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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Iole, by Robert W. Chambers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Iole
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Illustrator: Arthur C. Becker
+
+Release Date: January 25, 2008 [EBook #24426]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IOLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Louise Hope, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WORKS OF ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+  Cardigan                A King and a Few Dukes
+  The Maid-at-Arms        The Conspirators
+  The Reckoning           The Cambric Mask
+  Lorraine                The Haunts of Men
+  Maids of Paradise       Outsiders
+  Ashes of Empire         A Young Man in a Hurry
+  The Red Republic        In Search of the Unknown
+  The King in Yellow      In the Quarter
+  The Maker of Moons      The Mystery of Choice
+  Iole
+
+
+FOR CHILDREN
+
+  Outdoor-Land            River-Land
+  Orchard-Land            Forest-Land
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+IOLE
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  [Illustration:
+  "The little things," he continued, delicately perforating
+  the atmosphere as though selecting a diatom.]
+
+
+
+
+IOLE
+
+By
+
+ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  D. APPLETON & CO.
+  New York       MDCCCCV
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+Copyright, 1905, by
+
+ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+
+_Published May, 1905_
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Does anybody remember the opera of _The Inca_, and that heartbreaking
+episode where the Court Undertaker, in a morbid desire to increase his
+professional skill, deliberately accomplishes the destruction of his
+middle-aged relatives in order to inter them for the sake of practise?
+
+If I recollect, his dismal confession runs something like this:
+
+  "It was in a bleak November
+  When I slew them, I remember,
+  As I caught them unawares
+  Drinking tea in rocking-chairs."
+
+And so he talked them to death, the subject being "What Really is Art?"
+Afterward he was sorry--
+
+      "The squeak of a door,
+      The creak of the floor,
+  My horrors and fears enhance;
+      And I wake with a scream
+      As I hear in my dream
+  The shrieks of my maiden aunts!"
+
+Now it is a very dreadful thing to suggest that those highly respectable
+pseudo-spinsters, the Sister Arts, supposedly cozily immune in their
+polygamous chastity (for every suitor for favor is popularly expected to
+be wedded to his particular art)--I repeat, it is very dreadful to
+suggest that these impeccable old ladies are in danger of being talked
+to death.
+
+But the talkers are talking and Art Nouveau rockers are rocking, and the
+trousers of the prophet are patched with stained glass, and it is a day
+of dinkiness and of thumbs.
+
+Let us find comfort in the ancient proverb: "Art talked to death shall
+rise again." Let us also recollect that "Dinky is as dinky does"; that
+"All is not Shaw that Bernards"; that "Better Yeates than Clever"; that
+words are so inexpensive that there is no moral crime in robbing Henry
+to pay James.
+
+Firmly believing all this, abjuring all atom-pickers, slab furniture,
+and woodchuck literature--save only the immortal verse:
+
+  "And there the wooden-chuck doth tread;
+    While from the oak trees' tops
+  The red, red squirrel on thy head
+    The frequent acorn drops."
+
+Abjuring, as I say, dinkiness in all its forms, we may still hope that
+those cleanly and respectable spinsters, the Sister Arts, will continue
+throughout the ages, rocking and drinking tea unterrified by the
+million-tongued clamor in the back yard and below stairs, where thumb
+and forefinger continue the question demanded by intellectual
+exhaustion: "L'arr! Kesker say l'arr?"
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                PAGE
+     I             1
+    II            12
+   III            21
+    IV            32
+     V            41
+    VI            48
+   VII            52
+  VIII            62
+    IX            73
+     X            85
+    XI            92
+   XII           100
+  XIII           104
+   XIV           111
+    XV           119
+   XVI           133
+  XVII           138
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                       FACING PAGE
+
+  "The little things," he continued,
+  delicately perforating the atmosphere
+  as though selecting a diatom.
+                                          _Frontispiece_
+    From a drawing by J. C. Leyendecker.
+
+
+  "Simplicity," breathed Guilford--"a single
+  blossom against a background of nothing at all"
+                                                      22
+    From a drawing by J. C. Leyendecker.
+
+
+  He paused; his six tall and blooming daughters,
+  two and two behind him
+                                                      54
+    From a drawing by Karl Anderson.
+
+
+  Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting
+  on the harp-strings, suddenly contracted
+  in a nervous tremor
+                                                     106
+    From a drawing by Karl Anderson.
+
+
+  _Decorative drawings by Arthur C. Becker._
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+IOLE
+
+I
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+"I ain't never knowed no one like him," continued the station-agent
+reflectively. "He made us all look like monkeys, but he was good to us.
+Ever see a ginuine poet, sir?"
+
+"Years ago one was pointed out to me," replied Briggs.
+
+"Was yours smooth shaved, with large, fat, white fingers?" inquired the
+station-agent.
+
+"If I remember correctly, he was thin," said Briggs, sitting down on his
+suit-case and gazing apprehensively around at the landscape. There was
+nothing to see but low, forbidding mountains, and forests, and a
+railroad track curving into a tunnel.
+
+The station-agent shoved his hairy hands into the pockets of his
+overalls, jingled an unseen bunch of keys, and chewed a dry grass stem,
+ruminating the while in an undertone:
+
+"This poet come here five years ago with all them kids, an' the fust
+thing he done was to dress up his girls in boys' pants. Then he went an'
+built a humpy sort o' house out of stones and boulders. Then he went to
+work an' wrote pieces for the papers about jay-birds an' woodchucks an'
+goddesses. He claimed the woods was full of goddesses. That was his way,
+sir."
+
+The agent contemplated the railroad track, running his eye along the
+perspective of polished rails:
+
+"Yes, sir; his name was--and is--Clarence Guilford, an' I fust seen it
+signed to a piece in the Uticy Star. An' next I knowed, folks began to
+stop off here inquirin' for Mr. Guilford. 'Is this here where Guilford,
+the poet, lives?' sez they; an' they come thicker an' thicker in warm
+weather. There wasn't no wagon to take 'em up to Guilford's, but they
+didn't care, an' they called it a lit'r'y shrine, an' they hit the pike,
+women, children, men--'speshil the women, an' I heard 'em tellin' how
+Guilford dressed his kids in pants an' how Guilford was a famous new
+lit'r'y poet, an' they said he was fixin' to lecture in Uticy."
+
+The agent gnawed off the chewed portion of the grass stem, readjusted
+it, and fixed his eyes on vacancy.
+
+"Three year this went on. Mr. Guilford was makin' his pile, I guess.
+He set up a shop an' hired art bookbinders from York. Then he set up
+another shop an' hired some of us 'round here to go an' make them big,
+slabby art-chairs. All his shops was called "At the sign of" somethin'
+'r other. Bales of vellum arrived for to bind little dinky books; art
+rocking-chairs was shipped out o' here by the carload. Meanwhile
+Guilford he done poetry on the side an' run a magazine; an' hearin' the
+boys was makin' big money up in that crank community, an' that the town
+was boomin', I was plum fool enough to drop my job here an' be a
+art-worker up to Rose-Cross--that's where the shops was; 'bout three
+mile back of his house into the woods."
+
+The agent removed his hands from his overalls and folded his arms
+grimly.
+
+"Well?" inquired Briggs, looking up from his perch on the suit-case.
+
+"Well, sir," continued the agent, "the hull thing bust. I guess the
+public kinder sickened o' them art-rockers an' dinky books without much
+printin' into them. Guilford he stuck to it noble, but the shops closed
+one by one. My wages wasn't paid for three months; the boys that
+remained got together that autumn an' fixed it up to quit in a bunch.
+
+"The poet was sad; he come out to the shops an' he says, 'Boys,' sez he,
+'art is long an' life is dam brief. I ain't got the cash, but,' sez he,
+'you can levy onto them art-rockers an' the dinky vellum books in stock,
+an',' sez he, 'you can take the hand-presses an' the tools an' bales o'
+vellum, which is very precious, an' all the wagons an' hosses, an' go
+sell 'em in that proud world that refuses to receive my message. The
+woodland fellowship is rent,' sez he, wavin' his plump fingers at us
+with the rings sparklin' on 'em.
+
+"Then the boys looked glum, an' they nudged me an' kinder shoved me
+front. So, bein' elected, I sez, 'Friend,' sez I, 'art is on the bum. It
+ain't your fault; the boys is sad an' sorrerful, but they ain't never
+knocked you to nobody, Mr. Guilford. You was good to us; you done your
+damdest. You made up pieces for the magazines an' papers an' you
+advertised how we was all cranks together here at Rose-Cross, a-lovin'
+Nature an' dicky-birds, an' wanderin' about half nood for art's sake.
+
+"'Mr. Guilford,' sez I, 'that gilt brick went. But it has went as far as
+it can travel an' is now reposin' into the soup. Git wise or eat hay,
+sir. Art is on the blink.'"
+
+The agent jingled his keys with a melancholy wink at Briggs.
+
+"So I come back here, an' thankful to hold down this job. An' five mile
+up the pike is that there noble poet an' his kids a-makin' up pieces for
+to sell to the papers, an' a sorrerin' over the cold world what refuses
+to buy his poems--an' a mortgage onto his house an' a threat to
+foreclose."
+
+"Indeed," said Briggs dreamily, for it was his business to attend to the
+foreclosure of the mortgage on the poet's house.
+
+"Was you fixin' to go up an' see the place?" inquired the agent.
+
+"Shall I be obliged to walk?"
+
+"I guess you will if you can't flutter," replied the agent. "I ain't got
+no wagon an' no horse."
+
+"How far is it?"
+
+"Five mile, sir."
+
+With a groan Mr. Briggs arose, lifted his suit-case, and, walking to the
+platform's edge, cast an agitated glance up the dusty road.
+
+Then he turned around and examined the single building in
+sight--station, water-tower, post-office and telegraph-office all in
+one, and incidentally the abode of the station-agent, whose duties
+included that of postmaster and operator.
+
+"I'll write a letter first," said Briggs. And this is what he wrote:
+
+  ROSE-CROSS P.O.,
+  _June 25, 1904_.
+
+  DEAR WAYNE: Do you remember that tract of land, adjoining your
+  preserve, which you attempted to buy four years ago? It was held by
+  a crank community, and they refused to sell, and made trouble for
+  your patrols by dumping dye-stuffs and sawdust into the Ashton Creek.
+
+  Well, the community has broken up, the shops are in ruins, and there
+  is nobody there now except that bankrupt poet, Guilford. I bought
+  the mortgage for you, foreseeing a slump in that sort of art, and
+  I expect to begin foreclosure proceedings and buy in the tract,
+  which, as you will recollect, includes some fine game cover and the
+  Ashton stream, where you wanted to establish a hatchery. This is a
+  God-forsaken spot. I'm on my way to the poet's now. Shall I begin
+  foreclosure proceedings and fire him? Wire me what to do.
+
+    Yours,
+      BRIGGS.
+
+Wayne received this letter two days later. Preoccupied as he was in
+fitting out his yacht for commission, he wired briefly, "Fire poet," and
+dismissed the matter from his mind.
+
+The next day, grappling with the problem of Japanese stewards and the
+decadence of all sailormen, he received a telegram from Briggs:
+
+"Can't you manage to come up here?"
+
+Irritated, he telegraphed back:
+
+"Impossible. Why don't you arrange to fire poet?" And Briggs replied:
+"Can't fire poet. There are extenuating circumstances."
+
+"Did you say exterminating or extenuating?" wired Wayne. "I said
+extenuating," replied Briggs.
+
+
+Then the following telegrams were exchanged in order:
+
+  (1)
+
+  What are the extenuating circumstances?
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+  (2)
+
+  Eight innocent children. Come up at once.
+
+    BRIGGS.
+
+  (3)
+
+  Boat in commission. Can't go. Why don't you fix things?
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+  (4)
+
+  How?
+
+    BRIGGS.
+
+  (5)
+
+  (Dated NEW LONDON.)
+
+  What on earth is the matter with you? Are you going to fix things
+  and join me at Bar Harbor or are you not?
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+  (6)
+
+  As I don't know how you want me to fix things, I can not join you.
+
+    BRIGGS.
+
+  (7)
+
+  (Dated PORTLAND, MAINE.)
+
+  Stuyvesant Briggs, what the devil is the matter with you? It's
+  absolutely necessary that I have the Ashton stream for a hatchery,
+  and you know it. What sort of a business man are you, anyhow? Of
+  course I don't propose to treat that poet inhumanly. Arrange to bid
+  in the tract, run up the price against your own bidding, and let
+  the poet have a few thousand if he is hard put. Don't worry me any
+  more; I'm busy with a fool crew, and you are spoiling my cruise by
+  not joining me.
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+  (8)
+
+  He won't do it.
+
+    BRIGGS.
+
+  (9)
+
+  _Who_ won't do _what_?
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+  (10)
+
+  Poet refuses to discuss the matter.
+
+    BRIGGS.
+
+  (11)
+
+  Fire that poet. You've spoiled my cruise with your telegrams.
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+  (12)
+
+  (_Marked "Collect."_)
+
+  Look here, George Wayne, don't drive me to desperation. You ought to
+  come up and face the situation yourself. I can't fire a poet with
+  eight helpless children, can I? And while I'm about it, let me
+  inform you that every time you telegraph me it costs me five dollars
+  for a carrier to bring the despatch over from the station; and every
+  time I telegraph you I am obliged to walk five miles to send it and
+  five miles back again. I'm mad all through, and my shoes are worn
+  out, and I'm tired. Besides, I'm too busy to telegraph.
+
+    BRIGGS.
+
+  (13)
+
+  Do you expect me to stop my cruise and travel up to that hole on
+  account of eight extenuating kids?
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+  (14)
+
+  I do.
+
+    BRIGGS.
+
+  (15)
+
+  Are you mad?
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+  (16)
+
+  Thoroughly. And extremely busy.
+
+    BRIGGS.
+
+  (17)
+
+  For the last time, Stuyve Briggs, are you going to bounce one
+  defaulting poet and progeny, arrange to have survey and warnings
+  posted, order timber and troughs for hatchery, engage extra
+  patrol--or are you not?
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+  (18)
+
+  No.
+
+    BRIGGS.
+
+  (19)
+
+  (_Received a day later by Mr. Wayne._)
+
+  Are you coming?
+
+    BRIGGS.
+
+  (20)
+
+  I'm coming to punch your head.
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+When George Wayne arrived at Rose-Cross station, seaburnt, angry, and in
+excellent athletic condition, Briggs locked himself in the waiting-room
+and attempted to calm the newcomer from the window.
+
+"If you're going to pitch into me, George," he said, "I'm hanged if I
+come out, and you can go to Guilford's alone."
+
+"Come out of there," said Wayne dangerously.
+
+"It isn't because I'm afraid of you," explained Briggs, "but it's merely
+that I don't choose to present either you or myself to a lot of pretty
+girls with the marks of conflict all over our eyes and noses."
+
+At the words "pretty girls" Wayne's battle-set features relaxed. He
+motioned to the Pullman porter to deposit his luggage on the empty
+platform; the melancholy bell-notes of the locomotive sounded, the train
+moved slowly forward.
+
+"Pretty girls?" he repeated in a softer voice. "Where are they staying?
+Of course, under the circumstances a personal encounter is superfluous.
+Where are they staying?"
+
+"At Guilford's. I told you so in my telegrams, didn't I?"
+
+"No, you didn't. You spoke only of a poet and his eight helpless
+children."
+
+"Well, those girls are the eight children," retorted Briggs sullenly,
+emerging from the station.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me----"
+
+"Yes, I do. They're his children, aren't they--even if they are girls,
+and pretty." He offered a mollifying hand; Wayne took it, shook it
+uncertainly, and fell into step beside his friend. "Eight pretty girls,"
+he repeated under his breath. "What did you do, Stuyve?"
+
+"What was I to do?" inquired Briggs, nervously worrying his short blond
+mustache. "When I arrived here I had made up my mind to fire the poet
+and arrange for the hatchery and patrol. The farther I walked through
+the dust of this accursed road, lugging my suit-case as you are doing
+now, the surer I was that I'd get rid of the poet without mercy.
+But----"
+
+"Well?" inquired Wayne, astonished.
+
+"But when I'd trudged some five miles up the stifling road I suddenly
+emerged into a wonderful mountain meadow. I tell you, George, it looked
+fresh and sweet as Heaven after that dusty, parching tramp--a mountain
+meadow deep with mint and juicy green grasses, and all cut up by little
+rushing streams as cold as ice. There were a lot of girls in pink
+sunbonnets picking wild strawberries in the middle distance," he added
+thoughtfully. "It was picturesque, wasn't it? Come, now, George,
+wouldn't that give you pause?--eight girls in pink pajamas----"
+
+"What!!!"
+
+"And sunbonnets--a sort of dress reform of the poet's."
+
+"Well?" inquired Wayne coldly.
+
+"And there was the 'house beautiful,' mercifully screened by woods,"
+continued Briggs. "He calls it the house beautiful, you know."
+
+"Why not the beautiful house?" asked Wayne, still more coldly.
+
+"Oh, he gets everything upside down. Guilford is harmless, you'll see."
+He began to whistle Fatinitza softly. There was a silence; then Wayne
+said:
+
+"You interrupted your narrative."
+
+"Where was I?"
+
+"In the foreground with eight pink pajamas in the middle distance."
+
+"Oh, yes. So there I was, travel-worn, thirsty, weary, uncertain----"
+
+"Cut it," observed Wayne.
+
+"And a stranger," continued Briggs with dignity, "in a strange
+country----"
+
+"Peculiarity of strangers."
+
+Briggs took no notice. "I drank from the cool springs; I lingered to
+pluck a delicious berry or two, I bathed my hot face, I----"
+
+"Where," demanded Wayne, "were the eight pink 'uns?"
+
+"Still in the middle distance. Don't interrupt me, George; I'm slowly
+drawing closer to them."
+
+"Well, get a move on," retorted Wayne sulkily.
+
+"I'm quite close to them now," explained Briggs; "close enough to remove
+my hat and smile and inquire the way to Guilford's. One superb young
+creature, with creamy skin and very red lips----"
+
+Wayne halted and set down his suit-case.
+
+"I'm not romancing; you'll see," said Briggs earnestly. "As I was
+saying, this young goddess looked at me in the sweetest way and said
+that Guilford was her father. And, Wayne, do you know what she did?
+She--er--came straight up to me and took hold of my hand, and led me up
+the path toward the high-art house, which is built of cobblestones!
+Think! Built of cobble----"
+
+"Took you by the hand?" repeated Wayne incredulously.
+
+"Oh, it was all right, George! I found out all about that sort of
+innocent thing later."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Certainly. These girls have been brought up like so many guileless
+speckled fawns out here in the backwoods. You know all about Guilford,
+the poet who's dead stuck on Nature and simplicity. Well, that's the man
+and that's his pose. He hasn't any money, and he won't work. His
+daughters raise vegetables, and he makes 'em wear bloomers, and he
+writes about chippy-birds and the house beautiful, and tells people to
+be natural, and wishes that everybody could go around without clothes
+and pick daisies----"
+
+"Do _they_?" demanded Wayne in an awful voice. "You _said_ they wore
+bloomers. Did you say that to break the news more gently? Did you!"
+
+"Of course they are clothed," explained his friend querulously; "though
+sometimes they wade about without shoes and stockings and do the nymph
+business. And, George, it's astonishing how modest that sort of dress
+is. And it's amazing how much they know. Why, they can talk
+Greek--_talk_ it, mind you. Every one of them can speak half a dozen
+languages--Guilford is a corker on culture, you know--and they can play
+harps and pianos and things, and give me thirty at tennis, even
+Chlorippe, the twelve-year-old----"
+
+"Is that her name?" asked Wayne.
+
+"Chlorippe? Yes. That bat-headed poet named all his children after
+butterflies. Let's see," he continued, telling off the names on his
+fingers; "there's Chlorippe, twelve; Philodice, thirteen; Dione,
+fourteen; Aphrodite, fifteen; Cybele, sixteen; Lissa, seventeen; Iole,
+eighteen, and Vanessa, nineteen. And, Wayne, never have the Elysian
+fields contained such a bunch of wholesome beauty as that mountain
+meadow contains all day long."
+
+Wayne, trudging along, suit-case firmly gripped, turned a pair of
+suspicious eyes upon his friend.
+
+"Of course," observed Briggs candidly, "I simply couldn't foreclose on
+the father of such children, could I? Besides, he won't let me discuss
+the subject."
+
+"I'll investigate the matter personally," said Wayne.
+
+"Nowhere to lay their heads! Think of it, George. And all because a
+turtle-fed, claret-flushed, idle and rich young man wants their earthly
+Paradise for a fish-hatchery. Think of it! A pampered, turtle-fed----"
+
+"You've said that before," snapped Wayne. "If you were half decent you'd
+help me with this suit-case. Whew! It's hot as Yonkers on this
+cattle-trail you call a road. How near are we to Guilford's?"
+
+An hour later Briggs said: "By the way, George, what are you going to do
+about the matter?"
+
+Wayne, flushed, dusty, perspiring, scowled at him.
+
+"What matter?"
+
+"The foreclosure."
+
+"I don't know; how can I know until I see Guilford?"
+
+"But you need the hatchery----"
+
+"I know it."
+
+"But he won't let you discuss it----"
+
+"If," said Wayne angrily, "you had spent half the time talking business
+with the poet that you spent picking strawberries with his helpless
+children I should not now be lugging this suit-case up this mountain.
+Decency requires few observations from _you_ just now."
+
+"Pooh!" said Briggs. "Wait till you see Iole."
+
+"Why Iole? Why not Vanessa?"
+
+"Don't--that's all," retorted Briggs, reddening.
+
+Wayne plumped his valise down in the dust, mopped his brow, folded his
+arms, and regarded Briggs between the eyes.
+
+"You have the infernal cheek, after getting me up here, to intimate that
+you have taken the pick?"
+
+"I do," replied Briggs firmly. The two young fellows faced each other.
+
+"By the way," observed Briggs casually, "the stock they come from is as
+good if not better than ours. This is a straight game."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you--you are--seriously----"
+
+"Something like it. There! Now you know."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Stuyve----"
+
+"Yes, for Heaven's sake and in Heaven's name don't get any wrong ideas
+into your vicious head."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I tell you," said Briggs, "that I was never closer to falling in love
+than I am to-day. And I've been here just two weeks."
+
+"Oh, Lord----"
+
+"Amen," muttered Briggs. "Here, give me your carpet-bag, you brute.
+We're on the edge of Paradise."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+"Before we discuss my financial difficulties," said the poet, lifting
+his plump white hand and waving it in unctuous waves about the veranda,
+"let me show you our home, Mr. Wayne. May I?"
+
+"Certainly," said Wayne politely, following Guilford into the house.
+
+They entered a hall; there was absolutely nothing in the hall except a
+small table on which reposed a single daisy in a glass of water.
+
+"Simplicity," breathed Guilford--"a single blossom against a background
+of nothing at all. You follow me, Mr. Wayne?"
+
+"Not--exactly----"
+
+The poet smiled a large, tender smile, and, with inverted thumb,
+executed a gesture as though making several spots in the air.
+
+"The concentration of composition," he explained; "the elimination of
+complexity; the isolation of the concrete in the center of the abstract;
+something in the midst of nothing. It is a very precious thought, Mr.
+Wayne."
+
+"Certainly," muttered Wayne; and they moved on.
+
+"This," said the poet, "is what I call my den."
+
+Wayne, not knowing what to say, sidled around the walls. It was almost
+bare of furniture; what there was appeared to be of the slab variety.
+
+"I call my house the house beautiful," murmured Guilford with his large,
+sweet smile. "Beauty is simplicity; beauty is unconsciousness; beauty is
+the child of elimination. A single fly in an empty room is beautiful to
+me, Mr. Wayne."
+
+"They carry germs," muttered Wayne, but the poet did not hear him and
+led the way to another enormous room, bare of everything save for eight
+thick and very beautiful Kazak rugs on the polished floor.
+
+  [Illustration:
+  "Simplicity," breathed Guilford--"a single blossom against
+  a background of nothing at all."]
+
+"My children's bedroom," he whispered solemnly.
+
+"You don't mean to say they sleep on those Oriental rugs!" stammered
+Wayne.
+
+"They do," murmured the poet. The tender sweetness of his ample smile
+was overpowering--like too much bay rum after shaving. "Sparta, Mr.
+Wayne, Sparta! And the result? My babes are perfect, physically,
+spiritually. Elimination wrought the miracle; yonder they sleep,
+innocent as the Graces, with all the windows open, clothed in moonlight
+or starlight, as the astronomical conditions may be. At the break of
+dawn they are afield, simply clothed, free limbed, unhampered by the
+tawdry harness of degenerate civilization. And as they wander through
+the verdure," he added with rapt enthusiasm, "plucking shy blossoms,
+gathering simples and herbs and vegetables for our bountiful and natural
+repast, they sing as they go, and every tremulous thrill of melody falls
+like balm on a father's heart." The overpowering sweetness of his smile
+drugged Wayne. Presently he edged toward the door, and the poet
+followed, a dreamy radiance on his features as though emanating from
+sacred inward meditation.
+
+They sat down on the veranda; Wayne fumbled for his cigar-case, but his
+unnerved fingers fell away; he dared not smoke.
+
+"About--about that business matter," he ventured feebly; but the poet
+raised his plump white hand.
+
+"You are my guest," he said graciously. "While you are my guest nothing
+shall intrude to cloud our happiness."
+
+Perplexed, almost muddled, Wayne strove in vain to find a reason for the
+elimination of the matter that had interrupted his cruise and brought
+him to Rose-Cross, the maddest yachtsman on the Atlantic. Why should
+Guilford forbid the topic as though its discussion were painful to
+Wayne?
+
+"He always gets the wrong end foremost, as Briggs said," thought the
+young man. "I wonder where the deuce Briggs can be? I'm no match for
+this bunch."
+
+His thoughts halted; he became aware that the poet was speaking in a
+rich, resonant voice, and he listened in an attitude of painful
+politeness.
+
+"It's the little things that are most precious," the poet was saying,
+and pinched the air with forefinger and thumb and pursed up his lips as
+though to whistle some saccharine air.
+
+"The little things," he continued, delicately perforating the atmosphere
+as though selecting a diatom.
+
+"Big things go, too," ventured Wayne.
+
+"No," said the poet; "no--or rather they _do_ go, in a certain sense,
+for every little thing is precious, and therefore little things are
+big!---big with portent, big in value. Do you follow me, Mr. Wayne?"
+
+Wayne's fascinated eyes were fixed on the poet. The latter picked out
+another atom from the atmosphere and held it up for Mr. Wayne's
+inspection; and while that young man's eyes protruded the poet rambled
+on and on until the melody of his voice became a ceaseless sound, a
+vague, sustained monotone, which seemed to bore into Wayne's brain until
+his legs twitched with a furious desire for flight.
+
+When he obtained command of himself the poet was saying, "It is my hour
+for withdrawal. It were insincere and artificial to ask your
+indulgence----"
+
+He rose to his rotund height.
+
+"You are due to sit in your cage," stammered Wayne, comprehending.
+
+"My den," corrected the poet, saturating the air with the sweetness of
+his smile.
+
+Wayne arose. "About that business--" he began desperately; but the
+poet's soft, heavy hand hovered in mid-air, and Wayne sat down so
+suddenly that when his eyes recovered their focus the poet had
+disappeared.
+
+A benumbed resentment struggled within him for adequate expression;
+he hitched his chair about to command a view of the meadow, then sat
+motionless, hypnotized by the view. Eight girls, clad in pink blouses
+and trousers, golden hair twisted up, decorated the landscape. Some were
+kneeling, filling baskets of woven, scented grasses with wild
+strawberries; some were wading the branches of the meadow brook,
+searching for trout with grass-woven nets; some picked early peas; two
+were playing a lightning set at tennis. And in the center of everything
+that was going on was Briggs, perfectly at ease, making himself
+agreeably at home.
+
+The spectacle of Briggs among the Hamadryads appeared to paralyze Wayne.
+
+Then an immense, intense resentment set every nerve in him tingling.
+Briggs, his friend, his confidential business adviser, his indispensable
+_alter ego_, had abandoned him to be tormented by this fat, saccharine
+poet--abandoned him while he, Briggs, made himself popular with eight of
+the most amazingly bewitching maidens mortal man might marvel on! The
+meanness stung Wayne till he jumped to his feet and strode out into the
+sunshine, menacing eyes fastened on Briggs.
+
+"Now wouldn't that sting you!" he breathed fiercely, turning up his
+trousers and stepping gingerly across the brook.
+
+Whether or not Briggs saw him coming and kept sidling away he could not
+determine; he did not wish to shout; he kept passing pretty girls and
+taking off his hat, and following Briggs about, but he never seemed to
+come any nearer to Briggs; Briggs always appeared in the middle
+distance, flitting genially from girl to girl; and presently the
+absurdity of his performance struck Wayne, and he sat down on the bank
+of the brook, too mad to think. There was a pretty girl picking
+strawberries near-by; he rose, took off his hat to her, and sat down
+again. She was one of those graceful, clean-limbed, creamy-skinned
+creatures described by Briggs; her hair was twisted up into a heavy,
+glistening knot, showing the back of a white neck; her eyes matched the
+sky and her lips the berries she occasionally bit into or dropped to the
+bottom of her woven basket.
+
+Once or twice she looked up fearlessly at Wayne as her search for
+berries brought her nearer; and Wayne forgot the perfidy of Briggs in
+an effort to look politely amiable.
+
+Presently she straightened up where she was kneeling in the long grass
+and stretched her arms. Then, still kneeling, she gazed curiously at
+Wayne with all the charm of a friendly wild thing unafraid.
+
+"Shall we play tennis?" she asked.
+
+"Certainly," said Wayne, startled.
+
+"Come, then," she said, picking up her basket in one hand and extending
+the other to Wayne.
+
+He took the fresh, cool fingers, and turned scarlet. Once his glance
+sneaked toward Briggs, but that young man was absorbed in fishing for
+brook trout with a net! Oh, ye little fishes! with a _net_!
+
+Wayne's brain seemed to be swarming with glittering pink-winged thoughts
+all singing. He walked on air, holding tightly to the hand of his
+goddess, seeing nothing but a blur of green and sunshine. Then a
+clean-cut idea stabbed him like a stiletto: was this Vanessa or Iole?
+And, to his own astonishment, he asked her quite naturally.
+
+"Iole," she said, laughing. "Why?"
+
+"Thank goodness," he said irrationally.
+
+"But why?" she persisted curiously.
+
+"Briggs--Briggs--" he stammered, and got no further. Perplexed, his
+goddess walked on, thoughtful, pure-lidded eyes searching some
+reasonable interpretation for the phrase, "Briggs--Briggs." But as Wayne
+gave her no aid, she presently dismissed the problem, and bade him
+select a tennis bat.
+
+"I do hope you play well," she said. Her hope was comparatively vain;
+she batted Wayne around the court, drove him wildly from corner to
+corner, stampeded him with volleys, lured him with lobs, and finally
+left him reeling dizzily about, while she came around from behind the
+net, saying, "It's all because you have no tennis shoes. Come; we'll
+rest under the trees and console ourselves with chess."
+
+Under a group of huge silver beeches a stone chess-table was set
+embedded in the moss; and Iole indolently stretched herself out on one
+side, chin on hands, while Wayne sorted weather-beaten basalt and marble
+chess-men which lay in a pile under the tree.
+
+She chatted on without the faintest trace of self-consciousness the
+while he arranged the pieces; then she began to move. He took a long
+time between each move; but no sooner did he move than, still talking,
+she extended her hand and shoved her piece into place without a fraction
+of a second's hesitation.
+
+When she had mated him twice, and he was still gazing blankly at the
+mess into which she had driven his forces, she sat up sideways,
+gathering her slim ankles into one hand, and cast about her for
+something to do, eyes wandering over the sunny meadow.
+
+"We had horses," she mused; "we rode like demons, bareback, until
+trouble came."
+
+"Trouble?"
+
+"Oh, not trouble--poverty. So our horses had to go. What shall we
+do--you and I?" There was something so subtly sweet, so exquisitely
+innocent in the coupling of the pronouns that a thrill passed completely
+through Wayne, and probably came out on the other side.
+
+"I know what I'm going to do," he said, drawing a note-book and a pencil
+from his pocket and beginning to write, holding it so she could see.
+
+"Do you want me to look over your shoulder?" she asked.
+
+"Please."
+
+She did; and it affected his penmanship so that the writing grew wabbly.
+Still she could read:
+
+  (_Telegram_)
+
+  TO SAILING MASTER, YACHT THENDARA, BAR HARBOR:
+
+  Put boat out of commission. I may be away all summer.
+
+    WAYNE.
+
+"How far is it to the station?" asked Wayne, turning to look into her
+eyes.
+
+"Only five miles," she said. "I'll walk with you if you like. Shall I?"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+"Wealth," observed the poet, waving his heavy white hand, "is a figure
+of speech, Mr. Wayne. Only by the process of elimination can one arrive
+at the exquisite simplicity of poverty--care-free poverty. Even a single
+penny is a burden--the flaw in the marble, the fly in the amber of
+perfection. Cast it away and enter Eden!" And joining thumb and
+forefinger, he plucked a figurative copper from the atmosphere, tossed
+it away, and wiped his fingers on his handkerchief.
+
+"But--" began Wayne uneasily.
+
+"Try it," smiled the poet, diffusing sweetness; "try it. Dismiss all
+thoughts of money from your mind."
+
+"I do," said Wayne, somewhat relieved. "I thought you meant for me to
+chuck my securities overboard and eat herbs."
+
+"Not in your case--no, not in your case. _I_ can do that; I have done
+it. No, your sacred mission is simply to forget that you are wealthy.
+That is a very precious thought, Mr. Wayne--remain a Croesus and forget
+it! Not to eliminate your _wealth_, but eliminate all _thought_ of it.
+Very, very precious."
+
+"Well, I never think about things like that except at a directors'
+meeting," blurted out the young fellow. "Perhaps it's because I've never
+had to think about it."
+
+The poet sighed so sweetly that the atmosphere seemed to drip with the
+saccharine injection.
+
+"I wish," ventured Wayne, "that you would let me mention the subject of
+business"--the poet shook his head indulgently--"just to say that I'm
+not going to foreclose." He laid a packet of legal papers in the poet's
+hand.
+
+"Hush," smiled Guilford, "this is not seemly in the house beautiful....
+_What_ was it you said, Mr. Wayne?"
+
+"I? I was going to say that I just wanted--wanted to stay here--be your
+guest, if you'll let me," he said honestly. "I was cruising--I didn't
+understand--Briggs--Briggs--" He stuck.
+
+"Yes, Briggs," softly suggested the poet, spraying the night air with
+more sweetness.
+
+"Briggs has spoken to you about--about your daughter Vanessa. You see,
+Briggs is my closest friend; his happiness is--er--important to me.
+I want to see Briggs happy; that's why I want to stay here, just to see
+Briggs happy. I--I love Briggs. You understand me, don't you, Mr.
+Guilford?"
+
+The poet breathed a dulcet breath. "Perfectly," he murmured. "The
+contemplation of Mr. Briggs' happiness eliminates all thoughts of self
+within you. By this process of elimination you arrive at happiness
+yourself. Ah, the thought is a very precious one, my young friend, for
+by elimination only can we arrive at perfection. Thank you for the
+thought; thank you. You have given me a very, very precious thought to
+cherish."
+
+"I--I have been here a week," muttered Wayne. "I thought--perhaps--my
+welcome might be outworn----"
+
+"In the house beautiful," murmured the poet, rising and waving his heavy
+white hand at the open door, "welcome is eternal." He folded his arms
+with difficulty, for he was stout, and one hand clutched the legal
+papers; his head sank. In profound meditation he wandered away into the
+shadowy house, leaving Wayne sitting on the veranda rail, eyes fixed on
+a white shape dimly seen moving through the moonlit meadows below.
+Briggs sauntered into sight presently, his arms full of flowers.
+
+"Get me a jug of water, will you? Vanessa has been picking these and she
+sent me back to fix 'em. Hurry, man! She is waiting for me in the
+garden." Wayne gazed earnestly at his friend.
+
+"So you have done it, have you, Stuyve?"
+
+"Done what?" demanded Briggs, blushing.
+
+"It."
+
+"If you mean," he said with dignity, "that I've asked the sweetest girl
+on earth to marry me, I have. And I'm the happiest man on the footstool,
+too. Good Heaven, George," he broke out, "if you knew the meaning of
+love! if you could for one second catch a glimpse of the beauty of her
+soul! Why, man of sordid clay that I was--creature of club and claret
+and turtle--like you----"
+
+"Drop it!" said Wayne somberly.
+
+"I can't help it, George. We were beasts--and _you_ are yet. But my base
+clay is transmuted, spiritualized; my soul is awake, traveling, toiling
+toward the upward heights where hers sits enthroned. When I think of
+what I was, and what you still are----"
+
+Wayne rose exasperated:
+
+"Do you think your soul is doing the only upward hustling?" he said
+hotly.
+
+Briggs, clasping his flowers to his breast, gazed out over them at
+Wayne.
+
+"You don't mean----"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Wayne. "I may be crazy, but I know something," with
+which paradox he turned on his heel and walked into the moonlit meadow
+toward that dim, white form moving through the dusk.
+
+"I wondered," she said, "whether you were coming," as he stepped through
+the long, fragrant grass to her side.
+
+"You might have wondered if I had not come," he answered.
+
+"Yes, that is true. This moonlight is too wonderful to miss," she added
+without a trace of self-consciousness.
+
+"It was for you I came."
+
+"Couldn't you find my sisters?" she asked innocently.
+
+He did not reply. Presently she stumbled over a hummock, recovered her
+poise without comment, and slipped her hand into his with unconscious
+confidence.
+
+"Do you know what I have been studying to-day?" she asked.
+
+"What?"
+
+"That curious phycomycetous fungus that produces resting-spores by the
+conjugation of two similar club-shaped hyphae, and in which conidia also
+occur. It's fascinating."
+
+After a silence he said:
+
+"What would you think of me if I told you that I do not comprehend a
+single word of what you have just told me?"
+
+"Don't you?" she asked, astonished.
+
+"No," he replied, dropping her hand. She wondered, vaguely distressed;
+and he went on presently: "As a plain matter of fact, I don't know much.
+It's an astonishing discovery for me, but it's a fact that I am not your
+mental, physical, or spiritual equal. In sheer, brute strength perhaps I
+am, and I am none too certain of that, either. But, and I say it to my
+shame, I can not follow you; I am inferior in education, in culture, in
+fine instinct, in mental development. You chatter in a dozen languages
+to your sisters: my French appals a Paris cabman; you play any
+instrument I ever heard of: the guitar is my limit, the fandango my
+repertoire. As for alert intelligence, artistic comprehension, ability
+to appreciate, I can not make the running with you; I am
+outclassed--hopelessly. Now, if this is all true--and I have spoken the
+wretched truth--_what_ can a man like me have to say for himself?"
+
+Her head was bent, her fair face was in shadow. She strayed on a little
+way, then, finding herself alone, turned and looked back at him where he
+stood. For a moment they remained motionless, looking at one another,
+then, as on some sweet impulse, she came back hastily and looked into
+his eyes.
+
+"I do not feel as you do," she said; "you are very--good--company. I am
+not all you say; I know very little. Listen. It--it distresses me to
+have you think I hold you--lightly. Truly we are _not_ apart."
+
+"There is but one thing that can join us."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Love."
+
+Her pure gaze did not falter nor her eyes droop. Curiously regarding
+him, she seemed immersed in the solution of the problem as he had
+solved it.
+
+"Do you love me?" she asked.
+
+"With all my soul--such as it is, with all my heart, with every thought,
+every instinct, every breath I draw."
+
+She considered him with fearless eyes; the beauty of them was all he
+could endure.
+
+"You love me?" she repeated.
+
+He bent his head, incapable of speech.
+
+"You wish me to love you?"
+
+He looked at her, utterly unable to move his lips.
+
+"_How_ do you wish me to love you?"
+
+He opened his arms; she stepped forward, close to him.
+
+Then their lips met.
+
+"Oh," she said faintly, "I did not know it--it was so sweet."
+
+And as her head fell back on his arm about her neck she looked up at him
+full of wonder at this new knowledge he had taught her, marvelous,
+unsuspected, divine in its simplicity. Then the first delicate blush
+that ever mounted her face spread, tinting throat and forehead; she drew
+his face down to her own.
+
+
+The poet paced the dim veranda, arms folded, head bent. But his glance
+was sideways and full of intelligence as it included two vague figures
+coming slowly back through the moon-drenched meadow.
+
+"By elimination we arrive at perfection," he mused; "and perfection is
+success. There remain six more," he added irrelevantly, "but they're
+young yet. Patience, subtle patience--and attention to the little
+things." He pinched a morsel of air out of the darkness, examined it and
+released it.
+
+"The little things," he repeated; "that is a very precious thought....
+I believe the sea air may agree with me--now and then."
+
+And he wandered off into his "den" and unlocked a drawer in his desk,
+and took out a bundle of legal papers, and tore them slowly, carefully,
+into very small pieces.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+The double wedding at the Church of Sainte Cicindella was pretty and
+sufficiently fashionable to inconvenience traffic on Fifth Avenue.
+Partly from loyalty, partly from curiosity, the clans of Wayne and
+Briggs, with their offshoots and social adherents, attended; and they
+saw Briggs and Wayne on their best behavior, attended by Sudbury Grey
+and Winsted Forest; and they saw two bridal visions of loveliness,
+attended by six additional sister visions as bridesmaids; and they saw
+the poet, agitated with the holy emotions of a father, now almost
+unmanned, now rallying, spraying the hushed air with sweetness. They saw
+clergymen and a bishop, and the splendor of stained glass through which
+ushers tiptoed. And they heard the subdued rustling of skirts and the
+silken stir, and the great organ breathing over Eden, and a single
+artistically-modulated sob from the poet. A good many other things they
+heard and saw, especially those of the two clans who were bidden to the
+breakfast at Wayne's big and splendid house on the southwest corner of
+Seventy-ninth Street and Madison Avenue.
+
+For here they were piped to breakfast by the boatswain of Wayne's big
+seagoing yacht, the _Thendara_--on which brides and grooms were
+presently to embark for Cairo via the Azores--and speeches were said and
+tears shed into goblets glimmering with vintages worth prayerful
+consideration.
+
+And in due time two broughams, drawn by dancing horses, with the azure
+ribbons aflutter from the head-stalls, bore away two very beautiful and
+excited brides and two determined, but entirely rattled, grooms. And
+after that several relays of parents fraternized with the poet and six
+daughters, and the clans of Briggs and of Wayne said a number of
+agreeable things to anybody who cared to listen; and as everybody did
+listen, there was a great deal of talk--more talk in a minute than the
+sisters of Iole had heard in all their several limited and innocently
+natural existences. So it confused them, not with its quality, but its
+profusion; and the champagne made their cheeks feel as though the soft
+peachy skin fitted too tight, and a number of persistent musical
+instruments were being tuned in their little ears; and, not yet
+thoroughly habituated to any garments except pink sunbonnets and
+pajamas, their straight fronts felt too tight, and the tops of their
+stockings pulled, and they balanced badly on their high heels, and
+Aphrodite and Cybele, being too snugly laced, retired to rid themselves
+of their first corsets.
+
+The remaining four, Lissa, now eighteen; Dione, fifteen; Philodice,
+fourteen, and Chlorippe, thirteen, found the missing Pleiads in the
+great library, joyously donning their rose-silk lounging pajamas, while
+two parlor maids brought ices from the wrecked feast below.
+
+So they, too, flung from them crinkling silk and diaphanous lace,
+high-heel shoon and the delicate body-harness never fashioned for
+free-limbed dryads of the Rose-Cross wilds; and they kept the electric
+signals going for ices and fruits and pitchers brimming with clear cold
+water; and they sat there in a circle like a thicket of fluttering
+pale-pink roses, until below the last guest had sped out into the
+unknown wastes of Gotham, and the poet's heavy step was on the stair.
+
+The poet was agitated--and like a humble bicolored quadruped of the
+Rose-Cross wilds, which, when agitated, sprays the air--so the poet,
+laboring obesely under his emotion, smiled with a sweetness so
+intolerable that the air seemed to be squirted full of saccharinity to
+the point of plethoric saturation.
+
+"My lambs," he murmured, fat hands clasped and dropped before him as
+straight as his rounded abdomen would permit; "my babes!"
+
+"Do you think," suggested Aphrodite, busy with her ice, "that we are
+going to enjoy this winter in Mr. Wayne's house?"
+
+"Enjoyment," breathed the poet in an overwhelming gush of sweetness, "is
+not in houses; it is in one's soul. What is wealth? Everything!
+Therefore it is of no value. What is poverty? Nothing! And, as it is the
+little things that are the most precious, so nothing, which is less than
+the very least, is precious beyond price. Thank you for listening; thank
+you for understanding. Bless you."
+
+And he wandered away, almost asphyxiated with his emotions.
+
+"I mean to have a gay winter--if I can ever get used to being laced in
+and pulled over by those dreadful garters," observed Aphrodite,
+stretching her smooth young limbs in comfort.
+
+"I suppose there would be trouble if we wore our country clothes on
+Broadway, wouldn't there?" asked Lissa wistfully.
+
+Chlorippe, aged thirteen, kicked off her sandals and stretched her
+pretty snowy feet: "They were never in the world made to fit into
+high-heeled shoes," she declared pensively, widening her little rosy
+toes.
+
+"But we might as well get used to all these things," sighed Philodice,
+rolling over among the cushions, a bunch of hothouse grapes suspended
+above her pink mouth. She ate one, looked at Dione, and yawned.
+
+"I'm going to practise wearing 'em an hour a day," said Aphrodite,
+"because I mean to go to the theater. It's worth the effort. Besides, if
+we just sit here in the house all day asking each other Greek riddles,
+we will never see anybody until Iole and Vanessa come back from their
+honeymoon and give teas and dinners for all sorts of interesting young
+men."
+
+"Oh, the attractive young men I have seen in these few days in New
+York!" exclaimed Lissa. "Would you believe it, the first day I walked
+out with George Wayne and Iole, I was perfectly bewildered and enchanted
+to see so many delightful-looking men. And by and by Iole missed me, and
+George came back and found me standing entranced on the corner of Fifth
+Avenue; and I said, "Please don't disturb me, George, because I am only
+standing here to enjoy the sight of so many agreeable-looking men." But
+he acted so queerly about it." She ended with a little sigh. "However,
+I love George, of course, even if he does bore me. I wonder where they
+are now--the bridal pairs?"
+
+"I wonder," mused Philodice, "whether they have any children by this
+time?"
+
+"Not yet," explained Aphrodite. "But they'll probably have some when
+they return. I understand it takes a good many weeks--to----"
+
+"To find new children," nodded Chlorippe confidently. "I suppose they've
+hidden the cunning little things somewhere on the yacht, and it's like
+hunt the thimble and lots and lots of fun." And she distributed six
+oranges.
+
+Lissa was not so certain of that, but, discussing the idea with Cybele,
+and arriving at no conclusion, devoted herself to the large juicy orange
+with more satisfaction, conscious that the winter's outlook was bright
+for them all and full of the charming mystery of anticipations so
+glittering yet so general that she could form not even the haziest ideas
+of their wonderful promise. And so, sucking the sunlit pulp of their
+oranges, they were content to live, dream, and await fulfilment under
+the full favor of a Heaven which had never yet sent them aught but
+happiness beneath the sun.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+Neither Lethbridge nor Harrow--lately exceedingly important
+undergraduates at Harvard and now twin nobodies in the employment of the
+great Occidental Fidelity and Trust Company--neither of these young men,
+I say, had any particular business at the New Arts Theater that
+afternoon.
+
+For the play was Barnard Haw's _Attitudes_, the performance was private
+and intensely intellectual, the admission by invitation only, and
+between the acts there was supposed to be a general _causerie_ among the
+gifted individuals of the audience.
+
+Why Stanley West, president of the Occidental Trust, should have
+presented to his two young kinsmen the tickets inscribed with his own
+name was a problem, unless everybody else, including the elevator boys,
+had politely declined the offer.
+
+"That's probably the case," observed Lethbridge. "Do we go?"
+
+"Art," said Harrow, "will be on the loose among that audience. And if
+anybody can speak to anybody there, we'll get spoken to just as if we
+were sitting for company, and first we know somebody will ask us what
+Art really is."
+
+"I'd like to see a place full of atmosphere," suggested Lethbridge.
+"I've seen almost everything--the Cafe Jaune, and Chinatown, and--you
+remember that joint at Tangier? But I've never seen atmosphere. I don't
+care how thin it is; I just want to say that I've seen it when the next
+girl throws it all over me." And as Harrow remained timid, he added: "We
+won't have to climb across the footlights and steal a curl from the
+author, because he's already being sheared in England. There's nothing
+to scare you."
+
+Normally, however, they were intensely afraid of Art except at their
+barbers', and they had heard, in various ways as vague as Broad Street
+rumors, something concerning these gatherings of the elect at the New
+Arts Theater on Saturday afternoons, where unselfish reformers produced
+plays for Art's sake as a rebuke to managers who declined to produce
+that sort of play for anybody's sake.
+
+"I'll bet," said Harrow, "that some thrifty genius sent Stanley West
+those tickets in a desperate endeavor to amalgamate the aristocracies of
+wealth and intellect!--as though you could shake 'em up as you shake a
+cocktail! As though you'd catch your Uncle Stanley wearing his richest
+Burgundy flush, sitting in the orchestra and talking _Arr Noovo_ to a
+young thing with cheek-bones who'd pinch him into a cocked hat for a
+contribution between the acts!"
+
+"Still," said Lethbridge, "even Art requires a wad to pay its license.
+Isn't West the foxy Freddie! Do you suppose, if we go, they'll sting us
+for ten?"
+
+"They'll probably take up a collection for the professor," said Harrow
+gloomily. "Better come to the club and give the tickets to the janitor."
+
+"Oh, that's putting it all over Art! If anybody with earnest eyes tries
+to speak to us we can call a policeman."
+
+"Well," said Harrow, "on your promise to keep your mouth shut I'll go
+with you. If you open it they'll discover you're an appraiser and I'm a
+broker, and then they'll think we're wealthy, because there'd be no
+other reason for our being there, and they'll touch us both for a brace
+of come-ons, and----"
+
+"Perhaps," interrupted the other, "we'll be fortunate enough to sit next
+to a peach! And as it's the proper thing there to talk to your neighbor,
+the prospect--er--needn't jar you."
+
+There was a silence as they walked up-town, which lasted until they
+entered their lodgings. And by that time they had concluded to go.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+So they went, having nothing better on hand, and at two o'clock they
+sidled into the squatty little theater, shyly sought their reserved
+seats and sat very still, abashed in the presence of the massed
+intellects of Manhattan.
+
+When Clarence Guilford, the Poet of Simplicity, followed by six healthy,
+vigorous young daughters, entered the middle aisle of the New Arts
+Theater, a number of people whispered in reverent recognition:
+"Guilford, the poet! Those are his daughters. They wear nothing but pink
+pajamas at home. Sh-sh-h-h!"
+
+Perhaps the poet heard, for he heard a great deal when absent-minded.
+He paused; his six tall and blooming daughters, two and two behind him,
+very naturally paused also, because the poet was bulky and the aisle
+narrow.
+
+Those of the elect who had recognized him had now an opportunity to view
+him at close range; young women with expressive eyes leaned forward,
+quivering; several earnest young men put up lorgnettes.
+
+It was as it should have been; and the poet stood motionless in dreamy
+abstraction, until an usher took his coupons and turned down seven
+seats. Then the six daughters filed in, and the poet, slowly turning to
+survey the house, started slightly, as though surprised to find himself
+under public scrutiny, passed a large, plump hand over his forehead, and
+slowly subsided into the aisle-seat with a smile of whimsical
+acquiescence in the knowledge of his own greatness.
+
+"Who," inquired young Harrow, turning toward Lethbridge--"who is that
+duck?"
+
+"You can search me," replied Lethbridge in a low voice, "but for
+Heaven's sake _look_ at those girls! Is it right to bunch such beauty
+and turn down Senators from Utah?"
+
+Harrow's dazzled eyes wandered over the six golden heads and snowy
+necks, lovely as six wholesome young goddesses fresh from a bath in the
+Hellespont.
+
+"The--the one next to the one beside you," whispered Lethbridge, edging
+around. "I want to run away with her. Would you mind getting me a
+hansom?"
+
+"The one next to me has them all pinched to death," breathed Harrow
+unsteadily. "Look!--when she isn't looking. Did you ever see such eyes
+and mouth--such a superb free poise----"
+
+"Sh-sh-h-h!" muttered Lethbridge, "the bell-mule is talking to them."
+
+"Art," said the poet, leaning over to look along the line of fragrant,
+fresh young beauty, "Art is an art." With which epigram he slowly closed
+his eyes.
+
+His daughters looked at him; a young woman expensively but not smartly
+gowned bent forward from the row behind. Her attitude was almost
+prayerful; her eyes burned.
+
+  [Illustration:
+  He paused; his six tall and blooming daughters two and two
+  behind him.]
+
+"Art," continued the poet, opening his heavy lids with a large, sweet
+smile, "Art is above Art, but Art is never below Art. Art, to be Art,
+must be artless. That is a very precious thought--very, very precious.
+Thank you for understanding me--thank you." And he included in his large
+smile young Harrow, who had been unconsciously bending forward,
+hypnotized by the monotonous resonance of the poet's deep, rich voice.
+
+Now that the spell was broken, he sank back in his chair, looking at
+Lethbridge a little wildly.
+
+"Let me sit next--after the first act," began Lethbridge, coaxing;
+"they'll be watching the stage all the first act and you can look at 'em
+without being rude, and they'll do the same next act, and I can look at
+'em, and perhaps they'll ask us what Art really is----"
+
+"Did you hear what that man said?" interrupted Harrow, recovering his
+voice. "_Did_ you?"
+
+"No; what?"
+
+"Well, listen next time. And all I have to say is, if that firing-line,
+with its battery of innocent blue eyes, understands him, you and I had
+better apply to the nearest night-school for the rudiments of an
+education."
+
+"Well, what did he say?" began the other uneasily, when again the poet
+bent forward to address the firing-line; and the lovely blue battery
+turned silently upon the author of their being.
+
+"Art is the result of a complex mental attitude capable of producing
+concrete simplicity."
+
+"Help!" whispered Harrow, but the poet had caught his eye, and was
+fixing the young man with a smile that held him as sirup holds a fly.
+
+"You ask me what is Art, young sir? Why should I not heed you? Why
+should I not answer you? What artificial barriers, falsely called
+convention, shall force me to ignore the mute eloquence of your
+questioning eyes? You ask me what is Art. I will tell you; it is
+_this_!" And the poet, inverting his thumb, pressed it into the air.
+Then, carefully inspecting the dent he had made in the atmosphere, he
+erased it with a gesture and folded his arms, looking gravely at Harrow,
+whose fascinated eyes protruded.
+
+Behind him Lethbridge whispered hoarsely, "I told you how it would be in
+the New Arts Theater. I told you a young man alone was likely to get
+spoken to. Now those six girls know you're a broker!"
+
+"Don't say it so loud," muttered Harrow savagely. "I'm all right so far,
+for I haven't said a word."
+
+"You'd better not," returned the other. "I wish that curtain would go up
+and stay up. It will be my turn to sit next them after this act, you
+know."
+
+Harrow ventured to glance at the superb young creature sitting beside
+him, and at the same instant she looked up and, catching his eye, smiled
+in the most innocently friendly fashion--the direct, clear-eyed advance
+of a child utterly unconscious of self.
+
+"I have never before been in a theater," she said; "have you?"
+
+"I--I beg your pardon," stammered Harrow when he found his voice, "but
+_were_ you good enough to speak to _me_?"
+
+"Why, yes!" she said, surprised but amiable; "shouldn't I have spoken to
+you?"
+
+"Indeed--oh, indeed you should!" said Harrow hastily, with a quick
+glance at the poet. The poet, however, appeared to be immersed in
+thought, lids partially closed, a benignant smile imprinted on his heavy
+features.
+
+"_What_ are you doing?" breathed Lethbridge in his ear. Harrow calmly
+turned his back on his closest friend and gazed rapturously at his
+goddess. And again her bewildering smile broke out and he fairly blinked
+in its glory.
+
+"This is my first play," she said; "I'm a little excited. I hope I shall
+care for it."
+
+"Haven't you ever seen a play?" asked Harrow, tenderly amazed.
+
+"Never. You see, we always lived in the country, and we have always been
+poor until my sister Iole married. And now our father has come to live
+with his new son-in-law. So that is how we came to be here in New York."
+
+"I am _so_ glad you _did_ come," said Harrow fervently.
+
+"So are we. We have never before seen anything like a large city. We
+have never had enough money to see one. But now that Iole is married,
+everything is possible. It is all so interesting for us--particularly
+the clothing. Do you like my gown?"
+
+"It is a dream!" stammered the infatuated youth.
+
+"Do you think so? I think it is wonderful--but not very comfortable."
+
+"Doesn't it fit?" he inquired.
+
+"Perfectly; that's the trouble. It is not comfortable. We never before
+were permitted to wear skirts and all sorts of pretty fluffy frills
+under them, and _such_ high heels, and _such_ long stockings, and _such_
+tight lacing--" She hesitated, then calmly: "But I believe father told
+us that we are not to mention our pretty underwear, though it's hard not
+to, as it's the first we ever had."
+
+Harrow was past all speech.
+
+"I wish I had my lounging-suit on," she said with a sigh and a hitch of
+her perfectly modeled shoulders.
+
+"W--what sort of things do you usually dress in?" he ventured.
+
+"Why, in dress-reform clothes!" she said, laughing. "We never have worn
+anything else."
+
+"Bloomers!"
+
+"I don't know; we had trousers and blouses and sandals--something like
+the pink pajamas we have for night-wear now. Formerly we wore nothing at
+night. I am beginning to wonder, from the way people look at us when we
+speak of this, whether we were odd. But all our lives we have never
+thought about clothing. However, I am glad you like my new gown, and I
+fancy I'll get used to this tight lacing in time.... What is your name?"
+
+"James Harrow," he managed to say, aware of an innocence and directness
+of thought and speech which were awaking in him faintest responsive
+echoes. They were the blessed echoes from the dim, fair land of
+childhood, but he did not know it.
+
+"James Harrow," she repeated with a friendly nod. "My name is Lissa--my
+first name; the other is Guilford. My father is the famous poet,
+Clarence Guilford. He named us all after butterflies--all my
+sisters"--counting them on her white fingers while her eyes rested on
+him--"Chlorippe, twelve years old, that pretty one next to my father;
+then Philodice, thirteen; Dione, fourteen; Aphrodite, fifteen; Cybele,
+the one next to me, sixteen, and almost seventeen; and myself,
+seventeen, almost eighteen. Besides, there is Iole, who married Mr.
+Wayne, and Vanessa, married to Mr. Briggs. They have been off on Mr.
+Wayne's yacht, the _Thendara_, on their wedding trip. Now you know all
+about us. Do you think you would like to know us?"
+
+"_Like_ to! I'd simply love to! I----"
+
+"That is very nice," she said unembarrassed.
+
+"I thought I should like you when I saw you leaning over and listening
+so reverently to father's epigrams. Then, besides, I had nobody but my
+sisters to talk to. Oh, you can't imagine how many attractive men I see
+every day in New York--and I should like to know them all--and many _do_
+look at me as though they would like it, too; but Mr. Wayne is so queer,
+and so are father and Mr. Briggs--about my speaking to people in public
+places. They have told me not to, but I--I--thought I would," she ended,
+smiling. "What harm can it do for me to talk to you?"
+
+"It's perfectly heavenly of you----"
+
+"Oh, do you think so? I wonder what father thinks"--turning to look;
+then, resuming: "He generally makes us stop, but I am quite sure he
+expected me to talk to you."
+
+The lone note of a piano broke the thread of the sweetest, maddest
+discourse Harrow had ever listened to; the girl's cheeks flushed and she
+turned expectantly toward the curtained stage. Again the lone note,
+thumped vigorously, sounded a staccato monotone.
+
+"Precious--very precious," breathed the poet, closing his eyes in a sort
+of fatty ecstasy.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+Harrow looked at his program, then, leaning toward Lissa, whispered:
+"That is the overture to _Attitudes_--the program explains it: 'A series
+of pale gray notes'--what the deuce!--'pale _gray_ notes giving the
+value of the highest light in which the play is pitched'--" He paused,
+aghast.
+
+"I understand," whispered the girl, resting her lovely arm on the chair
+beside him. "Look! The curtain is rising! _How_ my heart beats! Does
+yours?"
+
+He nodded, unable to articulate.
+
+The curtain rose very, very slowly, upon the first scene of Barnard
+Haw's masterpiece of satire; and the lovely firing-line quivered, blue
+batteries opening very wide, lips half parted in breathless
+anticipation. And about that time Harrow almost expired as a soft,
+impulsive hand closed nervously over his.
+
+And there, upon the stage, the human species was delicately vivisected
+in one act; human frailty exposed, human motives detected, human desire
+quenched in all the brilliancy of perverted epigram and the scalpel
+analysis of the astigmatic. Life, love, and folly were portrayed with
+the remorseless accuracy of an eye doubly sensitive through the stimulus
+of an intellectual strabismus. Barnard Haw at his greatest! And how he
+dissected attitudes; the attitude assumed by the lover, the father, the
+wife, the daughter, the mother, the mistress--proving that virtue, _per
+se_, is a pose. Attitudes! How he flayed those who assumed them. His
+attitude toward attitudes was remorseless, uncompromising, inexorable.
+
+And the curtain fell on the first act, its gray and silver folds swaying
+in the half-crazed whirlwind of applause.
+
+Lissa's silky hand trembled in Harrow's, her grasp relaxed. He dropped
+his hand and, searching, encountered hers again.
+
+"_What_ do you think of it?" she asked.
+
+"I don't think there's any harm in it," he stammered guiltily, supposing
+she meant the contact of their interlaced fingers.
+
+"Harm? I didn't mean harm," she said. "The play is perfectly harmless,
+I think."
+
+"Oh--the play! Oh, that's just _that_ sort of play, you know. They're
+all alike; a lot of people go about telling each other how black white
+is and that white is always black--until somebody suddenly discovers
+that black and white are a sort of greenish red. Then the audience
+applauds frantically in spite of the fact that everybody in it had
+concluded that black and white were really a shade of yellowish yellow!"
+
+She had begun to laugh; and as he proceeded, excited by her approval,
+the most adorable gaiety possessed her.
+
+"I _never_ heard anything half so clever!" she said, leaning toward him.
+
+"I? Clever!" he faltered. "You--you don't really mean that!"
+
+"Why? Don't you know you are? Don't you know in your heart that you have
+said the very thing that I in my heart found no words to explain?"
+
+"Did I, really?"
+
+"Yes. Isn't it delightful!"
+
+It was; Harrow, holding tightly to the soft little hand half hidden by
+the folds of her gown, cast a sneaking look behind him, and encountered
+the fixed and furious glare of his closest friend, who had pinched him.
+
+"Pig!" hissed Lethbridge, "do I sit next or not?"
+
+"I--I can't; I'll explain----"
+
+"_Do_ I?"
+
+"You don't understand----"
+
+"I understand _you_!"
+
+"No, you don't. Lissa and I----"
+
+"Lissa!"
+
+"Ya--as! We're talking very cleverly; _I_ am, too. Wha'd'you wan' to
+butt in for?" with sudden venom.
+
+"Butt in! Do you think I want to sit here and look at tha' damfool play!
+Fix it or I'll run about biting!"
+
+Harrow turned. "Lissa," he whispered in an exquisitely modulated voice,
+"what would happen if I spoke to your sister Cybele?"
+
+"Why, she'd answer you, silly!" said the girl, laughing. "Wouldn't you,
+Cybele?"
+
+"I'll tell you what I'd like to do," said Cybele, leaning forward: "I'd
+like very much to talk to that attractive man who is trying to look at
+me--only your head has been in the way." And she smiled innocently at
+Lethbridge.
+
+So Lissa moved down one. Harrow took her seat, and Cybele dropped gaily
+into Harrow's vacant place.
+
+"_Now_," she said to Lethbridge, "we can tell each other all sorts of
+things. I was so glad that you looked at me all the while and so vexed
+that I couldn't talk to you. _How_ do you like my new gown? And what is
+your name? Have you ever before seen a play? I haven't, and my name is
+Cybele."
+
+"It is per--perfectly heavenly to hear you talk," stammered Lethbridge.
+
+Harrow heard him, turned and looked him full in the eyes, then slowly
+resumed his attitude of attention: for the poet was speaking:
+
+"The Art of Barnard Haw is the quintessence of simplicity. What is the
+quintessence of simplicity?" He lifted one heavy pudgy hand, joined the
+tips of his soft thumb and forefinger, and selecting an atom of air,
+deftly captured it. "_That_ is the quintessence of simplicity; _that_ is
+Art!"
+
+He smiled largely on Harrow, whose eyes had become wild again.
+
+"_That!_" he repeated, pinching out another molecule of atmosphere, "and
+_that_!" punching dent after dent in the viewless void with inverted
+thumb.
+
+On the hapless youth the overpowering sweetness of his smile acted like
+an anesthetic; he saw things waver, even wabble; and his hidden clutch
+on Lissa's fingers tightened spasmodically.
+
+"Thank you," said the poet, leaning forward to fix the young man with
+his heavy-lidded eyes. "Thank you for the precious thoughts you inspire
+in me. Bless you. Our mental and esthetic commune has been very precious
+to me--very, very precious," he mooned bulkily, his rich voice dying to
+a resonant, soothing drone.
+
+Lissa turned to the petrified young man. "Please be clever some more,"
+she whispered. "You were so perfectly delightful about this play."
+
+"Child!" he groaned, "I have scarcely sufficient intellect to keep me
+overnight. You must know that I haven't understood one single thing your
+father has been kind enough to say."
+
+"What didn't you understand?" she asked, surprised.
+
+"'_That!_'" He flourished his thumb. "What does '_That!_' mean?"
+
+"Oh, that is only a trick father has caught from painters who tell you
+how they're going to use their brushes. But the truth is I've usually
+noticed that they do most of their work in the air with their thumbs....
+What else did you not understand?"
+
+"Oh--Art!" he said wearily. "What is it? Or, as Barnard Haw, the higher
+exponent of the Webberfield philosophy, might say: 'What it iss? Yess?'"
+
+"I don't know what the Webberfield philosophy is," said Lissa
+innocently, "but Art is only things one believes. And it's awfully hard,
+too, because nobody sees the same thing in the same way, or believes the
+same things that others believe. So there are all kinds of Art. I think
+the only way to be sure is when the artist makes himself and his
+audience happier; then that is Art.... But one need not use one's thumb,
+you know."
+
+"The--the way you make me happy? Is _that_ Art?"
+
+"Do I?" she laughed. "Perhaps; for I am happy, too--far, far happier
+than when I read the works of Henry Haynes. And Henry Haynes _is_ Art.
+Oh, dear!"
+
+But Harrow knew nothing of the intellectual obstetrics which produced
+that great master's monotypes.
+
+"Have you read Double or Quits?" he ventured shyly. "It's a humming Wall
+Street story showing up the entire bunch and exposing the trading-stamp
+swindle of the great department stores. The heroine is a detective
+and--" She was looking at him so intently that he feared he had said
+something he shouldn't. "But I don't suppose that would interest you,"
+he muttered, ashamed.
+
+"It does! It is _new_! I--I never read that sort of a novel. Tell me!"
+
+"Are you serious?"
+
+"Of course. It is perfectly wonderful to think of a heroine being a
+detective."
+
+"Oh, she's a dream!" he said with cautious enthusiasm. "She falls in
+love with the worst stock-washer in Wall Street, and pushes him off a
+ferry-boat when she finds he has cornered the trading-stamp market and
+is bankrupting her father, who is president of the department store
+trust----"
+
+"Go on!" she whispered breathlessly.
+
+"I will, but----"
+
+"What is it? Oh--is it my hand you are looking for? Here it is; I only
+wanted to smooth my hair a moment. Now tell me; for I never, never knew
+that such books were written. The books my father permits us to read are
+not concerned with all those vital episodes of every-day life. Nobody
+ever _does_ anything in the few novels I am allowed to read--except,
+once, in _Cranford_, somebody gets up out of a chair in one chapter--but
+sits down again in the next," she added wearily.
+
+"_I'll_ send you something to make anybody sit up and stay up," he said
+indignantly. "Baffles, the Gent Burglar; Love Militant, by Nora Norris
+Newman; The Crown-Snatcher, by Reginald Rodman Roony--oh, it's simply
+ghastly to think of what you've missed! This is the Victorian era; you
+have a right to be fully cognizant of the great literary movements of
+the twentieth century!"
+
+"I love to hear you say such things," she said, her beautiful face
+afire. "I desire to be modern--intensely, humanly modern. All my life I
+have been nourished on the classics of ages dead; the literature of the
+Orient, of Asia, of Europe I am familiar with; the literature of
+England--as far as Andrew Bang's boyhood verses. I--all my
+sisters--read, write, speak, even think, in ten languages. I long for
+something to read which is vital, familiar, friendly--something of my
+own time, my own day. I wish to know what young people do and dare; what
+they really think, what they believe, strive for, desire!"
+
+"Well--well, I don't think people really do and say and think the things
+that you read in interesting modern novels," he said doubtfully. "Fact
+is, only the tiresome novels seem to tell a portion of the truth; but
+they end by overdoing it and leave you yawning with a nasty taste in
+your mouth. I--I think you'd better let your father pick out your
+novels."
+
+"I don't want to," she said rebelliously. "I want _you_ to."
+
+He looked at the beautiful, rebellious face and took a closer hold on
+the hidden hand.
+
+"I wish you--I wish I could choose--everything for you," he said
+unsteadily.
+
+"I wish so, too. You are exactly the sort of man I like."
+
+"Do--do you mean it?"
+
+"Why, yes," she replied, opening her splendid eyes. "Don't I show the
+pleasure I take in being with you?"
+
+"But--would you tire of me if--if we always--forever----"
+
+"Were friends? No."
+
+"Mo-m-m-more than friends?" Then he choked.
+
+The speculation in her wide eyes deepened. "What do you mean?" she asked
+curiously.
+
+But again the lone note of the thumped piano signaled silence. In the
+sudden hush the poet opened his lids with a sticky smile and folded his
+hands over his abdomen, plump thumbs joined.
+
+"_What_ do you mean?" repeated Lissa hurriedly, tightening her slender
+fingers around Harrow's.
+
+"I mean--I mean----"
+
+He turned in silence and their eyes met. A moment later her fingers
+relaxed limply in his; their hands were still in contact--but scarcely
+so; and so remained while the _Attitudes_ of Barnard Haw held the stage.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+There was a young wife behind the footlights explaining to a young man
+who was not her husband that her marriage vows need not be too seriously
+considered if he, the young man, found them too inconvenient. Which
+scared the young man, who was plainly a purveyor of heated air and a
+short sport. And, although she explained very clearly that if he needed
+her in his business he had better say so quick, the author's invention
+gave out just there and he called in the young wife's husband to help
+him out.
+
+And all the while the battery of round blue eyes gazed on unwinking; the
+poet's dewlaps quivered with stored emotion, and the spellbound audience
+breathed as people breathe when the hostess at table attempts to smooth
+over a bad break by her husband.
+
+"Is _that_ life?" whispered Cybele to Lethbridge, her sensitive mouth
+aquiver. "Did the author actually know such people? Do _you_? Is
+conscience really only an attitude? Is instinct the only guide? Am
+_I_--really--bad----"
+
+"No, no," whispered Lethbridge; "all that is only a dramatist's
+attitude. Don't--don't look grieved! Why, every now and then some man
+discovers he can attract more attention by standing on his head. That is
+all--really, that is all. Barnard Haw on his feet is not amusing; but
+the same gentleman on his head is worth an orchestra-chair. When a man
+wears his trousers where other men wear their coats, people are bound to
+turn around. It is not a new trick. Mystes, the Argive comic poet, and
+the White Queen, taught this author the value of substituting 'is' for
+'is not,' until, from standing so long inverted, he himself forgets what
+he means, and at this point the eminent brothers Rogers take up the
+important work.... Please, please, Cybele, _don't_ take it seriously!...
+If you look that way--if you are unhappy, I--I----"
+
+A gentle snore from the poet transfixed the firing-line, but the snore
+woke up the poet and he mechanically pinched an atom out of the
+atmosphere, blinking at the stage.
+
+"Precious--very, very precious," he murmured drowsily. "Thank you--thank
+everybody--" And he sank into an obese and noiseless slumber as the gray
+and silver curtain slowly fell. The applause, far from rousing him,
+merely soothed him; a honeyed smile hovered on his lips which formed the
+words "Thank you." That was all; the firing-line stirred, breathed
+deeply, and folded twelve soft white hands. Chlorippe, twelve, and
+Philodice, thirteen, yawned, pink-mouthed, sleepy-eyed; Dione, fourteen,
+laid her golden head on the shoulder of Aphrodite, fifteen.
+
+The finger-tips of Lissa and Harrow still touched, scarcely clinging;
+they had turned toward one another when the curtain fell. But the play,
+to them, had been a pantomime of silhouettes, the stage, a void edged
+with flame--the scene, the audience, the theater, the poet himself as
+unreal and meaningless as the shadowy attitudes of the shapes that
+vanished when the phantom curtain closed its folds.
+
+And through the subdued light, turning noiselessly, they peered at one
+another, conscious that naught else was real in the misty, golden-tinted
+gloom; that they were alone together there in a formless, soundless
+chaos peopled by shapes impalpable as dreams.
+
+"_Now_ tell me," she said, her lips scarcely moving as the soft voice
+stirred them like carmine petals stirring in a scented breeze.
+
+"Tell you that it is--love?"
+
+"Yes, tell me."
+
+"That I love you, Lissa?"
+
+"Yes; that!"
+
+He stooped nearer; his voice was steady and very low, and she leaned
+with bent head to listen, clear-eyed, intelligent, absorbed.
+
+"So _that_ is love--what you tell me?"
+
+"Yes--partly."
+
+"And the other part?"
+
+"The other part is when you find you love me."
+
+"I--do. I think it must be love, because I can't bear to have you go
+away. Besides, I wish you to tell me--things."
+
+"Ask me."
+
+"Well--when two--like you and me, begin to love--what happens?"
+
+"We confess it----"
+
+"I do; I'm not ashamed.... Should I be? And then?"
+
+"Then?" he faltered.
+
+"Yes; do we kiss?... For I am curious to have you do it--I am so certain
+I shall adore you when you do.... I wish we could go away somewhere
+together.... But we can't do that until I am a bride, can we? Oh--do you
+really want me?"
+
+"Can you ask?" he breathed.
+
+"Ask? Yes--yes.... I love to ask! Your hand thrills me. We can't go away
+now, can we? It took Iole so long to be permitted to go away with Mr.
+Wayne--all that time lost in so many foolish ways--when a girl is so
+impatient.... Is it not strange how my heart beats when I look into your
+eyes? Oh, there can be no doubt about it, I am dreadfully in love....
+And so quickly, too. I suppose it's because I am in such splendid
+health; don't you?"
+
+"I--I--well----"
+
+"Oh, I _do_ want to get up at once and go away with you! _Can't_ we?
+I could explain to father."
+
+"Wait!" he gasped, "he--he's asleep. Don't speak--don't touch him."
+
+"How unselfish you are," she breathed. "No, you are not hurting my
+fingers. Tell me more--about love and the blessed years awaiting us, and
+about our children--oh, is it not wonderful!"
+
+"Ex--extremely," he managed to mutter, touching his suddenly dampened
+forehead with his handkerchief, and attempting to set his thoughts in
+some sort of order. He could not; the incoherence held him speechless,
+dazed, under the magic of this superb young being instinct with the soft
+fire of life.
+
+Her loveliness, her innocence, the beautiful, direct gaze, the childlike
+fulness of mouth and contour of cheek and throat, left him spellbound.
+The very air around them seemed suffused with the vital glow of her
+youth and beauty; each breath they drew increased their wonder, till the
+whole rosy universe seemed thrilling and singing at their feet, and they
+two, love-crowned, alone, saw Time and Eternity flowing like a golden
+tide under the spell of Paradise.
+
+"Jim!"
+
+The hoarse whisper of Lethbridge shook the vision from him; he turned a
+flushed countenance to his friend; but Cybele spoke:
+
+"We are very tired sitting here. We would like to take some tea at
+Sherry's," she whispered. "What do you think we had better do? It seems
+so--so futile to sit here--when we wish to be alone together----"
+
+"You and Henry, too!" gasped Harrow.
+
+"Yes; do you wonder?" She leaned swiftly in front of him; a fragrant
+breeze stirred his hair. "Lissa, I'm desperately infatuated with Mr.
+Lethbridge. Do you see any use in our staying here when I'm simply dying
+to have him all to myself somewhere?"
+
+"No, it is silly. I wish to go, too. Shall we?"
+
+"You need not go," began Cybele; then stopped, aware of the new magic in
+her sister's eyes. "Lissa! Lissa!" she said softly. "_You_, too! Oh, my
+dear--my dearest!"
+
+"Dear, is it not heavenly? I--I--was quite sure that if I ever had a
+good chance to talk to a man I really liked something would happen. And
+it has."
+
+"If Philodice might awaken father perhaps he would let us go now,"
+whispered Cybele. "Henry says it does not take more than an hour----"
+
+"To become a bride?"
+
+"Yes; he knows a clergyman very near----"
+
+"Do you?" inquired Lissa. Lethbridge nodded and gave a scared glance at
+Harrow, who returned it as though stunned.
+
+"But--but," muttered the latter, "your father doesn't know who we
+are----"
+
+"Oh, yes, he does," said Cybele calmly, "for he sent you the tickets and
+placed us near you so that if we found that we liked you we might talk
+to you----"
+
+"Only he made a mistake in your name," added Lissa to Harrow, "for he
+wrote 'Stanley West, Esq.' on the envelope. I know because I mailed it."
+
+"Invited West--put _you_ where you could--good God!"
+
+"What is the matter?" whispered Lissa in consternation; "have--have I
+said anything I should not?" And, as he was silent: "What is it? Have I
+hurt you--I who----"
+
+There was a silence; she looked him through and through and, after a
+while, deep, deep in his soul, she saw, awaking once again, all he had
+deemed dead--the truth, the fearless reason, the sweet and faultless
+instinct of the child whose childhood had become a memory. Then, once
+more spiritually equal, they smiled at one another; and Lissa, pausing
+to gather up her ermine stole, passed noiselessly out to the aisle,
+where she stood, perfectly self-possessed, while her sister joined her,
+smiling vaguely down at the firing-line and their lifted battery of
+blue, inquiring eyes.
+
+The poet--and whether he had slumbered or not nobody but himself is
+qualified to judge--the poet pensively opened one eye and peeped at
+Harrow as that young man bent beside him with Lethbridge at his elbow.
+
+"In sending those two tickets you have taught us a new creed," whispered
+Harrow; "you have taught us innocence and simplicity--you have taught us
+to be ourselves, to scorn convention, to say and do what we believe.
+Thank you."
+
+"Dear friend," said the poet in an artistically-modulated whisper,
+"I have long, long followed you in the high course of your career. To me
+the priceless simplicity of poverty: to you the responsibility for
+millions. To me the daisy, the mountain stream, the woodchuck and my
+Art! To you the busy mart, the haunts of men, the ship of finance laden
+with a nation's wealth, the awful burden of millions for which you are
+answerable to One higher!" He raised one soft, solemn finger.
+
+The young men gazed at one another, astounded. Lethbridge's startled
+eyes said, "He still takes you for Stanley West!"
+
+"Let him!" flashed the grim answer back from the narrowing gaze of
+Harrow.
+
+"Daughters," whispered the poet playfully, "are you so soon tired of the
+brilliant gems of satire which our master dramatist scatters with a
+lavish----"
+
+"No," said Cybele; "we are only very much in love."
+
+The poet sat up briskly and looked hard at Harrow.
+
+"Your--your friend?" he began--"doubtless associated with you in the
+high----"
+
+"We are inseparable," said Harrow calmly, "in the busy marts."
+
+The sweetness of the poet's smile was almost overpowering.
+
+"To discuss this sudden--ah--condition which so--ah--abruptly confronts
+a father, I can not welcome you to my little home in the wild--which I
+call the House Beautiful," he said. "I would it were possible. There all
+is quiet and simple and exquisitely humble--though now, through the
+grace of my valued son, there is no mortgage hanging like the brand of
+Damocles above our lowly roof. But I bid you welcome in the name of my
+son-in-law, on whom--I should say, _with_ whom--I and my babes are
+sojourning in this clamorous city. Come and let us talk, soul to soul,
+heart to heart; come and partake of what simples we have. Set the day,
+the hour. I thank you for understanding me."
+
+"The hour," replied Harrow, "will be about five P.M. on Monday
+afternoon.... You see, we are going out now to--to----"
+
+"To marry each other," whispered Lissa with all her sweet fearlessness.
+"Oh, dear! there goes that monotonous piano and we'll be blocking
+people's view!"
+
+The poet tried to rise upon his great flat feet, but he was wedged too
+tightly; he strove to speak, to call after them, but the loud thumping
+notes of the piano drowned his voice.
+
+"Chlorippe! Dione! Philodice! Tell them to stop! Run after them and stay
+them!" panted the poet.
+
+"_You_ go!" pouted Dione.
+
+"No, I don't want to," explained Chlorippe, "because the curtain is
+rising."
+
+"I'll go," sighed Philodice, rising to her slender height and moving up
+the aisle as the children of queens moved once upon a time. She came
+back presently, saying: "Dear me, they're dreadfully in love, and they
+have driven away in two hansoms."
+
+"Gone!" wheezed the poet.
+
+"Quite," said Philodice, staring at the stage and calmly folding her
+smooth little hands.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+When the curtain at last descended upon the parting attitudes of the
+players the poet arose with an alacrity scarcely to be expected in a
+gentleman of his proportions. Two and two his big, healthy
+daughters--there remained but four now--followed him to the lobby. When
+he was able to pack all four into a cab he did so and sent them home
+without ceremony; then, summoning another vehicle, gave the driver the
+directions and climbed in.
+
+Half an hour later he was deposited under the bronze shelter of the
+porte-cochere belonging to an extremely expensive mansion overlooking
+the park; and presently, admitted, he prowled ponderously and softly
+about an over-gilded rococo reception-room. But all anxiety had now fled
+from his face; he coyly nipped the atmosphere at intervals as various
+portions of the furniture attracted his approval; he stood before a
+splendid canvas of Goya and pushed his thumb at it; he moused and
+prowled and peeped and snooped, and his smile grew larger and larger and
+sweeter and sweeter, until--dare I say it!--a low smooth chuckle, all
+but noiseless, rippled the heavy cheeks of the poet; and, raising his
+eyes, he beheld a stocky, fashionably-dressed and red-faced man of forty
+intently eying him. The man spoke decisively and at once:
+
+"Mr. Guilford? Quite so. I am Mr. West."
+
+"You are--" The poet's smile flickered like a sickly candle. "I--this
+is--are you Mr. _Stanley_ West?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"It must--it probably was your son----"
+
+"I am unmarried," said the president of the Occidental tartly, "and the
+only Stanley West in the directory."
+
+The poet swayed, then sat down rather suddenly on a Louis XIV chair
+which crackled. Several times he passed an ample hand over his features.
+A mechanical smile struggled to break out, but it was not _the_ smile,
+any more than glucose is sugar.
+
+"Did--ah--_did_ you receive two tickets for the New Arts
+Theater--ah--Mr. West?" he managed to say at last.
+
+"I did. Thank you very much, but I was not able to avail myself----"
+
+"Quite so. And--ah--do you happen to know who it was that--ah--presented
+your tickets and occupied the seats this afternoon?"
+
+"Why, I suppose it was two young men in our employ--Mr. Lethbridge, who
+appraises property for us, and Mr. Harrow, one of our brokers. May I ask
+why?"
+
+For a long while the poet sat there, eyes squeezed tightly closed as
+though in bodily anguish. Then he opened one of them:
+
+"They are--ah--quite penniless, I presume?"
+
+"They have prospects," said West briefly. "Why?"
+
+The poet rose; something of his old attitude returned; he feebly gazed
+at a priceless Massero vase, made a half-hearted attempt to join thumb
+and forefinger, then rambled toward the door, where two spotless
+flunkies attended with his hat and overcoat.
+
+"Mr. Guilford," said West, following, a trifle perplexed and remorseful,
+"I should be very--er--extremely happy to subscribe to the New Arts
+Theater--if that is what you wished."
+
+"Thank you," said the poet absently as a footman invested him with a
+seal-lined coat.
+
+"Is there anything more I could do for you, Mr. Guilford?"
+
+The poet's abstracted gaze rested on him, then shifted.
+
+"I--I don't feel very well," said the poet hoarsely, sitting down in a
+hall-seat. Suddenly he began to cry, fatly.
+
+Nobody did anything; the stupefied footman gaped; West looked, walked
+nervously the length of the hall, looked again, and paced the inlaid
+floor to and fro, until the bell at the door sounded and a messenger-boy
+appeared with a note scribbled on a yellow telegraph blank:
+
+  "Lethbridge and I just married and madly happy. Will be on hand
+  Monday, sure. Can't you advance us three months' salary?
+
+  "HARROW."
+
+"Idiots!" said West. Then, looking up: "What are you waiting for, boy?"
+
+"Me answer," replied the messenger calmly.
+
+"Oh, you were told to bring back an answer?"
+
+"Ya-as."
+
+"Then give me your pencil, my infant Chesterfield." And West scribbled
+on the same yellow blank:
+
+  "Checks for you on your desks Monday. Congratulations. I'll see you
+  through, you damfools.
+
+  "WEST."
+
+"Here's a quarter for you," observed West, eying the messenger.
+
+"T'anks. Gimme the note."
+
+West glanced at the moist, fat poet; then suddenly that intuition which
+is bred in men of his stamp set him thinking. And presently he
+tentatively added two and two.
+
+"Mr. Guilford," he said, "I wonder whether this note--and my answer to
+it--concerns you."
+
+The poet used his handkerchief, adjusted a pair of glasses, and blinked
+at the penciled scrawl. Twice he read it; then, like the full sun
+breaking through a drizzle--like the glory of a search-light dissolving
+a sticky fog, _the_ smile of smiles illuminated everything: footmen,
+messenger, financier.
+
+"Thank you," he said thickly; "thank you for your thought. Thought is
+but a trifle to bestow--a little thing in itself. But it is the little
+things that are most important--the smaller the thing the more vital its
+importance, until"--he added in a genuine burst of his old
+eloquence--"the thing becomes so small that it isn't anything at all,
+and then the value of nothing becomes so enormous that it is past all
+computation. That is a very precious thought! Thank you for it; thank
+you for understanding. Bless you!"
+
+Exuding a rich sweetness from every feature the poet moved toward the
+door at a slow fleshy waddle, head wagging, small eyes half closed,
+thumbing the atmosphere, while his lips moved in wordless
+self-communion: "The attainment of nothing at all--that is rarest, the
+most precious, the most priceless of triumphs--very, very precious.
+So"--and his glance was sideways and nimbly intelligent--"so if nothing
+at all is of such inestimable value, those two young pups can live on
+their expectations--_quod erat demonstrandum_."
+
+He shuddered and looked up at the facade of the gorgeous house which he
+had just quitted.
+
+"So many sunny windows to sit in--to dream in. I--I should have found it
+agreeable. Pups!"
+
+Crawling into his cab he sank into a pulpy mound, partially closing his
+eyes. And upon his pursed-up lips, unuttered yet imminent, a word
+trembled and wabbled as the cab bounced down the avenue. It may have
+been "precious"; it was probably "pups!"
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+But there were further poignant emotions in store for the poet, for, as
+his cab swung out of the avenue and drew up before the great house on
+the southwest corner of Seventy-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, he
+caught a glimpse of his eldest daughter, Iole, vanishing into the house,
+and, at the same moment, he perceived his son-in-law, Mr. Wayne, paying
+the driver of a hansom-cab, while several liveried servants bore
+houseward the luggage of the wedding journey.
+
+"George!" he cried dramatically, thrusting his head from the window of
+his own cab as that vehicle drew up with a jolt that made his stomach
+vibrate, "George! I am here!"
+
+Wayne looked around, paid the hansom-driver, and, advancing slowly,
+offered his hand as the poet descended to the sidewalk. "How are you?"
+he inquired without enthusiasm as the poet evinced a desire to paw him.
+"All is well here, I hope."
+
+"George! Son!" The poet gulped till his dewlap contracted. He laid a
+large plump hand on Wayne's shoulders. "Where are my lambs?" he
+quavered; "where are they?"
+
+"Which lambs?" inquired the young man uneasily. "If you mean Iole and
+Vanessa----"
+
+"No! My ravished lambs! Give me my stolen lambs. Trifle no longer with a
+father's affections! Lissa!--Cybele! Great Heavens! Where are they?" he
+sobbed hoarsely.
+
+"Well, _where_ are they?" retorted his son-in-law, horrified. "Come into
+the house; people in the street are looking."
+
+In the broad hall the poet paused, staggered, strove to paw Wayne, then
+attempted to fold his arms in an attitude of bitter scorn.
+
+"Two penniless wastrels," he muttered, "are wedded to my lambs. But
+there are laws to invoke----"
+
+An avalanche of pretty girls in pink pajamas came tumbling down the
+bronze and marble staircase, smothering poet and son-in-law in happy
+embraces; and "Oh, George!" they cried, "how sunburned you are! So is
+Iole, but she is too sweet! Did you have a perfectly lovely honeymoon?
+When is Vanessa coming? And how is Mr. Briggs? And--oh, do you know the
+news? Cybele and Lissa married two such extremely attractive young men
+this afternoon----"
+
+"Married!" cried Wayne, releasing Dione's arms from his neck. "_Whom_
+did they marry?"
+
+"Pups!" sniveled the poet--"penniless, wastrel pups!"
+
+"Their names," said Aphrodite coolly, from the top of the staircase,
+"are James Harrow and Henry Lethbridge. I wish there had been three----"
+
+"Harrow! Lethbridge!" gasped Wayne. "When"--he turned helplessly to the
+poet--"when did they do this?"
+
+Through the gay babble of voices and amid cries and interruptions, Wayne
+managed to comprehend the story. He tried to speak, but everybody except
+the poet laughed and chatted, and the poet, suffused now with a sort of
+sad sweetness, waved his hand in slow unctuous waves until even the
+footmen's eyes protruded.
+
+"It's all right," said Wayne, raising his voice; "it's topsyturvy and
+irregular, but it's all right. I've known Harrow and Leth--For Heaven's
+sake, Dione, don't kiss me like that; I want to talk!--You're hugging me
+too hard, Philodice. Oh, Lord! _will_ you stop chattering all together!
+I--I--Do you want the house to be pinched?"
+
+He glanced up at Aphrodite, who sat astride the banisters lighting a
+cigarette. "Who taught you to do that?" he cried.
+
+"I'm sixteen, now," she said coolly, "and I thought I'd try it."
+
+Her voice was drowned in the cries and laughter; Wayne, with his hands
+to his ears, stared up at the piquant figure in its pink pajamas and
+sandals, then his distracted gaze swept the groups of parlor maids and
+footmen around the doors: "Great guns!" he thundered, "this is the limit
+and they'll pull the house! Morton!"--to a footman--"ring up 7--00--9B
+Murray Hill. My compliments and congratulations to Mr. Lethbridge and to
+Mr. Harrow, and say that we usually dine at eight! Philodice! stop that
+howling! Oh, just you wait until Iole has a talk with you all for
+running about the house half-dressed----"
+
+"I _won't_ wear straight fronts indoors, and my garters hurt!" cried
+Aphrodite defiantly, preparing to slide down the banisters.
+
+"Help!" said Wayne faintly, looking from Dione to Chlorippe, from
+Chlorippe to Philodice, from Philodice to Aphrodite. "I won't have my
+house turned into a confounded Art Nouveau music hall. I tell you----"
+
+"Let _me_ tell them," said Iole, laughing and kissing her hand to the
+poet as she descended the stairs in her pretty bride's traveling gown.
+
+She checked Aphrodite, looked wisely around at her lovely sisters, then
+turned to remount the stairs, summoning them with a gay little
+confidential gesture.
+
+And when the breathless crew had trooped after her, and the pad of
+little, eager, sandaled feet had died away on the thick rugs of the
+landing above, the poet, clasping his fat white hands, thumbs joined,
+across his rotund abdomen, stole a glance at his dazed son-in-law, which
+was partly apprehensive and partly significant, almost cunning. "An
+innocent saturnalia," he murmured. "The charming abandon of children."
+He unclasped one hand and waved it. "Did you note the unstudied beauty
+of the composition as my babes glided in and out following the natural
+and archaic yet exquisitely balanced symmetry of the laws which govern
+mass and line composition, all unconsciously, yet perhaps"--he reversed
+his thumb and left his sign manual upon the atmosphere--"perhaps," he
+mused, overflowing with sweetness--"perhaps the laws of Art Nouveau are
+divine!--perhaps angels and cherubim, unseen, watch fondly o'er my
+babes, lest all unaware they guiltlessly violate some subtle canon of
+Art, marring the perfect symmetry of eternal preciousness."
+
+Wayne's mouth was partly open, his eyes hopeless yet fixed upon the poet
+with a fearful fascination.
+
+"Art," breathed the poet, "is a solemn, a fearful responsibility. _You_
+are responsible, George, and some day you must answer for every
+violation of Art, to the eternal outraged fitness of things. _You_ must
+answer, _I_ must answer, every soul must answer!"
+
+"A-ans--answer! What, for God's sake?" stammered Wayne.
+
+The poet, deliberately joining thumb and forefinger, pinched out a
+portion of the atmosphere.
+
+"That! _That_ George! For that is Art! And Art is justice! And justice,
+affronted, demands an answer."
+
+He refolded his arms, mused for a space, then stealing a veiled glance
+sideways:
+
+"You--you are--ah--convinced that my two lost lambs need dread no bodily
+vicissitudes----"
+
+"Cybele and Lissa?"
+
+"Ah--yes----"
+
+"Lethbridge will have money to burn if he likes the aroma of the smoke.
+Harrow has burnt several stacks already; but his father will continue to
+fire the furnace. Is _that_ what you mean?"
+
+"No!" said the poet softly, "no, George, that is not what I mean. Wealth
+is a great thing. Only the little things are precious to me. And the
+most precious of all is absolutely nothing!" But, as he wandered away
+into the great luxurious habitation of his son-in-law, his smile grew
+sweeter and sweeter and his half-closed eyes swam, melting into a
+saccharine reverie.
+
+"The little things," he murmured, thumbing the air absently--"the little
+things are precious, but not as precious as absolutely nothing. For
+nothing is perfection. Thank you," he said sweetly to a petrified
+footman, "thank you for understanding. It is precious--very, very
+precious to know that I am understood."
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+By early springtide the poet had taken an old-fashioned house on the
+south side of Washington Square; his sons-in-law standing for it--as
+the poet was actually beginning to droop amid the civilized luxury of
+Madison Avenue. He missed what he called his own "den." So he got it,
+rent free, and furnished it sparingly with furniture of a slabby variety
+until the effect produced might, profanely speaking, be described as
+dinky.
+
+His friends, too, who haunted the house, bore curious conformity to the
+furnishing, being individually in various degrees either squatty, slabby
+or dinky; and twice a week they gathered for "Conferences" upon what he
+and they described as "L'Arr Noovo."
+
+L'Arr Noovo, a pleasing variation of the slab style in Art, had
+profoundly impressed the poet. Glass window-panes, designed with tulip
+patterns, were cunningly inserted into all sorts of furniture where
+window-glass didn't belong, and the effect appeared to be profitable;
+for up-stairs in his "shop," workmen were very busy creating
+extraordinary designs and setting tulip-patterned glass into everything
+with, as the poet explained, "a loving care" and considerable glue.
+
+His four unmarried daughters came to see him, wandering unconcernedly
+between the four handsome residences of their four brothers-in-law and
+the "den" of the author of their being--Chlorippe, aged thirteen;
+Philodice, fourteen; Dione, fifteen, and Aphrodite, sixteen--lovely,
+fresh-skinned, free-limbed young girls with the delicate bloom of sun
+and wind still creaming their cheeks--lingering effects of a life lived
+ever in the open, until the poet's sons-in-law were able to support him
+in town in the style to which he had been unaccustomed.
+
+To the Conferences of the poet came the mentally, morally, and
+physically dinky--and a few badgered but normal husbands, hustled
+thither by wives whose intellectual development was tending toward the
+precious.
+
+People read poems, discussed Yeats, Shaw, Fiona, Mendes, and L'Arr
+Noovo; sang, wandered about pinching or thumbing the atmosphere under
+stimulus of a cunningly and unexpectedly set window-pane in the back of
+a "mission" rocking-chair. And when the proper moment arrived the poet
+would rise, exhaling sweetness from every pore of his bulky entity, to
+interpret what he called a "Thought." Sometimes it was a demonstration
+of the priceless value of "nothings"; sometimes it was a naive
+suggestion that no house could afford to be without an "Art"-rocker with
+Arr Noovo insertions. Such indispensable luxuries were on sale
+up-stairs. Again, he performed a "necklace of precious sounds"--in other
+words, some verses upon various topics, nature, woodchucks, and the
+dinkified in Art.
+
+And it was upon one of these occasions that Aphrodite ran away.
+
+Aphrodite, the sweet, the reasonable, the self-possessed--Aphrodite ran
+away, having without any apparent reason been stricken with an
+overpowering aversion for civilization and Arr Noovo.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+At the poet's third Franco-American Conference that afternoon the room
+was still vibrating with the echoes of Aphrodite's harp accompaniment to
+her own singing, and gushing approbation had scarcely ceased, when the
+poet softly rose and stood with eyes half-closed as though concentrating
+all the sweetness within him upon the surface of his pursed lips.
+
+A wan young man whose face figured only as a by-product of his hair
+whispered "Hush!" and several people, who seemed to be more or less out
+of drawing, assumed attitudes which emphasized the faulty draftsmanship.
+
+"La Poesie!" breathed the poet; "Kesker say la poesie?"
+
+"La poesie--say la vee!" murmured a young woman with profuse teeth.
+
+"Wee, wee, say la vee!" cried several people triumphantly.
+
+"Nong!" sighed the poet, spraying the hushed air with sweetness, "nong!
+Say pas le vee; say l'Immortalitay!"
+
+After which the poet resumed his seat, and the by-product read, in
+French verse, "An Appreciation" of the works of Wilhelmina Ganderbury
+McNutt.
+
+And that was the limit of the Franco portion of the Conference; the
+remainder being plain American.
+
+Aphrodite, resting on her tall gilded harp, looked sullenly straight
+before her. Somebody lighted a Chinese joss-stick, perhaps to kill the
+aroma of defunct cigarettes.
+
+"Verse," said the poet, opening his heavy lids and gazing around him
+with the lambent-eyed wonder of a newly-wakened ram, "verse is a
+necklace of tinted sounds strung idly, yet lovingly, upon stray tinseled
+threads of thought.... Thank you for understanding; thank you."
+
+The by-product in the corner of the studio gathered arms and legs into a
+series of acute angles, and writhed; a lady ornamented with cheek-bones
+well sketched in, covered her eyes with one hand as though locked in
+jiu-jitsu with Richard Strauss.
+
+Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting on the harp-strings,
+suddenly contracted in a nervous tremor; a low twang echoed the
+involuntary reflex with a discord.
+
+A young man, whose neck was swathed in a stock a la d'Orsay, bent close
+to her shoulder.
+
+"I feel that our souls, blindfolded, are groping toward one another,"
+he whispered.
+
+"Don't--don't talk like that!" she breathed almost fiercely; "I am
+tired--suffocated with sound, drugged with joss-sticks and sandal.
+I can't stand much more, I warn you."
+
+"Are you not well, beloved."
+
+"Perfectly well--physically. I don't know what it is--it has come so
+suddenly--this overwhelming revulsion--this exasperation with scents and
+sounds.... I could rip out these harp-strings and--and kick that chair
+over! I--I think I need something--sunlight and the wind blowing my hair
+loose----"
+
+  [Illustration:
+  Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting on the harp-strings,
+  suddenly contracted in a nervous tremor.]
+
+The young man with the stock nodded. "It is the exquisite pagan athirst
+in you, scorched by the fire of spring. Quench that sweet thirst at the
+fount beautiful----"
+
+"What fount did you say?" she asked dangerously.
+
+"The precious fount of verse, dear maid."
+
+"No!" she whispered violently. "I'm half drowned already. Words, smells,
+sounds, attitudes, rocking-chairs--and candles profaning the sunshine--I
+am suffocated, I need more air, more sense and less incense--less sound,
+less art----"
+
+"Less--_what_?" he gasped.
+
+"Less art!--what you call 'l'arr'!--yes, I've said it; I'm sick! sick of
+art! I know what I require now." And as he remained agape in shocked
+silence: "I don't mean to be rude, Mr. Frawley, but I also require less
+of you.... So much less that father will scarcely expect me to play any
+more accompaniments to your 'necklaces of precious tones'--so much less
+that the minimum of my interest in you vanishes to absolute negation....
+So I shall not marry you."
+
+"Aphrodite--are--are you mad?"
+
+Her sulky red mouth was mute.
+
+Meanwhile the poet's rich, resonant voice filled the studio with an
+agreeable and rambling monotone:
+
+"Verse is a vehicle for expression; expression is a vehicle for verse;
+sound, in itself, is so subtly saturated with meaning that it requires
+nothing of added logic for its vindication. Sound, therefore, is sense,
+modified by the mysterious portent of tone. Thank you for understanding,
+thank you for a thought--very, very precious, a thought beautiful."
+
+He smeared the air with inverted thumb and smiled at Mr. Frawley, who
+rose, somewhat agitated, and, crooking one lank arm behind his back,
+made a mechanical pinch at an atmospheric atom.
+
+"If--if you do that again--if you dare to recite those verses about me,
+I shall go! I tell you I can't stand any more," breathed Aphrodite
+between her clenched teeth.
+
+The young man cast his large and rather sickly eyes upon her. For a
+moment he was in doubt, but belief in the witchery of sound prevailed,
+for he had yet to meet a being insensible to the "music of the soul,"
+and so with a fond and fatuous murmur he pinched the martyred atmosphere
+once more, and began, mousily:
+
+          ALL
+
+          A tear a year
+      My pale desire requires,
+         And that is all.
+  Enlacements weary, passion tires,
+  Kisses are cinder-ghosts of fires
+  Smothered at birth with mortal earth;
+         And that is all.
+
+          A year of fear
+      My pallid soul desires
+         And that is all--
+  Terror of bliss and dread of happiness,
+  A subtle need of sorrow and distress
+  And you to weep one tear, no more, no less,
+      And that is all I ask--
+         And that is all.
+
+People were breathing thickly; the poet unaffectedly distilled the
+suggested tear; it was a fat tear; it ran smoothly down his nose,
+twinkled, trembled, and fell.
+
+Aphrodite's features had become tense; she half rose, hesitated. Then,
+as the young man in the stock turned his invalid's eyes in her direction
+and began:
+
+  Oh, sixteen tears
+  In sixteen years----
+
+she transfixed her hat with one nervous gesture sprang to her feet,
+turned, and vanished through the door.
+
+"She is too young to endure it," sobbed the by-product to her of the
+sketchy face. And that was no idle epigram, either.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+She had no definite idea; all she craved for was the open--or its
+metropolitan substitute--sunshine, air, the glimpse of sanely
+preoccupied faces, the dull, quickening tumult of traffic. The tumult
+grew, increasing in her ears as she crossed Washington Square under the
+sycamores and looked up through tender feathery foliage at the white
+arch of marble through which the noble avenue flows away between its
+splendid arid chasms of marble, bronze, and masonry to that blessed
+leafy oasis in the north--the Park.
+
+She took an omnibus, impatient for the green rambles of the only
+breathing-place she knew of, and settled back in her seat, rebellious of
+eye, sullen of mouth, scarcely noticing the amused expression of the
+young man opposite.
+
+Two passengers left at Twenty-third Street, three at Thirty-fourth
+Street, and seven at Forty-second Street.
+
+Preoccupied, she glanced up at the only passenger remaining, caught the
+fleeting shadow of interest on his face, regarded him with natural
+indifference, and looked out of the window, forgetting him. A few
+moments later, accidentally aware of him again, she carelessly noted his
+superficially attractive qualities, and, approving, resumed her idle
+inspection of the passing throng. But the next time her pretty head
+swung round she found him looking rather fixedly at her, and
+involuntarily she returned the gaze with a childlike directness--a gaze
+which he sustained to the limit of good breeding, then evaded so amiably
+that it left an impression rather agreeable than otherwise.
+
+"I don't see," thought Aphrodite, "why I never meet that sort of man.
+He hasn't art nouveau legs, and his features are not by-products of his
+hair.... I have told my brothers-in-law that I am old enough to go out
+without coming out.... And I am."
+
+The lovely mouth grew sullen again: "I don't wish to wait two years and
+be what dreadful newspapers call a 'bud'! I wish to go to dinners and
+dances _now_!... Where I'll meet that sort of man.... The sort one feels
+almost at liberty to talk to without anybody presenting anybody.... I've
+a mind to look amiable the next time he----"
+
+He raised his eyes at that instant; but she did not smile.
+
+"I--I suppose that is the effect of civilization on me," she
+reflected--"metropolitan civilization. I felt like saying, 'For
+goodness' sake, let's say something'--even in spite of all my sisters
+have told me. I can't see why it would be dangerous for me to _look_
+amiable. If he glances at me again--so agreeably----"
+
+He did; but she didn't smile.
+
+"You see!" she said, accusing herself discontentedly; "you don't dare
+look human. Why? Because you've had it so drummed into you that you can
+never, never again do anything natural. Why? Oh, because they all begin
+to talk about mysterious dangers when you say you wish to be natural....
+I've made up my mind to look interested the next time he turns.... Why
+shouldn't he see that I'm quite willing to talk to him?... And I'm so
+tired of looking out of the window.... Before I came to this curious
+city I was never afraid to speak to anybody who attracted me.... And I'm
+not now.... So if he does look at me----"
+
+He did.
+
+The faintest glimmer of a smile troubled her lips. She thought: "I _do_
+wish he'd speak!"
+
+There was a very becoming color in his face, partly because he was
+experienced enough not to mistake her; partly from a sudden and complete
+realization of her beauty.
+
+"It's so odd," thought Aphrodite, "that attractive people consider it
+dangerous to speak to one another. I don't see any danger.... I wonder
+what he has in that square box beside him? It can't be a camera.... It
+_can't_ be a folding easel! It simply _can't_ be that _he_ is an artist!
+a man like that----"
+
+"_Are_ you?" she asked quite involuntarily.
+
+"What?" he replied, astonished, wheeling around.
+
+"An--an artist. I can't believe it, and I don't wish to! You don't look
+it, you know!"
+
+For a moment he could scarcely realize that she had spoken; his keen
+gaze dissected the face before him, the unembarrassed eyes, the oval
+contour, the smooth, flawless loveliness of a child.
+
+"Yes, I am an artist," he said, considering her curiously.
+
+"I am sorry," she said, "no, not sorry--only unpleasantly surprised. You
+see I am so tired of art--and I thought you looked so--so wholesome----"
+
+He began to laugh--a modulated laugh--rather infectious, too, for
+Aphrodite bit her lip, then smiled, not exactly understanding it all.
+
+"Why do you laugh?" she asked, still smiling. "Have I said something I
+should not have said?"
+
+But he replied with a question: "Have you found art unwholesome?"
+
+"I--I don't know," she answered with a little sigh; "I am so tired of it
+all. Don't let us talk about it--will you?"
+
+"It isn't often I talk about it," he said, laughing again.
+
+"Oh! That is unusual. Why don't you talk about art?"
+
+"I'm much too busy."
+
+"D--doing what? If that is not _very_ impertinent."
+
+"Oh, making pictures of things," he said, intensely amused.
+
+"Pictures? You don't talk about art, and you paint pictures!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"W--what kind? Do you mind my asking? You are so--so very unusual."
+
+"Well, to earn my living, I make full-page pictures for magazines; to
+satisfy an absurd desire, I paint people--things--anything that might
+satisfy my color senses." He shrugged his shoulders gaily. "You see, I'm
+the sort you are so tired of----"
+
+"But you _paint_! The artists I know don't paint--except _that_ way--"
+She raised her pretty gloved thumb and made a gesture in the air; and,
+before she had achieved it, they were both convulsed with laughter.
+
+"You never do that, do you?" she asked at length.
+
+"No, I never do. I can't afford to decorate the atmosphere for nothing!"
+
+"Then--then you are not interested in art nouveau?"
+
+"No; and I never could see that beautiful music resembled frozen
+architecture."
+
+They were laughing again, looking with confidence and delight upon one
+another as though they had started life's journey together in that
+ancient omnibus.
+
+"_What_ is a 'necklace of precious tones'?" she asked.
+
+"Precious stones?"
+
+"No, _tones_!"
+
+"Let me cite, as an example, those beautiful verses of Henry Haynes,"
+he replied gravely.
+
+TO BE OR NOT TO BE
+
+  I'd rather be a Could Be,
+    If I can not be an Are;
+  For a Could Be is a May Be,
+    With a chance of touching par.
+
+  I had rather be a Has Been
+    Than a Might Have Been, by far;
+  For a Might Be is a Hasn't Been
+    But a Has was _once_ an Are!
+
+  Also an Are is Is and Am;
+    A Was _was_ all of these;
+  So I'd rather be a Has Been
+    Than a Hasn't, if you please.
+
+And they fell a-laughing so shamelessly that the 'bus driver turned and
+squinted through his shutter at them, and the scandalized horses stopped
+of their own accord.
+
+"Are you going to leave?" he asked as she rose.
+
+"Yes; this is the Park," she said. "Thank you, and good-by."
+
+He held the door for her; she nodded her thanks and descended, turning
+frankly to smile again in acknowledgment of his quickly lifted hat.
+
+"He _was_ nice," she reflected a trifle guiltily, "and I had a good
+time, and I really don't see any danger in it."
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+She drew a deep, sweet breath as she entered the leafy shade and looked
+up into the bluest of cloudless skies. Odors of syringa and lilac
+freshened her, cleansing her of the last lingering taint of joss-sticks.
+The cardinal birds were very busy in the scarlet masses of Japanese
+quince; orioles fluttered among golden Forsythia; here and there an
+exotic starling preened and peered at the burnished purple grackle,
+stalking solemnly through the tender grass.
+
+For an hour she walked vigorously, enchanted with the sun and sky and
+living green, through arbors heavy with wistaria, iris hued and scented,
+through rambles under tall elms tufted with new leaves, past fountains
+splashing over, past lakes where water-fowl floated or stretched
+brilliant wings in the late afternoon sunlight. At times the summer wind
+blew her hair, and she lifted her lips to it, caressing it with every
+fiber of her; at times she walked pensively, wondering why she had been
+forbidden the Park unless accompanied.
+
+"More danger, I suppose," she thought impatiently.... "Well, what is
+this danger that seems to travel like one's shadow, dogging a girl
+through the world? It seems to me that if all the pleasant things of
+life are so full of danger I'd better find out what it is.... I might as
+well look for it so that I'll recognize it when I encounter it.... And
+learn to keep away."
+
+She scanned the flowery thickets attentively, looked behind her, then
+walked on.
+
+"If it's robbers they mean," she reflected, "I'm a good wrestler, and I
+can make any one of my four brothers-in-law look foolish.... Besides,
+the Park is full of fat policemen.... And if they mean I'm likely to get
+lost, or run over, or arrested, or poisoned with soda-water and
+bonbons--" She laughed to herself, swinging on in her free-limbed,
+wholesome beauty, scarcely noticing a man ahead, occupying a bench half
+hidden under the maple's foliage.
+
+"So I'll just look about for this danger they are all afraid of, and
+when I see it, I'll know what to do," she concluded, paying not the
+slightest heed to the man on the bench until he rose, as she passed him,
+and took off his hat.
+
+"You!" she exclaimed.
+
+She had stopped short, confronting him with the fearless and charming
+directness natural to her. "What an amusing accident," she said frankly.
+
+"The truth is," he began, "it is not exactly an accident."
+
+"Isn't it?"
+
+"N--no.... Are you offended?"
+
+"Offended? No. Should I be? Why?... Besides, I suppose when we have
+finished this conversation you are going the _other_ way."
+
+"I--no, I wasn't."
+
+"Oh! Then you are going to sit here?"
+
+"Y--yes--I suppose so.... But I don't want to."
+
+"Then why do you?"
+
+"Well, if I'm not going the _other_ way, and if I'm not going to remain
+here--" He looked at her, half laughing. She laughed, too, not exactly
+knowing why.
+
+"Don't you really mind my walking a little way with you?" he asked.
+
+"No, I don't. Why should I? Is there any reason? Am I not old enough to
+know why we should not walk together? Is it because the sun is going
+down? Is there what people call 'danger'?"
+
+He was so plainly taken aback that her fair young face became seriously
+curious.
+
+"_Is_ there any reason why you should not walk with me?" she persisted.
+
+The clear, direct gaze challenged him. He hesitated.
+
+"Yes, there is," he said.
+
+"A--a reason why you should not walk with me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+And, as he did not find words to answer, she studied him for a moment,
+glanced up and down the woodland walk, then impulsively seated herself
+and motioned him to a place beside her on the bench.
+
+"Now," she said, "I'm in a position to find out just what this danger is
+that they all warn me about. _You_ know, don't you?"
+
+"Know what?" he answered.
+
+"About the danger that I seem to run every time I manage to enjoy
+myself.... And you _do_ know; I see it by the way you look at me--and
+your expression is just like their expression when they tell me not to
+do things I find most natural."
+
+"But--I--you----"
+
+"You _must_ tell me! I shall be thoroughly vexed with you if you don't."
+
+Then he began to laugh, and she let him, leaning back to watch him with
+uncertain and speculative blue eyes. After a moment he said:
+
+"You are absolutely unlike any girl I ever heard of. I am trying to get
+used to it--to adjust things. Will you help me?"
+
+"How?" she asked innocently.
+
+"Well, by telling me"--he looked at her a moment--"your age. You look
+about nineteen."
+
+"I am sixteen and a half. I and all my sisters have developed our bodies
+so perfectly because, until we came to New York last autumn, we had
+lived all our lives out-of-doors." She looked at him with a friendly
+smile. "Would you really like to know about us?"
+
+"Intensely."
+
+"Well, there are eight of us: Chlorippe, thirteen; Philodice, fourteen;
+Dione, fifteen; Aphrodite, sixteen--I am Aphrodite; Cybele, seventeen,
+married; Lissa, eighteen, married; Iole, nineteen, married, and Vanessa,
+twenty, married." She raised one small, gloved finger to emphasize the
+narrative. "All our lives we were brought up to be perfectly natural, to
+live, act, eat, sleep, play like primitive people. Our father dressed us
+like youths--boys, you know. Why," she said earnestly, "until we came to
+New York we had no idea that girls wore such lovely, fluffy
+underwear--but I believe I am not to mention such things; at least they
+have told me not to--but my straight front is still a novelty to me, and
+so are my stockings, so you won't mind if I've said something I
+shouldn't, will you?"
+
+"No," he said; his face was expressionless.
+
+"Then _that's_ all right. So you see how it is; we don't quite know what
+we may do in this city. At first we were delighted to see so many
+attractive men, and we wanted to speak to some of them who seemed to
+want to speak to us, but my father put a stop to that--but it's absurd
+to think all those men might be robbers, isn't it?"
+
+"Very." There was not an atom of intelligence left in his face.
+
+"So _that's_ all right, then. Let me see, what was I saying? Oh, yes,
+I know! So four of my sisters were married, and we four remaining are
+being civilized.... But, oh--I wish I could be in the country for a
+little while! I'm so homesick for the meadows and brooks and my pajamas
+and my bare feet in sandals again.... And people seem to know so little
+in New York, and nobody understands us when we make little jests in
+Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, and nobody seems to have been very well
+educated and accomplished, so we feel strange at times."
+
+"D--d--do you _do_ all those things?"
+
+"What things?"
+
+"M--make jests in Arabic?"
+
+"Why, yes. Don't you?"
+
+"No. What else do you do?"
+
+"Why, not many things."
+
+"Music?"
+
+"Oh, of course."
+
+"Piano?"
+
+"Yes, piano, violin, harp, guitar, zither--all that sort of thing....
+Don't you?"
+
+"No. What else?"
+
+"Why--just various things, ride, swim, fence, box--I box pretty
+well--all those things----"
+
+"Science, too?"
+
+"Rudiments. Of course I couldn't, for example, discourse with authority
+upon the heteropterous mictidae or tell you in what genus or genera the
+prothorax and femora are digitate; or whether climatic and polymorphic
+forms of certain diurnal lepidoptera occur within certain boreal limits.
+I have only a vague and superficial knowledge of any science, you see."
+
+"I see," he said gravely.
+
+She leaned forward thoughtfully, her pretty hands loosely interlaced
+upon her knee.
+
+"Now," she said, "tell me about this danger that such a girl as I must
+guard against."
+
+"There is no danger," he said slowly.
+
+"But they told me----"
+
+"Let them tell you what it is, then."
+
+"No; you tell me?"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because--I simply can't."
+
+"Are you ashamed to?"
+
+"Perhaps--" He lifted his boxed sketching-kit by the strap, swung it,
+then set it carefully upon the ground: "Perhaps it is because I am
+ashamed to admit that there could be any danger to any woman in this
+world of men."
+
+She looked at him so seriously that he straightened up and began to
+laugh. But she did not forget anything he had said, and she began her
+questions at once:
+
+"Why should you not walk with me?"
+
+"I'll take that back," he said, still laughing; "there is every reason
+why I should walk with you."
+
+"Oh!... But you said----"
+
+"All I meant was not for you, but for the ordinary sort of girl. Now,
+the ordinary, every-day, garden girl does not concern you----"
+
+"Yes, she does! Why am I not like her?"
+
+"Don't attempt to be----"
+
+"_Am_ I different--very different?"
+
+"Superbly different!" The flush came to his face with the impulsive
+words.
+
+She considered him in silence, then: "Should I have been offended
+because you came into the Park to find me? And why did you? Do you find
+me interesting?"
+
+"So interesting," he said, "that I don't know what I shall do when you
+go away."
+
+Another pause; she was deeply absorbed with her own thoughts. He watched
+her, the color still in his face, and in his eyes a growing fascination.
+
+"I'm not out," she said, resting her chin on one gloved hand, "so we're
+not likely to meet at any of those jolly things you go to. What do you
+think we'd better do?--because they've all warned me against doing just
+what you and I have done."
+
+"Speaking without knowing each other?" he asked guiltily.
+
+"Yes.... But I did it first to you. Still, when I tell them about it,
+they won't let you come to visit me. I tried it once. I was in a car,
+and such an attractive man looked at me as though he wanted to speak,
+and so when I got out of the car he got out, and I thought he seemed
+rather timid, so I asked him where Tiffany's was. I really didn't know,
+either. So we had such a jolly walk together up Fifth Avenue, and when I
+said good-by he was so anxious to see me again, and I told him where I
+lived. But--do you know?--when I explained about it at home they acted
+so strangely, and they never would tell me whether or not he ever came."
+
+"Then you intend to tell them all about--_us_?"
+
+"Of course. I've disobeyed them."
+
+"And--and I am never to see you again?"
+
+"Oh, I'm very disobedient," she said innocently. "If I wanted to see you
+I'd do it."
+
+"But _do_ you?"
+
+"I--I am not sure. Do you want to see me?"
+
+His answer was stammered and almost incoherent. That, and the color in
+his face and the _something_ in his eyes, interested her.
+
+"Do you really find me so attractive?" she asked, looking him directly
+in the eyes. "You must answer me quickly; see how dark it is growing!
+I must go. Tell me, do you like me?"
+
+"I never cared so much for--for any woman----."
+
+She dimpled with delight and lay back regarding him under level,
+unembarrassed brows.
+
+"That is very pleasant," she said. "I've often wished that a man--of
+your kind--would say that to me. I do wish we could be together a great
+deal, because you like me so much already and I truly do find you
+agreeable.... Say it to me again--about how much you like me."
+
+"I--I--there is no woman--none I ever saw so--so interesting.... I mean
+more than that."
+
+"Say it then."
+
+"Say what I mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am afraid----"
+
+"Afraid? Of what?"
+
+"Of offending you----"
+
+"Is it an offense to me to tell me how much you like me? _How_ can it
+offend me?"
+
+"But--it is incredible! You won't believe----"
+
+"Believe what?"
+
+"That in so short a time I--I could care for you so much----"
+
+"But I shall believe you. I know how I feel toward you. And every time
+you speak to me I feel more so."
+
+"Feel more so?" he stammered.
+
+"Yes, I experience more delight in what you say. Do you think I am
+insensible to the way you look at me?"
+
+"You--you mean--" He simply could not find words.
+
+She leaned back, watching him with sweet composure; then laughed a
+little and said: "Do you suppose that you and I are going to fall in
+love with one another?"
+
+In the purpling dusk the perfume of wistaria grew sweeter and sweeter.
+
+"I've done it already--" His voice shook and failed; a thrush, invisible
+in shadowy depths, made soft, low sounds.
+
+"You _love_ me--already?" she exclaimed under her breath.
+
+"Love you! I--I--there are no words--" The thrush stirred the sprayed
+foliage and called once, then again, restless for the moon.
+
+Her eyes wandered over him thoughtfully: "So _that_ is love.... I didn't
+know.... I supposed it could be nothing pleasanter than friendship,
+although they say it is.... But how could it be? There is nothing
+pleasanter than friendship.... I am perfectly delighted that you love
+me. Shall we marry some day, do you think?"
+
+He strove to speak, but her frankness stunned him.
+
+"I meant to tell you that I am engaged," she observed. "Does that
+matter?"
+
+"Engaged!" He found his tongue quickly enough then; and she, surprised,
+interested, and in nowise dissenting, listened to his eloquent views
+upon the matter of Mr. Frawley, whom she, during the lucid intervals of
+his silence, curtly described.
+
+"Do you know," she said with great relief, "that I always felt that way
+about love, because I never knew anything about it except from the
+symptoms of Mr. Frawley? So when they told me that love and friendship
+were different, I supposed it must be so, and I had no high opinion of
+love ... until you made it so agreeable. Now I--I prefer it to anything
+else.... I could sit here with you all day, listening to you. Tell me
+some more."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+He did. She listened, sometimes intently interested, absorbed, sometimes
+leaning back dreamily, her eyes partly veiled under silken lashes, her
+mouth curved with the vaguest of smiles.
+
+He spoke as a man who awakes with a start--not very clearly at first,
+then with feverish coherence, at times with recklessness almost
+eloquent. Still only half awakened himself, still scarcely convinced,
+scarcely credulous that this miracle of an hour had been wrought in him,
+here under the sky and setting sun and new-born leaves, he spoke not
+only to her but of her to himself, formulating in words the rhythm his
+pulses were beating, interpreting this surging tide which thundered in
+his heart, clamoring out the fact--the fact--the fact that he
+loved!--that love was on him like the grip of Fate--on him so suddenly,
+so surely, so inexorably, that, stricken as he was, the clutch only
+amazed and numbed him.
+
+He spoke, striving to teach himself that the incredible was credible,
+the impossible possible--that it was done! done! done! and that he loved
+a woman in an hour because, in an hour, he had read her innocence as one
+reads through crystal, and his eyes were opened for the first time upon
+loveliness unspoiled, sweetness untainted, truth uncompromised.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "that, as you speak, you make me care for you
+so much more than I supposed a girl could care for a man?"
+
+"Can you love me?"
+
+"Oh, I do already! I don't mean mere love. It is something--_something_
+that I never knew about before. _Every_thing about you is so--so exactly
+what I care for--your voice, your head, the way you think, the way you
+look at me. I never thought of men as I am thinking about you.... I want
+you to belong to me--all alone.... I want to see how you look when you
+are angry, or worried, or tired. I want you to think of me when you are
+perplexed and unhappy and ill. Will you? You _must_! There is nobody
+else, is there? If you do truly love me?"
+
+"Nobody but you."
+
+"That is what I desire.... I want to live with you--I promise I won't
+talk about art--even _your_ art, which I might learn to care for. All I
+want is to really live and have your troubles to meet and overcome them
+because I will not permit anything to harm you.... I will love you
+enough for that.... I--do you love other women?"
+
+"Good God, no!"
+
+"And you shall not!" She leaned closer, looking him through and through.
+"I _will_ be what you love! I will be what you desire most in all the
+world. I _will_ be to you everything you wish, in every way, always,
+ever, and forever and ever.... Will you marry me?"
+
+"Will _you_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She suddenly stripped off her glove, wrenched a ring set with brilliants
+from the third finger of her left hand, and, rising, threw it, straight
+as a young boy throws, far out into deepening twilight. It was the end
+of Mr. Frawley; he, too, had not only become a by-product but a good-by
+product. Yet his modest demands had merely required a tear a year!
+Perhaps he had not asked enough. Love pardons the selfish.
+
+She was laughing, a trifle excited, as she turned to face him where he
+had risen. But, at the touch of his hand on hers, the laughter died at a
+breath, and she stood, her limp hand clasped in his, silent,
+expressionless, save for the tremor of her mouth.
+
+"I--I must go," she said, shrinking from him.
+
+He did not understand, thrilled as he was by the contact, but he let her
+soft hand fall away from his.
+
+Then with a half sob she caught her own fingers to her lips and kissed
+them where the pressure of his hand burned her white flesh--kissed them,
+looking at him.
+
+"You--you find a child--you leave a woman," she said unsteadily. "Do you
+understand how I love you--for that?"
+
+He caught her in his arms.
+
+"No--not yet--not my mouth!" she pleaded, holding him back; "I love you
+too much--already _too_ much. Wait! Oh, _will_ you wait?... And let me
+wait--_make_ me wait?... I--I begin to understand some things I did not
+know an hour ago."
+
+In the dusk he could scarcely see her as she swayed, yielding, her arms
+tightening about his neck in the first kiss she had ever given or
+forgiven in all her life.
+
+And through the swimming tumult of their senses the thrush's song rang
+like a cry. The moon had risen.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+Mounting the deadened stairway noiselessly to her sister's room, groping
+for the door in the dark of the landing, she called: "Iole!" And again:
+"Iole! Come to me! It is I!"
+
+The door swung noiselessly; a dim form stole forward, wide-eyed and
+white in the electric light.
+
+Then down at her sister's feet dropped Aphrodite, and laid a burning
+face against her silken knees. And, "Oh, Iole, Iole," she whispered,
+"Iole, Iole, Iole! There is danger, as you say--there is, and I
+understand it ... now.... But I love him so--I--I have been so happy--so
+happy! Tell me what I have done ... and how wrong it is! Oh, Iole, Iole!
+What have I done!"
+
+"Done, child! What in the name of all the gods have you done?"
+
+"Loved him--in the names of all the gods! Oh, Iole! Iole! Iole!"
+
+
+"----The thrush singing in darkness; the voice of spring calling,
+calling me to his arms! Oh, Iole, Iole!--these, and my soul and his,
+alone under the pagan moon! alone, save for the old gods whispering in
+the dusk----"
+
+
+"----And listening, I heard the feathery tattoo of wings close by--the
+wings of Eros all aquiver like a soft moth trembling ere it flies! Peril
+divine! I understood it then. And, stirring in darkness, sweet as the
+melody of unseen streams, I heard the old gods laughing.... _Then_ I
+knew."
+
+
+"Is that all, little sister?"
+
+"Almost all."
+
+"What more?"
+
+
+And when, at length, the trembling tale was told, Iole caught her in her
+white arms, looked at her steadily, then kissed her again and again.
+
+"If he is all you say--this miracle--I--I think I can make them
+understand," she whispered. "Where is he?"
+
+"D-down-stairs--at b-bay! Hark! You can hear George swearing! Oh, Iole,
+don't let him!"
+
+In the silence from the drawing-room below came the solid sobs of the
+poet:
+
+"P-pup! P-p-penniless pup!"
+
+"He _must_ not say that!" cried Aphrodite fiercely. "Can't you make
+father and George understand that he has nearly six hundred dollars in
+the bank?"
+
+"I will try," said Iole tenderly. "Come!"
+
+And with one arm around Aphrodite she descended the great stairway,
+where, on the lower landing, immensely interested, sat Chlorippe,
+Philodice and Dione, observant, fairly aquiver with intelligence.
+
+"Oh, that young man is catching it!" remarked Dione, looking up as Iole
+passed, her arm close around her sister's waist. "George has said
+'dammit' seven times and father is rocking--not in a rocking-chair--just
+rocking and expressing his inmost thoughts. And Mr. Briggs pretends to
+scowl and mutters: 'Hook him over the ropes, George. 'E ain't got no
+friends!' Take a peep, Iole. You can just see them if you lean over and
+hang on to the banisters----"
+
+But Iole brushed by her younger sisters, Aphrodite close beside her,
+and, entering the great receiving-hall, stood still, her clear eyes
+focused upon her husband's back.
+
+"George!"
+
+Mr. Wayne stiffened and wheeled; Mr. Briggs sidled hastily toward the
+doorway, crabwise; the poet choked back the word, "Phup!" and gazed at
+his tall daughter with apprehension and protruding lips.
+
+"Iole," began Wayne, "this is no place for you! Aphrodite! let that
+fellow alone, I say!"
+
+Iole turned, following with calm eyes the progress of her sister toward
+a tall young man who stood by the window, a red flush staining his
+strained face.
+
+The tense muscles in jaw and cheek relaxed as Aphrodite laid one hand on
+his arm; the poet, whose pursed lips were overloaded, expelled a
+passionate "Phupp!" and the young man's eyes narrowed again at the shot.
+
+Then silence lengthened to a waiting menace, and even the three sisters
+on the stairs succumbed to the oppressive stillness. And all the while
+Iole stood like a white Greek goddess under the glory of her hair,
+looking full into the eyes of the tall stranger.
+
+A minute passed; a glimmer dawned to a smile and trembled in the azure
+of Iole's eyes; she slowly lifted her arms, white hands outstretched,
+looking steadily at the stranger.
+
+He came, tense, erect; Iole's cool hands dropped in his. And, turning to
+the others with a light on her face that almost blinded him, she said,
+laughing: "Do you not understand? Aphrodite brings us the rarest gift in
+the world in this tall young brother! Look! Touch him! We have never
+seen his like before for all the wisdom of wise years. For he is one of
+few--and men are many, and artists legion--this honorable miracle, this
+sane and wholesome wonder! this trinity, Lover, Artist, and Man!"
+
+And, turning again, she looked him wistfully, wonderingly, in the eyes.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+           *       *       *       *
+
+Errata (noted by transcriber)
+
+The variation between single and double quotes for nested quotations
+is unchanged.
+
+  so many agreeable-looking men."  [_internal close quote missing_]
+  sounded a staccato monotone  [stacatto]
+  for understanding me."  [me.'"]
+  She leaned forward thoughtfully  [foward]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Iole, by Robert W. Chambers
+
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