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+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Reef, by Edith Wharton***
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+The Reef
+
+by Edith Wharton
+
+June, 1995  [Etext #283]
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Reef, by Edith Wharton
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+I
+
+
+"Unexpected obstacle.  Please don't come till thirtieth.
+Anna."
+
+All the way from Charing Cross to Dover the train had
+hammered the words of the telegram into George Darrow's
+ears, ringing every change of irony on its commonplace
+syllables: rattling them out like a discharge of musketry,
+letting them, one by one, drip slowly and coldly into his
+brain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice
+in some game of the gods of malice; and now, as he emerged
+from his compartment at the pier, and stood facing the wind-
+swept platform and the angry sea beyond, they leapt out at
+him as if from the crest of the waves, stung and blinded him
+with a fresh fury of derision.
+
+"Unexpected obstacle.  Please don't come till thirtieth.
+Anna."
+
+She had put him off at the very last moment, and for the
+second time: put him off with all her sweet reasonableness,
+and for one of her usual "good" reasons--he was certain that
+this reason, like the other, (the visit of her husband's
+uncle's widow) would be "good"!  But it was that very
+certainty which chilled him.  The fact of her dealing so
+reasonably with their case shed an ironic light on the idea
+that there had been any exceptional warmth in the greeting
+she had given him after their twelve years apart.
+
+They had found each other again, in London, some three
+months previously, at a dinner at the American Embassy, and
+when she had caught sight of him her smile had been like a
+red rose pinned on her widow's mourning.  He still felt the
+throb of surprise with which, among the stereotyped faces of
+the season's diners, he had come upon her unexpected face,
+with the dark hair banded above grave eyes; eyes in which he
+had recognized every little curve and shadow as he would
+have recognized, after half a life-time, the details of a
+room he had played in as a child.  And as, in the plumed
+starred crowd, she had stood out for him, slender, secluded
+and different, so he had felt, the instant their glances
+met, that he as sharply detached himself for her.  All that
+and more her smile had said; had said not merely "I
+remember," but "I remember just what you remember"; almost,
+indeed, as though her memory had aided his, her glance flung
+back on their recaptured moment its morning brightness.
+Certainly, when their distracted Ambassadress--with the cry:
+"Oh, you know Mrs. Leath?  That's perfect, for General
+Farnham has failed me"--had waved them together for the
+march to the diningroom, Darrow had felt a slight pressure
+of the arm on his, a pressure faintly but unmistakably
+emphasizing the exclamation: "Isn't it wonderful?--In
+London--in the season--in a mob?"
+
+Little enough, on the part of most women; but it was a sign
+of Mrs. Leath's quality that every movement, every syllable,
+told with her.  Even in the old days, as an intent grave-
+eyed girl, she had seldom misplaced her light strokes; and
+Darrow, on meeting her again, had immediately felt how much
+finer and surer an instrument of expression she had become.
+
+Their evening together had been a long confirmation of this
+feeling.  She had talked to him, shyly yet frankly, of what
+had happened to her during the years when they had so
+strangely failed to meet.  She had told him of her marriage
+to Fraser Leath, and of her subsequent life in France, where
+her husband's mother, left a widow in his youth, had been
+re-married to the Marquis de Chantelle, and where, partly in
+consequence of this second union, the son had permanently
+settled himself.  She had spoken also, with an intense
+eagerness of affection, of her little girl Effie, who was
+now nine years old, and, in a strain hardly less tender, of
+Owen Leath, the charming clever young stepson whom her
+husband's death had left to her care...
+
+
+A porter, stumbling against Darrow's bags, roused him to the
+fact that he still obstructed the platform, inert and
+encumbering as his luggage.
+
+"Crossing, sir?"
+
+Was he crossing?  He really didn't know; but for lack of any
+more compelling impulse he followed the porter to the
+luggage van, singled out his property, and turned to march
+behind it down the gang-way.  As the fierce wind shouldered
+him, building up a crystal wall against his efforts, he felt
+anew the derision of his case.
+
+"Nasty weather to cross, sir," the porter threw back at him
+as they beat their way down the narrow walk to the pier.
+Nasty weather, indeed; but luckily, as it had turned out,
+there was no earthly reason why Darrow should cross.
+
+While he pushed on in the wake of his luggage his thoughts
+slipped back into the old groove.  He had once or twice run
+across the man whom Anna Summers had preferred to him, and
+since he had met her again he had been exercising his
+imagination on the picture of what her married life must
+have been.  Her husband had struck him as a characteristic
+specimen of the kind of American as to whom one is not quite
+clear whether he lives in Europe in order to cultivate an
+art, or cultivates an art as a pretext for living in Europe.
+Mr. Leath's art was water-colour painting, but he practised
+it furtively, almost clandestinely, with the disdain of a
+man of the world for anything bordering on the professional,
+while he devoted himself more openly, and with religious
+seriousness, to the collection of enamelled snuff-boxes.  He
+was blond and well-dressed, with the physical distinction
+that comes from having a straight figure, a thin nose, and
+the habit of looking slightly disgusted--as who should not,
+in a world where authentic snuff-boxes were growing daily
+harder to find, and the market was flooded with flagrant
+forgeries?
+
+Darrow had often wondered what possibilities of communion
+there could have been between Mr. Leath and his wife.  Now
+he concluded that there had probably been none.  Mrs.
+Leath's words gave no hint of her husband's having failed to
+justify her choice; but her very reticence betrayed her.
+She spoke of him with a kind of impersonal seriousness, as
+if he had been a character in a novel or a figure in
+history; and what she said sounded as though it had been
+learned by heart and slightly dulled by repetition.  This
+fact immensely increased Darrow's impression that his
+meeting with her had annihilated the intervening years.
+She, who was always so elusive and inaccessible, had grown
+suddenly communicative and kind: had opened the doors of her
+past, and tacitly left him to draw his own conclusions.  As
+a result, he had taken leave of her with the sense that he
+was a being singled out and privileged, to whom she had
+entrusted something precious to keep.  It was her happiness
+in their meeting that she had given him, had frankly left
+him to do with as he willed; and the frankness of the
+gesture doubled the beauty of the gift.
+
+Their next meeting had prolonged and deepened the
+impression.  They had found each other again, a few days
+later, in an old country house full of books and pictures,
+in the soft landscape of southern England. The presence of a
+large party, with all its aimless and agitated
+displacements, had served only to isolate the pair and give
+them (at least to the young man's fancy) a deeper feeling of
+communion, and their days there had been like some musical
+prelude, where the instruments, breathing low, seem to hold
+back the waves of sound that press against them.
+
+Mrs. Leath, on this occasion, was no less kind than before;
+but she contrived to make him understand that what was so
+inevitably coming was not to come too soon.  It was not that
+she showed any hesitation as to the issue, but rather that
+she seemed to wish not to miss any stage in the gradual
+reflowering of their intimacy.
+
+Darrow, for his part, was content to wait if she wished it.
+He remembered that once, in America, when she was a girl,
+and he had gone to stay with her family in the country, she
+had been out when he arrived, and her mother had told him to
+look for her in the garden.  She was not in the garden, but
+beyond it he had seen her approaching down a long shady
+path.  Without hastening her step she had smiled and signed
+to him to wait; and charmed by the lights and shadows that
+played upon her as she moved, and by the pleasure of
+watching her slow advance toward him, he had obeyed her and
+stood still. And so she seemed now to be walking to him down
+the years, the light and shade of old memories and new hopes
+playing variously on her, and each step giving him the
+vision of a different grace.  She did not waver or turn
+aside; he knew she would come straight to where he stood;
+but something in her eyes said "Wait", and again he obeyed
+and waited.
+
+On the fourth day an unexpected event threw out his
+calculations.  Summoned to town by the arrival in England of
+her husband's mother, she left without giving Darrow the
+chance he had counted on, and he cursed himself for a
+dilatory blunderer.  Still, his disappointment was tempered
+by the certainty of being with her again before she left for
+France; and they did in fact see each other in London.
+There, however, the atmosphere had changed with the
+conditions.  He could not say that she avoided him, or even
+that she was a shade less glad to see him; but she was beset
+by family duties and, as he thought, a little too readily
+resigned to them.
+
+The Marquise de Chantelle, as Darrow soon perceived, had the
+same mild formidableness as the late Mr. Leath: a sort of
+insistent self-effacement before which every one about her
+gave way.  It was perhaps the shadow of this lady's
+presence--pervasive even during her actual brief eclipses--
+that subdued and silenced Mrs. Leath. The latter was,
+moreover, preoccupied about her stepson, who, soon after
+receiving his degree at Harvard, had been rescued from a
+stormy love-affair, and finally, after some months of
+troubled drifting, had yielded to his step-mother's counsel
+and gone up to Oxford for a year of supplementary study.
+Thither Mrs. Leath went once or twice to visit him, and her
+remaining days were packed with family obligations: getting,
+as she phrased it, "frocks and governesses" for her little
+girl, who had been left in France, and having to devote the
+remaining hours to long shopping expeditions with her
+mother-in-law.  Nevertheless, during her brief escapes from
+duty, Darrow had had time to feel her safe in the custody of
+his devotion, set apart for some inevitable hour; and the
+last evening, at the theatre, between the overshadowing
+Marquise and the unsuspicious Owen, they had had an almost
+decisive exchange of words.
+
+Now, in the rattle of the wind about his ears, Darrow
+continued to hear the mocking echo of her message:
+"Unexpected obstacle."  In such an existence as Mrs. Leath's,
+at once so ordered and so exposed, he knew how small a
+complication might assume the magnitude of an "obstacle;"
+yet, even allowing as impartially as his state of mind
+permitted for the fact that, with her mother-in-law always,
+and her stepson intermittently, under her roof, her lot
+involved a hundred small accommodations generally foreign to
+the freedom of widowhood--even so, he could not but think
+that the very ingenuity bred of such conditions might have
+helped her to find a way out of them.  No, her "reason",
+whatever it was, could, in this case, be nothing but a
+pretext; unless he leaned to the less flattering alternative
+that any reason seemed good enough for postponing him!
+Certainly, if her welcome had meant what he imagined, she
+could not, for the second time within a few weeks, have
+submitted so tamely to the disarrangement of their plans; a
+disarrangement which--his official duties considered--might,
+for all she knew, result in his not being able to go to her
+for months.
+
+"Please don't come till thirtieth."  The thirtieth--and it
+was now the fifteenth!  She flung back the fortnight on his
+hands as if he had been an idler indifferent to dates,
+instead of an active young diplomatist who, to respond to
+her call, had had to hew his way through a very jungle of
+engagements!  "Please don't come till thirtieth."  That was
+all.  Not the shadow of an excuse or a regret; not even the
+perfunctory "have written" with which it is usual to soften
+such blows.  She didn't want him, and had taken the shortest
+way to tell him so.  Even in his first moment of
+exasperation it struck him as characteristic that she should
+not have padded her postponement with a fib.  Certainly her
+moral angles were not draped!
+
+"If I asked her to marry me, she'd have refused in the same
+language.  But thank heaven I haven't!" he reflected.
+
+These considerations, which had been with him every yard of
+the way from London, reached a climax of irony as he was
+drawn into the crowd on the pier.  It did not soften his
+feelings to remember that, but for her lack of forethought,
+he might, at this harsh end of the stormy May day, have been
+sitting before his club fire in London instead of shivering
+in the damp human herd on the pier.  Admitting the sex's
+traditional right to change, she might at least have advised
+him of hers by telegraphing directly to his rooms.  But in
+spite of their exchange of letters she had apparently failed
+to note his address, and a breathless emissary had rushed
+from the Embassy to pitch her telegram into his compartment
+as the train was moving from the station.
+
+Yes, he had given her chance enough to learn where he lived;
+and this minor proof of her indifference became, as he
+jammed his way through the crowd, the main point of his
+grievance against her and of his derision of himself.  Half
+way down the pier the prod of an umbrella increased his
+exasperation by rousing him to the fact that it was raining.
+Instantly the narrow ledge became a battle-ground of
+thrusting, slanting, parrying domes.  The wind rose with the
+rain, and the harried wretches exposed to this double
+assault wreaked on their neighbours the vengeance they could
+not take on the elements.
+
+Darrow, whose healthy enjoyment of life made him in general
+a good traveller, tolerant of agglutinated humanity, felt
+himself obscurely outraged by these promiscuous contacts.
+It was as though all the people about him had taken his
+measure and known his plight; as though they were
+contemptuously bumping and shoving him like the
+inconsiderable thing he had become.  "She doesn't want you,
+doesn't want you, doesn't want you," their umbrellas and
+their elbows seemed to say.
+
+He had rashly vowed, when the telegram was flung into his
+window: "At any rate I won't turn back"--as though it might
+cause the sender a malicious joy to have him retrace his
+steps rather than keep on to Paris!  Now he perceived the
+absurdity of the vow, and thanked his stars that he need not
+plunge, to no purpose, into the fury of waves outside the
+harbour.
+
+With this thought in his mind he turned back to look for his
+porter; but the contiguity of dripping umbrellas made
+signalling impossible and, perceiving that he had lost sight
+of the man, he scrambled up again to the platform.  As he
+reached it, a descending umbrella caught him in the collar-
+bone; and the next moment, bent sideways by the wind, it
+turned inside out and soared up, kite-wise, at the end of a
+helpless female arm.
+
+Darrow caught the umbrella, lowered its inverted ribs, and
+looked up at the face it exposed to him.
+
+"Wait a minute," he said; "you can't stay here."
+
+As he spoke, a surge of the crowd drove the owner of the
+umbrella abruptly down on him.  Darrow steadied her with
+extended arms, and regaining her footing she cried out: "Oh,
+dear, oh, dear!  It's in ribbons!"
+
+Her lifted face, fresh and flushed in the driving rain, woke
+in him a memory of having seen it at a distant time and in a
+vaguely unsympathetic setting; but it was no moment to
+follow up such clues, and the face was obviously one to make
+its way on its own merits.
+
+Its possessor had dropped her bag and bundles to clutch at
+the tattered umbrella.  "I bought it only yesterday at the
+Stores; and--yes--it's utterly done for!" she lamented.
+
+Darrow smiled at the intensity of her distress.  It was food
+for the moralist that, side by side with such catastrophes
+as his, human nature was still agitating itself over its
+microscopic woes!
+
+"Here's mine if you want it!" he shouted back at her through
+the shouting of the gale.
+
+The offer caused the young lady to look at him more
+intently.  "Why, it's Mr. Darrow!" she exclaimed; and then,
+all radiant recognition: "Oh, thank you!  We'll share it, if
+you will."
+
+She knew him, then; and he knew her; but how and where had
+they met?  He put aside the problem for subsequent solution,
+and drawing her into a more sheltered corner, bade her wait
+till he could find his porter.
+
+When, a few minutes later, he came back with his recovered
+property, and the news that the boat would not leave till
+the tide had turned, she showed no concern.
+
+"Not for two hours?  How lucky--then I can find my trunk!"
+
+Ordinarily Darrow would have felt little disposed to involve
+himself in the adventure of a young female who had lost her
+trunk; but at the moment he was glad of any pretext for
+activity.  Even should he decide to take the next up train
+from Dover he still had a yawning hour to fill; and the
+obvious remedy was to devote it to the loveliness in
+distress under his umbrella.
+
+"You've lost a trunk?  Let me see if I can find it."
+
+It pleased him that she did not return the conventional "Oh,
+WOULD you?" Instead, she corrected him with a laugh--Not
+a trunk, but my trunk; I've no other--" and then added
+briskly: "You'd better first see to getting your own things
+on the boat."
+
+This made him answer, as if to give substance to his plans
+by discussing them: "I don't actually know that I'm going
+over."
+
+"Not going over?"
+
+"Well...perhaps not by this boat."  Again he felt a stealing
+indecision.  "I may probably have to go back to London.
+I'm--I'm waiting...expecting a letter...(She'll think me a
+defaulter," he reflected.) "But meanwhile there's plenty of
+time to find your trunk."
+
+He picked up his companion's bundles, and offered her an arm
+which enabled her to press her slight person more closely
+under his umbrella; and as, thus linked, they beat their way
+back to the platform, pulled together and apart like
+marionettes on the wires of the wind, he continued to wonder
+where he could have seen her.  He had immediately classed
+her as a compatriot; her small nose, her clear tints, a kind
+of sketchy delicacy in her face, as though she had been
+brightly but lightly washed in with water-colour, all
+confirmed the evidence of her high sweet voice and of her
+quick incessant gestures.She was clearly an American, but
+with the loose native quality strained through a closer woof
+of manners: the composite product of an enquiring and
+adaptable race.  All this, however, did not help him to fit
+a name to her, for just such instances were perpetually
+pouring through the London Embassy, and the etched and
+angular American was becoming rarer than the fluid type.
+
+More puzzling than the fact of his being unable to identify
+her was the persistent sense connecting her with something
+uncomfortable and distasteful.  So pleasant a vision as that
+gleaming up at him between wet brown hair and wet brown boa
+should have evoked only associations as pleasing; but each
+effort to fit her image into his past resulted in the same
+memories of boredom and a vague discomfort...
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Don't you remember me now--at Mrs. Murrett's?"
+She threw the question at Darrow across a table of the quiet
+coffee-room to which, after a vainly prolonged quest for her
+trunk, he had suggested taking her for a cup of tea.
+
+In this musty retreat she had removed her dripping hat, hung
+it on the fender to dry, and stretched herself on tiptoe in
+front of the round eagle-crowned mirror, above the mantel
+vases of dyed immortelles, while she ran her fingers comb-
+wise through her hair.  The gesture had acted on Darrow's
+numb feelings as the glow of the fire acted on his
+circulation; and when he had asked: "Aren't your feet wet,
+too?" and, after frank inspection of a stout-shod sole, she
+had answered cheerfully: "No--luckily I had on my new
+boots," he began to feel that human intercourse would still
+be tolerable if it were always as free from formality.
+
+The removal of his companion's hat, besides provoking this
+reflection, gave him his first full sight of her face; and
+this was so favourable that the name she now pronounced fell
+on him with a quite disproportionate shock of dismay.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Murrett's--was it THERE?"
+
+He remembered her now, of course: remembered her as one of
+the shadowy sidling presences in the background of that
+awful house in Chelsea, one of the dumb appendages of the
+shrieking unescapable Mrs. Murrett, into whose talons he had
+fallen in the course of his head-long pursuit of Lady Ulrica
+Crispin.  Oh, the taste of stale follies!  How insipid it
+was, yet how it clung!
+
+"I used to pass you on the stairs," she reminded him.
+
+Yes: he had seen her slip by--he recalled it now--as he
+dashed up to the drawing-room in quest of Lady Ulrica. The
+thought made him steal a longer look.  How could such a face
+have been merged in the Murrett mob?  Its fugitive slanting
+lines, that lent themselves to all manner of tender tilts
+and foreshortenings, had the freakish grace of some young
+head of the Italian comedy.  The hair stood up from her
+forehead in a boyish elf-lock, and its colour matched her
+auburn eyes flecked with black, and the little brown spot on
+her cheek, between the ear that was meant to have a rose
+behind it and the chin that should have rested on a ruff.
+When she smiled, the left corner of her mouth went up a
+little higher than the right; and her smile began in her
+eyes and ran down to her lips in two lines of light.  He had
+dashed past that to reach Lady Ulrica Crispin!
+
+"But of course you wouldn't remember me," she was saying.
+"My name is Viner--Sophy Viner."
+
+Not remember her?  But of course he DID!  He was genuinely
+sure of it now.  "You're Mrs. Murrett's niece," he declared.
+
+She shook her head.  "No; not even that.  Only her reader."
+
+"Her reader?  Do you mean to say she ever reads?"
+
+Miss Viner enjoyed his wonder.  "Dear, no!  But I wrote
+notes, and made up the visiting-book, and walked the dogs,
+and saw bores for her."
+
+Darrow groaned.  "That must have been rather bad!"
+
+"Yes; but nothing like as bad as being her niece."
+
+"That I can well believe.  I'm glad to hear," he added,
+"that you put it all in the past tense."
+
+She seemed to droop a little at the allusion; then she
+lifted her chin with a jerk of defiance.  "Yes.  All is at
+an end between us.  We've just parted in tears--but not in
+silence!"
+
+"Just parted?  Do you mean to say you've been there all this
+time?"
+
+"Ever since you used to come there to see Lady Ulrica?  Does
+it seem to you so awfully long ago?"
+
+The unexpectedness of the thrust--as well as its doubtful
+taste--chilled his growing enjoyment of her chatter.  He had
+really been getting to like her--had recovered, under the
+candid approval of her eye, his usual sense of being a
+personable young man, with all the privileges pertaining to
+the state, instead of the anonymous rag of humanity he had
+felt himself in the crowd on the pier.  It annoyed him, at
+that particular moment, to be reminded that naturalness is
+not always consonant with taste.
+
+She seemed to guess his thought.  "You don't like my saying
+that you came for Lady Ulrica?" she asked, leaning over the
+table to pour herself a second cup of tea.
+
+He liked her quickness, at any rate.  "It's better," he
+laughed, "than your thinking I came for Mrs. Murrett!"
+
+"Oh, we never thought anybody came for Mrs. Murrett!  It was
+always for something else: the music, or the cook--when
+there was a good one--or the other people; generally ONE
+of the other people."
+
+"I see."
+
+She was amusing, and that, in his present mood, was more to
+his purpose than the exact shade of her taste. It was odd,
+too, to discover suddenly that the blurred tapestry of Mrs.
+Murrett's background had all the while been alive and full
+of eyes.  Now, with a pair of them looking into his, he was
+conscious of a queer reversal of perspective.
+
+"Who were the 'we'?  Were you a cloud of witnesses?"
+
+"There were a good many of us."  She smiled.  "Let me see--
+who was there in your time?  Mrs. Bolt--and Mademoiselle--and
+Professor Didymus and the Polish Countess.  Don't you
+remember the Polish Countess?  She crystal-gazed, and played
+accompaniments, and Mrs. Murrett chucked her because Mrs.
+Didymus accused her of hypnotizing the Professor.  But of
+course you don't remember.  We were all invisible to you;
+but we could see.  And we all used to wonder about you----"
+
+Again Darrow felt a redness in the temples.  "What about
+me?"
+
+"Well--whether it was you or she who..."
+
+He winced, but hid his disapproval.  It made the time pass
+to listen to her.
+
+"And what, if one may ask, was your conclusion?"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Bolt and Mademoiselle and the Countess naturally
+thought it was SHE; but Professor Didymus and Jimmy
+Brance--especially Jimmy----"
+
+"Just a moment: who on earth is Jimmy Brance?"
+
+She exclaimed in wonder: "You WERE absorbed--not to
+remember Jimmy Brance!  He must have been right about you,
+after all."  She let her amused scrutiny dwell on him.  "But
+how could you? She was false from head to foot!"
+
+"False----?" In spite of time and satiety, the male instinct
+of ownership rose up and repudiated the charge.
+
+Miss Viner caught his look and laughed.  "Oh, I only meant
+externally!  You see, she often used to come to my room after
+tennis, or to touch up in the evenings, when they were going
+on; and I assure you she took apart like a puzzle.  In fact
+I used to say to Jimmy--just to make him wild--:'I'll bet
+you anything you like there's nothing wrong, because I know
+she'd never dare un--'" She broke the word in two, and her
+quick blush made her face like a shallow-petalled rose
+shading to the deeper pink of the centre.
+
+The situation was saved, for Darrow, by an abrupt rush of
+memories, and he gave way to a mirth which she as frankly
+echoed.  "Of course," she gasped through her laughter, "I
+only said it to tease Jimmy----"
+
+Her amusement obscurely annoyed him.  "Oh, you're all
+alike!" he exclaimed, moved by an unaccountable sense of
+disappointment.
+
+She caught him up in a flash--she didn't miss things!  "You
+say that because you think I'm spiteful and envious?  Yes--I
+was envious of Lady Ulrica...Oh, not on account of you or
+Jimmy Brance!  Simply because she had almost all the things
+I've always wanted: clothes and fun and motors, and
+admiration and yachting and Paris--why, Paris alone would
+be enough!--And how do you suppose a girl can see that sort
+of thing about her day after day, and never wonder why some
+women, who don't seem to have any more right to it, have it
+all tumbled into their laps, while others are writing dinner
+invitations, and straightening out accounts, and copying
+visiting lists, and finishing golf-stockings, and matching
+ribbons, and seeing that the dogs get their sulphur?  One
+looks in one's glass, after all!"
+
+She launched the closing words at him on a cry that lifted
+them above the petulance of vanity; but his sense of her
+words was lost in the surprise of her face.  Under the
+flying clouds of her excitement it was no longer a shallow
+flower-cup but a darkening gleaming mirror that might give
+back strange depths of feeling. The girl had stuff in her--
+he saw it; and she seemed to catch the perception in his
+eyes.
+
+"That's the kind of education I got at Mrs. Murrett's--and
+I never had any other," she said with a shrug.
+
+"Good Lord--were you there so long?"
+
+"Five years.  I stuck it out longer than any of the others."
+She spoke as though it were something to be proud of.
+
+"Well, thank God you're out of it now!"
+
+Again a just perceptible shadow crossed her face. "Yes--I'm
+out of it now fast enough."
+
+"And what--if I may ask--are you doing next?"
+
+She brooded a moment behind drooped lids; then, with a touch
+of hauteur: "I'm going to Paris: to study for the stage."
+
+"The stage?" Darrow stared at her, dismayed.  All his
+confused contradictory impressions assumed a new aspect at
+this announcement; and to hide his surprise he added
+lightly: "Ah--then you will have Paris, after all!"
+
+"Hardly Lady Ulrica's Paris.  It s not likely to be roses,
+roses all the way."
+
+"It's not, indeed."  Real compassion prompted him to
+continue: "Have you any--any influence you can count on?"
+
+She gave a somewhat flippant little laugh.  "None but my
+own.  I've never had any other to count on."
+
+He passed over the obvious reply.  "But have you any idea
+how the profession is over-crowded?  I know I'm trite----"
+
+"I've a very clear idea.  But I couldn't go on as I was."
+
+"Of course not.  But since, as you say, you'd stuck it out
+longer than any of the others, couldn't you at least have
+held on till you were sure of some kind of an opening?"
+
+She made no reply for a moment; then she turned a listless
+glance to the rain-beaten window.  "Oughtn't we be
+starting?" she asked, with a lofty assumption of
+indifference that might have been Lady Ulrica's.
+
+Darrow, surprised by the change, but accepting her rebuff as
+a phase of what he guessed to be a confused and tormented
+mood, rose from his seat and lifted her jacket from the
+chair-back on which she had hung it to dry.  As he held it
+toward her she looked up at him quickly.
+
+"The truth is, we quarrelled," she broke out, "and I left
+last night without my dinner--and without my salary."
+
+"Ah--" he groaned, with a sharp perception of all the sordid
+dangers that might attend such a break with Mrs. Murrett.
+
+"And without a character!" she added, as she slipped her
+arms into the jacket.  "And without a trunk, as it appears--
+but didn't you say that, before going, there'd be time for
+another look at the station?"
+
+There was time for another look at the station; but the look
+again resulted in disappointment, since her trunk was
+nowhere to be found in the huge heap disgorged by the newly-
+arrived London express.  The fact caused Miss Viner a
+moment's perturbation; but she promptly adjusted herself to
+the necessity of proceeding on her journey, and her decision
+confirmed Darrow's vague resolve to go to Paris instead of
+retracing his way to London.
+
+Miss Viner seemed cheered at the prospect of his company,
+and sustained by his offer to telegraph to Charing Cross for
+the missing trunk; and he left her to wait in the fly while
+he hastened back to the telegraph office. The enquiry
+despatched, he was turning away from the desk when another
+thought struck him and he went back and indited a message to
+his servant in London: "If any letters with French post-mark
+received since departure forward immediately to Terminus
+Hotel Gare du Nord Paris."
+
+Then he rejoined Miss Viner, and they drove off through the
+rain to the pier.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Almost as soon as the train left Calais her head had dropped
+back into the corner, and she had fallen asleep.
+
+Sitting opposite, in the compartment from which he had
+contrived to have other travellers excluded, Darrow looked
+at her curiously.  He had never seen a face that changed so
+quickly.  A moment since it had danced like a field of
+daisies in a summer breeze; now, under the pallid
+oscillating light of the lamp overhead, it wore the hard
+stamp of experience, as of a soft thing chilled into shape
+before its curves had rounded: and it moved him to see that
+care already stole upon her when she slept.
+
+The story she had imparted to him in the wheezing shaking
+cabin, and at the Calais buffet--where he had insisted on
+offering her the dinner she had missed at Mrs. Murrett's--
+had given a distincter outline to her figure.  From the
+moment of entering the New York boarding-school to which a
+preoccupied guardian had hastily consigned her after the
+death of her parents, she had found herself alone in a busy
+and indifferent world. Her youthful history might, in fact,
+have been summed up in the statement that everybody had been
+too busy to look after her.  Her guardian, a drudge in a big
+banking house, was absorbed by "the office"; the guardian's
+wife, by her health and her religion; and an elder sister,
+Laura, married, unmarried, remarried, and pursuing, through
+all these alternating phases, some vaguely "artistic" ideal
+on which the guardian and his wife looked askance, had (as
+Darrow conjectured) taken their disapproval as a pretext for
+not troubling herself about poor Sophy, to whom--perhaps for
+this reason--she had remained the incarnation of remote
+romantic possibilities.
+
+In the course of time a sudden "stroke" of the guardian's
+had thrown his personal affairs into a state of confusion
+from which--after his widely lamented death--it became
+evident that it would not be possible to extricate his
+ward's inheritance.  No one deplored this more sincerely
+than his widow, who saw in it one more proof of her
+husband's life having been sacrificed to the innumerable
+duties imposed on him, and who could hardly--but for the
+counsels of religion--have brought herself to pardon the
+young girl for her indirect share in hastening his end.
+Sophy did not resent this point of view.  She was really
+much sorrier for her guardian's death than for the loss of
+her insignificant fortune.  The latter had represented only
+the means of holding her in bondage, and its disappearance
+was the occasion of her immediate plunge into the wide
+bright sea of life surrounding the island-of her captivity.
+She had first landed--thanks to the intervention of the
+ladies who had directed her education--in a Fifth Avenue
+school-room where, for a few months, she acted as a buffer
+between three autocratic infants and their bodyguard of
+nurses and teachers.  The too-pressing attentions of their
+father's valet had caused her to fly this sheltered spot,
+against the express advice of her educational superiors, who
+implied that, in their own case, refinement and self-respect
+had always sufficed to keep the most ungovernable passions
+at bay.  The experience of the guardian's widow having been
+precisely similar, and the deplorable precedent of Laura's
+career being present to all their minds, none of these
+ladies felt any obligation to intervene farther in Sophy's
+affairs; and she was accordingly left to her own resources.
+
+A schoolmate from the Rocky Mountains, who was taking her
+father and mother to Europe, had suggested Sophy's
+accompanying them, and "going round" with her while her
+progenitors, in the care of the courier, nursed their
+ailments at a fashionable bath.  Darrow gathered that the
+"going round" with Mamie Hoke was a varied and diverting
+process; but this relatively brilliant phase of Sophy's
+career was cut short by the elopement of the inconsiderate
+Mamie with a "matinee idol" who had followed her from New
+York, and by the precipitate return of her parents to
+negotiate for the repurchase of their child.
+
+It was then--after an interval of repose with compassionate
+but impecunious American friends in Paris--that Miss Viner
+had been drawn into the turbid current of Mrs. Murrett's
+career.  The impecunious compatriots had found Mrs. Murrett
+for her, and it was partly on their account (because they
+were such dears, and so unconscious, poor confiding things,
+of what they were letting her in for) that Sophy had stuck
+it out so long in the dreadful house in Chelsea.  The
+Farlows, she explained to Darrow, were the best friends she
+had ever had (and the only ones who had ever "been decent"
+about Laura, whom they had seen once, and intensely
+admired); but even after twenty years of Paris they were the
+most incorrigibly inexperienced angels, and quite persuaded
+that Mrs. Murrett was a woman of great intellectual
+eminence, and the house at Chelsea "the last of the salons"
+--Darrow knew what she meant?  And she hadn't liked to
+undeceive them, knowing that to do so would be virtually to
+throw herself back on their hands, and feeling, moreover,
+after her previous experiences, the urgent need of gaining,
+at any cost, a name for stability; besides which--she threw
+it off with a slight laugh--no other chance, in all these
+years, had happened to come to her.
+
+She had brushed in this outline of her career with light
+rapid strokes, and in a tone of fatalism oddly untinged by
+bitterness.  Darrow perceived that she classified people
+according to their greater or less "luck" in life, but she
+appeared to harbour no resentment against the undefined
+power which dispensed the gift in such unequal measure.
+Things came one's way or they didn't; and meanwhile one
+could only look on, and make the most of small
+compensations, such as watching "the show" at Mrs.
+Murrett's, and talking over the Lady Ulricas and other
+footlight figures.  And at any moment, of course, a turn of
+the kaleidoscope might suddenly toss a bright spangle into
+the grey pattern of one's days.
+
+This light-hearted philosophy was not without charm to a
+young man accustomed to more traditional views. George
+Darrow had had a fairly varied experience of feminine types,
+but the women he had frequented had either been pronouncedly
+"ladies" or they had not. Grateful to both for ministering
+to the more complex masculine nature, and disposed to assume
+that they had been evolved, if not designed, to that end, he
+had instinctively kept the two groups apart in his mind,
+avoiding that intermediate society which attempts to
+conciliate both theories of life.  "Bohemianism" seemed to
+him a cheaper convention than the other two, and he liked,
+above all, people who went as far as they could in their own
+line--liked his "ladies" and their rivals to be equally
+unashamed of showing for exactly what they were.  He had not
+indeed--the fact of Lady Ulrica was there to remind him--
+been without his experience of a third type; but that
+experience had left him with a contemptuous distaste for the
+woman who uses the privileges of one class to shelter the
+customs of another.
+
+As to young girls, he had never thought much about them
+since his early love for the girl who had become Mrs. Leath.
+That episode seemed, as he looked back on it, to bear no
+more relation to reality than a pale decorative design to
+the confused richness of a summer landscape.  He no longer
+understood the violent impulses and dreamy pauses of his own
+young heart, or the inscrutable abandonments and reluctances
+of hers. He had known a moment of anguish at losing her--the
+mad plunge of youthful instincts against the barrier of
+fate; but the first wave of stronger sensation had swept
+away all but the outline of their story, and the memory of
+Anna Summers had made the image of the young girl sacred,
+but the class uninteresting.
+
+Such generalisations belonged, however, to an earlier stage
+of his experience.  The more he saw of life the more
+incalculable he found it; and he had learned to yield to his
+impressions without feeling the youthful need of relating
+them to others.  It was the girl in the opposite seat who
+had roused in him the dormant habit of comparison.  She was
+distinguished from the daughters of wealth by her avowed
+acquaintance with the real business of living, a familiarity
+as different as possible from their theoretical proficiency;
+yet it seemed to Darrow that her experience had made her
+free without hardness and self-assured without
+assertiveness.
+
+
+The rush into Amiens, and the flash of the station lights
+into their compartment, broke Miss Viner's sleep, and
+without changing her position she lifted her lids and looked
+at Darrow.  There was neither surprise nor bewilderment in
+the look.  She seemed instantly conscious, not so much of
+where she was, as of the fact that she was with him; and
+that fact seemed enough to reassure her.  She did not even
+turn her head to look out; her eyes continued to rest on him
+with a vague smile which appeared to light her face from
+within, while her lips kept their sleepy droop.
+
+Shouts and the hurried tread of travellers came to them
+through the confusing cross-lights of the platform.  A head
+appeared at the window, and Darrow threw himself forward to
+defend their solitude; but the intruder was only a train
+hand going his round of inspection. He passed on, and the
+lights and cries of the station dropped away, merged in a
+wider haze and a hollower resonance, as the train gathered
+itself up with a long shake and rolled out again into the
+darkness.
+
+Miss Viner's head sank back against the cushion, pushing out
+a dusky wave of hair above her forehead.  The swaying of the
+train loosened a lock over her ear, and she shook it back
+with a movement like a boy's, while her gaze still rested on
+her companion.
+
+"You're not too tired?"
+
+She shook her head with a smile.
+
+"We shall be in before midnight.  We're very nearly on
+time."  He verified the statement by holding up his watch to
+the lamp.
+
+She nodded dreamily.  "It's all right.  I telegraphed Mrs.
+Farlow that they mustn't think of coming to the station; but
+they'll have told the concierge to look out for me."
+
+"You'll let me drive you there?"
+
+She nodded again, and her eyes closed.  It was very pleasant
+to Darrow that she made no effort to talk or to dissemble
+her sleepiness.  He sat watching her till the upper lashes
+met and mingled with the lower, and their blent shadow lay
+on her cheek; then he stood up and drew the curtain over the
+lamp, drowning the compartment in a bluish twilight.
+
+As he sank back into his seat he thought how differently
+Anna Summers--or even Anna Leath--would have behaved.  She
+would not have talked too much; she would not have been
+either restless or embarrassed; but her adaptability, her
+appropriateness, would not have been nature but "tact."  The
+oddness of the situation would have made sleep impossible,
+or, if weariness had overcome her for a moment, she would
+have waked with a start, wondering where she was, and how
+she had come there, and if her hair were tidy; and nothing
+short of hairpins and a glass would have restored her self-
+possession...
+
+The reflection set him wondering whether the "sheltered"
+girl's bringing-up might not unfit her for all subsequent
+contact with life.  How much nearer to it had Mrs. Leath
+been brought by marriage and motherhood, and the passage of
+fourteen years?  What were all her reticences and evasions
+but the result of the deadening process of forming a "lady"?
+The freshness he had marvelled at was like the unnatural
+whiteness of flowers forced in the dark.
+
+As he looked back at their few days together he saw that
+their intercourse had been marked, on her part, by the same
+hesitations and reserves which had chilled their earlier
+intimacy.  Once more they had had their hour together and
+she had wasted it.  As in her girlhood, her eyes had made
+promises which her lips were afraid to keep.  She was still
+afraid of life, of its ruthlessness, its danger and mystery.
+She was still the petted little girl who cannot be left
+alone in the dark...His memory flew back to their youthful
+story, and long-forgotten details took shape before him.
+How frail and faint the picture was!  They seemed, he and
+she, like the ghostly lovers of the Grecian Urn, forever
+pursuing without ever clasping each other.  To this day he
+did not quite know what had parted them: the break had been
+as fortuitous as the fluttering apart of two seed-vessels on
+a wave of summer air...
+
+The very slightness, vagueness, of the memory gave it an
+added poignancy.  He felt the mystic pang of the parent for
+a child which has just breathed and died. Why had it
+happened thus, when the least shifting of influences might
+have made it all so different?  If she had been given to him
+then he would have put warmth in her veins and light in her
+eyes: would have made her a woman through and through.
+Musing thus, he had the sense of waste that is the bitterest
+harvest of experience.  A love like his might have given her
+the divine gift of self-renewal; and now he saw her fated to
+wane into old age repeating the same gestures, echoing the
+words she had always heard, and perhaps never guessing that,
+just outside her glazed and curtained consciousness, life
+rolled away, a vast blackness starred with lights, like the
+night landscape beyond the windows of the train.
+
+The engine lowered its speed for the passage through a
+sleeping station.  In the light of the platform lamp Darrow
+looked across at his companion.  Her head had dropped toward
+one shoulder, and her lips were just far enough apart for
+the reflection of the upper one to deepen the colour of the
+other.  The jolting of the train had again shaken loose the
+lock above her ear. It danced on her cheek like the flit of
+a brown wing over flowers, and Darrow felt an intense desire
+to lean forward and put it back behind her ear.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+As their motor-cab, on the way from the Gare du Nord, turned
+into the central glitter of the Boulevard, Darrow had bent
+over to point out an incandescent threshold.
+
+"There!"
+
+Above the doorway, an arch of flame flashed out the name of
+a great actress, whose closing performances in a play of
+unusual originality had been the theme of long articles in
+the Paris papers which Darrow had tossed into their
+compartment at Calais.
+
+"That's what you must see before you're twenty-four hours
+older!"
+
+The girl followed his gesture eagerly.  She was all awake
+and alive now, as if the heady rumours of the streets, with
+their long effervescences of light, had passed into her
+veins like wine.
+
+"Cerdine?  Is that where she acts?" She put her head out of
+the window, straining back for a glimpse of the sacred
+threshold.  As they flew past it she sank into her seat with
+a satisfied sigh.
+
+"It's delicious enough just to KNOW she's there!  I've
+never seen her, you know.  When I was here with Mamie Hoke
+we never went anywhere but to the music halls, because she
+couldn't understand any French; and when I came back
+afterward to the Farlows' I was dead broke, and couldn't
+afford the play, and neither could they; so the only chance
+we had was when friends of theirs invited us--and once it
+was to see a tragedy by a Roumanian lady, and the other time
+it was for 'L'Ami Fritz' at the Francais."
+
+Darrow laughed.  "You must do better than that now. 'Le
+Vertige' is a fine thing, and Cerdine gets some wonderful
+effects out of it.  You must come with me tomorrow evening
+to see it--with your friends, of course.--That is," he
+added, "if there's any sort of chance of getting seats."
+
+The flash of a street lamp lit up her radiant face. "Oh,
+will you really take us?  What fun to think that it's
+tomorrow already!"
+
+It was wonderfully pleasant to be able to give such
+pleasure.  Darrow was not rich, but it was almost impossible
+for him to picture the state of persons with tastes and
+perceptions like his own, to whom an evening at the theatre
+was an unattainable indulgence.  There floated through his
+mind an answer of Mrs. Leath's to his enquiry whether she
+had seen the play in question. "No.  I meant to, of course,
+but one is so overwhelmed with things in Paris.  And then
+I'm rather sick of Cerdine--one is always being dragged to
+see her."
+
+That, among the people he frequented, was the usual attitude
+toward such opportunities.  There were too many, they were a
+nuisance, one had to defend one's self!  He even remembered
+wondering, at the moment, whether to a really fine taste the
+exceptional thing could ever become indifferent through
+habit; whether the appetite for beauty was so soon dulled
+that it could be kept alive only by privation.  Here, at any
+rate, was a fine chance to experiment with such a hunger: he
+almost wished he might stay on in Paris long enough to take
+the measure of Miss Viner's receptivity.
+
+She was still dwelling on his promise, "It's too beautiful
+of you!  Oh, don't you THINK you'll be able to get
+seats?" And then, after a pause of brimming appreciation: "I
+wonder if you'll think me horrid?--but it may be my only
+chance; and if you can't get places for us all, wouldn't you
+perhaps just take ME?  After all, the Farlows may have
+seen it!"
+
+He had not, of course, thought her horrid, but only the more
+engaging, for being so natural, and so unashamed of showing
+the frank greed of her famished youth.  "Oh, you shall go
+somehow!" he had gaily promised her; and she had dropped
+back with a sigh of pleasure as their cab passed into the
+dimly-lit streets of the Farlows' quarter beyond the
+Seine...
+
+
+This little passage came back to him the next morning, as he
+opened his hotel window on the early roar of the Northern
+Terminus.
+
+The girl was there, in the room next to him.  That had been
+the first point in his waking consciousness.  The second was
+a sense of relief at the obligation imposed on him by this
+unexpected turn of everts.  To wake to the necessity of
+action, to postpone perforce the fruitless contemplation of
+his private grievance, was cause enough for gratitude, even
+if the small adventure in which he found himself involved
+had not, on its own merits, roused an instinctive curiosity
+to see it through.
+
+When he and his companion, the night before, had reached the
+Farlows' door in the rue de la Chaise, it was only to find,
+after repeated assaults on its panels, that the Farlows were
+no longer there.  They had moved away the week before, not
+only from their apartment but from Paris; and Miss Viner's
+breach with Mrs. Murrett had been too sudden to permit her
+letter and telegram to overtake them.  Both communications,
+no doubt, still reposed in a pigeon-hole of the loge;
+but its custodian, when drawn from his lair, sulkily
+declined to let Miss Viner verify the fact, and only flung
+out, in return for Darrow's bribe, the statement that the
+Americans had gone to Joigny.
+
+To pursue them there at that hour was manifestly impossible,
+and Miss Viner, disturbed but not disconcerted by this new
+obstacle, had quite simply acceded to Darrow's suggestion
+that she should return for what remained of the night to the
+hotel where he had sent his luggage.
+
+The drive back through the dark hush before dawn, with the
+nocturnal blaze of the Boulevard fading around them like the
+false lights of a magician's palace, had so played on her
+impressionability that she seemed to give no farther thought
+to her own predicament.  Darrow noticed that she did not
+feel the beauty and mystery of the spectacle as much as its
+pressure of human significance, all its hidden implications
+of emotion and adventure.  As they passed the shadowy
+colonnade of the Francais, remote and temple-like in the
+paling lights, he felt a clutch on his arm, and heard the
+cry: "There are things THERE that I want so desperately
+to see!" and all the way back to the hotel she continued to
+question him, with shrewd precision and an artless thirst
+for detail, about the theatrical life of Paris. He was
+struck afresh, as he listened, by the way in which her
+naturalness eased the situation of constraint, leaving to it
+only a pleasant savour of good fellowship. It was the kind
+of episode that one might, in advance, have characterized as
+"awkward", yet that was proving, in the event, as much
+outside such definitions as a sunrise stroll with a dryad in
+a dew-drenched forest; and Darrow reflected that mankind
+would never have needed to invent tact if it had not first
+invented social complications.
+
+It had been understood, with his good-night to Miss Viner,
+that the next morning he was to look up the Joigny trains,
+and see her safely to the station; but, while he breakfasted
+and waited for a time-table, he recalled again her cry of
+joy at the prospect of seeing Cerdine.  It was certainly a
+pity, since that most elusive and incalculable of artists
+was leaving the next week for South America, to miss what
+might be a last sight of her in her greatest part; and
+Darrow, having dressed and made the requisite excerpts from
+the time-table, decided to carry the result of his
+deliberations to his neighbour's door.
+
+It instantly opened at his knock, and she came forth looking
+as if she had been plunged into some sparkling element which
+had curled up all her drooping tendrils and wrapped her in a
+shimmer of fresh leaves.
+
+"Well, what do you think of me?" she cried; and with a hand
+at her waist she spun about as if to show off some miracle
+of Parisian dress-making.
+
+"I think the missing trunk has come--and that it was worth
+waiting for!"
+
+"You DO like my dress?"
+
+"I adore it!  I always adore new dresses--why, you don't mean
+to say it's NOT a new one?"
+
+She laughed out her triumph.
+
+"No, no, no!  My trunk hasn't come, and this is only my old
+rag of yesterday--but I never knew the trick to fail!" And,
+as he stared: "You see," she joyously explained, "I've
+always had to dress in all kinds of dreary left-overs, and
+sometimes, when everybody else was smart and new, it used to
+make me awfully miserable.  So one day, when Mrs. Murrett
+dragged me down unexpectedly to fill a place at dinner, I
+suddenly thought I'd try spinning around like that, and say
+to every one: 'WELL, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ME?'  And, do
+you know, they were all taken in, including Mrs. Murrett,
+who didn't recognize my old turned and dyed rags, and told
+me afterward it was awfully bad form to dress as if I were
+somebody that people would expect to know!  And ever since,
+whenever I've particularly wanted to look nice, I've just
+asked people what they thought of my new frock; and they're
+always, always taken in!"
+
+She dramatized her explanation so vividly that Darrow felt
+as if his point were gained.
+
+"Ah, but this confirms your vocation--of course," he cried,
+"you must see Cerdine!" and, seeing her face fall at this
+reminder of the change in her prospects, he hastened to set
+forth his plan.  As he did so, he saw how easy it was to
+explain things to her.  She would either accept his
+suggestion, or she would not: but at least she would waste
+no time in protestations and objections, or any vain
+sacrifice to the idols of conformity.  The conviction that
+one could, on any given point, almost predicate this of her,
+gave him the sense of having advanced far enough in her
+intimacy to urge his arguments against a hasty pursuit of
+her friends.
+
+Yes, it would certainly be foolish--she at once agreed--in
+the case of such dear indefinite angels as the Farlows, to
+dash off after them without more positive proof that they
+were established at Joigny, and so established that they
+could take her in.  She owned it was but too probable that
+they had gone there to "cut down", and might be doing so in
+quarters too contracted to receive her; and it would be
+unfair, on that chance, to impose herself on them
+unannounced.  The simplest way of getting farther light on
+the question would be to go back to the rue de la Chaise,
+where, at that more conversable hour, the concierge
+might be less chary of detail; and she could decide on her
+next step in the light of such facts as he imparted.
+
+Point by point, she fell in with the suggestion,
+recognizing, in the light of their unexplained flight, that
+the Farlows might indeed be in a situation on which one
+could not too rashly intrude.  Her concern for her friends
+seemed to have effaced all thought of herself, and this
+little indication of character gave Darrow a quite
+disproportionate pleasure.  She agreed that it would be well
+to go at once to the rue de la Chaise, but met his proposal
+that they should drive by the declaration that it was a
+"waste" not to walk in Paris; so they set off on foot
+through the cheerful tumult of the streets.
+
+The walk was long enough for him to learn many things about
+her.  The storm of the previous night had cleared the air,
+and Paris shone in morning beauty under a sky that was all
+broad wet washes of white and blue; but Darrow again noticed
+that her visual sensitiveness was less keen than her feeling
+for what he was sure the good Farlows--whom he already
+seemed to know--would have called "the human interest."  She
+seemed hardly conscious of sensations of form and colour, or
+of any imaginative suggestion, and the spectacle before
+them--always, in its scenic splendour, so moving to her
+companion--broke up, under her scrutiny, into a thousand
+minor points: the things in the shops, the types of
+character and manner of occupation shown in the passing
+faces, the street signs, the names of the hotels they
+passed, the motley brightness of the flower-carts, the
+identity of the churches and public buildings that caught
+her eye.  But what she liked best, he divined, was the mere
+fact of being free to walk abroad in the bright air, her
+tongue rattling on as it pleased, while her feet kept time
+to the mighty orchestration of the city's sounds. Her
+delight in the fresh air, in the freedom, light and sparkle
+of the morning, gave him a sudden insight into her stifled
+past; nor was it indifferent to him to perceive how much his
+presence evidently added to her enjoyment.  If only as a
+sympathetic ear, he guessed what he must be worth to her.
+The girl had been dying for some one to talk to, some one
+before whom she could unfold and shake out to the light her
+poor little shut-away emotions.  Years of repression were
+revealed in her sudden burst of confidence; and the pity she
+inspired made Darrow long to fill her few free hours to the
+brim.
+
+She had the gift of rapid definition, and his questions as
+to the life she had led with the Farlows, during the
+interregnum between the Hoke and Murrett eras, called up
+before him a queer little corner of Parisian existence.  The
+Farlows themselves--he a painter, she a "magazine writer"--
+rose before him in all their incorruptible simplicity: an
+elderly New England couple, with vague yearnings for
+enfranchisement, who lived in Paris as if it were a
+Massachusetts suburb, and dwelt hopefully on the "higher
+side" of the Gallic nature.  With equal vividness she set
+before him the component figures of the circle from which
+Mrs. Farlow drew the "Inner Glimpses of French Life"
+appearing over her name in a leading New England journal:
+the Roumanian lady who had sent them tickets for her
+tragedy, an elderly French gentleman who, on the strength of
+a week's stay at Folkestone, translated English fiction for
+the provincial press, a lady from Wichita, Kansas, who
+advocated free love and the abolition of the corset, a
+clergyman's widow from Torquay who had written an "English
+Ladies' Guide to Foreign Galleries" and a Russian sculptor
+who lived on nuts and was "almost certainly" an anarchist.
+It was this nucleus, and its outer ring of musical,
+architectural and other American students, which posed
+successively to Mrs. Farlow's versatile fancy as a centre of
+"University Life", a "Salon of the Faubourg St. Germain", a
+group of Parisian "Intellectuals" or a "Cross-section of
+Montmartre"; but even her faculty for extracting from it the
+most varied literary effects had not sufficed to create a
+permanent demand for the "Inner Glimpses", and there were
+days when--Mr. Farlow's landscapes being equally
+unmarketable--a temporary withdrawal to the country
+(subsequently utilized as "Peeps into Chateau Life") became
+necessary to the courageous couple.
+
+Five years of Mrs. Murrett's world, while increasing Sophy's
+tenderness for the Farlows, had left her with few illusions
+as to their power of advancing her fortunes; and she did not
+conceal from Darrow that her theatrical projects were of the
+vaguest.  They hung mainly on the problematical good-will of
+an ancient comedienne, with whom Mrs. Farlow had a slight
+acquaintance (extensively utilized in "Stars of the French
+Footlights" and "Behind the Scenes at the Francais"), and
+who had once, with signs of approval, heard Miss Viner
+recite the Nuit de Mai.
+
+"But of course I know how much that's worth," the girl broke
+off, with one of her flashes of shrewdness.  "And besides,
+it isn't likely that a poor old fossil like Mme. Dolle could
+get anybody to listen to her now, even if she really thought
+I had talent.  But she might introduce me to people; or at
+least give me a few tips.  If I could manage to earn enough
+to pay for lessons I'd go straight to some of the big people
+and work with them.  I'm rather hoping the Farlows may find
+me a chance of that kind--an engagement with some American
+family in Paris who would want to be 'gone round' with like
+the Hokes, and who'd leave me time enough to study."
+
+In the rue de la Chaise they learned little except the exact
+address of the Farlows, and the fact that they had sub-let
+their flat before leaving.  This information obtained,
+Darrow proposed to Miss Viner that they should stroll along
+the quays to a little restaurant looking out on the Seine,
+and there, over the plat du jour, consider the next step
+to be taken.  The long walk had given her cheeks a glow
+indicative of wholesome hunger, and she made no difficulty
+about satisfying it in Darrow's company.  Regaining the
+river they walked on in the direction of Notre Dame, delayed
+now and again by the young man's irresistible tendency to
+linger over the bookstalls, and by his ever-fresh response
+to the shifting beauties of the scene.  For two years his
+eyes had been subdued to the atmospheric effects of London,
+to the mysterious fusion of darkly-piled city and low-lying
+bituminous sky; and the transparency of the French air,
+which left the green gardens and silvery stones so
+classically clear yet so softly harmonized, struck him as
+having a kind of conscious intelligence. Every line of the
+architecture, every arch of the bridges, the very sweep of
+the strong bright river between them, while contributing to
+this effect, sent forth each a separate appeal to some
+sensitive memory; so that, for Darrow, a walk through the
+Paris streets was always like the unrolling of a vast
+tapestry from which countless stored fragrances were shaken
+out.
+
+It was a proof of the richness and multiplicity of the
+spectacle that it served, without incongruity, for so
+different a purpose as the background of Miss Viner's
+enjoyment.  As a mere drop-scene for her personal adventure
+it was just as much in its place as in the evocation of
+great perspectives of feeling.  For her, as he again
+perceived when they were seated at their table in a low
+window above the Seine, Paris was "Paris" by virtue of all
+its entertaining details, its endless ingenuities of
+pleasantness.  Where else, for instance, could one find the
+dear little dishes of hors d'oeuvre, the symmetrically-
+laid anchovies and radishes, the thin golden shells of
+butter, or the wood strawberries and brown jars of cream
+that gave to their repast the last refinement of rusticity?
+Hadn't he noticed, she asked, that cooking always expressed
+the national character, and that French food was clever and
+amusing just because the people were?  And in private houses,
+everywhere, how the dishes always resembled the talk--how
+the very same platitudes seemed to go into people's mouths
+and come out of them?  Couldn't he see just what kind of menu
+it would make, if a fairy waved a wand and suddenly turned
+the conversation at a London dinner into joints and
+puddings?  She always thought it a good sign when people
+liked Irish stew; it meant that they enjoyed changes and
+surprises, and taking life as it came; and such a beautiful
+Parisian version of the dish as the navarin that was
+just being set before them was like the very best kind of
+talk--the kind when one could never tell before-hand just
+what was going to be said!
+
+Darrow, as he watched her enjoyment of their innocent feast,
+wondered if her vividness and vivacity were signs of her
+calling.  She was the kind of girl in whom certain people
+would instantly have recognized the histrionic gift.  But
+experience had led him to think that, except at the creative
+moment, the divine flame burns low in its possessors.  The
+one or two really intelligent actresses he had known had
+struck him, in conversation, as either bovine or primitively
+"jolly". He had a notion that, save in the mind of genius,
+the creative process absorbs too much of the whole stuff of
+being to leave much surplus for personal expression; and the
+girl before him, with her changing face and flexible
+fancies, seemed destined to work in life itself rather than
+in any of its counterfeits.
+
+The coffee and liqueurs were already on the table when her
+mind suddenly sprang back to the Farlows.  She jumped up
+with one of her subversive movements and declared that she
+must telegraph at once.  Darrow called for writing materials
+and room was made at her elbow for the parched ink-bottle
+and saturated blotter of the Parisian restaurant; but the
+mere sight of these jaded implements seemed to paralyze Miss
+Viner's faculties. She hung over the telegraph-form with
+anxiously-drawn brow, the tip of the pen-handle pressed
+against her lip; and at length she raised her troubled eyes
+to Darrow's.
+
+"I simply can't think how to say it."
+
+"What--that you're staying over to see Cerdine?"
+
+"But AM I--am I, really?" The joy of it flamed over her
+face.
+
+Darrow looked at his watch.  "You could hardly get an answer
+to your telegram in time to take a train to Joigny this
+afternoon, even if you found your friends could have you."
+
+She mused for a moment, tapping her lip with the pen. "But I
+must let them know I'm here.  I must find out as soon as
+possible if they CAN, have me."  She laid the pen down
+despairingly.  "I never COULD write a telegram!" she
+sighed.
+
+"Try a letter, then and tell them you'll arrive tomorrow."
+
+This suggestion produced immediate relief, and she gave an
+energetic dab at the ink-bottle; but after another interval
+of uncertain scratching she paused again."Oh, it's fearful!
+I don't know what on earth to say.  I wouldn't for the world
+have them know how beastly Mrs. Murrett's been."
+
+Darrow did not think it necessary to answer.  It was no
+business of his, after all.  He lit a cigar and leaned back
+in his seat, letting his eyes take their fill of indolent
+pleasure.  In the throes of invention she had pushed back
+her hat, loosening the stray lock which had invited his
+touch the night before.  After looking at it for a while he
+stood up and wandered to the window.
+
+Behind him he heard her pen scrape on.
+
+"I don't want to worry them--I'm so certain they've got
+bothers of their own."  The faltering scratches ceased again.
+"I wish I weren't such an idiot about writing: all the words
+get frightened and scurry away when I try to catch them."
+He glanced back at her with a smile as she bent above her
+task like a school-girl struggling with a "composition."  Her
+flushed cheek and frowning brow showed that her difficulty
+was genuine and not an artless device to draw him to her
+side.  She was really powerless to put her thoughts in
+writing, and the inability seemed characteristic of her
+quick impressionable mind, and of the incessant come-and-go
+of her sensations.  He thought of Anna Leath's letters, or
+rather of the few he had received, years ago, from the girl
+who had been Anna Summers.  He saw the slender firm strokes
+of the pen, recalled the clear structure of the phrases,
+and, by an abrupt association of ideas, remembered that, at
+that very hour, just such a document might be awaiting him
+at the hotel.
+
+What if it were there, indeed, and had brought him a
+complete explanation of her telegram?  The revulsion of
+feeling produced by this thought made him look at the girl
+with sudden impatience.  She struck him as positively
+stupid, and he wondered how he could have wasted half his
+day with her, when all the while Mrs. Leath's letter might
+be lying on his table.  At that moment, if he could have
+chosen, he would have left his companion on the spot; but he
+had her on his hands, and must accept the consequences.
+
+Some odd intuition seemed to make her conscious of his
+change of mood, for she sprang from her seat, crumpling the
+letter in her hand.
+
+"I'm too stupid; but I won't keep you any longer.  I'll go
+back to the hotel and write there."
+
+Her colour deepened, and for the first time, as their eyes
+met, he noticed a faint embarrassment in hers. Could it be
+that his nearness was, after all, the cause of her
+confusion?  The thought turned his vague impatience with her
+into a definite resentment toward himself.  There was really
+no excuse for his having blundered into such an adventure.
+Why had he not shipped the girl off to Joigny by the evening
+train, instead of urging her to delay, and using Cerdine as
+a pretext?  Paris was full of people he knew, and his
+annoyance was increased by the thought that some friend of
+Mrs. Leath's might see him at the play, and report his
+presence there with a suspiciously good-looking companion.
+The idea was distinctly disagreeable: he did not want the
+woman he adored to think he could forget her for a moment.
+And by this time he had fully persuaded himself that a
+letter from her was awaiting him, and had even gone so far
+as to imagine that its contents might annul the writer's
+telegraphed injunction, and call him to her side at once...
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+At the porter's desk a brief "Pas de lettres" fell
+destructively on the fabric of these hopes.
+Mrs. Leath had not written--she had not taken the trouble to
+explain her telegram.  Darrow turned away with a sharp pang
+of humiliation.  Her frugal silence mocked his prodigality
+of hopes and fears.  He had put his question to the porter
+once before, on returning to the hotel after luncheon; and
+now, coming back again in the late afternoon, he was met by
+the same denial.  The second post was in, and had brought
+him nothing.
+
+A glance at his watch showed that he had barely time to
+dress before taking Miss Viner out to dine; but as he turned
+to the lift a new thought struck him, and hurrying back into
+the hall he dashed off another telegram to his servant:
+"Have you forwarded any letter with French postmark today?
+Telegraph answer Terminus."
+
+Some kind of reply would be certain to reach him on his
+return from the theatre, and he would then know definitely
+whether Mrs. Leath meant to write or not. He hastened up to
+his room and dressed with a lighter heart.
+
+Miss Viner's vagrant trunk had finally found its way to its
+owner; and, clad in such modest splendour as it furnished,
+she shone at Darrow across their restaurant table.  In the
+reaction of his wounded vanity he found her prettier and
+more interesting than before.  Her dress, sloping away from
+the throat, showed the graceful set of her head on its
+slender neck, and the wide brim of her hat arched above her
+hair like a dusky halo.  Pleasure danced in her eyes and on
+her lips, and as she shone on him between the candle-shades
+Darrow felt that he should not be at all sorry to be seen
+with her in public.  He even sent a careless glance about
+him in the vague hope that it might fall on an acquaintance.
+
+At the theatre her vivacity sank into a breathless hush, and
+she sat intent in her corner of their baignoire, with
+the gaze of a neophyte about to be initiated into the sacred
+mysteries.  Darrow placed himself behind her, that he might
+catch her profile between himself and the stage.  He was
+touched by the youthful seriousness of her expression.  In
+spite of the experiences she must have had, and of the
+twenty-four years to which she owned, she struck him as
+intrinsically young; and he wondered how so evanescent a
+quality could have been preserved in the desiccating Murrett
+air.  As the play progressed he noticed that her immobility
+was traversed by swift flashes of perception.  She was not
+missing anything, and her intensity of attention when
+Cerdine was on the stage drew an anxious line between her
+brows.
+
+After the first act she remained for a few minutes rapt and
+motionless; then she turned to her companion with a quick
+patter of questions.  He gathered from them that she had
+been less interested in following the general drift of the
+play than in observing the details of its interpretation.
+Every gesture and inflection of the great actress's had been
+marked and analyzed; and Darrow felt a secret gratification
+in being appealed to as an authority on the histrionic art.
+His interest in it had hitherto been merely that of the
+cultivated young man curious of all forms of artistic
+expression; but in reply to her questions he found things to
+say about it which evidently struck his listener as
+impressive and original, and with which he himself was not,
+on the whole, dissatisfied.  Miss Viner was much more
+concerned to hear his views than to express her own, and the
+deference with which she received his comments called from
+him more ideas about the theatre than he had ever supposed
+himself to possess.
+
+With the second act she began to give more attention to the
+development of the play, though her interest was excited
+rather by what she called "the story" than by the conflict
+of character producing it.  Oddly combined with her sharp
+apprehension of things theatrical, her knowledge of
+technical "dodges" and green-room precedents, her glibness
+about "lines" and "curtains", was the primitive simplicity
+of her attitude toward the tale itself, as toward something
+that was "really happening" and at which one assisted as at
+a street-accident or a quarrel overheard in the next room.
+She wanted to know if Darrow thought the lovers "really
+would" be involved in the catastrophe that threatened them,
+and when he reminded her that his predictions were
+disqualified by his having already seen the play, she
+exclaimed: "Oh, then, please don't tell me what's going to
+happen!" and the next moment was questioning him about
+Cerdine's theatrical situation and her private history.  On
+the latter point some of her enquiries were of a kind that
+it is not in the habit of young girls to make, or even to
+know how to make; but her apparent unconsciousness of the
+fact seemed rather to reflect on her past associates than on
+herself.
+
+When the second act was over, Darrow suggested their taking
+a turn in the foyer; and seated on one of its cramped
+red velvet sofas they watched the crowd surge up and down in
+a glare of lights and gilding.  Then, as she complained of
+the heat, he led her through the press to the congested
+cafe at the foot of the stairs, where orangeades were
+thrust at them between the shoulders of packed
+consommateurs and Darrow, lighting a cigarette while she
+sucked her straw, knew the primitive complacency of the man
+at whose companion other men stare.
+
+On a corner of their table lay a smeared copy of a
+theatrical journal.  It caught Sophy's eye and after poring
+over the page she looked up with an excited exclamation.
+
+'They're giving Oedipe tomorrow afternoon at the
+Francais!  I suppose you've seen it heaps and heaps of
+times?"
+
+He smiled back at her.  "You must see it too.  We'll go
+tomorrow."
+
+She sighed at his suggestion, but without discarding it.
+"How can I?  The last train for Joigny leaves at four."
+
+"But you don't know yet that your friends will want you."
+
+"I shall know tomorrow early.  I asked Mrs. Farlow to
+telegraph as soon as she got my letter."
+A twinge of compunction shot through Darrow.  Her words
+recalled to him that on their return to the hotel after
+luncheon she had given him her letter to post, and that he
+had never thought of it again.  No doubt it was still in the
+pocket of the coat he had taken off when he dressed for
+dinner.  In his perturbation he pushed back his chair, and
+the movement made her look up at him.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing.  Only--you know I don't fancy that letter can have
+caught this afternoon's post."
+
+"Not caught it?  Why not?"
+
+"Why, I'm afraid it will have been too late."  He bent his
+head to light another cigarette.
+
+She struck her hands together with a gesture which, to his
+amusement, he noticed she had caught from Cerdine.
+
+"Oh, dear, I hadn't thought of that!  But surely it will
+reach them in the morning?"
+
+"Some time in the morning, I suppose.  You know the French
+provincial post is never in a hurry.  I don't believe your
+letter would have been delivered this evening in any case."
+As this idea occurred to him he felt himself almost
+absolved.
+
+"Perhaps, then, I ought to have telegraphed?"
+
+"I'll telegraph for you in the morning if you say so."
+
+The bell announcing the close of the entr'-acte shrilled
+through the cafe, and she sprang to her feet.
+
+"Oh, come, come!  We mustn't miss it!"
+
+Instantly forgetful of the Farlows, she slipped her arm
+through his and turned to push her way back to the theatre.
+
+As soon as the curtain went up she as promptly forgot her
+companion.  Watching her from the corner to which he had
+returned, Darrow saw that great waves of sensation were
+beating deliciously against her brain.  It was as though
+every starved sensibility were throwing out feelers to the
+mounting tide; as though everything she was seeing, hearing,
+imagining, rushed in to fill the void of all she had always
+been denied.
+
+Darrow, as he observed her, again felt a detached enjoyment
+in her pleasure.  She was an extraordinary conductor of
+sensation: she seemed to transmit it physically, in
+emanations that set the blood dancing in his veins.  He had
+not often had the opportunity of studying the effects of a
+perfectly fresh impression on so responsive a temperament,
+and he felt a fleeting desire to make its chords vibrate for
+his own amusement.
+
+At the end of the next act she discovered with dismay that
+in their transit to the cafe she had lost the beautiful
+pictured programme he had bought for her. She wanted to go
+back and hunt for it, but Darrow assured her that he would
+have no trouble in getting her another.  When he went out in
+quest of it she followed him protestingly to the door of the
+box, and he saw that she was distressed at the thought of
+his having to spend an additional franc for her.  This
+frugality smote Darrow by its contrast to her natural bright
+profusion; and again he felt the desire to right so clumsy
+an injustice.
+
+When he returned to the box she was still standing in the
+doorway, and he noticed that his were not the only eyes
+attracted to her.  Then another impression sharply diverted
+his attention.  Above the fagged faces of the Parisian crowd
+he had caught the fresh fair countenance of Owen Leath
+signalling a joyful recognition.  The young man, slim and
+eager, had detached himself from two companions of his own
+type, and was seeking to push through the press to his step-
+mother's friend.  The encounter, to Darrow, could hardly
+have been more inopportune; it woke in him a confusion of
+feelings of which only the uppermost was allayed by seeing
+Sophy Viner, as if instinctively warned, melt back into the
+shadow of their box.
+
+A minute later Owen Leath was at his side.  "I was sure it
+was you!  Such luck to run across you!  Won't you come off
+with us to supper after it's over?  Montmartre, or wherever
+else you please.  Those two chaps over there are friends of
+mine, at the Beaux Arts; both of them rather good fellows--
+and we'd be so glad----"
+
+For half a second Darrow read in his hospitable eye the
+termination "if you'd bring the lady too"; then it deflected
+into: "We'd all be so glad if you'd come."
+
+Darrow, excusing himself with thanks, lingered on for a few
+minutes' chat, in which every word, and every tone of his
+companion's voice, was like a sharp light flashed into
+aching eyes.  He was glad when the bell called the audience
+to their seats, and young Leath left him with the friendly
+question: "We'll see you at Givre later on?"
+
+When he rejoined Miss Viner, Darrow's first care was to find
+out, by a rapid inspection of the house, whether Owen
+Leath's seat had given him a view of their box. But the
+young man was not visible from it, and Darrow concluded that
+he had been recognized in the corridor and not at his
+companion's side.  He scarcely knew why it seemed to him so
+important that this point should be settled; certainly his
+sense of reassurance was less due to regard for Miss Viner
+than to the persistent vision of grave offended eyes...
+
+During the drive back to the hotel this vision was
+persistently kept before him by the thought that the evening
+post might have brought a letter from Mrs. Leath.  Even if
+no letter had yet come, his servant might have telegraphed
+to say that one was on its way; and at the thought his
+interest in the girl at his side again cooled to the
+fraternal, the almost fatherly. She was no more to him,
+after all, than an appealing young creature to whom it was
+mildly agreeable to have offered an evening's diversion; and
+when, as they rolled into the illuminated court of the
+hotel, she turned with a quick movement which brought her
+happy face close to his, he leaned away, affecting to be
+absorbed in opening the door of the cab.
+
+At the desk the night porter, after a vain search through
+the pigeon-holes, was disposed to think that a letter or
+telegram had in fact been sent up for the gentleman; and
+Darrow, at the announcement, could hardly wait to ascend to
+his room.  Upstairs, he and his companion had the long
+dimly-lit corridor to themselves, and Sophy paused on her
+threshold, gathering up in one hand the pale folds of her
+cloak, while she held the other out to Darrow.
+
+"If the telegram comes early I shall be off by the first
+train; so I suppose this is good-bye," she said, her eyes
+dimmed by a little shadow of regret.
+
+Darrow, with a renewed start of contrition, perceived that
+he had again forgotten her letter; and as their hands met he
+vowed to himself that the moment she had left him he would
+dash down stairs to post it.
+
+"Oh, I'll see you in the morning, of course!"
+
+A tremor of pleasure crossed her face as he stood before
+her, smiling a little uncertainly.
+
+"At any rate," she said, "I want to thank you now for my
+good day."
+
+He felt in her hand the same tremor he had seen in her face.
+"But it's YOU, on the contrary--" he began, lifting the
+hand to his lips.
+
+As he dropped it, and their eyes met, something passed
+through hers that was like a light carried rapidly behind a
+curtained window.
+
+"Good night; you must be awfully tired," he said with a
+friendly abruptness, turning away without even waiting to
+see her pass into her room.  He unlocked his door, and
+stumbling over the threshold groped in the darkness for the
+electric button.  The light showed him a telegram on the
+table, and he forgot everything else as he caught it up.
+
+"No letter from France," the message read.
+
+It fell from Darrow's hand to the floor, and he dropped into
+a chair by the table and sat gazing at the dingy drab and
+olive pattern of the carpet.  She had not written, then; she
+had not written, and it was manifest now that she did not
+mean to write.  If she had had any intention of explaining
+her telegram she would certainly, within twenty-four hours,
+have followed it up by a letter.  But she evidently did not
+intend to explain it, and her silence could mean only that
+she had no explanation to give, or else that she was too
+indifferent to be aware that one was needed.
+
+Darrow, face to face with these alternatives, felt a
+recrudescence of boyish misery.  It was no longer his hurt
+vanity that cried out.  He told himself that he could have
+borne an equal amount of pain, if only it had left Mrs.
+Leath's image untouched; but he could not bear to think of
+her as trivial or insincere.  The thought was so intolerable
+that he felt a blind desire to punish some one else for the
+pain it caused him.
+
+As he sat moodily staring at the carpet its silly
+intricacies melted into a blur from which the eyes of Mrs.
+Leath again looked out at him.  He saw the fine sweep of her
+brows, and the deep look beneath them as she had turned from
+him on their last evening in London.  "This will be good-
+bye, then," she had said; and it occurred to him that her
+parting phrase had been the same as Sophy Viner's.
+
+At the thought he jumped to his feet and took down from its
+hook the coat in which he had left Miss Viner's letter.  The
+clock marked the third quarter after midnight, and he knew
+it would make no difference if he went down to the post-box
+now or early the next morning; but he wanted to clear his
+conscience, and having found the letter he went to the door.
+
+A sound in the next room made him pause.  He had become
+conscious again that, a few feet off, on the other side of a
+thin partition, a small keen flame of life was quivering and
+agitating the air.  Sophy's face came hack to him
+insistently.  It was as vivid now as Mrs. Leath's had been a
+moment earlier.  He recalled with a faint smile of
+retrospective pleasure the girl's enjoyment of her evening,
+and the innumerable fine feelers of sensation she had thrown
+out to its impressions.
+
+It gave him a curiously close sense of her presence to think
+that at that moment she was living over her enjoyment as
+intensely as he was living over his unhappiness. His own
+case was irremediable, but it was easy enough to give her a
+few more hours of pleasure.  And did she not perhaps
+secretly expect it of him?  After all, if she had been very
+anxious to join her friends she would have telegraphed them
+on reaching Paris, instead of writing.  He wondered now that
+he had not been struck at the moment by so artless a device
+to gain more time.  The fact of her having practised it did
+not make him think less well of her; it merely strengthened
+the impulse to use his opportunity.  She was starving, poor
+child, for a little amusement, a little personal life--why
+not give her the chance of another day in Paris?  If he did
+so, should he not be merely falling in with her own hopes?
+
+At the thought his sympathy for her revived.  She became of
+absorbing interest to him as an escape from himself and an
+object about which his thwarted activities could cluster.
+He felt less drearily alone because of her being there, on
+the other side of the door, and in his gratitude to her for
+giving him this relief he began, with indolent amusement, to
+plan new ways of detaining her.  He dropped back into his
+chair, lit a cigar, and smiled a little at the image of her
+smiling face.  He tried to imagine what incident of the day
+she was likely to be recalling at that particular moment,
+and what part he probably played in it.  That it was not a
+small part he was certain, and the knowledge was undeniably
+pleasant.
+
+Now and then a sound from her room brought before him more
+vividly the reality of the situation and the strangeness of
+the vast swarming solitude in which he and she were
+momentarily isolated, amid long lines of rooms each holding
+its separate secret.  The nearness of all these other
+mysteries enclosing theirs gave Darrow a more intimate sense
+of the girl's presence, and through the fumes of his cigar
+his imagination continued to follow her to and fro, traced
+the curve of her slim young arms as she raised them to undo
+her hair, pictured the sliding down of her dress to the
+waist and then to the knees, and the whiteness of her feet
+as she slipped across the floor to bed...
+
+He stood up and shook himself with a yawn, throwing away the
+end of his cigar.  His glance, in following it, lit on the
+telegram which had dropped to the floor. The sounds in the
+next room had ceased, and once more he felt alone and
+unhappy.
+
+Opening the window, he folded his arms on the sill and
+looked out on the vast light-spangled mass of the city, and
+then up at the dark sky, in which the morning planet stood.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+At the Theatre Francais, the next afternoon, Darrow yawned
+and fidgeted in his seat.
+
+The day was warm, the theatre crowded and airless, and the
+performance, it seemed to him, intolerably bad.  He stole a
+glance at his companion, wondering if she shared his
+feelings.  Her rapt profile betrayed no unrest, but
+politeness might have caused her to feign an interest that
+she did not feel.  He leaned back impatiently, stifling
+another yawn, and trying to fix his attention on the stage.
+Great things were going forward there, and he was not
+insensible to the stern beauties of the ancient drama.  But
+the interpretation of the play seemed to him as airless and
+lifeless as the atmosphere of the theatre.  The players were
+the same whom he had often applauded in those very parts,
+and perhaps that fact added to the impression of staleness
+and conventionality produced by their performance.  Surely
+it was time to infuse new blood into the veins of the
+moribund art.  He had the impression that the ghosts of
+actors were giving a spectral performance on the shores of
+Styx.
+
+Certainly it was not the most profitable way for a young man
+with a pretty companion to pass the golden hours of a spring
+afternoon.  The freshness of the face at his side,
+reflecting the freshness of the season, suggested dapplings
+of sunlight through new leaves, the sound of a brook in the
+grass, the ripple of tree-shadows over breezy meadows...
+
+When at length the fateful march of the cothurns was stayed
+by the single pause in the play, and Darrow had led Miss
+Viner out on the balcony overhanging the square before the
+theatre, he turned to see if she shared his feelings.  But
+the rapturous look she gave him checked the depreciation on
+his lips.
+
+"Oh, why did you bring me out here?  One ought to creep away
+and sit in the dark till it begins again!"
+
+"Is THAT the way they made you feel?"
+
+"Didn't they YOU?...As if the gods were there all the
+while, just behind them, pulling the strings?" Her hands
+were pressed against the railing, her face shining and
+darkening under the wing-beats of successive impressions.
+
+Darrow smiled in enjoyment of her pleasure.  After all, he
+had felt all that, long ago; perhaps it was his own fault,
+rather than that of the actors, that the poetry of the play
+seemed to have evaporated...But no, he had been right in
+judging the performance to be dull and stale: it was simply
+his companion's inexperience, her lack of occasions to
+compare and estimate, that made her think it brilliant.
+
+"I was afraid you were bored and wanted to come away."
+
+"BORED?" She made a little aggrieved grimace.  "You mean
+you thought me too ignorant and stupid to appreciate it?"
+
+"No; not that."  The hand nearest him still lay on the
+railing of the balcony, and he covered it for a moment with
+his.  As he did so he saw the colour rise and tremble in her
+cheek.
+
+"Tell me just what you think," he said, bending his head a
+little, and only half-aware of his words.
+
+She did not turn her face to his, but began to talk rapidly,
+trying to convey something of what she felt. But she was
+evidently unused to analyzing her aesthetic emotions, and
+the tumultuous rush of the drama seemed to have left her in
+a state of panting wonder, as though it had been a storm or
+some other natural cataclysm.  She had no literary or
+historic associations to which to attach her impressions:
+her education had evidently not comprised a course in Greek
+literature.  But she felt what would probably have been
+unperceived by many a young lady who had taken a first in
+classics: the ineluctable fatality of the tale, the dread
+sway in it of the same mysterious "luck" which pulled the
+threads of her own small destiny.  It was not literature to
+her, it was fact: as actual, as near by, as what was
+happening to her at the moment and what the next hour held
+in store.  Seen in this light, the play regained for Darrow
+its supreme and poignant reality.  He pierced to the heart
+of its significance through all the artificial accretions
+with which his theories of art and the conventions of the
+stage had clothed it, and saw it as he had never seen it: as
+life.
+
+After this there could be no question of flight, and he took
+her back to the theatre, content to receive his own
+sensations through the medium of hers.  But with the
+continuation of the play, and the oppression of the heavy
+air, his attention again began to wander, straying back over
+the incidents of the morning.
+
+He had been with Sophy Viner all day, and he was surprised
+to find how quickly the time had gone.  She had hardly
+attempted, as the hours passed, to conceal her satisfaction
+on finding that no telegram came from the Farlows.  "They'll
+have written," she had simply said; and her mind had at once
+flown on to the golden prospect of an afternoon at the
+theatre.  The intervening hours had been disposed of in a
+stroll through the lively streets, and a repast, luxuriously
+lingered over, under the chestnut-boughs of a restaurant in
+the Champs Elysees.  Everything entertained and interested
+her, and Darrow remarked, with an amused detachment, that
+she was not insensible to the impression her charms
+produced.  Yet there was no hard edge of vanity in her sense
+of her prettiness: she seemed simply to be aware of it as a
+note in the general harmony, and to enjoy sounding the note
+as a singer enjoys singing.
+
+After luncheon, as they sat over their coffee, she had again
+asked an immense number of questions and delivered herself
+of a remarkable variety of opinions. Her questions testified
+to a wholesome and comprehensive human curiosity, and her
+comments showed, like her face and her whole attitude, an
+odd mingling of precocious wisdom and disarming ignorance.
+When she talked to him about "life"--the word was often on
+her lips--she seemed to him like a child playing with a
+tiger's cub; and he said to himself that some day the child
+would grow up--and so would the tiger. Meanwhile, such
+expertness qualified by such candour made it impossible to
+guess the extent of her personal experience, or to estimate
+its effect on her character.  She might be any one of a
+dozen definable types, or she might--more disconcertingly to
+her companion and more perilously to herself--be a shifting
+and uncrystallized mixture of them all.
+
+Her talk, as usual, had promptly reverted to the stage. She
+was eager to learn about every form of dramatic expression
+which the metropolis of things theatrical had to offer, and
+her curiosity ranged from the official temples of the art to
+its less hallowed haunts.  Her searching enquiries about a
+play whose production, on one of the latter scenes, had
+provoked a considerable amount of scandal, led Darrow to
+throw out laughingly: "To see THAT you'll have to wait
+till you're married!" and his answer had sent her off at a
+tangent.
+
+"Oh, I never mean to marry," she had rejoined in a tone of
+youthful finality.
+
+"I seem to have heard that before!"
+
+"Yes; from girls who've only got to choose!" Her eyes had
+grown suddenly almost old.  "I'd like you to see the only
+men who've ever wanted to marry me!  One was the doctor on
+the steamer, when I came abroad with the Hokes: he'd been
+cashiered from the navy for drunkenness. The other was a
+deaf widower with three grown-up daughters, who kept a
+clock-shop in Bayswater!--Besides," she rambled on, "I'm not
+so sure that I believe in marriage.  You see I'm all for
+self-development and the chance to live one's life.  I'm
+awfully modern, you know."
+
+It was just when she proclaimed herself most awfully modern
+that she struck him as most helplessly backward; yet the
+moment after, without any bravado, or apparent desire to
+assume an attitude, she would propound some social axiom
+which could have been gathered only in the bitter soil of
+experience.
+
+All these things came back to him as he sat beside her in
+the theatre and watched her ingenuous absorption. It was on
+"the story" that her mind was fixed, and in life also, he
+suspected, it would always be "the story", rather than its
+remoter imaginative issues, that would hold her.  He did not
+believe there were ever any echoes in her soul...
+
+There was no question, however, that what she felt was felt
+with intensity: to the actual, the immediate, she spread
+vibrating strings.  When the play was over, and they came
+out once more into the sunlight, Darrow looked down at her
+with a smile.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+She made no answer.  Her dark gaze seemed to rest on him
+without seeing him.  Her cheeks and lips were pale, and the
+loose hair under her hat-brim clung to her forehead in damp
+rings.  She looked like a young priestess still dazed by the
+fumes of the cavern.
+
+"You poor child--it's been almost too much for you!"
+
+She shook her head with a vague smile.
+
+"Come," he went on, putting his hand on her arm, "let's jump
+into a taxi and get some air and sunshine.  Look, there are
+hours of daylight left; and see what a night it's going to
+be!"
+
+He pointed over their heads, to where a white moon hung in
+the misty blue above the roofs of the rue de Rivoli.
+
+She made no answer, and he signed to a motor-cab, calling
+out to the driver: "To the Bois!"
+
+As the carriage turned toward the Tuileries she roused
+herself.  "I must go first to the hotel.  There may be a
+message--at any rate I must decide on something."
+
+Darrow saw that the reality of the situation had suddenly
+forced itself upon her.  "I MUST decide on something,"
+she repeated.
+
+He would have liked to postpone the return, to persuade her
+to drive directly to the Bois for dinner.  It would have
+been easy enough to remind her that she could not start for
+Joigny that evening, and that therefore it was of no moment
+whether she received the Farlows' answer then or a few hours
+later; but for some reason he hesitated to use this
+argument, which had come so naturally to him the day before.
+After all, he knew she would find nothing at the hotel--so
+what did it matter if they went there?
+
+The porter, interrogated, was not sure.  He himself had
+received nothing for the lady, but in his absence his
+subordinate might have sent a letter upstairs.
+
+Darrow and Sophy mounted together in the lift, and the young
+man, while she went into her room, unlocked his own door and
+glanced at the empty table.  For him at least no message had
+come; and on her threshold, a moment later, she met him with
+the expected: "No--there's nothing!"
+
+He feigned an unregretful surprise.  "So much the better!
+And now, shall we drive out somewhere?  Or would you rather
+take a boat to Bellevue?  Have you ever dined there, on the
+terrace, by moonlight?  It's not at all bad.  And there's no
+earthly use in sitting here waiting."
+
+She stood before him in perplexity.
+
+"But when I wrote yesterday I asked them to telegraph. I
+suppose they're horribly hard up, the poor dears, and they
+thought a letter would do as well as a telegram."  The colour
+had risen to her face.  "That's why I wrote instead of
+telegraphing; I haven't a penny to spare myself!"
+
+Nothing she could have said could have filled her listener
+with a deeper contrition.  He felt the red in his own face
+as he recalled the motive with which he had credited her in
+his midnight musings.  But that motive, after all, had
+simply been trumped up to justify his own disloyalty: he had
+never really believed in it. The reflection deepened his
+confusion, and he would have liked to take her hand in his
+and confess the injustice he had done her.
+
+She may have interpreted his change of colour as an
+involuntary protest at being initiated into such shabby
+details, for she went on with a laugh: "I suppose you can
+hardly understand what it means to have to stop and think
+whether one can afford a telegram?  But I've always had to
+consider such things.  And I mustn't stay here any longer
+now--I must try to get a night train for Joigny.  Even if
+the Farlows can't take me in, I can go to the hotel: it will
+cost less than staying here."  She paused again and then
+exclaimed: "I ought to have thought of that sooner; I ought
+to have telegraphed yesterday!  But I was sure I should hear
+from them today; and I wanted--oh, I DID so awfully want
+to stay!" She threw a troubled look at Darrow. "Do you
+happen to remember," she asked, "what time it was when you
+posted my letter?"
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Darrow was still standing on her threshold.  As she put the
+question he entered the room and closed the door behind him.
+
+His heart was beating a little faster than usual and he had
+no clear idea of what he was about to do or say, beyond the
+definite conviction that, whatever passing impulse of
+expiation moved him, he would not be fool enough to tell her
+that he had not sent her letter. He knew that most
+wrongdoing works, on the whole, less mischief than its
+useless confession; and this was clearly a case where a
+passing folly might be turned, by avowal, into a serious
+offense.
+
+"I'm so sorry--so sorry; but you must let me help you...You
+will let me help you?" he said.
+
+He took her hands and pressed them together between his,
+counting on a friendly touch to help out the insufficiency
+of words.  He felt her yield slightly to his clasp, and
+hurried on without giving her time to answer.
+
+"Isn't it a pity to spoil our good time together by
+regretting anything you might have done to prevent our
+having it?"
+
+She drew back, freeing her hands.  Her face, losing its look
+of appealing confidence, was suddenly sharpened by distrust.
+
+"You didn't forget to post my letter?"
+
+Darrow stood before her, constrained and ashamed, and ever
+more keenly aware that the betrayal of his distress must be
+a greater offense than its concealment.
+
+"What an insinuation!" he cried, throwing out his hands with
+a laugh.
+
+Her face instantly melted to laughter.  "Well, then--I
+WON'T be sorry; I won't regret anything except that our
+good time is over!"
+
+The words were so unexpected that they routed all his
+resolves.  If she had gone on doubting him he could probably
+have gone on deceiving her; but her unhesitating acceptance
+of his word made him hate the part he was playing.  At the
+same moment a doubt shot up its serpenthead in his own
+bosom.  Was it not he rather than she who was childishly
+trustful?  Was she not almost too ready to take his word, and
+dismiss once for all the tiresome question of the letter?
+Considering what her experiences must have been, such
+trustfulness seemed open to suspicion.  But the moment his
+eyes fell on her he was ashamed of the thought, and knew it
+for what it really was: another pretext to lessen his own
+delinquency.
+
+"Why should our good time be over?" he asked.  "Why
+shouldn't it last a little longer?"
+
+She looked up, her lips parted in surprise; but before she
+could speak he went on: "I want you to stay with me--I want
+you, just for a few days, to have all the things you've
+never had.  It's not always May and Paris--why not make the
+most of them now?  You know me--we're not strangers--why
+shouldn't you treat me like a friend?"
+
+While he spoke she had drawn away a little, but her hand
+still lay in his.  She was pale, and her eyes were fixed on
+him in a gaze in which there was neither distrust or
+resentment, but only an ingenuous wonder.  He was
+extraordinarily touched by her expression.
+
+"Oh, do!  You must.  Listen: to prove that I'm sincere I'll
+tell you...I'll tell you I didn't post your letter...I
+didn't post it because I wanted so much to give you a few
+good hours...and because I couldn't bear to have you go."
+
+He had the feeling that the words were being uttered in
+spite of him by some malicious witness of the scene, and yet
+that he was not sorry to have them spoken.
+
+The girl had listened to him in silence.  She remained
+motionless for a moment after he had ceased to speak; then
+she snatched away her hand.
+
+"You didn't post my letter?  You kept it back on purpose?  And
+you tell me so NOW, to prove to me that I'd better put
+myself under your protection?" She burst into a laugh that
+had in it all the piercing echoes of her Murrett past, and
+her face, at the same moment, underwent the same change,
+shrinking into a small malevolent white mask in which the
+eyes burned black. "Thank you--thank you most awfully for
+telling me!  And for all your other kind intentions!  The
+plan's delightful--really quite delightful, and I'm
+extremely flattered and obliged."
+
+She dropped into a seat beside her dressing-table, resting
+her chin on her lifted hands, and laughing out at him under
+the elf-lock which had shaken itself down over her eyes.
+
+Her outburst did not offend the young man; its immediate
+effect was that of allaying his agitation.  The theatrical
+touch in her manner made his offense seem more venial than
+he had thought it a moment before.
+
+He drew up a chair and sat down beside her.  "After all," he
+said, in a tone of good-humoured protest, "I needn't have
+told you I'd kept back your letter; and my telling you seems
+rather strong proof that I hadn't any very nefarious designs
+on you."
+
+She met this with a shrug, but he did not give her time to
+answer.  "My designs," he continued with a smile, "were not
+nefarious.  I saw you'd been through a bad time with Mrs.
+Murrett, and that there didn't seem to be much fun ahead for
+you; and I didn't see--and I don't yet see--the harm of
+trying to give you a few hours of amusement between a
+depressing past and a not particularly cheerful future."  He
+paused again, and then went on, in the same tone of friendly
+reasonableness: "The mistake I made was not to tell you this
+at once--not to ask you straight out to give me a day or
+two, and let me try to make you forget all the things that
+are troubling you.  I was a fool not to see that if I'd put
+it to you in that way you'd have accepted or refused, as you
+chose; but that at least you wouldn't have mistaken my
+intentions.--Intentions!" He stood up, walked the length of
+the room, and turned back to where she still sat motionless,
+her elbows propped on the dressing-table, her chin on her
+hands.  "What rubbish we talk about intentions!  The truth is
+I hadn't any: I just liked being with you.  Perhaps you
+don't know how extraordinarily one can like being with
+you...I was depressed and adrift myself; and you made me
+forget my bothers; and when I found you were going--and
+going back to dreariness, as I was--I didn't see why we
+shouldn't have a few hours together first; so I left your
+letter in my pocket."
+
+He saw her face melt as she listened, and suddenly she
+unclasped her hands and leaned to him.
+
+"But are YOU unhappy too?  Oh, I never understood--I
+never dreamed it!  I thought you'd always had everything in
+the world you wanted!"
+
+Darrow broke into a laugh at this ingenuous picture of his
+state. He was ashamed of trying to better his case by an
+appeal to her pity, and annoyed with himself for alluding to
+a subject he would rather have kept out of his thoughts.
+But her look of sympathy had disarmed him; his heart was
+bitter and distracted; she was near him, her eyes were
+shining with compassion--he bent over her and kissed her
+hand.
+
+"Forgive me--do forgive me," he said.
+
+She stood up with a smiling head-shake.  "Oh, it's not so
+often that people try to give me any pleasure--much less two
+whole days of it!  I sha'n't forget how kind you've been.  I
+shall have plenty of time to remember. But this IS good-
+bye, you know.  I must telegraph at once to say I'm coming."
+
+"To say you're coming?  Then I'm not forgiven?"
+
+"Oh, you're forgiven--if that's any comfort."
+
+"It's not, the very least, if your way of proving it is to
+go away!"
+
+She hung her head in meditation.  "But I can't stay.--How
+CAN I stay?" she broke out, as if arguing with some
+unseen monitor.
+
+"Why can't you?  No one knows you're here...No one need ever
+know."
+
+She looked up, and their eyes exchanged meanings for a rapid
+minute.  Her gaze was as clear as a boy's.  "Oh, it's not
+THAT," she exclaimed, almost impatiently; "it's not people
+I'm afraid of!  They've never put themselves out for me--why
+on earth should I care about them?"
+
+He liked her directness as he had never liked it before.
+"Well, then, what is it?  Not ME, I hope?"
+
+"No, not you: I like you. It's the money!  With me that's
+always the root of the matter.  I could never yet afford a
+treat in my life!"
+
+Is THAT all?" He laughed, relieved by her naturalness.
+"Look here; since we re talking as man to man--can't you
+trust me about that too?"
+
+"Trust you?  How do you mean?  You'd better not trust
+ME!" she laughed back sharply.  "I might never be able to
+pay up!"
+
+His gesture brushed aside the allusion.  "Money may be the
+root of the matter; it can't be the whole of it, between
+friends.  Don't you think one friend may accept a small
+service from another without looking too far ahead or
+weighing too many chances?  The question turns entirely on
+what you think of me.  If you like me well enough to be
+willing to take a few days' holiday with me, just for the
+pleasure of the thing, and the pleasure you'll be giving me,
+let's shake hands on it. If you don't like me well enough
+we'll shake hands too; only I shall be sorry," he ended.
+
+"Oh, but I shall be sorry too!" Her face, as she lifted it
+to his, looked so small and young that Darrow felt a
+fugitive twinge of compunction, instantly effaced by the
+excitement of pursuit.
+
+"Well, then?" He stood looking down on her, his eyes
+persuading her.  He was now intensely aware that his
+nearness was having an effect which made it less and less
+necessary for him to choose his words, and he went on, more
+mindful of the inflections of his voice than of what he was
+actually saying: "Why on earth should we say good-bye if
+we're both sorry to?  Won't you tell me your reason?  It's not
+a bit like you to let anything stand in the way of your
+saying just what you feel. You mustn't mind offending me,
+you know!"
+
+She hung before him like a leaf on the meeting of cross-
+currents, that the next ripple may sweep forward or whirl
+back.  Then she flung up her head with the odd boyish
+movement habitual to her in moments of excitement. "What I
+feel?  Do you want to know what I feel?  That you're giving me
+the only chance I've ever had!"
+
+She turned about on her heel and, dropping into the nearest
+chair, sank forward, her face hidden against the dressing-
+table.
+
+Under the folds of her thin summer dress the modelling of
+her back and of her lifted arms, and the slight hollow
+between her shoulder-blades, recalled the faint curves of a
+terra-cotta statuette, some young image of grace hardly more
+than sketched in the clay.  Darrow, as he stood looking at
+her, reflected that her character, for all its seeming
+firmness, its flashing edges of "opinion", was probably no
+less immature.  He had not expected her to yield so suddenly
+to his suggestion, or to confess her yielding in that way.
+At first he was slightly disconcerted; then he saw how her
+attitude simplified his own.  Her behaviour had all the
+indecision and awkwardness of inexperience.  It showed that
+she was a child after all; and all he could do--all he had
+ever meant to do--was to give her a child's holiday to look
+back to.
+
+For a moment he fancied she was crying; but the next she was
+on her feet and had swept round on him a face she must have
+turned away only to hide the first rush of her pleasure.
+
+For a while they shone on each other without speaking; then
+she sprang to him and held out both hands.
+
+"Is it true?  Is it really true?  Is it really going to happen
+to ME?"
+
+He felt like answering: "You're the very creature to whom it
+was bound to happen"; but the words had a double sense that
+made him wince, and instead he caught her proffered hands
+and stood looking at her across the length of her arms,
+without attempting to bend them or to draw her closer.  He
+wanted her to know how her words had moved him; but his
+thoughts were blurred by the rush of the same emotion that
+possessed her, and his own words came with an effort.
+
+He ended by giving her back a laugh as frank as her own, and
+declaring, as he dropped her hands: "All that and more too--
+you'll see!"
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+All day, since the late reluctant dawn, the rain had come
+down in torrents.  It streamed against Darrow's high-perched
+windows, reduced their vast prospect of roofs and chimneys
+to a black oily huddle, and filled the room with the drab
+twilight of an underground aquarium.
+
+The streams descended with the regularity of a third day's
+rain, when trimming and shuffling are over, and the weather
+has settled down to do its worst.  There were no variations
+of rhythm, no lyrical ups and downs: the grey lines
+streaking the panes were as dense and uniform as a page of
+unparagraphed narrative.
+
+George Darrow had drawn his armchair to the fire.  The time-
+table he had been studying lay on the floor, and he sat
+staring with dull acquiescence into the boundless blur of
+rain, which affected him like a vast projection of his own
+state of mind.  Then his eyes travelled slowly about the
+room.
+
+It was exactly ten days since his hurried unpacking had
+strewn it with the contents of his portmanteaux.  His
+brushes and razors were spread out on the blotched marble of
+the chest of drawers.  A stack of newspapers had accumulated
+on the centre table under the "electrolier", and half a
+dozen paper novels lay on the mantelpiece among cigar-cases
+and toilet bottles; but these traces of his passage had made
+no mark on the featureless dulness of the room, its look of
+being the makeshift setting of innumerable transient
+collocations.  There was something sardonic, almost
+sinister, in its appearance of having deliberately "made up"
+for its anonymous part, all in noncommittal drabs and
+browns, with a carpet and paper that nobody would remember,
+and chairs and tables as impersonal as railway porters.
+
+Darrow picked up the time-table and tossed it on to the
+table.  Then he rose to his feet, lit a cigar and went to
+the window.  Through the rain he could just discover the
+face of a clock in a tall building beyond the railway roofs.
+He pulled out his watch, compared the two time-pieces, and
+started the hands of his with such a rush that they flew
+past the hour and he had to make them repeat the circuit
+more deliberately.  He felt a quite disproportionate
+irritation at the trifling blunder.  When he had corrected
+it he went back to his chair and threw himself down, leaning
+back his head against his hands.  Presently his cigar went
+out, and he got up, hunted for the matches, lit it again and
+returned to his seat.
+
+The room was getting on his nerves.  During the first few
+days, while the skies were clear, he had not noticed it, or
+had felt for it only the contemptuous indifference of the
+traveller toward a provisional shelter.  But now that he was
+leaving it, was looking at it for the last time, it seemed
+to have taken complete possession of his mind, to be soaking
+itself into him like an ugly indelible blot.  Every detail
+pressed itself on his notice with the familiarity of an
+accidental confidant: whichever way he turned, he felt the
+nudge of a transient intimacy...
+
+The one fixed point in his immediate future was that his
+leave was over and that he must be back at his post in
+London the next morning.  Within twenty-four hours he would
+again be in a daylight world of recognized activities,
+himself a busy, responsible, relatively necessary factor in
+the big whirring social and official machine.  That fixed
+obligation was the fact he could think of with the least
+discomfort, yet for some unaccountable reason it was the one
+on which he found it most difficult to fix his thoughts.
+Whenever he did so, the room jerked him back into the circle
+of its insistent associations.  It was extraordinary with
+what a microscopic minuteness of loathing he hated it all:
+the grimy carpet and wallpaper, the black marble mantel-
+piece, the clock with a gilt allegory under a dusty bell,
+the high-bolstered brown-counterpaned bed, the framed card
+of printed rules under the electric light switch, and the
+door of communication with the next room.  He hated the door
+most of all...
+
+At the outset, he had felt no special sense of
+responsibility.  He was satisfied that he had struck the
+right note, and convinced of his power of sustaining it.
+The whole incident had somehow seemed, in spite of its
+vulgar setting and its inevitable prosaic propinquities, to
+be enacting itself in some unmapped region outside the pale
+of the usual.  It was not like anything that had ever
+happened to him before, or in which he had ever pictured
+himself as likely to be involved; but that, at first, had
+seemed no argument against his fitness to deal with it.
+
+Perhaps but for the three days' rain he might have got away
+without a doubt as to his adequacy.  The rain had made all
+the difference.  It had thrown the whole picture out of
+perspective, blotted out the mystery of the remoter planes
+and the enchantment of the middle distance, and thrust into
+prominence every commonplace fact of the foreground.  It was
+the kind of situation that was not helped by being thought
+over; and by the perversity of circumstance he had been
+forced into the unwilling contemplation of its every
+aspect...
+
+His cigar had gone out again, and he threw it into the fire
+and vaguely meditated getting up to find another. But the
+mere act of leaving his chair seemed to call for a greater
+exertion of the will than he was capable of, and he leaned
+his head back with closed eyes and listened to the drumming
+of the rain.
+
+A different noise aroused him.  It was the opening and
+closing of the door leading from the corridor into the
+adjoining room.  He sat motionless, without opening his
+eyes; but now another sight forced itself under his lowered
+lids.  It was the precise photographic picture of that other
+room.  Everything in it rose before him and pressed itself
+upon his vision with the same acuity of distinctness as the
+objects surrounding him.  A step sounded on the floor, and
+he knew which way the step was directed, what pieces of
+furniture it had to skirt, where it would probably pause,
+and what was likely to arrest it.  He heard another sound,
+and recognized it as that of a wet umbrella placed in the
+black marble jamb of the chimney-piece, against the hearth.
+He caught the creak of a hinge, and instantly differentiated
+it as that of the wardrobe against the opposite wall.  Then
+he heard the mouse-like squeal of a reluctant drawer, and
+knew it was the upper one in the chest of drawers beside the
+bed: the clatter which followed was caused by the mahogany
+toilet-glass jumping on its loosened pivots...
+
+The step crossed the floor again.  It was strange how much
+better he knew it than the person to whom it belonged!  Now
+it was drawing near the door of communication between the
+two rooms.  He opened his eyes and looked.  The step had
+ceased and for a moment there was silence.  Then he heard a
+low knock.  He made no response, and after an interval he
+saw that the door handle was being tentatively turned.  He
+closed his eyes once more...
+
+The door opened, and the step was in the room, coming
+cautiously toward him.  He kept his eyes shut, relaxing his
+body to feign sleep.  There was another pause, then a
+wavering soft advance, the rustle of a dress behind his
+chair, the warmth of two hands pressed for a moment on his
+lids. The palms of the hands had the lingering scent of some
+stuff that he had bought on the Boulevard...He looked up and
+saw a  letter falling over his shoulder to his knee...
+
+"Did I disturb you?  I'm so sorry!  They gave me this just now
+when I came in."
+
+The letter, before he could catch it, had slipped between
+his knees to the floor.  It lay there, address upward, at
+his feet, and while he sat staring down at the strong
+slender characters on the blue-gray envelope an arm reached
+out from behind to pick it up.
+
+"Oh, don't--DON'T" broke from him, and he bent over and
+caught the arm.  The face above it was close to his.
+
+"Don't what?"
+
+----"take the trouble," he stammered.
+
+He dropped the arm and stooped down.  His grasp closed over
+the letter, he fingered its thickness and weight and
+calculated the number of sheets it must contain.
+
+Suddenly he felt the pressure of the hand on his shoulder,
+and became aware that the face was still leaning over him,
+and that in a moment he would have to look up and kiss it...
+
+He bent forward first and threw the unopened letter into the
+middle of the fire.
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+IX
+
+
+The light of the October afternoon lay on an old high-roofed
+house which enclosed in its long expanse of brick and
+yellowish stone the breadth of a grassy court filled with
+the shadow and sound of limes.
+
+From the escutcheoned piers at the entrance of the court a
+level drive, also shaded by limes, extended to a white-
+barred gate beyond which an equally level avenue of grass,
+cut through a wood, dwindled to a blue-green blur against a
+sky banked with still white slopes of cloud.
+
+In the court, half-way between house and drive, a lady
+stood.  She held a parasol above her head, and looked now at
+the house-front, with its double flight of steps meeting
+before a glazed door under sculptured trophies, now down the
+drive toward the grassy cutting through the wood.  Her air
+was less of expectancy than of contemplation: she seemed not
+so much to be watching for any one, or listening for an
+approaching sound, as letting the whole aspect of the place
+sink into her while she held herself open to its influence.
+Yet it was no less apparent that the scene was not new to
+her. There was no eagerness of investigation in her survey:
+she seemed rather to be looking about her with eyes to
+which, for some intimate inward reason, details long since
+familiar had suddenly acquired an unwonted freshness.
+
+This was in fact the exact sensation of which Mrs. Leath was
+conscious as she came forth from the house and descended
+into the sunlit court.  She had come to meet her step-son,
+who was likely to be returning at that hour from an
+afternoon's shooting in one of the more distant plantations,
+and she carried in her hand the letter which had sent her in
+search of him; but with her first step out of the house all
+thought of him had been effaced by another series of
+impressions.
+
+The scene about her was known to satiety.  She had seen
+Givre at all seasons of the year, and for the greater part
+of every year, since the far-off day of her marriage; the
+day when, ostensibly driving through its gates at her
+husband's side, she had actually been carried there on a
+cloud of iris-winged visions.
+
+The possibilities which the place had then represented were
+still vividly present to her.  The mere phrase "a French
+chateau" had called up to her youthful fancy a throng of
+romantic associations, poetic, pictorial and emotional; and
+the serene face of the old house seated in its park among
+the poplar-bordered meadows of middle France, had seemed, on
+her first sight of it, to hold out to her a fate as noble
+and dignified as its own mien.
+
+Though she could still call up that phase of feeling it had
+long since passed, and the house had for a time become to
+her the very symbol of narrowness and monotony.  Then, with
+the passing of years, it had gradually acquired a less
+inimical character, had become, not again a castle of
+dreams, evoker of fair images and romantic legend, but the
+shell of a life slowly adjusted to its dwelling: the place
+one came back to, the place where one had one's duties,
+one's habits and one's books, the place one would naturally
+live in till one died: a dull house, an inconvenient house,
+of which one knew all the defects, the shabbinesses, the
+discomforts, but to which one was so used that one could
+hardly, after so long a time, think one's self away from it
+without suffering a certain loss of identity.
+
+Now, as it lay before her in the autumn mildness, its
+mistress was surprised at her own insensibility.  She had
+been trying to see the house through the eyes of an old
+friend who, the next morning, would be driving up to it for
+the first time; and in so doing she seemed to be opening her
+own eyes upon it after a long interval of blindness.
+
+The court was very still, yet full of a latent life: the
+wheeling and rustling of pigeons about the rectangular yews
+and across the sunny gravel; the sweep of rooks above the
+lustrous greyish-purple slates of the roof, and the stir of
+the tree-tops as they met the breeze which every day, at
+that hour, came punctually up from the river.
+
+Just such a latent animation glowed in Anna Leath.  In every
+nerve and vein she was conscious of that equipoise of bliss
+which the fearful human heart scarce dares acknowledge.  She
+was not used to strong or full emotions; but she had always
+known that she should not be afraid of them.  She was not
+afraid now; but she felt a deep inward stillness.
+
+The immediate effect of the feeling had been to send her
+forth in quest of her step-son.  She wanted to stroll back
+with him and have a quiet talk before they re-entered the
+house.  It was always easy to talk to him, and at this
+moment he was the one person to whom she could have spoken
+without fear of disturbing her inner stillness.  She was
+glad, for all sorts of reasons, that Madame de Chantelle and
+Effie were still at Ouchy with the governess, and that she
+and Owen had the house to themselves.  And she was glad that
+even he was not yet in sight.  She wanted to be alone a
+little longer; not to think, but to let the long slow waves
+of joy break over her one by one.
+
+She walked out of the court and sat down on one of the
+benches that bordered the drive.  From her seat she had a
+diagonal view of the long house-front and of the domed
+chapel terminating one of the wings.  Beyond a gate in the
+court-yard wall the flower-garden drew its dark-green
+squares and raised its statues against the yellowing
+background of the park.  In the borders only a few late
+pinks and crimsons smouldered, but a peacock strutting in
+the sun seemed to have gathered into his out-spread fan all
+the summer glories of the place.
+
+In Mrs. Leath's hand was the letter which had opened her
+eyes to these things, and a smile rose to her lips at the
+mere feeling of the paper between her fingers. The thrill it
+sent through her gave a keener edge to every sense.  She
+felt, saw, breathed the shining world as though a thin
+impenetrable veil had suddenly been removed from it.
+
+Just such a veil, she now perceived, had always hung between
+herself and life.  It had been like the stage gauze which
+gives an illusive air of reality to the painted scene behind
+it, yet proves it, after all, to be no more than a painted
+scene.
+
+She had been hardly aware, in her girlhood, of differing
+from others in this respect.  In the well-regulated well-fed
+Summers world the unusual was regarded as either immoral or
+ill-bred, and people with emotions were not visited.
+Sometimes, with a sense of groping in a topsy-turvy
+universe, Anna had wondered why everybody about her seemed
+to ignore all the passions and sensations which formed the
+stuff of great poetry and memorable action.  In a community
+composed entirely of people like her parents and her
+parents' friends she did not see how the magnificent things
+one read about could ever have happened.  She was sure that
+if anything of the kind had occurred in her immediate circle
+her mother would have consulted the family clergyman, and
+her father perhaps even have rung up the police; and her
+sense of humour compelled her to own that, in the given
+conditions, these precautions might not have been
+unjustified.
+
+Little by little the conditions conquered her, and she
+learned to regard the substance of life as a mere canvas for
+the embroideries of poet and painter, and its little swept
+and fenced and tended surface as its actual substance.  It
+was in the visioned region of action and emotion that her
+fullest hours were spent; but it hardly occurred to her that
+they might be translated into experience, or connected with
+anything likely to happen to a young lady living in West
+Fifty- fifth Street.
+
+She perceived, indeed, that other girls, leading outwardly
+the same life as herself, and seemingly unaware of her world
+of hidden beauty, were yet possessed of some vital secret
+which escaped her.  There seemed to be a kind of freemasonry
+between them; they were wider awake than she, more alert,
+and surer of their wants if not of their opinions.  She
+supposed they were "cleverer", and accepted her inferiority
+good-humouredly, half aware, within herself, of a reserve of
+unused power which the others gave no sign of possessing.
+
+This partly consoled her for missing so much of what made
+their "good time"; but the resulting sense of exclusion, of
+being somehow laughingly but firmly debarred from a share of
+their privileges, threw her back on herself and deepened the
+reserve which made envious mothers cite her as a model of
+ladylike repression.
+Love, she told herself, would one day release her from this
+spell of unreality.  She was persuaded that the sublime
+passion was the key to the enigma; but it was difficult to
+relate her conception of love to the forms it wore in her
+experience.  Two or three of the girls she had envied for
+their superior acquaintance with the arts of life had
+contracted, in the course of time, what were variously
+described as "romantic" or "foolish" marriages; one even
+made a runaway match, and languished for a while under a
+cloud of social reprobation.  Here, then, was passion in
+action, romance converted to reality; yet the heroines of
+these exploits returned from them untransfigured, and their
+husbands were as dull as ever when one had to sit next to
+them at dinner.
+
+Her own case, of course, would be different.  Some day she
+would find the magic bridge between West Fifty-fifth Street
+and life; once or twice she had even fancied that the clue
+was in her hand.  The first time was when she had met young
+Darrow.  She recalled even now the stir of the encounter.
+But his passion swept over her like a wind that shakes the
+roof of the forest without reaching its still glades or
+rippling its hidden pools.  He was extraordinarily
+intelligent and agreeable, and her heart beat faster when he
+was with her.  He had a tall fair easy presence and a mind
+in which the lights of irony played pleasantly through the
+shades of feeling.  She liked to hear his voice almost as
+much as to listen to what he was saying, and to listen to
+what he was saying almost as much as to feel that he was
+looking at her; but he wanted to kiss her, and she wanted to
+talk to him about books and pictures, and have him insinuate
+the eternal theme of their love into every subject they
+discussed.
+
+Whenever they were apart a reaction set in.  She wondered
+how she could have been so cold, called herself a prude and
+an idiot, questioned if any man could really care for her,
+and got up in the dead of night to try new ways of doing her
+hair.  But as soon as he reappeared her head straightened
+itself on her slim neck and she sped her little shafts of
+irony, or flew her little kites of erudition, while hot and
+cold waves swept over her, and the things she really wanted
+to say choked in her throat and burned the palms of her
+hands.
+
+Often she told herself that any silly girl who had waltzed
+through a season would know better than she how to attract a
+man and hold him; but when she said "a man" she did not
+really mean George Darrow.
+
+Then one day, at a dinner, she saw him sitting next to one
+of the silly girls in question: the heroine of the elopement
+which had shaken West Fifty-fifth Street to its base.  The
+young lady had come back from her adventure no less silly
+than when she went; and across the table the partner of her
+flight, a fat young man with eye-glasses, sat stolidly
+eating terrapin and talking about polo and investments.
+
+The young woman was undoubtedly as silly as ever; yet after
+watching her for a few minutes Miss Summers perceived that
+she had somehow grown luminous, perilous, obscurely menacing
+to nice girls and the young men they intended eventually to
+accept.  Suddenly, at the sight, a rage of possessorship
+awoke in her.  She must save Darrow, assert her right to him
+at any price.  Pride and reticence went down in a hurricane
+of jealousy.  She heard him laugh, and there was something
+new in his laugh...She watched him talking, talking...He sat
+slightly sideways, a faint smile beneath his lids, lowering
+his voice as he lowered it when he talked to her.  She
+caught the same inflections, but his eyes were different.
+It would have offended her once if he had looked at her like
+that.  Now her one thought was that none but she had a right
+to be so looked at.  And that girl of all others!  What
+illusions could he have about a girl who, hardly a year ago,
+had made a fool of herself over the fat young man stolidly
+eating terrapin across the table?  If that was where romance
+and passion ended, it was better to take to district
+visiting or algebra!
+
+All night she lay awake and wondered: "What was she saying
+to him?  How shall I learn to say such things?" and she
+decided that her heart would tell her--that the next time
+they were alone together the irresistible word would spring
+to her lips.  He came the next day, and they were alone, and
+all she found was: "I didn't know that you and Kitty Mayne
+were such friends."
+
+He answered with indifference that he didn't know it either,
+and in the reaction of relief she declared: "She's certainly
+ever so much prettier than she was..."
+
+"She's rather good fun," he admitted, as though he had not
+noticed her other advantages; and suddenly Anna saw in his
+eyes the look she had seen there the previous evening.
+
+She felt as if he were leagues and leagues away from her.
+All her hopes dissolved, and she was conscious of sitting
+rigidly, with high head and straight lips, while the
+irresistible word fled with a last wing-beat into the golden
+mist of her illusions...
+
+
+She was still quivering with the pain and bewilderment of
+this adventure when Fraser Leath appeared.  She met him
+first in Italy, where she was travelling with her parents;
+and the following winter he came to New York. In Italy he
+had seemed interesting: in New York he became remarkable.
+He seldom spoke of his life in Europe, and let drop but the
+most incidental allusions to the friends, the tastes, the
+pursuits which filled his cosmopolitan days; but in the
+atmosphere of West Fifty-fifth Street he seemed the
+embodiment of a storied past.  He presented Miss Summers
+with a prettily-bound anthology of the old French poets and,
+when she showed a discriminating pleasure in the gift,
+observed with his grave smile: "I didn't suppose I should
+find any one here who would feel about these things as I
+do."  On another occasion he asked her acceptance of a half-
+effaced eighteenth century pastel which he had surprisingly
+picked up in a New York auction-room. "I know no one but you
+who would really appreciate it," he explained.
+
+He permitted himself no other comments, but these conveyed
+with sufficient directness that he thought her worthy of a
+different setting.  That she should be so regarded by a man
+living in an atmosphere of art and beauty, and esteeming
+them the vital elements of life, made her feel for the first
+time that she was understood.  Here was some one whose scale
+of values was the same as hers, and who thought her opinion
+worth hearing on the very matters which they both considered
+of supreme importance.  The discovery restored her self-
+confidence, and she revealed herself to Mr. Leath as she had
+never known how to reveal herself to Darrow.
+
+As the courtship progressed, and they grew more
+confidential, her suitor surprised and delighted her by
+little explosions of revolutionary sentiment.  He said:
+"Shall you mind, I wonder, if I tell you that you live in a
+dread-fully conventional atmosphere?" and, seeing that she
+manifestly did not mind: "Of course I shall say things now
+and then that will horrify your dear delightful parents--I
+shall shock them awfully, I warn you."
+
+In confirmation of this warning he permitted himself an
+occasional playful fling at the regular church-going of Mr.
+and Mrs. Summers, at the innocuous character of the
+literature in their library, and at their guileless
+appreciations in art.  He even ventured to banter Mrs.
+Summers on her refusal to receive the irrepressible Kitty
+Mayne who, after a rapid passage with George Darrow, was now
+involved in another and more flagrant adventure.
+
+"In Europe, you know, the husband is regarded as the only
+judge in such matters.  As long as he accepts the situation
+--" Mr. Leath explained to Anna, who took his view the more
+emphatically in order to convince herself that, personally,
+she had none but the most tolerant sentiments toward the
+lady.
+
+The subversiveness of Mr. Leath's opinions was enhanced by
+the distinction of his appearance and the reserve of his
+manners.  He was like the anarchist with a gardenia in his
+buttonhole who figures in the higher melodrama.  Every word,
+every allusion, every note of his agreeably-modulated voice,
+gave Anna a glimpse of a society at once freer and finer,
+which observed the traditional forms but had discarded the
+underlying prejudices; whereas the world she knew had
+discarded many of the forms and kept almost all the
+prejudices.
+
+In such an atmosphere as his an eager young woman, curious
+as to all the manifestations of life, yet instinctively
+desiring that they should come to her in terms of beauty and
+fine feeling, must surely find the largest scope for self-
+expression.  Study, travel, the contact of the world, the
+comradeship of a polished and enlightened mind, would
+combine to enrich her days and form her character; and it
+was only in the rare moments when Mr. Leath's symmetrical
+blond mask bent over hers, and his kiss dropped on her like
+a cold smooth pebble, that she questioned the completeness
+of the joys he offered.
+
+There had been a time when the walls on which her gaze now
+rested had shed a glare of irony on these early dreams.  In
+the first years of her marriage the sober symmetry of Givre
+had suggested only her husband's neatly-balanced mind.  It
+was a mind, she soon learned, contentedly absorbed in
+formulating the conventions of the unconventional.  West
+Fifty-fifth Street was no more conscientiously concerned
+than Givre with the momentous question of "what people did";
+it was only the type of deed investigated that was
+different.  Mr. Leath collected his social instances with
+the same seriousness and patience as his snuff-boxes.  He
+exacted a rigid conformity to his rules of non-conformity
+and his scepticism had the absolute accent of a dogma.  He
+even cherished certain exceptions to his rules as the book-
+collector prizes a "defective" first edition.  The
+Protestant church-going of Anna's parents had provoked his
+gentle sarcasm; but he prided himself on his mother's
+devoutness, because Madame de Chantelle, in embracing her
+second husband's creed, had become part of a society which
+still observes the outward rites of piety.
+
+Anna, in fact, had discovered in her amiable and elegant
+mother-in-law an unexpected embodiment of the West Fifty-
+fifth Street ideal.  Mrs. Summers and Madame de Chantelle,
+however strongly they would have disagreed as to the
+authorized source of Christian dogma, would have found
+themselves completely in accord on all the momentous
+minutiae of drawing-room conduct; yet Mr. Leath treated his
+mother's foibles with a respect which Anna's experience of
+him forbade her to attribute wholly to filial affection.
+
+In the early days, when she was still questioning the Sphinx
+instead of trying to find an answer to it, she ventured to
+tax her husband with his inconsistency.
+
+"You say your mother won't like it if I call on that amusing
+little woman who came here the other day, and was let in by
+mistake; but Madame de Chantelle tells me she lives with her
+husband, and when mother refused to visit Kitty Mayne you
+said----"
+
+Mr. Leath's smile arrested her.  "My dear child, I don't
+pretend to apply the principles of logic to my poor mother's
+prejudices."
+
+"But if you admit that they ARE prejudices----?"
+
+"There are prejudices and prejudices.  My mother, of course,
+got hers from Monsieur de Chantelle, and they seem to me as
+much in their place in this house as the pot-pourri in your
+hawthorn jar.  They preserve a social tradition of which I
+should be sorry to lose the least perfume.  Of course I
+don't expect you, just at first, to feel the difference, to
+see the nuance.  In the case of little Madame de
+Vireville, for instance: you point out that she's still
+under her husband's roof.  Very true; and if she were merely
+a Paris acquaintance--especially if you had met her, as one
+still might, in the RIGHT KIND of house in Paris--I
+should be the last to object to your visiting her.  But in
+the country it's different.  Even the best provincial
+society is what you would call narrow: I don't deny it; and
+if some of our friends met Madame de Vireville at Givre--
+well, it would produce a bad impression.  You're inclined to
+ridicule such considerations, but gradually you'll come to
+see their importance; and meanwhile, do trust me when I ask
+you to be guided by my mother.  It is always well for a
+stranger in an old society to err a little on the side of
+what you call its prejudices but I should rather describe as
+its traditions."
+
+After that she no longer tried to laugh or argue her husband
+out of his convictions.  They WERE convictions, and
+therefore unassailable.  Nor was any insincerity implied in
+the fact that they sometimes seemed to coincide with hers.
+There were occasions when he really did look at things as
+she did; but for reasons so different as to make the
+distance between them all the greater.  Life, to Mr. Leath,
+was like a walk through a carefully classified museum,
+where, in moments of doubt, one had only to look at the
+number and refer to one's catalogue; to his wife it was like
+groping about in a huge dark lumber-room where the exploring
+ray of curiosity lit up now some shape of breathing beauty
+and now a mummy's grin.
+
+In the first bewilderment of her new state these discoveries
+had had the effect of dropping another layer of gauze
+between herself and reality.  She seemed farther than ever
+removed from the strong joys and pangs for which she felt
+herself made.  She did not adopt her husband's views, but
+insensibly she began to live his life.  She tried to throw a
+compensating ardour into the secret excursions of her
+spirit, and thus the old vicious distinction between romance
+and reality was re-established for her, and she resigned
+herself again to the belief that "real life" was neither
+real nor alive.
+
+The birth of her little girl swept away this delusion. At
+last she felt herself in contact with the actual business of
+living: but even this impression was not enduring.
+
+Everything but the irreducible crude fact of child-bearing
+assumed, in the Leath household, the same ghostly tinge of
+unreality.  Her husband, at the time, was all that his own
+ideal of a husband required.  He was attentive, and even
+suitably moved: but as he sat by her bedside, and
+thoughtfully proffered to her the list of people who had
+"called to enquire", she looked first at him, and then at
+the child between them, and wondered at the blundering
+alchemy of Nature...
+
+With the exception of the little girl herself, everything
+connected with that time had grown curiously remote and
+unimportant.  The days that had moved so slowly as they
+passed seemed now to have plunged down head-long steeps of
+time; and as she sat in the autumn sun, with Darrow's letter
+in her hand, the history of Anna Leath appeared to its
+heroine like some grey shadowy tale that she might have read
+in an old book, one night as she was falling asleep...
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Two brown blurs emerging from the farther end of the wood-
+vista gradually defined themselves as her step-son and an
+attendant game-keeper.  They grew slowly upon the bluish
+background, with occasional delays and re-effacements, and
+she sat still, waiting till they should reach the gate at
+the end of the drive, where the keeper would turn off to his
+cottage and Owen continue on to the house.
+
+She watched his approach with a smile.  From the first days
+of her marriage she had been drawn to the boy, but it was
+not until after Effie's birth that she had really begun to
+know him.  The eager observation of her own child had shown
+her how much she had still to learn about the slight fair
+boy whom the holidays periodically restored to Givre.  Owen,
+even then, both physically and morally, furnished her with
+the oddest of commentaries on his father's mien and mind.
+He would never, the family sighingly recognized, be nearly
+as handsome as Mr. Leath; but his rather charmingly
+unbalanced face, with its brooding forehead and petulant
+boyish smile, suggested to Anna what his father's
+countenance might have been could one have pictured its neat
+features disordered by a rattling breeze.  She even pushed
+the analogy farther, and descried in her step-son's mind a
+quaintly-twisted reflection of her husband's.  With his
+bursts of door-slamming activity, his fits of bookish
+indolence, his crude revolutionary dogmatizing and his
+flashes of precocious irony, the boy was not unlike a
+boisterous embodiment of his father's theories.  It was as
+though Fraser Leath's ideas, accustomed to hang like
+marionettes on their pegs, should suddenly come down and
+walk.  There were moments, indeed, when Owen's humours must
+have suggested to his progenitor the gambols of an infant
+Frankenstein; but to Anna they were the voice of her secret
+rebellions, and her tenderness to her step-son was partly
+based on her severity toward herself.  As he had the courage
+she had lacked, so she meant him to have the chances she had
+missed; and every effort she made for him helped to keep her
+own hopes alive.
+
+Her interest in Owen led her to think more often of his
+mother, and sometimes she would slip away and stand alone
+before her predecessor's portrait.  Since her arrival at
+Givre the picture--a "full-length" by a once fashionable
+artist--had undergone the successive displacements of an
+exiled consort removed farther and farther from the throne;
+and Anna could not help noting that these stages coincided
+with the gradual decline of the artist's fame.  She had a
+fancy that if his credit had been in the ascendant the first
+Mrs. Leath might have continued to throne over the drawing-
+room mantel- piece, even to the exclusion of her successor's
+effigy. Instead of this, her peregrinations had finally
+landed her in the shrouded solitude of the billiard-room, an
+apartment which no one ever entered, but where it was
+understood that "the light was better," or might have been
+if the shutters had not been always closed.
+
+Here the poor lady, elegantly dressed, and seated in the
+middle of a large lonely canvas, in the blank contemplation
+of a gilt console, had always seemed to Anna to be waiting
+for visitors who never came.
+
+"Of course they never came, you poor thing!  I wonder how
+long it took you to find out that they never would?" Anna
+had more than once apostrophized her, with a derision
+addressed rather to herself than to the dead; but it was
+only after Effie's birth that it occurred to her to study
+more closely the face in the picture, and speculate on the
+kind of visitors that Owen's mother might have hoped for.
+
+"She certainly doesn't look as if they would have been the
+same kind as mine: but there's no telling, from a portrait
+that was so obviously done 'to please the family', and that
+leaves Owen so unaccounted for.  Well, they never came, the
+visitors; they never came; and she died of it.  She died of
+it long before they buried her: I'm certain of that.  Those
+are stone-dead eyes in the picture...The loneliness must
+have been awful, if even Owen couldn't keep her from dying
+of it.  And to feel it so she must have HAD feelings--
+real live ones, the kind that twitch and tug.  And all she
+had to look at all her life was a gilt console--yes, that's
+it, a gilt console screwed to the wall!  That's exactly and
+absolutely what he is!"
+
+She did not mean, if she could help it, that either Effie or
+Owen should know that loneliness, or let her know it again.
+They were three, now, to keep each other warm, and she
+embraced both children in the same passion of motherhood, as
+though one were not enough to shield her from her
+predecessor's fate.
+
+Sometimes she fancied that Owen Leath's response was warmer
+than that of her own child.  But then Effie was still hardly
+more than a baby, and Owen, from the first, had been almost
+"old enough to understand": certainly DID understand
+now, in a tacit way that yet perpetually spoke to her.  This
+sense of his understanding was the deepest element in their
+feeling for each other.  There were so many things between
+them that were never spoken of, or even indirectly alluded
+to, yet that, even in their occasional discussions and
+differences, formed the unadduced arguments making for final
+agreement...
+
+Musing on this, she continued to watch his approach; and her
+heart began to beat a little faster at the thought of what
+she had to say to him.  But when he reached the gate she saw
+him pause, and after a moment he turned aside as if to gain
+a cross-road through the park.
+
+She started up and waved her sunshade, but he did not see
+her.  No doubt he meant to go back with the gamekeeper,
+perhaps to the kennels, to see a retriever who had hurt his
+leg.  Suddenly she was seized by the whim to overtake him.
+She threw down the parasol, thrust her letter into her
+bodice, and catching up her skirts began to run.
+
+She was slight and light, with a natural ease and quickness
+of gait, but she could not recall having run a yard since
+she had romped with Owen in his school-days; nor did she
+know what impulse moved her now.  She only knew that run she
+must, that no other motion, short of flight, would have been
+buoyant enough for her humour.  She seemed to be keeping
+pace with some inward rhythm, seeking to give bodily
+expression to the lyric rush of her thoughts.  The earth
+always felt elastic under her, and she had a conscious joy
+in treading it; but never had it been as soft and springy as
+today.  It seemed actually to rise and meet her as she went,
+so that she had the feeling, which sometimes came to her in
+dreams, of skimming miraculously over short bright waves.
+The air, too, seemed to break in waves against her, sweeping
+by on its current all the slanted lights and moist sharp
+perfumes of the failing day.  She panted to herself: "This
+is nonsense!" her blood hummed back: "But it's glorious!"
+and she sped on till she saw that Owen had caught sight of
+her and was striding back in her direction.
+
+Then she stopped and waited, flushed and laughing, her hands
+clasped against the letter in her breast.
+
+"No, I'm not mad," she called out; "but there's something in
+the air today--don't you feel it?--And I wanted to have a
+little talk with you," she added as he came up to her,
+smiling at him and linking her arm in his.
+
+He smiled back, but above the smile she saw the shade of
+anxiety which, for the last two months, had kept its fixed
+line between his handsome eyes.
+
+"Owen, don't look like that!  I don't want you to!" she said
+imperiously.
+
+He laughed.  "You said that exactly like Effie.  What do you
+want me to do?  To race with you as I do Effie?  But I
+shouldn't have a show!" he protested, still with the little
+frown between his eyes.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked.
+
+"To the kennels.  But there's not the least need.  The vet
+has seen Garry and he's all right.  If there's anything you
+wanted to tell me----"
+
+"Did I say there was?  I just came out to meet you--I wanted
+to know if you'd had good sport."
+
+The shadow dropped on him again.  "None at all.  The fact is
+I didn't try.  Jean and I have just been knocking about in
+the woods.  I wasn't in a sanguinary mood."
+
+They walked on with the same light gait, so nearly of a
+height that keeping step came as naturally to them as
+breathing.  Anna stole another look at the young face on a
+level with her own.
+
+"You DID say there was something you wanted to tell me,"
+her step-son began after a pause.
+
+"Well, there is."  She slackened her pace involuntarily, and
+they came to a pause and stood facing each other under the
+limes.
+
+"Is Darrow coming?" he asked.
+
+She seldom blushed, but at the question a sudden heat
+suffused her.  She held her head high.
+
+"Yes: he's coming.  I've just heard.  He arrives to-morrow.
+But that's not----" She saw her blunder and tried to rectify
+it.  "Or rather, yes, in a way it is my reason for wanting
+to speak to you----"
+
+"Because he's coming?"
+
+"Because he's not yet here."
+
+"It's about him, then?"
+
+He looked at her kindly, half-humourously, an almost
+fraternal wisdom in his smile.
+
+"About----?  No, no: I meant that I wanted to speak today
+because it's our last day alone together."
+
+"Oh, I see."  He had slipped his hands into the pockets of
+his tweed shooting jacket and lounged along at her side, his
+eyes bent on the moist ruts of the drive, as though the
+matter had lost all interest for him.
+
+"Owen----"
+
+He stopped again and faced her.  "Look here, my dear, it's
+no sort of use."
+
+"What's no use?"
+
+"Anything on earth you can any of you say."
+
+She challenged him: "Am I one of 'any of you'?"
+
+He did not yield.  "Well, then--anything on earth that even
+YOU can say."
+"You don't in the least know what I can say--or what I mean
+to."
+
+"Don't I, generally?"
+
+She gave him this point, but only to make another. "Yes; but
+this is particularly.  I want to say...Owen, you've been
+admirable all through."
+
+He broke into a laugh in which the odd elder-brotherly note
+was once more perceptible.
+
+"Admirable," she emphasized.  "And so has SHE."
+
+"Oh, and so have you to HER!" His voice broke down to
+boyishness.  "I've never lost sight of that for a minute.
+It's been altogether easier for her, though," he threw off
+presently.
+
+"On the whole, I suppose it has.  Well----" she summed up
+with a laugh, "aren't you all the better pleased to be told
+you've behaved as well as she?"
+
+"Oh, you know, I've not done it for you," he tossed back at
+her, without the least note of hostility in the affected
+lightness of his tone.
+
+"Haven't you, though, perhaps--the least bit?  Because, after
+all, you knew I understood?"
+
+"You've been awfully kind about pretending to."
+
+She laughed.  "You don't believe me?  You must remember I had
+your grandmother to consider."
+
+"Yes: and my father--and Effie, I suppose--and the outraged
+shades of Givre!" He paused, as if to lay more stress on the
+boyish sneer: "Do you likewise include the late Monsieur de
+Chantelle?"
+
+His step-mother did not appear to resent the thrust. She
+went on, in the same tone of affectionate persuasion: "Yes:
+I must have seemed to you too subject to Givre.  Perhaps I
+have been.  But you know that was not my real object in
+asking you to wait, to say nothing to your grandmother
+before her return."
+
+He considered.  "Your real object, of course, was to gain
+time."
+
+"Yes--but for whom?  Why not for YOU?"
+
+"For me?" He flushed up quickly.  "You don't mean----?"
+
+She laid her hand on his arm and looked gravely into his
+handsome eyes.
+
+"I mean that when your grandmother gets back from Ouchy I
+shall speak to her----"
+"You'll speak to her...?"
+
+"Yes; if only you'll promise to give me time----"
+
+"Time for her to send for Adelaide Painter?"
+
+"Oh, she'll undoubtedly send for Adelaide Painter!"
+
+The allusion touched a spring of mirth in both their minds,
+and they exchanged a laughing look.
+
+"Only you must promise not to rush things.  You must give me
+time to prepare Adelaide too," Mrs. Leath went on.
+
+"Prepare her too?" He drew away for a better look at her.
+"Prepare her for what?"
+
+"Why, to prepare your grandmother!  For your marriage. Yes,
+that's what I mean.  I'm going to see you through, you know
+----"
+
+His feint of indifference broke down and he caught her hand.
+"Oh, you dear divine thing!  I didn't dream----"
+
+"I know you didn't."  She dropped her gaze and began to walk
+on slowly.  "I can't say you've convinced me of the wisdom
+of the step.  Only I seem to see that other things matter
+more--and that not missing things matters most.  Perhaps
+I've changed--or YOUR not changing has convinced me.
+I'm certain now that you won't budge. And that was really
+all I ever cared about."
+
+"Oh, as to not budging--I told you so months ago: you might
+have been sure of that!  And how can you be any surer today
+than yesterday?"
+
+"I don't know.  I suppose one learns something every day----
+"
+
+"Not at Givre!" he laughed, and shot a half-ironic look at
+her.  "But you haven't really BEEN at Givre lately--not
+for months!  Don't you suppose I've noticed that, my dear?"
+
+She echoed his laugh to merge it in an undenying sigh. "Poor
+Givre..."
+
+"Poor empty Givre!  With so many rooms full and yet not a
+soul in it--except of course my grandmother, who is its
+soul!"
+
+They had reached the gateway of the court and stood looking
+with a common accord at the long soft-hued facade on which
+the autumn light was dying.  "It looks so made to be happy
+in----" she murmured.
+
+"Yes--today, today!" He pressed her arm a little.  "Oh, you
+darling--to have given it that look for me!" He paused, and
+then went on in a lower voice: "Don't you feel we owe it to
+the poor old place to do what we can to give it that look?
+You, too, I mean?  Come, let's make it grin from wing to
+wing!  I've such a mad desire to say outrageous things to it
+--haven't you?  After all, in old times there must have been
+living people here!"
+
+Loosening her arm from his she continued to gaze up at the
+house-front, which seemed, in the plaintive decline of
+light, to send her back the mute appeal of something doomed.
+
+"It IS beautiful," she said.
+
+"A beautiful memory!  Quite perfect to take out and turn over
+when I'm grinding at the law in New York, and you're----" He
+broke off and looked at her with a questioning smile.
+"Come!  Tell me.  You and I don't have to say things to talk
+to each other.  When you turn suddenly absentminded and
+mysterious I always feel like saying: 'Come back.  All is
+discovered'."
+
+She returned his smile.  "You know as much as I know. I
+promise you that."
+
+He wavered, as if for the first time uncertain how far he
+might go.  "I don't know Darrow as much as you know him," he
+presently risked.
+
+She frowned a little.  "You said just now we didn't need to
+say things"
+
+"Was I speaking?  I thought it was your eyes----" He
+caught her by both elbows and spun her halfway round, so
+that the late sun shed a betraying gleam on her face.
+"They're such awfully conversational eyes!  Don't you suppose
+they told me long ago why it's just today you've made up
+your mind that people have got to live their own lives--even
+at Givre?"
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+"This is the south terrace," Anna said.  "Should you like to
+walk down to the river?"
+
+She seemed to listen to herself speaking from a far-off airy
+height, and yet to be wholly gathered into the circle of
+consciousness which drew its glowing ring about herself and
+Darrow.  To the aerial listener her words sounded flat and
+colourless, but to the self within the ring each one beat
+with a separate heart.
+
+It was the day after Darrow's arrival, and he had come down
+early, drawn by the sweetness of the light on the lawns and
+gardens below his window.  Anna had heard the echo of his
+step on the stairs, his pause in the stone- flagged hall,
+his voice as he asked a servant where to find her.  She was
+at the end of the house, in the brown-panelled sitting-room
+which she frequented at that season because it caught the
+sunlight first and kept it longest.  She stood near the
+window, in the pale band of brightness, arranging some
+salmon-pink geraniums in a shallow porcelain bowl.  Every
+sensation of touch and sight was thrice-alive in her.  The
+grey- green fur of the geranium leaves caressed her fingers
+and the sunlight wavering across the irregular surface of
+the old parquet floor made it seem as bright and shifting as
+the brown bed of a stream.
+
+Darrow stood framed in the door-way of the farthest drawing-
+room, a light-grey figure against the black and white
+flagging of the hall; then he began to move toward her down
+the empty pale-panelled vista, crossing one after another
+the long reflections which a projecting cabinet or screen
+cast here and there upon the shining floors.
+
+As he drew nearer, his figure was suddenly displaced by that
+of her husband, whom, from the same point, she had so often
+seen advancing down the same perspective. Straight, spare,
+erect, looking to right and left with quick precise turns of
+the head, and stopping now and then to straighten a chair or
+alter the position of a vase, Fraser Leath used to march
+toward her through the double file of furniture like a
+general reviewing a regiment drawn up for his inspection.
+At a certain point, midway across the second room, he always
+stopped before the mantel-piece of pinkish-yellow marble and
+looked at himself in the tall garlanded glass that
+surmounted it.  She could not remember that he had ever
+found anything to straighten or alter in his own studied
+attire, but she had never known him to omit the inspection
+when he passed that particular mirror.
+
+When it was over he continued more briskly on his way, and
+the resulting expression of satisfaction was still on his
+face when he entered the oak sitting-room to greet his
+wife...
+
+The spectral projection of this little daily scene hung but
+for a moment before Anna, but in that moment she had time to
+fling a wondering glance across the distance between her
+past and present.  Then the footsteps of the present came
+close, and she had to drop the geraniums to give her hand to
+Darrow...
+
+"Yes, let us walk down to the river."
+
+They had neither of them, as yet, found much to say to each
+other.  Darrow had arrived late on the previous afternoon,
+and during the evening they had had between them Owen Leath
+and their own thoughts.  Now they were alone for the first
+time and the fact was enough in itself.  Yet Anna was
+intensely aware that as soon as they began to talk more
+intimately they would feel that they knew each other less
+well.
+
+They passed out onto the terrace and down the steps to the
+gravel walk below.  The delicate frosting of dew gave the
+grass a bluish shimmer, and the sunlight, sliding in emerald
+streaks along the tree-boles, gathered itself into great
+luminous blurs at the end of the wood-walks, and hung above
+the fields a watery glory like the ring about an autumn
+moon.
+
+"It's good to be here," Darrow said.
+
+They took a turn to the left and stopped for a moment to
+look back at the long pink house-front, plainer, friendlier,
+less adorned than on the side toward the court.  So
+prolonged yet delicate had been the friction of time upon
+its bricks that certain expanses had the bloom and texture
+of old red velvet, and the patches of gold lichen spreading
+over them looked like the last traces of a dim embroidery.
+The dome of the chapel, with its gilded cross, rose above
+one wing, and the other ended in a conical pigeon-house,
+above which the birds were flying, lustrous and slatey,
+their breasts merged in the blue of the roof when they
+dropped down on it.
+
+"And this is where you've been all these years."
+
+They turned away and began to walk down a long tunnel of
+yellowing trees.  Benches with mossy feet stood against the
+mossy edges of the path, and at its farther end it widened
+into a circle about a basin rimmed with stone, in which the
+opaque water strewn with leaves looked like a slab of gold-
+flecked agate.  The path, growing narrower, wound on
+circuitously through the woods, between slender serried
+trunks twined with ivy. Patches of blue appeared above them
+through the dwindling leaves, and presently the trees drew
+back and showed the open fields along the river.
+
+They walked on across the fields to the tow-path.  In a
+curve of the wall some steps led up to a crumbling pavilion
+with openings choked with ivy.  Anna and Darrow seated
+themselves on the bench projecting from the inner wall of
+the pavilion and looked across the river at the slopes
+divided into blocks of green and fawn-colour, and at the
+chalk-tinted village lifting its squat church-tower and grey
+roofs against the precisely drawn lines of the landscape.
+Anna sat silent, so intensely aware of Darrow's nearness
+that there was no surprise in the touch he laid on her hand.
+They looked at each other, and he smiled and said: "There
+are to be no more obstacles now."
+
+"Obstacles?" The word startled her.  "What obstacles?"
+
+"Don't you remember the wording of the telegram that turned
+me back last May?  'Unforeseen obstacle': that was it.  What
+was the earth-shaking problem, by the way?  Finding a
+governess for Effie, wasn't it?"
+
+"But I gave you my reason: the reason why it was an
+obstacle.  I wrote you fully about it."
+
+"Yes, I know you did."  He lifted her hand and kissed it.
+"How far off it all seems, and how little it all matters
+today!"
+
+She looked at him quickly.  "Do you feel that?  I suppose I'm
+different.  I want to draw all those wasted months into
+today--to make them a part of it."
+
+"But they are, to me.  You reach back and take everything--
+back to the first days of all."
+
+She frowned a little, as if struggling with an inarticulate
+perplexity.  "It's curious how, in those first days, too,
+something that I didn't understand came between us."
+
+"Oh, in those days we neither of us understood, did we?  It's
+part of what's called the bliss of being young."
+
+"Yes, I thought that, too: thought it, I mean, in looking
+back.  But it couldn't, even then, have been as true of you
+as of me; and now----"
+
+"Now," he said, "the only thing that matters is that we're
+sitting here together."
+
+He dismissed the rest with a lightness that might have
+seemed conclusive evidence of her power over him.  But she
+took no pride in such triumphs.  It seemed to her that she
+wanted his allegiance and his adoration not so much for
+herself as for their mutual love, and that in treating
+lightly any past phase of their relation he took something
+from its present beauty.  The colour rose to her face.
+
+"Between you and me everything matters."
+
+"Of course!" She felt the unperceiving sweetness of his
+smile.  "That's why," he went on, "'everything,' for me, is
+here and now: on this bench, between you and me."
+
+She caught at the phrase.  "That's what I meant: it's here
+and now; we can't get away from it."
+
+"Get away from it?  Do you want to?  AGAIN?"
+
+Her heart was beating unsteadily.  Something in her,
+fitfully and with reluctance, struggled to free itself, but
+the warmth of his nearness penetrated every sense as the
+sunlight steeped the landscape.  Then, suddenly, she felt
+that she wanted no less than the whole of her happiness.
+
+"'Again'?  But wasn't it YOU, the last time----?"
+
+She paused, the tremor in her of Psyche holding up the lamp.
+But in the interrogative light of her pause her companion's
+features underwent no change.
+
+"The last time?  Last spring?  But it was you who--for the
+best of reasons, as you've told me--turned me back from your
+very door last spring!"
+
+She saw that he was good-humouredly ready to "thresh out,"
+for her sentimental satisfaction, a question which, for his
+own, Time had so conclusively dealt with; and the sense of
+his readiness reassured her.
+
+"I wrote as soon as I could," she rejoined.  "I explained
+the delay and asked you to come.  And you never even
+answered my letter."
+
+"It was impossible to come then.  I had to go back to my
+post."
+
+"And impossible to write and tell me so?"
+
+"Your letter was a long time coming.  I had waited a week--
+ten days.  I had some excuse for thinking, when it came,
+that you were in no great hurry for an answer."
+
+"You thought that--really--after reading it?"
+
+"I thought it."
+
+Her heart leaped up to her throat.  "Then why are you here
+today?"
+
+He turned on her with a quick look of wonder.  "God knows--
+if you can ask me that!"
+
+"You see I was right to say I didn't understand."
+
+He stood up abruptly and stood facing her, blocking the view
+over the river and the checkered slopes.  "Perhaps I might
+say so too."
+
+"No, no: we must neither of us have any reason for saying it
+again."  She looked at him gravely.  "Surely you and I
+needn't arrange the lights before we show ourselves to each
+other.  I want you to see me just as I am, with all my
+irrational doubts and scruples; the old ones and the new
+ones too."
+
+He came back to his seat beside her.  "Never mind the old
+ones.  They were justified--I'm willing to admit it.  With
+the governess having suddenly to be packed off, and Effie on
+your hands, and your mother-in-law ill, I see the
+impossibility of your letting me come. I even see that, at
+the moment, it was difficult to write and explain.  But what
+does all that matter now?  The new scruples are the ones I
+want to tackle."
+
+Again her heart trembled.  She felt her happiness so near,
+so sure, that to strain it closer might be like a child's
+crushing a pet bird in its caress.  But her very security
+urged her on.  For so long her doubts had been knife-edged:
+now they had turned into bright harmless toys that she could
+toss and catch without peril!
+
+"You didn't come, and you didn't answer my letter; and after
+waiting four months I wrote another."
+"And I answered that one; and I'm here."
+
+"Yes."  She held his eyes.  "But in my last letter I repeated
+exactly what I'd said in the first--the one I wrote you last
+June.  I told you then that I was ready to give you the
+answer to what you'd asked me in London; and in telling you
+that, I told you what the answer was."
+
+"My dearest!  My dearest!" Darrow murmured.
+
+"You ignored that letter.  All summer you made no sign. And
+all I ask now is, that you should frankly tell me why."
+
+"I can only repeat what I've just said.  I was hurt and
+unhappy and I doubted you.  I suppose if I'd cared less I
+should have been more confident.  I cared so much that I
+couldn't risk another failure.  For you'd made me feel that
+I'd miserably failed.  So I shut my eyes and set my teeth
+and turned my back.  There's the whole pusillanimous truth
+of it!"
+
+"Oh, if it's the WHOLE truth!----"  She let him clasp
+her. "There's my torment, you see.  I thought that was what
+your silence meant till I made you break it.  Now I want to
+be sure that I was right."
+
+"What can I tell you to make you sure?"
+
+"You can let me tell YOU everything first."  She drew
+away, but without taking her hands from him.  "Owen saw you
+in Paris," she began.
+
+She looked at him and he faced her steadily.  The light was
+full on his pleasantly-browned face, his grey eyes, his
+frank white forehead.  She noticed for the first time a
+seal-ring in a setting of twisted silver on the hand he had
+kept on hers.
+
+"In Paris?  Oh, yes...So he did."
+
+"He came back and told me.  I think you talked to him a
+moment in a theatre.  I asked if you'd spoken of my having
+put you off--or if you'd sent me any message. He didn't
+remember that you had."
+
+"In a crush--in a Paris foyer?  My dear!"
+
+"It was absurd of me!  But Owen and I have always been on odd
+kind of brother-and-sister terms.  I think he guessed about
+us when he saw you with me in London. So he teased me a
+little and tried to make me curious about you; and when he
+saw he'd succeeded he told me he hadn't had time to say much
+to you because you were in such a hurry to get back to the
+lady you were with."
+
+He still held her hands, but she felt no tremor in his, and
+the blood did not stir in his brown cheek.  He seemed to be
+honestly turning over his memories.
+"Yes: and what else did he tell you?"
+
+"Oh, not much, except that she was awfully pretty.  When I
+asked him to describe her he said you had her tucked away in
+a baignoire and he hadn't actually seen her; but he saw the
+tail of her cloak, and somehow knew from that that she was
+pretty.  One DOES, you know...I think he said the cloak
+was pink."
+
+Darrow broke into a laugh.  "Of course it was--they always
+are!  So that was at the bottom of your doubts?"
+
+"Not at first.  I only laughed.  But afterward, when I wrote
+you and you didn't answer----Oh, you DO see?" she
+appealed to him.
+
+He was looking at her gently.  "Yes: I see."
+
+"It's not as if this were a light thing between us.  I want
+you to know me as I am.  If I thought that at that
+moment...when you were on your way here, almost----"
+
+He dropped her hand and stood up.  "Yes, yes--I understand."
+
+"But do you?" Her look followed him.  "I'm not a goose of a
+girl.  I know...of course I KNOW...but there are things
+a woman feels...when what she knows doesn't make any
+difference.  It's not that I want you to explain--I mean
+about that particular evening.  It's only that I want you to
+have the whole of my feeling.  I didn't know what it was
+till I saw you again.  I never dreamed I should say such
+things to you!"
+
+"I never dreamed I should be here to hear you say them!" He
+turned back and lifting a floating end of her scarf put his
+lips to it.  "But now that you have, I know--I know," he
+smiled down at her.
+
+"You know?"
+
+"That this is no light thing between us.  Now you may ask me
+anything you please!  That was all I wanted to ask YOU."
+
+For a long moment they looked at each other without
+speaking.  She saw the dancing spirit in his eyes turn grave
+and darken to a passionate sternness.  He stooped and kissed
+her, and she sat as if folded in wings.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+It was in the natural order of things that, on the way back
+to the house, their talk should have turned to the future.
+
+Anna was not eager to define it.  She had an extraordinary
+sensitiveness to the impalpable elements of happiness, and
+as she walked at Darrow's side her imagination flew back and
+forth, spinning luminous webs of feeling between herself and
+the scene about her. Every heightening of emotion produced
+for her a new effusion of beauty in visible things, and with
+it the sense that such moments should be lingered over and
+absorbed like some unrenewable miracle.  She understood
+Darrow's impatience to see their plans take shape. She knew
+it must be so, she would not have had it otherwise; but to
+reach a point where she could fix her mind on his appeal for
+dates and decisions was like trying to break her way through
+the silver tangle of an April wood.
+
+Darrow wished to use his diplomatic opportunities as a means
+of studying certain economic and social problems with which
+he presently hoped to deal in print; and with this in view
+he had asked for, and obtained, a South American
+appointment.  Anna was ready to follow where he led, and not
+reluctant to put new sights as well as new thoughts between
+herself and her past.  She had, in a direct way, only Effie
+and Effie's education to consider; and there seemed, after
+due reflection, no reason why the most anxious regard for
+these should not be conciliated with the demands of Darrow's
+career. Effie, it was evident, could be left to Madame de
+Chantelle's care till the couple should have organized their
+life; and she might even, as long as her future step-
+father's work retained him in distant posts, continue to
+divide her year between Givre and the antipodes.
+
+As for Owen, who had reached his legal majority two years
+before, and was soon to attain the age fixed for the taking
+over of his paternal inheritance, the arrival of this date
+would reduce his step-mother's responsibility to a friendly
+concern for his welfare. This made for the prompt
+realization of Darrow's wishes, and there seemed no reason
+why the marriage should not take place within the six weeks
+that remained of his leave.
+
+They passed out of the wood-walk into the open brightness of
+the garden.  The noon sunlight sheeted with gold the bronze
+flanks of the polygonal yews. Chrysanthemums, russet,
+saffron and orange, glowed like the efflorescence of an
+enchanted forest; belts of red begonia purpling to wine-
+colour ran like smouldering flame among the borders; and
+above this outspread tapestry the house extended its
+harmonious length, the soberness of its lines softened to
+grace in the luminous misty air.
+
+Darrow stood still, and Anna felt that his glance was
+travelling from her to the scene about them and then back to
+her face.
+
+"You're sure you're prepared to give up Givre?  You look so
+made for each other!"
+
+"Oh, Givre----" She broke off suddenly, feeling as if her
+too careless tone had delivered all her past into his hands;
+and with one of her instinctive movements of recoil she
+added: "When Owen marries I shall have to give it up."
+
+"When Owen marries?  That's looking some distance ahead!  I
+want to be told that meanwhile you'll have no regrets."
+
+She hesitated.  Why did he press her to uncover to him her
+poor starved past?  A vague feeling of loyalty, a desire to
+spare what could no longer harm her, made her answer
+evasively: "There will probably be no 'meanwhile.' Owen may
+marry before long."
+
+She had not meant to touch on the subject, for her step-son
+had sworn her to provisional secrecy; but since the
+shortness of Darrow's leave necessitated a prompt adjustment
+of their own plans, it was, after all, inevitable that she
+should give him at least a hint of Owen's.
+
+"Owen marry?  Why, he always seems like a faun in flannels!  I
+hope he's found a dryad.  There might easily be one left in
+these blue-and-gold woods."
+
+"I can't tell you yet where he found his dryad, but she
+IS one, I believe: at any rate she'll become the Givre
+woods better than I do.  Only there may be difficulties----"
+
+"Well!  At that age they're not always to be wished away."
+
+She hesitated.  "Owen, at any rate, has made up his mind to
+overcome them; and I've promised to see him through."
+
+She went on, after a moment's consideration, to explain that
+her step-son's choice was, for various reasons, not likely
+to commend itself to his grandmother.  "She must be prepared
+for it, and I've promised to do the preparing.  You know I
+always HAVE seen him through things, and he rather
+counts on me now."
+
+She fancied that Darrow's exclamation had in it a faint note
+of annoyance, and wondered if he again suspected her of
+seeking a pretext for postponement.
+
+"But once Owen's future is settled, you won't, surely, for
+the sake of what you call seeing him through, ask that I
+should go away again without you?" He drew her closer as
+they walked.  "Owen will understand, if you don't.  Since
+he's in the same case himself I'll throw myself on his
+mercy.  He'll see that I have the first claim on you; he
+won't even want you not to see it."
+
+"Owen sees everything: I'm not afraid of that.  But his
+future isn't settled.  He's very young to marry--too young,
+his grandmother is sure to think--and the marriage he wants
+to make is not likely to convince her to the contrary."
+
+"You don't mean that it's like his first choice?"
+
+"Oh, no!  But it's not what Madame de Chantelle would call a
+good match; it's not even what I call a wise one."
+
+"Yet you're backing him up?"
+
+"Yet I'm backing him up."  She paused.  "I wonder if you'll
+understand?  What I've most wanted for him, and shall want
+for Effie, is that they shall always feel free to make their
+own mistakes, and never, if possible, be persuaded to make
+other people's.  Even if Owen's marriage is a mistake, and
+has to be paid for, I believe he'll learn and grow in the
+paying.  Of course I can't make Madame de Chantelle see
+this; but I can remind her that, with his character--his big
+rushes of impulse, his odd intervals of ebb and apathy--she
+may drive him into some worse blunder if she thwarts him
+now."
+
+"And you mean to break the news to her as soon as she comes
+back from Ouchy?"
+
+"As soon as I see my way to it.  She knows the girl and
+likes her: that's our hope.  And yet it may, in the end,
+prove our danger, make it harder for us all, when she learns
+the truth, than if Owen had chosen a stranger.  I can't tell
+you more till I've told her: I've promised Owen not to tell
+any one.  All I ask you is to give me time, to give me a few
+days at any rate She's been wonderfully 'nice,' as she would
+call it, about you, and about the fact of my having soon to
+leave Givre; but that, again, may make it harder for Owen.
+At any rate, you can see, can't you, how it makes me want to
+stand by him?  You see, I couldn't bear it if the least
+fraction of my happiness seemed to be stolen from his--as if
+it were a little scrap of happiness that had to be pieced
+out with other people's!" She clasped her hands on Darrow's
+arm.  "I want our life to be like a house with all the
+windows lit: I'd like to string lanterns from the roof and
+chimneys!"
+
+She ended with an inward tremor.  All through her exposition
+and her appeal she had told herself that the moment could
+hardly have been less well chosen.  In Darrow's place she
+would have felt, as he doubtless did, that her carefully
+developed argument was only the disguise of an habitual
+indecision.  It was the hour of all others when she would
+have liked to affirm herself by brushing aside every
+obstacle to his wishes; yet it was only by opposing them
+that she could show the strength of character she wanted him
+to feel in her.
+
+But as she talked she began to see that Darrow's face gave
+back no reflection of her words, that he continued to wear
+the abstracted look of a man who is not listening to what is
+said to him.  It caused her a slight pang to discover that
+his thoughts could wander at such a moment; then, with a
+flush of joy she perceived the reason.
+
+In some undefinable way she had become aware, without
+turning her head, that he was steeped in the sense of her
+nearness, absorbed in contemplating the details of her face
+and dress; and the discovery made the words throng to her
+lips.  She felt herself speak with ease, authority,
+conviction.  She said to herself: "He doesn't care what I
+say--it's enough that I say it--even if it's stupid he'll
+like me better for it..."  She knew that every inflexion of
+her voice, every gesture, every characteristic of her
+person--its very defects, the fact that her forehead was too
+high, that her eyes were not large enough, that her hands,
+though slender, were not small, and that the fingers did not
+taper--she knew that these deficiencies were so many
+channels through which her influence streamed to him; that
+she pleased him in spite of them, perhaps because of them;
+that he wanted her as she was, and not as she would have
+liked to be; and for the first time she felt in her veins
+the security and lightness of happy love.
+
+They reached the court and walked under the limes toward the
+house.  The hall door stood wide, and through the windows
+opening on the terrace the sun slanted across the black and
+white floor, the faded tapestry chairs, and Darrow's
+travelling coat and cap, which lay among the cloaks and rugs
+piled on a bench against the wall.
+
+The sight of these garments, lying among her own wraps, gave
+her a sense of homely intimacy.  It was as if her happiness
+came down from the skies and took on the plain dress of
+daily things.  At last she seemed to hold it in her hand.
+
+As they entered the hall her eye lit on an unstamped note
+conspicuously placed on the table.
+
+"From Owen!  He must have rushed off somewhere in the motor."
+
+She felt a secret stir of pleasure at the immediate
+inference that she and Darrow would probably lunch alone.
+Then she opened the note and stared at it in wonder.
+
+"Dear," Owen wrote, "after what you said yesterday I can't
+wait another hour, and I'm off to Francheuil, to catch the
+Dijon express and travel back with them.  Don't be
+frightened; I won't speak unless it's safe to. Trust me for
+that--but I had to go."
+
+She looked up slowly.
+
+"He's gone to Dijon to meet his grandmother.  Oh, I hope I
+haven't made a mistake!"
+
+"You?  Why, what have you to do with his going to Dijon?"
+
+She hesitated.  "The day before yesterday I told him, for
+the first time, that I meant to see him through, no matter
+what happened.  And I'm afraid he's lost his head, and will
+be imprudent and spoil things.  You see, I hadn't meant to
+say a word to him till I'd had time to prepare Madame de
+Chantelle."
+
+She felt that Darrow was looking at her and reading her
+thoughts, and the colour flew to her face.  "Yes: it was
+when I heard you were coming that I told him.  I wanted him
+to feel as I felt...it seemed too unkind to make him wait!"
+Her hand was in his, and his arm rested for a moment on her
+shoulder.
+
+"It WOULD have been too unkind to make him wait."
+
+They moved side by side toward the stairs.  Through the haze
+of bliss enveloping her, Owen's affairs seemed curiously
+unimportant and remote.  Nothing really mattered but this
+torrent of light in her veins.  She put her foot on the
+lowest step, saying: "It's nearly luncheon time--I must take
+off my hat..."  and as she started up the stairs Darrow stood
+below in the hall and watched her.  But the distance between
+them did not make him seem less near: it was as if his
+thoughts moved with her and touched her like endearing
+hands.
+
+In her bedroom she shut the door and stood still, looking
+about her in a fit of dreamy wonder.  Her feelings were
+unlike any she had ever known: richer, deeper, more
+complete.  For the first time everything in her, from head
+to foot, seemed to be feeding the same full current of
+sensation.
+
+She took off her hat and went to the dressing-table to
+smooth her hair.  The pressure of the hat had flattened the
+dark strands on her forehead; her face was paler than usual,
+with shadows about the eyes.  She felt a pang of regret for
+the wasted years.  "If I look like this today," she said to
+herself, "what will he think of me when I'm ill or worried?"
+She began to run her fingers through her hair, rejoicing in
+its thickness; then she desisted and sat still, resting her
+chin on her hands.
+
+"I want him to see me as I am," she thought.
+
+Deeper than the deepest fibre of her vanity was the
+triumphant sense that AS SHE WAS, with her flattened
+hair, her tired pallor, her thin sleeves a little tumbled by
+the weight of her jacket, he would like her even better,
+feel her nearer, dearer, more desirable, than in all the
+splendours she might put on for him.  In the light of this
+discovery she studied her face with a new intentness, seeing
+its defects as she had never seen them, yet seeing them
+through a kind of radiance, as though love were a luminous
+medium into which she had been bodily plunged.
+
+She was glad now that she had confessed her doubts and her
+jealousy.  She divined that a man in love may be flattered
+by such involuntary betrayals, that there are moments when
+respect for his liberty appeals to him less than the
+inability to respect it: moments so propitious that a
+woman's very mistakes and indiscretions may help to
+establish her dominion.  The sense of power she had been
+aware of in talking to Darrow came back with ten-fold force.
+She felt like testing him by the most fantastic exactions,
+and at the same moment she longed to humble herself before
+him, to make herself the shadow and echo of his mood. She
+wanted to linger with him in a world of fancy and yet to
+walk at his side in the world of fact.  She wanted him to
+feel her power and yet to love her for her ignorance and
+humility.  She felt like a slave, and a goddess, and a girl
+in her teens...
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Darrow, late that evening, threw himself into an armchair
+before his fire and mused.
+
+The room was propitious to meditation.  The red-veiled lamp,
+the corners of shadow, the splashes of firelight on the
+curves of old full-bodied wardrobes and cabinets, gave it an
+air of intimacy increased by its faded hangings, its
+slightly frayed and threadbare rugs.  Everything in it was
+harmoniously shabby, with a subtle sought-for shabbiness in
+which Darrow fancied he discerned the touch of Fraser Leath.
+But Fraser Leath had grown so unimportant a factor in the
+scheme of things that these marks of his presence caused the
+young man no emotion beyond that of a faint retrospective
+amusement.
+
+The afternoon and evening had been perfect.
+
+After a moment of concern over her step-son's departure,
+Anna had surrendered herself to her happiness with an
+impetuosity that Darrow had never suspected in her.  Early
+in the afternoon they had gone out in the motor, traversing
+miles of sober-tinted landscape in which, here and there, a
+scarlet vineyard flamed, clattering through the streets of
+stony villages, coming out on low slopes above the river, or
+winding through the pale gold of narrow wood-roads with the
+blue of clear-cut hills at their end.  Over everything lay a
+faint sunshine that seemed dissolved in the still air, and
+the smell of wet roots and decaying leaves was merged in the
+pungent scent of burning underbrush.  Once, at the turn of a
+wall, they stopped the motor before a ruined gateway and,
+stumbling along a road full of ruts, stood before a little
+old deserted house, fantastically carved and chimneyed,
+which lay in a moat under the shade of ancient trees.  They
+paced the paths between the trees, found a mouldy Temple of
+Love on an islet among reeds and plantains, and, sitting on
+a bench in the stable-yard, watched the pigeons circling
+against the sunset over their cot of patterned brick. Then
+the motor flew on into the dusk...
+
+When they came in they sat beside the fire in the oak
+drawing-room, and Darrow noticed how delicately her head
+stood out against the sombre panelling, and mused on the
+enjoyment there would always be in the mere fact of watching
+her hands as they moved about among the tea-things...
+
+They dined late, and facing her across the table, with its
+low lights and flowers, he felt an extraordinary pleasure in
+seeing her again in evening dress, and in letting his eyes
+dwell on the proud shy set of her head, the way her dark
+hair clasped it, and the girlish thinness of her neck above
+the slight swell of the breast.  His imagination was struck
+by the quality of reticence in her beauty.  She suggested a
+fine portrait kept down to a few tones, or a Greek vase on
+which the play of light is the only pattern.
+
+After dinner they went out on the terrace for a look at the
+moon-misted park.  Through the crepuscular whiteness the
+trees hung in blotted masses.  Below the terrace, the garden
+drew its dark diagrams between statues that stood like
+muffled conspirators on the edge of the shadow.  Farther
+off, the meadows unrolled a silver-shot tissue to the
+mantling of mist above the river; and the autumn stars
+trembled overhead like their own reflections seen in dim
+water.
+
+He lit his cigar, and they walked slowly up and down the
+flags in the languid air, till he put an arm about her,
+saying: "You mustn't stay till you're chilled"; then they
+went back into the room and drew up their chairs to the
+fire.
+
+It seemed only a moment later that she said: "It must be
+after eleven," and stood up and looked down on him, smiling
+faintly.  He sat still, absorbing the look, and thinking:
+"There'll be evenings and evenings"--till she came nearer,
+bent over him, and with a hand on his shoulder said: "Good
+night."
+
+He got to his feet and put his arms about her.
+
+"Good night," he answered, and held her fast; and they gave
+each other a long kiss of promise and communion.
+
+The memory of it glowed in him still as he sat over his
+crumbling fire; but beneath his physical exultation he felt
+a certain gravity of mood.  His happiness was in some sort
+the rallying-point of many scattered purposes.  He summed it
+up vaguely by saying to himself that to be loved by a woman
+like that made "all the difference"...He was a little tired
+of experimenting on life; he wanted to "take a line", to
+follow things up, to centralize and concentrate, and produce
+results.  Two or three more years of diplomacy--with her
+beside him!--and then their real life would begin: study,
+travel and book-making for him, and for her--well, the joy,
+at any rate, of getting out of an atmosphere of bric-a-brac
+and card-leaving into the open air of competing activities.
+
+The desire for change had for some time been latent in him,
+and his meeting with Mrs. Leath the previous spring had
+given it a definite direction.  With such a comrade to focus
+and stimulate his energies he felt modestly but agreeably
+sure of "doing something".  And under this assurance was the
+lurking sense that he was somehow worthy of his opportunity.
+His life, on the whole, had been a creditable affair.  Out
+of modest chances and middling talents he had built himself
+a fairly marked personality, known some exceptional people,
+done a number of interesting and a few rather difficult
+things, and found himself, at thirty-seven, possessed of an
+intellectual ambition sufficient to occupy the passage to a
+robust and energetic old age. As for the private and
+personal side of his life, it had come up to the current
+standards, and if it had dropped, now and then, below a more
+ideal measure, even these declines had been brief,
+parenthetic, incidental.  In the recognized essentials he
+had always remained strictly within the limit of his
+scruples.
+
+From this reassuring survey of his case he came back to the
+contemplation of its crowning felicity.  His mind turned
+again to his first meeting with Anna Summers and took up one
+by one the threads of their faintly sketched romance.  He
+dwelt with pardonable pride on the fact that fate had so
+early marked him for the high privilege of possessing her:
+it seemed to mean that they had really, in the truest sense
+of the ill-used phrase, been made for each other.
+
+Deeper still than all these satisfactions was the mere
+elemental sense of well-being in her presence.  That, after
+all, was what proved her to be the woman for him: the
+pleasure he took in the set of her head, the way her hair
+grew on her forehead and at the nape, her steady gaze when
+he spoke, the grave freedom of her gait and gestures.  He
+recalled every detail of her face, the fine veinings of the
+temples, the bluish-brown shadows in her upper lids, and the
+way the reflections of two stars seemed to form and break up
+in her eyes when he held her close to him...
+
+If he had had any doubt as to the nature of her feeling for
+him those dissolving stars would have allayed it. She was
+reserved, she was shy even, was what the shallow and
+effusive would call "cold".  She was like a picture so hung
+that it can be seen only at a certain angle: an angle known
+to no one but its possessor.  The thought flattered his
+sense of possessorship...He felt that the smile on his lips
+would have been fatuous had it had a witness.  He was
+thinking of her look when she had questioned him about his
+meeting with Owen at the theatre: less of her words than of
+her look, and of the effort the question cost her: the
+reddening of her cheek, the deepening of the strained line
+between her brows, the way her eyes sought shelter and then
+turned and drew on him.  Pride and passion were in the
+conflict--magnificent qualities in a wife!  The sight almost
+made up for his momentary embarrassment at the rousing of a
+memory which had no place in his present picture of himself.
+
+Yes!  It was worth a good deal to watch that fight between
+her instinct and her intelligence, and know one's self the
+object of the struggle...
+
+Mingled with these sensations were considerations of another
+order.  He reflected with satisfaction that she was the kind
+of woman with whom one would like to be seen in public.  It
+would be distinctly agreeable to follow her into drawing-
+rooms, to walk after her down the aisle of a theatre, to get
+in and out of trains with her, to say "my wife" of her to
+all sorts of people.  He draped these details in the
+handsome phrase "She's a woman to be proud of", and felt
+that this fact somehow justified and ennobled his
+instinctive boyish satisfaction in loving her.
+
+He stood up, rambled across the room and leaned out for a
+while into the starry night.  Then he dropped again into his
+armchair with a sigh of deep content.
+
+"Oh, hang it," he suddenly exclaimed, "it's the best thing
+that's ever happened to me, anyhow!"
+
+
+The next day was even better.  He felt, and knew she felt,
+that they had reached a clearer understanding of each other.
+It was as if, after a swim through bright opposing waves,
+with a dazzle of sun in their eyes, they had gained an inlet
+in the shades of a cliff, where they could float on the
+still surface and gaze far down into the depths.
+
+Now and then, as they walked and talked, he felt a thrill of
+youthful wonder at the coincidence of their views and their
+experiences, at the way their minds leapt to the same point
+in the same instant.
+
+"The old delusion, I suppose," he smiled to himself. "Will
+Nature never tire of the trick?"
+
+But he knew it was more than that.  There were moments in
+their talk when he felt, distinctly and unmistakably, the
+solid ground of friendship underneath the whirling dance of
+his sensations.  "How I should like her if I didn't love
+her!" he summed it up, wondering at the miracle of such a
+union.
+
+In the course of the morning a telegram had come from Owen
+Leath, announcing that he, his grandmother and Effie would
+arrive from Dijon that afternoon at four. The station of the
+main line was eight or ten miles from Givre, and Anna, soon
+after three, left in the motor to meet the travellers.
+
+When she had gone Darrow started for a walk, planning to get
+back late, in order that the reunited family might have the
+end of the afternoon to themselves.  He roamed the country-
+side till long after dark, and the stable-clock of Givre was
+striking seven as he walked up the avenue to the court.
+
+In the hall, coming down the stairs, he encountered Anna.
+Her face was serene, and his first glance showed him that
+Owen had kept his word and that none of her forebodings had
+been fulfilled.
+
+She had just come down from the school-room, where Effie and
+the governess were having supper; the little girl, she told
+him, looked immensely better for her Swiss holiday, but was
+dropping with sleep after the journey, and too tired to make
+her habitual appearance in the drawing-room before being put
+to bed.  Madame de Chantelle was resting, but would be down
+for dinner; and as for Owen, Anna supposed he was off
+somewhere in the park--he had a passion for prowling about
+the park at nightfall...
+
+Darrow followed her into the brown room, where the tea-table
+had been left for him.  He declined her offer of tea, but
+she lingered a moment to tell him that Owen had in fact kept
+his word, and that Madame de Chantelle had come back in the
+best of humours, and unsuspicious of the blow about to fall.
+
+"She has enjoyed her month at Ouchy, and it has given her a
+lot to talk about--her symptoms, and the rival doctors, and
+the people at the hotel.  It seems she met your Ambassadress
+there, and Lady Wantley, and some other London friends of
+yours, and she's heard what she calls 'delightful things'
+about you: she told me to tell you so.  She attaches great
+importance to the fact that your grandmother was an Everard
+of Albany.  She's prepared to open her arms to you.  I don't
+know whether it won't make it harder for poor Owen...the
+contrast, I mean...There are no Ambassadresses or Everards
+to vouch for HIS choice!  But you'll help me, won't you?
+You'll help me to help him?  To-morrow I'll tell you the
+rest.  Now I must rush up and tuck in Effie..."
+
+"Oh, you'll see, we'll pull it off for him!" he assured her;
+"together, we can't fail to pull it off."
+
+He stood and watched her with a smile as she fled down the
+half-lit vista to the hall.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+If Darrow, on entering the drawing-room before dinner,
+examined its new occupant with unusual interest, it was more
+on Owen Leath's account than his own.
+
+Anna's hints had roused his interest in the lad's love
+affair, and he wondered what manner of girl the heroine of
+the coming conflict might be.  He had guessed that Owen's
+rebellion symbolized for his step-mother her own long
+struggle against the Leath conventions, and he understood
+that if Anna so passionately abetted him it was partly
+because, as she owned, she wanted his liberation to coincide
+with hers.
+
+The lady who was to represent, in the impending struggle,
+the forces of order and tradition was seated by the fire
+when Darrow entered.  Among the flowers and old furniture of
+the large pale-panelled room, Madame de Chantelle had the
+inanimate elegance of a figure introduced into a "still-
+life" to give the scale.  And this, Darrow reflected, was
+exactly what she doubtless regarded as her chief obligation:
+he was sure she thought a great deal of "measure", and
+approved of most things only up to a certain point.
+She was a woman of sixty, with a figure at once young and
+old-fashioned.  Her fair faded tints, her quaint corseting,
+the passementerie on her tight-waisted dress, the velvet
+band on her tapering arm, made her resemble a "carte de
+visite" photograph of the middle sixties.  One saw her,
+younger but no less invincibly lady-like, leaning on a chair
+with a fringed back, a curl in her neck, a locket on her
+tuckered bosom, toward the end of an embossed morocco album
+beginning with The Beauties of the Second Empire.
+
+She received her daughter-in-law's suitor with an affability
+which implied her knowledge and approval of his suit.
+Darrow had already guessed her to be a person who would
+instinctively oppose any suggested changes, and then, after
+one had exhausted one's main arguments, unexpectedly yield
+to some small incidental reason, and adhere doggedly to her
+new position.  She boasted of her old-fashioned prejudices,
+talked a good deal of being a grandmother, and made a show
+of reaching up to tap Owen's shoulder, though his height was
+little more than hers.
+
+She was full of a small pale prattle about the people she
+had seen at Ouchy, as to whom she had the minute statistical
+information of a gazetteer, without any apparent sense of
+personal differences.  She said to Darrow: "They tell me
+things are very much changed in America...Of course in my
+youth there WAS a Society"...She had no desire to return
+there she was sure the standards must be so different.
+"There are charming people everywhere...and one must always
+look on the best side...but when one has lived among
+Traditions it's difficult to adapt one's self to the new
+ideas...These dreadful views of marriage...it's so hard to
+explain them to my French relations...I'm thankful to say I
+don't pretend to understand them myself!  But YOU'RE an
+Everard--I told Anna last spring in London that one sees
+that instantly"...
+
+She wandered off to the cooking and the service of the hotel
+at Ouchy.  She attached great importance to gastronomic
+details and to the manners of hotel servants. There, too,
+there was a falling off, she said.  "I don t know, of
+course; but people say it's owing to the Americans.
+Certainly my waiter had a way of slapping down the
+dishes...they tell me that many of them are
+Anarchists...belong to Unions, you know."  She appealed to
+Darrow's reported knowledge of economic conditions to
+confirm this ominous rumour.
+
+After dinner Owen Leath wandered into the next room, where
+the piano stood, and began to play among the shadows.  His
+step-mother presently joined him, and Darrow sat alone with
+Madame de Chantelle.
+
+She took up the thread of her mild chat and carried it on at
+the same pace as her knitting.  Her conversation resembled
+the large loose-stranded web between her fingers: now and
+then she dropped a stitch, and went on regardless of the gap
+in the pattern.
+
+Darrow listened with a lazy sense of well-being.  In the
+mental lull of the after-dinner hour, with harmonious
+memories murmuring through his mind, and the soft tints and
+shadowy spaces of the fine old room charming his eyes to
+indolence, Madame de Chantelle's discourse seemed not out of
+place.  He could understand that, in the long run, the
+atmosphere of Givre might be suffocating; but in his present
+mood its very limitations had a grace.
+
+Presently he found the chance to say a word in his own
+behalf; and thereupon measured the advantage, never before
+particularly apparent to him, of being related to the
+Everards of Albany.  Madame de Chantelle's conception of her
+native country--to which she had not returned since her
+twentieth year--reminded him of an ancient geographer's map
+of the Hyperborean regions. It was all a foggy blank, from
+which only one or two fixed outlines emerged; and one of
+these belonged to the Everards of Albany.
+
+The fact that they offered such firm footing--formed, so to
+speak, a friendly territory on which the opposing powers
+could meet and treat--helped him through the task of
+explaining and justifying himself as the successor of Fraser
+Leath.  Madame de Chantelle could not resist such
+incontestable claims.  She seemed to feel her son's hovering
+and discriminating presence, and she gave Darrow the sense
+that he was being tested and approved as a last addition to
+the Leath Collection.
+
+She also made him aware of the immense advantage he
+possessed in belonging to the diplomatic profession. She
+spoke of this humdrum calling as a Career, and gave Darrow
+to understand that she supposed him to have been seducing
+Duchesses when he was not negotiating Treaties.  He heard
+again quaint phrases which romantic old ladies had used in
+his youth: "Brilliant diplomatic society...social
+advantages...the entree everywhere...nothing else
+FORMS a young man in the same way..."  and she sighingly
+added that she could have wished her grandson had chosen the
+same path to glory.
+
+Darrow prudently suppressed his own view of the profession,
+as well as the fact that he had adopted it provisionally,
+and for reasons less social than sociological; and the talk
+presently passed on to the subject of his future plans.
+
+Here again, Madame de Chantelle's awe of the Career made her
+admit the necessity of Anna's consenting to an early
+marriage.  The fact that Darrow was "ordered" to South
+America seemed to put him in the romantic light of a young
+soldier charged to lead a forlorn hope: she sighed and said:
+"At such moments a wife's duty is at her husband's side."
+
+The problem of Effie's future might have disturbed her, she
+added; but since Anna, for a time, consented to leave the
+little girl with her, that problem was at any rate deferred.
+She spoke plaintively of the responsibility of looking after
+her granddaughter, but Darrow divined that she enjoyed the
+flavour of the word more than she felt the weight of the
+fact.
+
+"Effie's a perfect child.  She's more like my son, perhaps,
+than dear Owen.  She'll never intentionally give me the
+least trouble.  But of course the responsibility will be
+great...I'm not sure I should dare to undertake it if it
+were not for her having such a treasure of a governess.  Has
+Anna told you about our little governess?  After all the
+worry we had last year, with one impossible creature after
+another, it seems providential, just now, to have found her.
+At first we were afraid she was too young; but now we've the
+greatest confidence in her.  So clever and amusing--and
+SUCH a lady!  I don't say her education's all it might
+be...no drawing or singing...but one can't have everything;
+and she speaks Italian..."
+
+Madame de Chantelle's fond insistence on the likeness
+between Effie Leath and her father, if not particularly
+gratifying to Darrow, had at least increased his desire to
+see the little girl.  It gave him an odd feeling of
+discomfort to think that she should have any of the
+characteristics of the late Fraser Leath: he had, somehow,
+fantastically pictured her as the mystical offspring of the
+early tenderness between himself and Anna Summers.
+
+His encounter with Effie took place the next morning, on the
+lawn below the terrace, where he found her, in the early
+sunshine, knocking about golf balls with her brother.
+Almost at once, and with infinite relief, he saw that the
+resemblance of which Madame de Chantelle boasted was mainly
+external.  Even that discovery was slightly distasteful,
+though Darrow was forced to own that Fraser Leath's
+straight-featured fairness had lent itself to the production
+of a peculiarly finished image of childish purity.  But it
+was evident that other elements had also gone to the making
+of Effie, and that another spirit sat in her eyes.  Her
+serious handshake, her "pretty" greeting, were worthy of the
+Leath tradition, and he guessed her to be more malleable
+than Owen, more subject to the influences of Givre; but the
+shout with which she returned to her romp had in it the note
+of her mother's emancipation.
+
+He had begged a holiday for her, and when Mrs. Leath
+appeared he and she and the little girl went off for a
+ramble.  Anna wished her daughter to have time to make
+friends with Darrow before learning in what relation he was
+to stand to her; and the three roamed the woods and fields
+till the distant chime of the stable-clock made them turn
+back for luncheon.
+
+Effie, who was attended by a shaggy terrier, had picked up
+two or three subordinate dogs at the stable; and as she
+trotted on ahead with her yapping escort, Anna hung back to
+throw a look at Darrow.
+
+"Yes," he answered it, "she's exquisite...Oh, I see what I'm
+asking of you!  But she'll be quite happy here, won't she?
+And you must remember it won't be for long..."
+
+Anna sighed her acquiescence.  "Oh, she'll be happy here.
+It's her nature to be happy.  She'll apply herself to it,
+conscientiously, as she does to her lessons, and to what she
+calls 'being good'...In a way, you see, that's just what
+worries me.  Her idea of 'being good' is to please the
+person she's with--she puts her whole dear little mind on
+it!  And so, if ever she's with the wrong person----"
+
+"But surely there's no danger of that just now?  Madame de
+Chantelle tells me that you've at last put your hand on a
+perfect governess----"
+
+Anna, without answering, glanced away from him toward her
+daughter.
+
+"It's lucky, at any rate," Darrow continued, "that Madame de
+Chantelle thinks her so."
+
+"Oh, I think very highly of her too."
+
+"Highly enough to feel quite satisfied to leave her with
+Effie?"
+
+"Yes.  She's just the person for Effie.  Only, of course,
+one never knows...She's young, and she might take it into
+her head to leave us..."  After a pause she added: "I'm
+naturally anxious to know what you think of her."
+
+When they entered the house the hands of the hall clock
+stood within a few minutes of the luncheon hour.  Anna led
+Effie off to have her hair smoothed and Darrow wandered into
+the oak sitting-room, which he found untenanted.  The sun
+lay pleasantly on its brown walls, on the scattered books
+and the flowers in old porcelain vases.  In his eyes
+lingered the vision of the dark-haired mother mounting the
+stairs with her little fair daughter.  The contrast between
+them seemed a last touch of grace in the complex harmony of
+things.  He stood in the window, looking out at the park,
+and brooding inwardly upon his happiness...
+
+He was roused by Effie's voice and the scamper of her feet
+down the long floors behind him.
+
+"Here he is!  Here he is!" she cried, flying over the
+threshold.
+
+He turned and stooped to her with a smile, and as she caught
+his hand he perceived that she was trying to draw him toward
+some one who had paused behind her in the doorway, and whom
+he supposed to be her mother.
+
+"HERE he is!" Effie repeated, with her sweet impatience.
+
+The figure in the doorway came forward and Darrow, looking
+up, found himself face to face with Sophy Viner.  They stood
+still, a yard or two apart, and looked at each other without
+speaking.
+
+As they paused there, a shadow fell across one of the
+terrace windows, and Owen Leath stepped whistling into the
+room.  In his rough shooting clothes, with the glow of
+exercise under his fair skin, he looked extraordinarily
+light-hearted and happy.  Darrow, with a quick side-glance,
+noticed this, and perceived also that the glow on the
+youth's cheek had deepened suddenly to red.  He too stopped
+short, and the three stood there motionless for a barely
+perceptible beat of time.  During its lapse, Darrow's eyes
+had turned back from Owen's face to that of the girl between
+them.  He had the sense that, whatever was done, it was he
+who must do it, and that it must be done immediately.  He
+went forward and held out his hand.
+
+"How do you do, Miss Viner?"
+
+She answered: "How do you do?" in a voice that sounded clear
+and natural; and the next moment he again became aware of
+steps behind him, and knew that Mrs. Leath was in the room.
+
+To his strained senses there seemed to be another just
+measurable pause before Anna said, looking gaily about the
+little group: "Has Owen introduced you?  This is Effie's
+friend, Miss Viner."
+
+Effie, still hanging on her governess's arm, pressed herself
+closer with a little gesture of appropriation; and Miss
+Viner laid her hand on her pupil's hair.
+
+Darrow felt that Anna's eyes had turned to him.
+
+"I think Miss Viner and I have met already--several years
+ago in London."
+
+"I remember," said Sophy Viner, in the same clear voice.
+
+"How charming!  Then we're all friends.  But luncheon must be
+ready," said Mrs. Leath.
+
+She turned back to the door, and the little procession moved
+down the two long drawing-rooms, with Effie waltzing on
+ahead.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Madame de Chantelle and Anna had planned, for the afternoon,
+a visit to a remotely situated acquaintance whom the
+introduction of the motor had transformed into a neighbour.
+Effie was to pay for her morning's holiday by an hour or two
+in the school-room, and Owen suggested that he and Darrow
+should betake themselves to a distant covert in the
+desultory quest for pheasants.
+
+Darrow was not an ardent sportsman, but any pretext for
+physical activity would have been acceptable at the moment;
+and he was glad both to get away from the house and not to
+be left to himself.
+
+When he came downstairs the motor was at the door, and Anna
+stood before the hall mirror, swathing her hat in veils.
+She turned at the sound of his step and smiled at him for a
+long full moment.
+
+"I'd no idea you knew Miss Viner," she said, as he helped
+her into her long coat.
+
+"It came back to me, luckily, that I'd seen her two or three
+times in London, several years ago.  She was secretary, or
+something of the sort, in the background of a house where I
+used to dine."
+
+He loathed the slighting indifference of the phrase, but he
+had uttered it deliberately, had been secretly practising it
+all through the interminable hour at the luncheon-table.
+Now that it was spoken, he shivered at its note of
+condescension.  In such cases one was almost sure to
+overdo...But Anna seemed to notice nothing unusual.
+
+"Was she really?  You must tell me all about it--tell me
+exactly how she struck you.  I'm so glad it turns out that
+you know her."
+
+"'Know' is rather exaggerated: we used to pass each other on
+the stairs."
+
+Madame de Chantelle and Owen appeared together as he spoke,
+and Anna, gathering up her wraps, said: "You'll tell me
+about that, then.  Try and remember everything you can."
+
+As he tramped through the woods at his young host's side,
+Darrow felt the partial relief from thought produced by
+exercise and the obligation to talk.  Little as he cared for
+shooting, he had the habit of concentration which makes it
+natural for a man to throw himself wholly into whatever
+business he has in hand, and there were moments of the
+afternoon when a sudden whirr in the undergrowth, a vivider
+gleam against the hazy browns and greys of the woods, was
+enough to fill the foreground of his attention.  But all the
+while, behind these voluntarily emphasized sensations, his
+secret consciousness continued to revolve on a loud wheel of
+thought.  For a time it seemed to be sweeping him through
+deep gulfs of darkness.  His sensations were too swift and
+swarming to be disentangled.  He had an almost physical
+sense of struggling for air, of battling helplessly with
+material obstructions, as though the russet covert through
+which he trudged were the heart of a maleficent jungle...
+
+Snatches of his companion's talk drifted to him
+intermittently through the confusion of his thoughts. He
+caught eager self-revealing phrases, and understood that
+Owen was saying things about himself, perhaps hinting
+indirectly at the hopes for which Darrow had been prepared
+by Anna's confidences.  He had already become aware that the
+lad liked him, and had meant to take the first opportunity
+of showing that he reciprocated the feeling.  But the effort
+of fixing his attention on Owen's words was so great that it
+left no power for more than the briefest and most
+inexpressive replies.
+
+Young Leath, it appeared, felt that he had reached a
+turning-point in his career, a height from which he could
+impartially survey his past progress and projected
+endeavour.  At one time he had had musical and literary
+yearnings, visions of desultory artistic indulgence; but
+these had of late been superseded by the resolute
+determination to plunge into practical life.
+
+"I don't want, you see," Darrow heard him explaining, "to
+drift into what my grandmother, poor dear, is trying to make
+of me: an adjunct of Givre.  I don't want--hang it all!--to
+slip into collecting sensations as my father collected
+snuff-boxes.  I want Effie to have Givre--it's my
+grandmother's, you know, to do as she likes with; and I've
+understood lately that if it belonged to me it would
+gradually gobble me up.  I want to get out of it, into a
+life that's big and ugly and struggling.  If I can extract
+beauty out of THAT, so much the better: that'll prove my
+vocation.  But I want to MAKE beauty, not be drowned in
+the ready-made, like a bee in a pot of honey."
+
+Darrow knew that he was being appealed to for corroboration
+of these views and for encouragement in the course to which
+they pointed.  To his own ears his answers sounded now curt,
+now irrelevant: at one moment he seemed chillingly
+indifferent, at another he heard himself launching out on a
+flood of hazy discursiveness.  He dared not look at Owen,
+for fear of detecting the lad's surprise at these senseless
+transitions.  And through the confusion of his inward
+struggles and outward loquacity he heard the ceaseless trip-
+hammer beat of the question: "What in God's name shall I
+do?"...
+
+To get back to the house before Anna's return seemed his
+most pressing necessity.  He did not clearly know why: he
+simply felt that he ought to be there.  At one moment it
+occurred to him that Miss Viner might want to speak to him
+alone--and again, in the same flash, that it would probably
+be the last thing she would want...At any rate, he felt he
+ought to try to speak to HER; or at least be prepared to
+do so, if the chance should occur...
+
+Finally, toward four, he told his companion that he had some
+letters on his mind and must get back to the house and
+despatch them before the ladies returned.  He left Owen with
+the beater and walked on to the edge of the covert.  At the
+park gates he struck obliquely through the trees, following
+a grass avenue at the end of which he had caught a glimpse
+of the roof of the chapel.  A grey haze had blotted out the
+sun and the still air clung about him tepidly.  At length
+the house-front raised before him its expanse of damp-
+silvered brick, and he was struck afresh by the high decorum
+of its calm lines and soberly massed surfaces.  It made him
+feel, in the turbid coil of his fears and passions, like a
+muddy tramp forcing his way into some pure sequestered
+shrine...
+
+By and bye, he knew, he should have to think the complex
+horror out, slowly, systematically, bit by bit; but for the
+moment it was whirling him about so fast that he could just
+clutch at its sharp spikes and be tossed off again.  Only
+one definite immediate fact stuck in his quivering grasp.
+He must give the girl every chance--must hold himself
+passive till she had taken them...
+
+In the court Effie ran up to him with her leaping terrier.
+
+"I was coming out to meet you--you and Owen.  Miss Viner was
+coming, too, and then she couldn't because she's got such a
+headache.  I'm afraid I gave it to her because I did my
+division so disgracefully.  It's too bad, isn't it?  But
+won't you walk back with me?  Nurse won't mind the least bit;
+she'd so much rather go in to tea."
+
+Darrow excused himself laughingly, on the plea that he had
+letters to write, which was much worse than having a
+headache, and not infrequently resulted in one.
+
+"Oh, then you can go and write them in Owen's study. That's
+where gentlemen always write their letters."
+
+She flew on with her dog and Darrow pursued his way to the
+house.  Effie's suggestion struck him as useful. He had
+pictured himself as vaguely drifting about the drawing-
+rooms, and had perceived the difficulty of Miss Viner's
+having to seek him there; but the study, a small room on the
+right of the hall, was in easy sight from the staircase, and
+so situated that there would be nothing marked in his being
+found there in talk with her.
+
+He went in, leaving the door open, and sat down at the
+writing-table.  The room was a friendly heterogeneous place,
+the one repository, in the well-ordered and amply-servanted
+house, of all its unclassified odds and ends: Effie's
+croquet-box and fishing rods, Owen's guns and golf-sticks
+and racquets, his step-mother's flower-baskets and gardening
+implements, even Madame de Chantelle's embroidery frame, and
+the back numbers of the Catholic Weekly.  The early twilight
+had begun to fall, and presently a slanting ray across the
+desk showed Darrow that a servant was coming across the hall
+with a lamp.  He pulled out a sheet of note-paper and began
+to write at random, while the man, entering, put the lamp at
+his elbow and vaguely "straightened" the heap of newspapers
+tossed on the divan.  Then his steps died away and Darrow
+sat leaning his head on his locked hands.
+
+Presently another step sounded on the stairs, wavered a
+moment and then moved past the threshold of the study.
+Darrow got up and walked into the hall, which was still
+unlighted.  In the dimness he saw Sophy Viner standing by
+the hall door in her hat and jacket.  She stopped at sight
+of him, her hand on the door-bolt, and they stood for a
+second without speaking.
+
+"Have you seen Effie?" she suddenly asked.  "She went out to
+meet you."
+
+"She DID meet me, just now, in the court.  She's gone on
+to join her brother."
+
+Darrow spoke as naturally as he could, but his voice sounded
+to his own ears like an amateur actor's in a "light" part.
+
+Miss Viner, without answering, drew back the bolt.  He
+watched her in silence as the door swung open; then he said:
+"She has her
+nurse with her.  She won't be long."
+
+She stood irresolute, and he added: "I was writing in there
+--won't you come and have a little talk?  Every one's out."
+
+The last words struck him as not well-chosen, but there was
+no time to choose.  She paused a second longer and then
+crossed the threshold of the study.  At luncheon she had sat
+with her back to the window, and beyond noting that she had
+grown a little thinner, and had less colour and vivacity, he
+had seen no change in her; but now, as the lamplight fell on
+her face, its whiteness startled him.
+
+"Poor thing...poor thing...what in heaven's name can she
+suppose?" he wondered.
+
+"Do sit down--I want to talk to you," he said and pushed a
+chair toward her.
+
+She did not seem to see it, or, if she did, she deliberately
+chose another seat.  He came back to his own chair and
+leaned his elbows on the blotter.  She faced him from the
+farther side of the table.
+
+"You promised to let me hear from you now and then," he
+began awkwardly, and with a sharp sense of his awkwardness.
+
+A faint smile made her face more tragic.  "Did I?  There was
+nothing to tell.  I've had no history--like the happy
+countries..."
+
+He waited a moment before asking: "You ARE happy here?"
+
+"I WAS," she said with a faint emphasis.
+
+"Why do you say 'was'?  You're surely not thinking of going?
+There can't be kinder people anywhere."  Darrow hardly knew
+what he was saying; but her answer came to him with deadly
+definiteness.
+
+"I suppose it depends on you whether I go or stay."
+
+"On me?" He stared at her across Owen's scattered papers.
+"Good God!  What can you think of me, to say that?"
+
+The mockery of the question flashed back at him from her
+wretched face.  She stood up, wandered away, and leaned an
+instant in the darkening window-frame.  From there she
+turned to fling back at him: "Don't imagine I'm the least
+bit sorry for anything!"
+
+He steadied his elbows on the table and hid his face in his
+hands.  It was harder, oh, damnably harder, than he had
+expected!  Arguments, expedients, palliations, evasions, all
+seemed to be slipping away from him: he was left face to
+face with the mere graceless fact of his inferiority.  He
+lifted his head to ask at random: "You've been here, then,
+ever since?"
+
+"Since June; yes.  It turned out that the Farlows were
+hunting for me--all the while--for this."
+
+She stood facing him, her back to the window, evidently
+impatient to be gone, yet with something still to say, or
+that she expected to hear him say.  The sense of her
+expectancy benumbed him.  What in heaven's name could he say
+to her that was not an offense or a mockery?
+
+"Your idea of the theatre--you gave that up at once, then?"
+
+"Oh, the theatre!" She gave a little laugh.  "I couldn't
+wait for the theatre.  I had to take the first thing that
+offered; I took this."
+
+He pushed on haltingly: "I'm glad--extremely glad--you're
+happy here...I'd counted on your letting me know if there
+was anything I could do...The theatre, now--if you still
+regret it--if you're not contented here...I know people in
+that line in London--I'm certain I can manage it for you
+when I get back----"
+
+She moved up to the table and leaned over it to ask, in a
+voice that was hardly above a whisper: "Then you DO want
+me to leave?  Is that it?"
+
+He dropped his arms with a groan.  "Good heavens!  How can
+you think such things?  At the time, you know, I begged you
+to let me do what I could, but you wouldn't hear of it...and
+ever since I've been wanting to be of use--to do something,
+anything, to help you..."
+
+She heard him through, motionless, without a quiver of the
+clasped hands she rested on the edge of the table.
+
+"If you want to help me, then--you can help me to stay
+here," she brought out with low-toned intensity.
+
+Through the stillness of the pause which followed, the bray
+of a motor-horn sounded far down the drive.  Instantly she
+turned, with a last white look at him, and fled from the
+room and up the stairs.  He stood motionless, benumbed by
+the shock of her last words.  She was afraid, then--afraid
+of him--sick with fear of him!  The discovery beat him down
+to a lower depth...
+
+The motor-horn sounded again, close at hand, and he turned
+and went up to his room.  His letter-writing was a
+sufficient pretext for not immediately joining the party
+about the tea-table, and he wanted to be alone and try to
+put a little order into his tumultuous thinking.
+
+Upstairs, the room held out the intimate welcome of its lamp
+and fire.  Everything in it exhaled the same sense of peace
+and stability which, two evenings before, had lulled him to
+complacent meditation.  His armchair again invited him from
+the hearth, but he was too agitated to sit still, and with
+sunk head and hands clasped behind his back he began to
+wander up and down the room.
+
+His five minutes with Sophy Viner had flashed strange lights
+into the shadowy corners of his consciousness. The girl's
+absolute candour, her hard ardent honesty, was for the
+moment the vividest point in his thoughts. He wondered anew,
+as he had wondered before, at the way in which the harsh
+discipline of life had stripped her of false sentiment
+without laying the least touch on her pride.  When they had
+parted, five months before, she had quietly but decidedly
+rejected all his offers of help, even to the suggestion of
+his trying to further her theatrical aims: she had made it
+clear that she wished their brief alliance to leave no trace
+on their lives save that of its own smiling memory. But now
+that they were unexpectedly confronted in a situation which
+seemed, to her terrified fancy, to put her at his mercy, her
+first impulse was to defend her right to the place she had
+won, and to learn as quickly as possible if he meant to
+dispute it.  While he had pictured her as shrinking away
+from him in a tremor of self-effacement she had watched his
+movements, made sure of her opportunity, and come straight
+down to "have it out" with him.  He was so struck by the
+frankness and energy of the proceeding that for a moment he
+lost sight of the view of his own character implied in it.
+
+"Poor thing...poor thing!" he could only go on saying; and
+with the repetition of the words the picture of himself as
+she must see him pitiably took shape again.
+
+He understood then, for the first time, how vague, in
+comparison with hers, had been his own vision of the part he
+had played in the brief episode of their relation.  The
+incident had left in him a sense of exasperation and self-
+contempt, but that, as he now perceived, was chiefly, if not
+altogether, as it bore on his preconceived ideal of his
+attitude toward another woman.  He had fallen below his own
+standard of sentimental loyalty, and if he thought of Sophy
+Viner it was mainly as the chance instrument of his lapse.
+These considerations were not agreeable to his pride, but
+they were forced on him by the example of her valiant
+common-sense.  If he had cut a sorry figure in the business,
+he owed it to her not to close his eyes to the fact any
+longer...
+
+But when he opened them, what did he see?  The situation,
+detestable at best, would yet have been relatively simple if
+protecting Sophy Viner had been the only duty involved in
+it.  The fact that that duty was paramount did not do away
+with the contingent obligations.  It was Darrow's instinct,
+in difficult moments, to go straight to the bottom of the
+difficulty; but he had never before had to take so dark a
+dive as this, and for the minute he shivered on the
+brink...Well, his first duty, at any rate, was to the girl:
+he must let her see that he meant to fulfill it to the last
+jot, and then try to find out how to square the fulfillment
+with the other problems already in his path...
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+In the oak room he found Mrs. Leath, her mother-in-law and
+Effie.  The group, as he came toward it down the long
+drawing-rooms, composed itself prettily about the tea-table.
+The lamps and the fire crossed their gleams on silver and
+porcelain, on the bright haze of Effie's hair and on the
+whiteness of Anna's forehead, as she leaned back in her
+chair behind the tea-urn.
+
+She did not move at Darrow's approach, but lifted to him a
+deep gaze of peace and confidence.  The look seemed to throw
+about him the spell of a divine security: he felt the joy of
+a convalescent suddenly waking to find the sunlight on his
+face.
+
+Madame de Chantelle, across her knitting, discoursed of
+their afternoon's excursion, with occasional pauses induced
+by the hypnotic effect of the fresh air; and Effie,
+kneeling, on the hearth, softly but insistently sought to
+implant in her terrier's mind some notion of the relation
+between a vertical attitude and sugar.
+
+Darrow took a chair behind the little girl, so that he might
+look across at her mother.  It was almost a necessity for
+him, at the moment, to let his eyes rest on Anna's face, and
+to meet, now and then, the proud shyness of her gaze.
+
+Madame de Chantelle presently enquired what had become of
+Owen, and a moment later the window behind her opened, and
+her grandson, gun in hand, came in from the terrace.  As he
+stood there in the lamp-light, with dead leaves and bits of
+bramble clinging to his mud-spattered clothes, the scent of
+the night about him and its chill on his pale bright face,
+he really had the look of a young faun strayed in from the
+forest.
+
+Effie abandoned the terrier to fly to him.  "Oh, Owen, where
+in the world have you been?  I walked miles and miles with
+Nurse and couldn't find you, and we met Jean and he said he
+didn't know where you'd gone."
+
+"Nobody knows where I go, or what I see when I get there--
+that's the beauty of it!" he laughed back at her.  "But if
+you're good," he added, "I'll tell you about it one of these
+days."
+
+"Oh, now, Owen, now!  I don't really believe I'll ever be
+much better than I am now."
+
+"Let Owen have his tea first," her mother suggested; but the
+young man, declining the offer, propped his gun against the
+wall, and, lighting a cigarette, began to pace up and down
+the room in a way that reminded Darrow of his own caged
+wanderings.  Effie pursued him with her blandishments, and
+for a while he poured out to her a low-voiced stream of
+nonsense; then he sat down beside his step-mother and leaned
+over to help himself to tea.
+
+"Where's Miss Viner?" he asked, as Effie climbed up on him.
+"Why isn't she here to chain up this ungovernable infant?"
+
+"Poor Miss Viner has a headache.  Effie says she went to her
+room as soon as lessons were over, and sent word that she
+wouldn't be down for tea."
+
+"Ah," said Owen, abruptly setting down his cup.  He stood
+up, lit another cigarette, and wandered away to the piano in
+the room beyond.
+
+From the twilight where he sat a lonely music, borne on
+fantastic chords, floated to the group about the tea-table.
+Under its influence Madame de Chantelle's meditative pauses
+increased in length and frequency, and Effie stretched
+herself on the hearth, her drowsy head against the dog.
+Presently her nurse appeared, and Anna rose at the same
+time.  "Stop a minute in my sitting-room on your way up,"
+she paused to say to Darrow as she went.
+
+A few hours earlier, her request would have brought him
+instantly to his feet.  She had given him, on the day of his
+arrival, an inviting glimpse of the spacious book-lined room
+above stairs in which she had gathered together all the
+tokens of her personal tastes: the retreat in which, as one
+might fancy, Anna Leath had hidden the restless ghost of
+Anna Summers; and the thought of a talk with her there had
+been in his mind ever since.  But now he sat motionless, as
+if spell-bound by the play of Madame de Chantelle's needles
+and the pulsations of Owen's fitful music.
+
+"She will want to ask me about the girl," he repeated to
+himself, with a fresh sense of the insidious taint that
+embittered all his thoughts; the hand of the slender-
+columned clock on the mantel-piece had spanned a half-hour
+before shame at his own indecision finally drew him to his
+feet.
+
+From her writing-table, where she sat over a pile of
+letters, Anna lifted her happy smile.  The impulse to press
+his lips to it made him come close and draw her upward.  She
+threw her head back, as if surprised at the abruptness of
+the gesture; then her face leaned to his with the slow droop
+of a flower.  He felt again the sweep of the secret tides,
+and all his fears went down in them.
+
+She sat down in the sofa-corner by the fire and he drew an
+armchair close to her.  His gaze roamed peacefully about the
+quiet room.
+
+"It's just like you--it is you," he said, as his eyes came
+back to her.
+
+"It's a good place to be alone in--I don't think I've ever
+before cared to talk with any one here."
+
+"Let's be quiet, then: it's the best way of talking."
+
+"Yes; but we must save it up till later.  There are things I
+want to say to you now."
+
+He leaned back in his chair.  "Say them, then, and I'll
+listen."
+
+"Oh, no.  I want you to tell me about Miss Viner."
+
+"About Miss Viner?" He summoned up a look of faint
+interrogation.
+
+He thought she seemed surprised at his surprise.  "It's
+important, naturally," she explained, "that I should find
+out all I can about her before I leave."
+
+"Important on Effie's account?"
+
+"On Effie's account--of course."
+
+"Of course...But you've every reason to be satisfied,
+haven't you?"
+
+"Every apparent reason.  We all like her.  Effie's very fond
+of her, and she seems to have a delightful influence on the
+child.  But we know so little, after all--about her
+antecedents, I mean, and her past history.  That's why I
+want you to try and recall everything you heard about her
+when you used to see her in London."
+
+"Oh, on that score I'm afraid I sha'n't be of much use. As I
+told you, she was a mere shadow in the background of the
+house I saw her in--and that was four or five years ago..."
+
+"When she was with a Mrs. Murrett?"
+
+"Yes; an appalling woman who runs a roaring dinner-factory
+that used now and then to catch me in its wheels.  I escaped
+from them long ago; but in my time there used to be half a
+dozen fagged 'hands' to tend the machine, and Miss Viner was
+one of them.  I'm glad she's out of it, poor girl!"
+"Then you never really saw anything of her there?"
+
+"I never had the chance.  Mrs. Murrett discouraged any
+competition on the part of her subordinates."
+
+"Especially such pretty ones, I suppose?" Darrow made no
+comment, and she continued: "And Mrs. Murrett's own opinion
+--if she'd offered you one--probably wouldn't have been of
+much value?"
+
+"Only in so far as her disapproval would, on general
+principles, have been a good mark for Miss Viner.  But
+surely," he went on after a pause, "you could have found out
+about her from the people through whom you first heard of
+her?"
+
+Anna smiled.  "Oh, we heard of her through Adelaide Painter
+--;" and in reply to his glance of interrogation she
+explained that the lady in question was a spinster of South
+Braintree, Massachusetts, who, having come to Paris some
+thirty years earlier, to nurse a brother through an illness,
+had ever since protestingly and provisionally camped there
+in a state of contemptuous protestation oddly manifested by
+her never taking the slip-covers off her drawing-room
+chairs.  Her long residence on Gallic soil had not mitigated
+her hostility toward the creed and customs of the race, but
+though she always referred to the Catholic Church as the
+Scarlet Woman and took the darkest views of French private
+life, Madame de Chantelle placed great reliance on her
+judgment and experience, and in every domestic crisis the
+irreducible Adelaide was immediately summoned to Givre.
+
+"It's all the odder because my mother-in-law, since her
+second marriage, has lived so much in the country that she's
+practically lost sight of all her other American friends.
+Besides which, you can see how completely she has identified
+herself with Monsieur de Chantelle's nationality and adopted
+French habits and prejudices. Yet when anything goes wrong
+she always sends for Adelaide Painter, who's more American
+than the Stars and Stripes, and might have left South
+Braintree yesterday, if she hadn't, rather, brought it over
+with her in her trunk."
+
+Darrow laughed.  "Well, then, if South Braintree vouches for
+Miss Viner----"
+
+"Oh, but only indirectly.  When we had that odious adventure
+with Mademoiselle Grumeau, who'd been so highly recommended
+by Monsieur de Chantelle's aunt, the Chanoinesse, Adelaide
+was of course sent for, and she said at once: 'I'm not the
+least bit surprised.  I've always told you that what you
+wanted for Effie was a sweet American girl, and not one of
+these nasty foreigners.'  Unluckily she couldn't, at the
+moment, put her hand on a sweet American; but she presently
+heard of Miss Viner through the Farlows, an excellent couple
+who live in the Quartier Latin and write about French life
+for the American papers.  I was only too thankful to find
+anyone who was vouched for by decent people; and so far I've
+had no cause to regret my choice.  But I know, after all,
+very little about Miss Viner; and there are all kinds of
+reasons why I want, as soon as possible, to find out more--
+to find out all I can."
+
+"Since you've got to leave Effie I understand your feeling
+in that way.  But is there, in such a case, any
+recommendation worth half as much as your own direct
+experience?"
+
+"No; and it's been so favourable that I was ready to accept
+it as conclusive.  Only, naturally, when I found you'd known
+her in London I was in hopes you'd give me some more
+specific reasons for liking her as much as I do."
+
+"I'm afraid I can give you nothing more specific than my
+general vague impression that she seems very plucky and
+extremely nice."
+
+"You don't, at any rate, know anything specific to the
+contrary?"
+
+"To the contrary?  How should I?  I'm not conscious of ever
+having heard any one say two words about her.  I only infer
+that she must have pluck and character to have stuck it out
+so long at Mrs. Murrett's."
+
+"Yes, poor thing!  She has pluck, certainly; and pride, too;
+which must have made it all the harder."  Anna rose to her
+feet.  "You don't know how glad I am that your impression's
+on the whole so good.  I particularly wanted you to like
+her."
+
+He drew her to him with a smile.  "On that condition I'm
+prepared to love even Adelaide Painter."
+
+"I almost hope you wont have the chance to--poor Adelaide!
+Her appearance here always coincides with a catastrophe."
+
+"Oh, then I must manage to meet her elsewhere."  He held Anna
+closer, saying to himself, as he smoothed back the hair from
+her forehead: "What does anything matter but just THIS?
+--Must I go now?" he added aloud.
+
+She answered absently: "It must be time to dress"; then she
+drew back a little and laid her hands on his shoulders.  "My
+love--oh, my dear love!" she said.
+
+It came to him that they were the first words of endearment
+he had heard her speak, and their rareness gave them a magic
+quality of reassurance, as though no danger could strike
+through such a shield.
+
+A knock on the door made them draw apart.  Anna lifted her
+hand to her hair and Darrow stooped to examine a photograph
+of Effie on the writing-table.
+
+"Come in!" Anna said.
+
+The door opened and Sophy Viner entered.  Seeing Darrow, she
+drew back.
+
+"Do come in, Miss Viner," Anna repeated, looking at her
+kindly.
+
+The girl, a quick red in her cheeks, still hesitated on the
+threshold.
+
+"I'm so sorry; but Effie has mislaid her Latin grammar, and
+I thought she might have left it here.  I need it to prepare
+for tomorrow's lesson."
+
+"Is this it?" Darrow asked, picking up a book from the
+table.
+
+"Oh, thank you!"
+
+He held it out to her and she took it and moved to the door.
+
+"Wait a minute, please, Miss Viner," Anna said; and as the
+girl turned back, she went on with her quiet smile: "Effie
+told us you'd gone to your room with a headache. You mustn't
+sit up over tomorrow's lessons if you don't feel well."
+
+Sophy's blush deepened.  "But you see I have to. Latin's one
+of my weak points, and there's generally only one page of
+this book between me and Effie."  She threw the words off
+with a half-ironic smile.  "Do excuse my disturbing you,"
+she added.
+
+"You didn't disturb me," Anna answered.  Darrow perceived
+that she was looking intently at the girl, as though struck
+by something tense and tremulous in her face, her voice, her
+whole mien and attitude.  "You DO look tired.  You'd
+much better go straight to bed. Effie won't be sorry to skip
+her Latin."
+
+"Thank you--but I'm really all right," murmured Sophy Viner.
+Her glance, making a swift circuit of the room, dwelt for an
+appreciable instant on the intimate propinquity of arm-chair
+and sofa-corner; then she turned back to the door.
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+XVII
+
+
+At dinner that evening Madame de Chantelle's slender
+monologue was thrown out over gulfs of silence.  Owen was
+still in the same state of moody abstraction as when Darrow
+had left him at the piano; and even Anna's face, to her
+friend's vigilant eye, revealed not, perhaps, a personal
+preoccupation, but a vague sense of impending disturbance.
+
+She smiled, she bore a part in the talk, her eyes dwelt on
+Darrow's with their usual deep reliance; but beneath the
+surface of her serenity his tense perceptions detected a
+hidden stir.
+
+He was sufficiently self-possessed to tell himself that it
+was doubtless due to causes with which he was not directly
+concerned.  He knew the question of Owen's marriage was soon
+to be raised, and the abrupt alteration in the young man's
+mood made it seem probable that he was himself the centre of
+the atmospheric disturbance, For a moment it occurred to
+Darrow that Anna might have employed her afternoon in
+preparing Madame de Chantelle for her grandson's impending
+announcement; but a glance at the elder lady's unclouded
+brow showed that he must seek elsewhere the clue to Owen's
+taciturnity and his step-mother's concern.  Possibly Anna
+had found reason to change her own attitude in the matter,
+and had made the change known to Owen.  But this, again, was
+negatived by the fact that, during the afternoon's shooting,
+young Leath had been in a mood of almost extravagant
+expansiveness, and that, from the moment of his late return
+to the house till just before dinner, there had been, to
+Darrow's certain knowledge, no possibility of a private talk
+between himself and his step-mother.
+
+This obscured, if it narrowed, the field of conjecture; and
+Darrow's gropings threw him back on the conclusion that he
+was probably reading too much significance into the moods of
+a lad he hardly knew, and who had been described to him as
+subject to sudden changes of humour.  As to Anna's fancied
+perturbation, it might simply be due to the fact that she
+had decided to plead Owen's cause the next day, and had
+perhaps already had a glimpse of the difficulties awaiting
+her.  But Darrow knew that he was too deep in his own
+perplexities to judge the mental state of those about him.
+It might be, after all, that the variations he felt in the
+currents of communication were caused by his own inward
+tremor.
+
+Such, at any rate, was the conclusion he had reached when,
+shortly after the two ladies left the drawing-room, he bade
+Owen good-night and went up to his room. Ever since the
+rapid self-colloquy which had followed on his first sight of
+Sophy Viner, he had known there were other questions to be
+faced behind the one immediately confronting him.  On the
+score of that one, at least, his mind, if not easy, was
+relieved.  He had done what was possible to reassure the
+girl, and she had apparently recognized the sincerity of his
+intention.  He had patched up as decent a conclusion as he
+could to an incident that should obviously have had no
+sequel; but he had known all along that with the securing of
+Miss Viner's peace of mind only a part of his obligation was
+discharged, and that with that part his remaining duty was
+in conflict.  It had been his first business to convince the
+girl that their secret was safe with him; but it was far
+from easy to square this with the equally urgent obligation
+of safe-guarding Anna's responsibility toward her child.
+Darrow was not much afraid of accidental disclosures.  Both
+he and Sophy Viner had too much at stake not to be on their
+guard. The fear that beset him was of another kind, and had
+a profounder source.  He wanted to do all he could for the
+girl, but the fact of having had to urge Anna to confide
+Effie to her was peculiarly repugnant to him. His own ideas
+about Sophy Viner were too mixed and indeterminate for him
+not to feel the risk of such an experiment; yet he found
+himself in the intolerable position of appearing to press it
+on the woman he desired above all others to protect...
+
+Till late in the night his thoughts revolved in a turmoil of
+indecision.  His pride was humbled by the discrepancy
+between what Sophy Viner had been to him and what he had
+thought of her.  This discrepancy, which at the time had
+seemed to simplify the incident, now turned out to be its
+most galling complication.  The bare truth, indeed, was that
+he had hardly thought of her at all, either at the time or
+since, and that he was ashamed to base his judgement of her
+on his meagre memory of their adventure.
+
+The essential cheapness of the whole affair--as far as his
+share in it was concerned--came home to him with humiliating
+distinctness.  He would have liked to be able to feel that,
+at the time at least, he had staked something more on it,
+and had somehow, in the sequel, had a more palpable loss to
+show.  But the plain fact was that he hadn't spent a penny
+on it; which was no doubt the reason of the prodigious score
+it had since been rolling up.  At any rate, beat about the
+case as he would, it was clear that he owed it to Anna--and
+incidentally to his own peace of mind--to find some way of
+securing Sophy Viner's future without leaving her installed
+at Givre when he and his wife should depart for their new
+post.
+
+The night brought no aid to the solving of this problem; but
+it gave him, at any rate, the clear conviction that no time
+was to be lost.  His first step must be to obtain from Miss
+Viner the chance of another and calmer talk; and he resolved
+to seek it at the earliest hour.
+
+He had gathered that Effie's lessons were preceded by an
+early scamper in the park, and conjecturing that her
+governess might be with her he betook himself the next
+morning to the terrace, whence he wandered on to the gardens
+and the walks beyond.
+
+The atmosphere was still and pale.  The muffled sunlight
+gleamed like gold tissue through grey gauze, and the beech
+alleys tapered away to a blue haze blent of sky and forest.
+It was one of those elusive days when the familiar forms of
+things seem about to dissolve in a prismatic shimmer.
+
+The stillness was presently broken by joyful barks, and
+Darrow, tracking the sound, overtook Effie flying down one
+of the long alleys at the head of her pack.  Beyond her he
+saw Miss Viner seated near the stone-rimmed basin beside
+which he and Anna had paused on their first walk to the
+river.
+
+The girl, coming forward at his approach, returned his
+greeting almost gaily.  His first glance showed him that she
+had regained her composure, and the change in her appearance
+gave him the measure of her fears.  For the first time he
+saw in her again the sidelong grace that had charmed his
+eyes in Paris; but he saw it now as in a painted picture.
+
+"Shall we sit down a minute?" he asked, as Effie trotted
+off.
+
+The girl looked away from him.  "I'm afraid there's not much
+time; we must be back at lessons at half-past nine."
+
+"But it's barely ten minutes past.  Let's at least walk a
+little way toward the river."
+
+She glanced down the long walk ahead of them and then back
+in the direction of the house.  "If you like," she said in a
+low voice, with one of her quick fluctuations of colour; but
+instead of taking the way he proposed she turned toward a
+narrow path which branched off obliquely through the trees.
+
+Darrow was struck, and vaguely troubled, by the change in
+her look and tone.  There was in them an undefinable appeal,
+whether for help or forbearance he could not tell.  Then it
+occurred to him that there might have been something
+misleading in his so pointedly seeking her, and he felt a
+momentary constraint.  To ease it he made an abrupt dash at
+the truth.
+
+"I came out to look for you because our talk of yesterday
+was so unsatisfactory.  I want to hear more about you--about
+your plans and prospects.  I've been wondering ever since
+why you've so completely given up the theatre."
+
+Her face instantly sharpened to distrust.  "I had to live,"
+she said in an off-hand tone.
+
+"I understand perfectly that you should like it here--for a
+time."  His glance strayed down the gold-roofed windings
+ahead of them.  "It's delightful: you couldn't be better
+placed.  Only I wonder a little at your having so completely
+given up any idea of a different future."
+
+She waited for a moment before answering: "I suppose I'm
+less restless than I used to be."
+
+"It's certainly natural that you should be less restless
+here than at Mrs. Murrett's; yet somehow I don't seem to see
+you permanently given up to forming the young."
+
+"What--exactly--DO you seem to see me permanently given
+up to?  You know you warned me rather emphatically against
+the theatre."  She threw off the statement without
+impatience, as though they were discussing together the fate
+of a third person in whom both were benevolently interested.
+Darrow considered his reply.  "If I did, it was because you
+so emphatically refused to let me help you to a start."
+
+She stopped short and faced him "And you think I may let you
+now?"
+
+Darrow felt the blood in his cheek.  He could not understand
+her attitude--if indeed she had consciously taken one, and
+her changes of tone did not merely reflect the involuntary
+alternations of her mood.  It humbled him to perceive once
+more how little he had to guide him in his judgment of her.
+He said to himself: "If I'd ever cared a straw for her I
+should know how to avoid hurting her now"--and his
+insensibility struck him as no better than a vulgar
+obtuseness.  But he had a fixed purpose ahead and could only
+push on to it.
+
+"I hope, at any rate, you'll listen to my reasons. There's
+been time, on both sides, to think them over since----" He
+caught himself back and hung helpless on the "since":
+whatever words he chose, he seemed to stumble among
+reminders of their past.
+
+She walked on beside him, her eyes on the ground. "Then I'm
+to understand--definitely--that you DO renew your
+offer?" she asked
+
+"With all my heart!  If you'll only let me----"
+
+She raised a hand, as though to check him.  "It's extremely
+friendly of you--I DO believe you mean it as a friend--
+but I don't quite understand why, finding me, as you say, so
+well placed here, you should show more anxiety about my
+future than at a time when I was actually, and rather
+desperately, adrift."
+
+"Oh, no, not more!"
+
+"If you show any at all, it must, at any rate, be for
+different reasons.--In fact, it can only be," she went on,
+with one of her disconcerting flashes of astuteness, "for
+one of two reasons; either because you feel you ought to
+help me, or because, for some reason, you think you owe it
+to Mrs. Leath to let her know what you know of me."
+
+Darrow stood still in the path.  Behind him he heard Effie's
+call, and at the child's voice he saw Sophy turn her head
+with the alertness of one who is obscurely on the watch.
+The look was so fugitive that he could not have said wherein
+it differed from her normal professional air of having her
+pupil on her mind.
+
+Effie sprang past them, and Darrow took up the girl's
+challenge.
+
+"What you suggest about Mrs. Leath is hardly worth
+answering.  As to my reasons for wanting to help you, a good
+deal depends on the words one uses to define rather
+indefinite things.  It's true enough that I want to help
+you; but the wish isn't due to...to any past kindness on
+your part, but simply to my own interest in you.  Why not
+put it that our friendship gives me the right to intervene
+for what I believe to be your benefit?"
+
+She took a few hesitating steps and then paused again.
+Darrow noticed that she had grown pale and that there were
+rings of shade about her eyes.
+
+"You've known Mrs. Leath a long time?" she asked him
+suddenly.
+
+He paused with a sense of approaching peril.  "A long time--
+yes."
+
+"She told me you were friends--great friends"
+
+"Yes," he admitted, "we're great friends."
+
+"Then you might naturally feel yourself justified in telling
+her that you don't think I'm the right person for Effie."
+He uttered a sound of protest, but she disregarded it.  "I
+don't say you'd LIKE to do it. You wouldn't: you'd hate
+it.  And the natural alternative would be to try to persuade
+me that I'd be better off somewhere else than here.  But
+supposing that failed, and you saw I was determined to stay?
+THEN you might think it your duty to tell Mrs. Leath."
+
+She laid the case before him with a cold lucidity.  "I
+should, in your place, I believe," she ended with a little
+laugh.
+
+"I shouldn't feel justified in telling her, behind your
+back, if I thought you unsuited for the place; but I should
+certainly feel justified," he rejoined after a pause, "in
+telling YOU if I thought the place unsuited to you."
+
+"And that's what you're trying to tell me now?"
+
+"Yes; but not for the reasons you imagine."
+
+"What, then, are your reasons, if you please?"
+
+"I've already implied them in advising you not to give up
+all idea of the theatre.  You're too various, too gifted,
+too personal, to tie yourself down, at your age, to the
+dismal drudgery of teaching."
+
+"And is THAT what you've told Mrs. Leath?"
+
+She rushed the question out at him as if she expected to
+trip him up over it.  He was moved by the simplicity of the
+stratagem.
+
+"I've told her exactly nothing," he replied.
+
+"And what--exactly--do you mean by 'nothing'?  You and she
+were talking about me when I came into her sitting-room
+yesterday."
+
+Darrow felt his blood rise at the thrust.
+
+"I've told her, simply, that I'd seen you once or twice at
+Mrs. Murrett's."
+
+"And not that you've ever seen me since?"
+
+"And not that I've ever seen you since..."
+
+"And she believes you--she completely believes you?"
+
+He uttered a protesting exclamation, and his flush reflected
+itself in the girl's cheek.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon!  I didn't mean to ask you that."  She
+halted, and again cast a rapid glance behind and ahead of
+her.  Then she held out her hand.  "Well, then, thank you--
+and let me relieve your fears.  I sha'n't be Effie's
+governess much longer."
+
+At the announcement, Darrow tried to merge his look of
+relief into the expression of friendly interest with which
+he grasped her hand.  "You really do agree with me, then?
+And you'll give me a chance to talk things over with you?"
+
+She shook her head with a faint smile.  "I'm not thinking of
+the stage.  I've had another offer: that's all."
+
+The relief was hardly less great.  After all, his personal
+responsibility ceased with her departure from Givre.
+
+"You'll tell me about that, then--won't you?"
+
+Her smile flickered up.  "Oh, you'll hear about it soon...I
+must catch Effie now and drag her back to the blackboard."
+
+She walked on for a few yards, and then paused again and
+confronted him.  "I've been odious to you--and not quite
+honest," she broke out suddenly.
+
+"Not quite honest?" he repeated, caught in a fresh wave of
+wonder.
+
+"I mean, in seeming not to trust you.  It's come over me
+again as we talked that, at heart, I've always KNOWN I
+could..."
+
+Her colour rose in a bright wave, and her eyes clung to his
+for a swift instant of reminder and appeal.  For the same
+space of time the past surged up in him confusedly; then a
+veil dropped between them.
+
+"Here's Effie now!" she exclaimed.
+
+He turned and saw the little girl trotting back to them, her
+hand in Owen Leath's.
+Even through the stir of his subsiding excitement Darrow was
+at once aware of the change effected by the young man's
+approach.  For a moment Sophy Viner's cheeks burned redder;
+then they faded to the paleness of white petals.  She lost,
+however, nothing of the bright bravery which it was her way
+to turn on the unexpected.  Perhaps no one less familiar
+with her face than Darrow would have discerned the tension
+of the smile she transferred from himself to Owen Leath, or
+have remarked that her eyes had hardened from misty grey to
+a shining darkness.  But her observer was less struck by
+this than by the corresponding change in Owen Leath.  The
+latter, when he came in sight, had been laughing and talking
+unconcernedly with Effie; but as his eye fell on Miss Viner
+his expression altered as suddenly as hers.
+
+The change, for Darrow, was less definable; but, perhaps for
+that reason, it struck him as more sharply significant.
+Only--just what did it signify?  Owen, like Sophy Viner, had
+the kind of face which seems less the stage on which
+emotions move than the very stuff they work in.  In moments
+of excitement his odd irregular features seemed to grow
+fluid, to unmake and remake themselves like the shadows of
+clouds on a stream.  Darrow, through the rapid flight of the
+shadows, could not seize on any specific indication of
+feeling: he merely perceived that the young man was
+unaccountably surprised at finding him with Miss Viner, and
+that the extent of his surprise might cover all manner of
+implications.
+
+Darrow's first idea was that Owen, if he suspected that the
+conversation was not the result of an accidental encounter,
+might wonder at his step-mother's suitor being engaged, at
+such an hour, in private talk with her little girl's
+governess.  The thought was so disturbing that, as the three
+turned back to the house, he was on the point of saying to
+Owen: "I came out to look for your mother."  But, in the
+contingency he feared, even so simple a phrase might seem
+like an awkward attempt at explanation; and he walked on in
+silence at Miss Viner's side.  Presently he was struck by
+the fact that Owen Leath and the girl were silent also; and
+this gave a new turn to his thoughts. Silence may be as
+variously shaded as speech; and that which enfolded Darrow
+and his two companions seemed to his watchful perceptions to
+be quivering with cross-threads of communication.  At first
+he was aware only of those that centred in his own troubled
+consciousness; then it occurred to him that an equal
+activity of intercourse was going on outside of it.
+Something was in fact passing mutely and rapidly between
+young Leath and Sophy Viner; but what it was, and whither it
+tended, Darrow, when they reached the house, was but just
+beginning to divine...
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Anna Leath, from the terrace, watched the return of the
+little group.
+
+She looked down on them, as they advanced across the garden,
+from the serene height of her unassailable happiness.  There
+they were, coming toward her in the mild morning light, her
+child, her step-son, her promised husband: the three beings
+who filled her life.  She smiled a little at the happy
+picture they presented, Effie's gambols encircling it in a
+moving frame within which the two men came slowly forward in
+the silence of friendly understanding.  It seemed part of
+the deep intimacy of the scene that they should not be
+talking to each other, and it did not till afterward strike
+her as odd that neither of them apparently felt it necessary
+to address a word to Sophy Viner.
+
+Anna herself, at the moment, was floating in the mid-current
+of felicity, on a tide so bright and buoyant that she seemed
+to be one with its warm waves.  The first rush of bliss had
+stunned and dazzled her; but now that, each morning, she
+woke to the calm certainty of its recurrence, she was
+growing used to the sense of security it gave.
+
+"I feel as if I could trust my happiness to carry me; as if
+it had grown out of me like wings."  So she phrased it to
+Darrow, as, later in the morning, they paced the garden-
+paths together.  His answering look gave her the same
+assurance of safety.  The evening before he had seemed
+preoccupied, and the shadow of his mood had faintly
+encroached on the great golden orb of their blessedness; but
+now it was uneclipsed again, and hung above them high and
+bright as the sun at noon.
+
+Upstairs in her sitting-room, that afternoon, she was
+thinking of these things.  The morning mists had turned to
+rain, compelling the postponement of an excursion in which
+the whole party were to have joined.  Effie, with her
+governess, had been despatched in the motor to do some
+shopping at Francheuil; and Anna had promised Darrow to join
+him, later in the afternoon, for a quick walk in the rain.
+
+He had gone to his room after luncheon to get some belated
+letters off his conscience; and when he had left her she had
+continued to sit in the same place, her hands crossed on her
+knees, her head slightly bent, in an attitude of brooding
+retrospection.  As she looked back at her past life, it
+seemed to her to have consisted of one ceaseless effort to
+pack into each hour enough to fill out its slack folds; but
+now each moment was like a miser's bag stretched to bursting
+with pure gold.
+
+She was roused by the sound of Owen's step in the gallery
+outside her room.  It paused at her door and in answer to
+his knock she called out "Come in!"
+
+As the door closed behind him she was struck by his look of
+pale excitement, and an impulse of compunction made her say:
+"You've come to ask me why I haven't spoken to your
+grandmother!"
+He sent about him a glance vaguely reminding her of the
+strange look with which Sophy Viner had swept the room the
+night before; then his brilliant eyes came back to her.
+
+"I've spoken to her myself," he said.
+
+Anna started up, incredulous.
+
+"You've spoken to her?  When?"
+
+"Just now.  I left her to come here."
+
+Anna's first feeling was one of annoyance.  There was really
+something comically incongruous in this boyish surrender to
+impulse on the part of a young man so eager to assume the
+responsibilities of life.  She looked at him with a faintly
+veiled amusement.
+
+"You asked me to help you and I promised you I would. It was
+hardly worth while to work out such an elaborate plan of
+action if you intended to take the matter out of my hands
+without telling me."
+
+"Oh, don't take that tone with me!" he broke out, almost
+angrily.
+
+"That tone?  What tone?" She stared at his quivering face.
+"I might," she pursued, still half-laughing, "more properly
+make that request of YOU!"
+
+Owen reddened and his vehemence suddenly subsided.
+
+"I meant that I HAD to speak--that's all.  You don't
+give me a chance to explain..."
+
+She looked at him gently, wondering a little at her own
+impatience.
+
+"Owen!  Don't I always want to give you every chance?  It's
+because I DO that I wanted to talk to your grandmother
+first--that I was waiting and watching for the right
+moment..."
+
+"The right moment?  So was I.  That's why I've spoken."  His
+voice rose again and took the sharp edge it had in moments
+of high pressure.
+
+His step-mother turned away and seated herself in her sofa-
+corner.  "Oh, my dear, it's not a privilege to quarrel over!
+You've taken a load off my shoulders. Sit down and tell me
+all about it."
+
+He stood before her, irresolute.  "I can't sit down," he
+said.
+
+"Walk about, then.  Only tell me: I'm impatient."
+
+His immediate response was to throw himself into the
+armchair at her side, where he lounged for a moment without
+speaking, his legs stretched out, his arms locked behind his
+thrown-back head.  Anna, her eyes on his face, waited
+quietly for him to speak.
+
+"Well--of course it was just what one expected."
+
+"She takes it so badly, you mean?"
+
+"All the heavy batteries were brought up: my father, Givre,
+Monsieur de Chantelle, the throne and the altar. Even my
+poor mother was dragged out of oblivion and armed with
+imaginary protests."
+
+Anna sighed out her sympathy.  "Well--you were prepared for
+all that?"
+
+"I thought I was, till I began to hear her say it. Then it
+sounded so incredibly silly that I told her so."
+
+"Oh, Owen--Owen!"
+
+"Yes: I know.  I was a fool; but I couldn't help it."
+
+"And you've mortally offended her, I suppose?  That's exactly
+what I wanted to prevent."  She laid a hand on his shoulder.
+"You tiresome boy, not to wait and let me speak for you!"
+
+He moved slightly away, so that her hand slipped from its
+place.  "You don't understand," he said, frowning.
+
+"I don't see how I can, till you explain.  If you thought
+the time had come to tell your grandmother, why not have
+asked me to do it?  I had my reasons for waiting; but if
+you'd told me to speak I should have done so, naturally."
+
+He evaded her appeal by a sudden turn.  "What WERE your
+reasons for waiting?"
+
+Anna did not immediately answer.  Her step-son's eyes were
+on her face, and under his gaze she felt a faint
+disquietude.
+
+"I was feeling my way...I wanted to be absolutely sure..."
+
+"Absolutely sure of what?"
+
+She delayed again for a just perceptible instant. "Why,
+simply of OUR side of the case."
+
+"But you told me you were, the other day, when we talked it
+over before they came back from Ouchy."
+
+"Oh, my dear--if you think that, in such a complicated
+matter, every day, every hour, doesn't more or less modify
+one's surest sureness!"
+
+"That's just what I'm driving at.  I want to know what has
+modified yours."
+
+She made a slight gesture of impatience.  "What does it
+matter, now the thing's done?  I don't know that I could give
+any clear reason..."
+
+He got to his feet and stood looking down on her with a
+tormented brow.  "But it's absolutely necessary that you
+should."
+
+At his tone her impatience flared up.  "It's not necessary
+that I should give you any explanation whatever, since
+you've taken the matter out of my hands.  All I can say is
+that I was trying to help you: that no other thought ever
+entered my mind."  She paused a moment and then added: "If
+you doubted it, you were right to do what you've done."
+
+"Oh, I never doubted YOU!" he retorted, with a fugitive
+stress on the pronoun.  His face had cleared to its old look
+of trust.  "Don't be offended if I've seemed to," he went
+on.  "I can't quite explain myself, either...it's all a kind
+of tangle, isn't it?  That's why I thought I'd better speak
+at once; or rather why I didn't think at all, but just
+suddenly blurted the thing out----"
+
+Anna gave him back his look of conciliation.  "Well, the how
+and why don't much matter now.  The point is how to deal
+with your grandmother.  You've not told me what she means to
+do."
+
+"Oh, she means to send for Adelaide Painter."
+
+The name drew a faint note of mirth from him and relaxed
+both their faces to a smile.
+
+"Perhaps," Anna added, "it's really the best thing for us
+all."
+
+Owen shrugged his shoulders.  "It's too preposterous and
+humiliating.  Dragging that woman into our secrets----!"
+
+"This could hardly be a secret much longer."
+
+He had moved to the hearth, where he stood pushing about the
+small ornaments on the mantel-shelf; but at her answer he
+turned back to her.
+
+"You haven't, of course, spoken of it to any one?"
+
+"No; but I intend to now."
+
+She paused for his reply, and as it did not come she
+continued: "If Adelaide Painter's to be told there's no
+possible reason why I shouldn't tell Mr. Darrow."
+Owen abruptly set down the little statuette between his
+fingers.  "None whatever: I want every one to know."
+
+She smiled a little at his over-emphasis, and was about to
+meet it with a word of banter when he continued, facing her:
+"You haven't, as yet, said a word to him?"
+
+"I've told him nothing, except what the discussion of our
+own plans--his and mine--obliged me to: that you were
+thinking of marrying, and that I wasn't willing to leave
+France till I'd done what I could to see you through."
+
+At her first words the colour had rushed to his forehead;
+but as she continued she saw his face compose itself and his
+blood subside.
+
+"You're a brick, my dear!" he exclaimed.
+
+"You had my word, you know."
+
+"Yes; yes--I know."  His face had clouded again.  "And that's
+all--positively all--you've ever said to him?"
+
+"Positively all.  But why do you ask?"
+
+He had a moment's embarrassed hesitation.  "It was
+understood, wasn't it, that my grandmother was to be the
+first to know?"
+
+"Well--and so she has been, hasn't she, since you've told
+her?"
+
+He turned back to his restless shifting of the knick-knacks.
+
+"And you're sure that nothing you've said to Darrow could
+possibly have given him a hint----?"
+
+"Nothing I've said to him--certainly."
+
+He swung about on her.  "Why do you put it in that way?"
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Why--as if you thought some one else might have spoken..."
+
+"Some one else?  Who else?" She rose to her feet.  "What on
+earth, my dear boy, can you be driving at?"
+
+"I'm trying to find out whether you think he knows anything
+definite."
+
+"Why should I think so?  Do YOU?"
+
+"I don't know.  I want to find out."
+
+She laughed at his obstinate insistence.  "To test my
+veracity, I suppose?" At the sound of a step in the gallery
+she added: "Here he is--you can ask him yourself."
+
+She met Darrow's knock with an invitation to enter, and he
+came into the room and paused between herself and Owen.  She
+was struck, as he stood there, by the contrast between his
+happy careless good-looks and her step-son's frowning
+agitation.
+
+Darrow met her eyes with a smile.  "Am I too soon?  Or is our
+walk given up?"
+
+"No; I was just going to get ready."  She continued to linger
+between the two, looking slowly from one to the other.  "But
+there's something we want to tell you first: Owen is engaged
+to Miss Viner."
+
+The sense of an indefinable interrogation in Owen's mind
+made her, as she spoke, fix her eyes steadily on Darrow.
+
+He had paused just opposite the window, so that, even in the
+rainy afternoon light, his face was clearly open to her
+scrutiny.  For a second, immense surprise was alone visible
+on it: so visible that she half turned to her step-son, with
+a faint smile for his refuted suspicions.  Why, she
+wondered, should Owen have thought that Darrow had already
+guessed his secret, and what, after all, could be so
+disturbing to him in this not improbable contingency?  At any
+rate, his doubt must have been dispelled: there was nothing
+feigned about Darrow's astonishment.  When her eyes turned
+back to him he was already crossing to Owen with
+outstretched hand, and she had, through an unaccountable
+faint flutter of misgiving, a mere confused sense of their
+exchanging the customary phrases.  Her next perception was
+of Owen's tranquillized look, and of his smiling return of
+Darrow's congratulatory grasp.  She had the eerie feeling of
+having been overswept by a shadow which there had been no
+cloud to cast...
+
+A moment later Owen had left the room and she and Darrow
+were alone.  He had turned away to the window and stood
+staring out into the down-pour.
+
+"You're surprised at Owen's news?" she asked.
+
+"Yes: I am surprised," he answered.
+
+"You hadn't thought of its being Miss Viner?"
+
+"Why should I have thought of Miss Viner?"
+
+"You see now why I wanted so much to find out what you knew
+about her."  He made no comment, and she pursued: "Now that
+you DO know it's she, if there's anything----"
+
+He moved back into the room and went up to her.  His face
+was serious, with a slight shade of annoyance. "What on
+earth should there be?  As I told you, I've never in my life
+heard any one say two words about Miss Viner."
+
+Anna made no answer and they continued to face each other
+without moving.  For the moment she had ceased to think
+about Sophy Viner and Owen: the only thought in her mind was
+that Darrow was alone with her, close to her, and that, for
+the first time, their hands and lips had not met.
+
+He glanced back doubtfully at the window.  "It's pouring.
+Perhaps you'd rather not go out?"
+
+She hesitated, as if waiting for him to urge her.  "I
+suppose I'd better not.  I ought to go at once to my mother-
+in-law--Owen's just been telling her," she said.
+
+"Ah."  Darrow hazarded a smile.  "That accounts for my
+having, on my way up, heard some one telephoning for Miss
+Painter!"
+
+At the allusion they laughed together, vaguely, and Anna
+moved toward the door.  He held it open for her and followed
+her out.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+He left her at the door of Madame de Chantelle's sitting-
+room, and plunged out alone into the rain.
+
+The wind flung about the stripped tree-tops of the avenue
+and dashed the stinging streams into his face. He walked to
+the gate and then turned into the high-road and strode along
+in the open, buffeted by slanting gusts.  The evenly ridged
+fields were a blurred waste of mud, and the russet coverts
+which he and Owen had shot through the day before shivered
+desolately against a driving sky.
+
+Darrow walked on and on, indifferent to the direction he was
+taking.  His thoughts were tossing like the tree-tops.
+Anna's announcement had not come to him as a complete
+surprise: that morning, as he strolled back to the house
+with Owen Leath and Miss Viner, he had had a momentary
+intuition of the truth.  But it had been no more than an
+intuition, the merest faint cloud-puff of surmise; and now
+it was an attested fact, darkening over the whole sky.
+
+In respect of his own attitude, he saw at once that the
+discovery made no appreciable change.  If he had been bound
+to silence before, he was no less bound to it now; the only
+difference lay in the fact that what he had just learned had
+rendered his bondage more intolerable.  Hitherto he had felt
+for Sophy Viner's defenseless state a sympathy profoundly
+tinged with compunction.  But now he was half-conscious of
+an obscure indignation against her.  Superior as he had
+fancied himself to ready-made judgments, he was aware of
+cherishing the common doubt as to the disinterestedness of
+the woman who tries to rise above her past.  No wonder she
+had been sick with fear on meeting him!  It was in his power
+to do her more harm than he had dreamed...
+
+Assuredly he did not want to harm her; but he did
+desperately want to prevent her marrying Owen Leath. He
+tried to get away from the feeling, to isolate and
+exteriorize it sufficiently to see what motives it was made
+of; but it remained a mere blind motion of his blood, the
+instinctive recoil from the thing that no amount of arguing
+can make "straight."  His tramp, prolonged as it was, carried
+him no nearer to enlightenment; and after trudging through
+two or three sallow mud-stained villages he turned about and
+wearily made his way back to Givre.  As he walked up the
+black avenue, making for the lights that twinkled through
+its pitching branches, he had a sudden realisation of his
+utter helplessness.  He might think and combine as he would;
+but there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could
+do...
+
+He dropped his wet coat in the vestibule and began to mount
+the stairs to his room.  But on the landing he was overtaken
+by a sober-faced maid who, in tones discreetly lowered,
+begged him to be so kind as to step, for a moment, into the
+Marquise's sitting-room. Somewhat disconcerted by the
+summons, he followed its bearer to the door at which, a
+couple of hours earlier, he had taken leave of Mrs. Leath.
+It opened to admit him to a large lamp-lit room which he
+immediately perceived to be empty; and the fact gave him
+time to note, even through his disturbance of mind, the
+interesting degree to which Madame de Chantelle's apartment
+"dated" and completed her.  Its looped and corded curtains,
+its purple satin upholstery, the Sevres jardinieres, the
+rosewood fire-screen, the little velvet tables edged with
+lace and crowded with silver knick-knacks and simpering
+miniatures, reconstituted an almost perfect setting for the
+blonde beauty of the 'sixties.  Darrow wondered that Fraser
+Leath's filial respect should have prevailed over his
+aesthetic scruples to the extent of permitting such an
+anachronism among the eighteenth century graces of Givre;
+but a moment's reflection made it clear that, to its late
+owner, the attitude would have seemed exactly in the
+traditions of the place.
+
+Madame de Chantelle's emergence from an inner room snatched
+Darrow from these irrelevant musings.  She was already
+beaded and bugled for the evening, and, save for a slight
+pinkness of the eye-lids, her elaborate appearance revealed
+no mark of agitation; but Darrow noticed that, in
+recognition of the solemnity of the occasion, she pinched a
+lace handkerchief between her thumb and forefinger.
+
+She plunged at once into the centre of the difficulty,
+appealing to him, in the name of all the Everards, to
+descend there with her to the rescue of her darling.  She
+wasn't, she was sure, addressing herself in vain to one
+whose person, whose "tone," whose traditions so brilliantly
+declared his indebtedness to the principles she besought him
+to defend.  Her own reception of Darrow, the confidence she
+had at once accorded him, must have shown him that she had
+instinctively felt their unanimity of sentiment on these
+fundamental questions.  She had in fact recognized in him
+the one person whom, without pain to her maternal piety, she
+could welcome as her son's successor; and it was almost as
+to Owen's father that she now appealed to Darrow to aid in
+rescuing the wretched boy.
+
+"Don't think, please, that I'm casting the least reflection
+on Anna, or showing any want of sympathy for her, when I say
+that I consider her partly responsible for what's happened.
+Anna is 'modern'--I believe that's what it's called when you
+read unsettling books and admire hideous pictures.  Indeed,"
+Madame de Chantelle continued, leaning confidentially
+forward, "I myself have always more or less lived in that
+atmosphere: my son, you know, was very revolutionary.  Only
+he didn't, of course, apply his ideas: they were purely
+intellectual.  That's what dear Anna has always failed to
+understand.  And I'm afraid she's created the same kind of
+confusion in Owen's mind--led him to mix up things you read
+about with things you do...You know, of course, that she
+sides with him in this wretched business?"
+
+Developing at length upon this theme, she finally narrowed
+down to the point of Darrow's intervention. "My grandson,
+Mr. Darrow, calls me illogical and uncharitable because my
+feelings toward Miss Viner have changed since I've heard
+this news.  Well!  You've known her, it appears, for some
+years: Anna tells me you used to see her when she was a
+companion, or secretary or something, to a dreadfully vulgar
+Mrs. Murrett.  And I ask you as a friend, I ask you as one
+of US, to tell me if you think a girl who has had to
+knock about the world in that kind of position, and at the
+orders of all kinds of people, is fitted to be Owen's wife
+I'm not implying anything against her!  I LIKED the girl,
+Mr. Darrow...But what's that got to do with it?  I don't want
+her to marry my grandson.  If I'd been looking for a wife
+for Owen, I shouldn't have applied to the Farlows to find me
+one.  That's what Anna won't understand; and what you must
+help me to make her see."
+
+Darrow, to this appeal, could oppose only the repeated
+assurance of his inability to interfere.  He tried to make
+Madame de Chantelle see that the very position he hoped to
+take in the household made his intervention the more
+hazardous.  He brought up the usual arguments, and sounded
+the expected note of sympathy; but Madame de Chantelle's
+alarm had dispelled her habitual imprecision, and, though
+she had not many reasons to advance, her argument clung to
+its point like a frightened sharp-clawed animal.
+
+"Well, then," she summed up, in response to his repeated
+assertions that he saw no way of helping her, "you can, at
+least, even if you won't say a word to the others, tell me
+frankly and fairly--and quite between ourselves--your
+personal opinion of Miss Viner, since you've known her so
+much longer than we have."
+
+He protested that, if he had known her longer, he had known
+her much less well, and that he had already, on this point,
+convinced Anna of his inability to pronounce an opinion.
+
+Madame de Chantelle drew a deep sigh of intelligence. "Your
+opinion of Mrs. Murrett is enough!  I don't suppose you
+pretend to conceal THAT?  And heaven knows what other
+unspeakable people she's been mixed up with.  The only
+friends she can produce are called Hoke...Don't try to
+reason with me, Mr. Darrow.  There are feelings that go
+deeper than facts...And I KNOW she thought of studying
+for the stage..."  Madame de Chantelle raised the corner of
+her lace handkerchief to her eyes.  "I'm old-fashioned--like
+my furniture," she murmured.  "And I thought I could count
+on you, Mr. Darrow..."
+
+
+When Darrow, that night, regained his room, he reflected
+with a flash of irony that each time he entered it he
+brought a fresh troop of perplexities to trouble its serene
+seclusion.  Since the day after his arrival, only forty-
+eight hours before, when he had set his window open to the
+night, and his hopes had seemed as many as its stars, each
+evening had brought its new problem and its renewed
+distress.  But nothing, as yet, had approached the blank
+misery of mind with which he now set himself to face the
+fresh questions confronting him.
+
+Sophy Viner had not shown herself at dinner, so that he had
+had no glimpse of her in her new character, and no means of
+divining the real nature of the tie between herself and Owen
+Leath.  One thing, however, was clear: whatever her real
+feelings were, and however much or little she had at stake,
+if she had made up her mind to marry Owen she had more than
+enough skill and tenacity to defeat any arts that poor
+Madame de Chantelle could oppose to her.
+
+Darrow himself was in fact the only person who might
+possibly turn her from her purpose: Madame de Chantelle, at
+haphazard, had hit on the surest means of saving Owen--if to
+prevent his marriage were to save him!  Darrow, on this
+point, did not pretend to any fixed opinion; one feeling
+alone was clear and insistent in him: he did not mean, if he
+could help it, to let the marriage take place.
+
+How he was to prevent it he did not know: to his tormented
+imagination every issue seemed closed.  For a fantastic
+instant he was moved to follow Madame de Chantelle's
+suggestion and urge Anna to withdraw her approval.  If his
+reticence, his efforts to avoid the subject, had not escaped
+her, she had doubtless set them down to the fact of his
+knowing more, and thinking less, of Sophy Viner than he had
+been willing to admit; and he might take advantage of this
+to turn her mind gradually from the project.  Yet how do so
+without betraying his insincerity?  If he had had nothing to
+hide he could easily have said: "It's one thing to know
+nothing against the girl, it's another to pretend that I
+think her a good match for Owen."  But could he say even so
+much without betraying more?  It was not Anna's questions, or
+his answers to them, that he feared, but what might cry
+aloud in the intervals between them.  He understood now that
+ever since Sophy Viner's arrival at Givre he had felt in
+Anna the lurking sense of something unexpressed, and perhaps
+inexpressible, between the girl and himself...When at last
+he fell asleep he had fatalistically committed his next step
+to the chances of the morrow.
+
+The first that offered itself was an encounter with Mrs.
+Leath as he descended the stairs the next morning. She had
+come down already hatted and shod for a dash to the park
+lodge, where one of the gatekeeper's children had had an
+accident.  In her compact dark dress she looked more than
+usually straight and slim, and her face wore the pale glow
+it took on at any call on her energy: a kind of warrior
+brightness that made her small head, with its strong chin
+and close-bound hair, like that of an amazon in a frieze.
+
+It was their first moment alone since she had left him, the
+afternoon before, at her mother-in-law's door; and after a
+few words about the injured child their talk inevitably
+reverted to Owen.
+
+Anna spoke with a smile of her "scene" with Madame de
+Chantelle, who belonged, poor dear, to a generation when
+"scenes" (in the ladylike and lachrymal sense of the term)
+were the tribute which sensibility was expected to pay to
+the unusual.  Their conversation had been, in every detail,
+so exactly what Anna had foreseen that it had clearly not
+made much impression on her; but she was eager to know the
+result of Darrow's encounter with her mother-in-law.
+
+"She told me she'd sent for you: she always 'sends for'
+people in emergencies.  That again, I suppose, is de
+l'epoque.  And failing Adelaide Painter, who can't get here
+till this afternoon, there was no one but poor you to turn
+to."
+
+She put it all lightly, with a lightness that seemed to his
+tight-strung nerves slightly, undefinably over-done.  But he
+was so aware of his own tension that he wondered, the next
+moment, whether anything would ever again seem to him quite
+usual and insignificant and in the common order of things.
+
+As they hastened on through the drizzle in which the storm
+of the night was weeping itself out, Anna drew close under
+his umbrella, and at the pressure of her arm against his he
+recalled his walk up the Dover pier with Sophy Viner.  The
+memory gave him a startled vision of the inevitable
+occasions of contact, confidence, familiarity, which his
+future relationship to the girl would entail, and the
+countless chances of betrayal that every one of them
+involved.
+
+"Do tell me just what you said," he heard Anna pleading; and
+with sudden resolution he affirmed: "I quite understand your
+mother-in-law's feeling as she does."
+
+The words, when uttered, seemed a good deal less significant
+than they had sounded to his inner ear; and Anna replied
+without surprise: "Of course.  It's inevitable that she
+should.  But we shall bring her round in time."  Under the
+dripping dome she raised her face to his.  "Don't you
+remember what you said the day before yesterday?  'Together
+we can't fail to pull it off for him!' I've told Owen that,
+so you're pledged and there's no going back."
+
+The day before yesterday!  Was it possible that, no longer
+ago, life had seemed a sufficiently simple business for a
+sane man to hazard such assurances?
+
+"Anna," he questioned her abruptly, "why are you so anxious
+for this marriage?"
+
+She stopped short to face him.  "Why?  But surely I've
+explained to you--or rather I've hardly had to, you seemed
+so in sympathy with my reasons!"
+
+"I didn't know, then, who it was that Owen wanted to marry."
+
+The words were out with a spring and he felt a clearer air
+in his brain.  But her logic hemmed him in.
+
+"You knew yesterday; and you assured me then that you hadn't
+a word to say----"
+
+"Against Miss Viner?" The name, once uttered, sounded on and
+on in his ears.  "Of course not.  But that doesn't
+necessarily imply that I think her a good match for Owen."
+
+Anna made no immediate answer.  When she spoke it was to
+question: "Why don't you think her a good match for Owen?"
+
+"Well--Madame de Chantelle's reasons seem to me not quite as
+negligible as you think."
+
+"You mean the fact that she's been Mrs. Murrett's secretary,
+and that the people who employed her before were called
+Hoke?  For, as far as Owen and I can make out, these are the
+gravest charges against her."
+
+"Still, one can understand that the match is not what Madame
+de Chantelle had dreamed of."
+
+"Oh, perfectly--if that's all you mean."
+The lodge was in sight, and she hastened her step.  He
+strode on beside her in silence, but at the gate she checked
+him with the question: "Is it really all you mean?"
+
+"Of course," he heard himself declare.
+
+"Oh, then I think I shall convince you--even if I can't,
+like Madame de Chantelle, summon all the Everards to my
+aid!" She lifted to him the look of happy laughter that
+sometimes brushed her with a gleam of spring.
+
+Darrow watched her hasten along the path between the
+dripping chrysanthemums and enter the lodge.  After she had
+gone in he paced up and down outside in the drizzle, waiting
+to learn if she had any message to send back to the house;
+and after the lapse of a few minutes she came out again.
+
+The child, she said, was badly, though not dangerously,
+hurt, and the village doctor, who was already on hand, had
+asked that the surgeon, already summoned from Francheuil,
+should be told to bring with him certain needful appliances.
+Owen had started by motor to fetch the surgeon, but there
+was still time to communicate with the latter by telephone.
+The doctor furthermore begged for an immediate provision of
+such bandages and disinfectants as Givre itself could
+furnish, and Anna bade Darrow address himself to Miss Viner,
+who would know where to find the necessary things, and would
+direct one of the servants to bicycle with them to the
+lodge.
+
+Darrow, as he hurried off on this errand, had at once
+perceived the opportunity it offered of a word with Sophy
+Viner.  What that word was to be he did not know; but now,
+if ever, was the moment to make it urgent and conclusive.
+It was unlikely that he would again have such a chance of
+unobserved talk with her.
+
+He had supposed he should find her with her pupil in the
+school-room; but he learned from a servant that Effie had
+gone to Francheuil with her step-brother, and that Miss
+Viner was still in her room.  Darrow sent her word that he
+was the bearer of a message from the lodge, and a moment
+later he heard her coming down the stairs.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+For a second, as she approached him, the quick tremor of her
+glance showed her all intent on the same thought as himself.
+He transmitted his instructions with mechanical precision,
+and she answered in the same tone, repeating his words with
+the intensity of attention of a child not quite sure of
+understanding. Then she disappeared up the stairs.
+
+Darrow lingered on in the hall, not knowing if she meant to
+return, yet inwardly sure she would.  At length he saw her
+coming down in her hat and jacket. The rain still streaked
+the window panes, and, in order to say something, he said:
+"You're not going to the lodge yourself?"
+
+"I've sent one of the men ahead with the things; but I
+thought Mrs. Leath might need me."
+
+"She didn't ask for you," he returned, wondering how he
+could detain her; but she answered decidedly: "I'd better
+go."
+
+He held open the door, picked up his umbrella and followed
+her out.  As they went down the steps she glanced back at
+him.  "You've forgotten your mackintosh."
+
+"I sha'n't need it."
+
+She had no umbrella, and he opened his and held it out to
+her.  She rejected it with a murmur of thanks and walked on
+through the thin drizzle, and he kept the umbrella over his
+own head, without offering to shelter her.
+
+Rapidly and in silence they crossed the court and began to
+walk down the avenue.  They had traversed a third of its
+length before Darrow said abruptly: "Wouldn't it have been
+fairer, when we talked together yesterday, to tell me what
+I've just heard from Mrs. Leath?"
+
+"Fairer----?" She stopped short with a startled look.
+
+"If I'd known that your future was already settled I should
+have spared you my gratuitous suggestions."
+
+She walked on, more slowly, for a yard or two.  "I couldn't
+speak yesterday.  I meant to have told you today."
+
+"Oh, I'm not reproaching you for your lack of confidence.
+Only, if you HAD told me, I should have been more sure
+of your really meaning what you said to me yesterday."
+
+She did not ask him to what he referred, and he saw that her
+parting words to him lived as vividly in her memory as in
+his.
+
+"Is it so important that you should be sure?" she finally
+questioned.
+
+"Not to you, naturally," he returned with involuntary
+asperity.  It was incredible, yet it was a fact, that for
+the moment his immediate purpose in seeking to speak to her
+was lost under a rush of resentment at counting for so
+little in her fate.  Of what stuff, then, was his feeling
+for her made?  A few hours earlier she had touched his
+thoughts as little as his senses; but now he felt old
+sleeping instincts stir in him...
+A rush of rain dashed against his face, and, catching
+Sophy's hat, strained it back from her loosened hair. She
+put her hands to her head with a familiar gesture...He came
+closer and held his umbrella over her...
+
+At the lodge he waited while she went in.  The rain
+continued to stream down on him and he shivered in the
+dampness and stamped his feet on the flags.  It seemed to
+him that a long time elapsed before the door opened and she
+reappeared.  He glanced into the house for a glimpse of
+Anna, but obtained none; yet the mere sense of her nearness
+had completely altered his mood.
+
+The child, Sophy told him, was doing well; but Mrs. Leath
+had decided to wait till the surgeon came.  Darrow, as they
+turned away, looked through the gates, and saw the doctor's
+old-fashioned carriage by the roadside.
+
+"Let me tell the doctor's boy to drive you back," he
+suggested; but Sophy answered: "No; I'll walk," and he moved
+on toward the house at her side.  She expressed no surprise
+at his not remaining at the lodge, and again they walked on
+in silence through the rain.  She had accepted the shelter
+of his umbrella, but she kept herself at such a carefully
+measured distance that even the slight swaying movements
+produced by their quick pace did not once bring her arm in
+touch with his; and, noticing this, he perceived that every
+drop of her blood must be alive to his nearness.
+
+"What I meant just now," he began, "was that you ought to
+have been sure of my good wishes."
+
+She seemed to weigh the words.  "Sure enough for what?"
+
+"To trust me a little farther than you did."
+
+"I've told you that yesterday I wasn't free to speak."
+
+"Well, since you are now, may I say a word to you?"
+
+She paused perceptibly, and when she spoke it was in so low
+a tone that he had to bend his head to catch her answer.  "I
+can't think what you can have to say."
+
+"It's not easy to say here, at any rate.  And indoors I
+sha'n't know where to say it."  He glanced about him in the
+rain.  "Let's walk over to the spring-house for a minute."
+
+To the right of the drive, under a clump of trees, a little
+stucco pavilion crowned by a balustrade rose on arches of
+mouldering brick over a flight of steps that led down to a
+spring.  Other steps curved up to a door above.  Darrow
+mounted these, and opening the door entered a small circular
+room hung with loosened strips of painted paper whereon
+spectrally faded Mandarins executed elongated gestures.
+Some black and gold chairs with straw seats and an unsteady
+table of cracked lacquer stood on the floor of red-glazed
+tile.
+
+Sophy had followed him without comment.  He closed the door
+after her, and she stood motionless, as though waiting for
+him to speak.
+
+"Now we can talk quietly," he said, looking at her with a
+smile into which he tried to put an intention of the
+frankest friendliness.
+
+She merely repeated: "I can't think what you can have to
+say."
+
+Her voice had lost the note of half-wistful confidence on
+which their talk of the previous day had closed, and she
+looked at him with a kind of pale hostility.  Her tone made
+it evident that his task would be difficult, but it did not
+shake his resolve to go on.  He sat down, and mechanically
+she followed his example.  The table was between them and
+she rested her arms on its cracked edge and her chin on her
+interlocked hands.  He looked at her and she gave him back
+his look.
+
+"Have you nothing to say to ME?" he asked at length.
+
+A faint smile lifted, in the remembered way, the left corner
+of her narrowed lips.
+
+"About my marriage?"
+
+"About your marriage."
+
+She continued to consider him between half-drawn lids. "What
+can I say that Mrs. Leath has not already told you?"
+
+"Mrs. Leath has told me nothing whatever but the fact--and
+her pleasure in it."
+
+"Well; aren't those the two essential points?"
+
+"The essential points to YOU?  I should have thought----"
+
+"Oh, to YOU, I meant," she put in keenly.
+
+He flushed at the retort, but steadied himself and rejoined:
+"The essential point to me is, of course, that you should be
+doing what's really best for you."
+
+She sat silent, with lowered lashes.  At length she
+stretched out her arm and took up from the table a little
+threadbare Chinese hand-screen.  She turned its ebony stem
+once or twice between her fingers, and as she did so Darrow
+was whimsically struck by the way in which their evanescent
+slight romance was symbolized by the fading lines on the
+frail silk.
+
+"Do you think my engagement to Mr. Leath not really best for
+me?" she asked at length.
+
+Darrow, before answering, waited long enough to get his
+words into the tersest shape--not without a sense, as he did
+so, of his likeness to the surgeon deliberately poising his
+lancet for a clean incision.  "I'm not sure," he replied,
+"of its being the best thing for either of you."
+
+She took the stroke steadily, but a faint red swept her face
+like the reflection of a blush.  She continued to keep her
+lowered eyes on the screen.
+
+"From whose point of view do you speak?"
+
+"Naturally, that of the persons most concerned."
+
+"From Owen's, then, of course?  You don't think me a good
+match for him?"
+
+"From yours, first of all.  I don't think him a good match
+for you."
+
+He brought the answer out abruptly, his eyes on her face.
+It had grown extremely pale, but as the meaning of his words
+shaped itself in her mind he saw a curious inner light dawn
+through her set look.  She lifted her lids just far enough
+for a veiled glance at him, and a smile slipped through them
+to her trembling lips.  For a moment the change merely
+bewildered him; then it pulled him up with a sharp jerk of
+apprehension.
+
+"I don't think him a good match for you," he stammered,
+groping for the lost thread of his words.
+
+She threw a vague look about the chilly rain-dimmed room.
+"And you've brought me here to tell me why?"
+
+The question roused him to the sense that their minutes were
+numbered, and that if he did not immediately get to his
+point there might be no other chance of making it.
+
+"My chief reason is that I believe he's too young and
+inexperienced to give you the kind of support you need."
+
+At his words her face changed again, freezing to a tragic
+coldness.  She stared straight ahead of her, perceptibly
+struggling with the tremor of her muscles; and when she had
+controlled it she flung out a pale-lipped pleasantry.  "But
+you see I've always had to support myself!"
+
+"He's a boy," Darrow pushed on, "a charming, wonderful boy;
+but with no more notion than a boy how to deal with the
+inevitable daily problems...the trivial stupid unimportant
+things that life is chiefly made up of."
+"I'll deal with them for him," she rejoined.
+
+"They'll be more than ordinarily difficult."
+
+She shot a challenging glance at him.  "You must have some
+special reason for saying so."
+
+"Only my clear perception of the facts."
+
+"What facts do you mean?"
+
+Darrow hesitated.  "You must know better than I," he
+returned at length, "that the way won't be made easy to
+you."
+
+"Mrs. Leath, at any rate, has made it so."
+
+"Madame de Chantelle will not."
+
+"How do YOU know that?" she flung back.
+
+He paused again, not sure how far it was prudent to reveal
+himself in the confidence of the household. Then, to avoid
+involving Anna, he answered: "Madame de Chantelle sent for
+me yesterday."
+
+"Sent for you--to talk to you about me?" The colour rose to
+her forehead and her eyes burned black under lowered brows.
+"By what right, I should like to know?  What have you to do
+with me, or with anything in the world that concerns me?"
+
+Darrow instantly perceived what dread suspicion again
+possessed her, and the sense that it was not wholly
+unjustified caused him a passing pang of shame.  But it did
+not turn him from his purpose.
+
+"I'm an old friend of Mrs. Leath's.  It's not unnatural that
+Madame de Chantelle should talk to me."
+
+She dropped the screen on the table and stood up, turning on
+him the same small mask of wrath and scorn which had glared
+at him, in Paris, when he had confessed to his suppression
+of her letter.  She walked away a step or two and then came
+back.
+
+"May I ask what Madame de Chantelle said to you?"
+
+"She made it clear that she should not encourage the
+marriage."
+
+"And what was her object in making that clear to YOU?"
+
+Darrow hesitated.  "I suppose she thought----"
+
+"That she could persuade you to turn Mrs. Leath against me?"
+
+He was silent, and she pressed him: "Was that it?"
+"That was it."
+
+"But if you don't--if you keep your promise----"
+
+"My promise?"
+
+"To say nothing...nothing whatever..."  Her strained look
+threw a haggard light along the pause.
+
+As she spoke, the whole odiousness of the scene rushed over
+him.  "Of course I shall say nothing...you know that..."  He
+leaned to her and laid his hand on hers.  "You know I
+wouldn't for the world..."
+
+She drew back and hid her face with a sob.  Then she sank
+again into her seat, stretched her arms across the table and
+laid her face upon them.  He sat still, overwhelmed with
+compunction.  After a long interval, in which he had
+painfully measured the seconds by her hard-drawn breathing,
+she looked up at him with a face washed clear of bitterness.
+
+"Don't suppose I don't know what you must have thought of
+me!"
+
+The cry struck him down to a lower depth of self-abasement.
+"My poor child," he felt like answering, "the shame of it is
+that I've never thought of you at all!" But he could only
+uselessly repeat: "I'll do anything I can to help you."
+
+She sat silent, drumming the table with her hand.  He saw
+that her doubt of him was allayed, and the perception made
+him more ashamed, as if her trust had first revealed to him
+how near he had come to not deserving it.  Suddenly she
+began to speak.
+
+"You think, then, I've no right to marry him?"
+
+"No right?  God forbid!  I only meant----"
+
+"That you'd rather I didn't marry any friend of yours."  She
+brought it out deliberately, not as a question, but as a
+mere dispassionate statement of fact.
+
+Darrow in turn stood up and wandered away helplessly to the
+window.  He stood staring out through its small discoloured
+panes at the dim brown distances; then he moved back to the
+table.
+
+"I'll tell you exactly what I meant.  You'll be wretched if
+you marry a man you're not in love with."
+
+He knew the risk of misapprehension that he ran, but he
+estimated his chances of success as precisely in proportion
+to his peril.  If certain signs meant what he thought they
+did, he might yet--at what cost he would not stop to think--
+make his past pay for his future.
+
+The girl, at his words, had lifted her head with a movement
+of surprise.  Her eyes slowly reached his face and rested
+there in a gaze of deep interrogation. He held the look for
+a moment; then his own eyes dropped and he waited.
+
+At length she began to speak.  "You're mistaken--you're
+quite mistaken."
+
+He waited a moment longer.  "Mistaken----?"
+
+"In thinking what you think.  I'm as happy as if I deserved
+it!" she suddenly proclaimed with a laugh.
+
+She stood up and moved toward the door.  "NOW are you
+satisfied?" she asked, turning her vividest face to him from
+the threshold.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Down the avenue there came to them, with the opening of the
+door, the voice of Owen's motor.  It was the signal which
+had interrupted their first talk, and again, instinctively,
+they drew apart at the sound.  Without a word Darrow turned
+back into the room, while Sophy Viner went down the steps
+and walked back alone toward the court.
+
+At luncheon the presence of the surgeon, and the non-
+appearance of Madame de Chantelle--who had excused herself
+on the plea of a headache--combined to shift the
+conversational centre of gravity; and Darrow, under shelter
+of the necessarily impersonal talk, had time to adjust his
+disguise and to perceive that the others were engaged in the
+same re-arrangement.  It was the first time that he had seen
+young Leath and Sophy Viner together since he had learned of
+their engagement; but neither revealed more emotion than
+befitted the occasion.  It was evident that Owen was deeply
+under the girl's charm, and that at the least sign from her
+his bliss would have broken bounds; but her reticence was
+justified by the tacitly recognized fact of Madame de
+Chantelle's disapproval.  This also visibly weighed on
+Anna's mind, making her manner to Sophy, if no less kind,
+yet a trifle more constrained than if the moment of final
+understanding had been reached.  So Darrow interpreted the
+tension perceptible under the fluent exchange of
+commonplaces in which he was diligently sharing.  But he was
+more and more aware of his inability to test the moral
+atmosphere about him: he was like a man in fever testing
+another's temperature by the touch.
+
+After luncheon Anna, who was to motor the surgeon home,
+suggested to Darrow that he should accompany them. Effie was
+also of the party; and Darrow inferred that Anna wished to
+give her step-son a chance to be alone with his betrothed.
+On the way back, after the surgeon had been left at his
+door, the little girl sat between her mother and Darrow, and
+her presence kept their talk from taking a personal turn.
+Darrow knew that Mrs. Leath had not yet told Effie of the
+relation in which he was to stand to her.  The premature
+divulging of Owen's plans had thrown their own into the
+background, and by common consent they continued, in the
+little girl's presence, on terms of an informal
+friendliness.
+
+The sky had cleared after luncheon, and to prolong their
+excursion they returned by way of the ivy-mantled ruin which
+was to have been the scene of the projected picnic.  This
+circuit brought them back to the park gates not long before
+sunset, and as Anna wished to stop at the lodge for news of
+the injured child Darrow left her there with Effie and
+walked on alone to the house.  He had the impression that
+she was slightly surprised at his not waiting for her; but
+his inner restlessness vented itself in an intense desire
+for bodily movement.  He would have liked to walk himself
+into a state of torpor; to tramp on for hours through the
+moist winds and the healing darkness and come back
+staggering with fatigue and sleep.  But he had no pretext
+for such a flight, and he feared that, at such a moment, his
+prolonged absence might seem singular to Anna.
+
+As he approached the house, the thought of her nearness
+produced a swift reaction of mood.  It was as if an intenser
+vision of her had scattered his perplexities like morning
+mists.  At this moment, wherever she was, he knew he was
+safely shut away in her thoughts, and the knowledge made
+every other fact dwindle away to a shadow.  He and she loved
+each other, and their love arched over them open and ample
+as the day: in all its sunlit spaces there was no cranny for
+a fear to lurk. In a few minutes he would be in her presence
+and would read his reassurance in her eyes.  And presently,
+before dinner, she would contrive that they should have an
+hour by themselves in her sitting-room, and he would sit by
+the hearth and watch her quiet movements, and the way the
+bluish lustre on her hair purpled a little as she bent above
+the fire.
+
+A carriage drove out of the court as he entered it, and in
+the hall his vision was dispelled by the exceedingly
+substantial presence of a lady in a waterproof and a tweed
+hat, who stood firmly planted in the centre of a pile of
+luggage, as to which she was giving involved but lucid
+directions to the footman who had just admitted her.  She
+went on with these directions regardless of Darrow's
+entrance, merely fixing her small pale eyes on him while she
+proceeded, in a deep contralto voice, and a fluent French
+pronounced with the purest Boston accent, to specify the
+destination of her bags; and this enabled Darrow to give her
+back a gaze protracted enough to take in all the details of
+her plain thick-set person, from the square sallow face
+beneath bands of grey hair to the blunt boot-toes protruding
+under her wide walking skirt.
+
+She submitted to this scrutiny with no more evidence of
+surprise than a monument examined by a tourist; but when the
+fate of her luggage had been settled she turned suddenly to
+Darrow and, dropping her eyes from his face to his feet,
+asked in trenchant accents: "What sort of boots have you got
+on?"
+
+Before he could summon his wits to the consideration of this
+question she continued in a tone of suppressed indignation:
+"Until Americans get used to the fact that France is under
+water for half the year they're perpetually risking their
+lives by not being properly protected.  I suppose you've
+been tramping through all this nasty clammy mud as if you'd
+been taking a stroll on Boston Common."
+
+Darrow, with a laugh, affirmed his previous experience of
+French dampness, and the degree to which he was on his guard
+against it; but the lady, with a contemptuous snort,
+rejoined: "You young men are all alike----"; to which she
+appended, after another hard look at him: "I suppose you're
+George Darrow?  I used to know one of your mother's cousins,
+who married a Tunstall of Mount Vernon Street.  My name is
+Adelaide Painter.  Have you been in Boston lately?  No?  I'm
+sorry for that.  I hear there have been several new houses
+built at the lower end of Commonwealth Avenue and I hoped
+you could tell me about them.  I haven't been there for
+thirty years myself."
+
+Miss Painter's arrival at Givre produced the same effect as
+the wind's hauling around to the north after days of languid
+weather.  When Darrow joined the group about the tea-table
+she had already given a tingle to the air.  Madame de
+Chantelle still remained invisible above stairs; but Darrow
+had the impression that even through her drawn curtains and
+bolted doors a stimulating whiff must have entered.
+
+Anna was in her usual seat behind the tea-tray, and Sophy
+Viner presently led in her pupil.  Owen was also there,
+seated, as usual, a little apart from the others, and
+following Miss Painter's massive movements and equally
+substantial utterances with a smile of secret intelligence
+which gave Darrow the idea of his having been in clandestine
+parley with the enemy.  Darrow further took note that the
+girl and her suitor perceptibly avoided each other; but this
+might be a natural result of the tension Miss Painter had
+been summoned to relieve.
+
+Sophy Viner would evidently permit no recognition of the
+situation save that which it lay with Madame de Chantelle to
+accord; but meanwhile Miss Painter had proclaimed her tacit
+sense of it by summoning the girl to a seat at her side.
+
+Darrow, as he continued to observe the newcomer, who was
+perched on her arm-chair like a granite image on the edge of
+a cliff, was aware that, in a more detached frame of mind,
+he would have found an extreme interest in studying and
+classifying Miss Painter.  It was not that she said anything
+remarkable, or betrayed any of those unspoken perceptions
+which give significance to the most commonplace utterances.
+She talked of the lateness of her train, of an impending
+crisis in international politics, of the difficulty of
+buying English tea in Paris and of the enormities of which
+French servants were capable; and her views on these
+subjects were enunciated with a uniformity of emphasis
+implying complete unconsciousness of any difference in their
+interest and importance.  She always applied to the French
+race the distant epithet of "those people", but she betrayed
+an intimate acquaintance with many of its members, and an
+encyclopaedic knowledge of the domestic habits, financial
+difficulties and private complications of various persons of
+social importance.  Yet, as she evidently felt no
+incongruity in her attitude, so she revealed no desire to
+parade her familiarity with the fashionable, or indeed any
+sense of it as a fact to be paraded.  It was evident that
+the titled ladies whom she spoke of as Mimi or Simone or
+Odette were as much "those people" to her as the bonne
+who tampered with her tea and steamed the stamps off her
+letters ("when, by a miracle, I don't put them in the box
+myself.")  Her whole attitude was of a vast grim tolerance
+of things-as-they-came, as though she had been some
+wonderful automatic machine which recorded facts but had not
+yet been perfected to the point of sorting or labelling
+them.
+
+All this, as Darrow was aware, still fell short of
+accounting for the influence she obviously exerted on the
+persons in contact with her.  It brought a slight relief to
+his state of tension to go on wondering, while he watched
+and listened, just where the mystery lurked.  Perhaps, after
+all, it was in the fact of her blank insensibility, an
+insensibility so devoid of egotism that it had no hardness
+and no grimaces, but rather the freshness of a simpler
+mental state.  After living, as he had, as they all had, for
+the last few days, in an atmosphere perpetually tremulous
+with echoes and implications, it was restful and fortifying
+merely to walk into the big blank area of Miss Painter's
+mind, so vacuous for all its accumulated items, so echoless
+for all its vacuity.
+
+His hope of a word with Anna before dinner was dispelled by
+her rising to take Miss Painter up to Madame de Chantelle;
+and he wandered away to his own room, leaving Owen and Miss
+Viner engaged in working out a picture-puzzle for Effie.
+
+Madame de Chantelle--possibly as the result of her friend's
+ministrations--was able to appear at the dinner-table,
+rather pale and pink-nosed, and casting tenderly reproachful
+glances at her grandson, who faced them with impervious
+serenity; and the situation was relieved by the fact that
+Miss Viner, as usual, had remained in the school-room with
+her pupil.
+
+Darrow conjectured that the real clash of arms would not
+take place till the morrow; and wishing to leave the field
+open to the contestants he set out early on a solitary walk.
+It was nearly luncheon-time when he returned from it and
+came upon Anna just emerging from the house.  She had on her
+hat and jacket and was apparently coming forth to seek him,
+for she said at once: "Madame de Chantelle wants you to go
+up to her."
+
+"To go up to her?  Now?"
+
+"That's the message she sent.  She appears to rely on you to
+do something."  She added with a smile: "Whatever it is,
+let's have it over!"
+
+Darrow, through his rising sense of apprehension, wondered
+why, instead of merely going for a walk, he had not jumped
+into the first train and got out of the way till Owen's
+affairs were finally settled.
+
+"But what in the name of goodness can I do?" he protested,
+following Anna back into the hall.
+
+"I don't know.  But Owen seems so to rely on you, too----"
+
+"Owen!  Is HE to be there?"
+
+"No.  But you know I told him he could count on you."
+
+"But I've said to your mother-in-law all I could."
+
+"Well, then you can only repeat it."
+
+This did not seem to Darrow to simplify his case as much as
+she appeared to think; and once more he had a movement of
+recoil.  "There's no possible reason for my being mixed up
+in this affair!"
+
+Anna gave him a reproachful glance.  "Not the fact that
+I am?" she reminded him; but even this only stiffened his
+resistance.
+
+"Why should you be, either--to this extent?"
+
+The question made her pause.  She glanced about the hall, as
+if to be sure they had it to themselves; and then, in a
+lowered voice: "I don't know," she suddenly confessed; "but,
+somehow, if THEY'RE not happy I feel as if we shouldn't
+be."
+
+"Oh, well--" Darrow acquiesced, in the tone of the man who
+perforce yields to so lovely an unreasonableness. Escape
+was, after all, impossible, and he could only resign himself
+to being led to Madame de Chantelle's door.
+
+Within, among the bric-a-brac and furbelows, he found Miss
+Painter seated in a redundant purple armchair with the
+incongruous air of a horseman bestriding a heavy mount.
+Madame de Chantelle sat opposite, still a little wan and
+disordered under her elaborate hair, and clasping the
+handkerchief whose visibility symbolized her distress.  On
+the young man's entrance she sighed out a plaintive welcome,
+to which she immediately appended: "Mr. Darrow, I can't help
+feeling that at heart you're with me!"
+
+The directness of the challenge made it easier for Darrow to
+protest, and he reiterated his inability to give an opinion
+on either side.
+
+"But Anna declares you have--on hers!"
+
+He could not restrain a smile at this faint flaw in an
+impartiality so scrupulous.  Every evidence of feminine
+inconsequence in Anna seemed to attest her deeper subjection
+to the most inconsequent of passions.  He had certainly
+promised her his help--but before he knew what he was
+promising.
+
+He met Madame de Chantelle's appeal by replying: "If there
+were anything I could possibly say I should want it to be in
+Miss Viner's favour."
+
+"You'd want it to be--yes!  But could you make it so?"
+
+"As far as facts go, I don't see how I can make it either
+for or against her.  I've already said that I know nothing
+of her except that she's charming."
+
+"As if that weren't enough--weren't all there OUGHT to
+be!" Miss Painter put in impatiently.  She seemed to address
+herself to Darrow, though her small eyes were fixed on her
+friend.
+
+"Madame de Chantelle seems to imagine," she pursued, "that a
+young American girl ought to have a dossier--a police-
+record, or whatever you call it: what those awful women in
+the streets have here.  In our country it's enough to know
+that a young girl's pure and lovely: people don't
+immediately ask her to show her bank-account and her
+visiting-list."
+
+Madame de Chantelle looked plaintively at her sturdy
+monitress.  "You don't expect me not to ask if she's got a
+family?"
+
+"No; nor to think the worse of her if she hasn't.  The fact
+that she's an orphan ought, with your ideas, to be a merit.
+You won't have to invite her father and mother to Givre!"
+
+"Adelaide--Adelaide!" the mistress of Givre lamented.
+
+"Lucretia Mary," the other returned--and Darrow spared an
+instant's amusement to the quaint incongruity of the name--
+"you know you sent for Mr. Darrow to refute me; and how can
+he, till he knows what I think?"
+
+"You think it's perfectly simple to let Owen marry a girl we
+know nothing about?"
+
+"No; but I don't think it's perfectly simple to prevent
+him."
+
+The shrewdness of the answer increased Darrow's interest in
+Miss Painter.  She had not hitherto struck him as being a
+person of much penetration, but he now felt sure that her
+gimlet gaze might bore to the heart of any practical
+problem.
+
+Madame de Chantelle sighed out her recognition of the
+difficulty.
+
+"I haven't a word to say against Miss Viner; but she's
+knocked about so, as it's called, that she must have been
+mixed up with some rather dreadful people.  If only Owen
+could be made to see that--if one could get at a few facts,
+I mean.  She says, for instance, that she has a sister; but
+it seems she doesn't even know her address!"
+
+"If she does, she may not want to give it to you.  I daresay
+the sister's one of the dreadful people.  I've no doubt that
+with a little time you could rake up dozens of them: have
+her 'traced', as they call it in detective stories.  I don't
+think you'd frighten Owen, but you might: it's natural
+enough he should have been corrupted by those foreign ideas.
+You might even manage to part him from the girl; but you
+couldn't keep him from being in love with her.  I saw that
+when I looked them over last evening.  I said to myself:
+'It's a real old-fashioned American case, as sweet and sound
+as home-made bread.' Well, if you take his loaf away from
+him, what are you going to feed him with instead?  Which of
+your nasty Paris poisons do you think he'll turn to?
+Supposing you succeed in keeping him out of a really bad
+mess--and, knowing the young man as I do, I rather think
+that, at this crisis, the only way to do it would be to
+marry him slap off to somebody else--well, then, who, may I
+ask, would you pick out?  One of your sweet French
+ingenues, I suppose?  With as much mind as a minnow and as
+much snap as a soft-boiled egg.  You might hustle him into
+that kind of marriage; I daresay you could--but if I know
+Owen, the natural thing would happen before the first baby
+was weaned."
+
+"I don't know why you insinuate such odious things against
+Owen!"
+
+"Do you think it would be odious of him to return to his
+real love when he'd been forcibly parted from her?  At any
+rate, it's what your French friends do, every one of them!
+Only they don't generally have the grace to go back to an
+old love; and I believe, upon my word, Owen would!"
+
+Madame de Chantelle looked at her with a mixture of awe and
+exultation.  "Of course you realize, Adelaide, that in
+suggesting this you're insinuating the most shocking things
+against Miss Viner?"
+
+"When I say that if you part two young things who are dying
+to be happy in the lawful way it's ten to one they'll come
+together in an unlawful one?  I'm insinuating shocking things
+against YOU, Lucretia Mary, in suggesting for a moment
+that you'll care to assume such a responsibility before your
+Maker.  And you wouldn't, if you talked things straight out
+with him, instead of merely sending him messages through a
+miserable sinner like yourself!"
+
+Darrow expected this assault on her adopted creed to provoke
+in Madame de Chantelle an explosion of pious indignation;
+but to his surprise she merely murmured: "I don't know what
+Mr. Darrow'll think of you!"
+
+"Mr. Darrow probably knows his Bible as well as I do," Miss
+Painter calmly rejoined; adding a moment later, without the
+least perceptible change of voice or expression: "I suppose
+you've heard that Gisele de Folembray's husband accuses her
+of being mixed up with the Duc d'Arcachon in that business
+of trying to sell a lot of imitation pearls to Mrs. Homer
+Pond, the Chicago woman the Duke's engaged to?  It seems the
+jeweller says Gisele brought Mrs. Pond there, and got
+twenty-five per cent--which of course she passed on to
+d'Arcachon. The poor old Duchess is in a fearful state--so
+afraid her son'll lose Mrs. Pond!  When I think that Gisele
+is old Bradford Wagstaff's grand-daughter, I'm thankful he's
+safe in Mount Auburn!"
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+It was not until late that afternoon that Darrow could claim
+his postponed hour with Anna.  When at last he found her
+alone in her sitting-room it was with a sense of liberation
+so great that he sought no logical justification of it.  He
+simply felt that all their destinies were in Miss Painter's
+grasp, and that, resistance being useless, he could only
+enjoy the sweets of surrender.
+
+Anna herself seemed as happy, and for more explicable
+reasons.  She had assisted, after luncheon, at another
+debate between Madame de Chantelle and her confidant, and
+had surmised, when she withdrew from it, that victory was
+permanently perched on Miss Painter's banners.
+
+"I don't know how she does it, unless it's by the dead
+weight of her convictions.  She detests the French so that
+she'd back up Owen even if she knew nothing--or knew too
+much--of Miss Viner.  She somehow regards the match as a
+protest against the corruption of European morals.  I told
+Owen that was his great chance, and he's made the most of
+it."
+
+"What a tactician you are!  You make me feel that I hardly
+know the rudiments of diplomacy," Darrow smiled at her,
+abandoning himself to a perilous sense of well-being.
+
+She gave him back his smile.  "I'm afraid I think nothing
+short of my own happiness is worth wasting any diplomacy
+on!"
+
+"That's why I mean to resign from the service of my
+country," he rejoined with a laugh of deep content.
+
+The feeling that both resistance and apprehension were vain
+was working like wine in his veins.  He had done what he
+could to deflect the course of events: now he could only
+stand aside and take his chance of safety. Underneath this
+fatalistic feeling was the deep sense of relief that he had,
+after all, said and done nothing that could in the least
+degree affect the welfare of Sophy Viner.  That fact took a
+millstone off his neck.
+
+Meanwhile he gave himself up once more to the joy of Anna's
+presence.  They had not been alone together for two long
+days, and he had the lover's sense that he had forgotten, or
+at least underestimated, the strength of the spell she cast.
+Once more her eyes and her smile seemed to bound his world.
+He felt that their light would always move with him as the
+sunset moves before a ship at sea.
+
+
+The next day his sense of security was increased by a
+decisive incident.  It became known to the expectant
+household that Madame de Chantelle had yielded to the
+tremendous impact of Miss Painter's determination and that
+Sophy Viner had been "sent for" to the purple satin sitting-
+room.
+
+At luncheon, Owen's radiant countenance proclaimed the happy
+sequel, and Darrow, when the party had moved back to the
+oak-room for coffee, deemed it discreet to wander out alone
+to the terrace with his cigar.  The conclusion of Owen's
+romance brought his own plans once more to the front.  Anna
+had promised that she would consider dates and settle
+details as soon as Madame de Chantelle and her grandson had
+been reconciled, and Darrow was eager to go into the
+question at once, since it was necessary that the
+preparations for his marriage should go forward as rapidly
+as possible.  Anna, he knew, would not seek any farther
+pretext for delay; and he strolled up and down contentedly
+in the sunshine, certain that she would come out and
+reassure him as soon as the reunited family had claimed its
+due share of her attention.
+
+But when she finally joined him her first word was for the
+younger lovers.
+
+"I want to thank you for what you've done for Owen," she
+began, with her happiest smile.
+
+"Who--I?" he laughed.  "Are you confusing me with Miss
+Painter?"
+
+"Perhaps I ought to say for ME," she corrected herself.
+"You've been even more of a help to us than Adelaide."
+
+"My dear child!  What on earth have I done?"
+
+"You've managed to hide from Madame de Chantelle that you
+don't really like poor Sophy."
+
+Darrow felt the pallour in his cheek.  "Not like her?  What
+put such an idea into your head?"
+
+"Oh, it's more than an idea--it's a feeling.  But what
+difference does it make, after all?  You saw her in such a
+different setting that it's natural you should be a little
+doubtful.  But when you know her better I'm sure you'll feel
+about her as I do."
+
+"It's going to be hard for me not to feel about everything
+as you do."
+
+"Well, then--please begin with my daughter-in-law!"
+
+He gave her back in the same tone of banter: "Agreed: if you
+ll agree to feel as I do about the pressing necessity of our
+getting married."
+
+"I want to talk to you about that too.  You don't know what
+a weight is off my mind!  With Sophy here for good, I shall
+feel so differently about leaving Effie.  I've seen much
+more accomplished governesses--to my cost!--but I've never
+seen a young thing more gay and kind and human.  You must
+have noticed, though you've seen them so little together,
+how Effie expands when she's with her.  And that, you know,
+is what I want.  Madame de Chantelle will provide the
+necessary restraint."  She clasped her hands on his arm.
+"Yes, I'm ready to go with you now.  But first of all--this
+very moment!--you must come with me to Effie.  She knows, of
+course, nothing of what's been happening; and I want her to
+be told first about YOU."
+
+Effie, sought throughout the house, was presently traced to
+the school-room, and thither Darrow mounted with Anna.  He
+had never seen her so alight with happiness, and he had
+caught her buoyancy of mood.  He kept repeating to himself:
+"It's over--it's over," as if some monstrous midnight
+hallucination had been routed by the return of day.
+
+As they approached the school-room door the terrier's barks
+came to them through laughing remonstrances.
+
+"She's giving him his dinner," Anna whispered, her hand in
+Darrow's.
+
+"Don't forget the gold-fish!" they heard another voice call
+out.
+
+Darrow halted on the threshold.  "Oh--not now!"
+
+"Not now?"
+
+"I mean--she'd rather have you tell her first.  I'll wait
+for you both downstairs."
+
+He was aware that she glanced at him intently.  "As you
+please.  I'll bring her down at once."
+
+She opened the door, and as she went in he heard her say:
+"No, Sophy, don't go!  I want you both."
+
+
+The rest of Darrow's day was a succession of empty and
+agitating scenes.  On his way down to Givre, before he had
+seen Effie Leath, he had pictured somewhat sentimentally the
+joy of the moment when he should take her in his arms and
+receive her first filial kiss. Everything in him that
+egotistically craved for rest, stability, a comfortably
+organized middle-age, all the home-building instincts of the
+man who has sufficiently wooed and wandered, combined to
+throw a charm about the figure of the child who might--who
+should--have been his.  Effie came to him trailing the cloud
+of glory of his first romance, giving him back the magic
+hour he had missed and mourned.  And how different the
+realization of his dream had been!  The child's radiant
+welcome, her unquestioning acceptance of, this new figure in
+the family group, had been all that he had hoped and
+fancied.  If Mother was so awfully happy about it, and Owen
+and Granny, too, how nice and cosy and comfortable it was
+going to be for all of them, her beaming look seemed to say;
+and then, suddenly, the small pink fingers he had been
+kissing were laid on the one flaw in the circle, on the one
+point which must be settled before Effie could, with
+complete unqualified assurance, admit the new-comer to full
+equality with the other gods of her Olympus.
+
+"And is Sophy awfully happy about it too?" she had asked,
+loosening her hold on Darrow's neck to tilt back her head
+and include her mother in her questioning look.
+
+"Why, dearest, didn't you see she was?" Anna had exclaimed,
+leaning to the group with radiant eyes.
+
+"I think I should like to ask her," the child rejoined,
+after a minute's shy consideration; and as Darrow set her
+down her mother laughed: "Do, darling, do!  Run off at once,
+and tell her we expect her to be awfully happy too."
+
+The scene had been succeeded by others less poignant but
+almost as trying.  Darrow cursed his luck in having, at such
+a moment, to run the gauntlet of a houseful of interested
+observers.  The state of being "engaged", in itself an
+absurd enough predicament, even to a man only intermittently
+exposed, became intolerable under the continuous scrutiny of
+a small circle quivering with participation.  Darrow was
+furthermore aware that, though the case of the other couple
+ought to have made his own less conspicuous, it was rather
+they who found a refuge in the shadow of his prominence.
+Madame de Chantelle, though she had consented to Owen's
+engagement and formally welcomed his betrothed, was
+nevertheless not sorry to show, by her reception of Darrow,
+of what finely-shaded degrees of cordiality she was capable.
+Miss Painter, having won the day for Owen, was also free to
+turn her attention to the newer candidate for her sympathy;
+and Darrow and Anna found themselves immersed in a warm bath
+of sentimental curiosity.
+
+It was a relief to Darrow that he was under a positive
+obligation to end his visit within the next forty-eight
+hours.  When he left London, his Ambassador had accorded him
+a ten days' leave.  His fate being definitely settled and
+openly published he had no reason for asking to have the
+time prolonged, and when it was over he was to return to his
+post till the time fixed for taking up his new duties.  Anna
+and he had therefore decided to be married, in Paris, a day
+or two before the departure of the steamer which was to take
+them to South America; and Anna, shortly after his return to
+England, was to go up to Paris and begin her own
+preparations.
+
+In honour of the double betrothal Effie and Miss Viner were
+to appear that evening at dinner; and Darrow, on leaving his
+room, met the little girl springing down the stairs, her
+white ruffles and coral-coloured bows making her look like a
+daisy with her yellow hair for its centre.  Sophy Viner was
+behind her pupil, and as she came into the light Darrow
+noticed a change in her appearance and wondered vaguely why
+she looked suddenly younger, more vivid, more like the
+little luminous ghost of his Paris memories.  Then it
+occurred to him that it was the first time she had appeared
+at dinner since his arrival at Givre, and the first time,
+consequently, that he had seen her in evening dress.  She
+was still at the age when the least adornment embellishes;
+and no doubt the mere uncovering of her young throat and
+neck had given her back her former brightness.  But a second
+glance showed a more precise reason for his impression.
+Vaguely though he retained such details, he felt sure she
+was wearing the dress he had seen her in every evening in
+Paris.  It was a simple enough dress, black, and transparent
+on the arms and shoulders, and he would probably not have
+recognized it if she had not called his attention to it in
+Paris by confessing that she hadn't any other.  "The same
+dress?  That proves that she's forgotten!" was his first
+half-ironic thought; but the next moment, with a pang of
+compunction, he said to himself that she had probably put it
+on for the same reason as before: simply because she hadn't
+any other.
+
+He looked at her in silence, and for an instant, above
+Effie's bobbing head, she gave him back his look in a full
+bright gaze.
+
+"Oh, there's Owen!" Effie cried, and whirled away down the
+gallery to the door from which her step-brother was
+emerging.  As Owen bent to catch her, Sophy Viner turned
+abruptly back to Darrow.
+
+"You, too?" she said with a quick laugh.  "I didn't know----
+" And as Owen came up to them she added, in a tone that
+might have been meant to reach his ear: "I wish you all the
+luck that we can spare!"
+
+About the dinner-table, which Effie, with Miss Viner's aid,
+had lavishly garlanded, the little party had an air of
+somewhat self-conscious festivity.  In spite of flowers,
+champagne and a unanimous attempt at ease, there were
+frequent lapses in the talk, and moments of nervous groping
+for new subjects.  Miss Painter alone seemed not only
+unaffected by the general perturbation but as tightly sealed
+up in her unconsciousness of it as a diver in his bell.  To
+Darrow's strained attention even Owen's gusts of gaiety
+seemed to betray an inward sense of insecurity.  After
+dinner, however, at the piano, he broke into a mood of
+extravagant hilarity and flooded the room with the splash
+and ripple of his music.
+
+Darrow, sunk in a sofa corner in the lee of Miss Painter's
+granite bulk, smoked and listened in silence, his eyes
+moving from one figure to another.  Madame de Chantelle, in
+her armchair near the fire, clasped her little granddaughter
+to her with the gesture of a drawing-room Niobe, and Anna,
+seated near them, had fallen into one of the attitudes of
+vivid calm which seemed to Darrow to express her inmost
+quality.  Sophy Viner, after moving uncertainly about the
+room, had placed herself beyond Mrs. Leath, in a chair near
+the piano, where she sat with head thrown back and eyes
+attached to the musician, in the same rapt fixity of
+attention with which she had followed the players at the
+Francais.  The accident of her having fallen into the same
+attitude, and of her wearing the same dress, gave Darrow, as
+he watched her, a strange sense of double consciousness.  To
+escape from it, his glance turned back to Anna; but from the
+point at which he was placed his eyes could not take in the
+one face without the other, and that renewed the disturbing
+duality of the impression.  Suddenly Owen broke off with a
+crash of chords and jumped to his feet.
+
+"What's the use of this, with such a moon to say it for us?"
+
+Behind the uncurtained window a low golden orb hung like a
+ripe fruit against the glass.
+
+"Yes--let's go out and listen," Anna answered.  Owen threw
+open the window, and with his gesture a fold of the heavy
+star-sprinkled sky seemed to droop into the room like a
+drawn-in curtain.  The air that entered with it had a frosty
+edge, and Anna bade Effie run to the hall for wraps.
+
+Darrow said: "You must have one too," and started toward the
+door; but Sophy, following her pupil, cried back: "We'll
+bring things for everybody."
+
+Owen had followed her, and in a moment the three reappeared,
+and the party went out on the terrace.  The deep blue purity
+of the night was unveiled by mist, and the moonlight rimmed
+the edges of the trees with a silver blur and blanched to
+unnatural whiteness the statues against their walls of
+shade.
+
+Darrow and Anna, with Effie between them, strolled to the
+farther corner of the terrace.  Below them, between the
+fringes of the park, the lawn sloped dimly to the fields
+above the river.  For a few minutes they stood silently side
+by side, touched to peace beneath the trembling beauty of
+the sky.  When they turned back, Darrow saw that Owen and
+Sophy Viner, who had gone down the steps to the garden, were
+also walking in the direction of the house.  As they
+advanced, Sophy paused in a patch of moonlight, between the
+sharp shadows of the yews, and Darrow noticed that she had
+thrown over her shoulders a long cloak of some light colour,
+which suddenly evoked her image as she had entered the
+restaurant at his side on the night of their first dinner in
+Paris.  A moment later they were all together again on the
+terrace, and when they re-entered the drawing-room the older
+ladies were on their way to bed.
+
+Effie, emboldened by the privileges of the evening, was for
+coaxing Owen to round it off with a game of forfeits or some
+such reckless climax; but Sophy, resuming her professional
+role, sounded the summons to bed.  In her pupil's wake she
+made her round of good-nights; but when she proffered her
+hand to Anna, the latter ignoring the gesture held out both
+arms.
+
+"Good-night, dear child," she said impulsively, and drew the
+girl to her kiss.
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+XXIII
+
+
+The next day was Darrow's last at Givre and, foreseeing that
+the afternoon and evening would have to be given to the
+family, he had asked Anna to devote an early hour to the
+final consideration of their plans. He was to meet her in
+the brown sitting-room at ten, and they were to walk down to
+the river and talk over their future in the little pavilion
+abutting on the wall of the park.
+
+It was just a week since his arrival at Givre, and Anna
+wished, before he left, to return to the place where they
+had sat on their first afternoon together.  Her
+sensitiveness to the appeal of inanimate things, to the
+colour and texture of whatever wove itself into the
+substance of her emotion, made her want to hear Darrow's
+voice, and to feel his eyes on her, in the spot where bliss
+had first flowed into her heart.
+
+That bliss, in the interval, had wound itself into every
+fold of her being.  Passing, in the first days, from a high
+shy tenderness to the rush of a secret surrender, it had
+gradually widened and deepened, to flow on in redoubled
+beauty.  She thought she now knew exactly how and why she
+loved Darrow, and she could see her whole sky reflected in
+the deep and tranquil current of her love.
+
+Early the next day, in her sitting-room, she was glancing
+through the letters which it was Effie's morning privilege
+to carry up to her.  Effie meanwhile circled inquisitively
+about the room, where there was always something new to
+engage her infant fancy; and Anna, looking up, saw her
+suddenly arrested before a photograph of Darrow which, the
+day before, had taken its place on the writing-table.
+
+Anna held out her arms with a faint blush.  "You do like
+him, don't you, dear?"
+
+"Oh, most awfully, dearest," Effie, against her breast,
+leaned back to assure her with a limpid look.  "And so do
+Granny and Owen--and I DO think Sophy does too," she
+added, after a moment's earnest pondering.
+
+"I hope so," Anna laughed.  She checked the impulse to
+continue: "Has she talked to you about him, that you're so
+sure?" She did not know what had made the question spring to
+her lips, but she was glad she had closed them before
+pronouncing it.  Nothing could have been more distasteful to
+her than to clear up such obscurities by turning on them the
+tiny flame of her daughter's observation.  And what, after
+all, now that Owen's happiness was secured, did it matter if
+there were certain reserves in Darrow's approval of his
+marriage?
+
+A knock on the door made Anna glance at the clock. "There's
+Nurse to carry you off."
+
+"It's Sophy's knock," the little girl answered, jumping down
+to open the door; and Miss Viner in fact stood on the
+threshold.
+
+"Come in," Anna said with a smile, instantly remarking how
+pale she looked.
+
+"May Effie go out for a turn with Nurse?" the girl asked.
+"I should like to speak to you a moment."
+
+"Of course.  This ought to be YOUR holiday, as yesterday
+was Effie's.  Run off, dear," she added, stooping to kiss
+the little girl.
+
+When the door had closed she turned back to Sophy Viner with
+a look that sought her confidence.  "I'm so glad you came,
+my dear.  We've got so many things to talk about, just you
+and I together."
+
+The confused intercourse of the last days had, in fact, left
+little time for any speech with Sophy but such as related to
+her marriage and the means of overcoming Madame de
+Chantelle's opposition to it.  Anna had exacted of Owen that
+no one, not even Sophy Viner, should be given a hint of her
+own projects till all contingent questions had been disposed
+of.  She had felt, from the outset, a secret reluctance to
+intrude her securer happiness on the doubts and fears of the
+young pair.
+
+From the sofa-corner to which she had dropped back she
+pointed to Darrow's chair.  "Come and sit by me, dear. I
+wanted to see you alone.  There's so much to say that I
+hardly know where to begin."
+
+She leaned forward, her hands clasped on the arms of the
+sofa, her eyes bent smilingly on Sophy's.  As she did so,
+she noticed that the girl's unusual pallour was partly due
+to the slight veil of powder on her face. The discovery was
+distinctly disagreeable.  Anna had never before noticed, on
+Sophy's part, any recourse to cosmetics, and, much as she
+wished to think herself exempt from old-fashioned
+prejudices, she suddenly became aware that she did not like
+her daughter's governess to have a powdered face.  Then she
+reflected that the girl who sat opposite her was no longer
+Effie's governess, but her own future daughter-in-law; and
+she wondered whether Miss Viner had chosen this odd way of
+celebrating her independence, and whether, as Mrs. Owen
+Leath, she would present to the world a bedizened
+countenance. This idea was scarcely less distasteful than
+the other, and for a moment Anna continued to consider her
+without speaking.  Then, in a flash, the truth came to her:
+Miss Viner had powdered her face because Miss Viner had been
+crying.
+
+Anna leaned forward impulsively.  "My dear child, what's the
+matter?" She saw the girl's blood rush up under the white
+mask, and hastened on: "Please don't be afraid to tell me.
+I do so want you to feel that you can trust me as Owen does.
+And you know you mustn't mind if, just at first, Madame de
+Chantelle occasionally relapses."
+
+She spoke eagerly, persuasively, almost on a note of
+pleading.  She had, in truth, so many reasons for wanting
+Sophy to like her: her love for Owen, her solicitude for
+Effie, and her own sense of the girl's fine mettle.  She had
+always felt a romantic and almost humble admiration for
+those members of her sex who, from force of will, or the
+constraint of circumstances, had plunged into the conflict
+from which fate had so persistently excluded her.  There
+were even moments when she fancied herself vaguely to blame
+for her immunity, and felt that she ought somehow to have
+affronted the perils and hardships which refused to come to
+her.  And now, as she sat looking at Sophy Viner, so small,
+so slight, so visibly defenceless and undone, she still
+felt, through all the superiority of her worldly advantages
+and her seeming maturity, the same odd sense of ignorance
+and inexperience.  She could not have said what there was in
+the girl's manner and expression to give her this feeling,
+but she was reminded, as she looked at Sophy Viner, of the
+other girls she had known in her youth, the girls who seemed
+possessed of a secret she had missed.  Yes, Sophy Viner had
+their look--almost the obscurely menacing look of Kitty
+Mayne...Anna, with an inward smile, brushed aside the image
+of this forgotten rival.  But she had felt, deep down, a
+twinge of the old pain, and she was sorry that, even for the
+flash of a thought, Owen's betrothed should have reminded
+her of so different a woman...
+
+She laid her hand on the girl's.  "When his grandmother sees
+how happy Owen is she'll be quite happy herself.  If it's
+only that, don't be distressed. Just trust to Owen--and the
+future."
+
+Sophy Viner, with an almost imperceptible recoil of her
+whole slight person, had drawn her hand from under the palm
+enclosing it.
+
+"That's what I wanted to talk to you about--the future."
+
+"Of course!  We've all so many plans to make--and to fit into
+each other's.  Please let's begin with yours."
+
+The girl paused a moment, her hands clasped on the arms of
+her chair, her lids dropped under Anna's gaze; then she
+said: "I should like to make no plans at all...just yet..."
+
+"No plans?"
+
+"No--I should like to go away...my friends the Farlows would
+let me go to them..."  Her voice grew firmer and she lifted
+her eyes to add: "I should like to leave today, if you don't
+mind."
+
+Anna listened with a rising wonder.
+
+"You want to leave Givre at once?" She gave the idea a
+moment's swift consideration.  "You prefer to be with your
+friends till your marriage?  I understand that--but surely
+you needn't rush off today?  There are so many details to
+discuss; and before long, you know, I shall be going away
+too."
+
+"Yes, I know."  The girl was evidently trying to steady her
+voice.  "But I should like to wait a few days--to have a
+little more time to myself."
+
+Anna continued to consider her kindly.  It was evident that
+she did not care to say why she wished to leave Givre so
+suddenly, but her disturbed face and shaken voice betrayed a
+more pressing motive than the natural desire to spend the
+weeks before her marriage under her old friends' roof.
+Since she had made no response to the allusion to Madame de
+Chantelle, Anna could but conjecture that she had had a
+passing disagreement with Owen; and if this were so, random
+interference might do more harm than good.
+
+"My dear child, if you really want to go at once I sha'n't,
+of course, urge you to stay.  I suppose you have spoken to
+Owen?"
+
+"No.  Not yet..."
+
+Anna threw an astonished glance at her.  "You mean to say
+you haven't told him?"
+
+"I wanted to tell you first.  I thought I ought to, on
+account of Effie."  Her look cleared as she put forth this
+reason.
+
+"Oh, Effie!--" Anna's smile brushed away the scruple. "Owen
+has a right to ask that you should consider him before you
+think of his sister...Of course you shall do just as you
+wish," she went on, after another thoughtful interval.
+
+"Oh, thank you," Sophy Viner murmured and rose to her feet.
+
+Anna rose also, vaguely seeking for some word that should
+break down the girl's resistance.  "You'll tell Owen at
+once?" she finally asked.
+
+Miss Viner, instead of replying, stood before her in
+manifest uncertainty, and as she did so there was a light
+tap on the door, and Owen Leath walked into the room.
+
+Anna's first glance told her that his face was unclouded.
+He met her greeting with his happiest smile and turned to
+lift Sophy's hand to his lips.  The perception that he was
+utterly unconscious of any cause for Miss Viner's agitation
+came to his step-mother with a sharp thrill of surprise.
+
+"Darrow's looking for you," he said to her.  "He asked me to
+remind you that you'd promised to go for a walk with him."
+
+Anna glanced at the clock.  "I'll go down presently."  She
+waited and looked again at Sophy Viner, whose troubled eyes
+seemed to commit their message to her. "You'd better tell
+Owen, my dear."
+
+Owen's look also turned on the girl.  "Tell me what?  Why,
+what's happened?"
+
+Anna summoned a laugh to ease the vague tension of the
+moment.  "Don't look so startled!  Nothing, except that Sophy
+proposes to desert us for a while for the Farlows."
+
+Owen's brow cleared.  "I was afraid she'd run off before
+long."  He glanced at Anna.  "Do please keep her here as long
+as you can!"
+
+Sophy intervened: "Mrs. Leath's already given me leave to
+go."
+
+"Already?  To go when?"
+
+"Today," said Sophy in a low tone, her eyes on Anna's.
+
+"Today?  Why on earth should you go today?" Owen dropped back
+a step or two, flushing and paling under his bewildered
+frown.  His eyes seemed to search the girl more closely.
+"Something's happened."  He too looked at his step-mother.
+"I suppose she must have told you what it is?"
+
+Anna was struck by the suddenness and vehemence of his
+appeal.  It was as though some smouldering apprehension had
+lain close under the surface of his security.
+
+"She's told me nothing except that she wishes to be with her
+friends.  It's quite natural that she should want to go to
+them."
+
+Owen visibly controlled himself.  "Of course--quite
+natural."  He spoke to Sophy.  "But why didn't you tell me
+so?  Why did you come first to my step-mother?"
+
+Anna intervened with her calm smile.  "That seems to me
+quite natural, too.  Sophy was considerate enough to tell me
+first because of Effie."
+
+He weighed it.  "Very well, then: that's quite natural, as
+you say.  And of course she must do exactly as she pleases."
+He still kept his eyes on the girl.  "Tomorrow," he abruptly
+announced, "I shall go up to Paris to see you."
+
+"Oh, no--no!" she protested.
+
+Owen turned back to Anna.  "NOW do you say that
+nothing's happened?"
+
+Under the influence of his agitation Anna felt a vague
+tightening of the heart.  She seemed to herself like some
+one in a dark room about whom unseen presences are groping.
+
+"If it's anything that Sophy wishes to tell you, no doubt
+she'll do so.  I'm going down now, and I'll leave you here
+to talk it over by yourselves."
+
+As she moved to the door the girl caught up with her. "But
+there's nothing to tell: why should there be?  I've explained
+that I simply want to be quiet."  Her look seemed to detain
+Mrs. Leath.
+
+Owen broke in: "Is that why I mayn't go up tomorrow?"
+
+"Not tomorrow!"
+
+"Then when may I?"
+
+"Later...in a little while...a few days..."
+
+"In how many days?"
+"Owen!" his step-mother interposed; but he seemed no longer
+aware of her.  "If you go away today, the day that our
+engagement's made known, it's only fair," he persisted,
+"that you should tell me when I am to see you."
+
+Sophy's eyes wavered between the two and dropped down
+wearily.  "It's you who are not fair--when I've said I
+wanted to be quiet."
+
+"But why should my coming disturb you?  I'm not asking now to
+come tomorrow.  I only ask you not to leave without telling
+me when I'm to see you."
+
+"Owen, I don't understand you!" his step-mother exclaimed.
+
+"You don't understand my asking for some explanation, some
+assurance, when I'm left in this way, without a word,
+without a sign?  All I ask her to tell me is when she'll see
+me."
+
+Anna turned back to Sophy Viner, who stood straight and
+tremulous between the two.
+
+"After all, my dear, he's not unreasonable!"
+
+"I'll write--I'll write," the girl repeated.
+
+"WHAT will you write?" he pressed her vehemently.
+
+"Owen," Anna exclaimed, "you are unreasonable!"
+
+He turned from Sophy to his step-mother.  "I only want her
+to say what she means: that she's going to write to break
+off our engagement.  Isn't that what you're going away for?"
+
+Anna felt the contagion of his excitement.  She looked at
+Sophy, who stood motionless, her lips set, her whole face
+drawn to a silent fixity of resistance.
+
+"You ought to speak, my dear--you ought to answer him."
+
+"I only ask him to wait----"
+
+"Yes," Owen, broke in, "and you won't say how long!"
+
+Both instinctively addressed themselves to Anna, who stood,
+nearly as shaken as themselves, between the double shock of
+their struggle.  She looked again from Sophy's inscrutable
+eyes to Owen's stormy features; then she said: "What can I
+do, when there's clearly something between you that I don't
+know about?"
+
+"Oh, if it WERE between us!  Can't you see it's outside
+of us--outside of her, dragging at her, dragging her away
+from me?" Owen wheeled round again upon his step-mother.
+
+Anna turned from him to the girl.  "Is it true that you want
+to break your engagement?  If you do, you ought to tell him
+now."
+
+Owen burst into a laugh.  "She doesn't dare to--she's afraid
+I'll guess the reason!"
+
+A faint sound escaped from Sophy's lips, but she kept them
+close on whatever answer she had ready.
+
+"If she doesn't wish to marry you, why should she be afraid
+to have you know the reason?"
+
+"She's afraid to have YOU know it--not me!"
+
+"To have ME know it?"
+
+He laughed again, and Anna, at his laugh, felt a sudden rush
+of indignation.
+
+"Owen, you must explain what you mean!"
+
+He looked at her hard before answering; then: "Ask Darrow!"
+he said.
+
+"Owen--Owen!" Sophy Viner murmured.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+Anna stood looking from one to the other.  It had become
+apparent to her in a flash that Owen's retort, though it
+startled Sophy, did not take her by surprise; and the
+discovery shot its light along dark distances of fear.
+
+The immediate inference was that Owen had guessed the reason
+of Darrow's disapproval of his marriage, or that, at least,
+he suspected Sophy Viner of knowing and dreading it.  This
+confirmation of her own obscure doubt sent a tremor of alarm
+through Anna.  For a moment she felt like exclaiming: "All
+this is really no business of mine, and I refuse to have you
+mix me up in it--" but her secret fear held her fast.
+
+Sophy Viner was the first to speak.
+
+"I should like to go now," she said in a low voice, taking a
+few steps toward the door.
+
+Her tone woke Anna to the sense of her own share in the
+situation.  "I quite agree with you, my dear, that it's
+useless to carry on this discussion.  But since Mr. Darrow's
+name has been brought into it, for reasons which I fail to
+guess, I want to tell you that you're both mistaken if you
+think he's not in sympathy with your marriage.  If that's
+what Owen means to imply, the idea's a complete delusion."
+
+She spoke the words deliberately and incisively, as if
+hoping that the sound of their utterance would stifle the
+whisper in her bosom.
+
+Sophy's only answer was a vague murmur, and a movement that
+brought her nearer to the door; but before she could reach
+it Owen had placed himself in her way.
+
+"I don't mean to imply what you think," he said, addressing
+his step-mother but keeping his eyes on the girl.  "I don't
+say Darrow doesn't like our marriage; I say it's Sophy who's
+hated it since Darrow's been here!"
+
+He brought out the charge in a tone of forced composure, but
+his lips were white and he grasped the doorknob to hide the
+tremor of his hand.
+
+Anna's anger surged up with her fears.  "You're absurd,
+Owen!  I don't know why I listen to you.  Why should Sophy
+dislike Mr. Darrow, and if she does, why should that have
+anything to do with her wishing to break her engagement?"
+
+"I don't say she dislikes him!  I don't say she likes him; I
+don't know what it is they say to each other when they're
+shut up together alone."
+
+"Shut up together alone?" Anna stared.  Owen seemed like a
+man in delirium; such an exhibition was degrading to them
+all.  But he pushed on without seeing her look.
+
+"Yes--the first evening she came, in the study; the next
+morning, early, in the park; yesterday, again, in the
+spring-house, when you were at the lodge with the doctor...I
+don't know what they say to each other, but they've taken
+every chance they could to say it...and to say it when they
+thought that no one saw them."
+
+Anna longed to silence him, but no words came to her. It was
+as though all her confused apprehensions had suddenly taken
+definite shape.  There was "something"--yes, there was
+"something"...Darrow's reticences and evasions had been more
+than a figment of her doubts.
+
+The next instant brought a recoil of pride.  She turned
+indignantly on her step-son.
+
+"I don't half understand what you've been saying; but what
+you seem to hint is so preposterous, and so insulting both
+to Sophy and to me, that I see no reason why we should
+listen to you any longer."
+
+Though her tone steadied Owen, she perceived at once that it
+would not deflect him from his purpose.  He spoke less
+vehemently, but with all the more precision.
+
+"How can it be preposterous, since it's true?  Or insulting,
+since I don't know, any more than YOU, the meaning of
+what I've been seeing?  If you'll be patient with me I'll try
+to put it quietly.  What I mean is that Sophy has completely
+changed since she met Darrow here, and that, having noticed
+the change, I'm hardly to blame for having tried to find out
+its cause."
+
+Anna made an effort to answer him with the same composure.
+"You're to blame, at any rate, for so recklessly assuming
+that you HAVE found it out.  You seem to forget that,
+till they met here, Sophy and Mr. Darrow hardly knew each
+other."
+
+"If so, it's all the stranger that they've been so often
+closeted together!"
+
+"Owen, Owen--" the girl sighed out.
+
+He turned his haggard face to her.  "Can I help it, if I've
+seen and known what I wasn't meant to?  For God's sake give
+me a reason--any reason I can decently make out with!  Is it
+my fault if, the day after you arrived, when I came back
+late through the garden, the curtains of the study hadn't
+been drawn, and I saw you there alone with Darrow?"
+
+Anna laughed impatiently.  "Really, Owen, if you make it a
+grievance that two people who are staying in the same house
+should be seen talking together----!"
+
+"They were not talking.  That's the point----"
+
+"Not talking?  How do you know?  You could hardly hear them
+from the garden!"
+
+"No; but I could see.  HE was sitting at my desk, with
+his face in his hands.  SHE was standing in the window,
+looking away from him..."
+
+He waited, as if for Sophy Viner's answer; but still she
+neither stirred nor spoke.
+
+"That was the first time," he went on; "and the second was
+the next morning in the park.  It was natural enough, their
+meeting there.  Sophy had gone out with Effie, and Effie ran
+back to look for me.  She told me she'd left Sophy and
+Darrow in the path that leads to the river, and presently we
+saw them ahead of us.  They didn't see us at first, because
+they were standing looking at each other; and this time they
+were not speaking either.  We came up close before they
+heard us, and all that time they never spoke, or stopped
+looking at each other.  After that I began to wonder; and so
+I watched them."
+
+"Oh, Owen!"
+"Oh, I only had to wait.  Yesterday, when I motored you and
+the doctor back from the lodge, I saw Sophy coming out of
+the spring-house.  I supposed she'd taken shelter from the
+rain, and when you got out of the motor I strolled back down
+the avenue to meet her.  But she'd disappeared--she must
+have taken a short cut and come into the house by the side
+door.  I don't know why I went on to the spring-house; I
+suppose it was what you'd call spying.  I went up the steps
+and found the room empty; but two chairs had been moved out
+from the wall and were standing near the table; and one of
+the Chinese screens that lie on it had dropped to the
+floor."
+
+Anna sounded a faint note of irony.  "Really?  Sophy'd gone
+there for shelter, and she dropped a screen and moved a
+chair?"
+
+"I said two chairs----"
+
+"Two?  What damning evidence--of I don't know what!"
+
+"Simply of the fact that Darrow'd been there with her. As I
+looked out of the window I saw him close by, walking away.
+He must have turned the corner of the spring-house just as I
+got to the door."
+
+There was another silence, during which Anna paused, not
+only to collect her own words but to wait for Sophy Viner's;
+then, as the girl made no sign, she turned to her.
+
+"I've absolutely nothing to say to all this; but perhaps
+you'd like me to wait and hear your answer?"
+
+Sophy raised her head with a quick flash of colour. "I've no
+answer either--except that Owen must be mad."
+
+In the interval since she had last spoken she seemed to have
+regained her self-control, and her voice rang clear, with a
+cold edge of anger.
+
+Anna looked at her step-son.  He had grown extremely pale,
+and his hand fell from the door with a discouraged gesture.
+"That's all then?  You won't give me any reason?"
+
+"I didn't suppose it was necessary to give you or any one
+else a reason for talking with a friend of Mrs. Leath's
+under Mrs. Leath's own roof."
+
+Owen hardly seemed to feel the retort: he kept his dogged
+stare on her face.
+
+"I won't ask for one, then.  I'll only ask you to give me
+your assurance that your talks with Darrow have had nothing
+to do with your suddenly deciding to leave Givre."
+
+She hesitated, not so much with the air of weighing her
+answer as of questioning his right to exact any.  "I give
+you my assurance; and now I should like to go," she said.
+
+As she turned away, Anna intervened.  "My dear, I think you
+ought to speak."
+
+The girl drew herself up with a faint laugh.  "To him--or to
+YOU?"
+
+"To him."
+
+She stiffened.  "I've said all there is to say."
+
+Anna drew back, her eyes on her step-son.  He had left the
+threshold and was advancing toward Sophy Viner with a motion
+of desperate appeal; but as he did so there was a knock on
+the door.  A moment's silence fell on the three; then Anna
+said: "Come in!"
+
+Darrow came into the room.  Seeing the three together, he
+looked rapidly from one to the other; then he turned to Anna
+with a smile.
+
+"I came up to see if you were ready; but please send me off
+if I'm not wanted."
+
+His look, his voice, the simple sense of his presence,
+restored Anna's shaken balance.  By Owen's side he looked so
+strong, so urbane, so experienced, that the lad's passionate
+charges dwindled to mere boyish vapourings.  A moment ago
+she had dreaded Darrow's coming; now she was glad that he
+was there.
+
+She turned to him with sudden decision.  "Come in, please; I
+want you to hear what Owen has been saying."
+
+She caught a murmur from Sophy Viner, but disregarded it.
+An illuminating impulse urged her on.  She, habitually so
+aware of her own lack of penetration, her small skill in
+reading hidden motives and detecting secret signals, now
+felt herself mysteriously inspired. She addressed herself to
+Sophy Viner.  "It's much better for you both that this
+absurd question should be cleared up now " Then, turning to
+Darrow, she continued: "For some reason that I don't pretend
+to guess, Owen has taken it into his head that you've
+influenced Miss Viner to break her engagement."
+
+She spoke slowly and deliberately, because she wished to
+give time and to gain it; time for Darrow and Sophy to
+receive the full impact of what she was saying, and time to
+observe its full effect on them.  She had said to herself:
+"If there's nothing between them, they'll look at each
+other; if there IS something, they won't;" and as she
+ceased to speak she felt as if all her life were in her
+eyes.
+
+Sophy, after a start of protest, remained motionless, her
+gaze on the ground.  Darrow, his face grown grave, glanced
+slowly from Owen Leath to Anna.  With his eyes on the latter
+he asked: "Has Miss Viner broken her engagement?"
+
+A moment's silence followed his question; then the girl
+looked up and said: "Yes!"
+
+Owen, as she spoke, uttered a smothered exclamation and
+walked out of the room.  She continued to stand in the same
+place, without appearing to notice his departure, and
+without vouchsafing an additional word of explanation; then,
+before Anna could find a cry to detain her, she too turned
+and went out.
+
+"For God's sake, what's happened?" Darrow asked; but Anna,
+with a drop of the heart, was saying to herself that he and
+Sophy Viner had not looked at each other.
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Anna stood in the middle of the room, her eyes on the door.
+Darrow's questioning gaze was still on her, and she said to
+herself with a quick-drawn breath: "If only he doesn't come
+near me!"
+
+It seemed to her that she had been suddenly endowed with the
+fatal gift of reading the secret sense of every seemingly
+spontaneous look and movement, and that in his least gesture
+of affection she would detect a cold design.
+
+For a moment longer he continued to look at her enquiringly;
+then he turned away and took up his habitual stand by the
+mantel-piece.  She drew a deep breath of relief .
+
+"Won't you please explain?" he said.
+
+"I can't explain: I don't know.  I didn't even know--till
+she told you--that she really meant to break her engagement.
+All I know is that she came to me just now and said she
+wished to leave Givre today; and that Owen, when he heard of
+it--for she hadn't told him--at once accused her of going
+away with the secret intention of throwing him over."
+
+"And you think it's a definite break?" She perceived, as she
+spoke, that his brow had cleared.
+
+"How should I know?  Perhaps you can tell me."
+
+"I?" She fancied his face clouded again, but he did not move
+from his tranquil attitude.
+
+"As I told you," she went on, "Owen has worked himself up to
+imagining that for some mysterious reason you've influenced
+Sophy against him."
+
+Darrow still visibly wondered.  "It must indeed be a
+mysterious reason!  He knows how slightly I know Miss Viner.
+Why should he imagine anything so wildly improbable?"
+
+"I don't know that either."
+
+"But he must have hinted at some reason."
+
+"No: he admits he doesn't know your reason.  He simply says
+that Sophy's manner to him has changed since she came back
+to Givre and that he's seen you together several times--in
+the park, the spring-house, I don't know where--talking
+alone in a way that seemed confidential--almost secret; and
+he draws the preposterous conclusion that you've used your
+influence to turn her against him."
+
+"My influence?  What kind of influence?"
+
+"He doesn't say."
+
+Darrow again seemed to turn over the facts she gave him.
+His face remained grave, but without the least trace of
+discomposure.  "And what does Miss Viner say?"
+
+"She says it's perfectly natural that she should
+occasionally talk to my friends when she's under my roof--
+and refuses to give him any other explanation."
+
+"That at least is perfectly natural!"
+
+Anna felt her cheeks flush as she answered: "Yes--but there
+is something----"
+
+"Something----?"
+
+"Some reason for her sudden decision to break her
+engagement.  I can understand Owen's feeling, sorry as I am
+for his way of showing it.  The girl owes him some sort of
+explanation, and as long as she refuses to give it his
+imagination is sure to run wild."
+
+"She would have given it, no doubt, if he d asked it in a
+different tone."
+
+"I don't defend Owen's tone--but she knew what it was before
+she accepted him.  She knows he's excitable and
+undisciplined."
+
+"Well, she's been disciplining him a little--probably the
+best thing that could happen.  Why not let the matter rest
+there?"
+
+"Leave Owen with the idea that you HAVE been the cause
+of the break?"
+
+He met the question with his easy smile.  "Oh, as to that--
+leave him with any idea of me he chooses!  But leave him, at
+any rate, free."
+
+"Free?" she echoed in surprise.
+
+"Simply let things be.  You've surely done all you could for
+him and Miss Viner.  If they don't hit it off it's their own
+affair.  What possible motive can you have for trying to
+interfere now?"
+
+Her gaze widened to a deeper wonder.  "Why--naturally, what
+he says of you!"
+
+"I don't care a straw what he says of me!  In such a
+situation a boy in love will snatch at the most far-fetched
+reason rather than face the mortifying fact that the lady
+may simply be tired of him."
+
+"You don t quite understand Owen.  Things go deep with him,
+and last long.  It took him a long time to recover from his
+other unlucky love affair.  He's romantic and extravagant:
+he can't live on the interest of his feelings.  He worships
+Sophy and she seemed to be fond of him.  If she's changed
+it's been very sudden.  And if they part like this, angrily
+and inarticulately, it will hurt him horribly--hurt his very
+soul.  But that, as you say, is between the two. What
+concerns me is his associating you with their quarrel.
+Owen's like my own son--if you'd seen him when I first came
+here you'd know why.  We were like two prisoners who talk to
+each other by tapping on the wall.  He's never forgotten it,
+nor I.  Whether he breaks with Sophy, or whether they make
+it up, I can't let him think you had anything to do with
+it."
+
+She raised her eyes entreatingly to Darrow's, and read in
+them the forbearance of the man resigned to the discussion
+of non-existent problems.
+
+"I'll do whatever you want me to," he said; "but I don't yet
+know what it is."
+
+His smile seemed to charge her with inconsequence, and the
+prick to her pride made her continue: "After all, it's not
+so unnatural that Owen, knowing you and Sophy to be almost
+strangers, should wonder what you were saying to each other
+when he saw you talking together."
+
+She felt a warning tremor as she spoke, as though some
+instinct deeper than reason surged up in defense of its
+treasure.  But Darrow's face was unstirred save by the flit
+of his half-amused smile.
+
+"Well, my dear--and couldn't you have told him?"
+"I?" she faltered out through her blush.
+
+"You seem to forget, one and all of you, the position you
+put me in when I came down here: your appeal to me to see
+Owen through, your assurance to him that I would, Madame de
+Chantelle's attempt to win me over; and most of all, my own
+sense of the fact you've just recalled to me: the
+importance, for both of us, that Owen should like me.  It
+seemed to me that the first thing to do was to get as much
+light as I could on the whole situation; and the obvious way
+of doing it was to try to know Miss Viner better.  Of course
+I've talked with her alone--I've talked with her as often as
+I could.  I've tried my best to find out if you were right
+in encouraging Owen to marry her."
+
+She listened with a growing sense of reassurance, struggling
+to separate the abstract sense of his words from the
+persuasion in which his eyes and voice enveloped them.
+
+"I see--I do see," she murmured.
+
+"You must see, also, that I could hardly say this to Owen
+without offending him still more, and perhaps increasing the
+breach between Miss Viner and himself. What sort of figure
+should I cut if I told him I'd been trying to find out if
+he'd made a proper choice?  In any case, it's none of my
+business to offer an explanation of what she justly says
+doesn't need one.  If she declines to speak, it's obviously
+on the ground that Owen's insinuations are absurd; and that
+surely pledges me to silence."
+
+"Yes, yes!  I see," Anna repeated.  "But I don't want you to
+explain anything to Owen."
+
+"You haven't yet told me what you do want."
+
+She hesitated, conscious of the difficulty of justifying her
+request; then: "I want you to speak to Sophy," she said.
+
+Darrow broke into an incredulous laugh.  "Considering what
+my previous attempts have resulted in----!"
+
+She raised her eyes quickly.  "They haven't, at least,
+resulted in your liking her less, in your thinking less well
+of her than you've told me?"
+
+She fancied he frowned a little.  "I wonder why you go back
+to that?"
+
+"I want to be sure--I owe it to Owen.  Won't you tell me the
+exact impression she's produced on you?"
+
+"I have told you--I like Miss Viner."
+
+"Do you still believe she's in love with Owen?"
+
+"There was nothing in our short talks to throw any
+particular light on that."
+
+"You still believe, though, that there's no reason why he
+shouldn't marry her?"
+
+Again he betrayed a restrained impatience.  "How can I
+answer that without knowing her reasons for breaking with
+him?"
+
+"That's just what I want you to find out from her."
+
+"And why in the world should she tell me?"
+
+"Because, whatever grievance she has against Owen, she can
+certainly have none against me.  She can't want to have Owen
+connect me in his mind with this wretched quarrel; and she
+must see that he will until he's convinced you've had no
+share in it."
+
+Darrow's elbow dropped from the mantel-piece and he took a
+restless step or two across the room.  Then he halted before
+her.
+
+"Why can't you tell her this yourself?"
+
+"Don't you see?"
+
+He eyed her intently, and she pressed on: "You must have
+guessed that Owen's jealous of you."
+
+"Jealous of me?" The blood flew up under his brown skin.
+
+"Blind with it--what else would drive him to this folly?  And
+I can't have her think me jealous too!  I've said all I
+could, short of making her think so; and she's refused a
+word more to either of us.  Our only chance now is that she
+should listen to you--that you should make her see the harm
+her silence may do."
+
+Darrow uttered a protesting exclamation.  "It's all too
+preposterous--what you suggest!  I can't, at any rate, appeal
+to her on such a ground as that!"
+
+Anna laid her hand on his arm.  "Appeal to her on the ground
+that I'm almost Owen's mother, and that any estrangement
+between you and him would kill me.  She knows what he is--
+she'll understand.  Tell her to say anything, do anything,
+she wishes; but not to go away without speaking, not to
+leave THAT between us when she goes!"
+
+She drew back a step and lifted her face to his, trying to
+look into his eyes more deeply than she had ever looked; but
+before she could discern what they expressed he had taken
+hold of her hands and bent his head to kiss them.
+
+"You'll see her?  You'll see her?" she entreated; and he
+answered: "I'll do anything in the world you want me to."
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Darrow waited alone in the sitting-room.
+
+No place could have been more distasteful as the scene of
+the talk that lay before him; but he had acceded to Anna's
+suggestion that it would seem more natural for her to summon
+Sophy Viner than for him to go in search of her.  As his
+troubled pacings carried him back and forth a relentless
+hand seemed to be tearing away all the tender fibres of
+association that bound him to the peaceful room.  Here, in
+this very place, he had drunk his deepest draughts of
+happiness, had had his lips at the fountain-head of its
+overflowing rivers; but now that source was poisoned and he
+would taste no more of an untainted cup.
+
+For a moment he felt an actual physical anguish; then his
+nerves hardened for the coming struggle.  He had no notion
+of what awaited him; but after the first instinctive recoil
+he had seen in a flash the urgent need of another word with
+Sophy Viner.  He had been insincere in letting Anna think
+that he had consented to speak because she asked it.  In
+reality he had been feverishly casting about for the pretext
+she had given him; and for some reason this trivial
+hypocrisy weighed on him more than all his heavy burden of
+deceit.
+
+At length he heard a step behind him and Sophy Viner
+entered.  When she saw him she paused on the threshold and
+half drew back.
+
+"I was told that Mrs. Leath had sent for me."
+
+"Mrs. Leath DID send for you.  She'll be here presently;
+but I asked her to let me see you first."
+
+He spoke very gently, and there was no insincerity in his
+gentleness.  He was profoundly moved by the change in the
+girl's appearance.  At sight of him she had forced a smile;
+but it lit up her wretchedness like a candle-flame held to a
+dead face.
+
+She made no reply, and Darrow went on: "You must understand
+my wanting to speak to you, after what I was told just now."
+
+She interposed, with a gesture of protest: "I'm not
+responsible for Owen's ravings!"
+
+"Of course----".  He broke off and they stood facing each
+other.  She lifted a hand and pushed back her loose lock
+with the gesture that was burnt into his memory; then she
+looked about her and dropped into the nearest chair.
+
+"Well, you've got what you wanted," she said.
+
+"What do you mean by what I wanted?"
+
+"My engagement's broken--you heard me say so."
+
+"Why do you say that's what I wanted?  All I wished, from the
+beginning, was to advise you, to help you as best I could--
+--"
+
+"That's what you've done," she rejoined.  "You've convinced
+me that it's best I shouldn't marry him."
+
+Darrow broke into a despairing laugh.  "At the very moment
+when you'd convinced me to the contrary!"
+
+"Had I?" Her smile flickered up.  "Well, I really believed
+it till you showed me...warned me..."
+
+"Warned you?"
+
+"That I'd be miserable if I married a man I didn't love."
+
+"Don't you love him?"
+
+She made no answer, and Darrow started up and walked away to
+the other end of the room.  He stopped before the writing-
+table, where his photograph, well-dressed, handsome, self-
+sufficient--the portrait of a man of the world, confident of
+his ability to deal adequately with the most delicate
+situations--offered its huge fatuity to his gaze.  He turned
+back to her.  "It's rather hard on Owen, isn't it, that you
+should have waited until now to tell him?"
+
+She reflected a moment before answering.  "I told him as
+soon as I knew."
+
+"Knew that you couldn't marry him?"
+
+"Knew that I could never live here with him."  She looked
+about the room, as though the very walls must speak for her.
+
+For a moment Darrow continued to search her face
+perplexedly; then their eyes met in a long disastrous gaze.
+
+"Yes----" she said, and stood up.
+
+Below the window they heard Effie whistling for her dogs,
+and then, from the terrace, her mother calling her.
+
+"There--THAT for instance," Sophy Viner said.
+
+Darrow broke out: "It's I who ought to go!"
+
+She kept her small pale smile.  "What good would that do any
+of us--now?"
+
+He covered his face with his hands.  "Good God!" he groaned.
+"How could I tell?"
+
+"You couldn't tell.  We neither of us could."  She seemed to
+turn the problem over critically.  "After all, it might have
+been YOU instead of me!"
+
+He took another distracted turn about the room and coming
+back to her sat down in a chair at her side.  A mocking hand
+seemed to dash the words from his lips. There was nothing on
+earth that he could say to her that wasn't foolish or cruel
+or contemptible...
+
+"My dear," he began at last, "oughtn't you, at any rate, to
+try?"
+
+Her gaze grew grave.  "Try to forget you?"
+
+He flushed to the forehead.  "I meant, try to give Owen more
+time; to give him a chance.  He's madly in love with you;
+all the good that's in him is in your hands. His step-mother
+felt that from the first.  And she thought--she believed----
+"
+
+"She thought I could make him happy.  Would she think so
+now?"
+
+"Now...?  I don't say now.  But later?  Time modifies...rubs
+out...more quickly than you think...Go away, but let him
+hope...I'm going too--WE'RE going--" he stumbled on the
+plural--"in a very few weeks: going for a long time,
+probably.  What you're thinking of now may never happen.  We
+may not all be here together again for years."
+
+She heard him out in silence, her hands clasped on her knee,
+her eyes bent on them.  "For me," she said, "you'll always
+be here."
+
+"Don't say that--oh, don't!  Things change...people
+change...You'll see!"
+
+"You don't understand.  I don't want anything to change.  I
+don't want to forget--to rub out.  At first I imagined I
+did; but that was a foolish mistake.  As soon as I saw you
+again I knew it...It's not being here with you that I'm
+afraid of--in the sense you think.  It's being here, or
+anywhere, with Owen."  She stood up and bent her tragic smile
+on him.  "I want to keep you all to myself."
+
+The only words that came to him were futile denunciations of
+his folly; but the sense of their futility checked them on
+his lips.  "Poor child--you poor child!" he heard himself
+vainly repeating.
+
+Suddenly he felt the strong reaction of reality and its
+impetus brought him to his feet.  "Whatever happens, I
+intend to go--to go for good," he exclaimed.  "I want you to
+understand that.  Oh, don't be afraid--I'll find a reason.
+But it's perfectly clear that I must go."
+
+She uttered a protesting cry.  "Go away?  You?  Don't you see
+that that would tell everything--drag everybody into the
+horror?"
+
+He found no answer, and her voice dropped back to its calmer
+note.  "What good would your going do?  Do you suppose it
+would change anything for me?"  She looked at him with a
+musing wistfulness.  "I wonder what your feeling for me was?
+It seems queer that I've never really known--I suppose we
+DON'T know much about that kind of feeling.  Is it like
+taking a drink when you're thirsty?...I used to feel as if
+all of me was in the palm of your hand..."
+
+He bowed his humbled head, but she went on almost
+exultantly: "Don't for a minute think I'm sorry!  It was
+worth every penny it cost.  My mistake was in being ashamed,
+just at first, of its having cost such a lot. I tried to
+carry it off as a joke--to talk of it to myself as an
+'adventure'.  I'd always wanted adventures, and you'd given
+me one, and I tried to take your attitude about it, to 'play
+the game' and convince myself that I hadn't risked any more
+on it than you. Then, when I met you again, I suddenly saw
+that I HAD risked more, but that I'd won more, too--such
+worlds!  I'd been trying all the while to put everything I
+could between us; now I want to sweep everything away. I'd
+been trying to forget how you looked; now I want to remember
+you always.  I'd been trying not to hear your voice; now I
+never want to hear any other.  I've made my choice--that's
+all: I've had you and I mean to keep you."  Her face was
+shining like her eyes.  "To keep you hidden away here," she
+ended, and put her hand upon her breast.
+
+After she had left him, Darrow continued to sit motionless,
+staring back into their past.  Hitherto it had lingered on
+the edge of his mind in a vague pink blur, like one of the
+little rose-leaf clouds that a setting sun drops from its
+disk.  Now it was a huge looming darkness, through which his
+eyes vainly strained.  The whole episode was still obscure
+to him, save where here and there, as they talked, some
+phrase or gesture or intonation of the girl's had lit up a
+little spot in the night.
+
+She had said: "I wonder what your feeling for me was?" and
+he found himself wondering too...He remembered distinctly
+enough that he had not meant the perilous passion--even in
+its most transient form--to play a part in their relation.
+In that respect his attitude had been above reproach.  She
+was an unusually original and attractive creature, to whom
+he had wanted to give a few days of harmless pleasuring, and
+who was alert and expert enough to understand his intention
+and spare him the boredom of hesitations and
+misinterpretations.  That had been his first impression, and
+her subsequent demeanour had justified it.  She had been,
+from the outset, just the frank and easy comrade he had
+expected to find her.  Was it he, then, who, in the sequel,
+had grown impatient of the bounds he had set himself?  Was it
+his wounded vanity that, seeking balm for its hurt, yearned
+to dip deeper into the healing pool of her compassion?  In
+his confused memory of the situation he seemed not to have
+been guiltless of such yearnings...Yet for the first few
+days the experiment had been perfectly successful. Her
+enjoyment had been unclouded and his pleasure in it
+undisturbed.  It was very gradually--he seemed to see--that
+a shade of lassitude had crept over their intercourse.
+Perhaps it was because, when her light chatter about people
+failed, he found she had no other fund to draw on, or
+perhaps simply because of the sweetness of her laugh, or of
+the charm of the gesture with which, one day in the woods of
+Marly, she had tossed off her hat and tilted back her head
+at the call of a cuckoo; or because, whenever he looked at
+her unexpectedly, he found that she was looking at him and
+did not want him to know it; or perhaps, in varying degrees,
+because of all these things, that there had come a moment
+when no word seemed to fly high enough or dive deep enough
+to utter the sense of well-being each gave to the other, and
+the natural substitute for speech had been a kiss.
+
+The kiss, at all events, had come at the precise moment to
+save their venture from disaster.  They had reached the
+point when her amazing reminiscences had begun to flag, when
+her future had been exhaustively discussed, her theatrical
+prospects minutely studied, her quarrel with Mrs. Murrett
+retold with the last amplification of detail, and when,
+perhaps conscious of her exhausted resources and his
+dwindling interest, she had committed the fatal error of
+saying that she could see he was unhappy, and entreating him
+to tell her why...
+
+From the brink of estranging confidences, and from the risk
+of unfavourable comparisons, his gesture had snatched her
+back to safety; and as soon as he had kissed her he felt
+that she would never bore him again. She was one of the
+elemental creatures whose emotion is all in their pulses,
+and who become inexpressive or sentimental when they try to
+turn sensation into speech.  His caress had restored her to
+her natural place in the scheme of things, and Darrow felt
+as if he had clasped a tree and a nymph had bloomed from
+it...
+
+The mere fact of not having to listen to her any longer
+added immensely to her charm.  She continued, of course, to
+talk to him, but it didn't matter, because he no longer made
+any effort to follow her words, but let her voice run on as
+a musical undercurrent to his thoughts.
+
+She hadn't a drop of poetry in her, but she had some of the
+qualities that create it in others; and in moments of heat
+the imagination does not always feel the difference...
+
+Lying beside her in the shade, Darrow felt her presence as a
+part of the charmed stillness of the summer woods, as the
+element of vague well-being that suffused his senses and
+lulled to sleep the ache of wounded pride.  All he asked of
+her, as yet, was a touch on the hand or on the lips--and
+that she should let him go on lying there through the long
+warm hours, while a black-bird's song throbbed like a
+fountain, and the summer wind stirred in the trees, and
+close by, between the nearest branches and the brim of his
+tilted hat, a slight white figure gathered up all the
+floating threads of joy...
+
+He recalled, too, having noticed, as he lay staring at a
+break in the tree-tops, a stream of mares'-tails coming up
+the sky.  He had said to himself: "It will rain to-morrow,"
+and the thought had made the air seem warmer and the sun
+more vivid on her hair...Perhaps if the mares'-tails had not
+come up the sky their adventure might have had no sequel.
+But the cloud brought rain, and next morning he looked out
+of his window into a cold grey blur.  They had planned an
+all-day excursion down the Seine, to the two Andelys and
+Rouen, and now, with the long hours on their hands, they
+were both a little at a loss...There was the Louvre, of
+course, and the Luxembourg; but he had tried looking at
+pictures with her, she had first so persistently admired the
+worst things, and then so frankly lapsed into indifference,
+that he had no wish to repeat the experiment.  So they went
+out, aimlessly, and took a cold wet walk, turning at length
+into the deserted arcades of the Palais Royal, and finally
+drifting into one of its equally deserted restaurants, where
+they lunched alone and somewhat dolefully, served by a wan
+old waiter with the look of a castaway who has given up
+watching for a sail...It was odd how the waiter's face came
+back to him...
+
+Perhaps but for the rain it might never have happened; but
+what was the use of thinking of that now?  He tried to turn
+his thoughts to more urgent issues; but, by a strange
+perversity of association, every detail of the day was
+forcing itself on his mind with an insistence from which
+there was no escape.  Reluctantly he relived the long wet
+walk back to the hotel, after a tedious hour at a
+cinematograph show on the Boulevard. It was still raining
+when they withdrew from this stale spectacle, but she had
+obstinately refused to take a cab, had even, on the way,
+insisted on loitering under the dripping awnings of shop-
+windows and poking into draughty passages, and finally, when
+they had nearly reached their destination, had gone so far
+as to suggest that they should turn back to hunt up some
+show she had heard of in a theatre at the Batignolles.  But
+at that he had somewhat irritably protested: he remembered
+that, for the first time, they were both rather irritable,
+and vaguely disposed to resist one another's suggestions.
+His feet were wet, and he was tired of walking, and sick of
+the smell of stuffy unaired theatres, and he had said he
+must really get back to write some letters--and so they had
+kept on to the hotel...
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Darrow had no idea how long he had sat there when he heard
+Anna's hand on the door.  The effort of rising, and of
+composing his face to meet her, gave him a factitious sense
+of self-control.  He said to himself: "I must decide on
+something----" and that lifted him a hair's breadth above
+the whirling waters.
+
+She came in with a lighter step, and he instantly perceived
+that something unforeseen and reassuring had happened.
+
+"She's been with me.  She came and found me on the terrace.
+We've had a long talk and she's explained everything.  I
+feel as if I'd never known her before!"
+
+Her voice was so moved and tender that it checked his start
+of apprehension.
+
+"She's explained----?"
+
+"It's natural, isn't it, that she should have felt a little
+sore at the kind of inspection she's been subjected to?  Oh,
+not from you--I don't mean that!  But Madame de Chantelle's
+opposition--and her sending for Adelaide Painter!  She told
+me frankly she didn't care to owe her husband to Adelaide
+Painter...She thinks now that her annoyance at feeling
+herself so talked over and scrutinized may have shown itself
+in her manner to Owen, and set him imagining the insane
+things he did...I understand all she must have felt, and I
+agree with her that it's best she should go away for a
+while.  She's made me," Anna summed up, "feel as if I'd been
+dreadfully thick-skinned and obtuse!"
+
+"YOU?"
+
+"Yes.  As if I'd treated her like the bric-a-brac that used
+to be sent down here 'on approval,' to see if it would look
+well with the other pieces."  She added, with a sudden flush
+of enthusiasm: "I'm glad she's got it in her to make one
+feel like that!"
+
+She seemed to wait for Darrow to agree with her, or to put
+some other question, and he finally found voice to ask:
+"Then you think it's not a final break?"
+
+"I hope not--I've never hoped it more!  I had a word with
+Owen, too, after I left her, and I think he understands that
+he must let her go without insisting on any positive
+promise.  She's excited...he must let her calm down..."
+
+Again she waited, and Darrow said: "Surely you can make him
+see that."
+
+"She'll help me to--she's to see him, of course, before she
+goes.  She starts immediately, by the way, with Adelaide
+Painter, who is motoring over to Francheuil to catch the one
+o'clock express--and who, of course, knows nothing of all
+this, and is simply to be told that Sophy has been sent for
+by the Farlows."
+
+Darrow mutely signed his comprehension, and she went on:
+"Owen is particularly anxious that neither Adelaide nor his
+grandmother should have the least inkling of what's
+happened.  The need of shielding Sophy will help him to
+control himself.  He's coming to his senses, poor boy; he's
+ashamed of his wild talk already.  He asked me to tell you
+so; no doubt he'll tell you so himself."
+
+Darrow made a movement of protest.  "Oh, as to that--the
+thing's not worth another word."
+
+"Or another thought, either?" She brightened.  "Promise me
+you won't even think of it--promise me you won't be hard on
+him!"
+
+He was finding it easier to smile back at her.  "Why should
+you think it necessary to ask my indulgence for Owen?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, her eyes wandering from him. Then
+they came back with a smile.  "Perhaps because I need it for
+myself."
+
+"For yourself?"
+
+"I mean, because I understand better how one can torture
+one's self over unrealities."
+
+As Darrow listened, the tension of his nerves began to
+relax.  Her gaze, so grave and yet so sweet, was like a deep
+pool into which he could plunge and hide himself from the
+hard glare of his misery.  As this ecstatic sense enveloped
+him he found it more and more difficult to follow her words
+and to frame an answer; but what did anything matter, except
+that her voice should go on, and the syllables fall like
+soft touches on his tortured brain?
+
+"Don't you know," she continued, "the bliss of waking from a
+bad dream in one's own quiet room, and going slowly over all
+the horror without being afraid of it any more?  That's what
+I'm doing now.  And that's why I understand Owen..."  She
+broke off, and he felt her touch on his arm.  "BECAUSE
+I'D DREAMED THE HORROR TOO!"
+
+He understood her then, and stammered: "You?"
+
+"Forgive me!  And let me tell you!...It will help you to
+understand Owen...There WERE little things...little
+signs...once I had begun to watch for them: your reluctance
+to speak about her...her reserve with you...a sort of
+constraint we'd never seen in her before..."
+
+She laughed up at him, and with her hands in his he
+contrived to say: "NOW you understand why?"
+
+"Oh, I understand; of course I understand; and I want you to
+laugh at me--with me!  Because there were other things
+too...crazier things still...There was even--last night on
+the terrace--her pink cloak..."
+
+"Her pink cloak?" Now he honestly wondered, and as she saw
+it she blushed.
+
+"You've forgotten about the cloak?  The pink cloak that Owen
+saw you with at the play in Paris?  Yes...yes...I was mad
+enough for that!...It does me good to laugh about it now!
+But you ought to know that I'm going to be a jealous
+woman...a ridiculously jealous woman...you ought to be
+warned of it in time..."
+
+He had dropped her hands, and she leaned close and lifted
+her arms to his neck with one of her rare gestures of
+surrender.
+
+"I don't know why it is; but it makes me happier now to have
+been so foolish!"
+
+Her lips were parted in a noiseless laugh and the tremor of
+her lashes made their shadow move on her cheek.  He looked
+at her through a mist of pain and saw all her offered beauty
+held up like a cup to his lips; but as he stooped to it a
+darkness seemed to fall between them, her arms slipped from
+his shoulders and she drew away from him abruptly.
+
+"But she WAS with you, then?" she exclaimed; and then,
+as he stared at her: "Oh, don't say no!  Only go and look at
+your eyes!"
+
+He stood speechless, and she pressed on: "Don't deny it--oh,
+don't deny it!  What will be left for me to imagine if you
+do?  Don't you see how every single thing cries it out?  Owen
+sees it--he saw it again just now!  When I told him she'd
+relented, and would see him, he said: 'Is that Darrow's
+doing too?'"
+
+Darrow took the onslaught in silence.  He might have spoken,
+have summoned up the usual phrases of banter and denial; he
+was not even certain that they might not, for the moment,
+have served their purpose if he could have uttered them
+without being seen.  But he was as conscious of what had
+happened to his face as if he had obeyed Anna's bidding and
+looked at himself in the glass.  He knew he could no more
+hide from her what was written there than he could efface
+from his soul the fiery record of what he had just lived
+through.  There before him, staring him in the eyes, and
+reflecting itself in all his lineaments, was the
+overwhelming fact of Sophy Viner's passion and of the act by
+which she had attested it.
+
+Anna was talking again, hurriedly, feverishly, and his soul
+was wrung by the anguish in her voice.  "Do speak at last--
+you must speak!  I don't want to ask you to harm the girl;
+but you must see that your silence is doing her more harm
+than your answering my questions could.  You're leaving me
+only the worst things to think of her...she'd see that
+herself if she were here. What worse injury can you do her
+than to make me hate her--to make me feel she's plotted with
+you to deceive us?"
+
+"Oh, not that!" Darrow heard his own voice before he was
+aware that he meant to speak.  "Yes; I did see her in
+Paris," he went on after a pause; "but I was bound to
+respect her reason for not wanting it known."
+
+Anna paled.  "It was she at the theatre that night?"
+
+"I was with her at the theatre one night."
+
+"Why should she have asked you not to say so?"
+
+"She didn't wish it known that I'd met her."
+
+"Why shouldn't she have wished it known?"
+
+"She had quarrelled with Mrs. Murrett and come over suddenly
+to Paris, and she didn't want the Farlows to hear of it.  I
+came across her by accident, and she asked me not to speak
+of having seen her."
+
+"Because of her quarrel?  Because she was ashamed of her part
+in it?"
+
+"Oh, no.  There was nothing for her to be ashamed of. But
+the Farlows had found the place for her, and she didn't want
+them to know how suddenly she'd had to leave, and how badly
+Mrs. Murrett had behaved.  She was in a terrible plight--the
+woman had even kept back her month's salary.  She knew the
+Farlows would be awfully upset, and she wanted more time to
+prepare them."
+
+Darrow heard himself speak as though the words had proceeded
+from other lips.  His explanation sounded plausible enough,
+and he half-fancied Anna's look grew lighter.  She waited a
+moment, as though to be sure he had no more to add; then she
+said: "But the Farlows DID know; they told me all about
+it when they sent her to me."
+
+He flushed as if she had laid a deliberate trap for him.
+"They may know NOW; they didn't then----"
+
+"That's no reason for her continuing now to make a mystery
+of having met you."
+
+"It's the only reason I can give you."
+
+"Then I'll go and ask her for one myself."  She turned and
+took a few steps toward the door.
+
+"Anna!" He started to follow her, and then checked himself.
+"Don't do that!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's not like you...not generous..."
+
+She stood before him straight and pale, but under her rigid
+face he saw the tumult of her doubt and misery.
+
+"I don't want to be ungenerous; I don't want to pry into her
+secrets.  But things can't be left like this. Wouldn't it be
+better for me to go to her?  Surely she'll understand--she'll
+explain...It may be some mere trifle she's concealing:
+something that would horrify the Farlows, but that I
+shouldn't see any harm in..."  She paused, her eyes
+searching his face. "A love affair, I suppose...that's it?
+You met her with some man at the theatre--and she was
+frightened and begged you to fib about it?  Those poor young
+things that have to go about among us like machines--oh, if
+you knew how I pity them!"
+
+"If you pity her, why not let her go?"
+
+She stared.  "Let her go--go for good, you mean?  Is that the
+best you can say for her?"
+
+"Let things take their course.  After all, it's between
+herself and Owen."
+
+"And you and me--and Effie, if Owen marries her, and I leave
+my child with them!  Don't you see the impossibility of what
+you're asking?  We're all bound together in this coil."
+
+Darrow turned away with a groan.  "Oh, let her go--let her
+go."
+
+"Then there IS something--something really bad?  She
+WAS with some one when you met her?  Some one with whom she
+was----" She broke off, and he saw her struggling with new
+thoughts.  "If it's THAT, of course...Oh, don't you
+see," she desperately appealed to him, "that I must find
+out, and that it's too late now for you not to speak?  Don't
+be afraid that I'll betray you...I'll never, never let a
+soul suspect.  But I must know the truth, and surely it's
+best for her that I should find it out from you."
+
+Darrow waited a moment; then he said slowly: "What you
+imagine's mere madness.  She was at the theatre with me."
+
+"With you?"  He saw a tremor pass through her, but she
+controlled it instantly and faced him straight and
+motionless as a wounded creature in the moment before it
+feels its wound.  "Why should you both have made a mystery
+of that?"
+
+"I've told you the idea was not mine."  He cast about. "She
+may have been afraid that Owen----"
+
+"But that was not a reason for her asking you to tell me
+that you hardly knew her--that you hadn't even seen her for
+years."  She broke off and the blood rose to her face and
+forehead.  "Even if SHE had other reasons, there could
+be only one reason for your obeying her----"
+Silence fell between them, a silence in which the room
+seemed to become suddenly resonant with voices.  Darrow's
+gaze wandered to the window and he noticed that the gale of
+two days before had nearly stripped the tops of the lime-
+trees in the court.  Anna had moved away and was resting her
+elbows against the mantel-piece, her head in her hands.  As
+she stood there he took in with a new intensity of vision
+little details of her appearance that his eyes had often
+cherished: the branching blue veins in the backs of her
+hands, the warm shadow that her hair cast on her ear, and
+the colour of the hair itself, dull black with a tawny
+under-surface, like the wings of certain birds.  He felt it
+to be useless to speak.
+
+After a while she lifted her head and said: "I shall not see
+her again before she goes."
+
+He made no answer, and turning to him she added: "That is
+why she's going, I suppose?  Because she loves you and won't
+give you up?"
+
+Darrow waited.  The paltriness of conventional denial was so
+apparent to him that even if it could have delayed discovery
+he could no longer have resorted to it. Under all his other
+fears was the dread of dishonouring the hour.
+
+"She HAS given me up," he said at last.
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+When he had gone out of the room Anna stood where he had
+left her.  "I must believe him!  I must believe him!" she
+said.
+
+A moment before, at the moment when she had lifted her arms
+to his neck, she had been wrapped in a sense of complete
+security.  All the spirits of doubt had been exorcised, and
+her love was once more the clear habitation in which every
+thought and feeling could move in blissful freedom.  And
+then, as she raised her face to Darrow's and met his eyes,
+she had seemed to look into the very ruins of his soul.
+That was the only way she could express it.  It was as
+though he and she had been looking at two sides of the same
+thing, and the side she had seen had been all light and
+life, and his a place of graves...
+
+She didn't now recall who had spoken first, or even, very
+clearly, what had been said.  It seemed to her only a moment
+later that she had found herself standing at the other end
+of the room--the room which had suddenly grown so small
+that, even with its length between them, she felt as if he
+touched her--crying out to him "It IS because of you
+she's going!" and reading the avowal in his face.
+
+That was his secret, then, THEIR secret: he had met the
+girl in Paris and helped her in her straits--lent her money,
+Anna vaguely conjectured--and she had fallen in love with
+him, and on meeting him again had been suddenly overmastered
+by her passion.  Anna, dropping back into her sofa-corner,
+sat staring these facts in the face.
+
+The girl had been in a desperate plight--frightened,
+penniless, outraged by what had happened, and not knowing
+(with a woman like Mrs. Murrett) what fresh injury might
+impend; and Darrow, meeting her in this distracted hour, had
+pitied, counselled, been kind to her, with the fatal, the
+inevitable result.  There were the facts as Anna made them
+out: that, at least, was their external aspect, was as much
+of them as she had been suffered to see; and into the secret
+intricacies they might cover she dared not yet project her
+thoughts.
+
+"I must believe him...I must believe him..."  She kept on
+repeating the words like a talisman.  It was natural, after
+all, that he should have behaved as he had: defended the
+girl's piteous secret to the last. She too began to feel the
+contagion of his pity--the stir, in her breast, of feelings
+deeper and more native to her than the pains of jealousy.
+From the security of her blessedness she longed to lean over
+with compassionate hands...But Owen?  What was Owen's part to
+be?  She owed herself first to him--she was bound to protect
+him not only from all knowledge of the secret she had
+surprised, but also--and chiefly!--from its consequences.
+Yes: the girl must go--there could be no doubt of it--Darrow
+himself had seen it from the first; and at the thought she
+had a wild revulsion of relief, as though she had been
+trying to create in her heart the delusion of a generosity
+she could not feel...
+
+The one fact on which she could stay her mind was that Sophy
+was leaving immediately; would be out of the house within an
+hour.  Once she was gone, it would be easier to bring Owen
+to the point of understanding that the break was final; if
+necessary, to work upon the girl to make him see it.  But
+that, Anna was sure, would not be necessary.  It was clear
+that Sophy Viner was leaving Givre with no thought of ever
+seeing it again...
+
+Suddenly, as she tried to put some order in her thoughts,
+she heard Owen's call at the door: "Mother!----" a name he
+seldom gave her.  There was a new note in his voice: the
+note of a joyous impatience.  It made her turn hastily to
+the glass to see what face she was about to show him; but
+before she had had time to compose it he was in the room and
+she was caught in a school-boy hug.
+
+"It's all right!  It's all right!  And it's all your doing!  I
+want to do the worst kind of penance--bell and candle and
+the rest.  I've been through it with HER, and now she
+hands me on to you, and you're to call me any names you
+please."  He freed her with his happy laugh.  "I'm to be
+stood in the corner till next week, and then I'm to go up to
+see her.  And she says I owe it all to you!"
+
+"To me?"  It was the first phrase she found to clutch at as
+she tried to steady herself in the eddies of his joy.
+
+"Yes: you were so patient, and so dear to her; and you saw
+at once what a damned ass I'd been!" She tried a smile, and
+it seemed to pass muster with him, for he sent it back in a
+broad beam.  "That's not so difficult to see?  No, I admit it
+doesn't take a microscope.  But you were so wise and
+wonderful--you always are.  I've been mad these last days,
+simply mad--you and she might well have washed your hands of
+me!  And instead, it's all right--all right!"
+
+She drew back a little, trying to keep the smile on her lips
+and not let him get the least glimpse of what it hid.  Now
+if ever, indeed, it behoved her to be wise and wonderful!
+
+"I'm so glad, dear; so glad.  If only you'll always feel
+like that about me..."  She stopped, hardly knowing what she
+said, and aghast at the idea that her own hands should have
+retied the knot she imagined to be broken.  But she saw he
+had something more to say; something hard to get out, but
+absolutely necessary to express.  He caught her hands,
+pulled her close, and, with his forehead drawn into its
+whimsical smiling wrinkles, "Look here," he cried, "if
+Darrow wants to call me a damned ass too you're not to stop
+him!"
+
+It brought her back to a sharper sense of her central peril:
+of the secret to be kept from him at whatever cost to her
+racked nerves.
+
+"Oh, you know, he doesn't always wait for orders!"  On the
+whole it sounded better than she'd feared.
+
+"You mean he's called me one already?"  He accepted the fact
+with his gayest laugh.  "Well, that saves a lot of trouble;
+now we can pass to the order of the day----" he broke off
+and glanced at the clock--"which is, you know, dear, that
+she's starting in about an hour; she and Adelaide must
+already be snatching a hasty sandwich.  You'll come down to
+bid them good-bye?"
+
+"Yes--of course."
+
+There had, in fact, grown upon her while he spoke the
+urgency of seeing Sophy Viner again before she left. The
+thought was deeply distasteful: Anna shrank from
+encountering the girl till she had cleared a way through her
+own perplexities.  But it was obvious that since they had
+separated, barely an hour earlier, the situation had taken a
+new shape.  Sophy Viner had apparently reconsidered her
+decision to break amicably but definitely with Owen, and
+stood again in their path, a menace and a mystery; and
+confused impulses of resistance stirred in Anna's mind.
+She felt Owen's touch on her arm.  "Are you coming?"
+
+"Yes...yes...presently."
+
+"What's the matter?  You look so strange."
+
+"What do you mean by strange?"
+
+"I don't know: startled--surprised " She read what her look
+must be by its sudden reflection in his face.
+
+"Do I?  No wonder!  You've given us all an exciting morning."
+
+He held to his point.  "You're more excited now that there's
+no cause for it.  What on earth has happened since I saw
+you?"
+
+He looked about the room, as if seeking the clue to her
+agitation, and in her dread of what he might guess she
+answered: "What has happened is simply that I'm rather
+tired.  Will you ask Sophy to come up and see me here?"
+
+
+While she waited she tried to think what she should say when
+the girl appeared; but she had never been more conscious of
+her inability to deal with the oblique and the tortuous.
+She had lacked the hard teachings of experience, and an
+instinctive disdain for whatever was less clear and open
+than her own conscience had kept her from learning anything
+of the intricacies and contradictions of other hearts.  She
+said to herself: "I must find out----" yet everything in her
+recoiled from the means by which she felt it must be done...
+
+Sophy Viner appeared almost immediately, dressed for
+departure, her little bag on her arm.  She was still pale to
+the point of haggardness, but with a light upon her that
+struck Anna with surprise.  Or was it, perhaps, that she was
+looking at the girl with new eyes: seeing her, for the first
+time, not as Effie's governess, not as Owen's bride, but as
+the embodiment of that unknown peril lurking in the
+background of every woman's thoughts about her lover?  Anna,
+at any rate, with a sudden sense of estrangement, noted in
+her graces and snares never before perceived.  It was only
+the flash of a primitive instinct, but it lasted long enough
+to make her ashamed of the darknesses it lit up in her
+heart...
+
+She signed to Sophy to sit down on the sofa beside her. "I
+asked you to come up to me because I wanted to say good-bye
+quietly," she explained, feeling her lips tremble, but
+trying to speak in a tone of friendly naturalness.
+
+The girl's only answer was a faint smile of acquiescence,
+and Anna, disconcerted by her silence, went on: "You've
+decided, then, not to break your engagement?"
+
+Sophy Viner raised her head with a look of surprise.
+Evidently the question, thus abruptly put, must have sounded
+strangely on the lips of so ardent a partisan as Mrs. Leath!
+"I thought that was what you wished," she said.
+
+"What I wished?" Anna's heart shook against her side.  "I
+wish, of course, whatever seems best for Owen...It's
+natural, you must understand, that that consideration should
+come first with me..."
+
+Sophy was looking at her steadily.  "I supposed it was the
+only one that counted with you."
+
+The curtness of retort roused Anna's latent antagonism.  "It
+is," she said, in a hard voice that startled her as she
+heard it.  Had she ever spoken so to any one before?  She
+felt frightened, as though her very nature had changed
+without her knowing it...Feeling the girl's astonished gaze
+still on her, she continued: "The suddenness of the change
+has naturally surprised me.  When I left you it was
+understood that you were to reserve your decision----"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And now----?" Anna waited for a reply that did not come.
+She did not understand the girl's attitude, the edge of
+irony in her short syllables, the plainly premeditated
+determination to lay the burden of proof on her
+interlocutor.  Anna felt the sudden need to lift their
+intercourse above this mean level of defiance and distrust.
+She looked appealingly at Sophy.
+
+"Isn't it best that we should speak quite frankly?  It's this
+change on your part that perplexes me.  You can hardly be
+surprised at that.  It's true, I asked you not to break with
+Owen too abruptly--and I asked it, believe me, as much for
+your sake as for his: I wanted you to take time to think
+over the difficulty that seems to have arisen between you.
+The fact that you felt it required thinking over seemed to
+show you wouldn't take the final step lightly--wouldn't, I
+mean, accept of Owen more than you could give him.  But your
+change of mind obliges me to ask the question I thought you
+would have asked yourself.  Is there any reason why you
+shouldn't marry Owen?"
+
+She stopped a little breathlessly, her eyes on Sophy Viner's
+burning face.  "Any reason----?  What do you mean by a
+reason?"
+
+Anna continued to look at her gravely.  "Do you love some
+one else?" she asked.
+
+Sophy's first look was one of wonder and a faint relief;
+then she gave back the other's scrutiny in a glance of
+indescribable reproach.  "Ah, you might have waited!" she
+exclaimed.
+
+"Waited?"
+
+"Till I'd gone: till I was out of the house.  You might have
+known...you might have guessed..."  She turned her eyes
+again on Anna.  "I only meant to let him hope a little
+longer, so that he shouldn't suspect anything; of course I
+can't marry him," she said.
+
+Anna stood motionless, silenced by the shock of the avowal.
+She too was trembling, less with anger than with a confused
+compassion.  But the feeling was so blent with others, less
+generous and more obscure, that she found no words to
+express it, and the two women faced each other without
+speaking.
+
+"I'd better go," Sophy murmured at length with lowered head.
+
+The words roused in Anna a latent impulse of compunction.
+The girl looked so young, so exposed and desolate!  And what
+thoughts must she be hiding in her heart!  It was impossible
+that they should part in such a spirit.
+
+"I want you to know that no one said anything...It was I
+who..."
+
+Sophy looked at her.  "You mean that Mr. Darrow didn't tell
+you?  Of course not: do you suppose I thought he did?  You
+found it out, that's all--I knew you would. In your place I
+should have guessed it sooner."
+
+The words were spoken simply, without irony or emphasis; but
+they went through Anna like a sword.  Yes, the girl would
+have had divinations, promptings that she had not had!  She
+felt half envious of such a sad precocity of wisdom.
+
+"I'm so sorry...so sorry..."  she murmured.
+
+"Things happen that way.  Now I'd better go.  I'd like to
+say good-bye to Effie."
+
+"Oh----" it broke in a cry from Effie's mother.  "Not like
+this--you mustn't!  I feel--you make me feel too horribly: as
+if I were driving you away..."  The words had rushed up from
+the depths of her bewildered pity.
+
+"No one is driving me away: I had to go," she heard the girl
+reply.
+
+There was another silence, during which passionate impulses
+of magnanimity warred in Anna with her doubts and dreads.
+At length, her eyes on Sophy's face: "Yes, you must go now,"
+she began; "but later on...after a while, when all this is
+over...if there's no reason why you shouldn't marry Owen----
+" she paused a moment on the words--" I shouldn't want you
+to think I stood between you..."
+
+"You?" Sophy flushed again, and then grew pale.  She seemed
+to try to speak, but no words came.
+"Yes!  It was not true when I said just now that I was
+thinking only of Owen.  I'm sorry--oh, so sorry!--for you
+too.  Your life--I know how hard it's been; and
+mine...mine's so full...Happy women understand best!" Anna
+drew near and touched the girl's hand; then she began again,
+pouring all her soul into the broken phrases: "It's terrible
+now...you see no future; but if, by and bye...you know
+best...but you're so young...and at your age things DO
+pass.  If there's no reason, no real reason, why you
+shouldn't marry Owen, I WANT him to hope, I'll help him
+to hope...if you say so..."
+
+With the urgency of her pleading her clasp tightened on
+Sophy's hand, but it warmed to no responsive tremor: the
+girl seemed numb, and Anna was frightened by the stony
+silence of her look.  "I suppose I'm not more than half a
+woman," she mused, "for I don't want my happiness to hurt
+her;" and aloud she repeated: "If only you'll tell me
+there's no reason----"
+
+The girl did not speak; but suddenly, like a snapped branch,
+she bent, stooped down to the hand that clasped her, and
+laid her lips upon it in a stream of weeping. She cried
+silently, continuously, abundantly, as though Anna's touch
+had released the waters of some deep spring of pain; then,
+as Anna, moved and half afraid, leaned over her with a sound
+of pity, she stood up and turned away.
+
+"You're going, then--for good--like this?"  Anna moved
+toward her and stopped.  Sophy stopped too, with eyes that
+shrank from her.
+
+"Oh----" Anna cried, and hid her face.
+
+The girl walked across the room and paused again in the
+doorway.  From there she flung back: "I wanted it--I chose
+it.  He was good to me--no one ever was so good!"
+
+The door-handle turned, and Anna heard her go.
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Her first thought was: "He's going too in a few hours--I
+needn't see him again before he leaves..."  At that moment
+the possibility of having to look in Darrow's face and hear
+him speak seemed to her more unendurable than anything else
+she could imagine.  Then, on the next wave of feeling, came
+the desire to confront him at once and wring from him she
+knew not what: avowal, denial, justification, anything that
+should open some channel of escape to the flood of her pent-
+up anguish.
+
+She had told Owen she was tired, and this seemed a
+sufficient reason for remaining upstairs when the motor came
+to the door and Miss Painter and Sophy Viner were borne off
+in it; sufficient also for sending word to Madame de
+Chantelle that she would not come down till after luncheon.
+Having despatched her maid with this message, she lay down
+on her sofa and stared before her into darkness...
+
+She had been unhappy before, and the vision of old miseries
+flocked like hungry ghosts about her fresh pain: she
+recalled her youthful disappointment, the failure of her
+marriage, the wasted years that followed; but those were
+negative sorrows, denials and postponements of life.  She
+seemed in no way related to their shadowy victim, she who
+was stretched on this fiery rack of the irreparable.  She
+had suffered before--yes, but lucidly, reflectively,
+elegiacally: now she was suffering as a hurt animal must,
+blindly, furiously, with the single fierce animal longing
+that the awful pain should stop...
+
+She heard her maid knock, and she hid her face and made no
+answer.  The knocking continued, and the discipline of habit
+at length made her lift her head, compose her face and hold
+out her hand to the note the woman brought her.  It was a
+word from Darrow--"May I see you?"--and she said at once, in
+a voice that sounded thin and empty: "Ask Mr. Darrow to come
+up."
+
+The maid enquired if she wished to have her hair smoothed
+first, and she answered that it didn't matter; but when the
+door had closed, the instinct of pride drew her to her feet
+and she looked at herself in the glass above the mantelpiece
+and passed her hands over her hair.  Her eyes were burning
+and her face looked tired and thinner; otherwise she could
+see no change in her appearance, and she wondered that at
+such a moment her body should seem as unrelated to the self
+that writhed within her as if it had been a statue or a
+picture.
+
+The maid reopened the door to show in Darrow, and he paused
+a moment on the threshold, as if waiting for Anna to speak.
+He was extremely pale, but he looked neither ashamed nor
+uncertain, and she said to herself, with a perverse thrill
+of appreciation: "He's as proud as I am."
+
+Aloud she asked: "You wanted to see me?"
+
+"Naturally," he replied in a grave voice.
+
+"Don't!  It's useless.  I know everything.  Nothing you can
+say will help."
+
+At the direct affirmation he turned even paler, and his
+eyes, which he kept resolutely fixed on her, confessed his
+misery.
+
+"You allow me no voice in deciding that?"
+
+"Deciding what?"
+
+"That there's nothing more to be said?" He waited for her to
+answer, and then went on: "I don't even know what you mean
+by 'everything'."
+
+"Oh, I don't know what more there is!  I know enough.  I
+implored her to deny it, and she couldn't...What can you and
+I have to say to each other?" Her voice broke into a sob.
+The animal anguish was upon her again--just a blind cry
+against her pain!
+
+Darrow kept his head high and his eyes steady.  "It must be
+as you wish; and yet it's not like you to be afraid."
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"To talk things out--to face them."
+
+"It's for YOU to face this--not me!"
+
+"All I ask is to face it--but with you."  Once more he
+paused.  "Won't you tell me what Miss Viner told you?"
+
+"Oh, she's generous--to the utmost!" The pain caught her
+like a physical throe.  It suddenly came to her how the girl
+must have loved him to be so generous--what memories there
+must be between them!
+
+"Oh, go, please go.  It's too horrible.  Why should I have
+to see you?" she stammered, lifting her hands to her eyes.
+
+With her face hidden she waited to hear him move away, to
+hear the door open and close again, as, a few hours earlier,
+it had opened and closed on Sophy Viner. But Darrow made no
+sound or movement: he too was waiting.  Anna felt a thrill
+of resentment: his presence was an outrage on her sorrow, a
+humiliation to her pride.  It was strange that he should
+wait for her to tell him so!
+
+"You want me to leave Givre?" he asked at length.  She made
+no answer, and he went on: "Of course I'll do as you wish;
+but if I go now am I not to see you again?"
+
+His voice was firm: his pride was answering her pride!
+
+She faltered: "You must see it's useless----"
+
+"I might remind you that you're dismissing me without a
+hearing----"
+
+"Without a hearing?  I've heard you both!"
+
+----"but I won't," he continued, "remind you of that, or of
+anything or any one but Owen."
+
+"Owen?"
+
+"Yes; if we could somehow spare him----"
+
+She had dropped her hands and turned her startled eyes on
+him.  It seemed to her an age since she had thought of Owen!
+
+"You see, don't you," Darrow continued, "that if you send me
+away now----"
+
+She interrupted: "Yes, I see----" and there was a long
+silence between them.  At length she said, very low: "I
+don't want any one else to suffer as I'm suffering..."
+
+"Owen knows I meant to leave tomorrow," Darrow went on. "Any
+sudden change of plan may make him think..."
+
+Oh, she saw his inevitable logic: the horror of it was on
+every side of her!  It had seemed possible to control her
+grief and face Darrow calmly while she was upheld by the
+belief that this was their last hour together, that after he
+had passed out of the room there would be no fear of seeing
+him again, no fear that his nearness, his look, his voice,
+and all the unseen influences that flowed from him, would
+dissolve her soul to weakness. But her courage failed at the
+idea of having to conspire with him to shield Owen, of
+keeping up with him, for Owen's sake, a feint of union and
+felicity. To live at Darrow's side in seeming intimacy and
+harmony for another twenty-four hours seemed harder than to
+live without him for all the rest of her days. Her strength
+failed her, and she threw herself down and buried her sobs
+in the cushions where she had so often hidden a face aglow
+with happiness.
+
+"Anna----" His voice was close to her.  "Let me talk to you
+quietly.  It's not worthy of either of us to be afraid."
+
+Words of endearment would have offended her; but her heart
+rose at the call to her courage.
+
+"I've no defense to make," he went on.  "The facts are
+miserable enough; but at least I want you to see them as
+they are.  Above all, I want you to know the truth about
+Miss Viner----"
+
+The name sent the blood to Anna's forehead.  She raised her
+head and faced him.  "Why should I know more of her than
+what she's told me?  I never wish to hear her name again!"
+
+"It's because you feel about her in that way that I ask you
+--in the name of common charity--to let me give you the facts
+as they are, and not as you've probably imagined them."
+
+"I've told you I don't think uncharitably of her.  I don't
+want to think of her at all!"
+
+"That's why I tell you you're afraid."
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"Yes.  You've always said you wanted, above all, to look at
+life, at the human problem, as it is, without fear and
+without hypocrisy; and it's not always a pleasant thing to
+look at."  He broke off, and then began again: "Don't think
+this a plea for myself!  I don't want to say a word to lessen
+my offense.  I don't want to talk of myself at all.  Even if
+I did, I probably couldn't make you understand--I don't,
+myself, as I look back.  Be just to me--it's your right; all
+I ask you is to be generous to Miss Viner..."
+
+She stood up trembling.  "You're free to be as generous to
+her as you please!"
+
+"Yes: you've made it clear to me that I'm free.  But there's
+nothing I can do for her that will help her half as much as
+your understanding her would."
+
+"Nothing you can do for her?  You can marry her!"
+
+His face hardened.  "You certainly couldn't wish her a worse
+fate!"
+
+"It must have been what she expected...relied on..."He was
+silent, and she broke out: "Or what is she?  What are you?
+It's too horrible!  On your way here...to ME..."  She felt
+the tears in her throat and stopped.
+
+"That was it," he said bluntly.  She stared at him.
+
+"I was on my way to you--after repeated delays and
+postponements of your own making.  At the very last you
+turned me back with a mere word--and without explanation.  I
+waited for a letter; and none came.  I'm not saying this to
+justify myself.  I'm simply trying to make you understand.
+I felt hurt and bitter and bewildered.  I thought you meant
+to give me up.  And suddenly, in my way, I found some one to
+be sorry for, to be of use to.  That, I swear to you, was
+the way it began.  The rest was a moment's folly...a flash
+of madness...as such things are.  We've never seen each
+other since..."
+
+Anna was looking at him coldly.  "You sufficiently describe
+her in saying that!"
+
+"Yes, if you measure her by conventional standards--which is
+what you always declare you never do."
+
+"Conventional standards?  A girl who----" She was checked by
+a sudden rush of almost physical repugnance. Suddenly she
+broke out: "I always thought her an adventuress!"
+
+"Always?"
+
+"I don't mean always...but after you came..."
+
+"She's not an adventuress."
+
+"You mean that she professes to act on the new theories?  The
+stuff that awful women rave about on platforms?"
+
+"Oh, I don't think she pretended to have a theory----"
+
+"She hadn't even that excuse?"
+
+"She had the excuse of her loneliness, her unhappiness--of
+miseries and humiliations that a woman like you can't even
+guess.  She had nothing to look back to but indifference or
+unkindness--nothing to look forward to but anxiety.  She saw
+I was sorry for her and it touched her.  She made too much
+of it--she exaggerated it.  I ought to have seen the danger,
+but I didn't. There's no possible excuse for what I did."
+
+Anna listened to him in speechless misery.  Every word he
+spoke threw back a disintegrating light on their own past.
+He had come to her with an open face and a clear conscience
+--come to her from this!  If his security was the security of
+falsehood it was horrible; if it meant that he had
+forgotten, it was worse.  She would have liked to stop her
+ears, to close her eyes, to shut out every sight and sound
+and suggestion of a world in which such things could be; and
+at the same time she was tormented by the desire to know
+more, to understand better, to feel herself less ignorant
+and inexpert in matters which made so much of the stuff of
+human experience.  What did he mean by "a moment's folly, a
+flash of madness"?  How did people enter on such adventures,
+how pass out of them without more visible traces of their
+havoc?  Her imagination recoiled from the vision of a sudden
+debasing familiarity: it seemed to her that her thoughts
+would never again be pure...
+
+"I swear to you," she heard Darrow saying, "it was simply
+that, and nothing more."
+
+She wondered at his composure, his competence, at his
+knowing so exactly what to say.  No doubt men often had to
+make such explanations: they had the formulas by heart...A
+leaden lassitude descended on her.  She passed from flame
+and torment into a colourless cold world where everything
+surrounding her seemed equally indifferent and remote.  For
+a moment she simply ceased to feel.
+
+She became aware that Darrow was waiting for her to speak,
+and she made an effort to represent to herself the meaning
+of what he had just said; but her mind was as blank as a
+blurred mirror.  Finally she brought out: "I don't think I
+understand what you've told me."
+
+"No; you don't understand," he returned with sudden
+bitterness; and on his lips the charge of incomprehension
+seemed an offense to her.
+
+"I don't want to--about such things!"
+
+He answered almost harshly: "Don't be afraid...you never
+will..."  and for an instant they faced each other like
+enemies.  Then the tears swelled in her throat at his
+reproach.
+
+"You mean I don't feel things--I'm too hard?"
+
+"No: you're too high...too fine...such things are too far
+from you."
+
+He paused, as if conscious of the futility of going on with
+whatever he had meant to say, and again, for a short space,
+they confronted each other, no longer as enemies--so it
+seemed to her--but as beings of different language who had
+forgotten the few words they had learned of each other's
+speech.
+
+Darrow broke the silence.  "It's best, on all accounts, that
+I should stay till tomorrow; but I needn't intrude on you;
+we needn't meet again alone.  I only want to be sure I know
+your wishes."  He spoke the short sentences in a level voice,
+as though he were summing up the results of a business
+conference.
+
+Anna looked at him vaguely.  "My wishes?"
+
+"As to Owen----
+
+At that she started.  "They must never meet again!"
+
+"It's not likely they will.  What I meant was, that it
+depends on you to spare him..."
+
+She answered steadily: "He shall never know," and after
+another interval Darrow said: "This is good-bye, then."
+
+At the word she seemed to understand for the first time
+whither the flying moments had been leading them. Resentment
+and indignation died down, and all her consciousness
+resolved itself into the mere visual sense that he was there
+before her, near enough for her to lift her hand and touch
+him, and that in another instant the place where he stood
+would be empty.
+
+She felt a mortal weakness, a craven impulse to cry out to
+him to stay, a longing to throw herself into his arms, and
+take refuge there from the unendurable anguish he had caused
+her.  Then the vision called up another thought: "I shall
+never know what that girl has known..."  and the recoil of
+pride flung her back on the sharp edges of her anguish.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, in dread lest he should read her face;
+and she stood motionless, her head high, while he walked to
+the door and went out.
+
+
+
+BOOK V
+
+XXX
+
+
+Anna Leath, three days later, sat in Miss Painter's drawing-
+room in the rue de Matignon.
+
+Coming up precipitately that morning from the country, she
+had reached Paris at one o'clock and Miss Painter's landing
+some ten minutes later.  Miss Painter's mouldy little man-
+servant, dissembling a napkin under his arm, had mildly
+attempted to oppose her entrance; but Anna, insisting, had
+gone straight to the dining-room and surprised her friend--
+who ate as furtively as certain animals--over a strange meal
+of cold mutton and lemonade.  Ignoring the embarrassment she
+caused, she had set forth the object of her journey, and
+Miss Painter, always hatted and booted for action, had
+immediately hastened out, leaving her to the solitude of the
+bare fireless drawing-room with its eternal slip-covers and
+"bowed" shutters.
+
+In this inhospitable obscurity Anna had sat alone for close
+upon two hours.  Both obscurity and solitude were acceptable
+to her, and impatient as she was to hear the result of the
+errand on which she had despatched her hostess, she desired
+still more to be alone.  During her long meditation in a
+white-swathed chair before the muffled hearth she had been
+able for the first time to clear a way through the darkness
+and confusion of her thoughts.  The way did not go far, and
+her attempt to trace it was as weak and spasmodic as a
+convalescent's first efforts to pick up the thread of
+living.  She seemed to herself like some one struggling to
+rise from a long sickness of which it would have been so
+much easier to die.  At Givre she had fallen into a kind of
+torpor, a deadness of soul traversed by wild flashes of
+pain; but whether she suffered or whether she was numb, she
+seemed equally remote from her real living and doing self.
+
+It was only the discovery--that very morning--of Owen's
+unannounced departure for Paris that had caught her out of
+her dream and forced her back to action.  The dread of what
+this flight might imply, and of the consequences that might
+result from it, had roused her to the sense of her
+responsibility, and from the moment when she had resolved to
+follow her step-son, and had made her rapid preparations for
+pursuit, her mind had begun to work again, feverishly,
+fitfully, but still with something of its normal order.  In
+the train she had been too agitated, too preoccupied with
+what might next await her, to give her thoughts to anything
+but the turning over of dread alternatives; but Miss
+Painter's imperviousness had steadied her, and while she
+waited for the sound of the latch-key she resolutely
+returned upon herself.
+
+With respect to her outward course she could at least tell
+herself that she had held to her purpose.  She had, as
+people said, "kept up" during the twenty-four hours
+preceding George Darrow's departure; had gone with a calm
+face about her usual business, and even contrived not too
+obviously to avoid him.  Then, the next day before dawn,
+from behind the closed shutters where she had kept for half
+the night her dry-eyed vigil, she had heard him drive off to
+the train which brought its passengers to Paris in time for
+the Calais express.
+
+The fact of his taking that train, of his travelling so
+straight and far away from her, gave to what had happened
+the implacable outline of reality.  He was gone; he would
+not come back; and her life had ended just as she had
+dreamed it was beginning.  She had no doubt, at first, as to
+the absolute inevitability of this conclusion.  The man who
+had driven away from her house in the autumn dawn was not
+the man she had loved; he was a stranger with whom she had
+not a single thought in common.  It was terrible, indeed,
+that he wore the face and spoke in the voice of her friend,
+and that, as long as he was under one roof with her, the
+mere way in which he moved and looked could bridge at a
+stroke the gulf between them.  That, no doubt, was the fault
+of her exaggerated sensibility to outward things: she was
+frightened to see how it enslaved her.  A day or two before
+she had supposed the sense of honour was her deepest
+sentiment: if she had smiled at the conventions of others it
+was because they were too trivial, not because they were too
+grave.  There were certain dishonours with which she had
+never dreamed that any pact could be made: she had had an
+incorruptible passion for good faith and fairness.
+
+She had supposed that, once Darrow was gone, once she was
+safe from the danger of seeing and hearing him, this high
+devotion would sustain her.  She had believed it would be
+possible to separate the image of the man she had thought
+him from that of the man he was.  She had even foreseen the
+hour when she might raise a mournful shrine to the memory of
+the Darrow she had loved, without fear that his double's
+shadow would desecrate it.  But now she had begun to
+understand that the two men were really one.  The Darrow she
+worshipped was inseparable from the Darrow she abhorred; and
+the inevitable conclusion was that both must go, and she be
+left in the desert of a sorrow without memories...
+
+But if the future was thus void, the present was all too
+full.  Never had blow more complex repercussions; and to
+remember Owen was to cease to think of herself. What
+impulse, what apprehension, had sent him suddenly to Paris?
+And why had he thought it needful to conceal his going from
+her?  When Sophy Viner had left, it had been with the
+understanding that he was to await her summons; and it
+seemed improbable that he would break his pledge, and seek
+her without leave, unless his lover's intuition had warned
+him of some fresh danger. Anna recalled how quickly he had
+read the alarm in her face when he had rushed back to her
+sitting-room with the news that Miss Viner had promised to
+see him again in Paris.  To be so promptly roused, his
+suspicions must have been but half-asleep; and since then,
+no doubt, if she and Darrow had dissembled, so had he.  To
+her proud directness it was degrading to think that they had
+been living together like enemies who spy upon each other's
+movements: she felt a desperate longing for the days which
+had seemed so dull and narrow, but in which she had walked
+with her head high and her eyes unguarded.
+
+She had come up to Paris hardly knowing what peril she
+feared, and still less how she could avert it.  If Owen
+meant to see Miss Viner--and what other object could he
+have?--they must already be together, and it was too late to
+interfere.  It had indeed occurred to Anna that Paris might
+not be his objective point: that his real purpose in leaving
+Givre without her knowledge had been to follow Darrow to
+London and exact the truth of him.  But even to her alarmed
+imagination this seemed improbable.  She and Darrow, to the
+last, had kept up so complete a feint of harmony that,
+whatever Owen had surmised, he could scarcely have risked
+acting on his suspicions.  If he still felt the need of an
+explanation, it was almost certainly of Sophy Viner that he
+would ask it; and it was in quest of Sophy Viner that Anna
+had despatched Miss Painter.
+
+She had found a blessed refuge from her perplexities in the
+stolid Adelaide's unawareness.  One could so absolutely
+count on Miss Painter's guessing no more than one chose, and
+yet acting astutely on such hints as one vouchsafed her!  She
+was like a well-trained retriever whose interest in his prey
+ceases when he lays it at his master's feet.  Anna, on
+arriving, had explained that Owen's unannounced flight had
+made her fear some fresh misunderstanding between himself
+and Miss Viner. In the interests of peace she had thought it
+best to follow him; but she hastily added that she did not
+wish to see Sophy, but only, if possible, to learn from her
+where Owen was.  With these brief instructions Miss Painter
+had started out; but she was a woman of many occupations,
+and had given her visitor to understand that before
+returning she should have to call on a friend who had just
+arrived from Boston, and afterward despatch to another
+exiled compatriot a supply of cranberries and brandied
+peaches from the American grocery in the Champs Elysees.
+
+Gradually, as the moments passed, Anna began to feel the
+reaction which, in moments of extreme nervous tension,
+follows on any effort of the will.  She seemed to have gone
+as far as her courage would carry her, and she shrank more
+and more from the thought of Miss Painter's return, since
+whatever information the latter brought would necessitate
+some fresh decision.  What should she say to Owen if she
+found him?  What could she say that should not betray the one
+thing she would give her life to hide from him?  "Give her
+life"--how the phrase derided her!  It was a gift she would
+not have bestowed on her worst enemy.  She would not have
+had Sophy Viner live the hours she was living now...
+She tried again to look steadily and calmly at the picture
+that the image of the girl evoked.  She had an idea that she
+ought to accustom herself to its contemplation.  If life was
+like that, why the sooner one got used to it the
+better...But no!  Life was not like that.  Her adventure was
+a hideous accident. She dreaded above all the temptation to
+generalise from her own case, to doubt the high things she
+had lived by and seek a cheap solace in belittling what fate
+had refused her.  There was such love as she had dreamed,
+and she meant to go on believing in it, and cherishing the
+thought that she was worthy of it.  What had happened to her
+was grotesque and mean and miserable; but she herself was
+none of these things, and never, never would she make of
+herself the mock that fate had made of her...
+
+She could not, as yet, bear to think deliberately of Darrow;
+but she kept on repeating to herself "By and bye that will
+come too."  Even now she was determined not to let his image
+be distorted by her suffering.  As soon as she could, she
+would try to single out for remembrance the individual
+things she had liked in him before she had loved him
+altogether.  No "spiritual exercise" devised by the
+discipline of piety could have been more torturing; but its
+very cruelty attracted her.  She wanted to wear herself out
+with new pains...
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+The sound of Miss Painter's latch-key made her start. She
+was still a bundle of quivering fears to whom each coming
+moment seemed a menace.
+
+There was a slight interval, and a sound of voices in the
+hall; then Miss Painter's vigorous hand was on the door.
+
+Anna stood up as she came in.  "You've found him?"
+
+"I've found Sophy."
+
+"And Owen?--has she seen him?  Is he here?"
+
+"SHE'S here: in the hall.  She wants to speak to you."
+
+"Here--NOW?" Anna found no voice for more.
+
+"She drove back with me," Miss Painter continued in the tone
+of impartial narrative.  "The cabman was impertinent.  I've
+got his number."  She fumbled in a stout black reticule.
+
+"Oh, I can't--" broke from Anna; but she collected herself,
+remembering that to betray her unwillingness to see the girl
+was to risk revealing much more.
+
+"She thought you might be too tired to see her: she wouldn't
+come in till I'd found out."
+
+Anna drew a quick breath.  An instant's thought had told her
+that Sophy Viner would hardly have taken such a step unless
+something more important had happened. "Ask her to come,
+please," she said.
+
+Miss Painter, from the threshold, turned back to announce
+her intention of going immediately to the police station to
+report the cabman's delinquency; then she passed out, and
+Sophy Viner entered.
+
+The look in the girl's face showed that she had indeed come
+unwillingly; yet she seemed animated by an eager
+resoluteness that made Anna ashamed of her tremors. For a
+moment they looked at each other in silence, as if the
+thoughts between them were packed too thick for speech; then
+Anna said, in a voice from which she strove to take the edge
+of hardness: "You know where Owen is, Miss Painter tells
+me."
+
+"Yes; that was my reason for asking you to see me."  Sophy
+spoke simply, without constraint or hesitation.
+
+"I thought he'd promised you--" Anna interposed.
+
+"He did; but he broke his promise.  That's what I thought I
+ought to tell you."
+
+"Thank you."  Anna went on tentatively: "He left Givre this
+morning without a word.  I followed him because I was
+afraid..."
+
+She broke off again and the girl took up her phrase.  "You
+were afraid he'd guessed?  He HAS..."
+
+"What do you mean--guessed what?"
+
+"That you know something he doesn't...something that made
+you glad to have me go."
+
+"Oh--" Anna moaned.  If she had wanted more pain she had it
+now.  "He's told you this?" she faltered.
+
+"He hasn't told me, because I haven't seen him.  I kept him
+off--I made Mrs. Farlow get rid of him.  But he's written me
+what he came to say; and that was it."
+
+"Oh, poor Owen!" broke from Anna.  Through all the
+intricacies of her suffering she felt the separate pang of
+his.
+
+"And I want to ask you," the girl continued, "to let me see
+him; for of course," she added in the same strange voice of
+energy, "I wouldn't unless you consented."
+
+"To see him?" Anna tried to gather together her startled
+thoughts.  "What use would it be?  What could you tell him?"
+
+"I want to tell him the truth," said Sophy Viner.
+
+The two women looked at each other, and a burning blush rose
+to Anna's forehead.  "I don't understand," she faltered.
+
+Sophy waited a moment; then she lowered her voice to say: "I
+don't want him to think worse of me than he need..."
+
+"Worse?"
+
+"Yes--to think such things as you're thinking now...I want
+him to know exactly what happened...then I want to bid him
+good-bye."
+
+Anna tried to clear a way through her own wonder and
+confusion.  She felt herself obscurely moved.
+
+"Wouldn't it be worse for him?"
+
+"To hear the truth?  It would be better, at any rate, for you
+and Mr. Darrow."
+
+At the sound of the name Anna lifted her head quickly. "I've
+only my step-son to consider!"
+
+The girl threw a startled look at her.  "You don't mean--
+you're not going to give him up?"
+
+Anna felt her lips harden.  "I don't think it's of any use
+to talk of that."
+
+"Oh, I know!  It's my fault for not knowing how to say what I
+want you to hear.  Your words are different; you know how to
+choose them.  Mine offend you...and the dread of it makes me
+blunder.  That's why, the other day, I couldn't say
+anything...couldn't make things clear to you.  But now
+MUST, even if you hate it!" She drew a step nearer, her
+slender figure swayed forward in a passion of entreaty.  "Do
+listen to me!  What you've said is dreadful.  How can you
+speak of him in that voice?  Don't you see that I went away
+so that he shouldn't have to lose you?"
+
+Anna looked at her coldly.  "Are you speaking of Mr. Darrow?
+I don't know why you think your going or staying can in any
+way affect our relations."
+
+"You mean that you HAVE given him up--because of me?  Oh,
+how could you?  You can't really love him!--And yet," the
+girl suddenly added, "you must, or you'd be more sorry for
+me!"
+
+"I'm very sorry for you," Anna said, feeling as if the iron
+band about her heart pressed on it a little less inexorably.
+
+"Then why won't you hear me?  Why won't you try to
+understand?  It's all so different from what you imagine!"
+
+"I've never judged you."
+
+"I'm not thinking of myself.  He loves you!"
+
+"I thought you'd come to speak of Owen."
+
+Sophy Viner seemed not to hear her.  "He's never loved any
+one else.  Even those few days...I knew it all the
+while...he never cared for me."
+
+"Please don't say any more!" Anna said.
+
+"I know it must seem strange to you that I should say so
+much.  I shock you, I offend you: you think me a creature
+without shame.  So I am--but not in the sense you think!  I'm
+not ashamed of having loved him; no; and I'm not ashamed of
+telling you so.  It's that that justifies me--and him
+too...Oh, let me tell you how it happened!  He was sorry for
+me: he saw I cared. I KNEW that was all he ever felt.  I
+could see he was thinking of some one else.  I knew it was
+only for a week...He never said a word to mislead me...I
+wanted to be happy just once--and I didn't dream of the harm
+I might be doing him!"
+
+Anna could not speak.  She hardly knew, as yet, what the
+girl's words conveyed to her, save the sense of their tragic
+fervour; but she was conscious of being in the presence of
+an intenser passion than she had ever felt.
+
+"I am sorry for you."  She paused.  "But why do you say this
+to me?" After another interval she exclaimed: "You'd no
+right to let Owen love you."
+
+"No; that was wrong.  At least what's happened since has
+made it so.  If things had been different I think I could
+have made Owen happy.  You were all so good to me--I wanted
+so to stay with you!  I suppose you'll say that makes it
+worse: my daring to dream I had the right...But all that
+doesn't matter now.  I won't see Owen unless you're willing.
+I should have liked to tell him what I've tried to tell you;
+but you must know better; you feel things in a finer way.
+Only you'll have to help him if I can't.  He cares a great
+deal...it's going to hurt him..."
+
+Anna trembled.  "Oh, I know!  What can I do?"
+
+"You can go straight back to Givre--now, at once!  So that
+Owen shall never know you've followed him."  Sophy's clasped
+hands reached out urgently.  "And you can send for Mr.
+Darrow--bring him back.  Owen must be convinced that he's
+mistaken, and nothing else will convince him.  Afterward
+I'll find a pretext--oh, I promise you!  But first he must
+see for himself that nothing's changed for you."
+
+Anna stood motionless, subdued and dominated.  The girl's
+ardour swept her like a wind.
+
+"Oh, can't I move you?  Some day you'll know!" Sophy pleaded,
+her eyes full of tears.
+
+Anna saw them, and felt a fullness in her throat. Again the
+band about her heart seemed loosened.  She wanted to find a
+word, but could not: all within her was too dark and
+violent.  She gave the girl a speechless look.
+
+"I do believe you," she said suddenly; then she turned and
+walked out of the room.
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+She drove from Miss Painter's to her own apartment. The
+maid-servant who had it in charge had been apprised of her
+coming, and had opened one or two of the rooms, and prepared
+a fire in her bedroom.  Anna shut herself in, refusing the
+woman's ministrations.  She felt cold and faint, and after
+she had taken off her hat and cloak she knelt down by the
+fire and stretched her hands to it.
+
+In one respect, at least, it was clear to her that she would
+do well to follow Sophy Viner's counsel.  It had been an act
+of folly to follow Owen, and her first business was to get
+back to Givre before him.  But the only train leaving that
+evening was a slow one, which did not reach Francheuil till
+midnight, and she knew that her taking it would excite
+Madame de Chantelle's wonder and lead to interminable talk.
+She had come up to Paris on the pretext of finding a new
+governess for Effie, and the natural thing was to defer her
+return till the next morning.  She knew Owen well enough to
+be sure that he would make another attempt to see Miss
+Viner, and failing that, would write again and await her
+answer: so that there was no likelihood of his reaching
+Givre till the following evening.
+
+Her sense of relief at not having to start out at once
+showed her for the first time how tired she was.  The
+bonne had suggested a cup of tea, but the dread of having
+any one about her had made Anna refuse, and she had eaten
+nothing since morning but a sandwich bought at a buffet.
+She was too tired to get up, but stretching out her arm she
+drew toward her the arm-chair which stood beside the hearth
+and rested her head against its cushions.  Gradually the
+warmth of the fire stole into her veins and her heaviness of
+soul was replaced by a dreamy buoyancy.  She seemed to be
+seated on the hearth in her sitting-room at Givre, and
+Darrow was beside her, in the chair against which she
+leaned.  He put his arms about her shoulders and drawing her
+head back looked into her eyes.  "Of all the ways you do
+your hair, that's the way I like best," he said...
+
+A log dropped, and she sat up with a start.  There was a
+warmth in her heart, and she was smiling.  Then she looked
+about her, and saw where she was, and the glory fell.  She
+hid her face and sobbed.
+
+Presently she perceived that it was growing dark, and
+getting up stiffly she began to undo the things in her bag
+and spread them on the dressing-table.  She shrank from
+lighting the lights, and groped her way about, trying to
+find what she needed.  She seemed immeasurably far off from
+every one, and most of all from herself.  It was as if her
+consciousness had been transmitted to some stranger whose
+thoughts and gestures were indifferent to her...
+
+Suddenly she heard a shrill tinkle, and with a beating heart
+she stood still in the middle of the room.  It was the
+telephone in her dressing-room--a call, no doubt, from
+Adelaide Painter.  Or could Owen have learned she was in
+town?  The thought alarmed her and she opened the door and
+stumbled across the unlit room to the instrument.  She held
+it to her ear, and heard Darrow's voice pronounce her name.
+
+"Will you let me see you?  I've come back--I had to come.
+Miss Painter told me you were here."
+
+She began to tremble, and feared that he would guess it from
+her voice.  She did not know what she answered: she heard
+him say: "I can't hear."  She called "Yes!" and laid the
+telephone down, and caught it up again--but he was gone.
+She wondered if her "Yes" had reached him.
+
+She sat in her chair and listened.  Why had she said that
+she would see him?  What did she mean to say to him when he
+came?  Now and then, as she sat there, the sense of his
+presence enveloped her as in her dream, and she shut her
+eyes and felt his arms about her. Then she woke to reality
+and shivered.  A long time elapsed, and at length she said
+to herself: "He isn't coming."
+
+The door-bell rang as she said it, and she stood up, cold
+and trembling.  She thought: "Can he imagine there's any use
+in coming?" and moved forward to bid the servant say she
+could not see him.
+
+The door opened and she saw him standing in the drawing-
+room.  The room was cold and fireless, and a hard glare fell
+from the wall-lights on the shrouded furniture and the white
+slips covering the curtains. He looked pale and stern, with
+a frown of fatigue between his eyes; and she remembered that
+in three days he had travelled from Givre to London and
+back.  It seemed incredible that all that had befallen her
+should have been compressed within the space of three days!
+
+"Thank you," he said as she came in.
+
+She answered: "It's better, I suppose----"
+
+He came toward her and took her in his arms.  She struggled
+a little, afraid of yielding, but he pressed her to him, not
+bending to her but holding her fast, as though he had found
+her after a long search: she heard his hurried breathing.
+It seemed to come from her own breast, so close he held her;
+and it was she who, at last, lifted up her face and drew
+down his.
+
+She freed herself and went and sat on a sofa at the other
+end of the room.  A mirror between the shrouded window-
+curtains showed her crumpled travelling dress and the white
+face under her disordered hair
+
+She found her voice, and asked him how he had been able to
+leave London.  He answered that he had managed--he'd
+arranged it; and she saw he hardly heard what she was
+saying.
+
+"I had to see you," he went on, and moved nearer, sitting
+down at her side.
+
+"Yes; we must think of Owen----"
+
+"Oh, Owen--!"
+
+Her mind had flown back to Sophy Viner's plea that she
+should let Darrow return to Givre in order that Owen might
+be persuaded of the folly of his suspicions.  The suggestion
+was absurd, of course.  She could not ask Darrow to lend
+himself to such a fraud, even had she had the inhuman
+courage to play her part in it.  She was suddenly
+overwhelmed by the futility of every attempt to reconstruct
+her ruined world.  No, it was useless; and since it was
+useless, every moment with Darrow was pure pain...
+
+"I've come to talk of myself, not of Owen," she heard him
+saying.  "When you sent me away the other day I understood
+that it couldn't be otherwise--then.  But it's not possible
+that you and I should part like that. If I'm to lose you, it
+must be for a better reason."
+
+"A better reason?"
+
+"Yes: a deeper one.  One that means a fundamental disaccord
+between us.  This one doesn't--in spite of everything it
+doesn't.  That's what I want you to see, and have the
+courage to acknowledge."
+
+"If I saw it I should have the courage!"
+
+"Yes: courage was the wrong word.  You have that. That's why
+I'm here."
+
+"But I don't see it," she continued sadly.  "So it's
+useless, isn't it?--and so cruel..."  He was about to speak,
+but she went on: "I shall never understand it--never!"
+
+He looked at her.  "You will some day: you were made to feel
+everything"
+
+"I should have thought this was a case of not feeling----"
+
+"On my part, you mean?" He faced her resolutely.  "Yes, it
+was: to my shame...What I meant was that when you've lived a
+little longer you'll see what complex blunderers we all are:
+how we're struck blind sometimes, and mad sometimes--and
+then, when our sight and our senses come back, how we have
+to set to work, and build up, little by little, bit by bit,
+the precious things we'd smashed to atoms without knowing
+it. Life's just a perpetual piecing together of broken
+bits."
+
+She looked up quickly.  "That's what I feel: that you ought
+to----"
+
+He stood up, interrupting her with a gesture.  "Oh, don't--
+don't say what you're going to!  Men don't give their lives
+away like that.  If you won't have mine, it's at least my
+own, to do the best I can with."
+
+"The best you can--that's what I mean!  How can there be a
+'best' for you that's made of some one else's worst?"
+
+He sat down again with a groan.  "I don't know!  It seemed
+such a slight thing--all on the surface--and I've gone
+aground on it because it was on the surface. I see the
+horror of it just as you do.  But I see, a little more
+clearly, the extent, and the limits, of my wrong.  It's not
+as black as you imagine."
+
+She lowered her voice to say: "I suppose I shall never
+understand; but she seems to love you..."
+
+"There's my shame!  That I didn't guess it, didn't fly from
+it.  You say you'll never understand: but why shouldn't you?
+Is it anything to be proud of, to know so little of the
+strings that pull us?  If you knew a little more, I could
+tell you how such things happen without offending you; and
+perhaps you'd listen without condemning me."
+
+"I don't condemn you."  She was dizzy with struggling
+impulses.  She longed to cry out: "I DO understand!  I've
+understood ever since you've been here!"  For she was aware,
+in her own bosom, of sensations so separate from her
+romantic thoughts of him that she saw her body and soul
+divided against themselves.  She recalled having read
+somewhere that in ancient Rome the slaves were not allowed
+to wear a distinctive dress lest they should recognize each
+other and learn their numbers and their power.  So, in
+herself, she discerned for the first time instincts and
+desires, which, mute and unmarked, had gone to and fro in
+the dim passages of her mind, and now hailed each other with
+a cry of mutiny.
+
+"Oh, I don't know what to think!" she broke out.  "You say
+you didn't know she loved you.  But you know it now.
+Doesn't that show you how you can put the broken bits
+together?"
+
+"Can you seriously think it would be doing so to marry one
+woman while I care for another?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know...I don't know..."  The sense of her
+weakness made her try to harden herself against his
+arguments.
+
+"You do know!  We've often talked of such things: of the
+monstrousness of useless sacrifices.  If I'm to expiate,
+it's not in that way."  He added abruptly: "It's in having to
+say this to you now..."
+
+She found no answer.
+
+Through the silent apartment they heard the sudden peal of
+the door-bell, and she rose to her feet.  "Owen!" she
+instantly exclaimed.
+
+"Is Owen in Paris?"
+
+She explained in a rapid undertone what she had learned from
+Sophy Viner.
+
+"Shall I leave you?" Darrow asked.
+
+"Yes...no..."  She moved to the dining-room door, with the
+half-formed purpose of making him pass out, and then turned
+back.  "It may be Adelaide."
+
+They heard the outer door open, and a moment later Owen
+walked into the room.  He was pale, with excited eyes: as
+they fell on Darrow, Anna saw his start of wonder. He made a
+slight sign of recognition, and then went up to his step-
+mother with an air of exaggerated gaiety.
+
+"You furtive person!  I ran across the omniscient Adelaide
+and heard from her that you'd rushed up suddenly and
+secretly " He stood between Anna and Darrow, strained,
+questioning, dangerously on edge.
+
+"I came up to meet Mr. Darrow," Anna answered.  "His leave's
+been prolonged--he's going back with me."
+
+The words seemed to have uttered themselves without her
+will, yet she felt a great sense of freedom as she spoke
+them.
+
+The hard tension of Owen's face changed to incredulous
+surprise.  He looked at Darrow.
+"The merest luck...a colleague whose wife was ill...I came
+straight back," she heard the latter tranquilly explaining.
+His self-command helped to steady her, and she smiled at
+Owen.
+
+"We'll all go back together tomorrow morning," she said as
+she slipped her arm through his.
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+Owen Leath did not go back with his step-mother to Givre.
+In reply to her suggestion he announced his intention of
+staying on a day or two longer in Paris.
+
+Anna left alone by the first train the next morning. Darrow
+was to follow in the afternoon.  When Owen had left them the
+evening before, Darrow waited a moment for her to speak;
+then, as she said nothing, he asked her if she really wished
+him to return to Givre. She made a mute sign of assent, and
+he added: "For you know that, much as I'm ready to do for
+Owen, I can't do that for him--I can't go back to be sent
+away again."
+
+"No--no!"
+
+He came nearer, and looked at her, and she went to him. All
+her fears seemed to fall from her as he held her. It was a
+different feeling from any she had known before: confused
+and turbid, as if secret shames and rancours stirred in it,
+yet richer, deeper, more enslaving.  She leaned her head
+back and shut her eyes beneath his kisses.  She knew now
+that she could never give him up.
+
+Nevertheless she asked him, the next morning, to let her go
+back alone to Givre.  She wanted time to think. She was
+convinced that what had happened was inevitable, that she
+and Darrow belonged to each other, and that he was right in
+saying no past folly could ever put them asunder.  If there
+was a shade of difference in her feeling for him it was that
+of an added intensity.  She felt restless, insecure out of
+his sight: she had a sense of incompleteness, of passionate
+dependence, that was somehow at variance with her own
+conception of her character.
+
+It was partly the consciousness of this change in herself
+that made her want to be alone.  The solitude of her inner
+life had given her the habit of these hours of self-
+examination, and she needed them as she needed her morning
+plunge into cold water.
+
+During the journey she tried to review what had happened in
+the light of her new decision and of her sudden relief from
+pain.  She seemed to herself to have passed through some
+fiery initiation from which she had emerged seared and
+quivering, but clutching to her breast a magic talisman.
+Sophy Viner had cried out to her: "Some day you'll know!"
+and Darrow had used the same words.  They meant, she
+supposed, that when she had explored the intricacies and
+darknesses of her own heart her judgment of others would be
+less absolute. Well, she knew now--knew weaknesses and
+strengths she had not dreamed of, and the deep discord and
+still deeper complicities between what thought in her and
+what blindly wanted...
+
+Her mind turned anxiously to Owen.  At least the blow that
+was to fall on him would not seem to have been inflicted by
+her hand.  He would be left with the impression that his
+breach with Sophy Viner was due to one of the ordinary
+causes of such disruptions: though he must lose her, his
+memory of her would not be poisoned.  Anna never for a
+moment permitted herself the delusion that she had renewed
+her promise to Darrow in order to spare her step-son this
+last refinement of misery.  She knew she had been prompted
+by the irresistible impulse to hold fast to what was most
+precious to her, and that Owen's arrival on the scene had
+been the pretext for her decision, and not its cause; yet
+she felt herself fortified by the thought of what she had
+spared him.  It was as though a star she had been used to
+follow had shed its familiar ray on ways unknown to her.
+
+All through these meditations ran the undercurrent of an
+absolute trust in Sophy Viner.  She thought of the girl with
+a mingling of antipathy and confidence.  It was humiliating
+to her pride to recognize kindred impulses in a character
+which she would have liked to feel completely alien to her.
+But what indeed was the girl really like?  She seemed to have
+no scruples and a thousand delicacies.  She had given
+herself to Darrow, and concealed the episode from Owen
+Leath, with no more apparent sense of debasement than the
+vulgarest of adventuresses; yet she had instantly obeyed the
+voice of her heart when it bade her part from the one and
+serve the other.
+
+Anna tried to picture what the girl's life must have been:
+what experiences, what initiations, had formed her.  But her
+own training had been too different: there were veils she
+could not lift.  She looked back at her married life, and
+its colourless uniformity took on an air of high restraint
+and order.  Was it because she had been so incurious that it
+had worn that look to her?  It struck her with amazement that
+she had never given a thought to her husband's past, or
+wondered what he did and where he went when he was away from
+her.  If she had been asked what she supposed he thought
+about when they were apart, she would instantly have
+answered: his snuff-boxes.  It had never occurred to her
+that he might have passions, interests, preoccupations of
+which she was absolutely ignorant. Yet he went up to Paris
+rather regularly: ostensibly to attend sales and
+exhibitions, or to confer with dealers and collectors.  She
+tried to picture him, straight, trim, beautifully brushed
+and varnished, walking furtively down a quiet street, and
+looking about him before he slipped into a doorway.  She
+understood now that she had been cold to him: what more
+likely than that he had sought compensations?  All men were
+like that, she supposed--no doubt her simplicity had amused
+him.
+
+In the act of transposing Fraser Leath into a Don Juan she
+was pulled up by the ironic perception that she was simply
+trying to justify Darrow.  She wanted to think that all men
+were "like that" because Darrow was "like that": she wanted
+to justify her acceptance of the fact by persuading herself
+that only through such concessions could women like herself
+hope to keep what they could not give up.  And suddenly she
+was filled with anger at her blindness, and then at her
+disastrous attempt to see.  Why had she forced the truth out
+of Darrow?  If only she had held her tongue nothing need ever
+have been known.  Sophy Viner would have broken her
+engagement, Owen would have been sent around the world, and
+her own dream would have been unshattered. But she had
+probed, insisted, cross-examined, not rested till she had
+dragged the secret to the light. She was one of the luckless
+women who always have the wrong audacities, and who always
+know it...
+
+Was it she, Anna Leath, who was picturing herself to herself
+in that way?  She recoiled from her thoughts as if with a
+sense of demoniac possession, and there flashed through her
+the longing to return to her old state of fearless
+ignorance.  If at that moment she could have kept Darrow
+from following her to Givre she would have done so...
+
+But he came; and with the sight of him the turmoil fell and
+she felt herself reassured, rehabilitated.  He arrived
+toward dusk, and she motored to Francheuil to meet him.  She
+wanted to see him as soon as possible, for she had divined,
+through the new insight that was in her, that only his
+presence could restore her to a normal view of things.  In
+the motor, as they left the town and turned into the high-
+road, he lifted her hand and kissed it, and she leaned
+against him, and felt the currents flow between them.  She
+was grateful to him for not saying anything, and for not
+expecting her to speak.  She said to herself: "He never
+makes a mistake--he always knows what to do"; and then she
+thought with a start that it was doubtless because he had so
+often been in such situations.  The idea that his tact was a
+kind of professional expertness filled her with repugnance,
+and insensibly she drew away from him.  He made no motion to
+bring her nearer, and she instantly thought that that was
+calculated too.  She sat beside him in frozen misery,
+wondering whether, henceforth, she would measure in this way
+his every look and gesture.  Neither of them spoke again
+till the motor turned under the dark arch of the avenue, and
+they saw the lights of Givre twinkling at its end.  Then
+Darrow laid his hand on hers and said: "I know, dear--" and
+the hardness in her melted.  "He's suffering as I am," she
+thought; and for a moment the baleful fact between them
+seemed to draw them closer instead of walling them up in
+their separate wretchedness.
+
+It was wonderful to be once more re-entering the doors of
+Givre with him, and as the old house received them into its
+mellow silence she had again the sense of passing out of a
+dreadful dream into the reassurance of kindly and familiar
+things.  It did not seem possible that these quiet rooms, so
+full of the slowly-distilled accumulations of a fastidious
+taste, should have been the scene of tragic dissensions.
+The memory of them seemed to be shut out into the night with
+the closing and barring of its doors.
+
+At the tea-table in the oak-room they found Madame de
+Chantelle and Effie.  The little girl, catching sight of
+Darrow, raced down the drawing-rooms to meet him, and
+returned in triumph on his shoulder.  Anna looked at them
+with a smile.  Effie, for all her graces, was chary of such
+favours, and her mother knew that in according them to
+Darrow she had admitted him to the circle where Owen had
+hitherto ruled.
+
+Over the tea-table Darrow gave Madame de Chantelle the
+explanation of his sudden return from England.  On reaching
+London, he told her, he had found that the secretary he was
+to have replaced was detained there by the illness of his
+wife.  The Ambassador, knowing Darrow's urgent reasons for
+wishing to be in France, had immediately proposed his going
+back, and awaiting at Givre the summons to relieve his
+colleague; and he had jumped into the first train, without
+even waiting to telegraph the news of his release.  He spoke
+naturally, easily, in his usual quiet voice, taking his tea
+from Effie, helping himself to the toast she handed, and
+stooping now and then to stroke the dozing terrier.  And
+suddenly, as Anna listened to his explanation, she asked
+herself if it were true.
+
+The question, of course, was absurd.  There was no possible
+reason why he should invent a false account of his return,
+and every probability that the version he gave was the real
+one.  But he had looked and spoken in the same way when he
+had answered her probing questions about Sophy Viner, and
+she reflected with a chill of fear that she would never
+again know if he were speaking the truth or not.  She was
+sure he loved her, and she did not fear his insincerity as
+much as her own distrust of him.  For a moment it seemed to
+her that this must corrupt the very source of love; then she
+said to herself: "By and bye, when I am altogether his, we
+shall be so near each other that there will be no room for
+any doubts between us."  But the doubts were there now, one
+moment lulled to quiescence, the next more torturingly
+alert.  When the nurse appeared to summon Effie, the little
+girl, after kissing her grandmother, entrenched herself on
+Darrow's knee with the imperious demand to be carried up to
+bed; and Anna, while she laughingly protested, said to
+herself with a pang: "Can I give her a father about whom I
+think such things?"
+
+The thought of Effie, and of what she owed to Effie, had
+been the fundamental reason for her delays and hesitations
+when she and Darrow had come together again in England.  Her
+own feeling was so clear that but for that scruple she would
+have put her hand in his at once.  But till she had seen him
+again she had never considered the possibility of re-
+marriage, and when it suddenly confronted her it seemed, for
+the moment, to disorganize the life she had planned for
+herself and her child.  She had not spoken of this to Darrow
+because it appeared to her a subject to be debated within
+her own conscience.  The question, then, was not as to his
+fitness to become the guide and guardian of her child; nor
+did she fear that her love for him would deprive Effie of
+the least fraction of her tenderness, since she did not
+think of love as something measured and exhaustible but as a
+treasure perpetually renewed.  What she questioned was her
+right to introduce into her life any interests and duties
+which might rob Effie of a part of her time, or lessen the
+closeness of their daily intercourse.
+
+She had decided this question as it was inevitable that she
+should; but now another was before her.  Assuredly, at her
+age, there was no possible reason why she should cloister
+herself to bring up her daughter; but there was every reason
+for not marrying a man in whom her own faith was not
+complete...
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+When she woke the next morning she felt a great lightness of
+heart.  She recalled her last awakening at Givre, three days
+before, when it had seemed as though all her life had gone
+down in darkness.  Now Darrow was once more under the same
+roof with her, and once more his nearness sufficed to make
+the looming horror drop away.  She could almost have smiled
+at her scruples of the night before: as she looked back on
+them they seemed to belong to the old ignorant timorous time
+when she had feared to look life in the face, and had been
+blind to the mysteries and contradictions of the human heart
+because her own had not been revealed to her.  Darrow had
+said: "You were made to feel everything"; and to feel was
+surely better than to judge.
+
+When she came downstairs he was already in the oak-room with
+Effie and Madame de Chantelle, and the sense of reassurance
+which his presence gave her was merged in the relief of not
+being able to speak of what was between them.  But there it
+was, inevitably, and whenever they looked at each other they
+saw it.  In her dread of giving it a more tangible shape she
+tried to devise means of keeping the little girl with her,
+and, when the latter had been called away by the nurse,
+found an excuse for following Madame de Chantelle upstairs
+to the purple sitting-room.  But a confidential talk with
+Madame de Chantelle implied the detailed discussion of plans
+of which Anna could hardly yet bear to consider the vaguest
+outline: the date of her marriage, the relative advantages
+of sailing from London or Lisbon, the possibility of hiring
+a habitable house at their new post; and, when these
+problems were exhausted, the application of the same method
+to the subject of Owen's future.
+
+His grandmother, having no suspicion of the real reason of
+Sophy Viner's departure, had thought it "extremely suitable"
+of the young girl to withdraw to the shelter of her old
+friends' roof in the hour of bridal preparation.  This
+maidenly retreat had in fact impressed Madame de Chantelle
+so favourably that she was disposed for the first time to
+talk over Owen's projects; and as every human event
+translated itself for her into terms of social and domestic
+detail, Anna had perforce to travel the same round again.
+She felt a momentary relief when Darrow presently joined
+them; but his coming served only to draw the conversation
+back to the question of their own future, and Anna felt a
+new pang as she heard him calmly and lucidly discussing it.
+Did such self-possession imply indifference or insincerity?
+In that problem her mind perpetually revolved; and she
+dreaded the one answer as much as the other.
+
+She was resolved to keep on her course as though nothing had
+happened: to marry Darrow and never let the consciousness of
+the past intrude itself between them; but she was beginning
+to feel that the only way of attaining to this state of
+detachment from the irreparable was once for all to turn
+back with him to its contemplation.  As soon as this desire
+had germinated it became so strong in her that she regretted
+having promised Effie to take her out for the afternoon.
+But she could think of no pretext for disappointing the
+little girl, and soon after luncheon the three set forth in
+the motor to show Darrow a chateau famous in the annals of
+the region.  During their excursion Anna found it impossible
+to guess from his demeanour if Effie's presence between them
+was as much of a strain to his composure as to hers.  He
+remained imperturbably good-humoured and appreciative while
+they went the round of the monument, and she remarked only
+that when he thought himself unnoticed his face grew grave
+and his answers came less promptly.
+
+On the way back, two or three miles from Givre, she suddenly
+proposed that they should walk home through the forest which
+skirted that side of the park.  Darrow acquiesced, and they
+got out and sent Effie on in the motor.  Their way led
+through a bit of sober French woodland, flat as a faded
+tapestry, but with gleams of live emerald lingering here and
+there among its browns and ochres.  The luminous grey air
+gave vividness to its dying colours, and veiled the distant
+glimpses of the landscape in soft uncertainty.  In such a
+solitude Anna had fancied it would be easier to speak; but
+as she walked beside Darrow over the deep soundless flooring
+of brown moss the words on her lips took flight again.  It
+seemed impossible to break the spell of quiet joy which his
+presence laid on her, and when he began to talk of the place
+they had just visited she answered his questions and then
+waited for what he should say next...No, decidedly she could
+not speak; she no longer even knew what she had meant to
+say...
+
+The same experience repeated itself several times that day
+and the next.  When she and Darrow were apart she exhausted
+herself in appeal and interrogation, she formulated with a
+fervent lucidity every point in her imaginary argument.  But
+as soon as she was alone with him something deeper than
+reason and subtler than shyness laid its benumbing touch
+upon her, and the desire to speak became merely a dim
+disquietude, through which his looks, his words, his touch,
+reached her as through a mist of bodily pain.  Yet this
+inertia was torn by wild flashes of resistance, and when
+they were apart she began to prepare again what she meant to
+say to him.
+
+She knew he could not be with her without being aware of
+this inner turmoil, and she hoped he would break the spell
+by some releasing word.  But she presently understood that
+he recognized the futility of words, and was resolutely bent
+on holding her to her own purpose of behaving as if nothing
+had happened.  Once more she inwardly accused him of
+insensibility, and her imagination was beset by tormenting
+visions of his past...Had such things happened to him
+before?  If the episode had been an isolated accident--"a
+moment of folly and madness", as he had called it--she could
+understand, or at least begin to understand (for at a
+certain point her imagination always turned back); but if it
+were a mere link in a chain of similar experiments, the
+thought of it dishonoured her whole past...
+
+Effie, in the interregnum between governesses, had been
+given leave to dine downstairs; and Anna, on the evening of
+Darrow's return, kept the little girl with her till long
+after the nurse had signalled from the drawing-room door.
+When at length she had been carried off, Anna proposed a
+game of cards, and after this diversion had drawn to its
+languid close she said good-night to Darrow and followed
+Madame de Chantelle upstairs.  But Madame de Chantelle never
+sat up late, and the second evening, with the amiably
+implied intention of leaving Anna and Darrow to themselves,
+she took an earlier leave of them than usual.
+
+Anna sat silent, listening to her small stiff steps as they
+minced down the hall and died out in the distance.  Madame
+de Chantelle had broken her wooden embroidery frame, and
+Darrow, having offered to repair it, had drawn his chair up
+to a table that held a lamp. Anna watched him as he sat with
+bent head and knitted brows, trying to fit together the
+disjoined pieces. The sight of him, so tranquilly absorbed
+in this trifling business, seemed to give to the quiet room
+a perfume of intimacy, to fill it with a sense of sweet
+familiar habit; and it came over her again that she knew
+nothing of the inner thoughts of this man who was sitting by
+her as a husband might.  The lamplight fell on his white
+forehead, on the healthy brown of his cheek, the backs of
+his thin sunburnt hands.  As she watched the hands her sense
+of them became as vivid as a touch, and she said to herself:
+"That other woman has sat and watched him as I am doing.
+She has known him as I have never known him...Perhaps he is
+thinking of that now.  Or perhaps he has forgotten it all as
+completely as I have forgotten everything that happened to
+me before he came..."
+
+He looked young, active, stored with strength and energy;
+not the man for vain repinings or long memories. She
+wondered what she had to hold or satisfy him.  He loved her
+now; she had no doubt of that; but how could she hope to
+keep him?  They were so nearly of an age that already she
+felt herself his senior.  As yet the difference was not
+visible; outwardly at least they were matched; but ill-
+health or unhappiness would soon do away with this equality.
+She thought with a pang of bitterness: "He won't grow any
+older because he doesn't feel things; and because he
+doesn't, I SHALL..."
+
+And when she ceased to please him, what then?  Had he the
+tradition of faith to the spoken vow, or the deeper piety of
+the unspoken dedication?  What was his theory, what his inner
+conviction in such matters?  But what did she care for his
+convictions or his theories?  No doubt he loved her now, and
+believed he would always go on loving her, and was persuaded
+that, if he ceased to, his loyalty would be proof against
+the change.  What she wanted to know was not what he thought
+about it in advance, but what would impel or restrain him at
+the crucial hour.  She put no faith in her own arts: she was
+too sure of having none!  And if some beneficent enchanter
+had bestowed them on her, she knew now that she would have
+rejected the gift.  She could hardly conceive of wanting the
+kind of love that was a state one could be cozened into...
+
+Darrow, putting away the frame, walked across the room and
+sat down beside her; and she felt he had something special
+to say.
+
+"They're sure to send for me in a day or two now," he began.
+
+She made no answer, and he continued: "You'll tell me before
+I go what day I'm to come back and get you?"
+
+It was the first time since his return to Givre that he had
+made any direct allusion to the date of their marriage; and
+instead of answering him she broke out: "There's something
+I've been wanting you to know.  The other day in Paris I saw
+Miss Viner."
+
+She saw him flush with the intensity of his surprise.
+
+"You sent for her?"
+
+"No; she heard from Adelaide that I was in Paris and she
+came.  She came because she wanted to urge me to marry you.
+I thought you ought to know what she had done."
+
+Darrow stood up.  "I'm glad you've told me."  He spoke with a
+visible effort at composure.  Her eyes followed him as he
+moved away.
+
+"Is that all?" he asked after an interval.
+
+"It seems to me a great deal."
+
+"It's what she'd already asked me."  His voice showed her how
+deeply he was moved, and a throb of jealousy shot through
+her.
+
+"Oh, it was for your sake, I know!" He made no answer, and
+she added: "She's been exceedingly generous...Why shouldn't
+we speak of it?"
+
+She had lowered her head, but through her dropped lids she
+seemed to be watching the crowded scene of his face.
+
+"I've not shrunk from speaking of it."
+
+"Speaking of her, then, I mean.  It seems to me that if I
+could talk to you about her I should know better----"
+
+She broke off, confused, and he questioned: "What is it you
+want to know better?"
+
+The colour rose to her forehead.  How could she tell him
+what she scarcely dared own to herself?  There was nothing
+she did not want to know, no fold or cranny of his secret
+that her awakened imagination did not strain to penetrate;
+but she could not expose Sophy Viner to the base fingerings
+of a retrospective jealousy, nor Darrow to the temptation of
+belittling her in the effort to better his own case.  The
+girl had been magnificent, and the only worthy return that
+Anna could make was to take Darrow from her without a
+question if she took him at all...
+
+She lifted her eyes to his face.  "I think I only wanted to
+speak her name.  It's not right that we should seem so
+afraid of it.  If I were really afraid of it I should have
+to give you up," she said.
+
+He bent over her and caught her to him.  "Ah, you can't give
+me up now!" he exclaimed.
+
+She suffered him to hold her fast without speaking; but the
+old dread was between them again, and it was on her lips to
+cry out: "How can I help it, when I AM so afraid?"
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+The next morning the dread was still there, and she
+understood that she must snatch herself out of the torpor of
+the will into which she had been gradually sinking, and tell
+Darrow that she could not be his wife.
+
+The knowledge came to her in the watches of a sleepless
+night, when, through the tears of disenchanted passion, she
+stared back upon her past.  There it lay before her, her
+sole romance, in all its paltry poverty, the cheapest of
+cheap adventures, the most pitiful of sentimental blunders.
+She looked about her room, the room where, for so many
+years, if her heart had been quiescent her thoughts had been
+alive, and pictured herself henceforth cowering before a
+throng of mean suspicions, of unavowed compromises and
+concessions.  In that moment of self-searching she saw that
+Sophy Viner had chosen the better part, and that certain
+renunciations might enrich where possession would have left
+a desert.
+
+Passionate reactions of instinct fought against these
+efforts of her will.  Why should past or future coerce her,
+when the present was so securely hers?  Why insanely
+surrender what the other would after all never have?  Her
+sense of irony whispered that if she sent away Darrow it
+would not be to Sophy Viner, but to the first woman who
+crossed his path--as, in a similar hour, Sophy Viner herself
+had crossed it...But the mere fact that she could think such
+things of him sent her shuddering back to the opposite pole.
+She pictured herself gradually subdued to such a conception
+of life and love, she pictured Effie growing up under the
+influence of the woman she saw herself becoming--and she hid
+her eyes from the humiliation of the picture...
+
+
+
+They were at luncheon when the summons that Darrow expected
+was brought to him.  He handed the telegram to Anna, and she
+learned that his Ambassador, on the way to a German cure,
+was to be in Paris the next evening and wished to confer
+with him there before he went back to London.  The idea that
+the decisive moment was at hand was so agitating to her that
+when luncheon was over she slipped away to the terrace and
+thence went down alone to the garden.  The day was grey but
+mild, with the heaviness of decay in the air.  She rambled
+on aimlessly, following under the denuded boughs the path
+she and Darrow had taken on their first walk to the river.
+She was sure he would not try to overtake her: sure he would
+guess why she wished to be alone.  There were moments when
+it seemed to double her loneliness to be so certain of his
+reading her heart while she was so desperately ignorant of
+his...
+
+She wandered on for more than an hour, and when she returned
+to the house she saw, as she entered the hall, that Darrow
+was seated at the desk in Owen's study.  He heard her step,
+and looking up turned in his chair without rising.  Their
+eyes met, and she saw that his were clear and smiling.  He
+had a heap of papers at his elbow and was evidently engaged
+in some official correspondence.  She wondered that he could
+address himself so composedly to his task, and then
+ironically reflected that such detachment was a sign of his
+superiority.  She crossed the threshold and went toward him;
+but as she advanced she had a sudden vision of Owen,
+standing outside in the cold autumn dusk and watching Darrow
+and Sophy Viner as they faced each other across the lamplit
+desk...The evocation was so vivid that it caught her breath
+like a blow, and she sank down helplessly on the divan among
+the piled-up books.  Distinctly, at the moment, she
+understood that the end had come.  "When he speaks to me I
+will tell him!" she thought...
+
+Darrow, laying aside his pen, looked at her for a moment in
+silence; then he stood up and shut the door.
+
+"I must go to-morrow early," he said, sitting down beside
+her.  His voice was grave, with a slight tinge of sadness.
+She said to herself: "He knows what I am feeling..."  and now
+the thought made her feel less alone.  The expression of his
+face was stern and yet tender: for the first time she
+understood what he had suffered.
+
+She had no doubt as to the necessity of giving him up, but
+it was impossible to tell him so then.  She stood up and
+said: "I'll leave you to your letters."  He made no protest,
+but merely answered: "You'll come down presently for a
+walk?" and it occurred to her at once that she would walk
+down to the river with him, and give herself for the last
+time the tragic luxury of sitting at his side in the little
+pavilion.  "Perhaps," she thought, "it will be easier to
+tell him there."
+
+It did not, on the way home from their walk, become any
+easier to tell him; but her secret decision to do so before
+he left gave her a kind of factitious calm and laid a
+melancholy ecstasy upon the hour.  Still skirting the
+subject that fanned their very faces with its flame, they
+clung persistently to other topics, and it seemed to Anna
+that their minds had never been nearer together than in this
+hour when their hearts were so separate. In the glow of
+interchanged love she had grown less conscious of that other
+glow of interchanged thought which had once illumined her
+mind.  She had forgotten how Darrow had widened her world
+and lengthened out all her perspectives, and with a pang of
+double destitution she saw herself alone among her shrunken
+thoughts.
+
+For the first time, then, she had a clear vision of what her
+life would be without him.  She imagined herself trying to
+take up the daily round, and all that had lightened and
+animated it seemed equally lifeless and vain.  She tried to
+think of herself as wholly absorbed in her daughter's
+development, like other mothers she had seen; but she
+supposed those mothers must have had stored memories of
+happiness to nourish them.  She had had nothing, and all her
+starved youth still claimed its due.
+
+When she went up to dress for dinner she said to herself:
+"I'll have my last evening with him, and then, before we say
+good night, I'll tell him."
+
+This postponement did not seem unjustified.  Darrow had
+shown her how he dreaded vain words, how resolved he was to
+avoid all fruitless discussion.  He must have been intensely
+aware of what had been going on in her mind since his
+return, yet when she had attempted to reveal it to him he
+had turned from the revelation. She was therefore merely
+following the line he had traced in behaving, till the final
+moment came, as though there were nothing more to say...
+
+That moment seemed at last to be at hand when, at her usual
+hour after dinner, Madame de Chantelle rose to go upstairs.
+She lingered a little to bid good-bye to Darrow, whom she
+was not likely to see in the morning; and her affable
+allusions to his prompt return sounded in Anna's ear like
+the note of destiny.
+
+A cold rain had fallen all day, and for greater warmth and
+intimacy they had gone after dinner to the oak-room,
+shutting out the chilly vista of the farther drawing-rooms.
+The autumn wind, coming up from the river, cried about the
+house with a voice of loss and separation; and Anna and
+Darrow sat silent, as if they feared to break the hush that
+shut them in.  The solitude, the fire-light, the harmony of
+soft hangings and old dim pictures, wove about them a spell
+of security through which Anna felt, far down in her heart,
+the muffled beat of an inextinguishable bliss. How could she
+have thought that this last moment would be the moment to
+speak to him, when it seemed to have gathered up into its
+flight all the scattered splendours of her dream?
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+Darrow continued to stand by the door after it had closed.
+Anna felt that he was looking at her, and sat still,
+disdaining to seek refuge in any evasive word or movement.
+For the last time she wanted to let him take from her the
+fulness of what the sight of her could give.
+
+He crossed over and sat down on the sofa.  For a moment
+neither of them spoke; then he said: "To-night, dearest, I
+must have my answer."
+
+She straightened herself under the shock of his seeming to
+take the very words from her lips.
+
+"To-night?" was all that she could falter.
+
+"I must be off by the early train.  There won't be more than
+a moment in the morning."
+
+He had taken her hand, and she said to herself that she must
+free it before she could go on with what she had to say.
+Then she rejected this concession to a weakness she was
+resolved to defy.  To the end she would leave her hand in
+his hand, her eyes in his eyes: she would not, in their
+final hour together, be afraid of any part of her love for
+him.
+
+"You'll tell me to-night, dear," he insisted gently; and his
+insistence gave her the strength to speak.
+
+"There's something I must ask you," she broke out,
+perceiving, as she heard her words, that they were not in
+the least what she had meant to say.
+
+He sat still, waiting, and she pressed on: "Do such things
+happen to men often?"
+
+The quiet room seemed to resound with the long
+reverberations of her question.  She looked away from him,
+and he released her and stood up.
+
+"I don't know what happens to other men.  Such a thing never
+happened to me..."
+
+She turned her eyes back to his face.  She felt like a
+traveller on a giddy path between a cliff and a precipice:
+there was nothing for it now but to go on.
+
+"Had it...had it begun...before you met her in Paris?"
+
+"No; a thousand times no!  I've told you the facts as they
+were."
+
+"All the facts?"
+
+He turned abruptly.  "What do you mean?"
+
+Her throat was dry and the loud pulses drummed in her
+temples.
+
+"I mean--about her...Perhaps you knew...knew things about
+her...beforehand."
+
+She stopped.  The room had grown profoundly still.  A log
+dropped to the hearth and broke there in a hissing shower.
+
+Darrow spoke in a clear voice.  "I knew nothing, absolutely
+nothing," he said.
+
+She had the answer to her inmost doubt--to her last shameful
+unavowed hope.  She sat powerless under her woe.
+
+He walked to the fireplace and pushed back the broken log
+with his foot.  A flame shot out of it, and in the upward
+glare she saw his pale face, stern with misery.
+
+"Is that all?" he asked.
+
+She made a slight sign with her head and he came slowly back
+to her.  "Then is this to be good-bye?"
+
+Again she signed a faint assent, and he made no effort to
+touch her or draw nearer.  "You understand that I sha'n't
+come back?"
+
+He was looking at her, and she tried to return his look, but
+her eyes were blind with tears, and in dread of his seeing
+them she got up and walked away.  He did not follow her, and
+she stood with her back to him, staring at a bowl of
+carnations on a little table strewn with books.  Her tears
+magnified everything she looked at, and the streaked petals
+of the carnations, their fringed edges and frail curled
+stamens, pressed upon her, huge and vivid.  She noticed
+among the books a volume of verse he had sent her from
+England, and tried to remember whether it was before or
+after...
+
+She felt that he was waiting for her to speak, and at last
+she turned to him.  "I shall see you to-morrow before you
+go..."
+
+He made no answer.
+
+She moved toward the door and he held it open for her. She
+saw his hand on the door, and his seal ring in its setting
+of twisted silver; and the sense of the end of all things
+came to her.
+
+They walked down the drawing-rooms, between the shadowy
+reflections of screens and cabinets, and mounted the stairs
+side by side.  At the end of the gallery, a lamp brought out
+turbid gleams in the smoky battle-piece above it.
+
+On the landing Darrow stopped; his room was the nearest to
+the stairs.  "Good night," he said, holding out his hand.
+
+As Anna gave him hers the springs of grief broke loose in
+her.  She struggled with her sobs, and subdued them; but her
+breath came unevenly, and to hide her agitation she leaned
+on him and pressed her face against his arm.
+
+"Don't--don't," he whispered, soothing her.
+
+Her troubled breathing sounded loudly in the silence of the
+sleeping house.  She pressed her lips tight, but could not
+stop the nervous pulsations in her throat, and he put an arm
+about her and, opening his door, drew her across the
+threshold of his room.  The door shut behind her and she sat
+down on the lounge at the foot of the bed.  The pulsations
+in her throat had ceased, but she knew they would begin
+again if she tried to speak.
+
+Darrow walked away and leaned against the mantelpiece. The
+red-veiled lamp shone on his books and papers, on the arm-
+chair by the fire, and the scattered objects on his
+dressing-table.  A log glimmered on the hearth, and the room
+was warm and faintly smoke-scented.  It was the first time
+she had ever been in a room he lived in, among his personal
+possessions and the traces of his daily usage.  Every object
+about her seemed to contain a particle of himself: the whole
+air breathed of him, steeping her in the sense of his
+intimate presence.
+
+Suddenly she thought: "This is what Sophy Viner knew"...and
+with a torturing precision she pictured them alone in such a
+scene...Had he taken the girl to an hotel...where did people
+go in such cases?  Wherever they were, the silence of night
+had been around them, and the things he used had been strewn
+about the room...Anna, ashamed of dwelling on the detested
+vision, stood up with a confused impulse of flight; then a
+wave of contrary feeling arrested her and she paused with
+lowered head.
+
+Darrow had come forward as she rose, and she perceived that
+he was waiting for her to bid him good night.  It was clear
+that no other possibility had even brushed his mind; and the
+fact, for some dim reason, humiliated her.  "Why not...why
+not?" something whispered in her, as though his forbearance,
+his tacit recognition of her pride, were a slight on other
+qualities she wanted him to feel in her.
+
+"In the morning, then?" she heard him say.
+
+"Yes, in the morning," she repeated.
+
+She continued to stand in the same place, looking vaguely
+about the room.  For once before they parted--since part
+they must--she longed to be to him all that Sophy Viner had
+been; but she remained rooted to the floor, unable to find a
+word or imagine a gesture that should express her meaning.
+Exasperated by her helplessness, she thought: "Don't I feel
+things as other women do?"
+
+Her eye fell on a note-case she had given him.  It was worn
+at the corners with the friction of his pocket and distended
+with thickly packed papers.  She wondered if he carried her
+letters in it, and she put her hand out and touched it.
+
+All that he and she had ever felt or seen, their close
+encounters of word and look, and the closer contact of their
+silences, trembled through her at the touch.  She remembered
+things he had said that had been like new skies above her
+head: ways he had that seemed a part of the air she
+breathed.  The faint warmth of her girlish love came back to
+her, gathering heat as it passed through her thoughts; and
+her heart rocked like a boat on the surge of its long long
+memories.  "It's because I love him in too many ways," she
+thought; and slowly she turned to the door.
+
+She was aware that Darrow was still silently watching her,
+but he neither stirred nor spoke till she had reached the
+threshold.  Then he met her there and caught her in his
+arms.
+
+"Not to-night--don't tell me to-night!" he whispered; and
+she leaned away from him, closing her eyes for an instant,
+and then slowly opening them to the flood of light in his.
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+Anna and Darrow, the next day, sat alone in a compartment of
+the Paris train.
+
+Anna, when they entered it, had put herself in the farthest
+corner and placed her bag on the adjoining seat.  She had
+decided suddenly to accompany Darrow to Paris, had even
+persuaded him to wait for a later train in order that they
+might travel together.  She had an intense longing to be
+with him, an almost morbid terror of losing sight of him for
+a moment: when he jumped out of the train and ran back along
+the platform to buy a newspaper for her she felt as though
+she should never see him again, and shivered with the cold
+misery of her last journey to Paris, when she had thought
+herself parted from him forever.  Yet she wanted to keep him
+at a distance, on the other side of the compartment, and as
+the train moved out of the station she drew from her bag the
+letters she had thrust in it as she left the house, and
+began to glance over them so that her lowered lids should
+hide her eyes from him.
+
+She was his now, his for life: there could never again be
+any question of sacrificing herself to Effie's welfare, or
+to any other abstract conception of duty. Effie of course
+would not suffer; Anna would pay for her bliss as a wife by
+redoubled devotion as a mother. Her scruples were not
+overcome; but for the time their voices were drowned in the
+tumultuous rumour of her happiness.
+
+As she opened her letters she was conscious that Darrow's
+gaze was fixed on her, and gradually it drew her eyes
+upward, and she drank deep of the passionate tenderness in
+his.  Then the blood rose to her face and she felt again the
+desire to shield herself.  She turned back to her letters
+and her glance lit on an envelope inscribed in Owen's hand.
+
+Her heart began to beat oppressively: she was in a mood when
+the simplest things seemed ominous.  What could Owen have to
+say to her?  Only the first page was covered, and it
+contained simply the announcement that, in the company of a
+young compatriot who was studying at the Beaux Arts, he had
+planned to leave for Spain the following evening.
+
+"He hasn't seen her, then!" was Anna's instant thought; and
+her feeling was a strange compound of humiliation and
+relief.  The girl had kept her word, lived up to the line of
+conduct she had set herself; and Anna had failed in the same
+attempt.  She did not reproach herself with her failure; but
+she would have been happier if there had been less
+discrepancy between her words to Sophy Viner and the act
+which had followed them.  It irritated her obscurely that
+the girl should have been so much surer of her power to
+carry out her purpose...
+
+Anna looked up and saw that Darrow's eyes were on the
+newspaper.  He seemed calm and secure, almost indifferent to
+her presence.  "Will it become a matter of course to him so
+soon?" she wondered with a twinge of jealousy.  She sat
+motionless, her eyes fixed on him, trying to make him feel
+the attraction of her gaze as she felt his.  It surprised
+and shamed her to detect a new element in her love for him:
+a sort of suspicious tyrannical tenderness that seemed to
+deprive it of all serenity.  Finally he looked up, his smile
+enveloped her, and she felt herself his in every fibre, his
+so completely and inseparably that she saw the vanity of
+imagining any other fate for herself.
+
+To give herself a countenance she held out Owen's letter.
+He took it and glanced down the page, his face grown grave.
+She waited nervously till he looked up.
+
+"That's a good plan; the best thing that could happen," he
+said, a just perceptible shade of constraint in his tone.
+
+"Oh, yes," she hastily assented.  She was aware of a faint
+current of relief silently circulating between them.  They
+were both glad that Owen was going, that for a while he
+would be out of their way; and it seemed to her horrible
+that so much of the stuff of their happiness should be made
+of such unavowed feelings...
+
+"I shall see him this evening," she said, wishing Darrow to
+feel that she was not afraid of meeting her step-son.
+
+"Yes, of course; perhaps he might dine with you."
+
+The words struck her as strangely obtuse.  Darrow was to
+meet his Ambassador at the station on the latter's arrival,
+and would in all probability have to spend the evening with
+him, and Anna knew he had been concerned at the thought of
+having to leave her alone.  But how could he speak in that
+careless tone of her dining with Owen?  She lowered her voice
+to say: "I'm afraid he's desperately unhappy."
+
+He answered, with a tinge of impatience: "It's much the best
+thing that he should travel."
+
+"Yes--but don't you feel..."  She broke off.  She knew how
+he disliked these idle returns on the irrevocable, and her
+fear of doing or saying what he disliked was tinged by a new
+instinct of subserviency against which her pride revolted.
+She thought to herself: "He will see the change, and grow
+indifferent to me as he did to HER..."  and for a moment
+it seemed to her that she was reliving the experience of
+Sophy Viner.
+
+Darrow made no attempt to learn the end of her unfinished
+sentence.  He handed back Owen's letter and returned to his
+newspaper; and when he looked up from it a few minutes later
+it was with a clear brow and a smile that irresistibly drew
+her back to happier thoughts.
+
+The train was just entering a station, and a moment later
+their compartment was invaded by a commonplace couple
+preoccupied with the bestowal of bulging packages.  Anna, at
+their approach, felt the possessive pride of the woman in
+love when strangers are between herself and the man she
+loves.  She asked Darrow to open the window, to place her
+bag in the net, to roll her rug into a cushion for her feet;
+and while he was thus busied with her she was conscious of a
+new devotion in his tone, in his way of bending over her and
+meeting her eyes.  He went back to his seat, and they looked
+at each other like lovers smiling at a happy secret.
+
+Anna, before going back to Givre, had suggested Owen's
+moving into her apartment, but he had preferred to remain at
+the hotel to which he had sent his luggage, and on arriving
+in Paris she decided to drive there at once.  She was
+impatient to have the meeting over, and glad that Darrow was
+obliged to leave her at the station in order to look up a
+colleague at the Embassy. She dreaded his seeing Owen again,
+and yet dared not tell him so, and to ensure his remaining
+away she mentioned an urgent engagement with her dress-maker
+and a long list of commissions to be executed for Madame de
+Chantelle.
+
+"I shall see you to-morrow morning," she said; but he
+replied with a smile that he would certainly find time to
+come to her for a moment on his way back from meeting the
+Ambassador; and when he had put her in a cab he leaned
+through the window to press his lips to hers.
+
+She blushed like a girl, thinking, half vexed, half happy:
+"Yesterday he would not have done it..."  and a dozen
+scarcely definable differences in his look and manner seemed
+all at once to be summed up in the boyish act.  "After all,
+I'm engaged to him," she reflected, and then smiled at the
+absurdity of the word.  The next instant, with a pang of
+self-reproach, she remembered Sophy Viner's cry: "I knew all
+the while he didn't care..."  "Poor thing, oh poor thing!"
+Anna murmured...
+
+
+At Owen's hotel she waited in a tremor while the porter went
+in search of him.  Word was presently brought back that he
+was in his room and begged her to come up, and as she
+crossed the hall she caught sight of his portmanteaux lying
+on the floor, already labelled for departure.
+
+Owen sat at a table writing, his back to the door; and when
+he stood up the window was behind him, so that, in the rainy
+afternoon light, his features were barely discernible.
+
+"Dearest--so you're really off?" she said, hesitating a
+moment on the threshold.
+
+He pushed a chair forward, and they sat down, each waiting
+for the other to speak.  Finally she put some random
+question about his travelling-companion, a slow shy
+meditative youth whom he had once or twice brought down to
+Givre.  She reflected that it was natural he should have
+given this uncommunicative comrade the preference over his
+livelier acquaintances, and aloud she said: "I'm so glad
+Fred Rempson can go with you."
+
+Owen answered in the same tone, and for a few minutes their
+talk dragged itself on over a dry waste of common-places.
+Anna noticed that, though ready enough to impart his own
+plans, Owen studiously abstained from putting any questions
+about hers.  It was evident from his allusions that he meant
+to be away for some time, and he presently asked her if she
+would give instructions about packing and sending after him
+some winter clothes he had left at Givre.  This gave her the
+opportunity to say that she expected to go back within a day
+or two and would attend to the matter as soon as she
+returned.  She added: "I came up this morning with George,
+who is going on to London to-morrow," intending, by the use
+of Darrow's Christian name, to give Owen the chance to speak
+of her marriage.  But he made no comment, and she continued
+to hear the name sounding on unfamiliarly between them.
+
+The room was almost dark, and she finally stood up and
+glanced about for the light-switch, saying: "I can't see
+you, dear."
+
+"Oh, don't--I hate the light!" Owen exclaimed, catching her
+by the wrist and pushing her back into her seat.  He gave a
+nervous laugh and added: "I'm half-blind with neuralgia.  I
+suppose it's this beastly rain."
+
+"Yes; it will do you good to get down to Spain."
+
+She asked if he had the remedies the doctor had given him
+for a previous attack, and on his replying that he didn't
+know what he'd done with the stuff, she sprang up, offering
+to go to the chemist's.  It was a relief to have something
+to do for him, and she knew from his "Oh, thanks--would
+you?" that it was a relief to him to have a pretext for not
+detaining her.  His natural impulse would have been to
+declare that he didn't want any drugs, and would be all
+right in no time; and his acquiescence showed her how
+profoundly he felt the uselessness of their trying to
+prolong their talk.  His face was now no more than a white
+blur in the dusk, but she felt its indistinctness as a veil
+drawn over aching intensities of expression.  "He knows...he
+knows..."  she said to herself, and wondered whether the
+truth had been revealed to him by some corroborative fact or
+by the sheer force of divination.
+
+He had risen also, and was clearly waiting for her to go,
+and she turned to the door, saying: "I'll be back in a
+moment."
+
+"Oh, don't come up again, please!" He paused, embarrassed.
+"I mean--I may not be here.  I've got to go and pick up
+Rempson, and see about some final things with him."
+She stopped on the threshold with a sinking heart.  He meant
+this to be their leave-taking, then--and he had not even
+asked her when she was to be married, or spoken of seeing
+her again before she set out for the other side of the
+world.
+
+"Owen!" she cried, and turned back.
+
+He stood mutely before her in the dimness.
+
+"You haven't told me how long you're to be gone."
+
+"How long?  Oh, you see...that's rather vague...I hate
+definite dates, you know..."
+
+He paused and she saw he did not mean to help her out. She
+tried to say: "You'll be here for my wedding?" but could not
+bring the words to her lips.  Instead she murmured: "In six
+weeks I shall be going too..."  and he rejoined, as if he had
+expected the announcement and prepared his answer: "Oh, by
+that time, very likely..."
+
+"At any rate, I won't say good-bye," she stammered, feeling
+the tears beneath her veil.
+
+"No, no; rather not!" he declared; but he made no movement,
+and she went up and threw her arms about him. "You'll write
+me, won't you?"
+
+"Of course, of course----"
+
+Her hands slipped down into his, and for a minute they held
+each other dumbly in the darkness; then he gave a vague
+laugh and said: "It's really time to light up."  He pressed
+the electric button with one hand while with the other he
+opened the door; and she passed out without daring to turn
+back, lest the light on his face should show her what she
+feared to see.
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+Anna drove to the chemist's for Owen's remedy.  On the way
+she stopped her cab at a book-shop, and emerged from it
+laden with literature.  She knew what would interest Owen,
+and what he was likely to have read, and she had made her
+choice among the newest publications with the promptness of
+a discriminating reader.  But on the way back to the hotel
+she was overcome by the irony of adding this mental panacea
+to the other.  There was something grotesque and almost
+mocking in the idea of offering a judicious selection of
+literature to a man setting out on such a journey.  "He
+knows...he knows..."  she kept on repeating; and giving the
+porter the parcel from the chemist's she drove away without
+leaving the books.
+She went to her apartment, whither her maid had preceded
+her.  There was a fire in the drawing-room and the tea-table
+stood ready by the hearth.  The stormy rain beat against the
+uncurtained windows, and she thought of Owen, who would soon
+be driving through it to the station, alone with his bitter
+thoughts.  She had been proud of the fact that he had always
+sought her help in difficult hours; and now, in the most
+difficult of all, she was the one being to whom he could not
+turn.  Between them, henceforth, there would always be the
+wall of an insurmountable silence...She strained her aching
+thoughts to guess how the truth had come to him. Had he seen
+the girl, and had she told him?  Instinctively, Anna rejected
+this conjecture.  But what need was there of assuming an
+explicit statement, when every breath they had drawn for the
+last weeks had been charged with the immanent secret?  As she
+looked back over the days since Darrow's first arrival at
+Givre she perceived that at no time had any one deliberately
+spoken, or anything been accidentally disclosed.  The truth
+had come to light by the force of its irresistible pressure;
+and the perception gave her a startled sense of hidden
+powers, of a chaos of attractions and repulsions far beneath
+the ordered surfaces of intercourse.  She looked back with
+melancholy derision on her old conception of life, as a kind
+of well-lit and well policed suburb to dark places one need
+never know about.  Here they were, these dark places, in her
+own bosom, and henceforth she would always have to traverse
+them to reach the beings she loved best!
+
+She was still sitting beside the untouched tea-table when
+she heard Darrow's voice in the hall.  She started up,
+saying to herself: "I must tell him that Owen knows..."  but
+when the door opened and she saw his face, still lit by the
+same smile of boyish triumph, she felt anew the uselessness
+of speaking...Had he ever supposed that Owen would not know?
+Probably, from the height of his greater experience, he had
+seen long since that all that happened was inevitable; and
+the thought of it, at any rate, was clearly not weighing on
+him now.
+
+He was already dressed for the evening, and as he came
+toward her he said: "The Ambassador's booked for an official
+dinner and I'm free after all.  Where shall we dine?"
+
+Anna had pictured herself sitting alone all the evening with
+her wretched thoughts, and the fact of having to put them
+out of her mind for the next few hours gave her an immediate
+sensation of relief.  Already her pulses were dancing to the
+tune of Darrow's, and as they smiled at each other she
+thought: "Nothing can ever change the fact that I belong to
+him."
+
+"Where shall we dine?" he repeated gaily, and she named a
+well-known restaurant for which she had once heard him
+express a preference.  But as she did so she fancied she saw
+a shadow on his face, and instantly she said to herself: "It
+was THERE he went with her!"
+
+"Oh, no, not there, after all!" she interrupted herself; and
+now she was sure his colour deepened.
+
+"Where shall it be, then?"
+
+She noticed that he did not ask the reason of her change,
+and this convinced her that she had guessed the truth, and
+that he knew she had guessed it.  "He will always know what
+I am thinking, and he will never dare to ask me," she
+thought; and she saw between them the same insurmountable
+wall of silence as between herself and Owen, a wall of glass
+through which they could watch each other's faintest motions
+but which no sound could ever traverse...
+
+They drove to a restaurant on the Boulevard, and there, in
+their intimate corner of the serried scene, the sense of
+what was unspoken between them gradually ceased to oppress
+her.  He looked so light-hearted and handsome, so
+ingenuously proud of her, so openly happy at being with her,
+that no other fact could seem real in his presence.  He had
+learned that the Ambassador was to spend two days in Paris,
+and he had reason to hope that in consequence his own
+departure for London would be deferred.  He was exhilarated
+by the prospect of being with Anna for a few hours longer,
+and she did not ask herself if his exhilaration were a sign
+of insensibility, for she was too conscious of his power of
+swaying her moods not to be secretly proud of affecting his.
+
+They lingered for some time over the fruit and coffee, and
+when they rose to go Darrow suggested that, if she felt
+disposed for the play, they were not too late for the second
+part of the programme at one of the smaller theatres.
+
+His mention of the hour recalled Owen to her thoughts. She
+saw his train rushing southward through the storm, and, in a
+corner of the swaying compartment, his face, white and
+indistinct as it had loomed on her in the rainy twilight.
+It was horrible to be thus perpetually paying for her
+happiness!
+
+Darrow had called for a theatrical journal, and he presently
+looked up from it to say: "I hear the second play at the
+Athenee is amusing."
+
+It was on Anna's lips to acquiesce; but as she was about to
+speak she wondered if it were not at the Athenee that Owen
+had seen Darrow with Sophy Viner. She was not sure he had
+even mentioned the theatre, but the mere possibility was
+enough to darken her sky.  It was hateful to her to think of
+accompanying Darrow to places where the girl had been with
+him.  She tried to reason away this scruple, she even
+reminded herself with a bitter irony that whenever she was
+in Darrow's arms she was where the girl had been before her
+--but she could not shake off her superstitious dread of
+being with him in any of the scenes of the Parisian episode.
+She replied that she was too tired for the play, and they
+drove back to her apartment.  At the foot of the stairs she
+half-turned to wish him good night, but he appeared not to
+notice her gesture and followed her up to her door.
+
+"This is ever so much better than the theatre," he said as
+they entered the drawing-room.
+
+She had crossed the room and was bending over the hearth to
+light the fire.  She knew he was approaching her, and that
+in a moment he would have drawn the cloak from her shoulders
+and laid his lips on her neck, just below the gathered-up
+hair.  These privileges were his and, however deferently and
+tenderly he claimed them, the joyous ease of his manner
+marked a difference and proclaimed a right.
+
+"After the theatre they came home like this," she thought;
+and at the same instant she felt his hands on her shoulders
+and shrank back.
+
+"Don't--oh, don't!" she cried, drawing her cloak about her.
+She saw from his astonished stare that her face must be
+quivering with pain.
+
+"Anna!  What on earth is the matter?"
+
+"Owen knows!" she broke out, with a confused desire to
+justify herself.
+
+Darrow's countenance changed.  "Did he tell you so?  What did
+he say?"
+
+"Nothing!  I knew it from the things he didn't say."
+
+"You had a talk with him this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes: for a few minutes.  I could see he didn't want me to
+stay."
+
+She had dropped into a chair, and sat there huddled, still
+holding her cloak about her shoulders.
+
+Darrow did not dispute her assumption, and she noticed that
+he expressed no surprise.  He sat down at a little distance
+from her, turning about in his fingers the cigar-case he had
+drawn out as they came in.  At length he said: "Had he seen
+Miss Viner?"
+
+She shrank from the sound of the name.  "No...I don't think
+so...I'm sure he hadn't..."
+
+They remained silent, looking away from one another. Finally
+Darrow stood up and took a few steps across the room.  He
+came back and paused before her, his eyes on her face.
+
+"I think you ought to tell me what you mean to do."
+She raised her head and gave him back his look. "Nothing I
+do can help Owen!"
+
+"No; but things can't go on like this."  He paused, as if to
+measure his words.  "I fill you with aversion," he
+exclaimed.
+
+She started up, half-sobbing.  "No--oh, no!"
+
+"Poor child--you can't see your face!"
+
+She lifted her hands as if to hide it, and turning away from
+him bowed her head upon the mantel-shelf.  She felt that he
+was standing a little way behind her, but he made no attempt
+to touch her or come nearer.
+
+"I know you've felt as I've felt," he said in a low voice--"
+that we belong to each other and that nothing can alter
+that.  But other thoughts come, and you can't banish them.
+Whenever you see me you remember...you associate me with
+things you abhor...You've been generous--immeasurably.
+You've given me all the chances a woman could; but if it's
+only made you suffer, what's the use?"
+
+She turned to him with a tear-stained face.  "It hasn't only
+done that."
+
+"Oh, no!  I know...There've been moments..."  He took her hand
+and raised it to his lips.  "They'll be with me as long as I
+live.  But I can't see you paying such a price for them.
+I'm not worth what I'm costing you."
+
+She continued to gaze at him through tear-dilated eyes; and
+suddenly she flung out the question: "Wasn't it the Athenee
+you took her to that evening?"
+
+"Anna--Anna!"
+
+"Yes; I want to know now: to know everything.  Perhaps that
+will make me forget.  I ought to have made you tell me
+before.  Wherever we go, I imagine you've been there with
+her...I see you together.  I want to know how it began,
+where you went, why you left her...I can't go on in this
+darkness any longer!"
+
+She did not know what had prompted her passionate outburst,
+but already she felt lighter, freer, as if at last the evil
+spell were broken.  "I want to know everything," she
+repeated.  "It's the only way to make me forget."
+
+After she had ceased speaking Darrow remained where he was,
+his arms folded, his eyes lowered, immovable.  She waited,
+her gaze on his face.
+
+"Aren't you going to tell me?"
+
+"No."
+The blood rushed to her temples.  "You won't?  Why not?"
+
+"If I did, do you suppose you'd forget THAT?"
+
+"Oh--" she moaned, and turned away from him.
+
+"You see it's impossible," he went on.  "I've done a thing I
+loathe, and to atone for it you ask me to do another.  What
+sort of satisfaction would that give you?  It would put
+something irremediable between us."
+
+She leaned her elbow against the mantel-shelf and hid her
+face in her hands.  She had the sense that she was vainly
+throwing away her last hope of happiness, yet she could do
+nothing, think of nothing, to save it. The conjecture
+flashed through her: "Should I be at peace if I gave him
+up?" and she remembered the desolation of the days after she
+had sent him away, and understood that that hope was vain.
+The tears welled through her lids and ran slowly down
+between her fingers.
+
+"Good-bye," she heard him say, and his footsteps turned to
+the door.
+
+She tried to raise her head, but the weight of her despair
+bowed it down.  She said to herself: "This is the end...he
+won't try to appeal to me again..."  and she remained in a
+sort of tranced rigidity, perceiving without feeling the
+fateful lapse of the seconds.  Then the cords that bound her
+seemed to snap, and she lifted her head and saw him going.
+
+"Why, he's mine--he's mine!  He's no one else's!" His face
+was turned to her and the look in his eyes swept away all
+her terrors.  She no longer understood what had prompted her
+senseless outcry; and the mortal sweetness of loving him
+became again the one real fact in the world.
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+Anna, the next day, woke to a humiliated memory of the
+previous evening.
+
+Darrow had been right in saying that their sacrifice would
+benefit no one; yet she seemed dimly to discern that there
+were obligations not to be tested by that standard.  She
+owed it, at any rate, as much to his pride as to hers to
+abstain from the repetition of such scenes; and she had
+learned that it was beyond her power to do so while they
+were together.  Yet when he had given her the chance to free
+herself, everything had vanished from her mind but the blind
+fear of losing him; and she saw that he and she were as
+profoundly and inextricably bound together as two trees with
+interwoven roots.
+For a long time she brooded on her plight, vaguely conscious
+that the only escape from it must come from some external
+chance.  And slowly the occasion shaped itself in her mind.
+It was Sophy Viner only who could save her--Sophy Viner only
+who could give her back her lost serenity.  She would seek
+the girl out and tell her that she had given Darrow up; and
+that step once taken there would be no retracing it, and she
+would perforce have to go forward alone.
+
+Any pretext for action was a kind of anodyne, and she
+despatched her maid to the Farlows' with a note asking if
+Miss Viner would receive her.  There was a long delay before
+the maid returned, and when at last she appeared it was with
+a slip of paper on which an address was written, and a
+verbal message to the effect that Miss Viner had left some
+days previously, and was staying with her sister in a hotel
+near the Place de l'Etoile.  The maid added that Mrs.
+Farlow, on the plea that Miss Viner's plans were uncertain,
+had at first made some difficulty about giving this
+information; and Anna guessed that the girl had left her
+friends' roof, and instructed them to withhold her address,
+with the object of avoiding Owen.  "She's kept faith with
+herself and I haven't," Anna mused; and the thought was a
+fresh incentive to action.
+
+Darrow had announced his intention of coming soon after
+luncheon, and the morning was already so far advanced that
+Anna, still mistrustful of her strength, decided to drive
+immediately to the address Mrs. Farlow had given.  On the
+way there she tried to recall what she had heard of Sophy
+Viner's sister, but beyond the girl's enthusiastic report of
+the absent Laura's loveliness she could remember only
+certain vague allusions of Mrs. Farlow's to her artistic
+endowments and matrimonial vicissitudes.  Darrow had
+mentioned her but once, and in the briefest terms, as having
+apparently very little concern for Sophy's welfare, and
+being, at any rate, too geographically remote to give her
+any practical support; and Anna wondered what chance had
+brought her to her sister's side at this conjunction.  Mrs.
+Farlow had spoken of her as a celebrity (in what line Anna
+failed to recall); but Mrs. Farlow's celebrities were
+legion, and the name on the slip of paper--Mrs. McTarvie-
+Birch--did not seem to have any definite association with
+fame.
+
+While Anna waited in the dingy vestibule of the Hotel
+Chicago she had so distinct a vision of what she meant to
+say to Sophy Viner that the girl seemed already to be before
+her; and her heart dropped from all the height of its
+courage when the porter, after a long delay, returned with
+the announcement that Miss Viner was no longer in the hotel.
+Anna, doubtful if she understood, asked if he merely meant
+that the young lady was out at the moment; but he replied
+that she had gone away the day before.  Beyond this he had
+no information to impart, and after a moment's hesitation
+Anna sent him back to enquire if Mrs. McTarvie-Birch would
+receive her.  She reflected that Sophy had probably pledged
+her sister to the same secrecy as Mrs. Farlow, and that a
+personal appeal to Mrs. Birch might lead to less negative
+results.
+
+There was another long interval of suspense before the
+porter reappeared with an affirmative answer; and a third
+while an exiguous and hesitating lift bore her up past a
+succession of shabby landings.
+
+When the last was reached, and her guide had directed her
+down a winding passage that smelt of sea-going luggage, she
+found herself before a door through which a strong odour of
+tobacco reached her simultaneously with the sounds of a
+suppressed altercation.  Her knock was followed by a
+silence, and after a minute or two the door was opened by a
+handsome young man whose ruffled hair and general air of
+creased disorder led her to conclude that he had just risen
+from a long-limbed sprawl on a sofa strewn with tumbled
+cushions.  This sofa, and a grand piano bearing a basket of
+faded roses, a biscuit-tin and a devastated breakfast tray,
+almost filled the narrow sitting-room, in the remaining
+corner of which another man, short, swarthy and humble, sat
+examining the lining of his hat.
+
+Anna paused in doubt; but on her naming Mrs. Birch the young
+man politely invited her to enter, at the same time casting
+an impatient glance at the mute spectator in the background.
+
+The latter, raising his eyes, which were round and bulging,
+fixed them, not on the young man but on Anna, whom, for a
+moment, he scrutinized as searchingly as the interior of his
+hat.  Under his gaze she had the sense of being minutely
+catalogued and valued; and the impression, when he finally
+rose and moved toward the door, of having been accepted as a
+better guarantee than he had had any reason to hope for.  On
+the threshold his glance crossed that of the young man in an
+exchange of intelligence as full as it was rapid; and this
+brief scene left Anna so oddly enlightened that she felt no
+surprise when her companion, pushing an arm-chair forward,
+sociably asked her if she wouldn't have a cigarette. Her
+polite refusal provoked the remark that he would, if she'd
+no objection; and while he groped for matches in his loose
+pockets, and behind the photographs and letters crowding the
+narrow mantel-shelf, she ventured another enquiry for Mrs.
+Birch.
+
+"Just a minute," he smiled; "I think the masseur's with
+her."  He spoke in a smooth denationalized English, which,
+like the look in his long-lashed eyes and the promptness of
+his charming smile, suggested a long training in all the
+arts of expediency.  Having finally discovered a match-box
+on the floor beside the sofa, he lit his cigarette and
+dropped back among the cushions; and on Anna's remarking
+that she was sorry to disturb Mrs. Birch he replied that
+that was all right, and that she always kept everybody
+waiting.
+
+After this, through the haze of his perpetually renewed
+cigarettes, they continued to chat for some time of
+indifferent topics; but when at last Anna again suggested
+the possibility of her seeing Mrs. Birch he rose from his
+corner with a slight shrug, and murmuring: "She's perfectly
+hopeless," lounged off through an inner door.
+
+Anna was still wondering when and in what conjunction of
+circumstances the much-married Laura had acquired a partner
+so conspicuous for his personal charms, when the young man
+returned to announce: "She says it's all right, if you don't
+mind seeing her in bed."
+
+He drew aside to let Anna pass, and she found herself in a
+dim untidy scented room, with a pink curtain pinned across
+its single window, and a lady with a great deal of fair hair
+and uncovered neck smiling at her from a pink bed on which
+an immense powder-puff trailed.
+
+"You don't mind, do you?  He costs such a frightful lot that
+I can't afford to send him off," Mrs. Birch explained,
+extending a thickly-ringed hand to Anna, and leaving her in
+doubt as to whether the person alluded to were her
+masseur or her husband.  Before a reply was possible there
+was a convulsive stir beneath the pink expanse, and
+something that resembled another powder-puff hurled itself
+at Anna with a volley of sounds like the popping of
+Lilliputian champagne corks.  Mrs. Birch, flinging herself
+forward, gasped out: "If you'd just give him a
+caramel...there, in that box on the dressing-table...it's
+the only earthly thing to stop him..."  and when Anna had
+proffered this sop to her assailant, and he had withdrawn
+with it beneath the bedspread, his mistress sank back with a
+laugh.
+
+"Isn't he a beauty?  The Prince gave him to me down at Nice
+the other day--but he's perfectly awful," she confessed,
+beaming intimately on her visitor.  In the roseate penumbra
+of the bed-curtains she presented to Anna's startled gaze an
+odd chromo-like resemblance to Sophy Viner, or a suggestion,
+rather, of what Sophy Viner might, with the years and in
+spite of the powder-puff, become.  Larger, blonder, heavier-
+featured, she yet had glances and movements that
+disturbingly suggested what was freshest and most engaging
+in the girl; and as she stretched her bare plump arm across
+the bed she seemed to be pulling back the veil from dingy
+distances of family history.
+
+"Do sit down, if there's a place to sit on," she cordially
+advised; adding, as Anna took the edge of a chair hung with
+miscellaneous raiment: "My singing takes so much time that I
+don't get a chance to walk the fat off--that's the worst of
+being an artist."
+
+Anna murmured an assent.  "I hope it hasn't inconvenienced
+you to see me; I told Mr. Birch--"
+
+"Mr. WHO?" the recumbent beauty asked; and then: "Oh,
+JIMMY!" she faintly laughed, as if more for her own
+enlightenment than Anna's.
+
+The latter continued eagerly: "I understand from Mrs. Farlow
+that your sister was with you, and I ventured to come up
+because I wanted to ask you when I should have a chance of
+finding her."
+
+Mrs. McTarvie-Birch threw back her head with a long stare.
+"Do you mean to say the idiot at the door didn't tell you?
+Sophy went away last night."
+
+"Last night?" Anna echoed.  A sudden terror had possessed
+her.  Could it be that the girl had tricked them all and
+gone with Owen?  The idea was incredible, yet it took such
+hold of her that she could hardly steady her lips to say:
+"The porter did tell me, but I thought perhaps he was
+mistaken.  Mrs. Farlow seemed to think that I should find
+her here."
+
+"It was all so sudden that I don't suppose she had time to
+let the Farlows know.  She didn't get Mrs. Murrett's wire
+till yesterday, and she just pitched her things into a trunk
+and rushed----"
+
+"Mrs. Murrett?"
+
+"Why, yes.  Sophy's gone to India with Mrs. Murrett; they're
+to meet at Brindisi," Sophy's sister said with a calm smile.
+
+Anna sat motionless, gazing at the disordered room, the pink
+bed, the trivial face among the pillows.
+
+Mrs. McTarvie-Birch pursued: "They had a fearful kick-up
+last spring--I daresay you knew about it--but I told Sophy
+she'd better lump it, as long as the old woman was willing
+to...As an artist, of course, it's perfectly impossible for
+me to have her with me..."
+
+"Of course," Anna mechanically assented.
+
+Through the confused pain of her thoughts she was hardly
+aware that Mrs. Birch's explanations were still continuing.
+"Naturally I didn't altogether approve of her going back to
+that beast of a woman.  I said all I could...I told her she
+was a fool to chuck up such a place as yours.  But Sophy's
+restless--always was--and she's taken it into her head she'd
+rather travel..."
+
+Anna rose from her seat, groping for some formula of leave-
+taking.  The pushing back of her chair roused the white
+dog's smouldering animosity, and he drowned his mistress's
+further confidences in another outburst of hysterics.
+Through the tumult Anna signed an inaudible farewell, and
+Mrs. Birch, having momentarily succeeded in suppressing her
+pet under a pillow, called out: "Do come again!  I'd love to
+sing to you."
+
+Anna murmured a word of thanks and turned to the door. As
+she opened it she heard her hostess crying after her:
+"Jimmy!  Do you hear me?  Jimmy BRANCE!" and then, there
+being no response from the person summoned: "DO tell him
+he must go and call the lift for you!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Reef by Edith Wharton
+
+
+