned myself over half the money for my
+studying, and the other half I bullied and badgered and beat out of my
+poor old dad. I worked pretty hard in Paris, and I returned here
+expecting to become a great painter at once. I didn't, though. In fact,
+I had my worst moments then. It lasted for some years. Of course, the
+faith and endurance of my father were by this time worn to a
+shadow--this time, when I needed him the most. However, things got a
+little better and a little better, until I found that by working quite
+hard I could make what was to me a fair income. That's where I am now,
+too."
+
+"Why are you so ashamed of this story?"
+
+"The poverty."
+
+"Poverty isn't anything to be ashamed of."
+
+"Great heavens! Have you the temerity to get off that old nonsensical
+remark? Poverty is everything to be ashamed of. Did you ever see a
+person not ashamed of his poverty? Certainly not. Of course, when a man
+gets very rich he will brag so loudly of the poverty of his youth that
+one would never suppose that he was once ashamed of it. But he was."
+
+"Well, anyhow, you shouldn't be ashamed of the story you have just told
+me."
+
+"Why not? Do you refuse to allow me the great right of being like other
+men?"
+
+"I think it was--brave, you know."
+
+"Brave? Nonsense! Those things are not brave. Impression to that effect
+created by the men who have been through the mill for the greater glory
+of the men who have been through the mill."
+
+"I don't like to hear you talk that way. It sounds wicked, you know."
+
+"Well, it certainly wasn't heroic. I can remember distinctly that there
+was not one heroic moment."
+
+"No, but it was--it was----"
+
+"It was what?"
+
+"Well, somehow I like it, you know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+"There's three of them," said Grief in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"Four, I tell you!" said Wrinkles in a low, excited tone.
+
+"Four," breathed Pennoyer with decision.
+
+They held fierce pantomimic argument. From the corridor came sounds of
+rustling dresses and rapid feminine conversation.
+
+Grief had kept his ear to the panel of the door. His hand was stretched
+back, warning the others to silence. Presently he turned his head and
+whispered, "Three."
+
+"Four," whispered Pennoyer and Wrinkles.
+
+"Hollie is there, too," whispered Grief. "Billie is unlocking the door.
+Now they're going in. Hear them cry out, 'Oh, isn't it lovely!' Jinks!"
+He began a noiseless dance about the room. "Jinks! Don't I wish I had a
+big studio and a little reputation! Wouldn't I have my swell friends
+come to see me, and wouldn't I entertain 'em!" He adopted a descriptive
+manner, and with his forefinger indicated various spaces of the wall.
+"Here is a little thing I did in Brittany. Peasant woman in sabots. This
+brown spot here is the peasant woman, and those two white things are the
+sabots. Peasant woman in sabots, don't you see? Women in Brittany, of
+course, all wear sabots, you understand. Convenience of the painters. I
+see you are looking at that little thing I did in Morocco. Ah, you
+admire it? Well, not so bad--not so bad. Arab smoking pipe, squatting in
+doorway. This long streak here is the pipe. Clever, you say? Oh, thanks!
+You are too kind. Well, all Arabs do that, you know. Sole occupation.
+Convenience of the painters. Now, this little thing here I did in
+Venice. Grand Canal, you know. Gondolier leaning on his oar. Convenience
+of the painters. Oh, yes, American subjects are well enough, but hard to
+find, you know--hard to find. Morocco, Venice, Brittany, Holland--all
+oblige with colour, you know--quaint form--all that. We are so hideously
+modern over here; and, besides, nobody has painted us much. How the
+devil can I paint America when nobody has done it before me? My dear
+sir, are you aware that that would be originality? Good heavens! we are
+not ęsthetic, you understand. Oh, yes, some good mind comes along and
+understands a thing and does it, and after that it is ęsthetic. Yes, of
+course, but then--well---- Now, here is a little Holland thing of mine;
+it----"
+
+The others had evidently not been heeding him. "Shut up!" said Wrinkles
+suddenly. "Listen!" Grief paused his harangue and they sat in silence,
+their lips apart, their eyes from time to time exchanging eloquent
+messages. A dulled melodious babble came from Hawker's studio.
+
+At length Pennoyer murmured wistfully, "I would like to see her."
+
+Wrinkles started noiselessly to his feet. "Well, I tell you she's a
+peach. I was going up the steps, you know, with a loaf of bread under my
+arm, when I chanced to look up the street and saw Billie and Hollanden
+coming with four of them."
+
+"Three," said Grief.
+
+"Four; and I tell you I scattered. One of the two with Billie was a
+peach--a peach."
+
+"O, Lord!" groaned the others enviously. "Billie's in luck."
+
+"How do you know?" said Wrinkles. "Billie is a blamed good fellow, but
+that doesn't say she will care for him--more likely that she won't."
+
+They sat again in silence, grinning, and listening to the murmur of
+voices.
+
+There came the sound of a step in the hallway. It ceased at a point
+opposite the door of Hawker's studio. Presently it was heard again.
+Florinda entered the den. "Hello!" she cried, "who is over in Billie's
+place? I was just going to knock----"
+
+They motioned at her violently. "Sh!" they whispered. Their countenances
+were very impressive.
+
+"What's the matter with you fellows?" asked Florinda in her ordinary
+tone; whereupon they made gestures of still greater wildness. "S-s-sh!"
+
+Florinda lowered her voice properly. "Who is over there?"
+
+"Some swells," they whispered.
+
+Florinda bent her head. Presently she gave a little start. "Who is over
+there?" Her voice became a tone of deep awe. "She?"
+
+Wrinkles and Grief exchanged a swift glance. Pennoyer said gruffly, "Who
+do you mean?"
+
+"Why," said Florinda, "you know. She. The--the girl that Billie likes."
+
+Pennoyer hesitated for a moment and then said wrathfully: "Of course she
+is! Who do you suppose?"
+
+"Oh!" said Florinda. She took a seat upon the divan, which was privately
+a coal-box, and unbuttoned her jacket at the throat. "Is she--is
+she--very handsome, Wrink?"
+
+Wrinkles replied stoutly, "No."
+
+Grief said: "Let's make a sneak down the hall to the little unoccupied
+room at the front of the building and look from the window there. When
+they go out we can pipe 'em off."
+
+"Come on!" they exclaimed, accepting this plan with glee.
+
+Wrinkles opened the door and seemed about to glide away, when he
+suddenly turned and shook his head. "It's dead wrong," he said,
+ashamed.
+
+"Oh, go on!" eagerly whispered the others. Presently they stole
+pattering down the corridor, grinning, exclaiming, and cautioning each
+other.
+
+At the window Pennoyer said: "Now, for heaven's sake, don't let them see
+you!--Be careful, Grief, you'll tumble.--Don't lean on me that way,
+Wrink; think I'm a barn door? Here they come. Keep back. Don't let them
+see you."
+
+"O-o-oh!" said Grief. "Talk about a peach! Well, I should say so."
+
+Florinda's fingers tore at Wrinkle's coat sleeve. "Wrink, Wrink, is that
+her? Is that her? On the left of Billie? Is that her, Wrink?"
+
+"What? Yes. Stop punching me! Yes, I tell you! That's her. Are you
+deaf?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+In the evening Pennoyer conducted Florinda to the flat of many
+fire-escapes. After a period of silent tramping through the great golden
+avenue and the street that was being repaired, she said, "Penny, you are
+very good to me."
+
+"Why?" said Pennoyer.
+
+"Oh, because you are. You--you are very good to me, Penny."
+
+"Well, I guess I'm not killing myself."
+
+"There isn't many fellows like you."
+
+"No?"
+
+"No. There isn't many fellows like you, Penny. I tell you 'most
+everything, and you just listen, and don't argue with me and tell me I'm
+a fool, because you know that it--because you know that it can't be
+helped, anyhow."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, you kid! Almost anybody would be glad to----"
+
+"Penny, do you think she is very beautiful?" Florinda's voice had a
+singular quality of awe in it.
+
+"Well," replied Pennoyer, "I don't know."
+
+"Yes, you do, Penny. Go ahead and tell me."
+
+"Well----"
+
+"Go ahead."
+
+"Well, she is rather handsome, you know."
+
+"Yes," said Florinda, dejectedly, "I suppose she is." After a time she
+cleared her throat and remarked indifferently, "I suppose Billie cares a
+lot for her?"
+
+"Oh, I imagine that he does--in a way."
+
+"Why, of course he does," insisted Florinda. "What do you mean by 'in a
+way'? You know very well that Billie thinks his eyes of her."
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Yes, you do. You know you do. You are talking in that way just to brace
+me up. You know you are."
+
+"No, I'm not."
+
+"Penny," said Florinda thankfully, "what makes you so good to me?"
+
+"Oh, I guess I'm not so astonishingly good to you. Don't be silly."
+
+"But you are good to me, Penny. You don't make fun of me the way--the
+way the other boys would. You are just as good as you can be.--But you
+do think she is beautiful, don't you?"
+
+"They wouldn't make fun of you," said Pennoyer.
+
+"But do you think she is beautiful?"
+
+"Look here, Splutter, let up on that, will you? You keep harping on one
+string all the time. Don't bother me!"
+
+"But, honest now, Penny, you do think she is beautiful?"
+
+"Well, then, confound it--no! no! no!"
+
+"Oh, yes, you do, Penny. Go ahead now. Don't deny it just because you
+are talking to me. Own up, now, Penny. You do think she is beautiful?"
+
+"Well," said Pennoyer, in a dull roar of irritation, "do you?"
+
+Florinda walked in silence, her eyes upon the yellow flashes which
+lights sent to the pavement. In the end she said, "Yes."
+
+"Yes, what?" asked Pennoyer sharply.
+
+"Yes, she--yes, she is--beautiful."
+
+"Well, then?" cried Pennoyer, abruptly closing the discussion.
+
+Florinda announced something as a fact. "Billie thinks his eyes of her."
+
+"How do you know he does?"
+
+"Don't scold at me, Penny. You--you----"
+
+"I'm not scolding at you. There! What a goose you are, Splutter! Don't,
+for heaven's sake, go to whimpering on the street! I didn't say anything
+to make you feel that way. Come, pull yourself together."
+
+"I'm not whimpering."
+
+"No, of course not; but then you look as if you were on the edge of it.
+What a little idiot!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+When the snow fell upon the clashing life of the city, the exiled
+stones, beaten by myriad strange feet, were told of the dark, silent
+forests where the flakes swept through the hemlocks and swished softly
+against the boulders.
+
+In his studio Hawker smoked a pipe, clasping his knee with thoughtful,
+interlocked fingers. He was gazing sourly at his finished picture. Once
+he started to his feet with a cry of vexation. Looking back over his
+shoulder, he swore an insult into the face of the picture. He paced to
+and fro, smoking belligerently and from time to time eying it. The
+helpless thing remained upon the easel, facing him.
+
+Hollanden entered and stopped abruptly at sight of the great scowl.
+"What's wrong now?" he said.
+
+Hawker gestured at the picture. "That dunce of a thing. It makes me
+tired. It isn't worth a hang. Blame it!"
+
+"What?" Hollanden strode forward and stood before the painting with legs
+apart, in a properly critical manner. "What? Why, you said it was your
+best thing."
+
+"Aw!" said Hawker, waving his arms, "it's no good! I abominate it! I
+didn't get what I wanted, I tell you. I didn't get what I wanted. That?"
+he shouted, pointing thrust-way at it--"that? It's vile! Aw! it makes me
+weary."
+
+"You're in a nice state," said Hollanden, turning to take a critical
+view of the painter. "What has got into you now? I swear, you are more
+kinds of a chump!"
+
+Hawker crooned dismally: "I can't paint! I can't paint for a damn! I'm
+no good. What in thunder was I invented for, anyhow, Hollie?"
+
+"You're a fool," said Hollanden. "I hope to die if I ever saw such a
+complete idiot! You give me a pain. Just because she don't----"
+
+"It isn't that. She has nothing to do with it, although I know well
+enough--I know well enough----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I know well enough she doesn't care a hang for me. It isn't that. It is
+because--it is because I can't paint. Look at that thing over there!
+Remember the thought and energy I---- Damn the thing!"
+
+"Why, did you have a row with her?" asked Hollanden, perplexed. "I
+didn't know----"
+
+"No, of course you didn't know," cried Hawker, sneering; "because I had
+no row. It isn't that, I tell you. But I know well enough"--he shook his
+fist vaguely--"that she don't care an old tomato can for me. Why should
+she?" he demanded with a curious defiance. "In the name of Heaven, why
+should she?"
+
+"I don't know," said Hollanden; "I don't know, I'm sure. But, then,
+women have no social logic. This is the great blessing of the world.
+There is only one thing which is superior to the multiplicity of social
+forms, and that is a woman's mind--a young woman's mind. Oh, of course,
+sometimes they are logical, but let a woman be so once, and she will
+repent of it to the end of her days. The safety of the world's balance
+lies in woman's illogical mind. I think----"
+
+"Go to blazes!" said Hawker. "I don't care what you think. I am sure of
+one thing, and that is that she doesn't care a hang for me!"
+
+"I think," Hollanden continued, "that society is doing very well in its
+work of bravely lawing away at Nature; but there is one immovable
+thing--a woman's illogical mind. That is our safety. Thank Heaven,
+it----"
+
+"Go to blazes!" said Hawker again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+As Hawker again entered the room of the great windows he glanced in
+sidelong bitterness at the chandelier. When he was seated he looked at
+it in open defiance and hatred.
+
+Men in the street were shovelling at the snow. The noise of their
+instruments scraping on the stones came plainly to Hawker's ears in a
+harsh chorus, and this sound at this time was perhaps to him a
+_miserere_.
+
+"I came to tell you," he began, "I came to tell you that perhaps I am
+going away."
+
+"Going away!" she cried. "Where?"
+
+"Well, I don't know--quite. You see, I am rather indefinite as yet. I
+thought of going for the winter somewhere in the Southern States. I am
+decided merely this much, you know--I am going somewhere. But I don't
+know where. 'Way off, anyhow."
+
+"We shall be very sorry to lose you," she remarked. "We----"
+
+"And I thought," he continued, "that I would come and say 'adios' now
+for fear that I might leave very suddenly. I do that sometimes. I'm
+afraid you will forget me very soon, but I want to tell you that----"
+
+"Why," said the girl in some surprise, "you speak as if you were going
+away for all time. You surely do not mean to utterly desert New York?"
+
+"I think you misunderstand me," he said. "I give this important air to
+my farewell to you because to me it is a very important event. Perhaps
+you recollect that once I told you that I cared for you. Well, I still
+care for you, and so I can only go away somewhere--some place 'way
+off--where--where---- See?"
+
+"New York is a very large place," she observed.
+
+"Yes, New York is a very large---- How good of you to remind me! But
+then you don't understand. You can't understand. I know I can find no
+place where I will cease to remember you, but then I can find some place
+where I can cease to remember in a way that I am myself. I shall never
+try to forget you. Those two violets, you know--one I found near the
+tennis court and the other you gave me, you remember--I shall take them
+with me."
+
+"Here," said the girl, tugging at her gown for a moment--"Here! Here's a
+third one." She thrust a violet toward him.
+
+"If you were not so serenely insolent," said Hawker, "I would think that
+you felt sorry for me. I don't wish you to feel sorry for me. And I
+don't wish to be melodramatic. I know it is all commonplace enough, and
+I didn't mean to act like a tenor. Please don't pity me."
+
+"I don't," she replied. She gave the violet a little fling.
+
+Hawker lifted his head suddenly and glowered at her. "No, you don't," he
+at last said slowly, "you don't. Moreover, there is no reason why you
+should take the trouble. But----"
+
+He paused when the girl leaned and peered over the arm of her chair
+precisely in the manner of a child at the brink of a fountain. "There's
+my violet on the floor," she said. "You treated it quite
+contemptuously, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Together they stared at the violet. Finally he stooped and took it in
+his fingers. "I feel as if this third one was pelted at me, but I shall
+keep it. You are rather a cruel person, but, Heaven guard us! that only
+fastens a man's love the more upon a woman."
+
+She laughed. "That is not a very good thing to tell a woman."
+
+"No," he said gravely, "it is not, but then I fancy that somebody may
+have told you previously."
+
+She stared at him, and then said, "I think you are revenged for my
+serene insolence."
+
+"Great heavens, what an armour!" he cried. "I suppose, after all, I did
+feel a trifle like a tenor when I first came here, but you have chilled
+it all out of me. Let's talk upon indifferent topics." But he started
+abruptly to his feet. "No," he said, "let us not talk upon indifferent
+topics. I am not brave, I assure you, and it--it might be too much for
+me." He held out his hand. "Good-bye."
+
+"You are going?"
+
+"Yes, I am going. Really I didn't think how it would bore you for me to
+come around here and croak in this fashion."
+
+"And you are not coming back for a long, long time?"
+
+"Not for a long, long time." He mimicked her tone. "I have the three
+violets now, you know, and you must remember that I took the third one
+even when you flung it at my head. That will remind you how submissive I
+was in my devotion. When you recall the two others it will remind you of
+what a fool I was. Dare say you won't miss three violets."
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Particularly the one you flung at my head. That violet was certainly
+freely--given."
+
+"I didn't fling it at your head." She pondered for a time with her eyes
+upon the floor. Then she murmured, "No more freely--given than the one I
+gave you that night--that night at the inn."
+
+"So very good of you to tell me so!"
+
+Her eyes were still upon the floor.
+
+"Do you know," said Hawker, "it is very hard to go away and leave an
+impression in your mind that I am a fool? That is very hard. Now, you
+do think I am a fool, don't you?"
+
+She remained silent. Once she lifted her eyes and gave him a swift look
+with much indignation in it.
+
+"Now you are enraged. Well, what have I done?"
+
+It seemed that some tumult was in her mind, for she cried out to him at
+last in sudden tearfulness: "Oh, do go! Go! Please! I want you to go!"
+
+Under this swift change Hawker appeared as a man struck from the sky. He
+sprang to his feet, took two steps forward, and spoke a word which was
+an explosion of delight and amazement. He said, "What?"
+
+With heroic effort she slowly raised her eyes until, alight with anger,
+defiance, unhappiness, they met his eyes.
+
+Later, she told him that he was perfectly ridiculous.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THIRD VIOLET***
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