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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Black Oxen, by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
+
+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: Black Oxen
+
+
+Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 20, 2008  [eBook #25542]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACK OXEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 25542-h.htm or 25542-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/4/25542/25542-h/25542-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/4/25542/25542-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Extensive research found no evidence that the U.S. copyright
+      on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+
+
+
+BLACK OXEN
+
+by
+
+GERTRUDE ATHERTON
+
+Author of
+"_Sisters-in-Law_"
+
+
+  The years like Great Black Oxen tread the world
+  And God the herdsman goads them on behind.
+          --_W. B. Yeats._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Their tete-e-tete ended, Clavering (Conway Tearle) was
+about to make his departure when Judge Trent (Tom Guise), who held
+buried in his mind the secret of the charming Madame Zattiany's
+(Corinne Griffith), entered.  (_Screen version of "The Black Oxen."_)]
+
+
+
+A. L. Burt Company
+Publishers -------- New York
+Published by arrangement with Boni and Liveright
+
+Printed in U. S. A.
+
+Copyright, 1923, by
+Gertrude Atherton
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Their tete-e-tete ended, Clavering (Conway Tearle) was about to make
+his departure when Judge Trent (Tom Guise), who held buried in his mind
+the secret of the charming Madame Zattiany's (Corinne Griffith),
+entered.  (_Screen version of "The Black Oxen."_) . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+Returning home one night Clavering (Conway Tearle) found Janet
+Oglethorpe (Clara Bow), daughter of his old friend, in a
+semi-intoxicated condition.  (_Screen version of "The Black Oxen."_)
+
+It took a lot of self possession and grit for Zattiany (Corinne
+Griffith) and Clavering (Conway Tearle) to hide their feelings when she
+alighted to go to the ship which was to return her to Europe.  (_Screen
+version of "The Black Oxen."_)
+
+At Dinwiddie's mountain lodge Clavering (Conway Tearle) pleaded with
+Madame Zattiany (Corrine Griffith) to marry him.  (_Screen version of
+"The Black Oxen."_)
+
+
+
+
+BLACK OXEN
+
+
+I
+
+"Talk.  Talk.  Talk. . . .  Good lines and no action . . . said
+all . . . not even promising first act . . . eighth failure and season
+more than half over . . . rather be a playwright and fail than a critic
+compelled to listen to has-beens and would-bes trying to put over bad
+plays. . . .  Oh, for just one more great first-night . . . if there's
+a spirit world why don't the ghosts of dead artists get together and
+inhibit bad playwrights from tormenting first-nighters? . . .  Astral
+board of Immortals sitting in Unconscious tweaking strings until
+gobbets and sclerotics become gibbering idiots every time they put pen
+to paper? . . .  Fewer first-nights but more joy . . . also joy of
+sending producers back to cigar stands. . . .  Thank God, no longer a
+critic . . . don't need to come to first-nights unless I want . . .
+can't keep away . . . habit too strong . . . poor devil of a colyumist
+must forage . . . why did I become a columnist?  More money.  Money!
+And I once a rubescent socialist . . . best parlor type . . .  Lord!  I
+wish some one would die and leave me a million!"
+
+Clavering opened his weary eyes and glanced over the darkened
+auditorium, visualizing a mass of bored resentful disks: a few hopeful,
+perhaps, the greater number too educated in the theatre not to have
+recognized the heavy note of incompetence that had boomed like a
+muffled fog-horn since the rise of the curtain.
+
+It was a typical first-night audience, assembled to welcome a favorite
+actress in a new play.  All the Sophisticates (as Clavering had named
+them, abandoning "Intellectuals" and "Intelligentsia" to the Parlor
+Socialists) were present: authors, playwrights, editors and young
+editors, columnists, dramatic critics, young publishers, the
+fashionable illustrators and cartoonists, a few actors, artists,
+sculptors, hostesses of the eminent, and a sprinkling of Greenwich
+Village to give a touch of old Bohemia to what was otherwise almost as
+brilliant and standardized as a Monday night at the opera.  Twelve
+years ago, Clavering, impelled irresistibly from a dilapidated colonial
+mansion in Louisiana to the cerebrum of the Western World, had arrived
+in New York; and run the usual gamut of the high-powered man from
+reporter to special writer, although youth rose to eminence less
+rapidly then than now.  Dramatic critic of his newspaper for three
+years (two years at the war), an envied, quoted and omniscient
+columnist since his return from France.  Journalistically he could rise
+no higher, and none of the frequent distinguished parties given by the
+Sophisticates was complete without the long lounging body and saturnine
+countenance of Mr. Lee Clavering.  As soon as he had set foot upon the
+ladder of prominence Mr. Clavering had realized the value of
+dramatizing himself, and although he was as active of body as of mind
+and of an amiable and genial disposition, as his friends sometimes
+angrily protested, his world, that world of increasing importance in
+New York, knew him as a cynical, morose, mysterious creature, who, at a
+party, transferred himself from one woman's side to another's by sheer
+effort of will spurred by boredom.  The unmarried women had given him
+up as a confirmed bachelor, but a few still followed his dark face with
+longing eyes.  (He sometimes wondered what rôle he would have adopted
+if he had been a blond.)  As a matter of fact, he was intensely
+romantic, even after ten years of newspaper work in New York and two of
+war; and when his steel-blue half-closed eyes roved over a gathering at
+the moment of entrance it was with the evergreen hope of discovering
+the consummate woman.
+
+There was no affectation in his idealistic fastidiousness.  Nor, of
+late, in his general boredom.  Not that he did not still like his work,
+or possibly pontificating every morning over his famous name to an
+admiring public, but he was tired of "the crowd," the same old faces,
+tired of the steady grind, of bad plays--he, who had such a passionate
+love of the drama--somewhat tired of himself.  He would have liked to
+tramp the world for a year.  But although he had money enough saved he
+dared not drop out of New York.  One was forgotten overnight, and
+fashions, especially since the war, changed so quickly and yet so
+subtly that he might be another year readjusting himself on his return.
+Or find himself supplanted by some man younger than himself whose
+cursed audacity and dramatized youthfulness would have accustomed the
+facile public to some new brand of pap flavored with red pepper.  The
+world was marching to the tune of youth, damn it (Mr. Clavering was
+beginning to feel elderly at thirty-four), but it was hard to shake out
+the entrenched.  He had his public hypnotized.  He could sell ten
+copies of a book where a reviewer could sell one.  His word on a play
+was final--or almost.  Personal mention of any of the Sophisticates
+added a cubit to reputation.  Three mentions made them household words.
+Neglect caused agonies and visions of extinction.  Disparagement was
+preferable.  By publicity shall ye know them.  Even public men with
+rhinocerene hides had been seen to shiver.  Cause women courted him.
+Prize fighters on the dour morn after a triumphant night had howled
+between fury and tears as Mr. Lee Clavering (once crack reporter of the
+gentle art) wrote sadly of greater warriors.  Lenin had mentioned him
+as an enemy of the new religion, who dealt not with the truth.  Until
+he grew dull--no grinning skeleton as yet--his public, after hasty or
+solemn digestion of the news, would turn over to his column with a sigh
+of relief.  But he must hang on, no doubt of that.  Fatal to give the
+public even a hint that it might learn to do without him.
+
+He sighed and closed his eyes again.  It was not unpleasant to feel
+himself a slave, a slave who had forged his own gilded chains.  But he
+sighed again for his lost simplicities, for his day-dreams under the
+magnolias when he had believed that if women of his class were not
+obliged to do their own housework they would all be young and beautiful
+and talk only of romance; when he had thought upon the intellectual
+woman and the woman who "did things" as an anomaly and a horror.  Well,
+the reality was more companionable, he would say that for them. . . .
+Then he grinned as he recalled the days of his passionate socialism,
+when he had taken pains, like every socialist he had ever met, to let
+it be understood that he had been born in the best society.  Well, so
+he had, and he was glad of it, even if the best society of his small
+southern town had little to live on but its vanished past.  He never
+alluded to his distinguished ancestry now that he was eminent and
+comfortable, and he looked back with uneasy scorn upon his former
+breaches of taste, but he never quite forgot it.  No Southerner ever
+does.
+
+The play droned on to the end of the interminable first act.  Talk.
+Talk.  Talk.  He'd go to sleep, but would be sure to get a crick in his
+neck.  Then he remembered a woman who had come down the aisle just as
+the lights were lowering and passed his seat.  He had not seen her
+face, but her graceful figure had attracted his attention, and the
+peculiar shade of her hair: the color of warm ashes.  There was no
+woman of his acquaintance with that rare shade of blonde hair.
+
+He opened his eyes.  She was sitting two seats ahead of him and the
+lights of the stage gave a faint halo to a small well-shaped head
+defined by the low coil of hair.  She had a long throat apparently, but
+although she had dropped her wrap over the back of the seat he had no
+more than a glimpse of a white neck and a suggestion of sloping
+shoulders.  Rather rare those, nowadays.  They reminded him, together
+with the haughty poise of the head, of the family portraits in the old
+gallery at home.  Being dark himself, he admired fair women, although
+since they had taken to bobbing their hair they looked as much alike as
+magazine covers.  This woman wore her hair in no particular fashion.
+It was soft and abundant, brushed back from her face, and drawn merely
+over the tips of the ears.  At least so he inferred.  He had not seen
+even her profile as she passed.  Profiles were out of date, but in an
+old-fashioned corner of his soul he admired them, and he was idly
+convinced that a woman with so perfectly shaped a head, long and
+narrow, but not too narrow, must have a profile.  Probably her full
+face would not be so attractive.  Women with _cendré_ hair generally
+had light brows and lashes, and her eyes might be a washed-out blue.
+Or prominent.  Or her mouth too small.  He would bet on the profile,
+however, and instead of rushing out when that blessed curtain went down
+he would wait and look for it.
+
+Then he closed his eyes again and forgot her until he was roused by the
+clapping of many hands.  First-nighters always applaud, no matter how
+perfunctorily.  Noblesse oblige.  But the difference between the
+applause of the bored but loyal and that of the enchanted and quickened
+is as the difference between a rising breeze and a hurricane.
+
+The actors bowed en masse, in threes, in twos, singly.  The curtain
+descended, the lights rose, the audience heaved.  Men hurried up the
+aisle and climbed over patient women.  People began to visit.  And then
+the woman two seats ahead of Clavering did a singular thing.
+
+She rose slowly to her feet, turned her back to the stage, raised her
+opera glasses and leisurely surveyed the audience.
+
+"I knew it!"  Clavering's tongue clicked.  "European.  No American
+woman ever did that--unless, to be sure, she has lived too long abroad
+to remember our customs."
+
+He gazed at her eagerly, and felt a slight sensation of annoyance that
+the entire house was following his example.  The opera glasses
+concealed her eyes, but they rested upon the bridge of an indubitably
+straight nose.  Her forehead was perhaps too high, but it was full, and
+the thick hair was brushed back from a sharp point.  Her eyebrows,
+thank Heaven, were many shades darker than her hair.  They were also
+narrow and glossy.  Decidedly they received attention.  Possibly they
+were plucked and darkened--life had made him skeptical of "points."
+However, Clavering was no lover of unamended nature, holding nature,
+except in rare moments of inspiration, a bungler of the first water.
+
+In spite of its smooth white skin and rounded contours above an
+undamaged throat, it was, subtly, not a young face.  The mouth, rather
+large, although fresh and red (possibly they had lip sticks in Europe
+that approximated nature) had none of the girl's soft flexibility.  It
+was full in the center and the red of the underlip was more than a
+visible line, but it was straight at the corners, ending in an almost
+abrupt sternness.  Once she smiled, but it was little more than an
+amused flicker; the mouth did not relax.  The shape of the face bore
+out the promise of the head, but deflected from its oval at the chin,
+which was almost square, and indented.  The figure was very slight, but
+as subtly mature as the face, possibly because she held it
+uncompromisingly erect; apparently she had made no concession to the
+democratic absence of "carriage," the indifferent almost apologetic
+mien that had succeeded the limp curves of a few years ago.
+
+She wore a dress of white jet made with the long lines of the present
+fashion--in dress she was evidently a stickler.  The neck was cut in a
+low square, showing the rise of the bust.  Her own lines were long, the
+arms and hands very slender in the long white gloves.  Probably she was
+the only woman in the house who wore gloves.  Life was freer since the
+war.  She wore a triple string of pearls.
+
+He waited eagerly until she should drop her glasses. . . .  He heard
+two girls gasping and muttering behind him. . . .  There was a titter
+across the house.
+
+She lowered the opera glasses and glanced over the rows of upturned
+faces immediately before her, scrutinizing them casually, as if they
+were fish in an aquarium.  She had dropped her lids slightly before her
+eyes came to rest on Clavering.  He was leaning forward, his eyes hard
+and focal, doing his best to compel her notice.  Her glance did linger
+on his for a moment before it moved on indifferently, but in that brief
+interval he experienced a curious ripple along his nerves . . . almost
+a note of warning. . . .  They were very dark gray eyes, Greek in the
+curve of the lid, and inconceivably wise, cold, disillusioned.  She did
+not look a day over twenty-eight.  There were no marks of dissipation
+on her face.  But for its cold regularity she would have looked
+younger--with her eyes closed.  The eyes seemed to gaze down out of an
+infinitely remote past.
+
+Suddenly she seemed to sense the concentrated attention of the
+audience.  She swept it with a hasty glance, evidently appreciated the
+fact that she alone was standing and facing it, colored slightly and
+sat down.  But her repose was absolute.  She made no little embarrassed
+gestures as another woman would have done.  She did not even affect to
+read her program.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Clavering left his chair and wandered up the aisle.  He felt none of
+his usual impatience for the beneficent cigarette.  Was he hit?
+Hardly.  Inquisitive, certainly.  But he had seen so many provocative
+shells.  Vile trick of nature, that--poverty-stricken unoriginal
+creature that she was.
+
+He glanced over the rows of people as he passed.  It was not the play
+that was animating them.  The woman was a godsend.
+
+His gaze paused abruptly on the face of Mr. Charles Dinwiddie.
+Clavering's grand-aunt had married Mr. Dinwiddie's father and the two
+men, so far apart in years, were more or less intimate; the older man's
+inexhaustible gossip of New York Society amused Clavering, who in turn
+had initiated Mr. Dinwiddie into new and strange pleasures, including
+literary parties and first nights--ignored by the world of fashion.
+
+All New York men of the old régime, no matter what their individuality
+may have been twenty years earlier, look so much alike as they approach
+sixty, and more particularly after they have passed it, that they might
+be brothers in blood as in caste.  Their moustaches and what little
+hair they have left turns the same shade of well-bred white.  Their
+fine old Nordic faces are generally lean and flat of cheek, their
+expression calm, assured, not always smug.  They are impeccably groomed
+and erect.  Stout they may be, but seldom fat, and if not always
+handsome, they are polished, distinguished, aloof.  They no longer wear
+side-whiskers and look younger than their fathers did at the same age.
+
+Mr. Dinwiddie's countenance as a rule was as formal and politely
+expressionless as became his dignified status, but tonight it was not.
+It was pallid.  The rather prominent eyes were staring, the mouth was
+relaxed.  He was seated next the aisle and Clavering hastened toward
+him in alarm.
+
+"Ill, old chap?" he asked.  "Better come out."
+
+Mr. Dinwiddie focussed his eyes, then stumbled to his feet and caught
+Clavering by the arm.  "Yes," he muttered.  "Get me out of this and
+take me where I can get a drink.  Seen a ghost."
+
+Clavering guided him up the aisle, then out of a side exit into an
+alley and produced a flask from his hip-pocket.  Mr. Dinwiddie without
+ceremony raised it to his lips and swallowed twice, gasping a little.
+He had reached the age of the mild whiskey and soda.  Then he stood
+erect and passed his hand over the shining curve of his head.
+
+"Ever seen a ghost, Lee?" he asked.  "That woman was there, wasn't she?"
+
+"She was there, all right."  Clavering's face was no longer cynical and
+mysterious; it was alive with curiosity.  "D'you know who she is?"
+
+"Thirty-odd years ago any one of us old chaps would have told you she
+was Mary Ogden, and like as not raised his hat.  She was the beauty and
+the belle of her day.  But she married a Hungarian diplomat, Count
+Zattiany, when she was twenty-four, and deserted us.  Never been in the
+country since.  I never wanted to see her again.  Too hard hit.  But I
+caught a glimpse of her at the opera in Paris about ten years
+ago--faded!  Always striking of course with that style, but withered,
+changed, skinny where she had been slim, her throat concealed by a dog
+collar a yard long--her expression sad and apathetic--the dethroned
+idol of men.  God!  Mary Ogden!  I left the house."
+
+"It is her daughter, of course----"
+
+"Never had a child--positive of it.  Zattiany title went to a nephew
+who was killed in the war. . . .  No . . . it must be . . . must
+be . . ."  His eyes began to glitter.  Clavering knew the symptom.  His
+relative was about to impart interesting gossip.
+
+"Well?" he asked impatiently.
+
+"There were many stories about Mary Ogden--Mary Zattiany--always a
+notable figure in the capitals of Europe.  Her husband was in the
+diplomatic service until he died--some years before I saw her in Paris.
+She was far too clever--damnably clever, Mary Ogden, and had a
+reputation for it in European Society as well as for beauty--to get
+herself compromised.  But there were stories--that must be it!  She had
+a daughter and stowed her away somewhere.  No two women could be as
+alike as that except mother and daughter--don't see it too often at
+that.  Why, the very way she carries her head--her _style_ . . . wonder
+where she kept her?  That girl has been educated and has all the air of
+the best society.  Must have got friends to adopt her.  Gad!  What a
+secret chapter.  But why on earth does she let the girl run round
+loose?"
+
+"I shouldn't say she was a day under twenty-eight.  No doubt she looked
+younger from where you were sitting."
+
+"Twenty-eight!  Mary must have begun sooner than we heard.  But--well,
+we never felt that we knew Mary--that was one of her charms.  She kept
+us guessing, as you young fellows say, and she had the devil's own
+light in her eyes sometimes."  His own orb lit up again.  "Wonder if
+Mary is here?  No doubt she's come over to get her property back--she
+never transferred her investments and of course it was alienated during
+the war.  But not a soul has heard from her.  I am sure of that.  We
+were discussing her the other night at dinner and wondering if her
+fortune had been turned over.  It was at Jane Oglethorpe's.  Jane and a
+good many of the other women have seen her from time to time
+abroad--stayed at her castle in Hungary during the first years of her
+marriage; but they drifted apart as friends do. . . .  She must be a
+wreck, poor thing.  She ran a hospital during the war and was in Buda
+Pesth for some time after the revolution broke out.  I hope she had the
+girl well hidden away."
+
+"Perhaps she sent the girl over to look after her affairs."
+
+"That's it.  Beyond a doubt.  And I'll find out.  Trent is Mary's
+attorney and trustee.  I'll make him open up."
+
+"And you'll call on her?"
+
+"Won't I?  That is, I'll make Trent take me.  I never want to look at
+poor Mary again, but I'd feel young----  Hello!  I believe you're hit!"
+Mr. Dinwiddie, having solved his problems, was quite himself again and
+alert for one of the little dramas that savored his rather tasteless
+days.  "I'd like that.  I'll introduce you and give you my blessing.
+Wrong side of the blanket, though."
+
+"Don't care a hang."
+
+"That's right.  Who cares about anything these days?  And you can only
+be young once."  He sighed.  "And if she's like her mother--only
+halfway like her inside--she'll be worth it."
+
+"Is that a promise?"
+
+"We'll shake on it.  I'll see Trent in the morning.  Dine with me at
+the club at eight?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The critics left after the second act to damn the play at leisure.
+Clavering remained in his seat.  Forty minutes later, while the
+performers were responding to faint calls and amiable friends were
+demanding the author of the doomed play, the lady of mystery (who,
+Clavering reflected cynically, was doubtless merely an unusual looking
+person with a commonplace history--most explanations after wild guesses
+were common-place) left her seat and passed up the aisle.
+Irresistibly, Clavering followed her.  As she stood for a moment under
+the glare of the electric lights at the entrance he observed her
+critically.  She survived the test.  A small car drew up to the curb.
+She entered it, and he stood in the softly falling snow feeling
+somewhat of a fool.  As he walked slowly to his rooms in Madison Square
+he came definitely to the conclusion that it was merely his old
+reporter's instinct that burned so fiercely, even when he had prodded
+Dinwiddie and shaken hands in a glow of anticipation.  Certainly there
+was no fire in his blood.  His imagination had not toyed for a moment
+with the hope that here at last . . .  He did not feel in the least
+romantic.  But what man, especially after Dinwiddie's revelations,
+wouldn't feel a bit curious, a bit excited?  Thank Heaven he was young
+enough for that.  He must know who she was.  Certainly, he would like
+to talk to her.  She knew the world, no doubt of it--with those eyes!
+European women, given the opportunity, could cram more of life into ten
+years than an American woman into forty.  She had had her experiences
+in spite of that madonna face; he'd bet on it.  Well, he wasn't falling
+in love with a woman who had too heavily underscored in the book of
+life.  But he enjoyed talking to European women of the world.  New York
+had been overrun of late with Russian princesses and other ladies of
+title come over in the hope of milking the good old American cow, and
+when he could divert them from their grievances he found them clever,
+subtle and interesting.  It was unlikely that this woman had a
+grievance of that sort or was looking for a chance to get at the
+generous but elusive udder.  Her pearls might not be real, but her gown
+was superlatively expensive, her evening wrap of mauve velvet lined
+with ermine, and her little car perfectly turned out.  He'd look like a
+fortune-hunter with his salary of fifteen thousand a year and a few
+thousands in bonds . . . not if he knew it!  But find out who she was,
+know her, talk to her, learn what he felt was an interesting
+history--quite another matter.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The next evening when he arrived at the club he found Mr. Dinwiddie
+fuming.
+
+"What do you think!" he exclaimed as he led his guest to his favorite
+table in the corner.  "That old rascal bluffed me!  Bluffed me.  Said
+there was no relative of Countess Zattiany in the country that he knew
+of.  Looked blank as a post when I told him of the extraordinary
+resemblance of that girl to Mary Ogden.  Said he never heard of her.
+Laughed at the idea of a sub-rosa daughter.  Pretended to be angry at
+such an aspersion on Mary's fair fame--was in love with her himself
+like the rest of us.  But he was lying and he knew that I knew he was
+lying.  What'll you have?"
+
+"Anything.  Go ahead.  I know by the glitter of your eye that you
+haven't finished."
+
+"You're right, I haven't."  He gave his order and leaned forward.
+"I've done a little prospecting on my own account.  Mary inherited the
+old Ogden house over on Murray Hill.  I happen to know that the lease
+ran out last year and that it hasn't been rented since.  Well, I walked
+past there today, and some one is living in it.  Boarding off.  Windows
+open.  Fresh curtains.  A servant receiving a parcel at the area door.
+She's there, mark my words."
+
+"Not a doubt of it.  Why didn't you walk boldly up and send in your
+card?"
+
+"Hadn't the courage.  Besides, that girl never heard of me.  I hadn't
+the ghost of an excuse."
+
+"Why not put Mrs. Oglethorpe on the scent?  She could call.  Women are
+always fertile in excuses."
+
+"I can't see what pretext she could trump up.  She'd be keen enough,
+all right, but she hardly could tell this haughty creature with the
+unmistakable stamp of the great world on her that she knows she must be
+the left-handed daughter of Mary Ogden.  Even Jane hasn't assurance
+enough for that."
+
+"She might assume that this young woman is a member of the Countess
+Zattiany's family--daughter of a cousin or something--those
+extraordinary resemblances do recur in families. . . .  That indeed may
+be the explanation."
+
+"Not a bit of it.  That girl is Mary's daughter."
+
+"I'm inclined to agree with you.  But it is understood that you can't
+hurl it at her.  Mrs. Oglethorpe, however, could invent a pretty
+pretence--saw her at the theatre--struck by her likeness to her old
+friend--discovered she was living in the family mansion--felt that she
+must seek her out----"
+
+"Um.  That's not quite the sort of thing the New York woman does, and
+you know it.  True, the war has upset them as it has every one else.
+They are still restless.  I have met two opera singers, two actresses,
+three of these juvenile editors and columnists at dinners and musical
+evenings during the last month alone.  I believe they'd lionize Charley
+Chaplin if he'd let them, but I understand he's more exclusive than we
+are.  God!  What is New York Society coming to?"
+
+"You like straying outside the sacred preserves yourself occasionally."
+
+"I do.  But I'm a man.  We always did stray a bit.  But when I think of
+the exclusiveness of only a few years ago!  Why, New York Society was a
+Club.  The most exclusive club in the world.  London Society was
+Bohemia compared to it.  It's the democratic flu, that's what!
+Aristocracy's done for."
+
+"I'm not so sure.  The reaction may be devastating.  But it's a sign of
+grace that they've at last discovered sufficient intelligence to be
+bored with their somewhat monotonous selves.  And Mrs. Oglethorpe
+always does exactly as she pleases.  Better drop her a hint."
+
+"Well, I'll try it.  But while Jane may be high-handed, she has certain
+rigid ideas when it comes to Society and who shall enter its gates.  So
+far she's made no concessions.  She and a few others still keep a tight
+rein.  Their daughters though!  And granddaughters!  Jane's girls are
+replicas of herself with every atom of her personality left out--but
+Jim's daughter, Janet, is her grandmother over again plus modern bad
+manners, bad habits, and a defiance of every known convention.
+Wretched little flapper.  Gad!  What are we coming to!"
+
+"Never mind Janet----"
+
+"Why don't you suggest it to Jane?  She thinks more of you than of any
+one else.  I doubt if you could ask her anything----"
+
+"Not much.  She'd twig at once.  I've had several hints lately that she
+has her eye on somebody she wants me to marry.  You must do it
+yourself--and you _must_!"
+
+"Well!  If she won't, Mrs. Jim might.  The younger women would know
+this girl like a shot if they thought there was any fun in it--then
+drop her if she didn't measure up.  I don't know that I care to place
+her in such a position."
+
+"I've an idea the fair unknown can take care of herself.  I don't see
+her picked up and dropped.  Probably it would be the deuce and all to
+meet her.  I think my plan is best.  You can rouse any woman's
+curiosity, and no one has more than Mrs. Oglethorpe.  That would be the
+wedge.  You'd meet her and then you could give her a dinner and invite
+me."
+
+"All right.  I'll try it.  Something must happen soon.  My arteries
+won't stand the strain."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"Madam is not at home, ma'am."
+
+"Is she not?  Then I'll wait for her."
+
+Mrs. Oglethorpe swept by the butler and he had the sensation of chaff
+scattering before a strong wind.  In truth Mrs. Oglethorpe was an
+impressive figure and quite two inches taller than himself.  He could
+only stare at her in helpless awe, the more so as he had recognized her
+at once.  Leadership might be extinct, but Mrs. Oglethorpe was still a
+power in New York Society, with her terrible outspokenness, her
+uncompromising standards, her sardonic humor, her great wealth, and her
+eagle eye for subterfuge.  How could a mere servant hope to oppose that
+formidable will when his betters trembled at her nod?
+
+Mrs. Oglethorpe had made her usual careful toilet.  Her full long dress
+of heavy-pile black velvet, almost covered with a sable cape, swept the
+floor; changing skirts meant nothing to her.  Like all women of the old
+régime in New York, she wore her hair dressed very high and it was
+surmounted by a small black hat covered with feathers, ruthlessly
+exposing her large square face with its small snapping black eyes and
+prominent nose.  A high-boned collar of net supported what was left of
+her throat.  She wore no jewels, as she clung to the rigorous law of
+her youth which had tabued the vulgar display of anything but pearls in
+the daytime.  As she was too old and yellow for pearls she compromised
+on jet earrings and necklace.  She carried a cane.
+
+Mr. Dinwiddie to his surprise had found no difficulty in persuading her
+to investigate the mysteries of the Ogden mansion, for she had leapt at
+once to the conclusion that the friend of her youth was in some way
+menaced by this presumptuous stranger of the fantastic resemblance.
+There had been a time when, while indignantly repudiating the stories
+so prevalent for many years after Mary Ogden's marriage to Count
+Zattiany, she had secretly believed and condoned them; not only because
+she had loved her devotedly and known something of her heavy
+disillusionment, but because the wild secret life the exalted Countess
+Zattiany was believed to be leading fed her own suppressed longings for
+romance and adventure.  With the passage of years, which had taken
+their toll of Mary's beauty and fascination, and brought complete
+disillusionment to herself, she had almost forgotten that old phase;
+moreover, it was many years since she had visited Europe and
+correspondence between the two friends, once so intimate, had almost
+ceased before the war.  During that long interval she had heard nothing
+of her except that she was running a hospital in Buda Pesth, but
+shortly after the close of the war she had been distressed to learn
+from a member of one of the various commissions to Vienna that Countess
+Zattiany was ill in a sanitarium.  She had written at once, but
+received no reply.  Now she feared that some adventuress had taken
+advantage of a superficial resemblance--she dismissed Mr. Dinwiddie's
+protestations of the exactness of that resemblance as the maunderings
+of a weakened memory playing about among the ghosts of its youth--to
+scheme for the Ogden fortune.  When told that Judge Trent was evidently
+shielding the woman her suspicions were redoubled.  She had
+consistently hated Judge Trent for fifty years.
+
+If, on the other hand, the creature were really Mary's daughter--and
+could prove it--well, she would make up her mind what course to take
+when she met her.
+
+"I'll wait in the library," she announced, and moved majestically down
+the hall.  Then at a sound she paused and glanced toward the stair
+which rose on the left, opposite the library.  A woman was descending,
+a woman only an inch or two shorter than herself and no less stately,
+with ashen blonde hair coiled low on her graceful neck and wearing a
+loose gown of pale green crepe with a silver girdle.
+
+"My God!" exclaimed Mrs. Oglethorpe in a loud imperious voice, as if
+commanding the Almighty to leap from his throne and fly to her
+assistance.  Then she leaned heavily on her cane.
+
+The lady came quickly down the stairs and made a peremptory signal to
+the butler.  As he disappeared she walked forward more slowly and
+paused within a few feet of her agitated guest.  Her eyebrows were
+slightly raised, her face impassive.  Not even those sharp old eyes
+staring at her guessed that she had been completely taken by surprise
+and was inwardly quaking.
+
+Mrs. Oglethorpe could not speak for a moment.  The years had dropped
+from her.  She was once more a young woman come to spend the day with
+her favorite friend . . . or to attend a reception in the stately
+formal house on Murray Hill . . . high rooms filled with women wearing
+tight basques, bustles, full sweeping skirts, small hats or bonnets
+perched on puffs and braids. . . .  Mary, the most radiant and
+beautiful and enchanting girl in the world, coming forward with hands
+outstretched, while her more formal mother frowned a little at her
+enthusiasm . . . or were they both risen to haunt the old house?
+
+But confusion could reign for only a few seconds in Mrs. Oglethorpe's
+indomitable soul.  She drew herself up to her imposing height, and her
+voice was harsher than usual as she addressed the vision that had
+confounded her.
+
+"Pardon me.  Your likeness to my old friend, Countess Zattiany,
+startled me.  Who are you, may I ask?"
+
+"Does it really matter?"  And once more Mrs. Oglethorpe started,
+although the accent was foreign.
+
+"Yes, it does matter," she said grimly.  "That is what I have come to
+find out."
+
+"Oh!"  Again there was a slight lift of the eyebrows.  "I had always
+heard that Americans were unconventional, but hardly that they carried
+their independence of the conventions so far as to invade the house of
+a stranger."
+
+"I'll not be put off.  Are you Mary Zattiany's daughter?"
+
+For a second there was an expression of broad amusement on the
+beautiful cold face opposite, but it passed with a slight shrug of the
+shoulders.  "No," she said evenly.
+
+"Then who are you?"
+
+"I do not choose to say--at present."  Her tone was as arrogant as her
+interlocutor's and Mrs. Oglethorpe bristled.
+
+"What does Trent mean by lying about your presence in this house?"
+
+"Judge Trent respects my wishes."
+
+"Your wishes!  You've made a fool of him.  But I am Countess Zattiany's
+oldest friend, and if she has been imposed upon, if she has come to any
+harm, if you are after her fortune by pretending on the strength of
+your singular likeness to be her heir, I shall know how to put a stop
+to it in spite of Judge Trent.  I suppose you have never heard of me.
+My name is Oglethorpe."
+
+"I have heard of Mrs. Oglethorpe--from Countess Zattiany.  But she
+failed to prepare me for your excessively bad manners."
+
+"Manners be damned.  I use what manners I choose and I've never done
+anything else.  I repeat to you that Countess Zattiany was the most
+intimate friend of my youth and for many years after.  If she has no
+one to protect her interests in this country, I shall protect them
+myself.  Don't you suppose I am well aware that if you were in her
+confidence she would have sent you direct to me?  It is the first thing
+she would have thought of.  If you are not an impostor and an
+adventuress present your credentials and I will ask your pardon."
+
+"Judge Trent has my credentials.  Now, if you will excuse me----"
+
+"I will not excuse you.  I will get to the depth of all this mystery.
+I abominate mystery.  It is vulgar and stupid.  You will tell me who
+you are, or I will set the newspapers on your track.  They'll soon
+ferret it out.  I've only to say the word."
+
+"Ah!"  The lady seemed to falter for a moment.  She looked
+speculatively at the indignant old face opposite, then made a vague
+little gesture toward her hair, and dropped her eyes.  "No," she said
+softly.  "Don't--please."  She raised her eyes once more and looked
+straight into Mrs. Oglethorpe's.  The two women stood staring at each
+other for several seconds.  Mrs. Oglethorpe's eyes blinked, her jaw
+fell.  Then she drew herself up in her most impressive manner.
+
+"Good day," she said.  "Your pardon for the intrusion," and although
+her voice had trembled, she swept majestically down the hall.  The
+unwilling hostess touched a bell and a footman opened the door.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Three weeks passed.  There were almost twice as many first-nights.
+"Mary Ogden," as Clavering called her for want of the truth, was at
+each.  She never rose in her seat again, and, indeed, seemed to seek
+inconspicuousness, but she was always in the second or third row of the
+orchestra, and she wore a different gown on each occasion.  As she
+entered after the curtain rose and stole out before it went down for
+the last time, few but those in the adjacent seats and boxes were
+edified by any details of those charming creations, although it was
+noticeable that the visiting of both sexes was most active in her
+neighborhood.
+
+For by this time she was "the talk of the town," or of that important
+and excessively active-minded section of Greater New York represented
+at first-nights.  The columnists had commented on her.  One had indited
+ten lines of free verse in her honor, another had soared on the wings
+of seventeenth century English into a panegyric on her beauty and her
+halo of mystery.  A poet-editor-wit had cleped her "The Silent Drama."
+Had it been wartime she would inevitably have been set down as a spy,
+and as it was there were dark inferences that she was a Bolshevik agent
+who had smuggled vast sums of money into the country and passed it on
+to the Reds.  There were those who opined she was some rich man's
+mistress, recently imported, snatched from some victim of revolution
+who could no longer afford her.  Blonde madonnas were always under
+suspicion unless you knew all about them.  Others, more practical,
+scoffed at these fancy theories and asserted roundly that she was
+either a Russian refugee who had sound American or English investments,
+or some American woman, educated abroad, who knew no one in New York
+and amused herself at the theatre.  Indeed?  Why then should an
+obviously wealthy young woman of as obviously good birth and breeding
+bring no letters?  Something crooked, not a doubt of it.  A European
+girl or young widow of position would never come to America without a
+chaperon; nor an American brought up abroad.  A woman with that "air"
+knows what's what.  She's simply put herself beyond the pale and
+doesn't care.  Some impoverished woman of the noblesse who has taken up
+with a rich man.
+
+The men would have liked to put a detective on the track of every
+millionaire in town.
+
+Clavering had confided in no one, and Mr. Dinwiddie, although he had
+attended a party given by one of the most hospitable of the
+Sophisticates where the unknown was discussed from cocktail to
+cocktail, and where, forgetting his arteries, he had befuddled himself
+at the generous fount, had guarded his tongue.  To Clavering he had
+been unable to extend either hope or information.  Mrs. Oglethorpe had
+turned a bleak and rigid countenance upon the friend of her youth when
+he had called with an eager ear, and forbidden him tartly ever to
+mention the subject to her again.
+
+"Interview must have been devilish unpleasant to curdle poor old Jane
+like that," he had commented.  "No doubt the girl showed her the door.
+Gad!  Jane!  But Mary's daughter could do it.  None better."
+
+Clavering was deeply disappointed.  He turned a scowling back on the
+gossips rending The Topic to tatters.  New York must have a new Topic
+every season.  This girl had arrived in a season of dearth.  And,
+unless she were discovered to be living in absolute flagrancy, they
+would throw down the carpet.  Some went even further.  After all, what
+about . . .
+
+But there seemed to be not the remotest prospect of meeting her, nor
+even of solving the mystery.  She had been seen striding round the
+reservoir in a short skirt and high laced boots of soft pale leather.
+One triumphant woman had stood next to her at a glove counter and
+overheard her observe to the clerk in a sweet and rather deep voice
+with an ineluctably refined--and foreign--accent that gloves were
+cheaper in New York than in Paris.  She had been passed several times
+in her smart little car, and once she had been seen going into the
+Public Library.  Evidently she was no hermit.  Several of the
+Sophisticates had friends in Society and questioned them eagerly, but
+were rewarded only by questions as eager in return.
+
+On the sixth of these first-nights, when the unknown slipped quietly
+from her seat at the end of the last act, she saw the aisle in front of
+her almost blocked.  One after another the rows of seats were hurriedly
+deserted.  Clavering, as usual, was directly behind her, but Mr.
+Dinwiddie, forced from his chair many aisles back, was swept out with
+the crowd.
+
+When she reached the foyer she found herself surrounded by men and
+women whose frank interest was of the same well-bred but artless
+essence as that afforded a famous actress or prima donna exhibiting
+herself before the footlights.  It was evident that she had a sense of
+humor, for as she made her way slowly toward the entrance a smile
+twitched her mouth more than once.  Clavering thought that she was on
+the point of laughing outright.  But he fumed.  "Damn them!  They'll
+scare her off.  She'll never come again."
+
+One or two women had vowed they'd speak to her.  After all a
+first-night was a club of sorts.  But their courage failed them.  The
+crowd made way for her and she crossed the pavement to wait for her
+car.  Clavering, always hoping that some drunken brute would give him
+the opportunity to succor her, followed and stood as close as he dared.
+Her car drove up and she entered.  As it started she turned her head
+and looked straight at him.  And then Clavering was sure that she
+laughed outright.
+
+He started recklessly after the car, plunging between automobiles going
+in four different directions, and jumping on the running board of a
+taxi, told the man to drive like hell toward Park Avenue.  There was
+amused recognition in that glance!  She had, must have, noticed him
+before tonight!
+
+And then he had his chance.  To the brave belong the fair.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+He dismissed the taxi at the corner of her street and walked rapidly
+toward the house.  He had no definite object, but with the blood of
+romantic ancestors who had serenaded beneath magnolia trees pounding in
+his veins, he thought it likely he would take up his stand under the
+opposite lamp-post and remain there all night.  The reportorial
+news-sense died painlessly.
+
+Suddenly, to his amazement, he saw her run down the steps of her house
+and disappear into the area.  She was once more at the gate when he
+hurried up to her.
+
+"May I--am I----" he stammered.  "Is anything the matter?"
+
+For a moment she had shrunk back in alarm, but the narrow silent street
+between its ramparts of brown stone was bright with moonlight and she
+recognized him.
+
+"Oh, it is you," she said with a faint smile.  "I forgot my key and I
+cannot make any one hear the bell.  The servants sleep on the top
+floor, and of course like logs.  Yes, you can do something.  Are you
+willing to break a window, crawl in, and find your way up to the front
+door?"
+
+"Watch me!"  Clavering forgot that he was saturnine and remote and
+turning thirty-four.  He took the area steps at a bound.  Iron gates
+guarded the basement doors, but the old bars on the windows were easily
+wrenched out.  He lifted his foot, kicked out a pane, found the catch,
+opened the window and ran up the narrow dark stairs.  There was a light
+in the spacious hall and in another moment he had opened the door.  He
+expected to be dismissed with a word of lofty thanks, but she said in a
+tone of casual hospitality:
+
+"There are sandwiches in the library and I can give you a whiskey and
+soda."
+
+She walked with a light swift step down the hall, the narrow tail of
+her black velvet gown wriggling after her.  Clavering followed in a
+daze, but his trained eye took note of the fine old rugs and carved
+Italian furniture, two splendid tapestries, and great vases of flowers
+that filled the air with a drowsy perfume.  He had heard of the Ogden
+house, built and furnished some fifty years ago.  The couple that had
+leased it had been childless and it showed little wear.  The stairs
+curving on the left had evidently been recarpeted, but in a very dull
+red that harmonized with the mellow tints of the old house.
+
+She opened a door at the end of the hall on the right and he found
+himself in a large library whose walls were covered with books to the
+ceiling.  Dinwiddie had told him that the Ogdens were bookish people
+and that "Mary's" grandfather had been an eminent jurist.  The room was
+as dark in tone as the hall, but the worn chairs and sofas looked very
+comfortable.  A log was burning on the hearth.
+
+She took a key from a drawer and handed it to him.
+
+"You will find whiskey and a syphon in that cabinet, Mr. Clavering.  I
+keep them for Judge Trent."
+
+"Mr. Cla----"  He came out of his daze.  "You know who I am then?"
+
+"But certainly.  I am not as reckless as all that."
+
+Her accent was slight but indubious, yet impossible to place.  It might
+be that of a European who spoke many languages, or of an American with
+a susceptible ear who had lived the greater part of her life abroad.
+"I was driving one day with Judge Trent and saw you walking with Mr.
+Dinwiddie."
+
+"Trent--ah!"
+
+He had his first full look into those wise unfathomable eyes.  Standing
+close to her, she seemed somewhat older than he had guessed her to be,
+although her face was unlined.  Probably it was her remarkable poise,
+her air of power and security--and those eyes!  What had not they
+looked upon?  She smiled and poured broth from a thermos bottle.
+
+"You are forgetting your whiskey and soda," she reminded him.
+
+He filled his glass, took a sandwich and sank into the depths of a
+leather chair.  She had seated herself on an upright throne-like chair
+opposite.  Her black velvet gown was like a vase supporting a subtly
+moulded flower of dazzling fairness.  She wore the three rows of pearls
+that had excited almost as much speculation as her mysterious self.  As
+she drank her mild beverage she looked at him over the brim of her cup
+and once more appeared to be on the verge of laughter.
+
+"Will you tell me who you are?" asked Clavering bluntly.  "This is
+hardly fair, you know."
+
+"Mr. Dinwiddie really managed to coax nothing from Judge Trent?  He
+called three times, I understand."
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"He had my orders," she said coolly.  "I am obliged to pass some time
+in New York and I have my reasons for remaining obscure."
+
+"Then you should have avoided first-nights."
+
+"But I understood that Society did not attend first-nights.  So Judge
+Trent informed me.  I love the play.  Judge Trent told me that
+first-nights were very amusing and that I would be sure to be seen by
+no one I had ever met in European Society."
+
+"Probably not," he said drily and feeling decidedly nettled at her calm
+assumption that nothing but the society of fashion counted.  "But the
+people who do attend them are a long sight more distinguished in the
+only way that counts these days, and the women are often as well
+dressed as any in the sacrosanct preserves."
+
+"Oh, I noticed that," she said quickly.  "Charming intelligent faces, a
+great variety of types, and many--but many--quite admirable gowns.  But
+who are they, may I ask?  I thought there was nothing between New York
+Society and the poor but--well, the bourgeoisie."
+
+He informed her.
+
+"Ah!  You see--well, I always heard that your people of the artistic
+and intellectual class were rather eccentric--rather cultivated a pose."
+
+"Once, maybe.  They all make too much money these days.  But there are
+freaks, if you care to look for them.  Some of the suddenly prosperous
+authors and dramatists have rather dizzy-looking wives; and I suppose
+you saw those two girls from Greenwich Village that sat across the
+aisle from you tonight?"
+
+She shuddered.  "One merely looked like a Hottentot, but the
+other!--with that thin upper layer of her short black hair dyed a
+greenish white, and her haggard degenerate green face.  What do they do
+in Greenwich Village?  Is it an isolation camp for defectives?"
+
+"It was once a colony of real artists, but the big fish left and the
+minnows swim slimily about, giving off nothing but their own sickly
+phosphorescence."
+
+"How interesting.  A sort of Latin Quarter, although I never saw
+anything in Paris quite like those dreadful girls."
+
+"Probably not.  As a race we are prone to exaggerations.  But are you
+not going to tell me your name?"
+
+She had finished her supper and was leaning against the high back of
+her chair, her long slender but oddly powerful looking hands folded
+lightly on the black velvet of her lap.  Once more he was struck by her
+absolute repose.
+
+"But certainly.  I am the Countess Zattiany."
+
+"The Countess Zattiany!"
+
+"The Countess Josef Zattiany, to be exact.  I went to Europe when I was
+a child, and when I finished school visited my cousin, Mary Zattiany--I
+belong to the Virginian branch of her mother's family--at her palace in
+Vienna and married her cousin's nephew."
+
+"Ah!  That accounts for the resemblance!" exclaimed Clavering.  And
+then, quite abruptly, he did not believe a word of it.
+
+"Resemblance?"
+
+"Yes, poor old Dinwiddie was completely bowled over when you stood up
+and surveyed the house that night.  Thought he had seen the ghost of
+his old flame.  I had to take him out in the alley and give him a
+drink."
+
+She met his eyes calmly.  "That was the cause of his interest?  Cousin
+Mary always said that the likeness to herself as a young woman was
+rather remarkable, that we might be mother and daughter instead of only
+third cousins."
+
+"Ah--yes--exactly.  Is--is she with you?"
+
+"No, alas!  She is in a sanitarium in Vienna and likely to remain there
+for a long time.  When Judge Trent wrote that it would be well for her
+interests if she came to New York she asked me to come instead and gave
+me her power of attorney.  As my husband was killed in the first year
+of the war and I had no other ties, I can assure you I was glad to
+come."  She shivered slightly.  "Oh, yes!  Vienna!  To see so much
+misery and to be able to give so little help!  But now that Mary's and
+my own fortune are restored I can assure you it gives me the greatest
+satisfaction of my life to send a large share of our incomes to our
+agent in Vienna."
+
+This time there was an unmistakable ring of truth in her deep tones.
+And she was human.  Clavering had begun to doubt it, notwithstanding
+her powerful disturbing magnetism.  But was he falling in love with
+her?  He was attracted, dazzled, and he still felt romantic.  But love!
+In spite of his suspicions she seemed to move on a plane infinitely
+remote.
+
+"Shall you stay here?"
+
+"Oh, for a time, yes.  I cannot see Cousin Mary, and even Paris is
+spoiled.  Besides, Judge Trent wishes me to learn something of
+business.  He is growing old and says that women nowadays take an
+interest in their investments.  I certainly find it highly diverting."
+
+"No doubt.  But surely you will not continue to shut yourself up?  You
+could know any one you choose.  Judge Trent has only to give you a
+dinner.  Unfortunately most of his respectable friends are a great many
+years older than yourself----"
+
+"I have no desire to know them.  In Paris, off and on, I met many of
+those elderly New York ladies of position.  They all have that built-up
+look, with hats too small and high for their bony old faces, which they
+do not even soften with powder or the charming accessories of the
+toilet known to every European woman of fashion.  And feathers!  Why
+are they so fond of feathers--not charming drooping feathers, but a
+sort of clipped hedge, all of a size, like a garden plot; sometimes
+oblong, sometimes round?  And why do they never look _à la mode_, in
+spite of their expensive furs and materials?"
+
+"That is the sign manual of their intense respectability.  The old
+régime would not compromise with fashion in all its extravagant changes
+for the world.  Moreover, it is their serene belief that they may dress
+exactly as they choose, and they choose to keep an old tradition alive.
+Are not English duchesses much the same?"
+
+"So.  Well, I do not bore myself."
+
+"But the younger women.  They are the smartest in the world.  There is
+not the least necessity you should bore yourself with the elders.
+Surely you must long for the society of women of your age."
+
+She moved restlessly for the first time.  "They were always in Europe
+before the war.  I met many of them.  They did not interest me.  I
+hardly knew what they were talking about."
+
+"But men.  Surely a woman as young--and beautiful----"
+
+"Oh, men!"  Clavering had never heard as profound disillusion in any
+woman's tones.  And then a curious expression of fear flitted through
+her eyes and she seemed to draw herself together.
+
+"What has some brute of a man done to her?" thought Clavering with
+furious indignation, and feeling more romantic than ever.  Could it
+have been her husband?  For a moment he regretted that Count Josef
+Zattiany had gone beyond human vengeance.
+
+"You are too young to hate men," he stammered.  And then he went on
+with complete banality, "You have never met the right man."
+
+"I am older than you perhaps think," she said drily.  "And I have known
+a great many men--and of a variety!  But," she added graciously, "I
+shall be glad if you will come and see me sometimes.  I enjoy your
+column, and I am sure we shall find a great deal to talk about."
+
+Clavering glowed with a pride that almost convinced him he was not as
+blasé as he had hoped.  He rose, however.
+
+"I'll come as often as you will let me.  Make no mistake about that.
+But I should not have stayed so long.  It is very late, and you
+are--well, rather unprotected, you know.  I think you should have a
+chaperon."
+
+"I certainly shall not.  And if I find you interesting enough to talk
+with until two in the morning, I shall do so.  Dine with me tomorrow
+night if you have nothing better to do.  And----"  She hesitated a
+moment, then added with a curious smile, "Bring Mr. Dinwiddie.  It is
+always charitable to lay a ghost.  At half after eight?"
+
+She walked with him to the front door, and when he held out his hand
+she lifted hers absently.  He was a quick-witted young man and he
+understood.  He raised it lightly to his lips, then let himself out.
+As he was walking rapidly toward Park Avenue, wondering if he should
+tramp for hours--he had never felt less like sleeping--he remembered
+the broken window.  The "crime wave" was terrorizing New York.  There
+was no policeman in sight.  To leave her unprotected was unthinkable.
+He walked back slowly until he reached the lamp-post opposite her
+house; finally, grinning, he folded his arms and leaned against it.
+There he stood until a policeman came strolling along, some two hours
+later.  He stated the case and told the officer that if anything
+happened to the house he would hold him responsible.  The man was
+inclined to be intensely suspicious until Clavering mentioned his
+newspaper and followed the threat with a bill.  Then he promised to
+watch the house like a hawk, and Clavering, tired, stiff, and very
+cold, went home to bed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+"Tommy rot.  Don't believe a word of it.  Mary's mother was one of the
+Thornhills.  Don't believe there ever was a Virginia branch.  But I'll
+soon find out.  Also about this Josef Zattiany.  That girl is Mary
+Ogden's daughter."
+
+They were seated in a corner of Mr. Dinwiddie's favorite club, where
+they had met by appointment.  Clavering shrugged his shoulders.  He had
+no intention of communicating his own doubts.
+
+"But you'll dine there tonight?"
+
+"Won't I?  And I'll keep my ears open."
+
+Clavering privately thought that the Countess Josef Zattiany would be
+more than a match for him, but replied: "After all, what does it
+matter?  She is a beautiful and charming woman and no doubt you'll have
+a very good dinner."
+
+"That's all very well as far as it goes, but I've never been so
+interested in my life.  Of course if she's Mary's daughter I'll do
+anything to befriend her--that is if she'll be honest enough to admit
+it.  But I don't like all this lying and pretence----"
+
+"I think your terms are too strong.  There have been extraordinary
+resemblances before in the history of the world, 'doubles,' for
+instance, where there was no known relationship.  Rather remarkable
+there are enough faces to go round.  And she confesses to be of the
+same family.  At all events you must admit that she has not made use of
+her alibi to force her way into society."
+
+"Probably knows her alibi won't stand the strain.  The women would soon
+ferret out the truth. . . .  What I'm afraid of is that she's got this
+power of attorney out of Mary when the poor girl was too weak to
+resist, and is over here to corral the entire fortune."
+
+"But surely Judge Trent----"
+
+"Oh, Trent!  He's a fool where women are concerned.  Always was, and
+now he's got to the stage where he can't sit beside a girl without
+pawing her.  They won't have him in the house.  Of course this lovely
+creature's got him under her thumb.  (I'll see him today and give him a
+piece of my mind for the lies he's told me.)  And if this girl has
+inherited her mother's brains, she's equal to anything."
+
+"I thought that your Mary was composite perfection."
+
+"Never said anything of the sort.  Didn't I tell you she always kept us
+guessing?  I sometimes used to think that if it hadn't been for her
+breeding and the standards that involves, and her wealth and position,
+she'd have made a first-class adventuress."
+
+"Was she a good liar?"
+
+"She was insolently truthful, but I'm certain she wouldn't have
+hesitated at a whopping lie if it would have served her purpose.  She
+was certainly _rusée_."
+
+"Well, the dinner should be highly interesting with all these
+undercurrents.  I'll call for you at a quarter past eight.  I must run
+now and do my column."
+
+
+Clavering, often satirical and ironic, was positively brutal that
+afternoon.  The latest play, book, moving picture, the inefficiency of
+the New York police, his afflicting correspondents, were hacked to the
+bone.  When he had finished, his jangling nerves were unaccountably
+soothed.  Other nerves would shriek next morning.  Let 'em.  He'd been
+honest enough, and if he chose to use a battle-axe instead of Toledo
+steel that was his privilege.
+
+He called down for a messenger boy and strolled to the window to soothe
+his nerves still further.  Dusk had fallen.  Every window of the high
+stone buildings surrounding Madison Square was an oblong of light.  It
+was a symphony of gray and gold, of which he never tired.  It invested
+business with romance and beauty.  The men behind those radiant panels,
+thinking of nothing less, made their brief contribution to the beauty
+of the world, transported the rapt spectator to a realm of pure
+loveliness.
+
+A light fall of snow lay on the grass and benches, the statues and
+trees of the Square.  Motors were flashing and honking below and over
+on Fifth Avenue.  The roar of the great city came up to him like a
+flood over a broken dam.  Black masses were pouring toward the subways.
+Life!  New York was the epitome of life.  He enjoyed forcing his way
+through those moving masses, but it interested him even more to feel
+above, aloof, as he did this evening.  Those tides swept on as
+unconscious of the watchers so high above them as of the soaring beauty
+of the Metropolitan Tower.  Ground hogs, most of them, but part of the
+ever changing, ever fascinating, metropolitan pageant.
+
+The arcade of Madison Square Garden was already packed with men and he
+knew that a triple line reached down Twenty-sixth Street to Fourth
+Avenue.  There was to be a prize fight tonight and the men had stood
+there since noon, buying apples and peanuts from peddlers.  This was
+Tuesday and there was no half-holiday.  These men appeared to have
+unbounded leisure while the rest of the city toiled or demanded work.
+But they were always warmly dressed and indubitably well-fed.  They
+belonged to what is vaguely known as the sporting fraternity, and were
+invariably in funds, although they must have existed with the minimum
+of work.  The army of unemployed was hardly larger and certainly no
+bread line was ever half as long.  Mounted police rode up and down to
+avert any anticipation of the night's battle.  A loud barking murmur
+rose and mingled with the roar of the avenues.
+
+The great clock of the Metropolitan Tower began to play those sad and
+sweetly ominous notes preliminary to booming out the hour.  They always
+reminded him of the warning bell on a wild and rocky coast, with
+something of the Lorelei in its cadences: like a heartless woman's
+subtle allure, poignantly difficult to resist.
+
+There was a knock on the door.  Clavering gave his daily stint to the
+messenger boy.  He was hunting for change, when he recaptured his
+column, sat down at his desk, and, running it over hastily, inserted
+the word "authentic."  New York must have its Word, even as its topic.
+"Authentic," loosed upon the world by Arnold Bennett, was the rage at
+present.  The little writers hardly dared use it.  It was, as it were,
+the trademark of the Sophisticates.
+
+The boy, superior, indifferent, and chewing gum, accepted his tip and
+departed.  Clavering returned to the window.  Gone was the symphony of
+gold and gray.  The buildings surrounding the Square were a dark and
+formless mass in the heavy dusk.  Only the street lights below shone
+like globular phosphorescence on a dark and turbulent sea.
+
+Two hours later he left his hotel and walked up Madison Avenue.
+Twenty-sixth Street was deserted and as littered with papers, peanut
+shells, and various other debris as a picnic train.  The mounted police
+had disappeared.  From the great building came the first roar of the
+thousands assembled, whether in approval or the reverse it would be
+difficult to determine.  They roared upon the slightest pretext and
+they would roar steadily until half-past ten or eleven, when they would
+burst out of every exit, rending the night with their yells, while a
+congested mass of motors and taxi-cabs shrieked and honked and squealed
+and coughed; and then abruptly the silence of death would fall upon
+what is now a business quarter where only an occasional hotel or little
+old brownstone house--sole reminder of a vanished past when Madison
+Square was the centre of fashion--lingered between the towering masses
+of concrete and steel.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+When Clavering and Dinwiddie arrived at the Ogden house Judge Trent was
+already there and mixing cocktails in the library.  He was a large man
+who must have had a superb figure before it grew heavy.  He wore the
+moustache of his generation and in common with what was left of his hair
+it glistened like crystal.  His black eyes were still very bright and his
+full loose mouth wore the slight smirk peculiar to old men whose sex
+vanity perishes only in the grave.  Beside him stood a man some ten years
+younger who was in the graying period, which gave him a somewhat dried
+and dusty look; but whose figure was still slender and whose hard
+outlines of face were as yet unblurred by flesh.  They were, of course,
+faultlessly groomed, but if met in the wilds of Africa, clad in rags and
+bearded like the jungle, to the initiate they still would have been New
+Yorkers.
+
+"Come in!  Come in!" cried the Judge heartily.  "Madame Zattiany will be
+down in a minute--she prefers to be called Madame Zattiany, by the way.
+Thinks titles in America are absurd unless wearers were born to
+them--more particularly since continental titles today are worth about as
+much as rubles and marks. . . .  Mr. Clavering, you know Mr. Osborne?
+Madame Zattiany kindly permitted me to bring him as she was having a
+little party.  Families old friends."
+
+Clavering placed two fingers in the limp hand extended and met the cold
+appraising eye calmly.  The New York assumption that all other Americans
+are rank outsiders, that, in short, not to have been born in New York is
+a social and irremediable crime, had often annoyed him but never caused
+him to feel the slightest sense of inferiority.  He had his own
+ancestors, as important in their day as any bewigged old Dutchmen--all of
+whom, he reminded himself, had been but honest burghers in Holland.  But
+he admired their consistency.  The rest of the country had been
+commenting bitterly on the New York attitude since the eighteenth
+century.  And when you got under their protective armor they were an
+honorable and a loyal lot.  Meanwhile it paid to be as rude as themselves.
+
+"I am delighted that Madame Zattiany has decided to come out of her shell
+at last," said Judge Trent, shaking vigorously.  "I've been urging it for
+some time.  But she has had a long and harrowing experience, and seemed
+to want only to rest.  I think the stir she made at your first-nights,
+Clavering, had something to do with it.  There was a time, you know, when
+she never appeared without making a sensation--like poor Mary before
+her--but young as she is all that seems almost too remote to recall.  Of
+course if she had been able to live in London or Paris after the war it
+would have been different, but she was stuck in Buda Pesth and
+Vienna--ah!"
+
+Madame Zattiany had entered the room.  She wore pale green chiffon with
+floating sleeves that left her arms bare.  In the subdued light she
+looked like a girl playing at Undine.
+
+Clavering heard Dinwiddie give a sharp hiss.  "Gad!  More like Mary than
+ever.  Nile-green was her favorite color."
+
+She greeted the Judge and Clavering with her slight flickering smile and
+then turned to the other two men.
+
+"This must be Mr. Osborne, as Judge Trent pointed out Mr. Dinwiddie to me
+one day on Fifth Avenue.  It was kind of you both to come in this
+informal manner.  I appreciate it very much."
+
+Her manner was a little like that of a princess giving audience,
+Clavering reflected, a manner enhanced by her slight accent and profound
+repose, the negligent lifting of her hand to be kissed; and as she stood
+graciously accepting their expressions of unhoped for felicity she looked
+less American, more European, than ever.  But Clavering wondered for the
+first time if that perfect repose were merely the expression of a
+profound indifference, almost apathy . . . but no, she was too young for
+that, however the war may have seared her; and she was smiling
+spontaneously, there was a genuine note of pleasure in her voice as she
+turned to him.
+
+"It was more than kind of you to watch my house until the policeman
+came," she said on a lower key.  "I was really alarmed when I remembered
+that broken window and all those dreadful stories in the newspapers.  But
+you kept watch beneath my windows like a _preux chevalier_ and I felt
+safe."
+
+"I felt rather a fool if the truth be told."  Her eyes had a curious
+exploring look and Clavering felt unaccountably irritated, in spite of
+all that her words implied.  "I'd have done the same if you had been old
+and withered.  Served me right.  I should have thought before I left the
+house to telephone for a watchman."
+
+"Ah!  Quite so.  American men are famous for their gallantry, are they
+not?  Myself, I have always liked them."  The smile rose to her wise
+penetrating eyes, and Clavering colored like a schoolboy.  Then it faded
+and her face looked suddenly rigid.  "I wonder," she muttered, then
+turned her back abruptly.  "You must not forget your cocktail.  And
+dinner has been announced."
+
+Mr. Dinwiddie made a pretext of sipping his cocktail as the three raised
+their glasses simultaneously to their hostess.  She had declined to join
+them, with a little grimace.  "Perhaps in time I may become American
+enough to like your strange concoctions, but so far I think cocktails
+have a really horrid taste.  Shall we go in?"
+
+The Judge offered his arm with the formal gallant air he could assume at
+will and the other men followed at a discreet distance: her shimmering
+gown had a long tail.  Mr. Dinwiddie's eyes seemed to bore into that
+graceful swaying back, but he was not the man to discuss his hostess
+until he had left her house, and Clavering could only wonder what
+conclusions were forming in that avid cynical old brain.
+
+The dining-room, long and narrow, was at the back of the hall and
+extended along the entire width of the large house.  Like the hall it was
+panelled and dark, an imposing room hung with family portraits.  A small
+table at the end looked like a fairy oasis.  It glittered and gleamed and
+the flowers were mauve, matching the tall wand-like candles.
+
+"I do hope, Madame Zattiany," said Mr. Osborne, as he took a seat at her
+left, "that you won't succumb to the prevailing mania for white, and
+paint out this beautiful old walnut.  Too many of our houses look
+entirely too sanitary.  One feels as if he were about to be shown up to a
+ward, to be received by a hospital nurse with a warning not to speak too
+loud."  There was no chill formality in his mien as he bent over his
+young and beautiful hostess.
+
+"Ah, you forget this is Countess Zattiany's house," she said, smiling.
+"But I will admit that if it were mine I should make few changes.  White
+was quite _à la mode_ in London long before the war, but, myself, I never
+liked it."
+
+Judge Trent sat opposite his hostess at the round table.  She had placed
+Mr. Dinwiddie and Mr. Osborne on either side of her, smiling at
+Clavering.  "I am sorry I do not know any young ladies," she said
+graciously, although there was a twinkle in her eye.  "You look rather
+lonesome."
+
+"Why should he?" growled Dinwiddie.  "He is young and you are young.  The
+rest of us are the ones to feel out of it."
+
+"Not a bit of it!  Not a bit of it!" exclaimed Judge Trent.  "You forget
+that Madame Zattiany has lived in Europe since infancy.  She's talked to
+elderly statesmen all her life."
+
+"Well, we're not statesmen, the lord knows."  Dinwiddie could always be
+relied on to make the obvious retort, thought Clavering, although it must
+be admitted that he was seldom with none at all.  "But you must have seen
+more young men than old during the war, Madame Zattiany.  I understand
+that Mary turned her palace in Buda Pesth into a hospital and that you
+were her chief assistant."
+
+"That is quite true, and I had by no means confined myself before that to
+elderly statesmen; but I had almost forgotten what a young man on his
+feet looked like before the war finished.  Or Society, for that matter.
+My one temptation to enter Society here would be the hope of forming a
+relief organization--drive, do you call it?--for the starving children of
+Austria.  Russian children are not the only pitiable objects in Europe,
+and after all, the children of civilized countries are of more value to
+the future of the world."
+
+"Another drive!" Judge Trent groaned.  "New York flees to cover at the
+word.  Enter Society by all means, but to give your youth its rights.
+You have been deprived of them too long."
+
+"I shall never feel as young as that again.  Nor will any girl who was
+merely sixteen at the beginning of the war ever be the same as your
+care-free young ladies here.  I sit in the restaurants and watch them
+with amazement--often with anger.  What right have they . . .
+however . . . as for myself I shall not reenter the world for any but the
+object I have just mentioned.  Luncheons!  Dinners!  Balls!  I was
+surfeited before the war.  And I have forgotten persiflage, small talk.
+I am told that Americans avoid serious topics in Society.  I, alas, have
+become very serious."
+
+She swept her favored guests with a disarming smile.  They understood.
+There was no sting in her words for them.
+
+Clavering spoke up eagerly.  "Why should you bore yourself with social
+functions?  If you want to raise money for the children I will not only
+start a drive in my column but take you to call on several powerful
+editors--or bring them here," he added hastily at the look of amazement
+in her eyes, "and they will be more than willing to help you.  They have
+only to meet you----"
+
+"That is all very well," interrupted Judge Trent, who, like the other
+elderly gentlemen, was glaring at the famous young columnist who daily
+laid down the law to his admiring readers.  "But to raise money in large
+amounts you've got to have a committee, and no committee is of any
+use--for this sort of thing--without the names of fashionable women who
+are as well known to our democratic public, that daily devours the
+society columns, as the queens of the movies."
+
+"Well--well--I do not know.  I must think.  It is not a step to take
+lightly."
+
+Clavering intercepted a flash between her eyes and Judge Trent's and the
+old gentleman tightened his lips in a self-conscious smirk as he bent
+over his fish.
+
+"Damn him!" thought Clavering.  "He knows the whole truth and is laughing
+at us in his sleeve."
+
+Madame Zattiany had turned the subject gracefully to European politics,
+and he watched her with a detached air.  Trent's attitude toward her
+amused him.  It was more deferential and admiring than infatuated. . . .
+Whatever her charm, she was no longer in her first youth, and only unripe
+fruit could sting that senescent palate.  But the other two!  Clavering
+smiled sardonically.  Dinwiddie, hanging on her every word, was hardly
+eating.  He was a very handsome man, in spite of his shining pate and
+heavy white moustache.  His features were fine and regular, his eyes, if
+rather prominent, were clear and blue, his skin clean, and his figure but
+little amplified.  He was only sixty-two.
+
+Osborne, who looked barely fifty, was personable and clever enough to
+attract any woman.  He, too, was astonishingly indifferent to the
+excellent dinner, and both these gentlemen had reached an age, where, if
+wary of excess for reasons of vanity and interior comfort, they derived
+their sincerest enjoyment at the table.
+
+That she possessed sex magnetism in a superlative degree in spite of her
+deliberate aloofness, Clavering had, of course, been conscious from the
+first.  Had not every male first-nighter been conscious of it?  There was
+a surfeit of beauty in New York.  A stranger, even if invested with
+mystery, must possess the one irresistible magnet, combined with some
+unusual quality of looks, to capture and hold the interest of weary New
+Yorkers as she had done.  Even the dramatic critics, who looked as if
+they hated everybody, had been seen to gaze upon her with rare approval.
+
+But tonight Clavering had a glimpse of something more than a magnetism
+for which she was not responsible and to which she had seemed singularly
+indifferent.  It was quite evident that he was watching charm in action.
+She was sparkling and exerting herself, talking brilliantly and
+illuminatingly upon the chaos still known as Europe, and it was patent
+that her knowledge was not derived from newspapers or drawing-room
+gossip.  Her personal acquaintance of public men had evidently been
+extensive before the war, and she had as manifestly continued to see
+those in and out of office in Vienna and Buda Pesth throughout all the
+later fluctuations.  Her detestation of the old German militaristic party
+was unmitigated and she spoke of the late ruler of the Dual Empire and of
+his yearning heir with no respect whatever.  With other intelligent
+people she believed Bolshevism to be an inevitable phase in a country as
+backward and ignorant as Russia, but, to his surprise, she regarded the
+Republican ideal of government as the highest that had yet been evolved
+from finite minds, still far from their last and highest stages of
+development.  She believed that the only hope of the present civilization
+was to avert at any cost the successful rise of the proletariat to power
+until the governing and employing classes had learned sufficient wisdom
+to conciliate it and treat it with the same impartial justice they now
+reserved for themselves.  ("And to educate themselves along the lines
+laid down in 'The Mind in the Making,'" interpolated Clavering.)
+Otherwise any victory the masses might achieve would be followed by the
+same hideous results as in Russia--in other words, the same results that
+had followed all servile uprisings since the dawn of history.  When the
+underdog, who has never felt anything but an underdog, with all the
+misery and black injustice the word implies, finds himself on top he will
+inevitably torture and murder his former oppressors.  He hasn't the
+intelligence to foresee the ultimate folly of his acts, or that the only
+hope of the world is equal justice for all classes; he merely gratifies
+his primitive instinct for vengeance--precisely the same today, as during
+the first servile uprising of Rome--he butchers and slaughters and
+wrecks, and then sinks with his own weight, while what brains are left
+reconstruct civilization out of the ruins.  "The trouble is that the
+reconstructing brains are never quite good enough, and after a time it is
+all to do over again. . . ."
+
+This was by no means a monologue, but evoked in the give and take of
+argument with Mr. Osborne, who believed in never yielding an inch to the
+demands of labor, and with Mr. Dinwiddie, who, since his association with
+the Sophisticates, was looking forward vaguely toward some idealistic
+regeneration of the social order, although Socialism was rather out of
+date among them, and Bolshevism long since relegated to the attic.
+
+But Clavering was not particularly interested in her political views,
+sound as they were.  Foreign women of her class, if not as liberal,
+always talked intelligently of politics.  What interested him keenly was
+her deliberate, her quite conscious attempt to enslave the two men beside
+her, and her complete success.  Occasionally she threw him a word, and
+once he fancied she favored him with a glance of secret amused
+understanding, but he was thankful to be on the outer edge of that
+glamorous crescent.  It was enough to watch at a comparatively safe
+distance.  Would his turn come next, or was she merely bent on so
+befuddling these old chaps that there would be no place left in their
+enraptured minds for suspicion or criticism?  No doubt he was too rank an
+outsider. . . .  She shot him another glance. . . .  Was his to be the
+rôle of the sympathetic friend?
+
+Then she began to draw Dinwiddie and Osborne out, and it struck him that
+her attitude was not merely that of the accomplished hostess.  They both
+talked well, they were intelligent and well-informed, and he was himself
+interested in what they had to say on the subject of national politics.
+(The Judge, who had an unimpaired digestion, was attending strictly to
+his champagne and his dinner.)  There was something of anxiety, almost of
+wistfulness, in her expression as she listened to one or the other doing
+his admirable best to entertain her.  They had the charm of crisp
+well-modulated voices, these two men of her own class; she had met no
+better-bred men in Europe; and their air was as gallant as it had been in
+their youth.  He had a fleeting vision of what gay dogs they must have
+been.  Neither had married, but they had been ardent lovers once and
+aging women still spoke of them with tender amusement.  And yet only the
+shell had changed.  They had led decent enough lives and no doubt could
+fall honestly and romantically in love today.  In fact, they appeared to
+be demonstrating the possibility, with the eternal ingenuousness of the
+male.  And yet nature had played them this scurvy trick.  The young heart
+in the old shell.  Grown-up boys with a foot in the grave.  Dependent
+upon mind and address alone to win a woman's regard, while the woman
+dreamed of the man with a thick thatch over his brains and the responsive
+magnetism of her own years.  Poor old fighting-cocks!  What a jade nature
+was . . . or was it merely the tyranny of an Idea, carefully inculcated
+at the nativity of the social group, with other arbitrary laws, in behalf
+of the race?  The fetish of the body.  Stark materialism. . . .  However,
+it was not as hard on them as on women outgrown their primary function.
+Theirs at least the privilege of approach; and their deathless masculine
+conceit--when all was said, Nature's supreme gift of compensation--never
+faltered.
+
+It crossed Clavering's mind that she was experimenting on her own
+account, not merely bewildering and enthralling these estimable gentlemen
+of her mother's generation.  But why?  Joining casually in the
+conversation, or quite withdrawn, he watched her with increasing and now
+quite impersonal interest.  He almost fancied she was making an effort to
+be something more than the polite and amiable hostess, that she was
+deliberately striving to see them as men who had a perfect right to
+fascinate a woman of her age and loveliness.  Well, it had happened
+before.  Elderly men of charm and character had won and kept women fully
+thirty years their junior.  Possibly she belonged to that distinguished
+minority who refused to be enslaved by the Ancient Idea, that iron code
+devised by fore-thinking men when Earth was young and scantily
+peopled. . . .  Still--why this curious eagerness, this--it was
+indecipherable . . . no doubt his lively imagination was playing him
+tricks.  Probably she was merely sympathetic. . . .  And then, toward the
+end of the dinner, her manner changed, although too subtly for any but
+the detached observer to notice it.  To Clavering she seemed to go dead
+under her still animated face.  He saw her eyes wander from Dinwiddie's
+bald head to Osborne's flattened cheek . . . her lip curled, a look of
+fierce contempt flashed in her eyes before she hastily lowered the
+lids. . . .  He fancied she was glad to rise from the table.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+"Well?" he asked, as he and Dinwiddie were walking away from the house;
+Osborne had driven off with Judge Trent.  "Do you still think her a
+base impostor?"
+
+"Don't know what I think and don't much care.  She can pack me in her
+trunk, as we boys used to say.  She's a great lady and a charming
+woman; as little doubt about the first as the last.  She's like Mary
+Ogden and she isn't.  I suppose she might be merely a member of the
+same family--with several thousand ancestors where types must have
+reappeared again and again.  If she wants New York Society, especially
+if she wants money for those starving children, I'll go the limit.  But
+I'm going to find out about her all the same.  I'll hunt up Harry
+Thornhill tomorrow--he's a recluse but he'll see me--and I'll get on
+the track of some Hungarian refugee.  She can't be the usual rank
+impostor, that's positive.  She has the same blood as Mary in her
+veins, and if she's Mary's daughter and wishes to keep it dark, that's
+her business.  I'll never give her away."
+
+"Well, good luck.  Glad it went off so well."
+
+They parted at the door of Mr. Dinwiddie's rooms and Clavering walked
+slowly home in an extremely thoughtful mood.  He felt an uneasy
+distrust of the Countess Josef Zattiany, and he was not even sure that
+he liked her.
+
+On the following Monday night, however, he was by no means averse from
+making a notable personal score.  As Abbott, a dramatic critic, who
+happened to sit next to Madame Zattiany, made his usual hurried exit at
+the falling of the first curtain Clavering slipped into the vacant
+chair.  She smiled a welcome, but it was impossible to talk in the
+noise.  This was a great first-night.  One of the leading actresses of
+America had returned in an excellent play, and her admirers, who
+appeared to be a unit, were clapping and stamping and shouting:
+handkerchiefs fluttered all over the house.  When the curtain descended
+after the fifteenth recall and the lights went up and demonstration
+gave place to excited chatter, Madame Zattiany held out her hand toward
+Clavering.
+
+"See!  I have split my glove.  I caught the enthusiasm.  How
+generous your people are!  I never heard such whole-souled,
+such--ah--unself-conscious response."
+
+"Oh, we like to let go sometimes and the theatre is a safe place.  One
+of the best things that can be said for New York, by the way, is its
+loyalty to two or three actresses no longer young.  The whole country
+has gone crazy over youth.  The most astonishingly bad books create a
+furore because from end to end they glorify post-war youth at its
+worst, and the stage is almost as bad.  But New Yorkers are too old and
+wise in the theatre not to have a very deep appreciation of its art,
+and they will render tribute to old favorites as long as they produce
+good plays."
+
+"But that is very fine. . . .  I go to the matinee a good deal and I am
+often very bored.  And I have been reading your current novels with the
+desire to learn as well as to be amused.  I wish so much to understand
+the country in which I was born.  I have received much illumination!
+It is quite remarkable how well most of your authors write--but merely
+well, that is.  So few have individuality of style.  And even in the
+best authors I find nearly all of the heroines too young.  I had read
+many American novels before the war--they came to us in Tauchnitz--and
+even then I found this quite remarkable preoccupation with youth."
+
+"Well--youth is a beautiful thing--is it not?"  He smiled into her own
+beautiful face.  "But, if you will notice, many of our novelists,
+capable of real psychology, carry their heroines over into their second
+youth, and you can almost hear their sigh of relief when they get them
+there."
+
+"Yes, but they are still behind the European novelists, who find women
+interesting at any age, and their intelligent readers agree with them.
+Young women have little psychology.  They are too fluid."
+
+"Quite right.  But I am afraid we are too young a country to tolerate
+middle-aged heroines.  We are steeped in conventionalism, for all our
+fads.  We have certain cast-iron formulae for life, and associate love
+with youth alone.  I think we have a vague idea that autumnal love is
+rather indecent."
+
+"And you--yourself?" She looked at him speculatively.  "Are you too
+obsessed?"
+
+"I?  Good lord, no.  I was in love with a woman of forty when I was
+seventeen."
+
+His eyes were glowing into hers and she demanded abruptly: "Do you
+think I am forty?"
+
+"Rather not!"
+
+"Well, I am young," she said with a deep sigh of content.  "But look!
+I see nothing, but I see everything."
+
+Clavering glanced about him.  Every neck in the boxes and neighboring
+seats was craned.  It was evident that the people in front--and no
+doubt behind--were listening intently, although they could have caught
+no more than an occasional word of the murmured conversation.  Eyes
+across the aisle, when not distended with surprise, glared at him.  He
+laughed softly.
+
+"I am the best hated man in New York tonight."  Then he asked abruptly:
+"If you wish to avoid fashionable society why not see something of
+this?  It would be quite a new experience and vary the monotony of
+books and plays."
+
+"I may--some time, if you will kindly arrange it.  But I am not a
+stranger to the cognoscenti.  In London, of course, they are received,
+sought after.  In Paris not so much, but one still meets them.--the
+most distinguished.  In Berlin the men might go to court but not the
+women.  In Vienna--well, genius will not give quarterings.  But alas!
+so many gifted people seem to come out of the bourgeoisie, or lower
+down still--whether they are received or not depends largely on their
+table manners."
+
+"Oh, I assure you, our cognoscenti have very good table manners indeed!"
+
+"I am sure of it," she said graciously.  "I have an idea that American
+table manners are the best in the world.  Is it true that one never
+sees toothpicks on the table here?"
+
+"Good lord, yes!"
+
+"Well, you see them on every aristocratic table in Europe, royalty not
+excepted."
+
+"One more reason for revolution----  Oh!  Hang it!"
+
+The lights had gone out.  Clavering half rose, then settled himself
+back and folded his arms.  A man stood over him.  "Just take my seat,
+Billy, will you?" he asked casually of the eminent critic.  "It's only
+two back."
+
+The eminent critic gave him a look of hate, emitted a noise that
+resembled a hiss, hesitated long enough to suggest violence, then with
+the air of a bloodhound with his tail between his legs, slunk up the
+aisle.
+
+"Will you tell me how you always manage to get one of these prize
+seats?" asked Clavering at the fall of the second curtain.  "Nothing in
+New York is more difficult of attainment than a good seat--any
+seat--for a first-night.  All these people, including myself, have a
+pull of some sort--know the author, star, manager.  Many of us receive
+notifications long in advance."
+
+"Judge Trent has a pull, as you call it."
+
+"That explains it.  There has been almost as much speculation on that
+point as about your own mysterious self.  Well, this time I suppose I
+must.  But I'm coming back."
+
+He gave Mr. Dinwiddie his seat and went out for a cigarette.  The foyer
+was full of people and he was surrounded at once.  Who was she?  Where
+had he met her?  Dog that he was to keep her to himself!  Traitor!  He
+satisfied their curiosity briefly.  He happened to know Judge Trent,
+who was her trustee.  His acquaintance with the lady was only a week
+old.  Well, he hadn't thought to mention it to such friends as he had
+happened to meet.  Been too busy digging up matter for that infernal
+column.  Yes, he thought he could manage to introduce them to her
+later.  She had brought no letters and as she was a Virginian by birth
+and had gone abroad in her childhood and married a foreigner as soon as
+she grew up she knew practically no one in New York and didn't seem to
+wish to know any one.  But he fancied she was getting rather bored.
+She had been here for a month--resting--before she even went to the
+theatre.  Oh, yes, she could be quite animated.  Was interested in
+everything one would expect of a woman of her intelligence.  But the
+war had tired her out.  She had seen no one but Judge Trent until the
+past week. . . .
+
+He kept one eye on the still resentful Abbott, who refused to enhance
+his triumph by joining his temporary court, and slipped away before the
+beginning of the last act.  Dinwiddie resigned his seat with a sigh but
+looked flushed and happy.
+
+"Poor old codger," thought Clavering as he received a welcoming smile,
+and then he told her of the excitement in the foyer.
+
+"But that is amusing!" she said.  "How naïve people are after all, even
+in a great city like New York."
+
+"Oh, people as active mentally as this crowd never grow blasé, however
+they may affect it.  But surely you had your triumphs in Europe."
+
+"Oh, yes.  Once an entire house--it was at the opera--rose as I entered
+my box at the end of the first act.  But that was a thousand years
+ago--like everything else before the war."
+
+"That must be an experience a woman never forgets."
+
+"It is sometimes sad to remember it."
+
+"Dinwiddie tells me that your cousin, who was Mary Ogden, once had a
+similar experience.  It certainly must be a sad memory for her."
+
+"Yes, Mary was one of the great beauties of Europe in her day--and of a
+fascination!  Men went mad over her--but mad!  She took growing old
+very hard.  Her husband was handsome and attractive, but--well,
+fortunately he preferred other women, and was soon too indifferent to
+Mary to be jealous.  He was the sort of man no woman could hold, but
+Mary soon cared as little about him.  And she had her consolations!
+She could pick and choose.  It was a sad day for Mary when men left her
+for younger women."
+
+"But I thought that European men were not such blind worshippers of
+youth as we are?"
+
+"Yes, within reason.  Mary was too intellectual, too brilliant, too
+well-informed on every subject that is discussed in salons, not to
+attract men always.  But with a difference!  Quite elderly women in
+Europe have _liaisons_, but alas! they can no longer send men off their
+heads.  It is technique meeting technique, intellectual companionship,
+blowing on old ashes--or creating passion with the imagination.  Life
+is very sad for the women who have made a cult of men, and the cult of
+men is the European woman's supreme achievement."
+
+The delayed curtain rose and the house was silent.  First-nighters,
+unlike less distinguished audiences, never disgrace themselves by
+whispering and chattering while the actors are on the stage.
+
+At the end of this, the last act, while the audience, now on their
+feet, were wildly applauding and fairly howling for the author of "the
+first authentic success of the season," Clavering and Madame Zattiany
+went swiftly up the aisle.  A few others also hastened out, less
+interested in authors than in taxi-cabs.
+
+He handed her into her car and she invited him to enter and return with
+her for a sandwich and a whiskey-and-soda.  He hesitated a moment.
+"I'll go with pleasure," he said.  "But I think I'll walk.
+It--it--would be better."
+
+"Oh!"  A curious expression that for the second it lasted seemed to
+banish both youth and loveliness spread even to her nostrils.  Sardonic
+amusement hardly described it.  Then it vanished and she said sweetly:
+"You are very considerate.  I shall expect you."
+
+He did not walk.  He took a taxi.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+She opened the door as he ran up the steps.  "I never ask my servants
+to sit up," she said.  "Judge Trent warned me that the American servant
+is as difficult to keep as to get and must be humored.  When I think of
+the wages I pay these pampered creatures and the amount of food they
+consume, and then of my half-starved friends in Austria, it makes me
+sick--sick!"
+
+There being no reply to the axiomatic truth involved in these words,
+Clavering followed her silently into the library.  The log fire was
+still burning and he hastily replenished it.  They took their little
+supper standing and then seated themselves in easy chairs on either
+side of the hearth.
+
+"Why don't you bring over your own servants?" he asked.  "Time and
+democracy might ruin them, but meanwhile you would have comfort.
+Surely you brought your maid?"
+
+"I've had no maid until now since the beginning of the war.  I rarely
+left the hospital.  Heaven knows where my other servants are.  The
+young men were mobilized and those that returned alive were either
+killed in the revolution or turned revolutionists themselves.  No doubt
+the new government would have turned Mary's palace in Buda Pesth into a
+tenement house if it had not still been a hospital.  We left during the
+revolution and lived in Vienna.  Servants with the virus of Bolshevism
+in their veins would be worse than these."
+
+"Were you ever in danger?"
+
+"Oh, many times," she said indifferently.  "Who was not?"
+
+"Was that what broke your cousin down?"
+
+"That and the hard work in Vienna trying to relieve the distress--while
+half-starved herself.  Of course we had almost no money until the
+United States Government restored our properties."
+
+"Will she join you here when she is well?"
+
+"No, Mary Zattiany will never be seen again."
+
+"Ah?  As bad as that?  Her friends will be distressed.  I understand
+they saw her abroad from time to time before the war--particularly Mrs.
+Oglethorpe.  That old set is very loyal."
+
+"Loyal!  Oh, yes.  They are loyal.  Mrs. Oglethorpe was ready to give
+me over to the police.  She seemed to think that I had murdered
+Mary--no doubt during the revolution, when it would have been quite
+easy.  And she seemed to resent quite bitterly my resemblance to Mary
+in her youth--as if I had committed a theft."
+
+"Probably it made her feel her age.  I wonder you saw her."
+
+"I was coming down the stairs as she crossed the hall.  Be sure I would
+not have seen her if I could have avoided it."
+
+"Why?"  He left his seat restlessly and leaned against the mantelshelf.
+"That sounds impertinent.  All my questions have been impertinent, I am
+afraid.  But--I should warn you--I gather that both Mr. Dinwiddie and
+Mrs. Oglethorpe think there is something wrong--that is, unexplained."
+
+"Really?"  She looked intensely amused.  "But that is interesting.  Of
+course I knew of Mr. Dinwiddie's curiosity from Judge Trent--but I
+rather thought----"
+
+"Oh, yes, you have floored him completely.  But I fancy he's more
+curious than ever.  I--I--wish you would confide in me.  I might be
+better able to defend you if the necessity arose."
+
+"Don't you believe I am what I represent myself to be?"
+
+"It is a terrible thing to say to a woman like you, but----"
+
+He expected her to rise in her majesty and order him to leave the
+house, but she merely smiled again and said:
+
+"You forget Judge Trent.  Do you think if I were an impostor he would
+vouch for me?"
+
+"I believe you could make any man believe what you wished him to
+believe."
+
+"Except yourself."
+
+"Remember that a newspaper man----  However, I'll speak only for
+myself."  He thrust his hands into his pockets and tried to summon his
+saturnine expression, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that he
+looked merely wistful and boyish and that this highly accomplished
+woman of the world was laughing at him.  "For my own sake I want to
+know," he blurted out.  "I haven't an idea why I suspect you, and it is
+possible that you are what you say you are.  Certainly you are far too
+clever not to have an alibi it would be difficult to puncture.  But I
+_sensed_ something that first night . . . something beyond the fact
+that you were a European and did a curious thing--which, however, I
+understood immediately. . . .  It was something more. . . .  I don't
+think I can put it into words . . . you were there, and yet you were
+not there . . . somebody else seemed to be looking out of your
+eyes . . . even when Dinwiddie thought he had explained the
+matter. . . ."
+
+"You mean when he assumed that I was the illegitimate daughter of Mary
+Zattiany.  Poor Mary!  She always wanted a daughter--that is, when her
+own youth was over.  That is the reason she was so fond of me.  Do you
+think I am Mary's bastard?"
+
+"I did--I don't now. . . .  I don't know what to think. . . .  I have
+never lost that first impression--wholly."
+
+She stirred slightly.  Was it a movement of uneasiness?  He was
+horribly embarrassed, but determined to hold his ground, and he kept
+his eyes on her face, which retained its expression of mocking
+amusement.
+
+"But you think I am an adventuress of some sort."
+
+"The word does not apply to you.  There is no question that you are a
+great lady."
+
+"Of course I might be an actress," she said coolly.  "I may have been
+on the stage in Vienna when the war broke out, become accidentally
+associated with Countess Zattiany, won her confidence, owing to the
+extraordinary resemblance--our blood may have met and mingled in
+Cro-Magnon days--stolen her papers, led her to talk of her youth--of
+course every one knew Countess Zattiany's record in European
+Society--forged her power of attorney with the aid of an infatuated
+clerk, poisoned her--and here I am!"
+
+He laughed.  "Bully plot for the movies.  That is a new angle, as they
+say.  I hadn't thought of it.  And a good actress can put over
+anything.  I once heard a movie queen, who was the best young
+aristocrat, in looks and manner, I ever saw on the screen, say to her
+director--repeating a telephone conversation--'I says and he says and
+then I seen he hadn't heard me.'"
+
+For the first time since he had known her she threw back her head and
+laughed heartily.  Even her eyes looked young and her laugh was musical
+and thrilling.
+
+Then she demanded: "And do you think I am an actress--who got an
+education somehow?"
+
+"I think you are an actress, but not that sort.  Your imaginative
+flight leaves me cold."
+
+"Perhaps you think I had Mary's personality transferred and that it
+exists side by side with my own here in this accidental shell.  There
+are great scientists in Vienna."
+
+"Ah!"  He looked at her sharply.  "Button, button--I feel a sensation
+of warmth somewhere."
+
+She laughed again, but her eyes contracted and almost closed.  "I fear
+you are a very romantic young man as well as a very curious one."
+
+"I deserved that.  Well, I am curious.  But not so curious
+as--interested."
+
+"I hope you are not falling in love with me."  Her deep voice had risen
+to a higher register and was light and gay.
+
+"I am half in love with you.  I don't know what is going to happen----"
+
+"And you want to protect yourself by disenchantment?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"And you think it is my duty . . ."
+
+"Possibly I'd fall in love with you anyway, but I'd like to know where
+I stand.  I have a constitutional hatred of mystery outside of fiction
+and the drama."
+
+"Ah."  She gazed into the fire.  "Mr. Dinwiddie, no doubt, is making
+investigations.  If he verified my story, would you still disbelieve?"
+
+"I should know there was something back of it all."
+
+"You must have been a good reporter."
+
+"One of the best."
+
+"I suppose it is that."
+
+"Partly.  I don't think that if you were not just what you are I'd care
+a hang.  Other people's affairs don't excite me.  I've outgrown mere
+inquisitiveness."
+
+"That is rather beside the point, isn't it?  It all comes back to
+this--that you are afraid of falling in love with me."
+
+"You don't look as if it would do me any good if I did."
+
+"Why not let it go at that?"
+
+"I think the best thing I can do is to get out altogether."
+
+She rose swiftly and came close to him.  "Oh, no!  I am not going to
+let you go.  You are the only person on this continent who interests
+me.  I shall have your friendship.  And you must admit that I have done
+nothing----"
+
+"Oh, no, you have done nothing.  You've only to be."  He wondered that
+he felt no desire to touch her.  She looked lovely and appealing and
+very young.  But she radiated power, and that chin could not melt.
+
+He asked abruptly: "How many men have you had in love with you?"
+
+"Oh!"  She spread out her hands vaguely.  "How can one remember?"  And
+that look he most disliked, that look of ancient wisdom, disillusioned
+and contemptuous, came into her eyes.
+
+"You are too young to have had so very many.  And the war took a good
+slice out of your life.  I don't suppose you were infatuating
+smashed-up men or even doctors and surgeons."
+
+"Certainly not.  But, when one marries young--and one begins to live
+early in Europe."
+
+"How often have you loved, yourself?"
+
+"That question I could answer specifically, but I shall not."
+
+He calculated rapidly.  "Four years of war.  Assuming that you are
+thirty-two, although sometimes you look older and sometimes younger,
+and that you married at seventeen, that would leave you--well, eleven
+years before the war began.  I suppose you didn't fall in love once a
+year?"
+
+"Oh, no, I am a faithful soul.  Say three years and a third to each
+attack."
+
+"You talk at times singularly like an American for one who left here at
+the age of two."
+
+"Remember that my family went with me.  Moreover, Mary and I always
+talked English together--American if you like.  She was intensely proud
+of being an American.  We read all the American novels, as I told you.
+They are an education in the idiom, permanent and passing.  Moreover, I
+was always meeting Americans."
+
+"Were you?  Well, the greater number of them must be in New York at the
+present moment.  No doubt they would be glad to relieve your
+loneliness."
+
+"I am not in the least lonely and I have not the least desire to see
+any of them.  Only one thing would induce me--if I thought it would be
+possible to raise a large amount of money for the women and children of
+Austria."
+
+"Ah!  You would take the risk, then?"
+
+"Risk?  They were the most casual acquaintances.  They probably have
+forgotten me long since.  I had not left Hungary for a year before the
+war, and one rarely meets an American in Pesth Society--two or three
+other American women had married Hungarians, but they preferred Vienna
+and I preferred Europeans.  I knew them only slightly. . . .  Moreover,
+there are many Zattianys.  It is an immense connection."
+
+"You mean you believe you would be safe," he caught her up.
+
+"_Mon dieu_!  You make me feel as if I were on the stand.  But yes,
+quite safe."
+
+"And you really believe that any one could ever forget you?"
+
+"I am not as vain as you seem to think."
+
+"You have every right to be.  Suppose--suppose that something should
+occur to rouse the suspicions of the Countess Zattiany's old friends
+and they should start investigations in Vienna?"
+
+"They would not see her--nor their emissaries.  Dr. Steinach's
+sanitarium is inviolate."
+
+"Steinach--Steinach--where have I heard that name lately?"
+
+Her eyes flew open, but she lowered the lids immediately.  Her voice
+shook slightly as she replied:  "He is a very great doctor.  He will
+keep poor Mary's secret as long as she lives and nobody in Vienna would
+doubt his word.  Investigations would be useless."
+
+"She is there then?  I suppose you mean that she is dying of an
+incurable disease or has lost her mind.  But do not imagine that I care
+to pry further into that.  I never had the least idea that you had----
+Oh, I don't know what to believe! . . .  Won't you ever tell me?"
+
+"I wonder!  No, I think not!  No!  No!"
+
+"There is something then?"
+
+"Do you know why you still harp on that absurd idea that I am what I am
+and still am not?  Do you not know what it is--the simple explanation?"
+
+"No, I do not."
+
+"It is merely that European women, the women who have been raised in
+the intrigues of courts and the artificialities of what we call 'the
+World,' who learn the technique of gallantry as soon as they are
+_lancée_, where men make a definite cult of women and women of men,
+where sincerity in such an atmosphere is more baffling than subtlety
+and guile--that is the reason your American girl is never understood by
+foreign men--where naturalness is despised as gauche and art commands
+homage, where, in short, the game is everything--that most aristocratic
+and enthralling of all games--the game of chess, with men and women as
+kings, queens, pawns. . . .  There you have the whole explanation of my
+apparent riddle.  You have never met any one like me before."
+
+"There are a good many women of your class here now."
+
+"Yes, with avowed objects, is it not?  And they do not happen to
+possess the combination of qualities that commands your interest."
+
+"That is true enough.  Perhaps your explanation is the real one.  There
+is certainly something in it.  Well, I'll go now.  I have kept you up
+long enough."
+
+He was about to raise her hand to his lips when she surprised him by
+shaking his warmly.
+
+"I must get over that habit.  It is rather absurd in this country where
+you have not the custom.  But you will come again?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I'll come again."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Madame Zattiany adjusted the chain on the front door and returned very
+slowly to the library.  That broad placid brow, not the least of her
+physical charms, was drawn in a puzzled frown.  Instead of turning out
+the lights she sat down and stared into the dying fire.  Suddenly she
+began to laugh, a laugh of intense and ironic amusement; but it stopped
+in mid-course and her eyes expanded with an expression of
+consternation, almost of panic.
+
+She was not alarmed for the peace of mind of the man who was more in
+love with her than he had so far admitted to himself.  She had been
+loved by too many men and had regarded their heartaches and balked
+desires with too profound an indifference to worry over the possible
+harm she might be inflicting upon the brilliant and ambitious young man
+who had precipitated himself into her life.  That might come later, but
+not at this moment when she was shaken and appalled.
+
+She had dismissed from her mind long ago the hope or the desire that
+she could ever again feel anything but a keen mental response to the
+most provocative of men.  No woman had ever lived who was more
+completely disillusioned, more satiated, more scornful of that age-old
+dream of human happiness, which, stripped to its bones, was merely the
+blind instinct of the race to survive.  Civilization had heaped its
+fictions over the bare fact of nature's original purpose, imagination
+lashing generic sexual impulse to impossible demands for the consummate
+union of mind and soul and body.  Mutuality!  When man was essentially
+polygamous and woman essentially the vehicle of the race.  When the
+individual soul had been decreed by the embittered gods eternally to
+dwell alone and never yet had been tricked beyond the moment of nervous
+exaltation into the belief that it had fused into its mate.  Life
+itself was futile enough, but that dream of the perfect love between
+two beings immemorially paired was the most futile and ravaging of all
+the dreams civilization had imposed upon mankind.  The curse of
+imagination.  Only the savages and the ignorant masses understood
+"love" for the transitory functional thing it was and were undisturbed
+by spiritual unrest . . . by dreams . . . mad longings. . . .
+
+No one had ever surrendered to the illusion more completely than she.
+No one had ever hunted with a more passionate determination for that
+correlative soul that would submerge, exalt, and complete her own
+aspiring soul.  And what had she found?  Men.  Merely men.  Satiety or
+disaster.  Weariness and disgust.  She had not an illusion left.  She
+had put all that behind her long since.
+
+It seemed to her as she sat there staring into the last flickerings of
+the charred log that it had been countless years since any man had had
+the power to send a thrill along her nerves, to stir even the ghost of
+those old fierce desires.  No woman had ever had more cause to feel
+immune.  Too contemptuous of life and the spurious illusions man had
+created for himself, while destroying the even balance between matter
+and mind, even to be rebellious, she had felt a profound gratitude for
+her complete freedom from the thrall of sex when she had realized that
+with her gifts of mind and fortune she still had a work to do in the
+world that would resign her to the supreme boredom of living.  During
+the war man had been but a broken thing to be mended or eased out of
+life; and she knew that there was no better nurse in Europe; it had
+always been her pride to do nothing by halves; and before that she had
+come to look upon men with a certain passive toleration when their
+minds were responsive to her own.  Whatever sex charm they possessed
+might better have been wasted on the Venus in the Louvre.
+
+And tonight she had realized that this young man, so unlike any she had
+ever known in her European experience, had been more or less in her
+thoughts since the night he had followed her out of the theatre and
+stood covertly observing her as she waited for her car.  She had been
+conscious during subsequent nights at the play of his powerful gaze as
+he sat watching for a turn of the head that would give him a glimpse of
+something more than the back of her neck; or as she had passed him on
+her way to her seat.  She had been even more acutely conscious of him
+as he left his own seat while the lights were still down and followed
+her up the aisle.  But she had felt merely amusement at the time,
+possibly a thrill of gratified vanity, accustomed as she was to
+admiration and homage.
+
+But on the night when he had hastened up to her in the deserted street
+and offered his assistance, standing with his hat in his hand and
+looking at her with a boyish and diffident gallantry in amusing
+contrast with his stern and cynical countenance, and she had realized
+that he had impulsively followed her, something had stirred within her
+that she had attributed to a superficial recrudescence of her old love
+of adventure, of her keen desire for novelty at any cost.  Amused at
+both herself and him, she had suddenly decided, while he was effecting
+an entrance to her house, to invite him into the library and take
+advantage of this break in the monotonous life she had decreed should
+be her portion while she remained in New York.
+
+She had found him more personally attractive than she had expected.
+Judge Trent, whom she had deftly drawn out, had told her that he was a
+young man of whom, according to Dinwiddie, great things were expected
+in the literary world; his newspaper career, brilliant as it was, being
+regarded merely as a phase in his progress; he had not yet "found
+himself."  After that she had read his column attentively.
+
+But she had not been prepared for a powerful and sympathetic
+personality, that curious mixture of naïveté and hard sophistication,
+and she had ascribed her interest in him to curiosity in exploring what
+to her was a completely foreign type.  In her own naïveté it had never
+occurred to her that men outside her class were gentlemen as she
+understood the term, and she still supposed Clavering to be exceptional
+owing to his birth and breeding.  It had given her a distinct
+satisfaction, the night of the dinner, to observe that he lost nothing
+by contact with men who were indubitably of her own world.  There was
+no snobbery in her attitude.  She had always been too secure in her own
+exalted state for snobbery, too protected from climbers to conceive the
+"I will maintain" impulse, and she had escaped at birth that
+overpowering sense of superiority that carks the souls of high and low
+alike.  But it was the first time she had ever had the opportunity to
+judge by any standards but those in which she had been born and passed
+her life.  As for Clavering, he was a gentleman, and that was the end
+of that phase of the matter as far as she was concerned.
+
+It was only tonight that she had been conscious of a certain youthful
+eagerness as she paced up and down the hall waiting to hear him run up
+the steps.  She had paused once and laughed at herself as she realized
+that she was acting like a girl expecting her lover, when she was
+merely a coldly--no longer even bitterly--disillusioned woman, bored
+with this enforced inaction in New York, welcoming a little adventure
+to distract her mind from its brooding on the misery she had left
+behind her in Europe, and on the future to which she had committed
+herself.  And a midnight adventure!  She had shrugged her shoulders and
+laughed again as she had admitted him.
+
+But she felt no disposition to laugh as she sat alone in the chilling
+room.  She was both angry and appalled to remember that she had felt a
+quivering, almost a distension of her nerves as she had sat there with
+him in the silence and solitude of the night.  That she had felt a warm
+pleasure in the interest that betrayed him into positive impertinence,
+and that a sick terror had shaken her when she saw that he was making
+up his mind not to see her again.  She had not betrayed herself for a
+moment, she was too old a hand in the game of men and women for that,
+and she had let him go without a sign, secure in the confidence that he
+was at her beck; but she knew now, and her hands clenched and her face
+distorted as she admitted it, that if he had suddenly snatched her in
+his arms she would have flamed into passion and felt herself the
+incarnation of youth and love.
+
+Incredible.  Unthinkable.  She!
+
+What should she do?  Flee?  She had come to New York for one purpose
+only, to settle her financial affairs in the briefest possible time and
+return to the country where her work lay.  But she had been detained
+beyond expectation, for the slow reorganization of one of the companies
+in which a large portion of her fortune was invested would not be
+complete without her final signature.  There were other important
+transfers to be made, and moreover Judge Trent had insisted that she
+become thoroughly acquainted with her business affairs and able to
+maintain an intelligent correspondence with her trustees when he
+himself had retired.  She had shown a remarkable aptitude for finance
+and he was merciless in his insistence, demanding an hour of her time
+every day.
+
+Business.  She hated the word.  What did it matter----  But she knew
+that it did matter, and supremely.  She might have the beauty, the
+brains, and the sex domination to win men to her way of thinking when
+she launched herself into the maelstrom of politics, but she was well
+aware that her large fortune would be half the battle.  It furnished
+the halo and the sinews, and it gave her the power to buy men who could
+not be persuaded.  She had vowed that Austria should be saved at any
+cost.
+
+No, she could not go now.  She must remain for another month--two
+months, possibly.  She was no longer in that undisciplined stage of
+youth when flight from danger seems the only solution.  To wreck the
+lives of others in order to secure her own peace of mind would make her
+both ridiculous and contemptible in her own eyes, and she had yet to
+despise herself.  She would "stick it out," "see it through," to quote
+the vernacular of these curious American novels she had been reading;
+trusting that she had merely been suffering from a flurry of the
+senses . . . not so remarkable perhaps. . . .
+
+But her mind drifted back to the past month.  Senses?  And if it were
+not that alone, but merely the inevitable accompaniment of far stranger
+processes . . . if it were what she had once so long sought and with
+such disastrous results . . .  She had believed for so many years that
+it existed somewhere, in some man . . . that it was every woman's
+right . . . even if it could not last for ever. . . .  But while it
+lasted!  After all, imagination had its uses.  It helped to prolong as
+well as create. . . .  She sank back and closed her eyes, succumbing to
+an ineffable languor.
+
+It lasted but a moment.  She started up with an exclamation of
+impatience and disgust; and she shivered from head to foot.  The room
+was bitterly cold.  There were only ashes on the hearth.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Clavering turned hot and cold several times during his walk home.  He
+had been atrociously rude, impertinent.  If she hadn't ordered him out
+of the house it must have been because she was a creature of moods, and
+he had merely amused her for the hour.  No doubt she would wake up in a
+proper state of indignation and give her servants orders. . . .
+Or--was she sincere when she demanded his friendship, willing to put up
+with his abominable manners, trusting to her own wit to defeat him,
+lull his suspicions?  Friendship!  The best thing for him to do was to
+avoid her like the plague.  He hated to admit it, but he was afraid of
+her, not so much of falling in love with her and going through tragedy,
+which was probably what it would come to, as of the terrible force so
+skillfully hidden in that white and delicate body, of a powerful
+personality fortified by an unimaginable past.  She gave the impression
+of a woman who had been at grips with life and conquered it, from first
+to last.  Formidable creature!  An extraordinary achievement if true.
+But was it?   Women, no matter how beautiful, wealthy, highly placed
+and powerfully organized, got the worst of it one way or another.  When
+they fell in love they were apt to lose their heads, and with that the
+game.  Technique crumbled.  For a moment he imagined her in love,
+dissolved, helpless; then hastily changed the subject.  He liked women
+to be strong--having long since abandoned his earlier ideal of the
+supine adorant--but not too strong.  Certainly not stronger than
+himself.  He had met a good many "strong" women in the last twelve
+years, swathed, more often than not, in disarming femininity.  A man
+hadn't a chance with them, man's strength as a rule being all on the
+outside.  Women grew up and men didn't.  That was the infernal truth.
+
+For the moment he hated all women and felt not only a cowardly but a
+decidedly boyish impulse to run away.  He'd like to wander . . .
+wander . . . lie out in the woods and dream as he had done in his
+boyhood . . . before he knew too much of life . . . reading Shelley and
+munching chestnuts. . . .  Then he remembered that woods were full of
+snow in winter, and laughed.  Well, he'd go and see Gora Dwight.  She
+was in Washington at the moment, but would be home on Friday.  She was
+a tonic.  Strong if you like, but making no bones about it.  No soft
+feminine seductions there.  She, too, had fought life and conquered, in
+a way, but she showed the scars.  Must have had the devil of a time.
+At all events a man could spend hours in her stimulating company and
+know exactly where he stood.  No damned sex nonsense about her at all.
+He knew barely another woman who didn't trail round to sex sooner or
+later.  Psychoanalysis had relieved them of whatever decent inhibitions
+they might have had in the past.  He hated the subject.  Some day he'd
+let go in his column and tell women in general what he thought of them.
+Remind them that men were their superiors in this at least: they kept
+sex in its proper place and were capable always of more than one idea
+at a time.  So was Gora Dwight.  He believed he'd make a confidante of
+her--to a certain extent.  At all events he'd refresh his soul at that
+tranquil font.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Gora Dwight, after the fashion of other successful authors, had
+recently bought a house.  It was in East Thirty-fifth Street, not far
+from the one at present occupied by Madame Zattiany, but nearer
+Lexington Avenue.  It was one of the old monotonous brownstone houses,
+but with a "southern exposure," and the former owner had removed the
+front steps and remodeled the lower floor.
+
+The dining-room, on the left of the entrance, was a long admirably
+proportioned room, and the large room above, which embraced the entire
+floor, Miss Dwight had converted into a library both sumptuous and
+stately.  She had bought her furniture at auction that it might not
+look too new, and on the longer walls were bookcases seven feet high.
+She had collected a small library before the war; and for the many
+other books, some of them rare and all highly valued by their present
+possessor, she had haunted second-hand bookshops.
+
+The prevailing tone of the room was brown and gold, enlivened
+discreetly with red, and the chairs and lounges were deep and
+comfortable.  A large davenport stood before the fireplace, which had
+been rebuilt for logs.  There was a victrola in one corner, for Miss
+Dwight was amenable if her guests were seized with the desire to jazz,
+and a grand piano stood near the lower windows.  The only evidence of
+sheer femininity was a tea table furnished with old pieces of silver
+she had picked up in France.  The dining-room below was a trifle gayer
+in effect; the walls and curtains were a deep yellow and there were
+always flowers on the table.
+
+New York knew so much about this new literary planet that it took for
+granted there was nothing further to be discovered.  There are always
+San Franciscans in the great city, and when she became famous they were
+obliging with their biographical data.  Life had been hard on her at
+first, for although she came of old Revolutionary stock she grew up in
+poverty and obscurity.  Her father had been a failure, and after the
+death of her parents she had kept a lodging house for business women,
+taking courses at the University of California meanwhile; later she had
+studied nursing and made her mark with physicians and surgeons.  Her
+brother, a good-looking chap with fine manners, but a sort of
+super-moron, had unexpectedly married into the old aristocracy of San
+Francisco, and Gora, through her sister-in-law, the lovely Alexina
+Groome,[1] had seen something of the lighter side of life.  During this
+period she had written a number of short stories that had been
+published in the best magazines, and one novel of distinction that had
+made a "howling success" in San Francisco, owing to the unprecedented
+efforts of the fashionable people led by young Mrs. Mortimer Dwight;
+but had fallen flat in the East in spite of the reviews.  Then had come
+a long intermission when fictionists were of small account in a world
+of awful facts.  She was quite forgotten, for she made not even a
+casual contribution to the magazines; shortly after the war broke out
+she offered her services to England and for long and weary years was
+one of the most valued nurses in the British armies.  At the close of
+the war she had returned to California, intending to write her new
+novel at Lake Tahoe, but finding the season in full swing she had gone
+to some small interior town and written it there.  When it was finished
+she had brought it on to New York and had remained here ever since.
+
+So ended the brief biography, which was elaborated in many articles and
+interviews.
+
+As for the novel, it won her instant fame and a small fortune.  It was
+gloomy, pessimistic, excoriating, merciless, drab, sordid, and
+hideously realistic.  Its people hailed from that plebeian end of the
+vegetable garden devoted to turnips and cabbages.  They possessed all
+the mean vices and weaknesses that detestable humanity has so far
+begotten.  They were all failures and their pitiful aspirations were
+treated with biting irony.  Futile, futile world!
+
+The scene was laid in a small town in California, a microcosm of the
+stupidities of civilization and of the United States of America in
+particular.  The celebrated "atmosphere" of the state was ignored.  The
+town and the types were "American"; it would seem that merely some
+unadmitted tenuous sentiment had set the scene in the state of the
+author's birth, but there the concession ended.  Even the climate was
+treated with the scorn that all old _clichés_ deserved.  (Her
+biographers might have contributed the information that the climate of
+a California interior town in summer is simply infernal.)
+
+Naturally, the book created a furore.  A few years before it would have
+expired at birth, even had a publisher been mad enough to offer it to a
+smug contented world.  But the daily catalogue of the horrors and the
+obscenities of war, the violent dislocations that followed with their
+menaces of panic and revolution that affected the nerves and the
+pockets of the entire commonwealth, the irritable reaction against the
+war itself, knocked romance, optimism, aspiration, idealism, the sane
+and balanced judgment of life, to smithereens.  More _clichés_.  The
+world was rotten to the core and the human race so filthy the wonder
+was that any writer would handle it with tongs.  But they plunged to
+their necks.  The public, whose urges, inhibitions, complexes, were in
+a state of ferment, but inarticulate, found their release in these
+novels and stories and wallowed in them.  The more insulting, the more
+ruthless, the more one-sided the disclosure of their irremediable
+faults and meannesses, the more voluptuous the pleasure.  There had
+been reactions after the Civil War, but on a higher plane.  The
+population had not been maculated by inferior races.
+
+The young editors, critics, special writers were enchanted.  This was
+Life!  At last!  Moreover, it was Democracy.  These young and able men,
+having renounced their earlier socialism, their sense of humor
+recognizing its disharmony with high salaries and pleasant living, were
+hot for Democracy.  Nothing paid like Democracy in this heaving world.
+The Democratic wave rose and roared.  Symbolic was this violent
+eruption of small-town fiction, as realistic as the kitchen, as
+pessimistic as Wall Street.  All virtue, all hope, all idealism, had
+gone out of the world.  Romance, for that matter, never had existed and
+it was high time the stupid world was forcibly purged of its immemorial
+illusion.  Life was and ever had been sordid, commonplace, ignoble,
+vulgar, immedicable; refinement was a cowardly veneer that was beneath
+any seeker after Truth, and Truth was all that mattered.  Love was to
+laugh.  Happiness was hysteria, and content the delusion of morons (a
+word now hotly racing "authentic").  As for those verbal criminals,
+"loyalty" and "patriotism"--_fecit vomitare_.
+
+Their success was colossal.
+
+Gora Dwight caught the crest of the wave and sold three hundred
+thousand copies of "Fools."  She immediately signed a contract with one
+of the "woman's magazines" for the serial rights of her next novel for
+thirty thousand dollars, and received a corresponding advance from her
+publisher.  Her short stories sold for two thousand dollars apiece, and
+her first novel was exhumed and had a heavy sale.
+
+It was difficult to be pessimistic with a hundred thousand dollars in
+bonds and mortgages and the deed of a house in her strong box, but Gora
+Dwight was an artist and could always fall back on technique.  But
+although her book was the intellectual expression of wildly distorted
+complexes, owing to the disillusionments of war, the humiliation of her
+ego in woman's most disastrous adventure, and the consequent repression
+of all her dearest urges, she deserved her success far more than any of
+her adolescent rivals.  She had formed her style in the days of
+complete normalcy, and not only was that style distinguished, vigorous,
+and individual, but she was able to convey her extremest realism so
+subtly and yet so unambiguously that she could afford to disdain the
+latrinities of the "younger school."  A marvellous feat.  Most of them
+used the frank vocabulary of the humble home, as alone synonymous with
+Truth.  Never before had such words invaded the sacrosanct pages of
+American letters.  Little they recked, as Mr. Lee Clavering, who took
+the entire school as an obscene joke, pointed out, that they were but
+taking the shortest cut--advantage of the post-war license affecting
+all classes--to save themselves the exhausting effort of acquiring a
+vocabulary and forming a style.
+
+The spade as a symbol vanished from fiction.
+
+Miss Dwight had her own ideals, little as she permitted her unfortunate
+characters to have any, and not only was she a consummate master of
+words and of the art of suggestion, but she had been brought up by
+finicky parents who held that certain words were not to be used in
+refined society.  The impressions received in plastic years were not to
+be obliterated by any fad of the hour.
+
+No one knew, not even her fellow Californians, that she had had a
+disastrous love affair which had culminated in an attempt to murder her
+beautiful sister-in-law.  Her book had been a wild revulsion from every
+standard of her youth, and she loathed love and the bare idea of mutual
+happiness in fellow mortals as she recently had loathed blood and filth
+and war and Germans.
+
+Success is a great healer.  Moreover, she was a woman of strong and
+indomitable character, and very proud.  She consigned the man, who,
+after all, was the author of her phenomenal success, to nethermost
+oblivion.  You cannot sell three hundred thousand copies of a book,
+receive hundreds of letters from unknown admirers telling you that you
+are the greatest novelist living, see your name constantly in the
+"news," be besieged by editors and publishers, and become a popular
+favorite with Sophisticates, and carry around a lacerated heart.  The
+past fades.  The present reigns.  The future is rosy as the dawn.  Gora
+Dwight was far too arrogant at this period of her career to love any
+man even had there been anything left of her heart but a pump.  Her
+life was full to the brim.  She was quite aware that the present rage
+for stark and dour realism would pass--the indications were to be seen
+in the more moderate but pronounced success of several novels by
+authors impervious to crazes--but she was too fertile for apprehension
+on that score.  She had many and quite different themes wandering like
+luminous ghosts about the corridors of a brain singularly free from
+labyrinths, ready to emerge, full-bodied, when the world was ready for
+them.
+
+The last time Clavering had sat opposite a woman by a log fire both had
+enjoyed the deep luxury of easy chairs and his hostess had seemed to
+melt into the depths until they enfolded her.  But Miss Dwight never
+lounged.  Her backbone appeared to be made of cast-iron.  She sat erect
+today on a hassock while he reclined in a chair that exactly fitted his
+spine and enjoyed contrasting her with the other woman.  Gora Dwight
+had no beauty, but she never passed unnoticed in a crowd, even if
+unrecognized.  Her oval eyes were a pale clear gray, cold, almost
+sinister, and she wore her mass of rich brown hair on top of her head
+and down to her heavy eyebrows.  Her mouth was straight and sharply
+cut, but mobile and capable of relaxing into a charming smile, and she
+had beautiful teeth.  The nose was short and emphatic, the jawbone
+salient.  It was, altogether, a disharmonic type, for the head was long
+and the face short, broad across the high cheekbones; and her large
+light eyes set in her small dark face produced a disconcerting effect
+on sensitive people, but more often fascinated them.  Clavering had
+been told that in her California days she had possessed a superb bust,
+but long years of unremitting work in France and England had taken toll
+of her flesh and it had never returned; she was very thin and the
+squareness of her frame was emphasized by the strong uncompromising
+bones.  But her feet and her brown hands were long and narrow, and the
+straight lines of the present fashion were very becoming to her.  She
+wore today a gown of dark red velvet trimmed with brown fur and a touch
+of gold in the region of the waist.  It was known that she got her
+clothes at the "best houses."
+
+She was a curious mixture, Clavering reflected, and not the least
+contradictory thing about her was the way in which her rather sullen
+face could light up: exactly as if some inner flame leapt suddenly
+behind those uncanny eyes and shed its light over the very muscles of
+her cheeks and under her skin.  The oddest of her traits was her
+apparent pleasure in seeing a man comfortable while she looked like a
+ramrod herself; and she was the easiest of mortals to talk to when she
+was in the right mood.  She was morose at times, but her favorites were
+seldom inflicted with her moods, and of all her favorites Clavering
+reigned supreme.  This he knew and took advantage of after the fashion
+of his sex.  He told her all his troubles, his ambitions, which he
+believed to be futile--he had written plays which his own criticism had
+damned and no eye but his own and Gora Dwight's had ever seen--and she
+refreshed and stimulated his mind when his daily column must be written
+and his brain was stagnant.  She also knew of his secret quest of the
+one woman and had been the repository of several fleeting hopes.  And
+never for a moment had she thought him saturnine or disillusioned.  Not
+she!  Gora Dwight had an extraordinary knowledge of men for a woman to
+whom men did not make love.  But if she had neither beauty nor allure
+she had genius; and a father confessor hardly knows more about women
+than a nurse about men.  Moreover, she had her arts, little as men
+suspected it.  Long ago she had read an appraisement of Madame Récamier
+by Sainte-Beuve: "She listens _avec séduction_."  Gora had no intention
+of practising seduction in any of its forms, but she listened and she
+never betrayed, and her reward was that men sound and whole, and full
+of man's inherent and technical peculiarities, had confided in her.
+Altogether she was well equipped for fiction.
+
+
+
+[1] See the author's "Sisters-in-Law."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+She was listening now as Clavering told her of his adventurous meeting
+with Madame Zattiany, of their subsequent conversations, and of his
+doubts.
+
+"Are you sure she is not playing a part deliberately?" she asked.
+"Having her little fun after those horrible years?  She looks quite
+equal to it, and a personal drama would have its attractions after an
+experience during which a nurse felt about as personal as an amputated
+limb.  And while one is still young and beautiful--what a lark!"
+
+"No.  I don't believe anything of the sort.  I fancy that if she didn't
+happen to be so fond of the theatre she'd have come and gone and none
+of us been the wiser.  Her secret is _sui generis_, whatever it is.
+I've racked my mind in vain.  I don't believe she is the Countess
+Zattiany's daughter, nor a third cousin, nor the Countess Josef
+Zattiany.  I've tried to recall every mystery story I ever read that
+would bear on the case, but I'm as much in the dark as ever."
+
+"And you've thought of nothing else.  Your column has fallen off."
+
+"Do you think that?"  He sat up.  "I've not been too satisfied myself."
+
+"You've been filling up with letters from your correspondents after the
+fashion of more jaded columnists.  Even your comments on them have been
+flat.  And as for your description of that prize fight last night, it
+was about as thrilling as an account of a flower show."
+
+He laughed and dropped back.  "You are as refreshing as a cold shower,
+Gora.  But, after all, even a poor colyumist must be allowed to slump
+occasionally.  However, I'll turn her off hereafter when I sit down to
+my typewriter.  Lord knows a typewriter is no Wagnerian orchestra and
+should be warranted to banish sentiment. . . .  Sentiment is not the
+word, though.  It is plain raging curiosity."
+
+"Oh, no, it is not," said Miss Dwight coolly, lighting another
+cigarette, which she carefully fitted into a pair of small gold tongs:
+neither ink nor nicotine was ever seen on those long aristocratic
+fingers.  "You are in love with her, my child."
+
+"I am not!"
+
+"Oh, yes, you are.  I've never been misled for a moment by your other
+brief rhapsodies--the classic Anne--the demoniac Marian--but you're
+landed high and dry this time.  The mystery may have something to do
+with it, but the woman has far more.  She is the most beautiful
+creature I ever beheld and she looks intelligent and keen in spite of
+that monumental repose.  And what a great lady!"  Gora sighed.  How she
+once had longed to be a great lady!  She no longer cared a fig about
+it, and would not have changed her present state for that of a princess
+in a stable world.  But old dreams die hard.  There was no one of
+Madame Zattiany's abundant manifestations of high fortune that she
+admired more.  "Go in and win, Clavey--and without too much loss of
+time.  She'll be drawn into her own world here sooner or later.  She
+confesses to being a widow, so you needn't get tangled up in an
+intrigue."
+
+"You forget she is also a very rich woman.  I'd look like a fortune
+hunter----"
+
+"How old-fashioned of you!  And you'd feel like nothing of the sort.
+The only thing that worries you at present is that you are trying to
+hide from yourself that you are in love with her."
+
+"I wonder!  I don't feel any raging desire for her--that I can swear."
+
+"You simply haven't got that far.  The mystery has possessed your mind
+and your doubts have acted as a censor.  But once let yourself go . . ."
+
+"And suppose she turned me down--which, no doubt, she would do.  I'm
+not hunting for tragedy."
+
+"I've an idea she won't.  While you've been talking I've written out
+the whole story in my mind.  For that matter, I began it last Monday
+night when I saw you two whispering together.  I was in the box just
+above--if you noticed!  And I watched her face.  It was something more
+than politely interested."
+
+"Oh, she looked the same when she was talking to Din and Osborne that
+night at dinner.  She is merely a woman of the world who has had scores
+of men in love with her and is young enough to be interested in any
+young man who doesn't bore her.  To say nothing of keeping her hand
+in. . . .  But there is something else."  He moved restlessly.  "She
+seems to me to be compounded of strength, force, power.  She emanates,
+exudes it.  I'm afraid of being afraid of her.  I prefer to be stronger
+than my wife."
+
+"Don't flatter yourself.  Women are always stronger than their
+husbands, unless they are the complete idiot or man-crazy.  Neither
+type would appeal to you.  The average woman--all the millions of
+her--has a moral force and strength of character and certain shrewd
+mental qualities, however unintellectual, that dominate a man every
+time.  This woman has all that and more--a thousand times more.  A
+mighty good thing if she would take you in hand.  She'd be the making
+of you, for you'd learn things about men and women and life--and
+yourself--that you've never so much as guessed.  And then you'd write a
+play that would set the town on fire.  That's all you need.  Even if
+she treated you badly the result would be the same.  Life has been much
+too kind to you, Clavey, and your little disappointments have been so
+purely romantic that only your facile emotions have played about like
+amiable puppies on the roof of your passions.  It's time the lava began
+to boil and the lid blew off.  Your creative tract would get a
+ploughing up and a fertilizing as a natural sequence.  Your plays would
+no longer be mere models of architecture.  I am not an amiable
+altruist.  I don't long to see you happy.  I'm rather inclined to hate
+this woman who will end by infatuating you, for of course that would be
+the last I'd ever see of you.  But I'm an artist and I believe that art
+is really all that is worth living for.  I want you to do great work,
+and I want you to be a really great figure in New York instead of a
+merely notable one."
+
+"You've both taken the conceit out of me and bucked me up. . . .  But I
+want you to meet her, and I don't know how to bring it about.  I have
+an idea that your instinct would get somewhere near the truth."
+
+"Suppose I give a party, and, a day or two before, you ask her casually
+if she would like to come--or put it to her in any way you think best.
+Nobody calls these days, but I have an idea she would.  People of that
+type rarely renounce the formalities.  Then, if I'm really clever, I'll
+make her think she'd like to see me again and she will be at home when
+I return her call.  Do you think you could work it?"
+
+"It's possible.  I've roused her curiosity about our crowd and I'll
+plant a few more seeds.  Yes, I think she'll come.  When will you have
+it?"
+
+"A week from Saturday."
+
+"Good.  You're a brick, Gora.  And don't imagine you'll ever get rid of
+me.  If she is unique, so are you.  This fireside will always be a
+magnet."
+
+Miss Dwight merely smiled.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Clavering walked rapidly toward Mr. Dinwiddie's club.  He was in no
+haste to be alone with himself, although he should have been at his
+desk an hour ago.  But it was time Dinwiddie had some news for him.
+
+The club was deserted as far as he was concerned and he went on to Mr.
+Dinwiddie's rooms in Forty-eighth Street.  There he found his friend in
+dressing-gown and slippers, one bandaged foot on a stool.
+
+"Gout?" he asked with the callousness of youth.  "Wondered why I hadn't
+heard from you."
+
+"I've tried to get you no less than four times on the telephone."
+
+"When I'm at work I leave orders downstairs to let my telephone alone,
+and I've been walking a lot."
+
+"Well, sit down and smoke.  Standing round makes me nervous.  You look
+nervous yourself.  Been working too hard?"
+
+"Yes.  Think of taking a run down to Florida."
+
+"Perhaps I'll go with you.  But I've something to tell you.  That's the
+reason I called you up----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Don't snap my head off.  Got a touch of dyspepsia?"
+
+"No, I haven't.  If you had to turn out a column a day you'd be nervous
+too."
+
+"Well, take a vacation----"
+
+"What have you found out?"
+
+"It took me a week to get in touch with Harry Thornhill, but he finally
+consented to see me.  He's lived buried among books for the last twenty
+years.  His wife and two children were killed in a railway
+collision----"
+
+"What the devil do I care about Harry Thornhill!"
+
+"You're a selfish young beggar, but I would have cared as little at
+your age.  Well--a cousin of his, Maynard Thornhill, did move to
+Virginia some thirty-five years ago, married, and had a family, then
+moved on to Paris and remained there until both he and his wife died.
+Beyond that he could tell me nothing.  They weren't on particularly
+cordial terms and he never looked the family up when he went over.  Has
+Madame Zattiany ever said anything about brothers and sisters?"
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"Probably married and settled in Europe somewhere, or wiped out.  You
+might ask her."
+
+"I'll ask her no more questions."
+
+"Been snubbing you?"
+
+"On the contrary, she's been uncommonly decent.  I got rather strung up
+the last time I was there and asked her so many leading questions that
+she'd have been justified in showing me out of the house."
+
+"You impertinent young scamp.  But manners have changed since my day.
+What did she tell you?"
+
+"Nothing.  I'm as much in the dark as ever.  What have you found out
+about Josef Zattiany?"
+
+"Something, but not quite enough.  I met an Austrian, Countess Loyos,
+at dinner the other night and asked her about the Zattianys.  She said
+the family was a large one with many branches, but she had a vague idea
+that a Josef Zattiany was killed in the war.  Whether he was married or
+not, she had no idea. . . ."
+
+Clavering stood up suddenly and looked down on Mr. Dinwiddie, who was
+smiling less triumphantly than ruefully.  "Well?" he asked sharply.
+"Well?"
+
+"I see you've caught it.  It's rather odd, isn't it, that this Austrian
+lady, who has lived her life in Viennese Society, knows nothing
+apparently of any young and beautiful Countess Zattiany?  I didn't give
+her a hint of the truth, for I certainly shall not be the one to loose
+the bloodhounds on this charming young woman, whoever she may be.  Told
+her that I recalled having met a very young and handsome countess of
+that name in Europe before the war and wondered what had become of
+her. . . .  But somebody else may let them loose any moment.  A good
+many people are interested in her already."
+
+"Well, they can't do anything to her.  She's a right to call herself
+whatever she likes, and she asks no favors.  But I'd like to hypnotize
+Judge Trent and get the truth out of him.  He knows, damn him!"
+
+"He's laying up trouble for himself if he's passing off an
+impostor--letting her get possession of Mary's money.  I cannot
+understand Trent.  He's a fool about women, but he's the soul of honor,
+and has one of the keenest legal minds in the state.  That she has
+fooled him is unthinkable."
+
+"He knows, and is in some way justified.  Madame Zattiany _must_ have
+your friend's power of attorney.  That's positive.  And there is no
+doubt that Countess Zattiany--Mary Ogden--is in some sanitarium in
+Vienna, hopelessly ill.  She let that out."
+
+"Poor Mary!  Is that true?"
+
+"I'm afraid it is . . . perhaps . . . that _may_ be it. . . ."
+
+"What are you talking about?"
+
+"When she was mocking my curiosity she suggested that she might have
+been an actress and won the confidence of Countess Zattiany owing to
+the resemblance.  It struck me as fantastic, but who knows? . . .
+Still, why should she use the name Zattiany even if your friend did
+give her the power of attorney . . . unless . . ." he recalled Gora's
+suggestion, "she is out for a lark."
+
+"Lark?  She hasn't tried to meet people.  I can't see any point in your
+idea.  Absurd.  And that woman is no actress.  She is _grande dame_
+born and bred."
+
+"I've met some actresses that had very fine manners indeed, and also
+the _entrée_."
+
+"Well, they don't measure up according to my notion.  This girl is the
+real thing."
+
+"Then why, in heaven's name, doesn't your Countess Loyos know anything
+about her?  If Madame Zattiany is what she says she is, they must have
+met in Viennese Society a hundred times.  In fact she would have been
+one of the notable figures at court."
+
+"The only explanation I can think of is that Madame Zattiany is all
+that she claims to be, but that for some reason or other she is not
+using her own name."
+
+"Ah!  That is an explanation.  But why--why?"
+
+"There you have me . . . unless . . .  Ah!"  The familiar glitter came
+into his eyes and Clavering waited expectantly.  This old bird had a
+marvellous instinct.  "I have it!  For some reason she had to get out
+of Europe.  Maybe she's hiding from a man, maybe from the Government.
+Zattiany may be one of her husband's names--or her mother's.  Of course
+Mary would be interested in her--with that resemblance--and help her
+out.  She knew her well enough to trust her, and somebody had to
+represent her here.  Of course Trent knows the truth and naturally
+would keep her secret."
+
+"Another plot for the movies . . . still--it's a plausible enough
+explanation . . . yes . . .  I shouldn't wonder.  But from whom is she
+hiding?"
+
+"Possibly from her husband."
+
+"Her--her----"
+
+"Like as not.  Don't murder me.  I think you'd better go to Florida and
+stay there.  Better still, marry Anne Goodrich and take her along----"
+
+Clavering had flung himself out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+He charged down Madison Avenue, barely escaping disaster at the
+crossings in the frightful congestion of the hour: he was not only
+intensely perturbed in mind, but he was in a hurry.  His column was
+unfinished and an article on the "authentic drama" for one of the
+literary reviews must be delivered on the morrow.  In the normal course
+of events it would have been written a week since.
+
+He was furious with himself.  Passionate, impulsive, and often
+unreasonable, his mind was singularly well-balanced and never before
+had it succumbed to obsession.  He had taken the war as a normal
+episode in the history of a world dealing mainly in war; not as a
+strictly personal experience designed by a malignant fate to deprive
+youth of its illusions, embitter and deidealize it, fill it with a cold
+and acrid contempt for militarism and governments, convert it to
+pacificism, and launch it on a confused but strident groping after
+Truth.  It was incredible to him that any one who had read history
+could be guilty of such jejunity, and he attributed it to their bruised
+but itching egos.  After all, it had been a middle-aged man's war.  Not
+a single military reputation had been made by any one of the millions
+of young fighters, despite promotions, citations, and medals.
+Statesmen and military men long past their youth would alone be
+mentioned in history.
+
+The youth of America was individualism rampant plus the national
+self-esteem, and the mass of them today had no family traditions behind
+them--sprung from God knew what.  Their ego had been slapped in the
+face and compressed into a mould; they were subconsciously trying to
+rebuild it to its original proportions by feeling older than their
+fathers and showering their awful contempt upon those ancient and
+despicable loadstones: "loyalty" and "patriotism."  Writers who had
+remained safely at home had taken the cue and become mildly pacifist.
+It sounded intellectual and it certainly was the fashion.
+
+Clavering, whose ancestors had fought in every war in American history,
+had enlisted in 1917 with neither sentimentalism, enthusiasm, nor
+resentment.  It was idle to vent one's wrath and contempt upon
+statesmen who could not settle their quarrels with their brains, for
+the centuries that stood between the present and utter barbarism were
+too few to have accomplished more than the initial stages of a true
+civilization.  No doubt a thousand years hence these stages would
+appear as rudimentary as the age of the Neanderthals had seemed to the
+twentieth century.  And as man made progress so did he rarely outstrip
+it.  So far he had done less for himself than for what passed for
+progress and the higher civilization.  Naturally enough, when the
+Frankenstein monster heaved itself erect and began to run amok with
+seven-leagued boots, all the pigmies could do was to revert
+hysterically to Neanderthal methods and use the limited amount of
+brains the intervening centuries had given them, to scheme for victory.
+A thousand years hence the Frankenstein might be buried and man's brain
+gigantic.  Then and then only would civilization be perfected, and the
+savagery and asininity of war a blot on the history of his race to
+which no man cared to refer.  But that was a long way off.  When a
+man's country was in danger there was nothing to do but fight.
+Noblesse oblige.  And fight without growling and whining.  Clavering
+had liked army discipline, sitting in filthy trenches, wounds,
+hospitals, and killing his fellow men as little as any decent man; but
+what had these surly grumblers expected?  To fight when they felt like
+it, sleep in feather beds, and shoot at targets?  Disillusionment!
+Patriotism murdered by Truth!  One would think they were fighting the
+first war in history.
+
+It was not the war they took seriously but themselves.
+
+Like other men of his class and traditions, Clavering had emerged from
+the war hoping it would be the last of his time, but with his ego
+unbruised, his point of view of life in general undistorted, and a
+quick banishment of "hideous memories."  (His chief surviving memory
+was a hideous boredom.)  One more war had gone into history.  That he
+had taken an infinitesimal part in it instead of reading an account of
+it by some accomplished historian was merely the accident of his years.
+As far as he could see he was precisely the man he was before he was
+sent to France and he had only unmitigated contempt for these "war
+reactions" in men sound in limb and with no derangement of the ductless
+glands.
+
+As for the women, when they began to talk their intellectual
+pacificism, he told them that their new doctrine of non-resistance
+became them ill, but as even the most advanced were still women,
+consistency was not to be expected--nor desired.  Their pacificism,
+however, when not mere affectation--servility to the fashion of the
+moment--was due to an obscure fear of seeing the world depopulated of
+men, or of repressed religious instinct, or apology for being females
+and unable to fight.  He was extremely rude.
+
+And now this infernal woman had completely thrown him off his balance.
+He could think of nothing else.  His work had been deplorable--the last
+week at all events--and although a month since nothing would have given
+him more exquisite satisfaction than to write a paper on the authentic
+drama, he would now be quite indifferent if censorship had closed every
+theatre on Broadway.  Such an ass, such a cursed ass had he become in
+one short month.  He had tramped half the nights and a good part of
+every day trying to interest himself by the wayside and clear his
+brain.  He might as well have sat by his fire and read a piffling novel.
+
+Nevertheless, until Gora Dwight had brought her detached analytical
+faculty to bear on his case, he had not admitted to himself that he was
+in love with the woman.  He had chosen to believe that, being unique
+and compact of mystery, she had hypnotized his interest and awakened
+all the latent chivalry of his nature--something the modern woman
+called upon precious seldom.  He had felt the romantic knight ready to
+break a lance--a dozen if necessary--in case the world rose against
+her, denounced her as an impostor.  True, she seemed more than able to
+take care of herself, but she was very beautiful, very blonde, very
+unprotected, and in that wistful second youth he most admired.  He had
+thought himself the chivalrous son of chivalrous Southerners, excited
+and not too happy, but convinced, at the height of his restlessness and
+absorption, that she was but a romantic and passing episode in his life.
+
+When Gora Dwight had ruthlessly led him into those unconsciously
+guarded secret chambers of his soul and bidden him behold and ponder,
+he had turned as cold as if ice-water were running in his veins,
+although he had continued to smile indulgently and had answered with
+some approach to jocularity.  He was floored at last.  He'd got the
+infernal disease in its most virulent form.  Not a doubt of it.  No
+wonder he had deluded himself.  His ideal woman--whom, preferably, he
+would have wooed and won in some sequestered spot beautified by nature,
+not made hideous by man--was not a woman at all, but a girl; twenty-six
+was an ideal age; who had read and studied and thought, and seen all of
+the world that a girl decently may.  He had dreamed of no man's
+leavings, certainly not of a woman who had probably had more than one
+lover, and, no doubt, would not take the trouble to deny it.  He hated
+as much as he loved her and he felt that he would rather kill than
+possess her.
+
+It was half an hour after he reached his rooms before he finished
+striding up and down; then, with a final anathema, he flung himself
+into a chair before his table.  At least his brain felt clearer, now
+that he had faced the truth.  Time enough to wrestle with his problem
+when he had won his leisure.  If he couldn't switch her off for one
+night at least and give his brain its due, he'd despise himself, and
+that, he vowed, he'd never do.  He wrote steadily until two in the
+morning.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+He awoke at noon.  His first impression was that a large black bat was
+sitting on his brain.  The darkened room seemed to contain a visible
+presence of disaster.  He sprang out of bed and took a hot and cold
+shower; hobgoblins fled, although he felt no inclination to sing!  He
+called down for his breakfast and opened his hall door.  A pile of
+letters lay on his newspapers, and the topmost one, in a large envelope,
+addressed in a flowing meticulously fine hand, he knew, without
+speculation, to be from Madame Zattiany.
+
+He threw back the curtains, settled himself in an armchair, read his
+other letters deliberately, and glanced at the headlines of the papers,
+before he carefully slit the envelope that had seemed to press his
+eyeballs.  The time had come for self-discipline, consistently exercised.
+Moreover, he was afraid of it.  What--why had she written to him?  Why
+hadn't she telephoned?  Was this a tardy dismissal?  His breath was short
+and his hands shaking as he opened the letter.
+
+It was sufficiently commonplace.
+
+
+"Dear Mr. Clavering:
+
+"I have been in Atlantic City for a few days getting rid of a cold.  I
+hope you have not called.  Will you dine with me tomorrow night at half
+after eight?  I shall not ask any one else.
+
+"Sincerely,
+  "MARIE ZATTIANY."
+
+
+So her name was Marie.  It had struck him once or twice as humorous that
+he didn't know the first name of the woman who was demanding his every
+waking thought.  And she had been out of town and unaware that he had
+deliberately avoided her.  Had taken for granted that he had been polite
+enough to call--and had left his cards at home.
+
+Should he go?  He'd have his breakfast first and do his thinking
+afterward.
+
+He did ample justice to the breakfast which was also lunch, read his
+newspapers, cursed the printers of his own for two typographical errors
+he found in his column, then called up her house.  Feeling as normal and
+unromantic as a man generally does when digesting a meal and the news, he
+concluded that to refuse her invitation, to attempt to avoid her, in
+short, would not only be futile, as he was bound to respond to that
+magnet sooner or later, but would be a further confession of cowardice.
+Whatever his fate, he'd see it through.
+
+He gave his acceptance to the butler, went out and took a brisk walk,
+returned and wrote his column for the next day, then visited his club and
+talked with congenial souls until it was time to dress for dinner.  No
+more thinking at present.
+
+Nevertheless, he ascended her steps at exactly half-past eight with the
+blood pounding in his ears and his heart acting like a schoolboy's in his
+first attack of calf love.  But he managed to compose himself before the
+footman leisurely answered his ring.  If there was one point upon which
+he was primarily determined it was to keep his head.  If he gave her a
+hint that she had reduced him to a state of imbecility before his moment
+came--if it ever did!--his chances would be done for--dished.  He looked
+more saturnine than ever as he strode into the hall.
+
+"Dinner will be served in the library, sir," said the footman.  "Madame
+will be down in a moment."
+
+A tête-à-tête by the fire!  Worse and worse.  He had been fortified by
+the thought of the butler and footman.  An hour under their supercilious
+eyes would mean the most impersonal kind of small talk.  But they'd
+hardly stand round the library.
+
+However, the small table before the blazing logs looked very cosy and the
+imposing room was full of mellow light.  Two Gothic chairs had been drawn
+to the table.  They, at least, looked uncomfortable enough to avert
+sentiment.  Not that he felt sentimental.  He was holding down something
+a good deal stronger than sentiment, but he flattered himself that he
+looked as saturnine as Satan himself as he warmed his back at the fire.
+He hoped she had a cold in her head.
+
+But she had not.  As she entered, dressed in a white tea gown of chiffon
+and lace, she looked like a moonbeam, and as if no mortal indisposition
+had ever brushed her in passing.  Instead of her pearls she wore a long
+thin necklace of diamonds that seemed to frost her gown.  She was smiling
+and gracious and infinitely remote.  The effect was as cold and steadying
+as his morning's icy shower.
+
+He shook her hand firmly.  "Sorry you've been seedy.  Hope it didn't lay
+you up."
+
+"Oh, no.  I fancy I merely wanted an excuse to see Atlantic City.  It was
+just a touch of bronchitis and fled at once."
+
+"Like Atlantic City?"
+
+"No.  It is merely an interminable line of ostentatiously rich hotels on
+a _board walk_!  None of the grace and dignity of Ostend--poor Ostend as
+it used to be.  The digue was one of the most brilliant sights in
+Europe--but no doubt you have seen it," she added politely.
+
+"Yes, I spent a week there once, but Bruges interested me more.  I was
+very young at the time."
+
+"You must have been!  Don't you like to gamble?  The Kursaal could be
+very exciting."
+
+"Oh, yes, I like to gamble occasionally."  (God!  What banal talk!)
+"Gambling with life, however, is a long sight more exciting."
+
+"Yes, is it not?  Atlantic City might do you good.  You do not look at
+all well."
+
+"Never felt better in my life.  A bit tired.  Generally am at this time
+of the year.  May take a run down to Florida."
+
+"I should," she said politely.  "Shall you stay long?"
+
+"That depends."  (Presence of servants superfluous!)  "Are you fond of
+the sea?"
+
+"I detest it--that boundless flat gray waste.  A wild and rocky coast in
+a terrific storm, yes--but not that moving gray plain that comes in and
+falls down, comes in and falls down.  It is the mountains I turn to when
+I can.  I often long for the Austrian Alps.  The Dolomites!  The
+translucent green lakes like enormous emeralds, sparkling in the sun and
+set in straight white walls.  A glimpse of pine forest beyond.  The roar
+of an avalanche in the night."
+
+"New York and Atlantic City _must_ seem prosaic."  He had never felt so
+polite.  "I suppose you are eager to return?"  (Why in hell don't those
+servants bring the dinner!)
+
+"I have not seen the Alps since two years before the war.  Some day--yes!
+Oh, yes!  Shall we sit down?"
+
+The two men entered with enormous dignity bearing plates of oysters as if
+offering the Holy Grail and the head of Saint John the Baptist on a
+charger.  Impossible to associate class-consciousness with beings who
+looked as impersonal as fate, and would have regarded a fork out of
+alignment as a stain on their private 'scutcheon.  They performed the
+rite of placing the oysters on the table and retired.
+
+Madame Zattiany and Clavering adjusted themselves to the Gothic period.
+The oysters were succulent.  They discussed the weather.
+
+"This was a happy thought," he said.  "It feels like a blizzard outside."
+
+"The radiator in the dining-room is out of order."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+She was a woman of the world.  Why in thunder didn't she make things
+easier?  Had she asked him here merely because she was too bored to eat
+alone?  He hated small talk.  There was nothing he wanted less than the
+personalities of their previous conversations, but she might have
+entertained him.  She was eating her oysters daintily and giving him the
+benefit of her dark brown eyelashes.  Possibly she was merely in the mood
+for comfortable silences with an established friend.  Well, he was not.
+Passion had subsided but his nerves jangled.
+
+And inspiration came with the soup and some excellent sherry.
+
+"By the way!  Do you remember I asked you--at that last first-night--if
+you wouldn't like to see something of the Sophisticates?"
+
+"The what?"
+
+"Some of them still like to call themselves Intellectuals, but that
+title--Intelligentsia--is now claimed by every white collar in Europe who
+has turned Socialist or Revolutionist.  He may have the intellect of a
+cabbage, but he wants a 'new order.'  We still have a few
+pseudo-socialists among our busy young brains, but youth must have its
+ideals and they can originate nothing better.  I thought I'd coin a new
+head-line that would embrace all of us."
+
+"It is comprehensive!  Well?"
+
+"A friend of mine, Gora Dwight--at present 'foremost woman author of
+America'--is giving a party next Saturday night.  I'd like enormously to
+take you."
+
+"But I do not know Miss Dwight."
+
+"She will call in due form.  I assure you she understands the
+conventions.  Of course, you need not see her, but she will leave a card.
+Not that it wouldn't be quite proper for me merely to take you."
+
+"I should prefer that she called.  Then--yes, I should like to go.  Thank
+you."
+
+The men arrived with the entrée and departed with the soup plates.
+
+Once more he had an inspiration.
+
+"Poor old Dinwiddie's laid up with the gout."
+
+"Really?  He called a day or two after the dinner, and I enjoyed hearing
+him talk about the New York of his youth--and of Mary's.  Unfortunately,
+I was out when he called again.  But I have seen Mr. Osborne twice.
+These are his flowers.  He also sent me several books."
+
+"What were they?" growled Clavering.  He remembered with dismay that he
+hadn't even sent her the usual tribute of flowers.  There had been no
+place in his mind for the small amenities.
+
+"A verboten romance called 'Jurgen.'  Why verboten?  Because it is too
+good for the American public?  'Main Street.'  For me, it might as well
+have been written in Greek.  'The Domesday Book.'  A great story.  'Seed
+of the Sun.'  To enlighten me on the 'Japanese Question.'  'Cytherea.'
+Wonderful English.  Why is it not also verboten?"
+
+"Even censors must sleep.  Is that all he sent you?"
+
+"I am waiting for the chocolates--but possibly those are sent only by the
+very young men to the very young girls."
+
+He glowered at his plate.  "Do you like chocolates?  I'll send some
+tomorrow.  I've been very remiss, I'm afraid, but I've lost the habit."
+
+"I detest chocolates."
+
+Squabs and green peas displaced the entree.  The burgundy was admirable.
+
+Once more he was permitted to gaze at her eyelashes.  He plunged
+desperately.  "The name Marie doesn't suit you.  If ever I know you well
+enough I shall call you Mary.  It suits your vast repose.  That is why
+ordinary Marys are nicknamed 'Mamie' or 'Mame.'"
+
+"I was christened Mary."  She raised her eyes.  They were no longer wise
+and unfathomable.  They looked as young as his own.  Probably younger, he
+reflected.  She looked appealing and girlish.  Once more he longed to
+protect her.
+
+"Do you want to call me Mary?" she asked, smiling.
+
+"I hardly know whether I do or not. . . .  There's something else I
+should tell you.  I swore I'd never ask you any more questions--but
+I--well, Dinwiddie kept on the scent until he was laid up.  One of the
+Thornhills verified your story in so far as he remembered that a cousin
+had settled in Virginia and then moved on to Paris.  There his
+information stopped. . . .  But . . .  Dinwiddie met a Countess Loyos at
+dinner."
+
+"Countess Loyos?"
+
+"Yes--know her?"
+
+"Mathilde Loyos?  She is one of my oldest friends."
+
+"No doubt you'd like to see her.  I can get her address for you."
+
+"There is nothing I want less than to see her.  Nor any one else from
+Austria--at present."
+
+"I think this could not have been your friend.  She emphatically said--I
+am afraid of being horribly rude----"
+
+"Ah!"  For the first time since he had known her the color flooded her
+face; then it receded, leaving her more pale than white.  "I understand."
+
+"Of course, it may be another Countess Loyos.  Like the Zattianys, it may
+be a large family."
+
+"As it happens there is no other."
+
+Silence.  He swore to himself.  He had no desire to skate within a mile
+of her confounded mysteries and now like a fool he had precipitated
+himself into their midst again.  But if she wouldn't talk. . . .
+
+"Suppose we talk of something else," he said hurriedly.  "I assure you
+that I have deliberately suppressed all curiosity.  I am only too
+thankful to know you on any terms."
+
+"But you think I am in danger again?"
+
+"Yes, I do.  That is, if you wish to keep your identity a secret--for
+your own good reasons.  Of course, no harm can come to you.  I assume
+that you are not a political refugee--in danger of assassination!"
+
+"I am not.  What is Mr. Dinwiddie's inference?"  She was looking at him
+eagerly.
+
+"That you really are a friend of Countess Zattiany, but for some motive
+or other you are using her name instead of your own.  That--that--you had
+your own reasons for escaping from Austria----"
+
+"Escaping?"
+
+"One was that you might have got into some political mess--restoration of
+Charles, or something----"
+
+She laughed outright.
+
+"The other was--well--that you are hiding from your husband."
+
+"My husband is dead," she said emphatically.
+
+He had never known that clouds, unless charged with thunder, were noisy.
+But he heard a black and ominous cloud gather itself and roll off his
+brain.  Had that, after all, been . . .  Nevertheless, he was annoyed to
+feel that he was smiling boyishly and that he probably looked as
+saturnine as he felt.
+
+"Whatever your little comedy, it is quite within your rights to play it
+in your own way."
+
+"It is not a comedy," she said grimly.
+
+"Oh!  Not tragedy?" he cried in alarm.
+
+"No--not yet.  Not yet! . . .  I am beginning to wish that I had never
+come to America."
+
+"Now I shall ask you why."
+
+"And I shall not tell you.  I have read your Miss Dwight's novel, by the
+way, and think it quite hideous."
+
+"So do I.  But that is the reason of its success."  And the conversation
+meandered along the safe bypaths of American fiction through the ices and
+coffee.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+They sat beside the fire in chairs that had never felt softer.  He
+smoked a cigar, she cigarettes in a long topaz holder ornamented with a
+tiny crown in diamonds and the letter Z.  She had given it to him to
+examine when he exclaimed at its beauty.
+
+Z!
+
+But he banished both curiosity and possible confirmation.  He was
+replete and comfortable, and almost happy.  The occasional silences
+were now merely agreeable.  She lay back in her deep chair as relaxed
+as himself, but although she said little her aloofness had mysteriously
+departed.  She looked companionable and serene.  Only one narrow foot
+in its silvery slipper moved occasionally, and her white and beautiful
+hands, whose suggestion of ruthless power Clavering had appreciated
+apprehensively from the first, seemed, although they were quiet, subtly
+to lack the repose of her body.
+
+Once while he was gazing into the fire he felt sure that she was
+examining his profile.  He made no pretensions to handsomeness, but he
+rather prided himself on his nose, the long fine straight nose of the
+Claverings.  His brow was also good, but although his hair was black,
+his eyes were blue, and he would have preferred to have black eyes, as
+he liked consistent types.  Otherwise he was one of the "black
+Claverings."  Northumbrian in origin and claiming descent from the
+Bretwaldes, overlords of Britain, the Claverings were almost as fair as
+their Anglian ancestors, but once in every two or three generations a
+completely dark member appeared, resurgence of the ancient Briton;
+sometimes associated with the high stature of the stronger Nordic race,
+occasionally--particularly among the women--almost squat.  Clavering
+had been spared the small stature and the small too narrow head, but
+saving his steel blue eyes--trained to look keen and hard--he was as
+dark as any Mediterranean.  His mouth was well-shaped and closely set,
+but capable of relaxation and looked as if it might once have been full
+and sensitive.  It too had been severely trained.  The long face was
+narrower than the long admirably proportioned head.  It was by no means
+as disharmonic a type as Gora Dwight's; the blending of the races was
+far more subtle, and when making one of his brief visits to Europe he
+was generally taken for an Englishman, never for a member of the Latin
+peoples; except possibly in the north of France, where his type, among
+those Norman descendants of Norse and Danes, was not uncommon.
+Nevertheless, although his northern inheritance predominated, he was
+conscious at times of a certain affinity with the race that two
+thousand years ago had met and mingled with his own.
+
+He turned his eyes swiftly and met hers.  She colored faintly and
+dropped her lids.  Had she lowered those broad lids over a warm glow?
+
+"Now I know what you look like!" he exclaimed, and was surprised to
+find that his voice was not quite steady.  "A Nordic princess."
+
+"Oh!  That is the very most charming compliment ever paid me."
+
+"You look a pretty unadulterated type for this late date.  I don't mean
+in color only, of course; there are millions of blondes."
+
+"My mother was a brunette."
+
+"Oh, yes, you are a case of atavism, no doubt.  If I were as good a
+poet as one of my brother columnists I should have written a poem to
+you long since.  I can see you sweeping northward over the steppes of
+Russia as the ice-caps retreated . . . reëmbodied on the Baltic coast
+or the shores of the North Sea . . . sleeping for ages in one of the
+Megaliths, to rise again a daughter of the Brythons, or of a Norse
+Viking . . . west into Anglia to appear once more as a Priestess of
+the Druids chaunting in a sacred grove . . . or as Boadicea--who
+knows!  But no prose can regenerate that shadowy time.  I see
+it--prehistory--as a swaying mass of ghostly multitudes, but always
+pressing on--on . . . as we shall appear, no doubt, ten thousand years
+hence if all histories are destroyed--as no doubt they will be.  If I
+were an epic poet I might possibly find words and rhythm to fit that
+white vision, but it is wholly beyond the practical vocabulary and
+mental make-up of a newspaper man of the twentieth century.  Some of us
+write very good poetry indeed, but it is not precisely inspired, and it
+certainly is not epic.  One would have to retire to a cave like Buddha
+and fast."
+
+"You write singularly pure English, in spite of what seems to me a
+marked individuality of style, and--ah--your apparent delight in
+slang!"  Her voice was quite even, although her eyes had glowed and
+sparkled and melted at his poetic phantasma of her past (as what
+woman's would not?).  "I find a rather painful effort to be--what do
+you call it? highbrow?--in some of your writers."
+
+"The youngsters.  I went through that phase.  We all do.  But we
+emerge.  I mean, of course, when we have anything to express.
+Metaphysical verbosity is a friendly refuge.  But as a rule years and
+hard knocks drive us to directness of expression. . . .  But poets must
+begin young.  And New York is not exactly a hot-bed of romance."
+
+"Do you think that romance is impossible in New York?" she asked
+irresistibly.
+
+"I--oh--well, what is romance?  Of course, it is quite possible to fall
+in love in New York--although anything but the ideal setting.  But
+romance!"
+
+"Surely the sense of mystery between a man and woman irresistibly
+attracted may be as provocative in a great city as in a feudal castle
+surrounded by an ancient forest--or on one of my Dolomite lakes.  Is it
+not that which constitutes romance--the breathless trembling on the
+verge of the unexplored--that isolates two human beings as
+authentically--I am picking up your vocabulary--as if they were alone
+on a star in space?  Is it not possible to dream here in New York?--and
+surely dreams play their part in romance."  Her fingertips, moving
+delicately on the surface of her lap, had a curious suggestion of
+playing with fire.
+
+"One needs leisure for dreams."  He stood up suddenly and leaned
+against the mantelpiece.  The atmosphere had become electric.  "A good
+thing, too, as far as some of us are concerned.  The last thing for a
+columnist to indulge in is dreams.  Fine hash he'd have for his readers
+next morning!"
+
+"Do you mean to say that none of you clever young men fall in love?"
+
+"Every day in the week, some of them.  They even marry--and tell
+fatuous yarns about their babies.  No doubt some of them have even
+gloomed through brief periods of unreciprocated passion.  But they
+don't look very romantic to me."
+
+"Romance is impossible without imagination, I should think.  Aching for
+what you cannot have or falling in love reciprocally with a charming
+girl is hardly romance.  That is a gift--like the spark that goes to
+the making of Art."
+
+"Are you romantic?" he asked harshly.  "You look as if born to inspire
+romance--dreams--like a beautiful statue or painting--but mysterious as
+you make yourself--and, I believe, are in essence--I should never have
+associated you with the romantic temperament.  Your eyes--as they too
+often are----  Oh, no!"
+
+"It is true that I have never had a romance."
+
+"You married--and very young."
+
+"Oh, what is young love!  The urge of the race.  A blaze that ends in
+babies or ashes.  Romance!"
+
+"You have--other men have loved you."
+
+"European men--the type my lot was cast with--may be romantic in their
+extreme youth--I have never been attracted by men in that stage of
+development, so I may only suppose--but when a man has learned to
+adjust passion to technique there is not much romance left in him."
+
+"Are you waiting for your romance, then?  Have you come to this more
+primitive civilization to find it?"
+
+She raised her head and looked him full in the eyes.  "No, I did not
+believe in the possibility then."
+
+"May I have a high-ball?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+He took his drink on the other side of the room.  It was several
+minutes before he returned to the hearth.  Then he asked without
+looking at her: "How do you expect to find romance if you shut yourself
+up?"
+
+"I wanted nothing less.  As little as I wanted it to be known that I
+was here at all."
+
+"That damnable mystery!  Who _are_ you?"
+
+"Nothing that you have imagined.  It is far stranger--I fancy it would
+cure you."
+
+"Cure me?"
+
+"Yes.  Do you deny that you love me?"
+
+"No, by God!  I don't!  But you take a devilish advantage.  You must
+know that I had meant to keep my head.  Of course, you are playing with
+me--with your cursed technique! . . .  Unless . . ."  He reached her in
+a stride and stood over her.  "Is it possible--do you--_you_----"
+
+She pushed back her chair, and stood behind it.  Her cheeks were very
+pink, her eyes startled, but very soft.  "I do not admit that yet--I
+have been too astounded--I went away to think by myself--where I was
+sure not to see you--but--my mind seemed to revolve in circles.  I
+don't know!  I don't know!"
+
+"You do know!  You are not the woman to mistake a passing interest for
+the real thing."
+
+"Oh, does a woman ever--I never wanted to be as young as _that_ again!
+I should have believed it impossible if I had given the matter a
+thought--It is so long!  I had forgotten what love was like.  There was
+nothing I had buried as deep.  And there are reasons--reasons!"
+
+"I only follow you vaguely.  But I think I understand--worse luck!
+I've hated you more than once.  You must have known that.  I believe
+you are deliberately leading me on to make a fool of myself."
+
+"I am not!  Oh, I am not!"
+
+"_Do_ you love me?"
+
+"I--I want to be sure.  I have dreamed . . .  I--I have leisure, you
+see.  This old house shuts out the world--Europe--the past.  The war
+might have cut my life in two.  If it had not been for that--that long
+selfless interval . . .  I'd like you to go now."
+
+"Will you marry me?"
+
+"It may be.  I can't tell.  Not yet.  Are you content to wait?"
+
+"I am not!  But I've no intention of taking you by force, although I
+don't feel particularly civilized at the present moment.  But I'll win
+you and have you if you love me.  Make no doubt of that.  You may have
+ten thousand strange reasons--they count for nothing with me.  And I
+intend to see you every day.  I'll call you up in the morning.  Now I
+go, and as quickly as I can get out."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+He plunged down the steps into a snowstorm.  Even during his
+precipitate retreat he had realized the advisability of telephoning for
+a taxi, but had been incapable of the anti-climax.  He pulled his hat
+over his eyes, turned up the collar of his coat, and made his way
+hastily toward Park Avenue.  There was not a cab in sight.  Nor was
+there a rumble in the tunnel; no doubt the cars were snow-bound.  He
+hesitated only a moment: it would hardly take him longer to walk to his
+hotel than to the Grand Central Station, but he crossed over to Madison
+Avenue at once, for it was bitter walking and there was a bare chance
+of picking up a cab returning from one of the hotels.
+
+But the narrow street between its high dark walls looked like a
+deserted mountain pass rapidly filling with snow.  The tall
+street-lamps shed a sad and ghostly beam.  They might have been the
+hooded torches of cave dwellers sheltering from enemies and the storm
+in those perpendicular fastnesses.  Far down, a red sphere glowed
+dimly, exalting the illusion.  He almost fancied he could see the
+out-posts of primeval forests bending over the cañon and wondered why
+the "Poet of Manhattan" had never immortalized a scene at once so
+sinister and so lovely.
+
+And no stillness of a high mountain solitude had ever been more
+intense.  Not even a muffled roar from trains on the distant "L's."
+Clavering wondered if he really were in New York.  The whole evening
+had been unreal enough.  Certainly all that was prosaic and ugly and
+feverish had been obliterated by what it was no flight of fancy to call
+white magic.  That seething mass of humanity, that so often looked as
+if rushing hither and thither with no definite purpose, driven merely
+by the obsession of speed, was as supine in its brief privacy as its
+dead.  In spite of the fever in him he felt curiously uplifted--and
+glad to be alone.  There are moods and solitudes when a man wants no
+woman, however much he may be wanting one particular woman. . . .  But
+the mood was ephemeral; he had been too close to her a moment before.
+Moreover, she was still unpossessed. . . .  She seemed to take shape
+slowly in the white whirling snow, as white and imponderable. . . .  A
+Nordic princess drifting northward over her steppes. . . .  God!  Would
+he ever get her? . . .  If he did not it would be because one of them
+was qualifying for another incarnation.
+
+He walked down the avenue as rapidly as possible, his hands in his
+pockets, his head bent to the wind, no longer transported; forcing his
+mind to dwell on the warmth of his rooms and his bed. . . .  His head
+ached.  He'd go to the office tomorrow and write his column there.
+Then think things out.  How was he to win such a woman?  Make her sure
+of herself?  Convert her doubts into a passionate certainty?  She, with
+her highly technical past!  Make no mistakes?  If he made a precipitate
+ass of himself--what comparisons! . . .  His warm bed . . . the
+complete and personal isolation of his rooms . . . he had never given
+even a tea to women . . . he gave his dinners in restaurants. . . .
+How many more blocks?  The snow was thicker.  He couldn't even see the
+arcade of Madison Square Garden, although a faint diffused radiance
+high in air was no doubt the crown of lights on the Metropolitan
+Tower. . . .  Had he made a wrong move in bolting----?
+
+His thoughts and counter-thoughts came to an abrupt end.  At the corner
+of Thirtieth Street he collided with a small figure in a fur coat and
+nearly knocked it over.  He was for striding on with a muttered
+apology, when the girl caught him by the arm with a light laugh.
+
+"Lee Clavering!  What luck!  Take me home."
+
+He was looking down into the dark naughty little face of Janet
+Oglethorpe, granddaughter of the redoubtable Jane.
+
+"What on earth are you doing here?" he asked stupidly.
+
+"Perhaps I'll tell you and perhaps I won't.  On second thoughts don't
+take me home.  Take me to one of those all-night restaurants.  That's
+just the one thing I haven't seen, and I'm hungry."
+
+He subtly became an uncle.  "I'll do nothing of the sort.  You ought to
+be ashamed of yourself--alone in the streets at this hour of the night.
+It must be one o'clock.  I shall take you home.  I suppose you have a
+latch-key, but for two cents I'd ring the bell and hand you over to
+your mother."
+
+"Mother went to Florida today and dad's duck-hunting in South Carolina.
+Aunt Mollie's too deaf to hear doorbells and believes anything I tell
+her."
+
+"I am astonished that your mother left you behind to your own devices."
+
+"I wouldn't go.  She's given me up--used to my devices.  Besides, I've
+one or two on her and she doesn't dare give me away to dad.  He thinks
+I'm a darling spoilt child.  Not that I'd mind much if he didn't, but
+it's more convenient."
+
+"You little wretch!  I believe you've been drinking."
+
+"So I have!  So I have!  But I've got an asbestos lining and could
+stand another tall one.  Ah!"  Her eyes sparkled.  "Suppose you take me
+to your rooms----"
+
+"I'll take you home----"
+
+"You'll take me to one of those all-nighters----"
+
+"I shall not."
+
+"Then ta! ta!  I'll go home by myself.  I've had too good a time
+tonight to bother with old fogies."
+
+She started up the street and Clavering hesitated but a moment.  Her
+home was on East Sixty-fifth Street.  Heaven only knew what might
+happen to her.  Moreover, although her mother was one of those women
+whose insatiable demand for admiration bored him, he had no more
+devoted friends than her father and her grandmother.  Furthermore, his
+curiosity was roused.  What had the little devil been up to?
+
+He overtook the Oglethorpe flapper and seizing her hand drew it through
+his arm.
+
+"I'll take you where you can get a sandwich," he said.  "But I'll not
+take you to a restaurant.  Too likely to meet newspaper men."
+
+"Anything to drink?"
+
+"Ice cream soda."
+
+"Good Lord!"
+
+"You needn't drink it.  But you'll get nothing else.  Come along or
+I'll pick you up and carry you to the nearest garage."
+
+She trotted obediently beside him, a fragile dainty figure; carried
+limply, however, and little more distinguished than flappers of
+inferior origin.  He led her to a rather luxurious delicatessen not far
+from his hotel, kept by enterprising Italians who never closed their
+doors.  They seated themselves uncomfortably at the high counter, and
+the sleepy attendant served them with sandwiches, then retired to the
+back of the shop.  He was settling himself to alert repose when Miss
+Oglethorpe suddenly changed her mind and ordered a chocolate ice cream
+soda.  Then she ordered another, and she ate six sandwiches, a slice of
+cake and two bananas.
+
+"Great heaven!" exclaimed Clavering.  "You must have the stomach of an
+ostrich."
+
+"Can eat nails and drink fire water."
+
+"Well, you won't two years hence, and you'll look it, too."
+
+"Oh, no I won't.  I'll marry when I'm nineteen and a half and settle
+down."
+
+"I should say you were heading the other way.  Where have you been
+tonight?"
+
+"Donny Farren gave a party in his rooms and passed out just as he was
+about to take me home.  I loosened his collar and put a pillow under
+his head, but I couldn't lift him, even to the sofa.  Too fat."
+
+[Illustration: Returning home one night Clavering (Conway Tearle) found
+Janet Oglethorpe (Clara Bow), daughter of his old friend, in a
+semi-intoxicated condition.  (_Screen version of "The Black Oxen."_)]
+
+"I suppose you pride yourself on being a good sport."
+
+"Rather.  If Donny'd been ill I'd have stayed with him all night, but
+he was dead to the world."
+
+"You say he had a party.  Why didn't some of the others take you home?"
+
+"Ever hear about three being a crowd?  Donny, naturally, was all for
+taking me home, and didn't show any signs of collapse till the last
+minute."
+
+"But I should think that for decency's sake you'd all have gone down
+together."
+
+"Lord!  How old-fashioned you are.  I was finishing a cigarette and
+never thought of it."  She opened a little gold mesh bag, took out a
+cigarette and lit it.  Her cheeks were flushed under the rouge and her
+large black eyes glittered in her fluid little face.  She was one of
+the beauties of the season's débutantes, but scornful of nature.  Her
+olive complexion was thickly powdered and there was a delicate smudge
+of black under her lower lashes and even on her eyelids.  He had never
+seen her quite so blatantly made up before, but then he had seen little
+of her since the beginning of her first season.  He rarely went to
+parties, and she was almost as rarely in her own home or her
+grandmother's.  Her short hair curled about her face.  In spite of her
+paint she looked like a child--a greedy child playing with life.
+
+"Look here!" he said.  "How far do you go?"
+
+"Wouldn't you like to know?"
+
+"I should.  Not for personal reasons, for girls of your age bore me to
+extinction, but you've a certain sociological interest.  I wonder if
+you are really any worse than your predecessors?"
+
+"I guess girls have always been human enough, but we have more
+opportunities.  We've made 'em.  This is our age and we're enjoying it
+to the limit.  God! what stupid times girls must have had--some of them
+do yet.  They're naturally goody-goody, or their parents are too much
+for them.  Not many, though.  Parents have taken a back seat."
+
+"I don't quite see what you get out of it--guzzling, and smoking your
+nerves out by the roots, and making yourselves cheap with men little
+older than yourselves."
+
+"You don't see, I suppose, why girls should have their fling, or"--her
+voice wavered curiously--"why youth takes naturally to youth.  I
+suppose you think that is a cruel thing for a girl to say."
+
+"Not in the least," he answered cheerfully.  "Don't mind a bit.  But
+what do you get out of it--that's what I'm curious to know."
+
+She tossed her head and blew a perfect ring.  "Don't you know that
+girls never really enjoyed life before?"
+
+"It depends upon the point of view, I should think."
+
+"No, there's a lot more in it than you guess.  The girls used to sit
+round waiting for men to call and wondering if they'd condescend to
+show up at the next dance; while the men fairly raced after the girls
+with whom they could have a free and easy time--no company manners, no
+chaperons, no prudish affectations about kisses and things.  No fear of
+shocking if they wanted to let go--the strain must have been awful.
+You know what men are.  They like to call a spade a spade and be damned
+to it.  Our sort didn't have a chance.  They couldn't compete.  So, we
+made up our minds to compete in the only way possible.  We leave off
+our corsets at dances so they can get a new thrill out of us, then sit
+out in an automobile and drink and have little petting parties of two.
+And we slip out and have an occasional lark like tonight.  We're not to
+be worried about, either."
+
+"Why cryptic after your really admirable frankness?  But there's always
+a point beyond which women never will go when confessing their
+souls. . . .  I suppose you think you're as hard as nails.  Do you
+really imagine that you will ever be able to fall in love and marry and
+want children?"
+
+"Don't men?"
+
+"Ancient standards are not annihilated in one generation."
+
+"There's got to be a beginning to everything, hasn't there?  One would
+think the world stood still, to hear you talk.  But anything new always
+makes the fogies sick."
+
+"Nothing makes _me_ as sick as your bad manners--you and all your
+tribe.  Men, at least, don't lose their breeding if they choose to sow
+wild oats.  But women go the whole hog or none."
+
+"Other times, other manners.  We make our own, and you have to put up
+with them whether you like it or not.  See?"
+
+"I see that you are even sillier than I thought.  You need nothing so
+much as a sound spanking."
+
+"Your own manners are none too good.  You've handed me one insult after
+another."
+
+"I've merely talked to you as your father would if he were not blind.
+Besides, it would probably make you sick to be 'respected.'  Come
+along.  We'll go round to a garage and get a taxi.  Why on earth didn't
+you ring for a taxi from Farren's?"
+
+"I tried to, but it's an apartment house and there was no one
+downstairs to make the connection.  Too late.  So I footed it."  She
+yawned prodigiously.  "I'm ready at last for my little bunk.  Hope
+you've enjoyed this more than I have.  You'd be a scream at a petting
+party."
+
+Clavering paid his small account and they issued into the storm once
+more.  It was impossible to talk.  In the taxi she went to sleep.
+Thank Heaven!  He had had enough of her.  Odious brat.  More than once
+he had had a sudden vision of Mary Zattiany during that astonishing
+conversation at the counter.  The "past" she had suggested to his
+tormented mind was almost literary by contrast.  She, herself, a queen
+granting favors, beside this little fashionable near-strumpet.  They
+didn't breathe the same air, nor walk on the same plane.  Who, even if
+this little fool were merely demi-vierge, would hesitate between them?
+One played the game in the grand manner, the other like a glorified
+gutter-snipe.  But he was thankful for the diversion, and when he
+reached his own bed he fell asleep immediately and did not turn over
+for seven hours.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+He had informed Madame Zattiany's butler over the telephone that he
+would call that evening at half-past nine, but he returned to his rooms
+after a day at the office with lagging steps.  He dreaded another
+evening in that library by the fire.  It was beyond his imagination to
+foresee how she would treat him, what rôle she would choose to play,
+and although he was grimly determined to play whatever rôle she
+assigned to him (for the present!), he hated the prospect.  He was in
+no mood for a "game."  This wooing was like nothing his imagination had
+ever prefigured.  To be put on trial . . . to sit with the woman in the
+great solitude of the house and the very air vibrating between
+them . . . or frozen . . . self-conscious as a schoolboy up for
+inspection . . . afraid of making a false move. . . .  What in God's
+name would they talk about?  Politics?  Books?  Art?  Banalities! . . .
+he'd half a mind to go to Florida after all . . . or join Jim
+Oglethorpe in South Carolina: he had a standing invitation . . . he'd
+return by the next train; he'd felt as if existing in a vacuum all
+day. . . .
+
+When he reached his rooms he found his problem solved for the
+moment--possibly.  A telephone slip informed him that Madame Zattiany
+would be at home, and a note from Mrs. Oglethorpe enclosed tickets for
+her box at the opera that night.
+
+If she would only go!
+
+He called the house.  The butler answered and retired to summon Madame
+Zattiany.  Her voice came clear and cool over the telephone.  He
+invited her to go to Sherry's for dinner and to hear Farrar in
+_Butterfly_ afterward.  "I must tell you that we shall sit in a box,"
+he added.  "Mrs. Oglethorpe's."
+
+"Oh!"  There was a pause that seemed eternal.  Then she laughed
+suddenly, a laugh of intense amusement that ended on a note of
+recklessness.  "Well!  Why not?  Yes, I will go.  Very many thanks."
+
+"Good.  It means an early dinner.  I'll call for you at a quarter to
+seven."
+
+"I'm promptness itself.  Au 'voir."
+
+So that was that!  One night's respite.  He'd leave her at her door.
+He wondered if his voice had been as impersonal as her own: he had
+almost barked into the telephone and had probably overdone it.  But was
+any man ever in such a ghastly position before?  Well, he'd lose the
+game before he'd make a fool of himself again. . . .  Ass . . . he'd
+had the game in his own hands last night . . . could have switched off
+any moment.  He'd let go and delivered himself into hers.
+
+He took a cold shower, and made a meticulous toilet.
+
+When he arrived at the house he was shown into the drawing-room.  He
+had never seen it before and he glanced about him with some curiosity.
+It was a period room: Louis Quinze.  The furniture looked as if made of
+solid gold and Madame Du Barry herself might have sat on the dainty
+brocades.  The general effect was airy and graceful, gay, frivolous,
+and subtly vicious.  (An emanation to which the chaste Victorian had
+been impervious.)  He understood why Madame Zattiany did not use it.
+She might be subtly anything, but assuredly she was neither airy nor
+frivolous.
+
+Then he realized that there was a painting of a girl over the mantel
+and that the girl was Mary Ogden.  He stepped forward eagerly, almost
+holding his breath.  The portrait ended at the tiny waist, and the
+stiff satin of the cuirass-like bodice was softened with tulle which
+seemed to float about the sloping shoulders.  The soft ashen hair,
+growing in a deep point on the broad full brow, was brushed softly back
+and coiled low on the long white neck.  The mouth was soft and pouting,
+with a humorous quirk at the corners, and the large dark gray eyes were
+full of a mocking light that seemed directed straight into the depths
+of his puzzled brain as he stood gazing at that presentment of a once
+potent and long vanished beauty. . . .  Extraordinarily like and yet so
+extraordinarily unlike!  But the resemblance may have well been exact
+when Mary Zattiany was twenty.  How had Mary Ogden looked at thirty?
+That very lift of the strong chin, that long arch of nostril . . .
+something began to beat in the back of his brain. . . .
+
+"What a beauty poor Mary must have been, no?"
+
+He turned, and forgot the portrait.  Madame Zattiany wore a gown of
+that subtle but unmistakable green that no light can turn blue; thin
+shimmering velvet to the knees, melting into satin embroidered with
+silver and veiled with tulle.  On her head was a small diamond tiara
+and her breast was a blaze of emeralds and diamonds.  She carried a
+large fan of green feathers.
+
+He had believed he had measured the extent of her beauty, but the crown
+gave her a new radiance--and she looked as attainable as a queen on her
+throne.
+
+He went forward and raised her hand to his lips.  "I insist," he said
+gallantly.  "Anything else would be out of the picture.  I need not
+tell you how wonderful you look--nor that after tonight you will hardly
+remain obscure!"
+
+"Why do things halfway?  It has never been my method.  And Mary told me
+once that Nile-green had been her favorite color until she lost her
+complexion.  So--as I am to exhibit myself in a box--_enfin!_ . . .
+Besides, I wanted to go."  She smiled charmingly.  "It was most kind of
+you to think of me."
+
+"Would that all 'kind' acts were as graciously rewarded.  I shall be
+insufferably conceited for the rest of my life--only it is doubtful if
+I shall be seen at all.  Shall we go?"
+
+When they arrived at Sherry's they found the large restaurant almost
+deserted.  It was barely seven.  After he had ordered the dinner--and
+he thanked his stars that he knew how to order a dinner--she said
+casually:
+
+"I had a call from your friend, Miss Dwight, today."
+
+"Yes?  You did not see her, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, but I did.  We talked for two hours.  It was almost comical--the
+sheer delight in talking to a woman once more.  I have never been what
+is called a woman's woman, but I always had my friends, and I suddenly
+realized that I had missed my own sex."
+
+"I shouldn't fancy that you two would have much in common."
+
+"You forget that we were both nurses.  We compared experiences: methods
+of nursing, operations, doctors, surgeons, shell shock, plastic
+surgery, the various characteristics of wounded men--all the rest of
+it."
+
+"It must have been an exciting conversation."
+
+"You never could be brought to believe it, but it was.  Afterward, we
+talked of other things.  She seems to me quite a remarkable woman."
+
+"Entirely so.  What is it she lacks that prevents men from falling in
+love with her?  Men flock there, and she is more discussed as a mind
+and a personality than any woman among us; but it is all above the
+collar.  And yet those handsome-ugly women often captivate men."
+
+"You ask one woman why another cannot fascinate men!  I should say that
+it is for want of transmission.  The heart and passions are there--I
+will risk guessing that she has been tragically in love at least
+once--but there is something wrong with the conduit that carries sexual
+magnetism; it has been bent upward to the brain instead of directed
+straight to the sex for which it was designed.  Moreover, she is too
+coldly and obviously analytical and lacks the tact to conceal it.  Men
+do not mind being skewered when they are out for purely intellectual
+enjoyment, but they do not love it."
+
+Clavering laughed.  "I fancy your own mind is quite as coldly
+analytical, but nature took care of your conduits and you see to the
+tact.  You cannot teach Gora how to redistribute her magnetism, but you
+might give her a few points."
+
+"They would be wasted.  It is merely that I am a woman of the world,
+something she will never be.  And in my hey-day, I can assure you, I
+was not analytical."
+
+"Your hey-day?"
+
+"I was a good many years younger before the war, remember.  Heavens!
+How rowdy those young people are!  A month ago I should have asked if
+they were ladies and gentlemen, but I have been quite close to their
+kind in the tea rooms and their accent is unmistakable; although the
+girls talk and act like _gamines_.  One of them seems to know you."
+
+Clavering had been conscious that the restaurant was filling with
+groups and couples, bound, no doubt, for the opera or theatre.  He
+followed Madame Zattiany's eyes.  In the middle of the room was a large
+table surrounded by very young men and girls; the latter as fragile and
+lovely as butterflies: that pathetic and swiftly passing youth of the
+too pampered American girl.  The youth of this generation promised to
+be briefer than ever!
+
+He gave them a cursory glance, and then his chair turned to pins.
+Janet Oglethorpe sat at the head of the table.  What would the brat do?
+She had been fond of him as a child, but as he had found her detestable
+in her flapperhood, and been at no pains to conceal his attitude, she
+had taken a violent dislike to him.  Last night he had deliberately
+flicked her on the raw.
+
+He was not long in doubt.  She had returned his perfunctory bow with a
+curt nod, and after a brief interval--during which she appeared to be
+making a communication that was received with joyous hilarity--she left
+her seat and ran across the room.  She might have been in her own house
+for all the notice she took of the restaurant's other guests.
+
+Clavering rose and grimly awaited the onslaught.  Even the waiters were
+staring, but for the moment only at the flashing little figure whose
+cheeks matched to a shade the American Beauty rose of her wisp of a
+gown.
+
+Her big black eyes were sparkling wickedly, her vivid little mouth wore
+a twist that can only be described as a grin.  She had come for her
+revenge.  No doubt of that.
+
+She bore down on him, and shook his unresponsive hand heartily.  "I've
+been telling them how dear and noble you were last night, dear Mr.
+Clavering, just like a real uncle, or what any one would expect of one
+of granny's pets.  No doubt you saved my life and honor, and I want to
+tell the world." Her crisp clear voice was pitched in G.  It carried
+from end to end of the silent room.
+
+"Would that I were your uncle!  Won't you sit down?  I believe that you
+have not met Madame Zattiany."
+
+Miss Oglethorpe had not cast a glance at her victim's companion,
+assuming her to be some writing person; although he did once in a while
+take out Anne Goodrich or Marian Lawrence: old girls--being all of
+twenty-four--in whom she took no interest whatever.
+
+She half turned her head with a barely perceptible nod.  The tail of
+her eye was arrested.  She swung round and stared, her mouth open.  For
+the moment she was abashed; whatever else she may have submerged, her
+caste instinct remained intact and for a second she had the unpleasant
+sensation of standing at the bar of her entire class.  But she
+recovered immediately.  _Grandes dames_ were out of date.  Even her
+mother had worn her skirts to her knees a short time since.  What fun
+to "show this left-over."  And then her spiteful naughtiness was
+magnified by anger.  Madame Zattiany had inclined her head graciously,
+but made no attempt to conceal her amusement.
+
+"Yes, I'll sit down.  Thanks."  She produced a cigarette and lit it.
+"Granny's got a lot of ancient photographs of her girlhood friends,"
+she remarked with her insolent eyes on Madame Zattiany, "and one of
+them's enough like you to be you masquerading in the get-up of the
+eighties.  Comes back to me.  Just before mother left I heard her
+discussing you with a bunch of her friends.  Isn't there some mystery
+or other about you?"
+
+"Yes, indeed!  Is it not so?"  Madame Zattiany addressed her glowering
+host, her eyes twinkling.  It was evident that she regarded this
+representative of the new order with a scientific interest, as if it
+were a new sort of bug and herself an entomologist.  "Probably," she
+added indulgently, "the most mysterious woman in New York.  What you
+would call an adventuress if you were not too young to be uncharitable.
+Mr. Clavering is kind enough to take me on trust."
+
+Miss Oglethorpe's wrath waxed.  This creature of an obsolete order had
+the temerity to laugh at her.  Moreover----  She flashed a glance from
+Clavering's angry anxious face to the beautiful woman opposite, and a
+real color blazed in her cheeks.  But she summoned a sneer.
+
+"Noble again!  Has he told you of our little adventure last night?"
+
+"Last night?"  A flicker crossed the serenity of Madame Zattiany's
+face.  "But no.  I do not fancy Mr. Clavering is in the habit of
+telling his little adventures."
+
+"Oh, he wouldn't.  Old standards.  Southern chivalry.  All the rest of
+it.  That's why he's granny's model young man.  Well, I'll tell you----"
+
+"You've been drinking again," hissed Clavering.
+
+"Of course.  Cocktail party at Donny's----"
+
+"Well, moderate your voice.  It isn't necessary to take the entire room
+into your confidence.  Better still, go back to your own table."
+
+She raised her voice.  "You see, Madame Zattiany, I was running round
+loose at about one o'clock A. M. when whom should I run into but dear
+old Uncle Lee.  He looked all shot to pieces when he saw me.  Girls in
+his day didn't stay out late unless they had a beau.  Ten o'clock was
+the limit, anyhow.  But did he take advantage of my unprotected maiden
+innocence?  Not he.  He stood there in the snow and delivered a lecture
+on the error of my ways, then took me to a delicatessen shop--afraid of
+compromising himself in a restaurant--and stuffed me with sandwiches
+and bananas.  Even there, while we were perched on two high stools, he
+didn't make love to me as any human man would have done.  He just ate
+sandwiches and lectured.  God!  Life must have been dull for girls in
+his day!"
+
+People about them were tittering.  One young man burst into a guffaw.
+Madame Zattiany was calmly eating her dinner.  The tirade might have
+fallen on deaf ears.
+
+Clavering's skin had turned almost black.  His eyes looked murderous.
+But he did not raise his voice.  "Go back to your table," he said
+peremptorily.  "You've accomplished your revenge and I've had all I
+propose to stand. . . .  By God!  If you don't get out this minute I'll
+pick you up and carry you out and straight to your grandmother."
+
+"Yes you would--make a scene."
+
+"The scene could hardly be improved.  Will you go?"
+
+He half rose.  Even Madame Zattiany glanced at him apprehensively.
+
+Miss Oglethorpe laughed uncertainly.  "Oh, very well.  At least we
+never furnish material for your newspapers.  That's just one thing we
+think beneath us."  She rose and extended her hand.  "Good night,
+Madame Zattiany," she said with a really comical assumption of the
+grand manner.  "It has been a great pleasure to meet you."
+
+Madame Zattiany took the proffered hand.  "Good night," she said
+sweetly.  "Your little comedy has been most amusing.  Many thanks."
+
+Miss Oglethorpe jerked her shoulders.  "Well, console dear unky.  He'd
+like the floor to open and swallow him.  Ta!  Ta!"
+
+She ran back to her table, and its hilarity was shortly augmented.
+
+Madame Zattiany looked at Clavering aghast.  "But it is worse than I
+supposed!" she exclaimed.  "It is really a tragedy.  Poor Mrs.
+Oglethorpe."  Then she laughed, silently but with intense amusement.
+"I wish she had been here!  After all! . . .  Nevertheless, it is a
+tragedy.  An Oglethorpe!  A mere child intoxicated . . . and truly
+atrocious manners.  Why don't her people put her in a sanitarium?"
+
+"Parents count about as much today as women counted in the cave era.
+But it is abominable that you should be made conspicuous."
+
+"Oh, that!  I have been conspicuous all my life.  And you must admit
+that she had the centre of the stage!  If any one is to be
+commiserated, it is you.  But you really behaved admirably; I could
+only admire your restraint."
+
+Clavering's ferment subsided, and he returned her smile.  "I hope I
+didn't express all I felt.  Murder would have been too good for her.
+But you are an angel.  And for all her bravado you must have made her
+feel like the little vulgarian she is.  Heavens, but the civilization
+varnish is thin!--and when they deliberately rub it off----"
+
+"Tell me of this adventure."
+
+"It was such a welcome adventure after leaving you!  She told
+practically the whole of it.  She had been to a party and her host was
+too drunk to take her home.  She couldn't get a taxi, so started to
+walk.  After I had fed the little pig I took her home.  Of course I had
+no intention of mentioning it to any one, but I hardly feel that I am
+compromising my honor as a gentleman!"
+
+"But will Society permit this state of things to last?  New York!  It
+seems incredible."
+
+"Heaven knows.  It might as well try to curb the lightning as these
+little fools.  Their own children, if they have any, will probably be
+worse."
+
+"I wonder.  Reformed rakes are not generally indulgent to adventurous
+youth.  There will probably be a violent revulsion to the rigors of the
+nineteenth century."
+
+"Hope so.  Thank Heaven we can get out of this."
+
+They left the table.  As he followed her down the long room and noted
+the many eyes that focussed on the regal and beautiful figure in its
+long wrap of white velvet and fox he set his lips grimly.  Another
+ordeal before him.  For a moment he wished that he had fallen in love
+with a woman incapable of focussing eyes.  He hated being conspicuous
+as he hated poverty and ugliness and failure and death.  Then he gave
+an impatient sigh.  If he could win her he cared little if the entire
+town followed her every time she appeared on the street.  And she had
+been very sweet after that odious flapper had taken herself off.  He
+had ceased to feel at arm's length.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+They entered the box during the nuptial hymn.  Farrar, almost supine in
+the arms of the seducer, was singing with the voluptuous abandon that
+makes this scene the most explicit in modern opera.  She had sung it a
+thousand times, but she was still the beautiful young creature exalted by
+passion, and her voice seemed to have regained its pristine freshness.
+She had done many things to irritate New Yorkers, but in this scene,
+whether they forgave her or not, they surrendered; and those to whom love
+and passion were lost memories felt a dim resurgence under that golden
+tide.
+
+Clavering had no desire to surrender.  In fact he endeavored to close his
+ears.  He had received a cold douche and a hot one in the course of the
+past hour, and he felt that his equilibrium was satisfactorily
+established.  He had forgotten to warn Madame Zattiany of the step at the
+front of the box, down which so many novices had stumbled, but she had
+taken it and settled herself with the nonchalance of custom.  Odd.  Once
+more something beat in the back of his brain.  But he dismissed it
+impatiently.  No doubt many boxes in Europe were constructed in the same
+fashion.
+
+He had seated himself a little to the right and behind her.  He saw her
+lids droop and her hands move restlessly.  Then, as the curtain went down
+and Farrar was accepting the customary plaudits, her eyes opened and
+moved over the rich and beautiful auditorium with a look of hungry
+yearning.  This was too much for Clavering and he demanded abruptly:
+
+"Why do you look like that?  Have you ever been here before?"
+
+She turned to him with a smile.  "What a question! . . .  But opera, both
+the silliest and the most exalting of the arts, is the Youth of Life, its
+perpetual and final expression.  And when the house is dark I always
+imagine it haunted by the ghosts of dead opera singers, or of those whose
+fate is sadder still.  Does it never affect you in that way?"
+
+"Can't say it does. . . .  But . . .  I vaguely remember--some ten years
+ago a young singer with a remarkable voice sang Marguerite once on that
+stage and then disappeared overnight . . . lost her voice, it was
+said. . . ."
+
+She gave a low choking laugh.  "And you think I am she?  Really!"
+
+"I think nothing, but that I am here with you--and that in another moment
+I shall want to sit on the floor--Oh, Lord!"
+
+The house was a blaze of light.  It looked like a vast gold and red jewel
+box, built to exhibit in the fullness of their splendor the most
+luxurious and extravagant women in the world.  And it was filled tonight
+from coifed and jewelled orchestra to highest balcony, where plainer
+people with possibly jewelled souls clung like flies.  Not a box was
+empty.  Clavering's glance swept the parterre, hoping it would be
+occupied for the most part by the youngest set, less likely to be
+startled by the resemblance of his guest to the girl who had sat among
+their grandmothers when the opera house was new.  But there were few of
+the very young in the boxes.  They found their entertainment where
+traditions were in the making, and dismissed the opera as an old
+superstition, far too long-winded and boring for enterprising young
+radicals.
+
+Against the red backgrounds he saw the austere and homely faces of women
+who represented all that was oldest and best in New York Society, and
+they wore their haughty bones unchastened by power.  There were many more
+of the succeeding generation, of course, many more whose ancestry derived
+from gold not blood, and they made up in style and ritual what they
+lacked in pulchritude.  Lack of beauty in the parterre boxes was as
+notorious as the "horseshoe" itself, Dame Nature and Dame Fortune, rivals
+always, having been at each other's throats some century and
+three-quarters ago, and little more friendly when the newer aristocracy
+of mere wealth was founded.  All the New York Society Beauties were
+historical, the few who had survived the mere prettiness of youth
+entering a private Hall of Fame while still alive.
+
+It had begun!  Clavering fell back, folded his arms and set his teeth.
+First one pair of opera glasses in the parterre, then another, then
+practically all were levelled at Mrs. Oglethorpe's box.  Young men and
+old in the omnibus box remained in their seats.  Very soon white
+shoulders and black in the orchestra chairs began to change their angle,
+attracted by the stir in the boxes.  That comment was flowing freely, he
+made no doubt.  In the boxes on either side of him the occupants were
+staring less openly, but with frequent amazed side glances and much
+whispering.  Madame Zattiany sat like an idol.  She neither sought to
+relieve what embarrassment she may have felt--if she felt any! thought
+Clavering--by talking to her escort nor by gazing idly about the house
+comparing other women's gowns and crowns with her own.  She might have
+been a masterpiece in a museum.
+
+A diversion occurred for which Clavering at least was grateful.  The door
+opened and Mr. Dinwiddie entered, limping and leaning on a cane.  He
+looked pale and worried.  Clavering resigned his seat and took one still
+further in the rear.  But the low-pitched dialogue came to him distinctly.
+
+"Is this prudent?" murmured Dinwiddie, as he sat himself heavily beside
+her.  "There will be nothing else talked of in New York tomorrow.  So far
+there have only been rumors.  But here!  You look like Mary Ogden risen
+from the dead.  There's a rumor, by the way, that she is dead."
+
+"She was alive the last time I heard from Vienna.  But why imprudent?
+Mr. Clavering told me of your kind concern, but I assure you that I am
+neither a political nor a marital refugee."
+
+"But you have a secret you wish to keep.  Believe me, you can do so no
+longer.  The Sophisticates are generous and casual.  They take you on
+your face value and their curiosity is merely human and good-natured.
+But this!  In Jane Oglethorpe's box!  It is in the nature of an invasion.
+You hardly could have done more if you had forced yourself into a
+drawing-room uninvited.  You must either come out tomorrow and tell them
+who you are, establish yourself . . . or . . . or----"
+
+"Well?"  Madame Zattiany was smiling, and, probably, the most serene
+person in the house.
+
+"I--I--think you had better go back to Europe.  I must be frank.
+Anything less would be cowardly.  You interest me too much. . . .  But I
+can only suppose that your secret is of the sort that if discovered--and
+they will discover it!--would cause you grave embarrassment."
+
+"You mean if I am Mary Zattiany's illegitimate daughter?"
+
+"I don't think they would have minded that if you had brought letters to
+them from Mary asking them to be kind to you--and if you had made a good
+marriage.  But to have it flung in their faces like this--they will never
+forgive you."
+
+"And you think I am Mary Zattiany's daughter?"
+
+"I--yes--I think I have gone back to my original theory.  But there must
+be something behind.  She never would have let you come over here with a
+letter only to Trent.  She knew that she could rely on many of her old
+friends.  No people in the world are more loyal to their own than these
+old New Yorkers."
+
+"And suppose she did give me letters--and that I have not been interested
+enough to present them?"
+
+"I knew it!  But I am afraid it's too late now.  They not only will
+resent your indifference, but they are extremely averse to anything like
+sensational drama in private life.  And your appearance here tonight is
+extremely dramatic!  They'll never forgive you," he reiterated solemnly.
+
+"Really?  Well, let us enjoy the next act," she added indulgently.  "I
+hope you will remain here."
+
+The curtain had gone up.  The audience, balked of the private drama, in
+which they had manifested no aversion whatever from playing their own
+rôle, transferred their attention to the stage, although Clavering saw
+more than one glance wander across the house, and those in the adjoining
+boxes felt themselves free to peer persistently.
+
+Farrar had not finished bowing and kissing her hands before the next
+curtain when the door of the box opened once more and Mr. Osborne
+entered.  After a few words with Madame Zattiany he went out and returned
+almost immediately with three other men, two of his own generation, and a
+tall, dark, extremely good-looking young man, whose easy negligent air
+was set askew by the eager expression of his eyes.  Clavering, not
+waiting to be introduced, fled to the smoking-room and took a seat in a
+corner with his back to the other occupants lest some one recognize and
+speak to him.  A hideous fear had invaded his soul.  If this world, so
+indisputably her own, did accept her--as he had not a doubt it would if
+she demanded it; he made light of Dinwiddie's fears, knowing her as he
+did--where would he come in?  Sheer luck, supplemented by his own
+initiative, had given him a clear field for a few weeks, but what chance
+would he have, not only if her house were overrun with people, but if she
+were pursued by men with so much more to offer, with whom she must have
+so much more in common?  He might be the equal of the best of them in
+blood and the superior of many, but his life had not been of the order to
+equip him with those minor but essential and armorial arts, that assured
+ease and distinction, possessed by men not only born into the best
+society but bred in it, and who had lived on their background, not on
+their nerves.  To be "born" is not enough.  It is long association that
+counts, and the "air" may be acquired by men of inferior birth but the
+supreme opportunity.  He had managed to interest her because he had no
+rival, and he was young and his mind in tune with hers.  That alone, no
+doubt, was the secret of her imaginative flight in his direction.  For
+the first time in his life he felt a sense of inferiority, and for the
+moment he made no attempt to shake it off.  He was in the depths of
+despair.  He did not even light a cigarette. . . .  He could hear a group
+of young men discussing her . . . as one of their own kind . . . with no
+lack of respect . . . some new friend of Mrs. Oglethorpe's--they were too
+young to remember Mary Ogden. . . .  She would have many "knights" on the
+morrow . . . he felt on the far side of a rapidly widening gulf . . . and
+he had once sought to dig a gulf!  Disapproved!  Questioned!  Tried to
+forget her!  He wished he had abducted her.
+
+A bell rang.  The men moved toward the foyer.  In a few moments he
+followed.  The attendant opened the Oglethorpe door and as he entered the
+ante-room he saw that the box was still filled with men.  They had
+evidently taken root.  He was possessed by a dull anger, and as it spread
+upward his sense of inferiority took flight.  He'd rout them all, damn
+them.  After all he had more brains than any man in the house and his
+manners could be as good and as bad as their own.  Moreover, he was
+probably more strongly endowed in other ways than the youngest of them.
+The wise thing for him to do was to let her find it out the next time
+they were alone.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+But it was some time before he saw her alone again, and meanwhile many
+things happened.
+
+She took Mr. Dinwiddie home in her car for supper, Clavering following
+with Osborne in a taxi, and as the abundant repast was spread in the
+dining-room it was patent that she had gone to the opera with the
+intention of bringing back willing guests.  She knew that both
+Dinwiddie and Osborne subscribed to the omnibus box, and no doubt if
+they had failed to put in an appearance she would have dropped--with
+one of her infernally ready excuses--himself at his own door.  She
+might as well have announced, without bothering to feed these damned
+old bores, that she did not intend to see him alone again until she had
+made up her royal mind.
+
+He ground his teeth, but he was master of himself again and had no
+intention to make the mistake of sulking.  The situation put him on his
+mettle.  He led the conversation and did practically all the talking:
+as if the vital youth in him, stimulated by music and champagne (which
+the older men were forced to imbibe sparingly), must needs pour forth
+irresistibly--and impersonally.  He was not jealous of Dinwiddie or
+Osborne (although the black frown on the latter's brow was sufficient
+evidence of a deeply personal resentment), and although he did not
+flash Madame Zattiany a meaning glance, might indeed have sat at her
+board for the first time, he knew that he had never made a better
+impression.  Her eyes, which had been heavy and troubled as they took
+their seats at the table, and as old as eyes could be in that perfect
+setting, began to look like a gray landscape illumined by distant
+flashes of lightning.  Before long they were full of life, and
+response, and laughter.  And pride?  There was something very like
+pride in those expressive orbs (not always as subject to her will as
+she fancied), as they dwelt on the brilliant young journalist whose
+mind darted hither and thither on every subject he could summon that
+would afford the opportunity of witty comment.  He even quoted
+himself--skipping the past two months--and what had been evolved with
+much deliberation and rewriting sounded spontaneous and pertinent.  But
+in truth he was so genuinely stimulated before the brief hour was over
+that when he returned to his rooms he wrote his column before turning
+in.  He felt as if fiery swords were playing about his mind, flashing
+out words and phrases that would make his brother columnists, no
+sluggards in words and phrases themselves, green on the morrow.  For
+the moment he was quite happy, as he always was when his mind was
+abnormally quickened, and he dismissed women and their infernal whims
+to limbo.
+
+When he awoke at two o'clock in the afternoon his brain felt like the
+ashes of a bonfire and his spirits were a leaden weight.  He knew what
+was to be expected of reaction, however, and after his punch bag and
+showers he felt better.  He'd see her today and force some sort of
+understanding.
+
+But when he opened his door and saw a letter in her handwriting, and
+evidently delivered by a servant, as it was unstamped, his hand shook
+and his half-recovered confidence fled.  This time he made no attempt
+at the farce of self-discipline; he opened it at once.  When he saw
+that it began without formality he drew a longer breath.
+
+"I am not going to see you until Saturday," it read, "when I hope you
+will take me to Miss Dwight's party.  Meanwhile I shall ask you not to
+see Mr. Dinwiddie nor any one else likely to discuss me.  I shall not
+care to stay long at the party and if you will return here with me I
+will tell you my secret, such as it is.  I shall only say here that I
+had no intention of making a mystery of myself, for I did not expect to
+exchange a word with any one in America but Judge Trent and his
+business associates.  I came to America for one purpose only, to settle
+my affairs, which would have dragged on interminably if I had not been
+here to receive my alienated properties in person.  I know many people
+in New York, but I had no idea of seeing any of them, although tempted
+on account of the money they might help me to collect for the children
+of Austria.  But I had decided to leave that until the last minute.  I
+not only was no longer interested in these old friends of mine, but I
+disliked the explanations I should be forced to give them, the
+comments, the curiosity, the endless questions.  What I mean by this
+you will know on Saturday night.
+
+"But it is not the first time in my life that I have discovered the
+futility of making plans.  My meeting with you and the profound
+interest you have awakened has upset all calculations.  I expected
+nothing less!  If I had I should have told you the truth the night we
+met.  But it never occurred to me for an instant that I could love any
+man again.  I had done with all that years ago, and my intention was to
+give my life and my fortune to certain problems in Europe which I shall
+not bore you with here.
+
+"Possibly if I had met you casually with Judge Trent, or if I had not
+chosen to avoid my old friends and met you at one of their houses, as I
+might easily have done, I should have made no mystery of myself; if
+indeed you did not know the truth already.
+
+"But not only the curious circumstances of our meeting after your weeks
+of silent devotion, but your own personality, quickened to life a
+flicker of youthful romance so long moribund that I had forgotten it
+had ever been one of my lost inheritances.  I was also both amused and
+interested, and to play a little comedy with you was irresistible.  It
+did not occur to me for a moment that you would fall in love with me.
+
+"It was not until the second time you came here after the theatre that
+I realized what was happening in those submerged cells of mine.  But I
+could not make up my mind to tell you that night--nor the next.  By
+that time I was frightened.  I feared there could be only one result.
+I suppose all women are cowards when in love.  But I knew that this
+could not last, and when you asked me to sit in Mrs. Oglethorpe's box I
+thought the time had come to precipitate matters.  After a decisive
+step like that I could not retreat.  But I wish to tell you myself, and
+for that reason I have asked you to discuss me with no one until we
+meet.  It will probably be the last time I shall see you, but I am
+prepared for that.
+
+"I shall see Jane Oglethorpe today.  She has been very loyal and I
+think she will forgive me.  It would not matter much if she did not,
+and possibly would save me a good deal of boredom, but after last night
+an explanation is due her.
+
+"And after Saturday night, _mon ami_, matters will be entirely in your
+hands.  You will realize whether you have merely been dazzled and
+fascinated or whether there is really between us that mysterious bond
+that no circumstances can alter.  Such things have happened to men and
+women if we may believe history, but I have had too good reason to
+believe that it is not for me.  However--at least for a brief time you
+have given me back something of the hopes and illusions of youth.  This
+in itself is so astonishing that whatever the result I shall never be
+able to forget you.
+
+"Until Saturday.
+  "M."
+
+
+Clavering's immediate act was to dash off a love-letter more
+impassioned than any he had ever dreamed himself capable of writing,
+vowing that he was dazzled and fascinated, God knew, but that he loved
+her with the love of his life and would marry her if she would have
+him, no matter what her revelations.  And with what patience he could
+muster and with no grace whatever he would make no attempt to see her
+until Saturday night.  But she must believe that he loved her and she
+must write at once and tell him so.  He could not exist throughout that
+interminable interval unless she wrote him at once that she believed in
+the existence and the indissolubility of that bond, and that he had
+given her the highest and deepest and most passionate love of which man
+was capable, and which no woman but she could inspire, for no woman
+like her had ever lived.
+
+He dared not read it over.  He had never let himself go before, and he
+had written too much for print not to be self-conscious and critical of
+even a love-letter intended only for concordant eyes.  Nevertheless, he
+was aware even in his excitement that the more reckless it was the
+surer its effect.  No edited love-letter ever yet hit its mark.  (He
+remembered Parnell's love-letters, however, and devoutly hoped his own
+would never see the light.)  The waiter entered at the moment, and he
+gave him the missive, hastily addressed and sealed, and asked him to
+tell the "desk" to send it immediately and give the boy orders to wait
+for an answer.
+
+He drank his coffee, but ate nothing.  Nor did he open his newspapers.
+He strode up and down his rooms or stood at the window watching the
+hurrying throngs, the lumbering green busses, the thousand automobiles
+and taxis over on Fifth Avenue.  They were as unreal as a cinema.  He
+had the delusion, common to lovers, that Earth was inhabited by two
+people only--that brief extension of the soul which in its common
+acceptance of eternal loneliness looks out upon the world as upon a
+projected vision in which no reality exists, for man the dreamer is but
+a dream himself.  Phantasmagoria!
+
+He glanced at the clock every time he passed it.  It seemed incredible
+that mere minutes were passing.  But she was merciful.  She kept him in
+suspense but thirty-five minutes.  The messenger boy stared at the
+celebrated journalist, with whose appearance he was reasonably
+familiar, as if regarding a phase of masculine aberration with which he
+was even more familiar.  He grinned sympathetically, and Clavering was
+not too distraught to detect the point of view of the young
+philosopher.  He had been running his hands through his hair and no
+doubt his eyes were injected with blood.  He told him to wait, and went
+into his bedroom.  But the note was brief and required no answer.  "I
+believe you."  That was all, and it was enough.  He gave the astonished
+philosopher a five-dollar bill: an automatic American reaction.
+
+Then he sat down to puzzle over those parts of her letter which he had
+barely skimmed; faded into insignificance for the moment before the
+outstanding confession that she really loved him.  But they loomed
+larger and larger, more and more puzzling and ominous, as he read and
+reread them.  Finally he thrust the pages into his desk and went out
+for a tramp.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+It was a cold bright day.  The ice on the trees of Central Park was a
+diamond iridescence.  Nursemaids were leading children, bits of muffled
+wealth, along the alleys.  Horses pounded on the bridle paths.
+Automobiles and taxis, that must have looked to the airman above like
+aimless black planes drifting in a crystal sea, were carrying people to
+a thousand destinies.  Towering on all sides was the irregular concrete
+mass of New York.  As dusk fell, lights in those high buildings began
+to appear, first intermittently, then as long necklaces of brilliants
+strung against the sky.  Silence fell on the Park.
+
+Clavering walked until he could walk no farther, then took a bus at One
+Hundred and Tenth Street for Claremont.  When he reached the restaurant
+he could think of only three men whose companionship would be
+endurable, and failing to get any of them on the telephone resigned
+himself to a solitary dinner.  But still restless, he wandered over to
+a window and stared out across the Hudson at the dark Palisades on the
+opposite shore.  Battleships were at anchor, for there had been no ice
+in the Hudson this winter, and a steamboat with its double chain of
+lights swam gracefully up the river.  The cold winter stars winked down
+indifferently upon seething human hearts.
+
+He still refused to admit that the source of his uneasiness was that
+revelation set for Saturday night.  Nothing but death itself could halt
+his marriage with this woman, for she herself had unequivocally stated
+that after Saturday night the future would be in his hands.
+_His!_ . . .  Her secret?  Not that she had had lovers, for he had
+accepted that fact already, and for him the past had ceased to exist.
+Her husband was dead.  Nothing else mattered.  Nevertheless, the vague
+prescient chill he had experienced the night he first met her eyes, and
+once or twice since, accompanied as it was by a curious sense that just
+below his consciousness lay the key to the mystery, rattling now and
+again, but sinking deeper every time he made a dart at it, had defied
+further evasion since the receipt of her cryptic letter.  He was the
+more uneasy as she seemed far more certain of Mrs. Oglethorpe than of
+himself.
+
+Once more he heard the key rattle, but higher . . . almost in his
+consciousness . . . for the first time it seemed to sound a double note
+of warning . . . he had a sudden vision of a locked door--and not a
+door locked on a mere secret.
+
+He swung about impatiently.  The explanation of his mood was this
+hideous interval to be got through, Heaven alone knew how.  No wonder
+he had felt a sensation of terror.  When a man is in the unsatisfied
+stages of love he must expect occasional attacks of greensickness,
+sullen passions intensified by unreasoning fear.  And he was luckier
+than most.  He had been the confidant of men in love, with hope
+deferred or blasted, and although he had been sympathetic enough, and
+convinced that men had a far deeper capacity for suffering than women,
+still had his pity been tempered by a certain contempt.  Those had been
+the times when he had flouted the idea that he was basically romantic;
+and that he had never made a jackass of himself over any woman had
+induced a feeling of superiority that had expanded his ego.  Now he was
+convinced that his capacity for love put theirs to shame, and he was
+filled with pride at the thought.  Still--he wished it were Saturday
+night.
+
+He was crossing the room to his solitary table when he saw Jim
+Oglethorpe enter.  His first impulse was to avoid him.  The restaurant
+was well-filled and he could easily take a table in a corner with his
+back to the room.  But dining alone was a melancholy business at
+best--and tonight!  If Oglethorpe brought up Madame Zattiany's name he
+could change the subject or state bluntly that he had his reasons for
+not wishing to discuss her.  As he stood hesitating, Oglethorpe caught
+sight of him and almost ran across the room, his face, which had looked
+heavy and worried, glowing with pleasure.
+
+"Jove, this is luck!" he exclaimed.  "Alone?  So am I.  Got in this
+morning and found Janet had a dinner on for those infernally noisy
+friends of hers.  Got something to think over, so thought I'd come out
+here.  This is really luck as I was going to hunt you up tomorrow.
+Let's sit here.  I want to talk."
+
+He had led the way to a table in a remote corner, secluded, so far.  He
+beckoned the head waiter, who agreed that it should remain secluded.
+Then he asked Clavering to order the dinner, and, folding his arms,
+stared out of the window, his face sagging once more.  He was still a
+young man, not more than forty-five, but in spite of his love of
+outdoor sport he showed a more consistent love of eating and drinking
+in flabby muscles and pouches under the eyes.  It was an amiable,
+rather weak but stubborn face that had been handsome in youth when his
+eyes were bright and clear skin covered firm muscles, and it would be
+handsome again when years had compelled him to diet and his already
+faded hair had turned white; his features were regular and his figure
+well-knit under its premature accumulations.
+
+He produced a flask from his pocket when the waiter had discreetly
+turned his back, and their ice-water might have passed for cold tea.
+
+"Think I'll come to the point," he said.  "You know me well enough not
+to mind anything I say."
+
+Clavering glanced up from his oysters in alarm.  "There's just one
+question I won't discuss," he said sharply.
+
+Oglethorpe stared.  "You don't mean to say you're interested in her?
+So much the better!  And it strikes me you can't have any objection to
+discussing her with me.  I'm her father, ain't I?"
+
+"Her father--are you talking of Janet?"
+
+"Who else?  I'm worried as the devil.  Have been ever since I got in
+this morning.  I'd telegraphed I was coming, and when I got to the
+house Molly told me that mother wanted to see me at once and I posted
+down there.  It was about Janet, and you know more about it than I do."
+
+"I suppose I know what you mean.  But it turned out all right.  She
+happened to meet me, not some man who might have annoyed her.  Of
+course she shouldn't have taken such a risk, but; what can you do with
+these flappers?  They're all in league together and you might as well
+let them go their little pace.  It won't last.  They'll soon be older,
+and I don't suppose you intend to play the heavy father and lock her
+up."
+
+"No, but I'd like damn well to get her married.  Mother told me a
+pretty tale.  It seems she made a row at Sherry's last night, making
+you and some lady you had with you as conspicuous as herself.  Mrs.
+Vane was there and carried it straight to mother.  Mother's no fool and
+had already got on to this younger generation business and given Janny
+one or two tongue lashings, but she never dreamed it had gone as far as
+it looks.  Roaming the streets alone at one in the morning!  She'd
+undoubtedly been drinking last night--God!  I've a notion to take a
+switch to her.  And I suppose she was pretty well lit the night you
+picked her up.  I've never seen a hint of it.  Janny's spoilt enough.
+Her mother never had the slightest control over her and she could
+always get round me.  But she won't in the future.  I'll get top-hand
+somehow.  God!  My daughter!  Tell me your side of it, will you?"
+
+Clavering, who was genuinely fond of Oglethorpe, and relieved,
+moreover, that he had not yet heard of Madame Zattiany, gave a cautious
+and colorless account of the adventure.
+
+"It is possible that she had had a cocktail or two," he concluded.
+"But you must expect that.  If the flapper should adopt a coat of arms
+no doubt it would be a cocktail rampant with three cigarettes argent on
+a field de rouge.  However, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you took her
+in hand.  That is, if you can."
+
+"I'll do it all right.  D'you mean to tell me she was at Farren's
+without a chaperon?"
+
+"There may have been a chaperon to each couple for all I know."
+
+"You know damn well there wasn't.  No chaperon would have left her
+alone."
+
+"But surely, Jim, you know that chaperons are practically obsolete.
+They don't gee with cocktails and petting parties.  The New Freedom!
+The Reign of Youth!"
+
+"Damn nonsense.  No, I didn't know it.  I supposed she was properly
+chaperoned, as girls of her class always have been.  You know how much
+I care for Society, and I haven't got to the chicken stage either.
+Took it for granted that certain cast-iron conventions were still
+observed, in our set at least.  Of course I've seen her drink cocktails
+at home and thought it rather cute, and I've rubbed the paint off her
+cheeks and lips once or twice.  Girls are making up nowadays as if they
+were strumpets, but some little fool started it, and you know the old
+saying: 'What one monkey does the other monkey must do.'  It never
+worried me.  Of course I've heard more or less about these young
+idiots; they're always being discussed and written up; but somehow you
+never think those things can happen in your own family. . . .  I went
+straight home and blew up Molly--haven't had a sight of Janet yet--and
+of course she bawled.  Always does.  When I told her that Janet had
+been at Farren's alone she protested that Janet had told her she was
+going to bed early that night.  Even last night, when she had a theatre
+party, she understood that some young married woman was along.  But
+Molly's a fool.  What on earth am I to do with Janet?  There were no
+such girls in my young days.  Some of them were bad uns, but as
+discreet as you make 'em.  Didn't disgrace their families.  Some of
+them used to drink, right enough, but they were as smooth as silk in
+public, and went to a sanitarium to sober up when it got the best of
+'em.  But these girls appear to be about as discreet as street-walkers.
+You don't think they kick over the traces, do you?"
+
+"I'm dead sure that Janet hasn't.  She puts on the cap and bells partly
+because it's the fashion, partly because she thinks girls are alive and
+having their fun for the first time.  But she's no fool.  She nearly
+floored me once or twice.  She'll take care of herself."
+
+"Girls don't take care of themselves when they're drunk.  But I've an
+idea there's something else the matter with her.  At least mother has?"
+
+"Something else?"
+
+"In love."
+
+"Well, there's your chance to marry her off.  The sooner the better.
+But why should it drive her to drink?  If she's fixed her affections on
+any of those chaps that dance at her beck----"
+
+"She hasn't.  She's in love with you."
+
+"What!"  Clavering dropped his fork.  When the waiter had rushed to
+present him with another and retired, he still stared at Oglethorpe as
+if he had been stunned by a blow between the eyes.  "Whatever--what on
+earth put such an idea into Mrs. Oglethorpe's head?  The child can't
+endure me.  She pretty well proved it last night, and I've always known
+she disliked me--since she grew up, that is.  To be perfectly frank,
+aside from the fact that I don't care for young girls, she always
+irritates me like the deuce, and I've never made any secret of it.
+Night before last I couldn't well have made myself more disagreeable if
+I'd rehearsed for the part."
+
+Oglethorpe grinned.  "Lot you know about girls.  Just the way to make
+'em crazy about you.  Like all idealists, you don't know a thing about
+women.  Being a rank materialist myself, I know 'em like a book.  The
+emancipated flapper is just plain female under her paint and outside
+her cocktails.  More so for she's more stimulated.  Where girls used to
+be merely romantic, she's romantic--callow romance of youth, perhaps,
+but still romantic--plus sex-instinct rampant.  At least that's the way
+I size 'em up, and its logic.  There's no virginity of mind left,
+mauled as they must be and half-stewed all the time, and they're wild
+to get rid of the other.  But they're too young yet to be promiscuous,
+at least those of Janet's sort, and they want to fall in love and get
+him quick.  See the point?"
+
+"No doubt you're right.  But I'm not the object of Janet's young
+affections.  She's either led your mother to believe it for purposes of
+her own, or Mrs. Oglethorpe has merely jumped at that conclusion--well,
+Heaven only knows why."
+
+"You know why.  Because she'd like it.  So would I."
+
+"Good Lord, Jim!  I'm nearly old enough to be her father.  Barely ten
+years younger than yourself."
+
+"You'll never be as old as I am this minute, and I'd give my eyes to
+see you married to her.  Moreover, I'm convinced mother's right.  Janny
+let out something--broke down, I fancy, although mother wouldn't give
+her away any further.  And you used to be fond of her when she was a
+child.  She's sat on your lap a hundred times."
+
+"My dear Jim," said Clavering drily.  "You've just pronounced yourself
+a man of consummate experience.  Need I remind you that when a man has
+held a girl on his lap as a child, she is generally the last girl he
+wants on his lap later on?  Man love's the shock of novelty, the spice
+of surprise.  It's hard to get that out of a girl you have spanked--as
+I did Janet on two different occasions.  She was a fascinating
+youngster, but a little devil if there ever was one."
+
+"She's full of fascination yet.  I can see that, if I am her father.  A
+year or two from now, when she comes to her senses----"
+
+"Oh, cut it out, Jim!  I won't listen.  Even it were true--and I'd
+stake my life it isn't--I--well----"
+
+"D'you mean there's some other woman?"
+
+"I don't care to talk about it--but--let it go at that."
+
+"Sorry.  I'd have liked it.  You could have made a fine woman out of
+Janny.  She has it in her."
+
+Clavering did not express his doubts on this point aloud.  He was in
+truth horribly embarrassed and hardly knew what to say.  Not for a
+moment did he believe that the minx was in love with him, nor would he
+have taken the trouble to find out, even to please Jim Oglethorpe and
+his mother, had Mary Zattiany never crossed his horizon.  But he felt
+sorry for his friend and would have liked to banish his brooding
+distress.
+
+"Look here!" he exclaimed.  "You'll have to buck up and take her in
+hand.  After all, you're her father and she respects you.  No girl
+respects her mother these days, apparently, but the father has the
+advantage of being male.  Give her a talking to.  Tell her how cut up
+you are.  She's too young to be as hard as she likes to think.  Don't
+preach.  That would make matters worse.  Appeal to her.  Tell her she's
+making you miserable.  If that doesn't work--well, your idea of taking
+a switch to her isn't bad.  A sound spanking is what they all need, and
+it certainly would take the starch out of them.  Make them feel so
+damned young they'd forget just how blasé they're trying to be."
+
+"She might run away," rumbled Oglethorpe.  "I believe I'll try it,
+though, if worse comes to worst.  I'll have no filthy scandals in my
+family."
+
+"Why not collect all the fathers and plan a regular campaign?  Without
+their allowances they'd soon be helpless.  It would be a battle royal
+and might make history!  Might also get hold of the fathers of these
+young chaps.  Few have independent incomes."
+
+Oglethorpe laughed for the first time.  "Not a bad idea for a bachelor,
+Lee.  Maybe I'll try it.  Let's get out of this.  How about the
+Follies?"
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+When a man has cultivated a practical and methodical habit of mind and
+body he pursues the accustomed tenor of his way, whatever the ferment
+of his spirit.  Clavering's spirit was mercurial, but long since
+subject to his will, and it would no more have occurred to him to
+neglect his regular work because he was in love and a state of suspense
+than to put on petticoats and walk up Fifth Avenue.  It might be better
+or worse under foreign impact, but it would be done, and all else
+banished for the hour.
+
+There were times when he wrote better surrounded by the stimulations of
+the office; when he was neither fagged nor disturbed he worked at home.
+During this week of incertitudes he rose late, lunched with friends at
+the Sign of the Indian Chief, a restaurant where the cleverest of
+them--and those who were so excitedly sure of their cleverness that for
+the moment they convinced others as well as themselves--foregathered
+daily.  Then he went to the office and wrote or talked to other men
+until it was time to dine.  He could always be sure of companionship
+for the evening.  On his "day off" he took a train out into the country
+and walked for hours.
+
+There was a great deal of scintillating talk in his group on the
+significant books and tendencies of the day, and if the talk of French
+youth in their clubs before the Revolution may possibly have been
+profounder and more far-reaching in its philosophy, more formulative in
+its plan of action, owing to a still deeper necessity for change in the
+social order, the very fact that these brilliant young Americans had no
+personal grievance but merely sharpened their wits on matters in which
+they were intelligent enough to take an interest, saved their
+cleverness from becoming mordant or distorted by passion.  It was an
+excellent forcing-house for ideas and vocabulary.
+
+But their most solemn causeries were upon the vital theme of The
+American Reputation in Letters.  Past.  Present.  Future.  This was the
+age of Youth.  Should any of the old reputations be permitted to live
+on--save in the favor of the negligible public?  If so, which?  All the
+recent reputations they would have liked to pronounce equally great,
+merely on account of their commendable newness, but they were too
+conscientious for that.  They appraised, debated, rejected, finally
+placed the seal of their august approval upon a favored few.  Claques
+were arranged if the public were obtuse.  The future?  A few, a very
+few, were selected from the older group, many more from the younger,
+and ordained to survive and shed their undying beams for posterity.
+From these judicial pronouncements there was no appeal, and the
+pleasant spaces of the Sign of the Indian Chief, so innocuous to the
+uninitiated eye, was a veritable charnel house that stank in the
+nostrils of the rejected; but, inconsistent even as life itself, those
+melancholy graves were danced over by the sprightly young feet of the
+elect.  Sometimes there was a terrifying upheaval in one of those
+graves.  A dismal figure fought his way out, tore off his cerements,
+and stalked forth, muttering: "'But I stride on, austere.  No hope I
+have, no fear,'" leaving a puzzled uneasiness behind him.
+
+But for good or ill, it was a matter for congratulation that criticism
+was at last being taken seriously in the United States.
+
+
+There was a jazz party at the studio of a hospitable girl artist where
+Clavering danced with several of the prettiest young actresses of
+recent Broadway fame until dawn, and drank enough to make him as wild
+as the rest of the party had it not been for the seasoned apparatus
+inherited from hard-drinking Southern ancestors.  Altogether, he gave
+himself little time for thought, and if he felt at times an inclination
+to dream he thrust it from him with an almost superstitious fear.  He
+would speculate no longer, but neither would he run the risk of
+invoking the laughter of cynical gods.  If unimaginable disaster
+awaited him, at least he would not weaken his defences by a sojourn in
+the paradise of fools.
+
+He avoided Oglethorpe and Dinwiddie, and although he had engaged
+himself to dine at the Goodriches on Thursday night he sent an excuse.
+
+On Thursday morning, as he was turning over the pages of one of the
+newspapers his eye was arrested by the name Zattiany.  He never read
+Society paragraphs, but that name would leap to his eyes anywhere.  The
+announcement was as brief as "social notes" always are in the daily
+editions of the morning papers: "Mrs. Oglethorpe gives a luncheon
+tomorrow at her house in Gramercy Park to the Countess Zattiany of
+Vienna."
+
+So!  She had satisfied Mrs. Oglethorpe.  That was one on Dinwiddie.
+
+On the following night he bought himself an admission ticket to the
+Metropolitan Opera House and entered at the close of the second act.
+As he had half expected, she was in Mrs. Oglethorpe's box, and it was
+crowded with men.  He fancied that his older friend looked both glum
+and amused.  As for Dinwiddie, his expression was half-witted.
+
+He went home and took a bromide.  Sleep, being a function, is outside
+the domain of the will, and he had had little of it since Tuesday.  And
+sleep he must if he was to be in alert command of his faculties on the
+following night.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+Madame Zattiany stood before the long old-fashioned pier glass in her
+bedroom, a large cheerful room recently done over in white chintz sprayed
+with violets.  The bright winter sun streamed in on a scene of confusion.
+Gowns were thrown over every chair and hats covered the bed.  They all
+had the air of being tossed aside impatiently, as indeed they had been,
+and the maid with a last comprehensive look at her mistress began to
+gather them up and carry them to the large wardrobes in the dressing-room.
+
+Mary regarded herself critically.  She had wished (not without malice!)
+to emphasize her youthful appearance, but not at the expense of dignity,
+and she felt that she had achieved the subtle combination in the frock of
+soft black velvet cut with long, sweeping lines and of an excessive
+simplicity; and a black velvet hat of medium size with a drooping brim
+that almost covered one eye.  The long white gloves disappeared into her
+sleeves somewhere above the elbow and she wore a single string of pearls.
+She looked very Parisian, very elegant, as Mrs. Oglethorpe would have
+expressed it, and very assured.  In spite of the mocking gleam in the one
+visible eye her face was serene and proud.
+
+She had felt some trepidation on Tuesday when she had sought out Mrs.
+Oglethorpe and made her explanations, but she felt none whatever at the
+prospect of meeting these other twelve old friends.  Whether they
+approved or resented, were indulgent or elevated their respectable noses
+and intimated, "You are no longer one of _us_," was a matter of profound
+indifference to Mary Zattiany.  She would have avoided them all if it had
+been possible, but since she had deliberately permitted her hand to be
+forced she would take the situation humorously and amuse herself with
+whatever drama it might afford.
+
+Elinor Goodrich.  Mabel Lawrence.  Polly Vane.  Isabel Ruyler.  Ellen de
+Lacey.  Louise Prevost.  She had been so intimate with all of them, not
+only in the schoolroom but when they were all in Society together.  Now
+only her somewhat cynical sense of anticipation mitigated utter boredom
+at the thought of meeting them again.  Of the other six she had still
+vaguer memories, although she recalled having heard that the beauty of
+her own last season, Lily Armstrong, had married one of the Tracys.  She
+also was to be at the luncheon.
+
+What on earth was she to talk to them about at the table?  She could
+hardly tell them the story they expected before the servants.  That would
+be for the later hour in the drawing-room--or would it be in that absurd
+old room of Jane's upstairs?
+
+She recalled Elinor Tracy (Goodrich) and her enthusiastic admiration,
+which she had accepted as a matter-of-course, and given little beyond
+amiable tolerance in return.  As she had told Clavering, she was not a
+woman's woman.  She hoped Nelly had outgrown "gush."  For some ten years
+after her marriage she had met her from time to time abroad, but she had
+not seen her for so long that she doubted if she would recognize her if
+they passed on the street.  The only one of her old friends for whom she
+retained either interest or affection was Jane Oglethorpe, who, ten years
+older than herself, with a commanding personality unfolding rapidly at
+the dawn of their intimacy, had attracted deeply but subtly her own
+untried force of character and ruthless will.  Embarrassment over, she
+had enjoyed their long hour together, and was glad to renew the intimacy,
+to find that her old friend's warm affection had lost nothing with the
+years.  And she had found her more interesting than in her youth.
+
+She sighed a little as she looked back on her long hours of almost
+unbroken solitude in this old house.  She had been comparatively happy at
+first--a blessed interval of rest and peace in this marvellously wealthy
+and prosperous city where the poor were kept out of sight, at least,
+where all the men were whole and where one never saw a gaunt woman's
+appealing eyes, or emaciated ragged children.  Those untroubled hours had
+fled for ever and astonishment, impotent fury, and dire mental conflict
+had followed, but nevertheless she had dreamed--dreamed--and been glad of
+her freedom from social and all other duties.  Now, probably these women
+and many more would swarm here.
+
+Her mouth twisted as her maid helped her into the soft gray coat trimmed
+with blue fox.  Ordeal!  That would come on Saturday night.  No wonder
+she was merely amused and totally indifferent today!
+
+When she arrived at the house in Gramercy Park, purposely late, to give
+her entrance the effect Mrs. Oglethorpe had commanded, she heard an
+excited buzz of voices in the drawing-room as she was being relieved of
+her wrap.  As she entered it ceased abruptly and she heard several hardly
+perceptible gasps.  But the pause, before they all crowded about her, was
+too brief to be noticeable, and they shook her hand heartily or kissed
+her warmly.  If their eyes were perhaps too studiously expressionless,
+their words and manner might have been those of old friends welcoming
+back one who had been long absent and nothing more.  Conflicting
+emotions, born of undying femininity, were not evident for the moment.
+Mrs. Goodrich cried out at once how wonderfully well she looked, Mrs.
+Lawrence asked if she had stopped in Paris for her clothes, and Mrs. Vane
+if she found New York much changed.  Nothing could have gone off better.
+
+Mrs. Oglethorpe, in old-pile black velvet as usual, with a front and
+high-boned collar of yellow rose-point lace, stood in the background
+watching the comedy with a frank sardonic grin.  If her guests had been
+faithless to the traditions in which they had been bred, she would have
+felt angry and ashamed, but the automatic manner in which they rose to
+the occasion and took the blow standing (Mrs. Oglethorpe often indulged
+in the vernacular of her son, her Janet, and her Lee) made her rock with
+silent mirth.  She knew exactly how they felt!
+
+They were a fine-looking set of women and handsomely dressed, but they
+indisputably belonged to the old régime, and even Mrs. Tracy, the
+youngest of them, had something of what Mary Zattiany called that
+built-up look.  They were fashionable but not smart.  They carried
+themselves with a certain conscious rigidity and aloofness which even
+their daughters had abandoned and was a source of disrespectful amusement
+to their iniquitous granddaughters.  Although Mrs. Goodrich, Mrs.
+Lawrence and Mrs. Tracy were more up to date in their general appearance,
+wearing slightly larger hats and fewer feathers, with narrow dog collars
+instead of whaleboned net, they were as disdainful as the others of every
+art that aims to preserve something of the effect of youth; although they
+were spickingly groomed.  They accepted life as it was, and they had
+accepted it at every successive stage, serene in the knowledge that in
+this as in other things they were above the necessity of compromise and
+subterfuge.  They were the fixed quantities in a world of shifting values.
+
+In age they ranged from fifty-six to sixty-two, with the exception of
+Mrs. Tracy, who was a mere fifty-two.  A few were stout, the others bony
+and gaunt.  Their hair was white or gray.  Only Mrs. Tracy, with her
+fresh complexion and soft brown hair, her plump little figure encased in
+modern corsets, had got on the blind side of nature, as Mrs. Oglethorpe
+had told Mary.  The others were frankly elderly women, but of great
+dignity and distinction, some charm, and considerable honesty and
+simplicity.  And their loyalty never failed them.
+
+The luncheon was by no means easy and informal.  Mary, by racking her
+memory, recalled the first names of most of them and never in all her
+varied life had she been more sweetly amiable, made so determined an
+effort to please.  She might not care what they thought of her, but she
+was sorry for them, they had behaved very decently, and for Jane
+Oglethorpe's sake alone the occasion must be a success.  She was ably
+seconded by Mrs. Goodrich, who stared at her in wide-eyed admiration and
+rattled off the gossip of New York, and by Mrs. Tracy, who had an
+insatiable interest in diplomatic society.  When she had satisfied the
+latter's curiosity she led the conversation by a straight path to the
+sufferings of the children of Austria and begged them to join her in
+forming a relief committee.  They received this philanthropic suggestion
+with no apparent fervor, but it served to relieve the stiffness and
+tension until they retired to the drawing-room for coffee.
+
+They stood about for a few moments, Mary looking up at the portrait of
+Jane Oglethorpe in her flaming youth.  But the hostess ordered them all
+to sit down and exclaimed peremptorily: "Now, Mary, tell them all about
+it or I'll have a lot of fainting hysterical women on my hands.  We're
+still human if we are old and ugly.  Go to it, as Janet would say.  I
+believe you have met that estimable exponent of the later New York
+manner.  You are no more extraordinary yourself than some of the changes
+here at home, but you're more picturesque, and that's harder to swallow.
+Put them out of their misery."
+
+The ladies smiled or frowned, according to what humor the Almighty,
+niggardly in his bestowal of humor, had allotted them.  At all events
+they were used to "Jane."  Mrs. Goodrich, who had led Mary to a sofa and
+seated herself beside her, took her hand and pressed it affectionately,
+as if she were encouraging her on the way to the operating room.  "Yes,
+tell us the story, darling.  It is all too wonderful!"
+
+"Do you really mean that you have never heard of this treatment?" asked
+Madame Zattiany, who knew quite well that they had not.  "Few things are
+better known in Europe."
+
+"We have never heard of it," said Mrs. Vane austerely.  "We were totally
+unprepared."
+
+Madame Zattiany shrugged her graceful shoulders.  "I have been told that
+America never takes up anything new in science until it has become stale
+in Europe.  But women as well as men have been flocking to Vienna.
+Russian princesses have pledged their jewels----"
+
+"How romantic!" exclaimed Mrs. Goodrich, who was one of those women in
+whom a certain spurious sense of romance increases with age.  But Mrs.
+Vane mumbled something less complimentary.  She had never been romantic
+in her life; and she was beginning to feel the strain.
+
+"Well," said Madame Zattiany, "I suppose I must begin at the beginning.
+I dislike holding forth, but if you will have it----"
+
+"Don't leave out a word!" exclaimed Mrs. Tracy.  "We want every detail.
+You've made us feel both as young as yourself and as old as Methuselah."
+
+Madame Zattiany smiled amiably at the one woman in the room who had
+lingered in the pleasant spaces of middle age.  "Very well.  I'll be as
+little technical as possible. . . .  As you know, I ran a hospital in
+Buda Pesth during the war.  After the revolution broke out I was forced
+to leave in secret to escape being murdered.  I was on Bela Kun's
+list----"
+
+There was a sympathetic rustle in the group.  This at least they could
+grasp on the wing.  Mrs. de Lacey interrupted to beg for exciting
+details, but Mrs. Goodrich and Mrs. Tracy cried simultaneously:
+
+"No!  No!  Go on--please!"
+
+"Quite right," said Mrs. Oglethorpe, who was prepared to enjoy herself.
+"We can have that later."
+
+"I naturally went to Vienna, not only because I had some money invested
+there, but because I could live in the Zattiany Palace.  The old house
+was difficult to keep warm, and as I was too tired and nervous to
+struggle with any new problems I went at a friend's suggestion into a
+sanitarium.
+
+"The doctor in charge soon began to pay me something more than
+perfunctory visits when he found that intelligent conversation after my
+long dearth did me more good than harm.  Finally he told me of a method
+of treatment that might restore my youth, and begged me to undertake
+it----"
+
+"Ah!"  There were sharp indrawn breaths.  Mrs. Vane drew herself
+up--figuratively, for she could hardly be more perpendicular, with her
+unyielding spine, her long neck encased in whaleboned net and her lofty
+head topped off with feathers.  A look of hostility dawned in several
+pairs of eyes, while frank distaste overspread Mrs. Ruyler's mahogany
+visage.  Madame Zattiany went on unperturbed.
+
+"It may relieve your minds to hear that I was at first as indifferent as
+all of you no doubt would have been.  The war--and many other things--had
+made me profoundly tired of life--something of course that I do not
+expect you to understand.  And now that the war was over and my
+usefulness at an end, I had nothing to look forward to but the
+alleviation of poverty by means of my wealth when it was restored, and
+this could be done by trustees.  Life had seemed to me to consist mainly
+of repetitions.  I had run the gamut.  But I began to be interested, at
+first by the fact that science might be able to accomplish a miracle
+where centuries of woman's wit had failed----"
+
+"Wit?" snorted Mrs. Vane.  "Ignoble vanity."
+
+"Well, call it that if you like, but the desire to be young again or to
+achieve its simulacrum, in both men and women, has something of the
+dignity which the centuries give to all antiques.  However, at the time,
+you will also be glad to know, I was far more interested in the prospect
+of reënergizing my worn out mind and body.  I was so mortally tired!  And
+if I had to live on, and no doubt with still much work to do in
+distracted Europe----"
+
+"But what did they _do_ to you?" cried Mrs. Tracy.  "I'd have done it in
+your place--yes, I would!" she said defiantly as she met the august
+disgusted eye of Mrs. Vane.  "I think Countess Zattiany was quite right.
+What is science for, anyhow?"
+
+"Go on!  Go on!" murmured Mrs. Goodrich.  She was too fat and comfortable
+to have any desire to return to youth with its tiresome activities, but
+all her old romantic affection for Mary Ogden had revived and she was
+even more interested than curious.
+
+"I am trying to!  Well, I must tell you that the explanation of my
+condition, as of others of my age, was that the endocrines----"
+
+"The what?"  The demand was simultaneous.
+
+"The ductless glands."
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Prevost vaguely, "I've seen something----"
+
+"It is all Greek to me," said Mrs. Vane, who felt that unreasoning
+resentment common to the minor-informed for the major-informed.  "You
+promised to avoid technical terms."
+
+Madame Zattiany explained in the simplest language she could command the
+meaning and the function of the ductless glands.  The more intelligent
+among them looked gratified, for the painless achievement of fresh
+knowledge is a pleasant thing.  Madame Zattiany went on patiently: "These
+glands in my case had undergone a natural process of exhaustion.  In
+women the slower functioning of the endocrines is coincident with the
+climacteric, as they have been dependent for stimulation upon certain
+ovarian cells.  The idea involved is that the stimulation of these
+exhausted cells would cause the other glands to function once more at
+full strength and a certain rejuvenation ensue as a matter of course;
+unless, of course, they had withered beyond the power of science.  I was
+a promising subject, for examination proved that my organs were healthy,
+my arteries soft; and I was not yet sixty.  Only experimentation could
+reveal whether or not there was still any life left in the cells,
+although I responded favorably to the preliminary tests.  The upshot was
+that I consented to the treatment----"
+
+"Yes?  Yes?"  Every woman in the room now sat forward, no longer old
+friends or rivals, affectionate or resentful, nor the victims of
+convention solidified into sharp black and white by the years.  They were
+composite female.
+
+"It consisted of the concentration of powerful Röntgen--what you call
+X-Rays--on that portion of the body covering the ovaries----"
+
+"How horrible!"  "Did you feel as if you were being electrocuted?"  "Are
+you terribly scarred?"
+
+"Not at all.  I felt nothing whatever, and there was nothing to cause
+scars----"
+
+"But I thought that the X-Rays----"
+
+"Oh, do be quiet, Louisa," exclaimed Mrs. Tracy impatiently.  "Please go
+on, Countess Zattiany."
+
+"As I said, the application was painless, and if no benefit results,
+neither will any harm be done when the Rays are administered by a
+conscientious expert.  My final consent, as I told you, was due to the
+desire to regain my old will power and vitality.  I was extremely
+skeptical about any effect on my personal appearance.  During the first
+month I felt so heavy and dull that, in spite of assurances that these
+were favorable symptoms, I was secretly convinced that I had forfeited
+what little mental health I had retained; but was consoled by the fact
+that I slept all night and a part of the day: I had suffered from
+insomnia since my duties at the hospital had ended----"
+
+"But surely you must have been nervous and terrified?"  All of these
+women had seen and suffered illness, but all from time-honored
+visitations, even if under new and technical names, and they had suffered
+in common with millions of others, which, if it offended their sense of
+exclusiveness, at least held the safeguard of normalcy.  They felt a
+chill of terror, in some cases of revulsion, as Madame Zattiany went on
+to picture this abnormal renaissance going on in the body unseen and
+unfelt; in the body of one who had been cast in the common mould, subject
+to the common fate, and whom they had visioned--when they thought about
+her at all--as growing old with themselves; as any natural Christian
+woman would.  It was not only mysterious and terrifying but subtly
+indecent.  Mrs. Vane drew back from her eager poise.  Almost it seemed to
+the amused Mrs. Oglethorpe that she withdrew her skirts.  Drama was for
+the stage or the movies; at all events drama in private life, among the
+elect, was objective, external, and, however offensive, particularly when
+screamed in the divorce court, it was, at least, like the old diseases,
+remarkably normal.  But an interior drama; not to put too fine a point on
+it, a drama of one's insides, and especially one that dealt with the
+raising from the dead of that section which refined women ceased to
+discuss after they had got rid of it--it was positively ghoulish.  Drama
+of any sort in this respectable old drawing-room, which might have been
+photographed as the sarcophagus of all the Respectabilities, was
+extremely offensive.  And what a drama!  Never had these old walls
+listened to such a tale.  Mrs. Vane and others like her had long since
+outgrown the prudery of their mothers, who had alluded in the most
+distant manner to the most decent of their internal organs, and called a
+leg a limb; but the commonplace was their rock, and they had a sense of
+sinking foundations.
+
+Madame Zattiany, who knew exactly what was passing in their minds,
+continued placidly: "Almost suddenly at the end of the fourth or fifth
+week, it seemed to me that an actual physical weight that had depressed
+my brain lifted, and I experienced a decided activity of mind and body,
+foreign to both for many years.  Nevertheless, the complete reënergizing
+of both was very slow, the rejuvenation of appearance slower still.
+Worn-out cells do not expand rapidly.  The mental change was pronounced
+long before the physical, except that I rarely felt fatigue, although I
+spent many hours a day at the relief stations."
+
+She paused and let her cool ironic glance wander over the intent faces
+before her.  "Not only," she went on with a slow emphasis, which made
+them prick up their ears, "was the renewed power manifest in mental
+activity, in concentration, in memory, but that distaste for new ideas,
+for reorientation, had entirely disappeared.  People growing old are
+condemned for prejudice, smugness, hostility to progress, to the purposes
+and enthusiasms of youth; but this attitude is due to aging glands alone,
+all things being equal.  They _cannot_ dig up the sunken tracks from the
+ruts in their brain and lay them elsewhere; and they instinctively
+protect themselves by an affectation of calm and scornful superiority, of
+righteous conservatism, which deceives themselves; much as I had
+assumed--and learned to feel--an attitude of profound indifference to my
+vanished youth, and refused to attempt any transparent disguise with
+cosmetics."
+
+Intentness relaxed once more.  Twelve pairs of eyes expressed at least
+half as many sentiments.  Mrs. Vane gazed at Mary Ogden, whose insolence
+she had never forgotten, with indignant hostility; Mrs. Poole, who always
+dressed as if she had a tumor, but whose remnant of a once lovely
+complexion indicated perfect health, maintained her slight tolerant
+smile; its effect somewhat abridged by the fact that the small turban of
+bright blue feathers topping her large face had slipped to one side.
+Mrs. Goodrich looked startled and gazed deprecatingly at her friends.
+Mrs. Lawrence's eyes snapped, and Mrs. de Lacey looked thoughtful.  Only
+Mrs. Tracy spoke.
+
+"Wonderful!  I feel more like Methuselah than ever.  But it certainly is
+a relief to know what is the matter with me.  Do go on, Mary--I may call
+you Mary?  I only came out the year you were married--and you cannot
+imagine what a satisfaction it is to know that I am younger than
+you--were once.  I've never done any of those things one reads about to
+keep looking young except cold cream my face at night, but I've often
+felt as if I'd like to----"
+
+"Do stop babbling, Lily Tracy!" exclaimed Mrs. Vane, who, however
+disgusted, was quite as curious as the others to hear the rest of the
+tale.  And Mrs. Goodrich said softly:
+
+"Yes, go on, Mary, darling.  I am sure the most thrilling part is yet to
+come.  You see how interested your old friends all are."
+
+Madame Zattiany moved her cool insolent eyes to Mrs. Vane's set visage.
+"The time came when I knew that youth was returning to my face as well as
+to the hidden processes of my body; and I can assure you that it excited
+me far more than the renewed functioning of my brain.  The treatment
+induces flesh, and as I had been excessively thin, my skin, as flesh
+accumulated, grew taut and lines disappeared.  My eyes, which had long
+been dull, had regained something of their old brilliancy under the
+renaissance of brain and blood, and that was accentuated.  My hair----"
+
+"Do you mean to say that it restores hair to its natural color?" demanded
+Mrs. Tracy, who had been plucking out bleached hairs for the past year.
+"That would----"
+
+"It does not.  But my hair is the shade that never turns gray; and of
+course my teeth had always been kept in perfect order.  I should never in
+any circumstances be a fat woman, but the active functioning of the
+glands gave me just enough flesh to complete the outer renovation.  My
+complexion, after so many years of neglect, naturally needed scientific
+treatment of another sort, but that was still to be had in Vienna."
+
+"Ah!"  The exclamation was sharp.  Here, at least, was something they
+knew all about and systematically discountenanced.  "Do you mean that you
+had your skin ripped off?" asked Mrs. Ruyler.
+
+"Certainly not.  The skin was simply softened and reinvigorated by
+massage and the proper applications."
+
+They were too proud to ask for details, and Mrs. de Lacey, who was stout,
+glanced triumphantly at Mrs. Ruyler, who was stouter.  "You mean, Mary,
+that one has to be thin for this treatment to be a success?"
+
+"That I cannot say.  I really do not know what the treatment would do to
+a stout woman of middle or old age.  The internal change would be the
+same, but, although additional flesh can be kept down by medicaments and
+diet, I doubt if there would be a complete restoration of the outlines of
+face and neck.  A woman of sixty, with sagging flesh and distended skin,
+might once more look forty, if the treatment were successful, but hardly
+as young as I do.  I was particularly fortunate in having withered.
+Still, I cannot say.  As I told you, many women of all ages and sizes
+took the treatment while I was in Vienna.  But they are too scattered for
+me at least to obtain any data on the results.  I knew none of them
+personally and I was too busy to seek them out and compare notes. . . .
+But with me----"  She leaned back and lit a cigarette, looking over her
+audience with mischievous eyes.  "With me it has been a complete
+success--mentally, physically----"
+
+"Yes, and how long will it last?" shot out Mrs. Ruyler.  She was as
+strong as a horse and as alert mentally as she had ever been, and her
+complete indifference to rejuvenation in any of its forms gave her a
+feeling of superior contempt for all those European women who had swarmed
+to Vienna like greedy flies at the scent of molasses--no doubt to undergo
+terrible torments that Mary Zattiany would not admit.  But her objective
+curiosity on the subject of youth was insatiable and she read everything
+that appeared in the newspapers and magazines about it, not neglecting
+the advertisements.  If she had sent for a facial masseuse she would have
+felt that she had planted a worm at the root of the family tree, but the
+subject was unaccountably interesting.
+
+Mary Zattiany, who understood her complex perfectly, shrugged her
+graceful shoulders.  "It is too soon to reply with assurance.  The method
+was only discovered some six years ago.  But the eminent biologists who
+have given profound study to the subject estimate that it will last for
+ten years at least, when it can be renewed once at all events.  Of course
+the end must come.  It was not intended that man should live for ever.
+And who would wish it?"
+
+"Not I, certainly," said Mrs. Ruyler sententiously.  "Well, I must admit
+it has been a complete success in your case.  That is not saying I
+approve of what you have done.  You know how we have always regarded such
+things.  If you had lived your life in New York instead of in
+Europe--notoriously loose in such matters--I feel convinced that you
+would never have done such a thing--exhausted or not.  Moreover, I am a
+religious woman and I do not believe in interfering with the will of the
+Almighty."
+
+"Then why have a doctor when you are ill?  Are not illnesses the act of
+God?  They certainly are processes of nature."
+
+"I have always believed in letting nature take her course," said Mrs.
+Ruyler firmly.  "But of course when one is ill, that is another
+matter----"
+
+"Is it?"  Madame Zattiany's eye showed a militant spark.  "Or is it
+merely that you are so accustomed to the convention of calling in a
+doctor that you have never wasted thought on the subject?  But is not
+medicine a science?  When you are ill you invoke the aid of science in
+the old way precisely as I did in the new one.  The time will come when
+this treatment I have undergone will be so much a matter of course that
+it will cause no more discussion than going under the knife for
+cancer--or for far less serious ailments.  I understand that you, Polly,
+had an operation two years ago for gastric ulcer, an operation called by
+the very long and very unfamiliar name, gastroenterostomy.  Did you
+feel--for I assume that you agree with Isabel in most things--that you
+were flying in the face of the Almighty?  Or were you only too glad to
+take advantage of the progress of science?"
+
+Mrs. Vane merely grunted.  Mrs. Ruyler exclaimed crossly, "Oh, no one
+ever could argue with you, Mary Ogden.  The truth is," she added, in a
+sudden burst of enlightenment that astonished herself, "I don't suppose
+any of us would mind if you didn't look younger than our daughters.  That
+sticks in our craw.  Why not admit it?"
+
+Mrs. Oglethorpe chuckled.  She and Isabel Ruyler snapped at each other
+like two belligerent old cats every time they crossed each other's path,
+but, with the exception of Mary Ogden, whom she loved, she liked her
+better than any of her old friends.
+
+But once more Mrs. Vane drew herself up (figuratively).  "Speak for
+yourself.  It may be that I am too old to accept new ideas, but this one
+certainly seems to me downright immoral and indecent.  This is not
+intended to reflect on you personally, Mary, and of course you were more
+or less demoralized by your close contact with the war.  I mean the
+idea--the thing--itself.  We may call in doctors and surgeons when we are
+in bodily discomfort, and be thankful that they are more advanced than in
+our mothers' time, when people died of appendicitis every day in the week
+and called it inflammation of the bowels.  But no one can tell me that
+rejuvenation is not against the laws of nature.  What are you going to do
+with this new youth--I never saw any one look less indifferent to
+life!--make fools of men again--of our sons?"
+
+"Who can tell?" asked Mary maliciously.  "Could anything be more amusing
+than to come back to New York after thirty-four years and be a belle
+again, with the sons and grandsons of my old friends proposing to me?"
+
+"Do you really mean that?"  Mrs. Vane almost rose.  She recalled that her
+youngest son had met Madame Zattiany in Mrs. Oglethorpe's box on Monday
+night and had been mooning about the house ever since.  "If I thought
+that----"
+
+"Well, what would you do, Polly?" Mary laughed outright.  "Your
+son--Harry is his name, is it not?--is remarkably good-looking and very
+charming.  After all, where could you find a safer and more understanding
+wife for him than a woman who has had not only the opportunity to know
+the world and men like the primer, but looks--is--so young that he is
+bound to forget it and be led like a lamb?  Girls, those uncharted seas,
+are always a risk----"
+
+"Stop tormenting Polly," exclaimed Mrs. Oglethorpe.  "Mary has no
+intention of marrying any one.  She's only waiting for her estate to be
+settled in order to return to Europe and devote herself to certain plans
+of reconstruction----"
+
+"Is that true?"
+
+"Quite true," said Madame Zattiany, smiling.  "Don't worry, Polly.  If I
+marry it will be some one you are not interested in too personally, and
+it is doubtful if I ever marry at all.  There's a tremendous work to be
+done in Europe, and so far as lies in my power I shall do my share.  If I
+marry it will be some one who can help me.  I can assure you I long since
+ceased to be susceptible, particularly to young men.  Remember that while
+my _brain_ has been rejuvenated with the rest of my physical structure,
+my _mind_ is as old as it was before the treatment."  She gave a slight
+unnoticed shiver.  "My memory, that for years before the war was dull and
+inactive, is now as vigorous as ever."
+
+Several of the women recalled those old stories of Countess Zattiany's
+youth, and looked at her sharply.  There was a general atmosphere of
+uneasiness in the large respectable room.  But whether or not they gave
+her the benefit of the doubt, they had always given her due credit for
+neither being found out nor embarrassing her virtuous friends with
+confidences.
+
+Mrs. Tracy was the first to break the silence.  "But you will come to all
+of us as long as you do stay, will you not?  I do so want to give you a
+dinner next week."
+
+"Yes, yes, indeed."  The chorus was eager, and sincere enough.  After
+all, nothing could alter the fact that she was one of them.
+
+"Oh, I have enjoyed meeting you all again, and I am hoping to see more of
+you."  Madame Zattiany felt that she could do no less than be gracious.
+"I have become a very quiet person, but I will go with pleasure."
+
+"You must let us see you daily while you are with us," cried Mrs.
+Goodrich, her spirits soaring at the prospect.  As Mary stood up and
+adjusted her hat before the mirror she felt that she had successfully
+distracted their attention from a quick sigh of utter boredom.  "You are
+too kind, Nelly," she murmured, "but then you always were."
+
+"Yes, go, Mary," said Mrs. Oglethorpe peremptorily, and rising also.
+"Clear out and let them talk you over.  They'll burst if you don't.
+Human nature can stand just so much and no more."
+
+Madame Zattiany took her leave amid much laughter, more or less
+perfunctory, and one and all, whatever their reactions, insisted that she
+must give her old friends the pleasure of entertaining her, and of seeing
+her as often as possible as long as she remained in New York.
+
+She escaped at last.  That was over.  But tomorrow night!  Tomorrow
+night.  Every wheel and tire seemed to be revolving out the words.  Well,
+if he were repelled and revolted, no doubt it would be for the best.  She
+had made up her mind to spare him nothing.  He would hear far more than
+she had told those women.  Certainly he should be given full opportunity
+to come to his senses.  If he refused to take it, on his head be the
+consequences.  She would have done her part.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+On Saturday afternoon as Clavering was walking up Forty-fourth Street
+he met Anne Goodrich coming out of the Belasco Theatre.  He saw her
+first and tried to avoid her, for her family and the Oglethorpes were
+as one, but she caught sight of him and held out her hand.
+
+"I shouldn't speak to you after your base desertion the other night,"
+she said, smiling.  "But you do look rather seedy and I prefer to
+flatter myself that you really were ill."
+
+"Was sure I was coming down with the flu," Clavering mumbled.  "Of
+course you know that nothing else----"
+
+"Oh, hostesses are too canny these days to take offence.  All we are
+still haughty enough to demand is a decent excuse.  But you really owe
+me something, and besides I've been wanting to talk to you.  Take me to
+Pierre's for tea."
+
+She spoke in a light tone of command.  There had been a time when
+issuing commands to Clavering had been her habit and he had responded
+with a certain palpitation, convinced for nearly a month that Anne
+Goodrich was the Clavering woman.  He had known her as an awkward
+schoolgirl and then as one of the prettiest and most light-hearted of
+the season's débutantes, but she had never interested him until after
+her return from France, where she had done admirable work in the
+canteens.  Then, sitting next to her at a dinner, and later for two
+hours in the conservatory, he had thought her the finest girl he had
+ever met.  He thought so still; but although she stimulated his mind
+and they had many tastes in common, he had soon realized that when
+apart he forgot her and that only novelty had inspired his brief
+desire.  She might have everything for another man as exacting as
+himself, but that unanalyzable something his own peculiar essence
+demanded no woman had ever possessed until he met Mary Zattiany.
+
+He had begun too ardently to cease his visits abruptly and, moreover,
+he still found her more companionable than any woman he knew; he
+continued to show her a frank and friendly devotion until an attack of
+influenza sent him to the hospital for a month; when he accepted the
+friendly intervention of fate and thereafter timed his occasional calls
+to coincide with the hour of tea, when she was never alone.  There were
+no more long morning walks, no more long rides in her car, no more
+hastily arranged luncheons at the Bohemian restaurants that interested
+her, no more "dropping in" and long telephone conversations.  He still
+enjoyed a talk with her at a dinner, and she was always a pleasure to
+the eye with her calm and regular features softened by a cloud of
+bright chestnut hair that matched her eyes to a shade, her serene brow
+and her exquisite clothes.  She did not carry herself well according to
+his standard; "well" when she came out six years ago had meant laxity
+of shoulders and pride of stomach, and in spite of her devotion to
+outdoor sports she had fallen a prey to fashion.  She so far
+disapproved of the new fashion in girls, however, that she was making
+an effort to stand erect and she had even banished powder from her
+clear warm skin.  Today she was becomingly dressed in taupe velvet,
+with stole and muff and turban of sable; but Clavering had fancied that
+her fine face wore a weary discontented expression until she saw him,
+when it changed swiftly to a sort of imperious gladness.  It made him
+vaguely uncomfortable.  He had never flattered himself that she loved
+him, but he had believed in the possibility of winning her.  He had
+later chosen to believe that she had grown as indifferent as himself,
+and he wondered, as he stood plunging about in his mind for an excuse
+to avoid a tête-à-tête, why she had not married.
+
+"Well--you see----"
+
+"Come now!  You don't go to teas, men never call these days, and you
+surely have done your column for tomorrow.  Here is the car.  You can
+spare me an hour."
+
+He had always avoided any appearance of rudeness and in his mind at
+least he had treated her badly; he followed her without further
+hesitation, trusting to his agile mind to keep her off the subject of
+Madame Zattiany.  This he would do at the cost of rudeness itself, for
+he would not permit fiasco at the last moment.
+
+The street was packed with automobiles and taxis, and after a slow
+progress toward Fifth Avenue they arrived in time to see the traffic
+towers flash on the yellow light and were forced to halt for another
+three minutes.  He had started an immediate discussion of the play she
+had just witnessed, knowing her love of argument, but she suddenly
+broke off and laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"Look!" she exclaimed.  "The famous Countess Zattiany in that car with
+mother.  Of course you know her; you were with her at the opera on the
+historic night, weren't you?  Tell me!  What is she like?  Did you ever
+hear of anything so extraordinary?"
+
+"Never.  I really know her very slightly.  But as I had met her and she
+had kindly asked me to dinner, I was glad to return the compliment when
+Mrs. Oglethorpe sent me her box, as she always does once or twice
+during the season, you know.  But go on.  What you said interested me
+immensely, although I don't agree with you.  I have certain fixed
+standards when it comes to the drama."
+
+She picked him up and the argument lasted until they were seated in
+Pierre's and had ordered tea.
+
+"I might have taken you home," she said then.  "We could have had tea
+in my den.  No doubt Countess Zattiany was returning with mother, who,
+it seems, has always adored her----"
+
+"This is ever so much nicer, for we are far less likely to be
+interrupted.  I haven't had a real talk with you for months."
+
+And he gave her a look of boyish pleasure, wholly insincere, but so
+well done that she flushed slightly.
+
+"Is that my fault?  There was a time when you came almost every day.
+And then you never came in the same way again."  It evidently cost her
+something to say this, for her flush deepened, but she managed a glance
+of dignified archness.
+
+"Oh, remember I had a villainous attack of the flu, and after that
+there were arrears of work to make up.  Moreover, the dramatic critic
+came down with an even longer attack and they piled his work on me.  I
+don't know what it is to 'drop in' these days."
+
+"Well--are you always to be driven to death?  I read your column
+religiously and it runs so smoothly and spontaneously that it doesn't
+seem possible it can take you more than an hour to write it."
+
+"An hour!  Little you know.  And subjects don't drop out of the clouds,
+dear Anne.  I have to go through all the newspapers, read an endless
+number of books--not all fiction by a long sight--glance through the
+magazines, reviews, weekly publications and foreign newspapers, read my
+rivals' columns, go about among the Sophisticates, attend first-nights,
+prize-fights, and even see the best of the movies.  I assure you it's a
+dog's life."
+
+"It sounds tremendously interesting.  Far, far more so than my own.  I
+am so tired of that!  I--that is one thing I wanted to talk to you
+about--I meant to bring it up at my dinner--I wish you would introduce
+me to some of your Sophisticates.  Uncle Din says they are the most
+interesting people in New York and that he always feels young again
+when he is at one of their parties.  Will you take me to one?"
+
+"Of course I will.  The novelty might amuse you----"
+
+"It's not only novelty I want.  I want really to know people whose
+minds are constantly at work, who are doing the things we get the
+benefit of when we are intelligent enough to appreciate them.  I cannot
+go on in the old way any longer.  I paint more or less and read a great
+deal--still on the lines you laid down.  But one cannot paint and read
+and walk and motor and dance all the time.  Even if I had not gone to
+France I should have become as bored and disgusted as I am now.  You
+know that I have a mind.  What has it to feed on?  I don't mean, of
+course, that all the women I know are fools.  Some of them no doubt are
+cleverer than I am.  But all the girls of my set--except Marian
+Lawrence, and we don't get on very well--are married; and some have
+babies, some have lovers, some are mad about bridge, a few have gone in
+for politics, which don't interest me, and those that the war made
+permanently serious devote themselves to charities and reform
+movements.  The war spoilt me for mere charity work--although I give a
+charity I founded one afternoon a week--and mother does enough for one
+family anyhow.  I see no prospect of marrying--I don't know a young man
+who wants to talk anything but sport and prohibition--you are an oasis.
+There you are!  The Sophisticates are an inspiration.  I am sure they
+will save my life."
+
+"But have you reflected----"  Clavering was embarrassed.  She had
+controlled her tones and spoken with her usual crisp deliberateness,
+but he knew that the words came from some profound emotional reaction.
+For Anne Goodrich it was an outburst.  "You see--it is quite possible
+that when the novelty wore thin you would not be much better off than
+you are now.  All these people are intensely interested in their
+particular jobs.  They are specialists.  You----"
+
+"You mean, what have I to give them?"
+
+"Not exactly.  You could give them a good deal.  To say nothing of your
+own high intelligence, they are by no means averse from taking an
+occasional flyer into the realm of fashion.  Curiosity partly, natural
+human snobbishness, perhaps.  They will go to your house if you invite
+them, no doubt of that; and they may conceive an enthusiastic liking
+for you.  But after all, you would not be one of them.  Even though
+they genuinely appreciated your accomplishments, still you would be
+little more than an interesting incident.  They are workers, engaged in
+doing the things they think most worth while--which are worth while
+because they furnish what the intelligent public is demanding just now,
+and upon which the current market places a high value.  And you are
+merely an intellectual young woman of leisure.  They might think it a
+pity you didn't have to work, but secretly, no matter what their
+regard, they'd consider you negligible because you belong to a class
+that is content to be, not to do.  I assure you they consider
+themselves the most important group in New York--in America--at
+present: the life-giving group of suns round which far-off planets
+humbly revolve."
+
+"I see.  You mean that my novelty would wear thin long before theirs.
+Heaven knows I have little to give them.  I should feel rather ashamed
+sitting at the head of my table offering nothing but terrapin and
+Gobelins.  But don't you think I could make real friends of some of
+them?  Surely we would find much in common to talk about--and they
+certainly take time to play, according to Uncle Din."
+
+"I think there would always be a barrier. . . .  Ah!  I have an idea.
+Why don't you set up a studio and take your painting seriously?  Cut
+yourself off from the old life and join the ranks of the real workers?
+Then, by degrees, they would accept you as a matter of course.  You
+could return their hospitality in your studio, which could be one of
+the largest--there is no danger of overwhelming them; they are too
+successful themselves.  Think it over."
+
+Miss Goodrich's face, which had looked melancholy, almost hopeless, lit
+up again.  Her red mouth lifted at the corners, light seemed to pour
+into her hazel eyes.  "I'll do it!" she exclaimed.  "I did a portrait
+of father last month and it really is good.  He is delighted with it,
+and you know how easy he is to please!  I wonder I never thought of it
+before.  You certainly are the most resourceful man in the world,
+Lee--by the way, I hear there is a party at that wonderful Gora
+Dwight's tonight.  Do take me."
+
+"Oh! . . .  I'm so sorry . . . it's quite impossible, Anne.  I wish I
+could. . . .  I'll take you to one next week.  And meanwhile get to
+work.  Be ready to meet them in the outer court at least.  You'll find
+it an immense advantage--rob your advent of any suggestion of
+curiosity."
+
+"I'll look for a studio tomorrow.  That is the way I do things--my
+father's daughter, you see."
+
+She spoke with gay determination, but her face had fallen again.  In a
+moment she began to draw on her gloves.  "Now I'll have to run if I'm
+to dress and get over to Old Westbury for dinner at eight.  Thank you
+so much, Lee; you've been a godsend.  If I were a writer instead of a
+mere dabbler in paints I'd dedicate my first book to you.  I'm so sorry
+I haven't time to drive you down to Madison Square."
+
+Clavering, drawing a long breath as if he had escaped from imminent
+danger, saw her into her car and then walked briskly home.  He intended
+to dine alone tonight.  And in a moment he had forgotten Anne Goodrich
+as completely as he had forgotten Janet Oglethorpe.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+He called for Madame Zattiany at ten o'clock.  This time she was
+standing in the hall as the man opened the door, and she came out
+immediately.  A lace scarf almost concealed her face.
+
+"I didn't order the car," she said.  "It is such a fine night, and she
+lives so near.  Do you mind?"
+
+"I much prefer to walk, but your slippers----"
+
+"They are dark and the heels not too high."
+
+"I'm not going to make the slightest preliminary attempt at
+indifference tonight, nor wait for one of your leads.  How long do you
+intend to stay at this party?"
+
+"Oh, an hour, possibly.  One must not be rude."  Her own tones were not
+even, but he could not see her face.
+
+"But you'll keep your word and tell me everything tonight?"
+
+She gave a deep sigh.  "Yes, I'll keep my word.  No more
+now--please! . . .  Tell me, what do they do at these parties besides
+talk--dance?"
+
+"Not always.  They have charades, spelling matches, pick a word out of
+a hat and make impromptu speeches----"
+
+"But _Mon dieu_!"  She stopped short and pushed back her scarf.
+Whatever expression she may have wished to conceal there was nothing
+now in her face but dismay.  "But you did not tell me this or I should
+not have accepted.  I never bore myself.  I understood these were your
+intellectuals.  Charades!  Spelling matches!  Words in the hat!  It
+sounds like a small town moved to New York."
+
+"Well, a good many of them are from small towns and they rather pride
+themselves on preserving some of the simplicities of rural life and
+juvenescence, while leading an exaggerated mental life for which nature
+designed no man.  Perhaps it is merely owing to an obscure warning to
+preserve the balance.  Or an innocent arrogance akin to Mrs.
+Oglethorpe's when she is looking her dowdiest. . . .  But Gora often
+has good music . . . still, if you don't want to go on I'm sure I do
+not."
+
+"No," she said hurriedly.  "I shall go.  But--I am still astonished.  I
+do not know what I expected.  But brilliant conversation, probably,
+such as one hears in a European salon.  Don't they relax their great
+minds at outdoor sports?  I understand there are golf links and tennis
+courts near the city."
+
+"A good many of them do.  But they like to relax still further at
+night.  You see we are not Europeans.  Americans are as serious as
+children, but like children they also love to play.  Remember, we are a
+young nation--and a very healthy one.  And you will have conversation
+if you want it.  The men, you may be sure, will be ready to give you
+anything you demand."
+
+"I had rather hoped to listen.  Is this the house?"
+
+Several taxis were arriving and there were many cars parked along the
+block.  When they entered the house they were directed to
+dressing-rooms on the second floor, and Clavering met Madame Zattiany
+at the head of the staircase.  She wore a gown of emerald green velvet,
+cut to reveal the sloping line of her shoulders, and an emerald comb
+thrust sideways in the low coil of her soft ashen hair.  On the
+dazzling fairness of her neck lay a single unset emerald depending from
+a fine gold chain.  Clavering stared at her helplessly. . . .  It was
+evident she had not made her toilette with an eye to softening a blow!
+
+"Am I overdressed?" she murmured.  "I did not know. . . .  I thought I
+would dress as if--well, as if I had been invited by one of my own
+friends----"
+
+"Quite right.  To 'dress down' would have been fatal.  And Gora must
+spend a small fortune on her clothes. . . .  But you . . . you . . .  I
+have never seen you----"
+
+"I am fond of green," she said lightly.  "_Couleur d'espérance_.  Shall
+we go down?"
+
+He followed her down the stairs and before they reached the crowded
+room below he had managed to set his face; but his heart was pounding.
+He gave Gora, who came forward to meet them, a ferocious scowl, but she
+was too much engaged with Madame Zattiany to notice him; and so, for
+that matter, was the rest of the company.  Miss Dwight's gown was of
+black satin painted with flaming poinsettias, and Clavering saw Madame
+Zattiany give it a swift approving glance.  Around her thin shoulders
+was a scarf of red tulle that warmed her brown cheeks.  She looked
+remarkably well, almost handsome, and her strange pale eyes were very
+bright.  It was evident that she was enjoying her triumphs; this no
+doubt was the crowning one, and she led Madame Zattiany into the room,
+leaving Clavering to his own devices.
+
+It was certainly the "distinguished party" he had promised.  There were
+some eight or ten of the best-known novelists and story-writers in the
+country, two dramatists, several of the younger publishers, most of the
+young editors, critics, columnists, and illustrators, famous in New
+York, at least; a few poets, artists; the more serious contributors to
+the magazines and reviews; an architect, an essayist, a sculptress, a
+famous girl librarian of a great private library, three correspondents
+of foreign newspapers, and two visiting British authors.  The men wore
+evening dress.  The women, if not all patrons of the ranking "houses"
+and dressmakers, were correct.  Even the artistic gowns stopped short
+of delirium.  And if many of the women wore their hair short, so did
+all of the men.  Everybody in the room was reasonably young or had
+managed to preserve the appearance and spirit of youth.  Clavering
+noticed at once that Mr. Dinwiddie was not present.  No doubt he had
+been ordered to keep out of the way!
+
+Miss Dwight led Madame Zattiany to the head of the room and enthroned
+her, but made no introductions at the moment; a young man stood by the
+piano, violin in hand, evidently waiting for the stir over the guest of
+honor to subside.  The hostess gave the signal and the guests were
+polite if restless.  However, the playing was admirable; and Madame
+Zattiany, at least, gave it her undivided attention.  She was, as ever,
+apparently unconscious of glances veiled and open, but Clavering laid a
+bet with himself that before the end of the encore--politely
+demanded--she knew what every woman in the room had on.
+
+The violinist retired.  Cocktails were passed.  There was a surge
+toward the head of the room.
+
+Clavering had dropped into a chair beside the wife of De Witt Turner,
+eminent novelist, who, however, called herself in print and out, Suzan
+Forbes.  She was one of the founders of the Lucy Stone League, stern
+advocates of the inalienable individuality of woman.  Whether you had
+one adored husband or many, never should that individuality (presumably
+derived from the male parent) be sunk in any man's.  When Suzan's
+husband took his little family travelling the astonished hotel register
+read: De Witt Turner, Suzan Forbes, child and nurse.  Sometimes
+explanations were wearisome; and when travelling in Europe they found
+it expedient to bow to prejudice.  Several of the Lucy Stoners,
+however, had renounced Europe for the present, a reactionary government
+refusing to issue separate passports.  You took your husband's name at
+the altar, didn't you?  You are legally married?  You are?  Then you're
+no more miss than mister.  You go to Europe as a respectable married
+woman or you stay at home.  So they stayed.  But they would win in the
+end.  They always did.  As for the husbands, they were amenable.
+Whether they really approved of feministics in extenso, or were merely
+good-natured and indulgent after the fashion of American husbands, they
+were at some pains to conceal.  All the bright young married women who
+were "doing things," however, were not Lucy Stoners, advanced as they
+might be in thought.  They were mildly sympathetic, but rather liked
+the matronly, and possessive, prefix.  And, after all, what did it
+matter?  There were enough tiresome barriers to scale, Heaven knew.
+This was the age of woman, but man, heretofore predominant by right of
+brute strength and hallowed custom, was cultivating subtlety, and if he
+feminized while they masculinized there would be the devil to pay
+before long.
+
+Miss Forbes was a tiny creature, wholly feminine in appearance, and in
+spite of her public activities, her really brilliant and initiative
+mind, was notoriously dependent upon her big burly husband for guidance
+and advice in all practical matters.  When they took a holiday the
+younger of his children gave him the least trouble, for she had a
+nurse: he dared not give his wife her ticket in a crowd lest she lose
+it, far less trust her to relieve his burdened mind of any of the
+details of travel; nor even to order a meal.  Nevertheless, he
+invariably, and with complete gravity, introduced her and alluded to
+her as Suzan Forbes (she even tabued the Miss), and he sent a cheque to
+the League when it was founded.  His novels had a quality of delicate
+irony, but he avowed that his motto was live and let live.
+
+Miss Forbes was not pretty, but she had an expressive original little
+face and her manners were charming.  Janet Oglethorpe was a boor beside
+her.  It was doubtful if she had ever been aggressive in manner or rude
+in her life; although she never hesitated to give utterance to the
+extremest of her opinions or to maintain them to the bitter end (when
+she sometimes sped home to have hysterics on her husband's broad
+chest).  She was one of Clavering's favorites and the heroine of the
+comedy he so far rejected.
+
+She lit a cigarette as the music finished and pinched it into a holder
+nearly as long as her face.  But even smoking never interfered with her
+pleasant, rather deprecatory, smile.
+
+"It must be wonderful to be an authentic beauty," she said wistfully,
+glancing at the solid phalanx of black backs and sleek heads at the
+other end of the room.  "And she's ravishing, of course.  The men are
+sleepless about her already.  Do assure me that she is stupid!  Nature
+would never treat the rest of us so unfairly as to spare brains for
+that enchanting skull when she hasn't enough to go round as it is.  I
+believe I'd give mine to look like that."
+
+"She's anything and everything but stupid.  Ask Gora.  They've met
+already."
+
+"Well, there's _something_," she said wisely.  "Law of compensation.
+Although any woman who can look like that should have a special
+dispensation of Providence.  Are you interested in her, Clavey?"
+
+"Immensely.  But I want to talk to you about another friend of mine."
+And he told her something of Anne Goodrich, her ambitions, her talents,
+and her admiration of the new aristocracy.
+
+Suzan Forbes listened with smiling interest and bobbed her brown little
+head emphatically.  "Splendid!  I'm having a party on Thursday night.
+Be sure to bring her.  She'll need encouragement at first, poor thing,
+and I'll be only too glad to advise her.  I'll tell Tommy Treadwell to
+find a studio for her.  I've an idea there's one vacant in The
+Gainsborough, and she'd love the outlook on the Park.  Witt can help
+her furnish; he's a wonder at picking up things.  Mother can furnish
+the kitchenette.  Do you think she'd join the Lucy Stone League?"
+
+"No doubt, as she was brought up in the most conservative atmosphere in
+America, she'll leap most of the fences after she takes the first.  But
+I don't think she's the marrying kind."
+
+"I shall advise her to marry.  Husbands are almost indispensable in a
+busy woman's life; and there are so many new ways of bringing up a
+baby.  D'you like my gown?"
+
+It was a charming but not extravagant slip of bright green chiffon and
+suited her elfishness admirably, as he told her.
+
+"I paid for it myself.  I pay for all my gowns, as I think it
+consistent, but I can't afford the expensive dressmakers yet.  At least
+I think I've paid for it.  Witt says I haven't and that he expects a
+collector any day.  But I must have, because I told her to send the
+bill at once so that it wouldn't get lost among all the other bills on
+the first of the month.  Your column's been simply spiffing lately.
+Full of fire and go, but rather--what shall I call it--explosive?
+What's happened, Clavey?"
+
+"Good of you to encourage me, Suzanna.  I'd thought it rotten.  What
+are you working at?"
+
+"I've just finished a paper on John Dewey for the _Atlantic_.  I was so
+proud when Witt said he hadn't a criticism to make.  I'm on a review
+for the _Yale_ now; and the new _Century_ has asked me for a
+psychological analysis of the Younger Generation.  I'm going to compare
+our post-war product with all that is known of young people and their
+manifestations straight back to the Stone Age.  I've made a specialty
+of the subject.  Witt has helped me a lot in research.  D'you think
+he's gone off?"
+
+"Gone off?  Certainly not.  Every columnist in town had something to
+say about that last installment of his novel.  Best thing he's ever
+done, and that's saying all.  He's strong as an ox, too.  Why in
+heaven's name should he go off?"
+
+"Well, baby's teething and won't let any one else hold her when she
+gets a fretting spell.  He's been up a lot lately."
+
+Clavering burst into a loud delighted laugh.  He had forgotten his
+personal affairs completely, as he always did when talking to this
+remarkable little paradox.  "Gad!  That's good!  And his public
+visualizes him as a sort of Buddha, brooding cross-legged in his
+library, receiving direct advice from the god of fiction. . . .  But I
+wouldn't have you otherwise.  The nineteenth century bluestocking with
+twentieth century trimmings. . . .  What now?"
+
+Rollo Landers Todd, the "Poet of Manhattan," had stalked in with a
+Prussian helmet on his head, his girth draped in a rich blue shawl
+embroidered and fringed with white, a bitter frown on his jovial round
+face; and in his hand a long rod with a large blue bow on the metal
+point designed to shut refractory windows.  Helen Vane Baker, a
+contribution from Society to the art of fiction, with flowing hair and
+arrayed in a long nightgown over her dress, fortunately white, was
+assisted to the top of the bookcase on the west wall.  Henry Church, a
+famous satirist, muffled in a fur cloak, a small black silk
+handkerchief pinned about his lively face, stumped heavily into the
+room, fell in a heap on the floor against the opposite wall, and in a
+magnificent bass growled out the resentment of Ortrud, while a rising
+but not yet prosilient pianist, with a long blonde wig from Miss
+Dwight's property chest, threw his head back, shook his hands, adjusted
+a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and banged out the prelude to
+_Lohengrin_ with amazing variations.  Elsa, with her profile against
+the wall and her hands folded across her breast, sang what of Elsa's
+prayer she could remember and with no apparent effort improvised the
+rest.  Lohengrin pranced up and down the room barking out German
+phonetics (he did not know a word of the language, but his accent was
+as Teutonic as his helmet), demanding vengeance and threatening
+annihilation.  He brandished his pole in the face of Ortrud, stamping
+and roaring, then, bending his knees, waddled across the room and
+prodded Elsa, who winced perceptibly but continued to mingle her light
+soprano with the rolling bass of Mr. Church and the vociferations of
+the poet.  Finally, at the staccato command of Mr. Todd's hoarsening
+voice, she toppled over into his arms and they both fell on Ortrud.
+The nonsense was over.
+
+No one applauded more spontaneously than Madame Zattiany, and she even
+drank a cocktail.  By this time every one in the room had been
+introduced to her and she was chatting as if she hadn't a care in the
+world.  As far as Clavering could see, she had every intention of
+making a Sophisticate night of it.
+
+The pianist, after a brief interval for recuperation, played with
+deafening vehemence and then with excruciating sweetness.  Once more
+cocktails were passed, and then there was a charade by Todd, Suzan
+Forbes and the handsome young English sculptress, which Madame Zattiany
+followed with puzzled interest; and was so delighted with herself for
+guessing the word before the climax that she clapped her hands and
+laughed like a child.
+
+More music, more cocktails, a brief impromptu play full of witty
+nonsense, caricaturing several of the distinguished company, whose
+appreciation was somewhat dubious, and Miss Dwight led the way down to
+supper.  Clavering watched Madame Zattiany go out with the good-looking
+young editor of one of the staid old fiction magazines which he had
+recently levered out of its rut by the wayside, cranked up and driven
+with a magnificent gesture into the front rank of Youth.  She was
+talking with the greatest animation.  He hardly recognized her and it
+was apparent that she had entered into the spirit of the evening, quite
+reconciled to any dearth of intellectual refreshment.
+
+The supper of hot oysters, chicken salad, every known variety of
+sandwich, ices and cakes was taken standing for the most part, Madame
+Zattiany, however, once more enthroned at the head of the room, women
+as well as men dancing attendance upon her.  Prohibition, a dead letter
+to all who could afford to patronize the underground mart, had but
+added to the spice of life, and it was patent that Miss Dwight had a
+cellar.  More cocktails, highballs, sherry, were passed continuously,
+and two enthusiastic guests made a punch.  Fashionable young actors and
+actresses began to arrive.  Hilarity waxed, impromptu speeches were
+made, songs rose on every key.  Then suddenly some one ran up to the
+victrola and turned on the jazz; and in a twinkling the dining-room was
+deserted, furniture in the large room upstairs was pushed to the wall
+and the night entered on its last phase.
+
+Then only did Madame Zattiany signify her intention of retiring, and
+Clavering, to whom such entertainments were too familiar to banish for
+more than a moment his heavy disquiet, hastened to her side with a sigh
+of relief and a sinking sensation behind his ribs.  Madame Zattiany
+made her farewells not only with graciousness but with unmistakable
+sincerity in her protestations of having passed her "most interesting
+evening in New York."
+
+Miss Dwight went up to the dressing-room with her, and Clavering,
+retrieving hat and top-coat, waited for her at the front door.  She
+came down radiant and talking animatedly to her hostess; but when they
+had parted and she was alone with Clavering her face seemed suddenly to
+turn to stone and her lids drooped.  As she was about to pass him she
+shrank back, and then raised her eyes to his.  In that fleeting moment
+they looked as when he had met them first: inconceivably old, wise,
+disillusioned.
+
+"Now for it," he thought grimly as he closed the door and followed her
+out to the pavement.  "The Lord have mercy----"  And then he made a
+sudden resolution.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+Madame Zattiany did not utter a word during the short walk to her house.
+It was evident that she had dismissed the merry evening from her mind and
+was brooding on the coming hour.  At the top of the steps she handed him
+the latchkey, but still lingered outside for a moment.  As he took her
+hand and drew her gently into the house he felt that she was trembling.
+
+"Come," he said, his own voice shaking.  "Remember that you need tell me
+nothing unless you wish.  This idea of confession before marriage is
+infernal rot.  I have not the least intention of making one of my own."
+
+"Oh!"  She gave a short harsh laugh.  "I should never dream of asking for
+any man's confession.  They are all alike.  And I must tell you.  I
+cannot leave you to hear it from others."
+
+He helped her out of her wrap and she threw the lace scarf on a chair and
+preceded him slowly down the hall.
+
+"I am a coward.  A coward," she thought heavily.  "Have I ever felt moral
+cowardice before?  I don't remember.  Not toward any other man who loved
+me.  But----  Oh, God!  And I shall never see him again.  How shall I
+begin?"
+
+She was totally unprepared for the beginning.  She heard him shut the
+library door, and then it seemed to her that her entire body was
+encircled by flexible hot bars of iron and her face, her mouth, were
+being flagellated.  If he hadn't held her in that vise-like grip she
+would have fallen.  She lay back on his arm as he kissed her and for the
+moment she forgot the past and the future and was happy, although she
+felt dimly that life was being drained out of her.  She was passive in
+that fierce possessive embrace.  She had lost all sense of separateness.
+
+"I won't listen to your story," he muttered.  "This is no time for talk."
+
+His voice, hoarse and shaking as it was, broke the spell; with a sudden
+lithe movement she twisted herself out of his arms.  Before he realized
+what was happening she had run across the room, snatched the key from the
+door and locked it on the other side.  He heard her run up the stairs.
+
+Clavering did and said most of the things men do and say when balked in
+mid-flight, but in a moment he took the little key from the drawer in the
+table and poured himself out a whiskey and soda--he had taken almost
+nothing at the party--lit a cigarette and threw himself into a chair.  He
+had no desire to stride up and down; he felt as if all the strength had
+gone out of him.  But he felt no apprehension that she had left him for
+the night.  Nor should he take possession of her again until she had told
+her story: he reflected with what humor was left in him that when a woman
+had something to say and was determined to say it, the only thing to do
+was to let her talk.  Words to a woman were as steam to a boiler, and no
+man could control her mind until she had talked off the lid.
+
+She was giving him time to cool off, he reflected grimly, as he glanced
+at the clock.  Well, he felt heavy and inert enough--hideous reaction!
+He was in a condition to listen to anything.  If she was determined to
+work her will on him, at least he had worked his on her for a brief
+moment.  She knew now that in the future she might as well try to resist
+death itself.  Let her have her last fling.
+
+He rose as she entered, and for the moment his heart failed him.  He had
+never seen even her look more like marble, and she did not meet his eyes
+as she crossed the room and seated herself so that her profile would be
+toward him as she talked.  As she had chosen the large high-backed chair,
+Clavering, knowing her love of comfort, hoped that her discourse was to
+be brief.
+
+"When I finish," she said in her low vital voice, "I shall leave the room
+immediately and I must have your word that you will make no attempt to
+detain me, and that you will go at once and not return until Monday
+afternoon.  I shall not wish to see you again until you have had time to
+deliberate calmly on what I shall tell you.  I do not want any
+embarrassed protests from a gallant gentleman--whose confusion of mind is
+second only to his chivalrous dismay.  Have I your word?"
+
+"It never takes me long to make up my mind----"
+
+"That may be, but I intend to save you from an embarrassing situation.
+You need not come on Monday unless you wish.  You may write--or, for that
+matter, if I do not hear from you on Monday by four I shall
+understand----"
+
+"I--for God's sake, Mary----"
+
+"You must do as I say--this time.  And--and--you could not overcome me
+again tonight.  I can turn myself to stone when I choose."
+
+"Oh!"  He ground his teeth.  His own nerves might be lulled for the
+moment, but he had anticipated reaction when she finished her story.
+"Very well--but it is for the last time, my dear.  And why Monday?  Why
+not this afternoon?"
+
+"You must sleep and write your column, is it not so?  Moreover--and
+deliberately--I am lunching with Mrs. Ruyler and dining at the
+Lawrences'."
+
+"Very well.  Monday, then.  You have set the stage.  If I must be a
+puppet for once in my life, so be it.  But, I repeat, it's for the last
+time.  Now, for heaven's sake, go ahead and get it off your chest."
+
+"And you will let me go without a word?  Otherwise I shall not speak--and
+I'll leave the room again and not return."
+
+"Very well.  I promise."
+
+"I told part of it the other day at Mrs. Oglethorpe's luncheon--I had
+told her before.  But there's so much else.  I hardly know how to begin
+with you, and I have not the habit of talking about myself.  But I
+suppose I should begin at the beginning."
+
+"It is one of the formulae."
+
+"It is the most difficult of all--that beginning."  And although she had
+announced the torpidity of her nerves, her hands clenched and her voice
+shook slightly.
+
+"Let me remind you that to begin anywhere you've got to begin somewhere."
+And then as she continued silent, he burst out: "For God's sake, say it!"
+
+"Is--is--it possible that the suspicion has never crossed your mind that
+I am Mary Ogden?"
+
+"Wh-a-at!"
+
+"Mary Ogden, who married Count Zattiany thirty-four years ago.  I was
+twenty-four at the time.  You may do your own arithmetic."
+
+But Clavering made no answer.  His cigarette was burning a hole in the
+carpet.  He mechanically set his foot on it, but his faculties felt
+suspended, his body immersed in ice-water.  And yet something in his
+unconscious rose and laughed . . . and tossed up a key . . . if he had
+not fallen in love with her he would have found that key long since.  His
+news sense rarely failed him.
+
+"I've told a good many lies, I'm afraid," she went on, and her voice was
+even and cool.  The worst was over.  "You'll have to forgive me that at
+least.  I dislike downright lying, if only because concessions are
+foreign to my nature, and I quibbled when it was possible; but when
+cornered there was no other way out.  I had no intention of being forced
+to tell you or any one the truth until I chose to tell it."
+
+"Well, you had your little comedy!"
+
+"It did amuse me for a time, but I think I explained all that in my
+letter.  I also explained why I came to America, and that if I had not
+met you I should probably have come and gone and no one but Judge Trent
+been the wiser.  I had prepared him by letter, and to him, I suppose, it
+has been a huge comedy--with no tragic sequel.  Be sure that I never
+entertained the thought that I could ever love any man again.  But I have
+made up my mind to disenchant you as far as possible, not only for your
+sake but my own.  I wish you to know exactly whom you have fallen in love
+with."
+
+"You grow more interesting every moment," said Clavering politely, "and I
+have never been one-half as interested in my life."
+
+"Perhaps you have heard--Mrs. Oglethorpe, I should think, would be very
+much disposed to talk about old times--that I was a great belle in New
+York--belles were fashionable in those days of more marked individuality.
+I suppose no girl ever had more proposals.  Naturally I grew to
+understand my power over men perfectly.  I had that white and regular
+beauty combined with animation and great sex-magnetism which always
+convinces men that under the snow volcanic fires are burning.  I was
+experienced, under the frankest exterior, in all the subtle arts of the
+coquette.  Men to me were a sort of musical instrument from which I could
+evoke any harmony or cacophony I chose.
+
+"What held the men I played with and rejected was my real gift for
+good-fellowship, my loyalty in friendship, and some natural sweetness of
+disposition.  But such power makes a woman, particularly while young,
+somewhat heartless and callous, and I was convinced that I had no
+capacity for love myself; especially as I found all men rather
+ridiculous.  I met Otto Zattiany in Paris, where he was attached to the
+Embassy of the Dual Empire.  He was an impetuous wooer and very handsome.
+I did not love him, but I was fascinated.  Moreover, I was tired of
+American men and American life.  Diplomacy appealed to my ambition, my
+love of power and intrigue.  He was also a nobleman with great estates;
+there could be no suspicion that he was influenced by my fortune.  He
+followed me back to New York, and although my parents were opposed to all
+foreigners, I had my way; there was the usual wedding in Saint Thomas's,
+and we sailed immediately for Europe.
+
+"I hated him at once.  I shall not go into the details of that marriage.
+Fortunately he soon tired of me and returned to his mistresses.  To him I
+was the Galatea that no man could bring to life.  But he was very proud
+of me and keenly aware of my value as the wife of an ambitious
+diplomatist.  He treated me with courtesy, and concerned himself not at
+all with my private life.  He knew my pride, and believed that where he
+had failed no man could succeed; in short, that I would never consider
+divorce nor elopement, nor even run the risk of less public scandals.
+
+"I was not unhappy.  I was rid of him.  I had a great position and there
+was everything to distract my mind.  I was not so interested in the inner
+workings of diplomacy as I was later, but the comedy of jealousy and
+intrigue in the diplomatic set was amusing from the first.  I was very
+beautiful, I entertained magnificently, I was called the best-dressed
+woman in Paris, I was besieged by men--men who were a good deal more
+difficult to manage than chivalrous Americans, particularly as I was now
+married and the natural prey of the hunter.  But it was several years
+before I could think of men without a shudder, little as I permitted them
+to suspect it.  I learned to play the subtle and absorbing game of men
+and women as it is played to perfection in the bolder civilizations.  It
+was all that gave vitality to the general game of society.  I had no
+children; my establishment was run by a major domo; it bore little
+resemblance to a home.  It was the brilliant artificial existence of a
+great lady, young, beautiful, and wealthy, in Europe before
+nineteen-fourteen.  Of course that phase of life was suspended in Europe
+during the war.  All the women I knew or heard of worked as hard as I
+did.  Whether that terrible interregnum left its indelible seal on them,
+or whether they have rebounded to the old life, where conditions are less
+agonizing than in Vienna, I do not know."
+
+She paused a moment, and Clavering unconsciously braced himself.  Her
+initial revelation had left the deeper and more personal part of him
+stunned, and he was listening to her with a certain detachment.  So far
+she had revealed little that Dinwiddie had not told him already, and as
+he knew that this brief recapitulation of her earlier life was not
+prompted by vanity, he could only wonder if it were the suggestive
+preface to that secret volume at which Dinwiddie had hinted more than
+once.
+
+As she continued silent, he got suddenly to his feet.  "I'll walk up and
+down a bit, if you don't mind," he muttered.  "I'm rather--ah--getting
+rather cramped."
+
+"Do," she said indifferently.
+
+"Please go on.  I am deeply interested."
+
+She continued in a particularly level voice while he strode unevenly up
+and down: "Of course the time came when ugly memories faded, my buoyant
+youth asserted itself and I wanted love.  And when a woman feels a crying
+need to love as well as to be loved, her whole being a peremptory demand,
+unsatisfied romance quickening, she is not long finding the man.  I had
+many to choose from.  I made my choice and was happy for a time.
+Although I had been brought up in the severest respectability--just
+recall Jane Oglethorpe, Mrs. Vane, Mrs. Ruyler, and you will be able to
+reconstruct the atmosphere--several of the women I had known as a girl
+had lovers, it seemed to me that American women came to Europe for no
+other purpose, and I was now living at the fountain-head of polite
+license.  Not that I made any apologies to myself.  I should have taken a
+lover if I had wanted one had virtue been the fashion.  And the contract
+with my husband had been dissolved by mutual consent.  The only thing
+that rebelled was my pride.  I hated stepping down from my pedestal."
+
+Clavering gave a short barking laugh.  "Your arrogance is the most
+magnificent thing about you, and that is saying more than I could
+otherwise express.  I'll fortify myself before you proceed further, if
+you will permit."  He poured himself out a drink, and returned to his
+chair with the glass in his hand.  "Pray go on."
+
+She had not turned her head and continued to look into the fire.  She
+might have been posing to a sculptor for a bust that would hardly look
+more like marble when finished.
+
+"I soon discovered that I had not found happiness.  Men want.  They
+rarely love.  I realized that I had demanded in love far more than
+passion, and I received nothing else.
+
+"I am not going to tell you how many lovers I have had.  It is none of
+your business----"
+
+"Ah!"  Clavering, staring at her, had forgotten his first shock,
+everything but her living presence; forgotten also that he had once
+apprehended something of the sort, then dismissed it from his mind.  He
+spilt the whiskey over the arm of the chair, then sprang to his feet and
+began to pace the room once more.
+
+She went on calmly: "Disappointment does not mean the end of
+seeking. . . .  They gave me little that I wanted.  They were clever and
+adroit enough in the prelude.  They knew how to create the illusion that
+in them alone could be found the fulfillment of all aspiration and
+desire.  No doubt they satisfied many women, but they could not satisfy
+me.  They gave me little I did not find in the mere society of the many
+brilliant and accomplished men with whom I was surrounded.  I had a
+rapacious mind, and there was ample satisfaction for it in the men who
+haunted my salon and were constantly to be met elsewhere.  European men
+are _instruits_.  They are interested in every vital subject,
+intellectual and political, despite the itch of amor, their deliberate
+cult of sex.  They like to talk.  Conversation is an art.  My mind was
+never uncompanioned.  But that deeper spiritual rapacity, one offspring
+of passion as it may be, they could not satisfy; for love with them is
+always too confused with animalism and is desiccated in the art of
+love-making.  Fidelity is a virtue relegated to the bourgeois----"
+
+"What about Englishmen?" demanded Clavering sarcastically.  "I thought
+they were bad artists but real lovers."
+
+"I know little of Englishmen.  Zattiany was never appointed to St.
+James's, and although, of course, I met many of them in the service on
+the continent, and even visited London several times, it must have
+happened that I was interested in some one else or in a state of profound
+reaction from love at the time--at least so I infer.  It is a long while
+ago.  I remember only the fact.
+
+"Those whom I tried to love would soon have tired of me had I not played
+the game as adroitly as themselves, and if I had permitted them to feel
+sure of me.  The last thing any of them wanted was depth of feeling,
+tragic passion. . . .  My most desperate affair was my last--after a long
+interval. . . .  I was in my early forties.  I had thought myself too
+utterly disillusioned ever to imagine myself in love again.  Men are
+gross and ridiculous creatures in the main, and aside from my personal
+disappointments, I thought it was time for that chapter of my life to
+finish; I was amusing myself with diplomatic intrigue.  I was in the
+Balkans at the time, that breeding ground of war microbes, and I was
+interested in a very delicate situation in which I played a certain part.
+
+"The awakening was violent.  He was an Austrian, with an important place
+in the Government; he came to Belgrade on a private mission.  He was a
+very great person in many ways, and I think I really loved him, for he
+seemed to me entirely worthy of it.  He certainly was mad enough about me
+for a time--for a year, to be exact.  When he returned to Vienna it was
+not difficult for me to find an excuse to go also.  Although Zattiany was
+a Hungarian, he never visited his Hungarian estates except for the boar
+hunting, and spent his time when on leave, or between appointments, in
+Vienna, where he had inherited a palace--I must tell you that the city
+residence of a nobleman in the Dual Empire was always called a palace,
+however much it might look like a house.
+
+"I shall always remember this man with a certain pleasure and respect,
+for he is the only man who ever made me suffer.  A woman forgets the
+lovers she has dismissed as quickly as possible.  Their memory is hateful
+to her, like the memory of all mistakes.  But this man made me suffer
+horribly.  (He married a young girl, out of duty to his House, and
+unexpectedly fell in love with her.)  Therefore, although I recovered,
+and completely, still do I sometimes dwell with a certain cynical
+pleasure on the memory of him----"
+
+"Have you never seen him since?" asked Clavering sharply.  He had
+returned to his chair.  "How long ago was that?"
+
+"Quite sixteen years ago.  I did not visit Vienna again for several
+years; in fact, not until after my husband's death, when I returned there
+to live.  But by that time I had lost both youth and beauty.  His wife
+had died, but left him an heir, and he showed no disposition to marry
+again; certainly he was as indifferent to me as I to him.  We often met,
+and as he respected my mind and my knowledge of European affairs, we
+talked politics together, and he sometimes asked my advice.
+
+"But to go back.  After that was over I determined to put love definitely
+out of my life.  I believed then and finally that I had not the gift of
+inspiring love; nor would I ever risk humiliation and suffering again.  I
+played the great game of life and politics.  I was still beautiful--for a
+few years--I had an increasingly great position, all the advantages,
+obvious and subtle, that money could procure.  My maid was very clever.
+My gowns, as time went on, were of a magnificent simplicity; all
+frou-frous were renounced.  I had no mind to invite the valuation I heard
+applied to certain American women in Paris: 'elderly and dressy.'"
+
+Clavering laughed for the first time.  "I wonder you ever made a mistake
+of any sort.  I also wonder if you are a type as well as an individual?
+I have, I think, followed intelligently your psychological involutions
+and convolutions so far.  I am only hoping you will not get beyond my
+depth.  What was your attitude toward your past mistakes--beyond what you
+have told me?  Did you suffer remorse, as I am told women do when they
+either voluntarily renounce or are permitted to sin no more?"
+
+"I neither regarded them as mistakes nor did I suffer remorse.  Every
+human being makes what are called mistakes and those happened to be mine.
+Therefore I dismissed them to the limbo of the inevitable. . . .  As your
+world, I am told, looks upon you as the coming dramatist, it may appeal
+to your imagination to visualize that secret and vital and dramatic
+undercurrent of what was on the surface a proud and splendid life. . . .
+Or, if there are regrets, it is for the weight of memories, the
+completeness of disillusion, the slaying of mental youth--which cannot
+survive brutal facts.
+
+"I think that for women of my type--what may be called the intellectual
+siren--the lover phase is inevitable.  We are goaded not only by the
+imperious demands of womanhood and the hope of the perfect companion, but
+by curiosity, love of adventure, ennui; possibly some more obscure
+complex--vengeance on the husband who has wrecked our first illusions--on
+Life itself.  Bringing-up, family and social traditions, have nothing to
+do with it.  Only opportunity counts.  Moreover, we are not the product
+of our immediate forebears, but of a thousand thousand unknown
+ancestors. . . ."
+
+"God!  True enough!"
+
+"Unfortunately, these women who have wasted so much time on love never
+realize the tragic futility until Time himself disposes of temptation,
+and then it is too late for anything but regrets of another sort.  The
+war may have solved the problem for many a desperate spirit.
+
+"My own case has assumed an entirely different complexion.  With my youth
+restored I have the world at my feet once more, but safeguarded by the
+wisdom of experience--in so far as a mortal ever may be.  The bare idea
+of that old game of prowling sex fills me with ennui and disgust.  The
+body may be young again, but my mind, reënergized though it is, is packed
+with memories, a very Book of Life.  When I found that my beauty was
+restored I thought of nothing less than returning to the conquest of men
+in the old manner, although quite aware of its powerful aid in the work I
+have made up my mind to do in Austria.  Of late, of course, I have
+thought of little else but what this recrudescence of my youth means to
+you and to myself.  But--please do not interrupt--this I shall not
+discuss with you again until Monday--if then.
+
+"But once more I wish to impress you with the fact that I indulge in
+nothing so futile as regrets for my 'past.'  'Sack-cloth and ashes'
+provokes nothing but a smile from women of my type and class.  Moreover,
+I believe that my education would not be complete without that
+experience--_mine_, understand.  I am not speaking for women of other
+temperaments, opportunities, of less intellect, of humbler character,
+weaker will. . . .  And if I had persisted in virtue at that time I
+should probably make a fool of myself today, an even more complete fool
+than women do when they feel youth slipping but still are able with the
+aid of art and arts to fascinate younger men.
+
+"That almost standardized chapter I renounced peremptorily.  My pride was
+too great to permit me to be foolish even in the privacy of my mind over
+men half my age.  Nor did I make any of the usual frantic attempts to
+keep looking young.  I had seen too much of that, laughed at it too
+often.  Nevertheless, I hated the approach of age, the decay of beauty,
+the death of magnetism, as bitterly as the silliest woman I had ever met.
+
+"Some women merely fade: lose their complexions, the brightness of their
+eyes and hair.  Others grow heavy, solid; stout or flabby; the muscles of
+the face and neck loosen and sag, the features alter.  I seemed slowly to
+dry up--wither.  There was no flesh to hang or loose skin to wrinkle, but
+it seemed to me that I had ten thousand lines.  I thought it a horrid
+fate.  I could not know that Nature, meaning to be cruel, had given me
+the best chance for the renewal of the appearance as well as the fact of
+youth.
+
+"I suppose all this seems trivial to you--this mourning over lost
+youth----"
+
+"Not at all.  It must have been hell to a woman like you.  As for women
+in general--they may make more fuss about it, but I fancy they hate it
+less than men."
+
+"Yes, men are vainer than women," said Madame Zattiany indifferently.
+"But I have yet to waste any sympathy on men. . . .
+
+"I suppose I only fully realized that my youth, my beauty, my magnetic
+charm, had gone when men ceased to make violent love to me.  They still
+paid court, for I was a very important person, my great prestige was a
+sort of halo, and I had never neglected my mind.  There was nothing of
+significance I had not read during all these years.  I was as profoundly
+interested in the great political currents of Europe, seen and unseen, as
+any man--or as any intelligent woman of European society.  Moreover, I
+had the art of life down to a fine point, and I had not forgotten that
+even in friendship men are drawn to the subtle woman who knows how to
+envelop herself in a certain mystery.  And European men are always eager
+to talk with an accomplished woman, even if she has no longer the power
+to stir their facile passions.
+
+"When I realized that my sex power had left me I adopted an entirely new
+set of tactics--never would I provoke a cynical smile on the faces I once
+had the power to distort!  With no evidence of regret for my lost
+enchantment I remained merely the alert and always interested woman of
+the world, to whom men, if sufficiently entertaining, were welcome
+companions for the moment, nothing more.  I cemented many friendships, I
+cultivated a cynical philosophy--for my own private succor--and although,
+for a time, there were moments of bewildered groping and of intense
+rebellion, or a sudden and hideous sense of inferiority, I twisted the
+necks of those noxious weeds thrusting themselves upward into my
+consciousness and threatening to strangle it, and trampled them under the
+heel of my will.  It was by no means the least happy interval of my life,
+for I was very healthy, I took a great deal of outdoor exercise, and
+there was a sense of freedom I never had experienced before.  Love is
+slavery, and I was no longer a slave.
+
+"After my husband's death, as I told you, I opened the Zattiany palace in
+Vienna once more (my nephew and his wife preferred Paris, and I leased it
+from them), expecting to follow the life I had mapped out, until I was
+too old for interests of any sort.  I had a brilliant salon and I was
+something of a political power.  Of course, I knew that the war was
+coming long before hatreds and ambitions reached their climax, and
+advised this man of whom I have spoken, Mathilde Loyos, and other
+friends, to invest large sums of money in the United States.  Judge Trent
+arranged the trusteeship in each case----"
+
+"Where is this man?"
+
+"I do not know.  He went down with the old régime, of course, and would
+be a pauper but for these American investments and a small amount in
+Switzerland.  He has occupied no position in the new Government, although
+he was a Liberal in politics.  What he is doing I have no idea.  I have
+not seen him for years."
+
+"Well--go on."
+
+"It was only when I became aware of a growing mental lassitude, a
+constant sense of effort in talking everlastingly on subjects that called
+for constant alertness and often reorientation, that I was really aghast
+and began to look toward the future not only with a sense of helplessness
+but of intolerable weariness.  I used to feel an inclination to turn my
+head away with an actual physical gesture when concentration was
+imperative.  I thought that my condition was psychological, that I had
+lived too much and too hard, that my memory was over-burdened and my
+sense of the futility and meaninglessness of life too overwhelming.  But
+I know now that the condition was physical, the result of the
+degeneration of certain cells.
+
+"I spent the summer alone on my estate in Hungary, and when it was over I
+determined to close the palace in Vienna and remain in the country.  I
+could not go back to that restless high-pitched life, with its ceaseless
+gaiety on the one hand and its feverish politics and portentous rumblings
+on the other.  My tired mind rebelled.  And the long strain had told on
+my health.
+
+"I lived an almost completely outdoor life, riding, walking, swimming in
+the lake, hunting, but careful not to overtax my returning strength.  I
+was not in love with life, far from it!  But I had no intention of adding
+invalidism to my other disintegrations.  In the evening I played cards
+with my secretary or practised at the piano, with some revival of my old
+interest in music.  I read little, even in the newspapers.  I was become,
+save perhaps for my music, an automaton.  But, although I did not improve
+in appearance, my health was completely restored, and when the war came I
+was in perfect condition for the arduous task I immediately undertook.
+Moreover, my mind, torpid for a year, was free and refreshed for those
+practical details it must grapple with at once.  I turned the Zattiany
+palace in Buda Pesth into a hospital.  And then for four years I was
+again an automaton, but this time a necessary and useful one.  When I
+thought about myself at all, it seemed to me that this selfless and
+strenuous interval was the final severance from my old life.  If Society
+in Europe today were miraculously restored to its pre-war
+brilliancy--indifferent to little but excitement and pleasure--there
+would be nothing in it for me.
+
+"Now I come to the miracle."  And while she recapitulated what she had
+told the women at Mrs. Oglethorpe's luncheon, Clavering listened without
+chaos in his accompanying thoughts.  "Certainly, man's span is too brief
+now," she concluded.  "He withers and dies at an age when, if he has
+lived sanely--and when a man abuses his natural functions he generally
+dies before old age, anyhow--he is beginning to see life as a whole, with
+that detachment that comes when his personal hold on life and affairs is
+relaxing, when he has realized his mistakes, and has attained a mental
+and moral orientation which could be of inestimable service to his fellow
+men, and to civilization in general.  What you call crankiness in old
+people, so trying to the younger generations, does not arise from natural
+hatefulness of disposition and a released congenital selfishness, but
+from atrophying glands, and, no doubt, a subtle rebellion against nature
+for consigning men to ineptitude when they should be entering upon their
+best period of usefulness, and philosophical as well as active enjoyment
+of life.
+
+"Science has defeated nature at many points.  The isolation of germs, the
+discovery of toxins and serums, the triumph over diseases that once
+wasted whole nations and brought about the fall of empires, the arrest of
+infant mortality, the marvels of vivisection and surgery--the list is
+endless.  It is entirely logical, and no more marvellous, that science
+should be able to arrest senescence, put back the clock.  The wonder is
+that it has not been done before."
+
+She rose, still looking down at the fire, which Clavering had replenished
+twice.  "I am going now.  And I have no fear that you will not keep your
+promise!  But remember this when thinking it over: I do not merely _look_
+young again, _I am_ young.  I am not the years I have passed in this
+world, I am the age of the rejuvenated glands in my body.  Some day we
+shall have the proverb: 'A man is as old as his endocrines.'  Of course I
+cannot have children.  The treatment is identical with that for
+sterilization.  This consideration may influence you.  I shall use no
+arguments nor seductions.  You will have decided upon all that before we
+meet again.  Good night."  And she was gone.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+It seemed to Clavering that he had run the gamut of the emotions while
+listening to that brief biography, so sterilely told, but there had
+also been times when he had felt as if suspended in a void even while
+visited by flashes of acute consciousness that he was being called upon
+to know himself for the first time in his life.  And in such fashion as
+no man had ever been called upon to know himself before.
+
+There was no precedent in life or in fiction to guide him, and he had
+realized with a sensation of panic even while she talked that it was
+doubtful if any one had ever understood himself since the dawn of time.
+Man had certain standards, fixed beliefs, ideals, above all,
+habits--how often they scattered to the winds under some unheralded or
+teratogenic stress.  He had seen it more than once, and not only in
+war.  Every man had at least two personalities that he was aware of,
+and he dimly guessed at others.  Some were frank enough to admit that
+they had not an idea what they would do in a totally unfamiliar
+situation.  Clavering had sometimes emblemized man and his
+personalities with the old game of the ivory egg.  A twist and the
+outer egg revealed an inner.  Another and one beheld a third.  And so
+on to the inner unmanipulatable sphere, which might stand for the
+always inscrutable soul.  Like all intelligent men, he had a fair
+knowledge of these two outer layers of personality, and he had
+sometimes had a flashing glimpse of others, too elusive to seize and
+put under the microscopic eye of the mind.
+
+What did he know of himself?  He asked the question again as he sat in
+his own deep chair in the early morning hours.  The heat in the hotel
+had been turned off and he had lit the gas logs in the grate--symbol of
+the artificialities of civilization that had played their insidious
+rôle in man's outer and more familiar personality.  Perhaps they struck
+deeper.  Habit more often than not dominated original impulse.
+
+His own room, where he was nearly always alone, with its warm red
+curtains and rug, the low bookcases built under his direction and
+filled with his favorite books, the refectory table and other pieces of
+dark old English oak that he had brought from home, and several family
+portraits on the wall, restored his equilibrium and his brain was
+abnormally clear.  He wondered if he ever would sleep again.  Better
+think it over now.
+
+Mary Zattiany as she talked had never changed her expression.  She
+might have been some ancient oracle reciting her credo, and she seemed
+to have narcotized that magnetic current that had always vibrated
+between them.  Nevertheless, he had been fully aware that she felt like
+nothing less than an oracle or the marble bust she looked, and that her
+soul was racked and possibly fainting, but mastered by her formidable
+will.
+
+Formidable.  Did that word best express her?  Was she one of the
+superwomen who could find no mate on earth and must look for her god on
+another star?  He certainly was no superman himself to breathe on her
+plane and mate that incarnate will.  Had she any human weakness?  Even
+that subterranean sex-life in her past had not been due to weakness.
+She was far too arrogant for that.  Life had been her foot-stool.  She
+had kicked it about contemptuously.  Even her readjustments had been
+the dictates of her imperious will.  And her pride!  She was a female
+Lucifer in pride.
+
+No doubt the men she had dismissed had been secretly relieved; stung
+for the only time in their lives perhaps, with a sense of inferiority.
+It must have been like receiving the casual favors of a queen on her
+throne.  Well, she had got it in the neck once; there was some
+satisfaction in that.  He wished he knew the man's name.  He'd hunt him
+up and thank him in behalf of his sex.
+
+For an hour he excoriated her, hated her, feared her, dissociating her
+from the vast army of womanhood, but congratulating himself upon having
+known her.  She was a unique if crucifying study.
+
+With restored youth superimposed upon that exhaustive knowledge of
+life--every phase of it that counted in her calculations--the
+rejuvenation of all her great natural endowments, she'd probably go
+back and rule Europe!  What use could she possibly have for any man?
+
+He made himself a cup of coffee over his electric stove, turned off the
+malodorous gas, which affected his head, stood out on his balcony for a
+moment, then lit his pipe and felt in a more mellow mood.
+
+After all, she had suffered as only a woman so liberally endowed could
+suffer, and over a long period of years.  She had known despair and
+humiliation and bewilderment, lethargic hopelessness, and finally a
+complete sacrifice of self.  His imagination, in spite of his
+rebellious soul, had furnished the background for that bald recital.
+
+And she must have an indomitable soul, some inner super-fine spiritual
+essence, with which arrogance and even pride had less to do than she
+imagined.  Otherwise, after the life she had led, she would either have
+become an imperious uncomfortable old woman or one of those faltering
+non-entities crowded into the backwaters of life by a generation which
+inspires them with nothing but timidity and disapproval.  Towering
+individualities often go down to defeat in old age.
+
+And nothing could alter the fact that she was the most beautiful and
+the most wholly desirable woman he had ever known, the one woman who
+had focussed every aspiration of his mind, his soul, and his body.  He
+knew he must ask himself the inevitable question and face it without
+blinking.  Was he appalled by her real age; could he ever get away from
+the indubious fact that whatever miracle science may have effected, her
+literal age was verging on sixty?  If she were not an old woman she had
+been one.  That beautiful body had withered, undesired of all men, that
+perfect face had been the battered mirror of an aged ego.  He did not
+ask himself if the metamorphosis would last, if the shell might not
+wither again tomorrow.  He was abreast of the important scientific
+discoveries of his day and was not at all astonished that the problem
+of senescence should be solved.  It was no more remarkable than
+wireless, the Röntgen Ray, the properties of radium, or any one of the
+beneficent contributions of science to the well-being of mankind that
+were now too familiar for discussion.  He had heard a good deal of this
+particular discovery as applied to men.  No doubt Dinwiddie and Osborne
+would soon be appearing as gay young sparks on her doorstep.  It might
+be the greatest discovery of all time, but it certainly would work both
+ways.  While its economic value might be indisputable, and even, as she
+had suggested, its spiritual, it would be hard on the merely young.
+The mutual hatreds of capital and labor would sink into insignificance
+before the antagonism between authentic youth and age inverted.  On the
+other hand it might mean the millennium.  The threat of
+overpopulation--for man's architectonic powers were restored if not
+woman's; to say nothing of his prolonged sojourn--would at last rouse
+the law-makers to the imperious necessity of eugenics, birth control,
+sterilization of the unfit, and the expulsion of undesirable races.  It
+might even stimulate youth to a higher level than satisfied it at
+present.  Human nature might attain perfection.
+
+However, he was in no mood for abstract speculation.  His own problem
+was absorbing enough.
+
+He might as well itemize the questions he had to face and examine them
+one by one, and dispassionately.  He would never feel more emotionless
+than now; and that mental state was very rare that enabled a man to
+think clearly and see further than a yard ahead of him.
+
+Her real age?  Could he ever forget it?  Should he not always see the
+old face under the new mask, as the X-Rays revealed man's hideous
+interior under its merciful covering of flesh?  But he knew that one of
+the most beneficent gifts bestowed upon mankind is the talent for
+forgetting.  Particularly when one object has been displaced by
+another.  Reiteration dulls the memory.  He might say to himself every
+hour in the day that she was sixty not thirty and the phrase would soon
+become as meaningless as absent-minded replies to remarks about the
+weather.
+
+And he doubted if any man could look at Mary Zattiany for three
+consecutive minutes and recall that she had ever been old, or imagine
+that she ever could be old again.  However prone man may be to dream,
+he is, unless one of the visionaries, dominated by the present.  What
+he wants he wants now and he wants what he sees, not what may be
+lurking in the future.  That is the secret of the early and often
+imprudent marriage--the urge of the race.  And if a man is not deterred
+by mere financial considerations, still less is he troubled by visions
+of what his inamorata will look like thirty years hence or what she
+might have looked like had disease prematurely withered her.  He sees
+what he sees and if he is satisfied at all he is as completely
+satisfied as a man may be.
+
+He made no doubt that Mary Zattiany would have, if she chose, as many
+suitors among men of his own age as among her former contemporaries.
+They would discuss the phenomenon furiously, joke about it, try to
+imagine her as she had been, back water, return out of curiosity,
+hesitate, speculate--and then forget it.
+
+No one would forget it sooner than himself.  He had no doubt whatever
+that when he went to her house tomorrow afternoon he would remember as
+long as she kept him waiting and no longer.  So that was that.
+
+Did he want children?  They charmed him--sometimes--but he had never
+been conscious of any desire for a brood of his own.  He knew that many
+men felt an even profounder need of offspring than women.  Man's ego is
+more strident, the desire to perpetuate itself more insistent, his
+foresight is more extended.  Moreover, however subconsciously, his
+sense of duty to the race is stronger. . . .  But he doubted if any man
+would weigh the repetition of his ego against his ego's demand to mate
+with a woman like Mary Zattiany.  He certainly would not.  That was
+final.
+
+What was it she demanded in love, that she had sought so ardently and
+ever missed?  Could he give it to her?  Was she merely glamored once
+more, caught up again in the delusions of youth, with her revivified
+brain and reawakened senses, and this time only because the man was of
+a type novel in her cognizance of men?  Useless to plead the urge of
+the race in her case. . . .  Nevertheless, many women, denied the power
+of reproduction fell as mistakenly in love as the most fertile of their
+sisters.  But hardly a woman of Mary Zattiany's exhaustive experience!
+She certainly should know her own mind.  Her instincts by this time
+must be compounded of technical knowledge, not the groping inherited
+flashes playing about the shallow soil of youth. . . .  If her
+instincts had centred on him there must be some deeper meaning than
+passion or even intellectual homology.  After all, their conversations,
+if vital, had been few in number.
+
+Perhaps she had found, with her mind's trained antennae, some one of
+those hidden layers of personality which she alone could reveal to
+himself.  What was it?  She wanted far more than love-making and mental
+correspondence.  _What_ was it?  He wished he knew.  Tenderness?  He
+could give her that in full measure.  Sentiment?  He was no
+sentimentalist, but he believed that he possessed the finer quality.
+Fidelity?  That was not worth consideration.  Appreciation of the
+deepest and best in her, sympathetic understanding of all her mistakes
+and of all that she had suffered?  She knew the answer as well as he
+did.  The ability to meet her in many moods, never to weary her with
+monotony?  He was a man of many moods himself.  What had saved him from
+early matrimony was a certain monotony in women, the cleverest of them.
+
+But there must be something beyond, some subtle spiritual demand,
+developed throughout nearly twice as many years as he had dwelt on
+earth; born not only of an aspiring soul and terrible disenchantments,
+but of a wisdom that only years of deep and living experience, no mere
+intelligence, however brilliant, could hope to assemble.  He was
+thirty-four.  There was no possible question that at fifty-eight, if he
+lived sanely, and his intellectual faculties had progressed unimpaired,
+he would look back upon thirty-four as the nonage of life--when the
+future was a misty abyss of wisdom whose brink he had barely trod.  She
+herself was an abyss of wisdom.  How in God's name could he ever cross
+it?  Her body might be young again, but never her mind.  Never her
+mind!  And then he had a flash of insight.  Perhaps he alone could
+rejuvenate that mind.
+
+Certainly he could make her forget.  Men and women would be aged at
+thirty, but for this beneficent gift of forgetting. . . .  He could
+make the present vivid enough.
+
+He explored every nook of those personalities of his, determined to
+discover if he felt any sense of inferiority to this woman who knew so
+much more, had lived and thought and felt so much more, than
+himself--whom he still visioned on a plane above and apart.  No woman
+was ever more erudite in the most brilliant and informing declensions
+of life, whatever the disenchantments, and for thirty years she had
+known in varying degrees of intimacy the ablest and most distinguished
+men in Europe.  She had been at no pains to conceal her opinion of
+their intellectual superiority over American men. . . .
+
+He concluded dispassionately that he never could feel inferior to any
+woman.  Women might arrest the attention of the world with their
+talents, change laws and wring a better deal out of life than man had
+accorded them in the past, but whatever their gifts and whatever their
+achievements they always had been and always would be, through their
+physical disabilities, their lack of ratiocination, of constructive
+ability on the grand scale, the inferiors of men.  The rare exceptions
+but proved the rule, and no doubt they had been cast in one mould and
+finished in another.
+
+In sheer masculine arrogance he was more than her match.  Moreover,
+there were other ways of keeping a woman subject.
+
+Did he love her?  Comprehensively and utterly?  Clear thinking fled
+with the last of his doubts. . . .  And when a man detaches himself
+from the gross material surface of life and wings to the realm of the
+imagination, where he glimpses immortality, what matter the penalty?
+Any penalty?  Few had the thrice blessed opportunity.  If he were one
+of the chosen, the very demi-gods, jeering at mortals, would hate him.
+
+And then abruptly he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+He went direct from the office that evening to Mrs. Oglethorpe's house
+in Gramercy Park.  During the morning he had received the following
+note from her, and he had puzzled over it at intervals ever since.
+
+
+"Dear Lee:
+
+"Will you dine alone with an old woman tonight--a rather bewildered and
+upset old woman?  I suppose to the young nothing is too new and strange
+for readjustment, but I have hardly known where I am these last few
+days.  You are the only friend I care to talk to on the subject, for
+you always understand.  I am probably older than your mother and I look
+old enough to be your grandmother, but you are the only person living
+with whom I ever feel inclined to lay aside all reserve.  Old men are
+fossils and young men regard me as an ancient wreck preserved by family
+traditions.  As for women I hate them and always did.  Do come and dine
+with a lonely puzzled old woman unless you have an engagement
+impossible to break.  Don't bother to dress.
+
+"Your affectionate old friend,
+  "JANE OGLETHORPE."
+
+
+"What's up?" Clavering had thought as he finished it.  "Mary or Janet?"
+
+It was an extraordinary letter to receive from Mrs. Oglethorpe, the
+most fearsome old woman in New York.  To Clavering she had always shown
+the softer side of her nature and he knew her perhaps better, or at all
+events more intimately, than any of her old friends, for she had not
+treated him as a negligible junior even when he arrived in New York at
+the tender age of twenty-two.  His ingenuous precocity had amused her
+and she had discovered a keen interest in the newspaper world of whose
+existence she had hardly been aware; no interviewer had ever dared
+approach her; and as he grew older, developing rapidly and more and
+more unlike her sons and her sons' friends, they had fallen into an
+easy pallish intimacy, were frank to rudeness, quarrelled furiously,
+but fed each other's wisdom and were deeply attached.  During the war
+she had knitted him enough socks and sweaters to supply half his
+regiment; and when he had left the hospital after a serious attack of
+influenza it had been for the house in Gramercy Park, where he could
+have remained indefinitely had he wished.
+
+But in all the years of their intimacy never before had she "broken,"
+given a hint that she felt the long generation between them.  He found
+her more interesting in talk than any girl, except when he was briefly
+in love, and her absence of vanity, her contempt for sentiment in any
+of its forms, filled him with a blessed sense of security as he spent
+hours stretched out on the sofa in her upstairs sitting-room, smoking
+and discussing the universe.  She was not an intellectual woman, but
+she was sharp and shrewd, a monument of common sense and worldly
+wisdom.  It would be as easy to hoodwink her as the disembodied
+Minerva, and it was doubtful if any one made even a tentative attempt.
+Clavering wondered which of those inner secret personalities was to be
+revealed tonight.
+
+As he stood in the drawing-room waiting for her to come down he
+examined for the first time in many years the full-length picture of
+her painted shortly before her marriage to James Oglethorpe.  She was
+even taller than Mary Zattiany and in the portrait her waist was round
+and disconcertingly small to the modern therapeutic eye.  But the whole
+effect of the figure was superb and dashing, the poise of the head was
+almost defiant, and the hands were long, slender, and very white
+against the crimson satin of her gown.  She looked as if about to lead
+a charge of cavalry, although, oddly enough, her full sensuous mouth
+with its slightly protruding lower lip was pouting.  Beautiful she had
+never been; the large bony structure of her face was too uncoverable,
+her eyes too sharp and sardonic; but handsome certainly, and, no doubt,
+for many years after she had stood for this portrait in the full
+insolence of her young womanhood.  She retained not a trace of that
+handsomeness today.  Her hands were skinny, large-veined, discolored by
+moth patches, and her large aquiline nose rose from her sunken cheeks
+like the beak of an old eagle--an indomitable old eagle.  Many women of
+sixty-eight had worn far better, but looks need care, spurred by
+vanity, and she had a profound contempt for both.  No doubt if she had
+made a few of the well-known feminine concessions would have looked at
+least ten years younger than her age, for she had never had a day's
+illness: eight lyings-in were not, in her case, to be counted as
+exceptions.  No doubt, thought Clavering, as he turned to greet her,
+she had thought it quite enough to be imposing.
+
+She certainly looked imposing tonight in spite of her old-fashioned
+corsets and her iron-gray hair arranged in flat rolls and puffs on the
+precise top of her head, for although flesh had accumulated lumpily on
+her back, her shoulders were still unbowed, her head as haughtily
+poised as in her youth, and the long black velvet gown with yellow old
+point about the square neck (the neck itself covered, like the throat,
+with net), and falling over her hands, became her style if not the
+times.
+
+"Well, Lee!" she said drily.  "I suppose when you got my note you
+thought I had gone bug-house, as my fastidious granddaughter Janet
+would express it.  But that is the way I felt and that is the way I
+feel at the present moment."
+
+"Dear Lady Jane!  Whatever it is, here I am to command, as you see.
+There is no engagement I wouldn't have broken----"
+
+"You are a perfect dear, and if I were forty years younger I should
+marry you.  However, we'll come to that later.  I want to talk to you
+about that damnable little Janet first--we'll have to go in now."
+
+When they were seated at a small table at one end of the immense
+dining-room she turned to the butler and said sharply:
+
+"Get out, Hawkins, and stay out except when we can't get on without
+you."  And Hawkins, whom a cataclysm would not have ruffled after
+forty-five years in Mrs. Oglethorpe's service, vanished.
+
+"Jim said he had a talk with you about Janet, and that you advised him
+to spank her," she said.  "Well, he did."
+
+"What?"  Clavering gave a delighted grin.  "I never believed he'd do
+it."
+
+"Nor I.  Thought his will had grown as flabby as his body.  But when
+she stood up to him and with a cool insolence, which she may or may not
+have inherited from me, or which may be merely part and parcel of the
+new manner, and flung in his face a good deal more than he knew
+already, and asked him what he was going to do about it, he turned her
+over his knee and took a hair-brush to her."
+
+"It must have been a tussle.  I suppose she kicked and scratched?"
+
+"She was so astonished that at first she merely ejaculated: 'Oh, by
+Jimminy!'  Then she fought to get away and when she found she couldn't
+she began to blubber, exactly as she did when she was not so very much
+younger and was spanked about once a day.  That hurt his feelings, for
+he's as soft as mush, and he let her go; but he locked her up in her
+room and there she stays until she promises to behave herself as girls
+did in his time.  I'm afraid it won't work.  She hasn't promised yet,
+but merely hisses at him through the keyhole.  D'you understand this
+new breed?  I'm afraid none of the rest of us do."
+
+"I can't say I've been interested enough to try.  Janet informed me
+that they were going the pace because they couldn't hold the men any
+other way.  But I fancy it's merely a part of the general unrest which
+is the usual aftermath of war.  This was a very long war, and the young
+seem to have made up their minds that the old who permitted it are
+bunglers and criminals and idiots and that it is up to them to
+demonstrate their contempt."
+
+"And what good do they think that will do them?"  Mrs. Oglethorpe's
+face and inflection betrayed no sympathy with the Younger Generation.
+
+"You don't suppose they worry their little heads with analysis, do you?
+Somebody started the idea and the rest followed like sheep.  No doubt
+it had its real origin in the young men who did the fighting and saw
+their comrades do the dying, and all the kudus carried off by the old
+men who ran no risks.  They are very bitter.  And women generally take
+their cues from men, little as they suspect it.  However, whatever the
+cause, here it is, and what to do about it I've no more idea than you;
+but I should think it would be a good idea for Jim to take her abroad
+for a year."
+
+"I don't see Jim giving up his clubs and sports, and tagging round the
+world after a flapper.  He never took himself very seriously as a
+parent . . . still, he is really alarmed. . . .  Are you going to marry
+Marian Lawrence?"
+
+"Do you think I'd engage myself to any one without telling you first of
+all?"
+
+"Better not.  Are you in love with her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I'm told you were devoted to her at one time.  That was one of the
+times when I saw little or nothing of you."
+
+"I've been devoted to quite a number of girls, first and last, but
+there's really been nothing in it on either side.  I know what you're
+driving at.  Shoot."
+
+"Yes, Jim said he told you.  Well, I've changed my mind.  Janet's a
+little fool, perhaps worse.  Not half good enough for you and would
+devil the life out of you before you got rid of her in self-defence.
+Let her hoe her own row.  How about that writing person, Gora Dwight,
+you and Din are always talking about?"
+
+"Never been the ghost of a flirtation.  She's all intellect and
+ambition.  I enjoy going there for I'm almost as much at home with her
+as I am with you."
+
+"Ha!  Harmless.  I hope she's as flattered as I am.  There remains Anne
+Goodrich.  She's handsome, true to her traditions in every way--Marian
+Lawrence is a hussy unless I'm mistaken and I usually am not--she has
+talent and she has cultivated her mind.  She will have a fortune and
+would make an admirable wife in every way for an ambitious and gifted
+man.  More pliable than Marian, too.  You're as tyrannical and
+conceited as all your sex and would never get along with any woman who
+wasn't clever enough to pretend to be submissive while twisting you
+round her little finger.  I rather favor Anne."
+
+Clavering was beginning to feel uneasy.  What was she leading up to?
+Who next?  But he replied with a humorous smile:
+
+"Dearest Lady Jane!  Why are you suddenly determined to marry me off?
+Are you anxious to get rid of me?  Marriage plays the very devil with
+friendships."
+
+"Only for a year or so.  And I really think it is time you were
+settling yourself.  To tell you the truth I worry about you a good
+deal.  You're a sentimental boy at heart and chivalrous and
+impressionable, although I know you think you're a seasoned old
+rounder.  Men are children, the cleverest of them, in a scheming
+woman's hands."
+
+"But I don't know any scheming women and I'm really not as irresistible
+as you seem to think.  Besides, I assure you, I have fairly keen
+intuitions and should run from any unprincipled female who thought it
+worth while to cast her nets in my direction."
+
+"Intuitions be damned.  They haven't a chance against beauty and
+finesse.  Don't men as clever as yourself make fools of themselves over
+the wrong woman every day in the week?  The cleverer a man is the less
+chance he has, for there's that much more to play on by a cleverer
+woman.  It would be just like you to fall in love with a woman older
+than yourself and marry her----"
+
+"For God's sake, Jane, cut out my fascinating self!  It's a subject
+that bores me to tears.  Fire away about Janet.  How long's she been
+shut up?  What will Jim do next?  I'll do my best to persuade him to
+take her round the world.  He'd enjoy it himself for there are clubs in
+every port and some kind of sport.  I'll look him up tomorrow."
+
+Mrs. Oglethorpe gave him a sharp look but surrendered.  When he shouted
+"Jane" at her in precisely the same tone as he often exploded "Jim" to
+her son, she found herself suddenly in a mood to deny him nothing.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+They went up to her sitting-room to spend the rest of the evening.  It
+was a large high room overlooking the park and furnished in massive
+walnut and blood-red brocade: a room as old-fashioned and ugly as its
+mistress but comfortable withal.  On a table in one corner was an
+immense family Bible, very old, and recording the births, marriages,
+and deaths of the Van den Poeles from the time they began their
+American adventures in the seventeenth century.  On another small table
+in another corner was a pile of albums, the lowest containing the first
+presentments of Mrs. Oglethorpe's family after the invention of
+calotype photography.  These albums recorded fashion in all its stages
+from 1841 down to the sport suit, exposed legs and rolled stockings of
+Janet Oglethorpe; a photograph her grandmother had sworn at but
+admitted as a curiosity.
+
+One of the albums was devoted to the friends of Mrs. Oglethorpe's
+youth, and Mary Ogden occupied the place of honor.  Clavering had once
+derived much amusement looking over these old albums and listening to
+Mrs. Oglethorpe's running and often sarcastic comment; but although he
+had recalled to mind this photograph the night Mr. Dinwiddie had been
+so perturbed by the stranger's resemblance to the flame of his youth,
+he had, himself, been so little interested in Mary Ogden that it had
+not occurred to him to disinter that old photograph of the eighties and
+examine it in detail.  He turned his back squarely on it tonight,
+although he had a misgiving that it was not Janet who had inspired Mrs.
+Oglethorpe's singular note.
+
+On one wall was a group of daguerreotypes, hideous but rare and
+valuable.  An oil painting of James Oglethorpe, long dead, hung over
+the fireplace; an amiable looking gentleman with long side-whiskers
+sprouting out of plump cheeks, a florid complexion, and the expression
+of a New Yorker who never shirked his civic obligations, his
+chairmanships of benevolent institutions, nor his port.  Opposite was
+another oil painting of young James taken at the age of twelve, wearing
+a sailor suit and the surly expression of an active boy detained within
+walls while other boys were shouting in the park.  Beside it was a
+water color of Janet at the age of two, even then startlingly like her
+grandmother.  She had been Mrs. Oglethorpe's favorite descendant until
+the resemblance had become too accentuated by modern divagations.
+
+Clavering did not extend himself on the sofa tonight but drew a leather
+chair (built for Mr. Oglethorpe) to the small coal grate, which
+inadequately warmed the large room.  Mrs. Oglethorpe, like many women
+of her generation, never indulged her backbone save in bed, and she
+seated herself in her own massive upright chair not too close to the
+fire.  She had made a concession to time in the rest of the house,
+which was lighted by electricity, but the gas remained in her own
+suite, and the room was lit by faint yellow flames struggling through
+the ground-glass globes of four-side brackets.  The light from the
+coals was stronger, and as it fell on her bony austere old face with
+its projecting beak, Clavering reflected that she needed only a
+broomstick.  He really loved her, but a trained faculty works as
+impersonally as a camera.
+
+He smoked in silence and Mrs. Oglethorpe stared into the fire.  She,
+too, was fond of her cigar, but tonight she had shaken her head as
+Hawkins had offered the box, after passing the coffee.  Her face no
+longer looked sardonic, but relaxed and sad.  Clavering regarded her
+with uneasy sympathy.  Would it be possible to divert her mind?
+
+"Lady Jane," he began.
+
+"I wish you would call me Jane tonight.  I wouldn't feel so intolerably
+old."
+
+"Of course I'll call you Jane, but you'll never be old.  What skeleton
+have you been exhuming?"  He was in for it and might as well give her a
+lead.
+
+"It's Mary Ogden," she said abruptly and harshly.
+
+"Oh--I wondered how you felt about it.  You certainly have been
+splendid----"
+
+"What else could I do?  She was the most intimate friend of my youth,
+the only woman I ever had any real affection for.  I had already seen
+her and recognized her.  I suppose she has told you that I went there
+and that she treated me like an intruding stranger.  But I knew she
+must have some good reason for it--possibly that she was here on some
+secret political mission and had sworn to preserve her incognito.  I
+knew she had been mixed up in politics more than once.  I thought I was
+going mad when I saw her, but I never suspected the truth.  The light
+was dim and I took for granted that some one of those beauty experts
+had made a mask for her, or ripped her skin off--I hardly knew what to
+think, so I concluded not to think about it at all, and succeeded
+fairly well in dismissing it from my mind.  I was deeply hurt at her
+lack of confidence in me, but I dismissed that, too.  After all it was
+her right.  I do as I choose, why shouldn't she?  And I remembered that
+she always did."
+
+Here Clavering stirred uneasily.
+
+"When she came to me here last Tuesday and told me the whole truth I
+felt as if I were listening to a new chapter out of the Bible, but on
+the whole I was rather pleased than otherwise.  I had never been
+jealous of her when we were young, for I was married before she came
+out, and she was so lovely to look at that I was rather grateful to her
+than otherwise.  After her marriage I used to meet her every few years
+in Europe up to some three or four years before the outbreak of the
+war, and it often made me feel melancholy as I saw her beauty
+going . . . until there was nothing left but her style and her hair.
+But nothing else was to be expected.  Time is a brute to all
+women. . . .  So, while she sat here in this room so radiantly
+beautiful and so exquisitely and becomingly dressed, and leaning toward
+me with that old pleading expression I remembered so well; when she
+wanted something and knew exactly how to go to work to get it; and
+looking not a day over thirty--well, while she was here I felt young
+again myself and I loved her as much as ever and felt it a privilege to
+look at her.  I arranged a luncheon promptly to meet several of her old
+friends and put a stop to the clacking that was going on--I had been
+called up eight times that morning. . . .  I could have boxed your
+ears, but of course it was a natural enough thing to do, and you had no
+suspicion. . . .  Well, as soon as she had gone I wrote to twelve
+women, giving them a bare sketch of the truth, and sent the notes off
+in the motor.  And then--I went and looked at myself in the glass."
+
+She paused, and Clavering rose involuntarily and put his hand on her
+shoulder.
+
+"Never mind, Jane," he said awkwardly.  "What does it matter?  You are
+you and there's only one of the kind.  After all it's only one more
+miracle of Science.  You could do it yourself if you liked."
+
+"I?  Ha!  With twenty-three grandchildren.  I may be a fool but I'm not
+a damn fool, as James used to say.  What good would it do me to look
+forty?  I had some looks left at that age but with no use for them as
+women go.  I'd have less now.  But Mary was always lucky--a daughter of
+the gods.  It's just like her damned luck to have that discovery made
+in her time and while she is still young enough to profit by it,
+besides being as free as when she was Mary Ogden.  Now, God knows what
+devilment she'll be up to.  What she wants she'll have and the devil
+take the consequences."  She patted his hand.  "Go and sit down, Lee.
+I've a good deal more to say."
+
+Clavering returned to his seat with no sense of the old chair's
+comfort, and she went on in a moment.
+
+"The unfairness of it as I looked at that old witch in the glass that
+had reflected my magnificent youth, seemed to me unendurable.  I had
+lived a virtuous and upright life.  I knew damned well she hadn't.  I
+had done my duty by the race and my own and my husband's people, and I
+had brought up my sons to be honorable and self-respecting men,
+whatever their failings, and my daughters in the best traditions of
+American womanhood.  They are model wives and mothers, and they have
+made no weak-kneed concessions to these degenerate times.  They bore me
+but I'd rather they did that than disgrace me.  Mary never had even one
+child, although her husband must have wanted an heir.  I have lived a
+life of duty--duty to my family traditions, my husband, my children, my
+country, and to Society: she one of self-indulgence and pleasure and
+excitement, although I'm not belittling the work she did during the
+war.  But noblesse oblige.  What else could she do?  And now, she'll be
+at it again.  She'll have the pick of our young men--I don't know
+whether it's all tragic or grotesque.  She'll waste no time on those
+men who loved her in her youth--small blame to her.  Who wants to
+coddle old men?  They've all got something the matter with 'em. . . .
+But she'll have love--love--if not here--and thank God, she's not
+remaining long--then elsewhere and wherever she chooses.  Love!  I too
+once took a fierce delight in making men love me.  It seems a thousand
+years ago.  What if I should try to make a man fall in love with me
+today?  I'd be rushed off by my terrified family to a padded cell."
+
+"Well--Jane----"
+
+"Don't 'well Jane' me!  You'd jump out of the window if I suddenly
+began to make eyes at you.  I could rely on your manners.  You wouldn't
+laugh until you struck the grass and then you'd be arrested for
+disturbing the peace.  Well--don't worry.  I'm not an old ass.  But I'm
+a terribly bewildered old woman.  It seems to me there has been a
+crashing in the air ever since she sat in that chair. . . .  Growing
+old always seemed to me a natural process that no arts or dodges could
+interrupt, and any attempt to arrest the processes of nature was an
+irreverent gesture in the face of Almighty God.  It was immoral and
+irreverent, and above all it showed a lack of humor and of sound common
+sense.  The world, my candid grandchild tells me, laughs at the women
+of my generation for their old-fashioned 'cut.'  But we have our code
+and we have the courage to live up to it.  That is one reason, perhaps,
+why growing old has never meant anything to me but reading-spectacles,
+two false teeth, and weak ankles.  It had seemed to me that my life had
+been pretty full--I never had much imagination--what with being as good
+a wife as ever lived--although James was a pompous bore if there ever
+was one--bringing eight children into the world and not making a
+failure of one of them, never neglecting my charities or my social
+duties or my establishments.  As I have grown older I have often
+reflected upon a life well-spent, and looked forward to dying when my
+time came with no qualms whatever, particularly as there was precious
+little left for me to do except give parties for my grandchildren and
+blow them up occasionally.  I never labored under the delusion that I
+had an angelic disposition or a perfect character, but I had always
+had, and maintained, certain standards; and, according to my lights, it
+seemed to me that when I arrived at the foot of the throne the Lord
+would say to me 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant.'  The only
+thing I ever regretted was that I wasn't a man."
+
+She paused and then went on in a voice that grew more raucous every
+moment.  "That was later.  It's a long time since I've admitted even to
+myself that there was a period--after my husband's death--when I hated
+growing old with the best of them.  I was fifty and I found myself with
+complete liberty for the first time in my life; for the elder children
+were all married, and the younger in Europe at school.  I had already
+begun to look upon myself as an old woman. . . .  But I soon made the
+terrible discovery that the heart never grows old.  I fell in love four
+times.  They were all years younger than myself and I'd have opened one
+of my veins before I'd have let them find it out.  Even then I had as
+little use for old men as old men have for old women.  Whatever it may
+be in men, it's the young heart in women.  I had no illusions.  Fifty
+is fifty.  My complexion was gone, my stomach high, and I had the face
+of an old war horse.  But--and here is the damned trick that nature
+plays on us--I hoped--hoped--I dreamed--and as ardently as I ever had
+dreamed in my youth, when I was on the look-out for the perfect knight
+and before I compromised on James Oglethorpe, who was handsome before
+he grew those whiskers and got fat--yes, as ardently as in my youth I
+dreamed that these clever intelligent men would look through the old
+husk and see only the young heart and the wise brain--I knew that I
+could give them more than many a younger woman.  But if beauty is only
+skin deep the skin is all any man wants, the best of 'em.  They treated
+me with the most impeccable respect--for the first time in my life I
+hated the word--and liked my society because I was an amusing caustic
+old woman.  Of course they drifted off, either to marry, or because I
+terrified them with my sharp tongue: when I loved them most and felt as
+if I had poison in my veins.  Well, I saved my pride, at all events.
+
+"By the time you came along I had sworn at myself once for all as an
+old fool, and, in any case, I would hardly have been equal to falling
+in love with a brat of twenty-two."
+
+She seized the stick that always rested against her chair and thumped
+the floor with it.  "Nevertheless," she exclaimed with savage contempt,
+"my heart is as young today as Mary Ogden's.  That is the appalling
+discovery I have made this week.  I'd give my immortal soul to be
+thirty again--or look it.  Why in heaven's name did nature play us this
+appalling dirty trick?"
+
+"But Jane!"  He felt like tearing his hair.  What was Mary Zattiany's
+tragedy to this?  Banalities were the only refuge.  "Remember that at
+thirty you were in love with your husband and bent on having a
+family----"
+
+"I meant thirty and all I know now. . . .  I'm not so damn sure I'd
+have tried to make myself think I was in love with James--who had about
+as much imagination as a grasshopper and the most infernal mannerisms.
+I'd have found out what love and life meant, that's what!  And when I
+did I'd have sent codes and traditions to the devil."
+
+"Oh, no, you would not.  If you'd had it in you you'd have done it,
+anyhow.  All women of your day were not virtuous--not by a long sight.
+I'll admit that your best possibilities have been wasted; I've always
+thought that.  You have a terrific personality and if you were at your
+maturity in this traditionless era you'd be a great national figure,
+not a mere social power.  But nature in a fit of spite launched you too
+soon and the cast-iron traditions were too strong for you.  It was the
+epoch of the submerged woman."
+
+"Mary Ogden was brought up in those same cast-iron traditions."
+
+"Yes, but Madame Zattiany belongs to a class of women that derive less
+from immediate ancestors than from a legendary race of sirens--not so
+merely legendary, perhaps, as we think.  Convention is only a flexible
+harness for such women and plays no part whatever in their secret
+lives."
+
+"You're in love with Mary."
+
+"_Don't_ come back to me.  I won't have it.  For the moment I don't
+feel as if I had an atom of personality left, I'm so utterly absorbed
+in you; and I'd give my immortal soul to help you."
+
+"Yes, I know that.  I wouldn't be turning myself inside out if I
+didn't.  I've never talked to a living soul as I've talked to you
+tonight and I never shall again."
+
+She stared at him for a moment, and then she burst into a loud laugh.
+It was awe-inspiring, that laugh.  Lucifer in hell, holding his sides
+at the futilities of mankind, could not have surpassed it.  "What a
+mess!  What a mess!  Life!  Begins nowhere, ends nowhere."  She went on
+muttering to herself, and then, abruptly, she broke into the sarcastic
+speech which her friends knew best.
+
+"Lord, Lee, I wish you could have been behind a screen at that
+luncheon.  Thirteen old tombstones in feathers and net collars--seven
+or eight of 'em, anyhow--colonial profiles and lorgnettes, and all
+looking as if they'd been hit in the stomach.  I at one end of the
+table looking like the Witch of Endor, Mary at the other looking like
+one of our granddaughters and trying to be animated and intimate.  I
+forgot my own tragedy and haw-hawed three times.  She looked almost
+apologetic when she called us by our first names, especially when she
+used the diminutive.  Polly Vane, who's got a head like a billiard ball
+and has to wear a wig for decency's sake, drew herself up twice and
+then relaxed with a sickly grin. . . .  All the same I don't think Mary
+felt any more comfortable or liked it much better than the rest of us.
+Too much like reading your own epitaph on a tombstone.  I thought I saw
+her squirm."
+
+"How did they take it individually?"  Clavering hoped she was finally
+diverted.  "Were they jealous and resentful?"
+
+"Some.  Elinor Goodrich had always been too besottedly fond of her to
+mind.  Others, who had been merely admirers and liked her, were--well,
+it's too much to say they were enchanted to see Mary looking not a day
+over thirty, but they were able to endure it.  Isabel Lawrence thought
+it downright immoral, and Polly Vane looked as if she had fallen into a
+stinking morass and only refrained from holding her nose out of
+consideration for her hostess.  I think she feels that Mary's return is
+an insult to New York.  Lily Tracy was painfully excited.  No doubt
+she'll begin collecting for the Vienna poor at once and finding it
+necessary to go over and distribute the funds in person.  Mary lost no
+time getting in her fine work for Vienna relief."
+
+"But they'll all stand by her?"
+
+"Oh, yes, she's Mary Ogden.  We'd be as likely to desert New York
+itself because we didn't like the mayor.  And she'll need us.  It's the
+young women she'll have to look out for.  My God!  How they'll hate
+her.  As for Anne Goodrich and Marian Lawrence----"
+
+Clavering sprang to his feet.  "Who's that?  Jim?"
+
+A man was running up the stairs.
+
+"Janet," said Mrs. Oglethorpe grimly.  "She's out."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+  "Don't be a flat tyre,
+  Don't be a dumb-bell;
+  Run from the dumb ducks,
+  Run from the plumbers.
+  Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
+
+
+Oglethorpe pounded on the door with his stick.  There was a sudden hush
+in the room, then a wild scurry and a slamming door.  He rattled the
+knob and, to his surprise, for he had assumed that these wild parties
+of his young friends were soundly barricaded, the door opened.
+
+There were only four young men standing about a table covered with the
+remains of a chafing dish supper and many champagne bottles, but an
+excited whispering came through the partition.  Young Farren was
+leaning against the table, his large moon-face pallid with fright.  As
+he recognized Oglethorpe and Clavering fright was wiped out by
+astonishment and relief.
+
+"Thought you were the police," he muttered.  "Though they've got no
+business here----"
+
+"I've come for Janet.  Go into that room and bring her out at once."
+
+"Janet ain't here.  Haven't seen Janet for a week.  Tried to get her on
+the 'phone early this afternoon and couldn't----"
+
+"If you don't go into that room and fetch her, I will."  As he started
+for the inner door, Farren with drunken dignity opposed his broad bulk.
+
+"Now, Mr. Oglethorpe, you wouldn't do that.  Ladies in there.  Chorus
+girls----"
+
+"That's a lie.  Stand aside."
+
+Farren, who was very young and very drunk, but who had a rudimentary
+sense of responsibility where girls of his own class were concerned,
+burst into tears.  "You wouldn't, Mr. Oglethorpe!  I swear to God
+Janet's not there.  But--but--some of her friends are.  They wouldn't
+want you to see them."  His mood changed to righteous indignation.
+"What right you got breaking into a gentleman's rooms like a damned
+policeman?  It's an outrage and if I had a gun I'd shoot you.
+I'd--I'd----"  And then he collapsed on a chair and was very sick.
+
+Oglethorpe turned to Clavering, who had thought it best to remain in
+the hall and watch other exits.  "Just stay there, will you?"  He
+turned to the three gaping youngsters.  "You dare make a move and I'll
+knock your heads together.  Just remember that you're drunk and I'm
+sober."
+
+He went into the next room, and immediately saw several forms under the
+bed.  He reached down and jerked them out by their legs.  They rolled
+over, covering their faces and sobbing with fright.  Emancipated as
+they were and disdainful of pre-war parents, when it came to late
+parties in a bachelor's rooms they exercised strategy to slip out, not
+defiance.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Oglethorpe," gasped one convulsively.  "Don't tell on us,
+p-l-e-a-s-e."
+
+"I've no intention of telling on you.  You can go to the devil in your
+own way for all I care.  I'm after Janet----"
+
+"She's not here----"
+
+"That's what I'm going to find out."  He opened the door of a wardrobe
+and another girl tumbled into his arms, shrieked, and flung herself
+face downward on the bed.  But it was not Janet.  He investigated every
+corner of the apartment and then returned to Clavering, slamming the
+door behind him.
+
+"She's not there, Lee," he said, leaning heavily against the wall.
+"Where in God's name is she?  I don't know where to look next.  This is
+her particular gang.  She has no other intimates that I know of.  But
+what do I know about her, anyway?"
+
+"You're sure she isn't hiding anywhere at home?"
+
+"Searched the house from top to bottom."
+
+"I suppose it isn't likely that she's gone to any of her aunts."
+
+"Good Lord, no.  She'd take a chance on mother, but never with any of
+the rest of the family, and she's got no money.  I saw to that.  D'you
+suppose she's roaming the streets?"
+
+"Well, she can't roam long; legs will give out.  Perhaps she's home by
+now or at Mrs. Oglethorpe's.  Better telephone."
+
+They went out and found a public telephone.  Janet had not been seen
+nor heard from.
+
+"You don't think it's going to be another Dorothy Arnold case?" gasped
+Oglethorpe, who seemed completely unnerved.
+
+"Good Heavens no, Jim!  And she's able to take care of herself.  Nobody
+better.  She'll give you a scare and then turn up--with her thumb at
+her nose, likely.  Better come up to my rooms and have a drink."
+
+"Orright.  I can't go home and I don't want to be alone anywhere.  I'd
+go out of my senses.  Anything might happen to her, and I shan't call
+in the police until the last minute.  Filthy scandal."
+
+"Police?  Certainly not.  And as Janet is cold sober, be sure she'll
+come to no harm."
+
+A few moments later they were in the lift ascending to Clavering's
+rooms.  "Hullo!" he said, as he opened the door of his little hall.
+"The fool maid has left the light on," and, as they entered the
+living-room, "what the devil--"  Cigarette smoke hung in the air.
+
+[Illustration: It took a lot of self possession and grit for Zattiany
+(Corinne Griffith) and Clavering (Conway Tearle) to hide their feelings
+when she alighted to go to the ship which was to return her to Europe.
+(_Screen version of "The Black Oxen."_)]
+
+There was a wild shriek from a corner of the room, a slim girl leapt
+across the intervening space like a panther, and flinging herself upon
+Oglethorpe, beat his chest with her fists.
+
+"You damned old plumber, you old dumb-duck!" shrieked his little
+daughter.  "What did you come here and spoil everything for?  He'd have
+had to marry me tomorrow if you'd minded your own business.  I'll claw
+your eyes out."  But her hands were imprisoned in her father's hard
+fists, and she turned and spat at the petrified Clavering.  "I hate
+you!  I hate you!  But I'm going to marry you all the same.  One way or
+another I'll get you.  I meant to wait awhile; for I hadn't had fun
+enough yet, and I'd have precious little with you, you old flat tyre.
+But when I heard that old Zattiany woman'd got hold of you--and then
+locked up and not able to do a thing--I thought I'd go mad.  I dropped
+my diamond bracelet out of the window and one of the servants let me
+out--I won't tell which.  You've been seen coming out of her house at
+all hours, but she's a thousand years old and nobody cares what she
+does, but I intended to rouse this whole house and I'd have been so
+compromised you'd have had to marry me.  You're a gentleman if you are
+a damned old left-over, and you're a friend of granny's and dad's.  I'd
+have had you tied up so tight you'd have toddled straight down to the
+City Hall."
+
+Clavering stared at her, wondering how women felt when they were going
+to have hysterics.  What a night!  And this girl's resemblance to her
+grandmother was uncanny.  He could see the Jane Oglethorpe of the
+portrait in just such a tantrum.  And he had thought he knew both of
+them.  He wanted to burst into wild laughter, but the girl was tragic
+in spite of her silly plot and he merely continued to regard her
+stonily.
+
+"How did you get in?" he asked.  "That's not easy in this house."
+
+"I just got in the lift and told the boy I was your sister just arrived
+from the South and he let me in with the pass key.  He took me for
+sixteen and said that as you weren't one for chickens he'd chance it."
+
+"He'll get the sack in the morning."
+
+"I don't care what happens to him."  Suddenly she burst into tears, her
+face working like a baby's, and flung herself into her father's arms.
+
+"Make him marry me, daddy.  Make him!  I want him.  I want him."
+
+Oglethorpe put his arms about her, but his sympathies were equally
+divided, and he understood men far better than he did young girls.
+"You wouldn't want to marry a man who doesn't love you," he said
+soothingly.  "Where's your pride?"
+
+"Who cares a damn about pride?  I want him and that's all there is to
+it."  She whirled round again.  "Do you think you're in love with that
+rejuvenated old dame who's granny's age if she's a day?  She's
+hypnotized you, that's what.  It isn't natural.  It isn't.  It isn't."
+
+"I certainly shall marry Madame Zattiany if she will have me."
+
+"O-h-h."  Tears dried.  She showed her teeth like a treed cat.  Her
+eyes blazed again and she would have precipitated herself upon him, but
+her father held her fast.  "Oh!  Oh!  Oh!  It can't be.  It can't be.
+It's as unnatural as if you married granny.  It isn't fair.  How dare
+she come here with her whitewash and sneak young girls' lovers away
+from them?"
+
+"Really, Janet."
+
+"Oh, I know, you thought you didn't care for me, but you always did,
+and I'd have got you in time.  I knew there was no chance for Marian
+and Anne; they're old maids, and I'm young--_young_.  If I'd cut out
+the fun and concentrated on you I'd have got you.  I wish I had!  I
+wish I had!  But you were such an old flat tyre I thought you were
+safe."
+
+"What in heaven's name makes you think you're in love with me?"
+exploded Clavering.  "Your opinion of me is anything but complimentary,
+and I'm everything your chosen companions are not.  You don't want me
+any more than I want you.  You've simply been playing some fool game
+with yourself----"
+
+"It's not!  It's not!  It's the real thing.  I've been in love with you
+since I was six.  Ask daddy.  Daddy, didn't I always say I was going to
+marry him?"
+
+"Yes, when you were little more of a baby than you are now.  Can't you
+imagine how ashamed you'll be of such an undignified performance as
+this?"
+
+"I ashamed?  Not much.  I always intend to do just as I please and damn
+the consequences."
+
+"A fine wife you'd make for Lee or any other man."
+
+"I'd make him the best wife in the world.  I'd do everything he told
+me.  No, I wouldn't.  Yes, I would."  Sheer femaleness and the spirit
+of the age seesawed inconclusively.  "Anyhow, I'd make you happy,
+because I'd be happy myself," she added naïvely.  "Much happier than
+your grand-mother----"
+
+"Perhaps you will oblige me by making no further allusion to Madame
+Zattiany."
+
+"No, I won't.  And the first time I see her when there's a lot of
+people round I'll tell her just what she is to her face."
+
+"If you dare!"  Clavering advanced threateningly and she swung herself
+behind her father, who, however, took her firmly by the arm and marched
+her to the door.
+
+"Enough of this," he said.  "You come home and pack your trunk and
+tomorrow we take the first steamer out of New York.  If there isn't
+one, we'll take the train for Canada----"
+
+"I won't go."
+
+"It's either that or a sanitarium for neurotics.  I'll have you
+strapped down and carried there in an ambulance.  You may take your
+choice.  Good night, Lee.  Forget it, if you can."
+
+As Clavering slammed the door behind them he envied men who could tear
+their hair.  He had wanted to spend a long evening alone thinking of
+Mary Zattiany, dreaming of those vital hours before him, and he had
+been treated to a double nightmare.  For the moment he hated everything
+in petticoats that walked, and he felt like taking a steamer to the
+ends of the earth himself.  But he was more worn out than he knew and
+was sound asleep fifteen minutes later.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+Janet had her revenge.  Words have a terrible power.  And Janet's
+vocabulary might be as primitive as lightning, but unlike lightning it
+never failed to strike.
+
+"That old Zattiany woman."  "She's a thousand years old and nobody
+cares what she does."  "That rejuvenated old dame who's granny's age if
+she's a day."  "Much happier than your grandmother."  The phrases
+flashed into his mind when he awoke and echoed in his ears all day.  No
+doubt similar phrases, less crude, but equally scorching, were being
+tossed from one end of New York Society to the other.  If Janet knew of
+his devotion to Madame Zattiany others must, for it could only have
+come to her on the wings of gossip.  He was being ridiculed by people
+who grasped nothing beyond the fact that the woman was fifty-eight and
+the man thirty-four.  Of course it would be but a nine days' wonder and
+like all other social phenomena grow too stale for comment, but
+meanwhile he should feel as if he were frying on a gridiron.  Anne
+Goodrich would merely exclaim: "Abominable."  Marian Lawrence would
+draw in her nostrils and purr: "Lee was always an erratic and
+impressionable boy.  Just like him to fall in love with an old woman.
+And she's really a beautiful blonde--once more.  Poor Lee."  As for
+Gora and Suzan Forbes--well, Gora would understand, and impale them
+sympathetically in her next novel, and Suzan would read up on
+endocrines, blend them adroitly with psychology, and write an article
+for the _Yale Review_.
+
+He avoided the office and wrote his column at home.  Luckily a favorite
+old comedian had died recently.  He could fill up with reminiscence and
+anecdote.  But it was soon done and he was back in his chair with his
+thoughts again.
+
+It had been his intention when he awakened on Sunday after a few hours
+of unrefreshing sleep to dispatch his work as quickly as possible, take
+a long walk, and then return to his rooms and keep the hours that must
+intervene until Monday afternoon, sacred to Mary Zattiany.  But if man
+wishes to regulate his life, and more particularly his meditations, to
+suit himself he would be wise to retire to a mountain top.  Civilized
+life is a vast woof and the shuttle pursues its weaving and
+counter-weaving with no regard for the plans of men.  It was impossible
+to ignore Mrs. Oglethorpe's appeal, and it was equally impossible to
+refuse to aid in the hunt for that damnable Janet when her distracted
+father and his own intimate friend took his coöperation as a matter of
+course.  And even if he had remained at home, no doubt she would have
+wiggled her way in before he could shut the door in her face.  Then
+there _would_ have been the devil to pay, for she would have seen to it
+that he was hopelessly compromised.  No doubt she would have run out on
+the balcony and screamed for help.  Her failure was the one saving
+grace in the whole wretched night.
+
+But she had planted her stings.
+
+He was in a fine frame of mind to make love to a woman.  He had
+pictured that scene as one of the great moments of life, so subtly
+beautiful and dramatic, so exalted and exulting, so perfect in its very
+incompleteness, that not a lifetime of suffering and disappointment
+could blur it.  And he felt exactly like the flat tyre of Janet's
+distinguished vernacular.  Even his body was worn out, for he had had
+but nine hours' sleep in two nights.  What a dead cinch the playwrights
+had.  A man might as well try to breathe without oxygen on Mount
+Everest as attempt to give his own life the proper dramatic values.  He
+was a cursed puppet and Life itself was a curse.
+
+He excoriated himself for his susceptibility to mere words; he who
+juggled in words, and often quite insincerely when it suited his
+purpose.  But "that rejuvenated old dame," and "that old Zattiany
+woman" crawled like reeking vapors across some fair landscape a man had
+spent his life seeking, blotting out its loveliness, turning it to a
+noisome morass.
+
+He had used equally caustic phrases when some young man he knew had
+married a woman only ten years older than himself, and when old men had
+taken to themselves young wives.  And meant them, for he was
+fundamentally as conventional and conservative as all men. . . .  But
+he cared less that he would be the laughing stock of New York than that
+his own soul felt like boiling pitch and that he was ashamed of himself.
+
+He looked at the clock.  It was twenty minutes to four.  There was
+neither love nor desire in him and he would have liked to throw himself
+on the divan and sleep.  But he set his teeth and got to his feet.  He
+would go through it, play up, somehow.
+
+He felt better in the nipping air and soon began to walk briskly.  And
+then as he crossed Park Avenue and entered her street he saw two men
+coming down her steps.  They were Mr. Dinwiddie, and the extremely
+good-looking young man whom Osborne had brought to the box on Monday
+night.  The young man was smiling fatuously.
+
+A wave of rage and jealousy swept Clavering from head to foot.  She, at
+least, could have kept these hours sacred, and she had not only
+received this grinning ape, but evidently given him a delectable morsel
+to chew on.  He could have knocked both men down but he was not even
+permitted to pass them by with a scowling nod.  Another contretemps.
+
+Dinwiddie hailed him delightedly.
+
+"Good old Lee!  Haven't seen you in an age.  Where've you kept
+yourself?  Know Vane?  Mother's an old friend of Mary's.  He's head
+over like the rest of us.  Who says we don't live in the age of
+miracles?"
+
+"Yeh, ain't life wonderful?"  Clavering's jocular faculty was
+enfeebled, but it came to the rescue.  He was staring at Vane.
+Evidently this young man was unimpressed by searing phrases and he must
+have heard several, for, if he remembered aright, "Polly Vane" with
+"her head like a billiard ball," who "wore a wig for decency's sake,"
+had been one of the most resentful women at the luncheon.  For a moment
+he had a queer impression that his stature had diminished until the top
+of his head stood level with this glowing young man's waistcoat.  And
+then he shot up to seven feet.  Something had turned over inside him
+and vomited forth the pitch and its vapors.  But he still felt angry
+and jealous.  He managed to reply, however:
+
+"Well, I must be getting on.  Have an engagement at four.  See you in a
+day or two, Din."  He nodded to young Vane and in another moment he was
+taking Madame Zattiany's front steps three at a time.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+When Mary Zattiany had reached her bedroom on Sunday morning she had
+leaned heavily on her dressing-table for a few moments, staring into
+the mirror.  Then she curled her lip and shrugged her shoulders.  Well,
+it was done.  She had been as bald and uncompromising as she knew how
+to be.  A picturesque softening of details, pleas to understand, and
+appeals to the man's sympathy, might be for other women but not for
+her.  Life had given her a respect for hard facts and an utter contempt
+for the prevalent dodging of them.
+
+She had told him that she was determined to relate her story in full as
+much for his sake as her own.  But she had told it far more for her
+own.  Before going any farther she was determined to know this man, who
+may only have intoxicated her, as thoroughly as it was possible for a
+woman to know any man she had not lived with.  If he met the test she
+could be reasonably sure that for once she had made no mistake.  If he
+did not--well, perhaps, so much the better.  Surely she had had more
+than her share of love, and she had something to do in the world of
+vastly greater importance than wasting time in a man's arms.  And did
+she really want passion in her life again?  She with her young body and
+her old mind!  Did she?
+
+She recalled those brief moments of complete and ecstatic surrender.
+Or tried to recall them.  She was very tired.  Perhaps she might dream
+about them, but at the moment they seemed as far away as her first
+youth.
+
+She awoke the next day only in time to dress and go to Mrs. Ruyler's
+for luncheon.  She attended a concert in the afternoon, and she did not
+return from the Lawrences' until midnight.  On Monday she lunched with
+Mrs. Vane and brought "Harry" and Mr. Dinwiddie home with her.  She
+would give herself no time to think and brood.  She was too wise to
+harden her heart against him by bitter fancies that might be as
+bitterly unjust, and assuredly she had no intention of meeting disaster
+weakened by romantic castle-building.  Not she.  Let events take their
+course.  Whatever came, she had the strength to meet it.
+
+As Clavering entered the library she was standing by the hearth, one
+hand on the mantelshelf.  Her repose was absolute as she turned her
+head.  In her eyes was an insolent expression, a little mocking, a
+little challenging.  There was no trace of apprehension.  As she saw
+Clavering's angry face her brows lifted.
+
+"What did you let those fellows in for?" he demanded, glaring at her
+from the door.  "You set this hour for our meeting and I just missed
+finding them here in this room.  I should have thought you would have
+wanted to be alone before I came----"
+
+And then for a moment Mary Zattiany's mind felt as young as her body.
+It seemed to her that she heard ruins tumbling behind her, down and out
+of sight.  Her head felt light and she grasped the mantel for support;
+but she was not too dazed to realize that Clavering was in anything but
+a love-making mood, and she managed to steady her voice and reply
+lightly:
+
+"I lunched with Polly Vane, and her devoted son was hanging 'round.
+Mr. Dinwiddie was also at the luncheon, and as they both walked home
+with me I could do no less than ask them in for a moment.  But I never
+have the least difficulty getting rid of people."
+
+"Ah!"  He continued to stand staring at her, and, as he had
+anticipated, he saw only Mary Zattiany.  As far as he was concerned
+Mary Ogden had never existed.  But he still felt no immediate desire to
+touch her.  He came over and stood opposite her on the hearthrug, his
+hands in his pockets.
+
+"What have you been through?" he asked abruptly.  "I've been through
+hell."
+
+"So I imagined," she said drily.  "I can't say I've been through hell.
+I've grown too philosophical for that!  I have thought as little as
+possible.  I left it on the knees of the gods."
+
+There certainly was neither despair nor doubt in that vital voice of
+hers as she looked at him, and she was smiling.  He twitched his
+shoulders under those understanding eyes and turned his own to the fire
+with a frown.
+
+"I don't believe you had a moment of misgiving.  You were too sure of
+me."
+
+"Oh, no, I was not!  I know life too well to be sure of anything, mon
+ami.  Unlike that nice Vane boy, you have imagination and I gave you
+some hard swallowing.  Poor boy, I'm afraid you've been choking ever
+since----"
+
+"Don't 'poor boy' me.  I won't have it.  I feel a thousand years old."
+He glared at her once more.  "You are sure of me now--and quite
+right . . . but I don't feel in the least like kissing you. . . .  I've
+barely slept and I feel like the devil."
+
+For the first time in many days she felt an inclination to throw back
+her head and give vent to a joyous laugh--joyous but amused, for she
+would always be Mary Zattiany.  But she merely said:  "My dear Lee, I
+could not stand being made love to at four in the afternoon.  It is not
+aesthetic.  Suppose we sit down.  Tell me all about it."
+
+"I'll not tell you a thing."  But he took the chair and lit a
+cigarette.  "I'm more in love with you than ever, if you want to know.
+When will you marry me?"
+
+"Shall we say two months from today?"
+
+"Two months!  Why not tomorrow?"
+
+"Oh, hardly.  In the first place I'd like it all to be quite perfect,
+and I'd dreamed of spending our honeymoon in the Dolomites.  I've a
+shooting box there on the shore of a wonderful lake.  I used to stay
+there quite alone after my guests had left. . . .  And then--well, it
+would hardly be fair to give New York two shocks in succession.  They
+all take for granted I'll marry some one--I am already engaged to Mr.
+Osborne, although I have heard you alluded to meaningly--but better let
+them talk the first sensation to rags. . . .  They will be angry enough
+with me for marrying a young man, but perhaps too relieved that I have
+not carried off one of their own sons. . . .  Polly is in agonies at
+the present moment . . . we'll have to live in New York more or less--I
+suppose?"
+
+"More or less?  Altogether.  My work is here."
+
+"I believe there is more work for both of us in Europe."
+
+"And do you imagine I'd live on your money?  I've nothing but what I
+make."
+
+"I could pull wires and get you into one of the embassies----"
+
+"I'm no diplomat, and don't want to be.  Rotten lazy job."
+
+"Couldn't you be foreign correspondent for your newspaper?"
+
+"We've good men in every European capital now.  They've no use for
+more, and no excuse for displacing any of them.  Besides, I've every
+intention of being a playwright."
+
+"But playwrighting isn't--not really--quite as important as poor
+Europe.  And I know of several ways in which we could be of the
+greatest possible use.  Not only Austria----"
+
+"Perhaps.  But you'll have to wait until I've made money on at least
+one play.  I'll be only too glad to spend the honeymoon in the
+Dolomites, but then I return and go to work.  You'll have to make up
+your mind to live here for a year or two at least.  And the sooner you
+marry me, the sooner we can go to Europe to live--for a time.  I've no
+intention of living my life in Europe.  But I'm only too willing to
+help you.  So--better marry me tomorrow."
+
+"I can't get away for at least two months--possibly not then.  Ask
+Judge Trent.  And a honeymoon in New York would be too flat--not?"
+
+"Better than nothing . . . however--here's an idea.  I'll get to work
+on my play at once and maybe I can finish it before I leave.  If it
+went over big I could stay longer.  Besides, it'll be something to boil
+over into; I don't suppose I shall see any too much of you.  What's
+your idea?  To set all the young men off their heads and imagine you
+are Mary Ogden once more?  It _would_ be a triumph.  I've an idea
+that's what you are up to."
+
+"Certainly not," she said angrily.  "How trivial you must think me.
+I've not the least intention of going to dancing parties.  I should be
+bored to death.  I hardly knew what young Vane was talking about today.
+He seems to speak a different language from the men of my time.  But it
+is only decent that I bore myself at luncheons and dinners, for my old
+friends have behaved with the utmost loyalty and generosity.  Jane
+Oglethorpe would have been quite justified in never speaking to me
+again, and I have violated the most sacred traditions of the others.
+But it has not made the least difference.  Besides, I must keep them up
+to the mark.  I have their promise to form a committee for the children
+of Austria."
+
+"Well, that's that.  We'll marry two months from today.  I can finish
+my play in that time, and I won't wait a day longer."
+
+"Very well. . . .  I met Marian Lawrence the other day.  I'm told you
+were expected to marry her at one time.  She is very beautiful and has
+more subtlety than most American women.  Why didn't you?"
+
+"Because she wasn't you, I suppose.  Did she stick a little bejewelled
+gold pin into you?"
+
+"Only with her eyes.  She made me feel quite the age I had left behind
+me in Vienna."  And then she asked irresistibly, "Do you think you
+would have fallen in love with me, after a much longer and better
+opportunity to know me, if you--if we had met in Vienna before that
+time?"
+
+"No, I should not.  What a question!  I should have loved you in one
+way as I do now--with that part of me that worships you.  But men are
+men, and never will be demi-gods."
+
+This time she did laugh, and until tears were in her eyes.  "Oh, Lee!
+No wonder I fell in love with you.  Any other man--well, I couldn't
+have loved you.  My soul was too old."  And then her eyes widened as
+she stared before her.  "Perhaps----"
+
+He sprang to his feet and pulled her up from her chair.  "None of that.
+None of that.  And now I do want to kiss you."
+
+And as Mary Zattiany never did anything by halves she was completely
+happy, and completely young.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+He left her at ten o'clock, and the next morning rose at seven and went
+to work at once on his play.  He chose the one that had the greatest
+emotional possibilities.  Gora Dwight had told him that he must learn
+to "externalize his emotions," and he felt that here was the supreme
+opportunity.  Never would he have more turgid, pent-up, tearing
+emotions to get rid of than now.  He wrote until one o'clock, then,
+after lunch and two hours on his column, went out and took a long walk;
+but lighter of heart than since he had met Mary Zattiany.  He also
+reflected with no little satisfaction that when writing on the play he
+had barely thought of her.  All the fire in him had flown to his head
+and transported him to another plane; he wondered if any woman, save in
+brief moments, could rival the ecstasy of mental creation.  That rotten
+spot in the brain, dislocation of particles, whatever it was that
+enabled a few men to do what the countless millions never dreamed of
+attempting, or attempt only to fail, was, through its very abnormality,
+productive of a higher and more sustained delight, a more complete
+annihilation of prosaic life, than any mere function bestowed on all
+men alike.  It might bring suffering, disappointment, mortification,
+even despair in its train, but the agitation of that uncharted tract in
+the brain compensated for any revenge that nature, through her
+by-product, human nature, might visit on those who departed from her
+beloved formulae.
+
+Nevertheless, and before his walk was finished and he had returned home
+to dress for dinner with her, the play was on one plane and he on
+another, visioning himself alone with her in the Austrian agapemone.
+And cursing the interminable weeks between.  He anathematized himself
+for consenting to the delay, and vowed she'd had her own way for the
+last time, He foresaw many not unagreeable tussles of will.  She was
+far too accustomed to having her own way.  Well, so was he.
+
+For two weeks he left his rooms only to walk, or dine or spend an hour
+with her in the afternoon when she was alone.  He rebelled less than he
+had expected.  If he could not have her wholly, the less he saw of her
+the better.
+
+Dinners, luncheons, theatre parties, receptions, were being given for
+her not only by her old friends--who seemed to her to grow more
+numerous daily--but by their daughters and by many others who made up
+for lack of tradition by that admirable sense of rightness which makes
+fashionable society in America such a waste of efficiency and force.
+And whether the younger women privately hated her or had fallen victims
+to that famous charm was of little public consequence.  It was as if
+she had appeared in their midst, waved a sceptre and announced:  "I am
+the fashion.  Always have I been the fashion.  That is my _métier_.
+Bow down."  At all events the fashion she became, and it was quite as
+patent that she took it as a matter of course.  The radiant happiness
+that possessed her, refusing as she did to look into the future with
+its menace to those high duties of her former dedication--clear, sharp,
+ruthless children of her brain--not only enhanced both her beauty and
+magnetism, but enabled her to endure this social ordeal she had
+dreaded, without ennui.  She was too happy to be bored.  She even
+plunged into it with youthful relish.  For the first time in her life
+she was at peace with herself.  She was not at peace when Clavering
+made love to her, far from it; but she enjoyed with all the zest of a
+woman with her first lover, and something of the timidity, this
+tantalizing preliminary to fruition.  How could she ever have believed
+that her mind was old?  She turned her imagination away from that lodge
+in the Dolomites, and believed it was because the present with its
+happiness and its excitements sufficed her.
+
+Moreover, she was having one novel experience that afforded her much
+diversion.  The newspapers were full of her.  It took exactly five days
+after Mrs. Oglethorpe's luncheon for the story she had told there to
+filter down to Park Row, and although she would not consent to be
+interviewed, there were double-page stories in the Sunday issues,
+embellished with snapshots and a photograph of the Mary Ogden of the
+eighties: a photographer who had had the honor to "take" her was still
+in existence and exhumed the plates.
+
+Doctors, biologists, endocrinologists, were interviewed.  Civil war
+threatened: the medical fraternity, upheld by a few doubting Thomases
+among the more abstract followers of the science, on one side of the
+field, by far the greater number of those who peer into the human
+mechanism with mere scientific acumen on the other.  Doctors,
+notoriously as conservative as kings and as jealous as opera singers,
+found themselves threatened with the loss of elderly patients whose
+steady degeneration was a source of respectable income.  When it was
+discovered that New York actually held a practicing physician who had
+studied with the great endocrinologists of Vienna, the street in front
+of his house looked as if some ambitious hostess were holding a
+continual reception.
+
+Finally Madame Zattiany consented to give a brief statement to the
+press through her lawyers.  It was as impersonal as water, but
+technical enough to satisfy the _Medical Journal_.  At the theatre and
+opera people waited in solid phalanxes to see her pass.  Her utter
+immobility on these occasions but heightened the feverish interest.
+
+Women of thirty, dreaming of becoming flappers overnight, and
+formidable rivals, with the subtlety of experience behind the mask of
+seventeen, were desolated to learn that they must submit to the claws
+and teeth of Time until they had reached the last mile-post of their
+maturity.  Beauty doctors gnashed their teeth, and plastic surgeons
+looked forward to the day when they must play upon some other form of
+human credulity.  As a subject for the press it rivalled strikes,
+prohibition, German reparations, Lenin, prize-fights, censorship and
+scandalous divorces in high life.
+
+"Why isn't your head turned?" Clavering asked her one day when the
+sensation was about a month old and was beginning to expire
+journalistically for want of fresh fuel.  (Not a woman in New York
+could be induced to admit that she was taking the treatment.)  "You are
+the most famous woman in America and the pioneer of a revolution that
+may have lasting and momentous consequences on which we can only
+speculate vaguely today.  I don't believe you are as unmoved as you
+look.  It's not in woman's nature--in human nature.  Publicity goes to
+the head and then descends to the marrow of the bones."
+
+"I'm not unmoved.  I've been tremendously interested and excited.  I
+find that newspaper notoriety is the author of a distinctly new
+sensation."  And then she felt a disposition to play with fire.
+Clavering was in one of his rare detached moods, and had evidently come
+for an hour of agreeable companionship.  "I am beginning to get a
+little bored and tired.  If it were not for this Vienna Fund--and to
+the newspapers for their assistance I am eternally grateful--I believe
+I'd suggest that we leave for Austria tomorrow."
+
+"And I wouldn't go."  Clavering stood on the hearthrug smiling down at
+her with humorous defiance.  "You switched me on to that play, and
+there I stick until it is finished.  No chance for it in a honeymoon,
+and no chance for undiluted happiness with that crashing round inside
+my head."
+
+She shrank and turned cold, but recovered herself sharply and dismissed
+the pang.  It was her first experience, in her exhaustive knowledge of
+men, of the writing temperament; and after all it was part of the
+novelty of the man who had obliterated every other from her mind.  Nor
+had she any intention of letting him see that he could hurt her.  She
+smiled sweetly and asked:
+
+"How is it coming on?  Are you satisfied with it?"
+
+"Yes, I am.  And so is Gora Dwight.  I've finished two acts and I read
+them to her last night."
+
+"Ah?  Your Egeria?"
+
+"Not a bit of it.  But she's a wise cold-blooded critic.  You can't
+blame me for not even talking about it to you.  I see so little of you
+that I've no intention of wasting any of the precious time."
+
+"But you might let me read it."
+
+"I'd rather wait until it's finished and as polished and perfect as I
+can make it.  I always want you to know me at my best."
+
+"Oh, my dear!  You forget that we are to be made one and remain twain.
+Do you really believe that we shall either of us always be at our best?"
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't care a hang whether we are or
+not.  I'll have you, and all to myself.  And I won't say 'for a while,
+at least.'  Do you imagine that when we return to New York I'm going to
+let Society take possession of you again?  Not only shall I work harder
+than I've ever worked before, but I'd see little more of you than I do
+now.  And that I'll never submit to again.  I'll write my next play
+inside this house, and you'll be here when I want you, not gadding
+about."
+
+She felt a sudden pang of dismay, apprehension.  New York?  She
+realized that not for a moment had she given up her original purpose.
+But why disturb the serenity of the present?  When she had him in the
+Dolomites . . .  She answered him in the same light tone.
+
+"I'm having my last fling at New York Society.  When we return we'll
+give our spare time to the Sophisticates.  I see far less of them now
+than I like."  Then, with a further desire to investigate the literary
+temperament, even if she were stabbed again in the process, she looked
+at him with provocative eyes and said: "I've sometimes wondered why you
+haven't insisted upon a secret marriage.  I'm told it can be done with
+a reasonable prospect of success in certain states."
+
+"Don't imagine I didn't think of it . . . but--well--I think the play
+would go fluey . . . you see. . . ."
+
+"I see!  And what about your next?"
+
+"The next will be a comedy.  I'll never be able to write a tremendously
+emotional play again."
+
+"And meanwhile you will not deny that the artist has submerged the
+lover."
+
+"I admit nothing of the sort.  But you yourself let the artist
+loose--and what in God's name should I be doing these cursed weeks if
+you hadn't?  You know you never would have consented to a secret
+marriage.  You've set your heart on the Dolomites. . . .  How about
+that interval of travel, by the way?  Liners and trains are not
+particularly conducive to illusions."
+
+"I thought I'd told you.  My plan is to be married there.  I should go
+on a preceding steamer and see that the Lodge was in proper condition.
+I want everything to be quite perfect, and Heaven only knows what has
+happened to it."
+
+"Oh!  This is a new one you've sprung.  But--yes--I like the idea.  I'd
+rather dreaded the prelude."  And then he made one of those abrupt
+vaultings out of one mood into another which had fascinated her from
+the first.  "God!  I wish we were there now.  When I'm not writing----!
+How many men have you got in love with you already?  But no.  I don't
+care.  When I'm here--_like this, Mary, like this_--I don't care a hang
+if I never write another line."
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+During the following week she gave a dinner and insisted upon his
+attendance.  She had given others to that increasing throng that had
+been young with her in the eighties and to others who had stormed and
+conquered that once impregnable citadel, but, she informed him, it was
+now time to entertain some of the younger women, and he must help her.
+
+He consented readily enough, for he was curious to see her surrounded
+by a generation into which she had coolly stepped with no disadvantage
+to herself and, from all he heard, considerable to them.  He knew that
+not only Vane but other men in their late twenties and early thirties
+were paying her devoted attentions.  Dinwiddie, who met him in the Park
+one day and dined with him in the Casino, had spoken with modified
+enthusiasm of these conquests, but added that it was yet to be
+demonstrated whether the young men were egged by novelty or genuine
+coveting.  When he hinted that she may have appealed to that secret
+lust for the macabre that exists somewhere in all men, Clavering had
+scowled at him so ferociously that he had plunged into rhapsody and
+bewailed his own lost youth.
+
+And then he had endeavored to sound the young man in whom he was most
+interested, but of whose present relations with Mary Zattiany he had no
+inkling; he had not seen them together nor heard any fresh gossip since
+her second début.  But he was told to shut up and talk about the
+weather.
+
+Clavering, who knew that he would not have a moment alone with her,
+went to the dinner in much the same mood as he went to a first-night at
+which he was reasonably sure of entertainment.  It certainly would be
+good comedy to the detached observer, and this he was quite capable of
+being with nothing better in prospect.  Nevertheless, he was utterly
+unprepared for the presence of Anne Goodrich and Marian Lawrence, for
+he understood that the dinner was given to the more important of the
+young married women.  But they were the first persons he saw when he
+entered the drawing-room.  They were standing together--shoulder to
+shoulder, he reflected cynically--and he knew that they privately
+detested each other, and not on his account only.
+
+How like Mary Zattiany, with her superb confidence in herself, to ask
+these beautiful girls who she had heard wanted to marry him themselves.
+Well, he understood women well enough to be indulgent to their little
+vanities.
+
+He was almost the last of the guests, but he had time to observe the
+two girls before dinner was announced, in spite of the fact that he was
+claimed by other acquaintances before he could reach them.
+
+Anne looked regally handsome in gold-colored tissue and paillettes that
+gave a tawny light to her eyes and hair, and to her skin an amber glow.
+She held her head very high, and in spite of her mere five feet five,
+looked little less stately than Madame Zattiany, who wore a marvellous
+velvet gown the exact shade of her hair.  Marian Lawrence was small but
+so perfectly made that her figure was always alluded to as her body,
+and she carried her head, not regally, but with an insolent assurance
+that became her.  She was very beautiful, with a gleaming white skin
+that she never powdered nor colored, and hair like gold leaf, parted
+and worn in smooth bands over her ears and knotted loosely on her neck
+in the fashion known as à la vierge.  Her large grayish-green eyes were
+set far apart and her brows and lashes were black.  She had a straight
+innocent-looking nose with very thin nostrils, into which she was
+capable of compressing the entire expression of a face.  She generally
+wore the fashionable colors of the moment, but tonight her soft
+shimmering gown was of palest green, and Clavering wondered if this
+were a secret declaration of war.  She, too, was of the siren class,
+and it was possible that she and Mary Zattiany derived from some common
+ancestress who had combed her hair on a rock or floated northward over
+the steppes of Russia.  But there were abysmal differences between the
+two women, as Clavering well knew.  Marian Lawrence, with great natural
+intelligence, never read anything more serious than a novel and
+preferred those that were not translated into English.  She took no
+interest whatever in anything outside her inherited circumference, and
+had prided herself during the war upon ignoring its existence.  She was
+as luxurious and as dainty as a cat and one of the most ardent
+sportswomen in America.  She looked as if she had just stepped out of a
+stained-glass window, and she was a hard, subtle, predatory flirt; too
+much in love with her beautiful body to give it wholly to any man.  She
+had never really fallen in love with Clavering until she had lost him,
+and he, his brief enthusiasm for her unique beauty and somewhat
+demoniac charm having subsided, had avoided her ever since; although
+they danced together at the few fashionable parties he attended.  He
+knew her better now than when he had seen her daily, almost hourly, at
+a house party in the White Mountains, and almost as often for several
+weeks after his return.  This was shortly after his mistake with Anne,
+and her attraction had consisted largely in her complete difference
+from a really fine character toward whom he felt a certain resentment
+for having so much and still lacking the undefined essential.  He had
+not deluded himself that he would find it in Marian Lawrence, but her
+paradoxes diverted him and he was quite willing to go as far as her
+technique permitted.  It had never occurred to him for a moment that
+she was seriously in love with him, but he had had more than one
+glimpse of her claws and he regarded her uneasily tonight.  And what
+were she and Anne whispering about?
+
+"You will take in Miss Goodrich," Madame Zattiany had said to him, her
+eyes twinkling, and he had merely shrugged his shoulders.  He did not
+care in the least whom he talked to; it was the ensemble that
+interested him.  Anne and Marian were the only girls present.  The
+other women were between twenty-five and thirty-five or -six.  Madame
+Zattiany would seem to have chosen them all for their good looks, and
+she looked younger than several of them.
+
+Mauve was the fashionable color of the season.  There were three mauve
+gowns and the table was lit by very long, very thin mauve candles above
+a low bank of orchids.  Mrs. Ruyler had disinterred the family
+amethysts, but Mrs. de Lacey and Mrs. Vane, "Polly's" daughter-in-law,
+wore their pearls.  There were several tiaras, for they were going on
+to the opera and later to a ball.  The company numbered twenty in all
+and there were three unmarried men besides Clavering, and including
+Harry Vane.  Clavering found Marian Lawrence on his left, and once more
+he caught a twinkle in Madame Zattiany's eyes as the guests surrounded
+the table.
+
+He had not seen Anne since the night of Suzan's party, when they had
+varied the program by sitting on the floor in front of the fire,
+roasting chestnuts and discussing philosophy; then playing poker until
+two o'clock in the morning.  He asked her if she were comfortable and
+happy in her new life.
+
+"Rather!"  She smiled with all her old serene brightness and her eyes
+dwelt on him in complete friendliness.  "I'd even sleep in the studio,
+but have made one concession to my poor family.  They're not
+reconciled, but, after all, I am twenty-four--and spent two years in
+France.  I have had three orders for portraits--friends of the family,
+of course.  I must be content with 'pull' until I am taken seriously as
+an artist.  If I can only exhibit at the next Academy I shall feel
+full-fledged."
+
+"And what of your new circle?"
+
+"I've been to several parties and enjoyed myself hugely.  Some of them
+get pretty tight, but I've seen people tighter at house parties and not
+nearly so amusing.  And then Gora and Suzan!  I've never liked any
+women as well. . . .  This is the first dinner of the old sort I've
+been to since I started."
+
+"Ah?" asked Clavering absently.  "Why the exception?"
+
+"Well, you see, I am tremendously _intriguée_, like every one else.
+I'd met her several times at home, and she came one day to my studio,
+where the Sophisticates made the most tremendous fuss over her.  But I
+was curious to see her in her own old home, where she had reigned so
+long ago as Mary Ogden.  Mother told me that everything was unchanged
+except the stair carpet and her bedroom."  Her tone was lightly
+impersonal, and still more so as she added: "Why don't you write a
+novel about her, Lee?  She must be the most remarkable psychological
+study of the age.  Fancy living two lifetimes in the same body.  It
+puts reincarnation to the blush.  I suppose she'll bury us all."
+
+Clavering shot her a sharp investigating glance, but replied suavely:
+"Not necessarily.  The same road is open to all of you."
+
+Miss Goodrich had never looked more the fine and dignified
+representative of her class as she lifted her candid eyes with an
+expression of disdain.
+
+"My dear Lee!  Really!  There _are_ some women above that sort of
+thing."
+
+"Above?  I don't think I follow you.  But of course she's given
+hide-bound conservatism a pretty hard jolt."
+
+"It's not that--really.  But all women growing old and trying to be or
+to look young again are rather undignified--according to our standards
+at least, and I have been brought up in the belief that they are the
+highest in the world.  And then, one's sense of humor----!"
+
+"Humor?  Is that what you call it?"  (Damn all women for cats, the best
+of them.  Anne!)
+
+"Why, yes, isn't it rather absurd--for more reasons than one?
+To my mind it is the complete farce.  She has regained the
+appearance--and--_possibly_--the real feeling of youth, with all its
+capacity for enthusiasm and unworn emotions--it seems rather ludicrous,
+but still it may be; certainly the interior should be in some degree a
+match for that marvellously restored face and body--but the whole thing
+is made farcical by the fact that she never can have children.  And
+what else does youth in women really mean?"
+
+"Experience has taught me that it means quite a number of other things.
+And painting portraits is not fulfilling the first and highest duty of
+womanhood, dear Anne."
+
+Miss Goodrich flushed, but accepted his score calmly.  "Oh, I shall
+marry, of course.  But then, you see, I am young--really young."
+
+"What are you two quarrelling about?" broke in Miss Lawrence's husky
+voice.  She had smoked steadily since taking her seat at the table, not
+so much because she had an irresistible passion for tobacco as because
+it destroyed her appetite and preserved her figure.  "I haven't seen
+Anne blush like that since she got back from France."
+
+"I was just telling her how beautiful she looked tonight."  And angry
+as he was, it amused him to hear Anne's little gasp of pleasure.
+
+"Yes, doesn't she?"  Miss Lawrence blew a ring and smiled sweetly.
+"I've always been jealous of Anne.  She's such a beautiful height.  I'm
+so glad the giraffes of the last generation seem to have died out.  Too
+bad, when Madame Zattiany rejuvenated herself, she didn't slice off a
+few inches.  She dwarfs even men of your height, although, of course,
+you are really taller.  But then tall women----"  She shrugged her
+shoulders, her crisp voice softened and she went on as if thinking
+aloud.  "Do you know . . . to me she does not look young at all.  I
+have a fancy she's hypnotized every one but myself.  I seem to see an
+old woman with a colossal will. . . .  But I'd like to know the name of
+that whitewash she uses.  It may come in handy some day.  Not for
+another ten years, though.  Oh, Lee! it's good to be really young and
+not have to be flattened out on a table under broiling X-Rays and have
+your poor old feminine department cranked up. . . .  I wonder just how
+adventurous men are?"'
+
+But Clavering, although seething, merely smiled.  He knew himself to be
+like the man who has had a virulent attack of small-pox and is immune
+for the rest of his life.  Nevertheless, he would cheerfully have
+twisted her neck.  She was holding that slim lily-like throat up for
+his inspection, a cigarette between her thin scarlet lips as she looked
+at him over her shoulder.  At sixteen she could not have been more
+outwardly unblemished, and she emanated a heady essence.  Her long
+green eyes met his keen satiric ones with melting languor.  But she
+said unexpectedly:
+
+"I hear she's going to marry Mr. Osborne, mother's old beau--or is that
+Mr. Dinwiddie?  How can one straighten out those old-timers?  But it
+would be quite appropriate, if she must marry--and I suppose she's
+dying to; but I notice she hasn't asked either of them tonight.  I
+suppose it makes her feel younger to surround herself with young
+people.  It certainly makes me feel frightfully young----  I mean she
+does."
+
+"Do you think it good manners to discuss your hostess at her own table?"
+
+"Oh, manners!  You'll always be a Southerner, Lee.  New York has always
+prided itself on its bad manners.  That is the real source of our
+strength."
+
+"Pretty poor prop.  It seems to me a sign of congenital weakness."
+
+"Oh, we never defend ourselves.  By the way, I hear Jim Oglethorpe
+rushed poor little Janet off to Egypt because he found her in your
+rooms and you refused to marry her.  You're not such a gallant
+Southerner, after all----"
+
+"What a lie!  Who on earth started such a yarn?"  But he turned cold
+and his hand shook a little as he raised his wine glass.
+
+"It's all over town, and people think you really ought to marry her.
+Of course those ridiculous little flappers don't care whether they are
+talked about or not, but their families do.  I hear that old Mrs.
+Oglethorpe is quite ill over the scandal, and she always swore by you."
+
+"Mrs. Oglethorpe, I happen to know, as I dined there last night, was
+never better and is delighted with the idea that Jim has taken Janet
+abroad to get her away from that rotten crowd."
+
+She looked nonplussed, but returned to the charge.  "How stories do get
+about!  They even say that he horsewhipped you----"
+
+"Pray don't overtax your powers of invention.  You know there's no such
+story going about or everybody here would have cut me dead.  Try
+another tack."
+
+"Well, I'll confess I made that up just to get a rise out of you."  She
+looked at him speculatively.  "But about Janet--well, you see, I know
+you for a gay deceiver--mother is always using those old expressions
+that were the fashion in her--and Mary Ogden's--day.  I hear you even
+made love to our fair hostess until you found out the truth and then
+you dropped her like a hot potato--or a cold fish.  I was surprised
+when she told me you were coming here tonight, and asked her at once to
+seat us three together so that Anne and I could save you from feeling
+embarrassed--not that I told her that, of course.  I merely said we
+were such old friends we would naturally have a thousand things to talk
+about.  She didn't turn a hair; I'll say that much for her.  But
+perhaps she thinks she's playing you on a long string.  She's playing
+several poor fish who are here tonight."
+
+Should he tell her?  He really could stand no more.  He hadn't a doubt
+that the same rumor that had driven Janet to her crude attempt, to
+compromise him and then blast her rival with naked words, had reached
+these two older and cleverer, but hardly subtler girls, and they had
+joined forces to disenchant him and make him feel the misguided young
+man they no doubt believed him to be.  He hated them both.  They had
+that for their pains.  He'd never willingly see one of them again.
+
+He longed to blurt out the truth.  But his was not the right.  He
+glanced over at Madame Zattiany, who sat in the middle of the table's
+length, receiving the intent homage of the men on either side of her
+and looking more placid than any other woman in the room. . . .  It
+occurred to him that the rest were animated to excess, even the wives
+of those two men, to whom, it was patent, they were non-existent.  He
+would have given his play at that moment to be able to stand up and ask
+the company to drink his health and hers.
+
+For a few moments he was left to himself, both Marian and Anne being
+occupied with their neighbors, and during those moments he sensed an
+atmosphere of hostility, of impending danger.  He caught more than one
+malicious glance directed at Mary, and once a man, in response to a
+whispered remark, burst into uncontrollable laughter.  Had these women
+come here--but that was impossible.  Even New York had its limits.
+They might be icily rude to a pushing outsider, as indeed they had
+every right to be, but never to one of their own.  Still--to this
+alarmed generation possibly Madame Zattiany was nothing more than a
+foreign woman who had stormed the gates and reduced them to a mere
+background.  The fact that she had belonged to their mothers'
+generation and had abruptly descended to theirs was enough to arouse
+every instinct of self-defence.  He quite understood they must hate
+her, but in spite of that common enmity his sensitive mind apprehended,
+they'd surely commit no overt act of hostility.  Like all their kind,
+they were adepts in the art of "freezing out."  He had no doubt they
+had come here from mere curiosity and that he would shortly hear they
+had ceased to entertain or receive her.  But he wished the dinner were
+over.
+
+He was soon enlightened.
+
+Marian Lawrence leaned across the table.  "Oh, Madame Zattiany!  Will
+you settle a dispute?  Harry and I have been arguing about Disraeli.
+Your husband was an ambassador, wasn't he?  Did you happen to be at the
+Berlin What-d'you-call-it?"
+
+"Oh, no," replied Madame Zattiany, with open amusement.  "I was still
+Mary Ogden in eighteen-seventy-eight."
+
+"Oh!  The seventies and eighties are all one to me, I'm afraid.  I'm
+shockingly ignorant.  But we've all been saying that you ought to write
+your memoirs.  Thirty-four years of diplomatic life in Europe!  You
+must have met every one worth knowing and it would be such a delightful
+way for us youngsters to learn history."
+
+"Oh, I kept a diary," said Madame Zattiany lightly.  "I may publish it
+some day."  And she turned pointedly to the man on her right.  Why had
+she invited the little cat?
+
+"Oh, but Madame Zattiany!" exclaimed young Mrs. Ruyler, whose black
+eyes were sparkling.  "Please don't wait.  I'm so interested in German
+history since the war.  You must have known four generations of
+Hohenzollerns . . . too thrilling!  And Bismarck.  And the Empress
+Elizabeth.  And Crown Prince Rudolf--do tell us the truth of that
+mysterious tragedy.  Did you ever see Marie Vetsera?  I never heard of
+it until the other day when some of mother's friends raked it up, and
+I've been excited ever since."
+
+"Unfortunately my husband was an attaché in Paris at the time, and I
+never saw her.  I am afraid your curiosity will never be satisfied.
+There was a general impression that if Vienna ever became the capital
+of a Republic the archives would be opened and the truth of the
+Meyerling tragedy given to the world.  But all documents relating to
+private scandals must have been destroyed."  She spoke with the utmost
+suavity, the patient hostess with rather tiresome guests.  "People in
+Vienna, I assure you, take very little interest in that old scandal.
+They are too busy and too uncomfortable making history of their own."
+
+"Yes, it must be a hideously uncomfortable place to live in."  Mrs.
+Leonard, another daughter-in-law of one of Mary's old friends, gave a
+little shudder.  "No wonder you got out.  I was so glad to subscribe to
+your noble charity, dear Madame Zattiany.  But"--and she smiled
+winsomely--"I think we should get up a subscription for those wonderful
+scientists in Vienna.  Every once in a while you hear the most
+harrowing stories of the starving scientists of Europe, and it would be
+too awful if those miracle men in Vienna should pass away from
+malnutrition before it is our turn to need them."
+
+"Ah, dear Mrs. Ruyler!" exclaimed Madame Zattiany with a smile as
+winsome as her own.  "You forget they will probably all be dead by that
+time and that their pupils will be equally eminent and even more
+expert.  For that matter there will be experts in every city in the
+world."
+
+But Clavering, watching her anxiously, had seen an expression of wonder
+dawn in her eyes, quickly as she had banished it.  It was evident that
+whatever the secret spite of these women, this was the first time they
+had given it open expression.  He glanced about the table.  Young
+Vane's face was crimson and he had turned his back pointedly on Marian
+Lawrence, who was smoking and grinning.  She had started the ball and
+was too indolent to take it out of hands that seemed to be equally
+efficient.
+
+Clavering leaned forward and caught Mary's eye with a peremptory
+expression, but she shook her head, although too imperceptibly for any
+one else to catch the fleeting movement, and he sank back with a
+humiliating sense of impotence.  He wished she were not so well able to
+take care of herself.
+
+"But this is abominable," murmured Anne Goodrich.  It was possible that
+she was not in on the baiting.  "Abominable.  What must she think of
+us?  Or, perhaps they don't really mean to be horrid.  They look
+innocent enough.  After all, she could tell us many interesting things."
+
+"Oh, they mean it," said Clavering bitterly.  "They mean it all right
+and she knows it."
+
+"You speak as if you were even more interested in her than poor Harry
+Vane."  The indignation had faded from Miss Goodrich's lofty
+countenance.  "Are you?"
+
+"Yes, I am, if you want the truth.  I'd marry her tomorrow if she'd
+have me."  This was as far as he could go.
+
+"Oh!"  Her mouth trembled, but she did not look wholly unprepared for
+the statement.  "But--Lee----  You know how interested I have always
+been in you--how interested we all are in you----"
+
+"What has that to do with it?  If you are so interested in me I should
+think I'd have your best wishes to carry off such a prize.  Have you
+ever seen a more remarkable woman?"
+
+"Oh, remarkable, yes.  But--well----"  And then she burst out: "It
+seems to me unspeakably horrid.  I can't say all I'd like to----"
+
+"Pray, don't.  And suppose we change the subject----  They're at it
+again, damn them."
+
+The men were looking very uncomfortable.  The women were gazing at
+their hostess with round apologetic eyes.  Mrs. de Lacey, the youngest
+and prettiest of the married women, had clasped her hands as if
+worshipping at a shrine.
+
+"It seems too terrible when we look back upon it!" she exclaimed, and
+she infused her tones with the tragic ring of truth, "_dear_ Madame
+Zattiany, that for even a little while we thought the most awful things
+about you.  We'd heard of the wonderful things surgeons had done to
+mutilated faces during the war, and we were sure that some one of them
+bad taken one of your old photographs--how could we even guess the
+truth?  How you must have hated us!"
+
+"How could I hate you?"  Madame Zattiany smiled charmingly.  "I had not
+the faintest idea you were discussing me."
+
+"But why--why--did you shut yourself up so long after you came when you
+must have known how mother and all your old friends longed to see you
+again?"
+
+"I was tired and resting."  She frowned slightly.  Such a question was
+a distinct liberty and she had never either taken or permitted
+liberties.  But she banished the frown and met her tormentor's eyes
+blandly.  She had no intention of losing her poise for a moment.
+
+"Ah!  I said it!" cried Mrs. de Lacey.  "I knew it was not because you
+felt a natural hesitation in showing yourself.  To me you seem brave
+enough for anything, but it must have taken a lot of courage."
+
+"Courage?"
+
+"Why, yes!  Fancy--well, you see, I'm such a coward about what people
+say--especially if I thought they'd laugh at me--that if I'd done it I
+should have run off and hidden somewhere."
+
+"Then what object in invoking the aid of science to defeat nature at
+one more point?  And I can assure you, dear Mrs. de Lacey, that when
+you are fifty-eight, if you have not developed courage to face the
+world on every count it will merely be because you have indulged too
+frequently in unbridled passions."
+
+"Ah--yes--but you didn't have any qualms at all?"
+
+"Certainly not.  I confess I am surprised at your rather strained view
+of what is really a very simple matter."
+
+"_Simple_?  Why, it's the most extraordinary thing that ever happened."
+
+"The world is equally astonished--and resentful--at every new
+discovery, but in a short time accepts it as a commonplace.  The layman
+resents all new ideas, but the adjustment of the human mind to the
+inevitable is common even among savages."  Her slight affectation of
+pedantry was very well done and Clavering could not detect the flicker
+of a lash as her eyes rested indulgently upon her tormentor.
+
+"Well, I don't see what that has to do with it.  Anyhow, it must make
+you feel terribly isolated."
+
+Madame Zattiany shrugged her shoulders.  She could make this common
+gesture foreign, and her accent was a trifle more marked as she
+answered, "Here, possibly, but not in Europe, where the treatment has
+been known and practised for several years.  It may interest you to
+hear that only yesterday I had a letter from a friend in Vienna telling
+me that an elderly countess, a great beauty some forty years ago, had
+announced triumphantly that once more men were following her on the
+street."
+
+Mrs. de Lacey burst into a peal of girlish laughter.  "Pardon me, dear
+Madame Zattiany.  We are used to it in your case, now that we have got
+over the shock, but it does seem too funny.  And Europe almost manless.
+What--what will the poor girls do?"
+
+"Scratch their eyes out," said Clavering, who could contain himself no
+longer.
+
+Mrs. de Lacey made no attempt to conceal the wicked sparkle in her eyes
+as she turned to him.  "How crude!  I suppose it was you who set those
+dreadful newspapers on poor Madame Zattiany."  She turned back to her
+hostess.  "That has been a shocking ordeal for you.  You know how we
+always avoid that sort of thing.  We've felt for you--I wanted to come
+and tell you--you don't mind my telling you now?"
+
+"Your sympathy is very sweet.  But I really have enjoyed it!  You see,
+my dear child, when one has lived as long as I have, a new sensation is
+something to be grateful for."
+
+"Oh, but----"  Mrs. de Lacey's bright eyes were now charged with
+ingenuous curiosity.  "You don't really mean--we've had the most
+furious arguments--_couldn't_ you fall in love again?  I don't mean
+like silly old women with boys, but _really_--like a young woman?
+Please let me have my little triumph.  I've sworn you could.  And then
+the poor men----"
+
+"Upon my word!"  Madame Zattiany laughed outright.  "This has gone far
+enough.  I refuse to be the exclusive topic of conversation any longer.
+I am immensely flattered, but you are making me feel the rude hostess."
+And this time she turned with an air of finality to the apologetic,
+almost purple, man at her side and asked him to continue to enlighten
+her on municipal politics.
+
+One or two women shrugged their shoulders.  A few looked crestfallen,
+others, like Marian Lawrence, malignant.  She had marched off with the
+flag, no use blinking the fact, and it had been small satisfaction to
+make her admit what she had already told the world.  The "rubbing in"
+had evidently missed its mark.  And the men, instead of looking cheap,
+were either infuriated or disgusted.  Only Clavering, who managed to
+look bored and remote, was attending strictly to his salad.
+
+One thing more they could do, however, and that was to make the dinner
+a failure.  They barely replied to the efforts of the men to "make
+things go" and gloom settled over the table.  Madame Zattiany continued
+to talk with placidity or animation to the men beside her, and
+Clavering started a running fire with Anne Goodrich, who, almost as
+angry as himself, loyally helped him, on censorship, the latest books
+and plays, even the situation in Washington; and they continued their
+painful efforts until the signal was given to leave the table.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+The men did not linger in the dining-room.  The women, protesting that
+they were later than usual for the opera, left immediately after they
+returned to the drawing-room.  There was a cool insolence in their
+"good-byes" and there was no doubt that they meant them to be final.
+Only Anne Goodrich shook the imperturbable hostess's hand warmly and
+asked if she might come some day to tea.
+
+The husbands perforce went with their wives, after farewells that
+sounded more like au revoirs, and so did the younger men, except
+Clavering and Harry Vane.  Clavering planted himself on the hearthrug,
+and Vane, scowling at him, lingered uncertainly.
+
+He plunged his hands into his pockets, and, very red, stood in front of
+Madame Zattiany, who was leaning back in her chair and fanning herself
+leisurely.  "I feel like apologizing for those beastly women," he
+blurted out.
+
+"Apologize?"  Madame Zattiany raised her eyebrows.
+
+"Yes.  Can't you see they came here tonight with the deliberate
+intention of making New York too hot to hold you?  So that you'd clear
+out?  They'd made up their minds that you'd changed yours about
+returning to Europe.  They hate you.  They're used to being jealous of
+one another, but this has knocked them silly and they can't get used to
+it.  It's--it's--oh, it's too awful!  I almost died of shame."
+
+"I really do not understand.  Do you mean to tell me they meant to be
+rude?  I thought they were rather naïve and charming."
+
+"Damned hypocrites.  They hoped to make you simply expire with
+embarrassment.  But you were splendid.  They must feel like naughty
+children that have been stood in a corner."
+
+Madame Zattiany laughed.  "Then I have unwittingly been playing my part
+in a little comedy.  How stupid they must have thought me!  But I
+really hope for their sakes that you are mistaken."  She rose and held
+out her hand.  "I am going to ask you to excuse me, Mr. Vane.  I have a
+small commission for Mr. Clavering, who has kindly waited.  And I am
+very tired."
+
+Vane's face fell and he looked resentfully at Clavering, in whom he
+instantly recognized a rival.  But there was nothing to do but go and
+he went.
+
+When Madame Zattiany heard the front door close she told the footman on
+duty in the hall to put out the lights and go to bed.
+
+Then she walked down the room to the library door.  "Will you put out
+these lights?" she asked Clavering.  "I believe we still have a fire in
+here."
+
+Clavering, expecting to find her dissolved in tears, and, violent as
+his sympathy for her was, rejoicing that his was the part to comfort
+her, followed her precipitately.  But she was standing by the table
+with scornful lips and eyes.
+
+"I thought you'd be all broken up," he stammered.  Tears of
+disappointment almost rose to his own eyes.
+
+She laughed shortly.  "I?  Do you suppose I would pay them so great a
+compliment?  But what a ridiculous exhibition they made of themselves.
+It seems incredible."
+
+"But surely you must have been hurt--and stabbed.  It isn't possible
+that you weren't!"
+
+"Oh, yes, I was stabbed, but I think I was even more amused.  I felt
+sorry for the poor things.  I certainly never saw a more comically
+naked exhibition of human nature.  It was worth coming to America for.
+Nor do I blame them.  No doubt I should have felt the same at their
+age--although I hope I should even then have expressed myself in a
+fashion a trifle more subtle, a little less primeval."
+
+"Good God!  Are you always so--so rational?"
+
+She smiled slightly.  "If I deliberately unlearned the more valuable
+things a long life taught me there would be no object beyond vanity in
+being young again.  And don't you suppose I was grateful tonight for my
+years--those years so crowded with training and experience?  Who better
+prepared than I to hold my own against a lot of raw Americans?"
+
+"That is the first human thing you've said.  Raw?  Wasn't it Darwin who
+said that we are all such a short distance, in time, removed from our
+common savage ancestors that it is a wonder we don't revert oftener
+than we do?  They were plain unadulterated females.  I believe men are
+more civilized than women."
+
+"Oh, no, but they revert on the grand scale. . . .  I cannot say I was
+totally unprepared--not for such a concerted and shocking exhibition,
+of course; but I've felt their antagonism and expected to be dropped
+gradually from their set.  Of course, this is the end, definitely.
+However," she shrugged her shoulders again, "I have enjoyed the New
+York which seems to have changed in so many ways since my day, and all
+dramas should have a proper 'curtain,' should they not?  Is your own
+play finished, by the way?"
+
+"Oh!"  He turned his back on her and leaned on the mantel-piece,
+dropping his head on his arms.  He had never felt as far away from her
+when he had been unable to learn even her name.  What need had she of
+him or any man?
+
+Mary gave him a quick comprehending glance, and came out of her
+isolation.  She went over to him, turned him around, and took his face
+between her hands.
+
+"Can't you imagine what it meant to me to have you there?" she asked
+softly.  "It seemed to me that nothing else mattered.  We two are in a
+world of our own.  How could they seem more to me than the buzzing of
+so many brainless insects?  Forget it, and I shall."
+
+But although he was consoled, he wondered, as he left the house, if he
+would ever feel more depressed in his life.  She might love him, but
+what else could he ever be to her but a lover?  His manhood rebelled.
+If she had only flung herself weeping into his arms.  If for once he
+could have felt himself stronger than she--indispensable.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+The dinner was on Monday.  On Wednesday morning she met him at the Fort
+Lee Ferry at seven o'clock for one of their rare tramps.  She wore
+high-laced boots of soft leather, a short skirt and jersey and a soft
+hat; and if she had met any of her guests of that memorable dinner they
+would have looked profoundly thoughtful, and renounced whatever hope of
+having seared her to the bone they may have cherished.  She strode
+through the woods above the Palisades beside Clavering with high head
+and sparkling eyes, her arms swinging like a schoolboy's.  It was
+evident even to him, who had waited for her anxiously, that she had
+rubbed a sponge over her memory.  She was in high spirits and looked as
+if she had not a care in the world.
+
+There was a soft mist of green on the trees of the wood, a few birds
+had already migrated northward, their own world-old wireless having
+warned them of the early awakening of spring after an unusually mild
+winter, and they were singing their matins.
+
+She did not seem inclined for more than desultory conversation, but she
+had the gift of making silence eloquent, and Clavering, his fears
+banished, although by no means at peace, gave himself up to the
+pleasure of the moment.  They walked briskly for several miles, then
+had their breakfast at a roadside inn; and both were so hungry that
+they talked even less than before.  But there was little need for words
+between them; the current was too strong, and both were merely vital
+beings to whom companionship and healthy exercise were the highest good
+at the moment.
+
+During the long walk back to the ferry she talked with a certain
+excitement.  But it was all of the woods of Austria, the carefully
+tended woods with their leaping stags, their winding paths where no
+trolley-cars over-laden with commuters rushed shrieking by, their
+enchanting vistas with a green lake at the end, or a monastery, or a
+castle on a lofty rock.  She told him of the river Inn roaring through
+its gorges, with its solitary mills, its clustered old villages huddled
+at the foot of the heavy silent woods and forgotten by the world.  The
+millers were all old men now, no doubt, and the poor villages inhabited
+only by women and children.  Or blinded and broken men who had dragged
+themselves back from the war to exist where they once had given life
+and energy to that quiet valley of the Inn.  If this made her sad for a
+moment it was purely an impersonal sadness, and when they parted on the
+New York side of the ferry Clavering had forgotten his doubts and went
+back to his work with a light heart and an untroubled mind.
+
+The play was almost finished, and its chances for swift production were
+far greater than is usually the case with the new adventurer into the
+most inhospitable of all fields of artistic endeavor.  Adrian Hogarth,
+who had a play on Broadway every year, and Edwin Scores, who had
+recently exchanged the esteem of the few for the enthusiasm of The
+Public, had read it act by act and given him the practical advice he
+needed.  A dramatic critic always believes he knows more about plays
+than any one else until he attempts to write one, but Clavering, at
+least, if not unduly modest, was too anxious to succeed not to welcome
+all the help he could get.
+
+They even "sat in" with him during the final revision, and the dispute
+was hot over the last act, an act so daring in technique they were
+loath to believe that even Clavering, whose striking gifts they had
+always recognized, could "put it over."  Moreover, there was only one
+woman on the American stage who could act it and that was Margaret
+Anglin.  If it didn't appeal to her he might as well dock it.  The
+younger actresses, clever as some of them were, had so far given no
+evidence of sustained emotional power.  During the entire act no one
+was on the stage but the woman and she sat at a telephone talking with
+the man who controlled her destiny.  Not only must that one-sided
+dialogue give as sharp and clear an idea of what the man was saying as
+if he had been present, with the vivid personality, the gestures and
+the mobile face he must have for the part, but the conversation,
+beginning in happy confidence, ran the gamut of the emotions,
+portraying a war of wills and souls, and rising to inexorable spiritual
+tragedy.  It was a scene whose like had never before been attempted
+without both protagonists on the stage, and it lasted twenty-five
+minutes; a scene as difficult to write as to act; but the two
+playwrights admitted that in the deft use of words which, without
+repetitions by the woman, left the audience in no doubt what the man
+was saying, made it almost possible to see him, and in the rising scale
+of emotion, the act was a surpassingly brilliant piece of work.
+Clavering rewrote it fourteen times, and Hogarth and Scores were
+finally almost as excited as himself, although it was the last sort of
+thing either would have "tackled."  Whatever the originality of their
+own ideas they were careful to stick to the orthodox in treatment,
+knowing the striking lack of originality in audiences.
+
+Gora Dwight was more enthusiastic than he had ever known her to be over
+anything, and one night he read the play to a select few at her house.
+Abbott was there and two other critics, as well as Suzan Forbes and her
+distinguished consort, De Witt Turner.
+
+The critics preserved their ferocious and frozen demeanor common to
+first-nights and less common where cocktails were plentiful.  Not for
+them to encourage a tyro and a confrère, as if they were mere friends
+and well-wishers.  They left that to the others, but after the last act
+had been discussed with fury, Abbott arose and said with a yawn:
+
+"Oh, well, what's the use?  It's about the hardest play for actors ever
+written and the audience will either crack on that last act or pass
+away of their own emotions.  It would be the former if any one else had
+written the damn thing, but it'll go because it isn't time yet for the
+Clavering luck to break.  You'll get it in the neck, old man, one of
+these days, and when you least expect it.  You're one of Fate's pets,
+her pampered pup, and she'll purr over you until she has you besotted,
+and then she'll give you such a skinning that you'll wish you were
+little Jimmy Jones, cub reporter, with a snub nose and freckles.  I
+only hope to be in at the death to gloat."  Then he shot out his hand.
+"Good stuff, Clavey.  Congratulate you.  Count on me."
+
+And he drank a highball and waddled out.
+
+The others, expressing their congratulations in various keys, soon
+followed, and Clavering was left alone with Gora.  He was flushed and
+restless, but he doubted if he would feel happier on the first-night
+with the entire Sophisticate body howling for "author."  He had been
+more afraid of Abbott and the two other critics than he, a hardened
+critic himself, had dared admit.
+
+Gora watched him from her ottoman, where she sat stark upright, as
+usual, and smoking calmly.  But her cold gray eyes were softer than
+usual.  She knew exactly how he felt and rejoiced with him, but her
+expression in the long silence grew more and more thoughtful.  Finally
+she threw away her cigarette and said abruptly:
+
+"Clavey."
+
+"Yes, Gora."  He had been wandering about the room, but he halted in
+front of her, smiling.
+
+She smiled also.  "You do look so happy.  But you're such a mercurial
+creature that you'll probably wake up tomorrow morning with your soul
+steeped in indigo."
+
+"Oh, no, I won't.  It isn't as if I had nothing else in my life."  Gora
+alone knew of his engagement to Mary Zattiany.
+
+"That is it.  I want to say something.  I know you'll be angry with me,
+but just remember that I am not speaking as a friend, merely as an
+artist."
+
+"What are you driving at?"  Some of the exultation faded from
+Clavering's face.
+
+"This.  I no longer want you to marry Madame Zattiany.  She's served
+her purpose."
+
+Clavering stared, then laughed.  "Little you know about it."
+
+"I know more about it than you think.  Remember it is my business to
+know people's mental insides down to the roots----"
+
+"Not such a good metaphor, that."
+
+"Let it pass.  I'm not to be diverted.  I've seen her several times
+alone, you know.  She lunched here the other day, and I purposely asked
+no one else.  I believe I know her well enough to put her in a book,
+complex, both naturally and artificially, as she is.  Maybe I shall
+some day.  You once told me that she had a character of formidable
+strength and the 'will to power'--something like that.  Well, I agree
+with you, and I don't think you'd stand a chance of becoming a great
+artist if you married her."
+
+"You're talking utter rot."
+
+"Am I?  Tell me that a year hence--if you marry her."
+
+"If?  I'd tear the artist in me out by the roots before I'd give her
+up."
+
+"You think so.  I don't doubt it.  But have you really projected your
+imagination into the future?  I mean beyond the honeymoon?  She tells
+me that she intends to live in Europe--that she has a great work to
+accomplish----"
+
+"Yes, and she needs my help."
+
+"She doesn't need your help, nor anybody's help.  For that matter she'd
+be better off alone, for I don't doubt she would be in love with you
+longer than might be convenient.  She has formidable powers of
+concentration. . . .  But you--what would become of your own career?
+You'd be absorbed, devoured, annihilated by that woman.  You're no
+weakling, but you're an artist and an artist's strength is not like the
+ordinary male's.  It's too messed up with temperament and imagination.
+You are strong enough to impress your personality on her, win her, make
+her love you to the exclusion of everything else for the moment, and
+possibly hold her for a time.  But you never could dominate her.  What
+she needs is a statesman, if she must have marital partnership at all.
+Possibly not even a great executive brain could dominate her either,
+but at least it could force upon her a certain equality in personality,
+and that you never could do.  Not only would your own career be
+wrecked, but you'd end by being wretched and resentful--quite apart
+from your forfeited right to express your genius in your own
+way--because you've been accustomed all your life yourself to the
+dominating act.  You've always been a star of some sort, and you've
+never discouraged yourself--except when in the dumps--out of the belief
+that a fixed position was waiting for you in the stellar firmament.  To
+vary the metaphor, you've always been in the crack regiment, even when
+the regiment was composed of cub reporters. . . .  And you'd find
+yourself shrinking--shrinking--nothing but a famous woman's
+husband--lover, would be perhaps more like it----"
+
+Here Clavering swore and started down the room again.  That interview
+in the library two weeks ago tonight came back to him.  He had banished
+its memory and she had been feminine and exquisite, and _young_, ever
+since.  But that sudden vision of her standing by the table as he had
+rushed to her succor, calm and contemptuous in her indomitable powers,
+weakened his muscles and he walked unsteadily.
+
+Miss Dwight went on calmly.  "For she's going to be a very famous
+woman, make no doubt about that.  It's quite on the cards that she may
+have a niche in history.  You might be useful to her in many ways, with
+that brain of yours, but it was given to you for another purpose, and
+you'd end by leaving her.  You'd come home like a sick dog to its
+kennel--and become a hack.  Your genius would have shrivelled to the
+roots.  If you give her up now your very unhappiness and baffled
+longings will make you do greater and greater things.  Talent needs the
+pleasant pastures of content to browse on but they sicken genius.  If
+you married her you wouldn't even have the pastures after the first
+dream was over and you certainly would have neither the independence of
+action nor the background of tragedy so necessary to your genius.  That
+needs stones to bite on, not husks. . . .  Believe me, I know what I am
+talking about.  I have been through worse.  If personal happiness were
+brought to me on a gold platter with Divine assurance that it would
+last--which it never does--remember that, Clavey--I should laugh in its
+face.  And if you let her go now you will one day say the same thing
+yourself."
+
+But Clavering had made a violent rebound.  He threw himself into a
+chair and lit a cigarette, smiling at her indulgently.  "The trouble
+with you, Gora," he said, "is that you are--and probably always
+were--artist first and woman last.  If you'd got the man you thought
+you wanted you'd have chucked him in about six months.  But I happen to
+be a man first and artist next."
+
+Miss Dwight shrugged her shoulders.  "Will you deny that you have been
+completely happy while writing that play?  So happy and absorbed that
+you forgot everything else on earth--and everybody?"
+
+"That's true enough.  But if it's a mere question of happiness, that's
+not the sort that lasts, and the reaction is frightful.  I am beginning
+to feel a hideous sense of loss and wish I had it to do all over again."
+
+"You can go to work on another."
+
+"I'll never feel to another play as I have to this."
+
+"That's what every artist has said to himself since the gods plucked
+out a rib and invented the breed.  Even if you do your comedy next your
+submergence will be precisely the same.  It's the creative pot boiling
+that does the business."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"Well, don't, then.  And don't wake up as blue as paint tomorrow
+morning.  Reaction is the price we all have to pay for keeping the
+brain too long at a pitch so high above the normal.  It's the downwash
+of blood from the organ it has kept at fever heat.  And it's a long
+sight less commonplace than reaction from too much love-making.
+Especially when love-making has begun to pall--which it does sooner in
+artists than in ordinary men. . . .  Writers begin life all over again
+with each new release of the creative faculty; and each new work is as
+enthralling as the last.  But love!"  She sighed.  "You don't look as
+if I had made the slightest impression on you."
+
+"You haven't.  A man can combine both if a woman cannot.  You forget
+that we return here after two or three months in Austria, and here we
+remain for at least two years."
+
+"Why are you so sure of that?  Have you her actual promise?"
+
+"It is understood.  I told her we should return and she knew that I
+meant what I said."
+
+"It is quite likely that she knew you meant it!  But I'd like you to
+promise me that you will ask her to tell you exactly what she does
+intend to do--when the honeymoon is over."
+
+"What do you mean?" Clavering asked sharply.
+
+"I mean, that although she told me nothing of her plans, it was
+perfectly evident from her conversation that she intends to live her
+life in Europe and play a great rôle there.  I infer that she is in
+constant correspondence with political friends in Austria.  Do you mean
+that she has never told you this?"
+
+Clavering sat forward, frowning.  "No.  We--have had little time
+together and have not wasted it on politics.  Did she tell you this?"
+
+"Not she.  But I 'got' it.  I can't tell you just how, but my
+intuitions are pretty good."
+
+"Intuitions be hanged.  Your creative tract is prepared for action and
+has been doing a little stunt all by itself.  Better get to work on it
+and plough up a new book.  I don't doubt Mary has political friends in
+Austria, and corresponds with them.  Why shouldn't she?  But she's not
+committed to any definite date or action.  I'll swear to that.  She'd
+have told me so honestly."
+
+"Very well.  I've said my say.  But I wish----"  She fell silent and
+sat very still for several moments regarding the point of her slipper.
+Then she looked up and said brightly: "Don't you think it's time to let
+the rest of them know what's going to happen?  It's hardly fair to your
+other friends--and they are your friends, Clavey.  Of course they are
+practically certain of it."
+
+"I don't think she'll mind, particularly as the first sensation has
+pretty well run its course--she thought she'd spare her own friends two
+shocks at once.  But I fancy she intends to go out among them less and
+less.  I'll ask her, and if she agrees, suppose you announce it?"
+
+Miss Dwight bent down and removed a pinch of ashes from her slipper.
+"Do--persuade her.  It would be a tremendous feather in my cap.  I'll
+give you both a dinner and announce it then."
+
+"Settled.  Well, I'm off.  Got my column to write."  He gathered up his
+manuscript, and she went to the door with him.  As he held her hand, he
+felt one of those subtle whispers along his nerves that had warned him
+of danger before.  He dropped her hand with a frown.
+
+"Look here, Gora," he said.  "You haven't any mistaken idea of
+appealing to _her_, have you?"
+
+"What do you take me for?" demanded Miss Dwight angrily.  "The father
+in _Camille_?"
+
+"Well, keep off the grass, that's all.  Ta, ta."
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+When Mary Zattiany returned home at twelve o'clock after a tiresome
+morning in Judge Trent's office she told the butler to send her
+luncheon upstairs, and ascended to the seclusion of her room, delighted
+with the prospect of a few hours she could call her own.  These hours
+had been increasing during the past fortnight but were no less welcome.
+Not a word of that dinner was known to any but those who had attended
+it.  People do not foul their own nest unless they are ready to desert
+it and sometimes not then.  Moreover, the women were too ashamed or too
+humiliated with their failure to invite the criticism of their friends,
+and although they avoided the subject among themselves, their agreement
+to bury it was no less final for being tacit.  The men, with something
+of the deliberation of male guests at a diplomatic dinner where there
+has been an unfortunate incident involving dangerous possibilities if
+known, called one another up on the telephone the next day and agreed
+to "forget it."  Even Dinwiddie never heard of it.  As for Madame
+Zattiany, she could be trusted to dismiss it from her contemptuous
+mind.  Nevertheless, these young women, who had entertained her almost
+constantly, pointedly omitted her from their luncheons and dinners and
+parties--in her new lightheartedness she had been induced to attend
+several parties during the past six weeks.  And they had little
+difficulty in persuading others to follow their example.  The more
+amiable of the younger women might have looked upon their attack that
+night with horror if they had heard of it, as, indeed, several at the
+dinner had done, but they were no more enthusiastic over the "foreign
+invasion" than their militant sisters.  The remonstrances of the men
+were unheeded, and when one or two tried to arrange theatre parties or
+dinners in Madame Zattiany's honor they received graceful regrets.
+
+Even the attitude of her older friends had changed, now that the
+dramatic novelty of her return to them, and their first determined
+enthusiasm, had worn off.  They were betraying more and more their
+disapproval of what she had done, the more so perhaps, as the majority
+of them, being excessively thin, might have accomplished a like result
+had not their standards protected them.  This naturally inspired them
+with a full realization of their superiority, which increased daily.
+
+If she had made the attempt and failed it would have been bad enough,
+for such violations of the law of orthodoxy insulted the code in which
+she had been born and reared: but triumphantly to have succeeded in
+making herself young again while the rest of them were pursuing their
+unruffled way to the grave was a deliberate insult both to themselves
+and to God.
+
+Moreover, they hardly knew what to talk to her about, and although this
+might still have been the case had she returned to them carrying aloft
+the crinkled and spotted flag of time, so far apart their lines had
+run, her scientific victory added an ever-increasing irritant.  Also,
+she had never been a "woman's woman," and it was patent that, as ever,
+she was far more animated in the company of men.  Inevitably, old
+scandals were raked up.  They had been frowned upon in the days when
+she was protected by her husband and the great position he gave her,
+and the rumors had been dismissed for more interesting scandals, both
+public and private, at home.  They no doubt would have remained in the
+limbo of history had she returned looking no better than themselves,
+but her ridiculous defiance of nature revived them, and these ladies
+discovered that their memories were more lively than might have been
+expected of their years.
+
+It would be too much, as Mary told Clavering, to ask a violent
+contradiction of human nature from worn out glands, and she bore them
+no malice.  She only wondered that Jane Oglethorpe, Elinor Goodrich,
+and Lily Tracy were still faithful in private--to the world all of them
+preserved a united front; they would not even discuss her with their
+children, much less their grandchildren; but they made up their minds
+that it would be for the good of her soul to let her see, with no flaw
+in their politeness, just what uncompromisingly sensible women of high
+moral and social responsibilities thought of her.
+
+Mary, being human, felt the pin-pricks, but was glad on the whole to be
+rid of them.  Those first weeks of almost girlish pleasure in what was
+to her a novel society, had vanished for ever on the night of her
+dinner.  Scornful and indifferent she might be, but although they could
+not kill her youth, they drove home to her what she had guessed in the
+beginning, that the society and the companionship of young
+people--fashionable young people, at least--were not for her.  Their
+conversations, interests, shallow mental attitude to life, bored her.
+That curious brief period of mental rejuvenescence had been due to the
+novelty and excitement of being in love again, after long and arid
+years.
+
+And now, Judge Trent had told her that she would be free to leave in a
+fortnight.  She had walked the three miles from Broad Street with a
+buoyant step, and she had vowed that never, not for any consideration
+whatever, would she set foot in America again.  Vienna was the city of
+her heart as well as of her future exploits.  She would buy the old
+Zattiany palace from her widowed niece-in-law and make it the most
+famous rendezvous in Europe.  But of all this nothing to Clavering
+until they were in the Dolomites.
+
+She rang for her maid and exchanged her tweed walking suit for a tea
+gown of violet velvet and snow white chiffon, with stockings and
+slippers to match.  She expected no one but it was always a delight to
+her to be exquisitely and becomingly dressed.  Even in the seclusion of
+her Hungarian estate she had arrayed herself as appropriately for
+outdoors, and as fastidiously for the house, as if she had been under
+the critical eye of her world, for daintiness and luxury were as
+ingrained as ordinary cleanliness and refinement.  During the war she
+had not rebelled at her hard and unremitting labors, but she had often
+indulged in a fleeting regret for the frequent luxury of the bath, the
+soft caress of delicate underwear, for charming toilettes; and she had
+sometimes scowled at her white cotton stockings with a feeling of
+positive hatred.
+
+Judge Trent, while she was still in Austria, had sent her a cheque for
+forty thousand dollars.  She had given half of it to relief
+organizations in Vienna, and then gone to Paris and indulged in an orgy
+of clothes.  She looked back upon that wholly feminine reversion, when
+she had avoided every one she had ever known, as one of the completely
+satisfactory episodes of her life.  Even with unrestored youth and
+beauty, and a soberer choice of costumes, she would still have
+experienced a certain degree of excited pleasure in adorning herself.
+
+She had always liked the light freshness of chintz in her bedroom,
+leaving luxury to her boudoir; but here she had furnished no boudoir;
+her stay was to be short, and her bedroom was as large as two ordinary
+rooms.  She spent many hours in it, when its violet and white
+simplicities appealed to her mood.  Today it was redolent of the lilacs
+Clavering had sent her, and through the open windows came the singing
+of birds in the few trees still left in the old street.
+
+She loved comfort as much as she loved exercise, and after her careful
+toilette was finished and her maid had gone, she settled herself
+luxuriously in a deep chair before her desk and opened one of the
+drawers.  The European mail had arrived yesterday and she had only
+glanced through half of it.  But she must read all of those letters
+today and answer some of them before the sailings on Saturday.
+
+The telephone on a little stand at her elbow rang, and she took the
+receiver from its spreading violet skirts and raised it to her ear.  As
+she had expected, it was Clavering.  He told her that he had promised
+Gora Dwight the evening before to ask her permission to announce their
+engagement.
+
+For a moment she stared into the instrument.  Then she said hurriedly,
+almost breathlessly: "No--I'd rather not.  I hate the vulgarity of
+congratulations--publicity of my private affairs.  I've always said
+that when one marries a second time the decent thing to do is to marry
+first and tell afterward."
+
+"But they guess it, you know."
+
+"That is quite different."  It was Madame Zattiany who spoke now and
+her tones were deliberate and final.  "Quite a different thing from
+being congratulated, and tormented by newspapers."  She dismissed the
+subject.  "I shall be free two weeks from today.  What do you think of
+that?"  Her voice was both gay and tender.  "Judge Trent will see at
+once about engaging my stateroom.  Don't tell me that that play of
+yours will prevent you from following shortly after."
+
+"Not a bit of it.  We shall only be gone two months, and even if
+Hogarth succeeds in placing it with his manager as he expects, it might
+be several months before rehearsals."
+
+"Then it all fits in quite charmingly.  You are coming to dinner
+tonight?"
+
+"Well, rather."
+
+"Mind you come early.  I have many things to tell you."
+
+"It'll not be for that I'll come early."
+
+Mary smiled and hung up the receiver.  She would have to let him return
+to New York for a time--possibly.  But herself, she would go on to
+Vienna.  No doubt about that.
+
+She returned to her letters.  Those that required answers she placed in
+a separate heap with a pencilled note on the back, for she was neat and
+methodical; she even slit the envelopes with a paper-knife that was
+always at hand for the purpose, and the envelopes were dropped at once
+into the waste basket.
+
+The contents for the most part were expected, and related to her work
+in Vienna, the disposition of moneys she had sent over, and the usual
+clamoring for more.  But when she had read halfway through a long
+letter from Baroness Tauersperg, in whose capable hands she had left
+the most important of her charities, she involuntarily stiffened and
+sat forward a little.
+
+Several pages of her friend's letters were always devoted to business,
+the rest to gossip.  In return Mary enlivened her own letters with many
+of her American adventures, although she had made no mention of
+Clavering.
+
+"I need not ask if you remember Hohenhauer," continued Frau von
+Tauersperg, "although, I suppose, like the rest of us, you saw nothing
+of him after the war.  He was, as you know, not in bad standing with
+the new Government, like the reactionary nobles, as he had always been
+a liberal in politics, and had a good record as a generous and just
+landlord.  But they did not have intelligence enough to ask him to be a
+member of the Cabinet, or to send him to the Peace Conference, where he
+alone, of all Austrians, perhaps, might have won some advantage for
+this wretched country.
+
+"The present Government seems to have appreciated that initial mistake
+of ignoring him, for they have invited him to return from his estate in
+Switzerland, where he has been staying, and to act in some advisory
+capacity.  That means, we think here, that he will soon have the whole
+thing in his hands.  The first step he took was to pay a visit to
+Bavaria and have a conference with Count L., and no doubt you will
+surmise what that means.  He went incognito, however, and few people
+even here in Vienna know of that visit, much less the rest of Europe.
+Very shortly he goes to America, whether for reasons connected with his
+sudden interest in Bavaria, I have no means of knowing, but ostensibly
+because his New York lawyers demand his presence in regard to the large
+sum of money he invested in the United States.  The Government makes no
+objection to this journey, as you may imagine, for they know they can
+depend on him to spend it in the cause of Austria--under his
+leadership!  Imagine what it will mean to have the income of several
+million American dollars rolling in to be exchanged for Austrian
+kronen!  Or the capital, if he thinks the end justifies it.
+
+"No doubt you will see him, for he always had the greatest respect for
+your opinion--was it not you who advised him to sell out practically
+everything he possessed, except the land in Galicia, and invest it in
+America?  I have no doubt he will confide in you and ask your advice.
+You have a wonderful flair for politics, dear Marie, and you know what
+we all expect of you.  Hurry, hurry and come back to us.  We need you
+in a thousand ways.  But what a rest that sojourn in the gay and
+brilliant and _rich_ city of New York must have given you.  It is both
+wonderful and saddening to read of the almost unbelievable contrast to
+our poor Vienna.  But they are generous.  The second cheque from your
+Vienna Fund came yesterday.  Do leave the _oeuvre_ in reliable and
+sympathetic hands, dear Marie, so that it may go on until--well, God
+only knows when."
+
+Mary read this portion of the letter over twice, the serenity of her
+face routed by a frown.  Of course she had expected to meet this man in
+the future, indeed had had a very definite idea of playing his cards
+immediately upon her return to Vienna.  But that he should come here!
+Now.  That was another matter.  She had succeeded in dismissing the
+past, and she resented this dark reminder.  Well, she could refuse to
+see him, and possibly he would not arrive until after her departure.
+And then she sighed again.  The futility of attempting to travel
+through even one brief cross-section of life on a straight line!
+
+Her luncheon was brought up to her and when it was finished she
+answered her letters and settled down to the latest novel of one of her
+new friends.  But Gora Dwight was announced and she put the book aside
+with a sensation of pleasant anticipation.  She liked no one better, of
+her new American acquaintances, and had made no objection when
+Clavering had asked her to let him confide his engagement to Gora
+Dwight alone.  He felt that he owed her the compliment (how he was to
+obtain the forgiveness of Mrs. Oglethorpe was a thought he dared not
+dwell on), and Mary, little disposed as she was to intimacies, had felt
+a certain release in speaking of her engagement to another woman.
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+Gora was looking her best in a smart spring frock of brown tweed with a
+drooping red feather on her hat, whose pointed brim almost but not
+quite obscured one eye.  The two women greeted each other with
+something like affection, and after the usual feminine preliminaries
+were over, Gora exclaimed with enthusiasm:
+
+"I have come to tell you how really wonderful Lee's play is, and to say
+that I could have shaken him for not letting you hear it, but he seems
+determined that it shall burst upon you in the unmitigated glory of a
+first-night performance."
+
+Madame Zattiany smiled, very slightly.  "Yes, he made a great point of
+that.  I could only let him have his way.  He is very fond of having
+his way, is he not?"
+
+"Well, we've spoiled him, you see.  And those of us who have heard the
+play are more excited than we have been over anything for a long time.
+Those that haven't are not far behind.  I believe there is a dinner or
+a party in his honor projected for every night for weeks to come."
+
+Madame Zattiany raised her eyebrows in genuine surprise.  "Isn't it
+rather unusual, that--to fête an author before he has made his débût?"
+
+"It is, rather.  But in this case it's different.  We've waited so long
+for Clavey to do the big thing that we must let off steam at once."
+
+"He certainly seems to be a tremendous favorite among you.  Several of
+his friends were here at dinner the other night--I was so sorry you
+were unable to come--and really they seemed to be able to talk of
+nothing else.  They are all very charming to me now, but I am wondering
+if they will be more than amiably interested in me when I am merely the
+wife of a famous playwright?"
+
+"Oh, you must do something yourself," said Miss Dwight emphatically.
+"I am sure you could write.  And equally sure that you will try, for
+you could not live constantly with such workers as we are without being
+stung by the same busy little bee.  You have suggested genius to me
+from the first, and I am convinced it is not merely the genius of
+personality.  Your life has stifled your talents, but now is the time
+to discover them and take your place in American letters."
+
+"I had thought such talents as I possessed should be used in the
+attempt to play a humble part in the reconstruction of Europe,"
+murmured Madame Zattiany; and one of her beautiful white hands moved
+toward the cigarette box with a curious tensing of the muscles that
+seemed to rob it subtly of its likeness to flesh.  Nothing escaped Miss
+Dwight's observing eye, and she replied casually: "Oh, Europe isn't
+worth the effort, dear Madame Zattiany.  It's too far gone.  The future
+of the world lies here in the United States.  New York is the brain and
+soul of the United States.  Moreover, if you want to help Europe, you
+can write about it here, be the one to give us all a clearer
+understanding of that miserable chaos."
+
+"But I detest writing," said Madame Zattiany, who was lying back and
+watching her smoke rings.  "I like the activity of doing, and I have
+had an experience that particularly fits me for political intrigue.  If
+this were Washington, now----"
+
+"Oh, Washington!  Washington is merely one of the islands outside of
+New York.  So is Chicago, Boston, the rest of them. . . .  And don't
+imagine you would not become fascinated with writing as soon as you
+were in your stride.  Here is a simple recipe to begin with.  Get up
+every morning with the set intention of writing and go to your desk and
+sit there for three hours, whether you accomplish anything or not.
+Before long you will find that you are writing madly, not waiting for
+inspiration.  And you will have Clavey to criticize you.  The rest is
+only stern self-discipline.  Here is another suggestion: when you have
+brain fag go to bed for two days and starve.  The result is miraculous."
+
+"So, that is the way American writers are made.  There are so many of
+them--I had often wondered----"
+
+"Oh, not at all!"  Miss Dwight rushed to the defence of native American
+genius.  "But all writers, no matter what their gifts, often go through
+a period of torture while forming habits of regular work."
+
+"It sounds like torture!"  She gave Gora a glance of lazy amusement.
+"Really, Miss Dwight!  Are you trying to frighten me off?"
+
+But Gora did not blush.  If she chose to concentrate her agile mind on
+acting, the accomplished actress opposite could give her few points.
+She replied with convincing emphasis: "Certainly not.  What an odd
+idea.  I have the most enormous respect for your abilities, and you
+should be famous for something besides beauty--and I should like to see
+you live down mere notoriety."
+
+"I've loved the notoriety, and rather regret that it seems to have lost
+flavor with time.  But I'll never make a writer, Miss Dwight, and have
+not the least intention of trying."
+
+"But surely you'll not be content to be just Lee's wife?  Why,
+practically every woman in our crowd does something.  There used to be
+a superstition that two brain-workers could not live comfortably under
+the same roof, but as a matter of fact we've proved that a woman keeps
+her husband far longer if her brain is as productive as his.  Each
+inspires and interests the other.  Another old _cliché_ gone to the
+dust bin.  Our sort of men want something more from a woman than good
+housekeeping.  Not that men no longer want to be comfortable, but the
+clever women of today have learned to combine both."
+
+"Marvellous age and marvellous America!  Don't you think I could keep
+Lee interested without grinding away at my desk for three hours every
+morning and lying in hungry misery for days at a time?"
+
+"You could keep any man interested.  I wasn't thinking of him, but of
+you.  He has more than a man's entitled to already.  Men are selfish
+brutes, and I waste no sympathy on them.  It's women who have the
+rotten deal in this world, the best of them.  And men are as vain as
+they are selfish.  It's an enormous advantage for a woman to have her
+own reputation and her own separate life.  No man should be able to
+feel that he possesses a woman wholly.  He simply can't stand it."
+
+"Quite right.  Discarding modesty, I may add that I am an old hand at
+that game."
+
+Gora regarded her with frank admiration, wholly unassumed.  "Oh, you
+couldn't lose Clavey if you tried.  He is mad about you.  We can all
+see that, and I knew it before he did himself.  It's only--really--that
+I'm afraid you'll be bored to death with so much shop if you don't set
+up one for yourself."
+
+"Oh, I never intend to be bored again as long as I live."  Mary
+Zattiany was a very shrewd woman and she determined on a bold stroke.
+Her suspicion lingered but had lost its edge.  Gora Dwight was deep and
+subtle but there was no doubt that she was honorable.  "I shall tell
+you something," she said, "but you must give me your word that you will
+not betray me--not even to Lee."
+
+Miss Dwight's mind, not her body, gave a slight stir of uneasiness.
+But she answered warmly: "Of course I promise."
+
+"Very well, then.  It is this.  I shall never return to America.  I
+sail in a fortnight.  Lee follows soon after, and we shall be married
+in Austria."
+
+"But--but--his play!"  Miss Dwight was too startled to act.  "He must
+be here for rehearsals.  Some one has said that plays are not written,
+they're rewritten, and it's pretty close to the truth."
+
+"I shall consent to his returning in time for rehearsals.  Prolonged
+honeymoons are indiscreet.  It is better to divide them into a series.
+I fancy the series might hold out indefinitely if adroitly spaced.
+Moreover, being a modern myself, I like new methods.  And he will be
+too busy to miss me.  I shall be equally busy in Vienna."
+
+"But will he consent?  Lee?  He's not used to having his plans made for
+him.  He's about the most dominating male I know."
+
+"I feel sure he will when the time comes.  It is woman's peculiar gift,
+you know, to convince the dominating male that he wants what she wants."
+
+Gora laughed.  But she also could turn mental somersaults.  "I think it
+a splendid arrangement.  Then we should not lose Lee altogether, for we
+really are devoted to him.  He is an adorable creature for all his
+absurdities.  But I can't endure the thought of losing you."
+
+"You must pay me a long visit in Vienna.  Many visits.  I can assure
+you that you will find material there, under my guidance, for a really
+great novel."
+
+Gora's eyes sparkled.  She was all artist at once.  "I should like
+that!  How kind of you.  And what a setting!"
+
+"Yes, Austria is the most interesting country in Europe, and the most
+beautiful to look at--and describe."
+
+"It will be heavenly."  Gora made up her mind at once that she would
+waste no more ingenuity to stop this marriage.  Its modernity appealed
+to her, and she foresaw new impulses to creation.  "The American
+Scene," conceivably, might grow monotonous with time; and with these
+daily recruits bent upon describing its minutiae with the relentless
+efficiency of the camera.  And with all her soul she loved beauty.
+With the possible exception of Bavaria she knew Austria to be the
+darling of nature.
+
+Once more she chose to believe this woman would manage Clavering to his
+own good, and to the satisfaction of his friends, who, as she well
+knew, were alarmed and alert.  They were too polite to show it, but
+much of their enthusiasm for Madame Zattiany had dimmed with the
+knowledge that she was a scientific phenomenon.  Fundamentally the
+brilliant creative mind is quite as conservative as the worldly, or the
+inarticulate millions between, for they have common ancestors and
+common traditions.  They feared not only to lose him, moreover, but had
+begun to ask one another if his career would not be wrecked.
+
+Miss Dwight concluded that such an uncommon and romantic marriage might
+be a spur to Clavering's genius, which might weaken in a conventional
+marital drama set in the city of New York.
+
+She rose and for the first time kissed Madame Zattiany.  "It will be
+too perfect!" she said.  "Let me visit you in summer when he is
+rehearsing.  He can arrange to have his first-nights in September, and
+then write his next play in Austria, filling his time while you are
+absorbed in politics.  Heavens, what a theme!  Some day I'll use it.
+Perfectly disguised, of course."
+
+"And I'll give you points," said Mary, laughing.  She returned the
+other's embrace; but when she was alone she sighed and sank back in her
+chair, without picking up her book.  Miss Gora Dwight had given her
+something to think of!  The last thing she wanted was a serial
+honeymoon.  She wanted this man's companionship and his help.  But she
+had slowly been forced to the conclusion that Clavering's was a mind
+whose enthusiasms could only be inspired by some form of creative art;
+politics would never appeal to it.  In her comparative ignorance of the
+denaturalized brain, she had believed that a brilliant gifted mind
+could concentrate itself upon any object with equal fertility and
+power, but she had seen too much of the Sophisticates of late, and
+studied Clavering in too many of his moods to cherish the illusion any
+longer.  Playwrighting seemed to her a contemptible pastime compared
+with the hideous facts of Life as exemplified in Europe, and she had
+restrained herself from an angry outburst more than once.  But she was
+too philosophical, possibly too fatalistic, not to have dismissed this
+attitude eventually.  Clavering could not be changed, but neither could
+she.  There would be the usual compromises.  After all, of what was
+life made up but of compromise?  But the early glow of the wondrous
+dream had faded.  The mistress was evidently the rôle nature had cast
+her to play.  The vision of home, the complete matehood, had gone the
+way of all dreams.
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+She was not sorry to forego the doubtful luxury of meditation on the
+sadness of life.  When Miss Trevor's card was brought to her she told
+the servant to show her up and bring tea immediately.  She was not
+interested in Agnes Trevor, a younger sister of Polly Vane, but at all
+events she would talk about her settlement work and give a comfortably
+commonplace atmosphere to the room in which tragic clouds were rising.
+As it had happened, Mary, during these past weeks, had seen little of
+New York women between the relics of her old set and their lively
+Society-loving daughters.  The women between forty and fifty, whether
+devoted to fashion, politics, husbands, children, or good works, had so
+far escaped her, and Agnes Trevor, who lived with Mrs. Vane, was
+practically the only representative of the intermediate age with whom
+she had exchanged a dozen words.  But the admirable spinster had taken
+up the cause of the Vienna children with enthusiasm and raised a good
+deal of money, besides contributing liberally herself.  She was
+forty-two, and, although she was said to have been a beautiful girl,
+was now merely patrician in appearance, very tall and thin and
+spinsterish, with a clean but faded complexion, and hair-colored hair
+beginning to turn gray.  She had left Society in her early twenties and
+devoted herself to moralizing the East Side.
+
+She came in with a light step and an air of subdued bright energy, very
+smartly but plainly dressed in dark blue tweed, with a large black hat
+in which a wing had been accurately placed by the best milliner in New
+York.  Her clothes were so well-worn, and her grooming was so
+meticulous, her accent so clean and crisp, her manner so devoid of
+patronage, yet subtly remote, her controlled heart so kind that she
+perennially fascinated the buxom, rather sloppy, preternaturally acute,
+and wholly unaristocratic young ladies of the East Side.
+
+Mary, who had a dangerous habit of characterizing people in her Day
+Book, had written when she met Agnes Trevor: "She radiates
+intelligence, good will, cheeriness, innate superiority and
+uncompromising virginity."
+
+"Dear Mary!" she exclaimed in her crisp bright tones as she kissed her
+amiable hostess.  "How delightful to find you alone.  I was afraid you
+would be surrounded as usual."
+
+"Oh, my novelty is wearing off," said Mary drily.  "But I will tell
+them to admit no one else today.  I find I enjoy one person at a time.
+One gets rather tired in New York of the unfinished sentence."
+
+"Oh, do."  Mary's quick eye took note of a certain repressed excitement
+in the fine eyes of her guest, who had taken an upright chair.
+Lounging did not accord with that spare ascetic figure.  "And you are
+quite right.  It is seldom one has anything like real conversation.
+One has to go for that to those of our older women who have given up
+Society to cultivate the intellects God gave them."
+
+"Are there any?" murmured Mary.
+
+"Oh, my dear, yes.  But, of course, you've had no time to meet them in
+your mad whirl.  Now that things have slowed down a bit you _must_ meet
+them."
+
+"I'm afraid it's too late.  I sail in a fortnight."
+
+"Oh!"  Miss Trevor's voice shook oddly, and the slow color crept up her
+cheeks.  But at that moment the tea was brought in.
+
+"Will you pour it out?" asked Mary.  "I'm feeling rather lazy."
+
+"Of course."  Miss Trevor was brightly acquiescent.  She seated herself
+before the table.  The man retired with instructions that Madame was
+not at home to other callers.
+
+Mary watched her closely as she stirred the tea with a little
+business-like air, warmed the cups, distributed the lemon and then
+poured out the clear brown fluid.
+
+"Formosa Oolong," she said, sniffing daintily.  "The only tea.  I hate
+people who drink scented teas, don't you?  I'm going to have a very
+strong cup, so I'll wait a minute or two.  I'm--rather tired."
+
+"You?  You look as if you never relaxed in your sleep.  How do you keep
+it up?"
+
+"Oh, think of the life the younger women lead.  Mine is a quiet amble
+along a country road by comparison. . . .  But . . . monotonous!"
+
+The last word came out with the effect of a tiny explosion.  It
+evidently surprised Miss Trevor herself, for she frowned, poured out a
+cup of tea that was almost black, and began sipping it with a somewhat
+elaborate concentration for one so simple and direct of method.
+
+"I'm afraid good works are apt to grow monotonous.  A sad commentary on
+the triumphs of civilization over undiluted nature."  Mary continued to
+watch the torch bearer of the East Side.  "Don't you sometimes hate it?"
+
+She asked the question idly, interested for the moment in probing under
+another shell hardened in the mould of time, and half-hoping that Agnes
+would be natural and human for once, cease to be the bright well-oiled
+machine.  She was by no means prepared for what she got.
+
+Miss Trevor gulped down the scalding tea in an almost unladylike
+manner, and put the cup down with a shaking hand.
+
+"That's what I've come to see you about," she said in a low intense
+voice, and her teeth set for a moment as if she had taken a bit between
+them.  "Mary, you've upset my life."
+
+"I?  What next!"
+
+"I suppose you have troubles of your own, dear, and I hate to bother
+you with mine----"
+
+"Oh, mine amount to nothing at present.  And if I can help you----"
+She felt no enthusiasm at the prospect, but she saw that the woman was
+laboring under excitement of some sort, and if she could not give her
+sympathy at least she might help her with sound practical advice.
+Moreover, she was in for it.  "Better tell me all about it."
+
+"It is terribly hard.  I'm so humiliated--and--and I suppose no more
+reticent woman ever lived."
+
+"Oh, reticence!  Why not emulate the younger generation?  I'm not
+sure--although I prefer the happy medium myself--that they are not
+wiser than their grandmothers and their maiden aunts.  On the principle
+that confession is good for the soul, I don't believe that women will
+be so obsessed by--well, let us say, sex, in the future."
+
+Miss Trevor flushed darkly.  "It is possible. . . .  That's what I
+am--a maiden aunt.  Just that and nothing more."
+
+"Nothing more?  I thought you were accounted one of the most useful
+women in serious New York.  A sort of mother to the East Side."
+
+"Mother?  How could I be a mother?  I'm only a maiden aunt even down
+there.  Not that I want to be a mother----"
+
+"I was going to ask you why you did not marry even now.  It is not too
+late to have children of your own----"
+
+"Oh, yes, it is.  That's all over--or nearly.  But I can't say that I
+ever did long for children of my own, although I get on beautifully
+with them."
+
+"Well?" asked Mary patiently, "what is it you do want?"
+
+"A husband!"  This time there was no doubt about the explosion.
+
+Mary felt a faint sensation of distaste, and wondered if she were
+reverting to type as a result of this recent association with the
+generation that still clung to the distastes and the disclaimers of the
+nineteenth century.  "Why didn't you marry when you were a girl?  I am
+told that you were quite lovely."
+
+"I hated the thought.  I was in love twice; but I had a sort of cold
+purity that I was proud of.  The bare idea of--of _that_ nauseated me."
+
+"Pity you hadn't done settlement work first.  That must have knocked
+prudishness out of you, I should think."
+
+"It horrified me so that for several years I hardly could go on with
+it, and I have always refused to mix the sexes in my house down there,
+but, of course, I could not help hearing things--seeing things--and
+after a while I did get hardened--and ceased to be revolted.  I learned
+to look upon all that sort of thing as a matter of course.  But it was
+too late then.  I had lost what little looks I had ever possessed.  I
+grew to look like an old maid long before I was thirty.  Why is nature
+so cruel, Mary?"
+
+"I fancy a good many American women develop very slowly sexually.  You
+were merely one of them.  I wonder you had the climacteric so early.
+But nature is very fond of taking her little revenges.  You defied her
+and she smote you."
+
+"Oh, yes, she smote me!  But I never fully realized it until you came."
+
+"I hardly follow you."
+
+"Oh, don't you see?  You have shown us that women can begin life over
+again, undo their awful mistakes.  And yet I don't dare--don't dare----"
+
+"Why not, pray?  Better come with me to Vienna if you haven't the
+courage to face the music here."
+
+"Oh, I haven't the courage.  I couldn't carry things off with such a
+high hand as you do.  You were always high and mighty, they say, and
+have done as you pleased all your life.  You don't care a pin whether
+we approve of what you've done or not.  It's the way you're made.  But
+I--couldn't stand it.  The admission of vanity, of--of--after the life
+I've led.  The young women would say, in their nasty slang, that I was
+probably man-crazy."
+
+"And aren't you?" asked Mary coolly.  "Isn't that just what is the
+matter?  The sex-imagination often outlives the withering of the
+sex-glands.  Come now, admit it.  Forget that you are a pastel-tinted
+remnant of the old order and call a spade a spade."
+
+"There's something terrifying about you, Mary."  Miss Trevor had
+flushed a dark purple, but she had very honest eyes, and they did not
+falter.  "But I respect you more than any woman I have ever known.  And
+although you are not very sympathetic you are the only person on earth
+to whom I could even mention such a subject."
+
+"Well, go ahead," said Mary resignedly.  "If you want my advice, take
+your courage in your hands and do it.  However people may carp, there
+is nothing they so much admire as courage."
+
+"Yes, but they make you suffer tortures just because they do admire
+it--or to keep themselves from admitting it."
+
+"True enough.  But after all, they don't matter.  Life would be so much
+simpler if we'd all make up our minds that what other people think
+about us does not signify in the least.  It's only permitting it to
+signify that permits it to exist."
+
+"That's all very well for you, but it's really a question of
+temperament.  Do you think I'd dare come back here looking like a girl
+again--and I suppose I should.  I'm sixteen years younger than
+you. . . .  You must know how many of the women hate you."
+
+"That sort of hate may be very stimulating, my dear Agnes," said Madame
+Zattiany drily.
+
+"I can understand that.  But I should return to what it is hardly an
+exaggeration to call a life of a thousand intimacies.  The ridicule!
+The contempt!  The merciless criticism!  I don't want to live anywhere
+else.  I can't face it!  But, oh, I do so want it!  I do so want it!"
+
+"But just think of the compensations.  No doubt you would marry
+immediately.  If you were happy, and with a man to protect you, how
+much would you care?"
+
+"Oh!"  Once more the thin ascetic face was dyed with an unbecoming
+flush.  "Oh!"  And then the barriers fell with a crash and she hurried
+on, the words tumbling over one another, as her memory, its inhibitions
+shattered, swept back into the dark vortex of her secret past.  "Oh,
+Mary!  You don't know!  You don't know!  You, who've had all the men
+you ever wanted.  Who, they say, have a young man now.  The nights of
+horror I've passed.  I've never slept a wink the nights our girls
+married.  I could have killed them.  I could have killed every man I've
+met for asking nothing of _me_.  It seems to me that I've thought of
+nothing else for twenty years.  When I've been teaching, counselling
+good thoughts, virtue, good conduct, to those girls down there, it's
+been in the background of my mind every minute like a terrible
+obsession.  I wonder I haven't gone mad.  Some of us old maids do go
+mad.  And no one knew until they raved what was the matter with them.
+When Hannah de Lacey lost her mind three years ago I heard one of the
+doctors telling Peter Vane that her talk was the most libidinous he had
+ever listened to.  And she was the most forbidding old maid in New
+York.  I know if I lose my mind it will be the same, and that alone is
+enough to drive any decent woman mad. . . .  I thought I'd get over it
+in time--I used to pray--and fight with my will--but when the time came
+when I should have been released I was afraid I would, and then I
+deliberately did everything I could to keep it alive.  I couldn't lose
+my right----  It _was_ my right.  I couldn't tell you all the things
+I've----  Oh, I tell you that unless I can be young again and have some
+man--any man--I don't care whether he'll marry me or not--I'll go
+mad--mad!"
+
+Her voice had risen to a shriek.  She would be in hysterics in another
+moment.  Mary, who was on the point of nausea, went hastily into her
+dressing-room and poured out a dose of sal-volatile.  "Here!" she said
+peremptorily.  "Drink this.  I'll not listen to another word.  And I
+don't wish to be obliged to call an ambulance."
+
+Miss Trevor gulped it down, and then permitted herself to be led to a
+sofa, where she lay sprawled, her immaculate hat on one side, giving
+her the look of a debauched gerontic virgin.  She lay panting for a few
+moments, while Madame Zattiany paced up and down the room.
+
+She turned as she heard a groan.  Miss Trevor was sitting up,
+straightening her hat.  "Feel better?" she asked unsympathetically.
+
+"Oh, yes--my nerves feel better!  But what have I said?  What must you
+think of me?  I never expected to give way like that when I came.  I
+thought I could put it all to you in a few delicate hints, knowing that
+you would understand.  _What_ have I said?  I can hardly remember."
+
+"Better not try!  I'll promise to forget it myself."  She sat down
+beside the sofa.  "Now, listen to me.  It would not be wise for you to
+go to Vienna.  They would suspect, if not at once, then certainly when
+you returned.  It can be done here.  The rejuvenescence is so gradual
+that it would hardly be noticed.  Fully a year.  You do not have to go
+into a hospital, nor even to bed.  You are not spied on, so no one
+would suspect that you were taking the treatment.  At your age success
+is practically assured.  Take it, and don't be a fool.  If you don't
+it's only a question of time when that superb self-control you have
+practised for so many years will go again.  And, too possibly, in the
+wrong place. . . .  It is quite likely that you will never be
+suspected, because women often bloom out in their forties, take on a
+new lease of life.  Begin to put on a little make-up----"
+
+Miss Trevor interrupted with a horrified exclamation.
+
+"It would be judicious.  If they criticize you, remember that nothing
+they can say will be as bad--from your point of view--as their finding
+out the truth.  They will lay it to that, and to the fact that you have
+grown a little stouter.  And let me tell you, you won't care in the
+least, even if conservatism attacks you in solid battalions, for your
+mental attitude to life will be entirely changed.  Remember that you
+will be young again, and too gay and happy to mind what people think of
+you.  Now, promise me that you will take my advice, and then go home
+and to bed."
+
+Miss Trevor got up and went to the mirror.  "Yes, I'll do it."  And
+then she said, no doubt for the first time in her life: "And I'll not
+give a damn, no matter what happens."
+
+When she had left Mary Zattiany stood for a few moments striking her
+hands together, her face distorted.  A wave of nausea overwhelmed her.
+She felt as if there had been an earthquake in her own soul and its
+muck were riding the surface.  She loathed herself and all women and
+all men.  She knew that the violence of the revulsion must be
+temporary, but for the moment it was beyond her control.  She went to
+the telephone and called up Clavering and told him that she had a
+severe headache and was going to bed.  And she cut short both his
+protests and his expression of sympathy by hanging up the receiver.
+And then she picked up a vase and hurled it to the floor and smashed it.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+Clavering stood on his high balcony and looked down upon Madison
+Square.  Spring had come.  The Square looked like an oasis in a rocky
+gorge.  The trees were covered with the tender greens of the new birth,
+and even President Arthur and Roscoe Conkling, less green than in
+winter, looked reconciled to their lot.  A few people were sunning
+themselves on the benches, many more were on top of the busses over on
+Fifth Avenue, and even the hurrying throngs, preoccupied with crass
+business, seemed to walk with a lighter step, their heads up, instead
+of sullenly defying winds and sleet.  The eight streets that surrounded
+or debouched into the Square poured forth continuous streams of
+figures, constantly augmented by throngs rising out of the earth
+itself.  There was a vivid color running like ribbons through the
+crowds, for it was nearly nine o'clock and the doors of offices and
+shops and business houses were open to women as to men.  Overhead a
+yellow sun shone in a pale filmy sky and the air was both warm and
+sharp.  The doves were circling and settling.
+
+The prize-fighters had taken their prowess elsewhere, and a circus had
+come to Madison Square Garden.  Clavering had heard the roar of lions
+in the night.  A far different crowd would stand under the arcade in a
+few hours, but the peanut venders would ply their trade, and a little
+booth for candies and innocuous juices had been erected in an alcove in
+the front wall, presided over by a plump pretty blonde.  She alternated
+"jollying" and selling with quiet intervals of beading a bag,
+undisturbed either by ogling or the hideous noises of Twenty-sixth
+Street.
+
+In spite of his disappointment two nights before he found it impossible
+to feel depressed in that gay spring sunshine.  He did not believe in
+the headache, but she had written him a charming note and he supposed
+that a man must get accustomed to the caprices of women if he intended
+to live with one.  And a month from now they would be in the Dolomites,
+and she would be his.  Let her have her caprices.  He had his own.
+There were times when he didn't want to see her.
+
+Moreover, he was still too jubilant over his play to feel depressed for
+long over anything; the warm and constantly manifested enthusiasm of
+his friends had kept his spirits from suffering any natural reaction.
+Their demand for his companionship was almost peremptory, and his
+thoughts turned to them as he stood on his balcony looking down on the
+waning throngs: the great stone buildings were humming like hives, and
+figures were passing busily to and fro behind the open windows.  It
+astonished him a little.  True, it was his first play and he was very
+popular.  But he had a vague uneasy idea they were overdoing it.  They
+talked of nothing else: his play, his brilliant future, his sure place
+in the crack regiment "if he hung on"; and they insisted that he must
+also express himself at least once through the medium of the novel.
+The great New York novel had yet to be written.  They fairly dinned his
+gifts into his ears, until he was almost sick of them, and wondered if
+Mary were not also.  She had seen a good deal of the Sophisticates
+lately, and from what she had let drop he inferred that even when he
+had not been present they had talked of little else.  They had by no
+means waited for his play to be finished and read to a select few.
+Hogarth and Scores had assured them long before it was finished that it
+would be a great play.
+
+Once or twice there was a rustling in the back of his mind.  They were
+not given to wild enthusiasms of this sort.  They thought too highly of
+themselves.  He realized how genuinely fond they were of him, but he
+had not hoped for more than critical appreciation, from the men, at
+least.  Could it be possible . . .
+
+But he was still in the first flush of his triumph, his brain hummed
+with pleasant memories of those hours at Gora Dwight's, three nights
+ago.  He had cleared the base of the pedestal on whose narrow and
+unaccommodating top he was soon to have his foothold, and it was not in
+human nature, at this stage of his progress, to suspect the sincerity
+of the adulation so generously poured at his feet.
+
+And Mary, during this past fortnight (when he had been present, at
+least) had seemed to bask contentedly in reflected glory, and smiled
+sympathetically while they talked of the many Clavering first-nights
+they would attend in the sure anticipation of that class of
+entertainment up to which the Little Theatres and the Theatre Guild
+were striving to educate the public.  They took it as a matter of
+course that he was to abide in the stimulating atmosphere of New York
+for the rest of his days.  And they invariably insisted that "Madame
+Zattiany" must always sit in a stage box and be a part of the
+entertainment.  They were too well-bred (and too astute) to hint at the
+engagement they were positive existed, but "hoped" she would be willing
+to add to the prestige of one who was now as much her friend as theirs.
+It was a curious position in which to place a woman like Mary Zattiany,
+but Sophisticate New York was not Diplomatic Europe, and he thought he
+saw her smile deepen into humor once or twice; no doubt she was
+reflecting that she had lived long enough to take people as she found
+them.
+
+His reverie was interrupted by a buzzing at the end of his hall and he
+went to the door quickly, wondering who could have sent him a special
+delivery letter or a note at this hour.  It proved to be a cablegram.
+He read it when he returned to his living-room.  It was dated Rome,
+Italy, and read:
+
+"I'll have you yet: Janet."
+
+Clavering swore, then laughed.  He tore the message into strips and sat
+down to read his newspapers; he had merely glanced at the headlines and
+his column.  His eye was arrested by the picture of a man at the top of
+the first page of his own newspaper.  Although smooth-shaven and very
+regular of feature, with no pronounced racial characteristics, it was,
+nevertheless, a foreign face, although difficult to place.  From its
+distinction it might be Austrian, but the name below, "Prince
+Hohenhauer," might as easily be German.  Still, it was not a German
+face, and Clavering studied it for a moment before reading the news
+text, wondering faintly at his interest.
+
+It was unmistakably the face of a statesman, and reminded him a little
+of a picture of Prince Schwarzenberg, prime minister when Franz Josef
+ascended the throne, he had seen lately in a history of Austria.  There
+was the same broad placidity of brow, the long oval face, the thin long
+slightly curved nose, the heavy lids, the slim erectness, the same
+suave repose.  But this man's large beautifully cut mouth was more
+firmly set, had a faintly satiric expression, and the eyes a powerful
+and penetrating gaze.  It was the face of a man who was complete master
+of himself and accustomed to the mastery of men.
+
+Clavering read the story under the headlines:
+
+
+  PRINCE HOHENHAUER ARRIVES IN NEW YORK
+    GOES AT ONCE TO WASHINGTON
+
+"Prince Hohenhauer, a distinguished political factor under the old
+Austrian Empire, arrived yesterday morning on the _Noordam_.  He
+refused to be interviewed, but it is understood he has a large amount
+of money invested in the United States and has come to New York at the
+request of his lawyers to attend to certain necessary formalities.  He
+was, in fact, met at Quarantine by Judge Trent, one of the most
+distinguished members of the New York Bar since his retirement from the
+Bench, and they went at once to the Prince's stateroom and remained
+there until it was time to leave the ship.  It is significant, however,
+that the Prince, after engaging a suite at the Ritz-Carlton, and
+lunching there with Judge Trent, took the afternoon train for
+Washington.  As he recently left his estate in Switzerland to return to
+Vienna and accept a position in the Cabinet, and as it is well known
+that Austria desires the backing of the American Government to enable
+her to overcome the opposition of France to her alliance with Germany,
+or, it is whispered, with a kingdom farther south, it is not
+unreasonable to infer that he has come to the United States on a
+special, if secret, mission.
+
+"The Prince was the subject of lively interest on the boat and of much
+speculation, but he took his meals in his suite and walked the deck
+only in the company of his secretary.
+
+"He is a man of striking appearance, quite six feet in height, with a
+spare erect figure, fine features, and hardly looks his sixty years, in
+spite of his white hair."
+
+Then followed a brief biography, which illustrated the efficiency of
+the newspaper "morgue," for the statesman's reputation was, so far,
+wholly European.
+
+"Prince Moritz Franz Ernst Felix von Hohenhauer was born October 6th,
+1862, on his ancestral estate in what was then known as Galicia.  His
+mother was a princess of the House of Schwarzenberg.  He has been the
+head of his own historic house for the last forty years, and has one
+son and two daughters.  His wife, a member of the Kalnóky family, died
+several years ago.  "Hohenhauer" was one of those almost unbelievably
+vast estates of sixteen million acres possessed by a few of the
+Austrian noblemen under the old régime.  In spite of the fact that
+Prince Hohenhauer was one of the greatest landlords in all Christendom
+he was a liberal in politics from the first and the author of several
+of the reform laws in behalf of the people which from time to time were
+forced upon the most conservative monarch in Europe.  He was in
+sympathy with the revolution and offered his services at once to the
+new Government.  They were declined, and he retired to Switzerland,
+where he has an estate near St. Moritz, and, it is understood,
+considerable money invested.  His vast estates in what is now Poland
+were confiscated, but he was one of the wealthiest men in the Empire
+and is said to have transferred immense sums to the United States
+before the war."
+
+Clavering dropped the newspaper.  Liberal in politics.  Immense sums
+invested in the United States.  Judge Trent.  There could be no
+possible doubt as to who the man was.  The floor seemed unsteady for a
+moment.
+
+And yet there was as little doubt that Mary Zattiany bad long since
+ceased to care for him.  _That_ was over fifteen or sixteen years ago.
+They had known each other in later years, both equally indifferent to
+the other and to the past. . . .  Yes . . . but she had then completely
+lost the beauty and the charm that had enthralled him, while he was
+still a man in his prime, who, with that appearance, no doubt had other
+young and beautiful women in his life.
+
+He may or may not have heard of the metamorphosis.  At all events they
+had been political allies.  He would call on her as a matter of course.
+And possibly out of more than politeness: he may have brought her an
+important message.  Or he might find it expedient to confer with her on
+his present mission.  That he had come on an important mission did not
+admit of a doubt; but at least he had not gone to her at once.  His
+interest in her, so far, was still impersonal.
+
+Clavering had too much of the arrogance of youth and he was too sure of
+Mary Zattiany's love for himself, to be apprehensive of the charms of a
+man of sixty, but he was invaded by a nameless and almost sickening
+fear.  He had very swift and often very sure intuitions, and he was
+shaken by a premonition that in some manner, which, in his ignorance of
+the facts he was unable to define, this man's presence in America boded
+no good to himself.
+
+But Clavering was also a man of swift decisions and resource, and he
+knew this was no time to lose his head, nor even to play a waiting
+game.  And he must tread warily.  Impulsive as he was by nature he
+could be as wary as a Red Indian when wariness would serve his purpose.
+He called up Mr. Dinwiddie on the telephone and asked if he might see
+him at once.  It was only half past nine and Mr. Dinwiddie was just
+finishing his breakfast in bed, but he told his favorite cordially to
+"come along."
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+"What is it?" asked Mr. Dinwiddie, as Clavering entered his bedroom
+fifteen minutes later.  "This is an early call.  Thought you didn't get
+up till noon."
+
+"Went to bed early last night for a change.  I've come to ask a favor.
+I'll smoke, if you don't mind."
+
+He took a chair beside the bed, where Mr. Dinwiddie, in skull cap and
+decorous pyjamas, leaned against high pillows, happily digesting his
+breakfast, with the newspapers beside him.  Clavering smoked for a few
+moments in silence, while his host watched him keenly.  He had never
+seen his young friend in quite this mood.  There was a curious deadly
+stillness about him.
+
+"What is it, Lee?" he asked when curiosity finally got the better of
+him.  "Nothing wrong between you and Mary, I hope?  Of course you know
+it's all over town that you're engaged to her.  Don't mind my saying
+this, do you?  And you know you can trust me.  Nothing like an old
+gossip for keeping a confidence sacred."
+
+"Well, I am.  But she chooses not to announce it and that is her right.
+And here is where you can help me.  I want you to open your camp in the
+Adirondacks and give Mary a house party.  I suppose Larsing and his
+wife are still there?"
+
+"Yes, but it's too early----"
+
+"Spring is early this year.  The ice must have gone out.  And the house
+is always comfortable; we've often had fires there when people were
+having sunstroke in New York.  I want you to get busy, so that we can
+leave tomorrow morning----"
+
+"Tomorrow morning?  You young dynamo.  It can't be done."
+
+"It can.  I'll call up the people I want in a few minutes--from here.
+You can telephone to the camp.  Provisions can go tonight.  I'll see to
+that also----"
+
+"But can you get away yourself?"
+
+"I'd get away if I had to resign, but I shan't.  I shall break away for
+two months later anyhow.  We have planned to marry in Austria in about
+a month from now."
+
+"Then why in thunder do you want to run off to the woods with her now?
+I never heard of anything so unreasonable.  She has friends here who'd
+like to see her until the last minute, you selfish young beggar----"
+
+"It's the most reasonable thing I ever did.  Don't insist upon an
+explanation, Din.  Just accept my word that it's a vital matter to me."
+
+"Ah!  But I know!"  Mr. Dinwiddie's eyes glittered.  "Hohenhauer is
+here.  That's the milk in the cocoanut."
+
+Clavering scowled.  "What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I--I--well--there was a good deal of talk at the time--but then you
+know, Lee, I told you the very first time we both saw her that there
+had been stories about Mary."
+
+"Well, as it happens, she told me about this man, although not his
+name.  Enough, however, for me to know at once this morning who he was.
+I don't intend she shall see him."
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that you are jealous of Hohenhauer.  Why,
+that was nearly twenty years ago, and he is almost as old as I am."
+
+"I'm not jealous, but I've got a hunch."  He scowled again, for he
+fancied he could see that old story unrolling itself in Dinwiddie's
+mind.  It is one thing to dismiss the past with a lordly gesture and
+another to see it rise from the dead and peer from old eyes.  He went
+on calmly, however.  "I've no faith, myself, in the making of bonfires
+out of dead ashes, but all the same I scent danger and I intend to get
+her away and keep her away until the day before she sails; and I'll
+marry her the morning she does.  I'll take no chances of their
+travelling on the same steamer."
+
+"I see.  Perhaps you are right.  He's a damn good-looking chap, too,
+and has that princely distinction peculiar to Austrians.  Some European
+princes look like successful businessmen of the Middle-West.  I was
+once stranded at Abbazia, Austria's Riviera, during a rainy spell, and
+as there were only two other people in the vast dining-room I thought
+I'd speak to them.  I took for granted they were Americans.  He was a
+big heavy man, with one of those large, round, fat, shrewd, weary faces
+you see by the hundreds in the lobbies of Chicago hotels.  She looked
+like a New England school-marm, and wore a red plaid waist.  Well--he
+was the reigning prince of Carlstadt-Rudolfstein, one of those
+two-by-six German principalities, and she was an Austrian archduchess.
+She was the only Austrian I ever saw that didn't look like one, but her
+manners were charming and we became great friends and they took me home
+with them to their beautiful old castle. . . .  Ah, those wonderful old
+German castles!  Profiteers living in them today, I suppose.  But
+Hohenhauer is a perfect specimen of his class--and then some.  I met
+him once in Paris.  Intensely reserved, but opened up one night at a
+small dinner.  I never met a more charming man in my life.  And
+unquestionably one of the ablest men in Europe. . . .  However, he's
+sixty and you're thirty-four.  If he has any influence over her it's
+political, and in European politics one never knows what dark business
+is going on under the surface.  Good idea to get Mary away.  I'll get
+some fun out of it, too.  Who'll you ask?"
+
+"None of your crowd.  How many bedrooms have you?  I don't remember."
+
+"Ten.  If you want a large party you can turn in with me.  There are
+twin beds in every room.  I don't know how Mary'll like it; she's a
+luxurious creature, you know, and we don't go to the woods to be
+comfortable----"
+
+"You forget she got pretty well used to worse while she was running
+that hospital.  And hardy people never do mind."
+
+"True.  I'll give her a room to herself, for I don't see her
+doubling-up, at all events.  That would leave eight good-sized rooms.
+Don't ask all married couples, Lee, for heaven's sake.  Let's have two
+girls, at least.  But the season is still on.  Sure you can get
+anybody?"
+
+"Of course.  They're not all pinned down to regular jobs, and will be
+only too glad to get out of New York after a grinding winter.  The
+novelty of a house party in the mountains at this season will appeal to
+them.  I'll call up Gora first."
+
+He was crossing the room to the telephone when Mr. Dinwiddie said
+hesitatingly: "And so--so--you're really going to marry Mary?  Have you
+thought what it means?  I mean your own career.  She'll never live
+here--she's out of the picture and knows it."
+
+Clavering took down the receiver and called Miss Dwight's number.  Mr.
+Dinwiddie sighed and shrugged his shoulders.  But his eyes were bright.
+He would have a love drama under his very nose.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+Mary's "headache" had continued for two days, but Clavering came to her
+house by appointment that same afternoon at five o'clock.  She kept him
+waiting fully ten minutes, and wandered back and forth in her room
+upstairs with none of her usual eagerness to welcome him after even a
+brief separation.  The violence of her revulsion had passed, but she
+was filled with a vast depression, apathetic, tired, in no mood for
+love-making.  Nor did she feel up to acting, and Clavering's intuitions
+were often very inconvenient.  He would never suspect the black turmoil
+of these past two days, nor its cause, but it would be equally
+disconcerting if he attributed her low spirits to the arrival of
+Hohenhauer.  What a fool she had been to have made more than a glancing
+reference to that last old love-affair, almost forgotten until that
+night of stark revelation.  She must have enjoyed talking about herself
+more than she had realized, unable to resist the temptation to indulge
+in imposing details.  Or self-justification?  Perhaps.  It didn't
+matter, and he must have "placed" Hohenhauer at once this morning, and
+would imagine that she was depressed at the thought of meeting him.
+There was no one on earth she wanted to meet less, although she felt a
+good deal of curiosity as to the object of his visit to Washington.
+
+She heard the maid in the dressing-room and was visited by an
+inspiration.  She called in the woman, gave her a key and told her to
+go down to the dining-room and bring her a glass of curacoa from the
+wine-cupboard.
+
+The liqueur sent a glow of warmth through her veins and raised her
+spirits.  Then, reflecting that Clavering never rushed at her in the
+fashion of most lovers, nor even greeted her with a perfunctory kiss,
+but waited until the mood for love-making attacked him suddenly, she
+took a last look at her new tea-gown of corn-flower blue chiffon and
+went down stairs with a light step.
+
+"Shocking to keep you waiting," she said as they shook hands, "but I
+came in late.  You'll stay to dinner, of course.  I had an engagement
+but broke it, as I'm still feeling a little out of sorts."
+
+"Never saw you look better.  Nor in blue before.  You look like a lily
+in a blue vase, or a snow maiden rising from a blue mist.  Not that I'm
+feeling poetic today, but you do look ripping.  What gave you a
+headache?  I thought you scorned the ills of the flesh."
+
+"So I do, but I had spent three hours in Judge Trent's office that
+morning, and you know what these American men are.  They keep the heat
+on no matter what the temperature outside, and every window closed.  On
+Tuesday the sun was blazing in besides, and Judge Trent and the two
+other men I was obliged to confer with smoked cigars incessantly.  It
+gave me the first headache I'd had for twenty years.  I felt as if I'd
+been poisoned."
+
+She looked up at him, smilingly, from her deep chair as he stood above
+her on the hearthrug.  He didn't believe a word of it: he was convinced
+she had been advised of Hohenhauer's coming, and that for some reason
+the news had upset her; but he had no intention of betraying himself.
+Moreover, he didn't care.  He was too intent on his own plans.
+
+"The rest has done you good," he said, smiling also.  "But as you were
+looking rather fagged before you came down with that two-days'
+headache, I made up my mind that you needed a change and dropped Din a
+hint to open his camp in the Adirondacks and give you a farewell
+house-party.  He jumped at the idea and it's all arranged.  You'll have
+eight days of outdoor life and some sport, as well as a good rest.
+He's got a big comfortable camp on a beautiful lake, where we can boat
+and fish----"
+
+"But Lee----"  She was almost gasping.
+
+"No buts.  Not only do you need a rest before that long journey but I
+want these last days with you in the mountains where I can have you
+almost to myself.  It seems to me sometimes that I do not know you at
+all--nor you me.  And to roam with you in the woods during the day and
+float about that lake at night--it came to me suddenly like a foretaste
+of heaven.  I couldn't stand the thought of the separation otherwise.
+Besides, here you'd be given a farewell luncheon or dinner every day
+until you sailed.  I'd see nothing of you.  And you'd be worn out.  You
+must come, Mary dear."
+
+Mary felt dimly suspicious, but it was possible that he had read his
+morning papers hastily, or that in his mental turmoil that night she
+had told him her story he had paid little attention to details, or
+forgotten them later.  He certainly had never alluded to the man since.
+And this sudden impetuous plan was so like him that he needed no
+foreign impulse.
+
+But she answered with some hesitation: "I'd like it, of course.  And
+Judge Trent has nothing more for me to sign until the last minute.
+But--a woman always has a thousand things to do before going on a
+journey----"
+
+"Your maid can do all that.  And pack your trunks.  She goes with you,
+doesn't she?  And you'll only need warm sweaters and skirts up there.
+We never dress.  You'll not need a maid."
+
+"Well--but--do you mean to tell me that the whole thing is settled?"
+
+"To the last detail.  There'll be twelve of us, including Din."
+
+"Really, Lee, you _are_ high-handed.  You might have consulted me
+first."
+
+"No time to waste on argument.  We'll only have a little over a week
+there as it is.  It takes a day to go and another to return, and you'll
+need one day here in New York before you sail.  I made up my mind you
+should go if I had to take you by force.  I _will_ have those last days
+in the Adirondacks."
+
+Her faint resentment vanished and she felt a languid sense of
+well-being in this enveloping atmosphere of the tactless imperious
+male, so foreign to her experience; of freedom from the necessity for
+independent action; and the prospect was certainly enchanting.
+Moreover, she would be able to avoid seeing Hohenhauer in surroundings
+where this strange love-affair of hers had obliterated the past (for
+the most part!), and she had found, for a time at least, happiness and
+peace.  She would see him in Vienna, of course, and she had no wish to
+avoid him there; no doubt they would work together and as impersonally
+as they had sometimes done in the past; but to see him here, even in
+the drawing-room, which held no sacred memories, would be but another
+and uglier blot on her already dimming idyl; and a subtle infidelity to
+this man whose every thought seemed to be of her in spite of all he had
+to inflame and excite his ego.
+
+And if she remained and Hohenhauer wished to see her she could hardly
+keep on making excuses for nearly a fortnight.  So she merely smiled up
+at Clavering, who was gazing down at her intently, and said softly: "Of
+course I'll go.  I always have sport things in my wardrobe and I think
+it a wonderful idea.  Now tell me who is going.  Miss Dwight, I
+suppose--and hope.  And the De Witt Turners?"  Madame Zattiany had no
+respect whatever for the Lucy Stone League, and invariably forgot the
+paternal names of the emancipated young wives of the men she found
+interesting.
+
+"They can't get away.  Gora, yes; and Rolly Todd, the Boltons, the
+Minors, Eva Darling, Babette Gold, Gerald Scores."
+
+"Miss Darling is rather a nuisance.  She flung her arms round me the
+other night at the Minors' and left a pink kiss on my neck.  She was
+very tight.  Still, she is amusing, and a favorite of Din's."
+
+"I would have submitted the list to you in the first place, darling,
+but I knew I should have to take what I could get on such short notice.
+The only two I really care about are Gora and Todd.  But there wasn't a
+moment to lose.  I wish to heaven I'd thought of it before, but that
+play had to be finished, and it looked as if the date of your sailing
+might be postponed, after all."
+
+He had no intention of letting her suspect that the wonderful plan was
+just eight hours old.
+
+"I understand," she said.  "When do we start?"
+
+"Tomorrow morning.  Eight-thirty.  Grand Central."
+
+"Tomorrow morning!"  She looked almost as dismayed as Mr. Dinwiddie had
+done, then laughed and shrugged her shoulders.  "Of course it can be
+done--but----"
+
+"Anything can be done," he said darkly.  And then, having got his way,
+he suddenly felt happy and irresponsible, and made one of his abrupt
+wild dives at her.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+The "camp," a large log house, with a great living-room, a small room
+for guns and fishing-tackle, two bedrooms, besides the servants' wing,
+downstairs, and eight bedrooms above, stood in a clearing on the
+western shore of a lake nearly two miles long, and about three-quarters
+of a mile wide in the centre of its fine oval sweep.  The lake itself
+was in a cup of the mountains, whose slopes in the distance looked as
+if covered with fur, so dense were the woods.  Only one high peak,
+burnt bare by fire, was still covered with snow.
+
+The camp was in a grove of pines, but the trees that crowded one
+another almost out into the lake among the lily pads were spruce and
+balsam and maple.
+
+The party arrived at half-past nine in the evening, and crossed the
+lake in a motor launch.  It was very dark and the forest surrounding
+the calm expanse of water looked like an impenetrable wall, an
+unscalable rampart.  There was not a sound but the faint chugging of
+the motor.  The members of the party, tired after their long trip on
+the train and two hours' drive up the rough road from the station to
+the lake, surrendered to the high mountain stillness, and even Rollo
+Todd, who had been in his best spirits all day, fell silent and forgot
+that he was a jolly good fellow, remembered only that he was a poet.
+Eva Darling, who had flirted shamelessly with Mr. Dinwiddie from New
+York to Huntersville, forgot to hold his hand, and he forgot her
+altogether.
+
+Mary had a sudden and complete sense of isolation.  Memory had played
+her a trick.  These were the mountains of her girlhood, and she was
+Mary Ogden once more.  Even the future that had been so hard of outline
+in her practical mind, that unescapable future just beyond a brief
+interval in an Austrian mountain solitude, seemed to sink beyond a
+horizon infinitely remote.  Europe was as unreal as New York.  She
+vowed, if it were necessary to vow, that she would give neither a
+thought while she was here in the wilderness.  And as she was a
+thorough-going person she knew she would succeed.
+
+She took her first step when Mr. Dinwiddie was showing them to their
+rooms.  She drew Gora into her own room and shut the door.
+
+"I want you to do me a favor--if you will, dear Miss Dwight," she said.
+
+"Of course."  Gora wondered what was coming.
+
+"I want you to ask the others to abandon their subtle game while we are
+up here and ignore the subjects of Lee's play, his future, his genius,
+which will wither outside of New York, and cease to attempt to strike
+terror into my soul.  You may tell them that we are to be married in a
+month or two from now--in Austria--but that I shall do nothing to
+interfere with his career; nor protest against his passing a part of
+each year in the United States.  Ask them kindly to refrain from
+congratulations, or any allusion to the subject whatever.  We have only
+eight days here, and I should like it to be as nearly perfect as
+possible."
+
+Gora had had the grace to blush.  "They have been worried, and I'm
+afraid they hatched a rather naughty plot.  But they'll be delighted to
+have their apprehensions banished--and of course they'll ignore the
+entire matter.  They won't say a word to Clavey, either."
+
+"They've not made the slightest impression on him, so it really doesn't
+matter whether they do or not.  But--when it dawned on me what they
+were up to, and the sound reasoning beneath it, I will confess that I
+had some bad half-hours.  Of course, Lee has a right to his own life.
+I had hoped he would help me in my own field, but he could not if he
+would.  I have come to see that plainly.  I do not mean to say that
+these amiable machinations of your friends caused me for a moment to
+consider giving him up.  I have survived worse----"  She shuddered as
+she recalled that hideous hour with Agnes Trevor, but promptly whipped
+the memory back to cover.  "But it made me very uncomfortable, and I
+realized there was nothing to do but compromise.  We must take what we
+can get in this world, my dear Miss Dwight, and be thankful for a
+candle when we cannot have the sun."
+
+And Gora, feeling unaccountably saddened, summoned the others to her
+room and told them of Madame Zattiany's announcement and request.  Some
+gasped with astonishment and delight, others were darkly suspicious,
+but all gave their word unhesitatingly to "forget it" while they were
+in camp.  Those that regarded Madame Zattiany as the most fascinating
+woman they had ever known, but also as an intrigante of dark and
+winding ways, made a mental reservation to "say a few things to Clavey"
+before he had time to buy his ticket for the Dolomites.
+
+Mary, having accomplished her purpose, swept the whole thing from her
+mind and looked about her room with pleasure.  The walls were ceiled
+with a wood that gleamed like gold in the candle-light, and gave out a
+faint scent of the forest.  On the bare floor were two or three small
+blue rugs, there were pretty blue counterpanes on the beds, and blue
+curtains on the small windows.  It looked like a young girl's room and
+was indescribably sweet and fresh.  Her own room at her father's camp,
+on another lake many miles away, had been not unlike it.  Moreover, it
+was pleasantly warm, for the caretaker had made a fire in the furnace
+the day before.  A window was open and she could hear the soft lap of
+the water among the lily pads, but there was no moon and she could see
+nothing but a dim black wall on the opposite shore.  And the silence!
+It might not have been broken since the glacial era, when mighty masses
+of ice ground these mountains into permanent form, and the air was
+filled with the roaring horrors of desolation.  But they had gone, and
+left infinite peace behind them.  That peace had endured for many
+thousands of years and it was unimaginable that any but the puny sounds
+of man would disturb that vast repose for thousands of years to come.
+The peaks of those old Adirondacks, their quiet lakes, their massive
+forests, looked as deathless as time itself.  "The Great North Woods"
+could not have been more remote from, more scornful of the swarming
+cities called civilization, if they had been on another star.
+
+Luxury in camp did not extend to hot water in the bedrooms,
+particularly as Mr. Dinwiddie had had no time to assemble a corps of
+servants, and as Mary washed her face and hands in what felt like
+melted ice, the shock made her tingle and she would have liked to sing.
+
+A deep bell sounded.  Doors flew open up and down the corridor, which
+was immediately filled with an eager chatter.  Rollo Todd stamped down
+the stair singing "Oh, Hunger, Sweet Hunger!"  The others took it up in
+various keys, and when Mary went down a moment later they were all
+swarming about the dining-table at the end of the living-room.
+
+This room, which was fully fifty feet long and half as wide, was lit by
+lamps suspended from the ceiling and heated by an immense fireplace in
+which logs, that looked like half-sections of trees, were blazing in a
+pile as high as a small bonfire.  The walls were ceiled and decorated
+with antlered deerheads, woven bright Indian blankets, snap-shots of
+Mr. Dinwiddie's many guests, and old Indian weapons.  In one corner,
+above a divan covered with gay cushions, were bookshelves filled with
+old novels.  A shelf had been built along one side of the room for fine
+specimens of Indian pottery and basket weaving.  The comfortable chairs
+were innumerable, and there was another divan, and a victrola.  The
+guide had filled the vases with balsam, whose pungent odor blended with
+the resinous fumes of the burning logs; and through the open door came
+the scents of the forest.
+
+"Ideal place for everything but spooning," cried Todd.  "The woods and
+the lake are all right in fine weather, but what do you expect us to do
+if it rains, mine host?  D'you mean to say you haven't any little
+retiring rooms?"
+
+"Not a thing unless you retire to the gun-room, but who comes up to the
+woods to spoon in the house?"
+
+"Rolly never spoons, anyhow," announced Eva Darling, whose blue eyes,
+however, were languishing toward the table.  "But it makes him unhappy
+to think he can't burst in on somebody----"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Evy.  You don't know what you're talking about.
+Because I'm quite insensible to your charms, don't fool yourself that
+I'm an anchorite.  I merely prefer brunettes."
+
+"Come, come, children!"  Mr. Dinwiddie was rubbing his hands at the end
+of the table covered with blue china and mounds of home-made cake.
+"Stop quarrelling and sit down.  Anywhere.  No ceremony here."
+
+Some of the guests were in their seats.  The others fairly swooped into
+theirs, entirely regardless of anything so uneatable as neighbors.
+Mrs. Larsing, a tall, red-haired, raw-boned New England woman, had
+entered, bearing an enormous platter of fried trout, fresh from the
+lake.  Larsing, burnt almost as dark as an Indian, followed with a
+plate of potatoes boiled in their jackets balanced on one hand, and a
+small mountain of johnny cake on the other.  He returned in a moment
+with two large platters of sliced ham and cold boiled beef, and the
+guests were left to wait on themselves.
+
+The dinner was the gayest Mary had ever attended, for even the
+Sophisticates, however lively, preserved a certain formality in town;
+when she was present, at all events.  Rollo Todd, broke into periodical
+war whoops, to Mr. Dinwiddie's manifest delight.  The others burst into
+song, while waiting for the travelling platters.  Eva Darling got up
+twice and danced by herself, her pale bobbed head and little white face
+eerily suspended in the dark shadows of the great room.  Other feet
+moved irresistibly under the table.  Good stories multiplied, and they
+laughed uncontrollably at the worst of the jokes.
+
+They drank little, for the supply was limited, but the altitude was
+four thousand feet and the thin light air went to their heads.  They
+were New Yorkers suddenly snatched from the most feverish pitch of
+modern civilization, but no less primitive in soul than woodsmen who
+had never seen a city, and the men would have liked to put on war paint
+and run through the forest with tomahawks.
+
+Todd, when the dinner was over, did seize a tomahawk from the wall,
+drape himself in an Indian blanket, and march up and down the room
+roaring out terrific battle-cries.  Three minutes later, Minor and
+Bolton had followed his example, and marched solemnly behind him,
+brandishing their weapons and making unearthly noises.  Mary, from her
+chair by the hearth, watched them curiously.  At first it was merely
+the exuberant spirits of their release and the unaccustomed altitude
+that inspired them, but their countenances grew more and more sombre,
+their eyes wilder, their voices more war-like.  They were no longer
+doing a stunt, they were atavistic.  Their voices reverberated across
+the lake.
+
+One by one the other men had joined them, until even Mr. Dinwiddie was
+in the procession, marching with loud stamping feet round and round the
+big room.  The cries became shorter, menacing, abrupt, imperative.  The
+high lamps cast strange shadows on their lost faces.  The voices grew
+hoarse, dropped to low growls, their faces changed from ferocity to a
+mournful solemnity until they looked even more like primal men than
+before; but they continued their marching and stamping until Gora, who,
+with the other women, had begun to fear that the rhythm would bring
+down the house, had the inspiration to insert a Caruso disk into the
+victrola; and as those immortal notes flung themselves imperiously
+across that wild scene, the primitive in the men dropped like a leaden
+plummet, and they threw themselves on the floor by the fire.  But they
+smoked their pipes in silence.  They had had something that no woman
+could give them nor share, and there was an ungallant wish in every
+manly heart that they had left the women at home.
+
+Caruso was succeeded by Emma Eames, and the great lost diva by Farrar
+and Scotti.  Then, the concert over, a yawning party stumbled upstairs
+to bed and not a sound was heard from them until the first bell rang at
+seven o'clock next morning.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+"You forgot me last night."
+
+"Yes, I did."  Clavering smiled unrepentantly.
+
+"You looked horribly primitive."
+
+"No more so than I felt."
+
+They were in a boat on the lake.  The air was crisp and cold although
+the sun blazed overhead.  Clavering was happy in a disreputable old
+sweater that he kept at the camp, and baggy corduroy trousers tucked
+into leggins, but Mary wore an angora sweater and skirt of a vivid
+grass green and a soft sport hat of the same shade, the rim turned down
+over eyes that might never have looked upon life beyond these woods and
+mountains.  Clavering was hatless and smoked his pipe lazily as he
+pulled with long slow strokes.
+
+Other boats were on the lake, the women in bright sweaters and hats
+that looked like floating autumn leaves, and the lake was liquid amber.
+A breeze blew warm scents out of the woods.  The water lilies had
+opened to the sun and looked oddly artificial in their waxen beauty, at
+the feet of those ancient trees.  Stealthy footsteps behind that wall
+of trees, or a sudden loud rustling, told of startled deer.  The
+distant peak looked to be enamelled blue and white, and the long slopes
+of the nearer mountains were dark green under a blue mist, the higher
+spruce rising like Gothic spires.
+
+Clavering smiled into her dancing eyes.  "You look about fourteen," he
+said tenderly.
+
+"I don't feel much more.  I spent a month or two every year in these
+woods--let us play a game.  Make believe that I am Mary Ogden and you
+have met me here for the first time and are deliberately setting out to
+woo me.  Begin all over again.  It--you, perhaps!--was what I always
+dreamed of up here.  I used to row on the lake for hours by myself, or
+sit alone in the very depths of the woods.  Do you think that famous
+imagination of yours could accomplish a purely personal feat?  I
+haven't nearly as much but I'm quite sure I could.  And then--after--we
+could just go on from here."
+
+He looked at her in smiling sympathy.  "Done.  We met last night, Miss
+Ogden, and I went down at the first shot.  I'm now out to win you or
+perish in the attempt.  But before we get down to business I'll just
+inform you of a resolution I took a day or two ago.  I shall get a
+license the day we return and marry you the morning you sail."
+
+"Oh!"  And then she realized in a blinding flash what she had fought
+out of her consciousness: that she had shrunk from the consummation of
+marriage, visualized a long period of intermittent but superficial
+love-making and delightful companionship, an exciting but incomplete
+idyl of mind and soul and senses. . . .  Underneath always an undertone
+of repulsion and incurable ennui . . . the dark residuum of immedicable
+disillusion . . . that what she had really wanted was love with its
+final expression eliminated.
+
+But she realized it only as a fact, . . . a psychological study of
+another . . . buried down there in an artificial civilization she had
+forgotten . . . in that past that belonged to Marie Zattiany . . . with
+which Mary Ogden had nothing to do . . . her mind at last was as young
+as her body, and this man had accomplished the miracle.  The present
+and the future were his.
+
+She looked up into his eyes, anxious but imperious, and answered
+softly:  "Why not?"
+
+"Exactly.  I've no desire to take that long journey with you, but I'm
+not going to take any chances, either. . . .  Ah!  Here's an idea that
+beats the other hollow.  When the party breaks up we'll go down to
+Huntersville with them, marry there, and return to the camp.  I don't
+see how your Dolomites could beat this for a honeymoon.  Why in thunder
+should we trail all the way over to Europe to find seclusion when we
+must return in two or three months, anyhow?  It's a scandalous waste.
+We can go to the Dolomites for our second honeymoon--we'll have one
+every year.  And this is much more in the picture if you want to be
+Mary Ogden again.  She never would have proposed anything so elaborate
+and unnecessary.  Say yes, and don't be more than a minute about it."
+
+Mary drew in her breath sharply.  The plan made a violent and
+irresistible appeal.  There would be no long interval for possible
+reversal, for contacts in which it might be difficult to hold fast to
+her new faith.  But what excuse could she make to leave him
+later? . . .  Later?  Did Austria really exist?  Did she care?  Let the
+future take care of itself.  Her horizon, a luminous band, encircled
+these mountains. . . .  She smiled into his ardent eyes.  "Very well.
+I'll write to Hortense today and tell her to send me up a trousseau of
+sorts.  And now--you are to understand that you have not dared to
+propose to me yet and are suffering all the qualms of uncertainty, for
+I am a desperate flirt, and took a long walk in the woods this morning
+with Mr. Scores."
+
+"Very well, Miss Ogden, I will now do my best to make a fool of myself,
+and as soon as we return to camp will telegraph to New York for a
+five-pound box of chocolates."
+
+"Hark!  Hark!  The Lark!" shouted Todd as he rowed past with Babette
+Gold.  "Only there isn't a lark or any other bird in these woods that
+I've been able to discover."
+
+"Birds sing one at a time," shouted back Clavering.  "Choir of jealous
+soloists."
+
+He rowed into a little cove and they gazed into the dim green woods,
+but the maple leaves grew almost to the ground, and it was like peering
+through the tiny changing spaces of a moving curtain through which one
+glimpsed green columns flecked with gold.
+
+He beached the boat, and they walked, single file, up a narrow run-way
+made by the deer.  Everywhere was that leafy whispering curtain.
+Between the rigid spruce and soft maples were fragrant balsams, and
+ferns, and an occasional pine with its pale green spikes.  They passed
+enormous boulders detached from the glaciers that had ground mountains
+in their embrace, but today things of mere beauty in their coats of
+pink and green and golden moss.
+
+Their footsteps made no sound on the mossy path, and they came suddenly
+upon a deer and his doe drinking at a pool.  But the antlered head was
+flung back instantly, the magnificent buck wheeled on his hind legs,
+gave a leap and went crashing through the forest snorting his
+protesting fury.  The doe scampered after, her white-lined tail
+standing up perfectly straight.
+
+They sat down on a log, dried and warmed by the sun in this open space,
+and talked for two hours.  There was no need for careful avoidance of
+dangerous subjects.  Clavering had come to these woods nearly every
+year since he had made the north his home, and she had forgotten
+nothing of her woodland lore.  When one is "in the woods," as the great
+Adirondacks are familiarly called, one rarely talks of anything but
+their manifold offerings.  It is easy enough to forget the world.  They
+both had had their long tramps, their rough campings-out, more or less
+exciting adventures.  When a loud bell, hung in a frame outside the
+camp, summoned them to dinner, they walked out briskly.  Once, as the
+trail widened, he touched her fingers tentatively.  She let her own
+curl for a moment, then gave him a provocative glance over her shoulder
+and hurried on.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+Clavering, when making up his list with Mr. Dinwiddie (by courtesy),
+had, with the exception of Todd, who was always the life of any party,
+Gora, whom he always liked to have at hand, and Eva Darling, who was a
+favorite of "The Ambassador to the Court of the Sophisticates," as Todd
+had long since dubbed him, chosen his guests at random, taking whom he
+could get, careful merely to ask those who, so far as he knew, were on
+speaking terms.
+
+But he hardly could have gathered together a more congenial and lively
+party, nor one more delighted to leave New York for the woods.  Henry
+Minor, editor of one of the intellectual and faintly radical magazines,
+whose style was so involved in his efforts to be both "different" and
+achieve an unremitting glitter, that he had recently received a
+petition to issue a glossary, was as amiable as a puppy in the society
+of his friends and when in the woods talked in words of one syllable
+and discovered a mighty appetite.  His wife, who had demonstrated her
+originality by calling herself Mrs. Minor, was what is known as a
+spiffing cook and a top-notch dresser.  She had, in fact, the most
+charming assortment of sports clothes in the camp.  Eva Darling, who
+danced for pastime and illustrated for what little bread she was
+permitted to eat at home, was as lively as a grasshopper and scarcely
+less devastating.  Babette Gold wore her black hair in smooth bands on
+either side of the perfect oval of her face, and had the sad and
+yearning gaze of the unforgiven Magdalen, and she had written two
+novels dealing with the domesticities of the lower middle class,
+treating with a clinical wealth of detail the irritable monotonies of
+the nuptial couch and the artless intimacies of the nursery.  She
+smoked incessantly, could walk ten miles at a stretch, and was as
+passionless as a clam.  Gerald Scores, who wore a short pointed beard
+and looked the complete artist, was one of the chief hopes of the
+intellectual drama cunningly commercialized; and as capable as
+Clavering of shutting up his genius in a water-tight compartment, and
+enjoying himself in the woods.  He was mildly flirtatious, but looked
+upon emotional intensity in the personal life of the artist as a
+criminal waste of force.  Halifax Bolton, who claimed to be the
+discoverer of the Younger Generation (in fiction) and was just
+twenty-eight himself, was a critic of formidable severity and the
+author of at least five claques.  The intense concentration of writing
+routed his sense of humor, but he had as many droll stories in his
+repertoire as Todd.  His wife, the famous "Alberta Jones," fierce Lucy
+Stoner, was the editor, at a phenomenal salary, of one of the "Woman's
+Magazines," and wrote short stories of impeccable style and indifferent
+content for the _Century_ and the _Dial_.
+
+They were all intimate friends and argued incessantly and amiably.  And
+they were all devoted to Mr. Dinwiddie, whom they addressed as
+Excellence, without accent.
+
+[Illustration: At Dinwiddie's mountain lodge Clavering (Conway Tearle)
+pleaded with Madame Zattiany (Corrine Griffith) to marry him.  (_Screen
+version of "The Black Oxen."_)]
+
+When Mary and Clavering arrived at the camp in response to the dinner
+bell, Eva Darling, who wore very pretty pink silk bloomers under her
+sport skirt, was turning hand-springs down the living-room, while the
+rest of the party applauded vociferously, and Mrs. Larsing, who was
+entering with the fried chicken, nearly dropped the platter.
+
+"Just in time, Madame Zattiany," cried Minor.  "This is the sixth round
+and she is panting----"
+
+But she interrupted him.  "'Mary'--from this time on.  I insist.  You
+make me feel an outsider.  I won't be addressed in that formal manner
+nor answer to that foreign name again."
+
+"Mary!  Mary!  Mary!" shouted the party with one accord, and Clavering
+drew a long breath.  He had wondered how she would manage to feel Mary
+Ogden under the constant bombardment of a name that was a title in more
+ways than one.  But he might have trusted her to manage it!'
+
+In the afternoon Mrs. Minor suggested having tea in the woods, and they
+all walked--single file--five miles to drink their tea and eat their
+cakes (Larsing carrying the paraphernalia) in a pine grove on the
+summit of a hill, and then walked back again, clamoring for supper.
+Mary had been monopolized by Scores and Bolton, occasionally
+vouchsafing Clavering a glance.  During the evening they were all too
+pleasantly tired and replete to dance or to play the charades they had
+planned, but lay about comfortably, listening to a concert of alternate
+arias and jazz.  Clavering did not have a word alone with Mary.  She
+sat on one of the divans between Gora and Todd, while Scores lay on the
+floor at her feet, his head on a cushion, one foot waving over a lifted
+knee, the perfect picture of the contented playwright.  They kept up a
+continuous murmur, punctuated with gales of laughter.  Clavering had
+sulkily taken a chair beside Babette Gold, whose metallic humor
+sometimes amused him, but she went sound asleep before his eyes, and he
+could only gaze into the fire and console himself with visions of a
+week hence, when these cursed people had gone and he was the most
+fortunate man on earth.
+
+His room was downstairs next to Mr. Dinwiddie's, and he made up his
+mind to let himself out softly at midnight, throw pebbles at her window
+and whisper to her as she leaned from her casement.  It was a scene
+that if introduced into a modern play would have driven him from the
+theatre and tipped his pen with vitriol next morning, but it appealed
+to him, somehow, as a fitting episode in his own high romance.  But he
+was asleep before his head touched the pillow, and did not lift an
+eyelash until the first bell roused him at seven o'clock.  Then,
+however, he lay for some time thinking, soberly.
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+The hour between seven and eight was a lively one in the upper
+corridor.  There was only one bathroom on the second floor.  Scores and
+Miss Gold took their morning plunge in the lake, but the rest preferred
+the less drastic shower, and there was a continual darting to and fro
+of forms clad in bath-robe or kimono; the vanquished peeping through
+door-cracks waiting for the bathroom door to open--signal for another
+wild rush down the hall, a scuffle at the door, a triumphant slam and
+hoot, and loud vituperations from the defeated.  Mary cannily waited
+until the last, and came down, clad in a white sweater and heavy white
+tweed skirt, after the others had cleared the generous platter of ham
+and eggs, and the mountain of corn bread was a hillock of crumbs.
+
+"Oh, Mary!" said Mr. Dinwiddie, reprovingly, "and you as prompt as
+royalty.  In camp----"
+
+"I've no thought of going without my breakfast," said Mary
+unrepentantly.  "Ring the bell, Din."
+
+The men had risen, but Clavering alone had determination in his eye.
+He pulled out a chair beside his own, and Mary accepted it gracefully,
+waving a morning greeting to the others.
+
+"How good of you to keep this chair for me, Mr. Clavering," she
+murmured.  "It is shocking of me to be so lazy."
+
+"I'm sick of this game," growled Clavering.  "If you act today----"
+
+"Shh!  I am sure you are going to take me out on the lake immediately
+after breakfast."
+
+His amiability was immediately restored, but his gaiety was somewhat
+forced.  "You are looking charming this morning, Miss Ogden.  I wished
+last night that there was a guitar or even a banjo in the camp, that I
+might serenade beneath your window."
+
+And Mary actually blushed.  She had slept dreamlessly, and between the
+light mountain air and her new rôle, she felt as light-hearted as Eva
+Darling, who was holding Mr. Dinwiddie's hand openly.
+
+"Oh, Excellence!" cried Mrs. Minor from the other end of the table.
+"What do you say to having a picnic lunch?  Didn't you tell me that you
+knew of a lovely gorge about six miles from here?  Steak broiled
+between forked sticks!  Potatoes roasted in the ashes!  Flapjacks!
+Heavenly."
+
+"Anything you say," replied Mr. Dinwiddie rather tonelessly.  "Want to
+put it to the vote?"
+
+"Let me answer for the crowd," commanded Todd.  "It is our duty when in
+the woods to eat our meals after as much unnecessary toil, and to enjoy
+as much discomfort, as is humanly possible.  Otherwise we might as well
+stay in town.  We'll hilariously tramp six miles with packs, sit on the
+damp ground, extract earwigs, eat burnt steak and half-cooked potatoes,
+and then tramp back again, our spirits gradually rising at the prospect
+of a decent meal eaten in comfort----"
+
+"Kill-joy!" cried Minor.  "Don't we come to the woods to tramp?  I want
+to lose twenty pounds this trip, and if you don't you ought to.  I vote
+we make Rolly carry a sack of potatoes."
+
+"It's agreed then?" asked Mr. Dinwiddie, veiling his hope that it was
+not.  But the assent was general.  They were all as excited over the
+prospect of a picnic as if they were slum children about to enjoy their
+first charitable outing, and it was settled that they were to start at
+ten o'clock.  Mrs. Minor and Miss Gold went into the kitchen to help
+Mrs. Larsing make sandwiches and salads, and the others ran down to the
+lake.
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+Clavering had tied the boat to a tree in a little inlet far down the
+lake, and they were walking through a wood of spruce trees and balsam.
+There was no leafy curtain here, although they could see one swaying on
+either side through open vistas between the rigid columns of the spruce.
+A trail was hardly necessary for there was no undergrowth, and although
+the trees were set close together they were easily circumnavigated.
+
+It was some time since they had spoken.  His face was graver than she had
+ever seen it, and she waited for him to speak.  She almost could feel
+those unuttered words beating on the silence of the woods.  There was
+nothing else to break that silence but the faint constant murmur in the
+tree-tops, and once, beyond that leafy curtain, the sudden trilling of a
+solitary bird.  Again, the tremendousness of this high isolation swept
+over her.  The camp and its gay party might have been on some far distant
+lake.
+
+He put his arm around her firmly.  "I am not going to pretend any
+further," he said.  "It is too big for that.  And you have never been
+anything but Mary Ogden to me, except, perhaps, on that night I have
+practically dismissed from my mind.  I called you Mary Ogden to myself
+until I learned your new name, and I don't think that name has ever come
+into my thoughts of you.  And although you slipped on another skin with
+it you were always Mary Ogden underneath.  You needed a new name for your
+new rôle, but, like any actress on the stage, it had nothing to do with
+your indestructible personality.  I say this because I want you to
+understand that although I cannot play up to your little comedy any
+longer and go through the forms of wooing you as if you were a girl--I
+shouldn't like you half as well if you were--I do not think of you or
+wish you to think of yourself as anything but Mary Ogden."
+
+He paused a moment, and she slipped her arm about him and they walked on
+through the wood.
+
+"I cannot go on with it because these days up here that we can spend
+almost altogether alone, if we will, are too sacred to waste on an
+amusing but futile game.  Do you realize that we do not know each other
+very well?  I sometimes wonder if you know me at all.  From the time I
+fell in love with you until you promised to marry me, I was at one sort
+of fever-pitch, and when I got to work on that play I was at another.  No
+writer while exercising an abnormal faculty is quite sane.  His brain is
+several pitches above normal and his nerves are like hot taut wires--that
+hum like the devil.  If this were not the case he would not be an
+imaginative writer at all.  But he certainly is in no condition to reveal
+himself to a woman.  I have made wild and sporadic love to you--sporadic
+is the word, for between my work and your friends, we have had little
+time together--and I don't think I have ever taken you in my arms with
+the feeling that you were the woman I loved, not merely the woman I
+desired.  And I believe that I love you even more than I desire you.  You
+are all that, but so much--so much--more."
+
+She had fixed her startled eyes on him, but he did not turn his head.
+
+"There has always been a lot of talk about the soul.  Sentimentalists
+wallow in the word, and realists deride it.  What it really is I do not
+pretend to know.  Probably as good a word as any--and certainly a very
+mellifluous word--for some obscure chemical combination of finer essence
+than the obvious material part of us, that craves a foretaste of
+immortality while we are still mortal.  Perhaps we are descended from the
+gods after all, and unless we listen when they whisper in this
+unexplorable part of our being, we find only a miserable substitute for
+happiness, and love turns to hate.  Whatever it is that golden essence
+demands, I have found it in you, and if circumstances had been different
+I should have known it long ago.  I know now what you meant that night
+when you told me you had spent many distracted years looking for what no
+man could give you, and although I doubted at that time I could even
+guess what your own mysterious essence demanded, I know now--still
+vaguely, for it is something as far beyond the defining power of words as
+the faith of the Christian.  It can never be seen, nor heard, nor
+expressed, but it is there.  And only once in a lifetime does any one
+mortal have it to give to another.  A man may love many times, but he is
+a god-man only once."
+
+He held her more closely, for she was trembling, but he continued to walk
+on, guiding her automatically through the trees, for his eyes were almost
+vacant, as if their vision had been reversed.
+
+"I have had some hours of utter despair, in spite of the double
+excitement of these past weeks, for it has seemed to me that I was no
+nearer to you than I had been in the beginning.  There was a sense of
+unreality about the whole affair.  At first it seemed to me the most
+romantic thing that could happen to any man, and it was incredible that I
+had been chosen the hero of such an extraordinary romance--intensified,
+if anything, by the fact that it was set in roaring New York, where you
+have to talk at the top of your voice to hear yourself think. . . .  But
+that passed--in a measure.  I was beset by the fear--at times, I mean: I
+was not always in a state to look inward--that you were slipping away.
+Not that I doubted for a moment you would marry me, but that your
+innermost inscrutable self had withdrawn, and that you accepted what must
+have appeared to be my own attitude--that we were merely two vital
+beings, who saw in each other a prospect of a superior sort of sensual
+delight----"
+
+"That is not true," she interrupted him fiercely.  "But you seemed to me
+to be in that phase when a man can think of nothing else.  If I hadn't
+hoped--and believed--in you against all I knew of men, I'd never have
+gone on with it."
+
+"I'm sure that is true.  I must have disappointed you horribly.  You had
+felt the bond from the beginning, and I can imagine what you must have
+dreamed I alone could give you.  The trouble was that I didn't realize
+that I alone was in fault, at the time.  That boiling pot in my brain was
+making too much noise.  But I can assure you that I have returned to
+normal, and if I thought I couldn't satisfy you I'd let you go without a
+word.  But you know that I can, don't you?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"What is it, I wonder?"  He sighed.  "I wish I knew.  But it is enough to
+feel. . . .  You must understand that in spite of the erratic creature
+you have known since you refused to marry me at once and left me with no
+resource but to let that play boil out, I am man first and a writer
+incidentally.  I also have a stronger ambition to be your husband than to
+write plays.  If I don't strangle what talent I have it is because I must
+have the money to be independent of newspaper work.  Otherwise I should
+have neither peace of mind nor be able to live abroad with you.  I know
+that you cannot be happy here, and I am not a victim of that ancient myth
+that two people who love each other can be happy anywhere.  Environment
+is half the battle--for the super-civilized, at all events.  But you
+shall never have another dose of the writer.  I'll write my plays in New
+York and rush production.  The greater part of the year I shall spend
+with you in Europe, and I cannot think of anything I'd like more--why,
+the very night I first saw you I was longing with all my soul to get out
+of New York and over to the other side of the world----  Why, Mary!  You
+are not crying?  You!  I never believed you could----"
+
+"I--I--did not believe it either. . . .  But, are you sure?  Could you
+reconcile yourself?  You seem so much a part of New York, of this strange
+high-pitched civilization.  If you are not sure--if you are only tired of
+New York for the moment. . . .  I--yes, I will!  I'll give it all up and
+live here.  Of course I love New York itself--was it not my Mary Ogden
+home?  And there are delightful people everywhere. . . .  No doubt my
+dream of doing great things in Europe was mere vanity----"
+
+"Do you believe that?"
+
+"Perhaps not.  But, after all, what I tried to do might be so easily
+frustrated in that cauldron--why should I risk personal happiness--the
+most precious and the rarest thing in life, for what may be a
+chimera--wasted years and a wasted life.  Why are we made as we are, if
+to coax that hidden spark into a steady flame is not our highest destiny?
+It certainly is our manifest right. . . .  Dreams of doing great things
+in this world are nine-tenths personal vanity.  I believe that when we
+leave this planet we go to a higher star, where our incompleteness here
+will be made complete; and perhaps we are spared a term of probation if
+we make ourselves as complete here as mortal conditions will permit.
+And, possibly, once in a great while, two human beings are permitted to
+effect that completeness together."
+
+They were both in an exalted mood.  The wood was very still, its beauty
+incomparable.  And they might already have been on another star.
+
+Across that divine balsam-scented stillness came the deep imperative
+notes of a bell.
+
+Clavering twitched his shoulders impatiently.
+
+"Let them go on their screaming picnic," he said.  "We stay here.  Did
+you mean that, Mary?"
+
+"Yes, I meant it.  We will not go to Europe at all--except to visit my
+Dolomites some day.  When you are writing I'll come up here."
+
+"I don't know that I shall ask that sacrifice of you.  A part of your
+brain is asleep now, but it is a very active and insistent part when
+awake.  In time you might revert--and resentment is a fatal canker; but
+let's leave it open.  It is generally a mistake to settle things
+off-hand.  Let them alone and they settle themselves."
+
+"Very well.  At all events, while we are here, I shall not give it
+another thought.  The present at least is perfect."
+
+"Yes, it is perfect!"  He put both arms about her.  The past was a blank
+to both.  Their pulsing lips met in the wonder and the ecstasy of the
+first kiss of youth, of profound and perfect and imperishable love.  They
+clung together exalted and exulting and for the moment at least they were
+one.
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+They ate their dinner under the amused eyes of Mrs. Larsing, who had
+served dinners à deux before to couples that had "lost their way."
+Afterward they sat by the fire and talked desultorily: a great deal
+about themselves; sometimes wandering to the subjects that had
+interested them most before they had met each other.  Clavering told
+her of the many plays he had written, and burned; because in his
+inordinate respect for the drama he had found them, when not wholly
+bad, too good to be good enough.  But the long practice had given him a
+certain mastery of technique, and when she had set his brain on fire he
+had had less trouble than most young playwrights in compelling his
+imagination to adapt itself to the inexorable framework.  He had always
+felt that the imagination, what is called, for want of a better term,
+the "creative faculty," was there, but it was lethargic; it sometimes
+roused itself to spurts and flashes during wakeful nights, but slept
+like a boa-constrictor that had swallowed a pig when he tried to invoke
+it.  No doubt, as Gora had told him, his life had been too easy and
+agreeable; he made a good deal of money with no particular effort, he
+was a favorite with the cleverest men and women in New York, and he had
+no one to think of but himself.  His mother was dead and his sisters
+married.  And there was no doubt that if you were on top, a
+personality, New York was the most enchanting place in the world to
+live in, just as it must be the most unsatisfactory for the poor and
+insignificant.  To have conquered New York meant more--several thousand
+times more--than conquering all the rest of the United States put
+together, with New York left out.  Moreover, it was the only place
+where you could have any real fun, if you wanted your fun with the sort
+of men who drifted to New York from all parts of the nation as
+naturally as pilgrims went to Mecca.  If it was your fate to be a
+politician, Washington, of course, was the goal, but that, in his
+opinion, was merely moving from a little small-town to a big one, and
+he thanked his stars he did not have to live in a place where there was
+nothing but politics and society.  In New York you had only to help
+yourself to any phase of life you wanted.
+
+Mary smiled as she remembered the contemptuous remark of another New
+York convert: "Oh, Washington is merely an island outside of New York,"
+and she fell to wondering what New York would have been like if it had
+not been fed so persistently by those streams of eager and ambitious
+brains debouching into it from every part of a by no means unambitious
+and negligible commonwealth.  Another island, probably.  Certainly it
+was the most exhilarating place in the world today, with its atmosphere
+of invincible security and prosperity, its surging tides of life.  No
+wonder it was impossible for the intensive New Yorker to realize that
+four thousand miles away a greater world was falling to ruin.
+
+She told him something of the old political life of Vienna, continually
+agitated by some "Balkan Question"; of the general dislike of the
+"Heir," whose violent death at Sarajevo had been the death knell of
+European peace; apprehensions of the day when he should ascend the
+throne, for he was intensely clerical and reactionary.  If he had
+survived until the old Emperor's death, and there had been no war, it
+was doubtful if there would not have been a "palace revolution" within
+six months of his succession.  It was also possible that the people
+would have had their revolution, for they were becoming enlightened and
+discontented, and powerful men in the highest offices of the Government
+were in sympathy with them.
+
+"I suppose you mean this Prince Hohenhauer for one," said Clavering.
+
+"Hohenhauer believed that every throne in Europe would be overturned
+before the middle of the twentieth century, and that it was the part of
+wise leaders to prepare not only themselves but the people for a
+republican form of government.  He had the greatest admiration for the
+principles on which this Republic was founded, and said that Europe was
+to be congratulated that we had made the mistakes for her to avoid.
+Much as the rest of the world congratulates itself that Bolshevism was
+tried out in Russia and made a ghastly mess of improving the condition
+of the underdog before the masses in other countries had time to lose
+their heads.  I've no doubt that he will be the next Chancellor of
+Austria, and that when he gets the reins of power in his hands, he'll
+keep a firm hold on them, which is more than any one else has done----"
+
+"What do you suppose has brought him to this country?"
+
+"I fancy he has come to obtain the moral support of the American
+Government in whatever plan he may have made for putting Austria on her
+feet again."
+
+"Have you any idea of what that plan may be?"  Clavering was watching
+her intently, his ear attuned to every inflection of her voice.  But
+her tones were as impersonal as if reciting a page out of ancient
+history, and her gaze was frank and direct.
+
+"I can only guess.  Personally I should think his present plan would be
+an alliance with Bavaria and other South German States--a South German
+Confederacy.  That would make a powerful combination, and as Bavaria
+has always hated Prussia, she would be the last to lend herself to any
+schemes of vengeance the north may cherish--particularly if she remains
+a republic.  And, of course, she would assume her share of the Allied
+debt. . . .  It would be a wonderful thing if it could be brought off.
+Vienna"--her eyes sparkled--"Vienna, of course, would be the
+capital--and again one of the great capitals of Europe.  Perhaps the
+greatest."
+
+"Were you ever closely associated with Hohenhauer in any of his
+schemes?"
+
+"He had no immediate schemes then.  He only awaited events.  While the
+old Emperor lived no move was possible; he was most illogically adored
+by his people.  But Hohenhauer told me more than once that he was only
+biding his time."
+
+"And what of that preposterous estate of his in the old
+Galicia--sixteen million acres, wasn't it?  Did he expect to hang on to
+that under a popular form of government?"
+
+"He would have retained the castle and a few hundred acres, for he
+naturally had a great affection for his birthplace; and divided the
+rest among the people, whose natural inheritance it was.  But he could
+do nothing until the proper time, for such an act would undoubtedly
+have resulted in confiscation and banishment.  He would have
+accomplished no good, and lost his immediate power for usefulness
+besides.  Like all those old-world statesmen, he knows how to play a
+waiting game."
+
+"Sounds like a great man--if there are any such."
+
+"I should certainly call him a great man," said Mary, but still with
+that note of complete personal indifference in her voice.  "He not only
+has immense brain power and personality, but farsight and a thorough
+understanding of the people, and sympathy with them.  Even the
+Social-Democrats liked and trusted him.  And he has more than the
+ordinary politician's astuteness in trimming his sails; but coming out,
+nevertheless, at the end of the course exactly at the point he had
+aimed for.  If he captures the bridge, to change the simile, he'll
+steer Austria out of her deep waters.  No doubt of that."
+
+"Exactly what was the part you intended to play in Austria?" he asked.
+"You have never told me."
+
+"I thought we were not to talk of that.  It is impossible to make
+deliberate plans, anyhow.  Only, there is a part for any one who loves
+the country and has the brains and the wealth and the political
+knowledge to help her."
+
+"I have never quite understood why it should be Austria.  Why not
+Hungary?  After all----"
+
+"I never cared for anything in Hungary but the castle, which was
+wonderfully situated in the mountains of Transylvania.  The
+surroundings were wild beyond description and the peasants the most
+picturesque and interesting in Europe.  But even if Buda Pesth had
+appealed to me socially, which it never did, there were deep personal
+reasons that made me dislike Hungary--I never spent a night in the
+Zattiany palace until I turned it into a hospital.  But Vienna!  I
+always lived in Vienna when I could, even during my first years in
+Europe, and later I made it my home.  It is the most fascinating city,
+to me at least, in the world.  Besides, Hungary is in the hands of
+Horthy and Bethlen, who have no more idea of making a republic of it
+than of permitting any one else to be king.  There is no rôle for----"
+
+"Hullo!  Hullo!  Hullo!"
+
+Clavering sprang to his feet.  "Shall we take the bull by the horns and
+go to meet them?" he asked.  "Poor devils!  They'll hate us for looking
+so fresh."
+
+
+
+
+LII
+
+They were forced to submit to a vast amount of good-natured chaffing,
+for they had invited it, but it was the sort of chaffing with which
+this amiable company would have victimized any pair that had recently
+met, and found each other's society suddenly preferable to that of the
+crowd.
+
+They were all very tired.  Mr. Dinwiddie, after refreshing his guests
+and himself with highballs, went to his room and to bed.  Rollo Todd
+announced that it was time to go back to New York to rest, and all fell
+down on the divans or floor for half an hour before going up to revive
+themselves with a hot and cold shower.
+
+But fatigue passes away quickly in the mountains.  They were as lively
+as ever the next morning, although they unanimously elected to spend
+the day on the lake or idling in the woods.  Clavering and Mary walked
+to another gorge he knew of and sat for hours among boulders and ferns
+on the brink of the stream, and surrounded by the maples with their
+quietly rustling leaves.
+
+When they returned, Miss Darling, attired in ferns, was executing what
+she called the wood-nymph's dance, and Todd and Minor were capering
+about her making horrible faces and pretending to be satyrs.  The rest
+were keeping time with hands and feet.  All had agreed that not a
+letter nor a newspaper should be brought to the camp during their eight
+days' absence from civilization.  Freedom should be complete.  It
+seemed to Clavering that the expression of every face had changed.
+They all wore the somewhat fixed and dreamy look one unconsciously
+assumes "in the woods."  It was only a few moments before the onlookers
+had joined hands and were dancing around the central figures; chanting
+softly; closing in on them; retreating; turning suddenly to dance with
+one another . . . but with a curious restraint as if they were reviving
+some old classic of the forest and were afraid of abandonment.  Almost
+unconsciously Clavering and Mary joined in the dance.  Only Mr.
+Dinwiddie, a smile half-puzzled, half-cynical, in his eyes, remained a
+spectator.  They swayed rhythmically, like tides, the chanting was very
+low and measured, the faces rapt.  Even Todd and Minor looked exalted.
+Impossible to imagine they had ever been Sophisticates.  They were
+creatures of the woods, renegades for a time, perhaps, but the woods
+had claimed them.
+
+Then Mr. Dinwiddie did an impish thing.  He inserted a disk in the
+victrola, and at once they began to jazz, hardly conscious of the
+transition.
+
+
+
+
+LIII
+
+At nine o'clock the moon was on the lake, and several couples,
+announcing their need of exercise, went out in boats.
+
+Clavering rowed with long swift strokes until the others were far
+behind.  Mary, muffled in a warm white coat and with a scarf twisted
+round her head like an Oriental turban, lay on a pile of cushions in
+the bottom of the boat, her head against the seat.  She had the
+sensation of floating in space.  From the middle of the lake the forest
+on every side was a mass of shadows, and nothing was visible but that
+high vast firmament sprinkled with silver--silver dust scattered by the
+arrogant moon.  The great silver disk, which, Mary murmured, looked
+like the tomb of dead gods, seemed to challenge mortals as well as
+planets to deny that he was lord of all, and that even human emotions
+must dwindle under his splendor.
+
+"The moon is so impersonal," she sighed.  "I wonder why the poets have
+made so much of it?  I'm sure it cares nothing about lovers--less about
+poets--and thinks the old days, when the world was a heaving splitting
+chaos, and glaciers were tearing what was already made of it to bits,
+were vastly superior to the finished perfection of form today.  Like
+all old things.  If it has the gods in there, no doubt it wakes them up
+periodically to remind them how much better things were in their time.
+Myself, I prefer the sun.  It is far more glamoring."
+
+"That is because you can't look it in the eye," said Clavering, smiling
+down on her.  "You really don't know it half as well, and endow it with
+all sorts of mysterious attributes.  I think I prefer the moon, because
+it is inimitable.  You can counterfeit the light and warmth and heat of
+the sun, and even its color.  But silver is used to describe the
+complexion of the moon only for want of a better word.  It is neither
+silver nor white, but is the result of some mysterious alchemy known
+only to itself.  And its temperature does not affect our bodies at all.
+You cannot deny that it has exercised a most beneficent effect on the
+spirits of lovers and poets for all the centuries we know of.  Every
+pair of lovers has some cherished memories of moonlight, and poets
+would probably have starved without its aid.  It is a most benevolent
+old god, and the one thing connected with Earth that doesn't mind
+working overtime."
+
+"I'm sure it must be frayed at the edges and hollow at the core.  And
+when it is in the three-quarters it looks exactly like a fish that has
+lost its platter."
+
+"If you continue to insult the moon, I shall take you back to camp and
+ask Minor to teach you how to jazz."
+
+"I love the moon," said Mary contentedly, and pushing a cushion between
+her head and the sharp edge of the seat, "I'd like to stay out all
+night."
+
+They continued to talk nonsense for a while and then fell silent.  When
+the boat was almost at the head of the lake Clavering turned it into a
+long water lane where the maples met overhead and the low soft leaves
+kept up a continual whispering.  It was as dark as a tunnel, but he
+knew every inch of the way and presently shot out into another lake,
+small enough for its shores to be sharply outlined under the full light
+of the moon, which appeared to have poised itself directly overhead.
+
+Here it was less silent than on the larger lake.  There was a chorus of
+frogs among the lily pads, an owl hooted wistfully in the forest, and
+they heard an angry snort from the underbrush, followed by a trampling
+retreat.
+
+"I fancy if we had lingered quietly in that passage we should have seen
+deer drinking from that patch of sward over there," said Clavering.
+"But I was not thinking of deer."
+
+"What were you thinking of?"
+
+"Why--you--in a way, I suppose.  If I was thinking at all.  I was
+merely filled with a vast content.  God!  I have found more than I ever
+dreamed any man could imagine he wanted.  Vastly more than any man's
+deserts.  It is an astonishing thing for a man to be able to say."
+
+Mary sat up suddenly.  "Be careful.  A little superstition is a good
+thing to keep in one's bag of precautions."
+
+"I feel good enough to disdain it.  Of course I may be struck by
+lightning tomorrow, or the car may turn turtle when we go down to be
+married, but I refuse to contemplate anything of the sort.  I feel as
+arrogant as that moon up there, who may have all the gods inside him,
+and do not mind proclaiming aloud that earth is heaven."
+
+"Well--it is."  She was not superstitious herself, but she was suddenly
+invaded by a sinister inexplicable fear, and smiled the more brightly
+to conceal it.  But she lowered her eyelids and glanced hastily about
+her, wondering if an enemy could be hiding in those dark woods.  She
+was not conscious of possessing enemies venomous enough to assassinate
+her, but she knew little of Clavering's life after all, and he was the
+sort of man who must inspire hate as well as love . . . danger
+assuredly was lurking somewhere . . . it seemed to wash against her
+brain, carrying its message. . . .  But there were no wild beasts in
+the Adirondacks, nor even reptiles. . . .  Nor a sound.  The owl had
+given up his attempt to entice his lady out for a rendezvous and the
+frogs had paused for breath.  There was not the faintest rustle in the
+forest except those eternally whispering leaves and the faint surging
+tide in the tree-tops.  That ugly invading fear was still in her eyes
+as she met his.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked.  "You look frightened."
+
+"I am a little--I have a curious feeling of uneasiness--as if something
+were going to happen."
+
+
+  "'Out of the depths of the hollow gloom,
+  On her soul's bare sands she heard it boom,
+  The measured tide of the sea of doom,'"
+
+he quoted lightly.  "I fancy when one is too happy, the jealous gods
+run the quicksilver of our little spiritual barometers down for a
+moment, merely to remind us that we are mortals after all."
+
+The shadow on her face lifted, and she smiled into his ardent eyes.
+
+"Ah, Mary!" he whispered.  "Mary!"
+
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+As they left the boathouse an hour later and walked up the steep path
+to the camp, once more that sense of coming disaster drove into her
+mind and banished the memory of the past hour, when she had forgotten
+it.  What did it mean?  She recalled that she had had dark
+presentiments before in her life, and they had always come in the form
+of this sudden mental invasion, as if some malignant homeless spirit
+exulted in being the first to hint at the misfortune to come.
+
+But the camp was silent.  Every one, apparently, had gone to bed, and
+slept the sleep of valiant souls and weary bodies.  One lamp burned in
+the living-room, and Clavering turned it out and they parted
+lingeringly, and she went up to her room.
+
+She had barely taken off her coat and scarf when she heard a tap on her
+door.  She stared for a moment in panic, then crossed the room swiftly
+and opened it.  Mr. Dinwiddie, wrapped against the cold in a padded
+dressing-gown and with noiseless slippers on his feet, entered and
+closed the door behind him.
+
+"What has happened?" she demanded sharply.  "Something.  I know it."
+
+"Don't look so frightened, my dear.  I have no bad news for you.  Only
+it's rather annoying, and I knew I shouldn't get a word alone with you
+in the morning."
+
+"What is it?  What is it?"
+
+"I had this telegram an hour ago from Trent."  He took a sheet of paper
+from the pocket of his dressing-gown, covered with handwriting.  "Of
+course those bumpkins down in Huntersville took their time about
+telephoning it up.  Luckily the telephone is over in Larsing's room----"
+
+Mary had snatched the paper from his hand and was reading it aloud.
+
+
+"Hohenhauer took morning train for Huntersville stop will spend night
+there and go to camp in morning stop must see M. Z. stop don't let
+anything prevent stop very important stop he will not ask you to put
+him up stop thought best to warn you as you might be planning
+expedition.  Trent."
+
+
+"Hohenhauer!" exclaimed Mary, and now, oddly enough, she felt only
+astonishment and annoyance.  "Why should he come all this way to see
+me?  He could have written if he had anything to say."  And then she
+added passionately, "I won't have him here!"
+
+"I thought perhaps you'd rather go down to Huntersville to see him,"
+said Mr. Dinwiddie, looking out of the window.  "Besides, he would make
+thirteen at table.  I can take you down in the morning and telephone
+him to wait for us at the same time I order the motor to be sent up."
+
+"I don't know that I'll see him at all."
+
+"But you must realize that if you don't go down he'll come here.  I
+don't fancy he's the sort of man to take that long journey and be put
+off with a rebuff.  From what I know of him he not only would drive up
+here, but, if you had gone off for the day, wait until you returned.  I
+don't see how you can avoid him."
+
+"No, you are right.  I shall have to see him--but what excuse can I
+give Lee?  He must never know the truth, and he'll want to go with us."
+
+"I've thought of that.  I'll tell him that Trent is sending up some
+important papers for you to sign, and as some one is obliged to go to
+Huntersville to check up the provisions that will arrive on the train
+tomorrow morning, I've told Trent's clerk to wait there, as I prefer to
+see to the other matter myself.  I--I--hate deceiving Lee----"
+
+"So do I, but it cannot be helped.  Did he bring me up here to get me
+away from Hohenhauer?"
+
+Mr. Dinwiddie's complexion suddenly looked darker in the light of the
+solitary candle.  "Well--you see----"
+
+"I suspected it for a moment and then forgot it.  No doubt it is the
+truth.  So much the more reason why he should know nothing about that
+man's following me.  Why should he be made uneasy--perhaps unhappy?
+But what excuse to go off without him?"
+
+"They have a Ford down there.  I'll tell them to send that.  With the
+provisions there'll be no room for four people."
+
+"That will answer.  And I'll give Hohenhauer a piece of my mind."
+
+"But, Mary, you don't suppose that one of the most important men in
+Europe, with limited time at his disposal, would take that journey
+unless he had something very important indeed to say to you?  Not even
+for your _beaux yeux_, I should think, or he'd have asked Trent to get
+him an invitation to spend several days at the camp.  I must say I'm
+devoured with curiosity----"
+
+Mary shrugged her shoulders.  "I'm too sleepy for curiosity.  What time
+must we start?"
+
+"About nine, if the car gets here on time.  It takes two hours to come
+up the mountain, and they'll hardly be induced to start before seven.
+I'll tell Larsing to telephone at six."
+
+"It's now eleven.  We have eight hours for sleep.  Good night, and
+believe that I am immensely grateful.  You've arranged it all
+wonderfully."
+
+She stamped her foot as Mr. Dinwiddie silently closed the door.
+
+"Moritz!  _What_ does he want?  _Why_ has he followed me here?  But he
+has no power whatever over my life, so why should I care what he wants?
+. . .  But that this--this--should be interrupted!"
+
+She undressed without calm and slept ill.
+
+
+
+
+LV
+
+The flight next morning proved simpler of accomplishment than she had
+anticipated.  The men were going to a neighboring lake to fish, Larsing
+having excited them with the prospect of abundant trout; and why fish
+in your own lake when you may take a tramp of several miles through the
+woods to another?  They begged Clavering to go with them, and as man
+cannot exist for long in the rarefied atmosphere of the empyrean
+without growing restive, he was feeling rather let down, and cherished
+a sneaking desire for a long day alone with men.
+
+But he told Mary that he did not want to go out of their woods and down
+to that hideous village for any such purpose as to watch her sign
+papers, and he stood on the landing waving his hat as she and Mr.
+Dinwiddie crossed the lake in the motor boat to the waiting Ford.  For
+once his intuitions failed him, and he tramped off with the other men,
+his heart as light as the mountain air, and his head empty of woman.
+
+Mary looked back once at the golden-brown lake, set like a jewel in its
+casket of fragrant trees, and wondered if she would see it again with
+the same eyes.  She was both resentful and uneasy, although she still
+was unable to guess what harm could come of this interview.  If
+Hohenhauer wanted her to go to Washington she could refuse, and he had
+long since lost his old magnetic power over her.
+
+But as the Ford bumped down the steep road between the woods she felt
+less like Mary Ogden every moment . . . those mists of illusion to
+withdraw from her practical brain . . . returning to the heights where
+they belonged . . . she wondered how she could have dared to be so
+unthinkingly happy . . . the sport of the cynical gods? . . .
+sentimental folly that she had called exaltation?  After all!  After
+all!
+
+Could she recapture that mood when she returned?  Certainly, whatever
+this man wanted of her, it would be hard facts, not illusions, he would
+invite her to deal with.  Even when he had been the most passionate of
+lovers, his brain had always seemed to stand aloof, luminous and
+factual.  He had not an illusion.  He saw life as it was, and although
+his manners were suave and polished, and his voice the most beautiful
+she had ever heard, he could be brutally direct when it suited his
+purpose.  For a moment she hated him as ardently as she had for a time
+after he left her.
+
+They descended into lower and lower altitudes until the air grew
+intensely hot, physically depressing after the cold wine of the
+mountains; finally, ten minutes ahead of time, they drove into the
+doubly depressing village of Huntersville.  It was no uglier than
+thousands of other villages and small towns that look as if built to
+demonstrate the American contempt for beauty, but the fact mitigated
+nothing to eyes accustomed to the picturesqueness of mountain villages
+in Europe, where the very roofs are artistic and the peasants have the
+grace to wear the dress of their ancestors.
+
+There were a few farms in the valley, but if Huntersville had not been
+a junction of sorts, it is doubtful if it would have consisted of
+anything but a "general store," now that the saloons were closed.
+There was one long crooked street, with the hotel at one end, the Store
+at the other (containing the post office), and a church, shops for
+automobile supplies, two garages, a drug store, and a candy store;
+eight or ten cottages filled the interstices.  Men were working in the
+fields, but those in Huntersville proper seemed to be exhausted with
+loafing.  Campers going in and out of the woods needing shelter for a
+night, and people demanding meals between trains, kept the dismal
+looking hotel open and reasonably clean.
+
+The situation was very beautiful, for the mountains rose behind and
+there was a brawling stream.
+
+Mr. Dinwiddie having ascertained that "Mr." Hohenhauer had received his
+message and gone for a walk, leaving word he would return at ten
+o'clock, Mary went into the hotel parlor to wait for him.  The room was
+seldom used, patrons, local and otherwise, preferring the Bar of happy
+memories, and it smelled musty.  She opened the windows and glanced
+about distastefully.  The walls were covered with a faded yellow paper,
+torn in places, and the ceiling was smoked and fly-specked.  The worn
+thin carpet seemed to have been chosen for its resemblance to turtle
+soup squirming with vermicelli.  Over the pine mantel, painted yellow,
+were the inevitable antlers, and on a marble-topped table were badly
+executed water lilies under a glass dome.  The furniture was horsehair,
+and she wondered how she and the Austrian statesman were to preserve
+their dignity on the slippery surface.  Then she heard his voice in the
+hall as he stopped to speak to Mr. Dinwiddie, and she glanced out
+curiously.
+
+She had not seen him since a year before the war, but he was little
+changed; improved if anything, for there was more color in his formerly
+pale face.  He was as straight and as thin as ever, his fine head
+erect, without haughtiness; his dark eyes under their heavy lids had
+the same eagle glance.  He was still, she concluded dispassionately,
+the handsomest man she had ever seen, even for an Austrian, the
+handsomest race on earth; he combined high intelligence with a classic
+regularity of feature, grace, dignity; and when the firm lips relaxed
+he had a delightful smile.  If it had not been for his hair, very thick
+white hair, he would have passed for little over forty.  He wore loose
+gray travelling clothes, and every detail was as quietly faultless as
+ever.
+
+She went hastily to the speckled mirror beneath the antlers and
+surveyed herself anxiously.  Her own travelling suit of dark green
+tweed, with its white silk shirt, was as carelessly perfect as his own,
+and the little green turban, with its shaded, drooping feather,
+extremely becoming.  No color set off her fairness like green, but she
+turned away with a sigh.  It was not the eyes of the past three days
+that looked back at her.
+
+And then she remembered that he had not seen her since the renaissance.
+The moment was not without its excitements.
+
+Their meeting was excessively formal.
+
+"Frau Gräfin."
+
+"Excellenz."
+
+She lifted her hand.  He raised it to his lips.
+
+And then he drew back and looked at her with penetrating but smiling
+eyes.
+
+"I had heard, of course," he said gallantly, "but I hardly was
+prepared.  May I say, Frau Gräfin, that you look younger than when I
+had the pleasure of meeting you first?"
+
+"I assure you that I feel many years younger," she replied lightly.
+"May I add that I am delighted to see that you are in the best of
+health?  Your rest in Switzerland has done you good, although it would
+have been better for Austria had it been shorter.  Shall we sit down?"
+
+Two tall dignified bodies adjusted themselves to chairs both slippery
+and bumpy.  He had closed the door behind him.
+
+"Now that the amenities are over, Excellenz," she said with the
+briskness she had picked up from her American friends, "let us come to
+the point.  I infer you did not take a day's journey and put up with
+this abominable hotel to tell me that you are forming a Federation of
+Austria and the South German States.  You were sometimes kind enough to
+ask my help in the past, but I have no influence in Washington."
+
+"No, dear Gräfin.  I do not need your assistance in Washington.  But I
+do need it in Austria, and that is why I am here."
+
+"But it is--was--my intention to return to Austria almost immediately.
+Surely Judge Trent must have told you."
+
+"Yes, dear Gräfin, he told me, but he also told me other things.  I
+shall not waste the little time at our disposal in diplomacy.  He told
+me that you have the intention to marry a young American."  There was
+the faintest accent on the _young_.
+
+Mary was annoyed to feel herself flushing, but she answered coldly, "It
+is quite true that I intend to marry Mr. Clavering."
+
+"And I have come here to ask you to renounce that intention and to
+marry me instead."
+
+"You!"  Mary almost rose from her chair.  "What on earth do you mean?"
+
+"My dear Marie."  He renounced formalities abruptly.  "I think you will
+be able to recall that whether I wrapped my meaning in diplomatic
+phrases or conveyed it by the blunter method, it was always
+sufficiently clear to the trained understanding.  I have never known a
+more trained or acute understanding than yours.  I wish you to marry
+me, and I beg you to listen to my reasons."
+
+She gave the little foreign shrug she had almost forgotten.  "I will
+listen, of course.  Need I add that I am highly honored?  If I were not
+so astonished, no doubt I should be more properly appreciative of that
+honor.  Pray let me hear the reasons."  Her tone was satirical, but she
+was beginning to feel vaguely uneasy.
+
+Neither her words nor her inflections ruffled the calm of that long
+immobile face with its half-veiled powerful eyes.
+
+"Let us avert all possible misunderstandings at the beginning," he said
+suavely.  "I shall not pretend that I have fallen in love with you
+again, for although my gallantry prompts me to such a natural
+statement, I have not the faintest hope of deceiving you.  What I felt
+for you once can never be revived, for I loved you more than I have
+ever loved any woman; and when such love burns itself out, its ashes
+are no more to be rekindled than the dust of the corpse.  You thought I
+fell in love with my pretty young wife, but I was merely fond and
+appreciative of her.  I knew that the end had come for us, and that if
+I did not recognize that sad fact, you would.  My marriage, which, as
+you know, was imperative, afforded a graceful climax to a unique
+episode in the lives of both of us.  There was no demoralizing interval
+of subterfuge and politely repressed ennui.  On the other hand, it did
+not degenerate into one of those dreary and loosely knit _liaisons_,
+lasting on into old age.  We left each other on the heights, although
+the cliff was beginning to crumble."
+
+"Really, Moritz!  I hope you have not come up here to indulge in
+sentimental reminiscence.  Why rake up that old--episode?  I assure you
+I have practically forgotten it."
+
+"And I can assure you that I never felt less sentimental.  I wish
+merely to emphasize the fact that it was complete in itself, and
+therefore as impossible of resuscitation as the dead.  Otherwise, you
+might naturally leap to the conclusion that I was an elderly romantic
+gentleman----"
+
+"Oh, never!  It is obvious that you are inclined to be brutally frank.
+But, as you said, time is short."
+
+"If what I said sounded brutal, it was merely to remind you that
+love--the intense passionate love I have no doubt you feel for this
+young man who helps you to realize your renewed youth--never lasts.
+And when this new love of yours burns itself out--you never had the
+reputation of being very constant, dear Marie--you will have an alien
+young man on your hands, while that remarkable brain of yours will be
+demanding its field of action.  You are European, not American--why,
+even your accent is stronger than mine!  That may be due to an
+uncommonly susceptible ear, but as a matter of fact your mind has a
+stronger accent still.  You became thoroughly Europeanized, one of us,
+and--I say this quite impartially--the most statesman-like woman in
+Europe.  Your mind was still plastic when you came to us--and your
+plastic years are long over, _ma chère_.  If your mind had become as
+young as your body, you would have bitterly resented it.  You were
+always very proud of that intellect of yours--and with the best of
+reasons."
+
+Mary was staring out of the window.  She recalled that she had faced
+the fact of the old mind in the young brain when she first discovered
+that she loved Clavering.  How could she have forgotten . . . for a few
+short weeks--and up there? . . .  She raised her eyes to the mountain.
+From where she sat she could not see the top.  It looked like an
+impenetrable rampart, rising to the skies.
+
+"Can you tell me with honesty and candor," he continued in those same
+gentle tones that had always reminded her of limpid water running over
+iron, "--and for all your subtlety your mind is too arrogant and
+fearless to be otherwise than honest _au fond_--that you believe you
+could remain satisfied with love alone?  For more, let us say, than a
+year?"
+
+She moved restlessly.  "Perhaps not.  But I had planned to live in
+Vienna.  He would spend only a part of the year there with me.  His own
+interests are here, of course.  It would be a perfectly workable
+arrangement."
+
+"Are you sure?  If you are, I must conclude that in the mental
+confusion love so often induces, you have lost temporarily your
+remarkable powers of clear and coherent thought.  Do you not realize
+that you would no longer be Gräfin Zattiany, you would be Mrs. Lee
+Clavering?  Do you imagine for a moment that you could play the great
+rôle in Austrian affairs you have set yourself, handicapped by an
+American name--and an American husband?  Not with all your gifts, your
+wealth, your genius for playing on that complex instrument called human
+nature.  Austria may be a Republic of sorts, but it is still Austria.
+You would be an American and an outsider--a presumptuous interloper."
+
+She stared at him aghast.  "I--oh!--I had not thought of that.  It
+seems incomprehensible--but I had never thought of myself as Mrs.
+Clavering.  I have been Gräfin Zattiany so long!"
+
+"And your plans were well-defined, and your ambition to play a great
+rôle on the modern European stage possessed you utterly until you met
+this young man--is it not so?"
+
+"Oh, yes, but----"
+
+"I understand.  It must have been a quite marvellous experience, after
+those barren years, to feel yourself glowing with all the vitalities of
+youth once more; to bring young men to your feet with a glance and to
+fancy yourself in love----"
+
+"Fancy!"  She interrupted him passionately.  "I am in love--and
+more--more than I ever was with you.  Until I met him I did not even
+guess that I had the capacity to love again.  It was the last thing I
+wanted.  Abhorrent!  But . . . but . . . he has something for me that
+you--not even you--ever had . . . that I had given up hope of finding
+long before I met you. . . ."
+
+She stopped, coloring and hesitating.  She had an intense desire to
+make this man understand, but she shivered, as if her proud reserve
+were a visible garment that she had torn off and flung at his feet,
+leaving her naked to his ironic gaze.
+
+He was leaning forward, regarding her through his veiled eyes.  Their
+light was not ironic, but it was very penetrating.
+
+"And what is that something, Marie?" he asked softly.
+
+"I--you know those things cannot be put into words."
+
+"I fancy they can.  It is merely one more delusion of the senses.  One
+of the imagination's most devilish tricks.  I had it for you and you
+for me--for a time!  In the intimacies of either a _liaison_ or
+matrimony that supreme delusion is soon scattered, _ma chère_."
+
+"But I believe it."  She spoke obstinately, although that brawling
+stream seemed to take on a note of derision.
+
+"Do you?  Not in the depths of your clear brain.  The mist on top is
+dense and hot--but, alas for those mists!"
+
+"I refuse to discuss it," she said haughtily.  "Why do you wish to
+marry me yourself?"
+
+"Because I need your partnership as much as you need mine.  Even if you
+returned to Austria unencumbered, you could accomplish less alone than
+with a man of equal endowments and greater power beside you.  Two
+strong brains and characters with similar purpose can always accomplish
+more together than alone.  I intend to rule and to save Austria, and I
+need you, your help, your advice, your subtlety, your compelling
+fascination, and your great personality."
+
+"Do you intend to make yourself king?" she asked insolently, although
+his words had thrilled her.
+
+"You know that is a foolish question.  I do not even use my title
+there.  But I intend to make Vienna the capital of a great and powerful
+Republic, and I therefore ask you to renounce, before it is too late,
+this commonplace and unworthy dream of young love, and stand beside me.
+Youth--real youth--and the best years of maturity are the seasons for
+love.  You and I have sterner duties.  Do you suppose that I would
+sacrifice Austria for some brief wild hope of human happiness?  And you
+are only two years younger than I am.  Nothing can alter the march of
+the years.  Moreover, you owe to Austria this wonderful rejuvenescence
+of yours.  Steinach is not an American."
+
+She stamped her foot.  "You descend to quibbling.  And I have more than
+repaid Austria all that I owe her."
+
+"You have given her money and service, but she expects more, and you
+pledged yourself to her before you left.  And don't forget that she is
+the country of your deliberate adoption.  A far more momentous thing
+than any mere accident of birth.  You did not return to America when
+Zattiany died.  You never even paid her a brief visit after your
+marriage.  You would not be here now but for the imperative necessities
+of business.  You are Austrian to your marrow."
+
+"I had a rôle thrust on me and I played it.  My parents came to Europe
+every year until they died.  When Zattiany went, there were no ties to
+draw me back and habit is strong.  But--underneath--I don't believe
+that I have ever been other than Mary Ogden."
+
+She blushed as she said it, and he looked at her keenly.
+
+"I think I understand.  He is a very clever young man--of an
+outstanding cleverness, I am told.  Or it may be that he is merely in
+love, and love's delusions are infinite--for a time.  I doubt if a
+young man with so brilliant an intellect would, if he faced himself in
+honest detachment, admit that he believed anything of the sort.  Nor do
+you, my dear Marie, nor do you."
+
+She twisted her hands together, but would not raise her eyes.  He bent
+forward again and said harshly:
+
+"Marie!  Glance inward.  Do you see nothing that causes you to feel
+ashamed and foolish?  Do you--_you_--fail to recognize the indecency of
+a woman of your mental age permitting herself to fancy that she is
+experiencing the authentic passions of youth?  Are you capable of
+creating life?  Can you love with unsullied memory?  Have you the
+ideals of youth, the plasticity, the hopes, the illusions?  Have you
+still even that power of desperate mental passion, so often
+subordinating the merely physical, of the mature woman who seeks for
+the last time to find in love what love has not?  The final delusion.
+No, Marie.  Your revivified glands have restored to you the appearance
+and the strength of youth, but, although you have played with a rôle
+that appealed to your vanity, to your histrionic powers--with yourself
+as chief audience--your natural desire to see if you could not be--to
+yourself, again--as young as you appear, you have no more illusion in
+your soul than when you were a withered old woman in Vienna."
+
+She looked at him with hostile but agonized eyes.
+
+"Your calculated brutality does not affect me in the least.  And you
+are merely one more victim of convention--like those old women in New
+York.  It never has been, therefore it never can be.  Many women are
+not able to bear children, even in youth."
+
+"It is your turn to quibble.  Tell me: until you were attracted to this
+young man--attracted, no doubt, because he was so unlike the European
+of your long experience--had you deviated from the conclusion, arrived
+at many years before, that you had had enough of love--of sex--to
+satisfy any woman?  You implied as much to me a few moments since.  I
+know the mental part of you so well that I am positive the mere thought
+would have disgusted you.  If you had been starved all your life it
+would be understandable, but you had experimented and deluded yourself
+again and again--and you were burnt out when you came to Vienna to
+live--burnt out, not only physically but spiritually.  Your imagination
+was as arid as a desert without an oasis.  If any man had made love to
+you then, you would merely have turned on him your weary disillusioned
+eyes, or laughed cynically at him and yourself.  Your keen aesthetic
+sense would have been shocked.  You were playing then an important and
+ambitious rôle, you had the greatest political salon in Vienna--in
+Europe--and you went away to rest that you might continue to play it,
+not that you might feel fresh enough once more to have _liaisons_ like
+other foolish old women. . . .  But the part you played then was a
+bagatelle to the one awaiting you now.  With your splendid mental
+gifts, your political genius, your acquired statecraft, your wealth,
+and your restored beauty, you could become the most powerful woman in
+Europe.  But only as my wife.  Even you are not strong enough to play
+the part alone.  There is too much prejudice against women to permit
+you to pull more than hidden strings.  Masculine jealousy of women is
+far more irritable in a democracy than in a monarchy, where women of
+rank are expected to play a decorative--and tactful part in politics.
+But if they step down and come into conflict with ambitious men of the
+people, class jealousy aggravates sex jealousy.  You might have a salon
+again and become a power somewhat in the old fashion, but you never
+would be permitted to play a great public rôle.  But as the consort (I
+think the word will pass) of the President--or Chancellor--you could
+wield almost sensational power."
+
+"I should probably be quite overshadowed by you," she murmured; but she
+was hardly conscious of speaking.  Her brain was whirling.
+
+"Your position would be too eminent for that, even if I wished it,
+which I assuredly should not.  I value you too highly.  Perhaps I am
+one of the few men in Europe who admit--and believe--that a woman may
+have as powerful and accomplished an intellect as any man.  I did not
+appreciate your mind as you deserved when I loved you, but I did during
+those subsequent years in Vienna."
+
+"You did not ask me to marry you then--when you appreciated me so
+highly.  You never seemed to know whether you were talking to a man or
+a woman when you were with me.  And yet I was, possibly, more
+interesting psychologically than I had ever been."
+
+"No man is interested in an old woman's psychology.  I am not
+interested in your psychology today.  And I did not ask you to marry me
+then for a great many reasons.  I was too handicapped to play a great
+rôle myself, you will remember.  Nor could you have been of the same
+service to me.  Even if your fatigued mind had been refreshed, by your
+stay in Hungary, you had lost the beauty and the energy, the power of
+ardent interest in the affairs of state, which have now been restored
+to you.  With your rare gifts and your renewed youth, I repeat you have
+it in your power to be the most famous woman in Europe, and perhaps the
+most useful.  But not with a young alien husband.  Not only would you
+automatically revert to the status of an American, but the dignity
+which, unlike so many women of your age who had been _dames galantes_,
+you took care to impress on the world, would be hopelessly sacrificed.
+Incredible.  To spend yourself on a love affair, wantonly to throw away
+an historic career, merely because a young man has hypnotized you into
+the delusion that you may once more enjoy the passions of youth----"
+
+"Stop!  You shall not!"  She had sprung to her feet.  Her face was
+drawn and pinched but her eyes were blazing.  "Every word you say is
+for a purpose.  If that were all I should have hated him.  As much as I
+hate you.  My mind never dwelt on that--not for a moment--I--I never
+faced it.  You don't know what you're talking about."
+
+"Ah, but I do."  He had risen also, and he put his hands on her
+shoulders.  They were long thin hands but very powerful, and it seemed
+to her that they sank slowly through her flesh, until, however
+painlessly, they gripped the skeleton underneath.  "Look at me, Marie.
+Your Mary Ogden died many, many years ago.  She died, I should say, at
+the first touch of Otto Zattiany.  There was nothing in your new life
+to revive her, assuredly not your first lover.  Certainly you were
+Marie Zattiany, the most subtle, complex, and fascinating woman in
+Europe when I met you--but abominably disillusioned even then.  I
+revived your youth for a time, but never your girlhood.  You have been
+able to deceive yourself here in the country of that girlhood, for a
+time, with this interesting young gentleman in love with you, and, no
+doubt, extremely ardent."
+
+"Oh!"  Her head sank.  But she could not turn away, for his hands still
+gripped her shoulders.  The roar of the stream sounded to her horrified
+ears like the crash of falling ruins.
+
+"Listen, Marie," he said more gently.  "If I have been brutal, it was
+merely because there was no other way to fling you head first out of
+your fool's paradise.  If I had not known the common sense that forms
+the solid lower stratum of your mind, I should not have come here to
+say anything at all.  You would not have been worth it.  But remember,
+Marie, that under this new miracle of science, the body may go back but
+never the mind.  You, your ego, your mind, your _self_, are no younger
+than your fifty-eight hard-lived years.  And what object in being young
+again for any of us if we are to make the same old mistakes?  Remember,
+that when you were as young as you look now you had no such opportunity
+offered you as in this terrible period of European history.  Nor could
+you have taken advantage of it if you had, for mere mental brilliancy
+and ambition cannot take the place of political experience and an
+intellect educated by the world.  It may be that we shall both be
+destroyed, that our efforts will avail nothing, and we shall all be
+swallowed up in chaos.  But at least we shall have done what we could.
+And I know you well enough to believe that such an implacable end would
+give you greater satisfaction than dallying in the arms of a handsome
+young husband."
+
+He pushed her back into her chair, and resumed his own.  "Would you
+like to smoke?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."  She looked at him with bitter eyes, but she had recaptured her
+threatened composure.  He regarded her with admiration but they smoked
+in silence for several moments.  Then he spoke again.
+
+"You remember Elka Zsáky, I suppose?  She was several years older than
+you and one of the _dames galantes_ of her day.  She has taken the
+treatment and looks many years younger, at least, than when she was a
+painted old hag with a red wig.  She is still forced to employ
+artifice, but she has lovers again, and that is all she did it for.
+Vienna is highly amused.  No doubt all women of her sort will take it
+for no other purpose.  But many of the intellectual women of Europe are
+taking it, too--and with the sole purpose of reinvigorating their
+mental faculties and recapturing the physical endurance necessary to
+their work.  I happen to know of a woman scientist, Frau Bloch, who is
+now working sixteen hours a day, and she had had a bitter struggle with
+her enfeebled forces to work at all.  Lorenz is no more remarkable.  He
+seems to be the only disciple besides yourself that this country has
+heard of, but I could name a hundred men, out of my own knowledge, who
+are once more working with all the vigor of youth----"
+
+"Yes," she interrupted sarcastically.  "And without a thought of women,
+of course."
+
+"Probably not."  He waved his hand negligently.  "But incidentally.
+That is where men have the supreme advantage of women.  The woman is an
+incident in their lives, even when sincerely in love.  And if these men
+indulge occasionally in the pleasures of youth, or even marry young
+wives, the world will not be interested.  But with women, who renew
+their youth and return to its follies, it will be quite another matter.
+If they are not made the theme of obscene lampoons they may count
+themselves fortunate.  There will certainly be verbal lampoons in
+private."
+
+"Orthodoxy!  Orthodoxy!"
+
+"Possibly.  But orthodoxy is a fixed habit of mind.  The average man
+and woman hug their orthodoxies and spit their venom on those that
+outrage them.  How it may be some years hence, when this cure for
+senescence has become a commonplace, I do not pretend to say.  But so
+it is today.  Personally, no doubt, you would be indifferent, for you
+have a contemptuously independent mind.  But your career and your
+usefulness would be at an end."
+
+"And suppose I am quite indifferent to that?"
+
+"Ah, but you are not.  I will not say that I have killed Mary Ogden
+during this painful hour, for it is impossible to kill the dead, but I
+have exorcised her ghost.  She will not come again.  If you marry this
+young man it will be out of defiance, or possibly out of a mistaken
+consideration for him--although he will be an object for sympathy later
+on.  And you will marry him as Marie Zattiany, without an illusion left
+in that clear brain of yours--from which the mists have been blown by
+the cold wind of truth.  And in a year--if you can stand self-contempt
+and ineffable ennui so long--you will leave him, resume your present
+name--the name by which Europe knows you--and return to us.  But it may
+be too late.  Vienna would still be laughing.  The Viennese are a
+light-hearted race, and a lax, but when they laugh they cease to take
+seriously the subject of that good-natured amusement. . . .  It is not
+aesthetic, you know, it is not aesthetic.  Are you really quite
+indifferent, Marie?"
+
+She shrugged and rose.  "It must be time for luncheon," she said.  "It
+will no doubt be horrible, but at least we can have it in here.  The
+public dining-room would be impossible.  I will find Mr. Dinwiddie and
+ask him to order it."
+
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+When the men returned from their fishing trip at six o'clock they saw
+several of the women on the lake, but there was no one in the
+living-room.  Clavering tapped at Mr. Dinwiddie's door, but as there
+was no answer, concluded that he and Mary had not yet returned from
+Huntersville.  He was too desirous of a bath and clean clothes,
+however, to feel more than a fleeting disappointment, and it was not
+until his return to his room that he saw a letter lying on the table.
+
+It was addressed in Mary's handwriting, and he stared at it in
+astonishment for a second, then tore it open.  It was dated
+"Huntersvilie, Monday afternoon," and it read:
+
+
+"Dear Lee:
+
+"Mr. Dinwiddie will tell you that unforeseen circumstances have arisen
+which compel me to go to New York for a few days.  It is excessively
+annoying, but unavoidable, and I do not ask you to follow me as I
+should hardly be able to see anything of you.  If there is a prospect
+of being detained it will not be worth while to return and I'll let you
+know at once--on Thursday night by telephone; and then I hope you will
+not wait for the others, but join me here.  Indeed, dear Lee, I wish
+this need not have happened, but at least we had three days.----M."
+
+
+Clavering read this letter twice, hardly comprehending its purport.
+She made no mention of Judge Trent.  The whole thing was ambiguous,
+curt.  A full explanation was his right; moreover, it was the reverse
+of a love letter.  Even its phrases of regret were formal.  Something
+was wrong.
+
+He put on his clothes hurriedly in order to go in search of Dinwiddie,
+but before he had finished he heard a sound in the next room and opened
+the connecting door unceremoniously.
+
+Mr. Dinwiddie braced himself as he saw Clavering's set face.
+
+"Too bad," he muttered, but Clavering cut him short.
+
+"I want the truth.  What took Mary to New York?"
+
+"Surely she explained in her letter."
+
+"She explained nothing.  There's some mystery here and I want it
+cleared up at once."
+
+"By God!  I'll tell you!" Mr. Dinwiddie burst out.  "Mary exacted no
+promise--I suppose she took for granted I'd not tell you, for she told
+me what she had written.  But if she had I'd tell you anyhow.  I'd
+rather break a promise to a woman than lie to a friend.  Believe men
+should stand by one another.  She went down there this morning to meet
+Hohenhauer."
+
+"Hohenhauer!"  Clavering's face turned almost black.
+
+"Yes.  Trent telegraphed me yesterday that Hohenhauer was arriving at
+Huntersville last night and would come up here in the morning to see
+Mary.  He said the matter was most important.  I went to Mary's room
+after you came in from the lake and showed her the message.  She was
+extremely annoyed and said at first that she wouldn't see him.  But I
+pointed out that she couldn't possibly avoid it.  Then she said he
+shouldn't come up here, and she was very emphatic about it.  The only
+thing to do was to take her down.  Of course you will be reasonable and
+see there was nothing else to be done."
+
+"What did that infernal blackguard want of her?  And why did she go off
+with him?"
+
+"She didn't go off with him.  She hired a car directly after lunch
+intending to drive as far as Saratoga and take a train from there.  She
+left Hohenhauer to cool his heels until it was time to take the local
+for the Adirondack Express.  She could easily have taken him along, but
+I think she was meting out punishment."
+
+"Punishment?"
+
+"Yes.  They had a private conference for nearly two hours, and,
+whatever happened, it put her in an infernally bad humor.  She scarcely
+opened her mouth during luncheon, and as Mary is a woman of the world,
+used to concealing her feelings, I thought it highly significant.  She
+looked as if she were in a secret frozen rage.  Hohenhauer, however,
+was quite himself, and the meal--corned beef and cabbage!--went off
+very well."
+
+"What did he want of her?"
+
+"Of that I haven't the vaguest idea.  Something momentous, beyond a
+doubt.  If I may hazard a guess, it has something to do with this
+special mission of his, and it is quite possible that he has asked her
+to go to Washington--insisted upon it--appealing to her love of
+Austria.  I confess I don't see what she can accomplish there, for she
+never did have any Washington connections--of course she could get
+letters from Trent and trust to her personal power and prestige.  But
+let me tell you that she didn't do it to please him.  She looked as if
+she hated him."
+
+"Is he still in love with her?  Are you sure he didn't come here to ask
+her to marry him?"
+
+"If he did he had his journey for his pains--although I can see that it
+would be a highly desirable combination from his point of view.  But
+he's not in love with her.  I'll stake all I know of men on that."
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"As sure as that I'm alive."
+
+"Well, I take the morning train for New York."
+
+"Lee," said Mr. Dinwiddie impressively, "take the advice of an old man,
+who has seen a good deal of men and women in his day, and stay where
+you are until you hear from Mary.  Some sort of crisis has arisen, no
+use blinking the fact, but if you burst in on her now, while she is
+Madame Zattiany, encased in a new set of triple-plated armor, you may
+ruin all your chances of happiness.  Whatever it is let her work it
+out--and off--by herself.  I made her promise she would not leave the
+country without seeing you again--for I didn't know what might be in
+the wind--and when she had given her word she added that she had not
+the least intention of not seeing you again, and that it was quite
+possible she would return to the camp.  If you go down you'll spoil
+everything."
+
+"I suppose I can trust you, Din, but I've seen plainly that you don't
+want me to marry her."
+
+"That is true enough.  I want nothing less--for your sake; and
+Hohenhauer would be a far more suitable match for her.  But I don't
+believe you even question my faith----"
+
+"No.  I don't.  You're a brick, Din.  But I'm unspeakably
+worried--almost terrified.  I have never felt that I really knew her.
+She may have only imagined--but that is impossible!  How in God's name
+am I to sit round here for three days and twiddle my thumbs?"
+
+"Don't.  Take one of the men and go off on a three days' tramp.  Climb
+Mount Moose.  That will give you no chance to think.  All your thinking
+will be in your muscles."
+
+"And suppose she should return--or telegraph me to go to her?"
+
+"If she returns and finds you gone it'll serve her right.  And she
+won't telegraph before Thursday--if she's going to Washington.  Now
+take my advice and don't be a fool."
+
+Clavering shrugged his shoulders, but he set his lips.  "Very well.  I
+won't follow her.  Nor will I forgive her in a hurry, either."
+
+"That's healthy.  Give her a piece of your mind, have a good row, and
+then make it up.  But let me tell you, my dear boy, that she was
+horrified at the thought of that man coming up here, and she only
+refrained from telling you of the summons, so to speak, because she
+wanted to spare you any anxiety.  There's no doubt in my mind that
+she's as much in love with you as you are with her. . . .  You have
+none, I suppose?"
+
+"None.  Particularly lately.  I hadn't told you, but I had intended, in
+a day or two, to ask you if you would let me have the camp for a few
+weeks.  We intended to marry in Huntersville the day the rest of you
+went out."
+
+Mr. Dinwiddie whistled.  "No wonder she was furious at having her
+preliminary honeymoon disturbed.  But if that is the case of course
+she'll return.  You're more than welcome to the camp, and I'll send
+whatever you need from time to time.  You've only to command me. . . .
+It makes it all the more comprehensible.  Whatever it was that man said
+to her, she wanted to get over it by herself before coming back to the
+place where she had forgotten that Hohenhauers and politics existed.  I
+could see how it was with her here.  She looked exactly as she used to
+in the old days, and I don't doubt felt like it, too.  No wonder she
+resented being forced back into the rôle of Madame Zattiany, or
+Gräfin--countess--as he calls her.  You must let her thresh it out by
+herself."
+
+"You believe she will come back."
+
+"If that was your plan, I assuredly do.  There isn't a spark of human
+affection between those two, and Mary never placed herself in any man's
+power.  I am more and more inclined to believe that he appealed to her
+for help in his mission here, whatever it is--and it's not so difficult
+to guess--and that against her inclination and out of her love for
+Austria, she consented."
+
+"Well, it's no use to speculate.  There's the supper bell.  I'll decide
+in the morning whether I go off for a tramp or not."
+
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+Clavering slept when he first went to bed, for he was healthily tired,
+but he awoke suddenly at midnight with body refreshed and mind
+abnormally clear.  He knew that he would sleep no more that night, and
+he put on his trousers and coat over his pyjamas, thrust his feet into
+bedroom slippers and went out into the living-room.  There he put a log
+on the fire and paced up and down, not unlike a tiger round its cage.
+
+He felt as if black bats were flying about his brain, each charged with
+a different portent of disaster.  Once more the unreality of the whole
+affair overwhelmed him.  How could he have been so fatuous as to
+believe that he had really won such a woman?  He remembered his first
+impression: that she was on a plane above, apart.  They hadn't an
+interest in common, not even a memory that antedated their meeting a
+few short weeks ago.  She had lived a life of which he knew nothing
+outside of European novels and memoirs.  She had known nothing of any
+other world until he had introduced her to his friends, and he made no
+doubt that her interest in them was about as permanent as a highly
+original comedy on the stage would inspire.  There was nothing,
+literally, between them but a mutual irresistible attraction, and that
+bond recognized so unerringly by both.
+
+That bond.
+
+Would it hold?
+
+Had this man offered her something that would make love seem
+insignificant and trivial?  She, who had had a surfeit of love long
+since?  Whose eyes had looked a thousand years old until he had given
+her mind back its youth as the great Vienna biologist had rejuvenated
+her body.
+
+He was entirely indifferent to her old love affair with Hohenhauer.  It
+was those years of political association and mutual interdependence in
+Vienna that he feared.  He had, when he first met her, appraised her as
+a woman to whom power was the breath of life.  Ambition--in the grand
+manner--incarnate.  She had all the appearance and the air of a woman
+to whom the wielding of power, however subtly, was an old story.  He
+recalled that that terrifying suggestion of concealed ruthless forces
+behind those charming manners, those feminine wiles, had almost made
+him resolve to "avoid her like the plague."  And then he had fallen
+madly in love with her and forgotten everything but the woman.
+
+He had divined even before these last miraculous days that she had
+looked upon love with abhorrence for almost half as many years as he
+had lived, an abhorrence rooted in a profound revulsion of body and
+mind and spirit.  For nearly twenty years that revulsion had endured
+and eaten into the very depths of her being. . . .  He had a sudden
+blaze of enlightenment.  She had frequently alluded to that Lodge of
+hers in the Dolomites and their sojourn there together, but always in
+the terms of romance. . . .  She had never given him a glance of
+understanding. . . .  And she had put off the wedding until the last
+possible moment. . . .  If she had really been as eager as himself she
+would have left her power of attorney with Trent and started for
+Austria six weeks ago.  Or the papers could have been sent to her to
+sign, if her signature were imperative. . . .  And in spite of the fact
+that everybody had taken the engagement for granted, she had, with
+wholly insufficient reasons,--as he saw, now that he was removed from
+the influence of her plausible and dominating self,--refused to
+announce it.  Could it be that in the depths of her mind--unadmitted by
+her consciousness--she had never intended to marry him?  Was that old
+revulsion paramount?  . . .  Sixteen years! . . .  A long time, and
+nothing in life is more corroding than habit.
+
+Perhaps--as long as they were down there in New York.  But not up here.
+That he would be willing to swear.  There had been another revolution,
+involuntary perhaps, but the stronger for that; and every shackle that
+memory and habit can forge had dropped from her.  She had been youth
+incarnate.  The proof was in her joyful consent to marry him
+immediately and remain in the mountains . . . and then her complete
+surrender of the future into his hands. . . .  She had during those
+three brief days loved him wholly, and without a shadow in her soul.
+
+But now?  Whatever had happened, she was not Mary Ogden tonight,
+hastening to New York, nor would she be when in her own house on the
+morrow.  She might hate Hohenhauer, but his mere presence would have
+made the past live again.  She must have known when she went down that
+mountain that even with her strong will and powers of self-delusion,
+things could not be quite the same again.  Not even if she had returned
+with Dinwiddie.  Why in heaven's name had she been so mad as to go?
+She could have sent Hohenhauer a peremptory refusal to see him and then
+gone off on a camping trip that could have lasted until he gave up the
+game.  She must have been mad--mad.
+
+And he did not believe for a moment that she had gone to Washington.
+
+She had gone home to think--think.
+
+And if he followed Dinwiddie's advice and remained here she might think
+too long.  And if he followed and insisted upon seeing her, the result
+might be more fatal still.  He knew nothing of those personalities she
+may have concealed from him.  For all he knew she might have depths in
+her nature as black as the bottomless pit.
+
+And God only knew what the man had said to her. . . .  Should he let
+her fight it out by herself?  What in heaven's name should he do?
+Whatever happened, this divine interval, like some exquisitely adjusted
+musical instrument, had been hopelessly jarred out of tune.  He almost
+hoped she would not return.  Let it remain a perfect memory. . . .
+They could marry in New York and return here, when she was his
+wife. . . .  If he had not already lost her. . . .  What in God's name
+was the thing for him to do?  He'd go mad if he stayed here, and if he
+went he might regret it for the rest of his days.  Why could not light
+be vouchsafed him?
+
+Gora.
+
+Fortunately he knew her room for he had carried up her luggage.  He ran
+lightly up the stairs and tapped on her door.  A startled sleepy voice
+answered.  He opened the door and put in his head.
+
+"Come downstairs at once, Gora," he said peremptorily.  "I must talk to
+you."
+
+She came down in a moment, clad in a scarlet kimono, her hair hanging
+in thick braids.  With her large round forehead exposed she looked not
+unlike a gnome, but curiously young.
+
+"What on earth is the matter, Clavey?" she asked as she pushed her
+chair as close to the fire as possible.  "It has something to do with
+this sudden trip of Mary's, I suppose.  Mr. Dinwiddie said she had been
+called to New York on important business, and the others accepted the
+explanation as a matter of course; but I'll confess I wondered."
+
+Clavering, still too nervous to sit down, jerked out the whole story,
+omitting only the old love affair with the man who had exercised so
+strong an influence on Mary Zattiany's later life.
+
+"You see," he concluded, "there are two things: Austria had taken the
+place in her affections that women of her age generally concentrate on
+human beings--it became almost a sacrament.  And then--for nearly
+twenty years she had hated everything in men but their minds.  Sex was
+not only dead but a detestable memory.  After that rejuvenescence she
+had never cast a thought to loving any man again.  That mental habit,
+at least, was fixed.  When I met her she was a walking intellect. . . .
+I thought I had changed all that . . . up here I had not a doubt
+left . . . but now . . .  I don't know. . . .  Put that cold-blooded
+mind of yours on it and tell me what to do."
+
+"Let me think a minute, Clavey."
+
+As he resumed his restless march, Gora sent her mind travelling out of
+the mountains and far to the south, and tried to penetrate the brain of
+Mary Zattiany.  She could not visualize her in the bed of a casual
+hotel or sitting in the chair of a parlor car, so she skipped the
+interval and saw her next day in that intimate room of hers upstairs;
+the room, assuredly, where she would think out her problem.
+
+Gora had studied Madame Zattiany with all the avidity of the artist for
+a rare human theme, and she believed that she knew her as well as
+Clavering did, if not better.  She had also not failed to observe
+Prince Hohenhauer's picture, and had read the accompanying text with
+considerable interest, an interest augmented, not unnaturally, by his
+exceeding good looks.  That same day she had met a Viennese at dinner
+who had talked of him with enthusiasm and stated definitely that he was
+the one hope of Austria.
+
+Gora Dwight was a very ambitious woman and revelled in the authority
+that fame and success had brought her.  She was also as disillusioned
+in regard to men as any unmarried woman could be; although quite aware
+that if she had lacked a gift to entice her emotions to her brain, she
+no doubt would even now be looking about for some man to fall in love
+with.  But her pride was spared a succession of humiliating
+anti-climaxes, and she had learned, younger than most women, or even
+men, that power, after sex has ceased from troubling, is the dominant
+passion in human nature.
+
+And Madame Zattiany was twenty years older than herself, and had
+drained the jewelled chalice to the dregs.  And for many years more she
+had enjoyed power, revelled in it, looked forward, Gora made no doubt,
+to a greater and greater exercise of it.  Power had become the master
+passion of her life.
+
+Like men in the same case, she had indulged herself, during a period of
+enforced inaction, with an exciting love adventure.  That she had
+fallen in love, romantically in love, with this young man, whom so many
+women loved, and who, no doubt, had given her the full benefit of all
+his pent-up ardors--Gora could imagine those love scenes--she had not
+questioned, in spite of Madame Zattiany's carefully composed tones when
+speaking of him, and her avoidance of so much as the exchange of a
+meaning glance with him in public.  Up here "Mary" had ceased to be a
+woman of the world, she had looked like a girl of twenty: and that she
+was in love and recklessly happy in the fact, was for all to see.  That
+had been one of her most interesting divagations to the novelist, Gora
+Dwight--but a phase.  Gora was not deluded.
+
+And this man Hohenhauer had brought her to her senses; no doubt of that
+either to a mind both warmly imaginative and coldly analytical.  And
+what had he come up here for except to ask her to marry him--to share
+his power?  She dismissed the Washington inference with the contempt it
+deserved.  Mr. Dinwiddie was a very experienced and astute old
+gentleman, but he always settled on the obvious like a hen on a
+porcelain egg. . . .  What a manifest destiny!  What an ideal
+match. . . .  She sighed, almost envying her.  But it would be almost
+as interesting to write about as to experience.  After all, a novelist
+had things all her own way, and that was more than even the Zattianys
+could hope for.
+
+Then she remembered poor Clavering and looked up at him with eyes that
+were wholly sympathetic.
+
+"I don't think there's a doubt," she said, "that Prince Hohenhauer came
+up here to ask her to marry him.  You can see for yourself what such a
+match would mean for him, for aside from that indisputable genius of
+hers--trained in later years by himself--she has great wealth and few
+scruples; and where he failed to win men to his purpose, she, with her
+superlative charm, and every feminine intuition sharpened by an
+uncommon experience of men and public life, would succeed.  She may
+hate him, as Mr. Dinwiddie says--for the moment.  But even if she
+continued to hate him that would not prevent her from marrying him if
+she believed he could help her to power.  If it had not been for you I
+don't believe she would have hesitated a moment."
+
+"Do you mean to say you believe she'll throw me over?" demanded
+Clavering fiercely.
+
+"I think you're in danger, and if I were you I'd throw Mr. Dinwiddie's
+advice to the winds and take the morning train for New York."
+
+"Don't you believe that she loves me?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  As love goes."
+
+"What d'you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean that Madame Zattiany has long since reached the age when power
+means more than love--in a woman of that calibre.  But you, in turn,
+have tremendous power over her.  Sweep her off her feet again and make
+her marry you."
+
+"You don't believe she's gone to Washington?"
+
+"I do not.  If that was all he wanted of her, why didn't he telephone?
+I am sure he could be ambiguous enough to defeat the curiosity of any
+listeners-in.  But a man of that sort does not ask a woman to marry him
+over the telephone----"
+
+"But Din thinks----"
+
+"How long do you think you can stand inaction?"
+
+"Not another hour, by God!  I'm nearly mad as it is."
+
+"I thought so.  You are about the last man on earth equipped to play
+the waiting game."
+
+"You don't think she means to return here?"
+
+"Never.  She's too much of an artist for one thing.  She might be
+willing to begin a new chapter, but she knows that asterisks in the
+wrong place are fatal.  This interruption has done for your idyl!"
+
+"I had thought the same thing."  He sighed heavily.
+
+"Oh, yes, Clavey dear, you are an artist yourself.  No matter what
+happens never forget that it is your destiny to be a great one."
+
+"Artist be damned.  If--if--God! if I lose her--I'll never write
+another line."
+
+"I don't doubt you think so.  But you're only just beginning to know
+yourself.  You got a few glimpses, I should think, while you were
+writing that play."
+
+"Don't mention that play to me.  I hate it.  If I hadn't let myself go
+with the damned thing I'd have had my wits about me and would have
+married her off-hand."
+
+"I wonder.  Was she so very anxious to marry?"
+
+He turned cold.  Fear flared up again.  "What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Well, I don't know that I mean anything.  Except that like all women
+she probably wanted to enjoy the thrilling hopes and fears and
+uncertainties of that never to be repeated prelude, to the limit.  Now,
+better wake up Larsing and order the car if you mean to catch that
+morning train.  If you don't want to go back to bed I'll sit up with
+you.  You can sleep on the train."
+
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+He left the next morning in a dense fog.  As Larsing rowed him across
+the lake he could not see its surface nor the wall of trees on the
+opposite bank, and in a moment the camp was obliterated.
+
+Only Gora and Larsing knew of his departure.  Even Dinwiddie was still
+asleep.  Larsing had made him a cup of coffee, and Gora had packed his
+bag, moving like a mouse in his room.  She kissed him good-bye and
+patted him on the back.
+
+"I'll go out myself in a day or two," she said.  "You may need me down
+there."
+
+The fog thinned gradually and the Ford made its usual comfortless speed
+down the mountain.  When they reached Huntersville the valley was
+bathed in early morning sunlight, and Huntersville, asleep, shared the
+evanescent charm of the dawn.  It was a beautiful and a peaceful scene
+and Clavering, whose spirits had descended into utter gloom while
+enwrapped in that sinister fog, accepted it as a happier portent; and
+when he was so fortunate as to find an empty drawing-room on the
+Express, he went to bed and slept until the porter awoke him at
+Tarrytown.
+
+It was his first impulse to rush direct to Murray Hill, but he knew the
+folly of doing anything of the sort.  He needed a bath and a shave and
+a fortifying dinner.
+
+He concluded that it would be unwise to telephone, and at nine o'clock
+he approached her house, reasonably calm and quite determined to have
+his own way.  But the house was dark from cellar to roof.  Every window
+was closed although it was a warm night.  He sprang up the steps and
+rang the bell.  He rang again, and then kept his finger on the button
+for nearly five minutes.
+
+He descended into the area, but the iron bars were new, and immovable.
+Moreover, a policeman was sauntering opposite.  He approached the man
+in a moment and asked him if he knew whether the house had been open
+earlier in the evening.  Yes, the officer told him, he had seen one of
+the servants go in about half an hour ago.
+
+Clavering walked away slowly.  If Mary had gone to Washington, why had
+the servants not answered his ring?  It was too early for them to be in
+bed.  Then his spirits, which had descended to zero, rose jubilantly.
+Hohenhauer!  It was against him she was barricading herself.  No doubt
+she would feel herself in a state of siege as long as the man remained
+in the country.
+
+He went to the nearest hotel and telephoned.  He was prepared to be
+told, after an interminable wait, that there was "no answer"; but in a
+moment he heard the voice of the butler.  Obeying a sudden impulse he
+disguised his own.
+
+"I should like to speak to Madame Zattiany."
+
+"Madame has retired."
+
+He hung up.  He had ascertained that she was at home and his spiritual
+barometer ascended another notch.  He'd see her tomorrow if he spent
+the day on her doorstep.  He bought an evening paper, picked out a new
+play, and spent a very agreeable evening at the theatre.
+
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+His nervous excitement returned next morning, but he forced himself to
+eat a good breakfast and read his newspapers.  He was determined to
+show her that he was completely master of himself.  She should be able
+to draw no unfavorable comparisons with Hohenhauer, whose composure had
+probably not been ruffled in forty years.  His comparative youth might
+be against him, but after all a man of thirty-four was no infant, and
+in some respects he was as old as he would ever be.  He knew the value
+of dignity and self-control, and whatever might come he would sacrifice
+neither.  But he sighed heavily.  "Whatever might come."  But he
+refused to dwell on alternatives.
+
+It was ten o'clock when he presented himself at Madame Zattiany's door.
+As he had hoped, his ring was answered.  Hohenhauer was not the man to
+call on a woman at ten in the morning.
+
+The footman permitted himself to stare, and said deprecatingly: "I am
+very sorry, Mr. Clavering, but Madame told me to admit no visitors----"
+
+"Did she?"  He entered and tossed his hat on a high Italian chair.
+"Kindly tell her that I am in the library and shall remain there until
+she is ready to come down."
+
+The man hesitated, but after all Clavering had had the run of the
+house, and it was possible that Madame believed him still to be in the
+mountains.  At all events he knew determination when he saw it, and
+marched reluctantly up the stairs.
+
+Clavering went into the library.  He was filled with an almost
+unbearable excitement, but at least the man's assertion that she was at
+home to no one cemented his belief that she meant to see nothing
+further of Hohenhauer.
+
+He glanced round the beautiful mellow room so full of memories.  After
+all he had been happier here than he had ever been in his life--until
+they had gone up to the woods!  The room's benignant atmosphere seemed
+to enfold him, calmed his fears, subdued that inner quiver.  Surely she
+would surrender to its influence and to his--whatever had happened.  He
+knew she had always liked him the better because he did not make love
+to her the moment they met, but today he would take her by surprise,
+give her no time to think.
+
+But, as Mrs. Oglethorpe had once told him, a clever man is no match for
+a still cleverer woman.
+
+At the end of fifteen minutes the footman opened the door and announced:
+
+"Madame is in the car, sir, and begs you will join her."
+
+Clavering repressed a violent start and an imprecation.  But there was
+nothing to do but follow the man; fortunately he did not have what was
+known as an "open countenance."  Let her have her own way for the
+moment.  He could--and would--return with her.  For the moment he felt
+primitive enough to beat her.
+
+She was wearing a black dress with a long jade necklace and a large
+black hat, and, as he ran down the steps, he had time further to
+observe that she was even whiter than usual and had dark rings under
+her eyes.
+
+"It is too beautiful a morning to remain indoors," she said, as she
+gave him her hand and he took the seat beside her.  "We will drive in
+the Park and then up the river for a bit."
+
+She was completely at her ease, and she was the Madame Zattiany of the
+night he had met her.  But she did not elaborate the rôle, and asked
+him how he had left his friends at the camp and if he had enjoyed his
+fishing trip.
+
+"Enough of this," he interrupted, when he had mastered his excitement
+at being close to her once more.  After all, he had expected something
+of the sort.  She was just the woman to fall back on her infernal
+technique.  "I know that you went down to Huntersville to meet
+Hohenhauer, and that the result of that interview was an abrupt flight
+from me--possibly from him.  I want the truth."
+
+Her face had flushed, but as the color ebbed she looked almost waxen.
+"I relied on Din----"
+
+"Well, I guessed it and he admitted the fact.  And if he hadn't I'd
+have come after you, anyhow.  Your note was enough to tell any man
+something was wrong.  I shall not be put off and I will have an answer
+to my questions.  Do you love me no longer?"
+
+"Oh, yes," she said softly.  "I love you."  But when he tried to take
+her hand she drew it away.
+
+"Do you still intend to marry me?"
+
+"Won't you give me a few days more to think it over?"
+
+"No, I will not.  And--do you need them?  Haven't you already made up
+your mind?"
+
+She sighed and looked out of the window.  They were driving up Fifth
+Avenue and the bright street was full of color and life.  The busses
+and motors were filled with women on their way to the shops, whose gay
+windows were the most enticing in the world.  New York, in this, her
+River of Delight, looked as if she had not a care in the world.
+
+Madame Zattiany did not speak again until they were in the Park.
+
+"I have promised to marry you, remember; and I do not lightly go back
+on my word. . . .  But . . .  I had intended to ask if you would be
+willing to let me go alone to Vienna for six months--and then join
+me----"
+
+"After I had lost you completely!  I shall marry you here, today, or
+not at all.  I love you but I'll not let you play with me.  I'll go to
+Austria with you, and you may do as you choose when you get there.
+You'll belong to me and I'll make the best of it."
+
+"If I married you now it would not be worth my while to return to
+Austria. . . .  You see, I'd be an American.  I'd no longer be Gräfin
+Zattiany. . . .  I could accomplish nothing. . . .  It is the strangest
+thing in the world, but I never had thought of changing my name----"
+
+"Until Hohenhauer reminded you, I suppose.  Well, I could have told you
+that myself.  I had counted on it, if you want to know the truth."
+
+"Ah!  Then you counted on that to--to----"
+
+"To have you altogether.  Yes."  And then he added hastily: "But up
+there--you must believe this--I never gave it a thought--after--after
+you promised to marry me at once."
+
+He doubted if she had listened to this protest that there had been an
+hour when in the complete baring of his soul he had been above plotting
+and subterfuge.  She was still looking out of the window.  He saw her
+long upward-curving nostril grow rigid.
+
+But she said quietly: "And what do you think you would have done with
+me, Lee, after we were on the plane of common mortals once more?
+Transports do not last for ever, you know, and we are not heedless
+young things with no thought of the future.  You have acknowledged
+there is no place for me here, and there would be no place for me in
+Europe if I married you.  Do you wonder that I came away to think,
+after Prince Hohenhauer--who, remember, knows me far better than you
+do--pointed out the inexorable truth?  What would you do with me, Lee?"
+
+He stared out of the window in his turn--at the tender greens of the
+Park.  He could hear the birds singing.  Spring!  The chill of winter
+was in the car, and it emanated from the woman beside him.
+
+"I don't know," he said miserably.  "I only know that I love you and
+would take any chances."
+
+"But, you see, although it is my misfortune to love you, I recognize
+that there is a long generation between us.  I thought I had spanned
+it, but--do you realize that we have literally nothing to give each
+other but love?  That we are as unlike----"
+
+"Oh, yes, I realized all that the night you left.  But I don't care.
+Cannot you trust me?"
+
+"There is that long generation, Lee.  And it is I who have lived it,
+not you.  Lived it and outlived the woman who began it.  The gods in a
+sportive mood made us for each other--and then sent me into the world
+too soon. . . .  I must go on.  It is not in me to go back nor to
+remain becalmed.  Hohenhauer told me many cruel truths.  Those women at
+my dinner might have enlightened me if I had not deliberately bandaged
+the eyes of my mind.  I chose to forget them at once.  But
+Hohenhauer----"  She shuddered.  "Well, although I was infuriated with
+him at the time--what he said was true.  Every word.  I must go
+forward.  I cannot--cannot go back."
+
+"He appealed to your ambition, your love of power, I suppose----"
+
+"He showed me to myself for exactly what I am," she said emphatically.
+"No appeal would have made the slightest impression on me if I had
+really and finally returned to my Mary Ogdenhood up there in the woods
+of my real youth.  My God!  What incredible folly!  What powers of
+self-delusion!  But we both have that memory.  Let us be grateful.  I
+at least shall hold it apart from all memories as long as I live."
+
+"Are you going to marry that man?"
+
+"That is so purely incidental that it is not worth talking about.  I
+came away to think out my own problem.  I love you and I believe that I
+shall always love you--but I don't see any way out.  I have killed once
+and for all that fatal talent for self-delusion that I had thought was
+as dead--well, as dead as my love for Moritz Hohenhauer; and nothing
+could be more dead than that.  My brain feels like a crystal house
+illuminated by searchlights, strong enough to penetrate every corner
+but not strong enough to blind.  I could never, if I would, deceive
+myself again, nor make another mistake, so far as human prescience will
+serve me."
+
+He looked at her hands.  Her gloves were black suede and they made
+those hands look smaller, but he had an idea that if he lifted one it
+would fall of its own rigid weight.
+
+He made no comment and she said in a moment: "Perhaps you may have an
+inspiration.  If there is any solution for us, believe me when I say
+that it would make me as happy as it could make you."
+
+But her hands did not relax.
+
+"What is the solution, Lee?"
+
+He had buried his face in his hands.  "There is none, I suppose.
+Unless you have the courage to drive down to the City Hall and marry
+me . . . and"--he lifted his head with a faint gleam of hope--"remember
+that you are young again.  You have many years to live.  You are a
+woman.  Can you go through life without love?"
+
+"Far better than with it.  Love is a very old story to me," she said
+deliberately.  "It could never be to me again the significant thing it
+is even to the woman of middle age, much less to the young.  And
+now--with a world falling to ruins--in the most critical period of its
+history--to imagine that love has any but a passing significance----
+Oh, no, my friend.  Oh, no!  Let those women who have it in their power
+to repeople the earth which has lost so many millions of its sons,
+cherish that delusion of the supreme importance of love; but not I!  I
+have had my dream, but it is over.  If we had met in Vienna it would
+never have claimed me at all.  In New York one may be serious in the
+romantic manner when one is temporarily free from care, but seriousness
+is of another and a portentous quality over there."
+
+"Why did you ask me to wait six months and then join you in Vienna?"
+
+She turned her eyes on him with what he had once called her look of
+ancient wisdom.  There was not an expiring flicker of youth in them,
+nor in the faint smile on her lips.  He had thrown himself back in his
+corner and folded his arms; he had no desire to attract the attention
+of the passers-by.  But his face was as white as a dark man's can be
+and his eyes were both stricken and bitter.
+
+"To give you time to get over it," she said.  "To write another play.
+To settle down into your old life--and look back upon this episode as
+upon a dream, a wonderful dream, but difficult to recall as anything
+more substantial."
+
+"So I inferred.  And you have not the courage to marry me--here--today?"
+
+"No, that is the one thing for which I have no courage whatever.  In
+three months I should hate you and myself.  I should not have even one
+memory in my life that I had no wish to banish--the sustaining memory
+of love undestroyed I may take back with me now.  Courage!  I could
+contemplate going back to certain death at the hands of an assassin, or
+in another revolution; to stand on the edge of the abyss, the last
+human being alive in Europe, and look down upon her expiring throes
+before I went over the brink myself.  But I have not the courage to
+marry you."
+
+Clavering picked up the tube and told the driver to stop.
+
+He closed the door and lifted his hat.
+
+"Good-bye, Madame Zattiany," he said.  And as the driver was listening,
+he added: "A pleasant journey."
+
+
+
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