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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dust Flower, by Basil King
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Dust Flower
+
+Author: Basil King
+
+Illustrator: Hibbard V. B. Kline
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2009 [EBook #28590]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUST FLOWER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Darleen Dove and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DUST FLOWER
+
+
+
+
+  BOOKS BY
+  BASIL KING
+  ----------------------------
+  _The Dust Flower_
+  _The Empty Sack_
+  _Going West_
+  _The City of Comrades_
+  _Abraham's Bosom_
+  _The Lifted Veil_
+  _The Side of the Angels_
+  _The Letter of the Contract_
+  _The Way Home_
+  _The Wild Olive_
+  _The Inner Shrine_
+  _The Street Called Straight_
+  _Let No Man Put Asunder_
+  _In the Garden of Charity_
+  _The Steps of Honor_
+  _The High Heart_
+  ----------------------------
+  HARPER & BROTHERS
+  Established 1817
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THEN SLOWLY, SLOWLY LETTY SANK ON HER KNEES, BOWING HER
+HEAD ON THE HANDS WHICH DREW HER CLOSER. [See p. 350]]
+
+
+
+
+  THE DUST FLOWER
+
+  _By_ BASIL KING
+
+  _Author of_
+  "THE EMPTY SACK" "THE INNER SHRINE" ETC.
+
+  _With Illustrations by_
+  HIBBARD V. B. KLINE
+
+  _Publishers_
+  Harper & Brothers
+  New York and London
+  _MCMXXII_
+
+
+
+
+  THE DUST FLOWER
+
+  Copyright, 1922
+  Harper & Brothers
+  Printed in the U. S. A.
+
+  _First Edition_
+  H-W
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                                   PAGE
+  THEN SLOWLY, SLOWLY LETTY SANK ON HER KNEES,
+  BOWING HER HEAD ON THE HANDS WHICH DREW HER
+  CLOSER                                                 _Frontispiece_
+
+  BY THE TIME HE HAD FINISHED, HIS HEART WAS A
+  LITTLE EASED AND SOME OF HER TENDERNESS BEGAN TO
+  FLOW TOWARD HIM                                     _Facing page_  68
+
+  THE PRINCE'S FIRST WORDS WERE ALSO A DISTRACTION
+  FROM TERRORS, AND ENCHANTMENTS WHICH MADE HER
+  FEEL FAINT                                          _Facing page_ 230
+
+  "BUT BY AND BY I CREEPS OUT AND DOWN THE STEPS,
+  AND THERE 'E WAS, ALL 'UDDLED EVERY WYE"            _Facing page_ 328
+
+
+
+
+THE DUST FLOWER
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+It is not often that you see a man tear his hair, but this is exactly
+what Rashleigh Allerton did. He tore it, first, because of being under
+the stress of great agitation, and second, because he had it to
+tear--a thick, black shock with a tendency to part in the middle, but
+brushed carefully to one side. Seated on the extreme edge of one of
+Miss Walbrook's strong, slender armchairs, his elbows on his knees, he
+dug his fingers into the dark mass with every fresh taunt from his
+fiancée.
+
+She was standing over him, high-tempered, imperious. "So it's come to
+this," she said, with decision; "you've got to choose between a
+stupid, vulgar lot of men, and me."
+
+He gritted his teeth. "Do you expect me to give up all my friends?"
+
+"All your friends! That's another matter. I'm speaking of half a dozen
+profligates, of whom you seem determined--I _must_ say it, Rash; you
+force me to it--of whom you seem determined to be one."
+
+He jumped to his feet, a slim, good-looking, well-dressed figure in
+spite of the tumbled effect imparted by excitement. "But, good
+heavens, Barbara, what have I been doing?"
+
+"I don't pretend to follow you there. I only know the condition in
+which you came here from the club last night."
+
+He was honestly bewildered. "Came here from the club last night?
+Why--why, I wasn't so bad."
+
+Standing away from him, she twirled the engagement solitaire as if
+resisting the impulse to snatch it off. "That would be a question of
+point of view, wouldn't it? If Aunt Marion hadn't been here----"
+
+"I'd only had----"
+
+"Please, Rash! I don't want to know the details."
+
+"But I want you to know them. I've told you a dozen times that if I
+take so much as a cocktail or a glass of sherry I'm all in, when
+another fellow can take ten times as much and not----"
+
+"Rash, dear, I haven't known you all my life without being quite aware
+that you're excitable. 'Crazy Rash' we used to call you when we were
+children, and Crazy Rash you are still. But that's not my point."
+
+"Your point is that that infernal old Aunt Marion of yours doesn't
+like me."
+
+"She's not infernal, and she's not old, but it's true that she doesn't
+like you. All the more reason, then, that when she gave her consent to
+our engagement on condition that you'd give up your disgusting
+habits----"
+
+He raced away from her to the other side of the room, turning to face
+her like an exasperated animal at bay.
+
+The room was noteworthy, and of curiously feminine refinement.
+Expressing Miss Marion Walbrook as it did, it made no provision for
+the coarse and lounging habits of men, Miss Walbrook's world being a
+woman's world. All was straight, slender, erect, and hard in the way
+that women like for occasions of formality. It was evident, too, that
+Miss Walbrook's women friends were serious, if civilized. There was no
+place here for the slapdash, smoking girl of the present day.
+
+The tone which caught your eye was that of dusky gold, thrown out
+first from the Chinese rug in imperial yellow, but reflected from a
+score of surfaces in rich old satinwood, discreetly mounted in ormolu.
+On the French-paneled walls there was but one picture, Sargent's
+portrait of Miss Walbrook herself, an exquisite creature, with the
+straight, thin lines of her own table legs and the grace which makes
+no appeal to men. Not that she was of the type colloquially known as a
+"back number," or a person to be ignored. On the contrary, she was a
+pioneer of the day after to-morrow, the herald of an epoch when the
+blundering of men would be replaced by superior intelligence.
+
+You must know these facts with regard to Miss Walbrook, the aunt, in
+order to understand Miss Walbrook, the niece. The latter was not the
+pupil of the former, since she was too intense and high-handed to be
+the pupil of anyone. Nevertheless she had caught from her wealthy and
+public-spirited relative certain prepossessions which guided her
+points of view.
+
+Without having beauty, Miss Barbara Walbrook impressed you as Someone,
+and as Someone dressed by the most expensive houses in New York. For
+beauty her lips were too full, her eyes too slanting, and her
+delicate profile too much like that of an ancient Egyptian princess.
+The princess was perhaps what was most underscored in her character,
+the being who by some indefinable divine right is entitled to her own
+way. She didn't specially claim her way; she only couldn't bear not
+getting it.
+
+Rashleigh Allerton, being of the easy-going type, had no objection to
+her getting her own way, but he sometimes rebelled against her manner
+of taking it. So rebelling now, he tried to give her to understand
+that he was master.
+
+"If you marry me, Barbe, you'll have to take me as I am--disgusting
+habits and all."
+
+It was the wrong tone, the whip to the filly that should have been
+steered gently.
+
+"But I suppose there's no law to compel me to marry you."
+
+"Only the law of honor."
+
+Her whole personality was aflame. "You talk of honor!"
+
+"Yes I talk of it. Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Do you know anything about it?"
+
+"Would you marry a man who didn't?"
+
+"I haven't married any one--as yet."
+
+"But you're going to marry me, I presume."
+
+"Considering the facts, that's a good deal in the way of presumption,
+isn't it?"
+
+They reached the place to which they came once in every few weeks,
+where each had the impulse to hurt the other cruelly.
+
+"If it's so much presumption as all that," he demanded, "what's the
+meaning of that ring?"
+
+"Oh, I don't have to go on wearing it." Crossing the room she pulled
+it off and held it out toward him "Do you want it back?"
+
+He shrank away from her. "Don't be a fool Barbe. You may go too far."
+
+"That's what I'm afraid of--that I've gone too far already."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"In the way that's brought us face to face like this. If I'd never
+promised to marry you I shouldn't now have to--to reconsider."
+
+"Oh, so that's it. You're reconsidering."
+
+"Don't you see that I have to? If you make me as unhappy as you can
+before marriage, what'll it be afterward?"
+
+"And how happy are you making me?"
+
+Holding the ring between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand,
+she played at putting it back, without doing it. "So there you are!
+Isn't that another reason for reconsidering--for both of us?"
+
+"Don't you care anything about me?"
+
+"You make it difficult--after such an exhibition as that of last
+night, right before Aunt Marion. Can't you imagine that there are
+situations in which I feel ashamed?"
+
+It was then that he spoke the words which changed the current of his
+life. "And can't you imagine that there are situations in which I
+resent being badgered by a bitter-tongued old maid, to say nothing of
+a girl----" He knew how "crazy" he was, but the habit of getting
+beyond his own control was one of long standing--"to say nothing of a
+girl who's more like an old maid than a woman going to be married."
+
+With a renewed attempt at being master he pointed at the ring which
+she was still holding within an inch of its finger. "Put that back."
+
+"I think not."
+
+"Then if you don't----"
+
+"Well--what?"
+
+Plunging his hands into the pockets of his coat, he began tearing up
+and down the room. "Look here, Barbe. This kind of thing can't
+possibly go on."
+
+"Which is what I'm trying to tell you, isn't it?"
+
+"Very well, then; we can stop it."
+
+"Certainly--in one way."
+
+"The way of getting married, with no more shilly-shallying about it."
+
+"On the principle that if you're hanging over a precipice the best
+thing you can do is to fall."
+
+He continued to race up and down the room, all nerves and frenzy.
+"Don't we care about each other?"
+
+She answered carefully. "I think you care about me to the extent that
+you believe I'd make a good mistress of the house your mother left
+you, and which, you say, is like an empty sepulcher. If you didn't
+have it on your hands, I don't imagine it would have occurred to you
+to ask me."
+
+"Well, that's all right. Now what about you?"
+
+"You've already answered that question for yourself." She stiffened
+haughtily. "I'm an old maid. I haven't been brought up by Aunt Marion
+for nothing. I've an old maid's ways and outlooks and habits. I
+resented your saying it a minute ago, and yet it's true. I've known
+for years that it was true. It wouldn't be fair for me to marry any
+man. So here it is, Rash." Crossing the floor-space she held out the
+ring again. "You might as well take it first as last."
+
+He drew back from her, his features screwed up like those of a tragic
+mask. "Do you mean it?"
+
+"Do I seem to be making a joke?"
+
+Averting his face, he swept the mere sight of the ring away from him.
+"I won't touch the thing."
+
+"And I can't keep it. So there!"
+
+It fell with a little shivery sound to a bare spot on the floor,
+rolling to the edge of a rug, where it stopped. Each looked down at
+it.
+
+"So you mean to send me to the devil! All right! Just watch and you'll
+see me go."
+
+She was walking away from him, but turned again. "If you mean by that
+that you put the responsibility for your abominable life on me----"
+
+"Abominable life! Me! Just because I'm not one of the white-blooded
+Nancies which your aunt thinks the only ones fit to be called
+men----"
+
+But he couldn't go on. He was choking. The sole relief to his
+indignation was in once more tearing round the room, while Miss
+Walbrook moved to the fluted white mantelpiece, where, with her foot
+resting on the attenuated Hunt Diedrich andirons she bowed her head
+against an attenuated Hunt Diedrich antelope in bronze.
+
+She was not softened or repentant. She knew she would become so later;
+but she knew too that her tempers had to work themselves off by
+degrees. Their quarrels having hitherto been rendered worth while by
+their reconciliations, she took it for granted that the same thing
+would happen once more though, as she expressed it to herself, she
+would have died before taking the first step. The obvious thing was
+for him to pick up the ring from off the floor, bring it to her humbly
+while her back was turned on him, and beseech her to allow him to slip
+it on where it belonged; whereupon she would consider as to whether
+she would do so or not. In her present frame of mind, so she told
+herself, she would not. Nothing would induce her to do anything of the
+kind. He had betrayed the fact that he knew something as to which she
+was desperately sensitive, which other people knew, but which she had
+always supposed to have escaped his observation--that she was like an
+old maid.
+
+She was. She was only twenty-five, but she had been like an old maid
+at fifteen. It had been a joke till she was twenty, after which it had
+continued as a joke to her friends, but a grief to herself. She was
+distinguished, aristocratic, intellectual, accomplished, and Aunt
+Marion would probably see to it that she was left tolerably well off;
+nevertheless she had picked up from her aunt, or perhaps had inherited
+from the same source, the peculiar quality of the woman who would
+probably not marry. Because she knew it and bewailed it, it had come
+like a staggering blow to learn that Rash knew it, and perhaps
+bewailed it too. The least he could do to atone for that offense would
+be to beg her, to implore her on his bended knees, to wear his ring
+again; and she might not do it even then.
+
+The dramatic experience was worth waiting for, however, and so with
+spirit churning she leaned her hot brow against the thin, cool flank
+of Hunt Diedrich's antelope. She knew by the fierce grinding of his
+steps on the far side of the room that he hadn't yet picked up the
+ring; but there was no hurry as to that. Since she would never, never
+forgive him for knowing what she thought he didn't know--forgive him
+in her heart, that was to say--not if she married him ten times over,
+or to the longest day he lived, there was plenty of time for reaching
+friendly terms again. Her anger had not yet blown off, nor had she
+stabbed him hard enough. As with most people subject to storms of hot
+temper, stabs, given and received, were all in her day's work. They
+relieved for the moment the pressure of emotion, leaving no permanent
+ill-will behind them.
+
+She heard him come to a halt, but did not turn to look at him.
+
+"So it's all over!"
+
+As a peg on which to hang a retort the words would serve as well as
+any others. "It seems so, doesn't it?"
+
+"And you don't care whether I go to the devil or not?"
+
+"What's the good of my caring when you seem determined to do it
+anyhow?"
+
+He allowed a good minute to pass before saying, "Well, if you don't
+marry me some other woman will."
+
+"Very likely; and if you make her a promise to reform I hope you'll
+keep your word."
+
+"She won't be likely to exact any such condition."
+
+"Then you'll probably be happier with her than you could have been
+with me."
+
+Having opened up the way for him to make some protest to which she
+could have remained obdurate, she waited for it to come. But nothing
+did come. Had she turned, she would have seen that he had grown white,
+that his hands were clenched and his lips compressed after a way he
+had and that his wild, harum-scarum soul was worked up to an
+extraordinary intensity; but she didn't turn. She was waiting for him
+to pick up the ring, creep along behind her, and seize the hand
+resting on the mantelpiece, according to the ritual she had mentally
+foreordained. But without stooping or taking a step he spoke again.
+
+"I picked up a book at the club the other day."
+
+Not being interested, she made no response.
+
+"It was the life of an English writing-guy."
+
+Though wondering what he was working up to, she still held her peace.
+
+"Gissing, the fellow's name was. Ever hear of him?"
+
+The question being direct, she murmured: "Yes; of course. What of
+it?"
+
+"Ever hear how he got married?"
+
+"Not that I remember."
+
+"When something went wrong--I've forgotten what--he went out into the
+street with a vow. It was a vow to marry the first woman he met who'd
+marry him."
+
+A shiver went through her. It was just such a foolhardy thing as
+Rashleigh himself was likely to attempt. She was afraid. She was
+afraid, and yet reangered just when her wrath was beginning to die
+down.
+
+"And he did it!" he cried, with a force in which it was impossible for
+her not to catch a note of personal implication.
+
+It was unlikely that he could be trying to trap her by any such cheap
+melodramatic threat as this; and yet----
+
+When several minutes had gone by in a silence which struck her soon as
+awesome, she turned slowly round, only to find herself alone.
+
+She ran into the hall, but there was no one there. He must have gone
+downstairs. Leaning over the baluster, she called to him.
+
+"Rash! Rash!"
+
+But only Wildgoose, the manservant, answered from below. "Mr. Allerton
+had just left the 'ouse, miss."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+While Allerton and Miss Walbrook had been conducting this debate a
+dissimilar yet parallel scene was enacted in a mean house in a mean
+street on the other side of the Park. Viewed from the outside, the
+house was one of those survivals of more primitive times which you
+will still run across in the richest as well as in the poorest
+districts of New York. A tiny wooden structure of two low stories, it
+connected with the sidewalk by a flight of steps of a third of the
+height of the whole façade. Flat-roofed and clap-boarded, it had once
+been painted gray with white facings, but time, weather, and soot had
+defaced these neat colors to a hideous pepper-and-salt.
+
+Within, a toy entry led directly to a toy stairway, and by a door on
+the left into a toy living-room. In the toy living-room a man of
+forty-odd was saying to a girl of perhaps twenty-three,
+
+"So you'll not give it up, won't you?"
+
+The girl cringed as the man stood over her, but pressing her hand over
+something she had slipped within the opening at the neck of her cheap
+shirtwaist, she maintained her ground. The face she raised to him was
+at once terrified and determined, tremulous with tears and yet defiant
+with some new exercise of will power.
+
+"No, I'll not give it up."
+
+"We'll see."
+
+He said it quietly enough, the menace being less in his tone than in
+himself. He was so plainly the cheap sport bully that there could have
+been nothing but a menace in his personality. Flashy male good looks
+got a kind of brilliancy from a set of big, strong teeth the whiter
+for their contrast with a black, brigand-like mustache. He was so well
+dressed in his cheap sport way as to be out of keeping with the
+dilapidation of the room, in which there was hardly a table or a chair
+which stood firmly on its legs, or a curtain or a covering which
+didn't reek with dust and germs. A worn, thin carpet gaped in holes;
+what had once been a sofa stood against a wall, shockingly
+disemboweled. Through a door ajar one glimpsed a toy kitchen where the
+stove had lost a leg and was now supported by a brick. It was plain
+that the master of the house was one of those for whom any lair is
+sufficient as a home as long as he can cut a dash outside.
+
+Quiveringly, as if in terror of a blow, the girl explained herself
+breathlessly: "The castin' director sent for me just as I was makin'
+tracks for home. He ast me if this was the on'y suit I had. When I
+'lowed it was, he just said he couldn't use me any more till I got a
+new one."
+
+The man took the tone of superior masculine knowledge. "That wasn't
+nothin' but bull. What if he does chuck you? I know every movin'
+picture studio round N'York. I'll get you in somewheres else. Come
+now, Letty. Fork out. I need the berries. I owe some one. I was only
+waitin' for you to come home."
+
+She clutched her breast more tightly. "I gotta have a new suit
+anyhow."
+
+"Well, I'll buy you a new suit when I get the bones. Didn't I give you
+this one?"
+
+She continued, still breathlessly: "Two years ago--a marked-down
+misses' it was even then--all right if I was on'y sixteen--but now
+when I'm near twenty-three--and it's in rags anyhow--and all out of
+style--and in pitchers you've gotta be----"
+
+"They'se plenty pitchers where they want that character--to pass in a
+crowd, and all that."
+
+"To pass in a crowd once or twice, yes; but when all you can do is to
+pass in a crowd, and wear the same old rig every time you pass in
+it----"
+
+He cut her protests short by saying, with an air of finality: "Well,
+anyhow I've got to have the bucks. Can't go out till I get 'em. So
+hand!"
+
+With lips compressed and eyes swimming, she shook her head.
+
+"Better do it. You'll be sorry if you don't. I can pass you that tip
+straight now."
+
+"If you was laughed at every time you stepped onto the lot----"
+
+"There's worse things than bein' laughed at. I can tell you that
+straight now."
+
+"Nothin's worse than bein' laughed at, not for a girl of my age there
+ain't."
+
+Watching his opportunity he caught her off her guard. Her eyes having
+wandered to the coat she had just taken off, a worn gray thing with
+edgings of worn gray squirrel fur, he wrenched back with an unexpected
+movement the hand that clutched something to her breast, thrust two
+fingers of his other hand within her corsage, and extracted her
+pay-envelope.
+
+It took her by such surprise that she was like a mad thing, throwing
+herself upon him and battling for her treasure, though any possibility
+of her getting it back from him was hopeless. It was so easy for him
+to catch her by the wrists and twist them that he laughed while he was
+doing it.
+
+"You little cat! You see what you bring on yourself. And you're goin'
+to get worse. I can tell you that straight now."
+
+Still twisting her arms till she writhed, though without a moan or a
+cry, he backed her toward the disemboweled sofa, on whose harsh,
+exposed springs she fell. Then he sprang on her a new surprise.
+
+"How dare you wear them rings? They was your mother's rings. I bought
+and paid for 'em. They're mine."
+
+"Oh, don't take them off," she begged. "You can keep the money----"
+
+"Sure I can keep the money," he grinned, wrenching from her fingers
+the plain gold band he had given her mother as a wedding ring, as well
+as another, bigger, broader, showier, and set with two infinitesimal
+white points claiming to be diamonds.
+
+Though he had released her hands, she now stretched them out toward
+him pleadingly. "Aw, give 'em back to me. They'se all I've got in the
+world to care about--just because she wore 'em. You can take anything
+else I've got----"
+
+"All right, then. I'll take this."
+
+With a deftness which would have done credit to a professor of
+legerdemain he unbuckled the strap of her little wrist-watch, putting
+the thing into his pocket.
+
+"I give that to your mother too. You don't need it, and it may be
+useful to me. What else have you got?"
+
+She struggled to her feet. He was growing more dangerous than she had
+ever known him to be even when he had beaten her.
+
+"I ain't got nothin' else."
+
+"Oh, yes, you have. You gotta purse. I seen you with it. Where is
+it?"
+
+The fear in her eyes sent his toward her jacket, thrown on the chair
+when she had come in. With an "Ah!" of satisfaction he pounced on it.
+As he held it upside down and shook it, a little leather wallet
+clattered to the floor. She sprang for it, but again he was too quick
+for her.
+
+"So!" he snarled, with his glittering grin. "You thought you'd get it,
+did you?" He rattled the few coins, copper and silver, into the palm
+of his hand, and unfolded a one-dollar bill. "You must owe me this
+money. Who's give you bed and board for the last ten year, I'd like to
+know? How much have you ever paid me?"
+
+"Only all I ever earned--which you stole from me."
+
+"Stole from you, did I? Well, you won't fling that in my face any
+more." He handed her her coat. "Put that on," he commanded.
+
+"What for?" She held it without obeying the order. "What's the good o'
+goin' out and me without a cent?"
+
+"Put it on."
+
+Her lip quivered; she began to suspect his intention. "I do' wanta."
+
+"Oh, very well! Please yourself. You got your hat on already."
+Seizing her by the shoulders he steered her toward the door. "Now
+march."
+
+Though she refused to march, it was not difficult for him to force
+her.
+
+"This'll teach you to valyer a good home when you got one. You'll
+deserve to find the next one different."
+
+She almost shrieked: "You're not going to turn me out?"
+
+"Well, what does it look as if I was doin'?"
+
+"I won't go! I won't go! Where _can_ I go?"
+
+"What I'm doin' 'll help you to find out."
+
+He had her now in the entry, where in spite of her struggles he had no
+difficulty in unlocking the door, pushing her out, and relocking the
+door behind her.
+
+"Lemme in! Lemme in! Oh, _please_, lemme in!"
+
+He stood in the middle of the living-room, listening with pleasure and
+smiling his brigand's smile. He was not as bad as you might think. He
+did mean to let her in eventually. His smile and his pleasure sprang
+purely from the fact that his lesson was so successful. With this in
+her mind, she wouldn't withstand him a second time.
+
+She rattled the door by the handle. She beat upon the panels. She
+implored.
+
+Still smiling, he filled his pipe. Let her keep it up. It would do her
+good. He remembered that once when he had turned her mother out at
+night, she had sat on the steps till he let her in at dawn before the
+police looked round that way. History would repeat itself. The
+daughter would do the same. He was only giving her the lesson she
+deserved.
+
+Meanwhile she was experiencing a new sensation, that of outrage. For
+the first time in her life she was swept by pride in revolt. She
+hadn't known that any such emotion could get hold of her. As a matter
+of fact she hadn't known that so strong a support to the inner man lay
+within the depths of human nature. Accustomed to being cowed, she had
+hardly understood that there was any other way to feel. Only within a
+day or two had something which you or I would have called spirit, but
+for which she had no name, disturbed her with unexpected flashes, like
+those of summer lightning.
+
+While waiting for the camera, for instance, in the street scene in
+"The Man with the Emerald Eye," a "fresh thing" had said, with a wink
+at her companions, "Say, did you copy that suit from a pattern in
+_Chic?_"
+
+Letty had so carefully minded her own business and tried to be nice to
+every one that the titter which went round at her expense hurt her
+with a wound impelling her to reply, "No; I ordered it at Margot's.
+You look as if you got your things there too, don't you?"
+Nevertheless, she was so stung by the sarcasm that the commendation
+she overheard later, that the Gravely kid had a tongue, didn't bring
+any consolation.
+
+Without knowing that what she felt now was an intensified form of the
+same rebellion against scorn, she knew it was not consistent with some
+inborn sense of human dignity to stand there pleading to be let into a
+house from which she was locked out, even though it was the only spot
+on earth she could call home. Still less was it possible when, round
+the foot of the steps, a crowd began to gather, jeering at her
+passionate beseechings. For the most part they were children, Slavic,
+Semitic, Italian. Amid their cries of, "Go it, Sis!" now in English
+and now in strange equivalents of Latin, or Polish, or even Hebraic
+origin, she was suddenly arrested by the consciousness of personal
+humiliation.
+
+She turned from the door to face the street. It was one of those
+streets not rare in New York which the civic authorities abandon in
+despair. A gash of children and refuse cut straight from river to
+Park, it got its chief movement from push-carts of fruit and other
+foods, while the "wash" of five hundred families blew its banners
+overhead. Vendors of all kinds uttered their nasal or raucous cries,
+in counterpoint to the treble screams of little boys and girls.
+
+Letty had always hated it, but it was something more than hatred which
+she felt for it now. Beyond the children adults were taking a rest
+from the hawking profession to comment with grins on the sight of a
+girl locked out of her own home. She was probably a very bad girl to
+call for that kind of treatment, and therefore one on whom they should
+spend some derision.
+
+They were spending it as she turned. It was an experience on a large
+scale of what the girl in the studio had inflicted. She was a thing to
+be scorned, and of all the hardships in the world scorn, now that she
+was aware of it, was the one she could least submit to.
+
+So pride came to her rescue. Throwing her coat across her arm she went
+down the steps, passed through the hooting children, one or two of
+whom pulled her by the skirt, passed through the bearded Jews, and
+the bronzed Italians, and the flat-nosed Slavs, passed through the
+women who had come out on the sidewalk at this accentuation of the
+daily din, passed through the barrows and handcarts and piles of
+cabbages and fruit, and went her way.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+Exactly at this minute Rashleigh Allerton was standing outside Miss
+Walbrook's door, glancing up and down Fifth Avenue and over at the
+Park. It was the hour after luncheon when pedestrians become numerous.
+For his purpose they could not be very numerous; they must be
+reasonably spaced apart.
+
+And already a veritable stream of women had begun to flow down the
+long, gentle slope, while a few, like fish, were stemming the current
+by making progress against it. None of them was his "affair." Young,
+old, short, tall, blond, brunette, they were without exception of the
+class indiscriminately lumped as ladies. Since you couldn't go to the
+devil because you had married a lady, even on the wild hypothesis that
+one of these sophisticated beings would without introduction or
+formality marry him, it would be better not to let himself in for the
+absurdity of the proposal. When there was a break in the procession,
+he darted across the street and made his way into the Park.
+
+Here there was no one in sight as far as the path continued without a
+bend. He was going altogether at a venture. Round the curve of the
+woodland way there might swing at any second the sibyl who would point
+his life downward.
+
+He was aware, however, that in sibyls he had a preference. If she was
+to send him to the devil, she must be of the type which he qualified
+as a "drab." Without knowing the dictionary meaning of the word, he
+felt that it implied whatever would contrast most revoltingly with
+Barbara Walbrook. Seeing with her own eyes to what she had driven him,
+her heart would be wrung. That was all he asked for, the wringing of
+her heart. It might be a mad thing for him to punish himself so
+terribly just to punish her, but he was mad anyhow. Madness gave him
+the satisfaction which some men got from thrift, and others from
+cleverness. He would keep the vow with which he had slipped out of
+Miss Walbrook's drawing room. It was all that life had left for him.
+
+That was, he wouldn't pick and choose. He would take them as they
+came. He had not stipulated with himself that she must be a "drab." It
+was only what he hoped. She must be the first woman he met who would
+marry him. Age, appearance, refinement, vulgarity were not to be
+considered. Picking and choosing on his part would only take his
+destiny out of the hands of Fate, where he preferred that it should
+lie.
+
+Had any one passed him, he would have seemed the more perturbed
+because of his being so well-dressed. He was one of the few New
+Yorkers as careful of appearances as many Londoners. With the finish
+that comes of studied selection in hat, stick, and gloves, as well as
+all small accessories of the costliest, he might have been going to or
+coming from a wedding.
+
+He was imposing, therefore, to a short, stout, elderly woman with whom
+he suddenly found himself face to face as the path took a sharp sweep
+to the south. The shrubs which had kept them hidden from each other
+gave place here to open stretches of lawn. When Allerton paused and
+lifted his hat, the woman naturally paused, too.
+
+She was a red-faced woman crowned with a bonnet of the style
+introduced by Mrs. Langtry in 1878, but worn on this occasion some
+degrees off center. On her arm she carried a flat basket of which the
+contents, decently covered with a towel, might have been freshly
+laundered shirts. Being stopped by a gentleman of Allerton's
+impressiveness and plainly suffering expression, her face grew
+motherly and sympathetic.
+
+"Madam, I wish to ask if you'll marry me?"
+
+Even a dull brain couldn't fail to catch words hammered out with this
+force of precision. The woman didn't wait to have them repeated.
+Dropping her basket as it was, she took to flight. Flight was the
+word. A modern Atalanta of Wellesley or Bryn Mawr might have envied
+the chamois leaps which took the good creature across the grass to the
+protection of a man with a lawn-mower.
+
+Allerton couldn't pause to watch her, for a new sibyl was advancing.
+To his disgust rather than not, she was young and pretty, a nursemaid
+pushing a baby-cart into which a young man of two was strapped. While
+far more likely to take him than the stout old party still skipping
+the greensward like a mountain roe, she would be much less plausible
+as a reason for going to the evil one. But a vow was a vow, and he was
+in for it.
+
+His approach was the same as on the previous occasion. Lifting his hat
+ceremoniously, he said with the same distinctness of utterance,
+"Madam, I wish to ask if you'll marry me?"
+
+The girl, who had paused when he did, leaned on the pusher of her
+go-cart, studying him calmly. Chewing something with a slow, rotary
+movement of the lips and chin, she broke the action with a snap before
+quite completing the circle, to begin all over again. "Oh, you do, do
+you?" was her quiet response.
+
+"If you please."
+
+She studied him again, with the same semi-circular motion of the jaw.
+She might have been weighing his proposal.
+
+"Say, is this one of them club initiation stunts, or have you just got
+a noive?"
+
+"Am I to take that as a yes or a no?"
+
+"And am I to take you as one of them smart-Alecks, or a coily-headed
+nut?"
+
+He saw a way out. "I'm generally considered a curly-headed nut."
+
+"Then it's me for the exit-in-case-of-fire, so ta-ta." She laughed
+back at him over her shoulder. "Wish you luck with your next."
+
+But fate was already on him in another form. A lady of fifty or
+thereabouts was coming up the path, refined, sedate, mistress of
+herself, the one type of all others most difficult to accost. All the
+same he must do it. He must keep on doing it till some one yielded to
+his suit. The rebuffs to which he had been subjected did no more than
+inflame his will.
+
+Approaching the new sibyl with the same ceremoniousness, he repeated
+the same words in the same precise tone. The lady stood off, eyed him
+majestically through a lorgnette, and spoke with a force which came
+from quietude.
+
+"I know who you are. You're Rashleigh Allerton. You ought to be
+ashamed with a shame that would strike you to the ground. I'm a friend
+of Miss Marion Walbrook's. I'm on my way to see her and shall _not_
+mention this encounter. We work on the same committee of the League
+for the Suppression of Men's Clubs. The lamentable state in which I
+see you convinces me once more of the need of our work, if our men are
+to become as we hope to see them. I bid you a good afternoon."
+
+With the dignity of a queen she passed on and out of sight, leaving
+him with the sting of a whiplash on his face.
+
+But the name of Miss Walbrook, connected with that of the League which
+was her pet enthusiasm for the public weal, only served as an
+incitement. He would go through with it now at any cost. By nightfall
+he would be at police-headquarters for insulting women, or he would
+have found a bride.
+
+Walking on again, the path was clear before him as far as he could
+see. Having thus a few minutes to reflect, he came to the conclusion
+that his attacks had been too precipitate. He should feel the ground
+before him, leading the sibyl a little at a time, so as to have her
+mentally prepared. There were methods of "getting acquainted" to which
+he should apply himself first of all.
+
+But getting acquainted with the old Italian peasant woman, bowed
+beneath a bundle, who was the next he would have to confront, being
+out of the question, he resolved to side-step destiny by slipping out
+of the main path and following a branch one. Doing so, he came into
+less frequented regions, while his steps took him up a low hill
+burnished with the tints of mid-October. Trees and shrubs were
+flame-colored, copper-colored, wine-colored, differing only in their
+diffuseness of hue from the concentrated gorgeousness of amaranth,
+canna, and gladiolus. The sounds of the city were deadened here to a
+dull rumble, while the vibrancy of the autumn afternoon excited his
+taut nerves.
+
+At the top of the hill he paused. There was no one in sight who could
+possibly respond to his quest. He wondered for a second if this were
+not a hint to him to abandon it. But doing that he would abandon his
+revenge, and by abandoning his revenge he would concede everything to
+this girl who had so bitterly wronged him. Ever since he could
+remember they had been pals, and for at least ten years he had vaguely
+thought of asking her to marry him when it came to his seeking a wife.
+It was true, the hint she had thrown out, that he had felt himself in
+no great need of a wife till his mother had died some eighteen months
+previously, and he had found himself with a cumbrous old establishment
+on his hands. That had given the decisive turn to his suit. He had
+asked her. She had taken him. And since then, in the course of less
+than ten weeks, if they had had three quarrels they had had thirty. He
+had taken them all more or less good-naturedly--till to-day. To-day
+was too much. He could hardly say why it was too much, unless it was
+as the last straw, but he felt it essential to his honor to show her
+by actual demonstration the ruin she had made of him.
+
+Looking about him for another possibility, he noticed that at the spot
+where the path, having serpentined down the little hillside, rejoined
+the main footway there was a bench so placed that its occupant would
+have a view along several avenues at once. Since it was obviously a
+vantage point for such strategy as his, he had taken the first steps
+down toward it when a little gray figure emerged from behind a group
+of blue Norway spruces. She went dejectedly to the bench, sitting down
+at an extreme end of it.
+
+Wrought up to a fit of tension far from rare with him, Allerton stood
+with his nails digging into his clenched palms and his thin lips
+pressed together. He was sure he was looking at a "drab." All the
+shoddy, outcast meanings he had read into the word were under the
+bedraggled feathers of this battered black hat or compressed within
+the forlorn squirrel-trimmed gray suit. The dragging movement, the
+hint of dropping on the seat not from fatigue but from desperation,
+completed the picture his imagination had already painted of some
+world-worn, knocked-about creature who had come to the point at which,
+in his own phrase, she was "all in."
+
+As far as this described Letty Gravely, he was wrong. She was not "all
+in." She was never more mentally alert than at that very minute. If
+she moved slowly, if she sank on the seat as if too beaten down by
+events to do more, it was because her mind was so intensely centered
+on her immediate problems.
+
+She had, in fact, just formed a great resolution. Whatever became of
+her, she would never go back to Judson Flack, her stepfather. This had
+not been clearly in her mind when she had gone down his steps and
+walked away, but the occasion presented itself now as one to be
+seized. In seizing it, however, the alternatives were difficult. She
+was without a cent, a shelter, a job, a friend, or the prospect of a
+meal. It was probable that there was not at that minute in New York a
+human being so destitute. Before nightfall she would have to find some
+nominal motive for living or be arrested as a vagrant.
+
+She was not appalled. For the first time in her life she was
+relatively free from fear. Even with nothing but her person as she
+stood, she was her own mistress. No big dread hung over her--that is,
+no big dread of the kind represented by Judson Flack. She might jump
+into the river or go to the bad, but in either case she would do it of
+her own free will. Merely to have the exercise of her own free will
+gave her the kind of physical relief which a human being gets from
+stretching limbs cramped and crippled by chains.
+
+Besides, there was in her situation an underlying possibility of
+adventure. This she didn't phrase, since she didn't understand it. She
+only had the intuition in her heart that where "the world is all
+before you, where to choose your place of rest, and Providence your
+guide," Providence _becomes_ your guide. Verbally she put it merely in
+the words, "Things happen," though as to what could happen between
+half-past three in the afternoon and midnight, when she would possibly
+be in jail, she could not begin to imagine.
+
+So absorbed was she in this momentous uncertainty that she scarcely
+noticed that some one had seated himself at the other end of the
+bench. It was a public place; it was likely that some one would. She
+felt neither curiosity nor resentment. A lack of certain of the
+feminine instincts, or their retarded development, left her without
+interest in the fact that the newcomer was a man. From the slight
+glance she had given him when she heard his step, she judged him to be
+what she estimated as an elderly man, quite far into the thirties.
+
+She went back to her own thoughts which were practical. There were
+certain measures which she could take at once, after which there would
+be no return. Once more she was not appalled. She had lived too near
+the taking of these steps to be shocked by them. Everything in life is
+a question of relativity, and in the world which her mother had
+entered on marrying Judson Flack the men were all so near the edge of
+the line which separates the criminal from the non-criminal that it
+seemed a natural thing when they crossed it, while the women....
+
+But as her thoughts were dealing with this social problem in its
+bearing on herself, her neighbor spoke.
+
+"Funny to watch those kids playing with the pup, isn't it?"
+
+She admitted that it was, that watching children and young animals was
+a favorite sport with her. She answered simply, because being
+addressed by strange men with whom she found herself in proximity was
+sanctioned by the etiquette of her society. To resent it would be
+putting on airs, besides which it would cut off social intercourse
+between the sexes. It had happened to her many a time to have engaging
+conversations with chance young men beside her in the subway, never
+seeing them before or afterward.
+
+So Allerton found getting acquainted easier than he had expected. The
+etiquette of _his_ society not sanctioning this directness of response
+on her part, he drew the conclusion that she was accustomed to
+"meeting fellows halfway." As this was the sort of person he was
+looking for, he found in the freedom nothing to complain of.
+
+With the openness of her social type she gave details of her biography
+without needing to be pressed.
+
+"You're a New York girl?"
+
+"I am now. I didn't use to be."
+
+"What were you to begin with?"
+
+"Momma brought me from Canada after my father died. That's why I ain't
+got no friends here."
+
+At this appeal for sympathy his glance stole suspiciously toward her,
+finding his first conjectures somewhat but not altogether verified.
+She was young apparently, and possibly pretty, though as to neither
+point did he care. He would have preferred more "past," more
+"mystery," more "drama," but since you couldn't have everything, a
+young person utterly unfit to be his wife would have to be enough. He
+continued to draw out her story, not because he cared anything about
+hearing it, but in order to spring his question finally without making
+her think him more unbalanced than he was.
+
+"Your father was a Canadian?"
+
+"Yes; a farmer. Momma used to say she was about as good to work a farm
+as a cat to run a fire-engine. When he died, she sold out for four
+thousand dollars and come to New York."
+
+"To work?"
+
+"No, to have a good time. She'd never had a good time, momma hadn't,
+and she was awful pretty. So she said she'd just blow herself to it
+while she had the berries in her basket. That was how she met Judson
+Flack. I suppose you know who he is. Everybody does."
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't the pleasure."
+
+"Oh, I don't know as you'd find it any big pleasure. Momma didn't, not
+after she'd give him a try."
+
+"Who and what is he?"
+
+"He calls hisself a man about town. I call him a bum. Poor momma
+married him."
+
+"And wasn't happy, I suppose."
+
+"Not after he'd spent her wad, she wasn't. She was crazy about him,
+and when she found out that all he'd cared about was her four thousand
+plunks--well, it was her finish."
+
+"How long ago was that?"
+
+"About four years now."
+
+"And what have you been doing in the meanwhile?"
+
+"Keepin' house for Judson Flack most of the time--till I quit."
+
+"Oh, you've quit?"
+
+"Sure I've quit." She was putting her better foot forward. "Now I'm in
+pitchers."
+
+He glanced at her again, having noticed already that she scarcely
+glanced at him. Her profile was toward him as at first, an irregular
+little profile of lifts and tilts, which might be appealing, but was
+not beautiful. The boast of being in pictures, so incongruous with
+her woefully dilapidated air, did not amuse him. He knew how large a
+place a nominal connection with the stage took in the lives of certain
+ladies. Even this poor little tramp didn't hesitate to make the
+claim.
+
+"And you're doing well?"
+
+She wouldn't show the white feather. "Oh, so so! I--I get along."
+
+"You live by yourself?"
+
+"I--I do now."
+
+"Don't you find it lonely?"
+
+"Not so lonely as livin' with Judson Flack."
+
+"You're--you're happy?"
+
+A faint implication that she might look to him for help stirred her
+fierce independence. "Gee, yes! I'm--I'm doin' swell."
+
+"But you wouldn't mind a change, I suppose?"
+
+For the first time her eyes stole toward him, not in suspicion, and
+still less in alarm, but in one of the intenser shades of curiosity.
+It was almost as if he was going to suggest to her something "off the
+level" but which would nevertheless be worth her while. She was used
+to these procedures, not in actual experience but from hearing them
+talked about. They made up a large part of what Judson Flack
+understood as "business." She felt it prudent to be as non-committal
+as possible.
+
+"I ain't so sure."
+
+She meant him to understand that being tolerably satisfied with her
+own way of life, she was not enthusiastic over new experiments.
+
+His next observation was no surprise to her. "I'm a lawyer."
+
+She was sure of that. There were always lawyers in these subterranean
+affairs--"shyster" was a word she had heard applied to them--and this
+man looked the part. His thin face, clear-cut profile, and skin which
+showed dark where he shaved, were all, in her judgment, signs of the
+sinister. Even his clothes, from his patent leather shoes with spats
+to his dark blue necktie with a pearl in it, were those which an actor
+would wear in pictures to represent a "shark."
+
+She was turning these thoughts over in her mind when he spoke again.
+
+"I've an office, but I don't practise much. It takes all my time to
+manage my own estate."
+
+She didn't know what this meant. It sounded like farming, but you
+didn't farm in New York, or do it from an office anyhow. "I guess he's
+one of them gold-brick nuts," she commented to herself, "but he won't
+put nothin' over on me."
+
+In return for her biography he continued to give his, bringing out his
+facts in short, hard statements which seemed to hurt him. It was this
+hurting him which she found most difficult to reconcile with her gold
+brick theory and the suspicion that he was a "shark."
+
+"My father was a lawyer, too. Rather well known in his day. One time
+ambassador to Vienna."
+
+Ambassador to Vienna! She didn't know where Vienna was or the nature
+of an ambassador, but she did know that it sounded grand, so she
+looked at him attentively. It was either more gold brick or else....
+
+Then something struck her--"smote her" would be perhaps the more
+accurately descriptive word, since the effect was on her heart. This
+man was sick. He was suffering. She had often seen women suffer, but
+men rarely, and this was one of the rare instances. Something in her
+was touched. She couldn't imagine why he talked to her or what he
+wanted of her, but a pity which had never yet been called upon was
+astir among her emotions.
+
+As for the minute he said no more, her next words came out only
+because she supposed them to betray the kindly interest of which he
+was in need.
+
+"Then I suppose he left you _a_ big fat wad."
+
+"Yes; but it doesn't do me any good. I mean, it doesn't make me
+happy--when I'm not."
+
+"I guess it'd make you a good deal less happy if you didn't have it."
+
+"Perhaps so; I don't think about it either way." He added, after tense
+compression of the lips; "I'm all alone in the world--like you."
+
+She was sure now that something was coming, though of what nature lay
+beyond her speculative power. She wondered if he could have fallen in
+love with her at first sight, realizing a favorite dream she often had
+in the subway. Hundreds of times she had beguiled the minutes by
+selecting one or another of the wealthy lawyers and bankers, whom she
+supposed to be her fellow-travelers there, seeing him smitten by a
+glance at her, following her when she got out, and laying his heart
+and coronet at her feet before she had run up the steps. If this man
+were not a shyster lawyer or a gold brick nut, he might possibly be
+doing that.
+
+"It's about a girl," he burst out suddenly. "Half an hour ago she
+kicked me out."
+
+"Did she know you had all that dough?"
+
+"Yes, she knew I had all that dough. But she said that since I was
+going to the devil, I had better go." He drew a long breath. "Well,
+I'm going--perhaps quicker than she thinks."
+
+"Will you do yourself any good by that?"
+
+"No, but I'll do her harm."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I'll show her what she's made of me."
+
+"She can't make anything of you in half an hour or in half a year--not
+so long as you've got your wad back of you. If you was to be kicked
+out with your pay-envelope stole, and your mother's rings pulled off
+your fingers, and her wrist-watch from your wrist, and even your
+carfare----"
+
+"Is that what's happened to you?"
+
+"Sure! Half an hour ago, too. Judson Flack! But why should I worry?
+Something'll happen before night."
+
+He became emphatic. "Yes, and I'll tell you what it will be. You put
+your finger on it just now when you said she couldn't make anything
+out of men in half an hour. Well, it's got to be something that would
+take just that time--an hour at the most--_and fatal_. Now do you
+see?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+He swung fully round on her from his end of the bench. "Think," he
+commanded.
+
+As if with a premonitory notion of what he meant, she answered coldly:
+"What's the good o' me thinkin'? I've got nothin' to do with it."
+
+"You might have."
+
+"I can't imagine what, unless it'd be----" Realizing what she had been
+about to say, she broke off in confusion, coloring to the eyes.
+
+He nodded. "I see you understand. I want you to come off somewhere and
+marry me."
+
+She took it more calmly than if she hadn't thought him mad. "But--but
+you said you'd be--be goin' to the devil."
+
+"Well?"
+
+His look, his tone, conveyed the idea, which penetrated to her mind
+but slowly. When it did, the surging color became a flush, hot and
+painful.
+
+So here it was again, the thing she had been running away from. It had
+outwitted and outrun her, meeting her again just at the instant when
+she thought she was shaking it off. She was so indignant with the
+_thing_ that she almost overlooked the man. She too swung round from
+her end of the bench, so that they confronted each other, with the
+length of the seat between them. It was her habit to put things
+plainly, though now she did it with a burning heart.
+
+"This is the way you mean it, isn't it?--you'd go to the devil because
+you'd married _me_."
+
+The half-minute before he answered was occupied not merely in thinking
+what to say but in noticing, now that he had her in full-face, that
+her large, brown irises seemed to be sprinkled with gold dust.
+Otherwise her appearance struck him simply as blurred, as if it had
+been brightly enough drawn as to color and line, only rubbed over and
+defaced by the hand of misery.
+
+"I don't want you to get me wrong," he explained. "It's not a question
+of my marrying you in particular. I've said I'd marry the first girl I
+met who'd marry me."
+
+The gold-brown eyes scintillated with a thousand tiny stars. "Say, and
+am I the first?"
+
+"No; you're the fourth." He added, so that she should be under no
+misconception as to what he was about: "You can take me or leave me.
+That's up to you. But if you take me, I want you to understand that
+it'll be on a purely business basis."
+
+She repeated, as if to memorize the words, "A purely business basis."
+
+"Exactly. I'm not looking for a wife. I only want a woman to marry--a
+woman to whom I can point and say, See there! I've married--that."
+
+"And _that'd_ be me."
+
+"If you undertook the job."
+
+"The job of--of bein' laughed at--jeered at----"
+
+"I'd be the one who'd be laughed at and jeered at. Nobody would think
+anything about you. They wouldn't remember how you looked or know your
+name. If you got sick of it after a bit, and decided to cut and run,
+you could do it. I'd see that you were well treated--for the rest of
+your life."
+
+She studied him long and earnestly. "Say, are _you_ crazy?"
+
+"I'm all on edge, if that's what you mean. But there's nothing for you
+to be afraid of. I shan't do you any harm at any time."
+
+"You only want to do harm to yourself. I'd be like the awful kind o'
+pill which a fellow'll swaller to commit suicide." She rose, not
+without a dignity of her own. "Well, mister, if I'm your fourth, I
+guess you'll have to look about you for a fifth."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+He asked the question without rising. She answered as if her choice of
+objectives was large.
+
+"Oh, anywheres."
+
+"Which means nowhere, doesn't it?"
+
+"Oh, not exactly. It means--it means--the first place I fetch up."
+
+"The first place you fetch up may be the police-station, if the things
+you said just now are true."
+
+"The police-station is safe, anyways."
+
+"And you think the place I'd take you to wouldn't be. Well, you're
+wrong. It'll be as safe as a church for as long as you like to stay;
+and when you want to go--lots of money to go with."
+
+Facing away from him toward the city, she said over her shoulder:
+"There's things money couldn't pay you for. Bein' looked down on is
+one."
+
+She was about to walk on, but he sprang after her, catching her by the
+sleeve.
+
+"Look here! Be a sport. You've got the chance of your lifetime. It'll
+mean no more to you than a part they'd give you in pictures--just a
+rôle--and pay you a lot better."
+
+She was not blind to the advantages he laid before her. True, it might
+be what she qualified as "bull" to get her into a trap; only she
+didn't believe it. This man with the sick mind and anguished face was
+none of the soft-spoken fiends whose business it is to ensnare young
+girls. She knew all about them from living with Judson Flack, and
+couldn't be mistaken. This fellow might be crazy, but he was what he
+said. If he said he wouldn't do her any harm, he wouldn't. If he said
+he would pay her well, he would. The main question was as to whether
+or not, just for the sake of getting something to eat and a place to
+sleep, she could deliberately put herself in a position in which the
+man who had married her would have gone to the devil _because_ he had
+married her.
+
+As he held her by the sleeve looking down at her, and she, half
+turned, was looking up at him, this was the battle she was fighting.
+Hitherto her impulse had been to run away from the scorn of her
+inferiority; now she was asking herself what would happen if she took
+up its challenge and fought it on its own ground. What if I do? was
+the way the question framed itself, but aloud she made it.
+
+"If I said I would, what would happen first?"
+
+"We'd go and get a license. Then we'd find a minister. After that I
+should give you something to eat, and then I'd take you home."
+
+"Where would that be?"
+
+He gave her his address in East Sixty-seventh Street, only a few doors
+from Fifth Avenue, but her social sophistication was not up to the
+point of seeing the significance of this. Neither did her imagination
+try to picture the home or to see it otherwise than as an alternative
+to the police-station, or worse, as a lodging for the night.
+
+"And what would happen to me when I got to your home?"
+
+"You'd have your own room. I shouldn't interfere with you. You'd
+hardly ever see me. You could stay as long as you liked or as short as
+you liked, after the first week or two."
+
+There was that about him which carried conviction. She believed him.
+As an alternative to having nowhere to go, what he offered her was
+something, and something with that spice of adventure of which she had
+been dreaming only a few minutes earlier. She couldn't be worse off
+than she was now, and if it gave her the chance of a hand-to-hand
+tussle with the world-pride which had never done anything but look
+down on her, she would be fighting what she held as her worst enemy.
+She braced herself to say,
+
+"All right; I'll do it."
+
+He, too, braced himself. "Very well! Let's start."
+
+The impetuosity of his motion almost took her breath away as she tried
+to keep pace with him.
+
+"By the way, what's your name?" he asked, before they reached Fifth
+Avenue.
+
+She told him, but was too overwhelmed with what she had undertaken to
+dare to ask him his.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+"Nao!"
+
+The strong cockney negative was also an exclamation. It came from Mrs.
+Courage, the cook-housekeeper, who stood near the kitchen range making
+the coffee for breakfast. She was a woman who looked her name, born
+not merely to do battle, but to enjoy being in the midst of it.
+
+Jane, the waitress, was the next to speak. "Nettie Duckett, you ought
+to be ashymed to sye them words, you that's been taught to 'ope the
+best of everyone."
+
+Jane had fluttered in from the pantry with the covered dish for the
+toast. Jane still fluttered at her work, as she had done for the past
+thirty years. The late Mrs. Allerton had liked her about the table
+because she was swift, deft, and moved lightly. A thin little woman,
+with a profile resembling that of Punch's Judy, and a smile of
+cheerful piety, she yielded to time only by a process of drying up.
+
+Nettie Duckett was quick in her own defense, but breathless, too, from
+girlish laughter. "I can't 'elp syin' what I see, now can I? There she
+was 'arf dressed in the little back spare-room. Oh, the commonest
+thing! You wouldn't 'a wanted to sweep 'er out with a broom."
+
+"Pretty goin's on I must sye," Jane commented. "'Ope the best of
+everyone I will, but when you think that we was all on the top
+floor----"
+
+"Pretty goin's off there'll be, I can tell you that," Mrs. Courage
+declared in her rich, decided bass. "Just let me 'ave a word with
+Master Rashleigh. I'll tell 'im what 'is ma would 'ave said. She left
+'im to me, she did. 'Courage,' she's told me many a time, 'that boy'll
+be your boy after I'm gone.' As good as mykin' a will, I call it. And
+now to think that with us right 'ere in the 'ouse.... Where's Steptoe?
+Do 'e know anything about it?"
+
+"Do 'e know anything about what?" The question came from Steptoe
+himself, who appeared on the threshold.
+
+The three women maintained a dramatic silence, while the old
+butler-valet looked from one to another.
+
+"Seems as if there was news," he observed dryly.
+
+"Tell 'im, Nettie," Mrs. Courage commanded.
+
+Nettie was the young thing of the establishment, Mrs. Courage's own
+niece, brought from England when the housemaid's place fell vacant on
+Bessie's unexpected marriage to Walter Wildgoose, Miss Walbrook's
+indoor man. Indeed she had been brought from England before Bessie's
+marriage, of which Mrs. Courage had had advance information, so that
+as soon as Bessie left, Nettie was on the spot to be smuggled into the
+Allerton household. Steptoe had not forgiven this underhand movement
+on Mrs. Courage's part, seeing that in the long-ago both she and Jane
+had been his own nominees, and that he considered the household posts
+as gifts at his disposal. "I'll 'ave to make a clean sweep o' the lot
+o' them," he had more than once declared at those gatherings at which
+the English butlers and valets of upper Fifth Avenue discuss their
+complex of interests. Forty years in the Allerton family had made him
+not merely its major-domo but in certain respects its head. His tone
+toward Nettie was that of authority with a note of disapprobation.
+
+"Speak, girl, and do it without giggling. What 'ave you to tell?"
+
+Though she couldn't do it without giggling Nettie repeated the story
+she had given to her aunt and Jane. She had gone into the small single
+back bedroom on the floor below Mr. Allerton's, and there was a
+half-dressed girl 'a-puttin' up of 'er 'air.' According to her own
+statement Nettie had passed away on the spot, being able, however, to
+articulate the question, "What are you a'doin' of 'ere?" To this the
+young woman had replied that Mr. Allerton had brought her in on the
+previous evening, telling her to sleep there, and there she had slept.
+Nettie's information could go no further, but it was considered to go
+far enough.
+
+"So what do you sye to _that_?" Mrs. Courage demanded of Steptoe; "you
+that's always so ready to defend my young lord?"
+
+Steptoe was prepared to stand back to back with his employer. "I don't
+defend 'im. I'm not called on to defend 'im. It's Mr. Rashleigh's
+'ouse. Any guest of 'is must be your guest and mine."
+
+"And what about Miss Walbrook, 'er that's to be missus 'ere in the
+course of a few weeks?"
+
+Steptoe colored, frostily. "She's not missus 'ere yet; and if she ever
+comes, there'll be stormy weather for all of us. New missuses don't
+generally get on with old servants like us--that's been in the family
+for so many years--but when they don't, it ain't them as gets
+notice."
+
+A bell rang sharply. Steptoe sprang to attention.
+
+"There's Mr. Rashleigh now. Don't you women go to mykin' a to-do.
+There's lots o' troubles that 'ud never 'ave 'appened if women 'ad
+been able to 'old their tongues."
+
+"But I suppose, Steptoe, you don't deny that there's such a thing as
+right."
+
+"I don't deny that there's such a thing as right, Mrs. Courage, but I
+only wonder if you knows more about it than the rest of us."
+
+In Allerton's room Steptoe found the young master of the house half
+dressed. Standing before a mirror, he was brushing his hair. His face
+and eyes, the reflection of which Steptoe caught in the glass, were
+like those of a man on the edge of going insane.
+
+The old valet entered according to his daily habit and without
+betraying the knowledge of anything unusual. All the same his heart
+was sinking, as old hearts sink when beloved young ones are in
+trouble. The boy was his darling. He had been with his father for ten
+years before the lad was born, and had watched his growth with a more
+than paternal devotion. "'E's all I 'ave," he often said to himself,
+and had been known to let out the fact in the afore-mentioned group of
+English upper servants, a small but exclusive circle in the multiplex
+life of New York.
+
+In Steptoe's opinion Master Rash had never had a chance. Born many
+years after his parents had lived together childlessly, he had come
+into the world constitutionally neurasthenic. Steptoe had never known
+a boy who needed more to be nursed along and coaxed along by
+affection, and now and then by indulgence. Instead, the system of
+severity had been applied with results little short of calamitous. He
+had been sent to schools famous for religion and discipline, from
+which he reacted in the first weeks of freedom in college, getting
+into dire academic scrapes. Further severity had led to further
+scrapes, and further scrapes to something like disgrace, when the war
+broke out and a Red Cross job had kept him from going to the bad. The
+mother had been a self-willed and selfish woman, claiming more from
+her son than she ever gave him, and never perceiving that his was a
+nature requiring a peculiar kind of care. After her death Steptoe had
+prayed for a kind, sweet wife to come to the boy's rescue, and the
+answer had been Miss Barbara Walbrook.
+
+When the engagement was announced, Steptoe had given up hope. Of Miss
+Walbrook as a woman he had nothing to complain. Walter Wildgoose
+reported her a noble creature, splendid, generous, magnificent, only
+needing a strong hand. She was of the type not to be served but to be
+mastered. Rashleigh Allerton would goad her to frenzy, and she would
+do the same by him. She was already doing it. For weeks past Steptoe
+could see it plainly enough, and what would happen after they were
+married God alone knew. For himself he saw no future but to hang on
+after the wedding as long as the new mistress of the house would allow
+him, take his dismissal as an inevitable thing, and sneak away and
+die.
+
+It was part of Steptoe's training not to notice anything till his
+attention was called to it. So having said his "Good-morning, sir," he
+went to the closet, took down the hanger with the coat and waistcoat
+belonging to the suit of which he saw that Allerton had put on the
+trousers, and waited till the young man was ready for his
+ministrations.
+
+Allerton was still brushing his hair, as he said over his shoulder:
+"There's a young woman in the house, Steptoe. Been here all night."
+
+"Yes, sir; I know--in the little back spare-room."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Nettie went in for a pincushion, Mr. Rash, and the young woman was
+a-doin' of 'er 'air."
+
+"What did Nettie say?"
+
+"It ain't what Nettie says, sir, if I may myke so bold. It's what Mrs.
+Courage and Jane says."
+
+"Tell Mrs. Courage and Jane they needn't be alarmed. The young woman
+is--" Steptoe caught the spasm which contracted the boy's face--"the
+young woman is--my wife."
+
+"Quite so, sir."
+
+If Allerton went no further, Steptoe could go no further; but inwardly
+he was like a man reprieved at the last minute, and against all hope,
+from sentence of death. "Then it won't be '_er_," was all he could say
+to himself, "'er" being Barbara Walbrook. Whatever calamity had
+happened, that calamity at least would be escaped, which was so much
+to the good.
+
+His arms trembled so that he could hardly hold up the waistcoat for
+Allerton to slip it on. But he didn't slip it on. Instead he wheeled
+round from the mirror, threw the brushes with a crash to the toilet
+table, and cried with a rage all the more raging for being impotent:
+
+"Steptoe, I've been every kind of fool."
+
+"Yes, sir, I expect so."
+
+"You've got to get me out of it, Steptoe. You must find a way to save
+me."
+
+"I'll do my best, sir." The joy of cooperation with the lad almost
+made up for the anguish at his anguish. "What 'ud it be--you must
+excuse me, Mr. Rash--but what 'ud it be that you'd like me to save you
+from?"
+
+Allerton threw out his arms. "From this crazy marriage. This frightful
+mix-up. I went right off the handle yesterday. I was an infernal
+idiot. And now I'm in for it. Something's got to be done, Steptoe, and
+I can't think of any one but you to do it."
+
+"Quite so, sir. Will you 'ave your wystcoat on now, sir? You're ready
+for it, I see. I'll think it over, Mr. Rash, and let you know."
+
+While first the waistcoat and then the coat were extended and slipped
+over the shoulders, Allerton did his best to put Steptoe in possession
+of the mad facts of the previous day. Though the account he gave was
+incoherent, the old man understood enough.
+
+"It wasn't her fault, you must understand," Allerton explained
+further, as Steptoe brushed his hat. "She didn't want to. I persuaded
+her. I wanted to do something that would wring Miss Walbrook's
+heart--and I've done it! Wrung my own, too! What's to become of me,
+Steptoe? Is the best thing I can do to shoot myself? Think it over.
+I'm ready to. I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a relief to get out of
+this rotten life. I'm all on edge. I could jump out of that window as
+easily as not. But it wasn't the girl's fault. She's a poor little
+waif of a thing. You must look after her and keep me from seeing her
+again, but she's not bad--only--only--Oh, my God! my God!"
+
+He covered his face with his hands and rocked himself about, so that
+Steptoe was obliged to go on brushing till his master calmed himself.
+
+"Do you think, sir," he said then, "that this is the 'at to go with
+this 'ere suit? I think as the brown one would be a lot chicker--tone
+in with the sort of fawn stripe in the blue like, and ketch the note
+in your tie." He added, while diving into the closet in search of the
+brown hat and bringing it out, "There's one thing I could say right
+now, Mr. Rash, and I think it might 'elp."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Do you remember the time when you 'urt your leg 'unting down in Long
+Island?"
+
+"Yes; what about it?"
+
+"You was all for not payin' it no attention and for 'oppin' about as
+if you 'adn't 'urt it at all. A terr'ble fuss you myde when the doctor
+said as you was to keep still. Anybody 'ud 'ave thought 'e'd bordered
+a hamputation. And yet it was keepin' still what got you out o' the
+trouble, now wasn't it?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, now you're in a worse trouble still it might do the syme again.
+I'm a great believer in keepin' still, I am."
+
+Allerton was off again. "How in thunder am I to keep still when----?"
+
+"I'll tell you one wye, sir. Don't talk. Don't _do_ nothink. Don't
+beat your 'ead against the wall. Be quiet. Tyke it natural. You've
+done this thing. Well, you 'aven't committed a murder. You 'aven't
+even done a wrong to the young lydy to whom you was engyged. By what I
+understand she'd jilted you, and you was free to marry any one you
+took a mind to."
+
+"Nominally, perhaps, but----"
+
+"If you're nominally free, sir, you're free, by what I can understand;
+and if you've gone and done a foolish thing it ain't no one's business
+but your own."
+
+"Yes, but I can't stand it!"
+
+"O' course you can't stand it, sir, but it's because you can't stand
+it that I'm arskin' of you to keep just as quiet as you can. Mistykes
+in our life is often like the twists we'll give to our bodies. They'll
+ache most awful, but let nyture alone and she'll tyke care of 'em.
+It's jest so with our mistykes. Let life alone and she'll put 'em
+stryght for us, nine times out o' ten, better than we can do it by
+workin' up into a wax."
+
+Calmed to some extent Allerton went off to the club for breakfast,
+being unable to face this meal at home. Steptoe tidied up the room. He
+was troubled and yet relieved. It was a desperate case, but he had
+always found that in desperate cases desperate remedies were close at
+hand.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+"See that the poor thing gets some breakfast," had been Allerton's
+parting command, and having finished the room, Steptoe went down the
+flight of stairs to carry out this injunction.
+
+He was on the third step from the landing when the door of the back
+room opened, and a little, gray figure, hatted and jacketed, crept out
+stealthily. She was plainly ready for the street, an intention
+understood by Beppo, the late Mrs. Allerton's red cocker spaniel, who
+was capering about her in the hope of sharing the promenade.
+
+As Steptoe came to a halt, the girl ran toward him.
+
+"Oh, mister, I gotta get out of this swell dump. Show me the way, for
+God's sake!"
+
+To say that Steptoe was thinking rapidly would be to describe his
+mental processes incorrectly. He never thought; he received
+illuminations. Some such enlightenment came to him now, inducing him
+to say, ceremoniously, "Madam can't go without 'er breakfast."
+
+"I don't want any breakfast," she protested, breathlessly. "All I want
+is to get away. I'm frightened."
+
+"I assure madam that there's nothink to be afryde of in this 'ouse.
+Mr. Allerton is the most honorable--" he pronounced the initial
+_h_--"young man that hever was born. I valeted 'is father before 'im
+and know that 'e wouldn't 'urt a fly. If madam'll trust me--Besides,
+Mr. Allerton left word with me as you was to be sure to 'ave your
+breakfast, and I shouldn't know how to fyce 'im if 'e was to know that
+you'd gone awye without so much as a hegg."
+
+She wrung her hands. "I don't want to see him. I couldn't."
+
+"Madam won't see 'im. 'E's gone for the dye. 'E don't so often heat at
+'ome--'ardly never."
+
+Of the courses before her Letty saw that yielding was the easiest.
+Besides, it would give her her breakfast, which was a consideration.
+Though she had nominally dined on the previous evening, she had not
+been able to eat; she had been too terrified. Never would she forget
+the things that had happened after she had given her consent in the
+Park.
+
+Not that outwardly they had been otherwise than commonplace. It was
+going through them at all! The man was as nearly "off his chump"--the
+expression was hers--as a human being could be without laying himself
+open to arrest. After calling the taxi in Fifth Avenue he had walked
+up and down, compelling her to walk by his side, for a good fifteen
+minutes before making her get in and springing in beside her. At the
+house opposite he had stared and stared, as if hoping that some one
+would look out. During the drive to the place where they got the
+license, and later to the minister's house, he spoke not a word. In
+the restaurant to which he took her afterward, the most glorious place
+she had ever been in, he ordered a feast suited to a queen, but she
+could hardly do more than taste it. She felt that the waiter was
+looking at them strangely, and she didn't know the uses of the knives
+and forks. The man she had married offered her no help, neither
+speaking to her nor giving her a glance. He himself ate but little,
+lost in some mental maze to which she had no clue.
+
+After dinner he had proposed the theatre, but she had refused. She
+couldn't go anywhere else with him. Wherever they moved, a thousand
+eyes were turned in amazement at the extraordinary pair. He saw
+nothing, but she was alive to it all--more conscious of her hat and
+suit than even in the street scene in "The Man with the Emerald Eye."
+Once and for all she became aware that the first standard for human
+valuation is in clothes.
+
+In the end they had got into another taxi, to be driven round and
+round the Park and out along the river bank, till he decided that they
+might go home. During all this time he hardly noticed her. Once he
+asked her if she was warm enough, and once if she would like to get
+out and take a walk along the parapet above the river, but otherwise
+he was withdrawn into a world which he kept shut and locked against
+her. That left her alone. She had never felt so much alone in her
+life, not even in the days which followed her mother's death. It was
+as if she had been snatched away from everything with which she was
+familiar, to find herself stranded in a country of fantastic dreams.
+
+Then there was the house and the little back room. By the use of his
+latchkey they had entered a palace huge and dark. Letty didn't know
+that people lived with so much space around them. Only a hall light
+burned in a many-colored oriental lamp, and in the half-gloom the
+rooms on each side of the entry were cavernous. There was not a
+servant, not a sound. The only living thing was a little dog which
+pattered out of the obscurity and, raising his paws against her skirt,
+adopted her instantaneously.
+
+"He was my mother's dog," Allerton explained briefly. "He likes women,
+but not men, though he's never taken to the women in the house. He'll
+probably like you. His name is Beppo. I'll show you up at once."
+
+The grandeur of the staircase was overpowering, and the little back
+spare-room of a magnificence beyond all her experience outside of
+movie-sets. The flowers on the chintz coverings were prettier than
+real ones, and there was a private bath. Letty had heard of private
+baths, but no picture she had ever painted equaled this dainty
+apartment in which everything was of spotless white except where a
+flight of blue-gray gulls skimmed over a blue summer sea.
+
+The objects in the bedroom were too lovely to live with. On the toilet
+table were boxes and trays which Letty supposed must be priceless, and
+a set of brushes with silver backs. She couldn't brush her hair with a
+brush with a silver back, because it would be journeying too far
+beyond real life into that of fairy princesses. On opening the closet
+to hang up her jacket the very hangers were puffed and covered with
+the "sweetest flowered silks," so she hung her jacket on a peg.
+
+But she wasn't comfortable, she wasn't happy. Alice had traveled too
+far into Wonderland, and too suddenly. Unwillingly she lay down in a
+bed too clean and soft for the human form, but she couldn't sleep in
+it. She could only tremble and toss and lie awake and wish for the
+morning. With the dawn she would be up and off, before any one caught
+sight of her.
+
+For Allerton had used words which had terrified her more than anything
+that had yet happened or been said--"the other women in the house!"
+Not till then had she sufficiently visualized the life into which he
+was taking her to understand that there would be other women there.
+Now that she knew it, she couldn't face them. She could have faced
+men. Men, after all, were simple creatures with only a rudimentary
+power of judgment. But women! God! She pulled the eiderdown about her
+head so as not to cry out so loudly that she would be heard. What mad
+thing had she done? What had she let herself in for? She didn't ask
+what kind of women they would be--members of his family or servants.
+She didn't care. All women were alike. The woman was not born who
+wouldn't view a girl in her unconventional situation, "and especially
+in that rig"--once more the expression was her own--without a
+condemnation which Letty could not and would not submit herself to. So
+she would get up and steal away with the first gleam of light.
+
+She got up with the first gleam of light, but she couldn't steal away.
+Once more she was afraid. Unlocking the door, she dared not venture
+out. Who knew where, in that palace of cavernous apartments, she might
+meet a woman, or what the woman would say to her? When Nettie walked
+in later, humming a street air, Letty almost died from shame. For one
+thing, she hadn't yet put on her shirtwaist, which in itself was poor
+enough, and as she stood exposed without it, any other of her sex
+could see.... She had once been on the studio lot when a girl of about
+her own age, a "supe" like herself, was arrested for thieving in the
+women's dressing-rooms. Letty had never forgotten the look in that
+girl's face as she passed out through the crowd of her colleagues. In
+Nettie's presence she felt like that girl's look.
+
+She had no means of telling the time, but when she could no longer
+endure the imprisonment she decided to make a bolt for it. She hadn't
+been thieving, and so they couldn't do anything to her--and there was
+a chance at least that she might get away. Opening the door
+cautiously, she stole out on the landing, and there was, not a woman,
+but a man!
+
+Joy! A man would listen to her appeal. He would see that she was poor,
+common, unequal to a dump so swell, and would be human and tender. He
+was a nice looking old man too--she was able to notice that--with a
+long, kindly face on which there were two spots of bloom as if he had
+been rouged. So she capitulated to his plea, making only the condition
+that if she took the hegg--she pronounced the word as he did, not
+being sure as to what it meant--she should be free to go.
+
+"Certainly, if madam wishes it. I'm sure the last thing Mr. Allerton
+would desire would be to detain madam against 'er will."
+
+She allowed herself to be ushered down the monumental stairs and into
+the dining-room, which awed her with the solemnity of a church. She
+knew at once that she wouldn't be able to eat amid this stateliness
+any more than in the glitter of last evening's restaurant. She had
+yielded, however, and there was nothing for it but to sit down at the
+head of the table in the chair which Steptoe drew out for her.
+Guessing at her most immediate embarrassment, he showed her what to do
+by unfolding the napkin and laying it in her lap.
+
+"Now, if madam will excuse me, I'll slip awye and tell Jyne."
+
+But telling Jyne was not so simple a matter as it looked. The council
+in the kitchen, which at first had been a council and no more, was now
+a council of war. As Steptoe entered, Mrs. Courage was saying:
+
+"I shall go to Mr. Rashleigh 'imself and tell 'im that hunder the syme
+roof with a baggage none of us will stye."
+
+"You can syve yourself the trouble, Mrs. Courage," Steptoe informed
+her. "Mr. Rash 'as just gone out. Besides, I've good news for all of
+you." He waited for each to take an appropriate expression, Mrs.
+Courage determined, Jane with face eager and alight, Nettie tittering
+behind her hand. "Miss Walbrook, which all of us 'as dreaded, is not
+a-comin' to our midst. The young lydy Nettie see in the back
+spare-room is Mr. Rashleigh's wife."
+
+"Wife!" Mrs. Courage threw up her hands and staggered backward. "'Im
+that 'is mother left to me! 'Courage,' says she, 'when I'm gone----'"
+
+Jane crept forward, horrified, stunned. "Them things can't be,
+Steptoe."
+
+"Mr. Rash told me so 'imself. I don't know what more we want than
+that." Steptoe was not without his diplomacy. "It's a fine thing for
+us, girls. This sweet young lydy is not goin' to myke us no trouble
+like what the other one would, and belongs right in our own class."
+
+"'Enery Steptoe, speak for yourself," Mrs. Courage said, severely.
+"There's no baggages in my class, nor never was, nor never will be."
+
+Jane began to cry. "I'm sure I try to think the best of everyone, but
+when such awful things 'appens and 'omes is broken up----"
+
+"Jynie," Steptoe said with authority, "the young missus is wytin' for
+'er breakfast. 'Ave the goodness to tyke 'er in 'er grypefruit."
+
+"Jyne Cakebread," Mrs. Courage declared, with an authority even
+greater than Steptoe's, "the first as tykes a grypefruit into that
+dinin'-room, to set before them as I shouldn't demean myself to nyme,
+comes hunder my displeasure."
+
+"I couldn't, Steptoe," Jane pleaded helplessly. "All my life I've
+wyted on lydies. 'Ow can you expect me to turn over a new leaf at my
+time o' life?"
+
+"Nettie?" Steptoe made the appeal magisterially.
+
+"Oh, I'll do it," Nettie giggled. "'Appy to get another look at 'er. I
+sye, she's a sight!"
+
+But Mrs. Courage barred the way. "My niece will wyte on people of
+doubtful conduck over my dead corpse."
+
+"Very well, then, Mrs. Courage," Steptoe reasoned. "If you won't serve
+the new missus, Mr. Rashleigh, will 'ave to get some one else who
+will."
+
+"Mr. Rashleigh will 'ave to do that very selfsame thing. Not another
+night will none of us sleep hunder this paternal roof with them that
+their very presence is a houtrage. 'Enery Steptoe was always a
+time-server, and a time-server 'e will be, but as for us women, we
+shall see the new missus in goin' in to give 'er notice. Not a month's
+notice, it won't be. This range as I've cooked at for nearly thirty
+years I shall cook at no more, not so much as for lunch. Oh, dear! Oh,
+dear! What's the world comin' to?"
+
+In spite of her strength of character Mrs. Courage threw her apron
+over her head and burst into tears. Jane was weeping already.
+
+"There, there, aunt," Nettie begged, patting her relative between the
+shoulders. "What's the good o' goin' on like that just because a silly
+ass 'as married beneath 'im?"
+
+Mrs. Courage pulled her apron from her face to cry out with passion:
+
+"If 'e was goin' to disgryce 'imself like that, why couldn't 'e 'a
+taken you?"
+
+So Steptoe waited on Letty himself, bringing in the grapefruit, the
+coffee, the egg, and the toast, and seeing that she knew how to deal
+with each in the proper forms. He was so brooding, so yearning, so
+tactful, as he bent over her, that she was never at a loss as to the
+fork or spoon she ought to use, or the minute at which to use it.
+Under his protection Letty ate. She ate, first because she was young
+and hungry, and then because she felt him standing between her and all
+vague terrors. By the time she had finished, he moved in front of her,
+where he could speak as one human being to another.
+
+Taking an empty plate from the table to put it on the sideboard, he
+said: "I 'ope madam is chyngin' 'er mind about leavin' us."
+
+Letty glanced up shyly in spite of being somewhat reassured. "What'ud
+be the good of my changin' my mind when--when I'm not fit to stay?"
+
+"Madam means not fit in the sense that----"
+
+"I'm not a lady."
+
+Resting one hand on the table, he looked down into her eyes with an
+expression such as Letty had never before seen in a human face.
+
+"I could myke a lydy of madam."
+
+At the sound of these quiet words, so confidently spoken, something
+passed through Letty's frame to be described only by the hard-worked
+word, a thrill. It was a double current of vibration, partly of
+upleaping hope, partly of the desperate sense of her own limitations.
+A hundred points of gold dust were aflame in her irises as she said:
+
+"You mean that you'd put me wise? Oh, but I'd never learn!"
+
+"On the contrary, I think madam would pick up very quick."
+
+"And I'd never be able to talk the right----"
+
+"I could learn madam to talk just as good as me."
+
+It seemed too much. She clasped her hands. It was the nearest point
+she had ever reached to ecstasy. "Oh, do you think you could? You talk
+somethin' beautiful, you do!"
+
+He smiled modestly. "I've always lived with the best people, and I
+suppose I ketch their wyes. I know what a gentleman is--and a lydy. I
+know all a lydy's little 'abits, and before two or three months was
+over madam 'ud 'ave them as natural as natural, if she wouldn't think
+me overbold."
+
+"When 'ud you begin?"
+
+The bright spot deepened in each cheek. "I've begun already, if madam
+won't think me steppin' out o' my plyce to sye so, in showin' madam
+the spoons and forks for the different----"
+
+Letty colored, too. "Yes, I saw that. I take it as very kind. But--"
+she looked at him with a puzzled knitting of the brows--"but what
+makes you take all this trouble for me?"
+
+"I've two reasons, madam, but I'll only tell you one of 'em just now.
+The other'll keep. I'll myke it known to you if--if all goes as I
+'ope." He straightened himself up. "I don't often speak o' this," he
+continued, "because among us butlers and valets it wouldn't be
+understood. Most of us is what's known as conservative, all for the
+big families and the old wyes. Well, so am I--to a point. But----"
+
+He moved a number of objects on the table before he could go on. "I
+wasn't born to the plyce I 'old now," he explained after getting his
+material at command. "I wasn't born to nothink. I was what they calls
+in England a foundlin'--a byby what's found--what 'is parents 'ave
+thrown awye. I don't know who my father and mother was, or what was my
+real nyme. 'Enery Steptoe is just a nyme they give me at the
+Horphanage. But I won't go into that. I'm just tryin' to tell madam
+that my life was a 'ard one, quite a 'ard one, till I come to New York
+as footman for Mr. Allerton's father, and afterward worked up to be
+'is valet and butler."
+
+He cleared his throat. Expressing ideals was not easy. "I 'ope madam
+will forgive me if I sye that what it learned me was a fellow-feelin'
+with my own sort--with the poor. I've often wished as I could go out
+among the poor and ryse them up. I ain't a socialist--a little bit of
+a anarchist perhaps, but nothink extreme--and yet--Well, if Mr.
+Rashleigh had married a rich girl, I would 'a tyken it as natural and
+done my best for 'im, but since 'e 'asn't--Oh, can't madam see?
+It's--it's a kind o' pride with me to find some one like--like what I
+was when I was 'er age--out in the cold like--and bring 'er in--and
+'elp 'er to tryne 'erself--so--so as--some day--to beat the best--them
+as 'as 'ad all the chances----"
+
+He was interrupted by the tinkle of the telephone. It was a relief. He
+had said all he needed to say, all he knew how to say. Whether madam
+understood it or not he couldn't tell, since she didn't seize ideas
+quickly.
+
+"If madam will excuse me now, I'll go and answer that call."
+
+But Letty sprang up in alarm. "Oh, don't leave me. Some of them women
+will blow in----"
+
+"None of them women will _come_--" he threw a delicate emphasis on the
+word--"if madam'll just sit down. They don't mean to come. I'll
+explyne that to madam when I come back, if she'll only not leave this
+room."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+"Good morning, Steptoe. Will you ask Mr. Allerton if he'll speak to
+Miss Walbrook?"
+
+"Mr. Allerton 'as gone to the New Netherlands club for 'is breakfast,
+miss."
+
+"Oh, thanks. I'll call him up there."
+
+She didn't want to call him up there, at a club, where a man must like
+to feel safe from feminine intrusion, but the matter was too pressing
+to permit of hesitation. Since the previous afternoon she had gone
+through much searching of heart. She was accustomed to strong
+reactions from tempestuousness to penitence, but not of the violence
+of this one.
+
+Summoned to the telephone, Allerton felt as if summoned to the bar of
+judgment. He divined who it was, and he divined the reason for the
+call.
+
+"Good morning, Rash!"
+
+His voice was absolutely dead. "Good morning, Barbara!"
+
+"I know you're cross with me for calling you at the club."
+
+"Oh, no! Not at all!"
+
+"But I couldn't wait any longer. I wanted you to know--I've got it on
+again, Rash--never to come off any more."
+
+He was dumb. Thirty seconds at least went by, and he had made no
+response.
+
+"Aren't you glad?"
+
+"I--I could have been glad--if--if I'd known you were going to do
+it."
+
+"And now you know that it's done."
+
+He repeated in his lifeless voice, "Yes, now I know that it's done."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Again he was silent. Two or three times he tried to find words,
+producing nothing but a stammering of incoherent syllables. "I--I
+can't talk about it here, Barbe," he managed to articulate at last.
+"You must let me come round and see you."
+
+It was her voice now that was dead. "When will you come, Rash?"
+
+"Now--at once--if you can see me."
+
+"Then come."
+
+She put up the receiver without saying more. He knew that she knew.
+She knew at least that something had happened which was fatal to them
+both.
+
+She received him not in the drawing-room, but in a little den on the
+right of the front door which was also alive with Miss Walbrook's
+modern personality. A gold-colored portière from Albert Herter's looms
+screened them from the hall, and the chairs were covered with bits of
+Herter tapestry representing fruits. A cabinet of old white Bennington
+faience stood against a wall, which was further adorned with three or
+four etchings of Sears Gallagher's. Barbara wore a lacy thing in
+hydrangea-colored crêpe de chine, loosely girt with a jade-green
+ribbon tasselled in gold, the whole bringing out the faintly Egyptian
+note in her personality.
+
+They dispensed with a greeting, because she spoke the minute he
+crossed the threshold of the room.
+
+"Rash, what is it? Why couldn't you tell me on the telephone?"
+
+He wished now that he had. It would have saved this explanation face
+to face. "Because I couldn't. Because--because I've been too much of
+an idiot to--to tell you about it--either on the telephone or in any
+other way."
+
+"How?" He thought she must understand, but she seemed purposely dense.
+"Sit down. Tell me about it. It can't be so terrible--all of a sudden
+like this."
+
+He couldn't sit down. He could only turn away from her and gulp in his dry
+throat. "You remember what I said--what I said--yesterday--about--about
+the--the Gissing fellow?"
+
+She nodded fiercely. "Yes. Go on. Get it out."
+
+"Well--well--I've--I've done that."
+
+She threw out her arms. She threw back her head till the little
+nut-brown throat was taut. The cry rent her. It rent him.
+
+"You--_fool_!"
+
+He stood with head hanging. He longed to run away, and yet he longed
+also to throw himself at her feet. If he could have done exactly as he
+felt impelled, he would have laid his head on her breast and wept like
+a child.
+
+She swung away from him, pacing the small room like a frenzied animal.
+Her breath came in short, hard pantings that were nearly sobs.
+Suddenly she stopped in front of him with a sort of calm.
+
+"What made you?"
+
+He barely lifted his agonized black eyes. "You,"
+
+She was in revolt again. "I? What did I do?"
+
+"You--you threw away my ring. You said it was all--all over."
+
+"Well? Couldn't I say that without driving you to act the madman? No
+one but a madman would have gone out of this house and--" She clasped
+her forehead in her hands with a dramatic lifting of the arms. "Oh!
+It's too much! I don't care about myself. But to have it on your
+conscience that a man has thrown his life away----"
+
+He asked meekly, "What good was it to me when you wouldn't have it?"
+
+She stamped her foot. "Rash, you'll drive me insane. Your life might
+be no good to you at all, and yet you might give it a chance for
+twenty-four hours--that isn't much, is it?--before you--" She caught
+herself up. "Tell me. You don't mean to say that you're _married_?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"Her first name is Letty. I've forgotten the second name."
+
+"Where did you find her?"
+
+"Over there in the Park."
+
+"And she went and married you--like that?"
+
+"She was all alone--chucked out by a stepfather----"
+
+She burst into a hard laugh. "Oh, you baby! You believed that? The
+kind of story that's told by nine of the----"
+
+[Illustration: BY THE TIME HE HAD FINISHED, HIS HEART WAS A LITTLE EASED
+AND SOME OF HER TENDERNESS BEGAN TO FLOW TOWARD HIM]
+
+He interrupted quickly. "Don't call her anything, Barbe--I mean any
+kind of a bad name. She's all right as far as that goes. There's a
+kind that couldn't take you in."
+
+"There's _no_ kind that couldn't take _you_ in!"
+
+"Perhaps not, but it's the one thing in--in this whole idiotic
+business that's on the level--I mean she is. I'd give my right hand to
+put her back where I found her yesterday--just as she was--but she's
+straight."
+
+She dropped into a chair. The first wild tumult of rage having more or
+less spent its force, she began, with a kind of heart-broken
+curiosity, to ask for the facts. She spoke nervously, beating a palm
+with a gold tassel of her girdle. "Begin at the beginning. Tell me all
+about it."
+
+He leaned on the mantelpiece, of which the only ornaments were a
+child's head in white and blue terra cotta by Paul Manship, balanced
+by a pair of old American glass candlesticks, and told the tale as
+consecutively as he could. He recounted everything, even to the
+bringing her home, the putting her in the little, back spare-room, and
+her adoption by Beppo, the red cocker spaniel. By the time he had
+finished, his heart was a little eased, and some of her tenderness
+toward him was beginning to flow forth. She was like that, all wrath
+at one minute, all gentleness the next. Springing to her feet, she
+caught him by the arm, pressing herself against him.
+
+"All right, Rash. You've done it. That's settled. But it can be undone
+again."
+
+He pressed her head back from him, resting the knot of her hair in
+the hollow of his palm and looking down into her eyes.
+
+"How can it be undone?"
+
+"Oh, there must be ways. A man can't be allowed to ruin his life--to
+ruin two lives--for a prank. We'll just have to think. If you made it
+worth while for her to take you, you can make it worth while for her
+to let you go. She'll do it."
+
+"She'd do it, of course. She doesn't care. I'm nothing to her, not any
+more than she to me. I shan't see her any more than I can help. I
+suppose she must stay at the house till--I told Steptoe to look after
+her."
+
+She took a position at one end of the mantelpiece, while he faced her
+from the other. She gave him wise counsel. He was to see his lawyers
+at once and tell them the whole story. Lawyers always saw the way out
+of things. There was the Bellington boy who married a show-girl. She
+had been bought off, and the lawyers had managed it. Now the
+Bellington boy was happily married to one of the Plantagenet Jones
+girls and lived at Marillo Park. Then there was the Silliman boy who
+had married the notorious Kate Cookesley. The lawyers had found the
+way out of that, too, and now the Silliman boy was a secretary of the
+American Embassy in Rome. Accidents such as had happened to Rash were
+regrettable of course, but it would be folly to think that a perfectly
+good life must be done for just because it had got a crack in it.
+
+"We'll play the game, of course," she wound up. "But it's a game, and
+the stronger side must win. What should you say of my going to see
+her--she needn't know who I am further than that I'm a friend of
+yours--and finding out for myself?"
+
+"Finding out what?"
+
+"Finding out her price, silly. What do you suppose? A woman can often
+see things like that where a man would be blind."
+
+He didn't know. He thought it might be worth while. He would leave it
+to her. "I'm not worth the trouble, Barbe," he said humbly.
+
+With this she agreed. "I know you're not. I can't think for a minute
+why I take it or why I should like you. But I do. That's straight."
+
+"And I adore you, Barbe."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders with a little, comic grimace. "Oh, well! I
+suppose every one has his own way of showing adoration, but I must say
+that yours is original."
+
+"If it's original to be desperate when the woman you worship drives
+you to despair----"
+
+There was another little comic grimace, though less comic than the
+first time. "Oh, yes, I know. It's always the woman whom a man
+worships that's in the wrong. I've noticed that. Men are never
+impossible--all of their own accord."
+
+"I could be as tame as a cat if----"
+
+"If it wasn't for me. Thank you, Rash. I said just now I was fond of
+you, and I should have to be to--to stand for all the----"
+
+"I'm not blaming you, Barbe. I'm only----"
+
+"Thanks again. The day you're not blaming me is certainly one to be
+marked with a white stone, as the Romans used to say. But if it comes
+to blaming any one, Rash, after what happened yesterday----"
+
+"What happened yesterday wasn't begun by me. It would never have
+entered my mind to do the crazy thing I did, if you hadn't positively
+and finally--as I thought--flung me down. I think you must do me that
+justice, Barbe--that justice, at the least."
+
+"Oh, I do you justice enough. I don't see that you can complain of
+that. It seems to me too that I temper justice with mercy to a degree
+that--that most people find ridiculous."
+
+"By most people I suppose you mean your aunt."
+
+"Oh, do leave Aunt Marion out of it. You can't forgive the poor thing
+for not liking you. Well, she doesn't, and I can't help it. She thinks
+you're a----"
+
+"A fool--as you were polite enough to say just now."
+
+She spread her hands apart in an attitude of protestation. "Well, if I
+did, Rash, surely you must admit that I had provocation."
+
+"Oh, of course. The wonder is that with the provocation you can----"
+
+"Forgive you, and try to patch it up again after this frightful gash
+in the agreement. Well, it _is_ a wonder. I don't believe that many
+girls----"
+
+"I only want you to understand, Barbe, that the gash in the agreement
+was made, not by what I did, but what you did. If you hadn't sent me
+to the devil, I shouldn't have been in such a hurry to go there."
+
+She was off. "Yes, there you are again. Always me! I'm the one! You
+may be the gunpowder, the perfectly harmless gunpowder, but it would
+never blow up if I didn't come as the match. _I_ make all the
+explosions. _I_ set you crazy. _I_ send you to the devil. _I_ make you
+go and marry a girl you never laid eyes on in your life before."
+
+So it was the same old scene all over again, till both were exhausted,
+and she had flung herself into a chair to cover her face with her
+hands and burst into tears. Instantly he was on his knees beside her.
+
+"Barbe! Barbe! My beloved Barbe! Don't cry. I'm a brute. I'm a fool.
+I'm not satisfied with breaking my own heart, but I must go to work
+and break yours. Oh, Barbe, forgive me. I'm all to pieces. Forgive me
+and let me go away and shoot myself. What's the good of a poor,
+wrecked creature like me hanging on and making such a mess of things?
+Let me kill myself before I kill you----"
+
+"Oh, hush!"
+
+Seizing his head, she pressed it against her bosom convulsively. By
+the shaking of his shoulders, she felt him sob. He _was_ a poor
+creature. She was saying so to herself. But just because he was,
+something in her yearned over him. He _could_ be different; he could
+be stronger and of value in the world if there was only some one to
+handle him rightly. She could do it--if she could only learn to handle
+herself. She _would_ learn to handle herself--for his sake. He was
+worth saving. He had fine qualities, and a good heart most of all. It
+was his very fineness which put him out of place in a world like that
+of New York. He was a delicate, brittle, highly-wrought thing which
+should be touched only with the greatest care, and all his life he had
+been pushed and hurtled about as if he were a football player or a
+business man. With the soul of a poet or a painter or a seer, he had
+been treated like the typical rough-and-ready American lad, till the
+sensitive nature had been brutalized, maimed, and frenzied.
+
+She knew that. It was why she cared for him. Even when they were
+children she had seen that he wasn't getting fair treatment, either at
+home or in school or among the boys and girls with whom they both grew
+up. He was the exception, and American life allowed only for the rule.
+If you couldn't conform to the rule, you were guyed and tormented and
+ejected. Among all his associates she alone knew what he suffered, and
+because she knew it a vast pity made her cling to him. He had forced
+himself into the life of clubs, into the life of society, into the
+life of other men as other men lived their lives, and the effect on
+him had been so nearly ruinous that it was no wonder if he was always
+on the edge of nervous explosion. His very wealth which might have
+been a protection was, under the uniform pressure of American social
+habit, an incitement to him to follow the wrong way. She knew it, and
+she alone. She could save him, and she alone. She could save him, if
+she could first of all save herself.
+
+With his head pressed against her she made the vow as she had made it
+fifty times already. She would be gentle with him; she would be
+patient; she would let him work off on her the agony of his suffering
+nerves, and smile at him through it all. She would help him out of the
+idiotic situation in which he found himself. The other girl was only
+an incident, as the show-girl had been to the Bellington boy, and
+could be disposed of. She attached to that only a secondary importance
+in comparison with the whole thing--her saving him. She would save
+him, even if it meant rooting out every instinct in her soul.
+
+But as he made his way blindly back to the club, his own conclusions
+were different. He must go to the devil. He must go to the devil now,
+whatever else he did. Going to the devil would set her free from him.
+It was the only thing that would. It would set him free from the other
+woman, set him free from life itself. Life tortured him. He was a
+misfit in it. He should never have been born. He had always understood
+that his parents hadn't wanted children and that his coming had been
+resented. You couldn't be born like that and find it natural to be in
+the world. He had never found it natural. He couldn't remember the
+time when he hadn't been out of his element in life, and now he must
+recognize the fact courageously.
+
+It would be easy enough. He had worked up an artificial appetite for
+all that went under the head of debauchery. It had meant difficult
+schooling at first, because his natural tastes were averse to that
+kind of thing, but he had been schooled. Schooled was the word, since
+his training had begun under the very roof where his father had sent
+him to get religion and discipline. There had been no let-up in this
+educational course, except when he himself had stolen away, generally
+in solitude, for a little holiday.
+
+But as he put it to himself, he knew all the roads and by-paths and
+cross-country leaps that would take him to the gutter, and to the
+gutter he would go.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+And all this while Letty was in the dining-room, learning certain
+lessons from her new-found friend.
+
+For some little time she had been alone. Steptoe finished his
+conversation with Miss Walbrook on the telephone, but did not come
+back. She sat at the table feeding Beppo with bread and milk, but
+wondering if, after all, she hadn't better make a bolt for it. She had
+had her breakfast, which was an asset to the good, and nothing worse
+could happen to her out in the open world than she feared in this
+great dim, gloomy house. She had once crept in to look at the
+cathedral and, overwhelmed by its height, immensity, and mystery, had
+crept out again. Its emotional suggestions had been more than she
+could bear. She felt now as if her bed had been made and her food laid
+out in that cathedral--as if, as long as she remained, she must eat
+and sleep in this vast, pillared solemnity.
+
+And that was only one thing. There were small practical considerations
+even more terrible to confront. If Nettie were to appear again ...
+
+But it was as to this that Steptoe was making his appeal. "I sye,
+girls, don't you go to mykin' a fuss and spoilin' your lives, when
+you've got a chanst as'll never come again."
+
+Mrs. Courage answered for them all. To sacrifice decency to
+self-interest wasn't in them, nor never would be. Some there might be,
+like 'Enery Steptoe, who would sell their birthright for a mess of
+pottage, but Mary Ann Courage was not of that company, nor any other
+woman upon whom she could use her influence. If a hussy had been put
+to reign over them, reigned over by a hussy none of them would be. All
+they asked was to see her once, to deliver the ultimatum of giving
+notice.
+
+"It's a strynge thing to me," Steptoe reasoned, "that when one poor
+person gets a lift, every other poor person comes down on 'em."
+
+"And might we arsk who you means by poor persons?"
+
+"Who should I mean, Mrs. Courage, but people like us? If we don't 'ang
+by each other, who _will_ 'ang by us, I should like to know? 'Ere's
+one of us plyced in a 'igh position, and instead o' bein' proud of it,
+and givin' 'er a lift to carry 'er along, you're all for mykin' it as
+'ard for 'er as you can. Do you call that sensible?"
+
+"I call it sensible for everyone to stye in their proper spere."
+
+"So that if a man's poor, you must keep 'im poor, no matter 'ow 'e
+tries to better 'imself. That's what your proper speres would come
+to."
+
+But argument being of no use, Steptoe could only make up his mind to
+revolution in the house. "The poor's very good to the poor when one of
+'em's in trouble," was his summing up, "but let one of 'em 'ave an
+extry stroke of luck, and all the rest'll jaw against 'im like so many
+magpies." As a parting shot he declared on leaving the kitchen, "The
+trouble with you girls is that you ain't got no class spunk, and
+that's why, in sperrit, you'll never be nothink but menials."
+
+This lack of _esprit de corps_ was something he couldn't understand,
+but what he understood less was the need of the heart to touch
+occasionally the high points of experience. Mrs. Courage and Jane, to
+say nothing of Nettie, after thirty years of domestic routine had
+reached the place where something in the way of drama had become
+imperative. The range and the pantry produce inhibitions as surely as
+the desk or the drawing-room. On both natures inhibitions had been
+packed like feathers on a seabird, till the soul cried out to be
+released from some of them. It might mean going out from the home that
+had sheltered them for years, and breaking with all their traditions,
+but now that the chance was there, neither could refuse it. To a
+virtuous woman, starched and stiffened in her virtue, steeped in it,
+dyed in it, permeated by it through and through, nothing so stirs the
+dramatic, so quickens the imagination, so calls the spirit to the
+purple emotional heights, as contact with the sister she knows to be a
+hussy. For Jane Cakebread and Mary Ann Courage the opportunity was
+unique.
+
+"Then I'll go. I'll go straight now."
+
+As Steptoe brought the information that the three women of the
+household were coming to announce the resignation of their posts,
+Letty sprang to her feet.
+
+"May I arsk madam to sit down again and let me explyne?"
+
+Taking this as an order, she sank back into her chair again. He stood
+confronting her as before, one hand resting lightly on the table.
+
+"Nothink so good won't 'ave 'appened in this 'ouse since old Mrs.
+Allerton went to work and died."
+
+Letty's eyes shone with their tiny fires, not in pleasure but in
+wonder.
+
+"When old servants is good, they're good, but even when they're good,
+there's times when you can't 'elp wishin' as 'ow the Lord 'ud be
+pleased to tyke them to 'Imself."
+
+He allowed this to sink in before going further.
+
+"The men's all right, for the most part. Indoor work comes natural to
+'em, and they'll swing it without no complynts. But with the women
+it's kick, kick, kick, and when they're worn theirselves out with
+kickin', they'll begin to kick again. What's plye for a man, for them
+ain't nothink but slyvery."
+
+Letty listened as one receiving revelations from another world.
+
+"I ain't what they call a woman-'ater. _I_ believe as God made woman
+for a purpose. Only I can't bring myself to think as the human race
+'as rightly found out yet what that purpose is. God's wyes is always
+dark, and when it comes to women, they're darker nor they are
+elsewheres. One thing I do know, and we'll be a lot more comfortable
+when more of us finds it out--that God never made women for the
+'ome."
+
+In spite of her awe of him, Letty found this doctrine difficult to
+accept.
+
+"If God didn't make 'em for the home, mister, where on earth would you
+put 'em?"
+
+The wintry color came out again on the old man's cheeks. "If madam
+would call me Steptoe," he said ceremoniously, "I think she'd find it
+easier. I mean," he went on, reverting to the original theme, "that 'E
+didn't make 'em to be cooks and 'ousemaids and parlormaids, and all
+that. That's men's work. Men'll do it as easy as a bird'll sing. I
+never see the woman yet as didn't fret 'erself over it, like a wild
+animal'll fret itself in a circus cage. It spiles women to put 'em to
+'ousework, like it always spiles people to put 'em to jobs for which
+the Lord didn't give 'em no haptitude."
+
+Letty was puzzled, but followed partially.
+
+"I've watched 'em and watched 'em, and it's always the syme tyle.
+They'll go into service young and joyous like, but it won't be two or
+three years before they'll have growed cat-nasty like this 'ere Jyne
+Cykebread and Mary Ann Courage. Madam 'ud never believe what sweet
+young things they was when I first picked 'em out--Mrs. Courage a
+young widow, and Jynie as nice a girl as madam 'ud wish to see, only
+with the features what Mrs. Allerton used to call a little
+hover-haccentuated. And now--!" He allowed the conditions to speak for
+themselves without criticizing further.
+
+"It's keepin' 'em in a 'ome what's done it. They knows it
+theirselves--and yet they don't. Inside they've got the sperrits of
+young colts that wants to kick up their 'eels in the pasture. They
+don't mean no worse nor that, only when people comes to Jynie's age
+and Mrs. Courage's they 'ave to kick up their 'eels in their own wye.
+If madam'll remember that, and be pytient with them like------"
+
+Letty cried in alarm, "But it's got nothin' to do with me!"
+
+"If madam'll excuse me, it's got everything to do with 'er. She's the
+missus of this 'ouse."
+
+"Oh, no, I ain't. Mr. Allerton just brung me here----"
+
+Once more there was the delicate emphasis with which he had corrected
+other slips. "Mr. Allerton _brought_ madam, and told me to see that
+she was put in 'er proper plyce. If madam'll let me steer the thing,
+I'll myke it as easy for 'er as easy."
+
+He reflected as to how to make the situation clear to her. "I've been
+readin' about the time when our lyte Queen Victoria come to the throne
+as quite a young girl. She didn't know nothin' about politics or
+presidin' at councils or nothin'. But she had a prime minister--a kind
+of hupper servant, you might sye--'er servant was what 'e always
+called 'imself--and whatever 'e told 'er to do, she done. Walked
+through it all, you might sye, till she got the 'ang of it, but once
+she did get the 'ang of it--well, there wasn't no big-bug in the world
+that our most grycious sovereign lydy couldn't put it all hover on."
+
+Once more he allowed her time to assimilate this parable.
+
+"Now if madam would only think of 'erself as called in youth to reign
+hover this 'ouse----"
+
+"Oh, but I couldn't!"
+
+"And yet it's madam's duty, now that she's married to its 'ead----"
+
+"Yes, but he didn't marry me like that. He married me--all queer like.
+This was the way."
+
+She poured out the story, while Steptoe listened quietly. There being
+no elements in it of the kind he called "shydy," he found it romantic.
+No one had ever suspected the longings for romance which had filled
+his heart and imagination when he was a poor little scullion boy; but
+the memory of them, with some of the reality, was still fresh in his
+hidden inner self. Now it seemed as if remotely and vicariously
+romance might be coming to him after all, through the boy he adored.
+
+On her tale his only comment was to say: "I've been readin'--I'm a
+great reader," he threw in parenthetically, "wonderful exercise for
+the mind, and learns you things which you wouldn't be likely to 'ear
+tell of--but I've been readin' about a king--I'll show you 'is nyme in
+the book--what fell in love with a beggar myde----"
+
+"Oh, but Mr. Allerton didn't fall in love with me."
+
+"That remynes to be seen."
+
+She lifted her hands in awed amazement. "Mister--I mean,
+Steptoe--you--you don't think----?"
+
+The subway dream of love at first sight was as tenacious in her soul
+as the craving for romance in his.
+
+He nodded. "I've known strynger things to 'appen."
+
+"But--but--he couldn't--" it was beyond her power of expression,
+though Steptoe knew what she meant--"not _him_!"
+
+He answered judicially. "'E may come to it. It'll be a tough job to
+bring 'im--but if madam'll be guided by me------"
+
+Letty collapsed. Her spirit grew faint as the spirit of Christian when
+he descried far off the walls of the Celestial City, with the Dark
+River rolling between him and it. Letty knew the Dark River must be
+there, but if beyond it there lay the slightest chance of the
+Celestial City....
+
+She came back to herself, as it were, on hearing Steptoe say that the
+procession from the kitchen would presently begin to form itself.
+
+"Now if madam'll be guided by me she'll meet this situytion fyce to
+fyce."
+
+"Oh, but I'd never know what to say."
+
+"Madam won't need to say nothink. She won't 'ave to speak. 'Ere
+they'll troop in--" a gesture described Mrs. Courage leading the
+advance through the doorway--"and 'ere they'll stand. Madam'll sit
+just where she's sittin'--a little further back from the
+tyble--lookin' over the mornin' pyper like--" he placed the paper in
+her hand--"and as heach gives notice, madam'll just bow 'er 'ead.
+See?"
+
+Madam saw, but not exactly.
+
+"Now if she'll just move 'er chair----"
+
+The chair was moved in such a way as to make it seem that the
+occupant, having finished her breakfast, was giving herself a little
+more space.
+
+"And if madam would remove 'er 'at and jacket, she'd--she'd seem more
+like the lydy of the 'ouse at 'ome."
+
+Letty took off these articles of apparel, which Steptoe whisked out of
+sight.
+
+"Now I'll be Mrs. Courage comin' to sye, 'Madam, I wish to give
+notice.' Madam'll lower the pyper just enough to show 'er inclinin' of
+'er 'ead, assentin' to Mrs. Courage leavin' 'er. Mrs. Courage will be
+all for 'avin' words--she's a great 'and for words, Mrs. Courage
+is--but if madam won't sye nothin' at all, the wind'll be out o' Mrs.
+Courage's syles like. Now, will madam be so good----?"
+
+Having passed out into the hall, he entered with Mrs. Courage's
+majestic gait, pausing some three feet from the table to say:
+
+"Madam, things bein' as they are, and me not wishin' to stye no longer
+in the 'ouse where I've served so many years, I beg to give notice
+that I'm a givin' of notice and mean to quit right off."
+
+Letty lowered the paper from before her eyes, jerking her head
+briskly.
+
+"Ye-es," Steptoe commended doubtfully, "a lettle too--well, too
+habrupt, as you might sye. Most lydies--real 'igh lydies, like the
+lyte Mrs. Allerton--inclines their 'ead slow and gryceful like. First,
+they throws it back a bit, so as to get a purchase on it, and then
+they brings it forward calm like, lowerin' it stytely--Perhaps if
+madam'ud be me for a bit--that 'ud be Mrs. Courage--and let me sit
+there and be 'er, I could show 'er----"
+
+The places were reversed. It was Letty who came in as Mrs. Courage,
+while Steptoe, seated in the chair, lowered the paper to the degree
+which he thought dignified. Letty mumbled something like the words the
+hypothetical Mrs. Courage was presumed to use, while Steptoe slowly
+threw back his head for the purchase, bringing it forward in
+condescending grace. Language could not have given Mrs. Courage so
+effective a retort courteous.
+
+Letty was enchanted. "Oh, Steptoe, let me have another try. I believe
+I could swing the cat."
+
+Again the places were reversed. Steptoe having repeated the rôle of
+Mrs. Courage, Letty imitated him as best she could in getting the
+purchase for her bow and catching his air of high-bred condescension.
+
+"Better," he approved, "if madam wouldn't lower 'er 'ead _quite_ so
+far back'ard. You see, madam, a lydy don't _know_ she's throwin' back
+'er 'ead so as to get a grip on it. She does it unconscious like,
+because bein' of a 'aughty sperrit she 'olds it 'igh natural. If
+madam'll only stiffen 'er neck like, as if sperrit 'ad made 'er about
+two inches taller than she is----"
+
+Having seized this idea, Letty tried again, with such success that
+Mrs. Courage was disposed of. Jane Cakebread followed next, with
+Nettie last of all. Unaware of his possession of histrionic ability,
+Steptoe gave to each character its outstanding traits, fluttering like
+Jane, and giggling like Nettie, not in zeal for a newly discovered
+interpretative art, but in order that Letty might be nowhere caught at
+a disadvantage. He was delighted with her quickness in imitation.
+
+"Couldn't 'ave done that better myself," he declared after Nettie had
+been dismissed for the third or fourth time. "When it comes to the
+inclinin' of the 'ead I should sye as madam was about letter-perfect,
+as they sye on the styge. If Mr. Rash was to see it, 'e'd swear as 'is
+ma 'ad come back again."
+
+A muffled sound proceeded from the back part of the hallway, with
+some whispering and once or twice Nettie's stifled cackle of a laugh.
+
+"'Ere they are," he warned her. "Madam must be firm and control
+'erself. There's nothink for 'er to be afryde of. Just let 'er think
+of the lyte Queen Victoria, called to the throne when younger even
+than madam is----"
+
+A shuffling developed into one lone step, heavy, stately, and
+funereal. Doing her best to emulate the historic example held up to
+her, Letty lengthened her neck and stiffened it. A haughty spirit
+seemed to rise in her by the mere process of the elongation. She was
+so nervous that the paper shook in her hand, but she knew that if the
+Celestial City was to be won, she could shrink from no tests which
+might lead her on to victory.
+
+Steptoe had relapsed into the major-domo's office, announcing from the
+doorway, "Mrs. Courage to see madam, if madam will be pleased to
+receive 'er."
+
+Madam indicated that she was so pleased, scrambling after the standard
+of the maiden sovereign of Windsor Castle giving audience to princes
+and ambassadors.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+"I'm 'ere."
+
+Letty couldn't know, of course, that this announcement, made in a
+menacing female bass, was due to the fact that three swaying
+bodies had been endeavoring so to get round the deployed paper
+wings as to see what was hidden there, and had found their efforts
+vain. All she could recognize was the summons to the bar of social
+judgment. To the bar of social judgment she would have gone
+obediently, had it not been for that rebelliousness against being
+"looked down upon" which had lately mastered her. As it was, she
+lengthened her neck by another half inch, receiving from the
+exercise a new degree of self-strengthening.
+
+"Mrs. Courage is 'ere, madam," Steptoe seconded, "and begs to sye as
+she's givin' notice to quit madam's service----"
+
+The explosion came as if Mrs. Courage was strangling.
+
+"When I wants words took out of my mouth by 'Enery Steptoe or anybody
+else I'll sye so. If them as I've come into this room to speak to
+don't feel theirselves aible to fyce me----"
+
+"Madam'll excuse an old servant who's outlived 'er time," Steptoe
+intervened, "and not tyke no notice. They always abuses the kindness
+that's been showed 'em, and tykes liberties which----"
+
+But not for nothing had Mrs. Courage been born to the grand manner.
+
+"When 'Enery Steptoe talks of old servants out-livin' their time and
+tykin' liberties 'e speaks of what 'e knows all about from personal
+experience. 'E was an old man when I was a little thing not _so_
+high."
+
+The appeal was to the curiosity of the girl behind the screen. To
+judge of how high Mrs. Courage had not been at a time when Steptoe was
+already an old man she might be enticed from her fortifications. But
+the pause only offered Steptoe a new opportunity.
+
+"And so, if madam can dispense with 'er services, which I understand
+madam can, Mrs. Courage will be a-leavin' of us this morning, with all
+our good wishes, I'm sure. Good-dye to you, Mary Ann, and God bless
+you after all the years you've been with us. Madam's givin' you your
+dismissal."
+
+Obedient to her cue Letty lowered her guard just enough to incline her
+head with the grace Steptoe had already pronounced "letter perfect."
+The shock to Mrs. Courage can best be narrated in her own terms to
+Mrs. Walter Wildgoose later in the day.
+
+"Airs! No one couldn't imagine it, Bessie, what 'adn't seen it for
+theirselves--what them baggages'll do--smokin'--and wearin' pearl
+necklaces--and 'avin' their own limousines--all that I've seen and 'ad
+got used to--but not the President's wife--not Mary Queen of
+England--could 'a myde you feel as if you was dirt hunder their feet
+like what this one--and 'er with one of them marked down sixty-nine
+cent blouses that 'adn't seen the wash since--and as for looks--why,
+she didn't 'ave a look to bless 'erself--and a-'oldin' of 'erself like
+what a empress might--and bowin' 'er 'ead, and goin' back to 'er
+pyper, as if I'd disturbed 'er at 'er readin'--and the dead and
+spitten image of 'Enery Steptoe 'imself she is--and you know 'ow many
+times we've all wondered as to why 'e didn't marry--and 'im with
+syvings put by--Jynie thinks as 'e's worth as much as--and you know
+what a 'and Jynie is for ferritin' out what's none of 'er
+business--why, if Jynie Cykebread could 'a myde 'erself Jynie
+Steptoe--but that's somethink wild 'orses wouldn't myke poor Jynie
+see--that no man wouldn't look at 'er the second time if it wasn't for
+to laugh--pitiful, I call it, at 'er aige--and me always givin' the
+old rip to know as it was no use 'is 'angin' round where I was--as if
+I'd marry agyne, and me a widda, as you might sye, from my crydle--and
+if I did, it wouldn't 'a been a wicked old varlet what I always
+suspected 'e was leadin' a double life--and now to see them two fyces
+together--why, I says, 'ere's the explanytion as plyne as plyne can
+make it...."
+
+All of which might have been true in rhetoric, but not in fact. For
+what had really given Mrs. Courage the _coup de grace_ we must go back
+to the scene of the morning.
+
+Ignoring both Letty's inclination of the head and Steptoe's
+benediction she had shown herself hurt where she was tenderest.
+
+"Now that there's no one to ryse their voice agynst the disgryce
+brought on this family but me----"
+
+"Speak right up, Jynie. Don't be afryde. Madam won't eat you. She
+knows that you've come to give notice----"
+
+Mrs. Courage struggled on. "No one ain't goin' to bow me out of the
+'ouse I've been cook-'ousekeeper in these twenty-seven year----"
+
+"Sorry as madam'll be to lose you, Jynie, she won't stand in the wye
+of your gettin' a better plyce----"
+
+Mrs. Courage's roar being that of the wounded lioness she was, the
+paper shook till it rattled in Letty's hand.
+
+"I _will_ be listened to. I've a right to be 'eard. My 'eart's been as
+much in this 'ouse and family as 'Enery Steptoe's 'eart; and to see
+shyme and ruin come upon it----"
+
+Steptoe's interruption was in a tone of pleased surprise.
+
+"Why, you still 'ere, Mary Ann? We thought you'd tyken leave of us.
+Madam didn't know you was speakin'. She won't detyne you, madam won't.
+You and Jynie and Nettie'll all find cheques for your wyges pyde up to
+a month a 'ead, as I know Mr. Rashleigh'd want me to do...."
+
+Shame and ruin! Letty couldn't follow the further unfoldings of
+Steptoe's diplomacy because of these two words. They summed up what
+she brought--what she had been married to bring--to a house of which
+even she could see the traditions were of honor. Vaguely aware of
+voices which she attributed to Jane and Nettie, her spirit was in
+revolt against the rôle for which her rashness of yesterday had let
+her in, and which Steptoe was forcing upon her.
+
+Jane was still whimpering and sniffling:
+
+"I'm sure I never dreamed that things would 'appen like what 'as
+'appened--and us all one family, as you might sye--'opin' the best of
+everyone----"
+
+"Jynie, stop," Mrs. Courage's voice had become low and firm, with
+emotion in its tone, making Letty catch her breath. "My 'eart's
+breakin', and I ain't a-goin' to let it break without mykin' them
+that's broken it know what they've done to me."
+
+"Now, Mary Ann," Steptoe tried to say, peaceably, "madam's grytely
+pressed for time----"
+
+"'Enery Steptoe, do you suppose that you're the only one in the world
+as 'as loved that boy? Ain't 'e my boy just as much as ever 'e was
+yours?"
+
+"'E's boy to them as stands by 'im, Mrs. Courage--and stands by them
+that belongs to 'im. The first thing you do is to quit----"
+
+"I'm not quittin'; I'm druv out. I'm druv out at a hour's notice from
+the 'ome I've slyved for all my best years, leavin' dishonor and
+wickedness in my plyce----"
+
+Letty could endure no more. Dashing to the floor the paper behind
+which she crouched she sprang to her feet.
+
+"Is that me?" she demanded.
+
+The surprise of the attack caught Mrs. Courage off her guard. She
+could only open her mouth, and close it again, soundlessly and
+helplessly. Jane stared, her curiosity gratified at last. Nettie
+turned to whisper to Jane, "There; what did I tell you? The commonest
+thing!" Steptoe nodded his head quietly. In this little creature with
+her sudden flame, eyes all fire and cheeks of the wine-colored damask
+rose, he seemed to find a corroboration of his power of divining
+character.
+
+It seemed long before Mrs. Courage had found the strength to live up
+to her convictions, by faintly murmuring: "Who else?"
+
+"Then tell me what you accuse me of?"
+
+Mrs. Courage saw her advantage. "We ain't 'ere to accuse nobody of
+nothink. If it's 'intin' that I'd tyke awye anyone's character it's a
+thing I've 'ardly ever done, and no one can sye it _of_ me. All we
+want is to give our notice----"
+
+"Then why don't you do it--and go?"
+
+Once more Steptoe intervened, diplomatically. "That's what Mrs.
+Courage is a-doin' of, madam. She's finished, ain't you Mary Ann?
+Jynie and Nettie is finished too----"
+
+But it was Letty now who refused this mediation.
+
+"No, they ain't finished. Let 'em go on."
+
+But no one did go on. Mrs. Courage was now dumb. She was dumb and
+frightened, falling back on her two supporters. All three together
+they huddled between the portières. If Steptoe could have calmed his
+protégée he would have done it; but she was beyond his control.
+
+"Am I the ruin and shame to this house that you was talkin' about just
+now? If I am, why don't you speak out and put it to me plain?"
+
+There was no response. The spectators looked on as if they were at the
+theater.
+
+"What have you all got against me anyhow?" Letty insisted,
+passionately. "What did I ever do to you? What's women's hearts made
+of, that they can't let a poor girl be?"
+
+Mrs. Courage had so far recovered as to be able to turn from one to
+another, to say in pantomime that she had been misunderstood. Jane
+began to cry; Nettie to laugh.
+
+"Even if I was the bad girl you're tryin' to make me out I should
+think other women might show me a little pity. But I'm not a bad
+girl--not yet. I may be. I dunno but what I will. When I see the
+hateful thing bein' good makes of women it drives me to do the other
+thing."
+
+This was the speech they needed to justify themselves. To be good made
+women hateful! Their dumb-crambo to each other showed that anyone who
+said so wild a thing stood already self-condemned.
+
+But Letty flung up her head with a mettle which Steptoe hadn't seen
+since the days of the late Mrs. Allerton.
+
+"I'm not in this house to drive no one else out of it. Them that have
+lived here for years has a right to it which I ain't got. You can go,
+and let me stay; or you can stay, and let me go. I'm the wife of the
+owner of this house, who married me straight and legal; but I don't
+care anything about that. You don't have to tell me I ain't fit to be
+his wife, because I know it as well as you do. All I'm sayin' is that
+you've got the choice to stay or go; and whichever you do, I'll do
+different."
+
+Never in her life had she spoken so many words at one time. The effort
+drained her. With a torrent of dry sobs that racked her body she
+dropped back into her chair.
+
+The hush was that of people who find the tables turned on themselves
+in a way they consider unwarranted. Of the general surprise Steptoe
+was quick to take advantage.
+
+"There you are, girls. Madam couldn't speak no fairer, now could
+she?"
+
+To this there was neither assent or dissent; but it was plain that no
+one was ready to pick up the glove so daringly thrown down.
+
+"Now what I would suggest," Steptoe went on, craftily, "is that we all
+go back to the kitchen and talk it over quiet like. What we decide to
+do we can tell madam lyter."
+
+For consent or refusal Jane and Nettie looked to Mary Ann, whose
+attitude was that of rejecting parley. She might, indeed, have
+rejected it, had not Letty, bowing her head on the arms she rested on
+the table, begun to cry bitterly.
+
+It was then that you saw Mrs. Courage at her best. The gesture with
+which she swept her subordinates back into the hall was that of the
+supremacy of will.
+
+"It shan't be said as I crush," she declared, nobly, directing
+Steptoe's attention to the weeping girl. "Where there's penitence I
+pity. God grant as them tears may gush out of an aichin' 'eart."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+By the time Letty was drying her eyes, her heart somewhat eased,
+Steptoe had come back. He came back with a smile. Something had
+evidently pleased him.
+
+"So that's all over. Madam won't be bothered with other people's
+cat-nasty old servants after to-dye."
+
+She felt a new access of alarm. "But they're not goin' away on account
+o' me? Don't let 'em do it. Lemme go instead. Oh, mister, I can't stay
+here, where everything's so different from what I'm used to."
+
+He still smiled, his gentle old man's smile which somehow gave her
+confidence.
+
+"Madam won't sye that after a dye or two. It's new to 'er yet, of
+course; but if she'll always remember that I'm 'ere, to myke
+everythink as easy as easy----"
+
+"But what are you goin' to do, with no cook, and no chambermaid----?"
+
+Standing with the corner of the table between him and her, he was
+saying to himself, "If Mr. Rash could only see 'er lookin' up like
+this--with 'er eyes all starry--and her cheeks with them dark-red
+roses--red roses like you'd rubbed with a little black...." But he
+suspended the romantic longing to say, aloud:
+
+"If madam will permit me I'll tyke my measures as I've wanted to tyke
+'em this long spell back."
+
+Madam was not to worry as to the three women who were leaving the
+house, inasmuch as they had long been intending to leave it. Both Mrs.
+Courage and Jane, having graduated to the stage of "accommodating,"
+were planning to earn more money by easier work. Nettie, since coming
+to America, had learned that housework was menial, and was going to be
+a milliner.
+
+Madam's remorse being thus allayed he told what he hoped to do for
+madam's comfort. There would be no more women in the house, not till
+madam herself brought them back. An English chef who had lost an eye
+in the war, and an English waiter, ready to do chamberwork, who had
+left a foot on some battlefield, were prepared under Steptoe's
+direction to man the house. No woman whose household cares had not
+been eased by men, in the European fashion, knew what it was to live.
+A woman waited on by women only was kept in a state of nerves. Nerves
+were infectious. When one woman in a household got them the rest were
+sooner or later their prey. Unless strongly preventative measures were
+adopted they spread at times to the men. America was a dreadful
+country for nerves and it mostly came of women working with women;
+whereas, according to Steptoe's psychology, men should work with women
+and women with men. There were thousands of women who were bitter in
+heart at cooking and making beds who would be happy as linnets in
+offices and shops; and thousands of men who were dying of boredom in
+offices and shops who would be in their element cooking and making
+beds.
+
+"One of the things the American people 'as got back'ards, if madam'll
+allow me to sye so, is that 'ouse'old work is not fit for a white man.
+When you come to that the American people ain't got a sense of the
+dignity of their 'omes. They can't see their 'omes as run by anything
+but slyves. All that's outside the dinin' room and the drorin' room
+and the masters' bedrooms the American sees as if it was a low-down
+thing, even when it's hunder 'is own roof. Colored men, yellow men,
+may cook 'is meals and myke 'is bed; but a white man'd demean 'imself.
+A poor old white man like me when 'e's no longer fit for 'ard outdoor
+work ain't allowed to do nothink; when all the time there's women
+workin' their fingers to the bone that 'e could be a great 'elp to,
+and who 'e'd like to go to their 'elp."
+
+This was one reason, he argued, why the question of domestic aid in
+America was all at sixes and sevens. It was not considered humanly. It
+was more than a question of supply and demand; it was one of national
+prejudice. A rich man could have a French chef and an English butler,
+and as many strapping indoor men--some of them much better fitted for
+manual labor--as he liked, and find it a social glory; while a family
+of moderate means were obliged to pay high wages to crude incompetent
+women from the darkest backwaters of European life, just because they
+were women.
+
+"And the women's mostly to blyme," he reasoned. "They suffers--nobody
+knows what they suffers better nor me--just because they ain't got the
+spunk to do anything _but_ suffer. They've got it all in their own
+'ands, and they never learn. Men is slow to learn; but women don't
+'ardly ever learn at all."
+
+Letty was thinking of herself, as she glanced up at this fount of
+wisdom with the question:
+
+"Don't none of 'em?"
+
+Having apparently weighed this already he had his answer. "None that's
+been drilled a little bit before 'and. Once let woman feel as so and
+so is the custom, and for 'er that custom, whether good or bad, is
+there to stye. They sye that chyngin' 'er mind is a woman's privilege;
+but the woman that chynged 'er mind about a custom is one I never met
+yet."
+
+She took him as seriously as he took himself.
+
+"Don't you like women, mister--I mean, Steptoe?"
+
+He pondered before replying. "I don't know as I could sye. I've never
+'ad a chance to see much of women except in 'ousework, where they're
+out of their element and tyken at a disadvantage. I don't like none
+I've ever run into there, because none of 'em never was no sport."
+
+The inquiry in her golden eyes led him a little further.
+
+"No one ain't a sport what sighs and groans over their job, and don't
+do it cheerful like. No one ain't a sport what undertykes a job and
+ain't proud of it. If a woman _will_ go into 'ousework let 'er do it
+honorable. If she chooses to be a servant let 'er _be_ a servant, and
+not be ashymed to sye she _is_ one. So if madam arsks me if I like 'em
+I 'ave to confess I don't, because as far as I see women I mostly 'ear
+'em complyne."
+
+Her admiration was quite sincere as she said: "I shouldn't think
+they'd complain if they had you to put 'em wise."
+
+He corrected gently. "If they 'ad me to _tell_ 'em."
+
+"If they 'ad you to _tell_ 'em," she imitated, meekly.
+
+"Madam mustn't pick up the bad 'abit of droppin' 'er haitches," he
+warned, parentally. "I'll learn 'er a lot, but that's one thing I
+mustn't learn 'er. I don't do it often--Oh, once in a wye, mybe--but
+that's something madam speaks right already--just like all
+Americans."
+
+Delighted that there was one thing about her that was right already
+she reminded him of what he had said, that women never learned.
+
+"I said women as 'ad been drilled a bit. But madam's different. Madam
+comes into this 'ouse newborn, as you might sye; and that'll myke it
+easier for 'er and me."
+
+"You mean that I'll not be a kicker."
+
+Once more he smiled his gentle reproof. "Oh, madam wouldn't be a
+kicker any'ow. Jynie or Nettie or Mary Ann Courage or even me--we
+might be kickers; but if madam was to hobject to anything she'd
+be--_displeased_."
+
+She knitted her brows. The distinction was difficult. He saw he had
+better explain more fully.
+
+"It's only the common crowd what kicks. It's only the common crowd
+what uses the expression. A man might use it--I mean a real 'igh
+gentleman like Mr. Rashleigh--and get awye with it--now and then--if
+'e didn't myke a 'abit of it; but when a woman does it she
+rubberstamps 'erself. Now, does madam see? A lydy couldn't be a
+lydy--and kick. The lyte Mrs. Allerton would never demean 'erself to
+kick; she'd only show displeasure."
+
+With a thumb and two fingers Letty marked off on the table the three
+points as to which she had received information that morning. She must
+say brought, and not brung; she must say tell, and not put wise; she
+must not kick, but show displeasure. Neither must she drop her
+aitches, though to do so would have been an effort. The warning only
+raised a suspicion that in the matter of speech there might be a
+higher standard than Steptoe's. If ever she heard Rashleigh Allerton
+speak again she resolved to listen to him attentively.
+
+She came back from her reverie on hearing Steptoe say:
+
+"With madam it's a cyse of beginning from the ground up, more or less
+as you would with a byby; so I 'ope madam'll forgive me if I drop a
+'int as to what we must do before goin' any farther."
+
+Once more he read her question in the starry little flames in her
+eyes.
+
+"It's--clothes."
+
+The damask red which had ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged
+back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her
+lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except
+those she wore; but she couldn't utter a syllable.
+
+"I understand madam's position, which is why I mention it. You might
+sye as clothes is the ABC of social life, and if we're to work from
+the ground up we must begin there."
+
+She forced it out at last, but the statement seemed to tear her.
+
+"I can't get clothes. I ain't got no money."
+
+"Oh, money's no hobject," he smiled. "Mr. Rash 'as plenty of that, and
+I know what 'e'd like me to do. There never was 'is hequal for the
+'open 'and. If madam'll leave it to me...."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allerton's office was much what you would have expected it to be,
+bearing to other offices the same relation as he to other business
+men. He had it because not to have it wouldn't have been respectable.
+A young American who didn't go to an office every day would hardly
+have been a young American. An office, then, was a concession to
+public sentiment, as well as some faint justification of himself.
+
+It was in the latter sense that he chiefly took it, making it a
+subject of frequent reference. In his conversation such expressions as
+"my office," or "due at my office," were introduced more often than
+there was occasion for. The implication that he had work to do gave
+him status, enabling him to sit down among his cronies and
+good-naturedly take their fun.
+
+He took a good deal of fun, never having succeeded in making himself
+the standardized type who escapes the shafts of ridicule. It was
+kindly fun, which, while viewing him as a white swan in a flock of
+black ones, recognized him as a swan, and this was as much as he could
+expect. To pass in the crowd was all he asked for, even when he only
+passed on bluff. If he couldn't wholly hide the bluff he could keep it
+from being flagrantly obtrusive; and toward that end an office was a
+help.
+
+It was an office situated just where you would have expected to find
+it--far enough downtown to be downtown, and yet not so far downtown as
+to make it a trouble to get there. Being on the eastern side of
+Washington Square, it had a picturesque outlook, and the merit of
+access from East Sixty-seventh Street through the long straight artery
+of Fifth Avenue.
+
+It was furnished, too, just as you might have known he would furnish
+it, in the rich and sober Style Empire, and yet not so exclusively in
+the Style Empire as to make the plain American business man fear he
+had dropped into Napoleon's library at Malmaison. That is what
+Rashleigh would have liked, but other men could do what in him would
+be thought finicky. To take the "cuss" off his refinement, as he put
+it to Barbara, he scattered modern American office bits among his
+luscious brown surfaces, adorned with wreaths and lictors' sheaves in
+gold, though to himself the wrong note was offensive.
+
+But wrong notes and right notes were the same to him as, on this
+particular morning, he dragged himself there because it was the hour.
+His office staff in the person of old Mr. Radbury was already on the
+spot, and had sorted the letters for the day. These were easily dealt
+with. Reinvestment, or new opportunities for investment, were their
+principal themes, and the only positive duty to attend to was in the
+endorsement of dividend checks for deposit. A few directions being
+given to Mr. Radbury as to such letters as were to be answered,
+Allerton had nothing to do but stroll to the window and look out.
+
+It was what he did perhaps fifty times in the course of the two or
+three hours daily, or approximately daily, which he spent there. He
+did so now. He did so because it put off for a few minutes longer the
+fierce, exasperating, acrid pleasure of doing worse. To do worse had
+been his avowed object in coming to the office that morning, and not
+the answering of letters or the raking in of checks.
+
+Looking down from his window on the tenth floor he asked himself the
+fruitless question which millions of other men have asked when folly
+has got them into trouble. Among these thousands who, viewed from that
+height, had a curious resemblance to ants, was there such a fool as he
+was? From the Square they streamed into Fifth Avenue; from Fifth
+Avenue they streamed into the Square. In the Square and round the
+Square they squirmed and wriggled and dawdled their seemingly aimless
+ways. Great green lumbering omnibuses disgorged one pack of them
+merely to suck up another. Motors whirled them toward uptown, toward
+downtown, or east, or west, by twos and threes, or as individuals.
+Like ants their general effect was black, with here and there a moving
+spot of color, or of intermingling colors, as of flowers in the wind,
+or tropic birds.
+
+He watched a figure detach itself from the mass swirling round a
+debouching omnibus. It was a little black figure, just clearly enough
+defined to show that it was a man. Because it was a man it had been a
+fool. Because it had been a fool it had dark chambers in its life
+which it would never willingly open. But it had doubtless got
+something for its folly. It might have lost more than it had gained,
+but it could probably reckon up and say, "At least I had my fun."
+
+And he had had none. He had squandered his whole life on a single act
+of insanity which even in the action had produced nothing but disgust.
+He hadn't merely swindled himself; he had committed a kind of suicide
+which made death silly and grotesque. The one thing that could save
+him a scrap of dignity--and such a sorry scrap!--would be going to the
+devil by the shortest way.
+
+He had come to the office to begin. He would begin by the means that
+seemed obvious. Now that going to the devil was a task he saw, as he
+had not seen hitherto, how curiously few were the approaches that
+would take him there. Song being only an accompaniment, he was limited
+to the remaining two of the famous and familiar trio.
+
+Very well! Limited as he was he would make the most of them. Knowing
+something of their merits he knew there was a bestial entertainment to
+be had from both. It was a kind of entertainment which his cursed
+fastidiousness had always loathed; but now his reckoning would be
+different. If he got _anything_ he should not feel so wastefully
+thrown away. He would be selling himself first and making his bargain
+afterwards; but some meager balance would stand to his credit, if
+credit it could be called. When the devil had been reached the world
+he knew would pardon him because it was the devil, and not--what it
+was in truth--an idiotic state of nerves.
+
+At the minute when Letty was leaping to her feet to take her stand he
+swung away from the window. First going to Mr. Radbury's door he
+closed it softly. Luckily the old man, an inheritance from his,
+Allerton's, father, was deaf and incurious. Like most clerks who had
+clerked their way up to seventy he was buried in clerking's little
+round. He wouldn't come in till the letters were finished, certainly
+not for an hour, and by that time Allerton would be.... He almost
+smiled at the old man's probable consternation on finding him so
+before the middle of the day. Any time would be bad enough; but in the
+high forenoon....
+
+He went to a cabinet which was said to have found its way via
+Bordentown from the furnishings of Queen Caroline Murat. Having opened
+it he took out a bottle and a glass. On the label of the bottle was a
+kilted Highlander playing on the pipes. A siphon of soda was also in
+the cabinet, but he left it there. What he had to do would be done
+more quickly without its mitigation.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Allerton was making these preparations Judson Flack, in pajamas
+and slippers, was standing in his toy kitchen, looking helplessly at a
+small gas stove. It was the hour in the middle of the morning at which
+he was accustomed to be waked with the information that his coffee and
+eggs were ready. The forenoon being what he called his slack time he
+found the earlier part of it most profitably used for sleep.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+The adjuration was called forth by the fact that he didn't know where
+anything was, or how anything should be done. From the simple
+expedient of going for his breakfast to one of the cheap restaurants
+with which he was familiar he was cut off by the fact of an unlucky
+previous night. He simply didn't have the bones. This was not to say
+that he was penniless, but that in view of more public expenses later
+in the day it would be well for him to economize where economy was so
+obvious. He never had an appetite in the morning anyway. With
+irregular eating and drinking all through the evening and far toward
+daylight, he found a cup of coffee and an egg....
+
+It was easy, he knew, to make the one and boil the other, but he was
+out of practice. He couldn't remember doing anything of the sort since
+the days before he married Letty's mother. Even then he had never
+tried this new-fangled thing, the gas stove, so that besides being out
+of practice he was at a loss.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+The resources of the kitchen being few exploration didn't take him
+long. He found bread, butter, milk that had turned sour, the usual
+condiments, some coffee in a canister, and a single egg. If he could
+only light the confounded gas stove....
+
+A small white handle offering itself for experiment, he turned it
+timidly, applying a match to a geometrical pattern of holes. He jumped
+back as from an exploding cannon.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+Having found the way, however, the next attempt was more successful.
+Soon he had two geometrical patterns of holes burning in steady blue
+buttons of flame. On the one he placed the coffee-pot into which he
+had turned a pint of water and a cupful of coffee; on the other a
+saucepan half full of water containing his egg. This being done he
+retired to the bathroom for the elements of a toilet.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+Washing, shaving, turning up his mustache with the little curling
+tongs, he observed with self-pity his increasing haggardness. He
+observed it also with dismay. Looks were as important to him as to an
+actress. His rôle being youth, high spirits, and the devil-may-care,
+the least trace of the wearing out would do for him. He had noticed
+some time ago that he was beginning to show fatal signs, which had the
+more emphatically turned his thoughts to the provision Letty might
+prove for his old age.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+It was cursing the girl which reminded him that he had allowed more
+than the necessary time for his breakfast to be ready for consumption.
+Hurrying back to the kitchen he found the egg gracefully dancing as
+the water boiled. He fished it out with a spoon and took it in his
+hand, but he didn't keep it there. Dashing it to the table, whence it
+crashed upon the floor, he positively screamed.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+He cursed her now licking and sucking the tips of his fingers and
+examining them to see if they were scalded. No such calamity having
+occurred he took up the coffee pot, leaving the mashed egg where it
+lay. Ladling a spoonful of sugar into a cup, and adding the usual
+milk, he poured in the coffee, which became a muddy dark brown
+mixture, with what appeared to be a porridge of seeds floating on the
+top. One sip, which induced a diabolical grimace, and he threw the
+beverage at the opposite wall as if it was a man he meant to insult.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+The appeal to the darker powers being accompanied now by a series of
+up-to-date terms of objurgation, the mere act of utterance, mental or
+articulate, churned him to a frenzy. Seizing the coffee pot which he
+had replaced on the gas stove he hurled it too against the wall. It
+struck, splathered the hideous liquor over a hideous calsomining which
+had once been blue, and fell to the floor like a living thing knocked
+insensible.
+
+The resemblance maddened him still more. It might have been Letty,
+struck down after having provoked him beyond patience. He rushed at
+it. He hurled it again. He hurled it again. He hurled it again. The
+exercise gave relief not only to his lawful resentment against Letty,
+but to those angers over his luck of last night which as "a good
+loser" he hadn't been at liberty to show. No one knew the repressions
+he was obliged to put upon himself; but now his inhibitions could come
+off in this solitary passion of destruction.
+
+When the coffee pot was a mere shapeless mass he picked up the empty
+cup. It was a thick stone-china cup, with a bar meant to protect his
+mustache across the top, a birthday present from Letty's mother. The
+association of memories acted as a further stimulus. Smash! After the
+cup went the stone-china sugar bowl. Smash! After the sugar bowl the
+plate with the yellow chunk of butter. Smash! After the butter plate
+the milk jar, a clumsy, lumpy thing, which merely gurgled out a splash
+of milk and fell without breaking.
+
+"Curse the girl! Curse the girl! Curse the girl! I'll learn her to go
+away and leave me! I'll find her and drag her back if she's in...."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+While Letty was beginning a new experience Judson Flack was doing his
+best to carry out his threat. That is to say, he was making the round
+of the studios in which his step-daughter had occasionally found work,
+discreetly asking if she had been there that day. It was all he could
+think of doing. To the best of his knowledge she had no friends with
+whom she could have taken refuge, though the suspicion crossed his
+mind that she might have drowned herself to spite him.
+
+As a matter of fact Letty was asking the question if she wasn't making
+a mistake in not doing so, either literally or morally. Never before
+in her life had she been up against this problem of insufficiency.
+Among the hard things she had known she had not known this; and now
+that she was involved in it, it seemed to her harder than everything
+else put together.
+
+In her humble round, bitter as it was, she had always been considered
+competent. It was the sense of her competence that gave her the
+self-respect enabling her to bear up. According to her standards she
+could keep house cleverly, and could make a dollar go as far as other
+girls made two. When she got her first chance in a studio, through an
+acquaintance of Judson Flack's, she didn't shrink from it, and had
+more than once been chosen by a director to be that member of a crowd
+who moves in the front and expresses the crowd psychologically. Had
+she only had the clothes....
+
+And now she was to have them. As far as that went she was not merely
+glad; she was one sheer quiver of excitement. It was not the end she
+shrank from; it was the means. If she could only have had fifty
+dollars to go "poking round" where she knew that bargains could be
+found, she might have enjoyed the prospect; but Steptoe could only
+"take measures" on the grand scale to which he was accustomed.
+
+The grand scale frightened her, chiefly because she was dressed as she
+was dressed. It was her first thought and her last one. When Steptoe
+told her the hour at which he had asked Eugene to bring round the car
+the mere vision of herself stepping into it made her want to sink into
+the ground. Eugene didn't live in the house--she had discovered
+that--and so would bring the stare of another pair of eyes under whose
+scrutiny she would have to pass. Those of the three women having
+already scorched her to the bone, she would have to be scorched
+again.
+
+She tried to say this to Steptoe, as they stood in the drawing-room
+window waiting for the car; but she didn't know how to make him
+understand it. When she tried to put it into words, the right words
+wouldn't come. Steptoe had taken as general what she was trying to
+explain to him in particular.
+
+"It'll be very important to madam to fyce what's 'ard, and to do it
+bryve like. It'll be the mykin' of 'er if she can. 'Umble 'ill is
+pretty stiff to climb; but them as gets to the top of it is tough."
+
+She thought this over silently. He meant that if she set herself to
+take humiliations as they came, dragging herself up over them, she
+would be the stronger for it in the end.
+
+"It'd 'ave been better for Mr. Rashleigh," he mused, "if 'e'd 'ad 'ad
+somethink of the kind to tackle in 'is life; it'd 'ave myde 'im more
+of a man. But because 'e adn't--Did madam ever notice," he broke off
+to ask, "'ow them as 'as everythink myde easy for 'em begins right off
+to myke things 'ard for theirselves. It's a kind of law like. It's
+just as if nyture didn't mean to let no one escype. When a man's got
+no troubles you can think of, 'e'll go to work to create 'em."
+
+"Didn't _he_"--she had never yet pronounced the name of the man who
+had married her--"didn't _he_ ever have any troubles?"
+
+"'E was fretted terrible--crossed like--rubbed up the wrong wye, as
+you might sye,--but a real trouble like what you and me 'ave 'ad
+plenty of--never! It's my opinion that trouble is to char-_ac_-ter
+what a peg'll be to a creepin' vine--something to which the vine'll
+'ook on and pull itself up by. Where there's nothink to ketch on to
+the vine'll grow; but it'll grow in a 'eap of flop." There was a
+tremor in his tone as he summed up. "That's somethink like my poor
+boy."
+
+Letty found this interesting. That in these exalted circles there
+could be a need of refining chastisement came to her as a surprise.
+
+"The wife as I've always 'oped for 'im," Steptoe went on, "is one
+that'd know what trouble was, and 'ow to fyce it. 'E'd myke a grand
+'usband to a woman who was--strong. But she'd 'ave to be the wall
+what the creepin' vine could cover all over and--and beautify."
+
+"That wouldn't be me."
+
+"If I was madam I wouldn't be so sure of that. It don't do to
+undervalyer your own powers. If I'd 'a done that I wouldn't 'a been
+where I am to-dye. Many's the time, when I was no more than a poor
+little foundlin' boy in a 'ome I've said to myself, I'm fit for
+somethink big. Somethink big I always meant to be. When it didn't seem
+possible for me to aim so 'igh I'd myde up my mind to be a valet and a
+butler. It comes--your hambition does. What you've first got to do is
+to form it; and then you've got to stick to it through thick and
+thin."
+
+To say what she said next Letty had to break down barrier beyond
+barrier of inhibition and timidity. "And if I was to--to form the--the
+ambition--to be--to be the kind of wall you was talkin' about just
+now----"
+
+"That wouldn't be hambition; it'd be--consecrytion."
+
+He allowed her time to get the meaning of this before going on.
+
+"But madam mustn't expect not to find it 'ard. Consecrytion is always
+'ard, by what I can myke out. When Mr. Rash was a little 'un 'e used
+to get Miss Pye, 'is governess, to read to 'im a fairy tyle about a
+little mermaid what fell in love with a prince on land. Bein' in love
+with 'im she wanted to be with 'im, natural like; but there she was in
+one element, as you might sye, and 'im in another."
+
+"That'd be like me."
+
+"Which is why I'm tellin' madam of the story. Well, off the little
+mermaid goes to the sea-witch to find out 'ow she could get rid of 'er
+fish's tyle and 'ave two feet for to walk about in the prince's
+palace. Well, the sea-witch she up and tells 'er what she'd 'ave to
+do. Only, says she, if you do that you'll 'ave to pye for it with
+every step you tykes; for every step you tykes'll be like walkin' on
+sharp blydes. Now, says she, to the little mermaid, do you think it'd
+be worth while?"
+
+In Letty's eyes all the stars glittered with her eagerness for the
+dénouement. "And did she think it was worth while--the little
+mermaid?"
+
+"She did; but I'll give madam the tyle to read for 'erself. It's in
+the syme little book what Miss Pye used to read out of--up in Mr.
+Rash's old nursery."
+
+With the pride of a royal thing conscious of its royalty the car
+rolled to the door and stopped. It was the prince's car, while she,
+Letty, was a mermaid born in an element different from his, and
+encumbered with a fish's tail. She must have shown this in her face,
+for Steptoe said, with his fatherly smile:
+
+"Madam may 'ave to walk on blydes--but it'll be in the Prince's
+palace."
+
+It'll be in the Prince's palace! Letty repeated this to herself as she
+followed him out to the car. Holding the door open for her, Eugene,
+who had been told of her romance, touched his cap respectfully. When
+she had taken her seat he tucked the robe round her, respectfully
+again. Steptoe marked the social difference between them by sitting
+beside Eugene.
+
+Rolling down Fifth Avenue Letty was as much at a loss to account for
+herself as Elijah must have been in the chariot of fire. She didn't
+know where she was going. She was not even able to ask. The succession
+of wonders within twenty-four hours blocked the working of her
+faculties. She thought of the girls who sneered at her in the
+studios--she thought of Judson Flack--and of what they would say if
+they were to catch a glimpse of her.
+
+She was not so unsophisticated as to be without some appreciation of
+the quarter of New York in which she found herself. She knew it was
+the "swell" quarter. She knew that the world's symbols of money and
+display were concentrated here, and that in some queer way she, poor
+waif, had been given a command of them. One day homeless, friendless,
+and penniless, and the next driving down Fifth Avenue in a limousine
+which might be called her own!
+
+The motor was slowing down. It was drawing to the curb. They had
+reached the place to which Steptoe had directed Eugene. Letty didn't
+have to look at the name-plate to know she was where the great stars
+got their gowns, and that she was being invited into Margot's!
+
+You know Margot's, of course. A great international house, Margot--the
+secret is an open one--is but the incognita of a business-like English
+countess who finds it financially profitable to sign articles on
+costume written by someone else, and be sponsor for the newest
+fashions which someone else designs. As a way of turning an
+impoverished historic title to account it is as good as any other.
+
+Without knowing who Margot was Letty knew what she was. She couldn't
+have frequented studios without hearing that much, and once or twice
+in her wanderings about the city she had paused to admire the door. It
+was all there was to admire, since Margot, to Letty's regret, didn't
+display confections behind plate-glass.
+
+It was a Flemish château which had been a residence before business
+had traveled above Forty-second Street. A man in livery would have
+barred them from passing the wrought-iron grille had it not been for
+the car from which they had emerged. Only people worthy of being
+customers of the house could afford such cars, and he saw that Steptoe
+was a servant. What Letty was he couldn't see, for servants of great
+houses never looked so nondescript.
+
+In the great hall a beautiful staircase swept to an upper floor, but
+apart from a Louis Seize mirror and console flanked by two Louis Seize
+chairs there was nothing and no one to be seen. Steptoe turned to the
+right into a vast saloon with a cinnamon-colored carpet and walls of
+cool French gray. A group of gilded chairs were the only furnishings,
+except for a gilded canapé between two French windows draped with
+cinnamon-colored hangings. A French fender with French andirons filled
+the fireplace, and on the white marble mantelpiece stood a _garniture
+de cheminée_, a clock and two vases, in biscuit de Sèvres.
+
+At the end of the room opposite the windows a woman in black, with
+coiffure à la Marcel, sat at a white-enamelled desk working with a
+ledger. A second woman in black, also with coiffure à la Marcel,
+stood holding open the doors of a white-enamelled wardrobe, gazing at
+its multi-colored contents. Two other women in black, still with
+coiffure à la Marcel, were bending over a white-enamelled drawer in a
+series of white-enamelled drawers, discussing in low tones. There were
+no customers. For such a house the season had not yet begun. Though in
+this saloon voices were pitched as low as for conversation in a
+church, the sharp catgut calls of Frenchwomen--and of French
+dressmakers especially--came from a room beyond.
+
+Overawed by this vastness, simplicity, and solemnity, Steptoe and
+Letty stood barely within the door, waiting till someone noticed them.
+No one did so till the woman holding open the wardrobe doors closed
+them and turned round. She did not come forward at once; she only
+stared at them. Still keeping her eye on the newcomers she called the
+attention of the ladies occupied with the drawer, who lifted
+themselves up. They too stared. The lady at the desk stared also.
+
+It was the lady of the wardrobe who advanced at last, slowly, with
+dignity, her hands genteelly clasped in front of her. She seemed to be
+saying, "No, we don't want any," or, "I'm sorry we've nothing to give
+you," by her very walk. Letty, with her gift for dramatic
+interpretation, could see this, though Steptoe, familiar as he was
+with ladies whom he would have classed as "'igher," was not daunted.
+He too went forward, meeting madam half way.
+
+Of what was said between them Letty could hear nothing, but the
+expression on the lady's face was dissuasive. She was telling Steptoe
+that he had come to the wrong place, while Steptoe was saying no. From
+time to time the lady would send a glance toward Letty, not in
+disdain, but in perplexity. It was perplexity which reached its climax
+when Steptoe drew from an inside pocket an impressive roll of bills.
+
+The lady looked at the bills, but she also looked at Letty. The honor
+of a house like Margot's is not merely in making money; it is in its
+clientèle. To have a poor little waif step in from the street....
+
+And yet it was because she was a poor little waif that she interested
+the ladies looking on. She was so striking an exception to their rule
+that her very coming in amazed them. One of the two who had remained
+near the open drawer came forward into conference with her colleague,
+adding her dissuasions to those which Steptoe had already refused to
+listen to.
+
+"There are plenty of other places to which you could go," Letty heard
+this second lady say, "and probably do better."
+
+Steptoe smiled, that old man's smile which was rarely ineffective.
+"Madam don't 'ave to tell me as there's plenty of other plyces to
+which I could go; but there's none where I could do as well."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"I'm butler to a 'igh gentleman what 'e used to entertyne quite a bit
+when 'is mother was alive. I've listened to lydies talkin' at tyble.
+No one can't tell me. I _know_."
+
+Both madams smiled. Each shot another glance at Letty. It was plain
+that they were curious as to her identity. One of them made a
+venture.
+
+"And is this your--your daughter?"
+
+Steptoe explained, not without dignity, that the young lady was not
+his daughter, but that she had come into quite a good bit of money,
+and had done it sudden like. She needed a 'igh, grand outfit, though
+for the present she would be content with three or four of the dresses
+most commonly worn by a lydy of stytion. He preferred to nyme no
+nymes, but he was sure that even Margot would not regret her
+confidence--and he had the cash, as they saw, in his pocket.
+
+Of this the result was an exchange between the madams of comprehending
+looks, while, in French, one said to the other that it might be well
+to consult Madame Simone.
+
+Madame Simone, who bustled in from the back room, was not in black,
+but in frowzy gray; her coiffure was not à la Marcel, but as Letty
+described it, "all anyway." A short, stout, practical Frenchwoman, she
+had progressed beyond the need to consider looks, and no longer
+considered them. The two shapely subordinates with whom Steptoe had
+been negotiating followed her at a distance like attendants.
+
+She disposed of the whole matter quickly, addressing the attendants
+rather than the postulants for Margot's favor.
+
+"Mademoiselle she want an outfit--good!--bon! We don't know her, but
+what difference does that make to me?--qu'est ce que c'est que cela me
+fait? Money is money, isn't it?--de l'argent c'est de l'argent,
+n'est-ce pas?--at this time of year especially--à cette saison de
+l'année surtout."
+
+To Steptoe and Letty she said: "'Ave the goodness to sit yourselves
+'ere. Me, I will show you what we 'ave. A street costume first for
+mademoiselle. If mademoiselle will allow me to look at her--Ah, oui!
+Ze taille--what you call in Eenglish the figure--is excellent. Très
+chic. With ze proper closes mademoiselle would have style--de
+l'élégance naturelle--that sees itself--cela se voit--oui--oui----"
+
+Meditating to herself she studied Letty, indifferent apparently to the
+actual costume and atrocious hat, like a seeress not viewing what is
+at her feet but events of far away.
+
+With a sudden start she sprang to her convictions. "I 'ave it. J'y
+suis." A shrill piercing cry like that of a wounded cockatoo went down
+the long room. "Alphonsine! Alphon_sine_!"
+
+Someone appeared at the door of the communicating rooms. Madame Simone
+gave her orders in a few sharp staccato French sentences. After that
+Letty and Steptoe found themselves sitting on two of the gilded
+chairs, unexpectedly alone. The other ladies had returned to their
+tasks. Madame Simone had gone back to the place whence they had
+summoned her. Nothing had happened. It seemed to be all over. They
+waited.
+
+"Ain't she goin' to show us nothin'?" Letty whispered anxiously. "They
+always do."
+
+Steptoe was puzzled but recommended patience. He couldn't think that
+Madame could have begun so kindly, only to go off and leave them in
+the lurch. It was not what he had looked for, any more than she; but
+he had always found patient waiting advantageous.
+
+Perhaps ten minutes had gone by when a new figure wandered toward
+them. Strutted would perhaps be the better word, since she stepped
+like a person for whom stepping means a calculation. She was about
+Letty's height, and about Letty's figure. Moreover, she was pretty,
+with that haughtiness of mien which turns prettiness to beauty. What
+was most disconcerting was her coming straight toward Letty, and
+standing in front of her to stare.
+
+Letty colored to the eyes--her deep, damask flush. The insult was
+worse than anything offered by Mrs. Courage; for Mrs. Courage after
+all was only a servant, and this a young lady of distinction. Letty
+had never seen anyone dressed with so much taste, not even the stars
+as they came on the studio lot in their everyday costumes. Indignant
+as she was she could appreciate this delicate seal-brown cloth, with
+its bits of gold braid, and darling glimpses of sage-green wherever
+the lining showed indiscreetly. The hat was a darling too, brown with
+a feather between brown and green, the one color or the other
+according as the wearer moved.
+
+If it hadn't been for this cool insolence.... And then the young lady
+deliberately swung on her heel, which was high, to move some five or
+six yards away, where she stood with her back to them. It was a
+darling back--with just enough gold braid to relieve the simplicity,
+and the tiniest revelation of sage-green. Letty admired it the more
+poignantly for its cold contempt of herself.
+
+Steptoe was not often put out of countenance, but it seemed to have
+happened now. "I _can't_ think," he murmured, as one who contemplates
+the impossible, "that the French madam can 'ave been so civil to begin
+with, just to go and make a guy of us."
+
+"If all her customers is like this----" Letty began.
+
+But the young lady of distinction turned again, stepping a few paces
+toward the back of the room, swinging on herself, stepping a few paces
+toward the front of the room, swinging on herself again, and all the
+while flinging at Letty glances which said: "If you want to see scorn,
+this is it."
+
+Fascination kept Letty paralyzed. Steptoe grew uneasy.
+
+"I wish the French madam'd come back agyne," he murmured, from half
+closed lips. "We 'aven't come 'ere to be myde a spectacle of--not for
+no one."
+
+And just then the seal-brown figure strolled away, as serenely and
+impudently as she had come.
+
+"Well, of all----!"
+
+Letty's exclamation was stifled by the fact that as the first young
+lady of distinction passed out a second crossed her coming in. They
+took no notice of each other, though the newcomer walked straight up
+to Letty, not to stare but to toss up her chin with a hint of laughter
+suppressed. Laughter, suppressed or unsuppressed, was her note. She
+was all fair-haired, blue-eyed vivacity. It was a relief to Letty that
+she didn't stare. She twitched, she twisted, she pirouetted, striking
+dull gleams from an embroidery studded with turquoise and jade--but
+she hadn't the hard unconscious arrogance of the other one.
+
+All the same it pained Letty that great ladies should be so beautiful.
+Not that this one was beautiful of face--she wasn't--only
+piquant--but the general effect was beautiful. It showed what money
+and the dressmaker could do. If she, Letty could have had a dress and
+a hat like this!--a blue or a green, it was difficult to say
+which--with these strips of jade and turquoise on a ground of the
+purplish-greenish-blue she remembered as that of the monkshood in the
+old farm garden in Canada--and the darlingest hat, with one long
+feather beginning as green and graduating through every impossible
+shade of green and blue till it ended in a monkshood tip....
+
+No wonder the girl's blue eyes danced and quizzed and laughed. As a
+matter of fact, Letty commented, the eyes brought a little too much
+blue into the composition. It was her only criticism. As a whole it
+lacked contrast. If she herself had worn this costume--with her
+gold-stone eyes--and brown hair--and rich coloring, when she had any
+color--blue was always a favorite shade with her--when she could
+choose, which wasn't often--she remembered as a child on the farm how
+she used to plaster herself with the flowers of the blue succory--the
+dust-flower they called it down there because it seemed to thrive like
+the disinherited on the dust of the wayside--not but what the
+seal-brown was adorable....
+
+The spectacle grew dazzling, difficult for Steptoe to keep up with. He
+and Letty were plainly objects of interest to these grand folk,
+because there were now four or five of them. They advanced, receded,
+came up and studied them, wheeled away, smiled sometimes at each other
+with the high self-assurance of beauty and position, pranced, pawed,
+curveted, were noble or coquettish as the inner self impelled, but
+always the embodiment of overweening pride. Among the "real gentry,"
+as he called them, there had unfailingly been for him and his
+colleagues a courtesy which might have been called only a distinction
+in equality, whereas these high-steppers....
+
+It was a relief to see the French madam bustling in again from the
+room at the back. Steptoe rose. He meant to express himself. Letty
+hoped he would. For people who brought money in their hands this
+treatment was too much. When Steptoe advanced to meet madam, she went
+with him. As her champion she must bear him out.
+
+But madam forestalled them. "I 'ope that mademoiselle has seen
+something what she like. Me, I thought the brown costume--_coeur de le
+marguerite jaune_ we call it ziz season----"
+
+Letty was quick. She had heard of mannequins, the living models,
+though so remotely as to give her no visualized impression. Suddenly
+knowing what they had been looking at she adapted herself before
+Steptoe could get his protest into words.
+
+"I liked the seal-brown; but for me I thought the second one----"
+
+Madame Simone nodded, sagely. "Why shouldn't mademoiselle 'ave both?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+While this question was being put, and Steptoe was rising to what he
+saw as the real occasion, Rashleigh Allerton too was having a new
+experience. He couldn't understand it; he couldn't understand himself.
+Not that that was strange, since he had hardly ever understood himself
+at any time; but now he was, as he expressed it, "absolutely
+stumped."
+
+He had put on the table the bottle on which the kilted Highlander was
+playing on the pipes; he had poured himself a glass. It was what he
+called a good stiff glass, meant, metaphorically, to kill or cure, and
+he hoped it would be to kill.
+
+And that was all.
+
+He had sat looking at it, or he had looked at it while walking about;
+but he had only looked at it. It was as far as he could go. Now that
+to go farther had become what he called a duty the perversity of his
+nerves was such that they refused. It was like him. He could always do
+the forbidden, the dare-devil, the crazily mad; but when it came to
+the reasonable and straightforward something in him balked. Here he
+was at what should have been the beginning of the end, and the demon
+which at another time would have driven him on was holding him back.
+Temptation had worked itself round the other way. It was temptation
+not to do, when saving grace lay in doing.
+
+An hour or more had gone by when Mr. Radbury knocked at the door,
+timidly.
+
+"Come in, Radbury," Allerton cried, in a gayety he didn't feel. "Have
+a drink."
+
+Mr. Radbury looked at the bottle and the glass. He looked at his young
+employer, who with his hands in his pockets, was again standing by the
+window. It was the first time in all the years of his service, first
+with the father and then with the son, that this invitation had been
+given him.
+
+"Thanks, Mr. Rash," he said, with a thick, shaky utterance. "Liquor
+and I are strangers. I wish I could feel----"
+
+But the old man's trembling anxiety forced on Allerton the fact that
+the foolish game was up. "All right, Radbury. Was only joking. No harm
+done. Had only taken the thing out to--to look at it."
+
+Before sitting down to read and sign the letters he put both glass and
+bottle back into the keeping of Queen Caroline Murat, saying to
+himself as he did so: "I must find some other way."
+
+He was thrown back thus on Barbara's suggestion of a few hours
+earlier. He must get rid of the girl! He had scarcely as yet
+considered this proposal, though not because he deemed it unworthy of
+himself. Nothing could be unworthy of himself. A man who was so little
+of a man as he was entitled to do anything, however base, and feel no
+shame. It was simply that his mind hadn't worked round to looking at
+the thing as feasible. And yet it was; plainly it was. The law allowed
+for it, if one only took advantage of the law's allowances. It would
+be beastly, of course; and more beastly for him than the average of
+men; but because it was beastly it were better done at once, before
+the girl got used to luxurious surroundings.
+
+But even this resolution, speedy as it was, came a little late. By
+evening Letty was already growing used to luxurious surroundings, and
+finding herself at home in them.
+
+First, there were no longer any women in the house, and with the three
+men--Steptoe's friends being already installed--she found herself safe
+from the prying and criticizing feminine.
+
+Secondly, some of the new clothes had already come home, and she was
+now wearing the tea-gown she had long dreamt of but had never aspired
+to possess. It was of a blue so dark as to be almost black, with a
+flame colored bar across the breast, harmonizing with her hair and
+eyes. Of her eyes she wasn't thinking; but her hair....
+
+That, however, was another part of the day's fairy tale.
+
+When the dresses had been bought and paid for madame presumed to
+Steptoe that mademoiselle was under some rich gentleman's protection.
+Taking words at their face value, as she, Letty, did herself, Steptoe
+admitted that she was. Madam made it plain that she understood this
+honor, which often came to girls of the humblest classes, and the need
+there could be for supplementing wardrobes suddenly. After that it was
+confidence for confidence. Madame had seen that in the matter of
+lingerie mademoiselle "left to desire," and though Margot made no
+specialty in this line, they happened to have on an upper floor a
+consignment just arrived from Paris, and if monsieur would allow
+mademoiselle to come up and inspect it.... Then it was Madame Simone's
+coiffeur. At least it was the coiffeur whom Madame Simone recommended,
+who came to the house, after Letty had donned a peignoir from the
+consignment just arrived from Paris.... And now, at half past nine in
+the evening, it was the memory of a day of mingled agony and
+enchantment.
+
+Having looked her over as he summoned her to dinner, Steptoe had
+approved of her. He had approved of her with an inner emphasis
+stronger than he expressed. Letty didn't know how she knew this; but
+she knew. She knew that her transformation was a surprise to him. She
+knew that though he had hoped much from her she was giving him more
+than he had hoped. Nothing that he said told her this, but something
+in his manner--in his yearning as he passed her the various dishes and
+tactfully showed her how to help herself, in the tenderness with which
+he repeated correctly her little slips in words--something in this
+betrayed it.
+
+She knew it, too, when after dinner he begged her not to escape to the
+little back room, but to take her place in the drawing-room.
+
+"Madam'll find that it'll pass the time for 'er. Maybe too Mr.
+Rashleigh'll come in. 'E does sometimes--early like. I've known 'im to
+come 'ome by 'alf past nine, and if 'is ma wasn't sittin' in the
+drorin' room 'e'd be quite put out. Lydies mostly wytes till their
+'usbands comes in; and in cyse madam'd feel lonely I'll leave the
+door open to the back part of the 'ouse, and she'll 'ear me talkin' to
+the boys."
+
+The October evening being chilly he lit a fire. Drawing up in front of
+it a small armchair, suited for a lady's use, he placed behind it a
+table with an electric lamp. Letty smiled up at him. He had never seen
+her smile before, and now that he did he made to himself another
+comment of approval.
+
+"You're awful good to me."
+
+He reflected as to how he could bring home to her the grammatical
+mistake.
+
+"Madam finds me _horfly_ good, does she? P'rhaps that's because madam
+don't know that 'er comin' to this 'ouse gratifies a tyste o' mine for
+which I ain't never 'ad no gratificytion."
+
+As he put a footstool to her feet he caught the question she so easily
+transmitted by her eyes.
+
+"P'raps madam can hunderstand that after doin' things all my life for
+people as is used to 'em I've 'ad a kind o' cryvin' to do 'em for them
+as 'aven't 'ad nothink, and who could enjoy them more. I told madam
+yesterday I was somethink of a anarchist, and that's 'ow I am--wantin'
+to give the poor a wee little bit of what the rich 'as to throw
+awye."
+
+Later he brought her an old red book, open at a page on which she
+read, _The Little Mermaid_.
+
+Her heart leaped. It was from this volume that Miss Pye had read to
+the Prince when he was a child. She let her eyes run along the opening
+words.
+
+"Far out in the sea the water is as blue as the petals of the
+cornflower, and clear as the purest glass."
+
+She liked this sentence. It took her into a blue world. It was
+curious, she thought, how much meaning there was in colors. If you
+looked through red glass the world was angry; if through yellow, it
+was lit with an extraordinary sun; if through blue, you had the
+sensation of universal happiness. She supposed that that was why blue
+flowers always made you feel that there was a want in life which ought
+to be supplied--and wasn't.
+
+She remembered a woman who had a farm near them in Canada, who grew
+only blue flowers in her garden. The neighbors said she was crazy; but
+she, Letty, had liked that garden better than all the gardens she
+knew. She would go there and talk to that woman, and listen to what
+she had to say of Nature's peculiar love of blue. The sea and sky were
+loveliest when they were blue, and so were the birds. There were blue
+stones, the woman said, precious stones, and other stones that were
+little more than rocks, which said something to the heart when pearls
+and diamonds spoke only to the eyes. In the fields, orchards, and
+gardens, white flowers, yellow flowers, red flowers were common; but
+blue flowers were rare and retiring, as if they guarded a secret which
+men should come and search out.
+
+To this there was only one exception. Letty would notice as she
+trudged back to her father's farm that along the August roadsides
+there was a blue flower--of a blue you would never see anywhere else,
+not even in the sky--which grew in the dust, and lived on dust, and
+out of the dust drew elements of beauty such as roses and lilies
+couldn't boast of. "That means," the crazy woman said, "that there's
+nothing so dry, or parched, or sterile, that God can't take it and
+fashion from it the most priceless treasures of loveliness, if we only
+had the eyes to see them."
+
+Letty never forgot this, and during all the intervening years the dust
+flower, with its heavenly color, had been the wild growing thing she
+loved best. It spoke to her. It not only responded to the ache she
+felt within herself, but gave a promise of assuagement. She had never
+expected the fulfilment of that promise, but was it possible that now
+it was going to be kept?
+
+With her eyes on the fire she saw the color of the dust flower close
+to the flaming wood. It was the closest of all the colors, the one the
+burning heart kept nearest to itself. It seemed to be, as the crazy
+woman said, dear to Nature itself, its own beloved secret, the secret
+which, even when written in the dust of the wayside, or in the fire on
+the hearth, hardly anyone read or found out.
+
+And as she was dreaming of this and of her Prince, Rashleigh was
+walking up the avenue, saying to himself that he must make an end of
+it. He was walking home because, having dined at the Club, he found
+himself too restless to stay there. Walking relieved his nerves, and
+enabled him to think. He must have the thing over and done with. She
+would go decently, of course, since, as he had promised her, she would
+have plenty of money to go with--plenty of money for the rest of her
+life--and that was the sole consideration. She would doubtless be as
+glad to escape as he to have her disappear. After that, so his lawyer
+had assured him in the afternoon, the legal steps would be relatively
+easy.
+
+Letting himself in with his latchkey he was surprised to see a light
+in the drawing-room. It had not been lighted up at night, as far as he
+could remember, since the days when his mother was accustomed to sit
+there. If he came home early he had always used the library, which was
+on the other side of the house and at the back.
+
+He went into the front drawing-room, which was empty; but a fire burnt
+in the back one, and before it someone was seated. It was not the girl
+he had found in the park. It was a lady whom he didn't recognize, but
+clearly a lady. She was reading a book, and had evidently not heard
+his entrance or his step.
+
+With the shadows of the front drawing-room behind him he stood between
+the portieres, and looked. He had looked for some seconds before the
+lady raised her eyes. She raised them with a start. Slowly there stole
+into her cheek the dark red of confusion. She dropped the book. She
+rose.
+
+It wasn't till she rose that he knew her. It wasn't till he knew her
+that he was seized by an astonishment which almost made him laugh. It
+wasn't till he almost laughed that he went forward with the words,
+which insensibly bridged some of the gulf between them:
+
+"Oh! So this is--_you_!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+Letty had not heard Allerton's entrance or approach because for the
+first time in her life she was lost in the magic of Hans Andersen.
+
+"The sun had just gone down as the little mermaid lifted her head
+above the water. The clouds were brilliant in purple and gold, and
+through the pale, rose-tinged air the evening star shone clear and
+bright. The air was warm and mild; the sea at rest. A great ship with
+three masts lay close by, only one sail unfurled, for there was no
+breath of air, and the sailors sat aloft in the rigging or leaned
+lazily over the bulwarks. Music and singing filled the air, and as the
+sky darkened hundreds of Chinese lanterns were lighted. It seemed as
+if the flags of every nation were hung out. The little mermaid swam up
+to the cabin window, and every time she rose upon the waves she could
+see through the clear glass that the room was full of brilliantly
+dressed people. Handsomest of all was the young prince with the great
+dark eyes."
+
+Allerton's eyes were dark, and though she did not consider him
+precisely young, the analogy between him and the hero of the tale was
+sufficient to take her eyes from the book and to set her to dreaming.
+
+"He could not be more than sixteen years old, and this was his
+birthday. All this gaiety was in honor of him; the sailors danced upon
+the deck; and when the young prince came out a myriad of rockets flew
+high in the air, with a glitter like the brightest noontide, and the
+little mermaid was so frightened that she dived deep down under the
+water. She soon rose up again, however, and it seemed as if all the
+stars of heaven were falling round her in golden showers. Never had
+she seen such fireworks; great, glittering suns wheeled by her, fiery
+fishes darted through the blue air, and all was reflected back from
+the quiet sea. The ship was lighted up so that one could see the
+smallest rope. How handsome the young prince looked! He shook hands
+with everybody, and smiled, as the music rang out into the glorious
+night. It grew late, but the little mermaid could not turn her eyes
+away from the ship and the handsome prince."
+
+Once more Letty's thought wandered from the page. She too would have
+watched her handsome prince, no matter what the temptation to look
+elsewhere.
+
+"The colored lanterns were put out, no rocket rose in the air, no
+cannon boomed from the portholes; but deep below there was a surging
+and a murmuring. The mermaid sat still, cradled by the waves, so that
+she could look in at the cabin window. But now the ship began to make
+more way. One sail after another was unfurled; the waves rose higher;
+clouds gathered in the sky; and there was a distant flash of
+lightning. The storm came nearer. All the sails were taken in, and the
+ship rocked giddily, as she flew over the foaming billows; the waves
+rose mountain-high, as if they would swallow up the very masts, but
+the good ship dived like a swan into the deep black trough, and rose
+bravely to the foaming crest. The little mermaid thought it was a
+merry journey, but the sailors were of a different opinion. The ship
+strained and creaked; the timbers shivered as the thunder strokes of
+the waves fell fast; heavy seas swept the decks; the mainmast snapped
+like a reed; and the ship lurched heavily, while the water rushed into
+the hold. Then the young princess began to understand the danger, and
+she herself was often threatened by the falling masts, yards, and
+spars. One moment it was so dark that she could see nothing, but when
+the lightning flamed out the ship was as bright as day. She sought for
+the young prince, and saw him sinking down through the water as the
+ship parted. The sight pleased her, for she knew he must sink down to
+her home. But suddenly she remembered that men cannot live in the
+water, and that he would only reach her father's palace a lifeless
+corpse. No; he must not die! She swam to and fro among the drifting
+spars, forgetting that they might crush her with their weight; she
+dived and rose again, and reached the prince just when he felt that he
+could swim no longer in the stormy sea. His arms were beginning to
+fail him, his beautiful eyes were closed; in another moment he must
+have sunk, had not the little mermaid come to his aid. She kept his
+head above water, and let the waves carry them whither they would."
+
+Letty didn't want Allerton's life to be in danger, but she would have
+loved saving it. She fell to pondering possible conditions in which
+she could perform this feat, while he ran no risk whatever.
+
+"The next day the storm was over; not a spar of the ship was left in
+sight. The sun rose red and glowing upon the waves, and seemed to pour
+down new life upon the prince, though his eyes remained closed. The
+little mermaid kissed his fair white forehead and stroked back his wet
+hair. He was like the marble statue in her little garden, she thought.
+She kissed him again, and prayed that he might live."
+
+Letty saw herself seated somewhere in a mead, Allerton lying
+unconscious with his head in her lap, though the circumstances that
+brought them so together remained vague.
+
+"Suddenly the dry land came in sight before her, high blue mountains
+on whose peaks the snow lay white, as if a flock of swans had settled
+there. On the coast below were lovely green woods, and close on shore
+a building of some kind, the mermaid didn't know whether it was church
+or cloister. Citrons and orange trees grew in the garden, and before
+the porch were stately palm trees. The sea ran in here and formed a
+quiet bay, unruffled, but very deep. The little mermaid swam with the
+prince to the white sandy shore, laid him on the warm sand, taking
+care that his head was left where the sun shone warmest. Bells began
+to chime and ring through all parts of the building, and several young
+girls entered the garden. The little mermaid swam farther out, behind
+a tiny cliff that rose above the waves. She showered sea-foam on her
+hair that no one might see its golden glory, and then waited patiently
+to see if anyone would come to the aid of the young prince."
+
+To Letty that was the heart-breaking part of the story, the leaving
+the beloved one to others. It was what she and the little mermaid had
+in common, unless she too could get rid of her fish's tail at the cost
+of walking on blades. But for the little mermaid there the necessity
+was, as she, Letty read on.
+
+"Before long a young girl came by; she gave a start of terror and ran
+back to call for assistance. Several people came to her aid, and after
+a while the little mermaid saw the prince recover his consciousness,
+and smile upon the group around him. But he had no smile for her; he
+did not even know that she had saved him. Her heart sank, and when she
+had seen him carried into the large building, she dived sorrowfully
+down to her father's palace."
+
+Lifting her eyes to meditate on this situation Letty saw Allerton
+standing between the portières. Her dream of being little mermaid to
+his prince went out like a pricked bubble. Though he neither smiled
+nor sneered she knew he was amused at her, with a bitterness in his
+amusement. In an instant she saw her transformation as it must appear
+to him. She had spent his money recklessly, and made herself look
+ridiculous. All the many kinds of shame she had ever known focused on
+her now, making her a glowing brand of humiliations. She stood
+helpless. Hans Andersen dropped to the floor with a soft thud.
+Nevertheless, it was she who spoke first.
+
+"I suppose you--you think it funny to see me rigged up like this?"
+
+He took time to pick up the book she had dropped and hand it back to
+her. "Won't you sit down again?"
+
+While she seated herself and he followed her example she continued to
+stammer on. "I--I thought I ought to--to look proper for the house as
+long as I was in it."
+
+Her phrasing gave him an opening. "You're quite right. I should like
+you to get whatever would help you in--in your profession before
+you--before you leave us."
+
+Quick to seize the implications here she took them with the submission
+of those whose lots have always depended on other people's wills.
+
+"I'll go whenever you want me to."
+
+Relieved as he was by this willingness he was anxious not to seem
+brutal. "I'd--I'd rather you consulted your own wishes about that."
+
+She put on a show of nonchalance. "Oh, I don't care. It'll be
+just--just as you say _when_."
+
+He would have liked to say when at that instant, but a pretense at
+courtesy had to be maintained. "There's no hurry--for a day or two."
+
+"You said a week or two yesterday."
+
+"Oh, did I? Well, then, we'll say a week or two now."
+
+"Oh, not for me," she hastened to assure him. "I'd just as soon go
+to-night."
+
+"Have you hated it as much as that?"
+
+"I've hated some of it."
+
+"Ah, well! You needn't be bothered with it long."
+
+Her candor was of the kind which asks questions frankly. "Haven't you
+got any more use for me?"
+
+"I'm afraid--" it was not easy to put it into the right words--"I'm
+afraid I was mistaken yesterday. I put you in--in a false position
+with no necessity for doing so."
+
+It took her a few seconds to get the force of this. "Do you mean that
+you didn't need me to be--to be a shame and a disgrace to you _at
+all_?"
+
+"Did I put it in that way?"
+
+"Well, didn't you?"
+
+The fact that she was now dressed as she was made it more embarrassing
+to him to be crude than it had been when addressing the homeless and
+shabby little "drab."
+
+"I don't know what I said then. I was--I was upset."
+
+"And you're upset very easy, ain't you?" She corrected herself
+quickly: "aren't you?"
+
+"I suppose that's true. What of it?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. I--I just happen to know a way you can get over that--if
+you want to."
+
+He smiled. "I'm afraid my nervousness is too deeply seated--I may as
+well admit that I'm nervous--you saw it for yourself----"
+
+"Oh, I saw you was--you were--sick up here--" she touched her
+forehead--"as soon as you begun to talk to me."
+
+Grateful for this comprehension he tried to use it to his advantage.
+"So that you understand how I could go off the hooks----"
+
+"Sure! My mother'd go off 'em the least little thing, till--till she
+done--till she did--the way I told her."
+
+"Then some of these days I may ask you to--but just now perhaps we'd
+better talk about----"
+
+"When I'm to get out."
+
+Her bluntness of expression hurt him. "That's not the way I should
+have put it----"
+
+"But it's the way you'd 'a' meant, isn't it?"
+
+He was the more disconcerted because she said this gently, with the
+same longing in her face and eyes as in that of the little mermaid
+bending over the unconscious prince.
+
+The unconscious prince of the moment merely said: "You mustn't think
+me more brutal than I am----"
+
+"Oh, I don't think you're brutal. You're just a little dippy,
+ain't--aren't--you? But that's because you let yourself go. If when
+you feel it comin' on you'd just--but perhaps you'd rather _be_ dippy.
+Would you?"
+
+If he could have called these wide goldstone eyes with their tiny
+flames maternal it is the word he would have chosen. In spite of the
+difficulty of the minute he was conscious of a flicker of amusement.
+
+"I don't know that I would, but----"
+
+"After I'm gone shall we--shall we _stay_ married?"
+
+This being the real question he was glad she faced it with the
+directness which gave her a kind of charm. He admitted that. She had
+the charm of everything which is genuine of its kind. She made no
+pretense. Her expression, her voice, her lack of sophistication, all
+had the limpidity of water. He felt himself thanking God for it. "He
+alone knows what kind of hands I might have fallen into yesterday,
+crazy fool that I am." Of this child, crude as she was, he could make
+his own disposition.
+
+So in answer to her question he told her he had seen his lawyer in the
+afternoon--he was a lawyer himself but he didn't practice--and the
+great man had explained to him that of all the processes known to
+American jurisprudence the retracing of such steps as they had taken
+on the previous day was one of the simplest. What the law had joined
+the law could put asunder, and was well disposed toward doing so.
+There being several courses which they could adopt, he put them before
+her one by one. She listened with the sort of attention which shows
+the mind of the listener to be fixed on the speaker, rather than on
+anything he says. Not being obliged to ask questions or to make
+answers she could again see him as the handsome, dark-eyed prince whom
+she would have loved to save from drowning or any other fate.
+
+Of all he said she could attach a meaning to but one word:
+"desertion." Even in the technical marital sense she knew vaguely its
+significance. She thought of it with a tightening about the heart. Any
+desertion of him of which she would be capable would be like that of
+the little mermaid when she dived sorrowfully down to her father's
+palace, leaving him with those to whom he belonged. It was this
+thought which prompted a question flung in among his observations,
+though the link in the train of thought was barely traceable:
+
+"Is she takin' you back--the girl you told me about yesterday?"
+
+He looked puzzled. "Did I tell you about a girl yesterday?"
+
+"Why, sure! You said she kicked you out----"
+
+"Well, she hadn't. I--I didn't know I'd gone so far as to say----"
+
+"Oh, you went a lot farther than that. You said you were goin' to the
+devil. Ain't you? I mean, aren't you?"
+
+"I--I don't seem able to."
+
+"You're the first fellow I've ever heard say that."
+
+"I'm the first fellow I've ever heard say it myself. But I tried
+to-day--and I couldn't."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"I tried to get drunk."
+
+She half rose, shrinking away from him. "Not--not _you!_"
+
+"Yes. Why not? I've been drunk before--not often, but----"
+
+"Don't tell me," she cried, hastily. "I don't want to know. It's
+too----"
+
+"But I thought it was just the sort of thing you'd be----"
+
+"I'd be used to. So it is. But that's the reason. You're--you're
+different. I can't bear to think of it--not with you."
+
+"But I'm just like any other man."
+
+"Oh, no, you're not."
+
+He looked at her curiously. "How am I--how am I--different?"
+
+"Oh, other men are just men, and you're a--a kind of prince."
+
+"You wouldn't think so if you were to know me better."
+
+"But I'm not goin' to know you better, and I'd rather think of you as
+I see you are." She dropped this theme to say: "So the other
+girl----"
+
+"She didn't mean it at all."
+
+"She'd be crazy if she did. But what made her let you think so?"
+
+"She's--she's simply that sort; goes off the hooks too."
+
+"Oh! So there'll be a pair of you."
+
+"I'm afraid so."
+
+"That'll be bloody murder, won't it? Momma was that way with Judson
+Flack. Hammer and tongs--the both of them--till I took her in hand,
+and----"
+
+"And what happened then?"
+
+"She calmed down and--and died."
+
+"So that it didn't do her much good, did it?"
+
+"It did her that much good that she died. Death was better than the
+way she was livin' with Judson Flack--and it wasn't always his fault.
+I do' wanta defend him, but momma got so that if he did have a quiet
+spell she'd go and stir him up. There's not much hope for two married
+people that lives like that, do you think?"
+
+"But you say your mother, under your instruction, got over it."
+
+"Yes, but it was too late. The more she got over it the more he'd
+lambaste her, and when her money was all gone----"
+
+"But do you think all--all hot-tempered couples have to go it in that
+way?"
+
+She made a little hunching movement of the shoulders. "It's mostly cat
+and dog anyhow. You and her--the other girl--won't be much worse than
+others."
+
+"But you think we'll be worse, to some extent at least."
+
+She ignored this to say, wistfully: "I suppose you're awful fond of
+her."
+
+"I think I can say as much as that."
+
+"And is she fond of you?"
+
+"She says so."
+
+"If she is I don't see how she could--" Her voice trailed away. Her
+eyes forsook his face to roam the shadows of the room. She added to
+herself rather than to him: "I couldn't ha' done it if it was me."
+
+"Oh, if you were in love----"
+
+The eyes wandered back from the shadows to rest on him again. They
+were sorrowful eyes, and unabashed. A child's would have had this
+unreproachful ache in them, or a dog's. Though he didn't know what it
+meant it disturbed him into leaving his sentence there.
+
+It occurred to him then that they were forgetting the subject in hand.
+He had not expected to be able to converse with her, yet something
+like conversation had been taking place. It had come to him, too, that
+she had a mind, and now that he really looked at her he saw that the
+face was intelligent. Yesterday that face had been no more to him than
+a smudge, without character, and almost featureless, while to-day....
+
+The train of his thought being twofold he could think along one line,
+and speak along another. "So if you go to see my lawyer he'll suggest
+different things that you could do----"
+
+"I'd rather do whatever 'ud make it easiest for you."
+
+"You're very kind, but I think I'd better not suggest. I'll leave that
+to him and you. He knows already that he's to supply you with whatever
+money you need for the present; and after everything is settled I'll
+see that you have----"
+
+The damask flush which Steptoe had admired stole over a face flooded
+with alarm. She spoke as she rose, drawing a little back from him. "I
+do' want any money."
+
+He looked up at her in protestation. "Oh, but you must take it."
+
+She was still drawing back, as if he was threatening her with
+something that would hurt. "I do' want to."
+
+"But it was part of our bargain. You don't understand that I
+couldn't----"
+
+"I didn't make no such--" She checked herself. Her mother had rebuked
+her for this form of speech a thousand times. She said the sentence
+over as she felt he would have said it, as the people would have said
+it among whom she had lived as a child. The cadence of his speech, the
+half forgotten cadences of theirs, helped her ear and her intuitions.
+"I didn't make any such bargain," she managed to bring out, at last.
+"You said you'd give me money; but I never said I'd take it."
+
+He too rose. He began to feel troubled. Perhaps she wouldn't be at his
+disposition after all. "But--but I couldn't stand it if you didn't let
+me----"
+
+"And I couldn't stand it if I did."
+
+"But that's not reasonable. It's part of the whole thing that I should
+look out for your future after what----"
+
+"I know what you mean," she declared, tremblingly. "You think that
+because I'm--I'm beneath you that I ain't got--that I haven't got--no
+sense of what a girl should do and what she shouldn't do. But you're
+wrong. Do you suppose I didn't know all about how crazy it was when I
+went with you yesterday? Of course I did. I was as much to blame as
+you."
+
+"Oh, no, you weren't. Apart from your being what you call beneath
+me--and I don't admit that you are--I'm a great deal older than
+you----"
+
+"You're only older in years. In livin' I'm twice your age. Besides I'm
+all right here----" she touched her forehead again--"and I could see
+first thing that you was a fellow that needed to be took--to be
+taken--care of."
+
+"Oh, you did!"
+
+She strengthened her statement with an affirmative nod. "Yes, I did."
+
+"Well, then, I've always paid the people who've taken care of me----"
+
+"Oh, but you didn't ask me to take care of you, and I didn't take no
+care. You wanted me to be a disgrace to you, and I thought so little
+of myself that I said I'd go and be it. Now I've got to pay for that,
+not be paid for it."
+
+Her head was up with what Steptoe considered to be mettle. Though the
+picture she presented was stamped on his mind as resembling the proud
+mien of the girl in Whistler's Yellow Buskin, he didn't think of that
+till later.
+
+"There's one thing I must ask you to remember," he said, in a tone he
+tried to make firm, "that I couldn't possibly accept from you anything
+in the way of sacrifice."
+
+Her eyes were wide and earnest. "But I never thought of _makin'_
+anything in the way of sacrifice."
+
+"It would be sacrifice for you to help me get out of this scrape, and
+have nothing at all to the good."
+
+"But I'd have lots to the good." She reflected. "I'd have
+rememberin'."
+
+"What have you got to remember?"
+
+With her child's lack of self-consciousness she looked him straight in
+the eyes. "You--for one thing."
+
+"Me!" He had hardly the words for his amazement. "For heaven's sake,
+what can you have to remember about me that--that could give you any
+pleasure?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't say it would give me any pleasure. I said I'd _have_ it.
+It'd be mine--something no one couldn't take away from me."
+
+"But if it doesn't do you any good----"
+
+"It does me good if it makes me richer, don't it?"
+
+"Richer to--to remember _me_?"
+
+She nodded, with a little twisted smile, beginning to move toward the
+door. Over her shoulder she said: "And it isn't only you.
+There's--there's Steptoe."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+Making her nod suffice for a good-night, Letty, with the red volume of
+Hans Andersen under her arm, passed out into the hall. It was not easy
+to carry herself with the necessary nonchalance, but she got strength
+by saying inwardly: "Here's where I begin to walk on blades." The
+knowledge that she was doing it, and that she was doing it toward an
+end, gave her a dignity of carriage which Allerton watched with
+sharpened observation.
+
+Reaching the little back spare room she found the door open, and
+Steptoe sweeping up the hearth before a newly lighted fire. Beppo,
+whose basket had been established here, jumped from his shelter to paw
+up at her caressingly. With the hearth-brush in his hand Steptoe
+raised himself to say:
+
+"Madam'll excuse me, but I thought as the evenin' was chilly----"
+
+"He doesn't want me to stay."
+
+She brought out the fact abruptly, lifelessly, because she couldn't
+keep it back. The calm she had been able to maintain downstairs was
+breaking up, with a quivering of the lip and two rolling tears.
+
+Slowly and absently Steptoe dusted his left hand with the hearth-brush
+held in his right. "If madam's goin' to decide 'er life by what
+another person wants she ain't never goin' to get nowhere."
+
+There were tears now in the voice. "Yes, but when it's--_him_."
+
+"'Im or anybody else, we all 'ave to fight for what we means to myke
+of our own life. It's a poor gyme in which I don't plye my 'and for
+all I think it'll win."
+
+"Do you mean that I should--act independent?"
+
+"'Aven't madam an independent life?"
+
+"Havin' an independent life don't make it easier to stay where you're
+not wanted."
+
+"Oh, if madam's lookin' first for what's easy----"
+
+"I'm not. I'm lookin' first for what he'll _like_."
+
+Hanging the hearth-brush in its place he took the tongs to adjust a
+smoking log. "I've been lookin' for what 'e'd like ever since 'e was
+born; and now I see that gettin' so much of what 'e liked 'asn't been
+good for 'im. If madam'd strike out on 'er own line, whether 'e liked
+it or not, and keep at it till 'e 'ad to like it----"
+
+"Oh, but when it's--" she sought for the right word--"when it's so
+humiliatin'----"
+
+"Humiliatin' things is not so 'ard to bear, once you've myde up your
+mind as they're to be borne." He put up the tongs, to busy himself
+with the poker. "Madam'll find that humiliation is a good deal like
+that there quinine; bitter to the tyste, but strengthenin'. I've
+swallered lots of it; and look at me to-dye."
+
+"I know as well as he does that it's all been a crazy mistake----"
+
+"I was readin' the other day--I'm fond of a good book, I am--occupies
+the mind like--but I was readin' about a circus man in South Africa,
+what 'e myde a mistyke and took the wrong tryle--and just when 'e was
+a-givin' 'imself up for lost among the tigers and the colored savages
+'e found 'e'd tumbled on a mine of diamonds. Big 'ouse in Park Lyne in
+London now, and 'is daughter married to a Lord."
+
+"Oh, I've tumbled into the mine of diamonds all right. The question
+is----"
+
+"If madam really tumbled, or was led by the 'and of Providence."
+
+She laughed, ruefully. "If that was it the hand of Providence 'd have
+to have some pretty funny ways."
+
+"I've often 'eard as the wyes of Providence was strynge; but I ain't
+so often 'eard as Providence 'ad got to myke 'em strynge to keep pyce
+with the wyes of men. Now if the 'and of Providence 'ad picked out
+madam for Mr. Rash, it'd 'ave to do somethink out of the common, as
+you might sye, to bring together them as man had put so far apart." He
+looked round the room with the eye of a head-waiter inspecting a table
+in a restaurant. "Madam 'as everythink? Well, if there's anythink else
+she's only got to ring."
+
+Bowing himself out he went down the stairs to attend to those duties
+of the evening which followed the return of the master of the house.
+In the library and dining-room he saw to the window fastenings, and
+put out the one light left burning in each room. In the hall he locked
+the door with the complicated locks which had helped to guarantee the
+late Mrs. Allerton against burglars. There was not only a bolt, a
+chain, and an ordinary lock, but there was an ingenious double lock
+which turned the wrong way when you thought you were turning it the
+right, and could otherwise baffle the unskilful. Occupied with this
+task he could peep over his shoulder, through the unlighted front
+drawing-room, and see his adored one standing on the hearthrug, his
+hands clasped behind him, and his head bent, in an attitude of
+meditation.
+
+Steptoe, having much to say to him, felt the nervousness of a prime
+minister going into the presence of a sovereign who might or might not
+approve his acts. It was at once the weakness and the strength of his
+position that his rule was based on an unwritten constitution. Being
+unwritten it allowed of a borderland where powers were undefined.
+Powers being undefined his scope was the more easily enlarged, though
+now and then he found that the sovereign rebelled against the mayor of
+the palace and had to be allowed his way.
+
+But the sovereign was nursing no seeds of the kind of discontent which
+Steptoe was afraid of. As a matter of fact he was thinking of the way
+in which Letty had left the room. The perspective, the tea-gown, the
+effectively dressed hair, enabled him to perceive the combination of
+results which Madame Simone had called _de l'élégance naturelle_. She
+had that; he could see it as he hadn't seen it hitherto. It must have
+given what value there was to her poor little rôles in motion
+pictures. Now that his eye had caught it, it surprised, and to some
+degree disturbed, him. It was more than the show-girl's inane
+prettiness, or the comely wax-work face of the girl on the cover of a
+magazine. With due allowance for her Anglo-Saxonism and honesty, she
+was the type of woman to whom "things happen." Things would happen to
+her, Allerton surmised, beyond anything she could experience in his
+cumbrous and antiquated house. This queer episode would drop behind
+her as an episode and no more, and in the multitude of future
+incidents she would almost forget that she had known him. He hoped to
+God that it would be so, and yet....
+
+He was noting too that she hadn't taxed him, in the way of calling on
+his small supply of nervous energy. Rather she had spared it, and he
+felt himself rested. After a talk with Barbara he was always spent.
+Her emotional furies demanded so much of him that they used him up.
+This girl, on the contrary, was soothing. He didn't know how she was
+soothing; but she was. He couldn't remember when he had talked to a
+woman with so little thought of what he was to say and how he was to
+say it, and heaven only knew that the things to be said between them
+were nerve-racking enough. But they had come out of their own accord,
+those nerve-racking things, probably, he reasoned, because she was a
+girl of inferior class with whom he didn't have to be particular.
+
+She was quick, too, to catch the difference between his speech and her
+own. She was quick--and pathetic. Her self-correction amused him, with
+a strain of pity in his amusement. If a girl like that had only had a
+chance.... And just then Steptoe broke in on his musing by entering
+the room.
+
+The first subject to be aired was that of the changes in the household
+staff, and Steptoe raised it diplomatically. Mrs. Courage and Jane had
+taken offense at the young lydy's presence, and packed themselves off
+in dishonorable haste. Had it not been that two men friends of his own
+were ready to come at an hour's notice the house would have been
+servantless till he had procured strangers. No condemnation could be
+too severe for Mrs. Courage and Jane, for not content with leaving the
+house in dudgeon they had insulted the young lydy before they went.
+
+"Sooner or lyter they would 'a' went any'ow. For this long time back
+they've been too big for their boots, as you might sye. If Mr. Rash
+'ad married the other young lydy she wouldn't 'a' stood 'em a week. It
+don't do to keep servants too long, not when they've got no more than
+a menial mind, which Jynie and Mrs. Courage 'aven't. The minute they
+'eard that this young lydy was in the 'ouse.... And beautiful the wye
+she took it, Mr. Rash. I never see nothink finer on the styge nor in
+the movin' pictures. Like a young queen she was, a-tellin' 'em that
+she 'adn't come to this 'ouse to turn out of it them as 'ad 'ad it as
+their 'ome, like, and that she'd put it up to them. If they went she'd
+stye; but if they styed she'd go----"
+
+"She's going anyhow."
+
+Steptoe moved away to feel the fastenings of the back windows.
+"That'll be a relief to us, sir, won't it?" he said, without turning
+his head.
+
+"It'll make things easier--certainly."
+
+"I was just 'opin' that it mightn't be--well, not too soon."
+
+"What do you mean by too soon?"
+
+"Well, sir, I've been thinkin' it over through the dye, just as you
+told me to do this mornin,' and I figger out--" on a table near him he
+began to arrange the disordered books and magazines--"I figger out
+that if she was to go it'd better be in a wye agreeable to all
+concerned. It wouldn't do, I syes to myself, for Mr. Rash to bring a
+young woman into this 'ouse and 'ave 'er go awye feelin' anythink but
+glad she'd come."
+
+"That'll be some job."
+
+"It'll be some job, sir; but it'll be worth it. It ain't only on the
+young lydy's account; it'll be on Mr. Rash's."
+
+"On Mr. Rash's--how?"
+
+The magazines lapping over each other in two long lines, he
+straightened them with little pats. "What I suppose you mean to do,
+sir, is to get out o' this matrimony and enter into the other as you
+thought as you wasn't goin' to enter into."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And when you'd entered into the other you wouldn't want it on your
+mind--on your conscience, as you might sye--that there was a young
+lydy in the world as you'd done a kind o' wrong to."
+
+Allerton took three strides across the corner of the room, and three
+strides back to the fireplace again. "How am I going to escape that?
+She says she won't let me give her any money."
+
+"Oh, money!" Steptoe brushed money aside as if it had no value. "She
+wouldn't of course. Not 'er sort."
+
+"But what _is_ 'er sort. She seemed one thing yesterday, and to-day
+she's another."
+
+"That's somethink like what I mean. That young lydy 'as growed more in
+twenty-four hours than lots'd grow in twenty-four years." He
+considered how best to express himself further. "Did Mr. Rash ever
+notice that it isn't bein' born of a certain kind o' family as'll myke
+a man a gentleman? Of course 'e did. But did 'e ever notice that a
+man'll often _not_ be born of a certain kind o' family, and yet be a
+gentleman all the syme?"
+
+"I know what you're driving at; but it depends on what you mean by a
+gentleman."
+
+"And I couldn't 'ardly sye--not no more than I could tell you what the
+smell of a flower was, not even while you was a-smellin' of it. You
+know a gentleman's a gentleman, and you may think it's this or that
+what mykes 'im so, but there ain't no wye to put it into words. Now
+you, Mr. Rash, anybody'd know you was a gentleman what merely looked
+at you through a telescope; but you couldn't explyne it, not if you
+was took all to pieces like the works of a clock. It ain't nothink you
+do and nothink you sye, because if we was to go by that----"
+
+"Good Lord, stop! We're not talking about me."
+
+"No, Mr. Rash. We're talkin' about the queer thing it is what mykes
+a gentleman, and I sye that I can't sye. But I _know_. Now, tyke
+Eugene. 'E's just a chauffeur. But no one couldn't be ten minutes with
+Eugene and not know 'e's a gentleman through and through.
+Obligin'--good-mannered--modest--polite to the very cat 'e is--and
+always with that nice smile--wouldn't _you_ sye as Eugene was a
+gentleman, if anybody was to arsk you, Mr. Rash?"
+
+"If they asked me from that point of view--yes--probably. But what has
+that to do with it?"
+
+"It 'as this to do with it that when you arsk me what sort that young
+lydy is I 'ave to reply as she's not the sort to accept money from
+strynge gentlemen, because it ain't what she's after."
+
+"Then what on earth _is_ she after? Whatever it is she can have it, if
+I can only find out what it is."
+
+Steptoe answered this in his own way. "It's very 'ard for the poor to
+see so much that's good and beautiful in the world, and know that they
+can't 'ave none of it. I felt that myself before I worked up to where
+I am now. 'Ere in New York a poor boy or a poor girl can't go out into
+the street without seein' the things they're cryvin' for in their
+insides flaunted at 'em like--shook in their fyces--while the law and
+the police and the church and everythink what mykes our life says to
+'em, 'There's none o' this for you.'"
+
+"Well, money would buy it, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Money'd buy it if money knew what to buy. But it don't. Mr. Rash must
+'ave noticed that there's nothink 'elplesser than the people with
+money what don't know 'ow to spend it. I used to be that wye myself
+when I'd 'ave a little cash. I wouldn't know what to blow myself to
+what wouldn't be like them vulgar new-rich. But the new-rich is vulgar
+only because our life 'as put the 'orse before the cart with 'em, as
+you might sye, in givin' them the money before showin' 'em what to do
+with it."
+
+Having straightened the lines of magazines to the last fraction of an
+inch he found a further excuse for lingering by moving back into their
+accustomed places the chairs which had been disarranged.
+
+"You 'ave to get the syme kind of 'ang of things as you and me've got,
+Mr. Rash, to know what it is you want, and 'ow to spend your money
+wise like. Pleasure isn't just in 'avin' things; it's in knowin'
+what's good to 'ave and what ain't. Now this young lydy'd be like a
+child with a dime sent into a ten-cent store to buy whatever 'e'd
+like. There's so many things, and all the syme price, that 'e's kind
+of confused like. First 'e thinks it'll be one thing, and then 'e
+thinks it'll be another, and 'e ends by tykin' the wrong thing,
+because 'e didn't 'ave nothink to tell 'im 'ow to choose. Mr. Rash
+wouldn't want a young lydy to whom 'e's indebted, as you might sye, to
+be like that, now would 'e?"
+
+"It doesn't seem to me that I've got anything to do with it. If I
+offer her the money, and can get her to take it----"
+
+"That's where she strikes me as wiser than Mr. Rash, for all she don't
+know but so little. That much she knows by hinstinck."
+
+"Then what am I going to do?"
+
+"That'd be for Mr. Rash to sye. If it was me----"
+
+The necessity for getting an armchair exactly beneath a portrait
+seemed to cut this sentence short.
+
+"Well, if it was you--what then?"
+
+"Before I'd give 'er money I'd teach 'er the 'ang of our kind o' life,
+like. That's what she's aichin' and cryvin' for. A born lydy she is,
+and 'ankerin' after a lydy's wyes, and with no one to learn 'em to
+'er----"
+
+"But, good heavens, I can't do that."
+
+"No, Mr. Rash, but I could, if you was to leave 'er 'ere for a bit. I
+could learn 'er to be a lydy in the course of a few weeks, and 'er so
+quick to pick up. Then if you was to settle a little hincome on 'er
+she wouldn't----"
+
+Allerton took the bull by the horns. "She wouldn't be so likely to go
+to the bad. That's what you mean, isn't it?"
+
+Moving behind Allerton, who continued to stand on the hearthrug,
+Steptoe began poking the embers, making them safe for the night.
+
+"Did Mr. Rash ever notice that goin' to the bad, as 'e calls it, ain't
+the syme for them as 'ave nothink as it looks to them as 'ave
+everythink? When you're 'ungry for food you heats the first thing you
+can lie your 'ands on; and when you're 'ungry for life you do the
+first thing as'll promise you the good you're lookin' for. What people
+like you and me is hapt to call goin' to the bad ain't mostly no more
+than a 'ankerin' for good which nothink don't seem to feed."
+
+Allerton smiled. "That sounds to me as if it might be dangerous
+doctrine."
+
+"What excuses the poor'll often seem dyngerous doctrine to the rich,
+Mr. Rash. Our kind is awful afryde of their kind gettin' a little bit
+of what they're longin' for, and especially 'ere in America. When
+we've took from them most of the means of 'aving a little pleasure
+lawful, we call it dyngerous if they tyke it unlawful like, and we go
+to work and pass laws agynst them. Protectin' them agynst theirselves
+we sye it is, and we go at it with a gun."
+
+"But we're talking of----"
+
+"Of the young lydy, sir. Quite so. It's on 'er account as I'm syin'
+what I'm syin'. You arsk me if I think she'll go to the bad in cyse
+we turn 'er out, and I sye that----"
+
+Allerton started. "There's no question of our turning her out. She's
+sick of it."
+
+"Then that'd be my point, wouldn't it, sir? If she goes because she's
+sick of it, why, then, natural like, she'll look somewhere else for
+what--for what she didn't find with us. You may call it goin' to the
+bad, but it'll be no more than tryin' to find in a wrong wye what life
+'as denied 'er in a right one."
+
+Allerton, who had never in his life been asked to bear moral
+responsibility, was uneasy at this philosophy, changing the subject
+abruptly.
+
+"Where did she get the clothes?"
+
+"Me and 'er, Mr. Rash, went to Margot's this mornin' and bought a
+bunch of 'em."
+
+"The deuce you did! And you used my name?"
+
+"No, sir," Steptoe returned, with dignity, "I used mine. I didn't give
+no 'andle to gossip. I pyde for the things out o' some money I 'ad in
+'and--my own money, Mr. Rash--and 'ad 'em all sent to me. I thought as
+we was mykin' a mistyke the young lydy'd better look proper while we
+was mykin' it; and I knew Mr. Rash'd feel the syme."
+
+The situation was that in which the _fainéant_ king accepts the act of
+the mayor of the palace because it is Hobson's choice. Moreover, he
+was willing that she should have the clothes. If she wouldn't take
+money she would at least apparently take them, which, in a measure,
+would amount to the same thing. He was dwelling on this bit of
+satisfaction when Steptoe continued.
+
+"And as long as the young lydy remynes with us, Mr. Rash, I thought
+it'd be discreeter like not to 'ave no more women pokin' about, and
+tryin' to find out what 'ad better not be known. It mykes it simpler
+as she 'erself arsks to be called Miss Gravely----"
+
+"Oh, she does?"
+
+"Yes, sir; and that's what I've told William and Golightly, the waiter
+and the chef, is 'er nyme. It mykes it all plyne to 'em----"
+
+"Plain? Why, they'll think----"
+
+"No, sir. They won't think. When it comes to what's no one's business
+but your own women thinks; men just haccepts. They tykes things for
+granted, and don't feel it none of their affair. Mr. Rash'll 'ave
+noticed that there's a different kind of honor among women from what
+there is among men. I don't sye but what the women's is all right,
+only the men's is easier to get on with."
+
+There being no response to these observations Steptoe made ready to
+withdraw. "And shall you stye 'ome for breakfast, sir?"
+
+"I'll see in the morning."
+
+"Very good, sir. I've locked up the 'ouse and seen to everythink, if
+you'll switch off the lights as you come up. Good-night, Mr. Rash."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+While this conversation was taking place Letty, in the back spare
+room, was conducting a ceremonial too poignant for tears. There were
+tears in her heart, but her eyes only smarted.
+
+Taking off the blue-black tea-gown, she clasped it in her arms and
+kissed it. Then, on one of the padded silk hangers, she hung it far in
+the depths of the closet, where it wouldn't scorch her sight in the
+morning.
+
+Next she arrayed herself in a filmy breakfast thing, white with a
+copper-colored sash matching some of the tones in her hair and eyes,
+and simple with an angelic simplicity. Standing before the long mirror
+she surveyed herself mournfully. But this robe too she took off,
+kissed, and laid away.
+
+Lastly she put on the blue-green costume, with the turquoise and jade
+embroidery. She put on also the hat with the feather which shaded
+itself from green into monkshood blue. She put on a veil, and a pair
+of white gloves. For once she would look as well as she was capable of
+looking, though no one should see her but herself.
+
+Viewing her reflection she grew frightened. It was the first time she
+had ever seen her personal potentialities. She had long known that
+with "half a chance" she could emerge from the cocoon stage of the old
+gray rag and be at least the equal of the average; but she hadn't
+expected so radical a change. She was not the same Letty Gravely. She
+didn't know what she was, since she was neither a "star" nor a "lady,"
+the two degrees of elevation of which she had had experience. All she
+could feel was that with the advantages here presented she had the
+capacity to be either. Since, apparently, the becoming a lady was now
+excluded from her choice of careers, "stardom" would still have been
+within her reach, only that she was not to get the necessary "half a
+chance." That was the bitter truth of it. That was to be the result of
+her walking on blades. All the same, as walking on blades would help
+her prince she was resolved to walk on them. For her mother's sake,
+even for Judson Flack's, she had done things nearly as hard, when she
+had not had this incentive.
+
+The incentive nerved her to take off the blue-green costume, kissing
+it a last farewell, and laying it to rest, as a mother a dead baby in
+its coffin. Into the closet went the bits of lingerie from the
+consignment just arrived from Paris, and the other spoils of the day.
+When everything was buried she shut the door upon it, as in her heart
+she was shutting the door on her poor little fledgling hopes. Nothing
+remained to torment her vision, or distract her from what she had to
+do. The old gray rag and the battered black hat were all she had now
+to deal with.
+
+She slept little that night, since she was watching not for daylight
+but for that first stirring in the streets which tells that daylight
+is approaching. Having neither watch nor clock the stirring was all
+she had to go by. When it began to rumble and creak and throb faintly
+in and above the town she got up and dressed.
+
+So far had she travelled in less than forty-eight hours that the old
+gray rag, and not the blue-green costume, was now the disguise. In
+other words, once having tasted the prosperous she had found it the
+natural. To go back to poverty was not merely hard; it was contrary to
+all spontaneous dictates. Dimly she had supposed that in reverting to
+the harness she had worn she would find herself again; but she only
+discovered that she was more than ever lost.
+
+Very softly she unlocked her door to peep out at the landing. The
+house was ghostly and still, but it was another sign of her
+development that she was no longer afraid of it. Space too had become
+natural, while dignity of setting had seemed to belong to her ever
+since she was born. Turning her back on these conditions was far more
+like turning her back on home than it had been when she walked away
+from Judson Flack's.
+
+She crept out. It was so dark that she was obliged to wait till
+objects defined themselves black against black before she could see
+the stairs. She listened too. There were sounds, but only such sounds
+as all houses make when everyone is sleeping. She guessed, it was pure
+guessing, that it must be about five o'clock.
+
+She stole down the stairs. The necessity for keeping her mind on
+moving noiselessly deadened her thought to anything else. She neither
+looked back to what she was leaving behind, nor forward to what she
+was going to. Once she had reached the street it would be time enough
+to think of both. She had the fact in the back of her consciousness,
+but she kept it there. Out in the street she would feel grief for the
+prince and his palace, and terror at the void before her; but she
+couldn't feel them yet. Her one impulse was to escape.
+
+At the great street door she could see nothing; but she could feel.
+She found the key and turned it easily. As the door did not then yield
+to the knob she fumbled till she touched the chain. Slipping that out
+of its socket she tried the door again, but it still refused to open.
+There must be something else! Rich houses were naturally fortresses!
+She discovered the bolt and pulled it back.
+
+Still the door was fixed like a rock. She couldn't make it out. A
+lock, a chain, a bolt! Surely that must be everything! Perhaps she had
+turned the key the wrong way. She turned it again, but only with the
+same result. She found she could turn the key either way, and still
+leave the door immovable.
+
+Perhaps she didn't pull it hard enough. Doors sometimes stuck. She
+pulled harder; she pulled with her whole might and main. She could
+shake the door; she could make it rattle. The hanging chain dangled
+against the woodwork with a terrifying clank. If anyone was lying
+awake she would sound like a burglar--and yet she must get out.
+
+Now that she was balked, to get out became an obsession. It became
+more of an obsession the more she was balked. It made her first
+impatient, and then frantic. She turned the key this way and that way.
+She pulled and tugged. The perspiration came out on her forehead. She
+panted for breath; she almost sobbed. She knew there was a "trick" to
+it. She knew it was a simple trick because she had seen Steptoe
+perform it on the previous day; but she couldn't find out what it was.
+The effort made her only the more desperate.
+
+She was not crying; she was only gasping--in raucous, exhausted,
+nervous sobs. They came shorter and harder as she pitted her impotence
+against this unyielding passivity. She knew it was impotence, and yet
+she couldn't desist; and she couldn't desist because she grew more and
+more frenzied. It was the kind of frenzy in which she would have
+dashed herself wildly, vainly against the force that blocked her with
+its pitiless resistance, only that the whole hall was suddenly flooded
+with a blaze of light.
+
+It was light that came so unexpectedly that her efforts were cut
+short. Even her hard gasps were silenced, not in relief but in
+amazement. She remained so motionless that she could practically see
+herself, thrown against this brutal door, her arms spread out on it
+imploringly.
+
+Seconds that seemed like minutes went by before she found strength to
+detach herself and turn.
+
+Amazement became terror. On the halfway landing of the stairs stood a
+figure robed in scarlet from head to foot, with flying indigo lapels.
+He was girt with an indigo girdle, while the mass of his hair stood up
+as in tongues of forked black flame. The countenance was terrible, in
+mingled perplexity and wrath.
+
+She saw it was the prince, but a prince transformed by condemnation.
+
+"What on earth does this mean?"
+
+He came down the rest of the stairs till he stood on the lowest step.
+She advanced toward him pleadingly.
+
+"I was--I was trying to get out."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I--I--I must get away."
+
+"Well, even so; is this the way to do it? I thought someone was
+tearing the house down. It woke me up."
+
+"I was goin' this way because--because I didn't want you to know
+what'd become of me."
+
+"Yes, and have you on my mind."
+
+"I hoped I'd be takin' myself off your mind."
+
+"If you want to take yourself off my mind there's a perfectly simple
+means of doing it."
+
+"I'll do anything--but take money."
+
+"And taking money is the only thing I ask of you."
+
+"I can't. It'd--it'd--shame me."
+
+"Shame you? What nonsense!"
+
+She reflected fast. "There's two ways a woman can take money from a
+man. The man may love her and marry her; or perhaps he don't marry
+her, but loves her just the same. Then she can take it; but when----"
+
+"When she only renders him a--a great service----"
+
+"Ah, but that's just what I didn't do. You said you wanted me to send
+you to the devil--and now you ain't a-goin' to go."
+
+He grew excited. "But, good Lord, girl, you don't expect me to go to
+the devil just to keep my word to you."
+
+"I don't want you to do anything just to keep your word to me," she
+returned, fiercely. "I only want you to let me get away."
+
+He came down the remaining step, beginning to pace back and forth as
+he always did when approaching the condition he called "going off the
+hooks." Letty found him a marvelous figure in his scarlet robe, and
+with his mass of diabolic black hair.
+
+"Yes, and if I let you get away, where would you get away _to_?"
+
+"Oh, I'll find a place."
+
+"A place in jail as a vagrant, as I said the other day."
+
+"I'd rather be in jail," she flung back at him, "than stay where I'm
+not wanted."
+
+"That's not the question."
+
+"It's the biggest question of all for me. It'd be the biggest for you
+too if you were in my place." She stretched out her hands to him. "Oh,
+please show me how to work the door, and let me go."
+
+He flared as he was in the habit of flaring whenever he was opposed.
+"You can go when we've settled the question of what you'll have to
+live on."
+
+"I'll have myself to live on--just as I had before I met you in the
+Park."
+
+"Nothing is the same for you or for me as before I met you in the
+Park."
+
+"No, but we want to make it the same, don't we? You can't--can't marry
+the other girl till it is."
+
+"I can't marry the other girl till I know you're taken care of."
+
+"Money wouldn't take care of me. That's where you're makin' your
+mistake. You rich people think that money will do anything. So it will
+for you; but it don't mean so awful much to me." Her eyes, her lips,
+her hands besought him together. "Think now! What would I do with
+money if I had it? It ain't as if I was a lady. A lady has ways of
+doin' nothin' and livin' all the same; but a girl like me don't know
+anything about them. I'd go crazy if I didn't work--or I'd die--or I'd
+do somethin' worse."
+
+It was because his nerves were on edge that he cried out: "I don't
+care a button what you do. I'm thinking of myself."
+
+She betrayed the sharpness of the wound only by a deepening of the
+damask flush. "I'm thinkin' of you, too. Wouldn't you rather have
+everything come right again--so that you could marry the other
+girl--and know that I'd done it for you _free_--and not that you'd
+just bought me off?"
+
+"You mean, wouldn't I rather that all the generosity should be on your
+side----"
+
+"I don't care anything about generosity. I wouldn't be doin' it for
+that. It'd be because----"
+
+He flung out his arms. "Well--why?"
+
+"Because I'd like to do something _for_ you----"
+
+"Do something for me by making me a cad." He was beside himself.
+"That's what it would come to. That's what you're playing for. I
+should be a cad. You dress yourself up again in this ridiculous
+rig----"
+
+"It's not a ridic'lous rig. It's my own clothes----"
+
+"Your own clothes _now_ are--are what I saw you in when I came home
+last evening. You can't go back to that thing. We can't go back in any
+way." He seemed to make a discovery. "It's no use trying to be what we
+were in the Park, because we can't be. Whatever we do must be in the
+way of--of going on to something else."
+
+"Well, that'd be something else, if you'd just let me go, and do the
+desertion stunt you talked to me about----"
+
+"I'll not let you do it unless I pay you for it."
+
+"But it'd be payin' me for it if--if you'd just let me do it. Don't
+you see I _want_ to?"
+
+"I can see that you want to keep me in your debt. I can see that I'd
+never have another easy moment in my life. Whatever I did, and whoever
+I married, I should have to owe it to _you_."
+
+"Well, couldn't you--when I owe so much to you?"
+
+"There you go! What do you owe to me? Nothing but getting you into an
+infernal scrape----"
+
+"Oh, no! It's not been that at all. You'd have to be me to understand
+what it _has_ been. It'll be something to think of all the rest of my
+life--whatever I do."
+
+"Yes, and I know how you'll think of it."
+
+"Oh, no, you don't. You couldn't. It's nothin' to you to come into
+this beautiful house and see its lovely kind of life; but for me----"
+
+"Oh, don't throw that sort of thing at me," he flamed out, striding up
+and down. "Steptoe's been putting that into your head. He's strong on
+the sentimental stuff. You and he are in a conspiracy against me.
+That's what it is. It's a conspiracy. He's got something up his
+sleeve--I don't know what--and he's using you as his tool. But you
+don't come it over me. I'm wise, I am. I'm a fool too. I know it well
+enough. But I'm not such a fool as to----"
+
+She was frightened. He was going "off the hooks." She knew the signs
+of it. This rapid speech, one word leading to another, had always been
+her mother's first sign of super-excitement, until it ended in a
+scream. If he were to scream she would be more terrified than she had
+ever been in her life. She had never heard a man scream; but then she
+had never seen a man grow hysterical.
+
+His utterance was the more clear-cut and distinct the faster it
+became.
+
+"I know what it is. Steptoe thinks I'm going insane, and he's made you
+think so too. That's why you want to get away. You're afraid of me.
+Well, I don't wonder at it; but you're not going. See? You're not
+going. You'll go when I send you; but you'll not go before. See? I've
+married you, haven't I? When all is said and done you're my wife. My
+wife!" He laughed, between gritted teeth. "My wife! That's my wife!"
+He pointed at her. "Rashleigh Allerton who thought so much of himself
+has married _that_--and she's trying to do the generous by him----"
+
+Going up to him timidly, she laid her hand on his arm. "Say, mister,
+would you mind countin' ten?"
+
+The appeal took him so much by surprise that, both in his
+speech and in his walk, he stopped abruptly. She began to
+count, slowly, and marking time with her forefinger.
+"One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten."
+
+He stared at her as if it was she who had gone "off the hooks." "What
+do you mean by that?"
+
+"Oh, nothin'. Now you can begin again."
+
+"Begin what?"
+
+"What you was--what you were sayin'."
+
+"What I was saying?" He rubbed his hand across his forehead, which was
+wet with cold perspiration. "Well, what was I saying?"
+
+He was not only dazed, but a pallor stole over his skin, the more
+ghastly in contrast with his black hair and his scarlet
+dressing-gown.
+
+"Isn't there no place you can lay down? I always laid momma down after
+a spell of this kind. It did her good to sleep and she always slept."
+
+He said, absently: "There's a couch in the library. I can't go back to
+bed."
+
+"No, you don't want to go back to bed," she agreed, as if she was
+humoring a child. "You wouldn't sleep there----"
+
+"I haven't slept for two nights," he pleaded, in excuse for himself,
+"not since----"
+
+Taking him by the arm she led him into the library, which was in an
+ell behind the back drawing-room. It was a big, book-lined room with
+worn, shiny, leather-covered furnishings. On the shiny,
+leather-covered couch was a cushion which she shook up and smoothed
+out. Over its foot lay an afghan the work of the late Mrs. Allerton.
+
+"Now, lay down."
+
+He stretched himself out obediently, after which she covered him with
+the afghan. When he had closed his eyes she passed her hand across his
+forehead, on which the perspiration was still thick and cold. She
+remembered that a bottle of Florida water and a paper fan were among
+the luxuries of the back spare room.
+
+"Don't you stir," she warned him. "I'm goin' to get you something."
+
+Absorbed in her tasks as nurse she forgot to make the sentimental
+reflections in which she would otherwise have indulged. Back to the
+room from which she had fled she hurried with no thought that she was
+doing so. From the grave of hope she disinterred a half dozen of the
+spider-web handkerchiefs to which a few hours previously she had bid a
+touching adieu. With handkerchiefs, fan, and Florida water, she flew
+back to her patient, who opened his eyes as she approached.
+
+"I don't want to be fussed over----" he was beginning, fretfully.
+
+"Lie still," she commanded. "I know what to do. I'm used to people who
+are sick--up here."
+
+"Up here" was plainly the forehead which she mopped softly with a
+specimen from Margot's Parisian consignment. He closed his eyes. His
+features relaxed to an expression of relief. Relief gave place to
+repose when he felt her hand with the cool scented essence on his
+brow. It passed and passed again, lightly, soothingly, consolingly.
+Drowsily he thought that it was Barbara's hand, but a Barbara somehow
+transformed, and grown tenderer.
+
+He was asleep. She sat fanning him till a feeble daylight through an
+uncurtained window warned her to switch off the electricity. Coming
+back to her place, she continued to fan him, quietly and deftly, with
+no more than a motion of the wrist. She had the nurse's wrist,
+slender, flexible; the nurse's hand, strong, shapely, with practical
+spatulated finger-tips. After all, he was in some degree the drowning
+unconscious prince, and she the little mermaid.
+
+"He'll be ashamed when he wakes up. He'll not like to find me sittin'
+here."
+
+It was broad daylight now. He was as sound asleep as a child. Since
+she couldn't disturb him by rising she rose. Since she couldn't
+disturb him even by kissing him she kissed him. But she wouldn't kiss
+his lips, nor so much as his cheek or his brow. Very humbly she knelt
+and kissed his feet, outlined beneath the afghan. Then she stole
+away.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+The interlacing of destinies is such that you will not be surprised to
+learn that the further careers of Letty Gravely, of Barbara Walbrook,
+of Rashleigh Allerton now turned on Mademoiselle Odette Coucoul, whose
+name not one of the three was ever destined to hear.
+
+On his couch in the library Allerton slept till after nine, waking in
+a confusion which did not preclude a sense of refreshment. At the same
+minute Madame Simone was finishing her explanations to Mademoiselle
+Coucoul as to what was to be done to the seal-brown costume, which
+Steptoe had added to Letty's wardrobe, in order to conceal the fact
+that it was a model of a season old, and not the new creation its
+purchasers supposed. Taking in her instructions with Gallic precision
+mademoiselle was already at work when Miss Tina Vanzetti paused at her
+door. The door was that of a small French-paneled room, once the
+boudoir of the owner of the Flemish chateau, but set apart now by
+Madame Simone for jobs requiring deftness.
+
+Miss Vanzetti, whose Neapolitan grandfather had begun his American
+career as a boot-black in Brooklyn, was of the Americanized type of
+her race. She could not, of course, eliminate her Latinity of eye and
+tress nor her wild luxuriance of bust, but English was her
+mother-tongue, and the chewing of gum her national pastime. She
+chewed it now, slowly, thoughtfully, as she stood looking in on
+Mademoiselle Odette, who was turning the skirt this way and that,
+searching out the almost invisible traces of use which were to be
+removed.
+
+"So she's give you that to do, has she? Some stunt, I'll say. Gee,
+she's got her gall with her, old Simone, puttin' that off on the
+public as something new. If I had a dollar for every time Mamie Gunn
+has walked in and out to show it to customers I'd buy a set of silver
+fox."
+
+Mademoiselle's smile was radiant, not because she had radiance to
+shed, but because her lips and teeth framed themselves that way. She
+too was of her race, alert, vivacious, and as neat as a trivet, as
+became a former midinette of the rue de la Paix and a daughter of
+Batignolles.
+
+"Madame she t'ink it all in de beezeness," she contented herself with
+saying.
+
+With her left hand Miss Vanzetti put soft touches to the big black
+coils of her back hair. "See that kid that all these things is goin'
+to? Gee, but she's beginnin' to step out. I know her. Spotted her the
+minute she come in to try on. Me and she went to the same school.
+Lived in the same street. Name of Letty Gravely."
+
+Seeing that she was expected to make a response mademoiselle could
+think of nothing better than to repeat in her pretty staccato English:
+"Name of Let-ty Grav-el-ly."
+
+"Stepfather's name was Judson Flack. Company-promoter he called
+himself. Mother croaked three or four years ago, just before we moved
+to Harlem. Never saw no more of her till she walked in here with the
+old white slaver what's payin' for the outfit. Gee, you needn't tell
+me! S'pose she'll hit the pace till some fella chucks her. Gee, I'm
+sorry. Awful slim chance a girl'll get when some guy with a wad blows
+along and wants her." The theme exhausted Miss Vanzetti asked
+suddenly: "Why don't you never come to the Lantern?"
+
+In her broken English mademoiselle explained that she didn't know the
+American dances, but that a fella had promised to teach her the steps.
+She had met him at the house of a cousin who was married to a waiter
+chez Bouquin. Ver' beautiful fella, he was, and had invited her to a
+chop suey dinner that evening, with the dance at the Lantern to wind
+up with. Most ver' beautiful fella, single, and a detective.
+
+"Good for you," Miss Vanzetti commanded. "If you don't dance you might
+as well be dead, I'll say. Keeps you thin, too; and the music at the
+Lantern is swell."
+
+The incident is so slight that to get its significance you must link
+it up with the sound of the telephone which, as a simultaneous
+happening, was waking Judson Flack from his first real sleep after an
+uncomfortable night. Nothing but the fear lest by ignoring the call
+the great North Dakota Oil Company whose shares would soon be on the
+market, would be definitely launched without his assistance dragged
+him from his bed.
+
+"Hello?"
+
+A woman's voice inquired: "Is this Hudson 283-J?"
+
+"You bet."
+
+"Is Miss Gravely in?"
+
+"Just gone out. Only round the corner. Back in a few minutes. Say,
+sister, I'm her stepfather, and 'll take the message."
+
+"Tell her to come right over to the Excelsior Studio. Castin'
+director's got a part for her. Real part. Small but a stunner. Outcast
+girl. I s'pose she's got some old duds to dress it in?"
+
+"Sure thing!"
+
+"Well, tell her to bring 'em along. And say, listen! I don't mind
+passing you the tip that the castin' director has his eye on that girl
+for doin' the pathetic stunt; so see she ain't late."
+
+"Y'betcha."
+
+That an ambitious man, growing anxious about his future, was thus
+placed in a trying situation will be seen at once. The chance of a
+lifetime was there and he was unable to seize it. Everyone knew that
+by these small condensations of nebular promise stars were eventually
+evolved, and to have at his disposal the earnings of a star....
+
+It seemed providential then that on dropping into the basement eating
+place at which he had begun to take his breakfasts he should fall in
+with Gorry Larrabin. They were not friends, or rather they were better
+than friends; they were enemies who found each other useful. Mutually
+antipathetic, they quarrelled, but could not afford to quarrel long. A
+few days or a few weeks having gone by, they met with a nod, as if no
+hot words had been passed.
+
+It was such an occasion now. Ten days earlier Judson had called Gorry
+to his teeth "no detective, but a hired sneak." Gorry had retorted
+that, hired sneak as he was, he would have Judson Flack "in the jug"
+as a promoter of faked companies before the year was out. One word had
+led to another, and only the intervention of friends to both parties
+had kept the high-spirited fellows from exchanging blows. But the
+moment had come round again when each had an axe to grind, so that as
+Judson hung up his hat near the table at which Gorry, having finished
+his breakfast, was smoking and picking his teeth, the nod of
+reconciliation was given and returned.
+
+"Say, why don't you sit down here?"
+
+Politely Gorry indicated the unoccupied side of his own table. It was
+a small table covered with a white oil-cloth, and tolerably clean.
+
+"Don't mind if I do," was the other's return of courtesy, friendly
+relations being thus re-established.
+
+Having given his order to a stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture,
+Judson Flack launched at once into the subject of Letty. He did this
+for a two-fold reason. First, his grievance made the expression of
+itself imperative, and next, Gorry being a hanger-on of that
+profession which lives by knowing what other people don't might be in
+a position to throw light on Letty's disappearance. If he was he gave
+no sign of it. As a matter of fact he was not, but he meant to be. He
+remembered the girl; had admired her; had pointed out to several of
+his friends that she had only to doll herself up in order to knock
+spots out of a lot of good lookers of recognized supremacy.
+
+Odette Coucoul's description of him as "most ver' beautiful fella"
+was not without some justification. Regular, clean-cut features, long
+and thin, were the complement of a slight well-knit figure, of which
+the only criticism one could make was that it looked slippery.
+Slipperiness was perhaps his ruling characteristic, a softness of
+movement suggesting a cat, and a habit of putting out and drawing back
+a long, supple, snake-like hand which made you think of a pickpocket.
+Eyes that looked at you steadily enough impressed you as untrustworthy
+chiefly because of a dropping of the pupil of the left, through
+muscular inability.
+
+"Awful sorry, Judson," was his summing up of sympathy with his
+companion's narrative. "Any dope I get I'll pass along to you."
+
+Between gentlemen, however, there are understandings which need not be
+put into words, the principle of nothing for nothing being one of
+them. The conversation had not progressed much further before Gorry
+felt at liberty to say:
+
+"Now, about this North Dakota Oil, Judson. I'd like awful well to get
+in on the ground floor of that. I've got a little something to blow
+in; and there's a lot of suckers ready to snap up that stock before
+you print the certificates."
+
+Diplomacy being necessary here Judson practiced it. Gorry might indeed
+be seeking a way of turning an honest penny; but then again he might
+mean to sell out the whole show. On the one hand you couldn't trust
+him, and on the other it wouldn't do to offend him so long as there
+was a chance of his getting news of the girl. Judson could only
+temporize, pleading his lack of influence with the bunch who were
+getting up the company. At the same time he would do his utmost to
+work Gorry in, on the tacit understanding that nothing would be done
+for nothing.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allerton too had breakfasted late, at the New Netherlands Club, and
+was now with Miss Barbara Walbrook, who received him in the same room,
+and wearing the same hydrangea-colored robe, as on the previous
+morning. He had called her up from the Club, asking to be allowed to
+come once more at this unconventional hour in order to communicate
+good news.
+
+"She's willing to do anything," he stated at once, making the
+announcement with the glee of evident relief. "In fact, it was by pure
+main force that I kept her from running away from the house this
+morning."
+
+He was dashed that she did not take these tidings with his own
+buoyancy. "What made you stop her?" she asked, in some wonder. "Sit
+down, Rash. Tell me the whole thing."
+
+Though she took a chair he was unable to do so. His excitement now was
+over the ease with which the difficulty was going to be met. He could
+only talk about it in a standing position, leaning on the mantelpiece,
+or stroking the head of the Manship terra cotta child, while she gazed
+up at him, nervously beating her left palm with the black and gold
+fringe of her girdle.
+
+"I stopped her because--well, because it wouldn't have done."
+
+"Why wouldn't it have done? I should think that it's just what would
+have done."
+
+"Let her slip away penniless, and--and without friends?"
+
+"She'd be no more penniless and without friends than she was
+when--when you--" she sought for the right word--"when you picked her
+up."
+
+"No, of course not; only now the--the situation is different."
+
+"I don't see that it is--much. Besides, if you were to let her run
+away first, so that you get--whatever the law wants you to get, you
+could see that she wasn't penniless and without friends afterwards.
+Most likely that's what she was expecting."
+
+His countenance fell. "I--I don't think so."
+
+"Oh, you wouldn't think so as long as she could bamboozle you. I was
+simply thinking of your getting what she probably wants to give
+you--for a price."
+
+"I don't think you do her justice, Barbe. If you'd seen her----"
+
+"Very well; I shall see her. But seeing her won't make any difference
+in my opinion."
+
+"She'll not strike you as anything wonderful of course; but I know
+she's as straight as they make 'em. And so long as she is----"
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Why, then, it seems to me, we must be straight on our side."
+
+"We'll be straight enough if we pay her her price."
+
+"There's more to it than that."
+
+"Oh, there is? Then how much more?"
+
+"I don't know that I can explain it." He lifted one of the Stiegel
+candlesticks and put it back in its place. "I simply feel that we
+can't--that we can't let all the magnanimity be on her side. If she
+plays high, we've got to play higher."
+
+"I see. So she's got you there, has she?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't be disagreeable about it, Barbe."
+
+"My dear Rash," she expostulated, "it isn't being disagreeable to have
+common sense. It's all the more necessary for me not to abnegate that,
+for the simple reason that you do."
+
+He hurled himself to the other end of the mantelpiece, picking up the
+second candlestick and putting it down with force. "It's surely not
+abnegating common sense just to--to recognize honesty."
+
+"Please don't fiddle with those candlesticks. They're the rarest
+American workmanship, and if you were to break one of them Aunt Marion
+would kill me. I'll feel safer about you if you sit down."
+
+"All right. I'll sit down." He drew to him a small frail chair,
+sitting astride on it. "Only please don't fidget me."
+
+"Would you mind taking _that_ chair?" She pointed to something solid
+and masculine by Phyffe. "That little thing is one of Aunt Marion's
+pet pieces of old Dutch colonial. If anything were to happen to
+it--But you were talking about recognizing honesty," she continued, as
+he moved obediently. "That's exactly what I should like you to do,
+Rash, dear--with your eyes open. If I'm not looking anyone can pull
+the wool over them, whether it's this girl or someone else."
+
+"In other words I'm a fool, as you were good enough to say----"
+
+"Oh, do forget that. I couldn't help saying it, as I think you ought
+to admit; but don't keep bringing it up every time I do my best to
+meet you pleasantly. I'm not going to quarrel with you any more, Rash.
+I've made a vow to that effect and I'm going to keep it. But if I'm to
+keep it on my side you mustn't badger me on yours. It doesn't do me
+any good, and it does yourself a lot of harm." Having delivered this
+homily she took a tone of brisk cheerfulness. "Now, you said over the
+phone that you were coming to tell me good news."
+
+"Well, that was it."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"That she was ready to do anything--even to disappear."
+
+"And you wouldn't let her."
+
+"That I couldn't let her--with nothing to show for it."
+
+"But she will have something to show for it--in the end. She knows
+that as well as I do. Do you suppose for a minute that she doesn't
+understand the kind of man she's dealing with?"
+
+"You mean that----?"
+
+"Rash, dear, no girl who knows as much as this girl knows could help
+seeing at a glance that she's got a pigeon to pluck, as the French
+say, and of course she means to pluck it. You can't blame her for
+that, being what she is; but for heaven's sake let her pluck it in her
+own way. Don't be a simpleton. Angels shouldn't rush in where fools
+would fear to tread--and you _are_ an angel, Rash, though I suppose
+I'm the only one in the world who sees it."
+
+"Thank you, Barbe. I know you feel kindly toward me, and that, as you
+say, you're the only one in the world who does. That's all right, I
+acknowledge it, and I'm grateful. What I don't like is to see you
+taking it for granted that this girl is merely playing a game----"
+
+"Rash, do you remember those two winters I worked in the Bleary Street
+Settlement? and do you remember that the third winter I said that I'd
+rather enlist in the Navy that go back to it again? You all thought
+that I was cynical and hard-hearted, but I'll tell you now what the
+trouble was. I went down there thinking I could teach those
+girls--that I could do them good--and raise them up--and have them
+call me blessed--and all that. Well, there wasn't one of them who
+hadn't forgotten more than I ever knew--who wasn't working me when I
+supposed she was hanging on my wisdom--who wasn't laughing at me
+behind my back when I was under the delusion that she was following my
+good example. And if you've got one of them on your hands she'll fool
+the eyes out of your head."
+
+"You think so," he said, drily. "Then I don't."
+
+"In that case there's no use discussing it any further."
+
+"There may be after you've seen her."
+
+"How can I see her?"
+
+"You can go to the house."
+
+"And tell her I know everything?"
+
+"If you like. You could say I told you in confidence--that you're an
+old friend of mine."
+
+"And nothing else?"
+
+"Since you only want to size her up I should think that would be
+enough."
+
+She nodded, slowly. "Yes, I think you're right. Better not give
+anything away we can keep to ourselves. Now tell me what happened this
+morning. You haven't done it yet."
+
+He told her everything--how he had been waked by hearing someone
+fumbling with the lock of the door, whether inside or outside the
+house he couldn't tell--how he had gone to the head of the stairs and
+switched on the lower hall light--how she had flung herself against
+the door as a little gray bird might dash itself against its cage in
+its passion to escape.
+
+"She staged it well, didn't she? She must have brains."
+
+"She has brains all right, but I don't think----"
+
+"She knew of course that if she made enough noise someone would come,
+and she'd get the credit for good intentions."
+
+"I really don't think, Barbe.... Now let me tell you. You'll _see_
+what she's like. I felt very much as you do. I was right on the jump.
+Got all worked up. Would have gone clean off the hooks if----"
+
+There followed the narrative of his loss of temper, of his wild talk,
+of her clever strategy in counting ten--"just like a cold douche it
+was"--and the faint turn he so often had after spells of emotion. To
+convince Miss Walbrook of the queer little thing's ingenuousness he
+told how she had made him lie down on the library couch, covered him
+up, rubbed his brow with Florida water, and induced the best sleep he
+had had in months.
+
+She surprised him by springing to her feet, her arms outspread. "You
+great big idiot! Really there's no other name for you!"
+
+He gazed up at her in amazement. "What's the matter now?"
+
+Flinging her hands about she made inarticulate sounds of exasperation
+beyond words.
+
+"There, there; that'll do," she threw off, when he jumped to her side,
+to calm her by taking her in his arms. "_I'm_ not off the hooks. _I_
+don't want anyone to rub Florida water on my brow--and hold my
+hand--and cradle me to sleep----"
+
+"She didn't," he exclaimed, with indignation. "She never touched my
+hand. She just----"
+
+"Oh, I know what she did--and of course I'm grateful. I'm delighted
+that she was there to do it--_delighted._ I quite see now why you
+couldn't let her go, when you knew your fit was coming on. I've seen
+you pretty bad, but I've never seen you as bad as that; and I must say
+I never should have thought of counting ten as a cure for it."
+
+"Well, _she_ did."
+
+"Quite so! And if I were you I'd never go anywhere without her. I'd
+keep her on hand in case I took a turn----"
+
+He was looking more and more reproachful. "I must say, Barbe, I don't
+think you're very reasonable."
+
+She pushed him from her with both hands against his shoulders. "Go
+away, for heaven's sake! You'll drive me crazy. I'm _not_ going to
+lose my temper with you. I'll never do it again. I've got you to bear
+with, and I'm going to bear with you. But go! No, go now! Don't stop
+to make explanations. You can do that later. I'll lay in a supply of
+Florida water and an afghan...."
+
+He went with that look on his face which a well meaning dog will wear
+when his good intentions are being misinterpreted. On his way to the
+office he kept saying to himself: "Well _I_ don't know what to do.
+Whatever I say she takes me up the wrong way. All I wanted was for her
+to understand that the little thing is a _good_ little thing...."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+While Allerton was making these reflections Steptoe was summoned to
+the telephone.
+
+"Is this you, Steptoe? I'm Miss Barbara Walbrook."
+
+Steptoe braced himself. In conversing with Miss Barbara Walbrook he
+always felt the need of inner strengthening. "Yes, Miss Walbrook?"
+
+"Mr. Allerton tells me you've a young woman at the house."
+
+"We 'ave a young lydy. Certainly, miss."
+
+"And Mr. Allerton has asked me to call on her."
+
+Steptoe's training as a servant permitted him no lapses of surprise.
+"Quite so, miss. And when was it you'd be likely to call?"
+
+"This afternoon about four-thirty. Perhaps you could arrange to have
+me see her alone."
+
+"Oh, there ain't likely to be no one 'ere, miss."
+
+"And another thing, Steptoe. Mr. Allerton has asked me just to call as
+an old friend of his. So you'll please not say to her that--well,
+anything about me. I'm sure you understand."
+
+Steptoe replied that he did understand, and having put up the receiver
+he pondered.
+
+What could it mean? What could be back of it? How would this
+unsophisticated girl meet so skilful an antagonist. That Miss Walbrook
+was coming as an antagonist he had no doubt. In his own occasional
+meetings with her she had always been a superior, a commander, to whom
+even he, 'Enery Steptoe, had been a servitor requiring no further
+consideration. With so gentle an opponent as madam she would order and
+be obeyed.
+
+At the same time he could not alarm madam, or allow her to shirk the
+encounter. She had that in her, he was sure, which couldn't but win
+out, however much she might be at a disadvantage. His part would be to
+reduce her disadvantages to a minimum, allowing her strong points to
+tell. Her strong points, he reckoned, were innocence, an absence of
+self-consciousness, and, to the worldly-wise, a disconcerting candor.
+Steptoe analyzed in the spirit and not verbally; but he analyzed.
+
+For Letty the morning had been feverish, chiefly because of her
+uncertainty. Was it the wish of the prince that she should go, or was
+it not? If it was his wish, why had he not let her? If, on the other
+hand, he desired her to stay, what did he mean to do with her? He had
+passed her on the way out to breakfast at the Club--she had been
+standing in the hall--and he had smiled.
+
+What was the significance of that smile? She sat down in the library
+to think. She sat down in the chair she had occupied while he lay on
+the couch, and reconstructed that scene which now, for all her life,
+would thrill her with emotional memories. There he had lain, his head
+on the very indentation which the cushion still bore, his feet here,
+where she had pressed her lips to them. She had actually had her hand
+on his brow, she had smoothed back his hair, and had hardly noted at
+the time that such was her extraordinary privilege.
+
+She came back to the fact that he had smiled at her. It would have
+been an enchanting smile from anyone, but coming from a prince it had
+all the romantic effulgence with which princes' smiles are infused.
+How much of that romantic effulgence came automatically from the
+prince because he was a prince, and how much of it was inspired by
+herself? Was any of it inspired by herself? When all was said and done
+this last was the great question.
+
+It brought her where so many things brought her, to the dream of love
+at first sight. Could it have happened to him as it had happened to
+herself? It was so much in her mental order of things that she was far
+from considering it impossible. Improbable, yes; she would admit as
+much as that; but impossible, no! To be sure she had been in the old
+gray rag; but Steptoe had informed her that there were kings who went
+about falling in love with beggar-maids. She would have loved being
+one of those beggar-maids; and after all, was she not?
+
+True, there was the other girl; but Letty found it hard to see her as
+a reality. Besides, she had, in appearance at least, treated him
+badly. Might it not easily have come about that she, Letty, had caught
+his heart in the rebound? She quite understood that if the prince
+_had_ fallen in love with her at first sight, there might be
+convulsion in his inner self without, as yet, a comprehension on his
+part of the nature of his passion.
+
+She had reached this point when Steptoe entered the library on one of
+his endless tasks of re-arranging that which seemed to be in
+sufficiently good order. Putting the big desk to rights he said over
+his shoulder:
+
+"Perhaps I'd better tell madam as she's to 'ave a caller this
+afternoon."
+
+Letty sprang up in alarm. "A--_what_?"
+
+"A lydy what'll myke a call. Oh, madam don't need to be afryde. She's
+an old friend o' Mr. Rash's, and'll want, no doubt, to be a friend o'
+madam too."
+
+"But what does she know about me?"
+
+"Mr. Rash must 'a told 'er. She spoke to me just now on the telephone,
+and seemed to know everything. She said she'd be 'ere this afternoon
+about four-thirty, if madam'd be so good as to give 'er a cup o'
+tea."
+
+"Me?"
+
+Having invented the cup of tea for his own purpose Steptoe went on to
+explain further. "It's what the 'igh lydies mostly gives each other
+about 'alf past four or five o'clock, and madam couldn't homit it
+without seemin' as if she didn't know what's what. It'll be very
+important for madam to tyke 'er position from the start. If the lydy
+is comin' friendly like she'd be 'urt if madam wasn't friendly too."
+
+Letty had seen the giving and taking of tea in more than one scene in
+the movies, and had also, from a discreet corner, witnessed the
+enacting of it right in the "set" on the studio lot. She remembered
+one time in particular when Luciline Lynch, the star in _Our Crimson
+Sins_, had driven Frank Redgar, the director, almost out of his senses
+by her inability to get the right turn of the wrist. Letty, too, had
+been almost out of her senses with the longing to be in Luciline
+Lynch's place, to do the thing in what was obviously the way. But now
+that she was confronted with the opportunity in real life she saw the
+situation otherwise.
+
+"And I won't be able to talk right," was the difficulty she raised
+next.
+
+"That'll be a chance for madam to listen and ketch on. She's horfly
+quick, madam is, and by listenin' to Miss Walbrook, that's the lydy's
+nyme, and listenin' to 'erself--" He broke off to emphasize this line
+of suggestion--"it's listenin' to 'erself that'll 'elp madam most.
+It's a thing as 'ardly no one does. If they did they'd be 'orrified at
+their squawky voices and bad pernounciation. If I didn't listen to
+myself, why, I'd talk as bad as anyone, but--Well, as I sye, this'll
+give madam a chance. All the time what Miss Walbrook is speakin' madam
+can be listenin' to 'er and listenin' to 'erself too, and if she mykes
+mistykes this time she'll myke fewer the next."
+
+Letty was pondering these hints as he continued.
+
+"Now if madam wouldn't think me steppin' out of my plyce I'd suggest
+that me and 'er 'as a little tea of our own like--right now--in the
+drorin' room--and I'll be Miss Walbrook--and William'll be
+William--and madam'll be madam--and we'll get it letter-perfect before
+'and, just as with Mary Ann Courage and Jyne."
+
+No sooner said than done. Letty was already wearing the white filmy
+thing with the copper-sash, buried with solemn rites on the previous
+night, but disinterred that morning, which did very well as a
+tea-gown. Steptoe placed her in the corner of the sofa which the lyte
+Mrs. Allerton had generally occupied when "receivin' company", and
+William brought in the tea-equipage on a gorgeous silver tray.
+
+Before he did this it had been necessary to school William to his
+part, which, to do him justice, he carried out with becoming gravity.
+Any reserves he might have felt were expressed to Golightly by a wink
+behind Steptoe's back before he left the kitchen. The wink was the
+more expressive owing to the fact that Golightly and William had
+already summed up the old fellow as "balmy on the bean," while their
+part was to humor him. Plain as a bursting shell seemed to William
+Miss Gravely's position in the household, and Steptoe's chivalry
+toward her an eccentricity which a sense of humor could enjoy.
+Otherwise they justified his reading of the fundamental non-morality
+of men, in bringing no condemnation to bear on anyone concerned. Being
+themselves two almost incapacitated heroes, with jobs likely to prove
+"soft," it was wise, they felt, to enter into Steptoe's comedy. At
+half past ten in the morning, therefore, Golightly prepared tea and
+buttered toast, while William arranged the tea-tray with those
+over-magnificent appointments which had been "the lyte Mrs. Allerton's
+tyste."
+
+From her corner of the sofa Letty heard the butler announce, in a
+voice stately but not stentorian: "Miss Barbara Walbrook."
+
+He was so near the door that to step out and step in again was the
+work of a second. In stepping in again he trod daintily, wriggling the
+back part of his person, better to simulate the feminine. In order
+that Letty should nowhere be caught unaware he put out his hand
+languidly, back upward, as princesses do when they expect it to be
+kissed.
+
+"So delighted to find you at 'ome, Mrs. Allerton. It's such a very
+fine dye I was sure as you'd be out."
+
+Rising from her corner Letty shook the relaxed hand as she might have
+shaken a dog's tail. "Very pleased to meet you."
+
+From the histrionic Steptoe lapsed at once into the critical. "I think
+if madam was to sye, 'So glad to be _at_ 'ome, Miss Walbrook; do let
+me ring for tea,' it'd be more like the lyte Mrs. Allerton."
+
+Obediently Letty repeated this formula, had the bell pointed out to
+her, and rang. The ladies having seated themselves, Miss Walbrook
+continued to improvise on the subject of the weather.
+
+"Some o' these October dyes'll be just like summer time! and then
+agyne there'll be a nip in the wind as'll fairly freeze you. A good
+time o' year to get out your furs, and I'm sure I 'ope as 'ow the
+moths 'aven't gone and got at 'em. Horfly nasty things them moths.
+They sye as everything in the world 'as a use; but I'm sure I don't
+see what use there is for moths, eatin' 'oles in the seats of
+gentlemen's trousers, no matter what you do to keep the coat-closet
+aired--and everything like that. What do you sye, Mrs. Allerton?"
+
+Letty was relieved of the necessity of answering by the entrance of
+William with the tray, after which her task became easier. Used to
+making "a good cup of tea" in an ordinary way, the doing it with this
+formal ceremoniousness was only a matter of revision. As if it was
+yesterday she recalled the instructions given to Luciline Lynch,
+"Lemon?--cream?--one lump?--two lumps?" so that Miss Walbrook was
+startled by her readiness. She, Miss Walbrook, was betrayed, in fact,
+into some confusion of personality, stating that she would have cream
+and no sugar, and that furthermore Englishmen like herself 'ardly ever
+took lemon in their tea, and in her opinion no one ever did to whom
+the tea-drinking 'abit was 'abitual.
+
+"It's a question of tyste," Miss Walbrook continued, sipping with a
+soft siffling noise in the way he considered to be ladylike. "Them
+that 'as drunk tea with their mother's milk, as you might sye, 'll
+tyke cream and sugar, one or both; but them that 'as picked up the
+'abit in lyter life 'll often condescend to lemon."
+
+What the rehearsal did for Letty was to make the mechanical task
+familiar, while she concentrated her attention on Miss Walbrook.
+
+It has to be admitted that to Barbara Walbrook Letty was a shock.
+Having worked for two years in the Bleary Street Settlement she had
+her preconceived ideas of what she was to find, and she found
+something so different that her first consciousness was that of being
+"sold."
+
+Steptoe had received her at the door, and having ushered her into the
+drawing-room announced, "Miss Barbara Walbrook," as if she had been
+calling on a duchess. From the semi-obscurity of the back drawing-room
+a small lithe figure came forward a step or two. The small lithe
+figure was wearing a tea-gown of which so practiced an eye as Miss
+Walbrook's could not but estimate the provenance and value, while a
+sweet voice said:
+
+"I'm so glad to be at home, Miss Walbrook. Do let me ring for tea."
+
+Before a protest could be voiced the bell had been rung, so that Miss
+Walbrook found herself sitting in the chair Steptoe had used in the
+morning, and listening to her hostess as you listen to people in a
+dream.
+
+"Beautiful weather for October, isn't it? Some of these October
+days'll be just like summer time. And then again there'll be a nip in
+the wind that'll fairly freeze you. A good time of year to get out
+your furs, isn't it? and I'm sure I hope the moths ain't--haven't--got
+at them. Awfully nasty things moths----"
+
+Letty's further efforts were interrupted by William bearing the tray
+as he had borne it in the morning, and in the minutes of silence while
+he placed it Miss Walbrook could go through the mental process known
+as pulling oneself together.
+
+But she couldn't pull herself together without a sense of outrage. She
+had expected to feel shame, vicariously for Rash; she had not expected
+to be asked to take part in a horrible bit of play-acting. This
+dressing-up; this mock hospitality; this desecration of the things
+which "dear Mrs. Allerton" had used; this mingling of ignorance and
+pretentiousness, inspired a rage prompting her to fling the back of
+her hand at the ridiculous creature's face. She couldn't do that, of
+course. She couldn't even express herself as she felt. She had come on
+a mission, and she must carry out that mission; and to carry out the
+mission she must be as suave as her indignation would allow of. _She_
+was morally the mistress of this house. Rash and all Rash owned
+belonged to _her_. To see this strumpet sitting in her place....
+
+It did nothing to calm her that while she was pressing Rash's ring
+into her flesh, beneath her glove, this vile thing was wearing a plain
+gold band, just as if she was married. She could understand that if
+they had absurdly walked through an absurd ceremony the absurd
+minister who performed it might have insisted on this absurd symbol;
+but it should have been snatched from the creature's hand the minute
+the business was ended. They owed that to _her_. _Hers_ was the only
+claim Rash had to consider, and to allow this farce to be enacted
+beneath his roof....
+
+But she remembered that Letty didn't know who she was, or why she had
+come, or the degree to which she, Barbara Walbrook, saw through this
+foolery.
+
+Letty repeated her little formula: "Lemon?--cream?--one lump?--two
+lumps?" though before she reached the end of it her voice began to
+fail. Catching the hostility in the other woman's bearing, she felt it
+the more acutely because in style, dress, and carriage this was the
+model she would have chosen for herself.
+
+Miss Walbrook waved hospitality aside. "Thank you, no; nothing in the
+way of tea." She nodded over her shoulder towards William's retreating
+form. "Who's that man?"
+
+Her tone was that of a person with the right to inquire. Letty didn't
+question that right, knowing the extent to which she herself was an
+usurper. "His name is William."
+
+"How did he come here?"
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+"Where are Nettie and Jane?"
+
+"They've--they've left."
+
+"Left? Why?"
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+"And has Mrs. Courage left too?"
+
+Letty nodded, the damask flush flooding her cheeks darkly.
+
+"When? Since--since you came?"
+
+Letty nodded again. She knew now that this was the bar of social
+judgment of which she had been afraid.
+
+The social judge continued. "That must be very hard on Mr. Allerton."
+
+Letty bowed her head. "I suppose it is."
+
+"He's not used to new people about him, and it's not good for him. I
+don't know whether you've seen enough of him to know that he's
+something of an invalid."
+
+"I know--" she touched her forehead--"that he's sick up here."
+
+"Oh, do you? Then I shouldn't have thought that you'd have--" but she
+dropped this line to take up another. "Yes, he's always been so. When
+he was a boy they were afraid he might be epileptic; and though he
+never was as bad as that he's always needed to be taken care of. He
+can do very wild and foolish things as--as you've discovered for
+yourself."
+
+Letty felt herself now a little shameful lump of misery. This woman
+was so experienced, so right. She spoke with a decision and an
+authority which made love at first sight a fancy to blush at. Letty
+could say nothing because there was nothing to say, and meanwhile the
+determined voice went on.
+
+"It's terrible for a man like him to make such a mistake, because
+being what he is he can't grapple with it as a stronger or a coarser
+man would do."
+
+But here Letty saw something that might be faintly pleaded in her own
+defence. "He says he wouldn't ha' made the mistake if that--that other
+girl hadn't been crazy."
+
+Barbara drew herself up. "Did he--did he say that?"
+
+"He said something like it. He said she went off the hooks, just like
+he did himself." She raised her eyes. "Do you know her, Miss
+Walbrook?"
+
+"Yes, I know her."
+
+"She must be an awful fool."
+
+Barbara prayed for patience. "What--what makes you say so?"
+
+"Oh, just what _he's_ said."
+
+"And what has he said? Has he talked about her to _you_?"
+
+"He hasn't talked about her. He's just--just let things out."
+
+"What sort of things?"
+
+"Only that sort." She added, as if to herself: "I don't believe he
+thinks much of her."
+
+Barbara's self-control was miraculous. "I've understood that he was
+very much in love with her."
+
+"Well, perhaps he is." Letty's little movement of the shoulders hinted
+that an expert wouldn't be of this opinion. "He may think he is,
+anyhow."
+
+"But if he thinks he is----"
+
+Letty's eyes rested on her visitor with their compelling candor. "I
+don't believe men know much about love, do you, Miss Walbrook?"
+
+"It depends. All men haven't had as much experience of it as I suppose
+you've had----"
+
+"Oh, I haven't had any." The candor of the eyes was now in the whole
+of the truthful face. "Nobody was ever in love with me--never. I never
+had a fella--nor nothing."
+
+In spite of herself Barbara believed this. She couldn't help herself.
+She could hear Rash saying that whatever else was wrong in the
+ridiculous business the girl herself was straight. All the same the
+discussion was beneath her. It was beneath her to listen to opinions
+of herself coming from such a source. If Rash didn't "think much of
+her" there was something to "have out" with him, not with this little
+street-waif dressed up with this ludicrous mummery. The sooner she
+ended the business on which she had come the sooner she would get a
+legitimate outlet for the passion of jealousy and rage consuming her.
+
+"But we're wandering away from my errand. I won't pretend that I've
+come of my own accord. I'm a very old friend of Mr. Allerton's, and
+he's asked me--or practically asked me--to come and find out----"
+
+For what she was to come and find out she lacked for a minute the
+right word, and so held up the sentence.
+
+"What I'd take to let him off?"
+
+The form of expression was so crude that once more Barbara was
+startled. "Well, that's what it would come to."
+
+"But I've told him already that--that I want to let him off anyhow."
+
+"Yes? And on what terms?"
+
+"I don't want any terms."
+
+"Oh, but there must be _terms_. He couldn't let you do it----"
+
+"He could let me do it for _him_, couldn't he? I'd go through fire, if
+it'd make him a bit more comfortable than he is."
+
+Barbara could not believe her ears. "Do you want me to understand
+that----?"
+
+"That I'll do whatever will make him happy just to _make_ him happy?
+Yes. That's it. He didn't need to send no one--to send anyone--to ask
+me, because I've told him so already. He wants me to get out. Well,
+I'm ready to get out. He wants me to go to the bad. Well, I'm
+ready----"
+
+"Yes; he understands all that. But, don't you see? a man in his
+position couldn't take such a sacrifice from a girl in yours----"
+
+"Unless he pays me for it in cash."
+
+"That's putting it in a nutshell. If you owned a house, for instance,
+and I wanted it, I'd buy it from you and pay you for it; but I
+couldn't take it as a gift, no matter how liberal you were nor how
+much I needed it."
+
+"I can see that about a house; but your own self is different. I could
+sell a house when I couldn't sell--myself."
+
+"Oh, but would you call that selling yourself?"
+
+"It'd be selling myself--the way I look at it. When I'm so ready to do
+what he wants I can't see why he don't let me." She added, tearfully:
+"Did he tell you about this morning?"
+
+She nodded. "Yes, he told me about that."
+
+"Well, I would have gone then if--if I'd known how to work the door."
+
+"Oh, that's easy enough."
+
+"Do you know?"
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"Will you show me?"
+
+Miss Walbrook rose. "It's so simple." She continued, as they went
+toward the door: "You see, Mr. Allerton's mother always kept a lot of
+valuable jewelry in the house, and she was afraid of burglars. She had
+the most wonderful pearls. I suppose Mr. Allerton has them still,
+locked away in some bank. Burglars would never come in by the front
+door, my aunt used to tell her, but--" They reached the door itself.
+"Now, you see, there's a common lock, a bolt, and a chain----"
+
+Letty explained that she had discovered them already.
+
+"But, you see these two little brass knobs over here? That's the
+trick. You push this one this way, and that one that way, and the door
+is locked with an extra double lock, which hardly anyone would
+suspect. See?"
+
+She shook the door which resisted as it had resisted Letty in the
+morning.
+
+"Now! You push that one this way, and this one that way--and there you
+are!"
+
+She opened the door to show how easily the thing could be done; and
+the door being open she passed out. She had not intended to go in
+this way; but, after all, was not her mission accomplished? It was
+nothing to her whether this girl accepted money, or whether she did
+not. The one thing essential was that she should take herself away;
+and if she was sincere in what she said she had now the means of doing
+it. Without troubling herself to take her leave Miss Walbrook went
+down the steps.
+
+Before turning toward Fifth Avenue she glanced back. Letty was
+standing in the open doorway, her flaming eyes wide, her expression
+puzzled and wounded. "It's nothing to me," Barbara repeated to herself
+firmly; but because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady,
+almost before she was a woman, she smiled faintly, with a distant, and
+yet not discourteous, inclination of the head.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+It was because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, that
+by the time she had walked the few steps into Fifth Avenue Miss
+Walbrook already felt the inner reproach of having done something
+mean. To do anything mean was so strange to her that she didn't at
+first recognize the sensation. She only found herself repeating two
+words, and repeating them uneasily: "_Noblesse oblige!_"
+
+Nevertheless, on the principle that all's fair in love and war, she
+fought this off. "Either she must go or I must." That she herself
+should go was not to be considered; therefore the other must go, and
+by the shortest way. The shortest way was the way she had shown her,
+and which the girl herself was desirous to take. There was no more
+than that to the situation.
+
+There was no more than that to the situation unless it was that the
+strong was taking a poor advantage of the weak. But then, why
+shouldn't the strong take any advantage it possessed? What otherwise
+was the use of being strong? The strong prevailed, and the weak went
+under. That was the law of life. To suppose that the weak must prevail
+because it was weak was sheer sentimentality. All the same, those two
+inconvenient words kept dinning in her ears: "_Noblesse oblige!_"
+
+She began to question the honesty which in Letty's presence had
+convinced her. It was probably not honesty at all. She had known
+girls in the Bleary Street Settlement who could persuade her that
+black was white, but who had proved on further knowledge to be lying
+all round the compass. When it wasn't lying it was bluff. It was
+possible that Letty was only bluffing, that in her pretense at
+magnanimity she was simply scheming for a bigger price. In that case
+she, Barbara, had called the bluff very skilfully. She had put her in
+a position in which she could be taken at her word. Since she was
+ready to go, she could go. Since she was ready to go to the bad....
+
+Miss Walbrook was not prim. She knew too much of the world to be
+easily shocked, in the old conventional sense. Besides, her Bleary
+Street work had brought her into contact with girls who had gone to
+the bad, and she had not found them different from other girls. If she
+hadn't known....
+
+She could contemplate without horror, therefore, Letty's taking
+desperate steps--if indeed she hadn't taken them long ago--and yet she
+herself didn't want to be involved in the proceeding. It was one thing
+to view an unfortunate situation from which you stood detached, and
+another to be in a certain sense the cause of it. She would not really
+be the cause of it, whatever the girl did, since she, the girl, was a
+free agent, and of an age to know her own mind. Moreover, the secret
+of the door was one which she couldn't help finding out in any case.
+She, Miss Walbrook, could dismiss these scruples; and yet there was
+that uncomfortable sing-song humming through her brain: "_Noblesse
+oblige! Noblesse oblige!_"
+
+"I must get rid of it," she said to herself, as Wildgoose admitted
+her. "I've got to be on the safe side. I can't have it on my mind."
+
+Going to the telephone before she had so much as taken off her gloves
+she was answered by Steptoe. "This is Miss Walbrook again, Steptoe. I
+should like to speak to--to the young woman."
+
+Steptoe who had found Letty crying after Miss Walbrook's departure
+answered with resentful politeness. "I'll speak to Mrs. Allerton,
+miss. She _may_ be aible to come to the telephone."
+
+"Ye-es?" came later, in a feeble, teary voice.
+
+"This is Miss Walbrook again. I'm sorry to trouble you the second
+time."
+
+"Oh, that doesn't matter."
+
+"I merely wanted to say, what perhaps I should have said before I
+left, that I hope you won't--won't _use_ the information I gave you as
+I was leaving--at any rate not at once."
+
+"Do you mean the door?"
+
+"Exactly. I was afraid after I came away that you might do something
+in a hurry----"
+
+"It'll have to be in a hurry if I do it at all."
+
+"Oh, I don't see that. In any case, I'd--I'd think it over. Perhaps we
+could have another talk about it, and then----"
+
+Something was said which sounded like a faint, "Very well," so that
+Barbara put up the receiver.
+
+Her conscience relieved she could open the dams keeping back the
+fiercer tides of her anger. Rash had talked about her to this girl! He
+had given her to understand that she was a fool! He had allowed it to
+appear that "he didn't think much of her!" No matter what he had
+said, the girl had been able to make these inferences. What was more,
+these inferences might be true. Perhaps he _didn't_ think much of her!
+Perhaps he only _thought_ he was in love with her! The idea was so
+terrible that it stilled her, as approaching seismic storm will still
+the elements. She moved about the drawing-room, taking off her gloves,
+her veil, her hat, and laying them together on a table, as if she was
+afraid to make a sound. She was standing beside that table, not
+knowing what to do next, or where to go, when Wildgoose came to the
+door to announce, "Mr. Allerton."
+
+"I've seen her." Without other form of greeting, or moving from beside
+the table, she picked up her gloves, threw them down again, picked
+them up again, threw them down again, with the nervous action of the
+hands which betrayed suppressed excitement. "I didn't believe
+her--quite."
+
+"But you didn't disbelieve her--wholly?"
+
+"It's a difficult case."
+
+"I've got you into an awful scrape, Barbe."
+
+She threw down the gloves with special vigor. "Oh, don't begin on
+that. The scrape's there. What we have to find is the way out."
+
+"Well, do you see it any more clearly?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+He came near to her. "I see this--that I can't let her throw herself
+away for me. I've been thinking it over, and I want to ask your
+opinion of this plan. Let's sit down."
+
+She thought his plan the maddest that was ever proposed, and yet she
+accepted it. She accepted it because she was suspicious, jealous, and
+unhappy. "It'll give me the chance to watch--and _see_," she said to
+herself, as he talked.
+
+In his opinion Letty couldn't take their point of view because she was
+so inexperienced. It seemed to her a simple thing to go away, leaving
+them with the responsibilities of her future on their consciences; and
+it would not seem other than a simple thing till she saw life more as
+they did. To bring her to this degree of culture they must be subtle
+with her, and patient. They mustn't rush things. They mustn't let her
+rush them. To end the situation in such a way as to make for happiness
+they must end it at a point where all would be best for all concerned.
+For Barbara and himself nothing would be best which was not also best
+for the girl. What would be best for the girl would be some degree of
+education, of knowledge of the world, so that she might go back to the
+life whence they had plucked her less likely to be a prey to the
+vicious. In that case, if they supplied her with a little income she
+would know what to do with it, and would perhaps marry some man in her
+own class able to take care of her.
+
+Barbara's impulse was to cry out: "That's the most preposterous
+suggestion I ever heard of in my life!" But she controlled this quite
+reasonable prompting because another voice said to her: "This will
+give you the opportunity to keep an eye on them. If he's not true in
+his love for you--if there _is_ an infatuation on his part for this
+common and vulgar creature--you'll be able to detect it." Jealousy
+loving to suffer she was willing to inflict torture on herself for the
+sake of catching him in disloyalty.
+
+Expecting a storm, and bringing out what he considered his wise
+proposals with great embarrassment, Allerton was surprised and pleased
+at the sympathetic calm in which she received them.
+
+"So that you'd suggest----?"
+
+"Our keeping her on a while longer, and making friends with her. I'd
+like it tremendously if you'd be a friend to her, because you could do
+more for her than anyone."
+
+"More than you?"
+
+"Oh, I'd do my bit too," he assured her, innocently. "I could put her
+up to a lot of things, seeing her every day as I should. But you're
+the one I should really count on."
+
+Because the words hurt her more than any she could utter; she said,
+quietly: "I suppose you remember sometimes that after all she's your
+wife."
+
+He sprang to his feet. Knowing that he did at times remember it he
+tried to deny it. "No, I don't. She's not. I don't admit it. I don't
+acknowledge it. If you care anything about me, Barbe, you'll never say
+that again."
+
+He came and knelt beside her, taking her hands and kissing them.
+Laying his head in her lap, he begged to be caressed, as if he had
+been a dog.
+
+Nevertheless by half past nine that evening he was at home, sitting by
+the fireside with Letty, and beginning his special part in the great
+experiment.
+
+"She's not my wife," he kept repeating to himself poignantly, as
+he walked up the Avenue from the Club; "she's not--she's _not_. But
+she _is_ a poor child toward whom I've undertaken grave
+responsibilities."
+
+Because the responsibilities were grave, and she was a poor child, his
+attitude toward her began to be paternal. It was the more freely
+paternal because Barbe approved of what he was undertaking. Had she
+disapproved he might have undertaken it all the same, but he couldn't
+have done it with this whole-heartedness. He would have been haunted
+by the fear of her displeasure; whereas now he could let himself go.
+
+"We don't want to keep you a prisoner, or detain you against your
+will," he said, with regard to the incident of the morning, "but if
+you'll stay with us a little longer, I think we can convince you of
+our good intentions."
+
+"Who's--we?"
+
+She shot the question at him, as she lay back in her chair, the red
+book in her lap. He smiled inwardly at the ready pertinence with which
+she went to a point he didn't care to discuss.
+
+"Well, then, suppose I said--I? That'll do, won't it?"
+
+She shot another question, her flaming eyes half veiled. "How long
+would you want me to stay?"
+
+"Suppose we didn't fix a time? Suppose we just left it--like that?"
+
+The question rose to her lips: "But in the end I'm to go?" only, on
+second thoughts she repressed it. She preferred that the situation
+should be left "like that," since it meant that she was not at once to
+be separated from the prince. The fact that she was legally the
+prince's wife had as little reality to her as to him. Could she have
+had what she yearned for law or no law would have been the same to
+her. But since she couldn't have that, it was much that he should
+come like this and sit with her by the fire in the evening.
+
+He leaned forward and took the book from her lap. "What are you
+reading? Oh, this! I haven't looked at it for years." He glanced at
+the title. "_The Little Mermaid!_ That used to be my favorite. It
+still is. When I was in Copenhagen I went to see the little bronze
+mermaid sitting on a rock on the shore. It's a memorial to Hans
+Andersen. She's quite startling for a minute--till you know what it
+is. Where are you at?"
+
+Pointing out the line at which she had stopped her hand touched his,
+but all the consciousness of the accident was on her side. He seemed
+to notice nothing, beginning to read aloud to her, with no suspicion
+that sentiment existed.
+
+"Many an evening and morning she rose to the place where she had left
+the prince. She watched the fruits in the garden ripen and fall; she
+saw the snow melt from the high mountains; but the prince she never
+saw, and she came home sadder than ever. Her one consolation was to
+sit in her little garden, with her arms clasped round the marble
+statue which was like the prince----"
+
+"That'd be me," Letty whispered to herself; "my arms clasped round a
+marble statue--like my prince--but only a marble statue."
+
+"Her flowers were neglected," Allerton read on, "and grew wild in a
+luxuriant tangle of stem and blossom, reaching the branches of the
+willow-tree, and making the whole place dark and dim. At last she
+could bear it no longer and she told one of her sisters----"
+
+"I wouldn't tell my sister, if I had one," Letty assured herself. "I'd
+never tell no one. It's more like my own secret when I keep it to
+myself. Nobody'll ever know--not even him."
+
+"The other sisters learned the story then, but they told it to no one
+but a few other mermaids, who told it to their intimate friends. One
+of these friends knew who the prince was, and told the princess where
+he came from and where his kingdom lay. Now she knew where he lived;
+and many a night she spent there, floating on the water. She ventured
+nearer to the land than any of her sisters had done. She swam up the
+narrow lagoon, under the carved marble balcony; and there she sat and
+watched the prince when he thought himself alone in the moonlight. She
+remembered how his head had rested on her breast, and how she had
+kissed his brow; but he would never know, and could not even dream of
+her."
+
+Letty had not kissed her prince's brow, but she had kissed his feet;
+but he would never know that, and would dream of her no more than this
+other prince of the little thing who loved him.
+
+Allerton continued to read on, partly because the old tale came back
+to him with its enchanting loveliness, partly because reading aloud
+would be a feature of his educational scheme, and partly because it
+soothed him to be doing it. He could never read to Barbara. Once, when
+he tried it, the sound of his voice and the monotony of his cadences,
+so got on her nerves that she stopped him in the middle of a word.
+But this girl with her uncritical mind, and her gratitude for small
+bits of kindliness, gave him confidence in himself by her rapt way of
+listening.
+
+She did listen raptly, since a prince's reading must always be more
+arresting than that of ordinary mortals, and also because, both
+consciously and subconsciously, she was taking his pronunciation as a
+standard.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+And just at this minute her name was under discussion in a brilliant
+gathering at The Hindoo Lantern, in another quarter of New York.
+
+If you know The Hindoo Lantern you know how much it depends on
+atmosphere. Once a disused warehouse in a section of the city which
+commerce had forsaken, the enthusiasm for the dance which arose about
+1910, has made it a temple. It gains, too, by being a temple of the
+esoteric. The Hindoo Lantern is not everybody's lantern, and does not
+swing in the open vulgar street. You might live in New York a hundred
+years and unless you were one of the initiated and privileged, you
+might never know of its existence.
+
+You could not so much as approach it were it not first explained to
+you what you ought to do. You must pass through a tobacconist's, which
+from the street looks like any other tobacconist's, after which you
+traverse a yard, which looks like any other yard, except that it is
+bounded by a wall in which there is a small and unobtrusive door.
+Beside the small and unobtrusive door there hangs a bell-rope, of the
+ancient kind suggesting the convent or the Orient. The bell-rope
+pulls a bell; the bell clangs overhead; the door is opened cautiously
+by a Hindoo lad, or, as some say, a mulatto boy dressed as a Hindoo.
+If you are with a friend of the institution you will be admitted
+without more inspection; but should you be a stranger there will be a
+scrutiny of your passports. Assuming, however, that you go in, you
+will find a small courtyard, in which at last The Hindoo Lantern hangs
+mystic, suggestive, in oriental iron-work, and panels of colored
+glass.
+
+Having passed beneath this symbol you will enter an antechamber rich
+in the magic of the East. In a reverent obscurity you will find Buddha
+on the right, Vishnu on the left, with flowers set before the one,
+while incense burns before the other. Somewhere in the darkness an
+Oriental woman will be seated on the ground, twanging on a sarabar,
+and now and then crooning a chant of invitation to come and share in
+darksome rites. You will thus be "worked up" to a sense of the
+mysterious before you pass the third gate of privilege into the shrine
+itself.
+
+Here you will discover the large empty oval of floor, surrounded by
+little tables for segregation and refreshment, with which the past ten
+years have made us familiar. The place will be buzzing with the hum of
+voices, merry with duologues of laughter, and steaming with tobacco
+smoke. A jazz-band will strike up, coughing out the nauseated,
+retching intervals so stimulating to our feet, and two by two, in
+driblets, streamlets, and lastly in a volume, the guests will take the
+floor.
+
+In the way of "steps" all the latest will be on exhibition. You will
+see the cow-trot, the rabbit-jump, the broom-stick, the washerwoman's
+dip. Everyone who is anyone will be here, if not on one night then on
+another, in a jovial fraternity steeped in the spirit of democracy.
+Revelry will be sustained on lemonade and a resinous astringent known
+locally as beer, while a sense of doing the forbidden will be in the
+air. For commercial reasons it will be needful to keep it in the air,
+since in the proceedings themselves there will be nothing more occult,
+or more inciting to iniquity, than a kindergarten game.
+
+Hither Mr. Gorry Larrabin had brought Mademoiselle Odette Coucoul, to
+teach her the new dances. As a matter of fact, he had just led her
+back to their little table, inconspicuously placed in the front row,
+after putting her through the paces of the camel-step. Mademoiselle
+had found it entrancing, so much more novel in the motion than the
+antiquated valses she had danced in France. Mr. Larrabin had retreated
+like a camel walking backwards, while she had advanced like a camel
+going forwards. The art was in lifting the foot quite high, throwing
+it slightly backwards, and setting it down with a delicate
+deliberation, while you craned the neck before you with a shake of the
+Adam's apple. To incite you to produce this effect the jazz-band urged
+you onward with a sob, a gulp, a moan, an effect of strangulation,
+till finally it tore up the seat of your being as if you had been
+suddenly struck sea-sick.
+
+"Mon Dieu, but it is lofely," mademoiselle gurgled, laughing in her
+breathlessness. "It is terr-i-bul to call no one a camel--_un
+chameau_--in France; but here am I a--_chameau_!"
+
+Gorry took this with puzzled amusement. "What's the matter with
+calling anyone a camel? I don't see any harm in that."
+
+Mademoiselle hid her face in confusion. "Oh, but it is terr-i-bul,
+terr-i-bul! It is almost so worse as to call no one a--how you say zat
+word in Eenglish?--a cow, n'est ce pas?--_une vache_--and zat is the
+most bad name what you can call no one."
+
+Looking across the room Gorry was struck with an idea. "Well, there's
+a--what d'ye call it--_a vashe_--over there. See that guy with the
+girl with the cream-colored hair--fella with a big black mustache,
+like a brigand in a play? There's a _vashe_ all-righty; and yet I've
+got to keep in with him."
+
+As he explained his reasons for keeping in with the "vashe" in
+question mademoiselle contented herself with shedding radiance and
+paying no attention. Neither did she pay attention when he went on to
+tell of the girl who had disappeared, and of her stepfather's reasons
+for finding her. She woke to cognizance of the subject only when Gorry
+repeated the exact words of Miss Tina Vanzetti that morning: "Name of
+Letty Gravely."
+
+It was mademoiselle's turn for repetition. "But me, I know dat name. I
+'ear it not so long ago. Name of Let-ty Grav-el-ly! I sure 'ear zat
+name all recently." She reflected, tapping her forehead with vivacity.
+"Mais quand? Mais oui? C'était--Ah!" The exclamation was the sharp cry
+of discovery. "Tina Vanzetti--my frien'! She tell me zis morning. Zat
+girl--Let-ty Grav-el-ly--she come chez Margot with ole man--what he
+keep ze white slave--and he command her grand beautiful
+trousseau--Tina Vanzetti she will give me ze address--and I will tell
+you--and you will tell him--and he will put you on to _riche
+affairs_----"
+
+"It'll be dollars and cents in the box office for me," Gorry
+interpreted, forcibly, while the band belched forth a chord like the
+groan of a dying monster, calling them again to their feet.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"'Remember,' said the witch," Allerton continued to read, "'when you
+have once assumed a human form you can never again be a mermaid--never
+return to your home or to your sisters more. Should you fail to win
+the prince's love, so that he leaves father and mother for your sake,
+and lays his hand in yours before the priest, an immortal soul will
+never be granted you. On the same day that he marries another your
+heart will break, and you will drift as sea-foam on the water.' 'So
+let it be,' said the little mermaid, turning pale as death.'"
+
+Allerton lifted his eyes from the book. "Does it bore you?"
+
+There was no mistaking her sincerity. "_No!_ I _love_ it."
+
+"Then perhaps we'll read a lot of things. After this we'll find a good
+novel, and then possibly somebody's life. You'd like that, wouldn't
+you?"
+
+Her joy was such that he could hardly hear the "Yes," for which he was
+listening. He listened because he was so accustomed to boring people
+that to know he was not boring them was a consolation.
+
+"Is there anybody's life--his biography--that you'd be specially
+interested in?"
+
+She answered timidly and yet daringly. "Could we--could we read the
+life of the late Queen Victoria--when she was a girl?"
+
+"Oh, easily! I'll hunt round for one to-day. Now let me tell you about
+Hans Andersen. He was born in Denmark, so that he was a Dane. You know
+where Denmark is on the map, don't you?"
+
+"I think I do. It's there by Germany isn't it?"
+
+"Quite right. But let me get the atlas, and we'll look it up."
+
+He was on his feet when she summoned her forces for a question. "Do
+you read like this to--to the girl you're engaged to?"
+
+"No," he said, reddening. "She--she doesn't like it. She won't let me.
+But wait a minute. I'll go and get the atlas."
+
+"'On the same day that he marries another,' Letty repeated to herself,
+as she sat alone, 'your heart will break, and you will drift as
+sea-foam on the water.' 'So let it be,' said the little mermaid."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+On the next afternoon Allerton reported to Miss Walbrook the success
+of his first educational evening.
+
+"She's very intelligent, very. You'd really be pleased with her,
+Barbe. Her mind is so starved that it absorbs everything you say to
+her, as a dry soil will drink up rain."
+
+Regarding him with the mysterious Egyptian expression which had at
+times suggested the reincarnation of some ancient spirit Barbara
+maintained the stillness which had come upon her on the previous day.
+"That must be very satisfactory to you, Rash."
+
+He agreed the more enthusiastically because of believing her at one
+with him in this endeavor. "You bet! The whole thing is going to work
+out. She'll pick up our point of view as if she was born to it."
+
+"And you're not afraid of her picking up anything else?"
+
+"Anything else of what kind?"
+
+"She might fall in love with you, mightn't she?"
+
+"With me? Nonsense! No one would fall in love with me who----"
+
+Her mysterious Egyptian smile came and went. "You can stop there,
+Rash. It's no use being more uncomplimentary than you need to be. And
+then, too, you might fall in love with her."
+
+"Barbe!" He cried out, as if wounded. "You're really too absurd.
+She's a good little thing, and she's had the devil's own luck----"
+
+"They always do have. That was one thing I learnt in Bleary Street. It
+was never a girl's own fault. It was always the devil's own luck."
+
+"Well, isn't it, now, when you come to think of it? You can't take
+everything away from people, and expect them to have the same
+standards as you and me. Think of the mess that people of our sort
+make of things, even with every advantage."
+
+"We've our own temptations, of course."
+
+"And they've got theirs--without our pull in the way of carrying them
+off. You should hear Steptoe----"
+
+"I don't want to hear Steptoe. I've heard him too much already."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"What can I mean by it but just what I say? I should think you'd get
+rid of him."
+
+Having first looked puzzled, with a suggestion of pain, he ended with
+a laugh. "You might as well expect me to get rid of an old
+grandfather. Steptoe wouldn't let me, if I wanted to."
+
+"He doesn't like me."
+
+"Oh, that's just your imagination, Barbe. I'll answer for him when it
+comes to----"
+
+"You needn't take the trouble to do that, because I don't like him."
+
+"Oh, but you will when you come to understand him."
+
+"Possibly; but I don't mean to come to understand him. Old servants
+can be an awful nuisance, Rash----"
+
+"But Steptoe isn't exactly an old servant. He's more like----"
+
+"Oh, I know what he's like. He's a habit; and habits are always
+dangerous, even when they're good. But we're not going to quarrel
+about Steptoe yet. I just thought I'd put you on your guard----"
+
+"Against him?"
+
+"He's a horrid old schemer, if that's what you want me to say; but
+then it may be what you like."
+
+"Well, I do," he laughed, "when it comes to him. He's been a horrid
+old schemer as long as I remember him, but always for my good."
+
+"For your good as he sees it."
+
+"For my good as a kind old nurse might see it. He's limited, of
+course; but then kind old nurses generally are."
+
+To be true to her vow of keeping the peace she forced back her
+irritations, and smiled. "You're an awful goose, Rash; but then you're
+a lovable goose, aren't you?" She beckoned, imperiously. "Come here."
+
+When he was on his knees beside her chair she pressed back his face
+framed by her two hands. "Now tell me. Which do you love most--Steptoe
+or me?"
+
+He cast about him for two of her special preferences. "And you tell
+me; which do you love most, a saddle-horse or an opera?"
+
+"If I told you, which should I be?--the opera or the saddle-horse?"
+
+"If I told you, which would you give up?"
+
+So they talked foolishly, as lovers do in the chaffing stage, she
+trying to charm him into promising to get rid of Steptoe, he charmed
+by her willingness to charm him. Neither remembered that technically
+he was a married man; but then neither had ever taken his marriage to
+Letty as a serious breach in their relations.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+While he was thus on his knees the kindly old nurse was giving to
+Letty a kindly old nurse's advice.
+
+"If madam 'ud go out and tyke a walk I think it'd do madam good."
+
+To madam the suggestion had elements of mingled terror and attraction.
+"But, Steptoe, I couldn't go out and take a walk unless I dressed up
+in the new outdoor suit."
+
+"And what did madam buy it for?--with the 'at and the vyle, and
+everythink, just like the lyte Mrs. Allerton."
+
+It was the argument she was hoping for. In the first place she was
+used to the freedom of the streets; and in the second the outdoor suit
+was calling her. Letty's love of dress was more than a love of
+appearing at her best, though that love was part of it; it was a love
+of the clothes themselves, of fabrics, colors, and fashions. When her
+dreams were not of wandering knights who loved her at a
+glance--bankers, millionaires, casting directors in motion-picture
+studios, or, in high flights of imagination, incognito English
+lords--they dealt in costumes of magic tissue, of hues suited to her
+hair and eyes, in which the world saw and greeted her, not as the poor
+little waif whom Judson Flack had put out of doors, but the true Letty
+Gravely of romance. The Letty Gravely of romance was the real Letty
+Gravely, a being set free from the cruel, the ugly, the carking, the
+sordid, to flourish in a sunlight she knew to be shining somewhere.
+
+Oddly enough her vision had come partly true; and yet so out of focus
+that she couldn't see its truth. It was like the sunlight which she
+knew to be shining somewhere, with a wrong refraction in its rays. The
+world into which she had been carried was like that in a cubist
+picture which someone had shown her at the studio. It bore a relation
+to the world she knew, but a relation in which whatever she had
+supposed to be perpendicular was oblique, and whatever she had
+supposed to be oblique was horizontal, and nothing as she had been
+accustomed to find it. It made her head swim. It was literally true
+that she was afraid to move lest she should make a misstep through an
+error in her sense of planes.
+
+But clothes she understood. In the swirling of her universe they
+formed a rock to which her intelligence could cling. They kept her
+sane. In a sense they kept her happy. When all outside was confusion
+and topsy-turvyness she could retire among Margot's cartons, and find
+herself on solid ground. I should be sorry to record the hours she
+spent before the long mirror in the little back spare room. Here her
+imagination could give itself free range. She was Luciline Lynch, and
+Mercola Merch, and Lisabel Anstey, and any other star of whom she
+admired the attainments; she could play a whole series of parts from
+which her lack of a wardrobe had hitherto excluded her. From time to
+time she ventured, like Steptoe, to be Barbara Walbrook herself,
+though assuming the role with less intrepidity than he.
+
+It was easier, she found, to be any of the stars than Barbara
+Walbrook, for the reason that the latter was "the real thing." She was
+living her part, not playing it. She was "letter perfect," in
+Steptoe's sense, not because a director moved her person this way, or
+turned her head that way, but because life had so infused her that she
+did what was right unconsciously. Letty, by pretending to enter at the
+door and come forward to the mirror as to a living presence, studied
+what was right by imitation. Miss Walbrook walked with a swift, easy
+gait which suggested the precision of certain strong birds when
+swooping on their prey. Between the door and the mirror Letty aimed at
+the same effect till she made a discovery.
+
+"I can't do it her way; I can only do it my way."
+
+The ways were different; yet each could be effective. That too was a
+discovery. Nature had no rule to which every individual was obliged to
+conform. The individual was, in a measure, his own rule, and got his
+attractiveness from being so. The minute you abandoned your own gifts
+to cultivate those with which Nature had blessed someone else you lost
+not only your identity but your charm.
+
+Letty worked this out as something like a principle. However many the
+hints she took it would be folly to try to be anything but herself.
+After all, it was what gave her value to a star, her personality. If
+Luciline Lynch whom Nature had endowed with the grand manner had tried
+to be Mercola Merch who was all vivacious wickedness--well, anyone
+could see! So, if Barbara Walbrook suggested an eagle on the wing and
+she, Letty Gravely, was only a sparrow in the street, the sparrow
+would be more successful as a sparrow than in trying to emulate the
+eagle.
+
+And yet there was a value to good models which at first she found
+difficult to reconcile with this truth of personal independence. This
+too she thought out. "It's like a way to do your hair," was her method
+of expressing it. "You do what's in fashion, but you twist it so that
+it suits your own style. It isn't the fashion that makes you look
+right; it's in being true to what suits you."
+
+There was, however, in Barbara Walbrook a something deeper than this
+which at first eluded her. It was in Rashleigh Allerton too. It was in
+Lisabel Anstey, and in a few other stars, but not in Mercola Merch,
+nor in Luciline Lynch. "It's the whole business," Letty summed up to
+herself, "and yet I don't know what it is. Unless I can put my finger
+on it...."
+
+She was just at this point when Steptoe addressed her on the subject
+of going out. That she do so was part of his programme. Madam would
+not be madam till she felt herself free to come and go; and till madam
+was madam Mr. Rash would not understand who it was they had in the
+'ouse. That he didn't understand it yet was partly due to madam
+'erself who didn't understand it on 'er side. To cultivate this
+understanding in madam was Steptoe's immediate aim, in which Beppo,
+the little cocker spaniel, unexpectedly came to his assistance.
+
+As the two stood conversing at the foot of the stairs Beppo lilted
+down, with that air of having no one to love which he had worn during
+all the eighteen months since his mistress had died. The cocker
+spaniel's heart, as everyone knows, is imbued with the principle of
+one life, one love. It has no room for two loves; it has still less
+room for that general amiability to which most dogs are born. Among
+the human race it singles out one; and to that one it is faithful. In
+separation it seeks no substitute; in bereavement it rarely forms a
+second tie. To everyone but Beppo the removal of Mrs. Allerton had
+made the world brighter. He alone had mourned that presence with a
+grief which sought neither comfort nor mitigation. He had followed his
+routine; he had eaten and slept; he had gone out when he was taken out
+and come in when he was brought in; but he had lived shut up within
+himself, aloof in his sorrow. For the first time in all those eighteen
+months he had come out of this proud gloom when Rashleigh's key had
+turned in the door that night, and Letty had entered the house.
+
+The secret call which Beppo had heard can never be understood by men
+till men have developed more of their latent faculties. As he lay in
+his basket something reached him which he recognized as a summons to a
+new phase of usefulness. Out of the lethargy of mourning he had jumped
+with an obedient leap that took him through the obscurity of the house
+to where a frightened girl had need of a little dog's sympathy. Of
+that sympathy he had been lavish; and now that there was new
+discussion in the air he came with his contribution.
+
+In words Steptoe had to be his interpreter. "That, poor little dog as
+'as growed so fond of madam don't get 'alf the exercise he ought to be
+give. If madam was to tyke 'im out like for a little stroll up the
+Havenue...."
+
+Thus it happened that in less than half an hour Letty found herself
+out in the October sunlight, dressed in her blue-green costume, with
+all the details to "correspond," and leading Beppo on the leash. To
+lead Beppo on the leash, as Steptoe had perceived, gave a reason for
+an excursion which would otherwise have seemed motiveless. But she was
+out. She was out in conditions in which even Judson Flack, had he met
+her, could hardly have detected her. Gorgeously arrayed as she seemed
+to herself she was dressed with the simplicity which stamps the French
+taste. There was nothing to make her remarked, especially in a double
+procession of women so many of whom were remarkable. Had you looked at
+her twice you would have noted that while skill counted for much in
+her gentle, well-bred appearance, a subtle, unobtrusive, native
+distinction counted for most; but you would have been obliged to look
+at her twice before noting anything about her. She was a neatly
+dressed girl, with an air; but on that bright afternoon in Fifth
+Avenue neatly dressed girls with an air were as buttercups in June.
+
+Seizing this fact Letty felt more at her ease. No one was thinking her
+conspicuous. She was passing in the crowd. She was not being "spotted"
+as the girl who a short time before had had nothing but the old gray
+rag to appear in. She could enjoy the walk--and forget herself.
+
+Then it came to her suddenly that this was the secret of which she was
+in search, the power to forget herself. She must learn to do things so
+easily that she would have no self-consciousness in doing them. In big
+things Barbara Walbrook might think of herself; but in all little
+things, in the way she spoke and walked and bore herself toward
+others, she acted as she breathed. It seemed wonderful to Letty, this
+assurance that you were right in all the fundamentals. It was
+precisely in the fundamentals that she was so likely to be wrong. It
+was where girls of her sort suffered most; in the lack of the
+elementary. One could bluff the advanced, or make a shot at it; but
+the elementary couldn't be bluffed, and no shot at it would tell. It
+betrayed you at once. You must _have_ it. You must have it as you had
+the circulation of your blood, as something so basic that you didn't
+need to consider it. That was her next discovery, as with Beppo
+tugging at the end of his tether she walked onward.
+
+She was used to walking; she walked strongly, and with a trudging
+sturdiness, not without its grace. She came to the part of Fifth
+Avenue where the great houses begin to thin out, and vacant lots, as
+if ashamed of their vacancy, shrink behind boardings vivid with the
+news of picture-plays. It was the year when they were advertising the
+screen-masterpiece, _Passion Aflame_; and here was depicted Luciline
+Lynch, a torch in her hand, her hair in maenadic dishevelment, leading
+on a mob to set fire to a town. Letty herself having been in that mob
+paused in search of her face among the horde of the great star's
+followers. It was a blob of scarlet and green from which she dropped
+her eyes, only to have them encounter a friend of long standing.
+
+At the foot of the boarding, and all in a row, was a straggling band
+of dust-flowers. It was late in the season, yet not too late for their
+bit of blue heaven to press in among the ways of men. She was not
+surprised to find them there. Ever since the crazy woman had pointed
+out the mission of this humble little helper of the human race she had
+noted its persistency in haunting the spots which beauty had deserted.
+You found it in the fields, it was true; but you found it rarely,
+sparsely, raggedly, blooming, you might say, with but little heart for
+its bloom. Where other flowers had been frightened away; where the
+poor crowded; where factories flared; where junk-heaps rusted; where
+backyards baked; where smoke defiled; where wretchedness stalked;
+where crime brooded; where the land was unkempt; where the human
+spirit was sodden--there the celestial thing multiplied its celestial
+growths, blessing the eyes and making the heart leap. It mattered
+little that so few gave it a thought or regarded it as other than a
+weed; there were always those few, who knew that it spelled beauty,
+who knew that it spelled something more.
+
+Letty was of those few. She was of those few for old sake's sake, but
+also for the sake of a new yearning. Slipping off a glove she picked a
+few of the dusty stalks, even though she knew that once taken from
+their task of glorifying the dishonored the blue stars would shut
+almost instantly. "They'll wither in a few days now," she said, in
+self-excuse; "and anyhow I'll leave most of them." Having shaken off
+the dust she fastened them in her corsage, blue against her
+blue-green.
+
+They were her symbol for happiness springing up in the face of
+despair, and from a soil where you would expect it to be choked. She
+herself was happy to-day as she could not remember ever to have been
+happy in her life. For the first time she was passing among decent
+people decently; and then--it was the great hope beyond which she
+didn't look--the prince might read with her again that evening.
+
+But as she turned from Fifth Avenue into East Sixty-seventh Street the
+prince was approaching his door from the other direction. Even she was
+aware that it was contrary to his habits to appear at home by five in
+the afternoon. She didn't know, of course, that Barbara had so
+stimulated his enthusiasm for the educational course that he had come
+on the chance of taking it up at the tea hour. He could not remember
+that Barbara had ever before been so sympathetic to one of his ideas.
+The fact encouraged his feeble belief in himself, and made him love
+her with richer tenderness.
+
+In the gentle girl of quietly distinguished mien he saw nothing but a
+stranger till Beppo strained at his leash and barked. Even then it
+took him half a minute to get his powers of recognition into play. He
+stopped at the foot of his steps, watching her approach.
+
+By doing so he made the approach more difficult for her. The heart
+seemed to stop in her body. She could scarcely breathe. Each step was
+like walking on blades, yet like walking on blades with a kind of
+ecstasy. Luckily Beppo pranced and pulled in such a way that she was
+forced to give him some attention.
+
+The prince's first words were also a distraction from terrors and
+enchantments which made her feel faint.
+
+"Where did you get the poor man's coffee?"
+
+The question by puzzling her gave her some relief. Pointing at the
+sprays in her corsage he went on:
+
+"That's what the country people often call the chicory weed in
+France."
+
+She was able to gasp feebly: "Oh, does it grow there?"
+
+"I think it grows pretty nearly everywhere. It's one of the most
+classic wild flowers we know anything about. The ancient Egyptians
+dried its leaves to give flavor to their salad, and I remember being
+told at Luxor that the modern Copts and Arabs do the same. You see
+it's quite a friendly little beast to man."
+
+It eased her other feelings to tell him about the crazy woman in
+Canada, and her reading of the dust-flower's significance.
+
+"That's a good idea too," Allerton agreed, smiling down into her eyes.
+"There are people like that--little dust-flowers cheering up the
+wayside for the rest of us poor brutes."
+
+She said, wistfully: "I suppose you've known a lot of them."
+
+[Illustration: THE PRINCE'S FIRST WORDS WERE ALSO A DISTRACTION FROM
+TERRORS, AND ENCHANTMENTS WHICH MADE HER FEEL FAINT]
+
+As he laughed his eyes rested on a man sauntering toward them from the
+direction of Fifth Avenue. "I've known about two--" his eyes came back
+to smile again down into hers--"or _one_." He started as a man starts
+who receives a new suggestion. "I say! Let's go in and look up chicory
+and succory in the encyclopedia. Then we'll know all about it. It
+seems to me, too," he went on, reminiscently, "that I read a little
+poem about this very blue flower--by Margaret Deland, I think it
+was--only a few weeks ago. I believe I could put my hand on it. Come
+along."
+
+As he sprang up the steps the pearly gates were opening again before
+Letty when the man whom Allerton had seen sauntering toward them
+actually passed by. Passing he lifted his hat politely, smiled, and
+said, "Good afternoon, Miss Gravely," like any other gentleman. He was
+a good-looking slippery young man, with a cast in his left eye.
+
+Because she was a woman before she was a lady, as she understood the
+word lady, Letty responded with, "Good afternoon," and a little
+inclination of the head. He was several doors off before she bethought
+herself sufficiently to take alarm.
+
+"Who's that?" Allerton demanded, looking down from the third or fourth
+step.
+
+"I'm sure I haven't an idea. I think he must be some camera-man who's
+seen me when they've been shooting the pitch--" she made the
+correction almost in time--"who's seen me when they've been shooting
+the _pick-tures_. I can't think of anything else."
+
+They watched the retreating form till, without a backward glance, it
+turned into Madison Avenue.
+
+"Come along in," Allerton called then, in a tone intended to disperse
+misgiving, "and let's begin."
+
+Ten minutes later he was reading in the library, from a big volume
+open on his knees, how for over a century the chicory root had been
+dried and ground in France, and used to strengthen the cheaper grades
+of coffee, when Letty broke in, as if she had not been following him:
+
+"I don't think that fella could have been a camera-man after all. No
+camera-man would ha' noticed me in the great big bunch I was always
+in."
+
+"Oh, well, he can't do you any harm anyhow," Allerton assured her.
+"I'll just finish this, and then I'll look for the poem by Mrs.
+Deland."
+
+With her veil and gloves in her lap Letty sat thoughtful while he
+passed from shelf to shelf in search of the smaller volume. Of her
+real suspicion, that the man was a friend of Judson Flack's, she
+decided not to speak.
+
+Seated once more in front of her, and bending slightly toward her,
+Allerton read:
+
+                 "Oh, not in ladies' gardens,
+                 My peasant posy!
+                 Smile thy dear blue eyes,
+                 Nor only--nearer to the skies--
+                 In upland pastures, dim and sweet--
+                 But by the dusty road
+                 Where tired feet
+                 Toil to and fro;
+                 Where flaunting Sin
+                 May see thy heavenly hue,
+                 Or weary Sorrow look from thee
+                 Toward a more tender blue."
+
+Allerton glanced up from the book. "Pretty, isn't it?"
+
+She admitted that it was, and then added: "And yet there was the times
+when the castin' director put me right in the front, to register what
+the crowd behind me was thinkin' about. He might ha' noticed me
+then."
+
+"Yes, of course; that must have been it. Now wouldn't you like me to
+read that again? You must always read a poem a second or third time to
+really know what it's about."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile a poem of another sort was being read to Miss Barbara
+Walbrook by her aunt, who had entered the drawing-room within five
+minutes after Allerton had left it. During those five minutes Barbara
+had remained seated, plunged into reverie. The problem with which she
+had to deal was the degree to which she was right or wrong in
+permitting Rashleigh to go on in his crazy course. That this outcast
+girl was twining herself round his heart was a fact growing too
+obtrusive to be ignored. Had Rashleigh been as other men decisive
+action would have been imperative. But he was not as other men, and
+there lay the possibilities she found difficult.
+
+If the aunt couldn't help the niece to solve the difficult question
+she at least could compel her to take a stand.
+
+As she entered the drawing-room she came from out of doors, a slender,
+unfleshly figure, all intellect and idea. Her vices being wholly of
+the spirit were not recognized as vices, so that she passed as the
+highest type of the good woman which the continent of America knows
+anything about. Being the highest type of the good woman she had,
+moreover, the privilege which American usage accords to all good women
+of being good aggressively. No other good woman in the world enjoys
+this right to the same degree, a fact to which we can point with
+pride. The good English woman, the good French woman, the good Italian
+woman, are obliged by the customs of their countries to direct their
+goodness into channels in which it is relatively curbed. The good
+American woman, on the other hand, is never so much at home as when
+she is on the warpath. Her goodness being the only standard of
+goodness which the country accepts she has the right to impose it by
+any means she can harness to her purposes. She is the inspiration of
+our churches, and the terror of our constituencies. She is behind
+state legislatures and federal congresses and presidential cabinets.
+They may elude her lofty purposes, falsify her trust, and for a time
+hoodwink her with male chicaneries; but they are always afraid of her,
+and in the end they do as she commands. Among the coarsely, stupidly,
+viciously masculine countries of the world the American Republic is
+the single and conspicuous matriarchate, ruled by its good women. Of
+these rulers Miss Marion Walbrook was as representative a type as
+could be found, high, pure, zealous, intolerant of men's weaknesses,
+and with only spiritual immoralities of her own.
+
+Seated in one of her slender upright armchairs she had the
+impressiveness of goodness fully conscious of itself. A document she
+held in her hand gave her the judicial air of one entitled to pass
+sentence.
+
+"I'm sorry, Barbara; but I've some disagreeable news for you."
+
+Barbara woke. "Indeed?"
+
+"I've just come from Augusta Chancellor's. She talked about--that
+man."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"She said two or three things. One was that she'd met him one day in
+the Park when he decidedly wasn't himself."
+
+"Oh, it's hard to say when he's himself and when he isn't. He's what
+the French would call _un original_."
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that. The originality of men is commonplace as
+it's most novel. This man is on a par with the rest, if you call it
+original for him to have a woman in the house."
+
+Barbara feigned languidness. "Well, it is--the way he has her there."
+
+"The way he has her there? What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean what I say. There's no one else in the world who would take a
+girl under his roof in the way Rash has taken this girl."
+
+"How, may I ask, did he take her?"
+
+Having foreseen that one day she should be in this position Barbara
+had made up her mind as to how much she should say. "He found her."
+
+"Oh, they all do that. They generally find them in the Park."
+
+"Exactly; it's just what he did."
+
+"I guessed--it was only guessing mind you--that he also tried to find
+Augusta Chancellor."
+
+"Oh, possibly. He'd go as far as that, if he saw her doing anything he
+thought not respectable."
+
+"Barbara, please! You're talking about a friend of mine, one of my
+colleagues. Let's return to--I hope you won't find the French phrase
+invidious--to our mutton."
+
+"Oh, very well! Rash found the girl homeless--penniless--with no
+friends. Her stepfather had turned her out. Another man would have
+left her there, or turned her over to the police. Rash took her to his
+own house, and since then we've both been helping her to--to get on
+her feet."
+
+"Helping her to get on her feet in a way that's driven from the house
+the good old women who've been there for nearly thirty years."
+
+"Oh, you know that too, do you?"
+
+"Why, certainly. Jane, that was the parlor maid, is very intimate with
+Augusta Chancellor's cook; and she says--Jane does--that he's actually
+married the creature."
+
+Barbara shrugged her shoulders. "I can't help what the servants say,
+Aunt Marion. I'm trying to be a friend to the girl, and help her to
+pull herself together. Of course I recognize the fact that Rash has
+been foolish--quixotic--or whatever you like to call it; but he hasn't
+kept anything from me."
+
+"And you're still engaged to him?"
+
+"Of course I'm still engaged to him." She held out her left hand.
+"Look at his ring."
+
+"Then why don't you get married?"
+
+"Are you in such a hurry to get rid of me?"
+
+The question being a pleasantry Miss Walbrook took it with a gentle
+smile. When she resumed it was with a slight flourish of the document
+in her hand and another turn to the conversation.
+
+"I went to the bank this morning. I've brought home my will. I'm
+thinking of making some changes in it."
+
+Barbara looked non-committal, as if the subject had nothing to do with
+herself.
+
+"The question I have to decide," Miss Walbrook pursued, "is whether to
+leave everything to you, in the hope that you'll carry on my
+work----"
+
+"I shouldn't know how."
+
+"Or whether to establish a trust----"
+
+"I should do that decidedly."
+
+"And let it fall into the hands of a pack of men."
+
+"It will fall into the hands of a pack of men, whatever you do with
+it."
+
+"And yet if you had it in charge----"
+
+"Some man would get hold of it, Aunt Marion."
+
+"Which is what I'm debating. I'm not so very sure----"
+
+"That I shall marry in the end?"
+
+"Well, you're not married yet ... and if you were to change your
+mind ... the world has such a need of consecrated women with men
+so unscrupulous and irresponsible ... we must break their power
+some day ... and now that we've got the opportunity ... all I want
+you to understand is that if you shouldn't marry there'd be a
+great career in store for you...."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+By the end of twenty-four hours the possibility of this great career
+quickened Barbara's zeal for taking a hand in Letty's education. Not
+only did that impulse of furious jealousy, by which she meant at first
+to leave it wholly to Rash, begin to seem dangerous, but there was a
+world to consider and throw off the scent. Now that Augusta Chancellor
+knew that the girl was beneath Rash's roof all their acquaintances
+would sooner or later be in possession of the fact. It was Barbara's
+part, therefore, to play the game in such a way that a bit of
+quixotism would be the most foolish thing of which Rash would be
+suspected.
+
+That she would be playing a game she knew in advance. She must hide
+her suspicions; she must control her sufferings. She must pretend to
+have confidence in Rash, when at heart she cried against him as an
+infant and a fool. Never was woman in such a ridiculous situation as
+that into which she had been thrust; never was heart so wild to ease
+itself by invective and denunciation; and never was the padlock fixed
+so firmly on the lips. Hour by hour the man she loved was being weaned
+and won away from her; and she must stand by with grimacing smiles,
+instead of throwing up her arms in dramatic gestures and calling on
+her gods to smite and smash and annihilate.
+
+Since, however, she had a game to play, a game she would play, though
+she did it quivering with protest and repulsion.
+
+"Do you mind if I take the car this afternoon, Aunt Marion, since
+you're not going to use it."
+
+"Take it of course; but where are you going?"
+
+"I thought I would ask that protégée of Rash Allerton's, of whom we
+were speaking yesterday, to come for a drive with me. But if you'd
+rather I didn't----"
+
+"I've nothing to do with it. It's entirely for you to say. The car is
+yours, of course."
+
+The invitation being transmitted by telephone Steptoe urged Letty to
+accept it. "It'll be all in the wye of madam's gettin' used to
+things--a bit at a time like."
+
+"But I don't think she likes me."
+
+"If madam won't stop to think whether people likes 'er or not I think
+madam 'd get for'arder. Besides madam'll pretty generally always find
+as love-call wykes love-echo, as the syin' goes."
+
+Which, as a matter of fact, was what Letty did find. She found it from
+the minute of entering the car and taking her seat, when Miss Walbrook
+exclaimed heartily: "What a lovely dress! And the hat's too sweet!
+Suits you exactly, doesn't it? My dear, I've the greatest bother ever
+to find a hat that doesn't make me look like a scarecrow."
+
+From the naturalness of the tone there was no suspecting the cost of
+these words to the speaker, and the subject was one in which Letty was
+at home. In turn she could compliment Miss Walbrook's appearance, duly
+admiring the toque of prune-colored velvet, with a little bunch of
+roses artfully disposed, and the coat of prune-colored Harris tweed.
+In further discussing the length of the new skirts and the chances of
+the tight corset coming back they found topics of common interest. The
+fact that they were the topics which came readiest to the lips of both
+made it possible to maintain the conversation at its normal
+give-and-take, while each could pursue the line of her own summing up
+of the other.
+
+To Letty Miss Walbrook seemed friendlier than she had expected, only
+spasmodically so. Her kindly moods came in spurts of which the
+inspiration soon gave out. "I think she's sad," was Letty's comment to
+herself. Sadness, in Letty's use of words, covered all the emotions
+not distinctly cheerful or hilarious.
+
+She knew nothing about Miss Walbrook, except that it appeared from
+this conversation that she lived with an aunt, whose car they were
+using. That she was a friend of the prince's had been several times
+repeated, but all information ended there. To Letty she seemed
+old--between thirty and forty. Had she known her actual age she would
+still have seemed old from her knowledge of the world and general
+sophistication. Letty's own lack of sophistication kept her a child
+when she was nearly twenty-three. That Miss Walbrook was the girl to
+whom the prince was engaged had not yet crossed her thought.
+
+At the same time, since she knew that girl she brought her to the
+forefront of Letty's consciousness. She was never far from the
+forefront of her consciousness, and of late speculation concerning her
+had become more active. If she approached the subject with the prince
+he reddened and grew ill at ease. The present seemed, therefore, an
+opportunity to be utilized.
+
+They were deep in the northerly avenues of the Park, when apropos of
+the dress topic, Letty said, suddenly: "I suppose she's awfully
+stylish--the girl he's engaged to."
+
+The response was laconic: "She's said to be."
+
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"I don't think you could say that."
+
+"Then what does he see in her?"
+
+"Whatever people do see in those they're in love with. I'm afraid I'm
+not able to define it."
+
+Dropping back into her corner Letty sighed. She knew this mystery
+existed, the mystery of falling in love for reasons no one was able to
+explain. It was the ground on which she hoped that at first sight
+someone would fall in love with her. If he didn't do it for reasons
+beyond explanation he would, of course, not do it at all.
+
+It was some minutes before another question trembled to her lips.
+"Does she--does she know about me?"
+
+"Oh, naturally."
+
+"And did she--did she feel very bad?"
+
+Barbara's long eyes slid round in Letty's direction, though the head
+was not turned. "How should you feel yourself, if it had happened to
+you?"
+
+"It'd kill me."
+
+"Well, then?" She let Letty draw her own conclusions before adding:
+"It's nearly killed her."
+
+Letty cowered. She had never thought of this. That she herself
+suffered she knew; that the prince suffered she also knew; but that
+this unknown girl, whatever her folly, lay smitten to the heart
+brought a new complication into her ideas. "Even if he ever did come
+to--" she held up her unspoken sentence there--"I'd ha' stolen him
+from her."
+
+There was little more conversation after that. Each had her motives
+for reflections and silences. They were nearing the end of the drive
+when Letty said again:
+
+"What would you do if you was--if you were--me?"
+
+"I'd do whatever I felt to be highest."
+
+To Letty this was a beautiful reply, and proof of a beautiful nature.
+Moreover, it was indirectly a compliment to herself, in that she could
+be credited with doing what she felt to be highest as well as anyone
+else. In her life hitherto she had been figuratively kicked and beaten
+into doing what she couldn't resist. Now she was considered capable of
+acting worthily of her own accord. It inspired a new sentiment toward
+Miss Walbrook.
+
+She thought, too, that Miss Walbrook liked her a little better.
+Perhaps it was the fulfillment of Steptoe's adage, love-call wakes
+love-echo. She was sure that somehow this call had gone out from her
+to Miss Walbrook, and that it hadn't gone out in vain.
+
+It hadn't gone out in vain, in that Miss Walbrook was able to say to
+herself, with some conviction, "That's the way it will have to be
+done." It was a way of which her experiences in Bleary Street had made
+her skeptical. Among those whom she called the lower orders innocence,
+ingenuousness, and integrity were qualities for which she had ceased
+to look. She didn't look for them anywhere with much confidence; but
+she had long ago come to the conclusion that the poor were schemers,
+and were obliged to be schemers because they were poor. Something in
+Letty impressed her otherwise. "That's the way," she continued to nod
+to herself. "It's no use trusting to Rash. I'll get her; and she'll
+get him; and so we shall work it."
+
+Arrived in East Sixty-seventh Street she went in with Letty and had
+tea. But it was she who sat in dear Mrs. Allerton's corner of the
+sofa, and when William brought in the tray she said, "Put it here,
+William," as one who speaks with authority. Of this usurpation of the
+right to dispense hospitality Letty did not see the significance,
+being glad to have it taken off her hands.
+
+Not so, however, with Steptoe who came in with a covered dish of
+muffins. Having placed it before Miss Walbrook he turned to Letty.
+
+"Madam ain't feelin' well?"
+
+Letty's tone expressed her surprise. "Why, yes."
+
+"Madam'll excuse me. As madam ain't presidin' at 'er own tyble I was
+afryde----"
+
+It being unnecessary to say more he tiptoed out, leaving behind him a
+declaration of war, which Miss Walbrook, without saying anything in
+words, was not slow to pick up. "Insufferable," was her comment to
+herself. Of the hostile forces against her this, she knew, was the
+most powerful.
+
+Neither did Rash perceive the significance of Barbara's place at the
+tea-table when he entered about five o'clock, though she was quick to
+perceive the significance of his arrival. It was not, however, a
+point to note outwardly, so that she lifted her hand above the
+tea-kettle, letting him bend over it, as she exclaimed:
+
+"Welcome to our city! Do sit down and make yourself at home. Letty and
+I have been for a drive, and are all ready to enjoy a little male
+society."
+
+The easy tone helped Allerton over his embarrassment, first in finding
+the two women face to face, then in coming so unexpectedly face to
+face with them, and lastly in being caught by Barbara coming home at
+this unexpected hour. Knowing what the situation must mean to her he
+admired her the more for her sangfroid and social flexibility.
+
+She took all the difficulties on herself. "Letty and I have been
+making friends, and are going to know each other awfully well, aren't
+we?" A smile at Letty drew forth Letty's smile, to Rashleigh's
+satisfaction, and somewhat to his bewilderment. But Barbara, handing
+him a cup of tea, addressed him directly. "Who do you think is
+engaged? Guess."
+
+He guessed, and guessed wrong. He guessed a second time, and guessed
+wrong. There followed a conversation about people they knew, with
+regard to which Letty was altogether an outsider. Now and then she
+recognized great names which she had read in the papers, tossed back
+and forth without prefixes of Mr. or Miss, and often with pet
+diminutives. The whole represented a closed corporation of intimacies
+into which she could no more force her way than a worm into a billiard
+ball. Rash who was at first beguiled by the interchange of
+personalities began to experience a sense of discomfort that Letty
+should be so discourteously left out; but Barbara knew that it was
+best for both to force the lesson home. Rash must be given to
+understand how lost he would be with any outsider as his companion;
+and Letty must be made to realize how hopelessly an outsider she would
+always be.
+
+But no lesson should be urged to the quick at a single sitting, so
+that Barbara broke off suddenly to ask why he had come home. In the
+same way as she had given the order to William she spoke with the
+authority of one at liberty to ask the question. Not to give the real
+reason he said that it was to write a letter and change his clothes.
+
+"And you're going back to the Club?"
+
+He replied that he was going to dine with a bachelor friend at his
+apartment.
+
+"Then I'll wait and drop you at the Club. You can go on from there
+afterwards. I've got the time."
+
+This too was said with an authority against which he felt himself
+unable to appeal.
+
+Having written a note and changed to his dinner jacket he rejoined
+them in the drawing-room. Barbara held out her hand to Letty, with a
+briskness indicating relief.
+
+"So glad we had our drive. I shall come soon again. I wish it could be
+to-morrow, but my aunt will be using the car."
+
+"There's my car," Allerton suggested.
+
+"Oh, so there is." Barbara took this proposal as a matter of course.
+"Then we'll say to-morrow. I'll call up Eugene and tell him when to
+come for me."
+
+With Allerton beside her, and driving down Fifth Avenue, she said: "I
+see how to do it, Rash. You must leave it to me."
+
+He replied in the tone of a child threatened with the loss of his rôle
+in a game. "I can't leave it to you altogether."
+
+"Then leave it to me as much as you can. I see what to do and you
+don't. Furthermore, I know just how to do it."
+
+"You're wonderful, Barbe," he said, humbly.
+
+"I'm wonderful so long as you don't interfere with me."
+
+"Oh, well, I shan't do that."
+
+She turned to him sharply. "Is that a promise?"
+
+"Why do you want a promise?" he asked, in some wonder.
+
+"Because I do."
+
+"That is, you can't trust me."
+
+"My dear Rash, who _could_ trust you after what----?"
+
+"Oh, well, then, I promise."
+
+"Then that's understood. And if anything happens, you won't go hedging
+and saying you didn't mean it in that way?"
+
+"It seems to me you're very suspicious."
+
+"One's obliged to foresee everything with you, Rash. It isn't as if
+one was dealing with an ordinary man."
+
+"You mean that I'm to give you carte blanche, and have no will of my
+own at all."
+
+"I mean that when I'm so reasonable, you must try to be reasonable on
+your side."
+
+"Well, I will."
+
+As they drew up in front of the New Netherlands Club, he escaped
+without committing himself further.
+
+If he dined with a bachelor friend that night he must have cut the
+evening short, for at half past nine he re-entered the back
+drawing-room where Letty was sitting before the fire, her red book in
+her lap. She sat as a lover stands at a tryst as to which there is no
+positive engagement. To fortify herself against disappointment she had
+been trying to persuade herself that he wouldn't come, and that she
+didn't expect him.
+
+He came, but he came as a man who has something on his mind. Almost
+without greeting he sat down, took the book from her lap and proceeded
+to look up the place at which he had left off.
+
+"Miss Walbrook's lovely, isn't she?" she said, before he had found the
+page.
+
+"She's a very fine woman," he assented. "Do you remember where we
+stopped?"
+
+"It was at, 'So let it be, said the little mermaid, turning pale as
+death.' You know her very well, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, very well indeed. I think we begin here: 'But you will have to
+pay me also----'"
+
+"Have you known her very long?"
+
+"All my life, more or less."
+
+"She says she knows the girl you're engaged to."
+
+"Yes, of course. We all know each other in our little set. Now, if
+you're ready, I'll begin to read."
+
+"'But you will have to pay me also,' said the witch; 'and it is not a
+little that I ask. Yours is the loveliest voice in the world, and you
+trust to that, I dare say, to charm your love. But you must give it
+to me. For my costly drink I claim the best thing you possess. I shall
+give you my own blood, so that my draught may be as sharp as a
+two-edged sword.' 'But if you take my voice from me, what have I
+left?' asked the little mermaid, piteously. 'Your loveliness, your
+graceful movements, your speaking eyes. Those are enough to win a
+man's heart. Well, is your courage gone? Stretch out your little
+tongue, that I may cut it off, and you shall have my magic potion.' 'I
+consent,' said the little mermaid."
+
+Letty cried out: "So that when she'd be with him she'd understand
+everything, and not be able to tell him anything."
+
+"I'm afraid," he smiled, "that that's what's ahead of her, poor
+thing."
+
+"Oh, but that--" she could hardly utter her distress--"Oh, but that's
+worse than anything in the world."
+
+He looked up at her curiously. "Would you rather I didn't go on?"
+
+"No, no; please. I--I want to hear it all."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+At The Hindoo Lantern Mr. Gorry Larrabin and Mr. Judson Flack found
+themselves elbow to elbow outside the rooms where their respective
+ladies were putting the final touches to their hats and hair before
+entering the grand circle. It was an opportunity especially on Gorry's
+part, to seal the peace which had been signed so recently.
+
+"Hello, Judson. What's the prospects in oil?" Judson's tone was
+pessimistic. "Not a thing doin', Gorry. Awful slow bunch, that lump
+of nuts I'm in with on this. Mentioned your name to one or two of 'em;
+but no enterprise. Boneheads that wouldn't know a white man from a
+crane." That he understood what Gorry understood became clear as he
+continued: "Friend o' mine at the Excelsior passes me the tip that
+they've held up that play they were goin' to put my girl into. Can't
+get anyone else that would swing the part. Waitin' for her to turn up
+again. I suppose you haven't heard anything, Gorry?"
+
+Gorry looked him in the eyes as straight as was possible for a man
+with a cast in the left one. "Not a thing, Judson; not a thing."
+
+The accent was so truthful that Judson gave his friend a long
+comprehending look. He was sure that Gorry would never speak with such
+sincerity if he was sincere.
+
+"Well, I'm on the job, Gorry," he assured him, "and one of these days
+you'll hear from me."
+
+"I'm on the job too, Judson; and one of these days----"
+
+But as Mademoiselle Coucoul emerged from the dressing-room and shed
+radiance, Gorry was obliged to go forward.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+
+It was May.
+
+In spite of her conviction that she knew what to do and how it to do
+it, Barbara perceived that at the end of seven months they were much
+where they had been in the previous October. If there was a change it
+was that all three, Rashleigh, Letty, and herself, had grown strained
+and intense.
+
+Outwardly they strove to maintain a semblance of friendship. For that
+Barbara had worked hard, and in a measure had succeeded. She had held
+Rash; she had won Letty.
+
+She had more than won Letty; she had trained her. All that in seven
+months a woman of the world could do for an unformed and ignorant
+child she had done. Her experience at Bleary Street had helped her in
+this; and Letty had been quick. She had seized not only those small
+points of speech and action foundational to rising in the world, but
+the point of view of those who had risen. She knew how, Barbara was
+sure, that there were certain things impossible to people such as
+those among whom she had been thrown.
+
+Since it was May it was the end of a season, and the minute Barbara
+had long ago chosen for a masterstroke. Each of the others felt the
+crisis as near as she did herself.
+
+"It's got to end," Letty confessed to her, as amid the soft
+loveliness of springtime, they were again driving in the Park.
+
+Barbara chose her words. "I suppose he feels that too."
+
+"Then why don't he let me end it?"
+
+"I fancy that that's a difficult position for a man. If you ask his
+permission beforehand he feels obliged to say----"
+
+"And perhaps," Letty suggested, "he's too tender-hearted."
+
+"That's part of it. He _is_ tender-hearted. Besides that, his position
+is grotesque--a man with whom two women are in love. To one of them
+he's been nominally married, while to the other he's bound by every
+tie of honor. No wonder he doesn't see his way. If he moves toward the
+one he hurts the other--a man to whom it's agony to hurt a fly."
+
+"Does the other girl still feel the way she did?"
+
+"She's killing herself. She's breaking her heart. Nobody knows it but
+him and her--and even he doesn't take it in. But she is."
+
+"I suppose she thinks I'm something awful."
+
+"Does it matter to you what she thinks?"
+
+"I don't want her to hate me."
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't say she did that. She feels that, considering
+everything, you might have acted with more decision."
+
+"But he won't let me."
+
+"And he never will, if you wait for that."
+
+"Then what do you think I ought to do?"
+
+"That's where I find you weak, Letty, since you ask me the question.
+No one can tell you what to do--and he least of all. It's a situation
+in which one of you must withdraw--either you or the other girl. But,
+don't you see? he can't say so to either."
+
+"And if one of us must withdraw you think it should be me."
+
+"I have to leave that to you. You're the one who butted in. I know it
+wasn't your fault--that the fault was his entirely; but we recognize
+the fact that he's--how shall I put it?--not quite responsible. We
+women have to take the burden of the thing on ourselves, if it's ever
+to be put right."
+
+In her corner of the car Letty thought this over. The impression on
+her mind was the deeper since, for several months past, she had
+watched the prince growing more and more unhappy. He was less nervous
+than he used to be, less excitable; and for that he had told her the
+credit was due to herself. "You soothe me," he had once said to her,
+in words she would always treasure; and yet as his irritability
+decreased his unhappiness seemed to grow. She could only infer that he
+was mourning over the girl to whom he was engaged, and on whom he had
+inflicted a great wrong. For the last few weeks Letty's mind had
+occupied itself with her almost more than with the prince himself.
+
+"Do you think I shall ever see her?" she asked, suddenly now.
+
+Barbara reflected. "I think you could if you wanted to."
+
+"Should you arrange it?"
+
+"I could."
+
+"You're sure she'd be willing to see me?"
+
+"Yes; I know she would."
+
+"When could you do it?"
+
+"Whenever you like."
+
+"Soon?"
+
+"Yes; sooner perhaps than--" Barbara spoke absently, as if a new idea
+was taking possession of her mind--"sooner perhaps than you think."
+
+"And you say she's breaking her heart?"
+
+"A little more, and it will be broken."
+
+By the time Letty had been set down at the door in East Sixty-seventh
+Street the afternoon had grown chilly. In the back drawing-room
+Steptoe was on his knees lighting the fire. Letty came and stood
+behind him. Without preliminary of any kind she said, quietly:
+
+"Steptoe, it's got to end."
+
+Expecting a protest she was surprised that he should merely blow on
+the shivering flame, saying, in the interval between two long breaths:
+"I agrees with madam."
+
+"And it's me that must end it."
+
+He blew gently again. "I guess that'd be so too."
+
+She thought of the little mermaid leaping into the sea, and trembling
+away into foam. "If he wants to marry the girl he's in love with he'll
+never do it the way we're living now."
+
+He rose from his knees, dusting one hand against the other. "Madam's
+quite right. 'E won't--not never."
+
+She threw out her arms, and moaned. "And, O Steptoe! I'm so tired of
+it."
+
+"Madam's tired of----?"
+
+"Of living here, and doing nothing, and just watching and waiting, and
+nothing never happening----"
+
+"Does madam remember that, the dye when she first come I said there
+was two reasons why I wanted to myke 'er into a lydy?"
+
+Letty nodded.
+
+"The one I told 'er was that I wanted to 'elp someone who was like
+what I used to be myself."
+
+"I remember."
+
+"And the other, what I didn't tell madam, I'll tell 'er now. It
+was--it was I was 'opin' that a woman'd come into my poor boy's life
+as'd comfort 'im like----"
+
+"And she didn't come."
+
+"'E ain't seen that she's come. I said it'd be a tough job to bring
+'im to fallin' in love with 'er like; but it's been tougher than what
+I thought it'd be."
+
+"So that I must--must do something."
+
+"Looks as if madam'd 'ave to."
+
+"I suppose you know that there's an easy way for me to do it?"
+
+"Nothink ain't so very easy; but if madam 'as a big enough
+reason----"
+
+She felt the necessity of being plain. "I suppose that if he hadn't
+picked me up in the Park that day I'd have gone to the bad anyhow."
+
+"If madam's thinkin' about goin' to the bad----"
+
+She threw up her head defiantly. "Well, I am. What of it?"
+
+"I was just thinkin' as I might 'elp 'er a bit about that."
+
+She was puzzled. "I don't think you know what I said. I said I
+was----"
+
+"Goin' to the bad, madam. That's what I understood. But madam won't
+find it so easy, not 'avin 'ad no experience like, as you might sye."
+
+"I didn't know you needed experience--for that."
+
+"All good people thinks that wye, madam; but when you tackle it
+deliberate like, there's quite a trick to it."
+
+"And do you know the trick?" was all she could think of saying.
+
+"I may not know the very hidentical trick madam'd be in want of--'er
+bein' a lydy, as you might sye--but I could put 'er in the wye of
+findin' out."
+
+"You don't think I could find out for myself?"
+
+"You see, it's like this. I used to know a young man what everythink
+went ag'in' 'im. And one dye 'e started out for to be a forgerer
+like--so as 'e'd be put in jyle--and be took care of--board and
+lodgin' free--and all that. Well, out 'e starts, and not knowin' the
+little ins and outs, as you might sye, everythink went agin 'im, just
+as it done before. And, would madam believe it? that young man 'e
+hended by studying for the ministry. Madam wouldn't want to myke a
+mistyke like that, now would she?"
+
+Letty turned this over in her mind. A career parallel to that of this
+young man would effect none of the results she was aiming at.
+
+"Then what would you suggest?" she asked, at last.
+
+"I could give madam the address of a lydy--an awful wicked lydy, she
+is--what'd put madam up to all the ropes. If madam was to go out into
+the cold world, like, this lydy'd give 'er a home. Besides the
+address I'd give madam a sign like--so as the lydy'd know it was
+somethink special."
+
+"A sign? I don't know what you mean."
+
+"It'd be this, madam." He drew from his pocket a small silver thimble.
+"This'd be a password to the lydy. The minute she'd see it she'd know
+that the time 'ad come."
+
+"What time?"
+
+"That's somethink madam'd find out. I couldn't explyne it
+before'and."
+
+"It sounds very queer."
+
+"It'd _be_ very queer. Goin' to the bad is always queer. Madam
+wouldn't look for it to be like 'avin' a gentleman lead 'er in to
+dinner."
+
+"What's she like--the lady?"
+
+"That's somethink madam'd 'ave to wyte and see. She wouldn't _seem_ so
+wicked, not at first sight, as you might sye. But time'd tell. If
+madam'd be pytient--well, I wouldn't like to sye." He eyed the fire.
+"I think that fire'll burn now, madam; and if it don't, madam'll only
+'ave to ring."
+
+He was at the door when Letty, feeling the end of all things to be at
+hand, ran after him, laying her fingers on his sleeve.
+
+"Oh, Steptoe; you've been so good to me!"
+
+He relaxed from his dignity sufficiently to let his hand rest on hers,
+which he patted gently. "I've been madam's servant--and my boy's."
+
+"I shall never think of you as a servant--never."
+
+The frosty color rose into his cheeks. "Then madam'll do me a great
+wrong."
+
+"To me you're so much higher than a servant----"
+
+"Madam'll find that there ain't nothink 'igher than a servant. There's
+a lot about service in the pypers nowadyes, crackin' it up, like; but
+nobody don't seem to remember that servants knows more about that than
+what other people do, and servants don't remember it theirselves. So
+long as I can serve madam, just as I've served my boy----"
+
+"Oh, but, Steptoe, I shall have gone to the bad."
+
+"That'd be all the syme to me, madam. At my time o' life I don't see
+no difference between them as 'as gone to the bad and them as 'as gone
+to the good, as you might sye. I only sees--people."
+
+Left alone Letty went back to the fire, and stood gazing down at it,
+her foot on the fender. So it was the end. Even Steptoe said so. In a
+sense she was relieved.
+
+She was relieved at the prospect of being freed from her daily
+torture. The little mermaid walking on blades in the palace of the
+prince, and forever dumb, had known bliss, but bliss so akin to
+anguish that her heart was consumed by it. The very fact that the
+prince himself suffered from the indefinable misery which her presence
+seemed to bring made escape the more enticing.
+
+She was so buried in this reflection as to have heard no sound in the
+house, when Steptoe announced in his stately voice: "Miss Barbara
+Walbrook." Having parted from this lady half an hour earlier Letty
+turned in some surprise.
+
+"I've come back again," was the explanation, sent down the long room.
+"Don't let William bring in tea," the imperious voice commanded
+Steptoe. "We wish to be alone." There was the same abruptness as she
+halted within two or three feet of where Letty stood, supporting
+herself with a hand on the edge of the mantelpiece. "I've come back to
+tell you something. I made up my mind to it all at once--after I left
+you a few minutes ago. Now that I've done it I feel easier."
+
+Letty didn't know which was uppermost in her mind, curiosity or fear.
+"What--what is it?" she asked, trembling.
+
+"I've given up the fight. I'm out of it."
+
+Letty crept forward. "You've--you've done _what_?"
+
+"I told you in the Park that one or the other of us would have to
+withdraw----"
+
+"One or the other of--of _us_?"
+
+"Exactly and I've done it."
+
+With horror in her face and eyes Letty crept nearer still. "But--but I
+don't understand."
+
+"Oh, yes, you do. How can you help understanding. You must have seen
+all along that----"
+
+"Not that--that you were--the other girl. Oh, not that!"
+
+"Yes, that; of course; why not?"
+
+"Because--because I--I couldn't bear it."
+
+"You can bear it if I can, can't you--if I've had to bear it all these
+weeks and months."
+
+"Yes, but that's--" she covered her face with her hands--"that's what
+makes it so terrible."
+
+"Of course it makes it terrible; but it isn't as terrible now as it
+was--to you anyhow."
+
+"But why do you withdraw when--when you love him--and he loves
+you----?"
+
+"I do it because I want to throw all the cards on the table. It's what
+my common sense has been telling me to do all along, only I've never
+worked round to it till we had our talk this afternoon. Now I
+see----"
+
+"What do you see, Miss Walbrook?"
+
+"I see that we've got to give him a clean sheet, or he'll never know
+where he is. He can't decide between us because he's in an impossible
+position. We'll have to set him absolutely free, so that he may begin
+again. I'll do it on my side. You can do--what you like."
+
+She went as abruptly as she came, leaving Letty clearer than ever as
+to her new course.
+
+By midnight she was ready. In the back spare room she waited only to
+be sure that all in the house were asleep.
+
+She had heard Allerton come in about half past nine, and the
+whispering of voices told that Steptoe was making his explanations,
+that she was out of sorts, had dined in her room, and begged not to be
+disturbed. At about half past ten she heard the prince go upstairs to
+his own room, though she fancied that outside her door he had paused
+for a second to listen. That was the culminating minute of her
+self-repression. Once it was over, and he had gone on his way, she
+knew the rest would be easier.
+
+By midnight she had only to wait quietly. In the old gray rag and the
+battered black hat she surveyed herself without emotion. Since making
+her last attempt to escape her relation to all these things had
+changed. They had become less significant, less important. The
+emblems of the higher life which in the previous autumn she had buried
+with ritual and regret she now packed away in the closet, with hardly
+a second thought. The old gray rag which had then seemed the livery of
+a degraded life was now no more than the resumption of her reality.
+
+"I'll go as I came," she had been saying to herself, all the evening.
+"I know he'd like me to take the things he's given me; but I'd rather
+be just what I was."
+
+If there was any ritual in what she had done since Miss Walbrook had
+left her it was in the putting away of small things by which she
+didn't want to be haunted.
+
+"I couldn't do it with this on," she said of the plain gold band on
+her finger, to which, as a symbol of marriage, she had never attached
+significance in any case.
+
+She took it off, therefore, and laid it on the dressing table.
+
+"I couldn't do it with this in my pocket," she said of the purse
+containing a few dollars, with which Steptoe had kept her supplied.
+
+This too she laid on the dressing table, becoming as penniless as when
+Judson Flack had put her out of doors. Somehow, to be penniless seemed
+to her an element in her new task, and an excuse for it.
+
+Since Allerton had never made her a present there was nothing of this
+kind to discard. It had been part of his non-committal, impersonal
+attitude toward her that he had never given her a concrete sign that
+she meant anything to him whatever. He had thanked her on occasions
+for the comforting quality he found in her presence. He had, in so
+many words, recognized the fact that when he got into a tantrum of
+nerves she could bring him out of it as no one else had ever done. He
+had also imparted to her the discovery that in reading to her, and
+trying to show her the point of view of a life superior to her own, he
+had for the first time in his life done something for someone else;
+but he had never gone beyond all this or allowed her to think that his
+heart was not given to "the girl he was engaged to." In that at least
+he had been loyal to the mysterious princess, as the little mermaid
+could not but see.
+
+She was not consciously denuded, as she would have felt herself six
+months earlier. As to that she was not thinking anything at all. Her
+motive, in setting free the prince from the "drag" on him which she
+now recognized herself to be, filled all her mental horizons. So
+dominated was she by this overwhelming impulse as to have no thought
+even for self-pity.
+
+When a clock somewhere struck one she took it as the summons. From the
+dressing-table she picked up the scrawl in Steptoe's hand, giving the
+name of Miss Henrietta Towell, at an address at Red Point, L. I. She
+knew Red Point, on the tip of Long Island, as a distant, partially
+developed suburb of Brooklyn. In the previous year she had gone with a
+half dozen other girl "supes" from the Excelsior Studio to "blow in" a
+quarter looking at the ocean steamers passing in and out. She had no
+intention of intruding on Miss Towell, but she couldn't hurt Steptoe's
+feelings by leaving the address behind her.
+
+For the same reason she took the silver thimble which stood on the
+scrap of paper. On its rim she read the inscription, "H.T. from H.S."
+but she made no attempt to unravel the romance behind it. She merely
+slipped the scrawl and the thimble into the pocket of her jacket, and
+stood up.
+
+She took no farewells. To do so would have unnerved her. On the
+landing outside her door she listened for a possible sound of the
+prince's breathing, but the house was still. In the lower hall she
+resisted the impulse to slip into the library and kiss the place where
+she had kissed his feet on the memorable morning when her hand had
+been on his brow. "That won't help me any," were the prosaic words
+with which she put the suggestion away from her. If the little mermaid
+was to leap over the ship's side and dissolve into foam the best thing
+she could do was to leap.
+
+The door no longer held secrets. She had locked it and unlocked it a
+thousand times. Feeling for the chain in the darkness she slipped it
+out of its socket; she drew back the bolt; she turned the key. Her
+fingers found the two little brass knobs, pressing this one that way,
+and that one this way. The door rolled softly as she turned the
+handle.
+
+Over the threshold she passed into a world of silence, darkness,
+electricity, and stars. She closed the door noiselessly. She went down
+the steps.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+
+Having the choice between going southward either by Fifth Avenue or by
+Madison Avenue, Letty took the former for the reason that there were
+no electric cars crashing through it, so that she would be less
+observed. It seemed to her important to get as far from East
+Sixty-seventh Street as possible before letting a human glance take
+note of her personality, even as a drifting silhouette.
+
+In this she was fortunate. For the hour between one and two in the
+early morning this part of Fifth Avenue was unusually empty. There was
+not a pedestrian, and only a rare motor car. When one of the latter
+flashed by she shrank into the shadow of a great house, lest some eye
+of miraculous discernment should light on her. It seemed to her that
+all New York must be ready to read her secret, and be on the watch to
+turn her back.
+
+She didn't know why she was going southward rather than northward,
+except that southward lay the Brooklyn Bridge, and beyond the Brooklyn
+Bridge lay Beehive Valley, and within Beehive Valley the Excelsior
+Studio, and in the Excelsior Studio the faint possibility of a job.
+She was already thinking in the terms that went with the old gray rag
+and the battered hat, and had come back to them as to her
+mother-tongue. In forsaking paradise for the limbo of outcast souls
+she was at least supported by the fact that in the limbo of outcast
+souls she was at home.
+
+She was not frightened. Now that she was out of the prince's palace
+she had suddenly become sensationless. She was like a soul which
+having reached the other side of death is conscious only of release
+from pain. She was no longer walking on blades; she was no longer
+attempting the impossible. Between her and the life which Barbara
+Walbrook understood the few steps she had taken had already marked the
+gulf. The gulf had always been there, yawning, unbridgeable, only that
+she, Letty Gravely, had tried to shut her eyes to it. She had tried to
+shut her eyes to it in the hope that the man she loved might come to
+do the same. She knew now how utterly foolish any such hope had been.
+
+She would have perceived this earlier had he not from time to time
+revived the hope when it was about to flicker out. More than once he
+had confessed to depending on her sympathy. More than once he had told
+her that she drew out something he had hardly dared think he
+possessed, but which made him more of a man. Once he harked back to
+the dust flower, saying that as its humble and heavenly bloom
+brightened the spots bereft of beauty so she cheered the lonely and
+comfortless places in his heart. He had said these things not as one
+who is in love, but as one who is grateful, only that between
+gratitude and love she had purposely kept from drawing the
+distinction.
+
+She did not reproach him. On the contrary, she blessed him even for
+being grateful. That meed he gave her at least, and that he should
+give her anything at all was happiness. Leaving his palace she did so
+with nothing but grateful thoughts on her own side. He had smiled on
+her always; he had been considerate, kindly, and very nearly tender.
+For what he called the wrong he had done her, which she held to be no
+wrong at all, he would have made amends so magnificent that the mere
+acceptance would have overwhelmed her. Since he couldn't give her the
+one thing she craved her best course was like the little mermaid to
+tremble into foam, and become a spirit of the wind.
+
+It was what she was doing. She was going without leaving a trace. A
+girl more important than she couldn't have done it so easily. A
+Barbara Walbrook had she attempted a freak so mad, would be discovered
+within twenty-four hours. It was one of the advantages of extreme
+obscurity that you came and went without notice. No matter how
+conspicuously a Letty Gravely passed it would not be remembered that
+she had gone by.
+
+With regard to this, however, she made one reserve. She couldn't
+disappear forever, not any more than Judith of Bethulia when she went
+to the tent of Holofernes. The history of Judith was not in Letty's
+mind, because she had never heard of it; there was only the impulse to
+the same sort of sacrifice. Since Israel could be delivered only in
+one way, that way Judith had been ready to take. To Letty her prince
+was her Israel. One day she would have to inform him that the
+Holofernes of his captivity was slain--that at last he was free.
+
+There were lines along which Letty was not imaginative, and one of
+those lines ran parallel to Judith's experience. When it came to love
+at first sight, she could invent as many situations as there were
+millionaires in the subway. In interpreting a part she had views of
+her own beyond any held by Luciline Lynch. As to matters of dress her
+fancy was boundless.
+
+Her limitations were in the practical. Among practical things "going
+to the bad" was now her chief preoccupation. She had always understood
+that when you made up your mind to do it you had only to present
+yourself. The way was broad; the gate wide open. There were wicked
+people on every side eager to pull you through. You had only to go out
+into the street, after dark especially--and there you were!
+
+Having walked some three or four blocks she made out the figure of a
+man coming up the hill toward her. Her heart stopped beating; her
+knees quaked. This was doom. She would meet it, of course, since her
+doom would be the prince's salvation; but she couldn't help trembling
+as she watched it coming on.
+
+By the light of an arc-lamp she saw that he was in evening dress. The
+wicked millionaires who, in motion-pictures, were the peril of young
+girls, were always so attired. Iphigenia could not have trodden to the
+altar with a more consuming mental anguish than Letty as she dragged
+herself toward this approaching fate; but she did so drag herself
+without mercy. For a minute as he drew near she was on the point of
+begging him to spare her; but she saved herself in time from this
+frustration of her task.
+
+The man, a young stock-broker in a bad financial plight, scarcely
+noticed that a female figure was passing him. Had the morrow's market
+been less a matter of life and death to him he might have thrown her
+a glance; but as it was she did not come within the range of his
+consciousness. To her amazement, and even to her consternation, Letty
+saw him go onward up the hill, his eyes straight before him, and his
+profile sharply cut in the electric light.
+
+She explained the situation by the fact that he hadn't seen her at
+all. That a man could actually _see_ a girl, in such unusual
+conditions, and still go by inoffensively, was as contrary to all she
+had heard of life as it would have been to the principles of a Turkish
+woman to suppose that one of this sex could behold her face and not
+fall fiercely in love with her. As, however, two men were now coming
+up the hill together Letty was obliged to re-organize her forces to
+meet the new advance.
+
+She couldn't reason this time that they hadn't seen her, because their
+heads turned in her direction, and the intonation of the words she
+couldn't articulately hear was that of faint surprise. Further than
+that there was no incident. They were young men too, also in evening
+dress, and of the very type of which all her warnings had bidden her
+beware. The immunity from insult was almost a matter for chagrin.
+
+As she approached Fifty-ninth Street encounters were nearly as
+numerous as they would have been in daylight; but Letty went on her
+way as if, instead of the old gray rag, she wore the magic cloak of
+invisibility. So it was during the whole of the long half mile between
+Fifty-ninth Street and Forty-second Street. In spite of the fact that
+she was the only unescorted woman she saw, no invitation "to go to the
+bad" was proffered her. "There's quite a trick to it," Steptoe had
+said, in the afternoon; and she began to think that there was.
+
+At Forty-second Street, for no reason that she could explain, she
+turned into the lower and quieter spur of Madison Avenue, climbing and
+descending Murray Hill. Here she was almost alone. Motor-car traffic
+had practically ceased; foot-passengers there were none; on each side
+of the street the houses were somber and somnolent. The electric lamps
+flared as elsewhere, but with little to light up.
+
+Her sense of being lost became awesome. It began to urge itself in on
+her that she was going nowhere, and had nowhere to go. She was back in
+the days when she had walked away from Judson Flack's, without the
+same heart in the adventure. She recalled now that on that day she had
+felt young, daring, equal to anything that fate might send; now she
+felt curiously old and experienced. All her illusions had been dished
+up to her at once and been blown away as by a hurricane. The little
+mermaid who had loved the prince and failed to win his love in return
+could have nothing more to look forward to.
+
+She was drifting, drifting, when suddenly from the shadow of a flight
+of broad steps a man stalked out and confronted her. He confronted her
+with such evident intention that she stopped. Not till she stopped
+could she see that he was a policeman in his summer uniform.
+
+"Where you goin', sister?"
+
+"I ain't goin' nowheres."
+
+She fell back on the old form of speech as on another tongue.
+
+"Where you come from then?"
+
+Feeling now that she had gone to the bad, or was at the beginning of
+that process, she made a reply that would seem probable. "I come from
+a fella I've been--I've been livin' with."
+
+"Gee!" The tone was of deepest pity. "Darned sorry to hear you're in
+that box, a nice girl like you."
+
+"I ain't such a nice girl as you might think."
+
+"Gee! Anyone can see you're a nice girl, just from the way you walk."
+
+Letty was astounded. Was the way you walked part of Steptoe's "trick
+to it?" In the hope of getting information she said, still in the
+secondary tongue: "What's the matter with the way I walk?"
+
+"There's nothin' the matter with it. That's the trouble. Anyone can
+see that you're not a girl that's used to bein' on the street at this
+hour of the night. Ain't you goin' _anywheres_?"
+
+Fear of the police-station suddenly made her faint. If she wasn't
+going _anywheres_ he might arrest her. She bethought her of Steptoe's
+scrawled address. "Yes, I'm goin' there."
+
+As he stepped under the arc-light to read it she saw that he was a
+fatherly man, on the distant outskirts of youth, who might well have a
+family of growing boys and girls.
+
+"That's a long ways from here," he said, handing the scrap of paper
+back to her. "Why don't you take the subway? At this time of night
+there's a train every quarter of an hour."
+
+"I ain't got no bones. I'm footin' it."
+
+"Footin' it all the way to Red Point? You? Gee!"
+
+Once more Letty felt that about her there was something which put her
+out of the key of her adventure.
+
+"Well, what's there against _me_ footin' it?"
+
+"There's nothin' against you footin' it--on'y you don't seem that
+sort. Haven't you got as much as two bits? It wouldn't come to that if
+you took the subway over here at----"
+
+"Well, I haven't got two bits; nor one bit; nor nothin' at all; so I
+guess I'll be lightin' out."
+
+She had nodded and passed, when a stride of his long legs brought him
+up to her again. "Well, see here, sister! If you haven't got two bits,
+take this. I can't have you trampin' all the way over to Red
+Point--not _you_!"
+
+Before knowing what had happened Letty found her hand closing over a
+silver half-dollar, while her benefactor, as if ashamed of his act,
+was off again on his beat. She ran after him. Her excitement was such
+that she forgot the secondary language.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't accept this from you. Please! Don't make me take it.
+I'm--" She felt it the moment for making the confession, and possibly
+getting hints--"I'm--I'm goin' to the bad, anyhow."
+
+"Oh, so that's the talk! I thought you said you'd gone to the bad
+already. Oh, no, sister; you don't put that over on me, not a nice
+looker like you!"
+
+She was almost sobbing. "Well, I'm going--if--if I can find the way. I
+wish you'd tell me if there's a trick to it."
+
+"There's one trick I'll tell you, and that's the way to Red Point."
+
+"I know that already."
+
+"Then, if you know that already, you've got my four bits, which is
+more than enough to take you there decent." He lifted his hand, with a
+warning forefinger. "Remember now, little sister, as long as you spend
+that half dollar it'll bind you to keep good."
+
+He tramped off into the darkness, leaving Letty perplexed at the ways
+of wickedness, as she began once more to drift southward.
+
+But she drifted southward with a new sense of misgiving. Danger was
+mysteriously coy, and she didn't know how to court it. True, there was
+still time enough, but the debut was not encouraging. When she had
+gone forth from Judson Flack's she had felt sure that adventure lay in
+wait for her, and Rashleigh Allerton had responded almost
+instantaneously. Now she had no such confidence. On the contrary; all
+her premonitions worked the other way. Perhaps it was the old gray
+rag. Perhaps it was her lack of feminine appeal. Men had never flocked
+about her as they flocked about some girls, like bees about flowers.
+If she was a flower, she was a dust flower, a humble thing, at home in
+the humblest places, and never regarded as other than a weed.
+
+She wandered into Fourth Avenue, reaching Astor Place. From Astor
+Place she descended the city by the long artery of Lafayette Street,
+in which teams rumbled heavily, and all-night workers shouted
+raucously to each other in foreign languages. One of a band of
+Italians digging in the roadway, with colored lanterns about them,
+called out something at her, the nature of which she could only infer
+from the laughter of his compatriots. Here too she began to notice
+other women like herself, shabby, furtive, unescorted, with terrible
+eyes, aimlessly drifting from nowhere to nowhere. There were not many
+of them; only one at long intervals; but they frightened her more than
+the men.
+
+They frightened her because she saw what she must look like herself, a
+thing too degraded for any man to want. She was not that yet, perhaps;
+but it was what she might become. They were not wholly new to her,
+these women; and they all had begun at some such point as that from
+which she was starting out. Very well! She was ready to go this road,
+if only by this road her prince could be freed from her. Since she
+couldn't give up everything for him in one way, she would do it in
+another. The way itself was more or less a matter of indifference--not
+entirely, perhaps, but more or less. If she could set him free in any
+way she would be content.
+
+The rumble and stir of Lafayette Street alarmed her because it was so
+foreign. The upper part of the town had been empty and eerie. This
+quarter was eerie, alien, and occupied. It was difficult for her to
+tell what so many people were doing abroad because their aims seemed
+different from those of daylight. What she couldn't understand struck
+her as nefarious; and what struck her as nefarious filled her with the
+kind of terror that comes in dreams.
+
+By these Italians, Slavs, and Semites she was more closely scrutinized
+than she had been elsewhere. She was scrutinized, too, with a hint of
+hostility in the scrutiny. In their jabber of tongues they said things
+about her as she passed. Wild-eyed women, working by the flare of
+torches with their men, resented her presence in the street. They
+insulted her in terms she couldn't understand, while the men laughed
+in frightful, significant jocosity. The unescorted women alone looked
+at her with a hint of friendliness. One of them, painted, haggard,
+desperate, awful, stopped as if to speak to her; but Letty sped away
+like a snowbird from a shrike.
+
+At a corner where the cross-street was empty she turned out of this
+haunted highway, presently finding herself lost in a congeries of
+old-time streets of which she had never heard. Her only knowledge of
+New York was of streets crossing each other at right angles, numbered,
+prosaic, leaving no more play to the fancy than a sum in arithmetic.
+Here the ways were narrow, the buildings tall, the night effects
+fantastic. In the lamp light she could read signs bearing names as
+unpronounceable as the gibbering monkey-speech in Lafayette Street.
+Warehouses, offices, big wholesale premises, lairs of highly
+specialized businesses which only the few knew anything about, offered
+no place for human beings to sleep, and little invitation to the
+prowler. Now and then a marauding cat darted from shadow to shadow,
+but otherwise she was as nearly alone as she could imagine herself
+being in the heart of a great city.
+
+Still she went on and on. In the effort to escape this overpowering
+solitude she turned one corner and then another, now coming out
+beneath the elevated trains, now on the outskirts of docks where she
+was afraid of sailors. She was afraid of being alone, and afraid of
+the thoroughfares where there were people. On the whole she was more
+afraid of the thoroughfares where there were people, though her fear
+soon entered the unreasoning phase, in which it is fear and nothing
+else. Still headed vaguely southward she zigzagged from street to
+street, helpless, terrified, longing for day.
+
+She was in a narrow street of which the high weird gables on either
+side recalled her impressions on opening a copy of _Faust_,
+illustrated by Gustave Doré, which she found on the library table in
+East Sixty-seventh Street. On her right the elevated and the docks
+were not far away, on the left she could catch, through an occasional
+side street the distant gleam of Broadway. Being afraid of both she
+kept to the deep canyon of unreality and solitude, though she was
+afraid of that. At least she was alone; and yet to be alone chilled
+her marrow and curdled her blood.
+
+Suddenly she heard the clank of footsteps. She stopped to listen,
+making them out as being on the other side of the street, and
+advancing. Before she had dared to move on again a man emerged from
+the half light and came abreast of her. As he stopped to look across
+at her, Letty hurried on.
+
+The man also went on, but on glancing over her shoulder to make sure
+that she was safe she saw him pause, cross to her side of the street,
+and begin to follow her. That he followed her was plain from his whole
+plan of action. The ring of his footsteps told her that he was walking
+faster than she, though in no precise hurry to overtake her. Rather,
+he seemed to be keeping her in sight, and watching for some
+opportunity.
+
+It was exactly what men did when they robbed and murdered unprotected
+women. She had read of scores of such cases, and had often imagined
+herself as being stalked by this kind of ghoul. Now the thing which
+she had greatly feared having come upon her she was nearly hysterical.
+If she ran he would run after her. If she only walked on he would
+overtake her. Before she could reach the docks on one side or Broadway
+on the other, where she might find possible defenders, he could easily
+have strangled her and rifled her fifty cents.
+
+It was still unreasoning fear, but fear in which there was another
+kind of prompting, which made her wheel suddenly and walk back towards
+him. She noticed that as she did so, he stopped, wavered, but came on
+again.
+
+Before the obscurity allowed of her seeing what type of man he was she
+cried out, with a half sob:
+
+"Oh, mister, I'm so afraid! I wish you'd help me."
+
+"Sure!" The tone had the cheery fraternal ring of commonplace
+sincerity. "That's what I turned round for. I says, that girl's lost,
+I says. There's places down here that's dangerous, and she don't know
+where she is."
+
+Hysterical fear became hysterical relief. "And you're not going to
+murder me?"
+
+"Gee! Me? What'd I murder you for? I'm a plumber."
+
+His tone making it seem impossible for a plumber to murder anyone she
+panted now from a sense of reassurance and security. She could see too
+that he was a decent looking young fellow in overalls, off on an
+early job.
+
+"Where you goin' anyhow?" he asked, in kindly interest. "The minute I
+see you on the other side of the street, I says Gosh, I says! That
+girl's got to be watched, I says. She don't know that these streets
+down by the docks is dangerous."
+
+She explained that she was on her way to Red Point, Long Island, and
+that having only fifty cents she was sparing of her money.
+
+"Gee! I wouldn't be so economical if it was me. That ain't the only
+fifty cents in the world. Look-a-here! I've got a dollar. You must
+take that----"
+
+"Oh, I couldn't."
+
+"Shucks! What's a dollar? You can pay me back some time. I'll give you
+my address. It's all right. I'm married. Three kids. And say, if you
+send me back the dollar, which you needn't do, you know--but if you
+_must_--sign a man's name to the letter, because my wife--well, she's
+all right, but if----"
+
+Letty escaped the necessity of accepting the dollar by assuring him
+that if he would tell her the way to the nearest subway station she
+would use a portion of her fifty cents.
+
+"I'll go with you," he declared, with breezy fraternity. "No distance.
+They're expecting me on a job up there in Waddle Street, but they'll
+wait. Pipe burst--floodin' a loft where they've stored a lot of
+jute--but why worry?"
+
+As they threaded the broken series of streets toward the subway he
+aired the matrimonial question.
+
+"Some think as two can live on the same wages as one. All bunk, I'll
+say. My wife used to be in the hair line. Some little earner too. Had
+an electric machine that'd make hair grow like hay on a marsh. Two
+dollars a visit she got. When we was married she had nine hunderd
+saved. I had over five hunderd myself. We took a weddin' tour;
+Atlantic City. Gettin' married's a cinch; but _stayin_' married--she's
+all right, my wife is, only she's kind o' nervous like if I look
+sideways at any other woman--which I hardly ever do intentional--only
+my wife's got it into her head that...."
+
+At the entrance to the subway Letty shook hands with him and thanked
+him.
+
+"Say," he responded, "I wish I could do something more for you; but I
+got to hike it back to Waddle Street. Look-a-here! You stick to the
+subway and the stations, and don't you be in a hurry to get to your
+address in Red Point till after daylight. They can't be killin' nobody
+over there, that you'd need to be in such a rush, and in the stations
+you'd be safe."
+
+To a degree that was disconcerting Letty found this so. Having
+descended the stairs, purchased a ticket, and cast it into the
+receptacle appointed for that purpose, she saw herself examined by the
+colored man guarding the entry to the platform. He sat with his chair
+tilted back, his feet resting on the chain which protected part of the
+entrance, picking a set of brilliant teeth. Letty, trembling, nervous,
+and only partly comforted by the cavalier who was now on his way to
+Waddle Street, shrank from the colored man's gaze and was going down
+the platform where she could be away from it. Her progress was
+arrested by the sight of two men, also waiting for the train, who on
+perceiving her started in her direction.
+
+The colored man lifted his feet lazily from the chain, brought his
+chair down to four legs, put his toothpick in his waistcoat pocket,
+and dragged himself up.
+
+"Say, lady," he drawled, on approaching her, "I think them two fellas
+is tough. You stay here by me. I'll not let no one get fresh with
+you."
+
+Languidly he went back to his former position and occupation, but when
+after long waiting, the train drew in he unhooked his feet again from
+the chain, rose lazily, and accompanied Letty across the otherwise
+empty platform.
+
+"Say, brother," he said to the conductor, "don't let any fresh guy get
+busy with this lady. She's alone, and timid like."
+
+"Sure thing," the conductor replied, closing the doors as Letty
+stepped within. "Sit in this corner, lady, next to me. The first mutt
+that wags his jaw at you'll get it on the bean."
+
+Letty dropped as she was bidden into the corner, dazed by the
+brilliant lighting, and the greasy unoccupied seats. She was alone in
+the car, and the kindly conductor having closed his door she felt a
+certain sense of privacy. The train clattered off into the darkness.
+
+Where was she going? Why was she there? How was she ever to accomplish
+the purpose with which two hours earlier she had stolen away from East
+Sixty-seventh Street? Was it only two hours earlier? It seemed like
+two years. It seemed like a space of time not to be reckoned....
+
+She was tired as she had never been tired in her life. Her head sank
+back into the support made by the corner.
+
+"There's quite a trick to it," she found herself repeating, though in
+what connection she scarcely knew. "An awful wicked lydy, she is,
+what'd put madam up to all the ropes." These words too drifted through
+her mind, foolishly, drowsily, without obvious connection. She began
+to wish that she was home again in the little back spare room--or
+anywhere--so long as she could lie down--and shut her eyes--and go to
+sleep....
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+
+It was Steptoe who discovered that the little back spare room was
+empty, though William had informed him that he thought it strange that
+madam didn't appear for breakfast. Steptoe knew then that what he had
+expected had come to pass, and if earlier than he had looked for it,
+perhaps it was just as well. Having tapped at madam's door and
+received no answer he ventured within. Everything there confirming his
+belief, he went to inform Mr. Rash.
+
+As Mr. Rash was shaving in the bathroom Steptoe plodded round the
+bedroom, picking up scattered articles of clothing, putting outside
+the door the shoes which had been taken off on the previous night,
+digging another pair of shoes from the shoe-cupboard, and otherwise
+busying himself as usual. Even when Mr. Rash had re-entered the
+bedroom the valet made no immediate reference to what had happened in
+the house. He approached the subject indirectly by saying, as he laid
+out an old velvet house-jacket on the bed:
+
+"I suppose if Mr. Rash ain't goin' out for 'is breakfast 'e'll put
+this on for 'ome."
+
+Mr. Rash, who was buttoning his collar before the mirror said over his
+shoulder: "But I am going out for my breakfast. Why shouldn't I? I
+always do."
+
+Steptoe carried the house-jacket back to the closet.
+
+"I thought as Mr. Rash only did that so as madam could 'ave the dinin'
+room to 'erself, private like."
+
+As a way of expressing the fact that Allerton had never eaten a meal
+with Letty the choice of words was neat.
+
+"Well? What then?"
+
+"Oh, nothink, sir. I was only thinkin' that, as madam was no longer
+'ere----"
+
+Allerton wheeled round, his fingers clawing at the collar-stud, his
+face growing bloodless. "No longer here? What the deuce do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, didn't Mr. Rash know? Madam seems to 'ave left us. I supposed
+that after I'd gone upstairs last night Mr. Rash and 'er must 'ave 'ad
+some sort of hunderstandin'--and she went."
+
+"Went?" Allerton's tone was almost a scream. Leaping on the old man he
+took him by the shoulders, snaking him. "Damn you! Get it out! What
+are you trying to tell me?"
+
+Steptoe quaked and cowered. "Why, nothink, sir. Only when William said
+as madam didn't come down to 'er breakfast I went to 'er door and
+tapped--and there wasn't no one in the room. Mr. Rash 'ad better go
+and see for 'imself."
+
+The young man not only released the older one, but pushed him aside
+with a force which sent him staggering backwards. Over the stairs he
+scrambled, he plunged. Though he had never entered the back spare room
+since allotting it to Letty as her own he threw the door open now as
+if the place was on fire.
+
+But by the time Steptoe had followed and reached the threshold
+Allerton had calmed suddenly. He stood in front of the open closet
+vaguely examining its contents. He picked up the little gold band,
+chucked it a few inches into the air, caught it, and put it down. He
+looked into the little leather purse, poured out its notes and pennies
+into his hand, replaced them, and put that also down again. He opened
+the old red volume lying on the table by the bed, finding _The Little
+Mermaid_ marked by two stiff dried sprays of dust flower, which more
+than ever merited its name. When he turned round to where Steptoe,
+white and scared by this time, was standing in the open doorway, his,
+Allerton's, face was drawn, in mingled convulsion and bewilderment.
+With two strides he was across the room.
+
+"Tell me what you know about this, you confounded old schemer, before
+I kick you out."
+
+Shivering and shaking, Steptoe nevertheless held himself with dignity.
+"I'll tell you what I know, Mr. Rash, though it ain't very much. I
+know that madam 'as 'ad it in 'er mind for some time past that unless
+she took steps Mr. Rash'd never be free to marry the young lydy what
+'e was in love with."
+
+"What did she mean by taking steps?"
+
+"I don't know exactly, but I think it was the kind o' steps as'd give
+Mr. Rash 'is release quicker nor any other."
+
+Allerton's arm was raised as if to strike a blow. "And you let her?"
+
+The old face was set steadily. "I didn't do nothin' but what Mr. Rash
+'imself told me to do."
+
+"Told you to do?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Rash; six months ago; the mornin' after you'd brought madam
+into the 'ouse. I was to get you out of the marriage, you said; but I
+think madam 'as done it all of 'er own haccord."
+
+"But why? Why should she?"
+
+Steptoe smiled, dimly. "Oh, don't Mr. Rash see? Madam 'ad give 'erself
+to 'im 'eart and spirit and soul. If she couldn't go to the good for
+'im, she'd go to the bad. So long as she served 'im, it didn't matter
+to madam what she done. And if I was Mr. Rash----"
+
+Allerton's spring was like that of a tiger. Before Steptoe felt that
+he had been seized he was on his back on the floor, with Allerton
+kneeling on his chest.
+
+"You old reptile! I'm going to kill you."
+
+"You may kill me, Mr. Rash, but it won't make no difference to madam
+'avin' loved you----"
+
+Two strong hands at his throat choked back more words, till the sound
+of his strangling startled Allerton into a measure of self-control. He
+scrambled to his feet again.
+
+"Get up."
+
+Steptoe dragged himself up, and after dusting himself with his fingers
+stood once more passive and respectful, as if nothing violent had
+occurred.
+
+"If I was Mr. Rash," he went on, imperturbably, "I'd let well enough
+alone."
+
+It was Allerton who was breathless. "Wha--what do you mean by well
+enough alone?"
+
+"Well the wye I see it, it's this wye. Mr. Rash is married to one
+young lydy and wants to marry another." He broke off to ask,
+significantly: "I suppose that'd be so, Mr. Rash?"
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Why, then, 'e can't marry the other young lydy till the young lydy
+what 'e's married to sets 'im free. Now that young lydy what 'e's
+married to 'as started out to set 'im free, and if I was Mr. Rash I'd
+let 'er."
+
+"You'd let her throw herself away for me?"
+
+"I'd let 'er do anythink what'd show I knowed my own mind, Mr. Rash.
+If it wouldn't be steppin' out of my place to sye so, I wish Mr. Rash
+could tell which of these two young lydies 'e wanted, and which 'e'd
+be willin' for to----"
+
+"How can I tell that when--when both have a claim on me?"
+
+"Yes, but only one 'as a clyme on Mr. Rash now. Madam 'as given up 'er
+clyme, so as to myke things easier for _'im_. There's only one clyme
+now for Mr. Rash to think about, and that mykes everythink simple."
+
+An embarrassed cough drew Steptoe's attention to the fact that someone
+was standing in the hall outside. It was William with a note on a
+silver tray. Beside the note stood a small square package, tied with a
+white ribbon, which looked as if it contained a piece of wedding cake.
+His whisper of explanation was the word, "Wildgoose," but a cocking of
+his eye gave Steptoe to understand that William was quite aware of
+wading in the current of his employer's love-affairs. Moreover, the
+fact that Steptoe and his master should be making so free with the
+little back spare room was in William's judgment evidence of drama.
+
+"What's this?"
+
+Glancing at the hand-writing on the envelope, and taking in the fact
+that a small square package, looking like a bit of wedding cake stood
+beside it, Allerton jumped back. Steptoe might have been presenting
+him with a snake.
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Rash. William 'as just brought it up. Someone seems
+to 'ave left it at the door."
+
+As Steptoe continued to stand with his offering held out Allerton had
+no choice but to take up the letter and break the seal. He read it
+with little grunts intended to signify ironic laughter, but which
+betrayed no more than bitterness of soul.
+
+    "DEAR RASH:
+
+    I have come to see that we shall never get out of the impasse
+    in which we seem to have been caught unless someone takes a
+    stand. I have therefore decided to take one. Of the three of
+    us it is apparently easiest for me, so that I am definitely
+    breaking our engagement and sending you back your ring. Any
+    claim I may have had on you I give up of my own accord, so
+    that as far as I am concerned you are free. This will simplify
+    your situation, and enable you to act according to the
+    dictates of your heart. Believe me, dear Rash, affectionately
+    yours
+
+                                              BARBARA WALBROOK."
+
+Though it was not his practice to take his valet into the secret of
+his correspondence the circumstances were exceptional. Allerton handed
+the letter to Steptoe without a word. As the old man was feeling for
+his glasses and adjusting them to his nose Mr. Rash turned absently
+away, picking up the volume of Hans Andersen, from which the sprays
+of dust flower tumbled out. On putting them back his eyes fell upon
+the words, which someone had marked with a pencil:
+
+"Day by day she grew dearer to the prince; but he loved her as one
+loves a child. The thought of making her his queen never crossed his
+mind."
+
+A spasm passed over his face. He turned the page impatiently. Here he
+caught the words which had been underlined:
+
+"I am with him every day. I will watch over him--love him--and
+sacrifice my life for him."
+
+Shutting the book with a bang, and throwing it on the table, he
+wheeled round to where Steptoe, having folded the letter, was taking
+off his spectacles.
+
+"Well, what do you say to that?"
+
+"What I'd sye to that, Mr. Rash, is that it's as good as a legal
+document. If any young lydy what wrote that letter was to bring a
+haction for breach, this 'ere pyper'd nyle 'er."
+
+"So where am I now?"
+
+"Free as a lark, Mr. Rash. One young lydy 'as turned you down, and the
+other 'as gone to the bad for you; so if you was to begin agyne with a
+third you'd 'ave a clean sheet."
+
+He groaned aloud. "Ah, go to ----"
+
+But without stating the place to which Steptoe was to go he marched
+out of the room, and back to his dressing upstairs.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+More dispassionate was the early morning scene in the little basement
+eating house in which the stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture was
+serving breakfast to two gentlemen who had plainly met by
+appointment. Beside the one was an oblong packet, of which some of the
+contents, half displayed, had the opulent engraved decorations of
+stock certificates.
+
+The other gentleman, resembling an operatic brigand a little the worse
+for wear, was saying with conviction: "Oil! Don't talk to me! No, sir!
+There's enough oil in Milligan Center alone to run every car in Europe
+and America at this present time; while if you include North Milligan,
+where it's beginnin' to shoot like the Old Faithful geyser----"
+
+"Awful obliged to you, Judson," the other took up, humbly. "I thought
+that bunch o' nuts 'd never----"
+
+"So did I, Gorry. I've sweated blood over this job all winter. Queer
+the way men are made. Now you'd hardly believe the work I've had to
+show that lot of boneheads that because a guy's a detective in one
+line, he ain't a detective in every line. Homicide, I said, was Gorry
+Larrabin's specialty, and where there's no homicide he's no more a
+detective than a busted rubber tire."
+
+"You've said it," Gorry corroborated, earnestly. "One of the cussed
+things about detectin' is that fellas gets afraid of you. Think
+because you're keepin' up your end you must be down on every little
+thing, and that you ain't a sport."
+
+"Must be hard," Judson said, sympathetically.
+
+"I'll tell you it's hard. Lots of fun I'd like to be let in on--but
+you're kept outside."
+
+The drawbacks of the detective profession not being what Judson
+chiefly had on his mind he allowed the subject to drop. An interval of
+silence for the consumption of a plateful of golden toasties
+permitted Gorry to begin again reminiscently.
+
+"By the way, Judson, do you remember that about six months ago you was
+chewin' over that girl of yours, and what had become of her?"
+
+To himself Judson said: "That's the talk; now we're comin' to
+business." Aloud he made it: "Why, yes. Seems to me I do. She's been
+gone so long I'd almost forgot her."
+
+"Well, what d'ye know? Last night--lemme see, was it last night?--no,
+night before last--I kind o' got wind of her."
+
+"Heaven's sake!"
+
+"Guy I know was comin' through East Sixty-seventh Street, and there
+was my lady, dressed to beat the band, leadin' one of them little toy
+dogs, and talkin' to a swell toff that lives in one of them houses.
+Got the number here in my pocket-book."
+
+While he was searching his pocket-book Judson asked, breathlessly:
+"Couldn't be no mistake?"
+
+"It's nix on mistakes. That guy don't make 'em. Surest thing on the
+force. He said, 'Good afternoon, Miss Gravely'; and she said, 'Good
+afternoon' back to him--just like that. The guy walked on and turned a
+corner; but when he peeped back, there was the couple goin' into the
+house just like husband and wife. What d'ye know?"
+
+"What do I know? I know I'll spill his claret for him before the week
+is out."
+
+"Ah, here it is! Knew I had that address on me somewheres." He handed
+the scrap of paper across the table. "That's his name and number.
+Seems to me you may have a good thing there, Judson, if you know how
+to work it."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+In another early morning scene the ermine was cleaning her nest; and
+you know how fastidious she is supposed to be as to personal
+spotlessness. The ermine in question did not belie her reputation, as
+you would have seen by a glance at the three or four rooms which made
+up what she called her "flat."
+
+Nothing was ever whiter than the wood-work of the "flat" and its
+furnishings. Nothing was ever whiter than the little lady's dress. The
+hair was white, and even the complexion, the one like silver, the
+other like the camelia. Having breakfasted from white dishes placed on
+a white napkin, she was busy with a carpet-sweeper sweeping up
+possible crumbs. In an interval of the carpet-sweeper's buzz she heard
+the telephone.
+
+"Hello!" The male voice was commanding.
+
+"Yes?" The response was sweetly precise.
+
+"Is this Red Point 3284-W?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Can I speak to Miss Henrietta Towell?"
+
+"This is Miss Henrietta Towell."
+
+"This is the Brooklyn Bridge Emergency Hospital. Do you know a girl
+named Letitia Rashleigh?"
+
+There was a second's hesitation. "I was once a lady's maid to a lady
+whose maiden name was Rashleigh. I think there may be a connection
+somewhere."
+
+"She was found unconscious on a car in the subway last night and
+brought in here."
+
+"And has she mentioned me?"
+
+"She hasn't mentioned anyone since she came to; but we find your
+address on a paper in her pocket."
+
+"That seems singular, but I expect there's a purpose behind it. Is
+that everything she had?"
+
+"No; she had forty-five cents and a thimble."
+
+"A thimble! Just an ordinary thimble."
+
+"Yes, an ordinary thimble, except that it has initials on the edge.
+'H.T. from H.S.' Does that mean anything to you?"
+
+"Yes; that means something to me. May I ask how to reach the
+hospital?"
+
+This being explained Miss Towell promised to appear without delay,
+begging that in the meantime everything be done for Miss Rashleigh's
+comfort.
+
+She was not perturbed. She was not surprised. She did not wonder who
+Letitia Rashleigh could be, or why her address should be found in the
+girl's pocket. She was as quiet and serene as if such incidents
+belonged to every day's work.
+
+Dressed for the street she was all in black. A mantua covered with
+bugles and braid dropped from her shoulders, while a bonnet which rose
+to a pointed arch above her brow, and allowed the silver knob of her
+hair to escape behind, gave her a late nineteenth century dignity.
+Before leaving the house she took two volumes from her shelves--read
+first in one, then in the other--sat pensive for a while, with head
+bent and eyes shaded--after which she replaced her books, turned the
+key in her door, and set forth for Brooklyn Bridge.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+
+"Why you should hold me responsible," Barbara was saying, "I can't
+begin to imagine. Surely I've done everything I could to simplify
+matters, to straighten them out, and to give you a chance to rectify
+your folly. I've effaced myself; I've broken my heart; I've promised
+Aunt Marion to go in for a job for which I'm not fitted and don't care
+a rap; and yet you come here, accusing me----"
+
+"But, Barbe, I'm _not_ accusing you! If I'm accusing anyone it's
+myself. Only I can't speak without your taking me up----"
+
+"There you go! Oh, Rash, dear, if you'd only been able to control
+yourself nothing of this would have happened--not from the first."
+
+She was pacing up and down the little reception room, and rubbing her
+hands together, while the twisting of the fish-tail of her
+hydrangea-colored robe, like an eel in agony, emphasized her
+agitation. Rashleigh was seated, his elbows on his knees, his head
+bowed between his hands, of which the fingers clutched and tore at the
+masses of his hair. Only when he spoke did he lift his woe-begone
+black eyes.
+
+"Well, I didn't control myself," he admitted, impatiently; "that's
+settled. Why go back to it? The question is----"
+
+"Yes; why go back to it? That's you all over, Rash. You can do what no
+one else in his senses would ever think of doing; and when you've
+upset the whole apple cart it must never be referred to again. I'm to
+accept, and keep silence. Well, I've _kept_ silence. I've gone all
+winter like a muzzled dog. I've wheedled that girl, and kow-towed to
+her, and made her think I was fond of her--which I am in a way--you
+may not believe it, but I am--and what's the result? She gets sick of
+the whole business; runs away; and you come here and throw the whole
+blame on me."
+
+He tried to speak with special calmness. "Barbe, listen to me. What I
+said was this----"
+
+She came to a full stop in front of him, her arms outspread. "Oh,
+Rash, dear, I know perfectly well what you said. You don't have to go
+all over it again. I'm not deaf. If you would only not be so
+excitable----"
+
+He jumped to his feet. "I'm excitable, I know, Barbe. I confess it.
+Everybody knows it. What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm not
+excited _now_."
+
+She laughed, a little mocking laugh, and started once more to pace up
+and down. "Oh, very well! You're not excited now. Then that's
+understood. You never are excited. You're as calm as a mountain." She
+paused again, though at a distance. "_Now?_ What is it you're going to
+do? That's what you've come to ask me, isn't it? Are you going to run
+after her? Are you going to let her go? Are you going to divorce her,
+if she gives you the opportunity? If you divorce her are you going
+to----?"
+
+"But, Barbe, I can't decide all these questions now. What I want to do
+is to _find_ her."
+
+"Well, I haven't got her here? Why don't you go after her? Why don't
+you apply to the police? Why don't you----?"
+
+"Yes, but that's just what I want to discuss with you. I don't _like_
+applying to the police. If I do it'll get into the papers, and the
+whole thing become so odious and vulgar----"
+
+"And it's such an exquisite idyll now!"
+
+He threw back his head. "_She's_ an exquisite idyll--in her way."
+
+"There! That's what I wanted to hear you say! I've thought you were in
+love with her----"
+
+He remembered the penciled lines in Hans Andersen. "If I have been,
+it's as you may be in love with an innocent little child----"
+
+She laughed again, wildly, almost hysterically. "Oh, Rash, don't try
+to get that sort of thing off on me. I know how men love innocent
+little children. You can see the way they do it any night you choose
+to hang round the stage-door of a theatre where the exquisite idylls
+are playing in musical comedy."
+
+"Don't Barbe! Not when you're talking about her! I know she's an
+ignorant little thing; but to me she's like a wild-flower----"
+
+"Wild-flowers can be cultivated, Rash."
+
+"Yes, but the wild-flower she's most like is the one you see in the
+late summer all along the dusty highways----"
+
+She put up both palms in a gesture of protestation. "Oh, Rash, please
+don't be poetical. It gets on my nerves. I can't stand it. I like you
+in every mood but your sentimental one." She came to a halt beside
+the mantelpiece, on which she rested an elbow, turning to look at him.
+"Now tell me, Rash! Suppose I wasn't in the world at all. Or suppose
+you'd never heard of me. And suppose you found yourself married to
+this girl, just as you are--nominally--legally--but not really. Would
+you--would you make it--really?"
+
+They exchanged a long silent look. His eyes had not left hers when he
+said: "I--I might."
+
+"Good! Now suppose she wasn't in the world at all, or that you'd never
+heard of her. And suppose that you and I were--were on just the same
+terms that we are to-day. Would you--would you want to marry me?
+Answer me truly."
+
+"Why, yes; of course."
+
+"Now suppose that she and I were standing together, and you were led
+in to choose between us. And suppose you were absolutely free and
+untrammelled in your choice, with no question as to her feelings or
+mine to trouble you. Which would you take? Answer me just as truly and
+sincerely as you can."
+
+He took time to think, wheeling away from her, and walking up and down
+the little room with his hands behind his back. It occurred to neither
+that Barbara having broken the "engagement," and returned the ring,
+the choice before him was purely hypothetical. Their relations were no
+more affected by the note she had written him that morning than by the
+ceremony through which he and Letty had walked in the previous year.
+
+To Barbara the suspense was almost unbearable. In a minute or two, and
+with a word or two, she would know how life for the future was to be
+cast. She would have before her the possibility of some day becoming a
+happy wife--or a great career like her aunt's.
+
+Pausing in his walk he confronted her just as he stood, his hands
+still clasped behind his back. Her own attitude, with elbow resting on
+the mantelpiece, was that of a woman equal to anything.
+
+He spoke slowly. "Just as truly and sincerely as I can answer you--I
+don't know."
+
+She stirred slightly, but otherwise gave no sign of her impatience.
+"And is there anything that would help you to find out?"
+
+He shook his head. "Nothing that I can think of, unless----"
+
+"Yes? Unless--what?"
+
+"Unless it's something that would unlock what's locked in my
+subconsciousness."
+
+"And what would that be?"
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea."
+
+She moved from the mantelpiece with a gesture of despair. "Rash,
+you're absolutely and hopelessly impossible."
+
+"I know that," he admitted, humbly.
+
+With both fists clenched she stood in front of him. "I could kill
+you."
+
+He hung his head. "Not half so easily as I could kill myself."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Letty's judgment on Miss Henrietta Towell was different from yours and
+mine. She found her just what she had expected to see from the
+warnings long ago issued by Mrs. Judson Flack in putting her daughter
+on her guard. In going about the city she, Letty, was always to be
+suspicious of elderly ladies, respectably dressed, enticingly
+mannered, and with what seemed like maternal intentions. The more any
+one of these traits was developed, the more suspicious Letty was to
+be. With these instructions carefully at heart she would have been
+suspicious of Henrietta Towell in any case; but with Steptoe's
+description to fall back upon she couldn't but feel sure.
+
+By the time Miss Towell had arrived at the hospital Letitia Rashleigh
+had sufficiently recovered to be dressed and seated in the armchair
+placed beside the bed in the small white ward. On one low bedpost the
+jacket had been hung, and on the other the battered black hat.
+
+"There's nothing the matter with her," the nurse explained to Miss
+Towell, before entering the ward. "She had fainted in the subway, but
+I think it was only from fatigue, and perhaps from lack of food. She's
+quite well nourished, only she didn't seem to have eaten any supper,
+and was evidently tired from a long and frightening walk. She gives us
+no explanation of herself, and is disinclined to talk, and if it
+hadn't been that she had your address in her pocket----"
+
+"I think I know how she got that. From her name I judge that she's a
+relative of the family in which I used to be employed; but as they
+were all very wealthy people----"
+
+"Even very wealthy people often have poor relations."
+
+"Yes, of course; but I was with this family for so many years that if
+there'd been any such connection I think I must have heard of it.
+However, it makes no difference to me, and I shall be glad to be of
+use to her, especially as she has in her possession an article--a
+thimble it is--which once belonged to me."
+
+At the bedside the nurse made the introduction. "This is the lady
+whose address you had in your pocket. She very kindly said she'd come
+and see what she could do for you."
+
+Having placed a chair for Miss Towell the nurse withdrew to attend to
+other patients in the ward, of whom there were three or four.
+
+Letty regarded the newcomer with eyes that seemed lustreless in spite
+of their tiny gold flames. Having a shrewd idea of what she would mean
+to her visitor she felt it unnecessary to express gratitude. In a
+certain sense she hated her at sight. She hated her bugles and braid
+and the shape of her bonnet, as the criminal about to be put to death
+might hate the executioner's mask and gaberdine. The more Miss Towell
+was sweet-spoken and respectable, the more Letty shrank from these
+tokens of hypocrisy in one who was wicked to the core. "She wouldn't
+seem so wicked, not at first," Steptoe had predicted, "but time'd
+tell." Well, Letty didn't need time to tell, since she could see for
+herself already. She could see from the first words addressed to her.
+
+"You needn't tell me anything about yourself, dear, that you don't
+want me to know. If you're without a place to go to, I shall be glad
+if you'll come home with me."
+
+It was the invitation Letty had expected, and to which she meant to
+respond. Knowing, however, what was behind it she replied more
+ungraciously than she would otherwise have done. "Oh, I don't mind
+talking about myself. I'm a picture-actress, only I've been out of a
+job. I haven't worked for over six months. I've been--I've been
+visiting."
+
+Miss Towell lowered her eyes, and spoke with modesty. "I suppose you
+were visiting people who knew--who knew the person who--who gave you
+my address and the thimble?"
+
+This question being more direct than she cared for Letty was careful
+to answer no more than, "Yes."
+
+Miss Towell continued to sit with eyes downcast, and as if musing. Two
+or three minutes went by before she said, softly: "How is he?"
+
+Letty replied that he was very well, and in the same place where he
+had been so long. Another interval of musing was followed by the
+simple statement: "We differed about religion."
+
+This remark had no modifying effect on Letty's estimate of Miss
+Towell's character, since religion was little more to her than a word.
+Neither was she interested in dead romance between Steptoe and Miss
+Towell, all romance being summed up in her prince. That flame burned
+with a pure and single purpose to wed him to the princess with whom he
+was in love, while the little mermaid became first foam, and then a
+spirit of the air. It took little from the poetry of this dissolution
+that it could be achieved only by trundling over Brooklyn Bridge, and
+through a nexus of dreary streets. In Letty's outlook on her mission
+the end glorified the means, however shady or degraded.
+
+It was precisely this spirit--mistaken, if you choose to call it
+so--which animated Judith of Bethulia, Monna Vanna, and Boule de Suif.
+Letty didn't class herself with these heroines; she only felt as they
+did, that there was something to be done. On that something a man's
+happiness depended; on it another woman's happiness depended too; on
+it her own happiness depended, since if it wasn't done she would feel
+herself a clog to be cursed. To be cursed by the prince would mean
+anguish far more terrible than any punishment society could mete out
+to her.
+
+"If you feel equal to it we might go now, dear," Miss Towell
+suggested, on waking from her dreams of what might have been. "I wish
+I could take you in a taxi; but I daresay you won't mind the tram."
+
+Letty rose briskly. "No, I shan't mind it at all." She looked Miss
+Towell significantly in the eyes, hoping that her words would carry
+all the meaning she was putting into them. "I shan't mind--anything
+you want me to do, no matter what."
+
+Miss Towell smiled, sweetly. "Thank you, dear. That'll be very nice. I
+shan't ask you to do much, because it's your problem, you know, and
+you must work it out. I'll stand by; but standing by is about all we
+can do for each other, when problems have to be faced. Don't you think
+it is?"
+
+As this language meant nothing to Letty, she thanked the nurse, smiled
+at the other patients, and, trudging at Miss Towell's side with her
+quaintly sturdy grace, went forth to her great sacrifice.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allerton had drawn from his conversation with Barbara this one
+practical suggestion. As he had months before consulted his lawyer,
+Mr. Nailes, as to ways of losing Letty after she had been found, he
+might consult him as to ways of finding her now that she had been
+lost. Mr. Nailes would not go to the police. He would apply to some
+discreet house of detectives who would do the work discreetly.
+
+"Then, I presume, you've changed your mind about this marriage," was
+Mr. Nailes' not unnatural inference, "and mean to go on with it."
+
+"N-not exactly." Allerton was still unable to define his intentions.
+"I only don't want her to disappear--like this."
+
+Mr. Nailes pondered. He was a tall, raw-boned man, of raw-boned
+countenance, to whom the law represented no system of divine justice,
+but a means by which Eugene Nailes could make money, as his father had
+made it before him. Having inherited his father's practice he had
+inherited Rashleigh Allerton, the two fathers having had a
+long-standing business connection. Mr. Nailes had no high opinion of
+Rashleigh Allerton--in which he was not peculiar--but a client with so
+much money was entitled to his way. At the same time he couldn't have
+been human without urging a point of common sense.
+
+"If you _don't_ want to--to continue your--your relation with
+this--this lady, doesn't it strike you that now might be a happy
+opportunity----?"
+
+Allerton did what he did rarely; he struck the table with his fist. "I
+want to find her."
+
+The words were spoken with so much force that to Mr. Nailes they were
+conclusive. It was far from his intention to compel anyone to common
+sense, and least of all a man whose folly might bring increased fees
+to the firm of Nailes, Nailes, and Nailes.
+
+It was agreed that steps should be taken at once, and that Mr. Nailes
+would report in the evening. Gravely was the name Allerton was sure
+she would use, and the only one that needed to be mentioned. It needed
+only to be mentioned too that Mr. Nailes was acting for a client who
+preferred to remain anonymous.
+
+It was further agreed that Mr. Nailes should report at Allerton's
+office at ten that evening, in person if there was anything to
+discuss, by telephone if there was nothing. This was convenient for
+Mr. Nailes, who lived in the neighborhood of Washington Square, while
+it protected Rash from household curiosity. At ten that night he was,
+therefore, in the unusual position of pacing the rooms he had hardly
+ever seen except by daylight.
+
+Not Letty's disappearance was uppermost in his mind, for the moment,
+but his own inhibitions.
+
+"My God, what's the matter with me?" he was muttering to himself. "Am
+I going insane? Have I been insane all along? Why _can't_ I say which
+of these two women I want, when I can have either?"
+
+He placed over against each other the special set of spells which each
+threw upon his heart.
+
+Barbara was of his own world; she knew the people he knew; she had the
+same interests, and the same way of showing them. Moreover, she had in
+a measure grown into his life. Their friendship was not only intimate
+it was one of long standing. Though she worried, hectored, and
+exasperated him, she had fits of generous repentance, in which she
+mothered him adorably. This double-harness of comradeship had worked
+for so many years that he couldn't imagine wearing it with another.
+
+And yet Letty pulled so piteously at his heart that he fairly melted
+in tenderness toward her. Everything he knew as appeal was summed up
+in her soft voice, her gentle manner, her humility, her unquestioning
+faith in himself. No one had ever had faith in him before. To Barbe he
+was a booby when he was not a baby. To Letty he was a hero, strong,
+wise, commanding. It wasn't merely his vanity that she touched; it was
+his manliness. Barbe suppressed his manliness, because she herself was
+so imperious. Letty depended on it, and therefore drew it out. Because
+she believed him a man, he could be a man; whereas with Barbe, as with
+everyone else, he was a creature to be liked, humored, laughed at, and
+good-naturedly despised. He was sick of being liked, humored, and
+laughed at; he rebelled with every atom in him that was masculine at
+being good-naturedly despised. To find anyone who thought him big and
+vigorous was to his starved spirit, as the psalmist says, sweeter also
+than honey and the honeycomb. In having her weakness to hold up he
+could for the first time in his life feel himself of use.
+
+If there was no Barbe in the world he could have taken Letty as the
+mate his soul was longing for. Yet how could he deal such a blow at
+Barbe's loyalty? She had protected him during all his life, from
+boyhood upwards. Between him and derision she had stood like a young
+lioness. How could he deny her now?--no matter what frail, gentle
+hands were clinging around his heart?
+
+"How can I? How can I? How can I?"
+
+He was torturing himself with this question when the telephone rang,
+and he knew that Letty had not been found.
+
+"No; nothing," were the words of Mr. Nailes. "No one of the name has
+been reported at any of the hospitals, or police stations, or any
+other public institution. They've applied at all the motion-picture
+studios round New York; but still with no result. This, of course, is
+only the preliminary search, as much as they've been able to
+accomplish in one afternoon and evening. You mustn't be disappointed.
+To-morrow is likely to be more successful."
+
+Rash was, therefore, thrown back on another phase of his situation.
+Letty was lost. She was not only lost, but she had run away from him.
+She had not only run away from him, but she had done it so that he
+might be rid of her. She had not only done it so that he might be rid
+of her, but....
+
+His spirit balked. His imagination could work no further. Horror
+staggered him. A mother who knows that her child is in the hands of
+kidnappers who will have no mercy might feel something like the
+despair and helplessness which sent him chafing and champing up and
+down the suite of rooms, cursing himself uselessly.
+
+Suddenly he paused. He was in front of the cabinet which had come via
+Bordentown from Queen Caroline Murat. Behind its closed door there was
+still the bottle on the label of which a kilted Highlander was
+dancing. He must have a refuge from his thoughts, or else he would go
+mad. He was already as near madness as a man could come and still be
+reckoned sane.
+
+He opened the door of the cabinet. The bottle and the glass stood
+exactly where he had placed them on that morning when he had tried to
+begin going to the devil, and had failed. Now there was no longer that
+same mysterious restraint. He was not thinking of the devil; he was
+thinking only of himself. He must still the working of his mind.
+Anything would do that would drug his faculties, and so....
+
+It was after midnight when he dragged himself out of a stupor which
+had not been sleep. Being stupor, however, it was that much to the
+good. He had stopped thinking. He couldn't think. His head didn't
+ache; it was merely sore. He might have been dashing it against the
+wall, as figuratively he had done. His body was sore too--stiff from
+long sitting in the same posture, and bruised as if from beating. All
+that was nothing, however, since misery only stunned him. To be
+stunned was what he had been working for.
+
+Out in the air the wind of the May night was comforting. It soothed
+his nerves without waking the dormant brain. Instead of looking for a
+taxi he began walking up the Avenue. Walking too was a relief. It
+allowed him to remain as stupefied as at first, and yet stirred the
+circulation in his limbs. He meant to walk till he grew tired, after
+which he would jump on an electric bus.
+
+But he did not grow tired. He passed the great milestones, Fourteenth
+Street, Twenty-third Street, Forty-second Street, Fifty-ninth Street,
+and not till crossing the last did he begin to feel fagged. He was
+then so near home that the impulse of doggedness kept him on foot. He
+was a strong walker, and physically in good condition, without being
+wholly robust. Had it not been for the kilted Highlander he would
+hardly have felt fatigue; but as it was, the corner of East
+Sixty-seventh Street found him as spent as he cared to be.
+
+Advancing toward his door he saw a man coming in the other direction.
+There was nothing in that, and he would scarcely have noticed him,
+only for the fact that at this hour of the night pedestrians in the
+quarter were rare. In addition to that the man, having reached the
+foot of Allerton's own steps, stood there waiting, as if with
+intention.
+
+Through the obscurity Rash could see only that the man was well built,
+flashily dressed, and that he wore a sweeping mustache. In his manner
+of standing and waiting there was something significant and menacing.
+Arrived at the foot of the steps Allerton could do no less than pause
+to ask if the stranger was looking for anyone.
+
+"Is your name Allerton?"
+
+"Yes; it is."
+
+"Then I want my girl."
+
+It was some seconds before Rash could get his dulled mind into play.
+Moreover, the encounter was of a kind which made him feel sick and
+disgusted.
+
+"Whom do you mean?" he managed to ask, at last.
+
+"You know very well who I mean. I mean Letty Gravely. I'm her father;
+and by God, if you don't give her up--with big damages----"
+
+"I can't give her up, because she's not here."
+
+"Not here? She was damn well here the day before yesterday."
+
+"Yes; she was here the day before yesterday; but she disappeared last
+night."
+
+"Ah, cut that kind o' talk. I'm wise, I am. You can't put that bunk
+over on me. She's in there, and I'm goin' to get her."
+
+"I wish she was in there; but she's not."
+
+"How do I know she's not?"
+
+"I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it."
+
+"Like hell I'll take your word for it. I'm goin' to see for myself."
+
+"I don't see how you're going to do that."
+
+"I'm goin' in with you."
+
+"That wouldn't do you any good. Besides, I can't let you."
+
+The man became more bullying. "See here, son. This game is my game.
+Did j'ever see a thing like this?"
+
+Watching the movement of his hand Rash saw the handle of a revolver
+displayed in a side pocket.
+
+"Yes, I've seen a thing like that; but even if it was loaded--which I
+don't believe it is--you've too much sense to use it. You might shoot
+me, of course; but you wouldn't find the girl in the house, because
+she isn't there."
+
+"Well, I'm goin' to see. You march. Up you go, and open that door, and
+I'll follow you."
+
+"Oh, no, you won't." Allerton looked round for the policeman who
+occasionally passed that way; but though a lighted car crashed down
+Madison Avenue there was no one in sight. He might have called in the
+hope of waking the men upstairs, but that seemed cowardly. Though in a
+physical encounter with a ruffian like this he could hardly help
+getting the worst of it--especially in his state of half
+intoxication--it was the encounter itself that he loathed, even more
+than the defeat. "Oh, no, you won't," he repeated, taking one step
+upward, and turning to defend his premises. "I don't mean that you
+shall come into this house, or ever see the girl again, if I can
+prevent it."
+
+"Oh, you don't, don't you?"
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Then take that."
+
+The words were so quickly spoken, and the blow in his face so
+unexpected, that Rash staggered backwards. Being on a step he had
+little or no footing, and having been drinking his balance was the
+more quickly lost.
+
+"And that!"
+
+A second blow in the face sent him down like a stone, without a
+struggle or a cry.
+
+He fell limply on his back, his feet slipping to the sidewalk, his
+body sagging on the steps like a bit of string, accidentally dropped
+there. The hat, which fell off, remained on the step beside the head
+it had been covering.
+
+The man leaped backward, as if surprised at his own deed. He looked
+this way and that, to see if he had been observed. A lighted car
+crashed up Madison Avenue, but otherwise the street remained empty.
+Creeping nearer the steps he bent over his victim, whose left hand lay
+helpless and outstretched. Timidly, gingerly, he put his fingers to
+the pulse, starting back from it with a shock. He spoke but two words,
+but he spoke them half aloud.
+
+"Dead! God!"
+
+Then he walked swiftly away into Madison Avenue, where he soon found a
+car going southward.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+
+Barbara was late for breakfast. Miss Walbrook, the aunt, was scanning
+the morning paper, her refined, austere Americanism being as
+noticeable in the dining-room as elsewhere in the house. Everything
+was slender and strong; everything was American, unless it was the
+Persian rug. On the paneled walls there were but three portraits, a
+Boston ancestress, in lace cap and satins, painted by Copley; a
+Philadelphia ancestor in the Continental uniform, painted by Gilbert
+Stuart; and her New York grandmother, painted by Thomas Sully, looking
+over her shoulder with the wild backward glance that artist gives to
+the girl Victoria in the Metropolitan Museum. In a flat cabinet along
+a wall was the largest collection of old American glass to be found in
+the country.
+
+Barbara rushed in, with apologies for being late. "I didn't sleep a
+wink. It doesn't seem to me as if I should ever sleep again. Where's
+my cup?"
+
+"Wildgoose will bring it. As the coffee had grown cold he took that
+and the cup to keep warm. What's the matter?"
+
+Wildgoose stepped in with the missing essentials. A full-fed,
+round-faced, rubicund man of fifty-odd he looked a perennial
+twenty-five. Barbara began to minister to herself.
+
+"Oh, everything's the matter. I told you yesterday that that girl had
+run away. Well, I begin to wish she'd run back again."
+
+Miss Walbrook, the elder, had this in common with Miss Henrietta
+Towell, that she believed it best for everyone to work out his own
+salvation. Barbara had her personal life to live, and while her aunt
+would help her to live it, she wouldn't guide her choice. She
+continued, therefore, to scan the paper till her niece should say
+something more.
+
+She said it, not because she wanted to give information, but because
+she was temperamentally outspoken. "I begin to wish there were no men
+in the world. If women are men in a higher stage of development, why
+didn't men die out, so that we could be rid of them? Isn't that what
+we generally get from the survival of the fittest?"
+
+Miss Walbrook's thin, clear smile suggested the edge of a keenly
+tempered blade. "I've never said that women were men in a higher stage
+of development. I've said that in their parallel states of development
+women had advanced a stage beyond men. You may say of every generation
+born that women begin where men leave off. I suppose that that's
+what's meant by the myth of Eve springing from Adam's side. It was to
+be noticed even then, in the prehistoric, in the age that formed the
+great legends. Adam was asleep, when Eve as a vital force leaped away
+from him. If it wasn't for Eve's vitality the human race would still
+be in the Stone Age."
+
+Barbara harked back to what for her was the practical. "Some of us are
+in the Stone Age as it is. I'm sure Rash Allerton is as nearly an
+elemental as one can be, and still belong to clubs and drive in
+motorcars."
+
+Miss Walbrook risked her principles of non-interference so far as to
+say: "It's part of our feminine lack of development that we're always
+inclined to look back on the elemental with pity, and even with
+regret. The woman was never born who didn't have in her something of
+Lot's wife."
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Marion. In a way that lets me out. If I'm no weaker
+than the rest of my sex----"
+
+"Than many of the rest of your sex."
+
+"Very well, then; than many of the rest of my sex; if I'm no weaker
+than that I don't have to lose my self-respect."
+
+"You don't have to lose your self-respect; you only risk--your
+reason."
+
+Barbara stared at her. "That's the very thing I'm afraid of. I'd give
+anything for peace of mind. How did you know?"
+
+"Oh, it doesn't call for much astuteness. I don't suppose there's a
+married woman in the world in full command of her wits. You've noticed
+how foolish most of them are. That's why. It isn't that they were born
+foolish. They've simply been addled by enforced adaptation to mates of
+lower intelligence. Oh, I'm not scolding. I'm merely stating a
+natural, observed, psychological fact. The woman who marries says
+good-bye to the orderly working of her faculties. For that she may get
+compensations, with which I don't intend to find fault. But
+compensations or no, to a clear-thinking woman like----"
+
+"Like yourself, Aunt Marion."
+
+"Very well; like myself, if you will; but to a clear-thinking woman
+it's as obvious as daylight that her married sisters are partially
+demented. They may not know it; the partially demented never do. And
+it's no good telling them, because they don't believe you. I'm only
+saying it to you to warn you in advance. If you part with your reason,
+it's something to know that you do it of your own free will."
+
+Once more Barbara confined herself to the case in hand. "Still, I
+don't believe every man is as trying as Rash Allerton."
+
+"Not in his particular way, perhaps. But if it's not in one way then
+it's in another."
+
+"Even he wouldn't be so bad if he could control himself. At the minute
+when he's tearing down the house he wants you to tell him that he's
+calm."
+
+"If he didn't want you to tell him that it would be something equally
+preposterous. There's little to choose between men."
+
+Barbara grew thoughtful. "Still, if people didn't marry the human race
+would die out."
+
+"And would there be any harm in that? It's not a danger, of course;
+but if it was, would anyone in his senses want to stop it? Looking
+round on the human race to-day one can hardly help saying that the
+sooner it dies out the better. Since we can't kill it off, it's well
+to remember----"
+
+"To remember what, Aunt Marion?"
+
+Miss Walbrook reflected as to how to express herself cautiously.
+"To remember that--in marrying--and having children--children who
+will have to face the highly probable miseries of the next
+generation--Well, I'm glad there'll be no one to reproach me with his
+being in the world, either as his mother or his ancestress."
+
+"They say Rash's father and mother didn't want _him_ in the world, and
+I sometimes wish they'd had their way. If he wasn't here--or if he was
+dead--I believe I could be happier. I shouldn't be forever worrying
+about him. I shouldn't have him on my mind. I often wonder if it's--if
+it's love I feel for him--or only an agonizing sense of
+responsibility."
+
+The door being open Walter Wildgoose waddled to the threshold, where
+he stood with his right hand clasped in his left. "Mr. Steptoe at Mr.
+Allerton's to speak to Miss Barbara on the telyphone, please."
+
+Barbara gasped. "Oh, Lord! I wonder what it is now!"
+
+Left to herself Miss Walbrook resumed her scanning of the paper, but
+she resumed it with the faintest quiver of a smile on her thin,
+cleanly-cut lips. It was the kind of smile which indicates patient
+hope, or the anticipation of something satisfactory.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+The exclamation was so loud as to be heard all the way from the
+telephone, which was in another part of the house. Miss Walbrook let
+the paper fall, sat bolt upright, and listened.
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+It was like a second, and repeated, explosion. Miss Walbrook rose to
+her feet; the paper rustled to the floor.
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+The sound was that which human beings make when the thing told them is
+more than they can bear. Barbara cried out as if someone was beating
+her with clubs, and she was coming to her knees.
+
+She was not coming to her knees. When her aunt reached her she was
+still standing by the little table in the hall which held the
+telephone, on which she had hung up the receiver. She supported
+herself with one hand on the table, as a woman does when all she can
+do is not to fall senseless.
+
+"It's--it's Rash," she panted, as she saw her aunt appear. "Somebody
+has--has killed him."
+
+Miss Walbrook stood with hands clasped, like one transfixed. "He's
+dead?--after all?"
+
+Barbara nodded, tearlessly. She could stammer out the words, but no
+more. "Yes--all but!"
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the flat at Red Point there was another and dissimilar breakfast
+scene. For the first time in her life Letty was having coffee and
+toast in bed. The window was open, and between the muslin curtains,
+which puffed in the soft May wind, she could see the ocean with
+steamers and ships on it.
+
+The room was tiny, but it was spotless. Everything was white, except
+where here and there it was tied up with a baby-blue ribbon. Anything
+that could be tied with a baby-blue ribbon was so tied.
+
+Letty thought she had never seen anything so dainty, though her
+experienced eye could detect the fact that nothing had really cost
+money. As an opening to the career on which she had embarked the
+setting was unexpected, while the method of her treatment was
+bewildering. In the black recesses of her heart Miss Henrietta Towell
+might be hiding all those feline machinations which Mrs. Judson Flack
+had led Letty to believe a part of the great world's stock-in-trade;
+but it couldn't be denied that she hid them well. Letty didn't know
+what to make of it. "There's quite a trick to it," Steptoe had warned
+her; but the explanation seemed inadequate to the phenomena.
+
+Sipping her coffee and crunching her toast she was driven to ponder on
+the ways of wickedness. She had expected them to be more obvious. All
+her information was to the effect that an unprotected girl in a world
+of males was a lamb among lions, a victim with no way of escape. That
+she was a lamb among lions, and a victim with no way of escape, she
+was still prepared to believe; only the preliminaries puzzled her.
+Instead of being crude, direct, indelicate, they were subtle and
+misleading. After twenty-four hours in Miss Towell's spare room there
+was still no hint of anything but coddling.
+
+"You see, my dear," Miss Towell had said, "if I don't nurse you back
+to real 'ealth, him that gave you the thimble might be displeased with
+me."
+
+It was not often that Miss Towell dropped an _h_ or added one; but in
+moments of emotion early habit was too strong for her.
+
+Coming into the room now, on some ermine's errand of neatness, she
+threw a glance at Letty, and said: "You don't _look_ like a Rashleigh,
+do you, dear? But then you never can tell anything about families from
+looks, can you?"
+
+It was her nearest approach as yet to the personal, and Letty
+considered as to how she was to meet it. "I'm not a Rashleigh--not
+really--only by--by marriage. Rashleigh isn't my real name.
+It's--it's the name I'm going by in pictures."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Miss Towell's exclamation was the subdued one of acquiescence. She
+knew that ladies in pictures often preferred names other than their
+own, and if Letty was not a Rashleigh it "explained things." That is,
+it explained how anyone called Rashleigh could be wandering about in
+this friendless way, though it made 'Enery Steptoe's intervention the
+more mysterious. It was conceivable that he might act on behalf of a
+genuine Rashleigh, however out at elbow; but that he should take such
+pains for a spurious one, and go to the length of sending the sacred
+silver thimble as a pledge, rendered the situation puzzling.
+
+Schooled by her religious precepts to taking her duties as those of a
+minute at a time Miss Towell made no effort to force the girl's
+confidence, and especially since Letty, like most young people in
+trouble, was on her guard against giving it. So long as she preferred
+to be shut up within herself, shut up within herself she should
+remain. Miss Towell felt that, for the moment at least, her own
+responsibility was limited to making the child feel that someone cared
+for her.
+
+At the same time she couldn't have been a lonely woman with a
+love-story behind her without the impulse to dwell a little longingly
+on the one romantic incident in her experience. Though it had never
+come to anything, the fact that it had once opened its shy little
+flower made a sweet bright place to which her thoughts could retire.
+
+The references came spasmodically and without context, as the little
+white lady busied herself in waiting on Letty or in the care of her
+room.
+
+"I haven't seen him since a short time after the mistress went away."
+
+Letty felt herself coloring. Though not prudish there were words she
+couldn't get used to. Besides which she had never thought that
+Steptoe.... But Miss Towell pursued her memories.
+
+"It always worried him that I should hold views different from his but
+I couldn't submit to dictation, now, could I, dear?"
+
+Once more Letty felt herself awkwardly placed. The only interpretation
+she could put on Miss Towell's words referring to moral reformation on
+her hostess's part she said, as non-committally as might be: "He's a
+good deal of a stickler."
+
+"He's been so long in a high position that he becomes--well, I won't
+be 'arsh--but he becomes a little harbitrary. That's where it was. He
+was a little harbitrary. With a mistress who allowed him a great deal
+of his own way--well, you can hardly blame him, can you, dear?"
+
+Letty forced herself to accept the linguistic standard of the world.
+"I suppose if she hadn't allowed him a great deal of his own way he'd
+have looked somewhere else."
+
+"That he could easily have done. He had temptations enough--a man like
+him. Why, dear, there was a lady in Park Avenue did everything she
+could that wasn't positively dishonorable to win him away----"
+
+"He must have been younger and better looking than he is now," Letty
+hazarded, bluntly.
+
+"Oh, it wasn't a question of looks. Of course if she'd considered
+that, why, any foolish young fellow--but she knew what she would have
+got."
+
+Not being at her ease in this kind of conversation, and finding the
+effort to see Steptoe as Lothario difficult, Letty became blunt again.
+"He must have had an awful crush on the first one."
+
+"It wasn't her exactly; it was the boy."
+
+"Oh, there was a boy?"
+
+"Why of course, dear! Didn't you know that?"
+
+"Whose boy was it?"
+
+"Why, the mistress's boy; but I don't think _he_----" Letty understood
+the pronoun as applying to Steptoe--"I don't think _he_ ever realized
+that he wasn't his very own." Straightening the white cover on the
+chest of drawers Miss Towell shook her head. "It was a sad case."
+
+"What made it sad?"
+
+"A lovely boy he was. Had a kind word for everyone, even for the cat.
+But somehow his father and mother--well, they were people of the
+world, and they hadn't wanted a child, and when he came--and he so
+delicate always--I could have cried over him."
+
+Letty's heart began to swell; her lip trembled. "I know someone like
+that myself."
+
+"Do you, dear? Then I'm sure you understand."
+
+Partly because the minute was emotional, and partly from a sense that
+she needed to explain herself, Letty murmured, more or less
+indistinctly: "It's on his account that I'm here."
+
+Failing to see the force of this Miss Towell was content to say: "I'm
+glad you were led to me, dear. There's always a power to shepherd us
+along, if we'll only let ourselves be guided."
+
+To Letty the moment had arrived when plainness of speech was
+imperative. Leaning across the tray, which still stood on her lap, she
+gazed up at her hostess with eager, misty eyes. "_He_ said you'd teach
+me all the ropes."
+
+Miss Towell paused beside the bed, to look inquiringly at the tense
+little face. "The ropes of what, dear?"
+
+"Of what--" it was hard to express--"of what you--you used to be
+yourself. You don't seem like it now," she added, desperately, "but
+you were, weren't you?"
+
+"Oh, that!" The surprise was in the discovery that an American girl of
+Letty's age could entertain so sensible a purpose. "Why, of course,
+dear! I'll tell you all I know, and welcome."
+
+"There's quite a trick to it, isn't there?"
+
+"Well, it's more than a trick. There are two or three things which you
+simply _have_ to be."
+
+"Oh, I know that. That's what frightens me."
+
+"You needn't be afraid, once you've made up your mind to it." She
+leaned above the bed to relieve Letty of the tray. "For instance--you
+don't mind my asking questions do you?"
+
+"Oh, no! You can ask me anything."
+
+"Then the first thing is this: Are you pretty good as a
+needle-woman?"
+
+Letty was astounded. "Why--why you don't have to _sew_, do you?"
+
+"Certainly, dear. That's one of the most important things you'd be
+called on to do. You'd never get anywhere if you weren't quick with
+your needle and thread. And then there'd be hair-dressing. You have to
+know something about that. I don't say that you must be a
+professional; but for the simpler occasions--after that there's
+packing. That's something we often overlook, and where French girls
+have us at a disadvantage. They pack so beautifully."
+
+Letty was entirely at sea. "Pack what?"
+
+"Pack trunks, dear."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"For travel; for moving from town to country; or from country to town;
+or making visits; you see you're always on the go. Oh, it's more than
+a trick; it's quite an art; only--" She smiled at Letty as she stood
+holding the tray, before carrying it out--"only, I shouldn't have
+supposed you'd be thinking of that when you act in moving pictures."
+
+"I--I thought I might do both."
+
+"Now, I should say that that's one thing you couldn't do, dear. If you
+took up this at all you'd find it so absorbing----"
+
+"And you're very unhappy too, aren't you? I've always heard you
+were."
+
+"Well, that would depend a good deal on yourself. There's nothing in
+the thing itself to make you unhappy; but sometimes there are other
+women----"
+
+Letty's eyes were flaming. "They say they're awful."
+
+"Oh, not always. It's a good deal as you carry yourself. I made it a
+point to keep my position and respect the position of others. It
+wasn't always easy, especially with Mary Ann Courage and Janie
+Cakebread; but----"
+
+Letty's head fell back on the pillow. Her eyes closed. A
+merry-go-round was spinning in her head. Where was she? How had she
+come there? What was she there _for?_ Where was the wickedness she had
+been told to look for everywhere? Having gone in search of it, and
+expected to find it lying in wait from the first minute of passing the
+protecting door, she had been shuffled along from one to another, with
+exasperating kindness, only to be brought face to face with Jane
+Cakebread and Mary Ann Courage at the end.
+
+Miss Towell having borne away the tray, Letty struggled out of bed,
+and put on the woollen dressing gown thrown over a chair by the
+bedside. This was no place for her. Beehive Valley was not far off,
+and her forty-five cents would more than suffice to take her there.
+She would see the casting director. She would get a job. With food to
+eat and a place to sleep as a starting point she would find her own
+way to wickedness, releasing the prince in spite of all the mishaps
+which kept her as she was.
+
+But she trembled so that having wrapped the dressing gown about her
+she was obliged to sit down again. She would have to be crafty. She
+must get this woman to help her with her dressing, without suspecting
+what she meant to do. How could she manage that? She must try to
+think.
+
+She was trying to think when she heard the ring of the telephone. It
+suggested an idea. Some time--not this time, of course--when the
+telephone rang and the woman was answering it, she, Letty, would be
+able to slip away. The important thing was to do her hair and get her
+clothes on.
+
+"Yes?... Yes?" There was a little catch to the breath, a smothered
+laugh, a smothered sigh. "Oh, so this is you!... Yes, I got it....
+Seeing it again gave me quite a turn.... I never expected that you'd
+keep it all this time, but.... Yes, she's here.... No; she didn't come
+exactly of her own accord, but I--I found her.... I could tell you
+about it easier if you were--it's so hard on the telephone when
+there's so much to say--but perhaps you don't care to.... Yes, she's
+quite well--only a little tired--been worked up somehow--but a day or
+so in bed.... Oh, very sensible ... and she wants me to teach her how
+to be a lady's maid...."
+
+So that was it! Steptoe had been treacherous. Letty would never
+believe in anyone again. She could make these reflections hurriedly
+because the voice at the telephone was silent.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+It was the same exclamation as that of Barbara Walbrook, but in
+another tone--a tone of distress, sharp, sympathetic. Pulling the
+dressing gown about her, frightened, tense, Letty knew that something
+had gone wrong.
+
+"Oh! Oh!... last night, did you say?... early this morning...."
+
+Letty crept to where her hostess was seated at the telephone. "What is
+it?"
+
+But Miss Towell either didn't hear the question or was too absorbed to
+answer it. "Oh, 'Enery, _try_ to remember that God is his life--that
+there can be no death to be afraid of when----"
+
+Letty snatched the receiver from the other woman's hands, and fell on
+her knees beside the little table. "Oh, what is it? What is it? It's
+me; Letty! Something's happened. I've got to know."
+
+Amazed and awed by the force of this intrusion Miss Towell stood up,
+and moved a little back.
+
+Over the wire Steptoe's voice sounded to Letty like the ghost of his
+voice, broken, dead.
+
+"I think if I was madam I'd come back."
+
+"But what's happened? Tell me that first."
+
+"It's Mr. Rash."
+
+"Yes, I know it's Mr. Rash. But what is it? Tell me quickly, for God's
+sake."
+
+"'E's been 'it."
+
+Her utterance was as nearly as possible a cry. "But he hasn't been
+_killed_?"
+
+"Madam'd find 'im alive--if she 'urried."
+
+When Letty rose from her knees she was strong. She was calm, too, and
+competent. She further surprised Miss Towell by the way in which she
+took command.
+
+"I must hurry. They want me at once. Would you mind helping me to
+dress?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+
+"The queer thing about it, miss," Steptoe was saying to Barbara, "is
+that I didn't 'ear no noise. My winder is just above the front door,
+two floors up, and it was open. I always likes an open winder,
+especially when the weather begins to get warm--makes it 'ealthier
+like, and so----"
+
+"Yes, but tell me just how he is."
+
+"That's what I'm comin' to, miss. The minute I see what an awful styte
+we was in, I says, Miss Walbrook, she'll 'ave to know, I says; and so
+I called up. Well, as I was a-tellin you, miss, I couldn't sleep all
+night, 'ardly not any, thinkin of all what 'ad 'appened in the 'ouse,
+in the course of a few months, as you might sye--and madam run
+awye--and Mr. Rash 'e not 'ome--and it one o'clock and lyter. Not but
+what 'e's often lyter than that, only last night I 'ad that kind of a
+feelin' which you'll get when you know things is not right, and you
+don't 'ardly know 'ow you know it."
+
+"Yes, Steptoe," she interposed, eagerly; "but is he conscious now?
+That's what I want to hear about."
+
+Steptoe's expression of grief lay in working up to a dramatic climax
+dramatically. He didn't understand the hurried leaps and bounds by
+which you took the tragic on the skip, as if it were not portentous.
+In his response to Miss Walbrook there was a hint of irritation, and
+perhaps of rebuke.
+
+"I couldn't sye what 'e is now, miss, as the doctor and the nurse is
+with 'im, and won't let nobody in till they decides whether 'e's to
+live or die." Rocking himself back and forth in his chair he moaned in
+stricken anticipation. "If 'e goes, I shan't be long after 'im. I may
+linger a bit, but the good Lord won't move me on too soon."
+
+Barbara curbed her impatience to reach the end, going back to the
+beginning. "Well, then, was it you who found 'im?"
+
+"It was this wye, miss. Knowin' 'e wasn't in the 'ouse, I kep' goin'
+to my winder and listenin'--and then goin' back to bed agyne--I
+couldn't tell you 'ow many times; and then, if you'd believe it I must
+'ave fell asleep. No; I can't believe as I was asleep. I just seemed
+to come to, like, and as I laid there wonderin' what time it was,
+seems to me as if I 'eard a kind of a snore, like, not in the 'ouse,
+but comin' up from the street."
+
+"What time was that?"
+
+"That'd be about 'alf past one. Well, up I gets and creeps to the
+winder, and sure enough the snore come right up from the steps. Seems
+to me, too, I could see somethink layin' there, all up and down the
+steps, just as if it 'ad been dropped by haccident like. My blood
+freezes. I slips into my thick dressin' gown--no, it was my thin
+dressin' gown--I always keeps two--one for winter and one for
+summer--and this spring bein' so early like----"
+
+"But in the end you got down stairs."
+
+"If I didn't, miss, 'ow could I 'a' found 'im? I ain't one to be
+afryde of dynger, not even 'ere in New York, where you can be robbed
+and murdered without 'ardly knowin' it--and the police that slow about
+follerin' up a clue----"
+
+"And what happened when you'd opened the front door?"
+
+"I didn't open it at once, miss. I put my hear to the crack and
+listened. And there it was, a long kind of snore, like--only it wasn't
+just what you'd call a snore. It was more like this." He drew a deep,
+rasping, stertorous breath. "Awful, it was, miss, just like somebody
+in liquor. 'It's liquor,' I says, and not wantin' to be mixed up in no
+low company I wasn't for openin' the door at all----"
+
+"But you did?"
+
+"Not till I'd gone 'alf wye upstairs and down agyne. I'm like that. I
+often thinks I'll not do a thing, and then I'll sye to myself, 'Now,
+perhaps I'd better, and so it was that time. 'E's out, I says, and who
+knows but what 'e's fell in a fynt like?' So back I goes, and I peeps
+out a little bit--just my nose out, as you might sye, not knowin' but
+what if there was low company----"
+
+"When did you find out who it was?"
+
+"I knowed the 'at, like. It was that 'at what 'e bought afore 'e
+bought the last one. No; I don't know but what 'e's bought two since
+'e bought that one--a soft felt, and a cowboy what he never wore but
+once or twice because it wasn't becomin'. You'll 'ave noticed, miss,
+that 'e 'ad one o' them fyces what don't look well in nothink
+rakish--a real gentleman's fyce 'e 'ad--and them cowboy 'ats----"
+
+"Well, when you saw that hat, what did you do?"
+
+"For quite a spell I didn't do nothink. I was all blood-curdled, as
+you might sye. But by and by I creeps out, and down the steps, and
+there 'e was, all 'uddled every wye----"
+
+His lip trembled. In trying to go on he produced only a few incoherent
+sounds. Reaching for his handkerchief, he blew his nose, before being
+able to say more.
+
+"Well, the first thing I says to myself, miss, was, Is 'e dead? It was
+a terrible thing to sye of one that's everythink in the world to me;
+but seein' 'im there, all crumpled up, with one leg one wye, and the
+other leg another wye, and a harm throwed out 'elpless like--well,
+what was I to think? miss--and 'im not aible to sye a word, and me
+shykin' like a leaf, and out of doors in my thin dressin' gown--if I'd
+'ad on my thick one I wouldn't 'a' felt so kind of shymeful like----"
+
+"You might have known he wasn't dead when you heard him breathing."
+
+"I didn't think o' that. I thought as 'e was. And when I see 'is poor
+harm stretched out so wild like I creeps nearer and nearer, and me
+'ardly aible to move--I felt so bad--and I puts my finger on 'is
+pulse. Might as well 'ave put it on that there fender. Then I looks at
+'is fyce and I see blood on 'is lip and 'is cheek. 'Somethink's struck
+'im,' I says; and then I just loses consciousness, and puts back my
+'ead, as you'll see a dog do when 'e 'owls, and I yells, 'Police!'"
+
+"Oh, you did that, did you?"
+
+"I'm ashymed to sye it, miss, but I did; and who should come runnin'
+along but the policeman what in the night goes up and down our beat.
+By that time I'd got my 'and on 'is 'eart, and the policeman 'e calls
+out from a distance, 'Hi, there! What you doin' to that man?' Thought
+I was murderin' 'im, you see. I says, 'My boy, 'e is, and I'm tryin'
+to syve 'is life.' Well, the policeman 'e sees I'm in my dressin'
+gown, and don't look as if I'd do 'im any 'arm, so 'e kind o' picks up
+'is courage, and blows 'is whistle, and another policeman 'e runs up
+from the wye of the Havenue. Then when there's two of 'em they ain't
+afryde no more, so that the first one 'e comes up to me quite bold
+like, and arsks me who's killed, and what's killed 'im, and I tells
+'im 'ow I was layin' awyke, with the winder open, and Mr. Rash bein'
+out I couldn't sleep like----"
+
+"How long did they let him lie there?"
+
+"Oh, not long. First they was for callin' a hambulance; but when I
+tells 'em that 'e's my boy, and lives in my 'ouse, they brings 'im in
+and we lays 'im on the sofa in the libery, and I rings up Dr. Lancing,
+and----"
+
+But something in Barbara snapped. She could stand no more. Not to cry
+out or break down she sprang to her feet. "That'll do, Steptoe. I know
+now all I need to know. Thank you for telling me. I shall stay here
+till the doctor or the nurse comes down. If I want you again I'll
+ring."
+
+[Illustration: "BUT BY AND BY I CREEPS OUT AND DOWN THE STEPS, AND THERE
+'E WAS, ALL 'UDDLED EVERY WYE."]
+
+Lashing up and down the drawing-room, wringing her hands and moaning
+inwardly, Barbara reflected on the speed with which Nemesis had
+overtaken her. "If he wasn't here--or if he was dead," she had said,
+"I believe I could be happier." As long as she lived she would hear
+the curious intonation in Aunt Marion's voice: "He's dead?--after
+all?" It was in that _after all_ that she read the unspeakable
+accusation of herself.
+
+Waiting for the doctor was not long. On hearing his step on the stair
+Barbara went out to meet him. "How is he?" she asked, without wasting
+time over self-introductions.
+
+"It's a little difficult to say as yet. The case is serious. Just how
+serious we can't tell to-day--perhaps not to-morrow. I find no trace
+of fracture of the cranium, or of laceration of the brain; but it's
+too soon to be sure. Dr. Brace and Dr. Wisdom, who've both been here,
+are inclined to think that it may be no more than a simple concussion.
+We must wait and see."
+
+Relieved to this extent Barbara went on to explain herself. "I'm Miss
+Walbrook. I was engaged to Mr. Allerton till--till quite recently.
+We're still great friends--the greatest friends. He had no near
+relations--only cousins--and I doubt if any of them are in New York as
+late in the season as this--and even if they are he hardly knows
+them----"
+
+The doctor, a cheery, robust man in the late thirties, in his own line
+one of the ablest specialists in New York, had a foible for social
+position and his success in it. Even now, with such grave news to
+communicate, he couldn't divest himself of his dinner-party manner or
+his smile.
+
+"I've had the pleasure of meeting Miss Walbrook, at the Essingtons'
+dinner--the big one for Isabel--and afterwards at the dance."
+
+"Oh, of course," Barbara corroborated, though with no recollection of
+the encounter. "I knew it was somewhere, but I couldn't quite
+recall--So I felt, when the butler called me up, that I should be
+here----"
+
+"Quite so! quite so! You'll find Miss Gallifer, who's with him now, a
+most competent nurse, and I shall bring a good night nurse before
+evening." The professional side of the situation disposed of, he
+touched tactfully on the romantic. "It will be a great thing for me to
+know that in a masculine household like this a woman with knowledge
+and authority is running in and out. The more you can be here, Miss
+Walbrook, the more responsibility you'll take off my hands."
+
+"May I be in his room--and help the nurse--or do anything like that?"
+
+"Quite so! quite so! I'm sure Miss Gallifer, who can't be there every
+minute of the time, you understand, will be glad to feel that there's
+someone she can trust----"
+
+"And he couldn't know I was there?"
+
+"Not unless he returned unexpectedly to consciousness, which is
+possible, you understand----"
+
+Her distress was so great that she hazarded a question on which she
+would not otherwise have ventured. "Doctor, you're a physician. I can
+speak to you as I shouldn't speak to everyone. Suppose he did return
+unexpectedly to consciousness, and found me there in the room, do you
+think he'd be--annoyed?"
+
+It was the sort of situation he liked, a part in the intimate affairs
+of people of the first quality. "As to his being annoyed I can't say.
+It might be the very opposite. What I know is this, that in the
+coming back of the mind to its regular functions inhibitions are
+often suspended----"
+
+"And you mean by that----?"
+
+"That the first few minutes in which the mind revives are likely to be
+minutes of genuine reality. I don't say that the mind could keep it
+up. Very few of us can be our genuine selves for more than flashes at
+a time; but a returning consciousness doesn't put on its inhibitions
+till----"
+
+"So that what you see in those few minutes you can take as the
+truth."
+
+"I should say so. I'm not in a position to affirm it; but the
+probabilities point that way."
+
+"And if there had been, let us say, a lesser affection, something of
+recent origin, and lower in every way----"
+
+"I think that until it forged its influence again--if it ever
+did--you'd see it forgotten or disowned."
+
+She tried to be even more explicit. "He's perfectly free, in every
+way. I broke off my engagement just to make him free. The--the other
+woman, she, too, has--has left him----"
+
+"So that," he summed up, "if in those first instants of returning to
+the world you could read his choice you'd be relieved of doubts for
+the future."
+
+Having made one or two small professional recommendations he was about
+to go when Barbara's mind worked to another point. "You know, he's
+been very excitable."
+
+"So I've understood. I go a good deal to the Chancellors'. You know
+them, of course. I've heard about him there."
+
+"Well, then, if he got better, is there anything we could do about
+that?"
+
+"In a general way, yes. If you're gentle with him----"
+
+"Oh, I am."
+
+"And if you try to smooth him down when you see him beginning to be
+ruffled----"
+
+"That's just what I do, only it seems to excite him the more."
+
+"Then, in that case, I should say, break the conversation off. Go away
+from him. Let him alone. Let him work out of it. Begin again later."
+
+"Ye-es, only--" she was wistful, unconvinced--"only later it's so
+likely to be the same thing over again."
+
+He dodged the further issue by running up to explain to the nurse Miss
+Walbrook's position in the house, and as helper in case of necessity.
+By the time he had come down again Barbara's anguish was visible. "Oh,
+doctor, you think he _will_ get better, don't you?"
+
+He was at the front door. "I hope he will. Quite--quite possibly he
+will. His pulse isn't very strong as yet, but--Well, Dr. Brace and Dr.
+Wisdom are coming for another consultation this afternoon; only his
+condition, you understand, is--well, serious."
+
+Barbara divined the malice beneath Steptoe's indications, as he
+conducted her upstairs. "That was the lyte Mrs. Allerton's room;
+that's the front spare room; and that's our present madam's room--when
+she's 'ere--heach with its barth. I'm sure if Miss Walbrook was
+inclined to use the front spare room I'd be entirely welcome, and
+'ave put in clean towels, and everythink, a-purpose."
+
+When Rash's door was pointed out to her she tapped. Miss Gallifer
+opened it, receiving her colleague with a great big hearty smile.
+Great, big, and hearty were the traits by which Miss Gallifer was
+known among the doctors. Healthy, skilful, jolly, and offhand, she
+carried the issues of life and death, in which she was at home, with a
+lightness which made her easy to work with. Some nurses would have
+resented the intrusion of an outsider--professionally speaking--like
+Miss Walbrook; but to Miss Gallifer it was the more the merrier, even
+in the sickroom. The very fact of coming to close quarters with the
+type she knew as a "society girl" added spice to the association.
+
+For the first few seconds Barbara found her breeziness a shock. She
+had expected something subdued, hushed, funereal. Miss Gallifer hardly
+lowered her voice, which was naturally loud, or quieted her manner,
+which, when off duty, could be boisterous. It was not boisterous now,
+of course; only quick, free, spontaneous. Then Barbara saw the
+reason.
+
+There was no need to lower the voice or quiet the manner or soften the
+swish of rustling to and fro, in presence of that still white form
+composed in the very attitude of death. If Barbara hadn't known he was
+alive she wouldn't have supposed it. She had seen dead men before--her
+father, two brothers, other relatives. They looked like this; this
+looked like them. She said _this_ to herself, and not _he_, because it
+seemed the word.
+
+But by the time she had moved forward and was standing by the bed Miss
+Gallifer's businesslike tone became a comfort. You couldn't take such
+a tone if you thought there was danger; and in spite of the hemming
+and hawing of the doctors Miss Gallifer didn't think there was.
+
+"Oh, I've seen lots of such cases, and _I_ say it's a simple
+concussion. Old Wisdom, he doesn't know anything. I wouldn't consult
+him about an accident to a cat. Laceration of the brain is always his
+first diagnosis; and if the patient didn't have it he'd get it to him
+before he'd admit that he was wrong."
+
+Barbara put the question in which all her other questions were
+enfolded. "Then you think he'll get better?"
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised."
+
+"Would you be surprised--the other way?"
+
+"I think I should--on the whole. Pulse is poor. That's the worst
+sign." She picked up the hand lying outside the coverlet and put her
+finger-tips to the wrist, doing it with the easy nonchalant
+carelessness with which she might have seized an inanimate object, yet
+knowing exactly what she was about. "H'm! Fifty-six! That's pretty
+low. If we could get it above sixty--but still!" Dropping the hand
+with the same indifference, yet continuing to know what she was about,
+Miss Gallifer tossed aside the index of the pulse as wholly
+non-convincing. "I've known cases where the pulse would go down till
+there was almost no pulse at all, and _yet_ it would come up again."
+
+"So that you feel----?"
+
+"Oh, he'll do. I shouldn't worry--yet. If he wasn't going to pull
+through there would be something----"
+
+"Something to tell you?"
+
+"Well, yes--if you put it that way. I most always know with a patient.
+It isn't anything in his condition. It's more like a hunch. There's
+often the difference between a doctor and a nurse. The doctor goes by
+what he sees, the nurse by what she feels. Nine times out of ten the
+doctor'll see wrong and the nurse'll feel right--and there you are!
+You can't go by doctors. A lot of guess-work gumps, I often think; and
+yet the laity need them for comfort."
+
+Making the most of all this Barbara asked, timidly: "Is there anything
+I could do?"
+
+"Well, no! There isn't much that anyone can do. You've just got to
+wait. If you're going to stay----"
+
+"I should like to."
+
+"Then you can be somewhere else in the house so that I could call
+you--or you could sit right here--whichever you preferred."
+
+"I'd rather sit right here, if I shouldn't be in the way."
+
+"Oh, when you're in the way I'll tell you."
+
+On this understanding Barbara sat down, in a small low armchair not
+far from the foot of the bed. Miss Gallifer also sat down, nearer to
+the window, taking up a book which, as Barbara could see from the
+"jacket" on the cover, bore the title, _The Secret of Violet Pryde_.
+It was clear that there was nothing to be done, since Miss Gallifer
+could so easily lose herself in her novel.
+
+Not till her jumble of impressions began to arrange themselves did
+Barbara realize that she was in Rash's room, surrounded by the objects
+most intimate to his person. Here the poor boy slept and dressed, and
+lived the portion of his life which no one else could share with him.
+In a sense they were rifling his privacy, the secrecy with which every
+human being has in some measure to surround himself. She recalled a
+day in her childhood, after her parents and both her brothers had
+died, when their house with its contents was put up for sale. She
+remembered the horror with which she had seen strangers walking about
+in the rooms sanctified by loved presences, and endeared to her
+holiest memories. Something of that she felt now, as Miss Gallifer
+threw aside her book, sprang lightly to her feet, hurried into Rash's
+bathroom, and came out with a towel slightly damped, which she passed
+over the patient's brow. She was so horribly at ease! It was as if
+Rash no longer had a personality whose rights one must respect.
+
+But he might get better! Miss Gallifer believed that he would! Barbara
+clung to that as an anchor in this tempest of emotions. If he got
+better he would open his eyes. If he opened his eyes it would be, for
+a little while at least, with his inhibitions suspended. If his
+inhibitions were suspended the thing he most wanted would be in his
+first glance; and if his first glance fell on her....
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI
+
+
+Waiting was becoming dreamlike. She didn't find it tedious, or
+over-fraught with suspense. On the contrary, it was soothing. It was a
+little trance-like, too, almost as if she had been enwrapped in Rash's
+stillness.
+
+It was so strange to see him still. It was so strange to be still
+herself. Of her own being, as of his, she had hardly any concept apart
+from the high winds of excitement. Calm like this was new to her, and
+because new it was appeasing, wonderful. It was not unlike content,
+only the content which comes in sleep, to be broken up by waking.
+Somewhere in her nature she liked seeing him as he was, helpless,
+inert, with no power of enraging her by being restive to her will. It
+was, in its way, a repetition of what she had said that morning: "If
+he wasn't here--or if he was dead!" Longing for peace, her stormy soul
+seemed to know by instinct the price she would have to pay for it. For
+peace to be possible Rash must pass out of her life, and the thought
+of Rash passing out of her life was agony.
+
+While Miss Gallifer was downstairs at lunch Barbara had the sweet,
+unusual sense of having him all to herself. She had never so had him
+in their hours together because the violence of their clashes had
+prevented communion. Seated in this silence, in this quietude, she
+felt him hers. There was no one to dispute her claim, no one whose
+claim she had in any way to recognize as superior. Letty's claim she
+had never recognized at all. It was accidental, spurious. Letty
+herself didn't put it forth--and even she was gone. If Rash were to
+open his eyes he would see no one but herself.
+
+She was sorry when Miss Gallifer came back, though there was no help
+for that; but Miss Gallifer was obtrusive only when she chatted or
+moved about. For much of the time she pursued the secret of Violet
+Pryde with such assiduity that the room became quiescent, and
+communion with Rash could be re-established.
+
+The awesome silence was disturbed only by the turning of Miss
+Gallifer's pages. It might have been three o'clock. Once more Barbara
+was lost in the unaccustomed hush, her eyes fixed on the white face on
+the pillow, in almost hypnotic restfulness. The pushing open of the
+door behind was so soft that she didn't notice. Miss Gallifer turned
+another page.
+
+It was the sense that someone was in the room which made Barbara
+glance over her shoulder and Miss Gallifer look up. A little gray
+figure in a battered black hat stood just within the door. She stood
+just within the door, but with no consciousness of anything or anyone
+in the room. She saw only the upturned face and its deathlike fixity.
+
+With slow, spellbound movement she began to come forward. Barbara, who
+had never seen the Letty who used to be, knew her now only by a
+terrified intuition. Miss Gallifer was entirely at a loss, and
+somewhat indignant. The little gray vagrant was not of the type she
+had been used to treating with respect.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she asked quickly, as soon as speech came
+to her.
+
+Letty didn't look at her, or remove her eyes from the face on the
+pillow. A woman in a trance could not have spoken with greater
+detachment or self-control. "I came--to see."
+
+"Well, now that you've seen, won't you please go away, before I call
+the police?"
+
+Of this Letty took no notice, going straight to the bedside, while
+Miss Gallifer moved toward Barbara, who stood as she had risen from
+her chair.
+
+"Do you know who she is?" Miss Gallifer asked, with curiosity greater
+than her indignation.
+
+Barbara nodded. "Yes, I know who she is. I thought she'd--disappeared."
+
+"Oh, they never disappear for long--not that kind. What had I better
+do? Is she anything--to _him_?"
+
+Barbara was saved the necessity of answering because Letty, who was on
+the other side of the bed, bent over and kissed the feet, as she had
+kissed them once before.
+
+"Is she dotty?" Miss Gallifer whispered. "Ought I to take her by the
+shoulders and put her out the door? I could, you know--a scrap of a
+thing like that."
+
+Barbara whispered back. "I can't tell you who she is, but--but I
+wouldn't interfere with her."
+
+"Oh, the doctor'll do that. _He'll_ not----"
+
+But Letty raised herself, addressing the nurse. "Is he--dead?"
+
+Miss Gallifer's tone was the curt one we use to inferiors. "No, he's
+not dead."
+
+"Is he going to die?"
+
+"Not this time, I think."
+
+Letty looked round her. "Well, I'll just sit over here." She went to a
+chair at the back of the room, in a corner on a line with the door. "I
+won't give any trouble. The minute he begins to--to live I'll go."
+
+It was Barbara who arranged the matter peaceably, mollifying Miss
+Gallifer. Without explaining who Letty was she insisted on her right
+to remain. If Miss Gallifer was mystified, it was no more than Miss
+Towell was, or anyone else who touched the situation at a tangent. To
+that Barbara was indifferent, while Letty didn't think of it.
+
+In rallying her forces Barbara's first recollection had been, "I must
+be a sport." With theoretical sporting instincts she knew herself the
+kind of sport who doesn't always run true to form. Hating meanness she
+could lapse into the mean, and toward Letty herself had so lapsed.
+That accident she must guard against. The issues were so big that
+whatever happened, she couldn't afford to reproach herself.
+Self-reproach would not only magnify defeat but poison success, since,
+if she availed herself of her advantages, no success would ever prove
+worth while.
+
+For her own sake rather than for Letty's she made use of the hour
+while the doctors were again in consultation to explain the
+possibilities. She would have the whole thing clearly understood.
+Whether or not Letty did understand it she wasn't quite sure, since
+she seemed cut off from thought-communication. She listened, nodded,
+was docile to instructions, but made no response.
+
+To be as lucid as possible Barbara put it in this way: "Since you've
+left him, and I've broken my engagement he'll be absolutely free to
+choose; and yet, you must remember, we may--we may both lose him."
+
+That both should lose him seemed indeed the more probable after the
+consultation. All the doctors looked grave, even Dr. Lancing. His
+dinner-party manner had forsaken him as he talked to Barbara, his
+emphasis being thrown on the word "prepared." It was still one of
+those cases in which you couldn't tell, though so far the symptoms
+were not encouraging. He felt himself bound in honor to say as much as
+that, hoping, however, for the best.
+
+Closing the front door on him Barbara felt herself shaken by a
+frightful possibility. If he never regained consciousness that would
+"settle it." The suspense would be over. Her fate would be determined.
+She would no longer have to wonder and doubt, to strive or to cry. No
+longer would she run the risk of seeing another woman get him. She
+would find that which her tempestuous nature craved before
+everything--rest, peace, release from the impulse to battle and
+dominate. Not by words, not so much as by thought, but only in wild
+emotion she knew that, as far as she was concerned, it might be better
+for him to die. If he lived, and chose herself, the storm would only
+begin again. If he lived and chose the other....
+
+But as to that she could see no reasonable prospect. She had only to
+look at Letty, shrinking in her corner of the bedroom, to judge any
+such mischance impossible. She was so humble; so negligible; so much
+a bit of flotsam of the streets. She had an appeal of her own, of
+course; but an appeal so lowly as to be obscured by the wayside dust
+which covered it. What was the flower to which Rash had now and then
+compared her? Wasn't that what he called it--the dust flower?--that
+ragged blue thing of byways and backyards, which you couldn't touch
+without washing your hands afterwards. No, no! Not even the legal tie
+which nominally bound them could hold in the face of this inequality.
+It would be too grotesque.
+
+The hours passed. The night nurse was now installed, and was reading
+_Keith Macdermot's Destiny_. She was one of those tall, slender women
+whom you see to be all bone. As businesslike as Miss Gallifer, and
+quite as detached, Miss Moines was brisk and systematic. It being her
+habit to subdue a household to herself before she entered on her
+duties her eyes regarded Miss Walbrook and Letty with the startled
+glance of a horse's.
+
+For before going Miss Gallifer had given her a hint. "You'll have to
+do a lot of side-stepping here. This is the famous House of Mystery.
+You'll find two nuts upstairs--that's what I'd call them if they were
+men--but they're women--girls, sort of--and you've just got to leave
+them alone. One's a high-stepper--regular society--was engaged to the
+patient and now acts as if she'd married him; and the other--well,
+perhaps you can make her out; I can't. Seems a little off. May be the
+poor castaway, once loved, and now broken-hearted but faithful, you
+read about in books. Anyhow, there they are, and you'd best let them
+be. It won't be for more than--well, I give him twenty-four hours at
+the most. I begin to think that for once old Wisdom is right.
+Good-looker too, poor fellow, and can't be more than thirty-five. I
+wonder what could have happened? I suppose they'll go into that at the
+inquest."
+
+But Miss Moines was too systematic to have companions in the room
+without marshaling them to some form of duty. They needed to eat; they
+needed to sleep. Now and then someone had to go out on the landing and
+comfort or reassure Steptoe, who sat on the attic stairs like a
+grief-stricken dog.
+
+Letty was the first to consent to go and lie down. She did so about
+nine o'clock, extracting a promise that whatever happened she would be
+called at twelve. If there was any change in the meantime--but that,
+Miss Moines assured her, was understood in all such ride-and-tie
+arrangements. At twelve Letty was to return and Barbara lie down till
+three, with the same proviso in case of the unexpected. But, so to put
+it, the unexpected seemed improbable, in view of that rigid form, and
+the white, upturned face.
+
+"And yet," Miss Moines confided to Barbara, "I don't think he's as far
+gone as they think. Miss Gallifer only changed her mind when they
+talked her round. A doctor just sees the patient in glimpses, whereas
+a nurse lives with him, and knows what he can stand."
+
+About eleven Miss Moines closed _Keith Macdermot's Destiny_, and took
+the pulse. She nodded as she did so, with a slight exclamation of
+triumph. "Ah, ha! Fifty-eight! That's the first good sign. It may not
+mean anything, but----"
+
+Barbara was too exhausted to feel more than a gleam of comfort. The
+lassitude being emotional rather than physical Miss Moines detected it
+easily enough, and sent her to rest before the hour agreed upon. She
+went the more willingly, since the pulse had risen and hope could
+begin once more.
+
+On the stairs Steptoe raised his bowed head, with a dazed stare.
+Seeing Miss Walbrook he stumbled to his feet.
+
+"'Ow is 'e now, miss?"
+
+She told him the good news.
+
+"Ah, thank God! Perhaps after all 'E'll spare 'im."
+
+Steptoe informed Letty, who right on the stroke of midnight returned
+to her post. "Pulse gone up two of them degrees, madam. 'E's goin' to
+pull through!"
+
+To Letty this was a signal. On going to rest in the little back
+spare room she had thrown off her street things, worn during all
+the hours of watching, and put on the dressing gown she had left
+there a few nights earlier. She was still wearing it, but at
+Steptoe's news she went back again. On passing him the second time
+she was clad in the old gray rag and the battered hat in which it
+would be easier to escape. Steptoe said nothing; but he nodded to
+himself comprehendingly.
+
+A clock struck two. Miss Moines was hungry. Expecting to be hungry she
+had had a small tray, with what she called a "lunch," placed for her
+in the dining-room. Had there been immediate danger she would not have
+left her post; but with Letty there she saw no harm in taking ten or
+fifteen minutes to conserve her strength.
+
+For the first time in all those hours Letty was alone with him. Not
+expecting to be so left she was at first frightened, then audacious.
+Except for the one time when she had approached the bedside and kissed
+his feet she had remained in her corner, watching with the silent,
+motionless intentness of a little animal. Her eyes hardly ever left
+the white face; but at this distance even the white face was dim.
+
+Now she was possessed by a great daring. She would steal to the
+bedside again. Again she would see the beloved features clearly. Again
+she would have the amazing bliss of kissing the coverlet that covered
+the dear feet. When Miss Moines returned she would be back again in
+her corner, as if she had never left it. If the pulse rose higher, if
+there was further hope, if he seemed to be reviving, she could slip
+away in the confusion of their joy.
+
+She rose and listened. The house was as still as it had been at other
+times when she had listened in the night. She glided to the bed.
+
+He lay as if he had been carved in stone, propped up with pillows to
+make breathing easier, his arms outside the coverlet. He was a little
+as he had been on the morning when she had passed her hand across his
+brow. As then, too, his hair rose in tongues of diabolic flame.
+
+She was near him. She was bending over him. She was bending not above
+his feet, but above his head. She knew how mad she was, but she
+couldn't help herself. Stooping--stooping--closer--closer--her lips
+touched the forked black mane of his hair.
+
+She leaped back. She leaped not only because of her own boldness, but
+because he seemed to stir. It was as if this kiss, so light, so
+imperceptible, had sent a galvanic throbbing through his frame. She
+herself felt it, as now and then in winter she had felt an electric
+spark.
+
+Her sin had found her out. She was terrified. He lay just as he had
+lain before--only not quite--not quite! His arms were not just as they
+had been; the coverlet was slightly, ever so slightly, disturbed. The
+nurse would see it and know that....
+
+There was a stirring of a hand. It was so little of a stirring that
+she thought her eyes must have deceived her when it stirred again--a
+restless toss, like a muscular contraction in sleep. She was not
+alarmed now, only excited, and wondering what she ought to do. She
+ought to run to the head of the stairs and call Miss Moines, only that
+she couldn't bring herself to leave him.
+
+Then, as she stood in her attitude of doubt, the eyes opened and
+looked at her. They looked at her straight, and yet glassily. They
+looked at her with no gladness in the look, almost with no
+recognition. If anything there was a kind of sickness there, as if the
+finding her by his bedside was a disappointment.
+
+"I know what it is," she said to herself. "He wants--_her_."
+
+But the eyes closed again. The face was as white, the profile as
+rigid, as ever.
+
+She sped to Barbara, who was lying on a couch in the front spare room.
+"Come! He woke up! He wants you!"
+
+Back in the bedroom she effaced herself. They were all there
+now--Barbara, Steptoe, and Miss Moines.
+
+"It's what he would do," Miss Moines corroborated, "if he was coming
+back."
+
+Letty had told part of what she had seen, but only part of it. The
+rest was her secret. The little mermaid's kiss had left the prince as
+inanimate as before; hers had brought him back to life!
+
+It was the moment to run away. Miss Moines had said that having once
+opened his eyes he would open them again. When he did he mustn't find
+her there. They were all so intent on watching that this was her
+opportunity.
+
+They were all so intent--but Steptoe. She was buttoning her jacket
+when she saw his eyes steal round in her direction. A second later he
+had tiptoed back into the hall, and closed the door behind him.
+
+It was vexing, but not fatal. He had probably gone for something.
+While he was getting it she would elude him. One thing was
+certain--she couldn't face the look of disappointment in those sick
+dark eyes again. She opened the door. She shut it noiselessly behind
+her. Steptoe wasn't there, and the way was free.
+
+Barbara stood just where Letty had described herself as standing when
+the eyes had given her that glassy stare. To herself she seemed to
+stand there for ever, though the time could be counted in minutes. The
+pounding of her heart was like a pulsating of the house.
+
+The eyes opened again. They opened, first wearily, and then with a
+fretful light which seemed to be searching for what they couldn't
+find.
+
+Barbara stood still.
+
+There was another stirring of the hand, irritated, impatient. A little
+moan or groan was distinctly of complaint. The eyes having rolled
+hither and thither helplessly, the head turned slowly on the pillow so
+as to see the other side of the room.
+
+"He's looking for something that he misses," Miss Moines explained,
+wonderingly. "What do you suppose it can be?"
+
+"He wants--_her_."
+
+Barbara found her at the street door, pleading with Steptoe, who
+actually held her by the arm. The loud whisper down the stairs was a
+cry as well as a command.
+
+"Come!"
+
+At the bedroom door they parted. With a light instinctive push Barbara
+forced Letty to go back to the spot on which she had stood earlier.
+She herself went to the other side of the bed, only to find that the
+head, in which the eyes were closed again, was now turned that way.
+
+As if aware that some mysterious decision was approaching Miss Moines
+kept herself in the background. Steptoe had hardly advanced from the
+threshold. Neither of the women by the bedside seemed to breathe.
+
+When the eyes opened for the third time the intelligence in them was
+keener. On Barbara they rested long, quietly, kindly, till memory came
+back.
+
+With memory there was again that restless stirring, that complaining
+moan. Once more, slowly, distressfully, the head turned on the
+pillow.
+
+On Letty the long, quiet, kindly regard lay as it had lain on Barbara.
+They waited; but in the look there was no more than that.
+
+From two hearts two silent prayers were going up.
+
+"Oh, God, end it somehow--and let me have _peace_!"
+
+"Oh, God, make him live again--and give them to each other!"
+
+Then, when no one was expecting it, a faint smile quivered on the
+lips, as if the returning mind saw something long desired and
+comforting. Faintly, feebly, unsteadily, the hands were raised toward
+the dust flower. The lips moved, enough to form dumbly the one word,
+"Come!"
+
+The invitation was beyond crediting. Letty trembled, and shrank back.
+
+But from the support of the pillow the whole figure leaned forward.
+The hands were lifted higher, more firmly and more longingly. Strength
+came with the need for strength. A smile which was of life, not death,
+beamed on the features and brought color to the face which had all
+these hours seemed carved in stone.
+
+"He'll do now," the nurse threw off, professionally. "He'll be up in a
+few days."
+
+It was Barbara who gave the sign to both Steptoe and Miss Moines. By
+the imperiousness of her gesture and her uplifted head she swept them
+out before her. If she was leaving all behind her she was leaving it
+superbly; but she wasn't leaving all. Back of her tumultuous passions
+a spirit was crying to her spirit, "Now you'll get what you want far
+more than you want this--rest from vain desire."
+
+Letty approached the bedside slowly, as if drawn by an enchantment. To
+the outstretched hands she stretched out hers. The door was closed,
+and once more she was alone with him.
+
+But neither saw that for the space of a few inches the closed door was
+opened again, and that an old profile peered within. Then, as slowly,
+slowly, slowly, Letty sank on her knees, bowing her head on the hands
+which drew her closer, and closer still, a pair of old lips smiled
+contentedly.
+
+When the head drew back, the door was closed again.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+  Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved as printed in the
+  original book except for the following changes.
+
+  Page 38: burred to blurred (her appearance struck him simply as
+           blurred)
+
+  Page 207: musn't to mustn't (They mustn't rush things.)
+
+  Page 264: unbridgable to unbridgeable (The gulf had always been
+            there, yawning, unbridgeable,)
+
+  Missing/extra quote marks were silently corrected, however,
+  punctuation has not been changed to comply with modern standards.
+  Inconsistency in hyphenation and accented words has also been retained.
+
+  Two deviations in paragraph-ending punctuation in the original book
+  should be noted: on Page 14, the paragraph beginning, "Within, a toy
+  entry led...." and on Page 42, "There was that about him...." Both
+  paragraphs end with a comma and have been retained, although
+  throughout the book a colon was used to end these types of paragraphs
+  in which dialogue immediately followed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dust Flower, by Basil King
+
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+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Dust Flower, by Basil King.
+</title>
+
+<style type="text/css">
+    p                 {margin-top: 0.5em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: 0.5em;}
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+    .caption          {font-size:0.8em;}
+    hr.tb             {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both;}
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+    hr.major          {width: 65%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; clear:both;}
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+</style>
+
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dust Flower, by Basil King
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Dust Flower
+
+Author: Basil King
+
+Illustrator: Hibbard V. B. Kline
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2009 [EBook #28590]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUST FLOWER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Darleen Dove and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<table summary="transcriber notes" style='margin:3em auto 0 auto; width:35em; border:1px solid; color:#778899; padding:5px;'>
+
+<tr><td>
+<p style='font-size:small; color:#303030; text-align:left;'>Transcriber&#8217;s Notes: <br /><br />
+
+Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved as printed in the original book except as indicated in the text by a dashed line under the change. Hover the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins class="trnote" title="like this">appear</ins>. A list of these changes can be found <a href="#ATN">here.</a>
+<br /><br />
+
+Missing/extra quote marks were silently corrected, however, punctuation has not been changed to comply with modern standards. Inconsistency in hyphenation and accented words has also been retained.<br /><br />
+
+Two deviations in paragraph-ending punctuation in the original book should be noted: on Page 14, the paragraph beginning, &#8220;Within, a toy entry led....&#8221; and on Page 42, &#8220;There was that about him....&#8221; Both paragraphs end with a comma and have been retained, although throughout the book a colon was used to end these types of paragraphs in which dialogue immediately followed.<br /><br />
+
+Illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph.
+<br /></p>
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<table style='margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto' summary="001.png">
+<tr><td style='font-size:2em'>THE DUST FLOWER</td></tr>
+<tr><td style='text-align:center; margin-top:0.1em;'><img src="images/illus-001.png" alt='emblem' /></td></tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<table style='margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;' summary="advert">
+<tr><td align="center">
+<span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Books By</span><br />
+BASIL KING
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td><hr class='p100' /></td></tr>
+<tr><td style='font-style:italic'>
+The Dust Flower<br />
+The Empty Sack<br />
+Going West<br />
+The City of Comrades<br />
+Abraham&#8217;s Bosom<br />
+The Lifted Veil<br />
+The Side of the Angels<br />
+The Letter of the Contract<br />
+The Way Home<br />
+The Wild Olive<br />
+The Inner Shrine<br />
+The Street Called Straight<br />
+Let No Man Put Asunder<br />
+In the Garden of Charity<br />
+The Steps of Honor<br />
+The High Heart</td></tr>
+<tr><td><hr class='p100' /></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">
+HARPER &amp; BROTHERS<br />
+Established 1817
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_1' id='linki_1'></a>
+<img src='images/illus-fpc.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 361px; height: 499px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 361px;'>
+THEN SLOWLY, SLOWLY LETTY SANK ON HER KNEES, BOWING HER HEAD ON THE HANDS WHICH DREW HER CLOSER. [<a href='#page_350'>See p. 350</a>]<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<table style='border: black 1px solid; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;' summary="title page">
+<tr><td>
+<table style='width: 22em; margin: 3px 3px;' summary="title page4">
+<tr><td align="center">
+<span style='font-size:2.2em;'>The<br />DUST &nbsp;FLOWER</span><br /><br /><br />
+<span style='font-size:1.4em; font-style:italic;'>By</span>
+<span style='font-size:1.4em'>BASIL KING</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:0.8em; font-style:italic;'>Author of</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:0.8em'>&#8220;THE EMPTY SACK&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp;&#8220;THE INNER SHRINE&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp;ETC.</span><br /><br /><br />
+<span style='font-size:0.8em; font-style:italic;'>With Illustrations by</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:1.0em'>HIBBARD V. B. KLINE</span>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td style='text-align:center; height: 12em;'><img src="images/illus-emb.jpg" alt="emblem"  />
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">
+<span style='font-size:1em; font-style:italic;'>Publishers</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:1.2em'>Harper &amp; Brothers</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:1.2em'>New York and London</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:0.8em; font-style:italic;'>MCMXXII</span>
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<table style='margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;' summary="copyright2">
+<tr><td align="center">
+<span style='font-variant:small-caps'>THE DUST FLOWER</span>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td><hr class='p100' /></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">
+<span style='font-size:0.8em'>Copyright, 1922<br />
+Harper &amp; Brothers<br />
+Printed in the U. S. A.</span>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td><hr class='p100' /></td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td style='text-align:center; font-size:0.8em; font-style:italic; letter-spacing:0.2em;'>First Edition</td></tr>
+<tr><td style='text-align:center; font-size:0.6em'>H-W
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<table border='0' width='600' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Illustrations' style='margin:1em auto'>
+<col style='width:75%;' />
+<col style='width:25%;' />
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align='right'><span style='font-size:small'>PAGE</span></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Then Slowly, Slowly Letty Sank on Her Knees, Bowing Her head on the Hands Which Drew Her Closer</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_1'><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>By the Time He Had Finished, His Heart Was a  Little Eased and Some of Her Tenderness Began to  Flow Toward Him</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_2'><i>Facing page&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</i>68</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Prince&#8217;s First Words Were Also a Distraction from Terrors, and Enchantments Which Made Her Feel Faint</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_3'><i>Facing page&nbsp;&nbsp;</i>230</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>&#8220;But By and By I Creeps Out and Down the Steps, and There &#8217;E was, All &#8217;Uddled Every Wye&#8221;</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_4'><i>Facing page&nbsp;&nbsp;</i>328</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<h1>THE DUST FLOWER</h1>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span></div>
+<h1>THE DUST FLOWER</h1>
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='CHAPTER_I' id='CHAPTER_I'></a>
+<h2>Chapter I</h2>
+</div>
+<p>It is not often that you see a man tear his hair, but
+this is exactly what Rashleigh Allerton did. He
+tore it, first, because of being under the stress of great
+agitation, and second, because he had it to tear&mdash;a
+thick, black shock with a tendency to part in the
+middle, but brushed carefully to one side. Seated on
+the extreme edge of one of Miss Walbrook&#8217;s strong,
+slender armchairs, his elbows on his knees, he dug his
+fingers into the dark mass with every fresh taunt
+from his fianc&eacute;e.</p>
+<p>She was standing over him, high-tempered, imperious.
+&#8220;So it&#8217;s come to this,&#8221; she said, with decision;
+&#8220;you&#8217;ve got to choose between a stupid, vulgar
+lot of men, and me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He gritted his teeth. &#8220;Do you expect me to give
+up all my friends?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All your friends! That&#8217;s another matter. I&#8217;m
+speaking of half a dozen profligates, of whom you
+seem determined&mdash;I <i>must</i> say it, Rash; you force
+me to it&mdash;of whom you seem determined to be one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He jumped to his feet, a slim, good-looking, well-dressed
+figure in spite of the tumbled effect imparted
+by excitement. &#8220;But, good heavens, Barbara, what
+have I been doing?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t pretend to follow you there. I only know
+the condition in which you came here from the club
+last night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was honestly bewildered. &#8220;Came here from
+the club last night? Why&mdash;why, I wasn&#8217;t so bad.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Standing away from him, she twirled the engagement
+solitaire as if resisting the impulse to snatch
+it off. &#8220;That would be a question of point of view,
+wouldn&#8217;t it? If Aunt Marion hadn&#8217;t been here&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d only had&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Please, Rash! I don&#8217;t want to know the details.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I want you to know them. I&#8217;ve told you a
+dozen times that if I take so much as a cocktail or a
+glass of sherry I&#8217;m all in, when another fellow can
+take ten times as much and not&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rash, dear, I haven&#8217;t known you all my life without
+being quite aware that you&#8217;re excitable. &#8216;Crazy
+Rash&#8217; we used to call you when we were children, and
+Crazy Rash you are still. But that&#8217;s not my point.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your point is that that infernal old Aunt Marion
+of yours doesn&#8217;t like me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s not infernal, and she&#8217;s not old, but it&#8217;s true
+that she doesn&#8217;t like you. All the more reason, then,
+that when she gave her consent to our engagement on
+condition that you&#8217;d give up your disgusting
+habits&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He raced away from her to the other side of the
+room, turning to face her like an exasperated animal
+at bay.</p>
+<p>The room was noteworthy, and of curiously feminine
+refinement. Expressing Miss Marion Walbrook as it
+did, it made no provision for the coarse and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span>
+lounging habits of men, Miss Walbrook&#8217;s world being
+a woman&#8217;s world. All was straight, slender, erect,
+and hard in the way that women like for occasions
+of formality. It was evident, too, that Miss Walbrook&#8217;s
+women friends were serious, if civilized.
+There was no place here for the slapdash, smoking
+girl of the present day.</p>
+<p>The tone which caught your eye was that of dusky
+gold, thrown out first from the Chinese rug in imperial
+yellow, but reflected from a score of surfaces
+in rich old satinwood, discreetly mounted in ormolu.
+On the French-paneled walls there was but one picture,
+Sargent&#8217;s portrait of Miss Walbrook herself,
+an exquisite creature, with the straight, thin lines
+of her own table legs and the grace which makes no
+appeal to men. Not that she was of the type colloquially
+known as a &#8220;back number,&#8221; or a person to
+be ignored. On the contrary, she was a pioneer of
+the day after to-morrow, the herald of an epoch when
+the blundering of men would be replaced by superior
+intelligence.</p>
+<p>You must know these facts with regard to Miss
+Walbrook, the aunt, in order to understand Miss
+Walbrook, the niece. The latter was not the pupil of the
+former, since she was too intense and high-handed
+to be the pupil of anyone. Nevertheless she had
+caught from her wealthy and public-spirited relative
+certain prepossessions which guided her points of view.</p>
+<p>Without having beauty, Miss Barbara Walbrook
+impressed you as Someone, and as Someone dressed
+by the most expensive houses in New York. For
+beauty her lips were too full, her eyes too slanting,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span>
+and her delicate profile too much like that of an ancient
+Egyptian princess. The princess was perhaps what
+was most underscored in her character, the being who
+by some indefinable divine right is entitled to her own
+way. She didn&#8217;t specially claim her way; she only
+couldn&#8217;t bear not getting it.</p>
+<p>Rashleigh Allerton, being of the easy-going type,
+had no objection to her getting her own way, but he
+sometimes rebelled against her manner of taking it.
+So rebelling now, he tried to give her to understand
+that he was master.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you marry me, Barbe, you&#8217;ll have to take me as
+I am&mdash;disgusting habits and all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was the wrong tone, the whip to the filly that
+should have been steered gently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I suppose there&#8217;s no law to compel me to
+marry you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only the law of honor.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her whole personality was aflame. &#8220;You talk of
+honor!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes I talk of it. Why shouldn&#8217;t I?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you know anything about it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Would you marry a man who didn&#8217;t?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t married any one&mdash;as yet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you&#8217;re going to marry me, I presume.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Considering the facts, that&#8217;s a good deal in the
+way of presumption, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>They reached the place to which they came once
+in every few weeks, where each had the impulse to
+hurt the other cruelly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If it&#8217;s so much presumption as all that,&#8221; he demanded,
+&#8220;what&#8217;s the meaning of that ring?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t have to go on wearing it.&#8221; Crossing
+the room she pulled it off and held it out toward him
+&#8220;Do you want it back?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He shrank away from her. &#8220;Don&#8217;t be a fool
+Barbe. You may go too far.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what I&#8217;m afraid of&mdash;that I&#8217;ve gone too
+far already.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In what way?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In the way that&#8217;s brought us face to face like this.
+If I&#8217;d never promised to marry you I shouldn&#8217;t now
+have to&mdash;to reconsider.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, so that&#8217;s it. You&#8217;re reconsidering.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you see that I have to? If you make me
+as unhappy as you can before marriage, what&#8217;ll it be
+afterward?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And how happy are you making me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Holding the ring between the thumb and forefinger
+of the right hand, she played at putting it back, without
+doing it. &#8220;So there you are! Isn&#8217;t that another
+reason for reconsidering&mdash;for both of us?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you care anything about me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You make it difficult&mdash;after such an exhibition as
+that of last night, right before Aunt Marion. Can&#8217;t
+you imagine that there are situations in which I feel
+ashamed?&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was then that he spoke the words which changed
+the current of his life. &#8220;And can&#8217;t you imagine that
+there are situations in which I resent being badgered
+by a bitter-tongued old maid, to say nothing of a
+girl&#8211;&#8211;&#8221; He knew how &#8220;crazy&#8221; he was, but the
+habit of getting beyond his own control was one
+of long standing&mdash;&#8220;to say nothing of a girl who&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span>
+more like an old maid than a woman going to be
+married.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With a renewed attempt at being master he pointed
+at the ring which she was still holding within an inch
+of its finger. &#8220;Put that back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then if you don&#8217;t&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well&mdash;what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Plunging his hands into the pockets of his coat,
+he began tearing up and down the room. &#8220;Look
+here, Barbe. This kind of thing can&#8217;t possibly go on.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Which is what I&#8217;m trying to tell you, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very well, then; we can stop it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly&mdash;in one way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The way of getting married, with no more shilly-shallying
+about it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;On the principle that if you&#8217;re hanging over a
+precipice the best thing you can do is to fall.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He continued to race up and down the room, all
+nerves and frenzy. &#8220;Don&#8217;t we care about each other?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She answered carefully. &#8220;I think you care about
+me to the extent that you believe I&#8217;d make a good
+mistress of the house your mother left you, and
+which, you say, is like an empty sepulcher. If you
+didn&#8217;t have it on your hands, I don&#8217;t imagine it would
+have occurred to you to ask me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, that&#8217;s all right. Now what about you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve already answered that question for yourself.&#8221;
+She stiffened haughtily. &#8220;I&#8217;m an old maid.
+I haven&#8217;t been brought up by Aunt Marion for nothing.
+I&#8217;ve an old maid&#8217;s ways and outlooks and habits.
+I resented your saying it a minute ago, and yet it&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>
+true. I&#8217;ve known for years that it was true. It
+wouldn&#8217;t be fair for me to marry any man. So here
+it is, Rash.&#8221; Crossing the floor-space she held out
+the ring again. &#8220;You might as well take it first as
+last.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He drew back from her, his features screwed up
+like those of a tragic mask. &#8220;Do you mean it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do I seem to be making a joke?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Averting his face, he swept the mere sight of the
+ring away from him. &#8220;I won&#8217;t touch the thing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I can&#8217;t keep it. So there!&#8221;</p>
+<p>It fell with a little shivery sound to a bare spot on
+the floor, rolling to the edge of a rug, where it stopped.
+Each looked down at it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So you mean to send me to the devil! All right!
+Just watch and you&#8217;ll see me go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was walking away from him, but turned again.
+&#8220;If you mean by that that you put the responsibility
+for your abominable life on me&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Abominable life! Me! Just because I&#8217;m not one
+of the white-blooded Nancies which your aunt thinks
+the only ones fit to be called men&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>But he couldn&#8217;t go on. He was choking. The sole
+relief to his indignation was in once more tearing
+round the room, while Miss Walbrook moved to the
+fluted white mantelpiece, where, with her foot resting
+on the attenuated Hunt Diedrich andirons she bowed
+her head against an attenuated Hunt Diedrich antelope
+in bronze.</p>
+<p>She was not softened or repentant. She knew she
+would become so later; but she knew too that her
+tempers had to work themselves off by degrees. Their
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>
+quarrels having hitherto been rendered worth while
+by their reconciliations, she took it for granted that
+the same thing would happen once more though, as
+she expressed it to herself, she would have died before
+taking the first step. The obvious thing was for him
+to pick up the ring from off the floor, bring it to her
+humbly while her back was turned on him, and beseech
+her to allow him to slip it on where it belonged;
+whereupon she would consider as to whether she would
+do so or not. In her present frame of mind, so she
+told herself, she would not. Nothing would induce
+her to do anything of the kind. He had betrayed the
+fact that he knew something as to which she was
+desperately sensitive, which other people knew, but
+which she had always supposed to have escaped his
+observation&mdash;that she was like an old maid.</p>
+<p>She was. She was only twenty-five, but she had
+been like an old maid at fifteen. It had been a joke
+till she was twenty, after which it had continued as a
+joke to her friends, but a grief to herself. She was
+distinguished, aristocratic, intellectual, accomplished,
+and Aunt Marion would probably see to it that she
+was left tolerably well off; nevertheless she had picked
+up from her aunt, or perhaps had inherited from the
+same source, the peculiar quality of the woman who
+would probably not marry. Because she knew it and
+bewailed it, it had come like a staggering blow to
+learn that Rash knew it, and perhaps bewailed it too.
+The least he could do to atone for that offense would
+be to beg her, to implore her on his bended knees, to
+wear his ring again; and she might not do it even then.</p>
+<p>The dramatic experience was worth waiting for,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span>
+however, and so with spirit churning she leaned her
+hot brow against the thin, cool flank of Hunt Diedrich&#8217;s
+antelope. She knew by the fierce grinding of
+his steps on the far side of the room that he hadn&#8217;t
+yet picked up the ring; but there was no hurry as to
+that. Since she would never, never forgive him for
+knowing what she thought he didn&#8217;t know&mdash;forgive
+him in her heart, that was to say&mdash;not if she married
+him ten times over, or to the longest day he lived,
+there was plenty of time for reaching friendly terms
+again. Her anger had not yet blown off, nor had she
+stabbed him hard enough. As with most people subject
+to storms of hot temper, stabs, given and received,
+were all in her day&#8217;s work. They relieved for the
+moment the pressure of emotion, leaving no permanent
+ill-will behind them.</p>
+<p>She heard him come to a halt, but did not turn to
+look at him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So it&#8217;s all over!&#8221;</p>
+<p>As a peg on which to hang a retort the words would
+serve as well as any others. &#8220;It seems so, doesn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you don&#8217;t care whether I go to the devil or
+not?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the good of my caring when you seem
+determined to do it anyhow?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He allowed a good minute to pass before saying,
+&#8220;Well, if you don&#8217;t marry me some other woman will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very likely; and if you make her a promise to
+reform I hope you&#8217;ll keep your word.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She won&#8217;t be likely to exact any such condition.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then you&#8217;ll probably be happier with her than
+you could have been with me.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span></div>
+<p>Having opened up the way for him to make some
+protest to which she could have remained obdurate,
+she waited for it to come. But nothing did come.
+Had she turned, she would have seen that he had
+grown white, that his hands were clenched and his
+lips compressed after a way he had and that his wild,
+harum-scarum soul was worked up to an extraordinary
+intensity; but she didn&#8217;t turn. She was waiting for
+him to pick up the ring, creep along behind her, and
+seize the hand resting on the mantelpiece, according
+to the ritual she had mentally foreordained. But without
+stooping or taking a step he spoke again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I picked up a book at the club the other day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Not being interested, she made no response.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was the life of an English writing-guy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Though wondering what he was working up to, she
+still held her peace.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gissing, the fellow&#8217;s name was. Ever hear of
+him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The question being direct, she murmured: &#8220;Yes;
+of course. What of it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ever hear how he got married?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not that I remember.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When something went wrong&mdash;I&#8217;ve forgotten
+what&mdash;he went out into the street with a vow. It
+was a vow to marry the first woman he met who&#8217;d
+marry him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A shiver went through her. It was just such a
+foolhardy thing as Rashleigh himself was likely to
+attempt. She was afraid. She was afraid, and yet
+reangered just when her wrath was beginning to die
+down.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;And he did it!&#8221; he cried, with a force in which
+it was impossible for her not to catch a note of personal
+implication.</p>
+<p>It was unlikely that he could be trying to trap her by
+any such cheap melodramatic threat as this; and
+yet&#8211;&#8211;</p>
+<p>When several minutes had gone by in a silence which
+struck her soon as awesome, she turned slowly round,
+only to find herself alone.</p>
+<p>She ran into the hall, but there was no one there.
+He must have gone downstairs. Leaning over the
+baluster, she called to him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rash! Rash!&#8221;</p>
+<p>But only Wildgoose, the manservant, answered
+from below. &#8220;Mr. Allerton had just left the &#8217;ouse,
+miss.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_II' id='CHAPTER_II'></a>
+<h2>Chapter II</h2>
+</div>
+<p>While Allerton and Miss Walbrook had been
+conducting this debate a dissimilar yet parallel
+scene was enacted in a mean house in a mean street
+on the other side of the Park. Viewed from the outside,
+the house was one of those survivals of more
+primitive times which you will still run across in the
+richest as well as in the poorest districts of New York.
+A tiny wooden structure of two low stories, it connected
+with the sidewalk by a flight of steps of a third
+of the height of the whole fa&ccedil;ade. Flat-roofed and
+clap-boarded, it had once been painted gray with white
+facings, but time, weather, and soot had defaced these
+neat colors to a hideous pepper-and-salt.</p>
+<p>Within, a toy entry led directly to a toy stairway,
+and by a door on the left into a toy living-room. In
+the toy living-room a man of forty-odd was saying to
+a girl of perhaps twenty-three,</p>
+<p>&#8220;So you&#8217;ll not give it up, won&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The girl cringed as the man stood over her, but
+pressing her hand over something she had slipped
+within the opening at the neck of her cheap shirtwaist,
+she maintained her ground. The face she raised to
+him was at once terrified and determined, tremulous
+with tears and yet defiant with some new exercise of
+will power.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I&#8217;ll not give it up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll see.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span></div>
+<p>He said it quietly enough, the menace being less in
+his tone than in himself. He was so plainly the cheap
+sport bully that there could have been nothing but a
+menace in his personality. Flashy male good looks
+got a kind of brilliancy from a set of big, strong teeth
+the whiter for their contrast with a black, brigand-like
+mustache. He was so well dressed in his cheap sport
+way as to be out of keeping with the dilapidation of
+the room, in which there was hardly a table or a chair
+which stood firmly on its legs, or a curtain or a covering
+which didn&#8217;t reek with dust and germs. A worn,
+thin carpet gaped in holes; what had once been a
+sofa stood against a wall, shockingly disemboweled.
+Through a door ajar one glimpsed a toy kitchen where
+the stove had lost a leg and was now supported by a
+brick. It was plain that the master of the house was
+one of those for whom any lair is sufficient as a home
+as long as he can cut a dash outside.</p>
+<p>Quiveringly, as if in terror of a blow, the girl explained
+herself breathlessly: &#8220;The castin&#8217; director sent
+for me just as I was makin&#8217; tracks for home. He ast
+me if this was the on&#8217;y suit I had. When I &#8217;lowed
+it was, he just said he couldn&#8217;t use me any more till
+I got a new one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The man took the tone of superior masculine knowledge.
+&#8220;That wasn&#8217;t nothin&#8217; but bull. What if he does
+chuck you? I know every movin&#8217; picture studio round
+N&#8217;York. I&#8217;ll get you in somewheres else. Come now,
+Letty. Fork out. I need the berries. I owe some one.
+I was only waitin&#8217; for you to come home.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She clutched her breast more tightly. &#8220;I gotta have
+a new suit anyhow.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;ll buy you a new suit when I get the bones.
+Didn&#8217;t I give you this one?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She continued, still breathlessly: &#8220;Two years ago&mdash;a
+marked-down misses&#8217; it was even then&mdash;all right
+if I was on&#8217;y sixteen&mdash;but now when I&#8217;m near twenty-three&mdash;and
+it&#8217;s in rags anyhow&mdash;and all out of style&mdash;and
+in pitchers you&#8217;ve gotta be&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;se plenty pitchers where they want that character&mdash;to
+pass in a crowd, and all that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To pass in a crowd once or twice, yes; but when
+all you can do is to pass in a crowd, and wear the same
+old rig every time you pass in it&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He cut her protests short by saying, with an air of
+finality: &#8220;Well, anyhow I&#8217;ve got to have the bucks.
+Can&#8217;t go out till I get &#8217;em. So hand!&#8221;</p>
+<p>With lips compressed and eyes swimming, she shook
+her head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Better do it. You&#8217;ll be sorry if you don&#8217;t. I can
+pass you that tip straight now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you was laughed at every time you stepped onto
+the lot&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s worse things than bein&#8217; laughed at. I can
+tell you that straight now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothin&#8217;s worse than bein&#8217; laughed at, not for a
+girl of my age there ain&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Watching his opportunity he caught her off her
+guard. Her eyes having wandered to the coat she
+had just taken off, a worn gray thing with edgings of
+worn gray squirrel fur, he wrenched back with an
+unexpected movement the hand that clutched something
+to her breast, thrust two fingers of his other hand
+within her corsage, and extracted her pay-envelope.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span></div>
+<p>It took her by such surprise that she was like a mad
+thing, throwing herself upon him and battling for her
+treasure, though any possibility of her getting it back
+from him was hopeless. It was so easy for him to
+catch her by the wrists and twist them that he laughed
+while he was doing it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You little cat! You see what you bring on yourself.
+And you&#8217;re goin&#8217; to get worse. I can tell you
+that straight now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Still twisting her arms till she writhed, though
+without a moan or a cry, he backed her toward the
+disemboweled sofa, on whose harsh, exposed springs
+she fell. Then he sprang on her a new surprise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How dare you wear them rings? They was your
+mother&#8217;s rings. I bought and paid for &#8217;em. They&#8217;re
+mine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, don&#8217;t take them off,&#8221; she begged. &#8220;You can
+keep the money&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure I can keep the money,&#8221; he grinned, wrenching
+from her fingers the plain gold band he had given
+her mother as a wedding ring, as well as another,
+bigger, broader, showier, and set with two infinitesimal
+white points claiming to be diamonds.</p>
+<p>Though he had released her hands, she now
+stretched them out toward him pleadingly. &#8220;Aw, give
+&#8217;em back to me. They&#8217;se all I&#8217;ve got in the world to
+care about&mdash;just because she wore &#8217;em. You can take
+anything else I&#8217;ve got&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right, then. I&#8217;ll take this.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With a deftness which would have done credit to
+a professor of legerdemain he unbuckled the strap of
+her little wrist-watch, putting the thing into his pocket.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I give that to your mother too. You don&#8217;t need it,
+and it may be useful to me. What else have you got?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She struggled to her feet. He was growing more
+dangerous than she had ever known him to be even
+when he had beaten her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t got nothin&#8217; else.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes, you have. You gotta purse. I seen you
+with it. Where is it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The fear in her eyes sent his toward her jacket,
+thrown on the chair when she had come in. With an
+&#8220;Ah!&#8221; of satisfaction he pounced on it. As he held
+it upside down and shook it, a little leather wallet
+clattered to the floor. She sprang for it, but again
+he was too quick for her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So!&#8221; he snarled, with his glittering grin. &#8220;You
+thought you&#8217;d get it, did you?&#8221; He rattled the few
+coins, copper and silver, into the palm of his hand, and
+unfolded a one-dollar bill. &#8220;You must owe me this
+money. Who&#8217;s give you bed and board for the last
+ten year, I&#8217;d like to know? How much have you ever
+paid me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only all I ever earned&mdash;which you stole from me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stole from you, did I? Well, you won&#8217;t fling
+that in my face any more.&#8221; He handed her her coat.
+&#8220;Put that on,&#8221; he commanded.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What for?&#8221; She held it without obeying the
+order. &#8220;What&#8217;s the good o&#8217; goin&#8217; out and me without
+a cent?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Put it on.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her lip quivered; she began to suspect his intention.
+&#8220;I do&#8217; wanta.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, very well! Please yourself. You got your
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>
+hat on already.&#8221; Seizing her by the shoulders he
+steered her toward the door. &#8220;Now march.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Though she refused to march, it was not difficult
+for him to force her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This&#8217;ll teach you to valyer a good home when you
+got one. You&#8217;ll deserve to find the next one different.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She almost shrieked: &#8220;You&#8217;re not going to turn
+me out?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what does it look as if I was doin&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I won&#8217;t go! I won&#8217;t go! Where <i>can</i> I go?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What I&#8217;m doin&#8217; &#8217;ll help you to find out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He had her now in the entry, where in spite of her
+struggles he had no difficulty in unlocking the door,
+pushing her out, and relocking the door behind her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lemme in! Lemme in! Oh, <i>please</i>, lemme in!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stood in the middle of the living-room, listening
+with pleasure and smiling his brigand&#8217;s smile. He
+was not as bad as you might think. He did mean to
+let her in eventually. His smile and his pleasure
+sprang purely from the fact that his lesson was so
+successful. With this in her mind, she wouldn&#8217;t withstand
+him a second time.</p>
+<p>She rattled the door by the handle. She beat upon
+the panels. She implored.</p>
+<p>Still smiling, he filled his pipe. Let her keep it up.
+It would do her good. He remembered that once when
+he had turned her mother out at night, she had sat
+on the steps till he let her in at dawn before the police
+looked round that way. History would repeat itself.
+The daughter would do the same. He was only giving
+her the lesson she deserved.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile she was experiencing a new sensation,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+that of outrage. For the first time in her life she was
+swept by pride in revolt. She hadn&#8217;t known that any
+such emotion could get hold of her. As a matter of
+fact she hadn&#8217;t known that so strong a support to the
+inner man lay within the depths of human nature.
+Accustomed to being cowed, she had hardly understood
+that there was any other way to feel. Only
+within a day or two had something which you or I
+would have called spirit, but for which she had no
+name, disturbed her with unexpected flashes, like those
+of summer lightning.</p>
+<p>While waiting for the camera, for instance, in the
+street scene in &#8220;The Man with the Emerald Eye,&#8221; a
+&#8220;fresh thing&#8221; had said, with a wink at her companions,
+&#8220;Say, did you copy that suit from a pattern in <i>Chic?</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty had so carefully minded her own business
+and tried to be nice to every one that the titter which
+went round at her expense hurt her with a wound
+impelling her to reply, &#8220;No; I ordered it at Margot&#8217;s.
+You look as if you got your things there too, don&#8217;t
+you?&#8221; Nevertheless, she was so stung by the sarcasm
+that the commendation she overheard later, that the
+Gravely kid had a tongue, didn&#8217;t bring any consolation.</p>
+<p>Without knowing that what she felt now was an
+intensified form of the same rebellion against scorn,
+she knew it was not consistent with some inborn sense
+of human dignity to stand there pleading to be let into
+a house from which she was locked out, even though
+it was the only spot on earth she could call home. Still
+less was it possible when, round the foot of the steps,
+a crowd began to gather, jeering at her passionate
+beseechings. For the most part they were children,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>
+Slavic, Semitic, Italian. Amid their cries of, &#8220;Go it,
+Sis!&#8221; now in English and now in strange equivalents
+of Latin, or Polish, or even Hebraic origin, she was
+suddenly arrested by the consciousness of personal
+humiliation.</p>
+<p>She turned from the door to face the street. It was
+one of those streets not rare in New York which the
+civic authorities abandon in despair. A gash of children
+and refuse cut straight from river to Park, it
+got its chief movement from push-carts of fruit and
+other foods, while the &#8220;wash&#8221; of five hundred families
+blew its banners overhead. Vendors of all kinds
+uttered their nasal or raucous cries, in counterpoint to
+the treble screams of little boys and girls.</p>
+<p>Letty had always hated it, but it was something
+more than hatred which she felt for it now. Beyond
+the children adults were taking a rest from the hawking
+profession to comment with grins on the sight of
+a girl locked out of her own home. She was probably
+a very bad girl to call for that kind of treatment,
+and therefore one on whom they should spend some
+derision.</p>
+<p>They were spending it as she turned. It was an
+experience on a large scale of what the girl in the
+studio had inflicted. She was a thing to be scorned,
+and of all the hardships in the world scorn, now that
+she was aware of it, was the one she could least submit
+to.</p>
+<p>So pride came to her rescue. Throwing her coat
+across her arm she went down the steps, passed
+through the hooting children, one or two of whom
+pulled her by the skirt, passed through the bearded
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>
+Jews, and the bronzed Italians, and the flat-nosed
+Slavs, passed through the women who had come out
+on the sidewalk at this accentuation of the daily din,
+passed through the barrows and handcarts and piles of
+cabbages and fruit, and went her way.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_III' id='CHAPTER_III'></a>
+<h2>Chapter III</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Exactly at this minute Rashleigh Allerton was
+standing outside Miss Walbrook&#8217;s door, glancing
+up and down Fifth Avenue and over at the Park.
+It was the hour after luncheon when pedestrians become
+numerous. For his purpose they could not be
+very numerous; they must be reasonably spaced apart.</p>
+<p>And already a veritable stream of women had begun
+to flow down the long, gentle slope, while a few, like
+fish, were stemming the current by making progress
+against it. None of them was his &#8220;affair.&#8221; Young,
+old, short, tall, blond, brunette, they were without
+exception of the class indiscriminately lumped as
+ladies. Since you couldn&#8217;t go to the devil because you
+had married a lady, even on the wild hypothesis that
+one of these sophisticated beings would without introduction
+or formality marry him, it would be better not
+to let himself in for the absurdity of the proposal.
+When there was a break in the procession, he darted
+across the street and made his way into the Park.</p>
+<p>Here there was no one in sight as far as the path
+continued without a bend. He was going altogether
+at a venture. Round the curve of the woodland way
+there might swing at any second the sibyl who would
+point his life downward.</p>
+<p>He was aware, however, that in sibyls he had a
+preference. If she was to send him to the devil, she
+must be of the type which he qualified as a &#8220;drab.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span>
+Without knowing the dictionary meaning of the word,
+he felt that it implied whatever would contrast most
+revoltingly with Barbara Walbrook. Seeing with her
+own eyes to what she had driven him, her heart would
+be wrung. That was all he asked for, the wringing of
+her heart. It might be a mad thing for him to punish
+himself so terribly just to punish her, but he was mad
+anyhow. Madness gave him the satisfaction which
+some men got from thrift, and others from cleverness.
+He would keep the vow with which he had slipped out
+of Miss Walbrook&#8217;s drawing room. It was all that
+life had left for him.</p>
+<p>That was, he wouldn&#8217;t pick and choose. He would
+take them as they came. He had not stipulated with
+himself that she must be a &#8220;drab.&#8221; It was only what
+he hoped. She must be the first woman he met who
+would marry him. Age, appearance, refinement, vulgarity
+were not to be considered. Picking and choosing
+on his part would only take his destiny out of the
+hands of Fate, where he preferred that it should lie.</p>
+<p>Had any one passed him, he would have seemed the
+more perturbed because of his being so well-dressed.
+He was one of the few New Yorkers as careful of
+appearances as many Londoners. With the finish that
+comes of studied selection in hat, stick, and gloves, as
+well as all small accessories of the costliest, he might
+have been going to or coming from a wedding.</p>
+<p>He was imposing, therefore, to a short, stout, elderly
+woman with whom he suddenly found himself face
+to face as the path took a sharp sweep to the south.
+The shrubs which had kept them hidden from each
+other gave place here to open stretches of lawn. When
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>
+Allerton paused and lifted his hat, the woman naturally
+paused, too.</p>
+<p>She was a red-faced woman crowned with a bonnet
+of the style introduced by Mrs. Langtry in 1878, but
+worn on this occasion some degrees off center. On
+her arm she carried a flat basket of which the contents,
+decently covered with a towel, might have been freshly
+laundered shirts. Being stopped by a gentleman of
+Allerton&#8217;s impressiveness and plainly suffering expression,
+her face grew motherly and sympathetic.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam, I wish to ask if you&#8217;ll marry me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Even a dull brain couldn&#8217;t fail to catch words
+hammered out with this force of precision. The
+woman didn&#8217;t wait to have them repeated. Dropping
+her basket as it was, she took to flight. Flight was
+the word. A modern Atalanta of Wellesley or Bryn
+Mawr might have envied the chamois leaps which
+took the good creature across the grass to the protection
+of a man with a lawn-mower.</p>
+<p>Allerton couldn&#8217;t pause to watch her, for a new
+sibyl was advancing. To his disgust rather than not,
+she was young and pretty, a nursemaid pushing a
+baby-cart into which a young man of two was strapped.
+While far more likely to take him than the stout old
+party still skipping the greensward like a mountain
+roe, she would be much less plausible as a reason for
+going to the evil one. But a vow was a vow, and he
+was in for it.</p>
+<p>His approach was the same as on the previous occasion.
+Lifting his hat ceremoniously, he said with the
+same distinctness of utterance, &#8220;Madam, I wish to ask
+if you&#8217;ll marry me?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span></div>
+<p>The girl, who had paused when he did, leaned on
+the pusher of her go-cart, studying him calmly. Chewing
+something with a slow, rotary movement of the
+lips and chin, she broke the action with a snap before
+quite completing the circle, to begin all over again.
+&#8220;Oh, you do, do you?&#8221; was her quiet response.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you please.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She studied him again, with the same semi-circular
+motion of the jaw. She might have been weighing
+his proposal.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say, is this one of them club initiation stunts, or
+have you just got a noive?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Am I to take that as a yes or a no?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And am I to take you as one of them smart-Alecks,
+or a coily-headed nut?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He saw a way out. &#8220;I&#8217;m generally considered a
+curly-headed nut.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then it&#8217;s me for the exit-in-case-of-fire, so ta-ta.&#8221;
+She laughed back at him over her shoulder. &#8220;Wish
+you luck with your next.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But fate was already on him in another form. A
+lady of fifty or thereabouts was coming up the path,
+refined, sedate, mistress of herself, the one type of all
+others most difficult to accost. All the same he must
+do it. He must keep on doing it till some one yielded
+to his suit. The rebuffs to which he had been subjected
+did no more than inflame his will.</p>
+<p>Approaching the new sibyl with the same ceremoniousness,
+he repeated the same words in the same precise
+tone. The lady stood off, eyed him majestically
+through a lorgnette, and spoke with a force which
+came from quietude.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I know who you are. You&#8217;re Rashleigh Allerton.
+You ought to be ashamed with a shame that would
+strike you to the ground. I&#8217;m a friend of Miss
+Marion Walbrook&#8217;s. I&#8217;m on my way to see her and
+shall <i>not</i> mention this encounter. We work on the
+same committee of the League for the Suppression of
+Men&#8217;s Clubs. The lamentable state in which I see
+you convinces me once more of the need of our work,
+if our men are to become as we hope to see them. I
+bid you a good afternoon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With the dignity of a queen she passed on and out
+of sight, leaving him with the sting of a whiplash on
+his face.</p>
+<p>But the name of Miss Walbrook, connected with
+that of the League which was her pet enthusiasm for
+the public weal, only served as an incitement. He
+would go through with it now at any cost. By nightfall
+he would be at police-headquarters for insulting
+women, or he would have found a bride.</p>
+<p>Walking on again, the path was clear before him as
+far as he could see. Having thus a few minutes to
+reflect, he came to the conclusion that his attacks had
+been too precipitate. He should feel the ground before
+him, leading the sibyl a little at a time, so as to
+have her mentally prepared. There were methods of
+&#8220;getting acquainted&#8221; to which he should apply himself
+first of all.</p>
+<p>But getting acquainted with the old Italian peasant
+woman, bowed beneath a bundle, who was the next
+he would have to confront, being out of the question,
+he resolved to side-step destiny by slipping out of the
+main path and following a branch one. Doing so, he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span>
+came into less frequented regions, while his steps took
+him up a low hill burnished with the tints of mid-October.
+Trees and shrubs were flame-colored, copper-colored,
+wine-colored, differing only in their diffuseness
+of hue from the concentrated gorgeousness of
+amaranth, canna, and gladiolus. The sounds of the
+city were deadened here to a dull rumble, while the
+vibrancy of the autumn afternoon excited his taut
+nerves.</p>
+<p>At the top of the hill he paused. There was no one
+in sight who could possibly respond to his quest. He
+wondered for a second if this were not a hint to him
+to abandon it. But doing that he would abandon his
+revenge, and by abandoning his revenge he would concede
+everything to this girl who had so bitterly
+wronged him. Ever since he could remember they
+had been pals, and for at least ten years he had vaguely
+thought of asking her to marry him when it came
+to his seeking a wife. It was true, the hint she had
+thrown out, that he had felt himself in no great need
+of a wife till his mother had died some eighteen
+months previously, and he had found himself with a
+cumbrous old establishment on his hands. That had
+given the decisive turn to his suit. He had asked her.
+She had taken him. And since then, in the course of
+less than ten weeks, if they had had three quarrels
+they had had thirty. He had taken them all more or
+less good-naturedly&mdash;till to-day. To-day was too
+much. He could hardly say why it was too much,
+unless it was as the last straw, but he felt it essential
+to his honor to show her by actual demonstration the
+ruin she had made of him.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span></div>
+<p>Looking about him for another possibility, he
+noticed that at the spot where the path, having serpentined
+down the little hillside, rejoined the main
+footway there was a bench so placed that its occupant
+would have a view along several avenues at once.
+Since it was obviously a vantage point for such
+strategy as his, he had taken the first steps down toward
+it when a little gray figure emerged from behind
+a group of blue Norway spruces. She went dejectedly
+to the bench, sitting down at an extreme end of it.</p>
+<p>Wrought up to a fit of tension far from rare with
+him, Allerton stood with his nails digging into his
+clenched palms and his thin lips pressed together. He
+was sure he was looking at a &#8220;drab.&#8221; All the shoddy,
+outcast meanings he had read into the word were
+under the bedraggled feathers of this battered black
+hat or compressed within the forlorn squirrel-trimmed
+gray suit. The dragging movement, the hint of dropping
+on the seat not from fatigue but from desperation,
+completed the picture his imagination had already
+painted of some world-worn, knocked-about creature
+who had come to the point at which, in his own phrase,
+she was &#8220;all in.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As far as this described Letty Gravely, he was
+wrong. She was not &#8220;all in.&#8221; She was never more
+mentally alert than at that very minute. If she moved
+slowly, if she sank on the seat as if too beaten down
+by events to do more, it was because her mind was so
+intensely centered on her immediate problems.</p>
+<p>She had, in fact, just formed a great resolution.
+Whatever became of her, she would never go back to
+Judson Flack, her stepfather. This had not been
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>
+clearly in her mind when she had gone down his steps
+and walked away, but the occasion presented itself now
+as one to be seized. In seizing it, however, the alternatives
+were difficult. She was without a cent, a
+shelter, a job, a friend, or the prospect of a meal. It
+was probable that there was not at that minute in
+New York a human being so destitute. Before nightfall
+she would have to find some nominal motive for
+living or be arrested as a vagrant.</p>
+<p>She was not appalled. For the first time in her life
+she was relatively free from fear. Even with nothing
+but her person as she stood, she was her own mistress.
+No big dread hung over her&mdash;that is, no big dread
+of the kind represented by Judson Flack. She might
+jump into the river or go to the bad, but in either case
+she would do it of her own free will. Merely to have
+the exercise of her own free will gave her the kind of
+physical relief which a human being gets from stretching
+limbs cramped and crippled by chains.</p>
+<p>Besides, there was in her situation an underlying
+possibility of adventure. This she didn&#8217;t phrase, since
+she didn&#8217;t understand it. She only had the intuition in
+her heart that where &#8220;the world is all before you,
+where to choose your place of rest, and Providence
+your guide,&#8221; Providence <i>becomes</i> your guide. Verbally
+she put it merely in the words, &#8220;Things happen,&#8221;
+though as to what could happen between half-past
+three in the afternoon and midnight, when she would
+possibly be in jail, she could not begin to imagine.</p>
+<p>So absorbed was she in this momentous uncertainty
+that she scarcely noticed that some one had seated
+himself at the other end of the bench. It was a public
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>
+place; it was likely that some one would. She felt
+neither curiosity nor resentment. A lack of certain
+of the feminine instincts, or their retarded development,
+left her without interest in the fact that the
+newcomer was a man. From the slight glance she had
+given him when she heard his step, she judged him to
+be what she estimated as an elderly man, quite far into
+the thirties.</p>
+<p>She went back to her own thoughts which were
+practical. There were certain measures which she
+could take at once, after which there would be no
+return. Once more she was not appalled. She had
+lived too near the taking of these steps to be shocked
+by them. Everything in life is a question of relativity,
+and in the world which her mother had entered on
+marrying Judson Flack the men were all so near the
+edge of the line which separates the criminal from the
+non-criminal that it seemed a natural thing when they
+crossed it, while the women....</p>
+<p>But as her thoughts were dealing with this social
+problem in its bearing on herself, her neighbor spoke.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Funny to watch those kids playing with the pup,
+isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She admitted that it was, that watching children
+and young animals was a favorite sport with her. She
+answered simply, because being addressed by strange
+men with whom she found herself in proximity was
+sanctioned by the etiquette of her society. To resent
+it would be putting on airs, besides which it would
+cut off social intercourse between the sexes. It
+had happened to her many a time to have engaging
+conversations with chance young men beside
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>
+her in the subway, never seeing them before or
+afterward.</p>
+<p>So Allerton found getting acquainted easier than he
+had expected. The etiquette of <i>his</i> society not sanctioning
+this directness of response on her part, he drew
+the conclusion that she was accustomed to &#8220;meeting
+fellows halfway.&#8221; As this was the sort of person he
+was looking for, he found in the freedom nothing to
+complain of.</p>
+<p>With the openness of her social type she gave
+details of her biography without needing to be
+pressed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a New York girl?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am now. I didn&#8217;t use to be.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What were you to begin with?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Momma brought me from Canada after my father
+died. That&#8217;s why I ain&#8217;t got no friends here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At this appeal for sympathy his glance stole suspiciously
+toward her, finding his first conjectures somewhat
+but not altogether verified. She was young apparently,
+and possibly pretty, though as to neither
+point did he care. He would have preferred more
+&#8220;past,&#8221; more &#8220;mystery,&#8221; more &#8220;drama,&#8221; but since you
+couldn&#8217;t have everything, a young person utterly unfit
+to be his wife would have to be enough. He continued
+to draw out her story, not because he cared anything
+about hearing it, but in order to spring his question
+finally without making her think him more unbalanced
+than he was.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your father was a Canadian?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; a farmer. Momma used to say she was about
+as good to work a farm as a cat to run a fire-engine.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span>
+When he died, she sold out for four thousand dollars
+and come to New York.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To work?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, to have a good time. She&#8217;d never had a good
+time, momma hadn&#8217;t, and she was awful pretty. So
+she said she&#8217;d just blow herself to it while she had
+the berries in her basket. That was how she met
+Judson Flack. I suppose you know who he is. Everybody
+does.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid I haven&#8217;t the pleasure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t know as you&#8217;d find it any big pleasure.
+Momma didn&#8217;t, not after she&#8217;d give him a try.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who and what is he?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He calls hisself a man about town. I call him a
+bum. Poor momma married him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And wasn&#8217;t happy, I suppose.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not after he&#8217;d spent her wad, she wasn&#8217;t. She
+was crazy about him, and when she found out that all
+he&#8217;d cared about was her four thousand plunks&mdash;well,
+it was her finish.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How long ago was that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;About four years now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what have you been doing in the meanwhile?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Keepin&#8217; house for Judson Flack most of the time&mdash;till
+I quit.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you&#8217;ve quit?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure I&#8217;ve quit.&#8221; She was putting her better foot
+forward. &#8220;Now I&#8217;m in pitchers.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He glanced at her again, having noticed already that
+she scarcely glanced at him. Her profile was toward
+him as at first, an irregular little profile of lifts and
+tilts, which might be appealing, but was not beautiful.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span>
+The boast of being in pictures, so incongruous
+with her woefully dilapidated air, did not amuse him.
+He knew how large a place a nominal connection
+with the stage took in the lives of certain ladies.
+Even this poor little tramp didn&#8217;t hesitate to make
+the claim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you&#8217;re doing well?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She wouldn&#8217;t show the white feather. &#8220;Oh, so so!
+I&mdash;I get along.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You live by yourself?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I do now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you find it lonely?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not so lonely as livin&#8217; with Judson Flack.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re&mdash;you&#8217;re happy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>A faint implication that she might look to him for
+help stirred her fierce independence. &#8220;Gee, yes! I&#8217;m&mdash;I&#8217;m
+doin&#8217; swell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you wouldn&#8217;t mind a change, I suppose?&#8221;</p>
+<p>For the first time her eyes stole toward him, not
+in suspicion, and still less in alarm, but in one of the
+intenser shades of curiosity. It was almost as if he was
+going to suggest to her something &#8220;off the level&#8221; but
+which would nevertheless be worth her while. She was
+used to these procedures, not in actual experience but
+from hearing them talked about. They made up a
+large part of what Judson Flack understood as &#8220;business.&#8221;
+She felt it prudent to be as non-committal
+as possible.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t so sure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She meant him to understand that being tolerably
+satisfied with her own way of life, she was not enthusiastic
+over new experiments.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span></div>
+<p>His next observation was no surprise to her. &#8220;I&#8217;m
+a lawyer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was sure of that. There were always lawyers
+in these subterranean affairs&mdash;&#8220;shyster&#8221; was a word
+she had heard applied to them&mdash;and this man looked
+the part. His thin face, clear-cut profile, and skin
+which showed dark where he shaved, were all,
+in her judgment, signs of the sinister. Even his
+clothes, from his patent leather shoes with spats
+to his dark blue necktie with a pearl in it, were those
+which an actor would wear in pictures to represent
+a &#8220;shark.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was turning these thoughts over in her mind
+when he spoke again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve an office, but I don&#8217;t practise much. It takes
+all my time to manage my own estate.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She didn&#8217;t know what this meant. It sounded like
+farming, but you didn&#8217;t farm in New York, or do it
+from an office anyhow. &#8220;I guess he&#8217;s one of them
+gold-brick nuts,&#8221; she commented to herself, &#8220;but he
+won&#8217;t put nothin&#8217; over on me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In return for her biography he continued to give
+his, bringing out his facts in short, hard statements
+which seemed to hurt him. It was this hurting him
+which she found most difficult to reconcile with her
+gold brick theory and the suspicion that he was a
+&#8220;shark.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My father was a lawyer, too. Rather well known
+in his day. One time ambassador to Vienna.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Ambassador to Vienna! She didn&#8217;t know where
+Vienna was or the nature of an ambassador, but
+she did know that it sounded grand, so she looked
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>
+at him attentively. It was either more gold brick or
+else....</p>
+<p>Then something struck her&mdash;&#8220;smote her&#8221; would
+be perhaps the more accurately descriptive word, since
+the effect was on her heart. This man was sick. He
+was suffering. She had often seen women suffer, but
+men rarely, and this was one of the rare instances.
+Something in her was touched. She couldn&#8217;t imagine
+why he talked to her or what he wanted of her, but
+a pity which had never yet been called upon was astir
+among her emotions.</p>
+<p>As for the minute he said no more, her next words
+came out only because she supposed them to betray
+the kindly interest of which he was in need.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I suppose he left you <i>a</i> big fat wad.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; but it doesn&#8217;t do me any good. I mean, it
+doesn&#8217;t make me happy&mdash;when I&#8217;m not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I guess it&#8217;d make you a good deal less happy if you
+didn&#8217;t have it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps so; I don&#8217;t think about it either way.&#8221;
+He added, after tense compression of the lips; &#8220;I&#8217;m
+all alone in the world&mdash;like you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was sure now that something was coming,
+though of what nature lay beyond her speculative
+power. She wondered if he could have fallen in love
+with her at first sight, realizing a favorite dream she
+often had in the subway. Hundreds of times she had
+beguiled the minutes by selecting one or another of
+the wealthy lawyers and bankers, whom she supposed
+to be her fellow-travelers there, seeing him smitten by
+a glance at her, following her when she got out, and
+laying his heart and coronet at her feet before she had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span>
+run up the steps. If this man were not a shyster lawyer
+or a gold brick nut, he might possibly be doing that.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s about a girl,&#8221; he burst out suddenly. &#8220;Half
+an hour ago she kicked me out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did she know you had all that dough?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, she knew I had all that dough. But she said
+that since I was going to the devil, I had better go.&#8221;
+He drew a long breath. &#8220;Well, I&#8217;m going&mdash;perhaps
+quicker than she thinks.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Will you do yourself any good by that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, but I&#8217;ll do her harm.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll show her what she&#8217;s made of me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She can&#8217;t make anything of you in half an hour
+or in half a year&mdash;not so long as you&#8217;ve got your wad
+back of you. If you was to be kicked out with your
+pay-envelope stole, and your mother&#8217;s rings pulled off
+your fingers, and her wrist-watch from your wrist,
+and even your carfare&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is that what&#8217;s happened to you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure! Half an hour ago, too. Judson Flack!
+But why should I worry? Something&#8217;ll happen before
+night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He became emphatic. &#8220;Yes, and I&#8217;ll tell you what it
+will be. You put your finger on it just now when
+you said she couldn&#8217;t make anything out of men in half
+an hour. Well, it&#8217;s got to be something that would
+take just that time&mdash;an hour at the most&mdash;<i>and fatal</i>.
+Now do you see?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+<p>He swung fully round on her from his end of the
+bench. &#8220;Think,&#8221; he commanded.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span></div>
+<p>As if with a premonitory notion of what he meant,
+she answered coldly: &#8220;What&#8217;s the good o&#8217; me
+thinkin&#8217;? I&#8217;ve got nothin&#8217; to do with it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You might have.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t imagine what, unless it&#8217;d be&#8211;&#8211;&#8221; Realizing
+what she had been about to say, she broke off in
+confusion, coloring to the eyes.</p>
+<p>He nodded. &#8220;I see you understand. I want you to
+come off somewhere and marry me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She took it more calmly than if she hadn&#8217;t thought
+him mad. &#8220;But&mdash;but you said you&#8217;d be&mdash;be goin&#8217; to
+the devil.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well?&#8221;</p>
+<p>His look, his tone, conveyed the idea, which penetrated
+to her mind but slowly. When it did, the surging
+color became a flush, hot and painful.</p>
+<p>So here it was again, the thing she had been running
+away from. It had outwitted and outrun her,
+meeting her again just at the instant when she thought
+she was shaking it off. She was so indignant with the
+<i>thing</i> that she almost overlooked the man. She too
+swung round from her end of the bench, so that they
+confronted each other, with the length of the seat
+between them. It was her habit to put things plainly,
+though now she did it with a burning heart.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is the way you mean it, isn&#8217;t it?&mdash;you&#8217;d go to
+the devil because you&#8217;d married <i>me</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The half-minute before he answered was occupied
+not merely in thinking what to say but in noticing,
+now that he had her in full-face, that her large, brown
+irises seemed to be sprinkled with gold dust. Otherwise
+her appearance struck him simply as <ins class="trnote" title="burred in original text">blurred</ins>, as if
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>
+it had been brightly enough drawn as to color and line,
+only rubbed over and defaced by the hand of misery.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want you to get me wrong,&#8221; he explained.
+&#8220;It&#8217;s not a question of my marrying you in particular.
+I&#8217;ve said I&#8217;d marry the first girl I met who&#8217;d marry
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The gold-brown eyes scintillated with a thousand
+tiny stars. &#8220;Say, and am I the first?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; you&#8217;re the fourth.&#8221; He added, so that she
+should be under no misconception as to what he was
+about: &#8220;You can take me or leave me. That&#8217;s up to
+you. But if you take me, I want you to understand
+that it&#8217;ll be on a purely business basis.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She repeated, as if to memorize the words, &#8220;A
+purely business basis.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Exactly. I&#8217;m not looking for a wife. I only
+want a woman to marry&mdash;a woman to whom I can
+point and say, See there! I&#8217;ve married&mdash;that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And <i>that&#8217;d</i> be me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you undertook the job.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The job of&mdash;of bein&#8217; laughed at&mdash;jeered at&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d be the one who&#8217;d be laughed at and jeered at.
+Nobody would think anything about you. They wouldn&#8217;t
+remember how you looked or know your
+name. If you got sick of it after a bit, and decided to
+cut and run, you could do it. I&#8217;d see that you were
+well treated&mdash;for the rest of your life.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She studied him long and earnestly. &#8220;Say, are <i>you</i>
+crazy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m all on edge, if that&#8217;s what you mean. But
+there&#8217;s nothing for you to be afraid of. I shan&#8217;t do
+you any harm at any time.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You only want to do harm to yourself. I&#8217;d be
+like the awful kind o&#8217; pill which a fellow&#8217;ll swaller
+to commit suicide.&#8221; She rose, not without a dignity
+of her own. &#8220;Well, mister, if I&#8217;m your fourth, I
+guess you&#8217;ll have to look about you for a fifth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where are you going?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He asked the question without rising. She answered
+as if her choice of objectives was large.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, anywheres.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Which means nowhere, doesn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, not exactly. It means&mdash;it means&mdash;the first
+place I fetch up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The first place you fetch up may be the police-station,
+if the things you said just now are true.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The police-station is safe, anyways.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you think the place I&#8217;d take you to wouldn&#8217;t
+be. Well, you&#8217;re wrong. It&#8217;ll be as safe as a church
+for as long as you like to stay; and when you want to
+go&mdash;lots of money to go with.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Facing away from him toward the city, she said
+over her shoulder: &#8220;There&#8217;s things money couldn&#8217;t
+pay you for. Bein&#8217; looked down on is one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was about to walk on, but he sprang after her,
+catching her by the sleeve.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Look here! Be a sport. You&#8217;ve got the chance of
+your lifetime. It&#8217;ll mean no more to you than a part
+they&#8217;d give you in pictures&mdash;just a r&ocirc;le&mdash;and pay you
+a lot better.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was not blind to the advantages he laid before
+her. True, it might be what she qualified as &#8220;bull&#8221;
+to get her into a trap; only she didn&#8217;t believe it. This
+man with the sick mind and anguished face was none
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>
+of the soft-spoken fiends whose business it is to ensnare
+young girls. She knew all about them from
+living with Judson Flack, and couldn&#8217;t be mistaken.
+This fellow might be crazy, but he was what he said.
+If he said he wouldn&#8217;t do her any harm, he wouldn&#8217;t.
+If he said he would pay her well, he would. The main
+question was as to whether or not, just for the sake
+of getting something to eat and a place to sleep, she
+could deliberately put herself in a position in which the
+man who had married her would have gone to the
+devil <i>because</i> he had married her.</p>
+<p>As he held her by the sleeve looking down at her,
+and she, half turned, was looking up at him, this
+was the battle she was fighting. Hitherto her
+impulse had been to run away from the scorn of
+her inferiority; now she was asking herself what
+would happen if she took up its challenge and
+fought it on its own ground. What if I do? was
+the way the question framed itself, but aloud she
+made it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I said I would, what would happen first?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;d go and get a license. Then we&#8217;d find a
+minister. After that I should give you something to
+eat, and then I&#8217;d take you home.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where would that be?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He gave her his address in East Sixty-seventh
+Street, only a few doors from Fifth Avenue, but her
+social sophistication was not up to the point of seeing
+the significance of this. Neither did her imagination
+try to picture the home or to see it otherwise than as
+an alternative to the police-station, or worse, as a lodging
+for the night.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;And what would happen to me when I got to your
+home?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;d have your own room. I shouldn&#8217;t interfere
+with you. You&#8217;d hardly ever see me. You could stay
+as long as you liked or as short as you liked, after
+the first week or two.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was that about him which carried conviction.
+She believed him. As an alternative to having nowhere
+to go, what he offered her was something, and
+something with that spice of adventure of which she
+had been dreaming only a few minutes earlier. She
+couldn&#8217;t be worse off than she was now, and if it gave
+her the chance of a hand-to-hand tussle with the
+world-pride which had never done anything but look
+down on her, she would be fighting what she held
+as her worst enemy. She braced herself to say,</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right; I&#8217;ll do it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He, too, braced himself. &#8220;Very well! Let&#8217;s start.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The impetuosity of his motion almost took her
+breath away as she tried to keep pace with him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;By the way, what&#8217;s your name?&#8221; he asked, before
+they reached Fifth Avenue.</p>
+<p>She told him, but was too overwhelmed with what
+she had undertaken to dare to ask him his.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_IV' id='CHAPTER_IV'></a>
+<h2>Chapter IV</h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Nao!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The strong cockney negative was also an exclamation.
+It came from Mrs. Courage, the cook-housekeeper,
+who stood near the kitchen range making the
+coffee for breakfast. She was a woman who looked
+her name, born not merely to do battle, but to enjoy
+being in the midst of it.</p>
+<p>Jane, the waitress, was the next to speak. &#8220;Nettie
+Duckett, you ought to be ashymed to sye them words,
+you that&#8217;s been taught to &#8217;ope the best of everyone.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jane had fluttered in from the pantry with the covered
+dish for the toast. Jane still fluttered at her
+work, as she had done for the past thirty years. The
+late Mrs. Allerton had liked her about the table because
+she was swift, deft, and moved lightly. A thin little
+woman, with a profile resembling that of Punch&#8217;s
+Judy, and a smile of cheerful piety, she yielded to time
+only by a process of drying up.</p>
+<p>Nettie Duckett was quick in her own defense, but
+breathless, too, from girlish laughter. &#8220;I can&#8217;t &#8217;elp
+syin&#8217; what I see, now can I? There she was &#8217;arf
+dressed in the little back spare-room. Oh, the commonest
+thing! You wouldn&#8217;t &#8217;a wanted to sweep &#8217;er
+out with a broom.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Pretty goin&#8217;s on I must sye,&#8221; Jane commented.
+&#8220;&#8217;Ope the best of everyone I will, but when you think
+that we was all on the top floor&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Pretty goin&#8217;s off there&#8217;ll be, I can tell you that,&#8221;
+Mrs. Courage declared in her rich, decided bass.
+&#8220;Just let me &#8217;ave a word with Master Rashleigh. I&#8217;ll
+tell &#8217;im what &#8217;is ma would &#8217;ave said. She left &#8217;im to
+me, she did. &#8216;Courage,&#8217; she&#8217;s told me many a time,
+&#8216;that boy&#8217;ll be your boy after I&#8217;m gone.&#8217; As good as
+mykin&#8217; a will, I call it. And now to think that with
+us right &#8217;ere in the &#8217;ouse.... Where&#8217;s Steptoe? Do
+&#8217;e know anything about it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do &#8217;e know anything about what?&#8221; The question
+came from Steptoe himself, who appeared on the
+threshold.</p>
+<p>The three women maintained a dramatic silence,
+while the old butler-valet looked from one to another.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Seems as if there was news,&#8221; he observed dryly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell &#8217;im, Nettie,&#8221; Mrs. Courage commanded.</p>
+<p>Nettie was the young thing of the establishment,
+Mrs. Courage&#8217;s own niece, brought from England
+when the housemaid&#8217;s place fell vacant on Bessie&#8217;s
+unexpected marriage to Walter Wildgoose, Miss Walbrook&#8217;s
+indoor man. Indeed she had been brought
+from England before Bessie&#8217;s marriage, of which
+Mrs. Courage had had advance information, so that
+as soon as Bessie left, Nettie was on the spot to be
+smuggled into the Allerton household. Steptoe had
+not forgiven this underhand movement on Mrs. Courage&#8217;s
+part, seeing that in the long-ago both she and
+Jane had been his own nominees, and that he considered
+the household posts as gifts at his disposal.
+&#8220;I&#8217;ll &#8217;ave to make a clean sweep o&#8217; the lot o&#8217; them,&#8221; he
+had more than once declared at those gatherings at
+which the English butlers and valets of upper Fifth
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span>
+Avenue discuss their complex of interests. Forty
+years in the Allerton family had made him not merely
+its major-domo but in certain respects its head. His
+tone toward Nettie was that of authority with a note
+of disapprobation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Speak, girl, and do it without giggling. What
+&#8217;ave you to tell?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Though she couldn&#8217;t do it without giggling Nettie
+repeated the story she had given to her aunt and Jane.
+She had gone into the small single back bedroom on
+the floor below Mr. Allerton&#8217;s, and there was a half-dressed
+girl &#8216;a-puttin&#8217; up of &#8217;er &#8217;air.&#8217; According to
+her own statement Nettie had passed away on the spot,
+being able, however, to articulate the question, &#8220;What
+are you a&#8217;doin&#8217; of &#8217;ere?&#8221; To this the young woman
+had replied that Mr. Allerton had brought her in on
+the previous evening, telling her to sleep there, and
+there she had slept. Nettie&#8217;s information could go no
+further, but it was considered to go far enough.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So what do you sye to <i>that</i>?&#8221; Mrs. Courage demanded
+of Steptoe; &#8220;you that&#8217;s always so ready to
+defend my young lord?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe was prepared to stand back to back with
+his employer. &#8220;I don&#8217;t defend &#8217;im. I&#8217;m not called on
+to defend &#8217;im. It&#8217;s Mr. Rashleigh&#8217;s &#8217;ouse. Any guest
+of &#8217;is must be your guest and mine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what about Miss Walbrook, &#8217;er that&#8217;s to be
+missus &#8217;ere in the course of a few weeks?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe colored, frostily. &#8220;She&#8217;s not missus &#8217;ere
+yet; and if she ever comes, there&#8217;ll be stormy weather
+for all of us. New missuses don&#8217;t generally get on
+with old servants like us&mdash;that&#8217;s been in the family
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span>
+for so many years&mdash;but when they don&#8217;t, it ain&#8217;t them
+as gets notice.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A bell rang sharply. Steptoe sprang to attention.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s Mr. Rashleigh now. Don&#8217;t you women go
+to mykin&#8217; a to-do. There&#8217;s lots o&#8217; troubles that &#8217;ud
+never &#8217;ave &#8217;appened if women &#8217;ad been able to &#8217;old
+their tongues.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I suppose, Steptoe, you don&#8217;t deny that there&#8217;s
+such a thing as right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t deny that there&#8217;s such a thing as right,
+Mrs. Courage, but I only wonder if you knows more
+about it than the rest of us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In Allerton&#8217;s room Steptoe found the young master
+of the house half dressed. Standing before a mirror,
+he was brushing his hair. His face and eyes, the
+reflection of which Steptoe caught in the glass, were
+like those of a man on the edge of going insane.</p>
+<p>The old valet entered according to his daily habit
+and without betraying the knowledge of anything unusual.
+All the same his heart was sinking, as old
+hearts sink when beloved young ones are in trouble.
+The boy was his darling. He had been with his father
+for ten years before the lad was born, and had watched
+his growth with a more than paternal devotion. &#8220;&#8217;E&#8217;s
+all I &#8217;ave,&#8221; he often said to himself, and had been known
+to let out the fact in the afore-mentioned group of
+English upper servants, a small but exclusive circle
+in the multiplex life of New York.</p>
+<p>In Steptoe&#8217;s opinion Master Rash had never had a
+chance. Born many years after his parents had lived
+together childlessly, he had come into the world constitutionally
+neurasthenic. Steptoe had never known
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span>
+a boy who needed more to be nursed along and coaxed
+along by affection, and now and then by indulgence.
+Instead, the system of severity had been applied with
+results little short of calamitous. He had been sent
+to schools famous for religion and discipline, from
+which he reacted in the first weeks of freedom in college,
+getting into dire academic scrapes. Further severity
+had led to further scrapes, and further scrapes
+to something like disgrace, when the war broke out
+and a Red Cross job had kept him from going to the
+bad. The mother had been a self-willed and selfish
+woman, claiming more from her son than she ever gave
+him, and never perceiving that his was a nature requiring
+a peculiar kind of care. After her death Steptoe
+had prayed for a kind, sweet wife to come to the
+boy&#8217;s rescue, and the answer had been Miss Barbara
+Walbrook.</p>
+<p>When the engagement was announced, Steptoe had
+given up hope. Of Miss Walbrook as a woman he
+had nothing to complain. Walter Wildgoose reported
+her a noble creature, splendid, generous, magnificent,
+only needing a strong hand. She was of the type not
+to be served but to be mastered. Rashleigh Allerton
+would goad her to frenzy, and she would do the same
+by him. She was already doing it. For weeks past
+Steptoe could see it plainly enough, and what would
+happen after they were married God alone knew.
+For himself he saw no future but to hang on after the
+wedding as long as the new mistress of the house
+would allow him, take his dismissal as an inevitable
+thing, and sneak away and die.</p>
+<p>It was part of Steptoe&#8217;s training not to notice anything
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span>
+till his attention was called to it. So having said
+his &#8220;Good-morning, sir,&#8221; he went to the closet, took
+down the hanger with the coat and waistcoat belonging
+to the suit of which he saw that Allerton had put on
+the trousers, and waited till the young man was ready
+for his ministrations.</p>
+<p>Allerton was still brushing his hair, as he said over
+his shoulder: &#8220;There&#8217;s a young woman in the house,
+Steptoe. Been here all night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sir; I know&mdash;in the little back spare-room.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who told you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nettie went in for a pincushion, Mr. Rash, and
+the young woman was a-doin&#8217; of &#8217;er &#8217;air.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did Nettie say?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It ain&#8217;t what Nettie says, sir, if I may myke so bold.
+It&#8217;s what Mrs. Courage and Jane says.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell Mrs. Courage and Jane they needn&#8217;t be
+alarmed. The young woman is&mdash;&#8221; Steptoe caught
+the spasm which contracted the boy&#8217;s face&mdash;&#8220;the young
+woman is&mdash;my wife.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quite so, sir.&#8221;</p>
+<p>If Allerton went no further, Steptoe could go no
+further; but inwardly he was like a man reprieved at
+the last minute, and against all hope, from sentence of
+death. &#8220;Then it won&#8217;t be &#8217;<i>er</i>,&#8221; was all he could say to
+himself, &#8220;&#8217;er&#8221; being Barbara Walbrook. Whatever
+calamity had happened, that calamity at least would be
+escaped, which was so much to the good.</p>
+<p>His arms trembled so that he could hardly hold up
+the waistcoat for Allerton to slip it on. But he didn&#8217;t
+slip it on. Instead he wheeled round from the mirror,
+threw the brushes with a crash to the toilet table, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+cried with a rage all the more raging for being impotent:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Steptoe, I&#8217;ve been every kind of fool.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sir, I expect so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve got to get me out of it, Steptoe. You
+must find a way to save me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll do my best, sir.&#8221; The joy of cooperation with
+the lad almost made up for the anguish at his anguish.
+&#8220;What &#8217;ud it be&mdash;you must excuse me, Mr. Rash&mdash;but
+what &#8217;ud it be that you&#8217;d like me to save you
+from?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton threw out his arms. &#8220;From this crazy
+marriage. This frightful mix-up. I went right off the
+handle yesterday. I was an infernal idiot. And now
+I&#8217;m in for it. Something&#8217;s got to be done, Steptoe,
+and I can&#8217;t think of any one but you to do it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quite so, sir. Will you &#8217;ave your wystcoat on now,
+sir? You&#8217;re ready for it, I see. I&#8217;ll think it over,
+Mr. Rash, and let you know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>While first the waistcoat and then the coat were
+extended and slipped over the shoulders, Allerton did
+his best to put Steptoe in possession of the mad facts
+of the previous day. Though the account he gave was
+incoherent, the old man understood enough.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t her fault, you must understand,&#8221; Allerton
+explained further, as Steptoe brushed his hat.
+&#8220;She didn&#8217;t want to. I persuaded her. I wanted to do
+something that would wring Miss Walbrook&#8217;s heart&mdash;and
+I&#8217;ve done it! Wrung my own, too! What&#8217;s to
+become of me, Steptoe? Is the best thing I can do to
+shoot myself? Think it over. I&#8217;m ready to. I&#8217;m
+not sure that it wouldn&#8217;t be a relief to get out of this
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>
+rotten life. I&#8217;m all on edge. I could jump out of that
+window as easily as not. But it wasn&#8217;t the girl&#8217;s fault.
+She&#8217;s a poor little waif of a thing. You must look
+after her and keep me from seeing her again, but she&#8217;s
+not bad&mdash;only&mdash;only&mdash;Oh, my God! my God!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He covered his face with his hands and rocked himself
+about, so that Steptoe was obliged to go on brushing
+till his master calmed himself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you think, sir,&#8221; he said then, &#8220;that this is the
+&#8217;at to go with this &#8217;ere suit? I think as the brown one
+would be a lot chicker&mdash;tone in with the sort of fawn
+stripe in the blue like, and ketch the note in your tie.&#8221;
+He added, while diving into the closet in search of the
+brown hat and bringing it out, &#8220;There&#8217;s one thing I
+could say right now, Mr. Rash, and I think it might
+&#8217;elp.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you remember the time when you &#8217;urt your leg
+&#8217;unting down in Long Island?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; what about it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You was all for not payin&#8217; it no attention and for
+&#8217;oppin&#8217; about as if you &#8217;adn&#8217;t &#8217;urt it at all. A terr&#8217;ble
+fuss you myde when the doctor said as you was to
+keep still. Anybody &#8217;ud &#8217;ave thought &#8217;e&#8217;d bordered a
+hamputation. And yet it was keepin&#8217; still what got
+you out o&#8217; the trouble, now wasn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, now you&#8217;re in a worse trouble still it might
+do the syme again. I&#8217;m a great believer in keepin&#8217; still,
+I am.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton was off again. &#8220;How in thunder am I to
+keep still when&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you one wye, sir. Don&#8217;t talk. Don&#8217;t <i>do</i>
+nothink. Don&#8217;t beat your &#8217;ead against the wall. Be
+quiet. Tyke it natural. You&#8217;ve done this thing. Well,
+you &#8217;aven&#8217;t committed a murder. You &#8217;aven&#8217;t even
+done a wrong to the young lydy to whom you was
+engyged. By what I understand she&#8217;d jilted you, and
+you was free to marry any one you took a mind to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nominally, perhaps, but&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re nominally free, sir, you&#8217;re free, by what
+I can understand; and if you&#8217;ve gone and done a
+foolish thing it ain&#8217;t no one&#8217;s business but your own.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but I can&#8217;t stand it!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;O&#8217; course you can&#8217;t stand it, sir, but it&#8217;s because
+you can&#8217;t stand it that I&#8217;m arskin&#8217; of you to keep just
+as quiet as you can. Mistykes in our life is often like
+the twists we&#8217;ll give to our bodies. They&#8217;ll ache most
+awful, but let nyture alone and she&#8217;ll tyke care of &#8217;em.
+It&#8217;s jest so with our mistykes. Let life alone and she&#8217;ll
+put &#8217;em stryght for us, nine times out o&#8217; ten, better
+than we can do it by workin&#8217; up into a wax.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Calmed to some extent Allerton went off to the club
+for breakfast, being unable to face this meal at home.
+Steptoe tidied up the room. He was troubled and yet
+relieved. It was a desperate case, but he had always
+found that in desperate cases desperate remedies were
+close at hand.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_V' id='CHAPTER_V'></a>
+<h2>Chapter V</h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;See that the poor thing gets some breakfast,&#8221; had
+been Allerton&#8217;s parting command, and having finished
+the room, Steptoe went down the flight of stairs
+to carry out this injunction.</p>
+<p>He was on the third step from the landing when
+the door of the back room opened, and a little, gray
+figure, hatted and jacketed, crept out stealthily. She
+was plainly ready for the street, an intention understood
+by Beppo, the late Mrs. Allerton&#8217;s red cocker
+spaniel, who was capering about her in the hope of
+sharing the promenade.</p>
+<p>As Steptoe came to a halt, the girl ran toward him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, mister, I gotta get out of this swell dump.
+Show me the way, for God&#8217;s sake!&#8221;</p>
+<p>To say that Steptoe was thinking rapidly would be
+to describe his mental processes incorrectly. He never
+thought; he received illuminations. Some such enlightenment
+came to him now, inducing him to say,
+ceremoniously, &#8220;Madam can&#8217;t go without &#8217;er breakfast.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want any breakfast,&#8221; she protested, breathlessly.
+&#8220;All I want is to get away. I&#8217;m frightened.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I assure madam that there&#8217;s nothink to be afryde
+of in this &#8217;ouse. Mr. Allerton is the most honorable&mdash;&#8221;
+he pronounced the initial <i>h</i>&mdash;&#8220;young man that
+hever was born. I valeted &#8217;is father before &#8217;im and
+know that &#8217;e wouldn&#8217;t &#8217;urt a fly. If madam&#8217;ll trust
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>
+me&mdash;Besides, Mr. Allerton left word with me as you
+was to be sure to &#8217;ave your breakfast, and I shouldn&#8217;t
+know how to fyce &#8217;im if &#8217;e was to know that you&#8217;d
+gone awye without so much as a hegg.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She wrung her hands. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to see him.
+I couldn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam won&#8217;t see &#8217;im. &#8217;E&#8217;s gone for the dye. &#8217;E
+don&#8217;t so often heat at &#8217;ome&mdash;&#8217;ardly never.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Of the courses before her Letty saw that yielding
+was the easiest. Besides, it would give her her breakfast,
+which was a consideration. Though she had
+nominally dined on the previous evening, she had not
+been able to eat; she had been too terrified. Never
+would she forget the things that had happened after
+she had given her consent in the Park.</p>
+<p>Not that outwardly they had been otherwise than
+commonplace. It was going through them at all! The
+man was as nearly &#8220;off his chump&#8221;&mdash;the expression
+was hers&mdash;as a human being could be without laying
+himself open to arrest. After calling the taxi in Fifth
+Avenue he had walked up and down, compelling her
+to walk by his side, for a good fifteen minutes before
+making her get in and springing in beside her. At the
+house opposite he had stared and stared, as if hoping
+that some one would look out. During the drive to
+the place where they got the license, and later to the
+minister&#8217;s house, he spoke not a word. In the restaurant
+to which he took her afterward, the most glorious
+place she had ever been in, he ordered a feast suited
+to a queen, but she could hardly do more than taste it.
+She felt that the waiter was looking at them strangely,
+and she didn&#8217;t know the uses of the knives and forks.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>
+The man she had married offered her no help, neither
+speaking to her nor giving her a glance. He himself
+ate but little, lost in some mental maze to which she
+had no clue.</p>
+<p>After dinner he had proposed the theatre, but she
+had refused. She couldn&#8217;t go anywhere else with him.
+Wherever they moved, a thousand eyes were turned
+in amazement at the extraordinary pair. He saw
+nothing, but she was alive to it all&mdash;more conscious
+of her hat and suit than even in the street scene in
+&#8220;The Man with the Emerald Eye.&#8221; Once and for all
+she became aware that the first standard for human
+valuation is in clothes.</p>
+<p>In the end they had got into another taxi, to be
+driven round and round the Park and out along the
+river bank, till he decided that they might go home.
+During all this time he hardly noticed her. Once he
+asked her if she was warm enough, and once if she
+would like to get out and take a walk along the parapet
+above the river, but otherwise he was withdrawn into
+a world which he kept shut and locked against her.
+That left her alone. She had never felt so much
+alone in her life, not even in the days which followed
+her mother&#8217;s death. It was as if she had been snatched
+away from everything with which she was familiar,
+to find herself stranded in a country of fantastic
+dreams.</p>
+<p>Then there was the house and the little back room.
+By the use of his latchkey they had entered a palace
+huge and dark. Letty didn&#8217;t know that people lived
+with so much space around them. Only a hall light
+burned in a many-colored oriental lamp, and in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span>
+half-gloom the rooms on each side of the entry were
+cavernous. There was not a servant, not a sound.
+The only living thing was a little dog which pattered
+out of the obscurity and, raising his paws against her
+skirt, adopted her instantaneously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He was my mother&#8217;s dog,&#8221; Allerton explained
+briefly. &#8220;He likes women, but not men, though he&#8217;s
+never taken to the women in the house. He&#8217;ll probably
+like you. His name is Beppo. I&#8217;ll show you up at
+once.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The grandeur of the staircase was overpowering,
+and the little back spare-room of a magnificence beyond
+all her experience outside of movie-sets. The flowers
+on the chintz coverings were prettier than real ones,
+and there was a private bath. Letty had heard of
+private baths, but no picture she had ever painted
+equaled this dainty apartment in which everything
+was of spotless white except where a flight of blue-gray
+gulls skimmed over a blue summer sea.</p>
+<p>The objects in the bedroom were too lovely to live
+with. On the toilet table were boxes and trays which
+Letty supposed must be priceless, and a set of brushes
+with silver backs. She couldn&#8217;t brush her hair with
+a brush with a silver back, because it would be journeying
+too far beyond real life into that of fairy
+princesses. On opening the closet to hang up her
+jacket the very hangers were puffed and covered with
+the &#8220;sweetest flowered silks,&#8221; so she hung her jacket
+on a peg.</p>
+<p>But she wasn&#8217;t comfortable, she wasn&#8217;t happy.
+Alice had traveled too far into Wonderland, and too
+suddenly. Unwillingly she lay down in a bed too clean
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span>
+and soft for the human form, but she couldn&#8217;t sleep
+in it. She could only tremble and toss and lie awake
+and wish for the morning. With the dawn she would
+be up and off, before any one caught sight of her.</p>
+<p>For Allerton had used words which had terrified
+her more than anything that had yet happened or
+been said&mdash;&#8220;the other women in the house!&#8221; Not
+till then had she sufficiently visualized the life into
+which he was taking her to understand that there
+would be other women there. Now that she knew it,
+she couldn&#8217;t face them. She could have faced men.
+Men, after all, were simple creatures with only a rudimentary
+power of judgment. But women! God! She
+pulled the eiderdown about her head so as not to cry
+out so loudly that she would be heard. What mad
+thing had she done? What had she let herself in for?
+She didn&#8217;t ask what kind of women they would be&mdash;members
+of his family or servants. She didn&#8217;t care.
+All women were alike. The woman was not born who
+wouldn&#8217;t view a girl in her unconventional situation,
+&#8220;and especially in that rig&#8221;&mdash;once more the expression
+was her own&mdash;without a condemnation which Letty
+could not and would not submit herself to. So she
+would get up and steal away with the first gleam of
+light.</p>
+<p>She got up with the first gleam of light, but she
+couldn&#8217;t steal away. Once more she was afraid. Unlocking
+the door, she dared not venture out. Who
+knew where, in that palace of cavernous apartments,
+she might meet a woman, or what the woman would
+say to her? When Nettie walked in later, humming
+a street air, Letty almost died from shame. For one
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span>
+thing, she hadn&#8217;t yet put on her shirtwaist, which in
+itself was poor enough, and as she stood exposed without
+it, any other of her sex could see.... She had
+once been on the studio lot when a girl of about her
+own age, a &#8220;supe&#8221; like herself, was arrested for thieving
+in the women&#8217;s dressing-rooms. Letty had never
+forgotten the look in that girl&#8217;s face as she passed out
+through the crowd of her colleagues. In Nettie&#8217;s presence
+she felt like that girl&#8217;s look.</p>
+<p>She had no means of telling the time, but when she
+could no longer endure the imprisonment she decided
+to make a bolt for it. She hadn&#8217;t been thieving, and
+so they couldn&#8217;t do anything to her&mdash;and there was a
+chance at least that she might get away. Opening the
+door cautiously, she stole out on the landing, and there
+was, not a woman, but a man!</p>
+<p>Joy! A man would listen to her appeal. He would
+see that she was poor, common, unequal to a dump so
+swell, and would be human and tender. He was a nice
+looking old man too&mdash;she was able to notice that&mdash;with
+a long, kindly face on which there were two
+spots of bloom as if he had been rouged. So she
+capitulated to his plea, making only the condition that
+if she took the hegg&mdash;she pronounced the word as he
+did, not being sure as to what it meant&mdash;she should
+be free to go.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly, if madam wishes it. I&#8217;m sure the last
+thing Mr. Allerton would desire would be to detain
+madam against &#8217;er will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She allowed herself to be ushered down the monumental
+stairs and into the dining-room, which awed
+her with the solemnity of a church. She knew at once
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span>
+that she wouldn&#8217;t be able to eat amid this stateliness
+any more than in the glitter of last evening&#8217;s restaurant.
+She had yielded, however, and there was nothing
+for it but to sit down at the head of the table in the
+chair which Steptoe drew out for her. Guessing at
+her most immediate embarrassment, he showed her
+what to do by unfolding the napkin and laying it in
+her lap.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, if madam will excuse me, I&#8217;ll slip awye and
+tell Jyne.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But telling Jyne was not so simple a matter as it
+looked. The council in the kitchen, which at first
+had been a council and no more, was now a council of
+war. As Steptoe entered, Mrs. Courage was saying:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I shall go to Mr. Rashleigh &#8217;imself and tell &#8217;im
+that hunder the syme roof with a baggage none of
+us will stye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can syve yourself the trouble, Mrs. Courage,&#8221;
+Steptoe informed her. &#8220;Mr. Rash &#8217;as just gone out.
+Besides, I&#8217;ve good news for all of you.&#8221; He waited
+for each to take an appropriate expression, Mrs. Courage
+determined, Jane with face eager and alight,
+Nettie tittering behind her hand. &#8220;Miss Walbrook,
+which all of us &#8217;as dreaded, is not a-comin&#8217; to our
+midst. The young lydy Nettie see in the back spare-room
+is Mr. Rashleigh&#8217;s wife.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wife!&#8221; Mrs. Courage threw up her hands and
+staggered backward. &#8220;&#8217;Im that &#8217;is mother left to
+me! &#8216;Courage,&#8217; says she, &#8216;when I&#8217;m gone&#8211;&#8211;&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jane crept forward, horrified, stunned. &#8220;Them
+things can&#8217;t be, Steptoe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Rash told me so &#8217;imself. I don&#8217;t know what
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span>
+more we want than that.&#8221; Steptoe was not without
+his diplomacy. &#8220;It&#8217;s a fine thing for us, girls. This
+sweet young lydy is not goin&#8217; to myke us no trouble
+like what the other one would, and belongs right in
+our own class.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Enery Steptoe, speak for yourself,&#8221; Mrs. Courage
+said, severely. &#8220;There&#8217;s no baggages in my class,
+nor never was, nor never will be.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jane began to cry. &#8220;I&#8217;m sure I try to think the
+best of everyone, but when such awful things &#8217;appens
+and &#8217;omes is broken up&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jynie,&#8221; Steptoe said with authority, &#8220;the young
+missus is wytin&#8217; for &#8217;er breakfast. &#8217;Ave the goodness
+to tyke &#8217;er in &#8217;er grypefruit.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jyne Cakebread,&#8221; Mrs. Courage declared, with an
+authority even greater than Steptoe&#8217;s, &#8220;the first as
+tykes a grypefruit into that dinin&#8217;-room, to set before
+them as I shouldn&#8217;t demean myself to nyme, comes
+hunder my displeasure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t, Steptoe,&#8221; Jane pleaded helplessly. &#8220;All
+my life I&#8217;ve wyted on lydies. &#8217;Ow can you expect
+me to turn over a new leaf at my time o&#8217; life?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nettie?&#8221; Steptoe made the appeal magisterially.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;ll do it,&#8221; Nettie giggled. &#8220;&#8217;Appy to get
+another look at &#8217;er. I sye, she&#8217;s a sight!&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Mrs. Courage barred the way. &#8220;My niece will
+wyte on people of doubtful conduck over my dead
+corpse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very well, then, Mrs. Courage,&#8221; Steptoe reasoned.
+&#8220;If you won&#8217;t serve the new missus, Mr. Rashleigh,
+will &#8217;ave to get some one else who will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Rashleigh will &#8217;ave to do that very selfsame
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span>
+thing. Not another night will none of us sleep hunder
+this paternal roof with them that their very presence
+is a houtrage. &#8217;Enery Steptoe was always a time-server,
+and a time-server &#8217;e will be, but as for us
+women, we shall see the new missus in goin&#8217; in to
+give &#8217;er notice. Not a month&#8217;s notice, it won&#8217;t be.
+This range as I&#8217;ve cooked at for nearly thirty years
+I shall cook at no more, not so much as for lunch.
+Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What&#8217;s the world comin&#8217; to?&#8221;</p>
+<p>In spite of her strength of character Mrs. Courage
+threw her apron over her head and burst into tears.
+Jane was weeping already.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There, there, aunt,&#8221; Nettie begged, patting her
+relative between the shoulders. &#8220;What&#8217;s the good o&#8217;
+goin&#8217; on like that just because a silly ass &#8217;as married
+beneath &#8217;im?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Courage pulled her apron from her face to
+cry out with passion:</p>
+<p>&#8220;If &#8217;e was goin&#8217; to disgryce &#8217;imself like that, why
+couldn&#8217;t &#8217;e &#8217;a taken you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>So Steptoe waited on Letty himself, bringing in the
+grapefruit, the coffee, the egg, and the toast, and seeing
+that she knew how to deal with each in the proper
+forms. He was so brooding, so yearning, so tactful,
+as he bent over her, that she was never at a loss as to
+the fork or spoon she ought to use, or the minute at
+which to use it. Under his protection Letty ate.
+She ate, first because she was young and hungry, and
+then because she felt him standing between her and
+all vague terrors. By the time she had finished, he
+moved in front of her, where he could speak as one
+human being to another.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span></div>
+<p>Taking an empty plate from the table to put it on
+the sideboard, he said: &#8220;I &#8217;ope madam is chyngin&#8217; &#8217;er
+mind about leavin&#8217; us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty glanced up shyly in spite of being somewhat
+reassured. &#8220;What&#8217;ud be the good of my changin&#8217; my
+mind when&mdash;when I&#8217;m not fit to stay?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam means not fit in the sense that&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not a lady.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Resting one hand on the table, he looked down
+into her eyes with an expression such as Letty had
+never before seen in a human face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I could myke a lydy of madam.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At the sound of these quiet words, so confidently
+spoken, something passed through Letty&#8217;s frame to
+be described only by the hard-worked word, a thrill.
+It was a double current of vibration, partly of upleaping
+hope, partly of the desperate sense of her own
+limitations. A hundred points of gold dust were
+aflame in her irises as she said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;You mean that you&#8217;d put me wise? Oh, but I&#8217;d
+never learn!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;On the contrary, I think madam would pick up
+very quick.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I&#8217;d never be able to talk the right&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I could learn madam to talk just as good
+as me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It seemed too much. She clasped her hands. It
+was the nearest point she had ever reached to ecstasy.
+&#8220;Oh, do you think you could? You talk somethin&#8217;
+beautiful, you do!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He smiled modestly. &#8220;I&#8217;ve always lived with the
+best people, and I suppose I ketch their wyes. I know
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>
+what a gentleman is&mdash;and a lydy. I know all a
+lydy&#8217;s little &#8217;abits, and before two or three months
+was over madam &#8217;ud &#8217;ave them as natural as natural,
+if she wouldn&#8217;t think me overbold.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When &#8217;ud you begin?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The bright spot deepened in each cheek. &#8220;I&#8217;ve
+begun already, if madam won&#8217;t think me steppin&#8217; out
+o&#8217; my plyce to sye so, in showin&#8217; madam the spoons
+and forks for the different&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty colored, too. &#8220;Yes, I saw that. I take it
+as very kind. But&mdash;&#8221; she looked at him with a puzzled
+knitting of the brows&mdash;&#8220;but what makes you
+take all this trouble for me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve two reasons, madam, but I&#8217;ll only tell you one
+of &#8217;em just now. The other&#8217;ll keep. I&#8217;ll myke it
+known to you if&mdash;if all goes as I &#8217;ope.&#8221; He straightened
+himself up. &#8220;I don&#8217;t often speak o&#8217; this,&#8221; he
+continued, &#8220;because among us butlers and valets it
+wouldn&#8217;t be understood. Most of us is what&#8217;s known
+as conservative, all for the big families and the old
+wyes. Well, so am I&mdash;to a point. But&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He moved a number of objects on the table before
+he could go on. &#8220;I wasn&#8217;t born to the plyce I &#8217;old
+now,&#8221; he explained after getting his material at command.
+&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t born to nothink. I was what they
+calls in England a foundlin&#8217;&mdash;a byby what&#8217;s found&mdash;what
+&#8217;is parents &#8217;ave thrown awye. I don&#8217;t know who
+my father and mother was, or what was my real
+nyme. &#8217;Enery Steptoe is just a nyme they give me at
+the Horphanage. But I won&#8217;t go into that. I&#8217;m just
+tryin&#8217; to tell madam that my life was a &#8217;ard one, quite
+a &#8217;ard one, till I come to New York as footman for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span>
+Mr. Allerton&#8217;s father, and afterward worked up to be
+&#8217;is valet and butler.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He cleared his throat. Expressing ideals was not
+easy. &#8220;I &#8217;ope madam will forgive me if I sye that
+what it learned me was a fellow-feelin&#8217; with my own
+sort&mdash;with the poor. I&#8217;ve often wished as I could go
+out among the poor and ryse them up. I ain&#8217;t a
+socialist&mdash;a little bit of a anarchist perhaps, but nothink
+extreme&mdash;and yet&mdash;Well, if Mr. Rashleigh had married
+a rich girl, I would &#8217;a tyken it as natural and
+done my best for &#8217;im, but since &#8217;e &#8217;asn&#8217;t&mdash;Oh, can&#8217;t
+madam see? It&#8217;s&mdash;it&#8217;s a kind o&#8217; pride with me to find
+some one like&mdash;like what I was when I was &#8217;er age&mdash;out
+in the cold like&mdash;and bring &#8217;er in&mdash;and &#8217;elp &#8217;er to
+tryne &#8217;erself&mdash;so&mdash;so as&mdash;some day&mdash;to beat the best&mdash;them
+as &#8217;as &#8217;ad all the chances&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was interrupted by the tinkle of the telephone.
+It was a relief. He had said all he needed to say, all
+he knew how to say. Whether madam understood it
+or not he couldn&#8217;t tell, since she didn&#8217;t seize ideas
+quickly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If madam will excuse me now, I&#8217;ll go and answer
+that call.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Letty sprang up in alarm. &#8220;Oh, don&#8217;t leave
+me. Some of them women will blow in&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;None of them women will <i>come</i>&mdash;&#8221; he threw a
+delicate emphasis on the word&mdash;&#8220;if madam&#8217;ll just sit
+down. They don&#8217;t mean to come. I&#8217;ll explyne that to
+madam when I come back, if she&#8217;ll only not leave
+this room.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_VI' id='CHAPTER_VI'></a>
+<h2>Chapter VI</h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Good morning, Steptoe. Will you ask Mr.
+Allerton if he&#8217;ll speak to Miss Walbrook?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Allerton &#8217;as gone to the New Netherlands
+club for &#8217;is breakfast, miss.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, thanks. I&#8217;ll call him up there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She didn&#8217;t want to call him up there, at a club,
+where a man must like to feel safe from feminine
+intrusion, but the matter was too pressing to permit
+of hesitation. Since the previous afternoon she
+had gone through much searching of heart. She
+was accustomed to strong reactions from tempestuousness
+to penitence, but not of the violence of
+this one.</p>
+<p>Summoned to the telephone, Allerton felt as if
+summoned to the bar of judgment. He divined who
+it was, and he divined the reason for the call.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good morning, Rash!&#8221;</p>
+<p>His voice was absolutely dead. &#8220;Good morning,
+Barbara!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know you&#8217;re cross with me for calling you at
+the club.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no! Not at all!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I couldn&#8217;t wait any longer. I wanted you to
+know&mdash;I&#8217;ve got it on again, Rash&mdash;never to come off
+any more.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was dumb. Thirty seconds at least went by,
+and he had made no response.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Aren&#8217;t you glad?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I could have been glad&mdash;if&mdash;if I&#8217;d known you
+were going to do it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And now you know that it&#8217;s done.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He repeated in his lifeless voice, &#8220;Yes, now I know
+that it&#8217;s done.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Again he was silent. Two or three times he tried to
+find words, producing nothing but a stammering of
+incoherent syllables. &#8220;I&mdash;I can&#8217;t talk about it here,
+Barbe,&#8221; he managed to articulate at last. &#8220;You must
+let me come round and see you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was her voice now that was dead. &#8220;When will
+you come, Rash?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now&mdash;at once&mdash;if you can see me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She put up the receiver without saying more. He
+knew that she knew. She knew at least that something
+had happened which was fatal to them both.</p>
+<p>She received him not in the drawing-room, but
+in a little den on the right of the front door which
+was also alive with Miss Walbrook&#8217;s modern personality.
+A gold-colored porti&egrave;re from Albert Herter&#8217;s
+looms screened them from the hall, and the
+chairs were covered with bits of Herter tapestry
+representing fruits. A cabinet of old white Bennington
+faience stood against a wall, which was further
+adorned with three or four etchings of Sears Gallagher&#8217;s.
+Barbara wore a lacy thing in hydrangea-colored
+cr&ecirc;pe de chine, loosely girt with a jade-green
+ribbon tasselled in gold, the whole bringing out the
+faintly Egyptian note in her personality.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span></div>
+<p>They dispensed with a greeting, because she spoke
+the minute he crossed the threshold of the room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rash, what is it? Why couldn&#8217;t you tell me on
+the telephone?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He wished now that he had. It would have saved
+this explanation face to face. &#8220;Because I couldn&#8217;t.
+Because&mdash;because I&#8217;ve been too much of an idiot
+to&mdash;to tell you about it&mdash;either on the telephone or in
+any other way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How?&#8221; He thought she must understand, but
+she seemed purposely dense. &#8220;Sit down. Tell me
+about it. It can&#8217;t be so terrible&mdash;all of a sudden like
+this.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He couldn&#8217;t sit down. He could only turn away
+from her and gulp in his dry throat. &#8220;You remember
+what I said&mdash;what I said&mdash;yesterday&mdash;about&mdash;about
+the&mdash;the Gissing fellow?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She nodded fiercely. &#8220;Yes. Go on. Get it out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well&mdash;well&mdash;I&#8217;ve&mdash;I&#8217;ve done that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She threw out her arms. She threw back her head
+till the little nut-brown throat was taut. The cry
+rent her. It rent him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&mdash;<i>fool</i>!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stood with head hanging. He longed to run
+away, and yet he longed also to throw himself at her
+feet. If he could have done exactly as he felt impelled,
+he would have laid his head on her breast and
+wept like a child.</p>
+<p>She swung away from him, pacing the small room
+like a frenzied animal. Her breath came in short,
+hard pantings that were nearly sobs. Suddenly she
+stopped in front of him with a sort of calm.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;What made you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He barely lifted his agonized black eyes. &#8220;You,&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was in revolt again. &#8220;I? What did I do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&mdash;you threw away my ring. You said it was
+all&mdash;all over.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well? Couldn&#8217;t I say that without driving you
+to act the madman? No one but a madman would
+have gone out of this house and&mdash;&#8221; She clasped
+her forehead in her hands with a dramatic lifting of
+the arms. &#8220;Oh! It&#8217;s too much! I don&#8217;t care about
+myself. But to have it on your conscience that a man
+has thrown his life away&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He asked meekly, &#8220;What good was it to me when
+you wouldn&#8217;t have it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She stamped her foot. &#8220;Rash, you&#8217;ll drive me
+insane. Your life might be no good to you at all,
+and yet you might give it a chance for twenty-four
+hours&mdash;that isn&#8217;t much, is it?&mdash;before you&mdash;&#8221; She
+caught herself up. &#8220;Tell me. You don&#8217;t mean to
+say that you&#8217;re <i>married</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To whom?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Her first name is Letty. I&#8217;ve forgotten the second
+name.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where did you find her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Over there in the Park.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And she went and married you&mdash;like that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She was all alone&mdash;chucked out by a stepfather&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She burst into a hard laugh. &#8220;Oh, you baby! You
+believed that? The kind of story that&#8217;s told by nine
+of the&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_2' id='linki_2'></a>
+<img src='images/illus-068.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 333px; height: 452px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 333px;'>
+BY THE TIME HE HAD FINISHED, HIS HEART WAS A LITTLE EASED AND SOME OF HER TENDERNESS BEGAN TO FLOW TOWARD HIM<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span></div>
+<p>He interrupted quickly. &#8220;Don&#8217;t call her anything,
+Barbe&mdash;I mean any kind of a bad name. She&#8217;s all
+right as far as that goes. There&#8217;s a kind that couldn&#8217;t
+take you in.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s <i>no</i> kind that couldn&#8217;t take <i>you</i> in!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps not, but it&#8217;s the one thing in&mdash;in this
+whole idiotic business that&#8217;s on the level&mdash;I mean she
+is. I&#8217;d give my right hand to put her back where I
+found her yesterday&mdash;just as she was&mdash;but she&#8217;s
+straight.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She dropped into a chair. The first wild tumult
+of rage having more or less spent its force, she began,
+with a kind of heart-broken curiosity, to ask for the
+facts. She spoke nervously, beating a palm with a
+gold tassel of her girdle. &#8220;Begin at the beginning.
+Tell me all about it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He leaned on the mantelpiece, of which the only
+ornaments were a child&#8217;s head in white and blue terra
+cotta by Paul Manship, balanced by a pair of old
+American glass candlesticks, and told the tale as consecutively
+as he could. He recounted everything, even
+to the bringing her home, the putting her in the little,
+back spare-room, and her adoption by Beppo, the red
+cocker spaniel. By the time he had finished, his heart
+was a little eased, and some of her tenderness toward
+him was beginning to flow forth. She was like that,
+all wrath at one minute, all gentleness the next.
+Springing to her feet, she caught him by the arm,
+pressing herself against him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right, Rash. You&#8217;ve done it. That&#8217;s settled.
+But it can be undone again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He pressed her head back from him, resting the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span>
+knot of her hair in the hollow of his palm and looking
+down into her eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How can it be undone?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, there must be ways. A man can&#8217;t be allowed
+to ruin his life&mdash;to ruin two lives&mdash;for a prank. We&#8217;ll
+just have to think. If you made it worth while for
+her to take you, you can make it worth while for her
+to let you go. She&#8217;ll do it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;d do it, of course. She doesn&#8217;t care. I&#8217;m
+nothing to her, not any more than she to me. I
+shan&#8217;t see her any more than I can help. I suppose
+she must stay at the house till&mdash;I told Steptoe to look
+after her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She took a position at one end of the mantelpiece,
+while he faced her from the other. She gave him
+wise counsel. He was to see his lawyers at once and
+tell them the whole story. Lawyers always saw the
+way out of things. There was the Bellington boy
+who married a show-girl. She had been bought off,
+and the lawyers had managed it. Now the Bellington
+boy was happily married to one of the Plantagenet
+Jones girls and lived at Marillo Park. Then there was
+the Silliman boy who had married the notorious Kate
+Cookesley. The lawyers had found the way out of
+that, too, and now the Silliman boy was a secretary
+of the American Embassy in Rome. Accidents such
+as had happened to Rash were regrettable of course,
+but it would be folly to think that a perfectly good
+life must be done for just because it had got a crack
+in it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll play the game, of course,&#8221; she wound up.
+&#8220;But it&#8217;s a game, and the stronger side must win.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>
+What should you say of my going to see her&mdash;she
+needn&#8217;t know who I am further than that I&#8217;m a friend
+of yours&mdash;and finding out for myself?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Finding out what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Finding out her price, silly. What do you suppose?
+A woman can often see things like that where
+a man would be blind.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He didn&#8217;t know. He thought it might be worth
+while. He would leave it to her. &#8220;I&#8217;m not worth
+the trouble, Barbe,&#8221; he said humbly.</p>
+<p>With this she agreed. &#8220;I know you&#8217;re not. I can&#8217;t
+think for a minute why I take it or why I should
+like you. But I do. That&#8217;s straight.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I adore you, Barbe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders with a little, comic
+grimace. &#8220;Oh, well! I suppose every one has his
+own way of showing adoration, but I must say that
+yours is original.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If it&#8217;s original to be desperate when the woman
+you worship drives you to despair&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was another little comic grimace, though less
+comic than the first time. &#8220;Oh, yes, I know. It&#8217;s
+always the woman whom a man worships that&#8217;s in
+the wrong. I&#8217;ve noticed that. Men are never impossible&mdash;all
+of their own accord.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I could be as tame as a cat if&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If it wasn&#8217;t for me. Thank you, Rash. I said
+just now I was fond of you, and I should have to
+be to&mdash;to stand for all the&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not blaming you, Barbe. I&#8217;m only&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thanks again. The day you&#8217;re not blaming me is
+certainly one to be marked with a white stone, as the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>
+Romans used to say. But if it comes to blaming any
+one, Rash, after what happened yesterday&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What happened yesterday wasn&#8217;t begun by me.
+It would never have entered my mind to do the crazy
+thing I did, if you hadn&#8217;t positively and finally&mdash;as I
+thought&mdash;flung me down. I think you must do me
+that justice, Barbe&mdash;that justice, at the least.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I do you justice enough. I don&#8217;t see that you
+can complain of that. It seems to me too that I
+temper justice with mercy to a degree that&mdash;that most
+people find ridiculous.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;By most people I suppose you mean your aunt.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, do leave Aunt Marion out of it. You can&#8217;t
+forgive the poor thing for not liking you. Well, she
+doesn&#8217;t, and I can&#8217;t help it. She thinks you&#8217;re a&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A fool&mdash;as you were polite enough to say just
+now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She spread her hands apart in an attitude of protestation.
+&#8220;Well, if I did, Rash, surely you must
+admit that I had provocation.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, of course. The wonder is that with the provocation
+you can&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Forgive you, and try to patch it up again after
+this frightful gash in the agreement. Well, it <i>is</i> a
+wonder. I don&#8217;t believe that many girls&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I only want you to understand, Barbe, that the
+gash in the agreement was made, not by what I did,
+but what you did. If you hadn&#8217;t sent me to the devil,
+I shouldn&#8217;t have been in such a hurry to go there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was off. &#8220;Yes, there you are again. Always
+me! I&#8217;m the one! You may be the gunpowder, the
+perfectly harmless gunpowder, but it would never
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>
+blow up if I didn&#8217;t come as the match. <i>I</i> make all
+the explosions. <i>I</i> set you crazy. <i>I</i> send you to the
+devil. <i>I</i> make you go and marry a girl you never
+laid eyes on in your life before.&#8221;</p>
+<p>So it was the same old scene all over again, till
+both were exhausted, and she had flung herself into
+a chair to cover her face with her hands and burst
+into tears. Instantly he was on his knees beside her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Barbe! Barbe! My beloved Barbe! Don&#8217;t cry.
+I&#8217;m a brute. I&#8217;m a fool. I&#8217;m not satisfied with
+breaking my own heart, but I must go to work and
+break yours. Oh, Barbe, forgive me. I&#8217;m all to
+pieces. Forgive me and let me go away and shoot
+myself. What&#8217;s the good of a poor, wrecked creature
+like me hanging on and making such a mess of things?
+Let me kill myself before I kill you&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, hush!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Seizing his head, she pressed it against her bosom
+convulsively. By the shaking of his shoulders, she
+felt him sob. He <i>was</i> a poor creature. She was saying
+so to herself. But just because he was, something
+in her yearned over him. He <i>could</i> be different; he
+could be stronger and of value in the world if there
+was only some one to handle him rightly. She could
+do it&mdash;if she could only learn to handle herself. She
+<i>would</i> learn to handle herself&mdash;for his sake. He was
+worth saving. He had fine qualities, and a good heart
+most of all. It was his very fineness which put him
+out of place in a world like that of New York. He
+was a delicate, brittle, highly-wrought thing which
+should be touched only with the greatest care, and all
+his life he had been pushed and hurtled about as if
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>
+he were a football player or a business man. With
+the soul of a poet or a painter or a seer, he had been
+treated like the typical rough-and-ready American lad,
+till the sensitive nature had been brutalized, maimed,
+and frenzied.</p>
+<p>She knew that. It was why she cared for him.
+Even when they were children she had seen that he
+wasn&#8217;t getting fair treatment, either at home or in
+school or among the boys and girls with whom they
+both grew up. He was the exception, and American
+life allowed only for the rule. If you couldn&#8217;t conform
+to the rule, you were guyed and tormented and
+ejected. Among all his associates she alone knew
+what he suffered, and because she knew it a vast pity
+made her cling to him. He had forced himself into
+the life of clubs, into the life of society, into the life
+of other men as other men lived their lives, and the
+effect on him had been so nearly ruinous that it was
+no wonder if he was always on the edge of nervous
+explosion. His very wealth which might have been a
+protection was, under the uniform pressure of American
+social habit, an incitement to him to follow the
+wrong way. She knew it, and she alone. She could
+save him, and she alone. She could save him, if she
+could first of all save herself.</p>
+<p>With his head pressed against her she made the
+vow as she had made it fifty times already. She would
+be gentle with him; she would be patient; she would
+let him work off on her the agony of his suffering
+nerves, and smile at him through it all. She would
+help him out of the idiotic situation in which he found
+himself. The other girl was only an incident, as the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span>
+show-girl had been to the Bellington boy, and could
+be disposed of. She attached to that only a secondary
+importance in comparison with the whole thing&mdash;her
+saving him. She would save him, even if it meant
+rooting out every instinct in her soul.</p>
+<p>But as he made his way blindly back to the club,
+his own conclusions were different. He must go to
+the devil. He must go to the devil now, whatever else
+he did. Going to the devil would set her free from him.
+It was the only thing that would. It would set him
+free from the other woman, set him free from life
+itself. Life tortured him. He was a misfit in it.
+He should never have been born. He had always
+understood that his parents hadn&#8217;t wanted children
+and that his coming had been resented. You couldn&#8217;t
+be born like that and find it natural to be in the world.
+He had never found it natural. He couldn&#8217;t remember
+the time when he hadn&#8217;t been out of his element in
+life, and now he must recognize the fact courageously.</p>
+<p>It would be easy enough. He had worked up an
+artificial appetite for all that went under the head
+of debauchery. It had meant difficult schooling at
+first, because his natural tastes were averse to that
+kind of thing, but he had been schooled. Schooled
+was the word, since his training had begun under the
+very roof where his father had sent him to get religion
+and discipline. There had been no let-up in this educational
+course, except when he himself had stolen
+away, generally in solitude, for a little holiday.</p>
+<p>But as he put it to himself, he knew all the roads
+and by-paths and cross-country leaps that would take
+him to the gutter, and to the gutter he would go.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_VII' id='CHAPTER_VII'></a>
+<h2>Chapter VII</h2>
+</div>
+<p>And all this while Letty was in the dining-room,
+learning certain lessons from her new-found
+friend.</p>
+<p>For some little time she had been alone. Steptoe
+finished his conversation with Miss Walbrook on the
+telephone, but did not come back. She sat at the
+table feeding Beppo with bread and milk, but wondering
+if, after all, she hadn&#8217;t better make a bolt for it.
+She had had her breakfast, which was an asset to the
+good, and nothing worse could happen to her out in
+the open world than she feared in this great dim,
+gloomy house. She had once crept in to look at the
+cathedral and, overwhelmed by its height, immensity,
+and mystery, had crept out again. Its emotional suggestions
+had been more than she could bear. She
+felt now as if her bed had been made and her food
+laid out in that cathedral&mdash;as if, as long as she remained,
+she must eat and sleep in this vast, pillared
+solemnity.</p>
+<p>And that was only one thing. There were small
+practical considerations even more terrible to confront.
+If Nettie were to appear again ...</p>
+<p>But it was as to this that Steptoe was making his
+appeal. &#8220;I sye, girls, don&#8217;t you go to mykin&#8217; a fuss
+and spoilin&#8217; your lives, when you&#8217;ve got a chanst as&#8217;ll
+never come again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Courage answered for them all. To sacrifice
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>
+decency to self-interest wasn&#8217;t in them, nor never
+would be. Some there might be, like &#8217;Enery Steptoe,
+who would sell their birthright for a mess of pottage,
+but Mary Ann Courage was not of that company, nor
+any other woman upon whom she could use her influence.
+If a hussy had been put to reign over them,
+reigned over by a hussy none of them would be. All
+they asked was to see her once, to deliver the ultimatum
+of giving notice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a strynge thing to me,&#8221; Steptoe reasoned,
+&#8220;that when one poor person gets a lift, every other
+poor person comes down on &#8217;em.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And might we arsk who you means by poor persons?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who should I mean, Mrs. Courage, but people
+like us? If we don&#8217;t &#8217;ang by each other, who <i>will</i>
+&#8217;ang by us, I should like to know? &#8217;Ere&#8217;s one of us
+plyced in a &#8217;igh position, and instead o&#8217; bein&#8217; proud of
+it, and givin&#8217; &#8217;er a lift to carry &#8217;er along, you&#8217;re all
+for mykin&#8217; it as &#8217;ard for &#8217;er as you can. Do you call
+that sensible?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I call it sensible for everyone to stye in their
+proper spere.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So that if a man&#8217;s poor, you must keep &#8217;im poor,
+no matter &#8217;ow &#8217;e tries to better &#8217;imself. That&#8217;s what
+your proper speres would come to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But argument being of no use, Steptoe could only
+make up his mind to revolution in the house. &#8220;The
+poor&#8217;s very good to the poor when one of &#8217;em&#8217;s in
+trouble,&#8221; was his summing up, &#8220;but let one of &#8217;em
+&#8217;ave an extry stroke of luck, and all the rest&#8217;ll jaw
+against &#8217;im like so many magpies.&#8221; As a parting shot
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>
+he declared on leaving the kitchen, &#8220;The trouble with
+you girls is that you ain&#8217;t got no class spunk, and that&#8217;s
+why, in sperrit, you&#8217;ll never be nothink but menials.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This lack of <i>esprit de corps</i> was something he
+couldn&#8217;t understand, but what he understood less was
+the need of the heart to touch occasionally the high
+points of experience. Mrs. Courage and Jane, to say
+nothing of Nettie, after thirty years of domestic
+routine had reached the place where something in the
+way of drama had become imperative. The range
+and the pantry produce inhibitions as surely as the
+desk or the drawing-room. On both natures inhibitions
+had been packed like feathers on a seabird, till
+the soul cried out to be released from some of them.
+It might mean going out from the home that had
+sheltered them for years, and breaking with all their
+traditions, but now that the chance was there, neither
+could refuse it. To a virtuous woman, starched and
+stiffened in her virtue, steeped in it, dyed in it, permeated
+by it through and through, nothing so stirs
+the dramatic, so quickens the imagination, so calls
+the spirit to the purple emotional heights, as contact
+with the sister she knows to be a hussy. For Jane
+Cakebread and Mary Ann Courage the opportunity
+was unique.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I&#8217;ll go. I&#8217;ll go straight now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As Steptoe brought the information that the three
+women of the household were coming to announce
+the resignation of their posts, Letty sprang to her
+feet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;May I arsk madam to sit down again and let me
+explyne?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span></div>
+<p>Taking this as an order, she sank back into her
+chair again. He stood confronting her as before, one
+hand resting lightly on the table.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothink so good won&#8217;t &#8217;ave &#8217;appened in this &#8217;ouse
+since old Mrs. Allerton went to work and died.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty&#8217;s eyes shone with their tiny fires, not in pleasure
+but in wonder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When old servants is good, they&#8217;re good, but even
+when they&#8217;re good, there&#8217;s times when you can&#8217;t &#8217;elp
+wishin&#8217; as &#8217;ow the Lord &#8217;ud be pleased to tyke them
+to &#8217;Imself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He allowed this to sink in before going further.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The men&#8217;s all right, for the most part. Indoor
+work comes natural to &#8217;em, and they&#8217;ll swing it
+without no complynts. But with the women it&#8217;s
+kick, kick, kick, and when they&#8217;re worn theirselves
+out with kickin&#8217;, they&#8217;ll begin to kick again.
+What&#8217;s plye for a man, for them ain&#8217;t nothink but
+slyvery.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty listened as one receiving revelations from
+another world.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t what they call a woman-&#8217;ater. <i>I</i> believe
+as God made woman for a purpose. Only I can&#8217;t
+bring myself to think as the human race &#8217;as rightly
+found out yet what that purpose is. God&#8217;s wyes is
+always dark, and when it comes to women, they&#8217;re
+darker nor they are elsewheres. One thing I do know,
+and we&#8217;ll be a lot more comfortable when more of us
+finds it out&mdash;that God never made women for the
+&#8217;ome.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In spite of her awe of him, Letty found this doctrine
+difficult to accept.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;If God didn&#8217;t make &#8217;em for the home, mister,
+where on earth would you put &#8217;em?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The wintry color came out again on the old man&#8217;s
+cheeks. &#8220;If madam would call me Steptoe,&#8221; he said
+ceremoniously, &#8220;I think she&#8217;d find it easier. I mean,&#8221;
+he went on, reverting to the original theme, &#8220;that &#8217;E
+didn&#8217;t make &#8217;em to be cooks and &#8217;ousemaids and parlormaids,
+and all that. That&#8217;s men&#8217;s work. Men&#8217;ll
+do it as easy as a bird&#8217;ll sing. I never see the woman
+yet as didn&#8217;t fret &#8217;erself over it, like a wild animal&#8217;ll
+fret itself in a circus cage. It spiles women to put
+&#8217;em to &#8217;ousework, like it always spiles people to put
+&#8217;em to jobs for which the Lord didn&#8217;t give &#8217;em no
+haptitude.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty was puzzled, but followed partially.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve watched &#8217;em and watched &#8217;em, and it&#8217;s always
+the syme tyle. They&#8217;ll go into service young and
+joyous like, but it won&#8217;t be two or three years before
+they&#8217;ll have growed cat-nasty like this &#8217;ere Jyne Cykebread
+and Mary Ann Courage. Madam &#8217;ud never
+believe what sweet young things they was when I
+first picked &#8217;em out&mdash;Mrs. Courage a young widow,
+and Jynie as nice a girl as madam &#8217;ud wish to see,
+only with the features what Mrs. Allerton used to call
+a little hover-haccentuated. And now&mdash;!&#8221; He
+allowed the conditions to speak for themselves without
+criticizing further.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s keepin&#8217; &#8217;em in a &#8217;ome what&#8217;s done it. They
+knows it theirselves&mdash;and yet they don&#8217;t. Inside
+they&#8217;ve got the sperrits of young colts that wants to
+kick up their &#8217;eels in the pasture. They don&#8217;t mean no
+worse nor that, only when people comes to Jynie&#8217;s age
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+and Mrs. Courage&#8217;s they &#8217;ave to kick up their &#8217;eels
+in their own wye. If madam&#8217;ll remember that, and
+be pytient with them like&#8211;&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty cried in alarm, &#8220;But it&#8217;s got nothin&#8217; to do with
+me!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If madam&#8217;ll excuse me, it&#8217;s got everything to do
+with &#8217;er. She&#8217;s the missus of this &#8217;ouse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no, I ain&#8217;t. Mr. Allerton just brung me
+here&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Once more there was the delicate emphasis with
+which he had corrected other slips. &#8220;Mr. Allerton
+<i>brought</i> madam, and told me to see that she was put
+in &#8217;er proper plyce. If madam&#8217;ll let me steer the
+thing, I&#8217;ll myke it as easy for &#8217;er as easy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He reflected as to how to make the situation clear
+to her. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been readin&#8217; about the time when our
+lyte Queen Victoria come to the throne as quite a
+young girl. She didn&#8217;t know nothin&#8217; about politics
+or presidin&#8217; at councils or nothin&#8217;. But she had
+a prime minister&mdash;a kind of hupper servant, you
+might sye&mdash;&#8217;er servant was what &#8217;e always called
+&#8217;imself&mdash;and whatever &#8217;e told &#8217;er to do, she done.
+Walked through it all, you might sye, till she got
+the &#8217;ang of it, but once she did get the &#8217;ang of
+it&mdash;well, there wasn&#8217;t no big-bug in the world that
+our most grycious sovereign lydy couldn&#8217;t put it all
+hover on.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Once more he allowed her time to assimilate this
+parable.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now if madam would only think of &#8217;erself as
+called in youth to reign hover this &#8217;ouse&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but I couldn&#8217;t!&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;And yet it&#8217;s madam&#8217;s duty, now that she&#8217;s married
+to its &#8217;ead&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but he didn&#8217;t marry me like that. He married
+me&mdash;all queer like. This was the way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She poured out the story, while Steptoe listened
+quietly. There being no elements in it of the kind
+he called &#8220;shydy,&#8221; he found it romantic. No one had
+ever suspected the longings for romance which had filled
+his heart and imagination when he was a poor little
+scullion boy; but the memory of them, with some of the
+reality, was still fresh in his hidden inner self. Now it
+seemed as if remotely and vicariously romance might
+be coming to him after all, through the boy he adored.</p>
+<p>On her tale his only comment was to say: &#8220;I&#8217;ve
+been readin&#8217;&mdash;I&#8217;m a great reader,&#8221; he threw in parenthetically,
+&#8220;wonderful exercise for the mind, and
+learns you things which you wouldn&#8217;t be likely to &#8217;ear
+tell of&mdash;but I&#8217;ve been readin&#8217; about a king&mdash;I&#8217;ll show
+you &#8217;is nyme in the book&mdash;what fell in love with a
+beggar myde&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but Mr. Allerton didn&#8217;t fall in love with me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That remynes to be seen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She lifted her hands in awed amazement. &#8220;Mister&mdash;I
+mean, Steptoe&mdash;you&mdash;you don&#8217;t think&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The subway dream of love at first sight was as
+tenacious in her soul as the craving for romance in his.</p>
+<p>He nodded. &#8220;I&#8217;ve known strynger things to
+&#8217;appen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But&mdash;but&mdash;he couldn&#8217;t&mdash;&#8221; it was beyond her power
+of expression, though Steptoe knew what she meant&mdash;&#8220;not
+<i>him</i>!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He answered judicially. &#8220;&#8217;E may come to it. It&#8217;ll
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>
+be a tough job to bring &#8217;im&mdash;but if madam&#8217;ll be
+guided by me&#8211;&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty collapsed. Her spirit grew faint as the spirit
+of Christian when he descried far off the walls of the
+Celestial City, with the Dark River rolling between
+him and it. Letty knew the Dark River must be there,
+but if beyond it there lay the slightest chance of the
+Celestial City....</p>
+<p>She came back to herself, as it were, on hearing
+Steptoe say that the procession from the kitchen
+would presently begin to form itself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now if madam&#8217;ll be guided by me she&#8217;ll meet this
+situytion fyce to fyce.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but I&#8217;d never know what to say.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam won&#8217;t need to say nothink. She won&#8217;t &#8217;ave
+to speak. &#8217;Ere they&#8217;ll troop in&mdash;&#8221; a gesture described
+Mrs. Courage leading the advance through the doorway&mdash;&#8220;and
+&#8217;ere they&#8217;ll stand. Madam&#8217;ll sit just
+where she&#8217;s sittin&#8217;&mdash;a little further back from the tyble&mdash;lookin&#8217;
+over the mornin&#8217; pyper like&mdash;&#8221; he placed the
+paper in her hand&mdash;&#8220;and as heach gives notice,
+madam&#8217;ll just bow &#8217;er &#8217;ead. See?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Madam saw, but not exactly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now if she&#8217;ll just move &#8217;er chair&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The chair was moved in such a way as to make it
+seem that the occupant, having finished her breakfast,
+was giving herself a little more space.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And if madam would remove &#8217;er &#8217;at and jacket,
+she&#8217;d&mdash;she&#8217;d seem more like the lydy of the &#8217;ouse at
+&#8217;ome.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty took off these articles of apparel, which Steptoe
+whisked out of sight.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Now I&#8217;ll be Mrs. Courage comin&#8217; to sye, &#8216;Madam,
+I wish to give notice.&#8217; Madam&#8217;ll lower the pyper
+just enough to show &#8217;er inclinin&#8217; of &#8217;er &#8217;ead, assentin&#8217;
+to Mrs. Courage leavin&#8217; &#8217;er. Mrs. Courage will be all
+for &#8217;avin&#8217; words&mdash;she&#8217;s a great &#8217;and for words, Mrs.
+Courage is&mdash;but if madam won&#8217;t sye nothin&#8217; at all,
+the wind&#8217;ll be out o&#8217; Mrs. Courage&#8217;s syles like. Now,
+will madam be so good&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Having passed out into the hall, he entered with
+Mrs. Courage&#8217;s majestic gait, pausing some three feet
+from the table to say:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam, things bein&#8217; as they are, and me not
+wishin&#8217; to stye no longer in the &#8217;ouse where I&#8217;ve served
+so many years, I beg to give notice that I&#8217;m a givin&#8217;
+of notice and mean to quit right off.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty lowered the paper from before her eyes, jerking
+her head briskly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ye-es,&#8221; Steptoe commended doubtfully, &#8220;a lettle
+too&mdash;well, too habrupt, as you might sye. Most lydies&mdash;real
+&#8217;igh lydies, like the lyte Mrs. Allerton&mdash;inclines
+their &#8217;ead slow and gryceful like. First, they throws
+it back a bit, so as to get a purchase on it, and then
+they brings it forward calm like, lowerin&#8217; it stytely&mdash;Perhaps
+if madam&#8217;ud be me for a bit&mdash;that &#8217;ud be
+Mrs. Courage&mdash;and let me sit there and be &#8217;er, I
+could show &#8217;er&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The places were reversed. It was Letty who came
+in as Mrs. Courage, while Steptoe, seated in the
+chair, lowered the paper to the degree which he
+thought dignified. Letty mumbled something like the
+words the hypothetical Mrs. Courage was presumed
+to use, while Steptoe slowly threw back his head for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span>
+the purchase, bringing it forward in condescending
+grace. Language could not have given Mrs. Courage
+so effective a retort courteous.</p>
+<p>Letty was enchanted. &#8220;Oh, Steptoe, let me have
+another try. I believe I could swing the cat.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Again the places were reversed. Steptoe having repeated
+the r&ocirc;le of Mrs. Courage, Letty imitated him
+as best she could in getting the purchase for her bow
+and catching his air of high-bred condescension.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Better,&#8221; he approved, &#8220;if madam wouldn&#8217;t lower
+&#8217;er &#8217;ead <i>quite</i> so far back&#8217;ard. You see, madam, a
+lydy don&#8217;t <i>know</i> she&#8217;s throwin&#8217; back &#8217;er &#8217;ead so as to
+get a grip on it. She does it unconscious like, because
+bein&#8217; of a &#8217;aughty sperrit she &#8217;olds it &#8217;igh natural.
+If madam&#8217;ll only stiffen &#8217;er neck like, as if sperrit &#8217;ad
+made &#8217;er about two inches taller than she is&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Having seized this idea, Letty tried again, with
+such success that Mrs. Courage was disposed of.
+Jane Cakebread followed next, with Nettie last of all.
+Unaware of his possession of histrionic ability, Steptoe
+gave to each character its outstanding traits, fluttering
+like Jane, and giggling like Nettie, not in zeal for a
+newly discovered interpretative art, but in order that
+Letty might be nowhere caught at a disadvantage.
+He was delighted with her quickness in imitation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Couldn&#8217;t &#8217;ave done that better myself,&#8221; he declared
+after Nettie had been dismissed for the third or fourth
+time. &#8220;When it comes to the inclinin&#8217; of the &#8217;ead I
+should sye as madam was about letter-perfect, as
+they sye on the styge. If Mr. Rash was to see it,
+&#8217;e&#8217;d swear as &#8217;is ma &#8217;ad come back again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A muffled sound proceeded from the back part of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>
+the hallway, with some whispering and once or twice
+Nettie&#8217;s stifled cackle of a laugh.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Ere they are,&#8221; he warned her. &#8220;Madam must be
+firm and control &#8217;erself. There&#8217;s nothink for &#8217;er to
+be afryde of. Just let &#8217;er think of the lyte Queen
+Victoria, called to the throne when younger even than
+madam is&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>A shuffling developed into one lone step, heavy,
+stately, and funereal. Doing her best to emulate the
+historic example held up to her, Letty lengthened her
+neck and stiffened it. A haughty spirit seemed to
+rise in her by the mere process of the elongation. She
+was so nervous that the paper shook in her hand, but
+she knew that if the Celestial City was to be won, she
+could shrink from no tests which might lead her on to
+victory.</p>
+<p>Steptoe had relapsed into the major-domo&#8217;s office,
+announcing from the doorway, &#8220;Mrs. Courage to see
+madam, if madam will be pleased to receive &#8217;er.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Madam indicated that she was so pleased, scrambling
+after the standard of the maiden sovereign of
+Windsor Castle giving audience to princes and
+ambassadors.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_VIII' id='CHAPTER_VIII'></a>
+<h2>Chapter VIII</h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m &#8217;ere.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty couldn&#8217;t know, of course, that this announcement,
+made in a menacing female bass, was
+due to the fact that three swaying bodies had been
+endeavoring so to get round the deployed paper wings
+as to see what was hidden there, and had found their
+efforts vain. All she could recognize was the summons
+to the bar of social judgment. To the bar of
+social judgment she would have gone obediently, had
+it not been for that rebelliousness against being
+&#8220;looked down upon&#8221; which had lately mastered her.
+As it was, she lengthened her neck by another half
+inch, receiving from the exercise a new degree of
+self-strengthening.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mrs. Courage is &#8217;ere, madam,&#8221; Steptoe seconded,
+&#8220;and begs to sye as she&#8217;s givin&#8217; notice to quit madam&#8217;s
+service&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The explosion came as if Mrs. Courage was
+strangling.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When I wants words took out of my mouth by
+&#8217;Enery Steptoe or anybody else I&#8217;ll sye so. If them
+as I&#8217;ve come into this room to speak to don&#8217;t feel
+theirselves aible to fyce me&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam&#8217;ll excuse an old servant who&#8217;s outlived &#8217;er
+time,&#8221; Steptoe intervened, &#8220;and not tyke no notice.
+They always abuses the kindness that&#8217;s been showed
+&#8217;em, and tykes liberties which&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span></div>
+<p>But not for nothing had Mrs. Courage been born
+to the grand manner.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When &#8217;Enery Steptoe talks of old servants out-livin&#8217;
+their time and tykin&#8217; liberties &#8217;e speaks of what &#8217;e
+knows all about from personal experience. &#8217;E was
+an old man when I was a little thing not <i>so</i> high.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The appeal was to the curiosity of the girl behind
+the screen. To judge of how high Mrs. Courage
+had not been at a time when Steptoe was already
+an old man she might be enticed from her fortifications.
+But the pause only offered Steptoe a new
+opportunity.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And so, if madam can dispense with &#8217;er services,
+which I understand madam can, Mrs. Courage will be
+a-leavin&#8217; of us this morning, with all our good wishes,
+I&#8217;m sure. Good-dye to you, Mary Ann, and God bless
+you after all the years you&#8217;ve been with us. Madam&#8217;s
+givin&#8217; you your dismissal.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Obedient to her cue Letty lowered her guard just
+enough to incline her head with the grace Steptoe had
+already pronounced &#8220;letter perfect.&#8221; The shock to
+Mrs. Courage can best be narrated in her own terms
+to Mrs. Walter Wildgoose later in the day.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Airs! No one couldn&#8217;t imagine it, Bessie, what
+&#8217;adn&#8217;t seen it for theirselves&mdash;what them baggages&#8217;ll
+do&mdash;smokin&#8217;&mdash;and wearin&#8217; pearl necklaces&mdash;and &#8217;avin&#8217;
+their own limousines&mdash;all that I&#8217;ve seen and &#8217;ad got
+used to&mdash;but not the President&#8217;s wife&mdash;not Mary
+Queen of England&mdash;could &#8217;a myde you feel as if you
+was dirt hunder their feet like what this one&mdash;and &#8217;er
+with one of them marked down sixty-nine cent
+blouses that &#8217;adn&#8217;t seen the wash since&mdash;and as for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>
+looks&mdash;why, she didn&#8217;t &#8217;ave a look to bless &#8217;erself&mdash;and
+a-&#8217;oldin&#8217; of &#8217;erself like what a empress might&mdash;and
+bowin&#8217; &#8217;er &#8217;ead, and goin&#8217; back to &#8217;er pyper, as if
+I&#8217;d disturbed &#8217;er at &#8217;er readin&#8217;&mdash;and the dead and
+spitten image of &#8217;Enery Steptoe &#8217;imself she is&mdash;and
+you know &#8217;ow many times we&#8217;ve all wondered as to
+why &#8217;e didn&#8217;t marry&mdash;and &#8217;im with syvings put by&mdash;Jynie
+thinks as &#8217;e&#8217;s worth as much as&mdash;and you know
+what a &#8217;and Jynie is for ferritin&#8217; out what&#8217;s none of
+&#8217;er business&mdash;why, if Jynie Cykebread could &#8217;a myde
+&#8217;erself Jynie Steptoe&mdash;but that&#8217;s somethink wild
+&#8217;orses wouldn&#8217;t myke poor Jynie see&mdash;that no man
+wouldn&#8217;t look at &#8217;er the second time if it wasn&#8217;t for
+to laugh&mdash;pitiful, I call it, at &#8217;er aige&mdash;and me
+always givin&#8217; the old rip to know as it was no use &#8217;is
+&#8217;angin&#8217; round where I was&mdash;as if I&#8217;d marry agyne,
+and me a widda, as you might sye, from my crydle&mdash;and
+if I did, it wouldn&#8217;t &#8217;a been a wicked old varlet
+what I always suspected &#8217;e was leadin&#8217; a double life&mdash;and
+now to see them two fyces together&mdash;why, I
+says, &#8217;ere&#8217;s the explanytion as plyne as plyne can make
+it....&#8221;</p>
+<p>All of which might have been true in rhetoric, but
+not in fact. For what had really given Mrs. Courage
+the <i>coup de grace</i> we must go back to the scene of
+the morning.</p>
+<p>Ignoring both Letty&#8217;s inclination of the head and
+Steptoe&#8217;s benediction she had shown herself hurt
+where she was tenderest.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now that there&#8217;s no one to ryse their voice agynst
+the disgryce brought on this family but me&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Speak right up, Jynie. Don&#8217;t be afryde. Madam
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span>
+won&#8217;t eat you. She knows that you&#8217;ve come to give
+notice&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Courage struggled on. &#8220;No one ain&#8217;t goin&#8217;
+to bow me out of the &#8217;ouse I&#8217;ve been cook-&#8217;ousekeeper
+in these twenty-seven year&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sorry as madam&#8217;ll be to lose you, Jynie, she won&#8217;t
+stand in the wye of your gettin&#8217; a better plyce&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Courage&#8217;s roar being that of the wounded
+lioness she was, the paper shook till it rattled in
+Letty&#8217;s hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I <i>will</i> be listened to. I&#8217;ve a right to be &#8217;eard. My
+&#8217;eart&#8217;s been as much in this &#8217;ouse and family as
+&#8217;Enery Steptoe&#8217;s &#8217;eart; and to see shyme and ruin come
+upon it&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe&#8217;s interruption was in a tone of pleased
+surprise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, you still &#8217;ere, Mary Ann? We thought
+you&#8217;d tyken leave of us. Madam didn&#8217;t know you
+was speakin&#8217;. She won&#8217;t detyne you, madam won&#8217;t.
+You and Jynie and Nettie&#8217;ll all find cheques for your
+wyges pyde up to a month a &#8217;ead, as I know Mr.
+Rashleigh&#8217;d want me to do....&#8221;</p>
+<p>Shame and ruin! Letty couldn&#8217;t follow the further
+unfoldings of Steptoe&#8217;s diplomacy because of
+these two words. They summed up what she brought&mdash;what
+she had been married to bring&mdash;to a house
+of which even she could see the traditions were of
+honor. Vaguely aware of voices which she attributed
+to Jane and Nettie, her spirit was in revolt against
+the r&ocirc;le for which her rashness of yesterday had let
+her in, and which Steptoe was forcing upon her.</p>
+<p>Jane was still whimpering and sniffling:</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure I never dreamed that things would &#8217;appen
+like what &#8217;as &#8217;appened&mdash;and us all one family, as you
+might sye&mdash;&#8217;opin&#8217; the best of everyone&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jynie, stop,&#8221; Mrs. Courage&#8217;s voice had become
+low and firm, with emotion in its tone, making
+Letty catch her breath. &#8220;My &#8217;eart&#8217;s breakin&#8217;,
+and I ain&#8217;t a-goin&#8217; to let it break without mykin&#8217;
+them that&#8217;s broken it know what they&#8217;ve done
+to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, Mary Ann,&#8221; Steptoe tried to say, peaceably,
+&#8220;madam&#8217;s grytely pressed for time&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Enery Steptoe, do you suppose that you&#8217;re the
+only one in the world as &#8217;as loved that boy? Ain&#8217;t
+&#8217;e my boy just as much as ever &#8217;e was yours?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;E&#8217;s boy to them as stands by &#8217;im, Mrs. Courage&mdash;and
+stands by them that belongs to &#8217;im. The first
+thing you do is to quit&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not quittin&#8217;; I&#8217;m druv out. I&#8217;m druv out at
+a hour&#8217;s notice from the &#8217;ome I&#8217;ve slyved for all my
+best years, leavin&#8217; dishonor and wickedness in my
+plyce&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty could endure no more. Dashing to the floor
+the paper behind which she crouched she sprang to
+her feet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is that me?&#8221; she demanded.</p>
+<p>The surprise of the attack caught Mrs. Courage off
+her guard. She could only open her mouth, and close
+it again, soundlessly and helplessly. Jane stared, her
+curiosity gratified at last. Nettie turned to whisper
+to Jane, &#8220;There; what did I tell you? The commonest
+thing!&#8221; Steptoe nodded his head quietly. In
+this little creature with her sudden flame, eyes all fire
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span>
+and cheeks of the wine-colored damask rose, he seemed
+to find a corroboration of his power of divining
+character.</p>
+<p>It seemed long before Mrs. Courage had found the
+strength to live up to her convictions, by faintly murmuring:
+&#8220;Who else?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then tell me what you accuse me of?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Courage saw her advantage. &#8220;We ain&#8217;t &#8217;ere
+to accuse nobody of nothink. If it&#8217;s &#8217;intin&#8217; that I&#8217;d tyke
+awye anyone&#8217;s character it&#8217;s a thing I&#8217;ve &#8217;ardly ever
+done, and no one can sye it <i>of</i> me. All we want is to
+give our notice&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then why don&#8217;t you do it&mdash;and go?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Once more Steptoe intervened, diplomatically.
+&#8220;That&#8217;s what Mrs. Courage is a-doin&#8217; of, madam.
+She&#8217;s finished, ain&#8217;t you Mary Ann? Jynie and
+Nettie is finished too&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>But it was Letty now who refused this mediation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, they ain&#8217;t finished. Let &#8217;em go on.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But no one did go on. Mrs. Courage was now
+dumb. She was dumb and frightened, falling back
+on her two supporters. All three together they huddled
+between the porti&egrave;res. If Steptoe could have
+calmed his prot&eacute;g&eacute;e he would have done it; but she
+was beyond his control.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Am I the ruin and shame to this house that you
+was talkin&#8217; about just now? If I am, why don&#8217;t you
+speak out and put it to me plain?&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was no response. The spectators looked on
+as if they were at the theater.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What have you all got against me anyhow?&#8221; Letty
+insisted, passionately. &#8220;What did I ever do to you?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>
+What&#8217;s women&#8217;s hearts made of, that they can&#8217;t let a
+poor girl be?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Courage had so far recovered as to be able
+to turn from one to another, to say in pantomime that
+she had been misunderstood. Jane began to cry;
+Nettie to laugh.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Even if I was the bad girl you&#8217;re tryin&#8217; to make
+me out I should think other women might show me a
+little pity. But I&#8217;m not a bad girl&mdash;not yet. I may
+be. I dunno but what I will. When I see the hateful
+thing bein&#8217; good makes of women it drives me to do
+the other thing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This was the speech they needed to justify
+themselves. To be good made women hateful!
+Their dumb-crambo to each other showed that
+anyone who said so wild a thing stood already self-condemned.</p>
+<p>But Letty flung up her head with a mettle which
+Steptoe hadn&#8217;t seen since the days of the late Mrs.
+Allerton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not in this house to drive no one else out of
+it. Them that have lived here for years has a right
+to it which I ain&#8217;t got. You can go, and let me
+stay; or you can stay, and let me go. I&#8217;m the wife of
+the owner of this house, who married me straight
+and legal; but I don&#8217;t care anything about that. You
+don&#8217;t have to tell me I ain&#8217;t fit to be his wife, because
+I know it as well as you do. All I&#8217;m sayin&#8217; is that
+you&#8217;ve got the choice to stay or go; and whichever
+you do, I&#8217;ll do different.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Never in her life had she spoken so many words
+at one time. The effort drained her. With a torrent
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span>
+of dry sobs that racked her body she dropped back
+into her chair.</p>
+<p>The hush was that of people who find the tables
+turned on themselves in a way they consider unwarranted.
+Of the general surprise Steptoe was quick
+to take advantage.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There you are, girls. Madam couldn&#8217;t speak no
+fairer, now could she?&#8221;</p>
+<p>To this there was neither assent or dissent; but it
+was plain that no one was ready to pick up the glove
+so daringly thrown down.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now what I would suggest,&#8221; Steptoe went on,
+craftily, &#8220;is that we all go back to the kitchen and talk
+it over quiet like. What we decide to do we can tell
+madam lyter.&#8221;</p>
+<p>For consent or refusal Jane and Nettie looked to
+Mary Ann, whose attitude was that of rejecting parley.
+She might, indeed, have rejected it, had not
+Letty, bowing her head on the arms she rested on the
+table, begun to cry bitterly.</p>
+<p>It was then that you saw Mrs. Courage at her best.
+The gesture with which she swept her subordinates
+back into the hall was that of the supremacy of will.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It shan&#8217;t be said as I crush,&#8221; she declared, nobly,
+directing Steptoe&#8217;s attention to the weeping girl.
+&#8220;Where there&#8217;s penitence I pity. God grant as them
+tears may gush out of an aichin&#8217; &#8217;eart.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_IX' id='CHAPTER_IX'></a>
+<h2>Chapter IX</h2>
+</div>
+<p>By the time Letty was drying her eyes, her heart
+somewhat eased, Steptoe had come back. He
+came back with a smile. Something had evidently
+pleased him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s all over. Madam won&#8217;t be bothered
+with other people&#8217;s cat-nasty old servants after
+to-dye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She felt a new access of alarm. &#8220;But they&#8217;re not
+goin&#8217; away on account o&#8217; me? Don&#8217;t let &#8217;em do it.
+Lemme go instead. Oh, mister, I can&#8217;t stay here,
+where everything&#8217;s so different from what I&#8217;m used to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He still smiled, his gentle old man&#8217;s smile which
+somehow gave her confidence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam won&#8217;t sye that after a dye or two. It&#8217;s
+new to &#8217;er yet, of course; but if she&#8217;ll always remember
+that I&#8217;m &#8217;ere, to myke everythink as easy as
+easy&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But what are you goin&#8217; to do, with no cook, and
+no chambermaid&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Standing with the corner of the table between him
+and her, he was saying to himself, &#8220;If Mr. Rash
+could only see &#8217;er lookin&#8217; up like this&mdash;with &#8217;er eyes
+all starry&mdash;and her cheeks with them dark-red roses&mdash;red
+roses like you&#8217;d rubbed with a little black....&#8221;
+But he suspended the romantic longing to say, aloud:</p>
+<p>&#8220;If madam will permit me I&#8217;ll tyke my measures as
+I&#8217;ve wanted to tyke &#8217;em this long spell back.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span></div>
+<p>Madam was not to worry as to the three women
+who were leaving the house, inasmuch as they had
+long been intending to leave it. Both Mrs. Courage
+and Jane, having graduated to the stage of &#8220;accommodating,&#8221;
+were planning to earn more money by easier
+work. Nettie, since coming to America, had learned
+that housework was menial, and was going to be a
+milliner.</p>
+<p>Madam&#8217;s remorse being thus allayed he told what
+he hoped to do for madam&#8217;s comfort. There would
+be no more women in the house, not till madam herself
+brought them back. An English chef who had
+lost an eye in the war, and an English waiter, ready
+to do chamberwork, who had left a foot on some
+battlefield, were prepared under Steptoe&#8217;s direction to
+man the house. No woman whose household cares
+had not been eased by men, in the European fashion,
+knew what it was to live. A woman waited on by
+women only was kept in a state of nerves. Nerves
+were infectious. When one woman in a household
+got them the rest were sooner or later their prey.
+Unless strongly preventative measures were adopted
+they spread at times to the men. America was a dreadful
+country for nerves and it mostly came of women
+working with women; whereas, according to Steptoe&#8217;s
+psychology, men should work with women and women
+with men. There were thousands of women who
+were bitter in heart at cooking and making beds
+who would be happy as linnets in offices and shops;
+and thousands of men who were dying of boredom
+in offices and shops who would be in their element
+cooking and making beds.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;One of the things the American people &#8217;as got
+back&#8217;ards, if madam&#8217;ll allow me to sye so, is that
+&#8217;ouse&#8217;old work is not fit for a white man. When you
+come to that the American people ain&#8217;t got a sense of
+the dignity of their &#8217;omes. They can&#8217;t see their &#8217;omes
+as run by anything but slyves. All that&#8217;s outside the
+dinin&#8217; room and the drorin&#8217; room and the masters&#8217;
+bedrooms the American sees as if it was a low-down
+thing, even when it&#8217;s hunder &#8217;is own roof. Colored
+men, yellow men, may cook &#8217;is meals and myke &#8217;is
+bed; but a white man&#8217;d demean &#8217;imself. A poor old
+white man like me when &#8217;e&#8217;s no longer fit for &#8217;ard
+outdoor work ain&#8217;t allowed to do nothink; when all
+the time there&#8217;s women workin&#8217; their fingers to the
+bone that &#8217;e could be a great &#8217;elp to, and who &#8217;e&#8217;d
+like to go to their &#8217;elp.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This was one reason, he argued, why the question
+of domestic aid in America was all at sixes and sevens.
+It was not considered humanly. It was more than a
+question of supply and demand; it was one of
+national prejudice. A rich man could have a French
+chef and an English butler, and as many strapping
+indoor men&mdash;some of them much better fitted for
+manual labor&mdash;as he liked, and find it a social glory;
+while a family of moderate means were obliged to pay
+high wages to crude incompetent women from the
+darkest backwaters of European life, just because they
+were women.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And the women&#8217;s mostly to blyme,&#8221; he reasoned.
+&#8220;They suffers&mdash;nobody knows what they suffers
+better nor me&mdash;just because they ain&#8217;t got the spunk
+to do anything <i>but</i> suffer. They&#8217;ve got it all in their
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span>
+own &#8217;ands, and they never learn. Men is slow to
+learn; but women don&#8217;t &#8217;ardly ever learn at all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty was thinking of herself, as she glanced up at
+this fount of wisdom with the question:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t none of &#8217;em?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Having apparently weighed this already he had his
+answer. &#8220;None that&#8217;s been drilled a little bit before
+&#8217;and. Once let woman feel as so and so is the custom,
+and for &#8217;er that custom, whether good or bad, is there
+to stye. They sye that chyngin&#8217; &#8217;er mind is a woman&#8217;s
+privilege; but the woman that chynged &#8217;er mind about
+a custom is one I never met yet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She took him as seriously as he took himself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you like women, mister&mdash;I mean, Steptoe?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He pondered before replying. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know as I
+could sye. I&#8217;ve never &#8217;ad a chance to see much of
+women except in &#8217;ousework, where they&#8217;re out of
+their element and tyken at a disadvantage. I don&#8217;t
+like none I&#8217;ve ever run into there, because none of
+&#8217;em never was no sport.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The inquiry in her golden eyes led him a little
+further.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No one ain&#8217;t a sport what sighs and groans over
+their job, and don&#8217;t do it cheerful like. No one ain&#8217;t
+a sport what undertykes a job and ain&#8217;t proud of it.
+If a woman <i>will</i> go into &#8217;ousework let &#8217;er do it honorable.
+If she chooses to be a servant let &#8217;er <i>be</i> a servant,
+and not be ashymed to sye she <i>is</i> one. So if
+madam arsks me if I like &#8217;em I &#8217;ave to confess I
+don&#8217;t, because as far as I see women I mostly &#8217;ear &#8217;em
+complyne.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her admiration was quite sincere as she said: &#8220;I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span>
+shouldn&#8217;t think they&#8217;d complain if they had you to
+put &#8217;em wise.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He corrected gently. &#8220;If they &#8217;ad me to <i>tell</i> &#8217;em.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If they &#8217;ad you to <i>tell</i> &#8217;em,&#8221; she imitated, meekly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam mustn&#8217;t pick up the bad &#8217;abit of droppin&#8217;
+&#8217;er haitches,&#8221; he warned, parentally. &#8220;I&#8217;ll learn &#8217;er a
+lot, but that&#8217;s one thing I mustn&#8217;t learn &#8217;er. I don&#8217;t do
+it often&mdash;Oh, once in a wye, mybe&mdash;but that&#8217;s something
+madam speaks right already&mdash;just like all Americans.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Delighted that there was one thing about her that
+was right already she reminded him of what he had
+said, that women never learned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I said women as &#8217;ad been drilled a bit. But madam&#8217;s
+different. Madam comes into this &#8217;ouse newborn,
+as you might sye; and that&#8217;ll myke it easier for
+&#8217;er and me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You mean that I&#8217;ll not be a kicker.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Once more he smiled his gentle reproof. &#8220;Oh,
+madam wouldn&#8217;t be a kicker any&#8217;ow. Jynie or Nettie
+or Mary Ann Courage or even me&mdash;we might be
+kickers; but if madam was to hobject to anything
+she&#8217;d be&mdash;<i>displeased</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She knitted her brows. The distinction was difficult.
+He saw he had better explain more fully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s only the common crowd what kicks. It&#8217;s only
+the common crowd what uses the expression. A man
+might use it&mdash;I mean a real &#8217;igh gentleman like Mr.
+Rashleigh&mdash;and get awye with it&mdash;now and then&mdash;if
+&#8217;e didn&#8217;t myke a &#8217;abit of it; but when a woman does
+it she rubberstamps &#8217;erself. Now, does madam see?
+A lydy couldn&#8217;t be a lydy&mdash;and kick. The lyte Mrs.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+Allerton would never demean &#8217;erself to kick; she&#8217;d
+only show displeasure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With a thumb and two fingers Letty marked off on
+the table the three points as to which she had received
+information that morning. She must say brought,
+and not brung; she must say tell, and not put wise;
+she must not kick, but show displeasure. Neither
+must she drop her aitches, though to do so would have
+been an effort. The warning only raised a suspicion
+that in the matter of speech there might be a higher
+standard than Steptoe&#8217;s. If ever she heard Rashleigh
+Allerton speak again she resolved to listen to him
+attentively.</p>
+<p>She came back from her reverie on hearing Steptoe
+say:</p>
+<p>&#8220;With madam it&#8217;s a cyse of beginning from the
+ground up, more or less as you would with a byby; so
+I &#8217;ope madam&#8217;ll forgive me if I drop a &#8217;int as to what
+we must do before goin&#8217; any farther.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Once more he read her question in the starry little
+flames in her eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s&mdash;clothes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The damask red which had ebbed surged slowly
+back again. It surged back under the transparent
+white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her lips parted
+to stammer the confession that she had no clothes
+except those she wore; but she couldn&#8217;t utter a syllable.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I understand madam&#8217;s position, which is why I
+mention it. You might sye as clothes is the ABC
+of social life, and if we&#8217;re to work from the ground
+up we must begin there.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span></div>
+<p>She forced it out at last, but the statement seemed
+to tear her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t get clothes. I ain&#8217;t got no money.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, money&#8217;s no hobject,&#8221; he smiled. &#8220;Mr. Rash
+&#8217;as plenty of that, and I know what &#8217;e&#8217;d like me to do.
+There never was &#8217;is hequal for the &#8217;open &#8217;and. If
+madam&#8217;ll leave it to me....&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Allerton&#8217;s office was much what you would have
+expected it to be, bearing to other offices the same
+relation as he to other business men. He had it because
+not to have it wouldn&#8217;t have been respectable. A young
+American who didn&#8217;t go to an office every day would
+hardly have been a young American. An office, then,
+was a concession to public sentiment, as well as some
+faint justification of himself.</p>
+<p>It was in the latter sense that he chiefly took it,
+making it a subject of frequent reference. In his
+conversation such expressions as &#8220;my office,&#8221; or &#8220;due
+at my office,&#8221; were introduced more often than
+there was occasion for. The implication that he
+had work to do gave him status, enabling him to
+sit down among his cronies and good-naturedly take
+their fun.</p>
+<p>He took a good deal of fun, never having succeeded
+in making himself the standardized type who escapes
+the shafts of ridicule. It was kindly fun, which, while
+viewing him as a white swan in a flock of black ones,
+recognized him as a swan, and this was as much as he
+could expect. To pass in the crowd was all he asked
+for, even when he only passed on bluff. If he couldn&#8217;t
+wholly hide the bluff he could keep it from being
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>
+flagrantly obtrusive; and toward that end an office
+was a help.</p>
+<p>It was an office situated just where you would
+have expected to find it&mdash;far enough downtown to
+be downtown, and yet not so far downtown as to
+make it a trouble to get there. Being on the eastern
+side of Washington Square, it had a picturesque
+outlook, and the merit of access from East Sixty-seventh
+Street through the long straight artery of
+Fifth Avenue.</p>
+<p>It was furnished, too, just as you might have known
+he would furnish it, in the rich and sober Style Empire,
+and yet not so exclusively in the Style Empire
+as to make the plain American business man fear he
+had dropped into Napoleon&#8217;s library at Malmaison.
+That is what Rashleigh would have liked, but other
+men could do what in him would be thought finicky.
+To take the &#8220;cuss&#8221; off his refinement, as he put it to
+Barbara, he scattered modern American office bits
+among his luscious brown surfaces, adorned with
+wreaths and lictors&#8217; sheaves in gold, though to himself
+the wrong note was offensive.</p>
+<p>But wrong notes and right notes were the same to
+him as, on this particular morning, he dragged himself
+there because it was the hour. His office staff in
+the person of old Mr. Radbury was already on the
+spot, and had sorted the letters for the day. These
+were easily dealt with. Reinvestment, or new opportunities
+for investment, were their principal themes,
+and the only positive duty to attend to was in the
+endorsement of dividend checks for deposit. A few
+directions being given to Mr. Radbury as to such letters
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span>
+as were to be answered, Allerton had nothing
+to do but stroll to the window and look out.</p>
+<p>It was what he did perhaps fifty times in the course
+of the two or three hours daily, or approximately
+daily, which he spent there. He did so now. He did
+so because it put off for a few minutes longer the
+fierce, exasperating, acrid pleasure of doing worse.
+To do worse had been his avowed object in coming
+to the office that morning, and not the answering of
+letters or the raking in of checks.</p>
+<p>Looking down from his window on the tenth floor
+he asked himself the fruitless question which millions
+of other men have asked when folly has got them into
+trouble. Among these thousands who, viewed from
+that height, had a curious resemblance to ants, was
+there such a fool as he was? From the Square they
+streamed into Fifth Avenue; from Fifth Avenue they
+streamed into the Square. In the Square and round
+the Square they squirmed and wriggled and dawdled
+their seemingly aimless ways. Great green lumbering
+omnibuses disgorged one pack of them merely to
+suck up another. Motors whirled them toward uptown,
+toward downtown, or east, or west, by twos
+and threes, or as individuals. Like ants their general
+effect was black, with here and there a moving spot
+of color, or of intermingling colors, as of flowers in
+the wind, or tropic birds.</p>
+<p>He watched a figure detach itself from the mass
+swirling round a debouching omnibus. It was a little
+black figure, just clearly enough defined to show that
+it was a man. Because it was a man it had been a fool.
+Because it had been a fool it had dark chambers in its
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>
+life which it would never willingly open. But it had
+doubtless got something for its folly. It might have
+lost more than it had gained, but it could probably
+reckon up and say, &#8220;At least I had my fun.&#8221;</p>
+<p>And he had had none. He had squandered his
+whole life on a single act of insanity which even in
+the action had produced nothing but disgust. He
+hadn&#8217;t merely swindled himself; he had committed a
+kind of suicide which made death silly and grotesque.
+The one thing that could save him a scrap of dignity&mdash;and
+such a sorry scrap!&mdash;would be going to the devil
+by the shortest way.</p>
+<p>He had come to the office to begin. He would
+begin by the means that seemed obvious. Now that
+going to the devil was a task he saw, as he had not
+seen hitherto, how curiously few were the approaches
+that would take him there. Song being only an accompaniment,
+he was limited to the remaining two of
+the famous and familiar trio.</p>
+<p>Very well! Limited as he was he would make the
+most of them. Knowing something of their merits he
+knew there was a bestial entertainment to be had from
+both. It was a kind of entertainment which his cursed
+fastidiousness had always loathed; but now his reckoning
+would be different. If he got <i>anything</i> he
+should not feel so wastefully thrown away. He would
+be selling himself first and making his bargain afterwards;
+but some meager balance would stand to his
+credit, if credit it could be called. When the devil had
+been reached the world he knew would pardon him
+because it was the devil, and not&mdash;what it was in truth&mdash;an
+idiotic state of nerves.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span></div>
+<p>At the minute when Letty was leaping to her feet
+to take her stand he swung away from the window.
+First going to Mr. Radbury&#8217;s door he closed it softly.
+Luckily the old man, an inheritance from his, Allerton&#8217;s,
+father, was deaf and incurious. Like most clerks
+who had clerked their way up to seventy he was buried
+in clerking&#8217;s little round. He wouldn&#8217;t come in till
+the letters were finished, certainly not for an hour,
+and by that time Allerton would be.... He almost
+smiled at the old man&#8217;s probable consternation on finding
+him so before the middle of the day. Any time
+would be bad enough; but in the high forenoon....</p>
+<p>He went to a cabinet which was said to have found
+its way via Bordentown from the furnishings of
+Queen Caroline Murat. Having opened it he took
+out a bottle and a glass. On the label of the bottle
+was a kilted Highlander playing on the pipes. A
+siphon of soda was also in the cabinet, but he left it
+there. What he had to do would be done more quickly
+without its mitigation.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>While Allerton was making these preparations Judson
+Flack, in pajamas and slippers, was standing in
+his toy kitchen, looking helplessly at a small gas stove.
+It was the hour in the middle of the morning at which
+he was accustomed to be waked with the information
+that his coffee and eggs were ready. The forenoon
+being what he called his slack time he found the earlier
+part of it most profitably used for sleep.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Curse the girl!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The adjuration was called forth by the fact that he
+didn&#8217;t know where anything was, or how anything
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>
+should be done. From the simple expedient of going
+for his breakfast to one of the cheap restaurants with
+which he was familiar he was cut off by the fact of an
+unlucky previous night. He simply didn&#8217;t have the
+bones. This was not to say that he was penniless, but
+that in view of more public expenses later in the day
+it would be well for him to economize where economy
+was so obvious. He never had an appetite in the morning
+anyway. With irregular eating and drinking all
+through the evening and far toward daylight, he found
+a cup of coffee and an egg....</p>
+<p>It was easy, he knew, to make the one and boil the
+other, but he was out of practice. He couldn&#8217;t remember
+doing anything of the sort since the days
+before he married Letty&#8217;s mother. Even then he had
+never tried this new-fangled thing, the gas stove, so
+that besides being out of practice he was at a loss.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Curse the girl!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The resources of the kitchen being few exploration
+didn&#8217;t take him long. He found bread, butter, milk
+that had turned sour, the usual condiments, some
+coffee in a canister, and a single egg. If he could
+only light the confounded gas stove....</p>
+<p>A small white handle offering itself for experiment,
+he turned it timidly, applying a match to a geometrical
+pattern of holes. He jumped back as from an exploding
+cannon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Curse the girl!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Having found the way, however, the next attempt
+was more successful. Soon he had two geometrical
+patterns of holes burning in steady blue buttons of
+flame. On the one he placed the coffee-pot into which
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>
+he had turned a pint of water and a cupful of coffee;
+on the other a saucepan half full of water containing
+his egg. This being done he retired to the bathroom
+for the elements of a toilet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Curse the girl!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Washing, shaving, turning up his mustache with
+the little curling tongs, he observed with self-pity his
+increasing haggardness. He observed it also with dismay.
+Looks were as important to him as to an actress.
+His r&ocirc;le being youth, high spirits, and the devil-may-care,
+the least trace of the wearing out would do for
+him. He had noticed some time ago that he was beginning
+to show fatal signs, which had the more emphatically
+turned his thoughts to the provision Letty
+might prove for his old age.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Curse the girl!&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was cursing the girl which reminded him that he
+had allowed more than the necessary time for his
+breakfast to be ready for consumption. Hurrying
+back to the kitchen he found the egg gracefully dancing
+as the water boiled. He fished it out with a spoon
+and took it in his hand, but he didn&#8217;t keep it there.
+Dashing it to the table, whence it crashed upon the
+floor, he positively screamed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Curse the girl!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He cursed her now licking and sucking the tips of
+his fingers and examining them to see if they were
+scalded. No such calamity having occurred he took
+up the coffee pot, leaving the mashed egg where it lay.
+Ladling a spoonful of sugar into a cup, and adding
+the usual milk, he poured in the coffee, which became
+a muddy dark brown mixture, with what appeared to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>
+be a porridge of seeds floating on the top. One sip,
+which induced a diabolical grimace, and he threw the
+beverage at the opposite wall as if it was a man he
+meant to insult.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Curse the girl!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The appeal to the darker powers being accompanied
+now by a series of up-to-date terms of objurgation, the
+mere act of utterance, mental or articulate, churned
+him to a frenzy. Seizing the coffee pot which he had
+replaced on the gas stove he hurled it too against the
+wall. It struck, splathered the hideous liquor over a
+hideous calsomining which had once been blue, and
+fell to the floor like a living thing knocked insensible.</p>
+<p>The resemblance maddened him still more. It
+might have been Letty, struck down after having provoked
+him beyond patience. He rushed at it. He
+hurled it again. He hurled it again. He hurled it
+again. The exercise gave relief not only to his lawful
+resentment against Letty, but to those angers over his
+luck of last night which as &#8220;a good loser&#8221; he hadn&#8217;t
+been at liberty to show. No one knew the repressions
+he was obliged to put upon himself; but now his inhibitions
+could come off in this solitary passion of
+destruction.</p>
+<p>When the coffee pot was a mere shapeless mass he
+picked up the empty cup. It was a thick stone-china
+cup, with a bar meant to protect his mustache across
+the top, a birthday present from Letty&#8217;s mother. The
+association of memories acted as a further stimulus.
+Smash! After the cup went the stone-china sugar
+bowl. Smash! After the sugar bowl the plate with
+the yellow chunk of butter. Smash! After the butter
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span>
+plate the milk jar, a clumsy, lumpy thing, which
+merely gurgled out a splash of milk and fell without
+breaking.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Curse the girl! Curse the girl! Curse the girl!
+I&#8217;ll learn her to go away and leave me! I&#8217;ll find her
+and drag her back if she&#8217;s in....&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_X' id='CHAPTER_X'></a>
+<h2>Chapter X</h2>
+</div>
+<p>While Letty was beginning a new experience
+Judson Flack was doing his best to carry out his
+threat. That is to say, he was making the round of the
+studios in which his step-daughter had occasionally
+found work, discreetly asking if she had been there
+that day. It was all he could think of doing. To the
+best of his knowledge she had no friends with whom
+she could have taken refuge, though the suspicion
+crossed his mind that she might have drowned herself
+to spite him.</p>
+<p>As a matter of fact Letty was asking the question
+if she wasn&#8217;t making a mistake in not doing so, either
+literally or morally. Never before in her life had
+she been up against this problem of insufficiency.
+Among the hard things she had known she had not
+known this; and now that she was involved in it,
+it seemed to her harder than everything else put
+together.</p>
+<p>In her humble round, bitter as it was, she had always
+been considered competent. It was the sense of her
+competence that gave her the self-respect enabling
+her to bear up. According to her standards she could
+keep house cleverly, and could make a dollar go as
+far as other girls made two. When she got her first
+chance in a studio, through an acquaintance of Judson
+Flack&#8217;s, she didn&#8217;t shrink from it, and had more
+than once been chosen by a director to be that member
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span>
+of a crowd who moves in the front and expresses
+the crowd psychologically. Had she only had the
+clothes....</p>
+<p>And now she was to have them. As far as that
+went she was not merely glad; she was one sheer
+quiver of excitement. It was not the end she shrank
+from; it was the means. If she could only have had
+fifty dollars to go &#8220;poking round&#8221; where she knew
+that bargains could be found, she might have enjoyed
+the prospect; but Steptoe could only &#8220;take measures&#8221;
+on the grand scale to which he was accustomed.</p>
+<p>The grand scale frightened her, chiefly because she
+was dressed as she was dressed. It was her first
+thought and her last one. When Steptoe told her the
+hour at which he had asked Eugene to bring round the
+car the mere vision of herself stepping into it made
+her want to sink into the ground. Eugene didn&#8217;t live
+in the house&mdash;she had discovered that&mdash;and so would
+bring the stare of another pair of eyes under whose
+scrutiny she would have to pass. Those of the three
+women having already scorched her to the bone, she
+would have to be scorched again.</p>
+<p>She tried to say this to Steptoe, as they stood in
+the drawing-room window waiting for the car; but
+she didn&#8217;t know how to make him understand it.
+When she tried to put it into words, the right words
+wouldn&#8217;t come. Steptoe had taken as general what
+she was trying to explain to him in particular.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll be very important to madam to fyce what&#8217;s
+&#8217;ard, and to do it bryve like. It&#8217;ll be the mykin&#8217; of &#8217;er
+if she can. &#8217;Umble &#8217;ill is pretty stiff to climb; but
+them as gets to the top of it is tough.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span></div>
+<p>She thought this over silently. He meant that if she
+set herself to take humiliations as they came, dragging
+herself up over them, she would be the stronger for
+it in the end.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;d &#8217;ave been better for Mr. Rashleigh,&#8221; he mused,
+&#8220;if &#8217;e&#8217;d &#8217;ad &#8217;ad somethink of the kind to tackle in &#8217;is
+life; it&#8217;d &#8217;ave myde &#8217;im more of a man. But because
+&#8217;e adn&#8217;t&mdash;Did madam ever notice,&#8221; he broke off to
+ask, &#8220;&#8217;ow them as &#8217;as everythink myde easy for &#8217;em
+begins right off to myke things &#8217;ard for theirselves.
+It&#8217;s a kind of law like. It&#8217;s just as if nyture didn&#8217;t
+mean to let no one escype. When a man&#8217;s got no
+troubles you can think of, &#8217;e&#8217;ll go to work to create
+&#8217;em.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Didn&#8217;t <i>he</i>&#8221;&mdash;she had never yet pronounced the
+name of the man who had married her&mdash;&#8221;didn&#8217;t <i>he</i>
+ever have any troubles?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;E was fretted terrible&mdash;crossed like&mdash;rubbed up
+the wrong wye, as you might sye,&mdash;but a real trouble
+like what you and me &#8217;ave &#8217;ad plenty of&mdash;never! It&#8217;s
+my opinion that trouble is to char-<i>ac</i>-ter what a peg&#8217;ll
+be to a creepin&#8217; vine&mdash;something to which the vine&#8217;ll
+&#8217;ook on and pull itself up by. Where there&#8217;s nothink
+to ketch on to the vine&#8217;ll grow; but it&#8217;ll grow in a
+&#8217;eap of flop.&#8221; There was a tremor in his tone as he
+summed up. &#8220;That&#8217;s somethink like my poor boy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty found this interesting. That in these exalted
+circles there could be a need of refining chastisement
+came to her as a surprise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The wife as I&#8217;ve always &#8217;oped for &#8217;im,&#8221; Steptoe
+went on, &#8220;is one that&#8217;d know what trouble was, and
+&#8217;ow to fyce it. &#8217;E&#8217;d myke a grand &#8217;usband to a woman
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>
+who was&mdash;strong. But she&#8217;d &#8217;ave to be the wall what
+the creepin&#8217; vine could cover all over and&mdash;and
+beautify.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That wouldn&#8217;t be me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I was madam I wouldn&#8217;t be so sure of that.
+It don&#8217;t do to undervalyer your own powers. If I&#8217;d
+&#8217;a done that I wouldn&#8217;t &#8217;a been where I am to-dye.
+Many&#8217;s the time, when I was no more than a poor little
+foundlin&#8217; boy in a &#8217;ome I&#8217;ve said to myself, I&#8217;m fit for
+somethink big. Somethink big I always meant to be.
+When it didn&#8217;t seem possible for me to aim so &#8217;igh
+I&#8217;d myde up my mind to be a valet and a butler. It
+comes&mdash;your hambition does. What you&#8217;ve first got
+to do is to form it; and then you&#8217;ve got to stick to it
+through thick and thin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To say what she said next Letty had to break down
+barrier beyond barrier of inhibition and timidity.
+&#8220;And if I was to&mdash;to form the&mdash;the ambition&mdash;to be&mdash;to
+be the kind of wall you was talkin&#8217; about just
+now&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That wouldn&#8217;t be hambition; it&#8217;d be&mdash;consecrytion.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He allowed her time to get the meaning of this
+before going on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But madam mustn&#8217;t expect not to find it &#8217;ard.
+Consecrytion is always &#8217;ard, by what I can myke out.
+When Mr. Rash was a little &#8217;un &#8217;e used to get Miss
+Pye, &#8217;is governess, to read to &#8217;im a fairy tyle about a
+little mermaid what fell in love with a prince on land.
+Bein&#8217; in love with &#8217;im she wanted to be with &#8217;im,
+natural like; but there she was in one element, as you
+might sye, and &#8217;im in another.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;d be like me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Which is why I&#8217;m tellin&#8217; madam of the story.
+Well, off the little mermaid goes to the sea-witch to
+find out &#8217;ow she could get rid of &#8217;er fish&#8217;s tyle and &#8217;ave
+two feet for to walk about in the prince&#8217;s palace.
+Well, the sea-witch she up and tells &#8217;er what she&#8217;d
+&#8217;ave to do. Only, says she, if you do that you&#8217;ll &#8217;ave
+to pye for it with every step you tykes; for every
+step you tykes&#8217;ll be like walkin&#8217; on sharp blydes. Now,
+says she, to the little mermaid, do you think it&#8217;d be
+worth while?&#8221;</p>
+<p>In Letty&#8217;s eyes all the stars glittered with her
+eagerness for the d&eacute;nouement. &#8220;And did she think
+it was worth while&mdash;the little mermaid?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She did; but I&#8217;ll give madam the tyle to read for
+&#8217;erself. It&#8217;s in the syme little book what Miss Pye
+used to read out of&mdash;up in Mr. Rash&#8217;s old nursery.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With the pride of a royal thing conscious of its
+royalty the car rolled to the door and stopped. It
+was the prince&#8217;s car, while she, Letty, was a mermaid
+born in an element different from his, and encumbered
+with a fish&#8217;s tail. She must have shown this in
+her face, for Steptoe said, with his fatherly smile:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam may &#8217;ave to walk on blydes&mdash;but it&#8217;ll be
+in the Prince&#8217;s palace.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It&#8217;ll be in the Prince&#8217;s palace! Letty repeated this
+to herself as she followed him out to the car. Holding
+the door open for her, Eugene, who had been told
+of her romance, touched his cap respectfully. When
+she had taken her seat he tucked the robe round her,
+respectfully again. Steptoe marked the social difference
+between them by sitting beside Eugene.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span></div>
+<p>Rolling down Fifth Avenue Letty was as much at
+a loss to account for herself as Elijah must have been
+in the chariot of fire. She didn&#8217;t know where she was
+going. She was not even able to ask. The succession
+of wonders within twenty-four hours blocked the
+working of her faculties. She thought of the girls
+who sneered at her in the studios&mdash;she thought of
+Judson Flack&mdash;and of what they would say if they
+were to catch a glimpse of her.</p>
+<p>She was not so unsophisticated as to be without
+some appreciation of the quarter of New York in
+which she found herself. She knew it was the &#8220;swell&#8221;
+quarter. She knew that the world&#8217;s symbols of money
+and display were concentrated here, and that in some
+queer way she, poor waif, had been given a command
+of them. One day homeless, friendless, and penniless,
+and the next driving down Fifth Avenue in a limousine
+which might be called her own!</p>
+<p>The motor was slowing down. It was drawing to
+the curb. They had reached the place to which Steptoe
+had directed Eugene. Letty didn&#8217;t have to look
+at the name-plate to know she was where the great
+stars got their gowns, and that she was being invited
+into Margot&#8217;s!</p>
+<p>You know Margot&#8217;s, of course. A great international
+house, Margot&mdash;the secret is an open one&mdash;is
+but the incognita of a business-like English countess
+who finds it financially profitable to sign articles on
+costume written by someone else, and be sponsor for
+the newest fashions which someone else designs. As
+a way of turning an impoverished historic title to
+account it is as good as any other.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span></div>
+<p>Without knowing who Margot was Letty knew
+what she was. She couldn&#8217;t have frequented studios
+without hearing that much, and once or twice in her
+wanderings about the city she had paused to admire
+the door. It was all there was to admire, since Margot,
+to Letty&#8217;s regret, didn&#8217;t display confections behind
+plate-glass.</p>
+<p>It was a Flemish ch&acirc;teau which had been a residence
+before business had traveled above Forty-second
+Street. A man in livery would have barred them
+from passing the wrought-iron grille had it not been
+for the car from which they had emerged. Only
+people worthy of being customers of the house could
+afford such cars, and he saw that Steptoe was a
+servant. What Letty was he couldn&#8217;t see, for servants
+of great houses never looked so nondescript.</p>
+<p>In the great hall a beautiful staircase swept to an
+upper floor, but apart from a Louis Seize mirror and
+console flanked by two Louis Seize chairs there was
+nothing and no one to be seen. Steptoe turned to
+the right into a vast saloon with a cinnamon-colored
+carpet and walls of cool French gray. A group of
+gilded chairs were the only furnishings, except for a
+gilded canap&eacute; between two French windows draped
+with cinnamon-colored hangings. A French fender
+with French andirons filled the fireplace, and on the
+white marble mantelpiece stood a <i>garniture de
+chemin&eacute;e</i>, a clock and two vases, in biscuit de S&egrave;vres.</p>
+<p>At the end of the room opposite the windows a
+woman in black, with coiffure &agrave; la Marcel, sat at a
+white-enamelled desk working with a ledger. A second
+woman in black, also with coiffure &agrave; la Marcel,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span>
+stood holding open the doors of a white-enamelled
+wardrobe, gazing at its multi-colored contents. Two
+other women in black, still with coiffure &agrave; la Marcel,
+were bending over a white-enamelled drawer in a series
+of white-enamelled drawers, discussing in low tones.
+There were no customers. For such a house the season
+had not yet begun. Though in this saloon voices
+were pitched as low as for conversation in a church,
+the sharp catgut calls of Frenchwomen&mdash;and of
+French dressmakers especially&mdash;came from a room
+beyond.</p>
+<p>Overawed by this vastness, simplicity, and solemnity,
+Steptoe and Letty stood barely within the door,
+waiting till someone noticed them. No one did so till
+the woman holding open the wardrobe doors closed
+them and turned round. She did not come forward
+at once; she only stared at them. Still keeping her
+eye on the newcomers she called the attention of the
+ladies occupied with the drawer, who lifted themselves
+up. They too stared. The lady at the desk
+stared also.</p>
+<p>It was the lady of the wardrobe who advanced at
+last, slowly, with dignity, her hands genteelly clasped
+in front of her. She seemed to be saying, &#8220;No, we
+don&#8217;t want any,&#8221; or, &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry we&#8217;ve nothing to give
+you,&#8221; by her very walk. Letty, with her gift for
+dramatic interpretation, could see this, though Steptoe,
+familiar as he was with ladies whom he would have
+classed as &#8220;&#8217;igher,&#8221; was not daunted. He too went
+forward, meeting madam half way.</p>
+<p>Of what was said between them Letty could hear
+nothing, but the expression on the lady&#8217;s face was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+dissuasive. She was telling Steptoe that he had come
+to the wrong place, while Steptoe was saying no.
+From time to time the lady would send a glance toward
+Letty, not in disdain, but in perplexity. It was perplexity
+which reached its climax when Steptoe drew
+from an inside pocket an impressive roll of bills.</p>
+<p>The lady looked at the bills, but she also looked at
+Letty. The honor of a house like Margot&#8217;s is not
+merely in making money; it is in its client&egrave;le. To
+have a poor little waif step in from the street....</p>
+<p>And yet it was because she was a poor little waif
+that she interested the ladies looking on. She was so
+striking an exception to their rule that her very coming
+in amazed them. One of the two who had remained
+near the open drawer came forward into conference
+with her colleague, adding her dissuasions to those
+which Steptoe had already refused to listen to.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There are plenty of other places to which you
+could go,&#8221; Letty heard this second lady say, &#8220;and
+probably do better.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe smiled, that old man&#8217;s smile which was
+rarely ineffective. &#8220;Madam don&#8217;t &#8217;ave to tell me as
+there&#8217;s plenty of other plyces to which I could go;
+but there&#8217;s none where I could do as well.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What makes you think so?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m butler to a &#8217;igh gentleman what &#8217;e used to
+entertyne quite a bit when &#8217;is mother was alive. I&#8217;ve
+listened to lydies talkin&#8217; at tyble. No one can&#8217;t tell
+me. I <i>know</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Both madams smiled. Each shot another glance at
+Letty. It was plain that they were curious as to her
+identity. One of them made a venture.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;And is this your&mdash;your daughter?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe explained, not without dignity, that the
+young lady was not his daughter, but that she had
+come into quite a good bit of money, and had done it
+sudden like. She needed a &#8217;igh, grand outfit, though
+for the present she would be content with three or
+four of the dresses most commonly worn by a lydy
+of stytion. He preferred to nyme no nymes, but he
+was sure that even Margot would not regret her confidence&mdash;and
+he had the cash, as they saw, in his
+pocket.</p>
+<p>Of this the result was an exchange between the
+madams of comprehending looks, while, in French,
+one said to the other that it might be well to consult
+Madame Simone.</p>
+<p>Madame Simone, who bustled in from the back
+room, was not in black, but in frowzy gray; her
+coiffure was not &agrave; la Marcel, but as Letty described
+it, &#8220;all anyway.&#8221; A short, stout, practical Frenchwoman,
+she had progressed beyond the need to consider
+looks, and no longer considered them. The two
+shapely subordinates with whom Steptoe had been
+negotiating followed her at a distance like attendants.</p>
+<p>She disposed of the whole matter quickly, addressing
+the attendants rather than the postulants for Margot&#8217;s
+favor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mademoiselle she want an outfit&mdash;good!&mdash;bon!
+We don&#8217;t know her, but what difference does that
+make to me?&mdash;qu&#8217;est ce que c&#8217;est que cela me fait?
+Money is money, isn&#8217;t it?&mdash;de l&#8217;argent c&#8217;est de l&#8217;argent,
+n&#8217;est-ce pas?&mdash;at this time of year especially&mdash;&agrave; cette
+saison de l&#8217;ann&eacute;e surtout.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span></div>
+<p>To Steptoe and Letty she said: &#8220;&#8217;Ave the goodness
+to sit yourselves &#8217;ere. Me, I will show you what
+we &#8217;ave. A street costume first for mademoiselle. If
+mademoiselle will allow me to look at her&mdash;Ah, oui!
+Ze taille&mdash;what you call in Eenglish the figure&mdash;is
+excellent. Tr&egrave;s chic. With ze proper closes mademoiselle
+would have style&mdash;de l&#8217;&eacute;l&eacute;gance naturelle&mdash;that
+sees itself&mdash;cela se voit&mdash;oui&mdash;oui&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Meditating to herself she studied Letty, indifferent
+apparently to the actual costume and atrocious hat,
+like a seeress not viewing what is at her feet but
+events of far away.</p>
+<p>With a sudden start she sprang to her convictions.
+&#8220;I &#8217;ave it. J&#8217;y suis.&#8221; A shrill piercing cry like that
+of a wounded cockatoo went down the long room.
+&#8220;Alphonsine! Alphon<i>sine</i>!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Someone appeared at the door of the communicating
+rooms. Madame Simone gave her orders in a few
+sharp staccato French sentences. After that Letty
+and Steptoe found themselves sitting on two of the
+gilded chairs, unexpectedly alone. The other ladies
+had returned to their tasks. Madame Simone had
+gone back to the place whence they had summoned
+her. Nothing had happened. It seemed to be all
+over. They waited.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ain&#8217;t she goin&#8217; to show us nothin&#8217;?&#8221; Letty whispered
+anxiously. &#8220;They always do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe was puzzled but recommended patience.
+He couldn&#8217;t think that Madame could have begun so
+kindly, only to go off and leave them in the lurch.
+It was not what he had looked for, any more than she;
+but he had always found patient waiting advantageous.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span></div>
+<p>Perhaps ten minutes had gone by when a new figure
+wandered toward them. Strutted would perhaps be
+the better word, since she stepped like a person for
+whom stepping means a calculation. She was about
+Letty&#8217;s height, and about Letty&#8217;s figure. Moreover,
+she was pretty, with that haughtiness of mien which
+turns prettiness to beauty. What was most disconcerting
+was her coming straight toward Letty, and
+standing in front of her to stare.</p>
+<p>Letty colored to the eyes&mdash;her deep, damask flush.
+The insult was worse than anything offered by Mrs.
+Courage; for Mrs. Courage after all was only a servant,
+and this a young lady of distinction. Letty had
+never seen anyone dressed with so much taste, not
+even the stars as they came on the studio lot in their
+everyday costumes. Indignant as she was she could
+appreciate this delicate seal-brown cloth, with its bits
+of gold braid, and darling glimpses of sage-green
+wherever the lining showed indiscreetly. The hat was
+a darling too, brown with a feather between brown
+and green, the one color or the other according as the
+wearer moved.</p>
+<p>If it hadn&#8217;t been for this cool insolence.... And
+then the young lady deliberately swung on her heel,
+which was high, to move some five or six yards away,
+where she stood with her back to them. It was a
+darling back&mdash;with just enough gold braid to relieve
+the simplicity, and the tiniest revelation of sage-green.
+Letty admired it the more poignantly for its cold contempt
+of herself.</p>
+<p>Steptoe was not often put out of countenance, but it
+seemed to have happened now. &#8220;I <i>can&#8217;t</i> think,&#8221; he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span>
+murmured, as one who contemplates the impossible,
+&#8220;that the French madam can &#8217;ave been so civil to
+begin with, just to go and make a guy of us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If all her customers is like this&#8211;&#8211;&#8221; Letty began.</p>
+<p>But the young lady of distinction turned again,
+stepping a few paces toward the back of the room,
+swinging on herself, stepping a few paces toward the
+front of the room, swinging on herself again, and all
+the while flinging at Letty glances which said: &#8220;If
+you want to see scorn, this is it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Fascination kept Letty paralyzed. Steptoe grew
+uneasy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish the French madam&#8217;d come back agyne,&#8221;
+he murmured, from half closed lips. &#8220;We &#8217;aven&#8217;t
+come &#8217;ere to be myde a spectacle of&mdash;not for no one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>And just then the seal-brown figure strolled away,
+as serenely and impudently as she had come.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, of all&#8211;&#8211;!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty&#8217;s exclamation was stifled by the fact that as
+the first young lady of distinction passed out a second
+crossed her coming in. They took no notice of each
+other, though the newcomer walked straight up to
+Letty, not to stare but to toss up her chin with a hint
+of laughter suppressed. Laughter, suppressed or unsuppressed,
+was her note. She was all fair-haired,
+blue-eyed vivacity. It was a relief to Letty that she
+didn&#8217;t stare. She twitched, she twisted, she pirouetted,
+striking dull gleams from an embroidery studded
+with turquoise and jade&mdash;but she hadn&#8217;t the hard
+unconscious arrogance of the other one.</p>
+<p>All the same it pained Letty that great ladies should
+be so beautiful. Not that this one was beautiful of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>
+face&mdash;she wasn&#8217;t&mdash;only piquant&mdash;but the general
+effect was beautiful. It showed what money and the
+dressmaker could do. If she, Letty could have had
+a dress and a hat like this!&mdash;a blue or a green, it was
+difficult to say which&mdash;with these strips of jade and
+turquoise on a ground of the purplish-greenish-blue
+she remembered as that of the monkshood in the old
+farm garden in Canada&mdash;and the darlingest hat, with
+one long feather beginning as green and graduating
+through every impossible shade of green and blue till
+it ended in a monkshood tip....</p>
+<p>No wonder the girl&#8217;s blue eyes danced and quizzed
+and laughed. As a matter of fact, Letty commented,
+the eyes brought a little too much blue into the composition.
+It was her only criticism. As a whole it
+lacked contrast. If she herself had worn this costume&mdash;with
+her gold-stone eyes&mdash;and brown hair&mdash;and
+rich coloring, when she had any color&mdash;blue was
+always a favorite shade with her&mdash;when she could
+choose, which wasn&#8217;t often&mdash;she remembered as a
+child on the farm how she used to plaster herself with
+the flowers of the blue succory&mdash;the dust-flower they
+called it down there because it seemed to thrive like
+the disinherited on the dust of the wayside&mdash;not but
+what the seal-brown was adorable....</p>
+<p>The spectacle grew dazzling, difficult for Steptoe
+to keep up with. He and Letty were plainly objects
+of interest to these grand folk, because there were
+now four or five of them. They advanced, receded,
+came up and studied them, wheeled away, smiled sometimes
+at each other with the high self-assurance of
+beauty and position, pranced, pawed, curveted, were
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>
+noble or coquettish as the inner self impelled, but
+always the embodiment of overweening pride. Among
+the &#8220;real gentry,&#8221; as he called them, there had unfailingly
+been for him and his colleagues a courtesy which
+might have been called only a distinction in equality,
+whereas these high-steppers....</p>
+<p>It was a relief to see the French madam bustling in
+again from the room at the back. Steptoe rose. He
+meant to express himself. Letty hoped he would.
+For people who brought money in their hands this
+treatment was too much. When Steptoe advanced to
+meet madam, she went with him. As her champion
+she must bear him out.</p>
+<p>But madam forestalled them. &#8220;I &#8217;ope that mademoiselle
+has seen something what she like. Me, I
+thought the brown costume&mdash;<i>c&oelig;ur de le marguerite
+jaune</i> we call it ziz season&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty was quick. She had heard of mannequins,
+the living models, though so remotely as to give her
+no visualized impression. Suddenly knowing what
+they had been looking at she adapted herself before
+Steptoe could get his protest into words.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I liked the seal-brown; but for me I thought the
+second one&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Madame Simone nodded, sagely. &#8220;Why shouldn&#8217;t
+mademoiselle &#8217;ave both?&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XI' id='CHAPTER_XI'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XI</h2>
+</div>
+<p>While this question was being put, and Steptoe
+was rising to what he saw as the real occasion,
+Rashleigh Allerton too was having a new experience.
+He couldn&#8217;t understand it; he couldn&#8217;t understand
+himself. Not that that was strange, since he had
+hardly ever understood himself at any time; but now
+he was, as he expressed it, &#8220;absolutely stumped.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He had put on the table the bottle on which the
+kilted Highlander was playing on the pipes; he had
+poured himself a glass. It was what he called a good
+stiff glass, meant, metaphorically, to kill or cure, and
+he hoped it would be to kill.</p>
+<p>And that was all.</p>
+<p>He had sat looking at it, or he had looked at it while
+walking about; but he had only looked at it. It was
+as far as he could go. Now that to go farther had
+become what he called a duty the perversity of his
+nerves was such that they refused. It was like him.
+He could always do the forbidden, the dare-devil, the
+crazily mad; but when it came to the reasonable and
+straightforward something in him balked. Here he
+was at what should have been the beginning of the
+end, and the demon which at another time would
+have driven him on was holding him back. Temptation
+had worked itself round the other way. It
+was temptation not to do, when saving grace lay
+in doing.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span></div>
+<p>An hour or more had gone by when Mr. Radbury
+knocked at the door, timidly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come in, Radbury,&#8221; Allerton cried, in a gayety he
+didn&#8217;t feel. &#8220;Have a drink.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mr. Radbury looked at the bottle and the glass.
+He looked at his young employer, who with his hands
+in his pockets, was again standing by the window.
+It was the first time in all the years of his service,
+first with the father and then with the son, that this
+invitation had been given him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thanks, Mr. Rash,&#8221; he said, with a thick, shaky
+utterance. &#8220;Liquor and I are strangers. I wish I
+could feel&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>But the old man&#8217;s trembling anxiety forced on
+Allerton the fact that the foolish game was up. &#8220;All
+right, Radbury. Was only joking. No harm done.
+Had only taken the thing out to&mdash;to look at it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Before sitting down to read and sign the letters he
+put both glass and bottle back into the keeping of
+Queen Caroline Murat, saying to himself as he did
+so: &#8220;I must find some other way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was thrown back thus on Barbara&#8217;s suggestion
+of a few hours earlier. He must get rid of the girl!
+He had scarcely as yet considered this proposal, though
+not because he deemed it unworthy of himself. Nothing
+could be unworthy of himself. A man who was
+so little of a man as he was entitled to do anything,
+however base, and feel no shame. It was simply
+that his mind hadn&#8217;t worked round to looking at
+the thing as feasible. And yet it was; plainly it
+was. The law allowed for it, if one only took advantage
+of the law&#8217;s allowances. It would be beastly, of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span>
+course; and more beastly for him than the average
+of men; but because it was beastly it were better
+done at once, before the girl got used to luxurious
+surroundings.</p>
+<p>But even this resolution, speedy as it was, came a
+little late. By evening Letty was already growing
+used to luxurious surroundings, and finding herself
+at home in them.</p>
+<p>First, there were no longer any women in the
+house, and with the three men&mdash;Steptoe&#8217;s friends being
+already installed&mdash;she found herself safe from the
+prying and criticizing feminine.</p>
+<p>Secondly, some of the new clothes had already come
+home, and she was now wearing the tea-gown she
+had long dreamt of but had never aspired to possess.
+It was of a blue so dark as to be almost black, with a
+flame colored bar across the breast, harmonizing with
+her hair and eyes. Of her eyes she wasn&#8217;t thinking;
+but her hair....</p>
+<p>That, however, was another part of the day&#8217;s fairy
+tale.</p>
+<p>When the dresses had been bought and paid for
+madame presumed to Steptoe that mademoiselle was
+under some rich gentleman&#8217;s protection. Taking
+words at their face value, as she, Letty, did herself,
+Steptoe admitted that she was. Madam made it plain
+that she understood this honor, which often came to
+girls of the humblest classes, and the need there could
+be for supplementing wardrobes suddenly. After
+that it was confidence for confidence. Madame had
+seen that in the matter of lingerie mademoiselle &#8220;left
+to desire,&#8221; and though Margot made no specialty in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span>
+this line, they happened to have on an upper floor a
+consignment just arrived from Paris, and if monsieur
+would allow mademoiselle to come up and inspect
+it.... Then it was Madame Simone&#8217;s coiffeur. At
+least it was the coiffeur whom Madame Simone
+recommended, who came to the house, after Letty
+had donned a peignoir from the consignment just
+arrived from Paris.... And now, at half past nine
+in the evening, it was the memory of a day of mingled
+agony and enchantment.</p>
+<p>Having looked her over as he summoned her to
+dinner, Steptoe had approved of her. He had approved
+of her with an inner emphasis stronger than
+he expressed. Letty didn&#8217;t know how she knew this;
+but she knew. She knew that her transformation was
+a surprise to him. She knew that though he had
+hoped much from her she was giving him more than
+he had hoped. Nothing that he said told her this,
+but something in his manner&mdash;in his yearning as he
+passed her the various dishes and tactfully showed her
+how to help herself, in the tenderness with which he
+repeated correctly her little slips in words&mdash;something
+in this betrayed it.</p>
+<p>She knew it, too, when after dinner he begged her
+not to escape to the little back room, but to take her
+place in the drawing-room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam&#8217;ll find that it&#8217;ll pass the time for &#8217;er.
+Maybe too Mr. Rashleigh&#8217;ll come in. &#8217;E does sometimes&mdash;early
+like. I&#8217;ve known &#8217;im to come &#8217;ome by
+&#8217;alf past nine, and if &#8217;is ma wasn&#8217;t sittin&#8217; in the drorin&#8217;
+room &#8217;e&#8217;d be quite put out. Lydies mostly wytes till
+their &#8217;usbands comes in; and in cyse madam&#8217;d feel
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>
+lonely I&#8217;ll leave the door open to the back part of the
+&#8217;ouse, and she&#8217;ll &#8217;ear me talkin&#8217; to the boys.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The October evening being chilly he lit a fire.
+Drawing up in front of it a small armchair, suited for
+a lady&#8217;s use, he placed behind it a table with an electric
+lamp. Letty smiled up at him. He had never
+seen her smile before, and now that he did he made
+to himself another comment of approval.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re awful good to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He reflected as to how he could bring home to her
+the grammatical mistake.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam finds me <i>horfly</i> good, does she? P&#8217;rhaps
+that&#8217;s because madam don&#8217;t know that &#8217;er comin&#8217; to
+this &#8217;ouse gratifies a tyste o&#8217; mine for which I ain&#8217;t
+never &#8217;ad no gratificytion.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As he put a footstool to her feet he caught the
+question she so easily transmitted by her eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;P&#8217;raps madam can hunderstand that after doin&#8217;
+things all my life for people as is used to &#8217;em I&#8217;ve
+&#8217;ad a kind o&#8217; cryvin&#8217; to do &#8217;em for them as &#8217;aven&#8217;t &#8217;ad
+nothink, and who could enjoy them more. I told
+madam yesterday I was somethink of a anarchist, and
+that&#8217;s &#8217;ow I am&mdash;wantin&#8217; to give the poor a wee little
+bit of what the rich &#8217;as to throw awye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Later he brought her an old red book, open at a
+page on which she read, <i>The Little Mermaid</i>.</p>
+<p>Her heart leaped. It was from this volume that
+Miss Pye had read to the Prince when he was a child.
+She let her eyes run along the opening words.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Far out in the sea the water is as blue as the
+petals of the cornflower, and clear as the purest glass.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She liked this sentence. It took her into a blue
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span>
+world. It was curious, she thought, how much meaning
+there was in colors. If you looked through red
+glass the world was angry; if through yellow, it was
+lit with an extraordinary sun; if through blue, you
+had the sensation of universal happiness. She supposed
+that that was why blue flowers always made you
+feel that there was a want in life which ought to be
+supplied&mdash;and wasn&#8217;t.</p>
+<p>She remembered a woman who had a farm near
+them in Canada, who grew only blue flowers in her
+garden. The neighbors said she was crazy; but she,
+Letty, had liked that garden better than all the
+gardens she knew. She would go there and talk to
+that woman, and listen to what she had to say of
+Nature&#8217;s peculiar love of blue. The sea and sky were
+loveliest when they were blue, and so were the birds.
+There were blue stones, the woman said, precious
+stones, and other stones that were little more than
+rocks, which said something to the heart when pearls
+and diamonds spoke only to the eyes. In the fields,
+orchards, and gardens, white flowers, yellow flowers,
+red flowers were common; but blue flowers were rare
+and retiring, as if they guarded a secret which men
+should come and search out.</p>
+<p>To this there was only one exception. Letty would
+notice as she trudged back to her father&#8217;s farm that
+along the August roadsides there was a blue flower&mdash;of
+a blue you would never see anywhere else, not even
+in the sky&mdash;which grew in the dust, and lived on dust,
+and out of the dust drew elements of beauty such as
+roses and lilies couldn&#8217;t boast of. &#8220;That means,&#8221; the
+crazy woman said, &#8220;that there&#8217;s nothing so dry, or
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>
+parched, or sterile, that God can&#8217;t take it and fashion
+from it the most priceless treasures of loveliness, if
+we only had the eyes to see them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty never forgot this, and during all the intervening
+years the dust flower, with its heavenly color,
+had been the wild growing thing she loved best. It
+spoke to her. It not only responded to the ache she
+felt within herself, but gave a promise of assuagement.
+She had never expected the fulfilment of that promise,
+but was it possible that now it was going to be kept?</p>
+<p>With her eyes on the fire she saw the color of the
+dust flower close to the flaming wood. It was the
+closest of all the colors, the one the burning heart kept
+nearest to itself. It seemed to be, as the crazy woman
+said, dear to Nature itself, its own beloved secret,
+the secret which, even when written in the dust of the
+wayside, or in the fire on the hearth, hardly anyone
+read or found out.</p>
+<p>And as she was dreaming of this and of her Prince,
+Rashleigh was walking up the avenue, saying to himself
+that he must make an end of it. He was walking
+home because, having dined at the Club, he found
+himself too restless to stay there. Walking relieved
+his nerves, and enabled him to think. He must have
+the thing over and done with. She would go decently,
+of course, since, as he had promised her, she would
+have plenty of money to go with&mdash;plenty of money for
+the rest of her life&mdash;and that was the sole consideration.
+She would doubtless be as glad to escape as he
+to have her disappear. After that, so his lawyer had
+assured him in the afternoon, the legal steps would be
+relatively easy.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span></div>
+<p>Letting himself in with his latchkey he was surprised
+to see a light in the drawing-room. It had
+not been lighted up at night, as far as he could remember,
+since the days when his mother was accustomed
+to sit there. If he came home early he had
+always used the library, which was on the other side
+of the house and at the back.</p>
+<p>He went into the front drawing-room, which was
+empty; but a fire burnt in the back one, and before it
+someone was seated. It was not the girl he had found
+in the park. It was a lady whom he didn&#8217;t recognize,
+but clearly a lady. She was reading a book, and had
+evidently not heard his entrance or his step.</p>
+<p>With the shadows of the front drawing-room behind
+him he stood between the portieres, and looked.
+He had looked for some seconds before the lady raised
+her eyes. She raised them with a start. Slowly there
+stole into her cheek the dark red of confusion. She
+dropped the book. She rose.</p>
+<p>It wasn&#8217;t till she rose that he knew her. It wasn&#8217;t
+till he knew her that he was seized by an astonishment
+which almost made him laugh. It wasn&#8217;t till he almost
+laughed that he went forward with the words, which
+insensibly bridged some of the gulf between them:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh! So this is&mdash;<i>you</i>!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XII' id='CHAPTER_XII'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XII</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Letty had not heard Allerton&#8217;s entrance or approach
+because for the first time in her life she
+was lost in the magic of Hans Andersen.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The sun had just gone down as the little mermaid
+lifted her head above the water. The clouds were
+brilliant in purple and gold, and through the pale,
+rose-tinged air the evening star shone clear and bright.
+The air was warm and mild; the sea at rest. A great
+ship with three masts lay close by, only one sail unfurled,
+for there was no breath of air, and the sailors
+sat aloft in the rigging or leaned lazily over the bulwarks.
+Music and singing filled the air, and as the
+sky darkened hundreds of Chinese lanterns were
+lighted. It seemed as if the flags of every nation were
+hung out. The little mermaid swam up to the cabin
+window, and every time she rose upon the waves she
+could see through the clear glass that the room was
+full of brilliantly dressed people. Handsomest of all
+was the young prince with the great dark eyes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton&#8217;s eyes were dark, and though she did not
+consider him precisely young, the analogy between
+him and the hero of the tale was sufficient to take her
+eyes from the book and to set her to dreaming.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He could not be more than sixteen years old, and
+this was his birthday. All this gaiety was in honor
+of him; the sailors danced upon the deck; and when
+the young prince came out a myriad of rockets flew
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>
+high in the air, with a glitter like the brightest noontide,
+and the little mermaid was so frightened that she dived
+deep down under the water. She soon rose up again,
+however, and it seemed as if all the stars of heaven
+were falling round her in golden showers. Never had
+she seen such fireworks; great, glittering suns wheeled
+by her, fiery fishes darted through the blue air, and all
+was reflected back from the quiet sea. The ship was
+lighted up so that one could see the smallest rope.
+How handsome the young prince looked! He shook
+hands with everybody, and smiled, as the music rang
+out into the glorious night. It grew late, but the
+little mermaid could not turn her eyes away from the
+ship and the handsome prince.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Once more Letty&#8217;s thought wandered from the page.
+She too would have watched her handsome prince,
+no matter what the temptation to look elsewhere.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The colored lanterns were put out, no rocket rose
+in the air, no cannon boomed from the portholes; but
+deep below there was a surging and a murmuring.
+The mermaid sat still, cradled by the waves, so that
+she could look in at the cabin window. But now the
+ship began to make more way. One sail after another
+was unfurled; the waves rose higher; clouds gathered
+in the sky; and there was a distant flash of lightning.
+The storm came nearer. All the sails were taken in,
+and the ship rocked giddily, as she flew over the foaming
+billows; the waves rose mountain-high, as if they
+would swallow up the very masts, but the good ship
+dived like a swan into the deep black trough, and rose
+bravely to the foaming crest. The little mermaid
+thought it was a merry journey, but the sailors were
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>
+of a different opinion. The ship strained and creaked;
+the timbers shivered as the thunder strokes of the
+waves fell fast; heavy seas swept the decks; the mainmast
+snapped like a reed; and the ship lurched heavily,
+while the water rushed into the hold. Then the young
+princess began to understand the danger, and she herself
+was often threatened by the falling masts, yards,
+and spars. One moment it was so dark that she could
+see nothing, but when the lightning flamed out the ship
+was as bright as day. She sought for the young
+prince, and saw him sinking down through the water
+as the ship parted. The sight pleased her, for she
+knew he must sink down to her home. But suddenly
+she remembered that men cannot live in the water,
+and that he would only reach her father&#8217;s palace a
+lifeless corpse. No; he must not die! She swam to
+and fro among the drifting spars, forgetting that
+they might crush her with their weight; she dived and
+rose again, and reached the prince just when he felt
+that he could swim no longer in the stormy sea. His
+arms were beginning to fail him, his beautiful eyes
+were closed; in another moment he must have sunk,
+had not the little mermaid come to his aid. She kept
+his head above water, and let the waves carry them
+whither they would.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty didn&#8217;t want Allerton&#8217;s life to be in danger,
+but she would have loved saving it. She fell to pondering
+possible conditions in which she could perform
+this feat, while he ran no risk whatever.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The next day the storm was over; not a spar of
+the ship was left in sight. The sun rose red and
+glowing upon the waves, and seemed to pour down
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span>
+new life upon the prince, though his eyes remained
+closed. The little mermaid kissed his fair white forehead
+and stroked back his wet hair. He was like the
+marble statue in her little garden, she thought. She
+kissed him again, and prayed that he might live.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty saw herself seated somewhere in a mead,
+Allerton lying unconscious with his head in her lap,
+though the circumstances that brought them so together
+remained vague.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Suddenly the dry land came in sight before her,
+high blue mountains on whose peaks the snow lay
+white, as if a flock of swans had settled there. On
+the coast below were lovely green woods, and close
+on shore a building of some kind, the mermaid didn&#8217;t
+know whether it was church or cloister. Citrons and
+orange trees grew in the garden, and before the porch
+were stately palm trees. The sea ran in here and
+formed a quiet bay, unruffled, but very deep. The
+little mermaid swam with the prince to the white
+sandy shore, laid him on the warm sand, taking care
+that his head was left where the sun shone warmest.
+Bells began to chime and ring through all parts of
+the building, and several young girls entered the
+garden. The little mermaid swam farther out, behind
+a tiny cliff that rose above the waves. She showered
+sea-foam on her hair that no one might see its golden
+glory, and then waited patiently to see if anyone would
+come to the aid of the young prince.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To Letty that was the heart-breaking part of the
+story, the leaving the beloved one to others. It was
+what she and the little mermaid had in common, unless
+she too could get rid of her fish&#8217;s tail at the cost of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span>
+walking on blades. But for the little mermaid there
+the necessity was, as she, Letty read on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Before long a young girl came by; she gave a
+start of terror and ran back to call for assistance.
+Several people came to her aid, and after a while the
+little mermaid saw the prince recover his consciousness,
+and smile upon the group around him. But he
+had no smile for her; he did not even know that she
+had saved him. Her heart sank, and when she had
+seen him carried into the large building, she dived
+sorrowfully down to her father&#8217;s palace.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Lifting her eyes to meditate on this situation Letty
+saw Allerton standing between the porti&egrave;res. Her
+dream of being little mermaid to his prince went out
+like a pricked bubble. Though he neither smiled nor
+sneered she knew he was amused at her, with a bitterness
+in his amusement. In an instant she saw her
+transformation as it must appear to him. She had
+spent his money recklessly, and made herself look
+ridiculous. All the many kinds of shame she had ever
+known focused on her now, making her a glowing
+brand of humiliations. She stood helpless. Hans
+Andersen dropped to the floor with a soft thud.
+Nevertheless, it was she who spoke first.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose you&mdash;you think it funny to see me
+rigged up like this?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He took time to pick up the book she had dropped
+and hand it back to her. &#8220;Won&#8217;t you sit down again?&#8221;</p>
+<p>While she seated herself and he followed her example
+she continued to stammer on. &#8220;I&mdash;I thought
+I ought to&mdash;to look proper for the house as long as
+I was in it.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span></div>
+<p>Her phrasing gave him an opening. &#8220;You&#8217;re quite
+right. I should like you to get whatever would help
+you in&mdash;in your profession before you&mdash;before you
+leave us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Quick to seize the implications here she took them
+with the submission of those whose lots have always
+depended on other people&#8217;s wills.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go whenever you want me to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Relieved as he was by this willingness he was
+anxious not to seem brutal. &#8220;I&#8217;d&mdash;I&#8217;d rather you consulted
+your own wishes about that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She put on a show of nonchalance. &#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t
+care. It&#8217;ll be just&mdash;just as you say <i>when</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He would have liked to say when at that instant, but
+a pretense at courtesy had to be maintained. &#8220;There&#8217;s
+no hurry&mdash;for a day or two.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You said a week or two yesterday.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, did I? Well, then, we&#8217;ll say a week or two now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, not for me,&#8221; she hastened to assure him.
+&#8220;I&#8217;d just as soon go to-night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you hated it as much as that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve hated some of it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, well! You needn&#8217;t be bothered with it long.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her candor was of the kind which asks questions
+frankly. &#8220;Haven&#8217;t you got any more use for me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid&mdash;&#8221; it was not easy to put it into the
+right words&mdash;&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid I was mistaken yesterday.
+I put you in&mdash;in a false position with no necessity for
+doing so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It took her a few seconds to get the force of this.
+&#8220;Do you mean that you didn&#8217;t need me to be&mdash;to be a
+shame and a disgrace to you <i>at all</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Did I put it in that way?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, didn&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The fact that she was now dressed as she was
+made it more embarrassing to him to be crude than
+it had been when addressing the homeless and shabby
+little &#8220;drab.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know what I said then. I was&mdash;I was
+upset.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you&#8217;re upset very easy, ain&#8217;t you?&#8221; She corrected
+herself quickly: &#8220;aren&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose that&#8217;s true. What of it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, nothing. I&mdash;I just happen to know a way
+you can get over that&mdash;if you want to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He smiled. &#8220;I&#8217;m afraid my nervousness is too
+deeply seated&mdash;I may as well admit that I&#8217;m nervous&mdash;you
+saw it for yourself&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I saw you was&mdash;you were&mdash;sick up here&mdash;&#8221;
+she touched her forehead&mdash;&#8220;as soon as you begun to
+talk to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Grateful for this comprehension he tried to use it to
+his advantage. &#8220;So that you understand how I could
+go off the hooks&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure! My mother&#8217;d go off &#8217;em the least little
+thing, till&mdash;till she done&mdash;till she did&mdash;the way I told
+her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then some of these days I may ask you to&mdash;but
+just now perhaps we&#8217;d better talk about&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When I&#8217;m to get out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her bluntness of expression hurt him. &#8220;That&#8217;s
+not the way I should have put it&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it&#8217;s the way you&#8217;d &#8217;a&#8217; meant, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was the more disconcerted because she said this
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span>
+gently, with the same longing in her face and eyes as
+in that of the little mermaid bending over the unconscious
+prince.</p>
+<p>The unconscious prince of the moment merely said:
+&#8220;You mustn&#8217;t think me more brutal than I am&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t think you&#8217;re brutal. You&#8217;re just a
+little dippy, ain&#8217;t&mdash;aren&#8217;t&mdash;you? But that&#8217;s because
+you let yourself go. If when you feel it comin&#8217; on
+you&#8217;d just&mdash;but perhaps you&#8217;d rather <i>be</i> dippy.
+Would you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>If he could have called these wide goldstone eyes
+with their tiny flames maternal it is the word he
+would have chosen. In spite of the difficulty of the
+minute he was conscious of a flicker of amusement.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know that I would, but&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;After I&#8217;m gone shall we&mdash;shall we <i>stay</i> married?&#8221;</p>
+<p>This being the real question he was glad she faced
+it with the directness which gave her a kind of charm.
+He admitted that. She had the charm of everything
+which is genuine of its kind. She made no pretense.
+Her expression, her voice, her lack of sophistication,
+all had the limpidity of water. He felt himself thanking
+God for it. &#8220;He alone knows what kind of hands
+I might have fallen into yesterday, crazy fool that I
+am.&#8221; Of this child, crude as she was, he could make
+his own disposition.</p>
+<p>So in answer to her question he told her he had
+seen his lawyer in the afternoon&mdash;he was a lawyer
+himself but he didn&#8217;t practice&mdash;and the great man had
+explained to him that of all the processes known to
+American jurisprudence the retracing of such steps
+as they had taken on the previous day was one of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>
+simplest. What the law had joined the law could put
+asunder, and was well disposed toward doing so.
+There being several courses which they could adopt,
+he put them before her one by one. She listened with
+the sort of attention which shows the mind of the
+listener to be fixed on the speaker, rather than on anything
+he says. Not being obliged to ask questions or
+to make answers she could again see him as the handsome,
+dark-eyed prince whom she would have loved to
+save from drowning or any other fate.</p>
+<p>Of all he said she could attach a meaning to but one
+word: &#8220;desertion.&#8221; Even in the technical marital
+sense she knew vaguely its significance. She thought
+of it with a tightening about the heart. Any desertion
+of him of which she would be capable would be like
+that of the little mermaid when she dived sorrowfully
+down to her father&#8217;s palace, leaving him with those to
+whom he belonged. It was this thought which
+prompted a question flung in among his observations,
+though the link in the train of thought was barely
+traceable:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is she takin&#8217; you back&mdash;the girl you told me about
+yesterday?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He looked puzzled. &#8220;Did I tell you about a girl
+yesterday?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, sure! You said she kicked you out&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, she hadn&#8217;t. I&mdash;I didn&#8217;t know I&#8217;d gone so
+far as to say&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you went a lot farther than that. You said
+you were goin&#8217; to the devil. Ain&#8217;t you? I mean,
+aren&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I don&#8217;t seem able to.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re the first fellow I&#8217;ve ever heard say that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m the first fellow I&#8217;ve ever heard say it myself.
+But I tried to-day&mdash;and I couldn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did you do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I tried to get drunk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She half rose, shrinking away from him. &#8220;Not&mdash;not
+<i>you!</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes. Why not? I&#8217;ve been drunk before&mdash;not
+often, but&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t tell me,&#8221; she cried, hastily. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to
+know. It&#8217;s too&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I thought it was just the sort of thing you&#8217;d
+be&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d be used to. So it is. But that&#8217;s the reason.
+You&#8217;re&mdash;you&#8217;re different. I can&#8217;t bear to think of
+it&mdash;not with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I&#8217;m just like any other man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no, you&#8217;re not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He looked at her curiously. &#8220;How am I&mdash;how am
+I&mdash;different?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, other men are just men, and you&#8217;re a&mdash;a kind
+of prince.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You wouldn&#8217;t think so if you were to know me
+better.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I&#8217;m not goin&#8217; to know you better, and I&#8217;d
+rather think of you as I see you are.&#8221; She dropped
+this theme to say: &#8220;So the other girl&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She didn&#8217;t mean it at all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;d be crazy if she did. But what made her let
+you think so?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s&mdash;she&#8217;s simply that sort; goes off the hooks
+too.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Oh! So there&#8217;ll be a pair of you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;ll be bloody murder, won&#8217;t it? Momma was
+that way with Judson Flack. Hammer and tongs&mdash;the
+both of them&mdash;till I took her in hand, and&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what happened then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She calmed down and&mdash;and died.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So that it didn&#8217;t do her much good, did it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It did her that much good that she died. Death
+was better than the way she was livin&#8217; with Judson
+Flack&mdash;and it wasn&#8217;t always his fault. I do&#8217; wanta
+defend him, but momma got so that if he did have a
+quiet spell she&#8217;d go and stir him up. There&#8217;s not much
+hope for two married people that lives like that, do
+you think?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you say your mother, under your instruction,
+got over it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but it was too late. The more she got over it
+the more he&#8217;d lambaste her, and when her money was
+all gone&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But do you think all&mdash;all hot-tempered couples
+have to go it in that way?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She made a little hunching movement of the
+shoulders. &#8220;It&#8217;s mostly cat and dog anyhow. You
+and her&mdash;the other girl&mdash;won&#8217;t be much worse than
+others.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you think we&#8217;ll be worse, to some extent at
+least.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She ignored this to say, wistfully: &#8220;I suppose
+you&#8217;re awful fond of her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think I can say as much as that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And is she fond of you?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;She says so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If she is I don&#8217;t see how she could&mdash;&#8221; Her voice
+trailed away. Her eyes forsook his face to roam the
+shadows of the room. She added to herself rather
+than to him: &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t ha&#8217; done it if it was me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, if you were in love&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The eyes wandered back from the shadows to rest
+on him again. They were sorrowful eyes, and unabashed.
+A child&#8217;s would have had this unreproachful
+ache in them, or a dog&#8217;s. Though he didn&#8217;t know
+what it meant it disturbed him into leaving his sentence
+there.</p>
+<p>It occurred to him then that they were forgetting
+the subject in hand. He had not expected to be able
+to converse with her, yet something like conversation
+had been taking place. It had come to him, too, that
+she had a mind, and now that he really looked at
+her he saw that the face was intelligent. Yesterday
+that face had been no more to him than a smudge,
+without character, and almost featureless, while
+to-day....</p>
+<p>The train of his thought being twofold he could
+think along one line, and speak along another. &#8220;So if
+you go to see my lawyer he&#8217;ll suggest different things
+that you could do&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d rather do whatever &#8217;ud make it easiest for
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re very kind, but I think I&#8217;d better not suggest.
+I&#8217;ll leave that to him and you. He knows
+already that he&#8217;s to supply you with whatever money
+you need for the present; and after everything is
+settled I&#8217;ll see that you have&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span></div>
+<p>The damask flush which Steptoe had admired stole
+over a face flooded with alarm. She spoke as she rose,
+drawing a little back from him. &#8220;I do&#8217; want any
+money.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He looked up at her in protestation. &#8220;Oh, but you
+must take it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was still drawing back, as if he was threatening
+her with something that would hurt. &#8220;I do&#8217;
+want to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it was part of our bargain. You don&#8217;t understand
+that I couldn&#8217;t&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t make no such&mdash;&#8221; She checked herself.
+Her mother had rebuked her for this form of speech
+a thousand times. She said the sentence over as she
+felt he would have said it, as the people would have
+said it among whom she had lived as a child. The
+cadence of his speech, the half forgotten cadences of
+theirs, helped her ear and her intuitions. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t
+make any such bargain,&#8221; she managed to bring out,
+at last. &#8220;You said you&#8217;d give me money; but I never
+said I&#8217;d take it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He too rose. He began to feel troubled. Perhaps
+she wouldn&#8217;t be at his disposition after all. &#8220;But&mdash;but
+I couldn&#8217;t stand it if you didn&#8217;t let me&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I couldn&#8217;t stand it if I did.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But that&#8217;s not reasonable. It&#8217;s part of the whole
+thing that I should look out for your future after
+what&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know what you mean,&#8221; she declared, tremblingly.
+&#8220;You think that because I&#8217;m&mdash;I&#8217;m beneath you that
+I ain&#8217;t got&mdash;that I haven&#8217;t got&mdash;no sense of what a
+girl should do and what she shouldn&#8217;t do. But you&#8217;re
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>
+wrong. Do you suppose I didn&#8217;t know all about how
+crazy it was when I went with you yesterday? Of
+course I did. I was as much to blame as you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no, you weren&#8217;t. Apart from your being what
+you call beneath me&mdash;and I don&#8217;t admit that you are&mdash;I&#8217;m
+a great deal older than you&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re only older in years. In livin&#8217; I&#8217;m twice
+your age. Besides I&#8217;m all right here&#8211;&#8211;&#8221; she touched
+her forehead again&mdash;&#8220;and I could see first thing that
+you was a fellow that needed to be took&mdash;to be taken&mdash;care
+of.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you did!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She strengthened her statement with an affirmative
+nod. &#8220;Yes, I did.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, then, I&#8217;ve always paid the people who&#8217;ve
+taken care of me&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but you didn&#8217;t ask me to take care of you, and
+I didn&#8217;t take no care. You wanted me to be a disgrace
+to you, and I thought so little of myself that I said I&#8217;d
+go and be it. Now I&#8217;ve got to pay for that, not be
+paid for it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her head was up with what Steptoe considered to
+be mettle. Though the picture she presented was
+stamped on his mind as resembling the proud mien of
+the girl in Whistler&#8217;s Yellow Buskin, he didn&#8217;t think
+of that till later.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s one thing I must ask you to remember,&#8221; he
+said, in a tone he tried to make firm, &#8220;that I couldn&#8217;t
+possibly accept from you anything in the way of
+sacrifice.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her eyes were wide and earnest. &#8220;But I never
+thought of <i>makin&#8217;</i> anything in the way of sacrifice.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;It would be sacrifice for you to help me get out of
+this scrape, and have nothing at all to the good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I&#8217;d have lots to the good.&#8221; She reflected.
+&#8220;I&#8217;d have rememberin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What have you got to remember?&#8221;</p>
+<p>With her child&#8217;s lack of self-consciousness she
+looked him straight in the eyes. &#8220;You&mdash;for one
+thing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Me!&#8221; He had hardly the words for his amazement.
+&#8220;For heaven&#8217;s sake, what can you have to
+remember about me that&mdash;that could give you any
+pleasure?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I didn&#8217;t say it would give me any pleasure.
+I said I&#8217;d <i>have</i> it. It&#8217;d be mine&mdash;something no one
+couldn&#8217;t take away from me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if it doesn&#8217;t do you any good&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It does me good if it makes me richer, don&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Richer to&mdash;to remember <i>me</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She nodded, with a little twisted smile, beginning to
+move toward the door. Over her shoulder she said:
+&#8220;And it isn&#8217;t only you. There&#8217;s&mdash;there&#8217;s Steptoe.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIII' id='CHAPTER_XIII'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XIII</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Making her nod suffice for a good-night, Letty,
+with the red volume of Hans Andersen under
+her arm, passed out into the hall. It was not easy to
+carry herself with the necessary nonchalance, but she
+got strength by saying inwardly: &#8220;Here&#8217;s where I
+begin to walk on blades.&#8221; The knowledge that she
+was doing it, and that she was doing it toward an
+end, gave her a dignity of carriage which Allerton
+watched with sharpened observation.</p>
+<p>Reaching the little back spare room she found the
+door open, and Steptoe sweeping up the hearth before a
+newly lighted fire. Beppo, whose basket had been
+established here, jumped from his shelter to paw up
+at her caressingly. With the hearth-brush in his hand
+Steptoe raised himself to say:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam&#8217;ll excuse me, but I thought as the evenin&#8217;
+was chilly&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He doesn&#8217;t want me to stay.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She brought out the fact abruptly, lifelessly, because
+she couldn&#8217;t keep it back. The calm she
+had been able to maintain downstairs was breaking
+up, with a quivering of the lip and two rolling
+tears.</p>
+<p>Slowly and absently Steptoe dusted his left hand
+with the hearth-brush held in his right. &#8220;If madam&#8217;s
+goin&#8217; to decide &#8217;er life by what another person wants
+she ain&#8217;t never goin&#8217; to get nowhere.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span></div>
+<p>There were tears now in the voice. &#8220;Yes, but when
+it&#8217;s&mdash;<i>him</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Im or anybody else, we all &#8217;ave to fight for what
+we means to myke of our own life. It&#8217;s a poor gyme
+in which I don&#8217;t plye my &#8217;and for all I think it&#8217;ll win.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you mean that I should&mdash;act independent?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Aven&#8217;t madam an independent life?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Havin&#8217; an independent life don&#8217;t make it easier to
+stay where you&#8217;re not wanted.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, if madam&#8217;s lookin&#8217; first for what&#8217;s easy&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not. I&#8217;m lookin&#8217; first for what he&#8217;ll <i>like</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Hanging the hearth-brush in its place he took the
+tongs to adjust a smoking log. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been lookin&#8217; for
+what &#8217;e&#8217;d like ever since &#8217;e was born; and now I see
+that gettin&#8217; so much of what &#8217;e liked &#8217;asn&#8217;t been good for
+&#8217;im. If madam&#8217;d strike out on &#8217;er own line, whether &#8217;e
+liked it or not, and keep at it till &#8217;e &#8217;ad to like it&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but when it&#8217;s&mdash;&#8221; she sought for the right
+word&mdash;&#8220;when it&#8217;s so humiliatin&#8217;&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Humiliatin&#8217; things is not so &#8217;ard to bear, once
+you&#8217;ve myde up your mind as they&#8217;re to be borne.&#8221;
+He put up the tongs, to busy himself with the poker.
+&#8220;Madam&#8217;ll find that humiliation is a good deal like that
+there quinine; bitter to the tyste, but strengthenin&#8217;.
+I&#8217;ve swallered lots of it; and look at me to-dye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know as well as he does that it&#8217;s all been a crazy
+mistake&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was readin&#8217; the other day&mdash;I&#8217;m fond of a good
+book, I am&mdash;occupies the mind like&mdash;but I was readin&#8217;
+about a circus man in South Africa, what &#8217;e myde a
+mistyke and took the wrong tryle&mdash;and just when &#8217;e
+was a-givin&#8217; &#8217;imself up for lost among the tigers and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>
+the colored savages &#8217;e found &#8217;e&#8217;d tumbled on a mine of
+diamonds. Big &#8217;ouse in Park Lyne in London now,
+and &#8217;is daughter married to a Lord.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;ve tumbled into the mine of diamonds all
+right. The question is&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If madam really tumbled, or was led by the &#8217;and
+of Providence.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She laughed, ruefully. &#8220;If that was it the hand of
+Providence &#8217;d have to have some pretty funny ways.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve often &#8217;eard as the wyes of Providence was
+strynge; but I ain&#8217;t so often &#8217;eard as Providence &#8217;ad
+got to myke &#8217;em strynge to keep pyce with the wyes
+of men. Now if the &#8217;and of Providence &#8217;ad picked
+out madam for Mr. Rash, it&#8217;d &#8217;ave to do somethink
+out of the common, as you might sye, to bring together
+them as man had put so far apart.&#8221; He looked
+round the room with the eye of a head-waiter inspecting
+a table in a restaurant. &#8220;Madam &#8217;as everythink?
+Well, if there&#8217;s anythink else she&#8217;s only got to ring.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Bowing himself out he went down the stairs to
+attend to those duties of the evening which followed
+the return of the master of the house. In the library
+and dining-room he saw to the window fastenings,
+and put out the one light left burning in each room.
+In the hall he locked the door with the complicated
+locks which had helped to guarantee the late Mrs.
+Allerton against burglars. There was not only a bolt,
+a chain, and an ordinary lock, but there was an ingenious
+double lock which turned the wrong way when
+you thought you were turning it the right, and could
+otherwise baffle the unskilful. Occupied with this task
+he could peep over his shoulder, through the unlighted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span>
+front drawing-room, and see his adored one standing
+on the hearthrug, his hands clasped behind him, and
+his head bent, in an attitude of meditation.</p>
+<p>Steptoe, having much to say to him, felt the nervousness
+of a prime minister going into the presence
+of a sovereign who might or might not approve his
+acts. It was at once the weakness and the strength of
+his position that his rule was based on an unwritten
+constitution. Being unwritten it allowed of a borderland
+where powers were undefined. Powers being
+undefined his scope was the more easily enlarged,
+though now and then he found that the sovereign rebelled
+against the mayor of the palace and had to be
+allowed his way.</p>
+<p>But the sovereign was nursing no seeds of the kind
+of discontent which Steptoe was afraid of. As a
+matter of fact he was thinking of the way in which
+Letty had left the room. The perspective, the tea-gown,
+the effectively dressed hair, enabled him to perceive
+the combination of results which Madame
+Simone had called <i>de l&#8217;&eacute;l&eacute;gance naturelle</i>. She had
+that; he could see it as he hadn&#8217;t seen it hitherto. It
+must have given what value there was to her poor
+little r&ocirc;les in motion pictures. Now that his eye had
+caught it, it surprised, and to some degree disturbed,
+him. It was more than the show-girl&#8217;s inane prettiness,
+or the comely wax-work face of the girl on the
+cover of a magazine. With due allowance for her
+Anglo-Saxonism and honesty, she was the type of
+woman to whom &#8220;things happen.&#8221; Things would
+happen to her, Allerton surmised, beyond anything she
+could experience in his cumbrous and antiquated house.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>
+This queer episode would drop behind her as an episode
+and no more, and in the multitude of future incidents
+she would almost forget that she had known him.
+He hoped to God that it would be so, and yet....</p>
+<p>He was noting too that she hadn&#8217;t taxed him, in
+the way of calling on his small supply of nervous
+energy. Rather she had spared it, and he felt himself
+rested. After a talk with Barbara he was always
+spent. Her emotional furies demanded so much of
+him that they used him up. This girl, on the contrary,
+was soothing. He didn&#8217;t know how she was soothing;
+but she was. He couldn&#8217;t remember when he had
+talked to a woman with so little thought of what he
+was to say and how he was to say it, and heaven only
+knew that the things to be said between them were
+nerve-racking enough. But they had come out of their
+own accord, those nerve-racking things, probably, he
+reasoned, because she was a girl of inferior class with
+whom he didn&#8217;t have to be particular.</p>
+<p>She was quick, too, to catch the difference between
+his speech and her own. She was quick&mdash;and pathetic.
+Her self-correction amused him, with a strain of pity
+in his amusement. If a girl like that had only had a
+chance.... And just then Steptoe broke in on his
+musing by entering the room.</p>
+<p>The first subject to be aired was that of the changes
+in the household staff, and Steptoe raised it diplomatically.
+Mrs. Courage and Jane had taken offense
+at the young lydy&#8217;s presence, and packed themselves
+off in dishonorable haste. Had it not been that two
+men friends of his own were ready to come at an
+hour&#8217;s notice the house would have been servantless
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span>
+till he had procured strangers. No condemnation
+could be too severe for Mrs. Courage and Jane, for
+not content with leaving the house in dudgeon they
+had insulted the young lydy before they went.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sooner or lyter they would &#8217;a&#8217; went any&#8217;ow. For
+this long time back they&#8217;ve been too big for their
+boots, as you might sye. If Mr. Rash &#8217;ad married
+the other young lydy she wouldn&#8217;t &#8217;a&#8217; stood &#8217;em a
+week. It don&#8217;t do to keep servants too long, not
+when they&#8217;ve got no more than a menial mind, which
+Jynie and Mrs. Courage &#8217;aven&#8217;t. The minute they
+&#8217;eard that this young lydy was in the &#8217;ouse.... And
+beautiful the wye she took it, Mr. Rash. I never see
+nothink finer on the styge nor in the movin&#8217; pictures.
+Like a young queen she was, a-tellin&#8217; &#8217;em that she
+&#8217;adn&#8217;t come to this &#8217;ouse to turn out of it them as &#8217;ad
+&#8217;ad it as their &#8217;ome, like, and that she&#8217;d put it up to
+them. If they went she&#8217;d stye; but if they styed she&#8217;d
+go&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s going anyhow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe moved away to feel the fastenings of the
+back windows. &#8220;That&#8217;ll be a relief to us, sir, won&#8217;t
+it?&#8221; he said, without turning his head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll make things easier&mdash;certainly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was just &#8217;opin&#8217; that it mightn&#8217;t be&mdash;well, not too
+soon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you mean by too soon?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, sir, I&#8217;ve been thinkin&#8217; it over through the
+dye, just as you told me to do this mornin,&#8217; and I
+figger out&mdash;&#8221; on a table near him he began to arrange
+the disordered books and magazines&mdash;&#8220;I figger out
+that if she was to go it&#8217;d better be in a wye agreeable
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span>
+to all concerned. It wouldn&#8217;t do, I syes to myself, for
+Mr. Rash to bring a young woman into this &#8217;ouse
+and &#8217;ave &#8217;er go awye feelin&#8217; anythink but glad she&#8217;d
+come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;ll be some job.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll be some job, sir; but it&#8217;ll be worth it. It
+ain&#8217;t only on the young lydy&#8217;s account; it&#8217;ll be on Mr.
+Rash&#8217;s.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;On Mr. Rash&#8217;s&mdash;how?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The magazines lapping over each other in two long
+lines, he straightened them with little pats. &#8220;What I
+suppose you mean to do, sir, is to get out o&#8217; this
+matrimony and enter into the other as you thought as
+you wasn&#8217;t goin&#8217; to enter into.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And when you&#8217;d entered into the other you
+wouldn&#8217;t want it on your mind&mdash;on your conscience,
+as you might sye&mdash;that there was a young lydy in the
+world as you&#8217;d done a kind o&#8217; wrong to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton took three strides across the corner of the
+room, and three strides back to the fireplace again.
+&#8220;How am I going to escape that? She says she won&#8217;t
+let me give her any money.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, money!&#8221; Steptoe brushed money aside as if
+it had no value. &#8220;She wouldn&#8217;t of course. Not &#8217;er
+sort.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But what <i>is</i> &#8217;er sort. She seemed one thing yesterday,
+and to-day she&#8217;s another.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s somethink like what I mean. That young
+lydy &#8217;as growed more in twenty-four hours than lots&#8217;d
+grow in twenty-four years.&#8221; He considered how best
+to express himself further. &#8220;Did Mr. Rash ever
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>
+notice that it isn&#8217;t bein&#8217; born of a certain kind o&#8217;
+family as&#8217;ll myke a man a gentleman? Of course &#8217;e
+did. But did &#8217;e ever notice that a man&#8217;ll often <i>not</i>
+be born of a certain kind o&#8217; family, and yet be a
+gentleman all the syme?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know what you&#8217;re driving at; but it depends on
+what you mean by a gentleman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I couldn&#8217;t &#8217;ardly sye&mdash;not no more than I
+could tell you what the smell of a flower was, not even
+while you was a-smellin&#8217; of it. You know a gentleman&#8217;s
+a gentleman, and you may think it&#8217;s this or that
+what mykes &#8217;im so, but there ain&#8217;t no wye to put it
+into words. Now you, Mr. Rash, anybody&#8217;d know
+you was a gentleman what merely looked at you
+through a telescope; but you couldn&#8217;t explyne it, not
+if you was took all to pieces like the works of a clock.
+It ain&#8217;t nothink you do and nothink you sye, because
+if we was to go by that&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good Lord, stop! We&#8217;re not talking about me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, Mr. Rash. We&#8217;re talkin&#8217; about the queer thing
+it is what mykes a gentleman, and I sye that I can&#8217;t
+sye. But I <i>know</i>. Now, tyke Eugene. &#8217;E&#8217;s just a
+chauffeur. But no one couldn&#8217;t be ten minutes with
+Eugene and not know &#8217;e&#8217;s a gentleman through and
+through. Obligin&#8217;&mdash;good-mannered&mdash;modest&mdash;polite
+to the very cat &#8217;e is&mdash;and always with that nice smile&mdash;wouldn&#8217;t
+<i>you</i> sye as Eugene was a gentleman, if
+anybody was to arsk you, Mr. Rash?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If they asked me from that point of view&mdash;yes&mdash;probably.
+But what has that to do with it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It &#8217;as this to do with it that when you arsk me
+what sort that young lydy is I &#8217;ave to reply as she&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>
+not the sort to accept money from strynge gentlemen,
+because it ain&#8217;t what she&#8217;s after.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then what on earth <i>is</i> she after? Whatever it
+is she can have it, if I can only find out what it is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe answered this in his own way. &#8220;It&#8217;s very
+&#8217;ard for the poor to see so much that&#8217;s good and beautiful
+in the world, and know that they can&#8217;t &#8217;ave none
+of it. I felt that myself before I worked up to where
+I am now. &#8217;Ere in New York a poor boy or a poor
+girl can&#8217;t go out into the street without seein&#8217; the
+things they&#8217;re cryvin&#8217; for in their insides flaunted
+at &#8217;em like&mdash;shook in their fyces&mdash;while the law
+and the police and the church and everythink what
+mykes our life says to &#8217;em, &#8216;There&#8217;s none o&#8217; this for
+you.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, money would buy it, wouldn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Money&#8217;d buy it if money knew what to buy. But
+it don&#8217;t. Mr. Rash must &#8217;ave noticed that there&#8217;s
+nothink &#8217;elplesser than the people with money what
+don&#8217;t know &#8217;ow to spend it. I used to be that wye
+myself when I&#8217;d &#8217;ave a little cash. I wouldn&#8217;t know
+what to blow myself to what wouldn&#8217;t be like them
+vulgar new-rich. But the new-rich is vulgar only
+because our life &#8217;as put the &#8217;orse before the cart with
+&#8217;em, as you might sye, in givin&#8217; them the money
+before showin&#8217; &#8217;em what to do with it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Having straightened the lines of magazines to the
+last fraction of an inch he found a further excuse for
+lingering by moving back into their accustomed places
+the chairs which had been disarranged.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You &#8217;ave to get the syme kind of &#8217;ang of things
+as you and me&#8217;ve got, Mr. Rash, to know what it is
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>
+you want, and &#8217;ow to spend your money wise like.
+Pleasure isn&#8217;t just in &#8217;avin&#8217; things; it&#8217;s in knowin&#8217;
+what&#8217;s good to &#8217;ave and what ain&#8217;t. Now this young
+lydy&#8217;d be like a child with a dime sent into a ten-cent
+store to buy whatever &#8217;e&#8217;d like. There&#8217;s so many
+things, and all the syme price, that &#8217;e&#8217;s kind of confused
+like. First &#8217;e thinks it&#8217;ll be one thing, and then
+&#8217;e thinks it&#8217;ll be another, and &#8217;e ends by tykin&#8217; the
+wrong thing, because &#8217;e didn&#8217;t &#8217;ave nothink to tell
+&#8217;im &#8217;ow to choose. Mr. Rash wouldn&#8217;t want a young
+lydy to whom &#8217;e&#8217;s indebted, as you might sye, to be
+like that, now would &#8217;e?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It doesn&#8217;t seem to me that I&#8217;ve got anything to do
+with it. If I offer her the money, and can get her to
+take it&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s where she strikes me as wiser than Mr.
+Rash, for all she don&#8217;t know but so little. That much
+she knows by hinstinck.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then what am I going to do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;d be for Mr. Rash to sye. If it was me&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The necessity for getting an armchair exactly beneath
+a portrait seemed to cut this sentence short.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, if it was you&mdash;what then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Before I&#8217;d give &#8217;er money I&#8217;d teach &#8217;er the &#8217;ang
+of our kind o&#8217; life, like. That&#8217;s what she&#8217;s aichin&#8217;
+and cryvin&#8217; for. A born lydy she is, and &#8217;ankerin&#8217;
+after a lydy&#8217;s wyes, and with no one to learn &#8217;em to
+&#8217;er&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, good heavens, I can&#8217;t do that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, Mr. Rash, but I could, if you was to leave &#8217;er
+&#8217;ere for a bit. I could learn &#8217;er to be a lydy in the
+course of a few weeks, and &#8217;er so quick to pick up.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>
+Then if you was to settle a little hincome on &#8217;er she
+wouldn&#8217;t&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton took the bull by the horns. &#8220;She wouldn&#8217;t
+be so likely to go to the bad. That&#8217;s what you mean,
+isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Moving behind Allerton, who continued to stand on
+the hearthrug, Steptoe began poking the embers, making
+them safe for the night.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did Mr. Rash ever notice that goin&#8217; to the bad, as
+&#8217;e calls it, ain&#8217;t the syme for them as &#8217;ave nothink as
+it looks to them as &#8217;ave everythink? When you&#8217;re
+&#8217;ungry for food you heats the first thing you can lie
+your &#8217;ands on; and when you&#8217;re &#8217;ungry for life you
+do the first thing as&#8217;ll promise you the good you&#8217;re
+lookin&#8217; for. What people like you and me is hapt
+to call goin&#8217; to the bad ain&#8217;t mostly no more than
+a &#8217;ankerin&#8217; for good which nothink don&#8217;t seem to
+feed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton smiled. &#8220;That sounds to me as if it might
+be dangerous doctrine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What excuses the poor&#8217;ll often seem dyngerous
+doctrine to the rich, Mr. Rash. Our kind is awful
+afryde of their kind gettin&#8217; a little bit of what they&#8217;re
+longin&#8217; for, and especially &#8217;ere in America. When
+we&#8217;ve took from them most of the means of &#8217;aving a
+little pleasure lawful, we call it dyngerous if they tyke
+it unlawful like, and we go to work and pass laws
+agynst them. Protectin&#8217; them agynst theirselves we
+sye it is, and we go at it with a gun.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But we&#8217;re talking of&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of the young lydy, sir. Quite so. It&#8217;s on &#8217;er
+account as I&#8217;m syin&#8217; what I&#8217;m syin&#8217;. You arsk me if
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>
+I think she&#8217;ll go to the bad in cyse we turn &#8217;er out, and
+I sye that&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton started. &#8220;There&#8217;s no question of our turning
+her out. She&#8217;s sick of it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then that&#8217;d be my point, wouldn&#8217;t it, sir? If
+she goes because she&#8217;s sick of it, why, then, natural
+like, she&#8217;ll look somewhere else for what&mdash;for what
+she didn&#8217;t find with us. You may call it goin&#8217; to the
+bad, but it&#8217;ll be no more than tryin&#8217; to find in a wrong
+wye what life &#8217;as denied &#8217;er in a right one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton, who had never in his life been asked to
+bear moral responsibility, was uneasy at this philosophy,
+changing the subject abruptly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where did she get the clothes?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Me and &#8217;er, Mr. Rash, went to Margot&#8217;s this
+mornin&#8217; and bought a bunch of &#8217;em.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The deuce you did! And you used my name?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, sir,&#8221; Steptoe returned, with dignity, &#8220;I used
+mine. I didn&#8217;t give no &#8217;andle to gossip. I pyde for
+the things out o&#8217; some money I &#8217;ad in &#8217;and&mdash;my own
+money, Mr. Rash&mdash;and &#8217;ad &#8217;em all sent to me. I
+thought as we was mykin&#8217; a mistyke the young lydy&#8217;d
+better look proper while we was mykin&#8217; it; and I
+knew Mr. Rash&#8217;d feel the syme.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The situation was that in which the <i>fain&eacute;ant</i> king
+accepts the act of the mayor of the palace because it
+is Hobson&#8217;s choice. Moreover, he was willing that
+she should have the clothes. If she wouldn&#8217;t take
+money she would at least apparently take them, which,
+in a measure, would amount to the same thing. He
+was dwelling on this bit of satisfaction when Steptoe
+continued.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;And as long as the young lydy remynes with us,
+Mr. Rash, I thought it&#8217;d be discreeter like not to &#8217;ave
+no more women pokin&#8217; about, and tryin&#8217; to find out
+what &#8217;ad better not be known. It mykes it simpler
+as she &#8217;erself arsks to be called Miss Gravely&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, she does?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sir; and that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve told William and
+Golightly, the waiter and the chef, is &#8217;er nyme. It
+mykes it all plyne to &#8217;em&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Plain? Why, they&#8217;ll think&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, sir. They won&#8217;t think. When it comes to
+what&#8217;s no one&#8217;s business but your own women thinks;
+men just haccepts. They tykes things for granted,
+and don&#8217;t feel it none of their affair. Mr. Rash&#8217;ll &#8217;ave
+noticed that there&#8217;s a different kind of honor among
+women from what there is among men. I don&#8217;t sye
+but what the women&#8217;s is all right, only the men&#8217;s is
+easier to get on with.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There being no response to these observations Steptoe
+made ready to withdraw. &#8220;And shall you stye
+&#8217;ome for breakfast, sir?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll see in the morning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very good, sir. I&#8217;ve locked up the &#8217;ouse and seen
+to everythink, if you&#8217;ll switch off the lights as you
+come up. Good-night, Mr. Rash.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good-night.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIV' id='CHAPTER_XIV'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XIV</h2>
+</div>
+<p>While this conversation was taking place Letty,
+in the back spare room, was conducting a ceremonial
+too poignant for tears. There were tears in
+her heart, but her eyes only smarted.</p>
+<p>Taking off the blue-black tea-gown, she clasped it
+in her arms and kissed it. Then, on one of the padded
+silk hangers, she hung it far in the depths of the
+closet, where it wouldn&#8217;t scorch her sight in the
+morning.</p>
+<p>Next she arrayed herself in a filmy breakfast thing,
+white with a copper-colored sash matching some of
+the tones in her hair and eyes, and simple with an
+angelic simplicity. Standing before the long mirror
+she surveyed herself mournfully. But this robe too
+she took off, kissed, and laid away.</p>
+<p>Lastly she put on the blue-green costume, with the
+turquoise and jade embroidery. She put on also the
+hat with the feather which shaded itself from green
+into monkshood blue. She put on a veil, and a pair of
+white gloves. For once she would look as well as she
+was capable of looking, though no one should see her
+but herself.</p>
+<p>Viewing her reflection she grew frightened. It was
+the first time she had ever seen her personal potentialities.
+She had long known that with &#8220;half a chance&#8221;
+she could emerge from the cocoon stage of the old
+gray rag and be at least the equal of the average; but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>
+she hadn&#8217;t expected so radical a change. She was
+not the same Letty Gravely. She didn&#8217;t know what
+she was, since she was neither a &#8220;star&#8221; nor a &#8220;lady,&#8221;
+the two degrees of elevation of which she had had
+experience. All she could feel was that with the advantages
+here presented she had the capacity to be
+either. Since, apparently, the becoming a lady was
+now excluded from her choice of careers, &#8220;stardom&#8221;
+would still have been within her reach, only that she
+was not to get the necessary &#8220;half a chance.&#8221; That
+was the bitter truth of it. That was to be the result
+of her walking on blades. All the same, as walking on
+blades would help her prince she was resolved to walk
+on them. For her mother&#8217;s sake, even for Judson
+Flack&#8217;s, she had done things nearly as hard, when she
+had not had this incentive.</p>
+<p>The incentive nerved her to take off the blue-green
+costume, kissing it a last farewell, and laying it to
+rest, as a mother a dead baby in its coffin. Into the
+closet went the bits of lingerie from the consignment
+just arrived from Paris, and the other spoils of the
+day. When everything was buried she shut the door
+upon it, as in her heart she was shutting the door on
+her poor little fledgling hopes. Nothing remained to
+torment her vision, or distract her from what she had
+to do. The old gray rag and the battered black hat
+were all she had now to deal with.</p>
+<p>She slept little that night, since she was watching
+not for daylight but for that first stirring in the
+streets which tells that daylight is approaching. Having
+neither watch nor clock the stirring was all she
+had to go by. When it began to rumble and creak
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>
+and throb faintly in and above the town she got up
+and dressed.</p>
+<p>So far had she travelled in less than forty-eight
+hours that the old gray rag, and not the blue-green
+costume, was now the disguise. In other words, once
+having tasted the prosperous she had found it the
+natural. To go back to poverty was not merely hard;
+it was contrary to all spontaneous dictates. Dimly
+she had supposed that in reverting to the harness she
+had worn she would find herself again; but she only
+discovered that she was more than ever lost.</p>
+<p>Very softly she unlocked her door to peep out at
+the landing. The house was ghostly and still, but it
+was another sign of her development that she was no
+longer afraid of it. Space too had become natural,
+while dignity of setting had seemed to belong to her
+ever since she was born. Turning her back on these
+conditions was far more like turning her back on home
+than it had been when she walked away from Judson
+Flack&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>She crept out. It was so dark that she was obliged
+to wait till objects defined themselves black against
+black before she could see the stairs. She listened too.
+There were sounds, but only such sounds as all houses
+make when everyone is sleeping. She guessed, it was
+pure guessing, that it must be about five o&#8217;clock.</p>
+<p>She stole down the stairs. The necessity for keeping
+her mind on moving noiselessly deadened her
+thought to anything else. She neither looked back to
+what she was leaving behind, nor forward to what she
+was going to. Once she had reached the street it
+would be time enough to think of both. She had the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span>
+fact in the back of her consciousness, but she kept it
+there. Out in the street she would feel grief for the
+prince and his palace, and terror at the void before her;
+but she couldn&#8217;t feel them yet. Her one impulse was
+to escape.</p>
+<p>At the great street door she could see nothing; but
+she could feel. She found the key and turned it easily.
+As the door did not then yield to the knob she fumbled
+till she touched the chain. Slipping that out of its
+socket she tried the door again, but it still refused to
+open. There must be something else! Rich houses
+were naturally fortresses! She discovered the bolt
+and pulled it back.</p>
+<p>Still the door was fixed like a rock. She couldn&#8217;t
+make it out. A lock, a chain, a bolt! Surely that
+must be everything! Perhaps she had turned the key
+the wrong way. She turned it again, but only with the
+same result. She found she could turn the key either
+way, and still leave the door immovable.</p>
+<p>Perhaps she didn&#8217;t pull it hard enough. Doors
+sometimes stuck. She pulled harder; she pulled with
+her whole might and main. She could shake the door;
+she could make it rattle. The hanging chain dangled
+against the woodwork with a terrifying clank. If
+anyone was lying awake she would sound like a burglar&mdash;and
+yet she must get out.</p>
+<p>Now that she was balked, to get out became an
+obsession. It became more of an obsession the more
+she was balked. It made her first impatient, and then
+frantic. She turned the key this way and that way.
+She pulled and tugged. The perspiration came out on
+her forehead. She panted for breath; she almost
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span>
+sobbed. She knew there was a &#8220;trick&#8221; to it. She
+knew it was a simple trick because she had seen Steptoe
+perform it on the previous day; but she couldn&#8217;t find
+out what it was. The effort made her only the more
+desperate.</p>
+<p>She was not crying; she was only gasping&mdash;in
+raucous, exhausted, nervous sobs. They came shorter
+and harder as she pitted her impotence against this
+unyielding passivity. She knew it was impotence, and
+yet she couldn&#8217;t desist; and she couldn&#8217;t desist because
+she grew more and more frenzied. It was the kind of
+frenzy in which she would have dashed herself wildly,
+vainly against the force that blocked her with its pitiless
+resistance, only that the whole hall was suddenly
+flooded with a blaze of light.</p>
+<p>It was light that came so unexpectedly that her
+efforts were cut short. Even her hard gasps were
+silenced, not in relief but in amazement. She remained
+so motionless that she could practically see
+herself, thrown against this brutal door, her arms
+spread out on it imploringly.</p>
+<p>Seconds that seemed like minutes went by before
+she found strength to detach herself and turn.</p>
+<p>Amazement became terror. On the halfway landing
+of the stairs stood a figure robed in scarlet from head
+to foot, with flying indigo lapels. He was girt with
+an indigo girdle, while the mass of his hair stood up
+as in tongues of forked black flame. The countenance
+was terrible, in mingled perplexity and wrath.</p>
+<p>She saw it was the prince, but a prince transformed
+by condemnation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What on earth does this mean?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span></div>
+<p>He came down the rest of the stairs till he stood on
+the lowest step. She advanced toward him pleadingly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was&mdash;I was trying to get out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What for?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I&mdash;I must get away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, even so; is this the way to do it? I thought
+someone was tearing the house down. It woke me up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was goin&#8217; this way because&mdash;because I didn&#8217;t
+want you to know what&#8217;d become of me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, and have you on my mind.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hoped I&#8217;d be takin&#8217; myself off your mind.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you want to take yourself off my mind there&#8217;s
+a perfectly simple means of doing it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll do anything&mdash;but take money.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And taking money is the only thing I ask of you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t. It&#8217;d&mdash;it&#8217;d&mdash;shame me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Shame you? What nonsense!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She reflected fast. &#8220;There&#8217;s two ways a woman can
+take money from a man. The man may love her and
+marry her; or perhaps he don&#8217;t marry her, but loves her
+just the same. Then she can take it; but when&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When she only renders him a&mdash;a great service&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, but that&#8217;s just what I didn&#8217;t do. You said
+you wanted me to send you to the devil&mdash;and now
+you ain&#8217;t a-goin&#8217; to go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He grew excited. &#8220;But, good Lord, girl, you don&#8217;t
+expect me to go to the devil just to keep my word
+to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want you to do anything just to keep your
+word to me,&#8221; she returned, fiercely. &#8220;I only want you
+to let me get away.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span></div>
+<p>He came down the remaining step, beginning to
+pace back and forth as he always did when approaching
+the condition he called &#8220;going off the hooks.&#8221;
+Letty found him a marvelous figure in his scarlet robe,
+and with his mass of diabolic black hair.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, and if I let you get away, where would you
+get away <i>to</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;ll find a place.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A place in jail as a vagrant, as I said the other
+day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d rather be in jail,&#8221; she flung back at him, &#8220;than
+stay where I&#8217;m not wanted.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s not the question.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the biggest question of all for me. It&#8217;d be the
+biggest for you too if you were in my place.&#8221; She
+stretched out her hands to him. &#8220;Oh, please show me
+how to work the door, and let me go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He flared as he was in the habit of flaring whenever
+he was opposed. &#8220;You can go when we&#8217;ve settled the
+question of what you&#8217;ll have to live on.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll have myself to live on&mdash;just as I had before
+I met you in the Park.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing is the same for you or for me as before
+I met you in the Park.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, but we want to make it the same, don&#8217;t we?
+You can&#8217;t&mdash;can&#8217;t marry the other girl till it is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t marry the other girl till I know you&#8217;re
+taken care of.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Money wouldn&#8217;t take care of me. That&#8217;s where
+you&#8217;re makin&#8217; your mistake. You rich people think
+that money will do anything. So it will for you; but
+it don&#8217;t mean so awful much to me.&#8221; Her eyes, her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span>
+lips, her hands besought him together. &#8220;Think now!
+What would I do with money if I had it? It ain&#8217;t as
+if I was a lady. A lady has ways of doin&#8217; nothin&#8217;
+and livin&#8217; all the same; but a girl like me don&#8217;t know
+anything about them. I&#8217;d go crazy if I didn&#8217;t work&mdash;or
+I&#8217;d die&mdash;or I&#8217;d do somethin&#8217; worse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was because his nerves were on edge that he cried
+out: &#8220;I don&#8217;t care a button what you do. I&#8217;m thinking
+of myself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She betrayed the sharpness of the wound only by a
+deepening of the damask flush. &#8220;I&#8217;m thinkin&#8217; of you,
+too. Wouldn&#8217;t you rather have everything come right
+again&mdash;so that you could marry the other girl&mdash;and
+know that I&#8217;d done it for you <i>free</i>&mdash;and not that you&#8217;d
+just bought me off?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You mean, wouldn&#8217;t I rather that all the generosity
+should be on your side&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t care anything about generosity. I
+wouldn&#8217;t be doin&#8217; it for that. It&#8217;d be because&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He flung out his arms. &#8220;Well&mdash;why?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because I&#8217;d like to do something <i>for</i> you&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do something for me by making me a cad.&#8221; He
+was beside himself. &#8220;That&#8217;s what it would come to.
+That&#8217;s what you&#8217;re playing for. I should be a
+cad. You dress yourself up again in this ridiculous
+rig&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not a ridic&#8217;lous rig. It&#8217;s my own clothes&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your own clothes <i>now</i> are&mdash;are what I saw you in
+when I came home last evening. You can&#8217;t go back
+to that thing. We can&#8217;t go back in any way.&#8221; He
+seemed to make a discovery. &#8220;It&#8217;s no use trying to
+be what we were in the Park, because we can&#8217;t be.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>
+Whatever we do must be in the way of&mdash;of going on
+to something else.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, that&#8217;d be something else, if you&#8217;d just let me
+go, and do the desertion stunt you talked to me
+about&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll not let you do it unless I pay you for it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it&#8217;d be payin&#8217; me for it if&mdash;if you&#8217;d just let
+me do it. Don&#8217;t you see I <i>want</i> to?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can see that you want to keep me in your debt.
+I can see that I&#8217;d never have another easy moment in
+my life. Whatever I did, and whoever I married, I
+should have to owe it to <i>you</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, couldn&#8217;t you&mdash;when I owe so much to you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There you go! What do you owe to me? Nothing
+but getting you into an infernal scrape&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no! It&#8217;s not been that at all. You&#8217;d have
+to be me to understand what it <i>has</i> been. It&#8217;ll be something
+to think of all the rest of my life&mdash;whatever
+I do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, and I know how you&#8217;ll think of it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no, you don&#8217;t. You couldn&#8217;t. It&#8217;s nothin&#8217; to
+you to come into this beautiful house and see its lovely
+kind of life; but for me&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, don&#8217;t throw that sort of thing at me,&#8221; he
+flamed out, striding up and down. &#8220;Steptoe&#8217;s been
+putting that into your head. He&#8217;s strong on the sentimental
+stuff. You and he are in a conspiracy against
+me. That&#8217;s what it is. It&#8217;s a conspiracy. He&#8217;s got
+something up his sleeve&mdash;I don&#8217;t know what&mdash;and he&#8217;s
+using you as his tool. But you don&#8217;t come it over
+me. I&#8217;m wise, I am. I&#8217;m a fool too. I know it well
+enough. But I&#8217;m not such a fool as to&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span></div>
+<p>She was frightened. He was going &#8220;off the hooks.&#8221;
+She knew the signs of it. This rapid speech, one word
+leading to another, had always been her mother&#8217;s first
+sign of super-excitement, until it ended in a scream.
+If he were to scream she would be more terrified than
+she had ever been in her life. She had never heard a
+man scream; but then she had never seen a man grow
+hysterical.</p>
+<p>His utterance was the more clear-cut and distinct
+the faster it became.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know what it is. Steptoe thinks I&#8217;m going
+insane, and he&#8217;s made you think so too. That&#8217;s why
+you want to get away. You&#8217;re afraid of me. Well,
+I don&#8217;t wonder at it; but you&#8217;re not going. See?
+You&#8217;re not going. You&#8217;ll go when I send you; but
+you&#8217;ll not go before. See? I&#8217;ve married you, haven&#8217;t
+I? When all is said and done you&#8217;re my wife. My
+wife!&#8221; He laughed, between gritted teeth. &#8220;My
+wife! That&#8217;s my wife!&#8221; He pointed at her. &#8220;Rashleigh
+Allerton who thought so much of himself has
+married <i>that</i>&mdash;and she&#8217;s trying to do the generous
+by him&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Going up to him timidly, she laid her hand on his
+arm. &#8220;Say, mister, would you mind countin&#8217; ten?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The appeal took him so much by surprise that, both
+in his speech and in his walk, he stopped abruptly.
+She began to count, slowly, and marking time with her
+forefinger. &#8220;One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;six&mdash;seven&mdash;eight&mdash;nine&mdash;ten.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stared at her as if it was she who had gone &#8220;off
+the hooks.&#8221; &#8220;What do you mean by that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, nothin&#8217;. Now you can begin again.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Begin what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What you was&mdash;what you were sayin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What I was saying?&#8221; He rubbed his hand across
+his forehead, which was wet with cold perspiration.
+&#8220;Well, what was I saying?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was not only dazed, but a pallor stole over his
+skin, the more ghastly in contrast with his black hair
+and his scarlet dressing-gown.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Isn&#8217;t there no place you can lay down? I always
+laid momma down after a spell of this kind. It did
+her good to sleep and she always slept.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He said, absently: &#8220;There&#8217;s a couch in the library.
+I can&#8217;t go back to bed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you don&#8217;t want to go back to bed,&#8221; she agreed,
+as if she was humoring a child. &#8220;You wouldn&#8217;t sleep
+there&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t slept for two nights,&#8221; he pleaded, in
+excuse for himself, &#8220;not since&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Taking him by the arm she led him into the library,
+which was in an ell behind the back drawing-room. It
+was a big, book-lined room with worn, shiny, leather-covered
+furnishings. On the shiny, leather-covered
+couch was a cushion which she shook up and smoothed
+out. Over its foot lay an afghan the work of the late
+Mrs. Allerton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, lay down.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stretched himself out obediently, after which
+she covered him with the afghan. When he had closed
+his eyes she passed her hand across his forehead, on
+which the perspiration was still thick and cold. She
+remembered that a bottle of Florida water and a paper
+fan were among the luxuries of the back spare room.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you stir,&#8221; she warned him. &#8220;I&#8217;m goin&#8217; to
+get you something.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Absorbed in her tasks as nurse she forgot to make the
+sentimental reflections in which she would otherwise
+have indulged. Back to the room from which she had
+fled she hurried with no thought that she was doing so.
+From the grave of hope she disinterred a half dozen
+of the spider-web handkerchiefs to which a few
+hours previously she had bid a touching adieu. With
+handkerchiefs, fan, and Florida water, she flew
+back to her patient, who opened his eyes as she
+approached.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to be fussed over&#8211;&#8211;&#8221; he was beginning,
+fretfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lie still,&#8221; she commanded. &#8220;I know what to do.
+I&#8217;m used to people who are sick&mdash;up here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Up here&#8221; was plainly the forehead which she
+mopped softly with a specimen from Margot&#8217;s Parisian
+consignment. He closed his eyes. His features
+relaxed to an expression of relief. Relief gave place
+to repose when he felt her hand with the cool scented
+essence on his brow. It passed and passed again,
+lightly, soothingly, consolingly. Drowsily he thought
+that it was Barbara&#8217;s hand, but a Barbara somehow
+transformed, and grown tenderer.</p>
+<p>He was asleep. She sat fanning him till a feeble
+daylight through an uncurtained window warned her
+to switch off the electricity. Coming back to her place,
+she continued to fan him, quietly and deftly, with no
+more than a motion of the wrist. She had the nurse&#8217;s
+wrist, slender, flexible; the nurse&#8217;s hand, strong,
+shapely, with practical spatulated finger-tips. After
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>
+all, he was in some degree the drowning unconscious
+prince, and she the little mermaid.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll be ashamed when he wakes up. He&#8217;ll not like
+to find me sittin&#8217; here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was broad daylight now. He was as sound asleep
+as a child. Since she couldn&#8217;t disturb him by rising
+she rose. Since she couldn&#8217;t disturb him even by kissing
+him she kissed him. But she wouldn&#8217;t kiss his lips,
+nor so much as his cheek or his brow. Very humbly
+she knelt and kissed his feet, outlined beneath the
+afghan. Then she stole away.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XV' id='CHAPTER_XV'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XV</h2>
+</div>
+<p>The interlacing of destinies is such that you will
+not be surprised to learn that the further careers
+of Letty Gravely, of Barbara Walbrook, of Rashleigh
+Allerton now turned on Mademoiselle Odette Coucoul,
+whose name not one of the three was ever destined to
+hear.</p>
+<p>On his couch in the library Allerton slept till after
+nine, waking in a confusion which did not preclude a
+sense of refreshment. At the same minute Madame
+Simone was finishing her explanations to Mademoiselle
+Coucoul as to what was to be done to the seal-brown
+costume, which Steptoe had added to Letty&#8217;s
+wardrobe, in order to conceal the fact that it was a
+model of a season old, and not the new creation its
+purchasers supposed. Taking in her instructions with
+Gallic precision mademoiselle was already at work
+when Miss Tina Vanzetti paused at her door. The
+door was that of a small French-paneled room, once
+the boudoir of the owner of the Flemish chateau, but
+set apart now by Madame Simone for jobs requiring
+deftness.</p>
+<p>Miss Vanzetti, whose Neapolitan grandfather had
+begun his American career as a boot-black in Brooklyn,
+was of the Americanized type of her race. She
+could not, of course, eliminate her Latinity of eye
+and tress nor her wild luxuriance of bust, but English
+was her mother-tongue, and the chewing of gum
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>
+her national pastime. She chewed it now, slowly,
+thoughtfully, as she stood looking in on Mademoiselle
+Odette, who was turning the skirt this way and
+that, searching out the almost invisible traces of use
+which were to be removed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So she&#8217;s give you that to do, has she? Some stunt,
+I&#8217;ll say. Gee, she&#8217;s got her gall with her, old Simone,
+puttin&#8217; that off on the public as something new. If
+I had a dollar for every time Mamie Gunn has walked
+in and out to show it to customers I&#8217;d buy a set of
+silver fox.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle&#8217;s smile was radiant, not because she
+had radiance to shed, but because her lips and teeth
+framed themselves that way. She too was of her
+race, alert, vivacious, and as neat as a trivet, as became
+a former midinette of the rue de la Paix and a
+daughter of Batignolles.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madame she t&#8217;ink it all in de beezeness,&#8221; she contented
+herself with saying.</p>
+<p>With her left hand Miss Vanzetti put soft touches
+to the big black coils of her back hair. &#8220;See that
+kid that all these things is goin&#8217; to? Gee, but she&#8217;s
+beginnin&#8217; to step out. I know her. Spotted her the
+minute she come in to try on. Me and she went to
+the same school. Lived in the same street. Name of
+Letty Gravely.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Seeing that she was expected to make a response
+mademoiselle could think of nothing better than to
+repeat in her pretty staccato English: &#8220;Name of
+Let-ty Grav-el-ly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stepfather&#8217;s name was Judson Flack. Company-promoter
+he called himself. Mother croaked three or
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>
+four years ago, just before we moved to Harlem.
+Never saw no more of her till she walked in here with
+the old white slaver what&#8217;s payin&#8217; for the outfit.
+Gee, you needn&#8217;t tell me! S&#8217;pose she&#8217;ll hit the pace
+till some fella chucks her. Gee, I&#8217;m sorry. Awful
+slim chance a girl&#8217;ll get when some guy with a wad
+blows along and wants her.&#8221; The theme exhausted
+Miss Vanzetti asked suddenly: &#8220;Why don&#8217;t you
+never come to the Lantern?&#8221;</p>
+<p>In her broken English mademoiselle explained that
+she didn&#8217;t know the American dances, but that a fella
+had promised to teach her the steps. She had met him
+at the house of a cousin who was married to a waiter
+chez Bouquin. Ver&#8217; beautiful fella, he was, and had
+invited her to a chop suey dinner that evening, with
+the dance at the Lantern to wind up with. Most
+ver&#8217; beautiful fella, single, and a detective.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good for you,&#8221; Miss Vanzetti commanded. &#8220;If you
+don&#8217;t dance you might as well be dead, I&#8217;ll say. Keeps
+you thin, too; and the music at the Lantern is swell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The incident is so slight that to get its significance
+you must link it up with the sound of the telephone
+which, as a simultaneous happening, was waking Judson
+Flack from his first real sleep after an uncomfortable
+night. Nothing but the fear lest by ignoring
+the call the great North Dakota Oil Company whose
+shares would soon be on the market, would be definitely
+launched without his assistance dragged him
+from his bed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hello?&#8221;</p>
+<p>A woman&#8217;s voice inquired: &#8220;Is this Hudson
+283-J?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You bet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is Miss Gravely in?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just gone out. Only round the corner. Back in a
+few minutes. Say, sister, I&#8217;m her stepfather, and
+&#8217;ll take the message.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell her to come right over to the Excelsior
+Studio. Castin&#8217; director&#8217;s got a part for her. Real
+part. Small but a stunner. Outcast girl. I s&#8217;pose
+she&#8217;s got some old duds to dress it in?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure thing!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, tell her to bring &#8217;em along. And say, listen!
+I don&#8217;t mind passing you the tip that the castin&#8217; director
+has his eye on that girl for doin&#8217; the pathetic
+stunt; so see she ain&#8217;t late.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Y&#8217;betcha.&#8221;</p>
+<p>That an ambitious man, growing anxious about his
+future, was thus placed in a trying situation will be
+seen at once. The chance of a lifetime was there and
+he was unable to seize it. Everyone knew that by
+these small condensations of nebular promise stars
+were eventually evolved, and to have at his disposal
+the earnings of a star....</p>
+<p>It seemed providential then that on dropping into
+the basement eating place at which he had begun to
+take his breakfasts he should fall in with Gorry
+Larrabin. They were not friends, or rather they
+were better than friends; they were enemies who
+found each other useful. Mutually antipathetic, they
+quarrelled, but could not afford to quarrel long. A
+few days or a few weeks having gone by, they met
+with a nod, as if no hot words had been passed.</p>
+<p>It was such an occasion now. Ten days earlier
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span>
+Judson had called Gorry to his teeth &#8220;no detective,
+but a hired sneak.&#8221; Gorry had retorted that, hired
+sneak as he was, he would have Judson Flack &#8220;in the
+jug&#8221; as a promoter of faked companies before the year
+was out. One word had led to another, and only the
+intervention of friends to both parties had kept the
+high-spirited fellows from exchanging blows. But the
+moment had come round again when each had an axe
+to grind, so that as Judson hung up his hat near the
+table at which Gorry, having finished his breakfast,
+was smoking and picking his teeth, the nod of reconciliation
+was given and returned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say, why don&#8217;t you sit down here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Politely Gorry indicated the unoccupied side of his
+own table. It was a small table covered with a white
+oil-cloth, and tolerably clean.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t mind if I do,&#8221; was the other&#8217;s return of
+courtesy, friendly relations being thus re-established.</p>
+<p>Having given his order to a stunted Hebrew maid
+of Polish culture, Judson Flack launched at once into
+the subject of Letty. He did this for a two-fold
+reason. First, his grievance made the expression of
+itself imperative, and next, Gorry being a hanger-on
+of that profession which lives by knowing what other
+people don&#8217;t might be in a position to throw light on
+Letty&#8217;s disappearance. If he was he gave no sign of
+it. As a matter of fact he was not, but he meant to
+be. He remembered the girl; had admired her; had
+pointed out to several of his friends that she had
+only to doll herself up in order to knock spots out
+of a lot of good lookers of recognized supremacy.</p>
+<p>Odette Coucoul&#8217;s description of him as &#8220;most ver&#8217;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span>
+beautiful fella&#8221; was not without some justification.
+Regular, clean-cut features, long and thin, were the complement
+of a slight well-knit figure, of which the only
+criticism one could make was that it looked slippery.
+Slipperiness was perhaps his ruling characteristic, a
+softness of movement suggesting a cat, and a habit
+of putting out and drawing back a long, supple, snake-like
+hand which made you think of a pickpocket.
+Eyes that looked at you steadily enough impressed
+you as untrustworthy chiefly because of a dropping of
+the pupil of the left, through muscular inability.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Awful sorry, Judson,&#8221; was his summing up of
+sympathy with his companion&#8217;s narrative. &#8220;Any dope
+I get I&#8217;ll pass along to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Between gentlemen, however, there are understandings
+which need not be put into words, the principle of
+nothing for nothing being one of them. The conversation
+had not progressed much further before Gorry
+felt at liberty to say:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, about this North Dakota Oil, Judson. I&#8217;d
+like awful well to get in on the ground floor of that.
+I&#8217;ve got a little something to blow in; and there&#8217;s a lot
+of suckers ready to snap up that stock before you
+print the certificates.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Diplomacy being necessary here Judson practiced it.
+Gorry might indeed be seeking a way of turning an
+honest penny; but then again he might mean to sell
+out the whole show. On the one hand you couldn&#8217;t
+trust him, and on the other it wouldn&#8217;t do to offend
+him so long as there was a chance of his getting news
+of the girl. Judson could only temporize, pleading
+his lack of influence with the bunch who were getting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>
+up the company. At the same time he would do his
+utmost to work Gorry in, on the tacit understanding
+that nothing would be done for nothing.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Allerton too had breakfasted late, at the New
+Netherlands Club, and was now with Miss Barbara
+Walbrook, who received him in the same room, and
+wearing the same hydrangea-colored robe, as on the
+previous morning. He had called her up from the
+Club, asking to be allowed to come once more at this
+unconventional hour in order to communicate good
+news.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s willing to do anything,&#8221; he stated at once,
+making the announcement with the glee of evident
+relief. &#8220;In fact, it was by pure main force that I kept
+her from running away from the house this morning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was dashed that she did not take these tidings
+with his own buoyancy. &#8220;What made you stop her?&#8221;
+she asked, in some wonder. &#8220;Sit down, Rash. Tell
+me the whole thing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Though she took a chair he was unable to do so.
+His excitement now was over the ease with which the
+difficulty was going to be met. He could only talk
+about it in a standing position, leaning on the mantelpiece,
+or stroking the head of the Manship terra cotta
+child, while she gazed up at him, nervously beating
+her left palm with the black and gold fringe of her
+girdle.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I stopped her because&mdash;well, because it wouldn&#8217;t
+have done.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why wouldn&#8217;t it have done? I should think that
+it&#8217;s just what would have done.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Let her slip away penniless, and&mdash;and without
+friends?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;d be no more penniless and without friends
+than she was when&mdash;when you&mdash;&#8221; she sought for the
+right word&mdash;&#8220;when you picked her up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, of course not; only now the&mdash;the situation is
+different.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see that it is&mdash;much. Besides, if you were
+to let her run away first, so that you get&mdash;whatever
+the law wants you to get, you could see that she wasn&#8217;t
+penniless and without friends afterwards. Most
+likely that&#8217;s what she was expecting.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His countenance fell. &#8220;I&mdash;I don&#8217;t think so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you wouldn&#8217;t think so as long as she could
+bamboozle you. I was simply thinking of your getting
+what she probably wants to give you&mdash;for a price.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think you do her justice, Barbe. If you&#8217;d
+seen her&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very well; I shall see her. But seeing her won&#8217;t
+make any difference in my opinion.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;ll not strike you as anything wonderful of
+course; but I know she&#8217;s as straight as they make &#8217;em.
+And so long as she is&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, then, it seems to me, we must be straight on
+our side.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll be straight enough if we pay her her price.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s more to it than that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, there is? Then how much more?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know that I can explain it.&#8221; He lifted one
+of the Stiegel candlesticks and put it back in its place.
+&#8220;I simply feel that we can&#8217;t&mdash;that we can&#8217;t let all the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span>
+magnanimity be on her side. If she plays high, we&#8217;ve
+got to play higher.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I see. So she&#8217;s got you there, has she?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish you wouldn&#8217;t be disagreeable about it,
+Barbe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My dear Rash,&#8221; she expostulated, &#8220;it isn&#8217;t being
+disagreeable to have common sense. It&#8217;s all the more
+necessary for me not to abnegate that, for the simple
+reason that you do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He hurled himself to the other end of the mantelpiece,
+picking up the second candlestick and putting it
+down with force. &#8220;It&#8217;s surely not abnegating common
+sense just to&mdash;to recognize honesty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Please don&#8217;t fiddle with those candlesticks. They&#8217;re
+the rarest American workmanship, and if you were to
+break one of them Aunt Marion would kill me. I&#8217;ll
+feel safer about you if you sit down.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right. I&#8217;ll sit down.&#8221; He drew to him a small
+frail chair, sitting astride on it. &#8220;Only please don&#8217;t
+fidget me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Would you mind taking <i>that</i> chair?&#8221; She pointed
+to something solid and masculine by Phyffe. &#8220;That
+little thing is one of Aunt Marion&#8217;s pet pieces of old
+Dutch colonial. If anything were to happen to it&mdash;But
+you were talking about recognizing honesty,&#8221; she
+continued, as he moved obediently. &#8220;That&#8217;s exactly
+what I should like you to do, Rash, dear&mdash;with your
+eyes open. If I&#8217;m not looking anyone can pull the
+wool over them, whether it&#8217;s this girl or someone
+else.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In other words I&#8217;m a fool, as you were good
+enough to say&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, do forget that. I couldn&#8217;t help saying it, as
+I think you ought to admit; but don&#8217;t keep bringing
+it up every time I do my best to meet you pleasantly.
+I&#8217;m not going to quarrel with you any more, Rash.
+I&#8217;ve made a vow to that effect and I&#8217;m going to keep
+it. But if I&#8217;m to keep it on my side you mustn&#8217;t
+badger me on yours. It doesn&#8217;t do me any good, and
+it does yourself a lot of harm.&#8221; Having delivered
+this homily she took a tone of brisk cheerfulness.
+&#8220;Now, you said over the phone that you were coming
+to tell me good news.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, that was it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What was it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That she was ready to do anything&mdash;even to disappear.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you wouldn&#8217;t let her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That I couldn&#8217;t let her&mdash;with nothing to show
+for it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But she will have something to show for it&mdash;in the
+end. She knows that as well as I do. Do you suppose
+for a minute that she doesn&#8217;t understand the
+kind of man she&#8217;s dealing with?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You mean that&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rash, dear, no girl who knows as much as this
+girl knows could help seeing at a glance that she&#8217;s got
+a pigeon to pluck, as the French say, and of course
+she means to pluck it. You can&#8217;t blame her for that,
+being what she is; but for heaven&#8217;s sake let her pluck
+it in her own way. Don&#8217;t be a simpleton. Angels
+shouldn&#8217;t rush in where fools would fear to tread&mdash;and
+you <i>are</i> an angel, Rash, though I suppose I&#8217;m the
+only one in the world who sees it.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Thank you, Barbe. I know you feel kindly toward
+me, and that, as you say, you&#8217;re the only one in the
+world who does. That&#8217;s all right, I acknowledge it,
+and I&#8217;m grateful. What I don&#8217;t like is to see you
+taking it for granted that this girl is merely playing
+a game&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rash, do you remember those two winters I
+worked in the Bleary Street Settlement? and do you
+remember that the third winter I said that I&#8217;d rather
+enlist in the Navy that go back to it again? You all
+thought that I was cynical and hard-hearted, but I&#8217;ll
+tell you now what the trouble was. I went down there
+thinking I could teach those girls&mdash;that I could do
+them good&mdash;and raise them up&mdash;and have them call
+me blessed&mdash;and all that. Well, there wasn&#8217;t one of
+them who hadn&#8217;t forgotten more than I ever knew&mdash;who
+wasn&#8217;t working me when I supposed she was
+hanging on my wisdom&mdash;who wasn&#8217;t laughing at me
+behind my back when I was under the delusion that
+she was following my good example. And if you&#8217;ve
+got one of them on your hands she&#8217;ll fool the eyes
+out of your head.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You think so,&#8221; he said, drily. &#8220;Then I don&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In that case there&#8217;s no use discussing it any
+further.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There may be after you&#8217;ve seen her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How can I see her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can go to the house.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And tell her I know everything?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you like. You could say I told you in confidence&mdash;that
+you&#8217;re an old friend of mine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And nothing else?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Since you only want to size her up I should think
+that would be enough.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She nodded, slowly. &#8220;Yes, I think you&#8217;re right.
+Better not give anything away we can keep to ourselves.
+Now tell me what happened this morning.
+You haven&#8217;t done it yet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He told her everything&mdash;how he had been waked
+by hearing someone fumbling with the lock of the
+door, whether inside or outside the house he couldn&#8217;t
+tell&mdash;how he had gone to the head of the stairs and
+switched on the lower hall light&mdash;how she had flung
+herself against the door as a little gray bird might
+dash itself against its cage in its passion to escape.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She staged it well, didn&#8217;t she? She must have
+brains.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She has brains all right, but I don&#8217;t think&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She knew of course that if she made enough noise
+someone would come, and she&#8217;d get the credit for good
+intentions.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I really don&#8217;t think, Barbe.... Now let me tell
+you. You&#8217;ll <i>see</i> what she&#8217;s like. I felt very much as
+you do. I was right on the jump. Got all worked up.
+Would have gone clean off the hooks if&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>There followed the narrative of his loss of temper,
+of his wild talk, of her clever strategy in counting
+ten&mdash;&#8220;just like a cold douche it was&#8221;&mdash;and the faint
+turn he so often had after spells of emotion. To convince
+Miss Walbrook of the queer little thing&#8217;s ingenuousness
+he told how she had made him lie down on
+the library couch, covered him up, rubbed his brow
+with Florida water, and induced the best sleep he had
+had in months.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span></div>
+<p>She surprised him by springing to her feet, her
+arms outspread. &#8220;You great big idiot! Really there&#8217;s
+no other name for you!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He gazed up at her in amazement. &#8220;What&#8217;s the
+matter now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Flinging her hands about she made inarticulate
+sounds of exasperation beyond words.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There, there; that&#8217;ll do,&#8221; she threw off, when he
+jumped to her side, to calm her by taking her in his
+arms. &#8220;<i>I&#8217;m</i> not off the hooks. <i>I</i> don&#8217;t want anyone
+to rub Florida water on my brow&mdash;and hold my hand&mdash;and
+cradle me to sleep&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She didn&#8217;t,&#8221; he exclaimed, with indignation. &#8220;She
+never touched my hand. She just&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I know what she did&mdash;and of course I&#8217;m
+grateful. I&#8217;m delighted that she was there to do it&mdash;<i>delighted.</i>
+I quite see now why you couldn&#8217;t let her
+go, when you knew your fit was coming on. I&#8217;ve seen
+you pretty bad, but I&#8217;ve never seen you as bad as that;
+and I must say I never should have thought of counting
+ten as a cure for it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, <i>she</i> did.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quite so! And if I were you I&#8217;d never go anywhere
+without her. I&#8217;d keep her on hand in case I took
+a turn&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was looking more and more reproachful. &#8220;I
+must say, Barbe, I don&#8217;t think you&#8217;re very reasonable.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She pushed him from her with both hands against
+his shoulders. &#8220;Go away, for heaven&#8217;s sake! You&#8217;ll
+drive me crazy. I&#8217;m <i>not</i> going to lose my temper with
+you. I&#8217;ll never do it again. I&#8217;ve got you to bear with,
+and I&#8217;m going to bear with you. But go! No, go
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>
+now! Don&#8217;t stop to make explanations. You can do
+that later. I&#8217;ll lay in a supply of Florida water and
+an afghan....&#8221;</p>
+<p>He went with that look on his face which a well
+meaning dog will wear when his good intentions are
+being misinterpreted. On his way to the office he kept
+saying to himself: &#8220;Well <i>I</i> don&#8217;t know what to do.
+Whatever I say she takes me up the wrong way. All
+I wanted was for her to understand that the little
+thing is a <i>good</i> little thing....&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XVI' id='CHAPTER_XVI'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XVI</h2>
+</div>
+<p>While Allerton was making these reflections
+Steptoe was summoned to the telephone.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is this you, Steptoe? I&#8217;m Miss Barbara Walbrook.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe braced himself. In conversing with Miss
+Barbara Walbrook he always felt the need of inner
+strengthening. &#8220;Yes, Miss Walbrook?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Allerton tells me you&#8217;ve a young woman at
+the house.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We &#8217;ave a young lydy. Certainly, miss.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And Mr. Allerton has asked me to call on her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe&#8217;s training as a servant permitted him no
+lapses of surprise. &#8220;Quite so, miss. And when was
+it you&#8217;d be likely to call?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This afternoon about four-thirty. Perhaps you
+could arrange to have me see her alone.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, there ain&#8217;t likely to be no one &#8217;ere, miss.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And another thing, Steptoe. Mr. Allerton has
+asked me just to call as an old friend of his. So
+you&#8217;ll please not say to her that&mdash;well, anything about
+me. I&#8217;m sure you understand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe replied that he did understand, and having
+put up the receiver he pondered.</p>
+<p>What could it mean? What could be back of it?
+How would this unsophisticated girl meet so skilful
+an antagonist. That Miss Walbrook was coming as
+an antagonist he had no doubt. In his own occasional
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+meetings with her she had always been a superior, a
+commander, to whom even he, &#8217;Enery Steptoe, had been
+a servitor requiring no further consideration. With so
+gentle an opponent as madam she would order and be
+obeyed.</p>
+<p>At the same time he could not alarm madam, or
+allow her to shirk the encounter. She had that in her,
+he was sure, which couldn&#8217;t but win out, however much
+she might be at a disadvantage. His part would be
+to reduce her disadvantages to a minimum, allowing
+her strong points to tell. Her strong points, he
+reckoned, were innocence, an absence of self-consciousness,
+and, to the worldly-wise, a disconcerting
+candor. Steptoe analyzed in the spirit and not verbally;
+but he analyzed.</p>
+<p>For Letty the morning had been feverish, chiefly
+because of her uncertainty. Was it the wish of the
+prince that she should go, or was it not? If it was
+his wish, why had he not let her? If, on the other
+hand, he desired her to stay, what did he mean to do
+with her? He had passed her on the way out to breakfast
+at the Club&mdash;she had been standing in the hall&mdash;and
+he had smiled.</p>
+<p>What was the significance of that smile? She sat
+down in the library to think. She sat down in the
+chair she had occupied while he lay on the couch,
+and reconstructed that scene which now, for all her
+life, would thrill her with emotional memories. There
+he had lain, his head on the very indentation which
+the cushion still bore, his feet here, where she had
+pressed her lips to them. She had actually had her
+hand on his brow, she had smoothed back his hair,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>
+and had hardly noted at the time that such was her
+extraordinary privilege.</p>
+<p>She came back to the fact that he had smiled at her.
+It would have been an enchanting smile from anyone,
+but coming from a prince it had all the romantic
+effulgence with which princes&#8217; smiles are infused.
+How much of that romantic effulgence came automatically
+from the prince because he was a prince,
+and how much of it was inspired by herself? Was
+any of it inspired by herself? When all was said and
+done this last was the great question.</p>
+<p>It brought her where so many things brought her,
+to the dream of love at first sight. Could it have
+happened to him as it had happened to herself? It
+was so much in her mental order of things that she
+was far from considering it impossible. Improbable,
+yes; she would admit as much as that; but impossible,
+no! To be sure she had been in the old gray rag;
+but Steptoe had informed her that there were kings
+who went about falling in love with beggar-maids.
+She would have loved being one of those beggar-maids;
+and after all, was she not?</p>
+<p>True, there was the other girl; but Letty found it
+hard to see her as a reality. Besides, she had, in
+appearance at least, treated him badly. Might it not
+easily have come about that she, Letty, had caught
+his heart in the rebound? She quite understood that
+if the prince <i>had</i> fallen in love with her at first sight,
+there might be convulsion in his inner self without,
+as yet, a comprehension on his part of the nature of
+his passion.</p>
+<p>She had reached this point when Steptoe entered the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span>
+library on one of his endless tasks of re-arranging
+that which seemed to be in sufficiently good order.
+Putting the big desk to rights he said over his
+shoulder:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps I&#8217;d better tell madam as she&#8217;s to &#8217;ave a
+caller this afternoon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty sprang up in alarm. &#8220;A&mdash;<i>what</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A lydy what&#8217;ll myke a call. Oh, madam don&#8217;t need
+to be afryde. She&#8217;s an old friend o&#8217; Mr. Rash&#8217;s, and&#8217;ll
+want, no doubt, to be a friend o&#8217; madam too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But what does she know about me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Rash must &#8217;a told &#8217;er. She spoke to me just
+now on the telephone, and seemed to know everything.
+She said she&#8217;d be &#8217;ere this afternoon about four-thirty,
+if madam&#8217;d be so good as to give &#8217;er a cup o&#8217; tea.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Having invented the cup of tea for his own purpose
+Steptoe went on to explain further. &#8220;It&#8217;s what
+the &#8217;igh lydies mostly gives each other about &#8217;alf
+past four or five o&#8217;clock, and madam couldn&#8217;t homit it
+without seemin&#8217; as if she didn&#8217;t know what&#8217;s what.
+It&#8217;ll be very important for madam to tyke &#8217;er position
+from the start. If the lydy is comin&#8217; friendly like
+she&#8217;d be &#8217;urt if madam wasn&#8217;t friendly too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty had seen the giving and taking of tea in more
+than one scene in the movies, and had also, from a
+discreet corner, witnessed the enacting of it right in the
+&#8220;set&#8221; on the studio lot. She remembered one time in
+particular when Luciline Lynch, the star in <i>Our
+Crimson Sins</i>, had driven Frank Redgar, the director,
+almost out of his senses by her inability to get the
+right turn of the wrist. Letty, too, had been almost
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span>
+out of her senses with the longing to be in Luciline
+Lynch&#8217;s place, to do the thing in what was obviously
+the way. But now that she was confronted with the
+opportunity in real life she saw the situation otherwise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I won&#8217;t be able to talk right,&#8221; was the difficulty
+she raised next.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;ll be a chance for madam to listen and ketch
+on. She&#8217;s horfly quick, madam is, and by listenin&#8217; to
+Miss Walbrook, that&#8217;s the lydy&#8217;s nyme, and listenin&#8217;
+to &#8217;erself&mdash;&#8221; He broke off to emphasize this line of
+suggestion&mdash;&#8220;it&#8217;s listenin&#8217; to &#8217;erself that&#8217;ll &#8217;elp madam
+most. It&#8217;s a thing as &#8217;ardly no one does. If they did
+they&#8217;d be &#8217;orrified at their squawky voices and bad
+pernounciation. If I didn&#8217;t listen to myself, why, I&#8217;d
+talk as bad as anyone, but&mdash;Well, as I sye, this&#8217;ll
+give madam a chance. All the time what Miss Walbrook
+is speakin&#8217; madam can be listenin&#8217; to &#8217;er and
+listenin&#8217; to &#8217;erself too, and if she mykes mistykes this
+time she&#8217;ll myke fewer the next.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty was pondering these hints as he continued.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now if madam wouldn&#8217;t think me steppin&#8217; out of
+my plyce I&#8217;d suggest that me and &#8217;er &#8217;as a little tea
+of our own like&mdash;right now&mdash;in the drorin&#8217; room&mdash;and
+I&#8217;ll be Miss Walbrook&mdash;and William&#8217;ll be William&mdash;and
+madam&#8217;ll be madam&mdash;and we&#8217;ll get it letter-perfect
+before &#8217;and, just as with Mary Ann Courage
+and Jyne.&#8221;</p>
+<p>No sooner said than done. Letty was already wearing
+the white filmy thing with the copper-sash, buried
+with solemn rites on the previous night, but disinterred
+that morning, which did very well as a tea-gown.
+Steptoe placed her in the corner of the sofa
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span>
+which the lyte Mrs. Allerton had generally occupied
+when &#8220;receivin&#8217; company&#8221;, and William brought in
+the tea-equipage on a gorgeous silver tray.</p>
+<p>Before he did this it had been necessary to school
+William to his part, which, to do him justice, he carried
+out with becoming gravity. Any reserves he
+might have felt were expressed to Golightly by a
+wink behind Steptoe&#8217;s back before he left the kitchen.
+The wink was the more expressive owing to the fact
+that Golightly and William had already summed up
+the old fellow as &#8220;balmy on the bean,&#8221; while their part
+was to humor him. Plain as a bursting shell seemed
+to William Miss Gravely&#8217;s position in the household,
+and Steptoe&#8217;s chivalry toward her an eccentricity
+which a sense of humor could enjoy. Otherwise they
+justified his reading of the fundamental non-morality
+of men, in bringing no condemnation to bear on anyone
+concerned. Being themselves two almost incapacitated
+heroes, with jobs likely to prove &#8220;soft,&#8221; it was
+wise, they felt, to enter into Steptoe&#8217;s comedy. At
+half past ten in the morning, therefore, Golightly prepared
+tea and buttered toast, while William arranged
+the tea-tray with those over-magnificent appointments
+which had been &#8220;the lyte Mrs. Allerton&#8217;s tyste.&#8221;</p>
+<p>From her corner of the sofa Letty heard the butler
+announce, in a voice stately but not stentorian: &#8220;Miss
+Barbara Walbrook.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was so near the door that to step out and step
+in again was the work of a second. In stepping in
+again he trod daintily, wriggling the back part of his
+person, better to simulate the feminine. In order
+that Letty should nowhere be caught unaware he put
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span>
+out his hand languidly, back upward, as princesses do
+when they expect it to be kissed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So delighted to find you at &#8217;ome, Mrs. Allerton.
+It&#8217;s such a very fine dye I was sure as you&#8217;d be out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rising from her corner Letty shook the relaxed
+hand as she might have shaken a dog&#8217;s tail. &#8220;Very
+pleased to meet you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>From the histrionic Steptoe lapsed at once into the
+critical. &#8220;I think if madam was to sye, &#8216;So glad to be
+<i>at</i> &#8217;ome, Miss Walbrook; do let me ring for tea,&#8217; it&#8217;d
+be more like the lyte Mrs. Allerton.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Obediently Letty repeated this formula, had the
+bell pointed out to her, and rang. The ladies having
+seated themselves, Miss Walbrook continued to improvise
+on the subject of the weather.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Some o&#8217; these October dyes&#8217;ll be just like summer
+time! and then agyne there&#8217;ll be a nip in the wind as&#8217;ll
+fairly freeze you. A good time o&#8217; year to get out your
+furs, and I&#8217;m sure I &#8217;ope as &#8217;ow the moths &#8217;aven&#8217;t
+gone and got at &#8217;em. Horfly nasty things them moths.
+They sye as everything in the world &#8217;as a use; but
+I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t see what use there is for moths,
+eatin&#8217; &#8217;oles in the seats of gentlemen&#8217;s trousers, no
+matter what you do to keep the coat-closet aired&mdash;and
+everything like that. What do you sye, Mrs.
+Allerton?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty was relieved of the necessity of answering
+by the entrance of William with the tray, after which
+her task became easier. Used to making &#8220;a good cup
+of tea&#8221; in an ordinary way, the doing it with this formal
+ceremoniousness was only a matter of revision.
+As if it was yesterday she recalled the instructions
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span>
+given to Luciline Lynch, &#8220;Lemon?&mdash;cream?&mdash;one
+lump?&mdash;two lumps?&#8221; so that Miss Walbrook was
+startled by her readiness. She, Miss Walbrook, was
+betrayed, in fact, into some confusion of personality,
+stating that she would have cream and no sugar, and
+that furthermore Englishmen like herself &#8217;ardly ever
+took lemon in their tea, and in her opinion no one ever
+did to whom the tea-drinking &#8217;abit was &#8217;abitual.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a question of tyste,&#8221; Miss Walbrook continued,
+sipping with a soft siffling noise in the way he considered
+to be ladylike. &#8220;Them that &#8217;as drunk tea
+with their mother&#8217;s milk, as you might sye, &#8217;ll tyke
+cream and sugar, one or both; but them that &#8217;as picked
+up the &#8217;abit in lyter life &#8217;ll often condescend to lemon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>What the rehearsal did for Letty was to make the
+mechanical task familiar, while she concentrated her
+attention on Miss Walbrook.</p>
+<p>It has to be admitted that to Barbara Walbrook
+Letty was a shock. Having worked for two years in
+the Bleary Street Settlement she had her preconceived
+ideas of what she was to find, and she found something
+so different that her first consciousness was that of
+being &#8220;sold.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe had received her at the door, and having
+ushered her into the drawing-room announced, &#8220;Miss
+Barbara Walbrook,&#8221; as if she had been calling on a
+duchess. From the semi-obscurity of the back drawing-room
+a small lithe figure came forward a step or
+two. The small lithe figure was wearing a tea-gown
+of which so practiced an eye as Miss Walbrook&#8217;s
+could not but estimate the provenance and value, while
+a sweet voice said:</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m so glad to be at home, Miss Walbrook. Do
+let me ring for tea.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Before a protest could be voiced the bell had been
+rung, so that Miss Walbrook found herself sitting
+in the chair Steptoe had used in the morning, and
+listening to her hostess as you listen to people in a
+dream.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Beautiful weather for October, isn&#8217;t it? Some of
+these October days&#8217;ll be just like summer time. And
+then again there&#8217;ll be a nip in the wind that&#8217;ll fairly
+freeze you. A good time of year to get out your furs,
+isn&#8217;t it? and I&#8217;m sure I hope the moths ain&#8217;t&mdash;haven&#8217;t&mdash;got
+at them. Awfully nasty things moths&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty&#8217;s further efforts were interrupted by William
+bearing the tray as he had borne it in the morning,
+and in the minutes of silence while he placed it Miss
+Walbrook could go through the mental process known
+as pulling oneself together.</p>
+<p>But she couldn&#8217;t pull herself together without a
+sense of outrage. She had expected to feel shame,
+vicariously for Rash; she had not expected to be asked
+to take part in a horrible bit of play-acting. This
+dressing-up; this mock hospitality; this desecration of
+the things which &#8220;dear Mrs. Allerton&#8221; had used; this
+mingling of ignorance and pretentiousness, inspired
+a rage prompting her to fling the back of her hand at
+the ridiculous creature&#8217;s face. She couldn&#8217;t do that,
+of course. She couldn&#8217;t even express herself as she
+felt. She had come on a mission, and she must carry
+out that mission; and to carry out the mission she must
+be as suave as her indignation would allow of. <i>She</i>
+was morally the mistress of this house. Rash and all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>
+Rash owned belonged to <i>her</i>. To see this strumpet
+sitting in her place....</p>
+<p>It did nothing to calm her that while she was pressing
+Rash&#8217;s ring into her flesh, beneath her glove, this
+vile thing was wearing a plain gold band, just as if
+she was married. She could understand that if they
+had absurdly walked through an absurd ceremony the
+absurd minister who performed it might have insisted
+on this absurd symbol; but it should have been
+snatched from the creature&#8217;s hand the minute the business
+was ended. They owed that to <i>her</i>. <i>Hers</i> was
+the only claim Rash had to consider, and to allow this
+farce to be enacted beneath his roof....</p>
+<p>But she remembered that Letty didn&#8217;t know who
+she was, or why she had come, or the degree to which
+she, Barbara Walbrook, saw through this foolery.</p>
+<p>Letty repeated her little formula: &#8220;Lemon?&mdash;cream?&mdash;one
+lump?&mdash;two lumps?&#8221; though before she
+reached the end of it her voice began to fail. Catching
+the hostility in the other woman&#8217;s bearing, she
+felt it the more acutely because in style, dress, and
+carriage this was the model she would have chosen for
+herself.</p>
+<p>Miss Walbrook waved hospitality aside. &#8220;Thank
+you, no; nothing in the way of tea.&#8221; She nodded over
+her shoulder towards William&#8217;s retreating form.
+&#8220;Who&#8217;s that man?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her tone was that of a person with the right to
+inquire. Letty didn&#8217;t question that right, knowing the
+extent to which she herself was an usurper. &#8220;His
+name is William.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How did he come here?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I don&#8217;t know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where are Nettie and Jane?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ve&mdash;they&#8217;ve left.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Left? Why?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I don&#8217;t know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And has Mrs. Courage left too?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty nodded, the damask flush flooding her cheeks
+darkly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When? Since&mdash;since you came?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty nodded again. She knew now that this was
+the bar of social judgment of which she had been
+afraid.</p>
+<p>The social judge continued. &#8220;That must be very
+hard on Mr. Allerton.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty bowed her head. &#8220;I suppose it is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s not used to new people about him, and it&#8217;s
+not good for him. I don&#8217;t know whether you&#8217;ve seen
+enough of him to know that he&#8217;s something of an
+invalid.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know&mdash;&#8221; she touched her forehead&mdash;&#8220;that he&#8217;s
+sick up here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, do you? Then I shouldn&#8217;t have thought that
+you&#8217;d have&mdash;&#8221; but she dropped this line to take up
+another. &#8220;Yes, he&#8217;s always been so. When he was
+a boy they were afraid he might be epileptic; and
+though he never was as bad as that he&#8217;s always needed
+to be taken care of. He can do very wild and foolish
+things as&mdash;as you&#8217;ve discovered for yourself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty felt herself now a little shameful lump of
+misery. This woman was so experienced, so right.
+She spoke with a decision and an authority which
+made love at first sight a fancy to blush at. Letty
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span>
+could say nothing because there was nothing to say,
+and meanwhile the determined voice went on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s terrible for a man like him to make such a
+mistake, because being what he is he can&#8217;t grapple with
+it as a stronger or a coarser man would do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But here Letty saw something that might be faintly
+pleaded in her own defence. &#8220;He says he wouldn&#8217;t
+ha&#8217; made the mistake if that&mdash;that other girl hadn&#8217;t
+been crazy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara drew herself up. &#8220;Did he&mdash;did he say
+that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He said something like it. He said she went off
+the hooks, just like he did himself.&#8221; She raised her
+eyes. &#8220;Do you know her, Miss Walbrook?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I know her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She must be an awful fool.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara prayed for patience. &#8220;What&mdash;what makes
+you say so?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, just what <i>he&#8217;s</i> said.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what has he said? Has he talked about her
+to <i>you</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He hasn&#8217;t talked about her. He&#8217;s just&mdash;just let
+things out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What sort of things?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only that sort.&#8221; She added, as if to herself: &#8220;I
+don&#8217;t believe he thinks much of her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara&#8217;s self-control was miraculous. &#8220;I&#8217;ve understood
+that he was very much in love with her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, perhaps he is.&#8221; Letty&#8217;s little movement of
+the shoulders hinted that an expert wouldn&#8217;t be of
+this opinion. &#8220;He may think he is, anyhow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if he thinks he is&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span></div>
+<p>Letty&#8217;s eyes rested on her visitor with their compelling
+candor. &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe men know much
+about love, do you, Miss Walbrook?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It depends. All men haven&#8217;t had as much experience
+of it as I suppose you&#8217;ve had&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I haven&#8217;t had any.&#8221; The candor of the eyes
+was now in the whole of the truthful face. &#8220;Nobody
+was ever in love with me&mdash;never. I never had a
+fella&mdash;nor nothing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In spite of herself Barbara believed this. She
+couldn&#8217;t help herself. She could hear Rash saying
+that whatever else was wrong in the ridiculous business
+the girl herself was straight. All the same the discussion
+was beneath her. It was beneath her to listen to
+opinions of herself coming from such a source. If
+Rash didn&#8217;t &#8220;think much of her&#8221; there was something
+to &#8220;have out&#8221; with him, not with this little street-waif
+dressed up with this ludicrous mummery. The sooner
+she ended the business on which she had come the
+sooner she would get a legitimate outlet for the passion
+of jealousy and rage consuming her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But we&#8217;re wandering away from my errand. I
+won&#8217;t pretend that I&#8217;ve come of my own accord. I&#8217;m
+a very old friend of Mr. Allerton&#8217;s, and he&#8217;s asked
+me&mdash;or practically asked me&mdash;to come and find
+out&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>For what she was to come and find out she lacked for
+a minute the right word, and so held up the sentence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What I&#8217;d take to let him off?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The form of expression was so crude that once more
+Barbara was startled. &#8220;Well, that&#8217;s what it would
+come to.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;But I&#8217;ve told him already that&mdash;that I want to let
+him off anyhow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes? And on what terms?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want any terms.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but there must be <i>terms</i>. He couldn&#8217;t let you
+do it&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He could let me do it for <i>him</i>, couldn&#8217;t he? I&#8217;d
+go through fire, if it&#8217;d make him a bit more comfortable
+than he is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara could not believe her ears. &#8220;Do you want
+me to understand that&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That I&#8217;ll do whatever will make him happy just
+to <i>make</i> him happy? Yes. That&#8217;s it. He didn&#8217;t need
+to send no one&mdash;to send anyone&mdash;to ask me, because
+I&#8217;ve told him so already. He wants me to get out.
+Well, I&#8217;m ready to get out. He wants me to go to
+the bad. Well, I&#8217;m ready&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; he understands all that. But, don&#8217;t you see?
+a man in his position couldn&#8217;t take such a sacrifice
+from a girl in yours&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Unless he pays me for it in cash.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s putting it in a nutshell. If you owned a
+house, for instance, and I wanted it, I&#8217;d buy it from
+you and pay you for it; but I couldn&#8217;t take it as a
+gift, no matter how liberal you were nor how much I
+needed it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can see that about a house; but your own self
+is different. I could sell a house when I couldn&#8217;t sell&mdash;myself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but would you call that selling yourself?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;d be selling myself&mdash;the way I look at it. When
+I&#8217;m so ready to do what he wants I can&#8217;t see why he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span>
+don&#8217;t let me.&#8221; She added, tearfully: &#8220;Did he tell
+you about this morning?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She nodded. &#8220;Yes, he told me about that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I would have gone then if&mdash;if I&#8217;d known
+how to work the door.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s easy enough.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you know?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Will you show me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Walbrook rose. &#8220;It&#8217;s so simple.&#8221; She continued,
+as they went toward the door: &#8220;You see, Mr.
+Allerton&#8217;s mother always kept a lot of valuable jewelry
+in the house, and she was afraid of burglars. She
+had the most wonderful pearls. I suppose Mr. Allerton
+has them still, locked away in some bank. Burglars
+would never come in by the front door, my aunt
+used to tell her, but&mdash;&#8221; They reached the door itself.
+&#8220;Now, you see, there&#8217;s a common lock, a bolt, and a
+chain&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty explained that she had discovered them
+already.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, you see these two little brass knobs over here?
+That&#8217;s the trick. You push this one this way, and that
+one that way, and the door is locked with an extra
+double lock, which hardly anyone would suspect.
+See?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She shook the door which resisted as it had resisted
+Letty in the morning.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now! You push that one this way, and this one
+that way&mdash;and there you are!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She opened the door to show how easily the thing
+could be done; and the door being open she passed out.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>
+She had not intended to go in this way; but, after
+all, was not her mission accomplished? It was nothing
+to her whether this girl accepted money, or whether
+she did not. The one thing essential was that she
+should take herself away; and if she was sincere in
+what she said she had now the means of doing it.
+Without troubling herself to take her leave Miss Walbrook
+went down the steps.</p>
+<p>Before turning toward Fifth Avenue she glanced
+back. Letty was standing in the open doorway, her
+flaming eyes wide, her expression puzzled and
+wounded. &#8220;It&#8217;s nothing to me,&#8221; Barbara repeated to
+herself firmly; but because she was a lady, as she
+understood the word lady, almost before she was a
+woman, she smiled faintly, with a distant, and yet not
+discourteous, inclination of the head.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XVII' id='CHAPTER_XVII'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XVII</h2>
+</div>
+<p>It was because she was a lady, as she understood
+the word lady, that by the time she had walked the
+few steps into Fifth Avenue Miss Walbrook already
+felt the inner reproach of having done something
+mean. To do anything mean was so strange to her
+that she didn&#8217;t at first recognize the sensation. She
+only found herself repeating two words, and repeating
+them uneasily: &#8220;<i>Noblesse oblige!</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, on the principle that all&#8217;s fair in love
+and war, she fought this off. &#8220;Either she must go or
+I must.&#8221; That she herself should go was not to be
+considered; therefore the other must go, and by the
+shortest way. The shortest way was the way she
+had shown her, and which the girl herself was desirous
+to take. There was no more than that to the situation.</p>
+<p>There was no more than that to the situation unless
+it was that the strong was taking a poor advantage
+of the weak. But then, why shouldn&#8217;t the strong take
+any advantage it possessed? What otherwise was the
+use of being strong? The strong prevailed, and the
+weak went under. That was the law of life. To suppose
+that the weak must prevail because it was weak
+was sheer sentimentality. All the same, those two
+inconvenient words kept dinning in her ears: &#8220;<i>Noblesse
+oblige!</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>She began to question the honesty which in Letty&#8217;s
+presence had convinced her. It was probably not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span>
+honesty at all. She had known girls in the Bleary
+Street Settlement who could persuade her that black
+was white, but who had proved on further knowledge
+to be lying all round the compass. When it wasn&#8217;t
+lying it was bluff. It was possible that Letty was
+only bluffing, that in her pretense at magnanimity she
+was simply scheming for a bigger price. In that case
+she, Barbara, had called the bluff very skilfully. She
+had put her in a position in which she could be taken
+at her word. Since she was ready to go, she could go.
+Since she was ready to go to the bad....</p>
+<p>Miss Walbrook was not prim. She knew too much
+of the world to be easily shocked, in the old conventional
+sense. Besides, her Bleary Street work had
+brought her into contact with girls who had gone to
+the bad, and she had not found them different from
+other girls. If she hadn&#8217;t known....</p>
+<p>She could contemplate without horror, therefore,
+Letty&#8217;s taking desperate steps&mdash;if indeed she hadn&#8217;t
+taken them long ago&mdash;and yet she herself didn&#8217;t want
+to be involved in the proceeding. It was one thing to
+view an unfortunate situation from which you stood
+detached, and another to be in a certain sense the
+cause of it. She would not really be the cause of it,
+whatever the girl did, since she, the girl, was a free
+agent, and of an age to know her own mind. Moreover,
+the secret of the door was one which she couldn&#8217;t
+help finding out in any case. She, Miss Walbrook,
+could dismiss these scruples; and yet there was that
+uncomfortable sing-song humming through her brain:
+&#8220;<i>Noblesse oblige! Noblesse oblige!</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must get rid of it,&#8221; she said to herself, as Wildgoose
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span>
+admitted her. &#8220;I&#8217;ve got to be on the safe side.
+I can&#8217;t have it on my mind.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Going to the telephone before she had so much as
+taken off her gloves she was answered by Steptoe.
+&#8220;This is Miss Walbrook again, Steptoe. I should
+like to speak to&mdash;to the young woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe who had found Letty crying after Miss
+Walbrook&#8217;s departure answered with resentful politeness.
+&#8220;I&#8217;ll speak to Mrs. Allerton, miss. She <i>may</i> be
+aible to come to the telephone.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ye-es?&#8221; came later, in a feeble, teary voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is Miss Walbrook again. I&#8217;m sorry to
+trouble you the second time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, that doesn&#8217;t matter.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I merely wanted to say, what perhaps I should have
+said before I left, that I hope you won&#8217;t&mdash;won&#8217;t <i>use</i>
+the information I gave you as I was leaving&mdash;at any
+rate not at once.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you mean the door?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Exactly. I was afraid after I came away that you
+might do something in a hurry&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll have to be in a hurry if I do it at all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t see that. In any case, I&#8217;d&mdash;I&#8217;d think
+it over. Perhaps we could have another talk about it,
+and then&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Something was said which sounded like a faint,
+&#8220;Very well,&#8221; so that Barbara put up the receiver.</p>
+<p>Her conscience relieved she could open the dams
+keeping back the fiercer tides of her anger. Rash had
+talked about her to this girl! He had given her to
+understand that she was a fool! He had allowed it to
+appear that &#8220;he didn&#8217;t think much of her!&#8221; No matter
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>
+what he had said, the girl had been able to make these
+inferences. What was more, these inferences might
+be true. Perhaps he <i>didn&#8217;t</i> think much of her! Perhaps
+he only <i>thought</i> he was in love with her! The
+idea was so terrible that it stilled her, as approaching
+seismic storm will still the elements. She moved about
+the drawing-room, taking off her gloves, her veil, her
+hat, and laying them together on a table, as if she
+was afraid to make a sound. She was standing beside
+that table, not knowing what to do next, or where to
+go, when Wildgoose came to the door to announce,
+&#8220;Mr. Allerton.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve seen her.&#8221; Without other form of greeting,
+or moving from beside the table, she picked up her
+gloves, threw them down again, picked them up again,
+threw them down again, with the nervous action of
+the hands which betrayed suppressed excitement. &#8220;I
+didn&#8217;t believe her&mdash;quite.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you didn&#8217;t disbelieve her&mdash;wholly?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a difficult case.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got you into an awful scrape, Barbe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She threw down the gloves with special vigor. &#8220;Oh,
+don&#8217;t begin on that. The scrape&#8217;s there. What we
+have to find is the way out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, do you see it any more clearly?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He came near to her. &#8220;I see this&mdash;that I can&#8217;t let
+her throw herself away for me. I&#8217;ve been thinking it
+over, and I want to ask your opinion of this plan.
+Let&#8217;s sit down.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She thought his plan the maddest that was ever
+proposed, and yet she accepted it. She accepted it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span>
+because she was suspicious, jealous, and unhappy.
+&#8220;It&#8217;ll give me the chance to watch&mdash;and <i>see</i>,&#8221; she said
+to herself, as he talked.</p>
+<p>In his opinion Letty couldn&#8217;t take their point of
+view because she was so inexperienced. It seemed to
+her a simple thing to go away, leaving them with the
+responsibilities of her future on their consciences; and
+it would not seem other than a simple thing till she
+saw life more as they did. To bring her to this degree
+of culture they must be subtle with her, and patient.
+They <ins class="trnote" title="musn&#8217;t in original text">mustn&#8217;t</ins> rush things. They mustn&#8217;t let her rush
+them. To end the situation in such a way as to make
+for happiness they must end it at a point where all
+would be best for all concerned. For Barbara and
+himself nothing would be best which was not also best
+for the girl. What would be best for the girl would be
+some degree of education, of knowledge of the world,
+so that she might go back to the life whence they had
+plucked her less likely to be a prey to the vicious. In
+that case, if they supplied her with a little income she
+would know what to do with it, and would perhaps
+marry some man in her own class able to take care of her.</p>
+<p>Barbara&#8217;s impulse was to cry out: &#8220;That&#8217;s the most
+preposterous suggestion I ever heard of in my life!&#8221;
+But she controlled this quite reasonable prompting because
+another voice said to her: &#8220;This will give you
+the opportunity to keep an eye on them. If he&#8217;s not
+true in his love for you&mdash;if there <i>is</i> an infatuation on
+his part for this common and vulgar creature&mdash;you&#8217;ll
+be able to detect it.&#8221; Jealousy loving to suffer she
+was willing to inflict torture on herself for the sake
+of catching him in disloyalty.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span></div>
+<p>Expecting a storm, and bringing out what he considered
+his wise proposals with great embarrassment,
+Allerton was surprised and pleased at the sympathetic
+calm in which she received them.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So that you&#8217;d suggest&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Our keeping her on a while longer, and making
+friends with her. I&#8217;d like it tremendously if you&#8217;d be
+a friend to her, because you could do more for her than
+anyone.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;More than you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;d do my bit too,&#8221; he assured her, innocently.
+&#8220;I could put her up to a lot of things, seeing her every
+day as I should. But you&#8217;re the one I should really
+count on.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Because the words hurt her more than any she
+could utter; she said, quietly: &#8220;I suppose you remember
+sometimes that after all she&#8217;s your wife.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He sprang to his feet. Knowing that he did at
+times remember it he tried to deny it. &#8220;No, I don&#8217;t.
+She&#8217;s not. I don&#8217;t admit it. I don&#8217;t acknowledge it.
+If you care anything about me, Barbe, you&#8217;ll never
+say that again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He came and knelt beside her, taking her hands
+and kissing them. Laying his head in her lap, he
+begged to be caressed, as if he had been a dog.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless by half past nine that evening he was
+at home, sitting by the fireside with Letty, and beginning
+his special part in the great experiment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s not my wife,&#8221; he kept repeating to himself
+poignantly, as he walked up the Avenue from the
+Club; &#8220;she&#8217;s not&mdash;she&#8217;s <i>not</i>. But she <i>is</i> a poor child
+toward whom I&#8217;ve undertaken grave responsibilities.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span></div>
+<p>Because the responsibilities were grave, and she was
+a poor child, his attitude toward her began to be
+paternal. It was the more freely paternal because
+Barbe approved of what he was undertaking. Had she
+disapproved he might have undertaken it all the same,
+but he couldn&#8217;t have done it with this whole-heartedness.
+He would have been haunted by the fear of
+her displeasure; whereas now he could let himself go.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t want to keep you a prisoner, or detain
+you against your will,&#8221; he said, with regard to the
+incident of the morning, &#8220;but if you&#8217;ll stay with us a
+little longer, I think we can convince you of our
+good intentions.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who&#8217;s&mdash;we?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She shot the question at him, as she lay back in
+her chair, the red book in her lap. He smiled inwardly
+at the ready pertinence with which she went to
+a point he didn&#8217;t care to discuss.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, then, suppose I said&mdash;I? That&#8217;ll do, won&#8217;t
+it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She shot another question, her flaming eyes half
+veiled. &#8220;How long would you want me to stay?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Suppose we didn&#8217;t fix a time? Suppose we just
+left it&mdash;like that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The question rose to her lips: &#8220;But in the end I&#8217;m
+to go?&#8221; only, on second thoughts she repressed it.
+She preferred that the situation should be left &#8220;like
+that,&#8221; since it meant that she was not at once to be
+separated from the prince. The fact that she was
+legally the prince&#8217;s wife had as little reality to her as
+to him. Could she have had what she yearned for
+law or no law would have been the same to her. But
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>
+since she couldn&#8217;t have that, it was much that he
+should come like this and sit with her by the fire in
+the evening.</p>
+<p>He leaned forward and took the book from her
+lap. &#8220;What are you reading? Oh, this! I haven&#8217;t
+looked at it for years.&#8221; He glanced at the title. &#8220;<i>The
+Little Mermaid!</i> That used to be my favorite. It
+still is. When I was in Copenhagen I went to see the
+little bronze mermaid sitting on a rock on the shore.
+It&#8217;s a memorial to Hans Andersen. She&#8217;s quite startling
+for a minute&mdash;till you know what it is. Where
+are you at?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pointing out the line at which she had stopped her
+hand touched his, but all the consciousness of the
+accident was on her side. He seemed to notice nothing,
+beginning to read aloud to her, with no suspicion
+that sentiment existed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Many an evening and morning she rose to the
+place where she had left the prince. She watched the
+fruits in the garden ripen and fall; she saw the snow
+melt from the high mountains; but the prince she
+never saw, and she came home sadder than ever. Her
+one consolation was to sit in her little garden, with
+her arms clasped round the marble statue which was
+like the prince&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;d be me,&#8221; Letty whispered to herself; &#8220;my
+arms clasped round a marble statue&mdash;like my prince&mdash;but
+only a marble statue.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Her flowers were neglected,&#8221; Allerton read on,
+&#8220;and grew wild in a luxuriant tangle of stem and
+blossom, reaching the branches of the willow-tree, and
+making the whole place dark and dim. At last she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>
+could bear it no longer and she told one of her sisters&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t tell my sister, if I had one,&#8221; Letty
+assured herself. &#8220;I&#8217;d never tell no one. It&#8217;s more
+like my own secret when I keep it to myself. Nobody&#8217;ll
+ever know&mdash;not even him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The other sisters learned the story then, but they
+told it to no one but a few other mermaids, who told
+it to their intimate friends. One of these friends
+knew who the prince was, and told the princess where
+he came from and where his kingdom lay. Now she
+knew where he lived; and many a night she spent
+there, floating on the water. She ventured nearer to
+the land than any of her sisters had done. She
+swam up the narrow lagoon, under the carved
+marble balcony; and there she sat and watched the
+prince when he thought himself alone in the moonlight.
+She remembered how his head had rested
+on her breast, and how she had kissed his brow; but
+he would never know, and could not even dream
+of her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty had not kissed her prince&#8217;s brow, but she had
+kissed his feet; but he would never know that, and
+would dream of her no more than this other prince
+of the little thing who loved him.</p>
+<p>Allerton continued to read on, partly because the
+old tale came back to him with its enchanting loveliness,
+partly because reading aloud would be a feature
+of his educational scheme, and partly because it
+soothed him to be doing it. He could never read to
+Barbara. Once, when he tried it, the sound of his
+voice and the monotony of his cadences, so got on her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span>
+nerves that she stopped him in the middle of a word.
+But this girl with her uncritical mind, and her gratitude
+for small bits of kindliness, gave him confidence
+in himself by her rapt way of listening.</p>
+<p>She did listen raptly, since a prince&#8217;s reading must
+always be more arresting than that of ordinary
+mortals, and also because, both consciously and subconsciously,
+she was taking his pronunciation as a
+standard.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>And just at this minute her name was under discussion
+in a brilliant gathering at The Hindoo Lantern,
+in another quarter of New York.</p>
+<p>If you know The Hindoo Lantern you know how
+much it depends on atmosphere. Once a disused warehouse
+in a section of the city which commerce had
+forsaken, the enthusiasm for the dance which arose
+about 1910, has made it a temple. It gains, too, by
+being a temple of the esoteric. The Hindoo Lantern
+is not everybody&#8217;s lantern, and does not swing in the
+open vulgar street. You might live in New York a
+hundred years and unless you were one of the initiated
+and privileged, you might never know of its
+existence.</p>
+<p>You could not so much as approach it were it not
+first explained to you what you ought to do. You
+must pass through a tobacconist&#8217;s, which from the
+street looks like any other tobacconist&#8217;s, after which
+you traverse a yard, which looks like any other yard,
+except that it is bounded by a wall in which there is
+a small and unobtrusive door. Beside the small and
+unobtrusive door there hangs a bell-rope, of the ancient
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span>
+kind suggesting the convent or the Orient. The bell-rope
+pulls a bell; the bell clangs overhead; the door
+is opened cautiously by a Hindoo lad, or, as some say,
+a mulatto boy dressed as a Hindoo. If you are with
+a friend of the institution you will be admitted without
+more inspection; but should you be a stranger there
+will be a scrutiny of your passports. Assuming, however,
+that you go in, you will find a small courtyard,
+in which at last The Hindoo Lantern hangs mystic,
+suggestive, in oriental iron-work, and panels of colored
+glass.</p>
+<p>Having passed beneath this symbol you will enter
+an antechamber rich in the magic of the East. In a
+reverent obscurity you will find Buddha on the right,
+Vishnu on the left, with flowers set before the one,
+while incense burns before the other. Somewhere in
+the darkness an Oriental woman will be seated on the
+ground, twanging on a sarabar, and now and then
+crooning a chant of invitation to come and share in
+darksome rites. You will thus be &#8220;worked up&#8221; to a
+sense of the mysterious before you pass the third gate
+of privilege into the shrine itself.</p>
+<p>Here you will discover the large empty oval of floor,
+surrounded by little tables for segregation and refreshment,
+with which the past ten years have made us
+familiar. The place will be buzzing with the hum of
+voices, merry with duologues of laughter, and steaming
+with tobacco smoke. A jazz-band will strike up,
+coughing out the nauseated, retching intervals so
+stimulating to our feet, and two by two, in driblets,
+streamlets, and lastly in a volume, the guests will take
+the floor.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span></div>
+<p>In the way of &#8220;steps&#8221; all the latest will be on exhibition.
+You will see the cow-trot, the rabbit-jump,
+the broom-stick, the washerwoman&#8217;s dip. Everyone
+who is anyone will be here, if not on one night then
+on another, in a jovial fraternity steeped in the spirit
+of democracy. Revelry will be sustained on lemonade
+and a resinous astringent known locally as beer, while
+a sense of doing the forbidden will be in the air. For
+commercial reasons it will be needful to keep it in the
+air, since in the proceedings themselves there will be
+nothing more occult, or more inciting to iniquity, than
+a kindergarten game.</p>
+<p>Hither Mr. Gorry Larrabin had brought Mademoiselle
+Odette Coucoul, to teach her the new dances.
+As a matter of fact, he had just led her back to their
+little table, inconspicuously placed in the front row,
+after putting her through the paces of the camel-step.
+Mademoiselle had found it entrancing, so much more
+novel in the motion than the antiquated valses she had
+danced in France. Mr. Larrabin had retreated like
+a camel walking backwards, while she had advanced
+like a camel going forwards. The art was in lifting
+the foot quite high, throwing it slightly backwards,
+and setting it down with a delicate deliberation, while
+you craned the neck before you with a shake of the
+Adam&#8217;s apple. To incite you to produce this effect
+the jazz-band urged you onward with a sob, a gulp,
+a moan, an effect of strangulation, till finally it tore
+up the seat of your being as if you had been suddenly
+struck sea-sick.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mon Dieu, but it is lofely,&#8221; mademoiselle gurgled,
+laughing in her breathlessness. &#8220;It is terr-i-bul to call
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>
+no one a camel&mdash;<i>un chameau</i>&mdash;in France; but here
+am I a&mdash;<i>chameau</i>!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gorry took this with puzzled amusement. &#8220;What&#8217;s
+the matter with calling anyone a camel? I don&#8217;t see
+any harm in that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle hid her face in confusion. &#8220;Oh, but
+it is terr-i-bul, terr-i-bul! It is almost so worse as
+to call no one a&mdash;how you say zat word in Eenglish?&mdash;a
+cow, n&#8217;est ce pas?&mdash;<i>une vache</i>&mdash;and zat is the
+most bad name what you can call no one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Looking across the room Gorry was struck with an
+idea. &#8220;Well, there&#8217;s a&mdash;what d&#8217;ye call it&mdash;<i>a vashe</i>&mdash;over
+there. See that guy with the girl with the cream-colored
+hair&mdash;fella with a big black mustache, like a
+brigand in a play? There&#8217;s a <i>vashe</i> all-righty; and yet
+I&#8217;ve got to keep in with him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As he explained his reasons for keeping in with the
+&#8220;vashe&#8221; in question mademoiselle contented herself
+with shedding radiance and paying no attention.
+Neither did she pay attention when he went on to tell
+of the girl who had disappeared, and of her stepfather&#8217;s
+reasons for finding her. She woke to cognizance
+of the subject only when Gorry repeated the
+exact words of Miss Tina Vanzetti that morning:
+&#8220;Name of Letty Gravely.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was mademoiselle&#8217;s turn for repetition. &#8220;But me,
+I know dat name. I &#8217;ear it not so long ago. Name
+of Let-ty Grav-el-ly! I sure &#8217;ear zat name all recently.&#8221;
+She reflected, tapping her forehead with
+vivacity. &#8220;Mais quand? Mais oui? C&#8217;&eacute;tait&mdash;Ah!&#8221;
+The exclamation was the sharp cry of discovery.
+&#8220;Tina Vanzetti&mdash;my frien&#8217;! She tell me zis morning.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>
+Zat girl&mdash;Let-ty Grav-el-ly&mdash;she come chez
+Margot with ole man&mdash;what he keep ze white slave&mdash;and
+he command her grand beautiful trousseau&mdash;Tina
+Vanzetti she will give me ze address&mdash;and I will
+tell you&mdash;and you will tell him&mdash;and he will put you
+on to <i>riche affairs</i>&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll be dollars and cents in the box office for me,&#8221;
+Gorry interpreted, forcibly, while the band belched
+forth a chord like the groan of a dying monster, calling
+them again to their feet.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Remember,&#8217; said the witch,&#8221; Allerton continued
+to read, &#8220;&#8216;when you have once assumed a human form
+you can never again be a mermaid&mdash;never return to
+your home or to your sisters more. Should you fail
+to win the prince&#8217;s love, so that he leaves father and
+mother for your sake, and lays his hand in yours
+before the priest, an immortal soul will never be
+granted you. On the same day that he marries another
+your heart will break, and you will drift as sea-foam
+on the water.&#8217; &#8216;So let it be,&#8217; said the little mermaid,
+turning pale as death.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton lifted his eyes from the book. &#8220;Does it
+bore you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was no mistaking her sincerity. &#8220;<i>No!</i> I <i>love</i> it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then perhaps we&#8217;ll read a lot of things. After
+this we&#8217;ll find a good novel, and then possibly somebody&#8217;s
+life. You&#8217;d like that, wouldn&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her joy was such that he could hardly hear the
+&#8220;Yes,&#8221; for which he was listening. He listened because
+he was so accustomed to boring people that to
+know he was not boring them was a consolation.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Is there anybody&#8217;s life&mdash;his biography&mdash;that you&#8217;d
+be specially interested in?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She answered timidly and yet daringly. &#8220;Could
+we&mdash;could we read the life of the late Queen Victoria&mdash;when
+she was a girl?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, easily! I&#8217;ll hunt round for one to-day. Now
+let me tell you about Hans Andersen. He was born
+in Denmark, so that he was a Dane. You know
+where Denmark is on the map, don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think I do. It&#8217;s there by Germany isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quite right. But let me get the atlas, and we&#8217;ll
+look it up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was on his feet when she summoned her forces
+for a question. &#8220;Do you read like this to&mdash;to the girl
+you&#8217;re engaged to?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; he said, reddening. &#8220;She&mdash;she doesn&#8217;t like
+it. She won&#8217;t let me. But wait a minute. I&#8217;ll go
+and get the atlas.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;On the same day that he marries another,&#8217; Letty
+repeated to herself, as she sat alone, &#8216;your heart will
+break, and you will drift as sea-foam on the water.&#8217;
+&#8216;So let it be,&#8217; said the little mermaid.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XVIII' id='CHAPTER_XVIII'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XVIII</h2>
+</div>
+<p>On the next afternoon Allerton reported to Miss
+Walbrook the success of his first educational
+evening.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s very intelligent, very. You&#8217;d really be
+pleased with her, Barbe. Her mind is so starved that
+it absorbs everything you say to her, as a dry soil
+will drink up rain.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Regarding him with the mysterious Egyptian expression
+which had at times suggested the reincarnation
+of some ancient spirit Barbara maintained the
+stillness which had come upon her on the previous
+day. &#8220;That must be very satisfactory to you, Rash.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He agreed the more enthusiastically because of believing
+her at one with him in this endeavor. &#8220;You
+bet! The whole thing is going to work out. She&#8217;ll
+pick up our point of view as if she was born to it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you&#8217;re not afraid of her picking up anything
+else?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Anything else of what kind?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She might fall in love with you, mightn&#8217;t she?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;With me? Nonsense! No one would fall in love
+with me who&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her mysterious Egyptian smile came and went.
+&#8220;You can stop there, Rash. It&#8217;s no use being more
+uncomplimentary than you need to be. And then,
+too, you might fall in love with her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Barbe!&#8221; He cried out, as if wounded. &#8220;You&#8217;re
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>
+really too absurd. She&#8217;s a good little thing, and she&#8217;s
+had the devil&#8217;s own luck&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They always do have. That was one thing I learnt
+in Bleary Street. It was never a girl&#8217;s own fault.
+It was always the devil&#8217;s own luck.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, isn&#8217;t it, now, when you come to think of
+it? You can&#8217;t take everything away from people, and
+expect them to have the same standards as you and
+me. Think of the mess that people of our sort make
+of things, even with every advantage.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve our own temptations, of course.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And they&#8217;ve got theirs&mdash;without our pull in the
+way of carrying them off. You should hear Steptoe&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to hear Steptoe. I&#8217;ve heard him too
+much already.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you mean by that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What can I mean by it but just what I say? I
+should think you&#8217;d get rid of him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Having first looked puzzled, with a suggestion of
+pain, he ended with a laugh. &#8220;You might as well
+expect me to get rid of an old grandfather. Steptoe
+wouldn&#8217;t let me, if I wanted to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He doesn&#8217;t like me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s just your imagination, Barbe. I&#8217;ll answer
+for him when it comes to&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You needn&#8217;t take the trouble to do that, because
+I don&#8217;t like him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but you will when you come to understand him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Possibly; but I don&#8217;t mean to come to understand
+him. Old servants can be an awful nuisance,
+Rash&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;But Steptoe isn&#8217;t exactly an old servant. He&#8217;s
+more like&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I know what he&#8217;s like. He&#8217;s a habit; and
+habits are always dangerous, even when they&#8217;re good.
+But we&#8217;re not going to quarrel about Steptoe yet. I
+just thought I&#8217;d put you on your guard&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Against him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a horrid old schemer, if that&#8217;s what you want
+me to say; but then it may be what you like.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I do,&#8221; he laughed, &#8220;when it comes to him.
+He&#8217;s been a horrid old schemer as long as I remember
+him, but always for my good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For your good as he sees it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For my good as a kind old nurse might see it. He&#8217;s
+limited, of course; but then kind old nurses generally
+are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To be true to her vow of keeping the peace she
+forced back her irritations, and smiled. &#8220;You&#8217;re an
+awful goose, Rash; but then you&#8217;re a lovable goose,
+aren&#8217;t you?&#8221; She beckoned, imperiously. &#8220;Come
+here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>When he was on his knees beside her chair she
+pressed back his face framed by her two hands. &#8220;Now
+tell me. Which do you love most&mdash;Steptoe or me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He cast about him for two of her special preferences.
+&#8220;And you tell me; which do you love most, a
+saddle-horse or an opera?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I told you, which should I be?&mdash;the opera or
+the saddle-horse?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I told you, which would you give up?&#8221;</p>
+<p>So they talked foolishly, as lovers do in the chaffing
+stage, she trying to charm him into promising to get
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>
+rid of Steptoe, he charmed by her willingness to
+charm him. Neither remembered that technically he
+was a married man; but then neither had ever taken
+his marriage to Letty as a serious breach in their
+relations.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>While he was thus on his knees the kindly old nurse
+was giving to Letty a kindly old nurse&#8217;s advice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If madam &#8217;ud go out and tyke a walk I think it&#8217;d
+do madam good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To madam the suggestion had elements of mingled
+terror and attraction. &#8220;But, Steptoe, I couldn&#8217;t go
+out and take a walk unless I dressed up in the new outdoor
+suit.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what did madam buy it for?&mdash;with the &#8217;at
+and the vyle, and everythink, just like the lyte Mrs.
+Allerton.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was the argument she was hoping for. In the
+first place she was used to the freedom of the streets;
+and in the second the outdoor suit was calling her.
+Letty&#8217;s love of dress was more than a love of appearing
+at her best, though that love was part of it; it
+was a love of the clothes themselves, of fabrics,
+colors, and fashions. When her dreams were not of
+wandering knights who loved her at a glance&mdash;bankers,
+millionaires, casting directors in motion-picture
+studios, or, in high flights of imagination, incognito
+English lords&mdash;they dealt in costumes of magic
+tissue, of hues suited to her hair and eyes, in which
+the world saw and greeted her, not as the poor little
+waif whom Judson Flack had put out of doors, but
+the true Letty Gravely of romance. The Letty Gravely
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>
+of romance was the real Letty Gravely, a being set
+free from the cruel, the ugly, the carking, the sordid,
+to flourish in a sunlight she knew to be shining
+somewhere.</p>
+<p>Oddly enough her vision had come partly true; and
+yet so out of focus that she couldn&#8217;t see its truth.
+It was like the sunlight which she knew to be shining
+somewhere, with a wrong refraction in its rays. The
+world into which she had been carried was like that
+in a cubist picture which someone had shown her at
+the studio. It bore a relation to the world she knew,
+but a relation in which whatever she had supposed
+to be perpendicular was oblique, and whatever she had
+supposed to be oblique was horizontal, and nothing
+as she had been accustomed to find it. It made her
+head swim. It was literally true that she was afraid
+to move lest she should make a misstep through an
+error in her sense of planes.</p>
+<p>But clothes she understood. In the swirling of her
+universe they formed a rock to which her intelligence
+could cling. They kept her sane. In a sense they kept
+her happy. When all outside was confusion and topsy-turvyness
+she could retire among Margot&#8217;s cartons,
+and find herself on solid ground. I should be sorry
+to record the hours she spent before the long mirror
+in the little back spare room. Here her imagination
+could give itself free range. She was Luciline Lynch,
+and Mercola Merch, and Lisabel Anstey, and any
+other star of whom she admired the attainments; she
+could play a whole series of parts from which her
+lack of a wardrobe had hitherto excluded her. From
+time to time she ventured, like Steptoe, to be Barbara
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span>
+Walbrook herself, though assuming the role with less
+intrepidity than he.</p>
+<p>It was easier, she found, to be any of the stars
+than Barbara Walbrook, for the reason that the latter
+was &#8220;the real thing.&#8221; She was living her part, not
+playing it. She was &#8220;letter perfect,&#8221; in Steptoe&#8217;s
+sense, not because a director moved her person this
+way, or turned her head that way, but because life had
+so infused her that she did what was right unconsciously.
+Letty, by pretending to enter at the door and
+come forward to the mirror as to a living presence,
+studied what was right by imitation. Miss Walbrook
+walked with a swift, easy gait which suggested the
+precision of certain strong birds when swooping on
+their prey. Between the door and the mirror Letty
+aimed at the same effect till she made a discovery.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t do it her way; I can only do it my way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The ways were different; yet each could be effective.
+That too was a discovery. Nature had no rule
+to which every individual was obliged to conform.
+The individual was, in a measure, his own rule, and
+got his attractiveness from being so. The minute
+you abandoned your own gifts to cultivate those with
+which Nature had blessed someone else you lost not
+only your identity but your charm.</p>
+<p>Letty worked this out as something like a principle.
+However many the hints she took it would be
+folly to try to be anything but herself. After all, it
+was what gave her value to a star, her personality. If
+Luciline Lynch whom Nature had endowed with the
+grand manner had tried to be Mercola Merch who was
+all vivacious wickedness&mdash;well, anyone could see! So,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span>
+if Barbara Walbrook suggested an eagle on the wing
+and she, Letty Gravely, was only a sparrow in the
+street, the sparrow would be more successful as a
+sparrow than in trying to emulate the eagle.</p>
+<p>And yet there was a value to good models which at
+first she found difficult to reconcile with this truth
+of personal independence. This too she thought out.
+&#8220;It&#8217;s like a way to do your hair,&#8221; was her method of
+expressing it. &#8220;You do what&#8217;s in fashion, but you
+twist it so that it suits your own style. It isn&#8217;t the
+fashion that makes you look right; it&#8217;s in being true
+to what suits you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was, however, in Barbara Walbrook a something
+deeper than this which at first eluded her. It was
+in Rashleigh Allerton too. It was in Lisabel Anstey,
+and in a few other stars, but not in Mercola Merch,
+nor in Luciline Lynch. &#8220;It&#8217;s the whole business,&#8221;
+Letty summed up to herself, &#8220;and yet I don&#8217;t know
+what it is. Unless I can put my finger on it....&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was just at this point when Steptoe addressed
+her on the subject of going out. That she do so was
+part of his programme. Madam would not be madam
+till she felt herself free to come and go; and till
+madam was madam Mr. Rash would not understand
+who it was they had in the &#8217;ouse. That he didn&#8217;t
+understand it yet was partly due to madam &#8217;erself
+who didn&#8217;t understand it on &#8217;er side. To cultivate this
+understanding in madam was Steptoe&#8217;s immediate aim,
+in which Beppo, the little cocker spaniel, unexpectedly
+came to his assistance.</p>
+<p>As the two stood conversing at the foot of the
+stairs Beppo lilted down, with that air of having no
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>
+one to love which he had worn during all the eighteen
+months since his mistress had died. The cocker
+spaniel&#8217;s heart, as everyone knows, is imbued with the
+principle of one life, one love. It has no room for
+two loves; it has still less room for that general amiability
+to which most dogs are born. Among the
+human race it singles out one; and to that one it is
+faithful. In separation it seeks no substitute; in
+bereavement it rarely forms a second tie. To everyone
+but Beppo the removal of Mrs. Allerton had made
+the world brighter. He alone had mourned that presence
+with a grief which sought neither comfort nor
+mitigation. He had followed his routine; he had
+eaten and slept; he had gone out when he was taken
+out and come in when he was brought in; but he had
+lived shut up within himself, aloof in his sorrow. For
+the first time in all those eighteen months he had come
+out of this proud gloom when Rashleigh&#8217;s key had
+turned in the door that night, and Letty had entered
+the house.</p>
+<p>The secret call which Beppo had heard can never
+be understood by men till men have developed more
+of their latent faculties. As he lay in his basket something
+reached him which he recognized as a summons
+to a new phase of usefulness. Out of the lethargy of
+mourning he had jumped with an obedient leap that
+took him through the obscurity of the house to where
+a frightened girl had need of a little dog&#8217;s sympathy.
+Of that sympathy he had been lavish; and now that
+there was new discussion in the air he came with his
+contribution.</p>
+<p>In words Steptoe had to be his interpreter. &#8220;That,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span>
+poor little dog as &#8217;as growed so fond of madam don&#8217;t
+get &#8217;alf the exercise he ought to be give. If madam
+was to tyke &#8217;im out like for a little stroll up the
+Havenue....&#8221;</p>
+<p>Thus it happened that in less than half an hour
+Letty found herself out in the October sunlight,
+dressed in her blue-green costume, with all the details
+to &#8220;correspond,&#8221; and leading Beppo on the leash. To
+lead Beppo on the leash, as Steptoe had perceived, gave
+a reason for an excursion which would otherwise have
+seemed motiveless. But she was out. She was out
+in conditions in which even Judson Flack, had he met
+her, could hardly have detected her. Gorgeously
+arrayed as she seemed to herself she was dressed with
+the simplicity which stamps the French taste. There
+was nothing to make her remarked, especially in a
+double procession of women so many of whom were
+remarkable. Had you looked at her twice you would
+have noted that while skill counted for much in her
+gentle, well-bred appearance, a subtle, unobtrusive,
+native distinction counted for most; but you would
+have been obliged to look at her twice before noting
+anything about her. She was a neatly dressed girl,
+with an air; but on that bright afternoon in Fifth
+Avenue neatly dressed girls with an air were as buttercups
+in June.</p>
+<p>Seizing this fact Letty felt more at her ease. No
+one was thinking her conspicuous. She was passing
+in the crowd. She was not being &#8220;spotted&#8221; as the
+girl who a short time before had had nothing but the
+old gray rag to appear in. She could enjoy the walk&mdash;and
+forget herself.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span></div>
+<p>Then it came to her suddenly that this was the
+secret of which she was in search, the power to forget
+herself. She must learn to do things so easily that
+she would have no self-consciousness in doing them.
+In big things Barbara Walbrook might think of herself;
+but in all little things, in the way she spoke and
+walked and bore herself toward others, she acted as
+she breathed. It seemed wonderful to Letty, this
+assurance that you were right in all the fundamentals.
+It was precisely in the fundamentals that she was so
+likely to be wrong. It was where girls of her sort
+suffered most; in the lack of the elementary. One
+could bluff the advanced, or make a shot at it; but the
+elementary couldn&#8217;t be bluffed, and no shot at it
+would tell. It betrayed you at once. You must <i>have</i>
+it. You must have it as you had the circulation of
+your blood, as something so basic that you didn&#8217;t need
+to consider it. That was her next discovery, as with
+Beppo tugging at the end of his tether she walked
+onward.</p>
+<p>She was used to walking; she walked strongly, and
+with a trudging sturdiness, not without its grace. She
+came to the part of Fifth Avenue where the great
+houses begin to thin out, and vacant lots, as if ashamed
+of their vacancy, shrink behind boardings vivid with
+the news of picture-plays. It was the year when they
+were advertising the screen-masterpiece, <i>Passion
+Aflame</i>; and here was depicted Luciline Lynch, a torch
+in her hand, her hair in maenadic dishevelment, leading
+on a mob to set fire to a town. Letty herself
+having been in that mob paused in search of her face
+among the horde of the great star&#8217;s followers. It
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span>
+was a blob of scarlet and green from which she
+dropped her eyes, only to have them encounter a
+friend of long standing.</p>
+<p>At the foot of the boarding, and all in a row, was
+a straggling band of dust-flowers. It was late in the
+season, yet not too late for their bit of blue heaven to
+press in among the ways of men. She was not surprised
+to find them there. Ever since the crazy woman had
+pointed out the mission of this humble little helper
+of the human race she had noted its persistency in
+haunting the spots which beauty had deserted. You
+found it in the fields, it was true; but you found it
+rarely, sparsely, raggedly, blooming, you might say,
+with but little heart for its bloom. Where other
+flowers had been frightened away; where the poor
+crowded; where factories flared; where junk-heaps
+rusted; where backyards baked; where smoke defiled;
+where wretchedness stalked; where crime brooded;
+where the land was unkempt; where the human spirit
+was sodden&mdash;there the celestial thing multiplied its
+celestial growths, blessing the eyes and making the
+heart leap. It mattered little that so few gave it a
+thought or regarded it as other than a weed; there
+were always those few, who knew that it spelled beauty,
+who knew that it spelled something more.</p>
+<p>Letty was of those few. She was of those few for
+old sake&#8217;s sake, but also for the sake of a new yearning.
+Slipping off a glove she picked a few of the
+dusty stalks, even though she knew that once taken
+from their task of glorifying the dishonored the blue
+stars would shut almost instantly. &#8220;They&#8217;ll wither in
+a few days now,&#8221; she said, in self-excuse; &#8220;and anyhow
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span>
+I&#8217;ll leave most of them.&#8221; Having shaken off
+the dust she fastened them in her corsage, blue against
+her blue-green.</p>
+<p>They were her symbol for happiness springing up
+in the face of despair, and from a soil where you would
+expect it to be choked. She herself was happy to-day
+as she could not remember ever to have been happy
+in her life. For the first time she was passing among
+decent people decently; and then&mdash;it was the great
+hope beyond which she didn&#8217;t look&mdash;the prince might
+read with her again that evening.</p>
+<p>But as she turned from Fifth Avenue into East
+Sixty-seventh Street the prince was approaching his
+door from the other direction. Even she was aware
+that it was contrary to his habits to appear at home by
+five in the afternoon. She didn&#8217;t know, of course,
+that Barbara had so stimulated his enthusiasm for the
+educational course that he had come on the chance of
+taking it up at the tea hour. He could not remember
+that Barbara had ever before been so sympathetic to
+one of his ideas. The fact encouraged his feeble
+belief in himself, and made him love her with richer
+tenderness.</p>
+<p>In the gentle girl of quietly distinguished mien he
+saw nothing but a stranger till Beppo strained at his
+leash and barked. Even then it took him half a
+minute to get his powers of recognition into play. He
+stopped at the foot of his steps, watching her approach.</p>
+<p>By doing so he made the approach more difficult
+for her. The heart seemed to stop in her body. She
+could scarcely breathe. Each step was like walking on
+blades, yet like walking on blades with a kind of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span>
+ecstasy. Luckily Beppo pranced and pulled in such a
+way that she was forced to give him some attention.</p>
+<p>The prince&#8217;s first words were also a distraction
+from terrors and enchantments which made her feel
+faint.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where did you get the poor man&#8217;s coffee?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The question by puzzling her gave her some relief.
+Pointing at the sprays in her corsage he went on:</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what the country people often call the
+chicory weed in France.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was able to gasp feebly: &#8220;Oh, does it grow
+there?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think it grows pretty nearly everywhere. It&#8217;s
+one of the most classic wild flowers we know anything
+about. The ancient Egyptians dried its leaves to give
+flavor to their salad, and I remember being told at
+Luxor that the modern Copts and Arabs do the same.
+You see it&#8217;s quite a friendly little beast to man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It eased her other feelings to tell him about the
+crazy woman in Canada, and her reading of the dust-flower&#8217;s
+significance.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s a good idea too,&#8221; Allerton agreed, smiling
+down into her eyes. &#8220;There are people like that&mdash;little
+dust-flowers cheering up the wayside for the rest of
+us poor brutes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She said, wistfully: &#8220;I suppose you&#8217;ve known a lot
+of them.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_3' id='linki_3'></a>
+<img src='images/illus-230.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 371px; height: 428px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 371px;'>
+THE PRINCE&#8217;S FIRST WORDS WERE ALSO A DISTRACTION FROM TERRORS, AND ENCHANTMENTS WHICH MADE HER FEEL FAINT<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span></div>
+<p>As he laughed his eyes rested on a man sauntering
+toward them from the direction of Fifth Avenue.
+&#8220;I&#8217;ve known about two&mdash;&#8221; his eyes came back to
+smile again down into hers&mdash;&#8220;or <i>one</i>.&#8221; He started
+as a man starts who receives a new suggestion. &#8220;I
+say! Let&#8217;s go in and look up chicory and succory in
+the encyclopedia. Then we&#8217;ll know all about it. It
+seems to me, too,&#8221; he went on, reminiscently, &#8220;that
+I read a little poem about this very blue flower&mdash;by
+Margaret Deland, I think it was&mdash;only a few weeks
+ago. I believe I could put my hand on it. Come
+along.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As he sprang up the steps the pearly gates were
+opening again before Letty when the man whom
+Allerton had seen sauntering toward them actually
+passed by. Passing he lifted his hat politely, smiled,
+and said, &#8220;Good afternoon, Miss Gravely,&#8221; like any
+other gentleman. He was a good-looking slippery
+young man, with a cast in his left eye.</p>
+<p>Because she was a woman before she was a lady,
+as she understood the word lady, Letty responded
+with, &#8220;Good afternoon,&#8221; and a little inclination of the
+head. He was several doors off before she bethought
+herself sufficiently to take alarm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who&#8217;s that?&#8221; Allerton demanded, looking down
+from the third or fourth step.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure I haven&#8217;t an idea. I think he must be
+some camera-man who&#8217;s seen me when they&#8217;ve been
+shooting the pitch&mdash;&#8221; she made the correction almost
+in time&mdash;&#8220;who&#8217;s seen me when they&#8217;ve been shooting
+the <i>pick-tures</i>. I can&#8217;t think of anything else.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They watched the retreating form till, without a
+backward glance, it turned into Madison Avenue.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come along in,&#8221; Allerton called then, in a tone
+intended to disperse misgiving, &#8220;and let&#8217;s begin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Ten minutes later he was reading in the library,
+from a big volume open on his knees, how for over a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span>
+century the chicory root had been dried and ground in
+France, and used to strengthen the cheaper grades of
+coffee, when Letty broke in, as if she had not been
+following him:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think that fella could have been a camera-man
+after all. No camera-man would ha&#8217; noticed me
+in the great big bunch I was always in.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, well, he can&#8217;t do you any harm anyhow,&#8221;
+Allerton assured her. &#8220;I&#8217;ll just finish this, and then
+I&#8217;ll look for the poem by Mrs. Deland.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With her veil and gloves in her lap Letty sat
+thoughtful while he passed from shelf to shelf in
+search of the smaller volume. Of her real suspicion,
+that the man was a friend of Judson Flack&#8217;s, she
+decided not to speak.</p>
+<p>Seated once more in front of her, and bending
+slightly toward her, Allerton read:</p>
+<table style='margin: auto' summary=''><tr><td>
+<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'>
+&#8220;Oh, not in ladies&#8217; gardens,<br />
+My peasant posy!<br />
+Smile thy dear blue eyes,<br />
+Nor only&mdash;nearer to the skies&mdash;<br />
+In upland pastures, dim and sweet&mdash;<br />
+But by the dusty road<br />
+Where tired feet<br />
+Toil to and fro;<br />
+Where flaunting Sin<br />
+May see thy heavenly hue,<br />
+Or weary Sorrow look from thee<br />
+Toward a more tender blue.&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+<p>Allerton glanced up from the book. &#8220;Pretty, isn&#8217;t
+it?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span></div>
+<p>She admitted that it was, and then added: &#8220;And
+yet there was the times when the castin&#8217; director put
+me right in the front, to register what the crowd
+behind me was thinkin&#8217; about. He might ha&#8217; noticed
+me then.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, of course; that must have been it. Now
+wouldn&#8217;t you like me to read that again? You must
+always read a poem a second or third time to really
+know what it&#8217;s about.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Meanwhile a poem of another sort was being read
+to Miss Barbara Walbrook by her aunt, who had
+entered the drawing-room within five minutes after
+Allerton had left it. During those five minutes
+Barbara had remained seated, plunged into reverie.
+The problem with which she had to deal was the
+degree to which she was right or wrong in permitting
+Rashleigh to go on in his crazy course. That this
+outcast girl was twining herself round his heart was
+a fact growing too obtrusive to be ignored. Had
+Rashleigh been as other men decisive action would
+have been imperative. But he was not as other men,
+and there lay the possibilities she found difficult.</p>
+<p>If the aunt couldn&#8217;t help the niece to solve the
+difficult question she at least could compel her to take
+a stand.</p>
+<p>As she entered the drawing-room she came from
+out of doors, a slender, unfleshly figure, all intellect
+and idea. Her vices being wholly of the spirit were
+not recognized as vices, so that she passed as the
+highest type of the good woman which the continent
+of America knows anything about. Being the highest
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span>
+type of the good woman she had, moreover,
+the privilege which American usage accords to all
+good women of being good aggressively. No other
+good woman in the world enjoys this right to the
+same degree, a fact to which we can point with pride.
+The good English woman, the good French woman,
+the good Italian woman, are obliged by the customs
+of their countries to direct their goodness into
+channels in which it is relatively curbed. The good
+American woman, on the other hand, is never so
+much at home as when she is on the warpath. Her
+goodness being the only standard of goodness which
+the country accepts she has the right to impose it by
+any means she can harness to her purposes. She is
+the inspiration of our churches, and the terror of our
+constituencies. She is behind state legislatures and
+federal congresses and presidential cabinets. They
+may elude her lofty purposes, falsify her trust, and
+for a time hoodwink her with male chicaneries; but
+they are always afraid of her, and in the end they
+do as she commands. Among the coarsely, stupidly,
+viciously masculine countries of the world the American
+Republic is the single and conspicuous matriarchate,
+ruled by its good women. Of these rulers Miss
+Marion Walbrook was as representative a type as
+could be found, high, pure, zealous, intolerant of
+men&#8217;s weaknesses, and with only spiritual immoralities
+of her own.</p>
+<p>Seated in one of her slender upright armchairs she
+had the impressiveness of goodness fully conscious of
+itself. A document she held in her hand gave her the
+judicial air of one entitled to pass sentence.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, Barbara; but I&#8217;ve some disagreeable
+news for you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara woke. &#8220;Indeed?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve just come from Augusta Chancellor&#8217;s. She
+talked about&mdash;that man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did she say?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She said two or three things. One was that she&#8217;d
+met him one day in the Park when he decidedly wasn&#8217;t
+himself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s hard to say when he&#8217;s himself and
+when he isn&#8217;t. He&#8217;s what the French would call <i>un
+original</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t know about that. The originality of
+men is commonplace as it&#8217;s most novel. This man is
+on a par with the rest, if you call it original for him
+to have a woman in the house.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara feigned languidness. &#8220;Well, it is&mdash;the way
+he has her there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The way he has her there? What do you mean
+by that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I mean what I say. There&#8217;s no one else in the
+world who would take a girl under his roof in the
+way Rash has taken this girl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How, may I ask, did he take her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Having foreseen that one day she should be in this
+position Barbara had made up her mind as to how
+much she should say. &#8220;He found her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, they all do that. They generally find them
+in the Park.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Exactly; it&#8217;s just what he did.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I guessed&mdash;it was only guessing mind you&mdash;that
+he also tried to find Augusta Chancellor.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, possibly. He&#8217;d go as far as that, if he saw her
+doing anything he thought not respectable.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Barbara, please! You&#8217;re talking about a friend of
+mine, one of my colleagues. Let&#8217;s return to&mdash;I hope
+you won&#8217;t find the French phrase invidious&mdash;to our
+mutton.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, very well! Rash found the girl homeless&mdash;penniless&mdash;with
+no friends. Her stepfather had
+turned her out. Another man would have left her
+there, or turned her over to the police. Rash took
+her to his own house, and since then we&#8217;ve both been
+helping her to&mdash;to get on her feet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Helping her to get on her feet in a way that&#8217;s
+driven from the house the good old women who&#8217;ve
+been there for nearly thirty years.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you know that too, do you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, certainly. Jane, that was the parlor maid,
+is very intimate with Augusta Chancellor&#8217;s cook; and
+she says&mdash;Jane does&mdash;that he&#8217;s actually married the
+creature.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara shrugged her shoulders. &#8220;I can&#8217;t help what
+the servants say, Aunt Marion. I&#8217;m trying to be a
+friend to the girl, and help her to pull herself together.
+Of course I recognize the fact that Rash has been
+foolish&mdash;quixotic&mdash;or whatever you like to call it;
+but he hasn&#8217;t kept anything from me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you&#8217;re still engaged to him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of course I&#8217;m still engaged to him.&#8221; She held out
+her left hand. &#8220;Look at his ring.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then why don&#8217;t you get married?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you in such a hurry to get rid of me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The question being a pleasantry Miss Walbrook
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span>
+took it with a gentle smile. When she resumed it
+was with a slight flourish of the document in her hand
+and another turn to the conversation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I went to the bank this morning. I&#8217;ve brought
+home my will. I&#8217;m thinking of making some changes
+in it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara looked non-committal, as if the subject
+had nothing to do with herself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The question I have to decide,&#8221; Miss Walbrook
+pursued, &#8220;is whether to leave everything to you, in the
+hope that you&#8217;ll carry on my work&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I shouldn&#8217;t know how.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Or whether to establish a trust&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I should do that decidedly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And let it fall into the hands of a pack of men.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It will fall into the hands of a pack of men, whatever
+you do with it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And yet if you had it in charge&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Some man would get hold of it, Aunt Marion.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Which is what I&#8217;m debating. I&#8217;m not so very
+sure&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That I shall marry in the end?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, you&#8217;re not married yet ... and if you
+were to change your mind ... the world has such a
+need of consecrated women with men so unscrupulous
+and irresponsible ... we must break their power
+some day ... and now that we&#8217;ve got the opportunity ...
+all I want you to understand is that if
+you shouldn&#8217;t marry there&#8217;d be a great career in store
+for you....&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIX' id='CHAPTER_XIX'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XIX</h2>
+</div>
+<p>By the end of twenty-four hours the possibility of
+this great career quickened Barbara&#8217;s zeal for
+taking a hand in Letty&#8217;s education. Not only did that
+impulse of furious jealousy, by which she meant at
+first to leave it wholly to Rash, begin to seem dangerous,
+but there was a world to consider and throw off
+the scent. Now that Augusta Chancellor knew that
+the girl was beneath Rash&#8217;s roof all their acquaintances
+would sooner or later be in possession of the fact. It
+was Barbara&#8217;s part, therefore, to play the game in such
+a way that a bit of quixotism would be the most foolish
+thing of which Rash would be suspected.</p>
+<p>That she would be playing a game she knew in
+advance. She must hide her suspicions; she must
+control her sufferings. She must pretend to have
+confidence in Rash, when at heart she cried against
+him as an infant and a fool. Never was woman in
+such a ridiculous situation as that into which she had
+been thrust; never was heart so wild to ease itself by
+invective and denunciation; and never was the padlock
+fixed so firmly on the lips. Hour by hour the man
+she loved was being weaned and won away from her;
+and she must stand by with grimacing smiles, instead
+of throwing up her arms in dramatic gestures and
+calling on her gods to smite and smash and annihilate.</p>
+<p>Since, however, she had a game to play, a game she
+would play, though she did it quivering with protest
+and repulsion.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Do you mind if I take the car this afternoon, Aunt
+Marion, since you&#8217;re not going to use it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take it of course; but where are you going?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought I would ask that prot&eacute;g&eacute;e of Rash
+Allerton&#8217;s, of whom we were speaking yesterday, to
+come for a drive with me. But if you&#8217;d rather I
+didn&#8217;t&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve nothing to do with it. It&#8217;s entirely for you to
+say. The car is yours, of course.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The invitation being transmitted by telephone Steptoe
+urged Letty to accept it. &#8220;It&#8217;ll be all in the wye
+of madam&#8217;s gettin&#8217; used to things&mdash;a bit at a time
+like.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I don&#8217;t think she likes me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If madam won&#8217;t stop to think whether people likes
+&#8217;er or not I think madam &#8217;d get for&#8217;arder. Besides
+madam&#8217;ll pretty generally always find as love-call
+wykes love-echo, as the syin&#8217; goes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Which, as a matter of fact, was what Letty did
+find. She found it from the minute of entering the
+car and taking her seat, when Miss Walbrook exclaimed
+heartily: &#8220;What a lovely dress! And the
+hat&#8217;s too sweet! Suits you exactly, doesn&#8217;t it? My
+dear, I&#8217;ve the greatest bother ever to find a hat that
+doesn&#8217;t make me look like a scarecrow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>From the naturalness of the tone there was no
+suspecting the cost of these words to the speaker, and
+the subject was one in which Letty was at home. In
+turn she could compliment Miss Walbrook&#8217;s appearance,
+duly admiring the toque of prune-colored velvet,
+with a little bunch of roses artfully disposed, and the
+coat of prune-colored Harris tweed. In further discussing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>
+the length of the new skirts and the chances
+of the tight corset coming back they found topics of
+common interest. The fact that they were the topics
+which came readiest to the lips of both made it possible
+to maintain the conversation at its normal give-and-take,
+while each could pursue the line of her own
+summing up of the other.</p>
+<p>To Letty Miss Walbrook seemed friendlier than
+she had expected, only spasmodically so. Her kindly
+moods came in spurts of which the inspiration soon
+gave out. &#8220;I think she&#8217;s sad,&#8221; was Letty&#8217;s comment
+to herself. Sadness, in Letty&#8217;s use of words, covered
+all the emotions not distinctly cheerful or hilarious.</p>
+<p>She knew nothing about Miss Walbrook, except
+that it appeared from this conversation that she lived
+with an aunt, whose car they were using. That she
+was a friend of the prince&#8217;s had been several times
+repeated, but all information ended there. To Letty
+she seemed old&mdash;between thirty and forty. Had she
+known her actual age she would still have seemed old
+from her knowledge of the world and general sophistication.
+Letty&#8217;s own lack of sophistication kept her a
+child when she was nearly twenty-three. That Miss
+Walbrook was the girl to whom the prince was engaged
+had not yet crossed her thought.</p>
+<p>At the same time, since she knew that girl she
+brought her to the forefront of Letty&#8217;s consciousness.
+She was never far from the forefront of her consciousness,
+and of late speculation concerning her had
+become more active. If she approached the subject with
+the prince he reddened and grew ill at ease. The present
+seemed, therefore, an opportunity to be utilized.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span></div>
+<p>They were deep in the northerly avenues of the
+Park, when apropos of the dress topic, Letty said,
+suddenly: &#8220;I suppose she&#8217;s awfully stylish&mdash;the girl
+he&#8217;s engaged to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The response was laconic: &#8220;She&#8217;s said to be.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is she pretty?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think you could say that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then what does he see in her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whatever people do see in those they&#8217;re in love
+with. I&#8217;m afraid I&#8217;m not able to define it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Dropping back into her corner Letty sighed. She
+knew this mystery existed, the mystery of falling in
+love for reasons no one was able to explain. It was
+the ground on which she hoped that at first sight
+someone would fall in love with her. If he didn&#8217;t
+do it for reasons beyond explanation he would, of
+course, not do it at all.</p>
+<p>It was some minutes before another question trembled
+to her lips. &#8220;Does she&mdash;does she know about
+me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, naturally.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And did she&mdash;did she feel very bad?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara&#8217;s long eyes slid round in Letty&#8217;s direction,
+though the head was not turned. &#8220;How should you
+feel yourself, if it had happened to you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;d kill me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, then?&#8221; She let Letty draw her own conclusions
+before adding: &#8220;It&#8217;s nearly killed her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty cowered. She had never thought of this.
+That she herself suffered she knew; that the prince
+suffered she also knew; but that this unknown girl,
+whatever her folly, lay smitten to the heart brought a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span>
+new complication into her ideas. &#8220;Even if he ever
+did come to&mdash;&#8221; she held up her unspoken sentence
+there&mdash;&#8220;I&#8217;d ha&#8217; stolen him from her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was little more conversation after that. Each
+had her motives for reflections and silences. They
+were nearing the end of the drive when Letty said
+again:</p>
+<p>&#8220;What would you do if you was&mdash;if you were&mdash;me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d do whatever I felt to be highest.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To Letty this was a beautiful reply, and proof of
+a beautiful nature. Moreover, it was indirectly a
+compliment to herself, in that she could be credited
+with doing what she felt to be highest as well as
+anyone else. In her life hitherto she had been figuratively
+kicked and beaten into doing what she couldn&#8217;t
+resist. Now she was considered capable of acting
+worthily of her own accord. It inspired a new sentiment
+toward Miss Walbrook.</p>
+<p>She thought, too, that Miss Walbrook liked her a
+little better. Perhaps it was the fulfillment of Steptoe&#8217;s
+adage, love-call wakes love-echo. She was sure
+that somehow this call had gone out from her to Miss
+Walbrook, and that it hadn&#8217;t gone out in vain.</p>
+<p>It hadn&#8217;t gone out in vain, in that Miss Walbrook
+was able to say to herself, with some conviction,
+&#8220;That&#8217;s the way it will have to be done.&#8221; It was a
+way of which her experiences in Bleary Street had
+made her skeptical. Among those whom she called
+the lower orders innocence, ingenuousness, and integrity
+were qualities for which she had ceased to look.
+She didn&#8217;t look for them anywhere with much confidence;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>
+but she had long ago come to the conclusion
+that the poor were schemers, and were obliged to be
+schemers because they were poor. Something in
+Letty impressed her otherwise. &#8220;That&#8217;s the way,&#8221; she
+continued to nod to herself. &#8220;It&#8217;s no use trusting to
+Rash. I&#8217;ll get her; and she&#8217;ll get him; and so we
+shall work it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Arrived in East Sixty-seventh Street she went in
+with Letty and had tea. But it was she who sat in
+dear Mrs. Allerton&#8217;s corner of the sofa, and when
+William brought in the tray she said, &#8220;Put it here,
+William,&#8221; as one who speaks with authority. Of
+this usurpation of the right to dispense hospitality
+Letty did not see the significance, being glad to have
+it taken off her hands.</p>
+<p>Not so, however, with Steptoe who came in with a
+covered dish of muffins. Having placed it before Miss
+Walbrook he turned to Letty.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam ain&#8217;t feelin&#8217; well?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty&#8217;s tone expressed her surprise. &#8220;Why, yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam&#8217;ll excuse me. As madam ain&#8217;t presidin&#8217; at
+&#8217;er own tyble I was afryde&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>It being unnecessary to say more he tiptoed out,
+leaving behind him a declaration of war, which Miss
+Walbrook, without saying anything in words, was not
+slow to pick up. &#8220;Insufferable,&#8221; was her comment to
+herself. Of the hostile forces against her this, she
+knew, was the most powerful.</p>
+<p>Neither did Rash perceive the significance of
+Barbara&#8217;s place at the tea-table when he entered about
+five o&#8217;clock, though she was quick to perceive the
+significance of his arrival. It was not, however, a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>
+point to note outwardly, so that she lifted her hand
+above the tea-kettle, letting him bend over it, as she
+exclaimed:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Welcome to our city! Do sit down and make
+yourself at home. Letty and I have been for a drive,
+and are all ready to enjoy a little male society.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The easy tone helped Allerton over his embarrassment,
+first in finding the two women face to face,
+then in coming so unexpectedly face to face with
+them, and lastly in being caught by Barbara coming
+home at this unexpected hour. Knowing what the
+situation must mean to her he admired her the more
+for her sangfroid and social flexibility.</p>
+<p>She took all the difficulties on herself. &#8220;Letty and
+I have been making friends, and are going to know
+each other awfully well, aren&#8217;t we?&#8221; A smile at
+Letty drew forth Letty&#8217;s smile, to Rashleigh&#8217;s satisfaction,
+and somewhat to his bewilderment. But
+Barbara, handing him a cup of tea, addressed him
+directly. &#8220;Who do you think is engaged? Guess.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He guessed, and guessed wrong. He guessed a
+second time, and guessed wrong. There followed a
+conversation about people they knew, with regard to
+which Letty was altogether an outsider. Now and
+then she recognized great names which she had read
+in the papers, tossed back and forth without prefixes
+of Mr. or Miss, and often with pet diminutives. The
+whole represented a closed corporation of intimacies
+into which she could no more force her way than a
+worm into a billiard ball. Rash who was at first
+beguiled by the interchange of personalities began to
+experience a sense of discomfort that Letty should
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span>
+be so discourteously left out; but Barbara knew that
+it was best for both to force the lesson home. Rash
+must be given to understand how lost he would be
+with any outsider as his companion; and Letty must
+be made to realize how hopelessly an outsider she
+would always be.</p>
+<p>But no lesson should be urged to the quick at a
+single sitting, so that Barbara broke off suddenly to
+ask why he had come home. In the same way as she
+had given the order to William she spoke with the
+authority of one at liberty to ask the question. Not
+to give the real reason he said that it was to write a
+letter and change his clothes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you&#8217;re going back to the Club?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He replied that he was going to dine with a bachelor
+friend at his apartment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I&#8217;ll wait and drop you at the Club. You can
+go on from there afterwards. I&#8217;ve got the time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This too was said with an authority against which
+he felt himself unable to appeal.</p>
+<p>Having written a note and changed to his dinner
+jacket he rejoined them in the drawing-room. Barbara
+held out her hand to Letty, with a briskness indicating
+relief.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So glad we had our drive. I shall come soon
+again. I wish it could be to-morrow, but my aunt
+will be using the car.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s my car,&#8221; Allerton suggested.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, so there is.&#8221; Barbara took this proposal as a
+matter of course. &#8220;Then we&#8217;ll say to-morrow. I&#8217;ll
+call up Eugene and tell him when to come for me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With Allerton beside her, and driving down Fifth
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>
+Avenue, she said: &#8220;I see how to do it, Rash. You
+must leave it to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He replied in the tone of a child threatened with
+the loss of his r&ocirc;le in a game. &#8220;I can&#8217;t leave it to you
+altogether.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then leave it to me as much as you can. I see
+what to do and you don&#8217;t. Furthermore, I know
+just how to do it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re wonderful, Barbe,&#8221; he said, humbly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m wonderful so long as you don&#8217;t interfere with
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, well, I shan&#8217;t do that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She turned to him sharply. &#8220;Is that a promise?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you want a promise?&#8221; he asked, in some
+wonder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because I do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is, you can&#8217;t trust me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My dear Rash, who <i>could</i> trust you after what&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, well, then, I promise.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then that&#8217;s understood. And if anything happens,
+you won&#8217;t go hedging and saying you didn&#8217;t
+mean it in that way?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It seems to me you&#8217;re very suspicious.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;One&#8217;s obliged to foresee everything with you,
+Rash. It isn&#8217;t as if one was dealing with an ordinary
+man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You mean that I&#8217;m to give you carte blanche,
+and have no will of my own at all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I mean that when I&#8217;m so reasonable, you must try
+to be reasonable on your side.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I will.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span></div>
+<p>As they drew up in front of the New Netherlands
+Club, he escaped without committing himself further.</p>
+<p>If he dined with a bachelor friend that night he
+must have cut the evening short, for at half past
+nine he re-entered the back drawing-room where Letty
+was sitting before the fire, her red book in her lap.
+She sat as a lover stands at a tryst as to which there
+is no positive engagement. To fortify herself against
+disappointment she had been trying to persuade herself
+that he wouldn&#8217;t come, and that she didn&#8217;t expect
+him.</p>
+<p>He came, but he came as a man who has something
+on his mind. Almost without greeting he sat down,
+took the book from her lap and proceeded to look up
+the place at which he had left off.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Miss Walbrook&#8217;s lovely, isn&#8217;t she?&#8221; she said,
+before he had found the page.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s a very fine woman,&#8221; he assented. &#8220;Do you
+remember where we stopped?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was at, &#8216;So let it be, said the little mermaid,
+turning pale as death.&#8217; You know her very well,
+don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, very well indeed. I think we begin here:
+&#8216;But you will have to pay me also&#8211;&#8211;&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you known her very long?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All my life, more or less.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She says she knows the girl you&#8217;re engaged to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, of course. We all know each other in our
+little set. Now, if you&#8217;re ready, I&#8217;ll begin to read.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;But you will have to pay me also,&#8217; said the witch;
+&#8216;and it is not a little that I ask. Yours is the loveliest
+voice in the world, and you trust to that, I dare say,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span>
+to charm your love. But you must give it to me.
+For my costly drink I claim the best thing you possess.
+I shall give you my own blood, so that my
+draught may be as sharp as a two-edged sword.&#8217;
+&#8216;But if you take my voice from me, what have I left?&#8217;
+asked the little mermaid, piteously. &#8216;Your loveliness,
+your graceful movements, your speaking eyes. Those
+are enough to win a man&#8217;s heart. Well, is your courage
+gone? Stretch out your little tongue, that I may
+cut it off, and you shall have my magic potion.&#8217; &#8216;I
+consent,&#8217; said the little mermaid.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty cried out: &#8220;So that when she&#8217;d be with him
+she&#8217;d understand everything, and not be able to tell
+him anything.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid,&#8221; he smiled, &#8220;that that&#8217;s what&#8217;s ahead
+of her, poor thing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but that&mdash;&#8221; she could hardly utter her distress&mdash;&#8220;Oh,
+but that&#8217;s worse than anything in the
+world.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He looked up at her curiously. &#8220;Would you rather
+I didn&#8217;t go on?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, no; please. I&mdash;I want to hear it all.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>At The Hindoo Lantern Mr. Gorry Larrabin and
+Mr. Judson Flack found themselves elbow to elbow
+outside the rooms where their respective ladies were
+putting the final touches to their hats and hair before
+entering the grand circle. It was an opportunity
+especially on Gorry&#8217;s part, to seal the peace which had
+been signed so recently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hello, Judson. What&#8217;s the prospects in oil?&#8221;
+Judson&#8217;s tone was pessimistic. &#8220;Not a thing doin&#8217;,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>
+Gorry. Awful slow bunch, that lump of nuts I&#8217;m in
+with on this. Mentioned your name to one or two of
+&#8217;em; but no enterprise. Boneheads that wouldn&#8217;t know
+a white man from a crane.&#8221; That he understood what
+Gorry understood became clear as he continued:
+&#8220;Friend o&#8217; mine at the Excelsior passes me the tip that
+they&#8217;ve held up that play they were goin&#8217; to put my
+girl into. Can&#8217;t get anyone else that would swing the
+part. Waitin&#8217; for her to turn up again. I suppose
+you haven&#8217;t heard anything, Gorry?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gorry looked him in the eyes as straight as was
+possible for a man with a cast in the left one. &#8220;Not
+a thing, Judson; not a thing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The accent was so truthful that Judson gave his
+friend a long comprehending look. He was sure that
+Gorry would never speak with such sincerity if he
+was sincere.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;m on the job, Gorry,&#8221; he assured him, &#8220;and
+one of these days you&#8217;ll hear from me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m on the job too, Judson; and one of these
+days&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>But as Mademoiselle Coucoul emerged from the
+dressing-room and shed radiance, Gorry was obliged
+to go forward.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XX' id='CHAPTER_XX'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XX</h2>
+</div>
+<p>It was May.</p>
+<p>In spite of her conviction that she knew what to do
+and how it to do it, Barbara perceived that at the end
+of seven months they were much where they had been
+in the previous October. If there was a change it was
+that all three, Rashleigh, Letty, and herself, had grown
+strained and intense.</p>
+<p>Outwardly they strove to maintain a semblance of
+friendship. For that Barbara had worked hard, and
+in a measure had succeeded. She had held Rash; she
+had won Letty.</p>
+<p>She had more than won Letty; she had trained her.
+All that in seven months a woman of the world could
+do for an unformed and ignorant child she had done.
+Her experience at Bleary Street had helped her in
+this; and Letty had been quick. She had seized not
+only those small points of speech and action foundational
+to rising in the world, but the point of view
+of those who had risen. She knew how, Barbara was
+sure, that there were certain things impossible to
+people such as those among whom she had been
+thrown.</p>
+<p>Since it was May it was the end of a season, and
+the minute Barbara had long ago chosen for a masterstroke.
+Each of the others felt the crisis as near as
+she did herself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s got to end,&#8221; Letty confessed to her, as amid
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span>
+the soft loveliness of springtime, they were again
+driving in the Park.</p>
+<p>Barbara chose her words. &#8220;I suppose he feels that
+too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then why don&#8217;t he let me end it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I fancy that that&#8217;s a difficult position for a man.
+If you ask his permission beforehand he feels obliged
+to say&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And perhaps,&#8221; Letty suggested, &#8220;he&#8217;s too tender-hearted.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s part of it. He <i>is</i> tender-hearted. Besides
+that, his position is grotesque&mdash;a man with whom two
+women are in love. To one of them he&#8217;s been nominally
+married, while to the other he&#8217;s bound by every tie
+of honor. No wonder he doesn&#8217;t see his way. If
+he moves toward the one he hurts the other&mdash;a man to
+whom it&#8217;s agony to hurt a fly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Does the other girl still feel the way she did?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s killing herself. She&#8217;s breaking her heart.
+Nobody knows it but him and her&mdash;and even he
+doesn&#8217;t take it in. But she is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose she thinks I&#8217;m something awful.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Does it matter to you what she thinks?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want her to hate me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I shouldn&#8217;t say she did that. She feels that,
+considering everything, you might have acted with
+more decision.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But he won&#8217;t let me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And he never will, if you wait for that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then what do you think I ought to do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s where I find you weak, Letty, since you
+ask me the question. No one can tell you what to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>
+do&mdash;and he least of all. It&#8217;s a situation in which one
+of you must withdraw&mdash;either you or the other girl.
+But, don&#8217;t you see? he can&#8217;t say so to either.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And if one of us must withdraw you think it
+should be me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have to leave that to you. You&#8217;re the one who
+butted in. I know it wasn&#8217;t your fault&mdash;that the fault
+was his entirely; but we recognize the fact that he&#8217;s&mdash;how
+shall I put it?&mdash;not quite responsible. We women
+have to take the burden of the thing on ourselves, if
+it&#8217;s ever to be put right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In her corner of the car Letty thought this over.
+The impression on her mind was the deeper since, for
+several months past, she had watched the prince growing
+more and more unhappy. He was less nervous
+than he used to be, less excitable; and for that he had
+told her the credit was due to herself. &#8220;You soothe
+me,&#8221; he had once said to her, in words she would
+always treasure; and yet as his irritability decreased
+his unhappiness seemed to grow. She could only infer
+that he was mourning over the girl to whom he was
+engaged, and on whom he had inflicted a great wrong.
+For the last few weeks Letty&#8217;s mind had occupied
+itself with her almost more than with the prince
+himself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you think I shall ever see her?&#8221; she asked,
+suddenly now.</p>
+<p>Barbara reflected. &#8220;I think you could if you wanted
+to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Should you arrange it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I could.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re sure she&#8217;d be willing to see me?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; I know she would.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When could you do it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whenever you like.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Soon?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; sooner perhaps than&mdash;&#8221; Barbara spoke
+absently, as if a new idea was taking possession of
+her mind&mdash;&#8220;sooner perhaps than you think.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you say she&#8217;s breaking her heart?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A little more, and it will be broken.&#8221;</p>
+<p>By the time Letty had been set down at the door in
+East Sixty-seventh Street the afternoon had grown
+chilly. In the back drawing-room Steptoe was on his
+knees lighting the fire. Letty came and stood behind
+him. Without preliminary of any kind she said,
+quietly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Steptoe, it&#8217;s got to end.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Expecting a protest she was surprised that he should
+merely blow on the shivering flame, saying, in the
+interval between two long breaths: &#8220;I agrees with
+madam.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And it&#8217;s me that must end it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He blew gently again. &#8220;I guess that&#8217;d be so too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She thought of the little mermaid leaping into the
+sea, and trembling away into foam. &#8220;If he wants to
+marry the girl he&#8217;s in love with he&#8217;ll never do it the
+way we&#8217;re living now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He rose from his knees, dusting one hand against
+the other. &#8220;Madam&#8217;s quite right. &#8217;E won&#8217;t&mdash;not
+never.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She threw out her arms, and moaned. &#8220;And, O
+Steptoe! I&#8217;m so tired of it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam&#8217;s tired of&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Of living here, and doing nothing, and just watching
+and waiting, and nothing never happening&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Does madam remember that, the dye when she first
+come I said there was two reasons why I wanted to
+myke &#8217;er into a lydy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty nodded.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The one I told &#8217;er was that I wanted to &#8217;elp someone
+who was like what I used to be myself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I remember.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And the other, what I didn&#8217;t tell madam, I&#8217;ll tell &#8217;er
+now. It was&mdash;it was I was &#8217;opin&#8217; that a woman&#8217;d come
+into my poor boy&#8217;s life as&#8217;d comfort &#8217;im like&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And she didn&#8217;t come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;E ain&#8217;t seen that she&#8217;s come. I said it&#8217;d be a
+tough job to bring &#8217;im to fallin&#8217; in love with &#8217;er like;
+but it&#8217;s been tougher than what I thought it&#8217;d be.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So that I must&mdash;must do something.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Looks as if madam&#8217;d &#8217;ave to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose you know that there&#8217;s an easy way for
+me to do it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothink ain&#8217;t so very easy; but if madam &#8217;as a
+big enough reason&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She felt the necessity of being plain. &#8220;I suppose
+that if he hadn&#8217;t picked me up in the Park that day
+I&#8217;d have gone to the bad anyhow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If madam&#8217;s thinkin&#8217; about goin&#8217; to the bad&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She threw up her head defiantly. &#8220;Well, I am.
+What of it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was just thinkin&#8217; as I might &#8217;elp &#8217;er a bit about
+that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was puzzled. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think you know what I
+said. I said I was&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Goin&#8217; to the bad, madam. That&#8217;s what I understood.
+But madam won&#8217;t find it so easy, not &#8217;avin
+&#8217;ad no experience like, as you might sye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t know you needed experience&mdash;for that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All good people thinks that wye, madam; but
+when you tackle it deliberate like, there&#8217;s quite a trick
+to it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And do you know the trick?&#8221; was all she could
+think of saying.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I may not know the very hidentical trick madam&#8217;d
+be in want of&mdash;&#8217;er bein&#8217; a lydy, as you might sye&mdash;but
+I could put &#8217;er in the wye of findin&#8217; out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t think I could find out for myself?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You see, it&#8217;s like this. I used to know a young
+man what everythink went ag&#8217;in&#8217; &#8217;im. And one dye
+&#8217;e started out for to be a forgerer like&mdash;so as &#8217;e&#8217;d be
+put in jyle&mdash;and be took care of&mdash;board and lodgin&#8217;
+free&mdash;and all that. Well, out &#8217;e starts, and not knowin&#8217;
+the little ins and outs, as you might sye, everythink
+went agin &#8217;im, just as it done before. And, would
+madam believe it? that young man &#8217;e hended by studying
+for the ministry. Madam wouldn&#8217;t want to myke
+a mistyke like that, now would she?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty turned this over in her mind. A career parallel
+to that of this young man would effect none of
+the results she was aiming at.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then what would you suggest?&#8221; she asked, at
+last.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I could give madam the address of a lydy&mdash;an
+awful wicked lydy, she is&mdash;what&#8217;d put madam up to
+all the ropes. If madam was to go out into the cold
+world, like, this lydy&#8217;d give &#8217;er a home. Besides the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span>
+address I&#8217;d give madam a sign like&mdash;so as the lydy&#8217;d
+know it was somethink special.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A sign? I don&#8217;t know what you mean.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;d be this, madam.&#8221; He drew from his pocket a
+small silver thimble. &#8220;This&#8217;d be a password to the
+lydy. The minute she&#8217;d see it she&#8217;d know that the
+time &#8217;ad come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What time?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s somethink madam&#8217;d find out. I couldn&#8217;t
+explyne it before&#8217;and.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It sounds very queer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;d <i>be</i> very queer. Goin&#8217; to the bad is always
+queer. Madam wouldn&#8217;t look for it to be like &#8217;avin&#8217;
+a gentleman lead &#8217;er in to dinner.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s she like&mdash;the lady?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s somethink madam&#8217;d &#8217;ave to wyte and see.
+She wouldn&#8217;t <i>seem</i> so wicked, not at first sight, as
+you might sye. But time&#8217;d tell. If madam&#8217;d be
+pytient&mdash;well, I wouldn&#8217;t like to sye.&#8221; He eyed the
+fire. &#8220;I think that fire&#8217;ll burn now, madam; and if
+it don&#8217;t, madam&#8217;ll only &#8217;ave to ring.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was at the door when Letty, feeling the end of
+all things to be at hand, ran after him, laying her
+fingers on his sleeve.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Steptoe; you&#8217;ve been so good to me!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He relaxed from his dignity sufficiently to let his
+hand rest on hers, which he patted gently. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been
+madam&#8217;s servant&mdash;and my boy&#8217;s.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I shall never think of you as a servant&mdash;never.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The frosty color rose into his cheeks. &#8220;Then
+madam&#8217;ll do me a great wrong.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To me you&#8217;re so much higher than a servant&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Madam&#8217;ll find that there ain&#8217;t nothink &#8217;igher than
+a servant. There&#8217;s a lot about service in the pypers
+nowadyes, crackin&#8217; it up, like; but nobody don&#8217;t seem
+to remember that servants knows more about that
+than what other people do, and servants don&#8217;t remember
+it theirselves. So long as I can serve madam, just
+as I&#8217;ve served my boy&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but, Steptoe, I shall have gone to the bad.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;d be all the syme to me, madam. At my time
+o&#8217; life I don&#8217;t see no difference between them as &#8217;as
+gone to the bad and them as &#8217;as gone to the good, as
+you might sye. I only sees&mdash;people.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Left alone Letty went back to the fire, and stood
+gazing down at it, her foot on the fender. So it was the
+end. Even Steptoe said so. In a sense she was relieved.</p>
+<p>She was relieved at the prospect of being freed
+from her daily torture. The little mermaid walking on
+blades in the palace of the prince, and forever dumb,
+had known bliss, but bliss so akin to anguish that
+her heart was consumed by it. The very fact that
+the prince himself suffered from the indefinable misery
+which her presence seemed to bring made escape the
+more enticing.</p>
+<p>She was so buried in this reflection as to have heard
+no sound in the house, when Steptoe announced in
+his stately voice: &#8220;Miss Barbara Walbrook.&#8221; Having
+parted from this lady half an hour earlier Letty
+turned in some surprise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve come back again,&#8221; was the explanation, sent
+down the long room. &#8220;Don&#8217;t let William bring in
+tea,&#8221; the imperious voice commanded Steptoe. &#8220;We
+wish to be alone.&#8221; There was the same abruptness as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span>
+she halted within two or three feet of where Letty
+stood, supporting herself with a hand on the edge of
+the mantelpiece. &#8220;I&#8217;ve come back to tell you something.
+I made up my mind to it all at once&mdash;after I
+left you a few minutes ago. Now that I&#8217;ve done it I
+feel easier.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty didn&#8217;t know which was uppermost in her
+mind, curiosity or fear. &#8220;What&mdash;what is it?&#8221; she
+asked, trembling.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve given up the fight. I&#8217;m out of it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty crept forward. &#8220;You&#8217;ve&mdash;you&#8217;ve done
+<i>what</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I told you in the Park that one or the other of us
+would have to withdraw&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;One or the other of&mdash;of <i>us</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Exactly and I&#8217;ve done it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With horror in her face and eyes Letty crept nearer
+still. &#8220;But&mdash;but I don&#8217;t understand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes, you do. How can you help understanding.
+You must have seen all along that&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not that&mdash;that you were&mdash;the other girl. Oh, not
+that!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, that; of course; why not?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because&mdash;because I&mdash;I couldn&#8217;t bear it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can bear it if I can, can&#8217;t you&mdash;if I&#8217;ve had to
+bear it all these weeks and months.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but that&#8217;s&mdash;&#8221; she covered her face with her
+hands&mdash;&#8220;that&#8217;s what makes it so terrible.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of course it makes it terrible; but it isn&#8217;t as terrible
+now as it was&mdash;to you anyhow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But why do you withdraw when&mdash;when you love
+him&mdash;and he loves you&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I do it because I want to throw all the cards on
+the table. It&#8217;s what my common sense has been telling
+me to do all along, only I&#8217;ve never worked round
+to it till we had our talk this afternoon. Now I
+see&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you see, Miss Walbrook?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I see that we&#8217;ve got to give him a clean sheet, or
+he&#8217;ll never know where he is. He can&#8217;t decide between
+us because he&#8217;s in an impossible position. We&#8217;ll
+have to set him absolutely free, so that he may begin
+again. I&#8217;ll do it on my side. You can do&mdash;what
+you like.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She went as abruptly as she came, leaving Letty
+clearer than ever as to her new course.</p>
+<p>By midnight she was ready. In the back spare room
+she waited only to be sure that all in the house were
+asleep.</p>
+<p>She had heard Allerton come in about half past
+nine, and the whispering of voices told that Steptoe
+was making his explanations, that she was out of
+sorts, had dined in her room, and begged not to be
+disturbed. At about half past ten she heard the
+prince go upstairs to his own room, though she fancied
+that outside her door he had paused for a second to
+listen. That was the culminating minute of her self-repression.
+Once it was over, and he had gone on his
+way, she knew the rest would be easier.</p>
+<p>By midnight she had only to wait quietly. In the
+old gray rag and the battered black hat she surveyed
+herself without emotion. Since making her last
+attempt to escape her relation to all these things had
+changed. They had become less significant, less important.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>
+The emblems of the higher life which in
+the previous autumn she had buried with ritual and
+regret she now packed away in the closet, with hardly
+a second thought. The old gray rag which had then
+seemed the livery of a degraded life was now no
+more than the resumption of her reality.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go as I came,&#8221; she had been saying to herself,
+all the evening. &#8220;I know he&#8217;d like me to take the
+things he&#8217;s given me; but I&#8217;d rather be just what I
+was.&#8221;</p>
+<p>If there was any ritual in what she had done since
+Miss Walbrook had left her it was in the putting away
+of small things by which she didn&#8217;t want to be
+haunted.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t do it with this on,&#8221; she said of the plain
+gold band on her finger, to which, as a symbol of
+marriage, she had never attached significance in any
+case.</p>
+<p>She took it off, therefore, and laid it on the dressing
+table.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t do it with this in my pocket,&#8221; she said
+of the purse containing a few dollars, with which
+Steptoe had kept her supplied.</p>
+<p>This too she laid on the dressing table, becoming
+as penniless as when Judson Flack had put her out of
+doors. Somehow, to be penniless seemed to her an
+element in her new task, and an excuse for it.</p>
+<p>Since Allerton had never made her a present there
+was nothing of this kind to discard. It had been part
+of his non-committal, impersonal attitude toward her
+that he had never given her a concrete sign that she
+meant anything to him whatever. He had thanked
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>
+her on occasions for the comforting quality he found
+in her presence. He had, in so many words, recognized
+the fact that when he got into a tantrum of
+nerves she could bring him out of it as no one else
+had ever done. He had also imparted to her the discovery
+that in reading to her, and trying to show her
+the point of view of a life superior to her own, he
+had for the first time in his life done something for
+someone else; but he had never gone beyond all this or
+allowed her to think that his heart was not given to
+&#8220;the girl he was engaged to.&#8221; In that at least he had
+been loyal to the mysterious princess, as the little mermaid
+could not but see.</p>
+<p>She was not consciously denuded, as she would have
+felt herself six months earlier. As to that she was
+not thinking anything at all. Her motive, in setting
+free the prince from the &#8220;drag&#8221; on him which she
+now recognized herself to be, filled all her mental
+horizons. So dominated was she by this overwhelming
+impulse as to have no thought even for self-pity.</p>
+<p>When a clock somewhere struck one she took it as
+the summons. From the dressing-table she picked up
+the scrawl in Steptoe&#8217;s hand, giving the name of Miss
+Henrietta Towell, at an address at Red Point, L. I.
+She knew Red Point, on the tip of Long Island, as
+a distant, partially developed suburb of Brooklyn. In
+the previous year she had gone with a half dozen other
+girl &#8220;supes&#8221; from the Excelsior Studio to &#8220;blow in&#8221;
+a quarter looking at the ocean steamers passing in and
+out. She had no intention of intruding on Miss Towell,
+but she couldn&#8217;t hurt Steptoe&#8217;s feelings by leaving the
+address behind her.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span></div>
+<p>For the same reason she took the silver thimble
+which stood on the scrap of paper. On its rim she
+read the inscription, &#8220;H.T. from H.S.&#8221; but she made
+no attempt to unravel the romance behind it. She
+merely slipped the scrawl and the thimble into the
+pocket of her jacket, and stood up.</p>
+<p>She took no farewells. To do so would have unnerved
+her. On the landing outside her door she
+listened for a possible sound of the prince&#8217;s breathing,
+but the house was still. In the lower hall she resisted
+the impulse to slip into the library and kiss the place
+where she had kissed his feet on the memorable morning
+when her hand had been on his brow. &#8220;That won&#8217;t
+help me any,&#8221; were the prosaic words with which she
+put the suggestion away from her. If the little mermaid
+was to leap over the ship&#8217;s side and dissolve into
+foam the best thing she could do was to leap.</p>
+<p>The door no longer held secrets. She had locked
+it and unlocked it a thousand times. Feeling for the
+chain in the darkness she slipped it out of its socket;
+she drew back the bolt; she turned the key. Her
+fingers found the two little brass knobs, pressing this
+one that way, and that one this way. The door rolled
+softly as she turned the handle.</p>
+<p>Over the threshold she passed into a world of silence,
+darkness, electricity, and stars. She closed the door
+noiselessly. She went down the steps.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXI' id='CHAPTER_XXI'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XXI</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Having the choice between going southward
+either by Fifth Avenue or by Madison Avenue,
+Letty took the former for the reason that there were
+no electric cars crashing through it, so that she would
+be less observed. It seemed to her important to get
+as far from East Sixty-seventh Street as possible before
+letting a human glance take note of her personality,
+even as a drifting silhouette.</p>
+<p>In this she was fortunate. For the hour between
+one and two in the early morning this part of Fifth
+Avenue was unusually empty. There was not a pedestrian,
+and only a rare motor car. When one of the
+latter flashed by she shrank into the shadow of a great
+house, lest some eye of miraculous discernment should
+light on her. It seemed to her that all New York
+must be ready to read her secret, and be on the watch
+to turn her back.</p>
+<p>She didn&#8217;t know why she was going southward
+rather than northward, except that southward lay
+the Brooklyn Bridge, and beyond the Brooklyn Bridge
+lay Beehive Valley, and within Beehive Valley the
+Excelsior Studio, and in the Excelsior Studio the faint
+possibility of a job. She was already thinking in
+the terms that went with the old gray rag and the
+battered hat, and had come back to them as to her
+mother-tongue. In forsaking paradise for the
+limbo of outcast souls she was at least supported
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span>
+by the fact that in the limbo of outcast souls she was
+at home.</p>
+<p>She was not frightened. Now that she was out of
+the prince&#8217;s palace she had suddenly become sensationless.
+She was like a soul which having reached the
+other side of death is conscious only of release from
+pain. She was no longer walking on blades; she was
+no longer attempting the impossible. Between her
+and the life which Barbara Walbrook understood the
+few steps she had taken had already marked the gulf.
+The gulf had always been there, yawning, <ins class="trnote" title="unbridgable in original text">unbridgeable</ins>,
+only that she, Letty Gravely, had tried to shut her
+eyes to it. She had tried to shut her eyes to it in the
+hope that the man she loved might come to do the
+same. She knew now how utterly foolish any such
+hope had been.</p>
+<p>She would have perceived this earlier had he not
+from time to time revived the hope when it was about
+to flicker out. More than once he had confessed to
+depending on her sympathy. More than once he had
+told her that she drew out something he had hardly
+dared think he possessed, but which made him more of
+a man. Once he harked back to the dust flower, saying
+that as its humble and heavenly bloom brightened
+the spots bereft of beauty so she cheered the lonely and
+comfortless places in his heart. He had said these
+things not as one who is in love, but as one who is
+grateful, only that between gratitude and love she had
+purposely kept from drawing the distinction.</p>
+<p>She did not reproach him. On the contrary, she
+blessed him even for being grateful. That meed he
+gave her at least, and that he should give her anything
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span>
+at all was happiness. Leaving his palace she did so
+with nothing but grateful thoughts on her own side.
+He had smiled on her always; he had been considerate,
+kindly, and very nearly tender. For what he called
+the wrong he had done her, which she held to be no
+wrong at all, he would have made amends so magnificent
+that the mere acceptance would have overwhelmed
+her. Since he couldn&#8217;t give her the one thing she
+craved her best course was like the little mermaid to
+tremble into foam, and become a spirit of the wind.</p>
+<p>It was what she was doing. She was going without
+leaving a trace. A girl more important than she couldn&#8217;t
+have done it so easily. A Barbara Walbrook had she
+attempted a freak so mad, would be discovered within
+twenty-four hours. It was one of the advantages of
+extreme obscurity that you came and went without notice.
+No matter how conspicuously a Letty Gravely passed
+it would not be remembered that she had gone by.</p>
+<p>With regard to this, however, she made one reserve.
+She couldn&#8217;t disappear forever, not any more than
+Judith of Bethulia when she went to the tent of Holofernes.
+The history of Judith was not in Letty&#8217;s mind,
+because she had never heard of it; there was only the
+impulse to the same sort of sacrifice. Since Israel
+could be delivered only in one way, that way Judith
+had been ready to take. To Letty her prince was her
+Israel. One day she would have to inform him that
+the Holofernes of his captivity was slain&mdash;that at
+last he was free.</p>
+<p>There were lines along which Letty was not imaginative,
+and one of those lines ran parallel to Judith&#8217;s
+experience. When it came to love at first sight, she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span>
+could invent as many situations as there were millionaires
+in the subway. In interpreting a part she had
+views of her own beyond any held by Luciline Lynch.
+As to matters of dress her fancy was boundless.</p>
+<p>Her limitations were in the practical. Among practical
+things &#8220;going to the bad&#8221; was now her chief
+preoccupation. She had always understood that when
+you made up your mind to do it you had only to
+present yourself. The way was broad; the gate wide
+open. There were wicked people on every side eager
+to pull you through. You had only to go out into the
+street, after dark especially&mdash;and there you were!</p>
+<p>Having walked some three or four blocks she made
+out the figure of a man coming up the hill toward
+her. Her heart stopped beating; her knees quaked.
+This was doom. She would meet it, of course, since
+her doom would be the prince&#8217;s salvation; but she
+couldn&#8217;t help trembling as she watched it coming on.</p>
+<p>By the light of an arc-lamp she saw that he was in
+evening dress. The wicked millionaires who, in
+motion-pictures, were the peril of young girls, were
+always so attired. Iphigenia could not have trodden
+to the altar with a more consuming mental anguish
+than Letty as she dragged herself toward this approaching
+fate; but she did so drag herself without
+mercy. For a minute as he drew near she was on the
+point of begging him to spare her; but she saved herself
+in time from this frustration of her task.</p>
+<p>The man, a young stock-broker in a bad financial
+plight, scarcely noticed that a female figure was passing
+him. Had the morrow&#8217;s market been less a matter
+of life and death to him he might have thrown her a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span>
+glance; but as it was she did not come within the range
+of his consciousness. To her amazement, and even to
+her consternation, Letty saw him go onward up the
+hill, his eyes straight before him, and his profile
+sharply cut in the electric light.</p>
+<p>She explained the situation by the fact that he
+hadn&#8217;t seen her at all. That a man could actually <i>see</i>
+a girl, in such unusual conditions, and still go by
+inoffensively, was as contrary to all she had heard of
+life as it would have been to the principles of a Turkish
+woman to suppose that one of this sex could behold
+her face and not fall fiercely in love with her.
+As, however, two men were now coming up the hill
+together Letty was obliged to re-organize her forces
+to meet the new advance.</p>
+<p>She couldn&#8217;t reason this time that they hadn&#8217;t seen
+her, because their heads turned in her direction, and
+the intonation of the words she couldn&#8217;t articulately
+hear was that of faint surprise. Further than that
+there was no incident. They were young men too,
+also in evening dress, and of the very type of which
+all her warnings had bidden her beware. The immunity
+from insult was almost a matter for chagrin.</p>
+<p>As she approached Fifty-ninth Street encounters
+were nearly as numerous as they would have been in
+daylight; but Letty went on her way as if, instead of
+the old gray rag, she wore the magic cloak of invisibility.
+So it was during the whole of the long half
+mile between Fifty-ninth Street and Forty-second
+Street. In spite of the fact that she was the only unescorted
+woman she saw, no invitation &#8220;to go to the
+bad&#8221; was proffered her. &#8220;There&#8217;s quite a trick to it,&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span>
+Steptoe had said, in the afternoon; and she began to
+think that there was.</p>
+<p>At Forty-second Street, for no reason that she could
+explain, she turned into the lower and quieter spur of
+Madison Avenue, climbing and descending Murray
+Hill. Here she was almost alone. Motor-car traffic
+had practically ceased; foot-passengers there were
+none; on each side of the street the houses were
+somber and somnolent. The electric lamps flared as
+elsewhere, but with little to light up.</p>
+<p>Her sense of being lost became awesome. It began
+to urge itself in on her that she was going nowhere,
+and had nowhere to go. She was back in the days
+when she had walked away from Judson Flack&#8217;s, without
+the same heart in the adventure. She recalled
+now that on that day she had felt young, daring, equal
+to anything that fate might send; now she felt curiously
+old and experienced. All her illusions had been dished
+up to her at once and been blown away as by a hurricane.
+The little mermaid who had loved the prince
+and failed to win his love in return could have nothing
+more to look forward to.</p>
+<p>She was drifting, drifting, when suddenly from the
+shadow of a flight of broad steps a man stalked out
+and confronted her. He confronted her with such
+evident intention that she stopped. Not till she
+stopped could she see that he was a policeman in his
+summer uniform.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where you goin&#8217;, sister?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t goin&#8217; nowheres.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She fell back on the old form of speech as on another
+tongue.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Where you come from then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Feeling now that she had gone to the bad, or was
+at the beginning of that process, she made a reply
+that would seem probable. &#8220;I come from a fella I&#8217;ve
+been&mdash;I&#8217;ve been livin&#8217; with.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gee!&#8221; The tone was of deepest pity. &#8220;Darned
+sorry to hear you&#8217;re in that box, a nice girl like you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t such a nice girl as you might think.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gee! Anyone can see you&#8217;re a nice girl, just from
+the way you walk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty was astounded. Was the way you walked
+part of Steptoe&#8217;s &#8220;trick to it?&#8221; In the hope of getting
+information she said, still in the secondary tongue:
+&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter with the way I walk?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s nothin&#8217; the matter with it. That&#8217;s the
+trouble. Anyone can see that you&#8217;re not a girl that&#8217;s
+used to bein&#8217; on the street at this hour of the night.
+Ain&#8217;t you goin&#8217; <i>anywheres</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Fear of the police-station suddenly made her faint.
+If she wasn&#8217;t going <i>anywheres</i> he might arrest her.
+She bethought her of Steptoe&#8217;s scrawled address.
+&#8220;Yes, I&#8217;m goin&#8217; there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As he stepped under the arc-light to read it she saw
+that he was a fatherly man, on the distant outskirts
+of youth, who might well have a family of growing
+boys and girls.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s a long ways from here,&#8221; he said, handing
+the scrap of paper back to her. &#8220;Why don&#8217;t you
+take the subway? At this time of night there&#8217;s a
+train every quarter of an hour.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t got no bones. I&#8217;m footin&#8217; it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Footin&#8217; it all the way to Red Point? You? Gee!&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span></div>
+<p>Once more Letty felt that about her there was something
+which put her out of the key of her adventure.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what&#8217;s there against <i>me</i> footin&#8217; it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s nothin&#8217; against you footin&#8217; it&mdash;on&#8217;y you
+don&#8217;t seem that sort. Haven&#8217;t you got as much as
+two bits? It wouldn&#8217;t come to that if you took the
+subway over here at&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I haven&#8217;t got two bits; nor one bit; nor
+nothin&#8217; at all; so I guess I&#8217;ll be lightin&#8217; out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She had nodded and passed, when a stride of his
+long legs brought him up to her again. &#8220;Well, see
+here, sister! If you haven&#8217;t got two bits, take this.
+I can&#8217;t have you trampin&#8217; all the way over to Red
+Point&mdash;not <i>you</i>!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Before knowing what had happened Letty found
+her hand closing over a silver half-dollar, while her
+benefactor, as if ashamed of his act, was off again on
+his beat. She ran after him. Her excitement was
+such that she forgot the secondary language.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I couldn&#8217;t accept this from you. Please!
+Don&#8217;t make me take it. I&#8217;m&mdash;&#8221; She felt it the moment
+for making the confession, and possibly getting hints&mdash;&#8220;I&#8217;m&mdash;I&#8217;m
+goin&#8217; to the bad, anyhow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, so that&#8217;s the talk! I thought you said you&#8217;d
+gone to the bad already. Oh, no, sister; you don&#8217;t
+put that over on me, not a nice looker like you!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was almost sobbing. &#8220;Well, I&#8217;m going&mdash;if&mdash;if
+I can find the way. I wish you&#8217;d tell me if there&#8217;s a
+trick to it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s one trick I&#8217;ll tell you, and that&#8217;s the way
+to Red Point.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know that already.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Then, if you know that already, you&#8217;ve got my
+four bits, which is more than enough to take you there
+decent.&#8221; He lifted his hand, with a warning forefinger.
+&#8220;Remember now, little sister, as long as you
+spend that half dollar it&#8217;ll bind you to keep good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He tramped off into the darkness, leaving Letty
+perplexed at the ways of wickedness, as she began
+once more to drift southward.</p>
+<p>But she drifted southward with a new sense of misgiving.
+Danger was mysteriously coy, and she didn&#8217;t
+know how to court it. True, there was still time
+enough, but the debut was not encouraging. When
+she had gone forth from Judson Flack&#8217;s she had felt
+sure that adventure lay in wait for her, and Rashleigh
+Allerton had responded almost instantaneously. Now
+she had no such confidence. On the contrary; all her
+premonitions worked the other way. Perhaps it was
+the old gray rag. Perhaps it was her lack of feminine
+appeal. Men had never flocked about her as they
+flocked about some girls, like bees about flowers. If
+she was a flower, she was a dust flower, a humble
+thing, at home in the humblest places, and never regarded
+as other than a weed.</p>
+<p>She wandered into Fourth Avenue, reaching Astor
+Place. From Astor Place she descended the city by
+the long artery of Lafayette Street, in which teams
+rumbled heavily, and all-night workers shouted raucously
+to each other in foreign languages. One of a
+band of Italians digging in the roadway, with colored
+lanterns about them, called out something at her, the
+nature of which she could only infer from the laughter
+of his compatriots. Here too she began to notice other
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>
+women like herself, shabby, furtive, unescorted, with
+terrible eyes, aimlessly drifting from nowhere to
+nowhere. There were not many of them; only one at
+long intervals; but they frightened her more than
+the men.</p>
+<p>They frightened her because she saw what she must
+look like herself, a thing too degraded for any man
+to want. She was not that yet, perhaps; but it was
+what she might become. They were not wholly new to
+her, these women; and they all had begun at some such
+point as that from which she was starting out. Very
+well! She was ready to go this road, if only by this
+road her prince could be freed from her. Since she
+couldn&#8217;t give up everything for him in one way, she
+would do it in another. The way itself was more or
+less a matter of indifference&mdash;not entirely, perhaps, but
+more or less. If she could set him free in any way
+she would be content.</p>
+<p>The rumble and stir of Lafayette Street alarmed
+her because it was so foreign. The upper part of the
+town had been empty and eerie. This quarter was
+eerie, alien, and occupied. It was difficult for her
+to tell what so many people were doing abroad because
+their aims seemed different from those of daylight.
+What she couldn&#8217;t understand struck her as
+nefarious; and what struck her as nefarious filled her
+with the kind of terror that comes in dreams.</p>
+<p>By these Italians, Slavs, and Semites she was more
+closely scrutinized than she had been elsewhere. She
+was scrutinized, too, with a hint of hostility in the
+scrutiny. In their jabber of tongues they said things
+about her as she passed. Wild-eyed women, working
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>
+by the flare of torches with their men, resented her
+presence in the street. They insulted her in terms
+she couldn&#8217;t understand, while the men laughed in
+frightful, significant jocosity. The unescorted women
+alone looked at her with a hint of friendliness. One
+of them, painted, haggard, desperate, awful, stopped as
+if to speak to her; but Letty sped away like a snowbird
+from a shrike.</p>
+<p>At a corner where the cross-street was empty she
+turned out of this haunted highway, presently finding
+herself lost in a congeries of old-time streets of which
+she had never heard. Her only knowledge of New
+York was of streets crossing each other at right
+angles, numbered, prosaic, leaving no more play to
+the fancy than a sum in arithmetic. Here the ways
+were narrow, the buildings tall, the night effects fantastic.
+In the lamp light she could read signs bearing
+names as unpronounceable as the gibbering monkey-speech
+in Lafayette Street. Warehouses, offices, big
+wholesale premises, lairs of highly specialized businesses
+which only the few knew anything about,
+offered no place for human beings to sleep, and little
+invitation to the prowler. Now and then a marauding
+cat darted from shadow to shadow, but otherwise she
+was as nearly alone as she could imagine herself being
+in the heart of a great city.</p>
+<p>Still she went on and on. In the effort to escape
+this overpowering solitude she turned one corner and
+then another, now coming out beneath the elevated
+trains, now on the outskirts of docks where she was
+afraid of sailors. She was afraid of being alone, and
+afraid of the thoroughfares where there were people.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span>
+On the whole she was more afraid of the thoroughfares
+where there were people, though her fear soon
+entered the unreasoning phase, in which it is fear and
+nothing else. Still headed vaguely southward she zigzagged
+from street to street, helpless, terrified, longing
+for day.</p>
+<p>She was in a narrow street of which the high
+weird gables on either side recalled her impressions
+on opening a copy of <i>Faust</i>, illustrated by Gustave
+Dor&eacute;, which she found on the library table in East
+Sixty-seventh Street. On her right the elevated and
+the docks were not far away, on the left she could
+catch, through an occasional side street the distant
+gleam of Broadway. Being afraid of both she kept
+to the deep canyon of unreality and solitude, though she
+was afraid of that. At least she was alone; and yet to
+be alone chilled her marrow and curdled her blood.</p>
+<p>Suddenly she heard the clank of footsteps. She
+stopped to listen, making them out as being on the
+other side of the street, and advancing. Before she
+had dared to move on again a man emerged from the
+half light and came abreast of her. As he stopped
+to look across at her, Letty hurried on.</p>
+<p>The man also went on, but on glancing over her
+shoulder to make sure that she was safe she saw him
+pause, cross to her side of the street, and begin to
+follow her. That he followed her was plain from his
+whole plan of action. The ring of his footsteps told
+her that he was walking faster than she, though in
+no precise hurry to overtake her. Rather, he seemed
+to be keeping her in sight, and watching for some
+opportunity.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span></div>
+<p>It was exactly what men did when they robbed and
+murdered unprotected women. She had read of scores
+of such cases, and had often imagined herself as
+being stalked by this kind of ghoul. Now the thing
+which she had greatly feared having come upon her
+she was nearly hysterical. If she ran he would run
+after her. If she only walked on he would overtake
+her. Before she could reach the docks on one side or
+Broadway on the other, where she might find possible
+defenders, he could easily have strangled her and
+rifled her fifty cents.</p>
+<p>It was still unreasoning fear, but fear in which
+there was another kind of prompting, which made her
+wheel suddenly and walk back towards him. She
+noticed that as she did so, he stopped, wavered, but
+came on again.</p>
+<p>Before the obscurity allowed of her seeing what
+type of man he was she cried out, with a half
+sob:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, mister, I&#8217;m so afraid! I wish you&#8217;d help me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure!&#8221; The tone had the cheery fraternal ring
+of commonplace sincerity. &#8220;That&#8217;s what I turned
+round for. I says, that girl&#8217;s lost, I says. There&#8217;s
+places down here that&#8217;s dangerous, and she don&#8217;t know
+where she is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Hysterical fear became hysterical relief. &#8220;And
+you&#8217;re not going to murder me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gee! Me? What&#8217;d I murder you for? I&#8217;m a
+plumber.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His tone making it seem impossible for a plumber
+to murder anyone she panted now from a sense of
+reassurance and security. She could see too that he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>
+was a decent looking young fellow in overalls, off on
+an early job.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where you goin&#8217; anyhow?&#8221; he asked, in kindly
+interest. &#8220;The minute I see you on the other side of
+the street, I says Gosh, I says! That girl&#8217;s got to be
+watched, I says. She don&#8217;t know that these streets
+down by the docks is dangerous.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She explained that she was on her way to Red
+Point, Long Island, and that having only fifty cents
+she was sparing of her money.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gee! I wouldn&#8217;t be so economical if it was me.
+That ain&#8217;t the only fifty cents in the world. Look-a-here!
+I&#8217;ve got a dollar. You must take that&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I couldn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Shucks! What&#8217;s a dollar? You can pay me back
+some time. I&#8217;ll give you my address. It&#8217;s all right.
+I&#8217;m married. Three kids. And say, if you send me
+back the dollar, which you needn&#8217;t do, you know&mdash;but
+if you <i>must</i>&mdash;sign a man&#8217;s name to the letter, because
+my wife&mdash;well, she&#8217;s all right, but if&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty escaped the necessity of accepting the dollar
+by assuring him that if he would tell her the way to
+the nearest subway station she would use a portion
+of her fifty cents.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go with you,&#8221; he declared, with breezy fraternity.
+&#8220;No distance. They&#8217;re expecting me on a
+job up there in Waddle Street, but they&#8217;ll wait. Pipe
+burst&mdash;floodin&#8217; a loft where they&#8217;ve stored a lot of
+jute&mdash;but why worry?&#8221;</p>
+<p>As they threaded the broken series of streets toward
+the subway he aired the matrimonial question.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Some think as two can live on the same wages as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span>
+one. All bunk, I&#8217;ll say. My wife used to be in the
+hair line. Some little earner too. Had an electric
+machine that&#8217;d make hair grow like hay on a marsh.
+Two dollars a visit she got. When we was married
+she had nine hunderd saved. I had over five hunderd
+myself. We took a weddin&#8217; tour; Atlantic City.
+Gettin&#8217; married&#8217;s a cinch; but <i>stayin</i>&#8217; married&mdash;she&#8217;s
+all right, my wife is, only she&#8217;s kind o&#8217; nervous like
+if I look sideways at any other woman&mdash;which I
+hardly ever do intentional&mdash;only my wife&#8217;s got it into
+her head that....&#8221;</p>
+<p>At the entrance to the subway Letty shook hands
+with him and thanked him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say,&#8221; he responded, &#8220;I wish I could do something
+more for you; but I got to hike it back to Waddle
+Street. Look-a-here! You stick to the subway and
+the stations, and don&#8217;t you be in a hurry to get to your
+address in Red Point till after daylight. They can&#8217;t
+be killin&#8217; nobody over there, that you&#8217;d need to be in
+such a rush, and in the stations you&#8217;d be safe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To a degree that was disconcerting Letty found
+this so. Having descended the stairs, purchased a
+ticket, and cast it into the receptacle appointed for that
+purpose, she saw herself examined by the colored man
+guarding the entry to the platform. He sat with his
+chair tilted back, his feet resting on the chain which
+protected part of the entrance, picking a set of brilliant
+teeth. Letty, trembling, nervous, and only partly
+comforted by the cavalier who was now on his way
+to Waddle Street, shrank from the colored man&#8217;s gaze
+and was going down the platform where she could be
+away from it. Her progress was arrested by the sight
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>
+of two men, also waiting for the train, who on perceiving
+her started in her direction.</p>
+<p>The colored man lifted his feet lazily from the chain,
+brought his chair down to four legs, put his toothpick
+in his waistcoat pocket, and dragged himself up.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say, lady,&#8221; he drawled, on approaching her, &#8220;I
+think them two fellas is tough. You stay here by me.
+I&#8217;ll not let no one get fresh with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Languidly he went back to his former position and
+occupation, but when after long waiting, the train
+drew in he unhooked his feet again from the chain,
+rose lazily, and accompanied Letty across the otherwise
+empty platform.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say, brother,&#8221; he said to the conductor, &#8220;don&#8217;t let
+any fresh guy get busy with this lady. She&#8217;s alone,
+and timid like.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure thing,&#8221; the conductor replied, closing the
+doors as Letty stepped within. &#8220;Sit in this corner,
+lady, next to me. The first mutt that wags his jaw at
+you&#8217;ll get it on the bean.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty dropped as she was bidden into the corner,
+dazed by the brilliant lighting, and the greasy unoccupied
+seats. She was alone in the car, and the kindly
+conductor having closed his door she felt a certain
+sense of privacy. The train clattered off into the
+darkness.</p>
+<p>Where was she going? Why was she there? How
+was she ever to accomplish the purpose with which
+two hours earlier she had stolen away from East
+Sixty-seventh Street? Was it only two hours earlier?
+It seemed like two years. It seemed like a space of
+time not to be reckoned....</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span></div>
+<p>She was tired as she had never been tired in her
+life. Her head sank back into the support made by
+the corner.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s quite a trick to it,&#8221; she found herself repeating,
+though in what connection she scarcely knew.
+&#8220;An awful wicked lydy, she is, what&#8217;d put madam up
+to all the ropes.&#8221; These words too drifted through
+her mind, foolishly, drowsily, without obvious connection.
+She began to wish that she was home again
+in the little back spare room&mdash;or anywhere&mdash;so long
+as she could lie down&mdash;and shut her eyes&mdash;and go to
+sleep....</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXII' id='CHAPTER_XXII'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XXII</h2>
+</div>
+<p>It was Steptoe who discovered that the little back
+spare room was empty, though William had informed
+him that he thought it strange that madam
+didn&#8217;t appear for breakfast. Steptoe knew then
+that what he had expected had come to pass, and if
+earlier than he had looked for it, perhaps it was just
+as well. Having tapped at madam&#8217;s door and received
+no answer he ventured within. Everything
+there confirming his belief, he went to inform
+Mr. Rash.</p>
+<p>As Mr. Rash was shaving in the bathroom Steptoe
+plodded round the bedroom, picking up scattered
+articles of clothing, putting outside the door the shoes
+which had been taken off on the previous night, digging
+another pair of shoes from the shoe-cupboard,
+and otherwise busying himself as usual. Even when
+Mr. Rash had re-entered the bedroom the valet made no
+immediate reference to what had happened in the
+house. He approached the subject indirectly by saying,
+as he laid out an old velvet house-jacket on the
+bed:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose if Mr. Rash ain&#8217;t goin&#8217; out for &#8217;is breakfast
+&#8217;e&#8217;ll put this on for &#8217;ome.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mr. Rash, who was buttoning his collar before the
+mirror said over his shoulder: &#8220;But I am going out
+for my breakfast. Why shouldn&#8217;t I? I always do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe carried the house-jacket back to the closet.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I thought as Mr. Rash only did that so as madam
+could &#8217;ave the dinin&#8217; room to &#8217;erself, private like.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As a way of expressing the fact that Allerton had
+never eaten a meal with Letty the choice of words
+was neat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well? What then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, nothink, sir. I was only thinkin&#8217; that, as
+madam was no longer &#8217;ere&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton wheeled round, his fingers clawing at the
+collar-stud, his face growing bloodless. &#8220;No longer
+here? What the deuce do you mean?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, didn&#8217;t Mr. Rash know? Madam seems to &#8217;ave
+left us. I supposed that after I&#8217;d gone upstairs last
+night Mr. Rash and &#8217;er must &#8217;ave &#8217;ad some sort of
+hunderstandin&#8217;&mdash;and she went.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Went?&#8221; Allerton&#8217;s tone was almost a scream.
+Leaping on the old man he took him by the shoulders,
+snaking him. &#8220;Damn you! Get it out! What are
+you trying to tell me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe quaked and cowered. &#8220;Why, nothink, sir.
+Only when William said as madam didn&#8217;t come down
+to &#8217;er breakfast I went to &#8217;er door and tapped&mdash;and
+there wasn&#8217;t no one in the room. Mr. Rash &#8217;ad better
+go and see for &#8217;imself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The young man not only released the older one,
+but pushed him aside with a force which sent him
+staggering backwards. Over the stairs he scrambled,
+he plunged. Though he had never entered the back
+spare room since allotting it to Letty as her own he
+threw the door open now as if the place was on fire.</p>
+<p>But by the time Steptoe had followed and reached
+the threshold Allerton had calmed suddenly. He stood
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span>
+in front of the open closet vaguely examining its contents.
+He picked up the little gold band, chucked it
+a few inches into the air, caught it, and put it down.
+He looked into the little leather purse, poured out its
+notes and pennies into his hand, replaced them, and
+put that also down again. He opened the old red
+volume lying on the table by the bed, finding <i>The
+Little Mermaid</i> marked by two stiff dried sprays of
+dust flower, which more than ever merited its name.
+When he turned round to where Steptoe, white and
+scared by this time, was standing in the open doorway,
+his, Allerton&#8217;s, face was drawn, in mingled convulsion
+and bewilderment. With two strides he was across
+the room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell me what you know about this, you confounded
+old schemer, before I kick you out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Shivering and shaking, Steptoe nevertheless held
+himself with dignity. &#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you what I know, Mr.
+Rash, though it ain&#8217;t very much. I know that madam
+&#8217;as &#8217;ad it in &#8217;er mind for some time past that unless
+she took steps Mr. Rash&#8217;d never be free to marry
+the young lydy what &#8217;e was in love with.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did she mean by taking steps?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know exactly, but I think it was the kind o&#8217;
+steps as&#8217;d give Mr. Rash &#8217;is release quicker nor any
+other.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton&#8217;s arm was raised as if to strike a blow.
+&#8220;And you let her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old face was set steadily. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t do nothin&#8217;
+but what Mr. Rash &#8217;imself told me to do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Told you to do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, Mr. Rash; six months ago; the mornin&#8217; after
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>
+you&#8217;d brought madam into the &#8217;ouse. I was to get
+you out of the marriage, you said; but I think madam
+&#8217;as done it all of &#8217;er own haccord.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But why? Why should she?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe smiled, dimly. &#8220;Oh, don&#8217;t Mr. Rash see?
+Madam &#8217;ad give &#8217;erself to &#8217;im &#8217;eart and spirit and soul.
+If she couldn&#8217;t go to the good for &#8217;im, she&#8217;d go to the
+bad. So long as she served &#8217;im, it didn&#8217;t matter to
+madam what she done. And if I was Mr. Rash&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton&#8217;s spring was like that of a tiger. Before
+Steptoe felt that he had been seized he was on his
+back on the floor, with Allerton kneeling on his chest.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You old reptile! I&#8217;m going to kill you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You may kill me, Mr. Rash, but it won&#8217;t make no
+difference to madam &#8217;avin&#8217; loved you&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Two strong hands at his throat choked back more
+words, till the sound of his strangling startled Allerton
+into a measure of self-control. He scrambled to
+his feet again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Get up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe dragged himself up, and after dusting himself
+with his fingers stood once more passive and
+respectful, as if nothing violent had occurred.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I was Mr. Rash,&#8221; he went on, imperturbably,
+&#8220;I&#8217;d let well enough alone.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was Allerton who was breathless. &#8220;Wha&mdash;what
+do you mean by well enough alone?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well the wye I see it, it&#8217;s this wye. Mr. Rash is
+married to one young lydy and wants to marry another.&#8221;
+He broke off to ask, significantly: &#8220;I suppose
+that&#8217;d be so, Mr. Rash?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what then?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Why, then, &#8217;e can&#8217;t marry the other young lydy
+till the young lydy what &#8217;e&#8217;s married to sets &#8217;im free.
+Now that young lydy what &#8217;e&#8217;s married to &#8217;as started
+out to set &#8217;im free, and if I was Mr. Rash I&#8217;d let &#8217;er.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;d let her throw herself away for me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d let &#8217;er do anythink what&#8217;d show I knowed my
+own mind, Mr. Rash. If it wouldn&#8217;t be steppin&#8217; out
+of my place to sye so, I wish Mr. Rash could tell
+which of these two young lydies &#8217;e wanted, and which
+&#8217;e&#8217;d be willin&#8217; for to&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How can I tell that when&mdash;when both have a claim
+on me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but only one &#8217;as a clyme on Mr. Rash now.
+Madam &#8217;as given up &#8217;er clyme, so as to myke things
+easier for <i>&#8217;im</i>. There&#8217;s only one clyme now for Mr.
+Rash to think about, and that mykes everythink
+simple.&#8221;</p>
+<p>An embarrassed cough drew Steptoe&#8217;s attention to
+the fact that someone was standing in the hall outside.
+It was William with a note on a silver tray. Beside
+the note stood a small square package, tied with a
+white ribbon, which looked as if it contained a piece
+of wedding cake. His whisper of explanation was the
+word, &#8220;Wildgoose,&#8221; but a cocking of his eye gave
+Steptoe to understand that William was quite aware
+of wading in the current of his employer&#8217;s love-affairs.
+Moreover, the fact that Steptoe and his master should
+be making so free with the little back spare room was
+in William&#8217;s judgment evidence of drama.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s this?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Glancing at the hand-writing on the envelope, and
+taking in the fact that a small square package, looking
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span>
+like a bit of wedding cake stood beside it, Allerton
+jumped back. Steptoe might have been presenting
+him with a snake.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know, Mr. Rash. William &#8217;as just brought
+it up. Someone seems to &#8217;ave left it at the door.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As Steptoe continued to stand with his offering
+held out Allerton had no choice but to take up the
+letter and break the seal. He read it with little grunts
+intended to signify ironic laughter, but which betrayed
+no more than bitterness of soul.</p>
+<p style='margin-left:2.0em; margin-right:2.0em; '>&#8220;<span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Dear Rash:</span></p>
+<p style='margin-left:2.0em; margin-right:2.0em; '>I have come to see that we shall never get out of
+the impasse in which we seem to have been caught
+unless someone takes a stand. I have therefore decided
+to take one. Of the three of us it is apparently
+easiest for me, so that I am definitely breaking our
+engagement and sending you back your ring. Any
+claim I may have had on you I give up of my own
+accord, so that as far as I am concerned you are free.
+This will simplify your situation, and enable you to
+act according to the dictates of your heart. Believe
+me, dear Rash, affectionately yours</p>
+<p style='margin-left:2.0em; margin-right:2.0em; text-align:right'><span style='margin-right: 0.78125em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Barbara Walbrook.</span>&#8221;</span><br /></p>
+<p>Though it was not his practice to take his valet into
+the secret of his correspondence the circumstances
+were exceptional. Allerton handed the letter to Steptoe
+without a word. As the old man was feeling for
+his glasses and adjusting them to his nose Mr. Rash
+turned absently away, picking up the volume of Hans
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span>
+Andersen, from which the sprays of dust flower
+tumbled out. On putting them back his eyes fell upon
+the words, which someone had marked with a pencil:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Day by day she grew dearer to the prince; but he
+loved her as one loves a child. The thought of making
+her his queen never crossed his mind.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A spasm passed over his face. He turned the page
+impatiently. Here he caught the words which had
+been underlined:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am with him every day. I will watch over him&mdash;love
+him&mdash;and sacrifice my life for him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Shutting the book with a bang, and throwing it on
+the table, he wheeled round to where Steptoe, having
+folded the letter, was taking off his spectacles.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what do you say to that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What I&#8217;d sye to that, Mr. Rash, is that it&#8217;s as good
+as a legal document. If any young lydy what wrote
+that letter was to bring a haction for breach, this &#8217;ere
+pyper&#8217;d nyle &#8217;er.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So where am I now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Free as a lark, Mr. Rash. One young lydy &#8217;as
+turned you down, and the other &#8217;as gone to the bad
+for you; so if you was to begin agyne with a third
+you&#8217;d &#8217;ave a clean sheet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He groaned aloud. &#8220;Ah, go to &#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>But without stating the place to which Steptoe was
+to go he marched out of the room, and back to his
+dressing upstairs.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>More dispassionate was the early morning scene in
+the little basement eating house in which the stunted
+Hebrew maid of Polish culture was serving breakfast
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span>
+to two gentlemen who had plainly met by appointment.
+Beside the one was an oblong packet, of which some
+of the contents, half displayed, had the opulent engraved
+decorations of stock certificates.</p>
+<p>The other gentleman, resembling an operatic brigand
+a little the worse for wear, was saying with conviction:
+&#8220;Oil! Don&#8217;t talk to me! No, sir! There&#8217;s
+enough oil in Milligan Center alone to run every car
+in Europe and America at this present time; while if
+you include North Milligan, where it&#8217;s beginnin&#8217; to
+shoot like the Old Faithful geyser&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Awful obliged to you, Judson,&#8221; the other took up,
+humbly. &#8220;I thought that bunch o&#8217; nuts &#8217;d never&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So did I, Gorry. I&#8217;ve sweated blood over this job
+all winter. Queer the way men are made. Now you&#8217;d
+hardly believe the work I&#8217;ve had to show that lot of
+boneheads that because a guy&#8217;s a detective in one
+line, he ain&#8217;t a detective in every line. Homicide, I
+said, was Gorry Larrabin&#8217;s specialty, and where there&#8217;s
+no homicide he&#8217;s no more a detective than a busted
+rubber tire.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve said it,&#8221; Gorry corroborated, earnestly.
+&#8220;One of the cussed things about detectin&#8217; is that fellas
+gets afraid of you. Think because you&#8217;re keepin&#8217; up
+your end you must be down on every little thing, and
+that you ain&#8217;t a sport.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Must be hard,&#8221; Judson said, sympathetically.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you it&#8217;s hard. Lots of fun I&#8217;d like to be
+let in on&mdash;but you&#8217;re kept outside.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The drawbacks of the detective profession not being
+what Judson chiefly had on his mind he allowed the
+subject to drop. An interval of silence for the consumption
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span>
+of a plateful of golden toasties permitted
+Gorry to begin again reminiscently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;By the way, Judson, do you remember that about
+six months ago you was chewin&#8217; over that girl of
+yours, and what had become of her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>To himself Judson said: &#8220;That&#8217;s the talk; now
+we&#8217;re comin&#8217; to business.&#8221; Aloud he made it: &#8220;Why,
+yes. Seems to me I do. She&#8217;s been gone so long
+I&#8217;d almost forgot her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what d&#8217;ye know? Last night&mdash;lemme see,
+was it last night?&mdash;no, night before last&mdash;I kind o&#8217;
+got wind of her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Heaven&#8217;s sake!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Guy I know was comin&#8217; through East Sixty-seventh
+Street, and there was my lady, dressed to beat
+the band, leadin&#8217; one of them little toy dogs, and
+talkin&#8217; to a swell toff that lives in one of them houses.
+Got the number here in my pocket-book.&#8221;</p>
+<p>While he was searching his pocket-book Judson
+asked, breathlessly: &#8220;Couldn&#8217;t be no mistake?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s nix on mistakes. That guy don&#8217;t make &#8217;em.
+Surest thing on the force. He said, &#8216;Good afternoon,
+Miss Gravely&#8217;; and she said, &#8216;Good afternoon&#8217; back
+to him&mdash;just like that. The guy walked on and turned
+a corner; but when he peeped back, there was the
+couple goin&#8217; into the house just like husband and
+wife. What d&#8217;ye know?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do I know? I know I&#8217;ll spill his claret for
+him before the week is out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, here it is! Knew I had that address on me
+somewheres.&#8221; He handed the scrap of paper across
+the table. &#8220;That&#8217;s his name and number. Seems to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span>
+me you may have a good thing there, Judson, if you
+know how to work it.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>In another early morning scene the ermine was
+cleaning her nest; and you know how fastidious she
+is supposed to be as to personal spotlessness. The
+ermine in question did not belie her reputation, as
+you would have seen by a glance at the three or four
+rooms which made up what she called her &#8220;flat.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nothing was ever whiter than the wood-work of
+the &#8220;flat&#8221; and its furnishings. Nothing was ever
+whiter than the little lady&#8217;s dress. The hair was white,
+and even the complexion, the one like silver, the other
+like the camelia. Having breakfasted from white
+dishes placed on a white napkin, she was busy with a
+carpet-sweeper sweeping up possible crumbs. In an
+interval of the carpet-sweeper&#8217;s buzz she heard the
+telephone.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hello!&#8221; The male voice was commanding.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes?&#8221; The response was sweetly precise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is this Red Point 3284-W?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can I speak to Miss Henrietta Towell?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is Miss Henrietta Towell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is the Brooklyn Bridge Emergency Hospital.
+Do you know a girl named Letitia Rashleigh?&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a second&#8217;s hesitation. &#8220;I was once a
+lady&#8217;s maid to a lady whose maiden name was Rashleigh.
+I think there may be a connection somewhere.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She was found unconscious on a car in the subway
+last night and brought in here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And has she mentioned me?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;She hasn&#8217;t mentioned anyone since she came to;
+but we find your address on a paper in her pocket.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That seems singular, but I expect there&#8217;s a purpose
+behind it. Is that everything she had?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; she had forty-five cents and a thimble.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A thimble! Just an ordinary thimble.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, an ordinary thimble, except that it has initials
+on the edge. &#8216;H.T. from H.S.&#8217; Does that mean anything
+to you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; that means something to me. May I ask how
+to reach the hospital?&#8221;</p>
+<p>This being explained Miss Towell promised to
+appear without delay, begging that in the meantime
+everything be done for Miss Rashleigh&#8217;s comfort.</p>
+<p>She was not perturbed. She was not surprised.
+She did not wonder who Letitia Rashleigh could be,
+or why her address should be found in the girl&#8217;s
+pocket. She was as quiet and serene as if such incidents
+belonged to every day&#8217;s work.</p>
+<p>Dressed for the street she was all in black. A
+mantua covered with bugles and braid dropped from
+her shoulders, while a bonnet which rose to a pointed
+arch above her brow, and allowed the silver knob of
+her hair to escape behind, gave her a late nineteenth
+century dignity. Before leaving the house she took
+two volumes from her shelves&mdash;read first in one, then
+in the other&mdash;sat pensive for a while, with head bent
+and eyes shaded&mdash;after which she replaced her books,
+turned the key in her door, and set forth for Brooklyn
+Bridge.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXIII' id='CHAPTER_XXIII'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XXIII</h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Why you should hold me responsible,&#8221; Barbara
+was saying, &#8220;I can&#8217;t begin to imagine. Surely
+I&#8217;ve done everything I could to simplify matters, to
+straighten them out, and to give you a chance to
+rectify your folly. I&#8217;ve effaced myself; I&#8217;ve broken
+my heart; I&#8217;ve promised Aunt Marion to go in for a
+job for which I&#8217;m not fitted and don&#8217;t care a rap; and
+yet you come here, accusing me&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, Barbe, I&#8217;m <i>not</i> accusing you! If I&#8217;m accusing
+anyone it&#8217;s myself. Only I can&#8217;t speak without
+your taking me up&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There you go! Oh, Rash, dear, if you&#8217;d only been
+able to control yourself nothing of this would have
+happened&mdash;not from the first.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was pacing up and down the little reception
+room, and rubbing her hands together, while the twisting
+of the fish-tail of her hydrangea-colored robe, like
+an eel in agony, emphasized her agitation. Rashleigh
+was seated, his elbows on his knees, his head bowed
+between his hands, of which the fingers clutched and
+tore at the masses of his hair. Only when he spoke
+did he lift his woe-begone black eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I didn&#8217;t control myself,&#8221; he admitted, impatiently;
+&#8220;that&#8217;s settled. Why go back to it? The
+question is&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; why go back to it? That&#8217;s you all over,
+Rash. You can do what no one else in his senses
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span>
+would ever think of doing; and when you&#8217;ve upset
+the whole apple cart it must never be referred to again.
+I&#8217;m to accept, and keep silence. Well, I&#8217;ve <i>kept</i>
+silence. I&#8217;ve gone all winter like a muzzled dog. I&#8217;ve
+wheedled that girl, and kow-towed to her, and made
+her think I was fond of her&mdash;which I am in a way&mdash;you
+may not believe it, but I am&mdash;and what&#8217;s the
+result? She gets sick of the whole business; runs
+away; and you come here and throw the whole blame
+on me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He tried to speak with special calmness. &#8220;Barbe,
+listen to me. What I said was this&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She came to a full stop in front of him, her arms
+outspread. &#8220;Oh, Rash, dear, I know perfectly well
+what you said. You don&#8217;t have to go all over it again.
+I&#8217;m not deaf. If you would only not be so excitable&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He jumped to his feet. &#8220;I&#8217;m excitable, I know,
+Barbe. I confess it. Everybody knows it. What I&#8217;m
+trying to tell you is that I&#8217;m not excited <i>now</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She laughed, a little mocking laugh, and started once
+more to pace up and down. &#8220;Oh, very well! You&#8217;re
+not excited now. Then that&#8217;s understood. You never
+are excited. You&#8217;re as calm as a mountain.&#8221; She
+paused again, though at a distance. &#8220;<i>Now?</i> What
+is it you&#8217;re going to do? That&#8217;s what you&#8217;ve come to
+ask me, isn&#8217;t it? Are you going to run after her?
+Are you going to let her go? Are you going to
+divorce her, if she gives you the opportunity? If
+you divorce her are you going to&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, Barbe, I can&#8217;t decide all these questions now.
+What I want to do is to <i>find</i> her.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I haven&#8217;t got her here? Why don&#8217;t you go
+after her? Why don&#8217;t you apply to the police? Why
+don&#8217;t you&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but that&#8217;s just what I want to discuss with
+you. I don&#8217;t <i>like</i> applying to the police. If I do it&#8217;ll
+get into the papers, and the whole thing become so
+odious and vulgar&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And it&#8217;s such an exquisite idyll now!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He threw back his head. &#8220;<i>She&#8217;s</i> an exquisite
+idyll&mdash;in her way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There! That&#8217;s what I wanted to hear you say!
+I&#8217;ve thought you were in love with her&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He remembered the penciled lines in Hans Andersen.
+&#8220;If I have been, it&#8217;s as you may be in love with
+an innocent little child&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She laughed again, wildly, almost hysterically.
+&#8220;Oh, Rash, don&#8217;t try to get that sort of thing off on
+me. I know how men love innocent little children.
+You can see the way they do it any night you choose
+to hang round the stage-door of a theatre where the
+exquisite idylls are playing in musical comedy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t Barbe! Not when you&#8217;re talking about her!
+I know she&#8217;s an ignorant little thing; but to me she&#8217;s
+like a wild-flower&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wild-flowers can be cultivated, Rash.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but the wild-flower she&#8217;s most like is the one
+you see in the late summer all along the dusty highways&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She put up both palms in a gesture of protestation.
+&#8220;Oh, Rash, please don&#8217;t be poetical. It gets on my
+nerves. I can&#8217;t stand it. I like you in every mood
+but your sentimental one.&#8221; She came to a halt beside
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span>
+the mantelpiece, on which she rested an elbow, turning
+to look at him. &#8220;Now tell me, Rash! Suppose
+I wasn&#8217;t in the world at all. Or suppose you&#8217;d never
+heard of me. And suppose you found yourself married
+to this girl, just as you are&mdash;nominally&mdash;legally&mdash;but
+not really. Would you&mdash;would you make it&mdash;really?&#8221;</p>
+<p>They exchanged a long silent look. His eyes had
+not left hers when he said: &#8220;I&mdash;I might.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good! Now suppose she wasn&#8217;t in the world at
+all, or that you&#8217;d never heard of her. And suppose
+that you and I were&mdash;were on just the same terms that
+we are to-day. Would you&mdash;would you want to
+marry me? Answer me truly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, yes; of course.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now suppose that she and I were standing together,
+and you were led in to choose between us. And
+suppose you were absolutely free and untrammelled in
+your choice, with no question as to her feelings or
+mine to trouble you. Which would you take? Answer
+me just as truly and sincerely as you can.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He took time to think, wheeling away from her,
+and walking up and down the little room with his
+hands behind his back. It occurred to neither that
+Barbara having broken the &#8220;engagement,&#8221; and returned
+the ring, the choice before him was purely
+hypothetical. Their relations were no more affected
+by the note she had written him that morning than
+by the ceremony through which he and Letty had
+walked in the previous year.</p>
+<p>To Barbara the suspense was almost unbearable. In
+a minute or two, and with a word or two, she would
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span>
+know how life for the future was to be cast. She
+would have before her the possibility of some day becoming
+a happy wife&mdash;or a great career like her aunt&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>Pausing in his walk he confronted her just as he
+stood, his hands still clasped behind his back. Her
+own attitude, with elbow resting on the mantelpiece,
+was that of a woman equal to anything.</p>
+<p>He spoke slowly. &#8220;Just as truly and sincerely as
+I can answer you&mdash;I don&#8217;t know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She stirred slightly, but otherwise gave no sign of
+her impatience. &#8220;And is there anything that would
+help you to find out?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He shook his head. &#8220;Nothing that I can think of,
+unless&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes? Unless&mdash;what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Unless it&#8217;s something that would unlock what&#8217;s
+locked in my subconsciousness.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what would that be?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t the faintest idea.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She moved from the mantelpiece with a gesture of
+despair. &#8220;Rash, you&#8217;re absolutely and hopelessly
+impossible.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know that,&#8221; he admitted, humbly.</p>
+<p>With both fists clenched she stood in front of him.
+&#8220;I could kill you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He hung his head. &#8220;Not half so easily as I could
+kill myself.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Letty&#8217;s judgment on Miss Henrietta Towell was
+different from yours and mine. She found her just
+what she had expected to see from the warnings long
+ago issued by Mrs. Judson Flack in putting her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span>
+daughter on her guard. In going about the city she,
+Letty, was always to be suspicious of elderly ladies,
+respectably dressed, enticingly mannered, and with
+what seemed like maternal intentions. The more any
+one of these traits was developed, the more suspicious
+Letty was to be. With these instructions carefully at
+heart she would have been suspicious of Henrietta
+Towell in any case; but with Steptoe&#8217;s description to
+fall back upon she couldn&#8217;t but feel sure.</p>
+<p>By the time Miss Towell had arrived at the hospital
+Letitia Rashleigh had sufficiently recovered to be
+dressed and seated in the armchair placed beside the
+bed in the small white ward. On one low bedpost
+the jacket had been hung, and on the other the battered
+black hat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s nothing the matter with her,&#8221; the nurse
+explained to Miss Towell, before entering the ward.
+&#8220;She had fainted in the subway, but I think it was only
+from fatigue, and perhaps from lack of food. She&#8217;s
+quite well nourished, only she didn&#8217;t seem to have
+eaten any supper, and was evidently tired from a long
+and frightening walk. She gives us no explanation of
+herself, and is disinclined to talk, and if it hadn&#8217;t been
+that she had your address in her pocket&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think I know how she got that. From her name
+I judge that she&#8217;s a relative of the family in which I
+used to be employed; but as they were all very wealthy
+people&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Even very wealthy people often have poor relations.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, of course; but I was with this family for so
+many years that if there&#8217;d been any such connection
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>
+I think I must have heard of it. However, it makes
+no difference to me, and I shall be glad to be of use
+to her, especially as she has in her possession an
+article&mdash;a thimble it is&mdash;which once belonged to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At the bedside the nurse made the introduction.
+&#8220;This is the lady whose address you had in your
+pocket. She very kindly said she&#8217;d come and see what
+she could do for you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Having placed a chair for Miss Towell the nurse
+withdrew to attend to other patients in the ward, of
+whom there were three or four.</p>
+<p>Letty regarded the newcomer with eyes that seemed
+lustreless in spite of their tiny gold flames. Having a
+shrewd idea of what she would mean to her visitor
+she felt it unnecessary to express gratitude. In a
+certain sense she hated her at sight. She hated her
+bugles and braid and the shape of her bonnet, as the
+criminal about to be put to death might hate the
+executioner&#8217;s mask and gaberdine. The more Miss
+Towell was sweet-spoken and respectable, the more
+Letty shrank from these tokens of hypocrisy in one
+who was wicked to the core. &#8220;She wouldn&#8217;t seem so
+wicked, not at first,&#8221; Steptoe had predicted, &#8220;but
+time&#8217;d tell.&#8221; Well, Letty didn&#8217;t need time to tell, since
+she could see for herself already. She could see from
+the first words addressed to her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You needn&#8217;t tell me anything about yourself, dear,
+that you don&#8217;t want me to know. If you&#8217;re without a
+place to go to, I shall be glad if you&#8217;ll come home with
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was the invitation Letty had expected, and to
+which she meant to respond. Knowing, however,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span>
+what was behind it she replied more ungraciously than
+she would otherwise have done. &#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t mind
+talking about myself. I&#8217;m a picture-actress, only I&#8217;ve
+been out of a job. I haven&#8217;t worked for over six
+months. I&#8217;ve been&mdash;I&#8217;ve been visiting.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Towell lowered her eyes, and spoke with modesty.
+&#8220;I suppose you were visiting people who knew&mdash;who
+knew the person who&mdash;who gave you my address
+and the thimble?&#8221;</p>
+<p>This question being more direct than she cared for
+Letty was careful to answer no more than, &#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Towell continued to sit with eyes downcast,
+and as if musing. Two or three minutes went by before
+she said, softly: &#8220;How is he?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty replied that he was very well, and in the same
+place where he had been so long. Another interval
+of musing was followed by the simple statement:
+&#8220;We differed about religion.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This remark had no modifying effect on Letty&#8217;s
+estimate of Miss Towell&#8217;s character, since religion was
+little more to her than a word. Neither was she interested
+in dead romance between Steptoe and Miss
+Towell, all romance being summed up in her prince.
+That flame burned with a pure and single purpose
+to wed him to the princess with whom he was in love,
+while the little mermaid became first foam, and then
+a spirit of the air. It took little from the poetry of
+this dissolution that it could be achieved only by trundling
+over Brooklyn Bridge, and through a nexus of
+dreary streets. In Letty&#8217;s outlook on her mission the
+end glorified the means, however shady or degraded.</p>
+<p>It was precisely this spirit&mdash;mistaken, if you choose
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span>
+to call it so&mdash;which animated Judith of Bethulia,
+Monna Vanna, and Boule de Suif. Letty didn&#8217;t class
+herself with these heroines; she only felt as they did,
+that there was something to be done. On that something
+a man&#8217;s happiness depended; on it another
+woman&#8217;s happiness depended too; on it her own happiness
+depended, since if it wasn&#8217;t done she would feel
+herself a clog to be cursed. To be cursed by the
+prince would mean anguish far more terrible than
+any punishment society could mete out to her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you feel equal to it we might go now, dear,&#8221;
+Miss Towell suggested, on waking from her dreams
+of what might have been. &#8220;I wish I could take you
+in a taxi; but I daresay you won&#8217;t mind the tram.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty rose briskly. &#8220;No, I shan&#8217;t mind it at all.&#8221;
+She looked Miss Towell significantly in the eyes, hoping
+that her words would carry all the meaning she
+was putting into them. &#8220;I shan&#8217;t mind&mdash;anything you
+want me to do, no matter what.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Towell smiled, sweetly. &#8220;Thank you, dear.
+That&#8217;ll be very nice. I shan&#8217;t ask you to do much,
+because it&#8217;s your problem, you know, and you must
+work it out. I&#8217;ll stand by; but standing by is about all
+we can do for each other, when problems have to be
+faced. Don&#8217;t you think it is?&#8221;</p>
+<p>As this language meant nothing to Letty, she
+thanked the nurse, smiled at the other patients, and,
+trudging at Miss Towell&#8217;s side with her quaintly sturdy
+grace, went forth to her great sacrifice.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Allerton had drawn from his conversation with
+Barbara this one practical suggestion. As he had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span>
+months before consulted his lawyer, Mr. Nailes, as
+to ways of losing Letty after she had been found,
+he might consult him as to ways of finding her now
+that she had been lost. Mr. Nailes would not go to
+the police. He would apply to some discreet house of
+detectives who would do the work discreetly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then, I presume, you&#8217;ve changed your mind about
+this marriage,&#8221; was Mr. Nailes&#8217; not unnatural inference,
+&#8220;and mean to go on with it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;N-not exactly.&#8221; Allerton was still unable to define
+his intentions. &#8220;I only don&#8217;t want her to disappear&mdash;like
+this.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mr. Nailes pondered. He was a tall, raw-boned
+man, of raw-boned countenance, to whom the law
+represented no system of divine justice, but a means
+by which Eugene Nailes could make money, as his
+father had made it before him. Having inherited his
+father&#8217;s practice he had inherited Rashleigh Allerton,
+the two fathers having had a long-standing business
+connection. Mr. Nailes had no high opinion of Rashleigh
+Allerton&mdash;in which he was not peculiar&mdash;but a
+client with so much money was entitled to his way. At
+the same time he couldn&#8217;t have been human without
+urging a point of common sense.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you <i>don&#8217;t</i> want to&mdash;to continue your&mdash;your relation
+with this&mdash;this lady, doesn&#8217;t it strike you that
+now might be a happy opportunity&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Allerton did what he did rarely; he struck the table
+with his fist. &#8220;I want to find her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The words were spoken with so much force that
+to Mr. Nailes they were conclusive. It was far from
+his intention to compel anyone to common sense, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span>
+least of all a man whose folly might bring increased
+fees to the firm of Nailes, Nailes, and Nailes.</p>
+<p>It was agreed that steps should be taken at once,
+and that Mr. Nailes would report in the evening.
+Gravely was the name Allerton was sure she would
+use, and the only one that needed to be mentioned.
+It needed only to be mentioned too that Mr. Nailes
+was acting for a client who preferred to remain
+anonymous.</p>
+<p>It was further agreed that Mr. Nailes should report
+at Allerton&#8217;s office at ten that evening, in person if
+there was anything to discuss, by telephone if there
+was nothing. This was convenient for Mr. Nailes,
+who lived in the neighborhood of Washington Square,
+while it protected Rash from household curiosity. At
+ten that night he was, therefore, in the unusual position
+of pacing the rooms he had hardly ever seen
+except by daylight.</p>
+<p>Not Letty&#8217;s disappearance was uppermost in his
+mind, for the moment, but his own inhibitions.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My God, what&#8217;s the matter with me?&#8221; he was
+muttering to himself. &#8220;Am I going insane? Have I
+been insane all along? Why <i>can&#8217;t</i> I say which of
+these two women I want, when I can have either?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He placed over against each other the special set
+of spells which each threw upon his heart.</p>
+<p>Barbara was of his own world; she knew the people
+he knew; she had the same interests, and the same way
+of showing them. Moreover, she had in a measure
+grown into his life. Their friendship was not only
+intimate it was one of long standing. Though she
+worried, hectored, and exasperated him, she had fits
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>
+of generous repentance, in which she mothered him
+adorably. This double-harness of comradeship had
+worked for so many years that he couldn&#8217;t imagine
+wearing it with another.</p>
+<p>And yet Letty pulled so piteously at his heart that
+he fairly melted in tenderness toward her. Everything
+he knew as appeal was summed up in her soft voice,
+her gentle manner, her humility, her unquestioning
+faith in himself. No one had ever had faith in him
+before. To Barbe he was a booby when he was not a
+baby. To Letty he was a hero, strong, wise, commanding.
+It wasn&#8217;t merely his vanity that she touched;
+it was his manliness. Barbe suppressed his manliness,
+because she herself was so imperious. Letty depended
+on it, and therefore drew it out. Because she believed
+him a man, he could be a man; whereas with Barbe,
+as with everyone else, he was a creature to be liked,
+humored, laughed at, and good-naturedly despised.
+He was sick of being liked, humored, and laughed
+at; he rebelled with every atom in him that was masculine
+at being good-naturedly despised. To find anyone
+who thought him big and vigorous was to his
+starved spirit, as the psalmist says, sweeter also than
+honey and the honeycomb. In having her weakness
+to hold up he could for the first time in his life feel
+himself of use.</p>
+<p>If there was no Barbe in the world he could have
+taken Letty as the mate his soul was longing for. Yet
+how could he deal such a blow at Barbe&#8217;s loyalty? She
+had protected him during all his life, from boyhood
+upwards. Between him and derision she had stood
+like a young lioness. How could he deny her now?&mdash;no
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>
+matter what frail, gentle hands were clinging
+around his heart?</p>
+<p>&#8220;How can I? How can I? How can I?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was torturing himself with this question when
+the telephone rang, and he knew that Letty had not
+been found.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; nothing,&#8221; were the words of Mr. Nailes.
+&#8220;No one of the name has been reported at any of the
+hospitals, or police stations, or any other public institution.
+They&#8217;ve applied at all the motion-picture
+studios round New York; but still with no result.
+This, of course, is only the preliminary search, as
+much as they&#8217;ve been able to accomplish in one afternoon
+and evening. You mustn&#8217;t be disappointed.
+To-morrow is likely to be more successful.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rash was, therefore, thrown back on another phase
+of his situation. Letty was lost. She was not only
+lost, but she had run away from him. She had not
+only run away from him, but she had done it so that
+he might be rid of her. She had not only done it so
+that he might be rid of her, but....</p>
+<p>His spirit balked. His imagination could work no
+further. Horror staggered him. A mother who
+knows that her child is in the hands of kidnappers
+who will have no mercy might feel something like the
+despair and helplessness which sent him chafing and
+champing up and down the suite of rooms, cursing
+himself uselessly.</p>
+<p>Suddenly he paused. He was in front of the cabinet
+which had come via Bordentown from Queen
+Caroline Murat. Behind its closed door there was
+still the bottle on the label of which a kilted Highlander
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span>
+was dancing. He must have a refuge from
+his thoughts, or else he would go mad. He was already
+as near madness as a man could come and still be
+reckoned sane.</p>
+<p>He opened the door of the cabinet. The bottle and
+the glass stood exactly where he had placed them on
+that morning when he had tried to begin going to
+the devil, and had failed. Now there was no longer
+that same mysterious restraint. He was not thinking
+of the devil; he was thinking only of himself. He
+must still the working of his mind. Anything would
+do that would drug his faculties, and so....</p>
+<p>It was after midnight when he dragged himself out
+of a stupor which had not been sleep. Being stupor,
+however, it was that much to the good. He had
+stopped thinking. He couldn&#8217;t think. His head didn&#8217;t
+ache; it was merely sore. He might have been dashing
+it against the wall, as figuratively he had done.
+His body was sore too&mdash;stiff from long sitting in the
+same posture, and bruised as if from beating. All
+that was nothing, however, since misery only stunned
+him. To be stunned was what he had been working
+for.</p>
+<p>Out in the air the wind of the May night was comforting.
+It soothed his nerves without waking the
+dormant brain. Instead of looking for a taxi he began
+walking up the Avenue. Walking too was a
+relief. It allowed him to remain as stupefied as at
+first, and yet stirred the circulation in his limbs. He
+meant to walk till he grew tired, after which he would
+jump on an electric bus.</p>
+<p>But he did not grow tired. He passed the great
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span>
+milestones, Fourteenth Street, Twenty-third Street,
+Forty-second Street, Fifty-ninth Street, and not till
+crossing the last did he begin to feel fagged. He was
+then so near home that the impulse of doggedness
+kept him on foot. He was a strong walker, and
+physically in good condition, without being wholly
+robust. Had it not been for the kilted Highlander
+he would hardly have felt fatigue; but as it was, the
+corner of East Sixty-seventh Street found him as
+spent as he cared to be.</p>
+<p>Advancing toward his door he saw a man coming in
+the other direction. There was nothing in that, and
+he would scarcely have noticed him, only for the fact
+that at this hour of the night pedestrians in the
+quarter were rare. In addition to that the man, having
+reached the foot of Allerton&#8217;s own steps, stood
+there waiting, as if with intention.</p>
+<p>Through the obscurity Rash could see only that the
+man was well built, flashily dressed, and that he wore
+a sweeping mustache. In his manner of standing
+and waiting there was something significant and menacing.
+Arrived at the foot of the steps Allerton could
+do no less than pause to ask if the stranger was
+looking for anyone.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is your name Allerton?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; it is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I want my girl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was some seconds before Rash could get his
+dulled mind into play. Moreover, the encounter was
+of a kind which made him feel sick and disgusted.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whom do you mean?&#8221; he managed to ask, at
+last.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You know very well who I mean. I mean Letty
+Gravely. I&#8217;m her father; and by God, if you don&#8217;t
+give her up&mdash;with big damages&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t give her up, because she&#8217;s not here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not here? She was damn well here the day
+before yesterday.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; she was here the day before yesterday; but
+she disappeared last night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, cut that kind o&#8217; talk. I&#8217;m wise, I am. You
+can&#8217;t put that bunk over on me. She&#8217;s in there, and
+I&#8217;m goin&#8217; to get her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish she was in there; but she&#8217;s not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How do I know she&#8217;s not?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid you&#8217;ll have to take my word for it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Like hell I&#8217;ll take your word for it. I&#8217;m goin&#8217;
+to see for myself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see how you&#8217;re going to do that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m goin&#8217; in with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That wouldn&#8217;t do you any good. Besides, I can&#8217;t
+let you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The man became more bullying. &#8220;See here, son.
+This game is my game. Did j&#8217;ever see a thing like
+this?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Watching the movement of his hand Rash saw
+the handle of a revolver displayed in a side pocket.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I&#8217;ve seen a thing like that; but even if it
+was loaded&mdash;which I don&#8217;t believe it is&mdash;you&#8217;ve too
+much sense to use it. You might shoot me, of course;
+but you wouldn&#8217;t find the girl in the house, because
+she isn&#8217;t there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;m goin&#8217; to see. You march. Up you
+go, and open that door, and I&#8217;ll follow you.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no, you won&#8217;t.&#8221; Allerton looked round for
+the policeman who occasionally passed that way; but
+though a lighted car crashed down Madison Avenue
+there was no one in sight. He might have called in
+the hope of waking the men upstairs, but that seemed
+cowardly. Though in a physical encounter with a
+ruffian like this he could hardly help getting the worst
+of it&mdash;especially in his state of half intoxication&mdash;it
+was the encounter itself that he loathed, even more
+than the defeat. &#8220;Oh, no, you won&#8217;t,&#8221; he repeated,
+taking one step upward, and turning to defend his
+premises. &#8220;I don&#8217;t mean that you shall come into
+this house, or ever see the girl again, if I can prevent
+it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you don&#8217;t, don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I don&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then take that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The words were so quickly spoken, and the blow
+in his face so unexpected, that Rash staggered backwards.
+Being on a step he had little or no footing,
+and having been drinking his balance was the more
+quickly lost.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And that!&#8221;</p>
+<p>A second blow in the face sent him down like a
+stone, without a struggle or a cry.</p>
+<p>He fell limply on his back, his feet slipping to the
+sidewalk, his body sagging on the steps like a bit of
+string, accidentally dropped there. The hat, which
+fell off, remained on the step beside the head it had
+been covering.</p>
+<p>The man leaped backward, as if surprised at his
+own deed. He looked this way and that, to see if
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span>
+he had been observed. A lighted car crashed up
+Madison Avenue, but otherwise the street remained
+empty. Creeping nearer the steps he bent over his
+victim, whose left hand lay helpless and outstretched.
+Timidly, gingerly, he put his fingers to the pulse,
+starting back from it with a shock. He spoke but
+two words, but he spoke them half aloud.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dead! God!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then he walked swiftly away into Madison Avenue,
+where he soon found a car going southward.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXIV' id='CHAPTER_XXIV'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XXIV</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Barbara was late for breakfast. Miss Walbrook,
+the aunt, was scanning the morning paper,
+her refined, austere Americanism being as noticeable
+in the dining-room as elsewhere in the house. Everything
+was slender and strong; everything was American,
+unless it was the Persian rug. On the paneled
+walls there were but three portraits, a Boston ancestress,
+in lace cap and satins, painted by Copley; a
+Philadelphia ancestor in the Continental uniform,
+painted by Gilbert Stuart; and her New York grandmother,
+painted by Thomas Sully, looking over her
+shoulder with the wild backward glance that artist
+gives to the girl Victoria in the Metropolitan Museum.
+In a flat cabinet along a wall was the largest collection
+of old American glass to be found in the country.</p>
+<p>Barbara rushed in, with apologies for being late.
+&#8220;I didn&#8217;t sleep a wink. It doesn&#8217;t seem to me as if
+I should ever sleep again. Where&#8217;s my cup?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wildgoose will bring it. As the coffee had grown
+cold he took that and the cup to keep warm. What&#8217;s
+the matter?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Wildgoose stepped in with the missing essentials.
+A full-fed, round-faced, rubicund man of fifty-odd
+he looked a perennial twenty-five. Barbara began
+to minister to herself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, everything&#8217;s the matter. I told you yesterday
+that that girl had run away. Well, I begin to
+wish she&#8217;d run back again.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span></div>
+<p>Miss Walbrook, the elder, had this in common
+with Miss Henrietta Towell, that she believed it best
+for everyone to work out his own salvation. Barbara
+had her personal life to live, and while her aunt would
+help her to live it, she wouldn&#8217;t guide her choice.
+She continued, therefore, to scan the paper till her
+niece should say something more.</p>
+<p>She said it, not because she wanted to give information,
+but because she was temperamentally outspoken.
+&#8220;I begin to wish there were no men in the
+world. If women are men in a higher stage of development,
+why didn&#8217;t men die out, so that we could be
+rid of them? Isn&#8217;t that what we generally get from
+the survival of the fittest?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Walbrook&#8217;s thin, clear smile suggested the
+edge of a keenly tempered blade. &#8220;I&#8217;ve never said
+that women were men in a higher stage of development.
+I&#8217;ve said that in their parallel states of development
+women had advanced a stage beyond men.
+You may say of every generation born that women
+begin where men leave off. I suppose that that&#8217;s
+what&#8217;s meant by the myth of Eve springing from
+Adam&#8217;s side. It was to be noticed even then, in the
+prehistoric, in the age that formed the great legends.
+Adam was asleep, when Eve as a vital force leaped
+away from him. If it wasn&#8217;t for Eve&#8217;s vitality the
+human race would still be in the Stone Age.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara harked back to what for her was the practical.
+&#8220;Some of us are in the Stone Age as it is.
+I&#8217;m sure Rash Allerton is as nearly an elemental as
+one can be, and still belong to clubs and drive in
+motorcars.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311' name='page_311'></a>311</span></div>
+<p>Miss Walbrook risked her principles of non-interference
+so far as to say: &#8220;It&#8217;s part of our feminine
+lack of development that we&#8217;re always inclined to
+look back on the elemental with pity, and even with
+regret. The woman was never born who didn&#8217;t have
+in her something of Lot&#8217;s wife.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thank you, Aunt Marion. In a way that lets
+me out. If I&#8217;m no weaker than the rest of my
+sex&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Than many of the rest of your sex.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very well, then; than many of the rest of my
+sex; if I&#8217;m no weaker than that I don&#8217;t have to lose
+my self-respect.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t have to lose your self-respect; you only
+risk&mdash;your reason.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara stared at her. &#8220;That&#8217;s the very thing I&#8217;m
+afraid of. I&#8217;d give anything for peace of mind.
+How did you know?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it doesn&#8217;t call for much astuteness. I don&#8217;t
+suppose there&#8217;s a married woman in the world in
+full command of her wits. You&#8217;ve noticed how
+foolish most of them are. That&#8217;s why. It isn&#8217;t that
+they were born foolish. They&#8217;ve simply been addled
+by enforced adaptation to mates of lower intelligence.
+Oh, I&#8217;m not scolding. I&#8217;m merely stating a natural,
+observed, psychological fact. The woman who marries
+says good-bye to the orderly working of her
+faculties. For that she may get compensations, with
+which I don&#8217;t intend to find fault. But compensations
+or no, to a clear-thinking woman like&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Like yourself, Aunt Marion.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very well; like myself, if you will; but to a clear-thinking
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_312' name='page_312'></a>312</span>
+woman it&#8217;s as obvious as daylight that her
+married sisters are partially demented. They may
+not know it; the partially demented never do. And
+it&#8217;s no good telling them, because they don&#8217;t believe
+you. I&#8217;m only saying it to you to warn you in
+advance. If you part with your reason, it&#8217;s something
+to know that you do it of your own free will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Once more Barbara confined herself to the case in
+hand. &#8220;Still, I don&#8217;t believe every man is as trying
+as Rash Allerton.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not in his particular way, perhaps. But if it&#8217;s
+not in one way then it&#8217;s in another.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Even he wouldn&#8217;t be so bad if he could control
+himself. At the minute when he&#8217;s tearing down the
+house he wants you to tell him that he&#8217;s calm.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If he didn&#8217;t want you to tell him that it would be
+something equally preposterous. There&#8217;s little to
+choose between men.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara grew thoughtful. &#8220;Still, if people didn&#8217;t
+marry the human race would die out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And would there be any harm in that? It&#8217;s not
+a danger, of course; but if it was, would anyone in
+his senses want to stop it? Looking round on the
+human race to-day one can hardly help saying that
+the sooner it dies out the better. Since we can&#8217;t kill
+it off, it&#8217;s well to remember&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To remember what, Aunt Marion?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Walbrook reflected as to how to express herself
+cautiously. &#8220;To remember that&mdash;in marrying&mdash;and
+having children&mdash;children who will have to face
+the highly probable miseries of the next generation&mdash;Well,
+I&#8217;m glad there&#8217;ll be no one to reproach me
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_313' name='page_313'></a>313</span>
+with his being in the world, either as his mother or
+his ancestress.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They say Rash&#8217;s father and mother didn&#8217;t want
+<i>him</i> in the world, and I sometimes wish they&#8217;d had
+their way. If he wasn&#8217;t here&mdash;or if he was dead&mdash;I
+believe I could be happier. I shouldn&#8217;t be forever
+worrying about him. I shouldn&#8217;t have him on my
+mind. I often wonder if it&#8217;s&mdash;if it&#8217;s love I feel for
+him&mdash;or only an agonizing sense of responsibility.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The door being open Walter Wildgoose waddled
+to the threshold, where he stood with his right hand
+clasped in his left. &#8220;Mr. Steptoe at Mr. Allerton&#8217;s
+to speak to Miss Barbara on the telyphone, please.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara gasped. &#8220;Oh, Lord! I wonder what it is
+now!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Left to herself Miss Walbrook resumed her scanning
+of the paper, but she resumed it with the faintest
+quiver of a smile on her thin, cleanly-cut lips. It
+was the kind of smile which indicates patient hope, or
+the anticipation of something satisfactory.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The exclamation was so loud as to be heard all the
+way from the telephone, which was in another part
+of the house. Miss Walbrook let the paper fall, sat
+bolt upright, and listened.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh! Oh!&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was like a second, and repeated, explosion. Miss
+Walbrook rose to her feet; the paper rustled to the
+floor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh! Oh!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The sound was that which human beings make
+when the thing told them is more than they can bear.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314' name='page_314'></a>314</span>
+Barbara cried out as if someone was beating her with
+clubs, and she was coming to her knees.</p>
+<p>She was not coming to her knees. When her
+aunt reached her she was still standing by the little
+table in the hall which held the telephone, on which
+she had hung up the receiver. She supported herself
+with one hand on the table, as a woman does when all
+she can do is not to fall senseless.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s&mdash;it&#8217;s Rash,&#8221; she panted, as she saw her aunt
+appear. &#8220;Somebody has&mdash;has killed him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Walbrook stood with hands clasped, like one
+transfixed. &#8220;He&#8217;s dead?&mdash;after all?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara nodded, tearlessly. She could stammer
+out the words, but no more. &#8220;Yes&mdash;all but!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>In the flat at Red Point there was another and dissimilar
+breakfast scene. For the first time in her
+life Letty was having coffee and toast in bed. The
+window was open, and between the muslin curtains,
+which puffed in the soft May wind, she could see
+the ocean with steamers and ships on it.</p>
+<p>The room was tiny, but it was spotless. Everything
+was white, except where here and there it was
+tied up with a baby-blue ribbon. Anything that could
+be tied with a baby-blue ribbon was so tied.</p>
+<p>Letty thought she had never seen anything so
+dainty, though her experienced eye could detect the
+fact that nothing had really cost money. As an opening
+to the career on which she had embarked the
+setting was unexpected, while the method of her
+treatment was bewildering. In the black recesses of
+her heart Miss Henrietta Towell might be hiding all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315' name='page_315'></a>315</span>
+those feline machinations which Mrs. Judson Flack had
+led Letty to believe a part of the great world&#8217;s stock-in-trade;
+but it couldn&#8217;t be denied that she hid them well.
+Letty didn&#8217;t know what to make of it. &#8220;There&#8217;s
+quite a trick to it,&#8221; Steptoe had warned her; but the
+explanation seemed inadequate to the phenomena.</p>
+<p>Sipping her coffee and crunching her toast she was
+driven to ponder on the ways of wickedness. She had
+expected them to be more obvious. All her information
+was to the effect that an unprotected girl in a
+world of males was a lamb among lions, a victim
+with no way of escape. That she was a lamb among
+lions, and a victim with no way of escape, she was
+still prepared to believe; only the preliminaries puzzled
+her. Instead of being crude, direct, indelicate,
+they were subtle and misleading. After twenty-four
+hours in Miss Towell&#8217;s spare room there was still no
+hint of anything but coddling.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You see, my dear,&#8221; Miss Towell had said, &#8220;if I
+don&#8217;t nurse you back to real &#8217;ealth, him that gave you
+the thimble might be displeased with me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was not often that Miss Towell dropped an <i>h</i> or
+added one; but in moments of emotion early habit was
+too strong for her.</p>
+<p>Coming into the room now, on some ermine&#8217;s errand
+of neatness, she threw a glance at Letty, and said:
+&#8220;You don&#8217;t <i>look</i> like a Rashleigh, do you, dear? But
+then you never can tell anything about families from
+looks, can you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was her nearest approach as yet to the personal,
+and Letty considered as to how she was to meet it.
+&#8220;I&#8217;m not a Rashleigh&mdash;not really&mdash;only by&mdash;by marriage.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_316' name='page_316'></a>316</span>
+Rashleigh isn&#8217;t my real name. It&#8217;s&mdash;it&#8217;s the
+name I&#8217;m going by in pictures.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Towell&#8217;s exclamation was the subdued one of
+acquiescence. She knew that ladies in pictures often
+preferred names other than their own, and if Letty
+was not a Rashleigh it &#8220;explained things.&#8221; That is,
+it explained how anyone called Rashleigh could be
+wandering about in this friendless way, though it
+made &#8217;Enery Steptoe&#8217;s intervention the more mysterious.
+It was conceivable that he might act on behalf
+of a genuine Rashleigh, however out at elbow; but
+that he should take such pains for a spurious one, and
+go to the length of sending the sacred silver thimble
+as a pledge, rendered the situation puzzling.</p>
+<p>Schooled by her religious precepts to taking her
+duties as those of a minute at a time Miss Towell
+made no effort to force the girl&#8217;s confidence, and especially
+since Letty, like most young people in trouble,
+was on her guard against giving it. So long as she
+preferred to be shut up within herself, shut up within
+herself she should remain. Miss Towell felt that, for
+the moment at least, her own responsibility was limited
+to making the child feel that someone cared for her.</p>
+<p>At the same time she couldn&#8217;t have been a lonely
+woman with a love-story behind her without the impulse
+to dwell a little longingly on the one romantic
+incident in her experience. Though it had never come
+to anything, the fact that it had once opened its shy
+little flower made a sweet bright place to which her
+thoughts could retire.</p>
+<p>The references came spasmodically and without context,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317' name='page_317'></a>317</span>
+as the little white lady busied herself in waiting
+on Letty or in the care of her room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t seen him since a short time after the mistress
+went away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty felt herself coloring. Though not prudish
+there were words she couldn&#8217;t get used to. Besides
+which she had never thought that Steptoe.... But
+Miss Towell pursued her memories.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It always worried him that I should hold views
+different from his but I couldn&#8217;t submit to dictation,
+now, could I, dear?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Once more Letty felt herself awkwardly placed.
+The only interpretation she could put on Miss Towell&#8217;s
+words referring to moral reformation on her hostess&#8217;s
+part she said, as non-committally as might be: &#8220;He&#8217;s
+a good deal of a stickler.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s been so long in a high position that he becomes&mdash;well,
+I won&#8217;t be &#8217;arsh&mdash;but he becomes a little
+harbitrary. That&#8217;s where it was. He was a little
+harbitrary. With a mistress who allowed him a great
+deal of his own way&mdash;well, you can hardly blame him,
+can you, dear?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty forced herself to accept the linguistic standard
+of the world. &#8220;I suppose if she hadn&#8217;t allowed him a
+great deal of his own way he&#8217;d have looked somewhere
+else.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That he could easily have done. He had temptations
+enough&mdash;a man like him. Why, dear, there was
+a lady in Park Avenue did everything she could that
+wasn&#8217;t positively dishonorable to win him away&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He must have been younger and better looking
+than he is now,&#8221; Letty hazarded, bluntly.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318' name='page_318'></a>318</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it wasn&#8217;t a question of looks. Of course if
+she&#8217;d considered that, why, any foolish young fellow&mdash;but
+she knew what she would have got.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Not being at her ease in this kind of conversation,
+and finding the effort to see Steptoe as Lothario difficult,
+Letty became blunt again. &#8220;He must have had
+an awful crush on the first one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t her exactly; it was the boy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, there was a boy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why of course, dear! Didn&#8217;t you know that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whose boy was it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, the mistress&#8217;s boy; but I don&#8217;t think <i>he</i>&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;
+Letty understood the pronoun as applying to Steptoe&mdash;&#8220;I
+don&#8217;t think <i>he</i> ever realized that he wasn&#8217;t his very
+own.&#8221; Straightening the white cover on the chest of
+drawers Miss Towell shook her head. &#8220;It was a sad
+case.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What made it sad?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A lovely boy he was. Had a kind word for everyone,
+even for the cat. But somehow his father and
+mother&mdash;well, they were people of the world, and
+they hadn&#8217;t wanted a child, and when he came&mdash;and
+he so delicate always&mdash;I could have cried over him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty&#8217;s heart began to swell; her lip trembled. &#8220;I
+know someone like that myself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you, dear? Then I&#8217;m sure you understand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Partly because the minute was emotional, and partly
+from a sense that she needed to explain herself, Letty
+murmured, more or less indistinctly: &#8220;It&#8217;s on his
+account that I&#8217;m here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Failing to see the force of this Miss Towell was
+content to say: &#8220;I&#8217;m glad you were led to me, dear.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319' name='page_319'></a>319</span>
+There&#8217;s always a power to shepherd us along, if we&#8217;ll
+only let ourselves be guided.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To Letty the moment had arrived when plainness of
+speech was imperative. Leaning across the tray, which
+still stood on her lap, she gazed up at her hostess with
+eager, misty eyes. &#8220;<i>He</i> said you&#8217;d teach me all the
+ropes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Towell paused beside the bed, to look inquiringly
+at the tense little face. &#8220;The ropes of what,
+dear?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of what&mdash;&#8221; it was hard to express&mdash;&#8220;of what
+you&mdash;you used to be yourself. You don&#8217;t seem like
+it now,&#8221; she added, desperately, &#8220;but you were, weren&#8217;t
+you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, that!&#8221; The surprise was in the discovery that
+an American girl of Letty&#8217;s age could entertain so
+sensible a purpose. &#8220;Why, of course, dear! I&#8217;ll tell
+you all I know, and welcome.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s quite a trick to it, isn&#8217;t there?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, it&#8217;s more than a trick. There are two or
+three things which you simply <i>have</i> to be.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I know that. That&#8217;s what frightens me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You needn&#8217;t be afraid, once you&#8217;ve made up your
+mind to it.&#8221; She leaned above the bed to relieve Letty
+of the tray. &#8220;For instance&mdash;you don&#8217;t mind my asking
+questions do you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no! You can ask me anything.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then the first thing is this: Are you pretty good
+as a needle-woman?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty was astounded. &#8220;Why&mdash;why you don&#8217;t have
+to <i>sew</i>, do you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly, dear. That&#8217;s one of the most important
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320' name='page_320'></a>320</span>
+things you&#8217;d be called on to do. You&#8217;d never get anywhere
+if you weren&#8217;t quick with your needle and
+thread. And then there&#8217;d be hair-dressing. You have
+to know something about that. I don&#8217;t say that you
+must be a professional; but for the simpler occasions&mdash;after
+that there&#8217;s packing. That&#8217;s something we
+often overlook, and where French girls have us at a
+disadvantage. They pack so beautifully.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty was entirely at sea. &#8220;Pack what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Pack trunks, dear.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What for?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For travel; for moving from town to country; or
+from country to town; or making visits; you see
+you&#8217;re always on the go. Oh, it&#8217;s more than a trick;
+it&#8217;s quite an art; only&mdash;&#8221; She smiled at Letty as she
+stood holding the tray, before carrying it out&mdash;&#8220;only,
+I shouldn&#8217;t have supposed you&#8217;d be thinking of that
+when you act in moving pictures.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I thought I might do both.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, I should say that that&#8217;s one thing you couldn&#8217;t
+do, dear. If you took up this at all you&#8217;d find it so
+absorbing&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you&#8217;re very unhappy too, aren&#8217;t you? I&#8217;ve
+always heard you were.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, that would depend a good deal on yourself.
+There&#8217;s nothing in the thing itself to make you unhappy;
+but sometimes there are other women&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty&#8217;s eyes were flaming. &#8220;They say they&#8217;re
+awful.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, not always. It&#8217;s a good deal as you carry
+yourself. I made it a point to keep my position and
+respect the position of others. It wasn&#8217;t always easy,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_321' name='page_321'></a>321</span>
+especially with Mary Ann Courage and Janie Cakebread;
+but&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty&#8217;s head fell back on the pillow. Her eyes
+closed. A merry-go-round was spinning in her head.
+Where was she? How had she come there? What
+was she there <i>for?</i> Where was the wickedness she
+had been told to look for everywhere? Having gone
+in search of it, and expected to find it lying in wait
+from the first minute of passing the protecting door,
+she had been shuffled along from one to another, with
+exasperating kindness, only to be brought face to face
+with Jane Cakebread and Mary Ann Courage at the
+end.</p>
+<p>Miss Towell having borne away the tray, Letty
+struggled out of bed, and put on the woollen dressing
+gown thrown over a chair by the bedside. This was
+no place for her. Beehive Valley was not far off, and
+her forty-five cents would more than suffice to take
+her there. She would see the casting director. She
+would get a job. With food to eat and a place to
+sleep as a starting point she would find her own way
+to wickedness, releasing the prince in spite of all the
+mishaps which kept her as she was.</p>
+<p>But she trembled so that having wrapped the dressing
+gown about her she was obliged to sit down again.
+She would have to be crafty. She must get this woman
+to help her with her dressing, without suspecting what
+she meant to do. How could she manage that? She
+must try to think.</p>
+<p>She was trying to think when she heard the ring
+of the telephone. It suggested an idea. Some time&mdash;not
+this time, of course&mdash;when the telephone rang and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322' name='page_322'></a>322</span>
+the woman was answering it, she, Letty, would be
+able to slip away. The important thing was to do her
+hair and get her clothes on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes?... Yes?&#8221; There was a little catch to the
+breath, a smothered laugh, a smothered sigh. &#8220;Oh,
+so this is you!... Yes, I got it.... Seeing it again
+gave me quite a turn.... I never expected that you&#8217;d
+keep it all this time, but.... Yes, she&#8217;s here....
+No; she didn&#8217;t come exactly of her own accord, but
+I&mdash;I found her.... I could tell you about it easier
+if you were&mdash;it&#8217;s so hard on the telephone when there&#8217;s
+so much to say&mdash;but perhaps you don&#8217;t care to....
+Yes, she&#8217;s quite well&mdash;only a little tired&mdash;been worked
+up somehow&mdash;but a day or so in bed.... Oh, very
+sensible ... and she wants me to teach her how to
+be a lady&#8217;s maid....&#8221;</p>
+<p>So that was it! Steptoe had been treacherous.
+Letty would never believe in anyone again. She
+could make these reflections hurriedly because the voice
+at the telephone was silent.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was the same exclamation as that of Barbara
+Walbrook, but in another tone&mdash;a tone of distress,
+sharp, sympathetic. Pulling the dressing gown about
+her, frightened, tense, Letty knew that something had
+gone wrong.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh! Oh!... last night, did you say?...
+early this morning....&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty crept to where her hostess was seated at the
+telephone. &#8220;What is it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Miss Towell either didn&#8217;t hear the question or
+was too absorbed to answer it. &#8220;Oh, &#8217;Enery, <i>try</i> to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_323' name='page_323'></a>323</span>
+remember that God is his life&mdash;that there can be no
+death to be afraid of when&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty snatched the receiver from the other woman&#8217;s
+hands, and fell on her knees beside the little table.
+&#8220;Oh, what is it? What is it? It&#8217;s me; Letty! Something&#8217;s
+happened. I&#8217;ve got to know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Amazed and awed by the force of this intrusion
+Miss Towell stood up, and moved a little back.</p>
+<p>Over the wire Steptoe&#8217;s voice sounded to Letty
+like the ghost of his voice, broken, dead.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think if I was madam I&#8217;d come back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But what&#8217;s happened? Tell me that first.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s Mr. Rash.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I know it&#8217;s Mr. Rash. But what is it? Tell
+me quickly, for God&#8217;s sake.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;E&#8217;s been &#8217;it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her utterance was as nearly as possible a cry. &#8220;But
+he hasn&#8217;t been <i>killed</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Madam&#8217;d find &#8217;im alive&mdash;if she &#8217;urried.&#8221;</p>
+<p>When Letty rose from her knees she was strong.
+She was calm, too, and competent. She further surprised
+Miss Towell by the way in which she took
+command.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must hurry. They want me at once. Would
+you mind helping me to dress?&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324' name='page_324'></a>324</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXV' id='CHAPTER_XXV'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XXV</h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;The queer thing about it, miss,&#8221; Steptoe was saying
+to Barbara, &#8220;is that I didn&#8217;t &#8217;ear no noise. My
+winder is just above the front door, two floors up,
+and it was open. I always likes an open winder,
+especially when the weather begins to get warm&mdash;makes
+it &#8217;ealthier like, and so&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but tell me just how he is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what I&#8217;m comin&#8217; to, miss. The minute I
+see what an awful styte we was in, I says, Miss Walbrook,
+she&#8217;ll &#8217;ave to know, I says; and so I called up.
+Well, as I was a-tellin you, miss, I couldn&#8217;t sleep all
+night, &#8217;ardly not any, thinkin of all what &#8217;ad &#8217;appened
+in the &#8217;ouse, in the course of a few months, as you
+might sye&mdash;and madam run awye&mdash;and Mr. Rash &#8217;e
+not &#8217;ome&mdash;and it one o&#8217;clock and lyter. Not but what
+&#8217;e&#8217;s often lyter than that, only last night I &#8217;ad that kind
+of a feelin&#8217; which you&#8217;ll get when you know things is
+not right, and you don&#8217;t &#8217;ardly know &#8217;ow you know
+it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, Steptoe,&#8221; she interposed, eagerly; &#8220;but is he
+conscious now? That&#8217;s what I want to hear about.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe&#8217;s expression of grief lay in working up to
+a dramatic climax dramatically. He didn&#8217;t understand
+the hurried leaps and bounds by which you took the
+tragic on the skip, as if it were not portentous. In
+his response to Miss Walbrook there was a hint of
+irritation, and perhaps of rebuke.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_325' name='page_325'></a>325</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t sye what &#8217;e is now, miss, as the doctor
+and the nurse is with &#8217;im, and won&#8217;t let nobody in
+till they decides whether &#8217;e&#8217;s to live or die.&#8221; Rocking
+himself back and forth in his chair he moaned in
+stricken anticipation. &#8220;If &#8217;e goes, I shan&#8217;t be long
+after &#8217;im. I may linger a bit, but the good Lord won&#8217;t
+move me on too soon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara curbed her impatience to reach the end,
+going back to the beginning. &#8220;Well, then, was it you
+who found &#8217;im?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was this wye, miss. Knowin&#8217; &#8217;e wasn&#8217;t in the
+&#8217;ouse, I kep&#8217; goin&#8217; to my winder and listenin&#8217;&mdash;and
+then goin&#8217; back to bed agyne&mdash;I couldn&#8217;t tell you &#8217;ow
+many times; and then, if you&#8217;d believe it I must &#8217;ave fell
+asleep. No; I can&#8217;t believe as I was asleep. I just
+seemed to come to, like, and as I laid there wonderin&#8217;
+what time it was, seems to me as if I &#8217;eard a kind of
+a snore, like, not in the &#8217;ouse, but comin&#8217; up from the
+street.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What time was that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;d be about &#8217;alf past one. Well, up I gets
+and creeps to the winder, and sure enough the snore
+come right up from the steps. Seems to me, too, I
+could see somethink layin&#8217; there, all up and down the
+steps, just as if it &#8217;ad been dropped by haccident like.
+My blood freezes. I slips into my thick dressin&#8217;
+gown&mdash;no, it was my thin dressin&#8217; gown&mdash;I always
+keeps two&mdash;one for winter and one for summer&mdash;and
+this spring bein&#8217; so early like&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But in the end you got down stairs.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I didn&#8217;t, miss, &#8217;ow could I &#8217;a&#8217; found &#8217;im? I
+ain&#8217;t one to be afryde of dynger, not even &#8217;ere in New
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326' name='page_326'></a>326</span>
+York, where you can be robbed and murdered without
+&#8217;ardly knowin&#8217; it&mdash;and the police that slow about
+follerin&#8217; up a clue&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what happened when you&#8217;d opened the front
+door?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t open it at once, miss. I put my hear to
+the crack and listened. And there it was, a long kind
+of snore, like&mdash;only it wasn&#8217;t just what you&#8217;d call a
+snore. It was more like this.&#8221; He drew a deep, rasping,
+stertorous breath. &#8220;Awful, it was, miss, just like
+somebody in liquor. &#8216;It&#8217;s liquor,&#8217; I says, and not
+wantin&#8217; to be mixed up in no low company I wasn&#8217;t
+for openin&#8217; the door at all&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you did?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not till I&#8217;d gone &#8217;alf wye upstairs and down agyne.
+I&#8217;m like that. I often thinks I&#8217;ll not do a thing, and
+then I&#8217;ll sye to myself, &#8216;Now, perhaps I&#8217;d better, and
+so it was that time. &#8217;E&#8217;s out, I says, and who knows
+but what &#8217;e&#8217;s fell in a fynt like?&#8217; So back I goes,
+and I peeps out a little bit&mdash;just my nose out, as you
+might sye, not knowin&#8217; but what if there was low
+company&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When did you find out who it was?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I knowed the &#8217;at, like. It was that &#8217;at what &#8217;e
+bought afore &#8217;e bought the last one. No; I don&#8217;t
+know but what &#8217;e&#8217;s bought two since &#8217;e bought that
+one&mdash;a soft felt, and a cowboy what he never wore
+but once or twice because it wasn&#8217;t becomin&#8217;. You&#8217;ll
+&#8217;ave noticed, miss, that &#8217;e &#8217;ad one o&#8217; them fyces what
+don&#8217;t look well in nothink rakish&mdash;a real gentleman&#8217;s
+fyce &#8217;e &#8217;ad&mdash;and them cowboy &#8217;ats&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, when you saw that hat, what did you do?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327' name='page_327'></a>327</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;For quite a spell I didn&#8217;t do nothink. I was all
+blood-curdled, as you might sye. But by and by I
+creeps out, and down the steps, and there &#8217;e was, all
+&#8217;uddled every wye&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>His lip trembled. In trying to go on he produced
+only a few incoherent sounds. Reaching for his handkerchief,
+he blew his nose, before being able to say
+more.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, the first thing I says to myself, miss, was,
+Is &#8217;e dead? It was a terrible thing to sye of one that&#8217;s
+everythink in the world to me; but seein&#8217; &#8217;im there,
+all crumpled up, with one leg one wye, and the other leg
+another wye, and a harm throwed out &#8217;elpless like&mdash;well,
+what was I to think? miss&mdash;and &#8217;im not aible to sye a
+word, and me shykin&#8217; like a leaf, and out of doors in
+my thin dressin&#8217; gown&mdash;if I&#8217;d &#8217;ad on my thick one
+I wouldn&#8217;t &#8217;a&#8217; felt so kind of shymeful like&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You might have known he wasn&#8217;t dead when you
+heard him breathing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t think o&#8217; that. I thought as &#8217;e was. And
+when I see &#8217;is poor harm stretched out so wild like I
+creeps nearer and nearer, and me &#8217;ardly aible to move&mdash;I
+felt so bad&mdash;and I puts my finger on &#8217;is pulse.
+Might as well &#8217;ave put it on that there fender. Then I
+looks at &#8217;is fyce and I see blood on &#8217;is lip and &#8217;is cheek.
+&#8216;Somethink&#8217;s struck &#8217;im,&#8217; I says; and then I just loses
+consciousness, and puts back my &#8217;ead, as you&#8217;ll see a
+dog do when &#8217;e &#8217;owls, and I yells, &#8216;Police!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you did that, did you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m ashymed to sye it, miss, but I did; and who
+should come runnin&#8217; along but the policeman what in
+the night goes up and down our beat. By that time
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_328' name='page_328'></a>328</span>
+I&#8217;d got my &#8217;and on &#8217;is &#8217;eart, and the policeman &#8217;e calls
+out from a distance, &#8216;Hi, there! What you doin&#8217; to
+that man?&#8217; Thought I was murderin&#8217; &#8217;im, you see. I
+says, &#8216;My boy, &#8217;e is, and I&#8217;m tryin&#8217; to syve &#8217;is life.&#8217;
+Well, the policeman &#8217;e sees I&#8217;m in my dressin&#8217; gown,
+and don&#8217;t look as if I&#8217;d do &#8217;im any &#8217;arm, so &#8217;e kind o&#8217;
+picks up &#8217;is courage, and blows &#8217;is whistle, and another
+policeman &#8217;e runs up from the wye of the Havenue.
+Then when there&#8217;s two of &#8217;em they ain&#8217;t afryde no
+more, so that the first one &#8217;e comes up to me quite
+bold like, and arsks me who&#8217;s killed, and what&#8217;s killed
+&#8217;im, and I tells &#8217;im &#8217;ow I was layin&#8217; awyke, with the
+winder open, and Mr. Rash bein&#8217; out I couldn&#8217;t sleep
+like&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How long did they let him lie there?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, not long. First they was for callin&#8217; a hambulance;
+but when I tells &#8217;em that &#8217;e&#8217;s my boy, and lives
+in my &#8217;ouse, they brings &#8217;im in and we lays &#8217;im on
+the sofa in the libery, and I rings up Dr. Lancing,
+and&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>But something in Barbara snapped. She could
+stand no more. Not to cry out or break down she
+sprang to her feet. &#8220;That&#8217;ll do, Steptoe. I know now
+all I need to know. Thank you for telling me. I
+shall stay here till the doctor or the nurse comes down.
+If I want you again I&#8217;ll ring.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_4' id='linki_4'></a>
+<img src='images/illus-328.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 365px; height: 495px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 365px;'>
+&#8220;BUT BY AND BY I CREEPS OUT AND DOWN THE STEPS, AND THERE &#8217;E WAS, ALL &#8217;UDDLED EVERY WYE.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_329' name='page_329'></a>329</span></div>
+<p>Lashing up and down the drawing-room, wringing
+her hands and moaning inwardly, Barbara reflected
+on the speed with which Nemesis had overtaken her.
+&#8220;If he wasn&#8217;t here&mdash;or if he was dead,&#8221; she had said,
+&#8220;I believe I could be happier.&#8221; As long as she lived
+she would hear the curious intonation in Aunt
+Marion&#8217;s voice: &#8220;He&#8217;s dead?&mdash;after all?&#8221; It was in
+that <i>after all</i> that she read the unspeakable accusation
+of herself.</p>
+<p>Waiting for the doctor was not long. On hearing
+his step on the stair Barbara went out to meet him.
+&#8220;How is he?&#8221; she asked, without wasting time over
+self-introductions.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a little difficult to say as yet. The case is serious.
+Just how serious we can&#8217;t tell to-day&mdash;perhaps
+not to-morrow. I find no trace of fracture of the
+cranium, or of laceration of the brain; but it&#8217;s too soon
+to be sure. Dr. Brace and Dr. Wisdom, who&#8217;ve both
+been here, are inclined to think that it may be no more
+than a simple concussion. We must wait and see.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Relieved to this extent Barbara went on to explain
+herself. &#8220;I&#8217;m Miss Walbrook. I was engaged to Mr.
+Allerton till&mdash;till quite recently. We&#8217;re still great
+friends&mdash;the greatest friends. He had no near relations&mdash;only
+cousins&mdash;and I doubt if any of them are
+in New York as late in the season as this&mdash;and even
+if they are he hardly knows them&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The doctor, a cheery, robust man in the late thirties,
+in his own line one of the ablest specialists in New
+York, had a foible for social position and his success
+in it. Even now, with such grave news to communicate,
+he couldn&#8217;t divest himself of his dinner-party
+manner or his smile.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve had the pleasure of meeting Miss Walbrook,
+at the Essingtons&#8217; dinner&mdash;the big one for Isabel&mdash;and
+afterwards at the dance.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, of course,&#8221; Barbara corroborated, though with
+no recollection of the encounter. &#8220;I knew it was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_330' name='page_330'></a>330</span>
+somewhere, but I couldn&#8217;t quite recall&mdash;So I felt,
+when the butler called me up, that I should be
+here&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quite so! quite so! You&#8217;ll find Miss Gallifer,
+who&#8217;s with him now, a most competent nurse, and I
+shall bring a good night nurse before evening.&#8221; The
+professional side of the situation disposed of, he
+touched tactfully on the romantic. &#8220;It will be a great
+thing for me to know that in a masculine household
+like this a woman with knowledge and authority is
+running in and out. The more you can be here, Miss
+Walbrook, the more responsibility you&#8217;ll take off my
+hands.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;May I be in his room&mdash;and help the nurse&mdash;or do
+anything like that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quite so! quite so! I&#8217;m sure Miss Gallifer, who
+can&#8217;t be there every minute of the time, you understand,
+will be glad to feel that there&#8217;s someone she
+can trust&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And he couldn&#8217;t know I was there?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not unless he returned unexpectedly to consciousness,
+which is possible, you understand&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her distress was so great that she hazarded a question
+on which she would not otherwise have ventured.
+&#8220;Doctor, you&#8217;re a physician. I can speak to you as
+I shouldn&#8217;t speak to everyone. Suppose he did return
+unexpectedly to consciousness, and found me there in
+the room, do you think he&#8217;d be&mdash;annoyed?&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was the sort of situation he liked, a part in the
+intimate affairs of people of the first quality. &#8220;As to
+his being annoyed I can&#8217;t say. It might be the very
+opposite. What I know is this, that in the coming
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331' name='page_331'></a>331</span>
+back of the mind to its regular functions inhibitions
+are often suspended&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you mean by that&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That the first few minutes in which the mind revives
+are likely to be minutes of genuine reality. I
+don&#8217;t say that the mind could keep it up. Very few
+of us can be our genuine selves for more than flashes
+at a time; but a returning consciousness doesn&#8217;t put
+on its inhibitions till&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So that what you see in those few minutes you
+can take as the truth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I should say so. I&#8217;m not in a position to affirm it;
+but the probabilities point that way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And if there had been, let us say, a lesser affection,
+something of recent origin, and lower in every
+way&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think that until it forged its influence again&mdash;if
+it ever did&mdash;you&#8217;d see it forgotten or disowned.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She tried to be even more explicit. &#8220;He&#8217;s perfectly
+free, in every way. I broke off my engagement just
+to make him free. The&mdash;the other woman, she, too,
+has&mdash;has left him&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So that,&#8221; he summed up, &#8220;if in those first instants
+of returning to the world you could read his choice
+you&#8217;d be relieved of doubts for the future.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Having made one or two small professional recommendations
+he was about to go when Barbara&#8217;s mind
+worked to another point. &#8220;You know, he&#8217;s been
+very excitable.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So I&#8217;ve understood. I go a good deal to the
+Chancellors&#8217;. You know them, of course. I&#8217;ve heard
+about him there.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_332' name='page_332'></a>332</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Well, then, if he got better, is there anything we
+could do about that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In a general way, yes. If you&#8217;re gentle with
+him&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I am.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And if you try to smooth him down when you see
+him beginning to be ruffled&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s just what I do, only it seems to excite him
+the more.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then, in that case, I should say, break the conversation
+off. Go away from him. Let him alone.
+Let him work out of it. Begin again later.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ye-es, only&mdash;&#8221; she was wistful, unconvinced&mdash;&#8220;only
+later it&#8217;s so likely to be the same thing over
+again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He dodged the further issue by running up to explain
+to the nurse Miss Walbrook&#8217;s position in the
+house, and as helper in case of necessity. By the time
+he had come down again Barbara&#8217;s anguish was visible.
+&#8220;Oh, doctor, you think he <i>will</i> get better, don&#8217;t
+you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was at the front door. &#8220;I hope he will. Quite&mdash;quite
+possibly he will. His pulse isn&#8217;t very strong
+as yet, but&mdash;Well, Dr. Brace and Dr. Wisdom are
+coming for another consultation this afternoon; only
+his condition, you understand, is&mdash;well, serious.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara divined the malice beneath Steptoe&#8217;s indications,
+as he conducted her upstairs. &#8220;That was the
+lyte Mrs. Allerton&#8217;s room; that&#8217;s the front spare room;
+and that&#8217;s our present madam&#8217;s room&mdash;when she&#8217;s &#8217;ere&mdash;heach
+with its barth. I&#8217;m sure if Miss Walbrook
+was inclined to use the front spare room I&#8217;d be entirely
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333' name='page_333'></a>333</span>
+welcome, and &#8217;ave put in clean towels, and everythink,
+a-purpose.&#8221;</p>
+<p>When Rash&#8217;s door was pointed out to her she
+tapped. Miss Gallifer opened it, receiving her colleague
+with a great big hearty smile. Great, big, and
+hearty were the traits by which Miss Gallifer was
+known among the doctors. Healthy, skilful, jolly,
+and offhand, she carried the issues of life and death,
+in which she was at home, with a lightness which
+made her easy to work with. Some nurses would
+have resented the intrusion of an outsider&mdash;professionally
+speaking&mdash;like Miss Walbrook; but to Miss
+Gallifer it was the more the merrier, even in the sickroom.
+The very fact of coming to close quarters with
+the type she knew as a &#8220;society girl&#8221; added spice to
+the association.</p>
+<p>For the first few seconds Barbara found her breeziness
+a shock. She had expected something subdued,
+hushed, funereal. Miss Gallifer hardly lowered her
+voice, which was naturally loud, or quieted her manner,
+which, when off duty, could be boisterous. It
+was not boisterous now, of course; only quick, free,
+spontaneous. Then Barbara saw the reason.</p>
+<p>There was no need to lower the voice or quiet the
+manner or soften the swish of rustling to and fro,
+in presence of that still white form composed in the
+very attitude of death. If Barbara hadn&#8217;t known he
+was alive she wouldn&#8217;t have supposed it. She had seen
+dead men before&mdash;her father, two brothers, other relatives.
+They looked like this; this looked like them.
+She said <i>this</i> to herself, and not <i>he</i>, because it seemed
+the word.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334' name='page_334'></a>334</span></div>
+<p>But by the time she had moved forward and was
+standing by the bed Miss Gallifer&#8217;s businesslike tone
+became a comfort. You couldn&#8217;t take such a tone if
+you thought there was danger; and in spite of the
+hemming and hawing of the doctors Miss Gallifer
+didn&#8217;t think there was.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;ve seen lots of such cases, and <i>I</i> say it&#8217;s a
+simple concussion. Old Wisdom, he doesn&#8217;t know
+anything. I wouldn&#8217;t consult him about an accident
+to a cat. Laceration of the brain is always his first
+diagnosis; and if the patient didn&#8217;t have it he&#8217;d get it
+to him before he&#8217;d admit that he was wrong.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara put the question in which all her other
+questions were enfolded. &#8220;Then you think he&#8217;ll get
+better?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I shouldn&#8217;t be surprised.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Would you be surprised&mdash;the other way?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think I should&mdash;on the whole. Pulse is poor.
+That&#8217;s the worst sign.&#8221; She picked up the hand lying
+outside the coverlet and put her finger-tips to the wrist,
+doing it with the easy nonchalant carelessness with
+which she might have seized an inanimate object, yet
+knowing exactly what she was about. &#8220;H&#8217;m! Fifty-six!
+That&#8217;s pretty low. If we could get it above
+sixty&mdash;but still!&#8221; Dropping the hand with the same
+indifference, yet continuing to know what she was
+about, Miss Gallifer tossed aside the index of the pulse
+as wholly non-convincing. &#8220;I&#8217;ve known cases where
+the pulse would go down till there was almost no pulse
+at all, and <i>yet</i> it would come up again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So that you feel&#8211;&#8211;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, he&#8217;ll do. I shouldn&#8217;t worry&mdash;yet. If he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_335' name='page_335'></a>335</span>
+wasn&#8217;t going to pull through there would be something&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Something to tell you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, yes&mdash;if you put it that way. I most always
+know with a patient. It isn&#8217;t anything in his condition.
+It&#8217;s more like a hunch. There&#8217;s often the difference
+between a doctor and a nurse. The doctor goes by
+what he sees, the nurse by what she feels. Nine
+times out of ten the doctor&#8217;ll see wrong and the nurse&#8217;ll
+feel right&mdash;and there you are! You can&#8217;t go by
+doctors. A lot of guess-work gumps, I often think;
+and yet the laity need them for comfort.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Making the most of all this Barbara asked, timidly:
+&#8220;Is there anything I could do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, no! There isn&#8217;t much that anyone can do.
+You&#8217;ve just got to wait. If you&#8217;re going to stay&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I should like to.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then you can be somewhere else in the house so
+that I could call you&mdash;or you could sit right here&mdash;whichever
+you preferred.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d rather sit right here, if I shouldn&#8217;t be in the
+way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, when you&#8217;re in the way I&#8217;ll tell you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>On this understanding Barbara sat down, in a small
+low armchair not far from the foot of the bed. Miss
+Gallifer also sat down, nearer to the window, taking
+up a book which, as Barbara could see from the
+&#8220;jacket&#8221; on the cover, bore the title, <i>The Secret of
+Violet Pryde</i>. It was clear that there was nothing to
+be done, since Miss Gallifer could so easily lose herself
+in her novel.</p>
+<p>Not till her jumble of impressions began to arrange
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_336' name='page_336'></a>336</span>
+themselves did Barbara realize that she was in Rash&#8217;s
+room, surrounded by the objects most intimate to
+his person. Here the poor boy slept and dressed, and
+lived the portion of his life which no one else could
+share with him. In a sense they were rifling his
+privacy, the secrecy with which every human being
+has in some measure to surround himself. She recalled
+a day in her childhood, after her parents and
+both her brothers had died, when their house with
+its contents was put up for sale. She remembered
+the horror with which she had seen strangers walking
+about in the rooms sanctified by loved presences,
+and endeared to her holiest memories. Something of
+that she felt now, as Miss Gallifer threw aside her
+book, sprang lightly to her feet, hurried into Rash&#8217;s
+bathroom, and came out with a towel slightly damped,
+which she passed over the patient&#8217;s brow. She was
+so horribly at ease! It was as if Rash no longer had
+a personality whose rights one must respect.</p>
+<p>But he might get better! Miss Gallifer believed
+that he would! Barbara clung to that as an anchor in
+this tempest of emotions. If he got better he would
+open his eyes. If he opened his eyes it would be, for
+a little while at least, with his inhibitions suspended.
+If his inhibitions were suspended the thing he most
+wanted would be in his first glance; and if his first
+glance fell on her....</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337' name='page_337'></a>337</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXVI' id='CHAPTER_XXVI'></a>
+<h2>Chapter XXVI</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Waiting was becoming dreamlike. She didn&#8217;t
+find it tedious, or over-fraught with suspense.
+On the contrary, it was soothing. It was a little
+trance-like, too, almost as if she had been enwrapped
+in Rash&#8217;s stillness.</p>
+<p>It was so strange to see him still. It was so strange
+to be still herself. Of her own being, as of his,
+she had hardly any concept apart from the high
+winds of excitement. Calm like this was new to her,
+and because new it was appeasing, wonderful. It
+was not unlike content, only the content which comes
+in sleep, to be broken up by waking. Somewhere in
+her nature she liked seeing him as he was, helpless,
+inert, with no power of enraging her by being restive
+to her will. It was, in its way, a repetition of what
+she had said that morning: &#8220;If he wasn&#8217;t here&mdash;or
+if he was dead!&#8221; Longing for peace, her stormy soul
+seemed to know by instinct the price she would have
+to pay for it. For peace to be possible Rash must pass
+out of her life, and the thought of Rash passing out
+of her life was agony.</p>
+<p>While Miss Gallifer was downstairs at lunch
+Barbara had the sweet, unusual sense of having him all
+to herself. She had never so had him in their hours
+together because the violence of their clashes had prevented
+communion. Seated in this silence, in this
+quietude, she felt him hers. There was no one to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338' name='page_338'></a>338</span>
+dispute her claim, no one whose claim she had in any
+way to recognize as superior. Letty&#8217;s claim she had
+never recognized at all. It was accidental, spurious.
+Letty herself didn&#8217;t put it forth&mdash;and even she was
+gone. If Rash were to open his eyes he would see no
+one but herself.</p>
+<p>She was sorry when Miss Gallifer came back,
+though there was no help for that; but Miss Gallifer
+was obtrusive only when she chatted or moved
+about. For much of the time she pursued the secret
+of Violet Pryde with such assiduity that the room
+became quiescent, and communion with Rash could
+be re-established.</p>
+<p>The awesome silence was disturbed only by the
+turning of Miss Gallifer&#8217;s pages. It might have been
+three o&#8217;clock. Once more Barbara was lost in the
+unaccustomed hush, her eyes fixed on the white face
+on the pillow, in almost hypnotic restfulness. The
+pushing open of the door behind was so soft that she
+didn&#8217;t notice. Miss Gallifer turned another page.</p>
+<p>It was the sense that someone was in the room which
+made Barbara glance over her shoulder and Miss
+Gallifer look up. A little gray figure in a battered
+black hat stood just within the door. She stood just
+within the door, but with no consciousness of anything
+or anyone in the room. She saw only the upturned
+face and its deathlike fixity.</p>
+<p>With slow, spellbound movement she began to come
+forward. Barbara, who had never seen the Letty
+who used to be, knew her now only by a terrified
+intuition. Miss Gallifer was entirely at a loss, and
+somewhat indignant. The little gray vagrant was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339' name='page_339'></a>339</span>
+not of the type she had been used to treating with
+respect.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you doing here?&#8221; she asked quickly,
+as soon as speech came to her.</p>
+<p>Letty didn&#8217;t look at her, or remove her eyes from
+the face on the pillow. A woman in a trance could
+not have spoken with greater detachment or self-control.
+&#8220;I came&mdash;to see.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, now that you&#8217;ve seen, won&#8217;t you please go
+away, before I call the police?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Of this Letty took no notice, going straight to the
+bedside, while Miss Gallifer moved toward Barbara,
+who stood as she had risen from her chair.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you know who she is?&#8221; Miss Gallifer asked,
+with curiosity greater than her indignation.</p>
+<p>Barbara nodded. &#8220;Yes, I know who she is. I
+thought she&#8217;d&mdash;disappeared.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, they never disappear for long&mdash;not that kind.
+What had I better do? Is she anything&mdash;to <i>him</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara was saved the necessity of answering because
+Letty, who was on the other side of the bed,
+bent over and kissed the feet, as she had kissed them
+once before.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is she dotty?&#8221; Miss Gallifer whispered. &#8220;Ought I
+to take her by the shoulders and put her out the
+door? I could, you know&mdash;a scrap of a thing like
+that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara whispered back. &#8220;I can&#8217;t tell you who she
+is, but&mdash;but I wouldn&#8217;t interfere with her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, the doctor&#8217;ll do that. <i>He&#8217;ll</i> not&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Letty raised herself, addressing the nurse. &#8220;Is
+he&mdash;dead?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_340' name='page_340'></a>340</span></div>
+<p>Miss Gallifer&#8217;s tone was the curt one we use to
+inferiors. &#8220;No, he&#8217;s not dead.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is he going to die?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not this time, I think.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty looked round her. &#8220;Well, I&#8217;ll just sit over
+here.&#8221; She went to a chair at the back of the room,
+in a corner on a line with the door. &#8220;I won&#8217;t give
+any trouble. The minute he begins to&mdash;to live I&#8217;ll go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was Barbara who arranged the matter peaceably,
+mollifying Miss Gallifer. Without explaining who
+Letty was she insisted on her right to remain. If
+Miss Gallifer was mystified, it was no more than Miss
+Towell was, or anyone else who touched the situation
+at a tangent. To that Barbara was indifferent, while
+Letty didn&#8217;t think of it.</p>
+<p>In rallying her forces Barbara&#8217;s first recollection had
+been, &#8220;I must be a sport.&#8221; With theoretical sporting
+instincts she knew herself the kind of sport who
+doesn&#8217;t always run true to form. Hating meanness
+she could lapse into the mean, and toward Letty herself
+had so lapsed. That accident she must guard
+against. The issues were so big that whatever happened,
+she couldn&#8217;t afford to reproach herself. Self-reproach
+would not only magnify defeat but poison
+success, since, if she availed herself of her advantages,
+no success would ever prove worth while.</p>
+<p>For her own sake rather than for Letty&#8217;s she made
+use of the hour while the doctors were again in consultation
+to explain the possibilities. She would have
+the whole thing clearly understood. Whether or not
+Letty did understand it she wasn&#8217;t quite sure, since she
+seemed cut off from thought-communication. She
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341' name='page_341'></a>341</span>
+listened, nodded, was docile to instructions, but made
+no response.</p>
+<p>To be as lucid as possible Barbara put it in this way:
+&#8220;Since you&#8217;ve left him, and I&#8217;ve broken my engagement
+he&#8217;ll be absolutely free to choose; and yet, you
+must remember, we may&mdash;we may both lose him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>That both should lose him seemed indeed the more
+probable after the consultation. All the doctors looked
+grave, even Dr. Lancing. His dinner-party manner
+had forsaken him as he talked to Barbara, his emphasis
+being thrown on the word &#8220;prepared.&#8221; It was still
+one of those cases in which you couldn&#8217;t tell, though
+so far the symptoms were not encouraging. He felt
+himself bound in honor to say as much as that, hoping,
+however, for the best.</p>
+<p>Closing the front door on him Barbara felt herself
+shaken by a frightful possibility. If he never regained
+consciousness that would &#8220;settle it.&#8221; The suspense
+would be over. Her fate would be determined. She
+would no longer have to wonder and doubt, to strive
+or to cry. No longer would she run the risk of seeing
+another woman get him. She would find that which
+her tempestuous nature craved before everything&mdash;rest,
+peace, release from the impulse to battle and dominate.
+Not by words, not so much as by thought, but only
+in wild emotion she knew that, as far as she was concerned,
+it might be better for him to die. If he lived,
+and chose herself, the storm would only begin again.
+If he lived and chose the other....</p>
+<p>But as to that she could see no reasonable prospect.
+She had only to look at Letty, shrinking in her corner
+of the bedroom, to judge any such mischance impossible.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_342' name='page_342'></a>342</span>
+She was so humble; so negligible; so much a
+bit of flotsam of the streets. She had an appeal of
+her own, of course; but an appeal so lowly as to be
+obscured by the wayside dust which covered it. What
+was the flower to which Rash had now and then compared
+her? Wasn&#8217;t that what he called it&mdash;the dust
+flower?&mdash;that ragged blue thing of byways and backyards,
+which you couldn&#8217;t touch without washing your
+hands afterwards. No, no! Not even the legal tie
+which nominally bound them could hold in the face of
+this inequality. It would be too grotesque.</p>
+<p>The hours passed. The night nurse was now installed,
+and was reading <i>Keith Macdermot&#8217;s Destiny</i>.
+She was one of those tall, slender women whom you
+see to be all bone. As businesslike as Miss Gallifer,
+and quite as detached, Miss Moines was brisk and systematic.
+It being her habit to subdue a household to
+herself before she entered on her duties her eyes regarded
+Miss Walbrook and Letty with the startled
+glance of a horse&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>For before going Miss Gallifer had given her a hint.
+&#8220;You&#8217;ll have to do a lot of side-stepping here. This
+is the famous House of Mystery. You&#8217;ll find two
+nuts upstairs&mdash;that&#8217;s what I&#8217;d call them if they were
+men&mdash;but they&#8217;re women&mdash;girls, sort of&mdash;and you&#8217;ve
+just got to leave them alone. One&#8217;s a high-stepper&mdash;regular
+society&mdash;was engaged to the patient and now
+acts as if she&#8217;d married him; and the other&mdash;well, perhaps
+you can make her out; I can&#8217;t. Seems a little
+off. May be the poor castaway, once loved, and now
+broken-hearted but faithful, you read about in books.
+Anyhow, there they are, and you&#8217;d best let them be.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_343' name='page_343'></a>343</span>
+It won&#8217;t be for more than&mdash;well, I give him twenty-four
+hours at the most. I begin to think that for once
+old Wisdom is right. Good-looker too, poor fellow,
+and can&#8217;t be more than thirty-five. I wonder what
+could have happened? I suppose they&#8217;ll go into that
+at the inquest.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Miss Moines was too systematic to have companions
+in the room without marshaling them to some
+form of duty. They needed to eat; they needed to
+sleep. Now and then someone had to go out on the
+landing and comfort or reassure Steptoe, who sat on
+the attic stairs like a grief-stricken dog.</p>
+<p>Letty was the first to consent to go and lie down.
+She did so about nine o&#8217;clock, extracting a promise
+that whatever happened she would be called at twelve.
+If there was any change in the meantime&mdash;but that,
+Miss Moines assured her, was understood in all such
+ride-and-tie arrangements. At twelve Letty was to
+return and Barbara lie down till three, with the same
+proviso in case of the unexpected. But, so to put it,
+the unexpected seemed improbable, in view of that
+rigid form, and the white, upturned face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And yet,&#8221; Miss Moines confided to Barbara, &#8220;I
+don&#8217;t think he&#8217;s as far gone as they think. Miss Gallifer
+only changed her mind when they talked her round.
+A doctor just sees the patient in glimpses, whereas a
+nurse lives with him, and knows what he can stand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>About eleven Miss Moines closed <i>Keith Macdermot&#8217;s
+Destiny</i>, and took the pulse. She nodded as she
+did so, with a slight exclamation of triumph. &#8220;Ah,
+ha! Fifty-eight! That&#8217;s the first good sign. It may
+not mean anything, but&#8211;&#8211;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_344' name='page_344'></a>344</span></div>
+<p>Barbara was too exhausted to feel more than a
+gleam of comfort. The lassitude being emotional
+rather than physical Miss Moines detected it easily
+enough, and sent her to rest before the hour agreed
+upon. She went the more willingly, since the pulse
+had risen and hope could begin once more.</p>
+<p>On the stairs Steptoe raised his bowed head, with
+a dazed stare. Seeing Miss Walbrook he stumbled to
+his feet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Ow is &#8217;e now, miss?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She told him the good news.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, thank God! Perhaps after all &#8217;E&#8217;ll spare &#8217;im.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Steptoe informed Letty, who right on the stroke of
+midnight returned to her post. &#8220;Pulse gone up two
+of them degrees, madam. &#8217;E&#8217;s goin&#8217; to pull through!&#8221;</p>
+<p>To Letty this was a signal. On going to rest in the
+little back spare room she had thrown off her street
+things, worn during all the hours of watching, and
+put on the dressing gown she had left there a few
+nights earlier. She was still wearing it, but at Steptoe&#8217;s
+news she went back again. On passing him the
+second time she was clad in the old gray rag and the
+battered hat in which it would be easier to escape.
+Steptoe said nothing; but he nodded to himself comprehendingly.</p>
+<p>A clock struck two. Miss Moines was hungry.
+Expecting to be hungry she had had a small tray, with
+what she called a &#8220;lunch,&#8221; placed for her in the dining-room.
+Had there been immediate danger she would
+not have left her post; but with Letty there she saw no
+harm in taking ten or fifteen minutes to conserve her
+strength.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_345' name='page_345'></a>345</span></div>
+<p>For the first time in all those hours Letty was alone
+with him. Not expecting to be so left she was at first
+frightened, then audacious. Except for the one time
+when she had approached the bedside and kissed his
+feet she had remained in her corner, watching with the
+silent, motionless intentness of a little animal. Her
+eyes hardly ever left the white face; but at this distance
+even the white face was dim.</p>
+<p>Now she was possessed by a great daring. She
+would steal to the bedside again. Again she would
+see the beloved features clearly. Again she would
+have the amazing bliss of kissing the coverlet that
+covered the dear feet. When Miss Moines returned
+she would be back again in her corner, as if she had
+never left it. If the pulse rose higher, if there was
+further hope, if he seemed to be reviving, she could
+slip away in the confusion of their joy.</p>
+<p>She rose and listened. The house was as still as it
+had been at other times when she had listened in the
+night. She glided to the bed.</p>
+<p>He lay as if he had been carved in stone, propped up
+with pillows to make breathing easier, his arms outside
+the coverlet. He was a little as he had been on the
+morning when she had passed her hand across his
+brow. As then, too, his hair rose in tongues of
+diabolic flame.</p>
+<p>She was near him. She was bending over him.
+She was bending not above his feet, but above his
+head. She knew how mad she was, but she couldn&#8217;t
+help herself. Stooping&mdash;stooping&mdash;closer&mdash;closer&mdash;her
+lips touched the forked black mane of his hair.</p>
+<p>She leaped back. She leaped not only because of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_346' name='page_346'></a>346</span>
+her own boldness, but because he seemed to stir. It
+was as if this kiss, so light, so imperceptible, had sent
+a galvanic throbbing through his frame. She herself
+felt it, as now and then in winter she had felt an
+electric spark.</p>
+<p>Her sin had found her out. She was terrified. He
+lay just as he had lain before&mdash;only not quite&mdash;not
+quite! His arms were not just as they had been; the
+coverlet was slightly, ever so slightly, disturbed. The
+nurse would see it and know that....</p>
+<p>There was a stirring of a hand. It was so little of
+a stirring that she thought her eyes must have deceived
+her when it stirred again&mdash;a restless toss, like a
+muscular contraction in sleep. She was not alarmed
+now, only excited, and wondering what she ought to
+do. She ought to run to the head of the stairs and
+call Miss Moines, only that she couldn&#8217;t bring herself
+to leave him.</p>
+<p>Then, as she stood in her attitude of doubt, the eyes
+opened and looked at her. They looked at her straight,
+and yet glassily. They looked at her with no gladness
+in the look, almost with no recognition. If anything
+there was a kind of sickness there, as if the finding her
+by his bedside was a disappointment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know what it is,&#8221; she said to herself. &#8220;He wants&mdash;<i>her</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But the eyes closed again. The face was as white,
+the profile as rigid, as ever.</p>
+<p>She sped to Barbara, who was lying on a couch in
+the front spare room. &#8220;Come! He woke up! He
+wants you!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Back in the bedroom she effaced herself. They
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_347' name='page_347'></a>347</span>
+were all there now&mdash;Barbara, Steptoe, and Miss
+Moines.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s what he would do,&#8221; Miss Moines corroborated,
+&#8220;if he was coming back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Letty had told part of what she had seen, but only
+part of it. The rest was her secret. The little mermaid&#8217;s
+kiss had left the prince as inanimate as before;
+hers had brought him back to life!</p>
+<p>It was the moment to run away. Miss Moines had
+said that having once opened his eyes he would open
+them again. When he did he mustn&#8217;t find her there.
+They were all so intent on watching that this was her
+opportunity.</p>
+<p>They were all so intent&mdash;but Steptoe. She was
+buttoning her jacket when she saw his eyes steal round
+in her direction. A second later he had tiptoed back
+into the hall, and closed the door behind him.</p>
+<p>It was vexing, but not fatal. He had probably gone
+for something. While he was getting it she would
+elude him. One thing was certain&mdash;she couldn&#8217;t face
+the look of disappointment in those sick dark eyes
+again. She opened the door. She shut it noiselessly
+behind her. Steptoe wasn&#8217;t there, and the way was free.</p>
+<p>Barbara stood just where Letty had described herself
+as standing when the eyes had given her that
+glassy stare. To herself she seemed to stand there for
+ever, though the time could be counted in minutes.
+The pounding of her heart was like a pulsating of
+the house.</p>
+<p>The eyes opened again. They opened, first wearily,
+and then with a fretful light which seemed to be
+searching for what they couldn&#8217;t find.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_348' name='page_348'></a>348</span></div>
+<p>Barbara stood still.</p>
+<p>There was another stirring of the hand, irritated,
+impatient. A little moan or groan was distinctly of
+complaint. The eyes having rolled hither and thither
+helplessly, the head turned slowly on the pillow so
+as to see the other side of the room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s looking for something that he misses,&#8221; Miss
+Moines explained, wonderingly. &#8220;What do you suppose
+it can be?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He wants&mdash;<i>her</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Barbara found her at the street door, pleading with
+Steptoe, who actually held her by the arm. The loud
+whisper down the stairs was a cry as well as a
+command.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come!&#8221;</p>
+<p>At the bedroom door they parted. With a light instinctive
+push Barbara forced Letty to go back to the
+spot on which she had stood earlier. She herself went
+to the other side of the bed, only to find that the head,
+in which the eyes were closed again, was now turned
+that way.</p>
+<p>As if aware that some mysterious decision was approaching
+Miss Moines kept herself in the background.
+Steptoe had hardly advanced from the
+threshold. Neither of the women by the bedside
+seemed to breathe.</p>
+<p>When the eyes opened for the third time the intelligence
+in them was keener. On Barbara they rested
+long, quietly, kindly, till memory came back.</p>
+<p>With memory there was again that restless stirring,
+that complaining moan. Once more, slowly, distressfully,
+the head turned on the pillow.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_349' name='page_349'></a>349</span></div>
+<p>On Letty the long, quiet, kindly regard lay as it had
+lain on Barbara. They waited; but in the look there
+was no more than that.</p>
+<p>From two hearts two silent prayers were going up.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, God, end it somehow&mdash;and let me have <i>peace</i>!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, God, make him live again&mdash;and give them to
+each other!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then, when no one was expecting it, a faint smile
+quivered on the lips, as if the returning mind saw
+something long desired and comforting. Faintly,
+feebly, unsteadily, the hands were raised toward the
+dust flower. The lips moved, enough to form dumbly
+the one word, &#8220;Come!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The invitation was beyond crediting. Letty trembled,
+and shrank back.</p>
+<p>But from the support of the pillow the whole figure
+leaned forward. The hands were lifted higher, more
+firmly and more longingly. Strength came with the
+need for strength. A smile which was of life, not
+death, beamed on the features and brought color to
+the face which had all these hours seemed carved
+in stone.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll do now,&#8221; the nurse threw off, professionally.
+&#8220;He&#8217;ll be up in a few days.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was Barbara who gave the sign to both Steptoe
+and Miss Moines. By the imperiousness of her
+gesture and her uplifted head she swept them out before
+her. If she was leaving all behind her she was
+leaving it superbly; but she wasn&#8217;t leaving all. Back
+of her tumultuous passions a spirit was crying to
+her spirit, &#8220;Now you&#8217;ll get what you want far more
+than you want this&mdash;rest from vain desire.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_350' name='page_350'></a>350</span></div>
+<p>Letty approached the bedside slowly, as if drawn by
+an enchantment. To the outstretched hands she
+stretched out hers. The door was closed, and once
+more she was alone with him.</p>
+<p>But neither saw that for the space of a few inches
+the closed door was opened again, and that an old
+profile peered within. Then, as slowly, slowly, slowly,
+Letty sank on her knees, bowing her head on the hands
+which drew her closer, and closer still, a pair of old
+lips smiled contentedly.</p>
+<p>When the head drew back, the door was closed
+again.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;'>THE END</p>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<p><a name="ATN"></a></p>
+<table summary="additional transcriber notes" style='margin:1em auto; width:35em; border:1px solid;color: #778899; padding:5px;'>
+
+<tr><td>
+<p style='font-size:small; color:#303030; text-align:left;'>Additional Transcriber&#8217;s Notes:<br /><br />
+
+The following changes were made to the original text.<br /><br />
+
+Page 38: burred to blurred (her appearance struck him simply as blurred)<br /><br />
+
+Page 207: musn&#8217;t to mustn&#8217;t (They mustn&#8217;t rush things.)<br /><br />
+
+Page 264: unbridgable to unbridgeable (The gulf had always been there, yawning, unbridgeable,)<br /><br /></p>
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+
+<!-- generated by ppg.rb version: 0.20c -->
+<!-- timestamp: Tue Mar 31 21:17:07 -0700 2009 -->
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dust Flower, by Basil King
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,11504 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dust Flower, by Basil King
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Dust Flower
+
+Author: Basil King
+
+Illustrator: Hibbard V. B. Kline
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2009 [EBook #28590]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUST FLOWER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Darleen Dove and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DUST FLOWER
+
+
+
+
+  BOOKS BY
+  BASIL KING
+  ----------------------------
+  _The Dust Flower_
+  _The Empty Sack_
+  _Going West_
+  _The City of Comrades_
+  _Abraham's Bosom_
+  _The Lifted Veil_
+  _The Side of the Angels_
+  _The Letter of the Contract_
+  _The Way Home_
+  _The Wild Olive_
+  _The Inner Shrine_
+  _The Street Called Straight_
+  _Let No Man Put Asunder_
+  _In the Garden of Charity_
+  _The Steps of Honor_
+  _The High Heart_
+  ----------------------------
+  HARPER & BROTHERS
+  Established 1817
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THEN SLOWLY, SLOWLY LETTY SANK ON HER KNEES, BOWING HER
+HEAD ON THE HANDS WHICH DREW HER CLOSER. [See p. 350]]
+
+
+
+
+  THE DUST FLOWER
+
+  _By_ BASIL KING
+
+  _Author of_
+  "THE EMPTY SACK" "THE INNER SHRINE" ETC.
+
+  _With Illustrations by_
+  HIBBARD V. B. KLINE
+
+  _Publishers_
+  Harper & Brothers
+  New York and London
+  _MCMXXII_
+
+
+
+
+  THE DUST FLOWER
+
+  Copyright, 1922
+  Harper & Brothers
+  Printed in the U. S. A.
+
+  _First Edition_
+  H-W
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                                   PAGE
+  THEN SLOWLY, SLOWLY LETTY SANK ON HER KNEES,
+  BOWING HER HEAD ON THE HANDS WHICH DREW HER
+  CLOSER                                                 _Frontispiece_
+
+  BY THE TIME HE HAD FINISHED, HIS HEART WAS A
+  LITTLE EASED AND SOME OF HER TENDERNESS BEGAN TO
+  FLOW TOWARD HIM                                     _Facing page_  68
+
+  THE PRINCE'S FIRST WORDS WERE ALSO A DISTRACTION
+  FROM TERRORS, AND ENCHANTMENTS WHICH MADE HER
+  FEEL FAINT                                          _Facing page_ 230
+
+  "BUT BY AND BY I CREEPS OUT AND DOWN THE STEPS,
+  AND THERE 'E WAS, ALL 'UDDLED EVERY WYE"            _Facing page_ 328
+
+
+
+
+THE DUST FLOWER
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+It is not often that you see a man tear his hair, but this is exactly
+what Rashleigh Allerton did. He tore it, first, because of being under
+the stress of great agitation, and second, because he had it to
+tear--a thick, black shock with a tendency to part in the middle, but
+brushed carefully to one side. Seated on the extreme edge of one of
+Miss Walbrook's strong, slender armchairs, his elbows on his knees, he
+dug his fingers into the dark mass with every fresh taunt from his
+fiancee.
+
+She was standing over him, high-tempered, imperious. "So it's come to
+this," she said, with decision; "you've got to choose between a
+stupid, vulgar lot of men, and me."
+
+He gritted his teeth. "Do you expect me to give up all my friends?"
+
+"All your friends! That's another matter. I'm speaking of half a dozen
+profligates, of whom you seem determined--I _must_ say it, Rash; you
+force me to it--of whom you seem determined to be one."
+
+He jumped to his feet, a slim, good-looking, well-dressed figure in
+spite of the tumbled effect imparted by excitement. "But, good
+heavens, Barbara, what have I been doing?"
+
+"I don't pretend to follow you there. I only know the condition in
+which you came here from the club last night."
+
+He was honestly bewildered. "Came here from the club last night?
+Why--why, I wasn't so bad."
+
+Standing away from him, she twirled the engagement solitaire as if
+resisting the impulse to snatch it off. "That would be a question of
+point of view, wouldn't it? If Aunt Marion hadn't been here----"
+
+"I'd only had----"
+
+"Please, Rash! I don't want to know the details."
+
+"But I want you to know them. I've told you a dozen times that if I
+take so much as a cocktail or a glass of sherry I'm all in, when
+another fellow can take ten times as much and not----"
+
+"Rash, dear, I haven't known you all my life without being quite aware
+that you're excitable. 'Crazy Rash' we used to call you when we were
+children, and Crazy Rash you are still. But that's not my point."
+
+"Your point is that that infernal old Aunt Marion of yours doesn't
+like me."
+
+"She's not infernal, and she's not old, but it's true that she doesn't
+like you. All the more reason, then, that when she gave her consent to
+our engagement on condition that you'd give up your disgusting
+habits----"
+
+He raced away from her to the other side of the room, turning to face
+her like an exasperated animal at bay.
+
+The room was noteworthy, and of curiously feminine refinement.
+Expressing Miss Marion Walbrook as it did, it made no provision for
+the coarse and lounging habits of men, Miss Walbrook's world being a
+woman's world. All was straight, slender, erect, and hard in the way
+that women like for occasions of formality. It was evident, too, that
+Miss Walbrook's women friends were serious, if civilized. There was no
+place here for the slapdash, smoking girl of the present day.
+
+The tone which caught your eye was that of dusky gold, thrown out
+first from the Chinese rug in imperial yellow, but reflected from a
+score of surfaces in rich old satinwood, discreetly mounted in ormolu.
+On the French-paneled walls there was but one picture, Sargent's
+portrait of Miss Walbrook herself, an exquisite creature, with the
+straight, thin lines of her own table legs and the grace which makes
+no appeal to men. Not that she was of the type colloquially known as a
+"back number," or a person to be ignored. On the contrary, she was a
+pioneer of the day after to-morrow, the herald of an epoch when the
+blundering of men would be replaced by superior intelligence.
+
+You must know these facts with regard to Miss Walbrook, the aunt, in
+order to understand Miss Walbrook, the niece. The latter was not the
+pupil of the former, since she was too intense and high-handed to be
+the pupil of anyone. Nevertheless she had caught from her wealthy and
+public-spirited relative certain prepossessions which guided her
+points of view.
+
+Without having beauty, Miss Barbara Walbrook impressed you as Someone,
+and as Someone dressed by the most expensive houses in New York. For
+beauty her lips were too full, her eyes too slanting, and her
+delicate profile too much like that of an ancient Egyptian princess.
+The princess was perhaps what was most underscored in her character,
+the being who by some indefinable divine right is entitled to her own
+way. She didn't specially claim her way; she only couldn't bear not
+getting it.
+
+Rashleigh Allerton, being of the easy-going type, had no objection to
+her getting her own way, but he sometimes rebelled against her manner
+of taking it. So rebelling now, he tried to give her to understand
+that he was master.
+
+"If you marry me, Barbe, you'll have to take me as I am--disgusting
+habits and all."
+
+It was the wrong tone, the whip to the filly that should have been
+steered gently.
+
+"But I suppose there's no law to compel me to marry you."
+
+"Only the law of honor."
+
+Her whole personality was aflame. "You talk of honor!"
+
+"Yes I talk of it. Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Do you know anything about it?"
+
+"Would you marry a man who didn't?"
+
+"I haven't married any one--as yet."
+
+"But you're going to marry me, I presume."
+
+"Considering the facts, that's a good deal in the way of presumption,
+isn't it?"
+
+They reached the place to which they came once in every few weeks,
+where each had the impulse to hurt the other cruelly.
+
+"If it's so much presumption as all that," he demanded, "what's the
+meaning of that ring?"
+
+"Oh, I don't have to go on wearing it." Crossing the room she pulled
+it off and held it out toward him "Do you want it back?"
+
+He shrank away from her. "Don't be a fool Barbe. You may go too far."
+
+"That's what I'm afraid of--that I've gone too far already."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"In the way that's brought us face to face like this. If I'd never
+promised to marry you I shouldn't now have to--to reconsider."
+
+"Oh, so that's it. You're reconsidering."
+
+"Don't you see that I have to? If you make me as unhappy as you can
+before marriage, what'll it be afterward?"
+
+"And how happy are you making me?"
+
+Holding the ring between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand,
+she played at putting it back, without doing it. "So there you are!
+Isn't that another reason for reconsidering--for both of us?"
+
+"Don't you care anything about me?"
+
+"You make it difficult--after such an exhibition as that of last
+night, right before Aunt Marion. Can't you imagine that there are
+situations in which I feel ashamed?"
+
+It was then that he spoke the words which changed the current of his
+life. "And can't you imagine that there are situations in which I
+resent being badgered by a bitter-tongued old maid, to say nothing of
+a girl----" He knew how "crazy" he was, but the habit of getting
+beyond his own control was one of long standing--"to say nothing of a
+girl who's more like an old maid than a woman going to be married."
+
+With a renewed attempt at being master he pointed at the ring which
+she was still holding within an inch of its finger. "Put that back."
+
+"I think not."
+
+"Then if you don't----"
+
+"Well--what?"
+
+Plunging his hands into the pockets of his coat, he began tearing up
+and down the room. "Look here, Barbe. This kind of thing can't
+possibly go on."
+
+"Which is what I'm trying to tell you, isn't it?"
+
+"Very well, then; we can stop it."
+
+"Certainly--in one way."
+
+"The way of getting married, with no more shilly-shallying about it."
+
+"On the principle that if you're hanging over a precipice the best
+thing you can do is to fall."
+
+He continued to race up and down the room, all nerves and frenzy.
+"Don't we care about each other?"
+
+She answered carefully. "I think you care about me to the extent that
+you believe I'd make a good mistress of the house your mother left
+you, and which, you say, is like an empty sepulcher. If you didn't
+have it on your hands, I don't imagine it would have occurred to you
+to ask me."
+
+"Well, that's all right. Now what about you?"
+
+"You've already answered that question for yourself." She stiffened
+haughtily. "I'm an old maid. I haven't been brought up by Aunt Marion
+for nothing. I've an old maid's ways and outlooks and habits. I
+resented your saying it a minute ago, and yet it's true. I've known
+for years that it was true. It wouldn't be fair for me to marry any
+man. So here it is, Rash." Crossing the floor-space she held out the
+ring again. "You might as well take it first as last."
+
+He drew back from her, his features screwed up like those of a tragic
+mask. "Do you mean it?"
+
+"Do I seem to be making a joke?"
+
+Averting his face, he swept the mere sight of the ring away from him.
+"I won't touch the thing."
+
+"And I can't keep it. So there!"
+
+It fell with a little shivery sound to a bare spot on the floor,
+rolling to the edge of a rug, where it stopped. Each looked down at
+it.
+
+"So you mean to send me to the devil! All right! Just watch and you'll
+see me go."
+
+She was walking away from him, but turned again. "If you mean by that
+that you put the responsibility for your abominable life on me----"
+
+"Abominable life! Me! Just because I'm not one of the white-blooded
+Nancies which your aunt thinks the only ones fit to be called
+men----"
+
+But he couldn't go on. He was choking. The sole relief to his
+indignation was in once more tearing round the room, while Miss
+Walbrook moved to the fluted white mantelpiece, where, with her foot
+resting on the attenuated Hunt Diedrich andirons she bowed her head
+against an attenuated Hunt Diedrich antelope in bronze.
+
+She was not softened or repentant. She knew she would become so later;
+but she knew too that her tempers had to work themselves off by
+degrees. Their quarrels having hitherto been rendered worth while by
+their reconciliations, she took it for granted that the same thing
+would happen once more though, as she expressed it to herself, she
+would have died before taking the first step. The obvious thing was
+for him to pick up the ring from off the floor, bring it to her humbly
+while her back was turned on him, and beseech her to allow him to slip
+it on where it belonged; whereupon she would consider as to whether
+she would do so or not. In her present frame of mind, so she told
+herself, she would not. Nothing would induce her to do anything of the
+kind. He had betrayed the fact that he knew something as to which she
+was desperately sensitive, which other people knew, but which she had
+always supposed to have escaped his observation--that she was like an
+old maid.
+
+She was. She was only twenty-five, but she had been like an old maid
+at fifteen. It had been a joke till she was twenty, after which it had
+continued as a joke to her friends, but a grief to herself. She was
+distinguished, aristocratic, intellectual, accomplished, and Aunt
+Marion would probably see to it that she was left tolerably well off;
+nevertheless she had picked up from her aunt, or perhaps had inherited
+from the same source, the peculiar quality of the woman who would
+probably not marry. Because she knew it and bewailed it, it had come
+like a staggering blow to learn that Rash knew it, and perhaps
+bewailed it too. The least he could do to atone for that offense would
+be to beg her, to implore her on his bended knees, to wear his ring
+again; and she might not do it even then.
+
+The dramatic experience was worth waiting for, however, and so with
+spirit churning she leaned her hot brow against the thin, cool flank
+of Hunt Diedrich's antelope. She knew by the fierce grinding of his
+steps on the far side of the room that he hadn't yet picked up the
+ring; but there was no hurry as to that. Since she would never, never
+forgive him for knowing what she thought he didn't know--forgive him
+in her heart, that was to say--not if she married him ten times over,
+or to the longest day he lived, there was plenty of time for reaching
+friendly terms again. Her anger had not yet blown off, nor had she
+stabbed him hard enough. As with most people subject to storms of hot
+temper, stabs, given and received, were all in her day's work. They
+relieved for the moment the pressure of emotion, leaving no permanent
+ill-will behind them.
+
+She heard him come to a halt, but did not turn to look at him.
+
+"So it's all over!"
+
+As a peg on which to hang a retort the words would serve as well as
+any others. "It seems so, doesn't it?"
+
+"And you don't care whether I go to the devil or not?"
+
+"What's the good of my caring when you seem determined to do it
+anyhow?"
+
+He allowed a good minute to pass before saying, "Well, if you don't
+marry me some other woman will."
+
+"Very likely; and if you make her a promise to reform I hope you'll
+keep your word."
+
+"She won't be likely to exact any such condition."
+
+"Then you'll probably be happier with her than you could have been
+with me."
+
+Having opened up the way for him to make some protest to which she
+could have remained obdurate, she waited for it to come. But nothing
+did come. Had she turned, she would have seen that he had grown white,
+that his hands were clenched and his lips compressed after a way he
+had and that his wild, harum-scarum soul was worked up to an
+extraordinary intensity; but she didn't turn. She was waiting for him
+to pick up the ring, creep along behind her, and seize the hand
+resting on the mantelpiece, according to the ritual she had mentally
+foreordained. But without stooping or taking a step he spoke again.
+
+"I picked up a book at the club the other day."
+
+Not being interested, she made no response.
+
+"It was the life of an English writing-guy."
+
+Though wondering what he was working up to, she still held her peace.
+
+"Gissing, the fellow's name was. Ever hear of him?"
+
+The question being direct, she murmured: "Yes; of course. What of
+it?"
+
+"Ever hear how he got married?"
+
+"Not that I remember."
+
+"When something went wrong--I've forgotten what--he went out into the
+street with a vow. It was a vow to marry the first woman he met who'd
+marry him."
+
+A shiver went through her. It was just such a foolhardy thing as
+Rashleigh himself was likely to attempt. She was afraid. She was
+afraid, and yet reangered just when her wrath was beginning to die
+down.
+
+"And he did it!" he cried, with a force in which it was impossible for
+her not to catch a note of personal implication.
+
+It was unlikely that he could be trying to trap her by any such cheap
+melodramatic threat as this; and yet----
+
+When several minutes had gone by in a silence which struck her soon as
+awesome, she turned slowly round, only to find herself alone.
+
+She ran into the hall, but there was no one there. He must have gone
+downstairs. Leaning over the baluster, she called to him.
+
+"Rash! Rash!"
+
+But only Wildgoose, the manservant, answered from below. "Mr. Allerton
+had just left the 'ouse, miss."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+While Allerton and Miss Walbrook had been conducting this debate a
+dissimilar yet parallel scene was enacted in a mean house in a mean
+street on the other side of the Park. Viewed from the outside, the
+house was one of those survivals of more primitive times which you
+will still run across in the richest as well as in the poorest
+districts of New York. A tiny wooden structure of two low stories, it
+connected with the sidewalk by a flight of steps of a third of the
+height of the whole facade. Flat-roofed and clap-boarded, it had once
+been painted gray with white facings, but time, weather, and soot had
+defaced these neat colors to a hideous pepper-and-salt.
+
+Within, a toy entry led directly to a toy stairway, and by a door on
+the left into a toy living-room. In the toy living-room a man of
+forty-odd was saying to a girl of perhaps twenty-three,
+
+"So you'll not give it up, won't you?"
+
+The girl cringed as the man stood over her, but pressing her hand over
+something she had slipped within the opening at the neck of her cheap
+shirtwaist, she maintained her ground. The face she raised to him was
+at once terrified and determined, tremulous with tears and yet defiant
+with some new exercise of will power.
+
+"No, I'll not give it up."
+
+"We'll see."
+
+He said it quietly enough, the menace being less in his tone than in
+himself. He was so plainly the cheap sport bully that there could have
+been nothing but a menace in his personality. Flashy male good looks
+got a kind of brilliancy from a set of big, strong teeth the whiter
+for their contrast with a black, brigand-like mustache. He was so well
+dressed in his cheap sport way as to be out of keeping with the
+dilapidation of the room, in which there was hardly a table or a chair
+which stood firmly on its legs, or a curtain or a covering which
+didn't reek with dust and germs. A worn, thin carpet gaped in holes;
+what had once been a sofa stood against a wall, shockingly
+disemboweled. Through a door ajar one glimpsed a toy kitchen where the
+stove had lost a leg and was now supported by a brick. It was plain
+that the master of the house was one of those for whom any lair is
+sufficient as a home as long as he can cut a dash outside.
+
+Quiveringly, as if in terror of a blow, the girl explained herself
+breathlessly: "The castin' director sent for me just as I was makin'
+tracks for home. He ast me if this was the on'y suit I had. When I
+'lowed it was, he just said he couldn't use me any more till I got a
+new one."
+
+The man took the tone of superior masculine knowledge. "That wasn't
+nothin' but bull. What if he does chuck you? I know every movin'
+picture studio round N'York. I'll get you in somewheres else. Come
+now, Letty. Fork out. I need the berries. I owe some one. I was only
+waitin' for you to come home."
+
+She clutched her breast more tightly. "I gotta have a new suit
+anyhow."
+
+"Well, I'll buy you a new suit when I get the bones. Didn't I give you
+this one?"
+
+She continued, still breathlessly: "Two years ago--a marked-down
+misses' it was even then--all right if I was on'y sixteen--but now
+when I'm near twenty-three--and it's in rags anyhow--and all out of
+style--and in pitchers you've gotta be----"
+
+"They'se plenty pitchers where they want that character--to pass in a
+crowd, and all that."
+
+"To pass in a crowd once or twice, yes; but when all you can do is to
+pass in a crowd, and wear the same old rig every time you pass in
+it----"
+
+He cut her protests short by saying, with an air of finality: "Well,
+anyhow I've got to have the bucks. Can't go out till I get 'em. So
+hand!"
+
+With lips compressed and eyes swimming, she shook her head.
+
+"Better do it. You'll be sorry if you don't. I can pass you that tip
+straight now."
+
+"If you was laughed at every time you stepped onto the lot----"
+
+"There's worse things than bein' laughed at. I can tell you that
+straight now."
+
+"Nothin's worse than bein' laughed at, not for a girl of my age there
+ain't."
+
+Watching his opportunity he caught her off her guard. Her eyes having
+wandered to the coat she had just taken off, a worn gray thing with
+edgings of worn gray squirrel fur, he wrenched back with an unexpected
+movement the hand that clutched something to her breast, thrust two
+fingers of his other hand within her corsage, and extracted her
+pay-envelope.
+
+It took her by such surprise that she was like a mad thing, throwing
+herself upon him and battling for her treasure, though any possibility
+of her getting it back from him was hopeless. It was so easy for him
+to catch her by the wrists and twist them that he laughed while he was
+doing it.
+
+"You little cat! You see what you bring on yourself. And you're goin'
+to get worse. I can tell you that straight now."
+
+Still twisting her arms till she writhed, though without a moan or a
+cry, he backed her toward the disemboweled sofa, on whose harsh,
+exposed springs she fell. Then he sprang on her a new surprise.
+
+"How dare you wear them rings? They was your mother's rings. I bought
+and paid for 'em. They're mine."
+
+"Oh, don't take them off," she begged. "You can keep the money----"
+
+"Sure I can keep the money," he grinned, wrenching from her fingers
+the plain gold band he had given her mother as a wedding ring, as well
+as another, bigger, broader, showier, and set with two infinitesimal
+white points claiming to be diamonds.
+
+Though he had released her hands, she now stretched them out toward
+him pleadingly. "Aw, give 'em back to me. They'se all I've got in the
+world to care about--just because she wore 'em. You can take anything
+else I've got----"
+
+"All right, then. I'll take this."
+
+With a deftness which would have done credit to a professor of
+legerdemain he unbuckled the strap of her little wrist-watch, putting
+the thing into his pocket.
+
+"I give that to your mother too. You don't need it, and it may be
+useful to me. What else have you got?"
+
+She struggled to her feet. He was growing more dangerous than she had
+ever known him to be even when he had beaten her.
+
+"I ain't got nothin' else."
+
+"Oh, yes, you have. You gotta purse. I seen you with it. Where is
+it?"
+
+The fear in her eyes sent his toward her jacket, thrown on the chair
+when she had come in. With an "Ah!" of satisfaction he pounced on it.
+As he held it upside down and shook it, a little leather wallet
+clattered to the floor. She sprang for it, but again he was too quick
+for her.
+
+"So!" he snarled, with his glittering grin. "You thought you'd get it,
+did you?" He rattled the few coins, copper and silver, into the palm
+of his hand, and unfolded a one-dollar bill. "You must owe me this
+money. Who's give you bed and board for the last ten year, I'd like to
+know? How much have you ever paid me?"
+
+"Only all I ever earned--which you stole from me."
+
+"Stole from you, did I? Well, you won't fling that in my face any
+more." He handed her her coat. "Put that on," he commanded.
+
+"What for?" She held it without obeying the order. "What's the good o'
+goin' out and me without a cent?"
+
+"Put it on."
+
+Her lip quivered; she began to suspect his intention. "I do' wanta."
+
+"Oh, very well! Please yourself. You got your hat on already."
+Seizing her by the shoulders he steered her toward the door. "Now
+march."
+
+Though she refused to march, it was not difficult for him to force
+her.
+
+"This'll teach you to valyer a good home when you got one. You'll
+deserve to find the next one different."
+
+She almost shrieked: "You're not going to turn me out?"
+
+"Well, what does it look as if I was doin'?"
+
+"I won't go! I won't go! Where _can_ I go?"
+
+"What I'm doin' 'll help you to find out."
+
+He had her now in the entry, where in spite of her struggles he had no
+difficulty in unlocking the door, pushing her out, and relocking the
+door behind her.
+
+"Lemme in! Lemme in! Oh, _please_, lemme in!"
+
+He stood in the middle of the living-room, listening with pleasure and
+smiling his brigand's smile. He was not as bad as you might think. He
+did mean to let her in eventually. His smile and his pleasure sprang
+purely from the fact that his lesson was so successful. With this in
+her mind, she wouldn't withstand him a second time.
+
+She rattled the door by the handle. She beat upon the panels. She
+implored.
+
+Still smiling, he filled his pipe. Let her keep it up. It would do her
+good. He remembered that once when he had turned her mother out at
+night, she had sat on the steps till he let her in at dawn before the
+police looked round that way. History would repeat itself. The
+daughter would do the same. He was only giving her the lesson she
+deserved.
+
+Meanwhile she was experiencing a new sensation, that of outrage. For
+the first time in her life she was swept by pride in revolt. She
+hadn't known that any such emotion could get hold of her. As a matter
+of fact she hadn't known that so strong a support to the inner man lay
+within the depths of human nature. Accustomed to being cowed, she had
+hardly understood that there was any other way to feel. Only within a
+day or two had something which you or I would have called spirit, but
+for which she had no name, disturbed her with unexpected flashes, like
+those of summer lightning.
+
+While waiting for the camera, for instance, in the street scene in
+"The Man with the Emerald Eye," a "fresh thing" had said, with a wink
+at her companions, "Say, did you copy that suit from a pattern in
+_Chic?_"
+
+Letty had so carefully minded her own business and tried to be nice to
+every one that the titter which went round at her expense hurt her
+with a wound impelling her to reply, "No; I ordered it at Margot's.
+You look as if you got your things there too, don't you?"
+Nevertheless, she was so stung by the sarcasm that the commendation
+she overheard later, that the Gravely kid had a tongue, didn't bring
+any consolation.
+
+Without knowing that what she felt now was an intensified form of the
+same rebellion against scorn, she knew it was not consistent with some
+inborn sense of human dignity to stand there pleading to be let into a
+house from which she was locked out, even though it was the only spot
+on earth she could call home. Still less was it possible when, round
+the foot of the steps, a crowd began to gather, jeering at her
+passionate beseechings. For the most part they were children, Slavic,
+Semitic, Italian. Amid their cries of, "Go it, Sis!" now in English
+and now in strange equivalents of Latin, or Polish, or even Hebraic
+origin, she was suddenly arrested by the consciousness of personal
+humiliation.
+
+She turned from the door to face the street. It was one of those
+streets not rare in New York which the civic authorities abandon in
+despair. A gash of children and refuse cut straight from river to
+Park, it got its chief movement from push-carts of fruit and other
+foods, while the "wash" of five hundred families blew its banners
+overhead. Vendors of all kinds uttered their nasal or raucous cries,
+in counterpoint to the treble screams of little boys and girls.
+
+Letty had always hated it, but it was something more than hatred which
+she felt for it now. Beyond the children adults were taking a rest
+from the hawking profession to comment with grins on the sight of a
+girl locked out of her own home. She was probably a very bad girl to
+call for that kind of treatment, and therefore one on whom they should
+spend some derision.
+
+They were spending it as she turned. It was an experience on a large
+scale of what the girl in the studio had inflicted. She was a thing to
+be scorned, and of all the hardships in the world scorn, now that she
+was aware of it, was the one she could least submit to.
+
+So pride came to her rescue. Throwing her coat across her arm she went
+down the steps, passed through the hooting children, one or two of
+whom pulled her by the skirt, passed through the bearded Jews, and
+the bronzed Italians, and the flat-nosed Slavs, passed through the
+women who had come out on the sidewalk at this accentuation of the
+daily din, passed through the barrows and handcarts and piles of
+cabbages and fruit, and went her way.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+Exactly at this minute Rashleigh Allerton was standing outside Miss
+Walbrook's door, glancing up and down Fifth Avenue and over at the
+Park. It was the hour after luncheon when pedestrians become numerous.
+For his purpose they could not be very numerous; they must be
+reasonably spaced apart.
+
+And already a veritable stream of women had begun to flow down the
+long, gentle slope, while a few, like fish, were stemming the current
+by making progress against it. None of them was his "affair." Young,
+old, short, tall, blond, brunette, they were without exception of the
+class indiscriminately lumped as ladies. Since you couldn't go to the
+devil because you had married a lady, even on the wild hypothesis that
+one of these sophisticated beings would without introduction or
+formality marry him, it would be better not to let himself in for the
+absurdity of the proposal. When there was a break in the procession,
+he darted across the street and made his way into the Park.
+
+Here there was no one in sight as far as the path continued without a
+bend. He was going altogether at a venture. Round the curve of the
+woodland way there might swing at any second the sibyl who would point
+his life downward.
+
+He was aware, however, that in sibyls he had a preference. If she was
+to send him to the devil, she must be of the type which he qualified
+as a "drab." Without knowing the dictionary meaning of the word, he
+felt that it implied whatever would contrast most revoltingly with
+Barbara Walbrook. Seeing with her own eyes to what she had driven him,
+her heart would be wrung. That was all he asked for, the wringing of
+her heart. It might be a mad thing for him to punish himself so
+terribly just to punish her, but he was mad anyhow. Madness gave him
+the satisfaction which some men got from thrift, and others from
+cleverness. He would keep the vow with which he had slipped out of
+Miss Walbrook's drawing room. It was all that life had left for him.
+
+That was, he wouldn't pick and choose. He would take them as they
+came. He had not stipulated with himself that she must be a "drab." It
+was only what he hoped. She must be the first woman he met who would
+marry him. Age, appearance, refinement, vulgarity were not to be
+considered. Picking and choosing on his part would only take his
+destiny out of the hands of Fate, where he preferred that it should
+lie.
+
+Had any one passed him, he would have seemed the more perturbed
+because of his being so well-dressed. He was one of the few New
+Yorkers as careful of appearances as many Londoners. With the finish
+that comes of studied selection in hat, stick, and gloves, as well as
+all small accessories of the costliest, he might have been going to or
+coming from a wedding.
+
+He was imposing, therefore, to a short, stout, elderly woman with whom
+he suddenly found himself face to face as the path took a sharp sweep
+to the south. The shrubs which had kept them hidden from each other
+gave place here to open stretches of lawn. When Allerton paused and
+lifted his hat, the woman naturally paused, too.
+
+She was a red-faced woman crowned with a bonnet of the style
+introduced by Mrs. Langtry in 1878, but worn on this occasion some
+degrees off center. On her arm she carried a flat basket of which the
+contents, decently covered with a towel, might have been freshly
+laundered shirts. Being stopped by a gentleman of Allerton's
+impressiveness and plainly suffering expression, her face grew
+motherly and sympathetic.
+
+"Madam, I wish to ask if you'll marry me?"
+
+Even a dull brain couldn't fail to catch words hammered out with this
+force of precision. The woman didn't wait to have them repeated.
+Dropping her basket as it was, she took to flight. Flight was the
+word. A modern Atalanta of Wellesley or Bryn Mawr might have envied
+the chamois leaps which took the good creature across the grass to the
+protection of a man with a lawn-mower.
+
+Allerton couldn't pause to watch her, for a new sibyl was advancing.
+To his disgust rather than not, she was young and pretty, a nursemaid
+pushing a baby-cart into which a young man of two was strapped. While
+far more likely to take him than the stout old party still skipping
+the greensward like a mountain roe, she would be much less plausible
+as a reason for going to the evil one. But a vow was a vow, and he was
+in for it.
+
+His approach was the same as on the previous occasion. Lifting his hat
+ceremoniously, he said with the same distinctness of utterance,
+"Madam, I wish to ask if you'll marry me?"
+
+The girl, who had paused when he did, leaned on the pusher of her
+go-cart, studying him calmly. Chewing something with a slow, rotary
+movement of the lips and chin, she broke the action with a snap before
+quite completing the circle, to begin all over again. "Oh, you do, do
+you?" was her quiet response.
+
+"If you please."
+
+She studied him again, with the same semi-circular motion of the jaw.
+She might have been weighing his proposal.
+
+"Say, is this one of them club initiation stunts, or have you just got
+a noive?"
+
+"Am I to take that as a yes or a no?"
+
+"And am I to take you as one of them smart-Alecks, or a coily-headed
+nut?"
+
+He saw a way out. "I'm generally considered a curly-headed nut."
+
+"Then it's me for the exit-in-case-of-fire, so ta-ta." She laughed
+back at him over her shoulder. "Wish you luck with your next."
+
+But fate was already on him in another form. A lady of fifty or
+thereabouts was coming up the path, refined, sedate, mistress of
+herself, the one type of all others most difficult to accost. All the
+same he must do it. He must keep on doing it till some one yielded to
+his suit. The rebuffs to which he had been subjected did no more than
+inflame his will.
+
+Approaching the new sibyl with the same ceremoniousness, he repeated
+the same words in the same precise tone. The lady stood off, eyed him
+majestically through a lorgnette, and spoke with a force which came
+from quietude.
+
+"I know who you are. You're Rashleigh Allerton. You ought to be
+ashamed with a shame that would strike you to the ground. I'm a friend
+of Miss Marion Walbrook's. I'm on my way to see her and shall _not_
+mention this encounter. We work on the same committee of the League
+for the Suppression of Men's Clubs. The lamentable state in which I
+see you convinces me once more of the need of our work, if our men are
+to become as we hope to see them. I bid you a good afternoon."
+
+With the dignity of a queen she passed on and out of sight, leaving
+him with the sting of a whiplash on his face.
+
+But the name of Miss Walbrook, connected with that of the League which
+was her pet enthusiasm for the public weal, only served as an
+incitement. He would go through with it now at any cost. By nightfall
+he would be at police-headquarters for insulting women, or he would
+have found a bride.
+
+Walking on again, the path was clear before him as far as he could
+see. Having thus a few minutes to reflect, he came to the conclusion
+that his attacks had been too precipitate. He should feel the ground
+before him, leading the sibyl a little at a time, so as to have her
+mentally prepared. There were methods of "getting acquainted" to which
+he should apply himself first of all.
+
+But getting acquainted with the old Italian peasant woman, bowed
+beneath a bundle, who was the next he would have to confront, being
+out of the question, he resolved to side-step destiny by slipping out
+of the main path and following a branch one. Doing so, he came into
+less frequented regions, while his steps took him up a low hill
+burnished with the tints of mid-October. Trees and shrubs were
+flame-colored, copper-colored, wine-colored, differing only in their
+diffuseness of hue from the concentrated gorgeousness of amaranth,
+canna, and gladiolus. The sounds of the city were deadened here to a
+dull rumble, while the vibrancy of the autumn afternoon excited his
+taut nerves.
+
+At the top of the hill he paused. There was no one in sight who could
+possibly respond to his quest. He wondered for a second if this were
+not a hint to him to abandon it. But doing that he would abandon his
+revenge, and by abandoning his revenge he would concede everything to
+this girl who had so bitterly wronged him. Ever since he could
+remember they had been pals, and for at least ten years he had vaguely
+thought of asking her to marry him when it came to his seeking a wife.
+It was true, the hint she had thrown out, that he had felt himself in
+no great need of a wife till his mother had died some eighteen months
+previously, and he had found himself with a cumbrous old establishment
+on his hands. That had given the decisive turn to his suit. He had
+asked her. She had taken him. And since then, in the course of less
+than ten weeks, if they had had three quarrels they had had thirty. He
+had taken them all more or less good-naturedly--till to-day. To-day
+was too much. He could hardly say why it was too much, unless it was
+as the last straw, but he felt it essential to his honor to show her
+by actual demonstration the ruin she had made of him.
+
+Looking about him for another possibility, he noticed that at the spot
+where the path, having serpentined down the little hillside, rejoined
+the main footway there was a bench so placed that its occupant would
+have a view along several avenues at once. Since it was obviously a
+vantage point for such strategy as his, he had taken the first steps
+down toward it when a little gray figure emerged from behind a group
+of blue Norway spruces. She went dejectedly to the bench, sitting down
+at an extreme end of it.
+
+Wrought up to a fit of tension far from rare with him, Allerton stood
+with his nails digging into his clenched palms and his thin lips
+pressed together. He was sure he was looking at a "drab." All the
+shoddy, outcast meanings he had read into the word were under the
+bedraggled feathers of this battered black hat or compressed within
+the forlorn squirrel-trimmed gray suit. The dragging movement, the
+hint of dropping on the seat not from fatigue but from desperation,
+completed the picture his imagination had already painted of some
+world-worn, knocked-about creature who had come to the point at which,
+in his own phrase, she was "all in."
+
+As far as this described Letty Gravely, he was wrong. She was not "all
+in." She was never more mentally alert than at that very minute. If
+she moved slowly, if she sank on the seat as if too beaten down by
+events to do more, it was because her mind was so intensely centered
+on her immediate problems.
+
+She had, in fact, just formed a great resolution. Whatever became of
+her, she would never go back to Judson Flack, her stepfather. This had
+not been clearly in her mind when she had gone down his steps and
+walked away, but the occasion presented itself now as one to be
+seized. In seizing it, however, the alternatives were difficult. She
+was without a cent, a shelter, a job, a friend, or the prospect of a
+meal. It was probable that there was not at that minute in New York a
+human being so destitute. Before nightfall she would have to find some
+nominal motive for living or be arrested as a vagrant.
+
+She was not appalled. For the first time in her life she was
+relatively free from fear. Even with nothing but her person as she
+stood, she was her own mistress. No big dread hung over her--that is,
+no big dread of the kind represented by Judson Flack. She might jump
+into the river or go to the bad, but in either case she would do it of
+her own free will. Merely to have the exercise of her own free will
+gave her the kind of physical relief which a human being gets from
+stretching limbs cramped and crippled by chains.
+
+Besides, there was in her situation an underlying possibility of
+adventure. This she didn't phrase, since she didn't understand it. She
+only had the intuition in her heart that where "the world is all
+before you, where to choose your place of rest, and Providence your
+guide," Providence _becomes_ your guide. Verbally she put it merely in
+the words, "Things happen," though as to what could happen between
+half-past three in the afternoon and midnight, when she would possibly
+be in jail, she could not begin to imagine.
+
+So absorbed was she in this momentous uncertainty that she scarcely
+noticed that some one had seated himself at the other end of the
+bench. It was a public place; it was likely that some one would. She
+felt neither curiosity nor resentment. A lack of certain of the
+feminine instincts, or their retarded development, left her without
+interest in the fact that the newcomer was a man. From the slight
+glance she had given him when she heard his step, she judged him to be
+what she estimated as an elderly man, quite far into the thirties.
+
+She went back to her own thoughts which were practical. There were
+certain measures which she could take at once, after which there would
+be no return. Once more she was not appalled. She had lived too near
+the taking of these steps to be shocked by them. Everything in life is
+a question of relativity, and in the world which her mother had
+entered on marrying Judson Flack the men were all so near the edge of
+the line which separates the criminal from the non-criminal that it
+seemed a natural thing when they crossed it, while the women....
+
+But as her thoughts were dealing with this social problem in its
+bearing on herself, her neighbor spoke.
+
+"Funny to watch those kids playing with the pup, isn't it?"
+
+She admitted that it was, that watching children and young animals was
+a favorite sport with her. She answered simply, because being
+addressed by strange men with whom she found herself in proximity was
+sanctioned by the etiquette of her society. To resent it would be
+putting on airs, besides which it would cut off social intercourse
+between the sexes. It had happened to her many a time to have engaging
+conversations with chance young men beside her in the subway, never
+seeing them before or afterward.
+
+So Allerton found getting acquainted easier than he had expected. The
+etiquette of _his_ society not sanctioning this directness of response
+on her part, he drew the conclusion that she was accustomed to
+"meeting fellows halfway." As this was the sort of person he was
+looking for, he found in the freedom nothing to complain of.
+
+With the openness of her social type she gave details of her biography
+without needing to be pressed.
+
+"You're a New York girl?"
+
+"I am now. I didn't use to be."
+
+"What were you to begin with?"
+
+"Momma brought me from Canada after my father died. That's why I ain't
+got no friends here."
+
+At this appeal for sympathy his glance stole suspiciously toward her,
+finding his first conjectures somewhat but not altogether verified.
+She was young apparently, and possibly pretty, though as to neither
+point did he care. He would have preferred more "past," more
+"mystery," more "drama," but since you couldn't have everything, a
+young person utterly unfit to be his wife would have to be enough. He
+continued to draw out her story, not because he cared anything about
+hearing it, but in order to spring his question finally without making
+her think him more unbalanced than he was.
+
+"Your father was a Canadian?"
+
+"Yes; a farmer. Momma used to say she was about as good to work a farm
+as a cat to run a fire-engine. When he died, she sold out for four
+thousand dollars and come to New York."
+
+"To work?"
+
+"No, to have a good time. She'd never had a good time, momma hadn't,
+and she was awful pretty. So she said she'd just blow herself to it
+while she had the berries in her basket. That was how she met Judson
+Flack. I suppose you know who he is. Everybody does."
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't the pleasure."
+
+"Oh, I don't know as you'd find it any big pleasure. Momma didn't, not
+after she'd give him a try."
+
+"Who and what is he?"
+
+"He calls hisself a man about town. I call him a bum. Poor momma
+married him."
+
+"And wasn't happy, I suppose."
+
+"Not after he'd spent her wad, she wasn't. She was crazy about him,
+and when she found out that all he'd cared about was her four thousand
+plunks--well, it was her finish."
+
+"How long ago was that?"
+
+"About four years now."
+
+"And what have you been doing in the meanwhile?"
+
+"Keepin' house for Judson Flack most of the time--till I quit."
+
+"Oh, you've quit?"
+
+"Sure I've quit." She was putting her better foot forward. "Now I'm in
+pitchers."
+
+He glanced at her again, having noticed already that she scarcely
+glanced at him. Her profile was toward him as at first, an irregular
+little profile of lifts and tilts, which might be appealing, but was
+not beautiful. The boast of being in pictures, so incongruous with
+her woefully dilapidated air, did not amuse him. He knew how large a
+place a nominal connection with the stage took in the lives of certain
+ladies. Even this poor little tramp didn't hesitate to make the
+claim.
+
+"And you're doing well?"
+
+She wouldn't show the white feather. "Oh, so so! I--I get along."
+
+"You live by yourself?"
+
+"I--I do now."
+
+"Don't you find it lonely?"
+
+"Not so lonely as livin' with Judson Flack."
+
+"You're--you're happy?"
+
+A faint implication that she might look to him for help stirred her
+fierce independence. "Gee, yes! I'm--I'm doin' swell."
+
+"But you wouldn't mind a change, I suppose?"
+
+For the first time her eyes stole toward him, not in suspicion, and
+still less in alarm, but in one of the intenser shades of curiosity.
+It was almost as if he was going to suggest to her something "off the
+level" but which would nevertheless be worth her while. She was used
+to these procedures, not in actual experience but from hearing them
+talked about. They made up a large part of what Judson Flack
+understood as "business." She felt it prudent to be as non-committal
+as possible.
+
+"I ain't so sure."
+
+She meant him to understand that being tolerably satisfied with her
+own way of life, she was not enthusiastic over new experiments.
+
+His next observation was no surprise to her. "I'm a lawyer."
+
+She was sure of that. There were always lawyers in these subterranean
+affairs--"shyster" was a word she had heard applied to them--and this
+man looked the part. His thin face, clear-cut profile, and skin which
+showed dark where he shaved, were all, in her judgment, signs of the
+sinister. Even his clothes, from his patent leather shoes with spats
+to his dark blue necktie with a pearl in it, were those which an actor
+would wear in pictures to represent a "shark."
+
+She was turning these thoughts over in her mind when he spoke again.
+
+"I've an office, but I don't practise much. It takes all my time to
+manage my own estate."
+
+She didn't know what this meant. It sounded like farming, but you
+didn't farm in New York, or do it from an office anyhow. "I guess he's
+one of them gold-brick nuts," she commented to herself, "but he won't
+put nothin' over on me."
+
+In return for her biography he continued to give his, bringing out his
+facts in short, hard statements which seemed to hurt him. It was this
+hurting him which she found most difficult to reconcile with her gold
+brick theory and the suspicion that he was a "shark."
+
+"My father was a lawyer, too. Rather well known in his day. One time
+ambassador to Vienna."
+
+Ambassador to Vienna! She didn't know where Vienna was or the nature
+of an ambassador, but she did know that it sounded grand, so she
+looked at him attentively. It was either more gold brick or else....
+
+Then something struck her--"smote her" would be perhaps the more
+accurately descriptive word, since the effect was on her heart. This
+man was sick. He was suffering. She had often seen women suffer, but
+men rarely, and this was one of the rare instances. Something in her
+was touched. She couldn't imagine why he talked to her or what he
+wanted of her, but a pity which had never yet been called upon was
+astir among her emotions.
+
+As for the minute he said no more, her next words came out only
+because she supposed them to betray the kindly interest of which he
+was in need.
+
+"Then I suppose he left you _a_ big fat wad."
+
+"Yes; but it doesn't do me any good. I mean, it doesn't make me
+happy--when I'm not."
+
+"I guess it'd make you a good deal less happy if you didn't have it."
+
+"Perhaps so; I don't think about it either way." He added, after tense
+compression of the lips; "I'm all alone in the world--like you."
+
+She was sure now that something was coming, though of what nature lay
+beyond her speculative power. She wondered if he could have fallen in
+love with her at first sight, realizing a favorite dream she often had
+in the subway. Hundreds of times she had beguiled the minutes by
+selecting one or another of the wealthy lawyers and bankers, whom she
+supposed to be her fellow-travelers there, seeing him smitten by a
+glance at her, following her when she got out, and laying his heart
+and coronet at her feet before she had run up the steps. If this man
+were not a shyster lawyer or a gold brick nut, he might possibly be
+doing that.
+
+"It's about a girl," he burst out suddenly. "Half an hour ago she
+kicked me out."
+
+"Did she know you had all that dough?"
+
+"Yes, she knew I had all that dough. But she said that since I was
+going to the devil, I had better go." He drew a long breath. "Well,
+I'm going--perhaps quicker than she thinks."
+
+"Will you do yourself any good by that?"
+
+"No, but I'll do her harm."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I'll show her what she's made of me."
+
+"She can't make anything of you in half an hour or in half a year--not
+so long as you've got your wad back of you. If you was to be kicked
+out with your pay-envelope stole, and your mother's rings pulled off
+your fingers, and her wrist-watch from your wrist, and even your
+carfare----"
+
+"Is that what's happened to you?"
+
+"Sure! Half an hour ago, too. Judson Flack! But why should I worry?
+Something'll happen before night."
+
+He became emphatic. "Yes, and I'll tell you what it will be. You put
+your finger on it just now when you said she couldn't make anything
+out of men in half an hour. Well, it's got to be something that would
+take just that time--an hour at the most--_and fatal_. Now do you
+see?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+He swung fully round on her from his end of the bench. "Think," he
+commanded.
+
+As if with a premonitory notion of what he meant, she answered coldly:
+"What's the good o' me thinkin'? I've got nothin' to do with it."
+
+"You might have."
+
+"I can't imagine what, unless it'd be----" Realizing what she had been
+about to say, she broke off in confusion, coloring to the eyes.
+
+He nodded. "I see you understand. I want you to come off somewhere and
+marry me."
+
+She took it more calmly than if she hadn't thought him mad. "But--but
+you said you'd be--be goin' to the devil."
+
+"Well?"
+
+His look, his tone, conveyed the idea, which penetrated to her mind
+but slowly. When it did, the surging color became a flush, hot and
+painful.
+
+So here it was again, the thing she had been running away from. It had
+outwitted and outrun her, meeting her again just at the instant when
+she thought she was shaking it off. She was so indignant with the
+_thing_ that she almost overlooked the man. She too swung round from
+her end of the bench, so that they confronted each other, with the
+length of the seat between them. It was her habit to put things
+plainly, though now she did it with a burning heart.
+
+"This is the way you mean it, isn't it?--you'd go to the devil because
+you'd married _me_."
+
+The half-minute before he answered was occupied not merely in thinking
+what to say but in noticing, now that he had her in full-face, that
+her large, brown irises seemed to be sprinkled with gold dust.
+Otherwise her appearance struck him simply as blurred, as if it had
+been brightly enough drawn as to color and line, only rubbed over and
+defaced by the hand of misery.
+
+"I don't want you to get me wrong," he explained. "It's not a question
+of my marrying you in particular. I've said I'd marry the first girl I
+met who'd marry me."
+
+The gold-brown eyes scintillated with a thousand tiny stars. "Say, and
+am I the first?"
+
+"No; you're the fourth." He added, so that she should be under no
+misconception as to what he was about: "You can take me or leave me.
+That's up to you. But if you take me, I want you to understand that
+it'll be on a purely business basis."
+
+She repeated, as if to memorize the words, "A purely business basis."
+
+"Exactly. I'm not looking for a wife. I only want a woman to marry--a
+woman to whom I can point and say, See there! I've married--that."
+
+"And _that'd_ be me."
+
+"If you undertook the job."
+
+"The job of--of bein' laughed at--jeered at----"
+
+"I'd be the one who'd be laughed at and jeered at. Nobody would think
+anything about you. They wouldn't remember how you looked or know your
+name. If you got sick of it after a bit, and decided to cut and run,
+you could do it. I'd see that you were well treated--for the rest of
+your life."
+
+She studied him long and earnestly. "Say, are _you_ crazy?"
+
+"I'm all on edge, if that's what you mean. But there's nothing for you
+to be afraid of. I shan't do you any harm at any time."
+
+"You only want to do harm to yourself. I'd be like the awful kind o'
+pill which a fellow'll swaller to commit suicide." She rose, not
+without a dignity of her own. "Well, mister, if I'm your fourth, I
+guess you'll have to look about you for a fifth."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+He asked the question without rising. She answered as if her choice of
+objectives was large.
+
+"Oh, anywheres."
+
+"Which means nowhere, doesn't it?"
+
+"Oh, not exactly. It means--it means--the first place I fetch up."
+
+"The first place you fetch up may be the police-station, if the things
+you said just now are true."
+
+"The police-station is safe, anyways."
+
+"And you think the place I'd take you to wouldn't be. Well, you're
+wrong. It'll be as safe as a church for as long as you like to stay;
+and when you want to go--lots of money to go with."
+
+Facing away from him toward the city, she said over her shoulder:
+"There's things money couldn't pay you for. Bein' looked down on is
+one."
+
+She was about to walk on, but he sprang after her, catching her by the
+sleeve.
+
+"Look here! Be a sport. You've got the chance of your lifetime. It'll
+mean no more to you than a part they'd give you in pictures--just a
+role--and pay you a lot better."
+
+She was not blind to the advantages he laid before her. True, it might
+be what she qualified as "bull" to get her into a trap; only she
+didn't believe it. This man with the sick mind and anguished face was
+none of the soft-spoken fiends whose business it is to ensnare young
+girls. She knew all about them from living with Judson Flack, and
+couldn't be mistaken. This fellow might be crazy, but he was what he
+said. If he said he wouldn't do her any harm, he wouldn't. If he said
+he would pay her well, he would. The main question was as to whether
+or not, just for the sake of getting something to eat and a place to
+sleep, she could deliberately put herself in a position in which the
+man who had married her would have gone to the devil _because_ he had
+married her.
+
+As he held her by the sleeve looking down at her, and she, half
+turned, was looking up at him, this was the battle she was fighting.
+Hitherto her impulse had been to run away from the scorn of her
+inferiority; now she was asking herself what would happen if she took
+up its challenge and fought it on its own ground. What if I do? was
+the way the question framed itself, but aloud she made it.
+
+"If I said I would, what would happen first?"
+
+"We'd go and get a license. Then we'd find a minister. After that I
+should give you something to eat, and then I'd take you home."
+
+"Where would that be?"
+
+He gave her his address in East Sixty-seventh Street, only a few doors
+from Fifth Avenue, but her social sophistication was not up to the
+point of seeing the significance of this. Neither did her imagination
+try to picture the home or to see it otherwise than as an alternative
+to the police-station, or worse, as a lodging for the night.
+
+"And what would happen to me when I got to your home?"
+
+"You'd have your own room. I shouldn't interfere with you. You'd
+hardly ever see me. You could stay as long as you liked or as short as
+you liked, after the first week or two."
+
+There was that about him which carried conviction. She believed him.
+As an alternative to having nowhere to go, what he offered her was
+something, and something with that spice of adventure of which she had
+been dreaming only a few minutes earlier. She couldn't be worse off
+than she was now, and if it gave her the chance of a hand-to-hand
+tussle with the world-pride which had never done anything but look
+down on her, she would be fighting what she held as her worst enemy.
+She braced herself to say,
+
+"All right; I'll do it."
+
+He, too, braced himself. "Very well! Let's start."
+
+The impetuosity of his motion almost took her breath away as she tried
+to keep pace with him.
+
+"By the way, what's your name?" he asked, before they reached Fifth
+Avenue.
+
+She told him, but was too overwhelmed with what she had undertaken to
+dare to ask him his.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+"Nao!"
+
+The strong cockney negative was also an exclamation. It came from Mrs.
+Courage, the cook-housekeeper, who stood near the kitchen range making
+the coffee for breakfast. She was a woman who looked her name, born
+not merely to do battle, but to enjoy being in the midst of it.
+
+Jane, the waitress, was the next to speak. "Nettie Duckett, you ought
+to be ashymed to sye them words, you that's been taught to 'ope the
+best of everyone."
+
+Jane had fluttered in from the pantry with the covered dish for the
+toast. Jane still fluttered at her work, as she had done for the past
+thirty years. The late Mrs. Allerton had liked her about the table
+because she was swift, deft, and moved lightly. A thin little woman,
+with a profile resembling that of Punch's Judy, and a smile of
+cheerful piety, she yielded to time only by a process of drying up.
+
+Nettie Duckett was quick in her own defense, but breathless, too, from
+girlish laughter. "I can't 'elp syin' what I see, now can I? There she
+was 'arf dressed in the little back spare-room. Oh, the commonest
+thing! You wouldn't 'a wanted to sweep 'er out with a broom."
+
+"Pretty goin's on I must sye," Jane commented. "'Ope the best of
+everyone I will, but when you think that we was all on the top
+floor----"
+
+"Pretty goin's off there'll be, I can tell you that," Mrs. Courage
+declared in her rich, decided bass. "Just let me 'ave a word with
+Master Rashleigh. I'll tell 'im what 'is ma would 'ave said. She left
+'im to me, she did. 'Courage,' she's told me many a time, 'that boy'll
+be your boy after I'm gone.' As good as mykin' a will, I call it. And
+now to think that with us right 'ere in the 'ouse.... Where's Steptoe?
+Do 'e know anything about it?"
+
+"Do 'e know anything about what?" The question came from Steptoe
+himself, who appeared on the threshold.
+
+The three women maintained a dramatic silence, while the old
+butler-valet looked from one to another.
+
+"Seems as if there was news," he observed dryly.
+
+"Tell 'im, Nettie," Mrs. Courage commanded.
+
+Nettie was the young thing of the establishment, Mrs. Courage's own
+niece, brought from England when the housemaid's place fell vacant on
+Bessie's unexpected marriage to Walter Wildgoose, Miss Walbrook's
+indoor man. Indeed she had been brought from England before Bessie's
+marriage, of which Mrs. Courage had had advance information, so that
+as soon as Bessie left, Nettie was on the spot to be smuggled into the
+Allerton household. Steptoe had not forgiven this underhand movement
+on Mrs. Courage's part, seeing that in the long-ago both she and Jane
+had been his own nominees, and that he considered the household posts
+as gifts at his disposal. "I'll 'ave to make a clean sweep o' the lot
+o' them," he had more than once declared at those gatherings at which
+the English butlers and valets of upper Fifth Avenue discuss their
+complex of interests. Forty years in the Allerton family had made him
+not merely its major-domo but in certain respects its head. His tone
+toward Nettie was that of authority with a note of disapprobation.
+
+"Speak, girl, and do it without giggling. What 'ave you to tell?"
+
+Though she couldn't do it without giggling Nettie repeated the story
+she had given to her aunt and Jane. She had gone into the small single
+back bedroom on the floor below Mr. Allerton's, and there was a
+half-dressed girl 'a-puttin' up of 'er 'air.' According to her own
+statement Nettie had passed away on the spot, being able, however, to
+articulate the question, "What are you a'doin' of 'ere?" To this the
+young woman had replied that Mr. Allerton had brought her in on the
+previous evening, telling her to sleep there, and there she had slept.
+Nettie's information could go no further, but it was considered to go
+far enough.
+
+"So what do you sye to _that_?" Mrs. Courage demanded of Steptoe; "you
+that's always so ready to defend my young lord?"
+
+Steptoe was prepared to stand back to back with his employer. "I don't
+defend 'im. I'm not called on to defend 'im. It's Mr. Rashleigh's
+'ouse. Any guest of 'is must be your guest and mine."
+
+"And what about Miss Walbrook, 'er that's to be missus 'ere in the
+course of a few weeks?"
+
+Steptoe colored, frostily. "She's not missus 'ere yet; and if she ever
+comes, there'll be stormy weather for all of us. New missuses don't
+generally get on with old servants like us--that's been in the family
+for so many years--but when they don't, it ain't them as gets
+notice."
+
+A bell rang sharply. Steptoe sprang to attention.
+
+"There's Mr. Rashleigh now. Don't you women go to mykin' a to-do.
+There's lots o' troubles that 'ud never 'ave 'appened if women 'ad
+been able to 'old their tongues."
+
+"But I suppose, Steptoe, you don't deny that there's such a thing as
+right."
+
+"I don't deny that there's such a thing as right, Mrs. Courage, but I
+only wonder if you knows more about it than the rest of us."
+
+In Allerton's room Steptoe found the young master of the house half
+dressed. Standing before a mirror, he was brushing his hair. His face
+and eyes, the reflection of which Steptoe caught in the glass, were
+like those of a man on the edge of going insane.
+
+The old valet entered according to his daily habit and without
+betraying the knowledge of anything unusual. All the same his heart
+was sinking, as old hearts sink when beloved young ones are in
+trouble. The boy was his darling. He had been with his father for ten
+years before the lad was born, and had watched his growth with a more
+than paternal devotion. "'E's all I 'ave," he often said to himself,
+and had been known to let out the fact in the afore-mentioned group of
+English upper servants, a small but exclusive circle in the multiplex
+life of New York.
+
+In Steptoe's opinion Master Rash had never had a chance. Born many
+years after his parents had lived together childlessly, he had come
+into the world constitutionally neurasthenic. Steptoe had never known
+a boy who needed more to be nursed along and coaxed along by
+affection, and now and then by indulgence. Instead, the system of
+severity had been applied with results little short of calamitous. He
+had been sent to schools famous for religion and discipline, from
+which he reacted in the first weeks of freedom in college, getting
+into dire academic scrapes. Further severity had led to further
+scrapes, and further scrapes to something like disgrace, when the war
+broke out and a Red Cross job had kept him from going to the bad. The
+mother had been a self-willed and selfish woman, claiming more from
+her son than she ever gave him, and never perceiving that his was a
+nature requiring a peculiar kind of care. After her death Steptoe had
+prayed for a kind, sweet wife to come to the boy's rescue, and the
+answer had been Miss Barbara Walbrook.
+
+When the engagement was announced, Steptoe had given up hope. Of Miss
+Walbrook as a woman he had nothing to complain. Walter Wildgoose
+reported her a noble creature, splendid, generous, magnificent, only
+needing a strong hand. She was of the type not to be served but to be
+mastered. Rashleigh Allerton would goad her to frenzy, and she would
+do the same by him. She was already doing it. For weeks past Steptoe
+could see it plainly enough, and what would happen after they were
+married God alone knew. For himself he saw no future but to hang on
+after the wedding as long as the new mistress of the house would allow
+him, take his dismissal as an inevitable thing, and sneak away and
+die.
+
+It was part of Steptoe's training not to notice anything till his
+attention was called to it. So having said his "Good-morning, sir," he
+went to the closet, took down the hanger with the coat and waistcoat
+belonging to the suit of which he saw that Allerton had put on the
+trousers, and waited till the young man was ready for his
+ministrations.
+
+Allerton was still brushing his hair, as he said over his shoulder:
+"There's a young woman in the house, Steptoe. Been here all night."
+
+"Yes, sir; I know--in the little back spare-room."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Nettie went in for a pincushion, Mr. Rash, and the young woman was
+a-doin' of 'er 'air."
+
+"What did Nettie say?"
+
+"It ain't what Nettie says, sir, if I may myke so bold. It's what Mrs.
+Courage and Jane says."
+
+"Tell Mrs. Courage and Jane they needn't be alarmed. The young woman
+is--" Steptoe caught the spasm which contracted the boy's face--"the
+young woman is--my wife."
+
+"Quite so, sir."
+
+If Allerton went no further, Steptoe could go no further; but inwardly
+he was like a man reprieved at the last minute, and against all hope,
+from sentence of death. "Then it won't be '_er_," was all he could say
+to himself, "'er" being Barbara Walbrook. Whatever calamity had
+happened, that calamity at least would be escaped, which was so much
+to the good.
+
+His arms trembled so that he could hardly hold up the waistcoat for
+Allerton to slip it on. But he didn't slip it on. Instead he wheeled
+round from the mirror, threw the brushes with a crash to the toilet
+table, and cried with a rage all the more raging for being impotent:
+
+"Steptoe, I've been every kind of fool."
+
+"Yes, sir, I expect so."
+
+"You've got to get me out of it, Steptoe. You must find a way to save
+me."
+
+"I'll do my best, sir." The joy of cooperation with the lad almost
+made up for the anguish at his anguish. "What 'ud it be--you must
+excuse me, Mr. Rash--but what 'ud it be that you'd like me to save you
+from?"
+
+Allerton threw out his arms. "From this crazy marriage. This frightful
+mix-up. I went right off the handle yesterday. I was an infernal
+idiot. And now I'm in for it. Something's got to be done, Steptoe, and
+I can't think of any one but you to do it."
+
+"Quite so, sir. Will you 'ave your wystcoat on now, sir? You're ready
+for it, I see. I'll think it over, Mr. Rash, and let you know."
+
+While first the waistcoat and then the coat were extended and slipped
+over the shoulders, Allerton did his best to put Steptoe in possession
+of the mad facts of the previous day. Though the account he gave was
+incoherent, the old man understood enough.
+
+"It wasn't her fault, you must understand," Allerton explained
+further, as Steptoe brushed his hat. "She didn't want to. I persuaded
+her. I wanted to do something that would wring Miss Walbrook's
+heart--and I've done it! Wrung my own, too! What's to become of me,
+Steptoe? Is the best thing I can do to shoot myself? Think it over.
+I'm ready to. I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a relief to get out of
+this rotten life. I'm all on edge. I could jump out of that window as
+easily as not. But it wasn't the girl's fault. She's a poor little
+waif of a thing. You must look after her and keep me from seeing her
+again, but she's not bad--only--only--Oh, my God! my God!"
+
+He covered his face with his hands and rocked himself about, so that
+Steptoe was obliged to go on brushing till his master calmed himself.
+
+"Do you think, sir," he said then, "that this is the 'at to go with
+this 'ere suit? I think as the brown one would be a lot chicker--tone
+in with the sort of fawn stripe in the blue like, and ketch the note
+in your tie." He added, while diving into the closet in search of the
+brown hat and bringing it out, "There's one thing I could say right
+now, Mr. Rash, and I think it might 'elp."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Do you remember the time when you 'urt your leg 'unting down in Long
+Island?"
+
+"Yes; what about it?"
+
+"You was all for not payin' it no attention and for 'oppin' about as
+if you 'adn't 'urt it at all. A terr'ble fuss you myde when the doctor
+said as you was to keep still. Anybody 'ud 'ave thought 'e'd bordered
+a hamputation. And yet it was keepin' still what got you out o' the
+trouble, now wasn't it?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, now you're in a worse trouble still it might do the syme again.
+I'm a great believer in keepin' still, I am."
+
+Allerton was off again. "How in thunder am I to keep still when----?"
+
+"I'll tell you one wye, sir. Don't talk. Don't _do_ nothink. Don't
+beat your 'ead against the wall. Be quiet. Tyke it natural. You've
+done this thing. Well, you 'aven't committed a murder. You 'aven't
+even done a wrong to the young lydy to whom you was engyged. By what I
+understand she'd jilted you, and you was free to marry any one you
+took a mind to."
+
+"Nominally, perhaps, but----"
+
+"If you're nominally free, sir, you're free, by what I can understand;
+and if you've gone and done a foolish thing it ain't no one's business
+but your own."
+
+"Yes, but I can't stand it!"
+
+"O' course you can't stand it, sir, but it's because you can't stand
+it that I'm arskin' of you to keep just as quiet as you can. Mistykes
+in our life is often like the twists we'll give to our bodies. They'll
+ache most awful, but let nyture alone and she'll tyke care of 'em.
+It's jest so with our mistykes. Let life alone and she'll put 'em
+stryght for us, nine times out o' ten, better than we can do it by
+workin' up into a wax."
+
+Calmed to some extent Allerton went off to the club for breakfast,
+being unable to face this meal at home. Steptoe tidied up the room. He
+was troubled and yet relieved. It was a desperate case, but he had
+always found that in desperate cases desperate remedies were close at
+hand.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+"See that the poor thing gets some breakfast," had been Allerton's
+parting command, and having finished the room, Steptoe went down the
+flight of stairs to carry out this injunction.
+
+He was on the third step from the landing when the door of the back
+room opened, and a little, gray figure, hatted and jacketed, crept out
+stealthily. She was plainly ready for the street, an intention
+understood by Beppo, the late Mrs. Allerton's red cocker spaniel, who
+was capering about her in the hope of sharing the promenade.
+
+As Steptoe came to a halt, the girl ran toward him.
+
+"Oh, mister, I gotta get out of this swell dump. Show me the way, for
+God's sake!"
+
+To say that Steptoe was thinking rapidly would be to describe his
+mental processes incorrectly. He never thought; he received
+illuminations. Some such enlightenment came to him now, inducing him
+to say, ceremoniously, "Madam can't go without 'er breakfast."
+
+"I don't want any breakfast," she protested, breathlessly. "All I want
+is to get away. I'm frightened."
+
+"I assure madam that there's nothink to be afryde of in this 'ouse.
+Mr. Allerton is the most honorable--" he pronounced the initial
+_h_--"young man that hever was born. I valeted 'is father before 'im
+and know that 'e wouldn't 'urt a fly. If madam'll trust me--Besides,
+Mr. Allerton left word with me as you was to be sure to 'ave your
+breakfast, and I shouldn't know how to fyce 'im if 'e was to know that
+you'd gone awye without so much as a hegg."
+
+She wrung her hands. "I don't want to see him. I couldn't."
+
+"Madam won't see 'im. 'E's gone for the dye. 'E don't so often heat at
+'ome--'ardly never."
+
+Of the courses before her Letty saw that yielding was the easiest.
+Besides, it would give her her breakfast, which was a consideration.
+Though she had nominally dined on the previous evening, she had not
+been able to eat; she had been too terrified. Never would she forget
+the things that had happened after she had given her consent in the
+Park.
+
+Not that outwardly they had been otherwise than commonplace. It was
+going through them at all! The man was as nearly "off his chump"--the
+expression was hers--as a human being could be without laying himself
+open to arrest. After calling the taxi in Fifth Avenue he had walked
+up and down, compelling her to walk by his side, for a good fifteen
+minutes before making her get in and springing in beside her. At the
+house opposite he had stared and stared, as if hoping that some one
+would look out. During the drive to the place where they got the
+license, and later to the minister's house, he spoke not a word. In
+the restaurant to which he took her afterward, the most glorious place
+she had ever been in, he ordered a feast suited to a queen, but she
+could hardly do more than taste it. She felt that the waiter was
+looking at them strangely, and she didn't know the uses of the knives
+and forks. The man she had married offered her no help, neither
+speaking to her nor giving her a glance. He himself ate but little,
+lost in some mental maze to which she had no clue.
+
+After dinner he had proposed the theatre, but she had refused. She
+couldn't go anywhere else with him. Wherever they moved, a thousand
+eyes were turned in amazement at the extraordinary pair. He saw
+nothing, but she was alive to it all--more conscious of her hat and
+suit than even in the street scene in "The Man with the Emerald Eye."
+Once and for all she became aware that the first standard for human
+valuation is in clothes.
+
+In the end they had got into another taxi, to be driven round and
+round the Park and out along the river bank, till he decided that they
+might go home. During all this time he hardly noticed her. Once he
+asked her if she was warm enough, and once if she would like to get
+out and take a walk along the parapet above the river, but otherwise
+he was withdrawn into a world which he kept shut and locked against
+her. That left her alone. She had never felt so much alone in her
+life, not even in the days which followed her mother's death. It was
+as if she had been snatched away from everything with which she was
+familiar, to find herself stranded in a country of fantastic dreams.
+
+Then there was the house and the little back room. By the use of his
+latchkey they had entered a palace huge and dark. Letty didn't know
+that people lived with so much space around them. Only a hall light
+burned in a many-colored oriental lamp, and in the half-gloom the
+rooms on each side of the entry were cavernous. There was not a
+servant, not a sound. The only living thing was a little dog which
+pattered out of the obscurity and, raising his paws against her skirt,
+adopted her instantaneously.
+
+"He was my mother's dog," Allerton explained briefly. "He likes women,
+but not men, though he's never taken to the women in the house. He'll
+probably like you. His name is Beppo. I'll show you up at once."
+
+The grandeur of the staircase was overpowering, and the little back
+spare-room of a magnificence beyond all her experience outside of
+movie-sets. The flowers on the chintz coverings were prettier than
+real ones, and there was a private bath. Letty had heard of private
+baths, but no picture she had ever painted equaled this dainty
+apartment in which everything was of spotless white except where a
+flight of blue-gray gulls skimmed over a blue summer sea.
+
+The objects in the bedroom were too lovely to live with. On the toilet
+table were boxes and trays which Letty supposed must be priceless, and
+a set of brushes with silver backs. She couldn't brush her hair with a
+brush with a silver back, because it would be journeying too far
+beyond real life into that of fairy princesses. On opening the closet
+to hang up her jacket the very hangers were puffed and covered with
+the "sweetest flowered silks," so she hung her jacket on a peg.
+
+But she wasn't comfortable, she wasn't happy. Alice had traveled too
+far into Wonderland, and too suddenly. Unwillingly she lay down in a
+bed too clean and soft for the human form, but she couldn't sleep in
+it. She could only tremble and toss and lie awake and wish for the
+morning. With the dawn she would be up and off, before any one caught
+sight of her.
+
+For Allerton had used words which had terrified her more than anything
+that had yet happened or been said--"the other women in the house!"
+Not till then had she sufficiently visualized the life into which he
+was taking her to understand that there would be other women there.
+Now that she knew it, she couldn't face them. She could have faced
+men. Men, after all, were simple creatures with only a rudimentary
+power of judgment. But women! God! She pulled the eiderdown about her
+head so as not to cry out so loudly that she would be heard. What mad
+thing had she done? What had she let herself in for? She didn't ask
+what kind of women they would be--members of his family or servants.
+She didn't care. All women were alike. The woman was not born who
+wouldn't view a girl in her unconventional situation, "and especially
+in that rig"--once more the expression was her own--without a
+condemnation which Letty could not and would not submit herself to. So
+she would get up and steal away with the first gleam of light.
+
+She got up with the first gleam of light, but she couldn't steal away.
+Once more she was afraid. Unlocking the door, she dared not venture
+out. Who knew where, in that palace of cavernous apartments, she might
+meet a woman, or what the woman would say to her? When Nettie walked
+in later, humming a street air, Letty almost died from shame. For one
+thing, she hadn't yet put on her shirtwaist, which in itself was poor
+enough, and as she stood exposed without it, any other of her sex
+could see.... She had once been on the studio lot when a girl of about
+her own age, a "supe" like herself, was arrested for thieving in the
+women's dressing-rooms. Letty had never forgotten the look in that
+girl's face as she passed out through the crowd of her colleagues. In
+Nettie's presence she felt like that girl's look.
+
+She had no means of telling the time, but when she could no longer
+endure the imprisonment she decided to make a bolt for it. She hadn't
+been thieving, and so they couldn't do anything to her--and there was
+a chance at least that she might get away. Opening the door
+cautiously, she stole out on the landing, and there was, not a woman,
+but a man!
+
+Joy! A man would listen to her appeal. He would see that she was poor,
+common, unequal to a dump so swell, and would be human and tender. He
+was a nice looking old man too--she was able to notice that--with a
+long, kindly face on which there were two spots of bloom as if he had
+been rouged. So she capitulated to his plea, making only the condition
+that if she took the hegg--she pronounced the word as he did, not
+being sure as to what it meant--she should be free to go.
+
+"Certainly, if madam wishes it. I'm sure the last thing Mr. Allerton
+would desire would be to detain madam against 'er will."
+
+She allowed herself to be ushered down the monumental stairs and into
+the dining-room, which awed her with the solemnity of a church. She
+knew at once that she wouldn't be able to eat amid this stateliness
+any more than in the glitter of last evening's restaurant. She had
+yielded, however, and there was nothing for it but to sit down at the
+head of the table in the chair which Steptoe drew out for her.
+Guessing at her most immediate embarrassment, he showed her what to do
+by unfolding the napkin and laying it in her lap.
+
+"Now, if madam will excuse me, I'll slip awye and tell Jyne."
+
+But telling Jyne was not so simple a matter as it looked. The council
+in the kitchen, which at first had been a council and no more, was now
+a council of war. As Steptoe entered, Mrs. Courage was saying:
+
+"I shall go to Mr. Rashleigh 'imself and tell 'im that hunder the syme
+roof with a baggage none of us will stye."
+
+"You can syve yourself the trouble, Mrs. Courage," Steptoe informed
+her. "Mr. Rash 'as just gone out. Besides, I've good news for all of
+you." He waited for each to take an appropriate expression, Mrs.
+Courage determined, Jane with face eager and alight, Nettie tittering
+behind her hand. "Miss Walbrook, which all of us 'as dreaded, is not
+a-comin' to our midst. The young lydy Nettie see in the back
+spare-room is Mr. Rashleigh's wife."
+
+"Wife!" Mrs. Courage threw up her hands and staggered backward. "'Im
+that 'is mother left to me! 'Courage,' says she, 'when I'm gone----'"
+
+Jane crept forward, horrified, stunned. "Them things can't be,
+Steptoe."
+
+"Mr. Rash told me so 'imself. I don't know what more we want than
+that." Steptoe was not without his diplomacy. "It's a fine thing for
+us, girls. This sweet young lydy is not goin' to myke us no trouble
+like what the other one would, and belongs right in our own class."
+
+"'Enery Steptoe, speak for yourself," Mrs. Courage said, severely.
+"There's no baggages in my class, nor never was, nor never will be."
+
+Jane began to cry. "I'm sure I try to think the best of everyone, but
+when such awful things 'appens and 'omes is broken up----"
+
+"Jynie," Steptoe said with authority, "the young missus is wytin' for
+'er breakfast. 'Ave the goodness to tyke 'er in 'er grypefruit."
+
+"Jyne Cakebread," Mrs. Courage declared, with an authority even
+greater than Steptoe's, "the first as tykes a grypefruit into that
+dinin'-room, to set before them as I shouldn't demean myself to nyme,
+comes hunder my displeasure."
+
+"I couldn't, Steptoe," Jane pleaded helplessly. "All my life I've
+wyted on lydies. 'Ow can you expect me to turn over a new leaf at my
+time o' life?"
+
+"Nettie?" Steptoe made the appeal magisterially.
+
+"Oh, I'll do it," Nettie giggled. "'Appy to get another look at 'er. I
+sye, she's a sight!"
+
+But Mrs. Courage barred the way. "My niece will wyte on people of
+doubtful conduck over my dead corpse."
+
+"Very well, then, Mrs. Courage," Steptoe reasoned. "If you won't serve
+the new missus, Mr. Rashleigh, will 'ave to get some one else who
+will."
+
+"Mr. Rashleigh will 'ave to do that very selfsame thing. Not another
+night will none of us sleep hunder this paternal roof with them that
+their very presence is a houtrage. 'Enery Steptoe was always a
+time-server, and a time-server 'e will be, but as for us women, we
+shall see the new missus in goin' in to give 'er notice. Not a month's
+notice, it won't be. This range as I've cooked at for nearly thirty
+years I shall cook at no more, not so much as for lunch. Oh, dear! Oh,
+dear! What's the world comin' to?"
+
+In spite of her strength of character Mrs. Courage threw her apron
+over her head and burst into tears. Jane was weeping already.
+
+"There, there, aunt," Nettie begged, patting her relative between the
+shoulders. "What's the good o' goin' on like that just because a silly
+ass 'as married beneath 'im?"
+
+Mrs. Courage pulled her apron from her face to cry out with passion:
+
+"If 'e was goin' to disgryce 'imself like that, why couldn't 'e 'a
+taken you?"
+
+So Steptoe waited on Letty himself, bringing in the grapefruit, the
+coffee, the egg, and the toast, and seeing that she knew how to deal
+with each in the proper forms. He was so brooding, so yearning, so
+tactful, as he bent over her, that she was never at a loss as to the
+fork or spoon she ought to use, or the minute at which to use it.
+Under his protection Letty ate. She ate, first because she was young
+and hungry, and then because she felt him standing between her and all
+vague terrors. By the time she had finished, he moved in front of her,
+where he could speak as one human being to another.
+
+Taking an empty plate from the table to put it on the sideboard, he
+said: "I 'ope madam is chyngin' 'er mind about leavin' us."
+
+Letty glanced up shyly in spite of being somewhat reassured. "What'ud
+be the good of my changin' my mind when--when I'm not fit to stay?"
+
+"Madam means not fit in the sense that----"
+
+"I'm not a lady."
+
+Resting one hand on the table, he looked down into her eyes with an
+expression such as Letty had never before seen in a human face.
+
+"I could myke a lydy of madam."
+
+At the sound of these quiet words, so confidently spoken, something
+passed through Letty's frame to be described only by the hard-worked
+word, a thrill. It was a double current of vibration, partly of
+upleaping hope, partly of the desperate sense of her own limitations.
+A hundred points of gold dust were aflame in her irises as she said:
+
+"You mean that you'd put me wise? Oh, but I'd never learn!"
+
+"On the contrary, I think madam would pick up very quick."
+
+"And I'd never be able to talk the right----"
+
+"I could learn madam to talk just as good as me."
+
+It seemed too much. She clasped her hands. It was the nearest point
+she had ever reached to ecstasy. "Oh, do you think you could? You talk
+somethin' beautiful, you do!"
+
+He smiled modestly. "I've always lived with the best people, and I
+suppose I ketch their wyes. I know what a gentleman is--and a lydy. I
+know all a lydy's little 'abits, and before two or three months was
+over madam 'ud 'ave them as natural as natural, if she wouldn't think
+me overbold."
+
+"When 'ud you begin?"
+
+The bright spot deepened in each cheek. "I've begun already, if madam
+won't think me steppin' out o' my plyce to sye so, in showin' madam
+the spoons and forks for the different----"
+
+Letty colored, too. "Yes, I saw that. I take it as very kind. But--"
+she looked at him with a puzzled knitting of the brows--"but what
+makes you take all this trouble for me?"
+
+"I've two reasons, madam, but I'll only tell you one of 'em just now.
+The other'll keep. I'll myke it known to you if--if all goes as I
+'ope." He straightened himself up. "I don't often speak o' this," he
+continued, "because among us butlers and valets it wouldn't be
+understood. Most of us is what's known as conservative, all for the
+big families and the old wyes. Well, so am I--to a point. But----"
+
+He moved a number of objects on the table before he could go on. "I
+wasn't born to the plyce I 'old now," he explained after getting his
+material at command. "I wasn't born to nothink. I was what they calls
+in England a foundlin'--a byby what's found--what 'is parents 'ave
+thrown awye. I don't know who my father and mother was, or what was my
+real nyme. 'Enery Steptoe is just a nyme they give me at the
+Horphanage. But I won't go into that. I'm just tryin' to tell madam
+that my life was a 'ard one, quite a 'ard one, till I come to New York
+as footman for Mr. Allerton's father, and afterward worked up to be
+'is valet and butler."
+
+He cleared his throat. Expressing ideals was not easy. "I 'ope madam
+will forgive me if I sye that what it learned me was a fellow-feelin'
+with my own sort--with the poor. I've often wished as I could go out
+among the poor and ryse them up. I ain't a socialist--a little bit of
+a anarchist perhaps, but nothink extreme--and yet--Well, if Mr.
+Rashleigh had married a rich girl, I would 'a tyken it as natural and
+done my best for 'im, but since 'e 'asn't--Oh, can't madam see?
+It's--it's a kind o' pride with me to find some one like--like what I
+was when I was 'er age--out in the cold like--and bring 'er in--and
+'elp 'er to tryne 'erself--so--so as--some day--to beat the best--them
+as 'as 'ad all the chances----"
+
+He was interrupted by the tinkle of the telephone. It was a relief. He
+had said all he needed to say, all he knew how to say. Whether madam
+understood it or not he couldn't tell, since she didn't seize ideas
+quickly.
+
+"If madam will excuse me now, I'll go and answer that call."
+
+But Letty sprang up in alarm. "Oh, don't leave me. Some of them women
+will blow in----"
+
+"None of them women will _come_--" he threw a delicate emphasis on the
+word--"if madam'll just sit down. They don't mean to come. I'll
+explyne that to madam when I come back, if she'll only not leave this
+room."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+"Good morning, Steptoe. Will you ask Mr. Allerton if he'll speak to
+Miss Walbrook?"
+
+"Mr. Allerton 'as gone to the New Netherlands club for 'is breakfast,
+miss."
+
+"Oh, thanks. I'll call him up there."
+
+She didn't want to call him up there, at a club, where a man must like
+to feel safe from feminine intrusion, but the matter was too pressing
+to permit of hesitation. Since the previous afternoon she had gone
+through much searching of heart. She was accustomed to strong
+reactions from tempestuousness to penitence, but not of the violence
+of this one.
+
+Summoned to the telephone, Allerton felt as if summoned to the bar of
+judgment. He divined who it was, and he divined the reason for the
+call.
+
+"Good morning, Rash!"
+
+His voice was absolutely dead. "Good morning, Barbara!"
+
+"I know you're cross with me for calling you at the club."
+
+"Oh, no! Not at all!"
+
+"But I couldn't wait any longer. I wanted you to know--I've got it on
+again, Rash--never to come off any more."
+
+He was dumb. Thirty seconds at least went by, and he had made no
+response.
+
+"Aren't you glad?"
+
+"I--I could have been glad--if--if I'd known you were going to do
+it."
+
+"And now you know that it's done."
+
+He repeated in his lifeless voice, "Yes, now I know that it's done."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Again he was silent. Two or three times he tried to find words,
+producing nothing but a stammering of incoherent syllables. "I--I
+can't talk about it here, Barbe," he managed to articulate at last.
+"You must let me come round and see you."
+
+It was her voice now that was dead. "When will you come, Rash?"
+
+"Now--at once--if you can see me."
+
+"Then come."
+
+She put up the receiver without saying more. He knew that she knew.
+She knew at least that something had happened which was fatal to them
+both.
+
+She received him not in the drawing-room, but in a little den on the
+right of the front door which was also alive with Miss Walbrook's
+modern personality. A gold-colored portiere from Albert Herter's looms
+screened them from the hall, and the chairs were covered with bits of
+Herter tapestry representing fruits. A cabinet of old white Bennington
+faience stood against a wall, which was further adorned with three or
+four etchings of Sears Gallagher's. Barbara wore a lacy thing in
+hydrangea-colored crepe de chine, loosely girt with a jade-green
+ribbon tasselled in gold, the whole bringing out the faintly Egyptian
+note in her personality.
+
+They dispensed with a greeting, because she spoke the minute he
+crossed the threshold of the room.
+
+"Rash, what is it? Why couldn't you tell me on the telephone?"
+
+He wished now that he had. It would have saved this explanation face
+to face. "Because I couldn't. Because--because I've been too much of
+an idiot to--to tell you about it--either on the telephone or in any
+other way."
+
+"How?" He thought she must understand, but she seemed purposely dense.
+"Sit down. Tell me about it. It can't be so terrible--all of a sudden
+like this."
+
+He couldn't sit down. He could only turn away from her and gulp in his dry
+throat. "You remember what I said--what I said--yesterday--about--about
+the--the Gissing fellow?"
+
+She nodded fiercely. "Yes. Go on. Get it out."
+
+"Well--well--I've--I've done that."
+
+She threw out her arms. She threw back her head till the little
+nut-brown throat was taut. The cry rent her. It rent him.
+
+"You--_fool_!"
+
+He stood with head hanging. He longed to run away, and yet he longed
+also to throw himself at her feet. If he could have done exactly as he
+felt impelled, he would have laid his head on her breast and wept like
+a child.
+
+She swung away from him, pacing the small room like a frenzied animal.
+Her breath came in short, hard pantings that were nearly sobs.
+Suddenly she stopped in front of him with a sort of calm.
+
+"What made you?"
+
+He barely lifted his agonized black eyes. "You,"
+
+She was in revolt again. "I? What did I do?"
+
+"You--you threw away my ring. You said it was all--all over."
+
+"Well? Couldn't I say that without driving you to act the madman? No
+one but a madman would have gone out of this house and--" She clasped
+her forehead in her hands with a dramatic lifting of the arms. "Oh!
+It's too much! I don't care about myself. But to have it on your
+conscience that a man has thrown his life away----"
+
+He asked meekly, "What good was it to me when you wouldn't have it?"
+
+She stamped her foot. "Rash, you'll drive me insane. Your life might
+be no good to you at all, and yet you might give it a chance for
+twenty-four hours--that isn't much, is it?--before you--" She caught
+herself up. "Tell me. You don't mean to say that you're _married_?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"Her first name is Letty. I've forgotten the second name."
+
+"Where did you find her?"
+
+"Over there in the Park."
+
+"And she went and married you--like that?"
+
+"She was all alone--chucked out by a stepfather----"
+
+She burst into a hard laugh. "Oh, you baby! You believed that? The
+kind of story that's told by nine of the----"
+
+[Illustration: BY THE TIME HE HAD FINISHED, HIS HEART WAS A LITTLE EASED
+AND SOME OF HER TENDERNESS BEGAN TO FLOW TOWARD HIM]
+
+He interrupted quickly. "Don't call her anything, Barbe--I mean any
+kind of a bad name. She's all right as far as that goes. There's a
+kind that couldn't take you in."
+
+"There's _no_ kind that couldn't take _you_ in!"
+
+"Perhaps not, but it's the one thing in--in this whole idiotic
+business that's on the level--I mean she is. I'd give my right hand to
+put her back where I found her yesterday--just as she was--but she's
+straight."
+
+She dropped into a chair. The first wild tumult of rage having more or
+less spent its force, she began, with a kind of heart-broken
+curiosity, to ask for the facts. She spoke nervously, beating a palm
+with a gold tassel of her girdle. "Begin at the beginning. Tell me all
+about it."
+
+He leaned on the mantelpiece, of which the only ornaments were a
+child's head in white and blue terra cotta by Paul Manship, balanced
+by a pair of old American glass candlesticks, and told the tale as
+consecutively as he could. He recounted everything, even to the
+bringing her home, the putting her in the little, back spare-room, and
+her adoption by Beppo, the red cocker spaniel. By the time he had
+finished, his heart was a little eased, and some of her tenderness
+toward him was beginning to flow forth. She was like that, all wrath
+at one minute, all gentleness the next. Springing to her feet, she
+caught him by the arm, pressing herself against him.
+
+"All right, Rash. You've done it. That's settled. But it can be undone
+again."
+
+He pressed her head back from him, resting the knot of her hair in
+the hollow of his palm and looking down into her eyes.
+
+"How can it be undone?"
+
+"Oh, there must be ways. A man can't be allowed to ruin his life--to
+ruin two lives--for a prank. We'll just have to think. If you made it
+worth while for her to take you, you can make it worth while for her
+to let you go. She'll do it."
+
+"She'd do it, of course. She doesn't care. I'm nothing to her, not any
+more than she to me. I shan't see her any more than I can help. I
+suppose she must stay at the house till--I told Steptoe to look after
+her."
+
+She took a position at one end of the mantelpiece, while he faced her
+from the other. She gave him wise counsel. He was to see his lawyers
+at once and tell them the whole story. Lawyers always saw the way out
+of things. There was the Bellington boy who married a show-girl. She
+had been bought off, and the lawyers had managed it. Now the
+Bellington boy was happily married to one of the Plantagenet Jones
+girls and lived at Marillo Park. Then there was the Silliman boy who
+had married the notorious Kate Cookesley. The lawyers had found the
+way out of that, too, and now the Silliman boy was a secretary of the
+American Embassy in Rome. Accidents such as had happened to Rash were
+regrettable of course, but it would be folly to think that a perfectly
+good life must be done for just because it had got a crack in it.
+
+"We'll play the game, of course," she wound up. "But it's a game, and
+the stronger side must win. What should you say of my going to see
+her--she needn't know who I am further than that I'm a friend of
+yours--and finding out for myself?"
+
+"Finding out what?"
+
+"Finding out her price, silly. What do you suppose? A woman can often
+see things like that where a man would be blind."
+
+He didn't know. He thought it might be worth while. He would leave it
+to her. "I'm not worth the trouble, Barbe," he said humbly.
+
+With this she agreed. "I know you're not. I can't think for a minute
+why I take it or why I should like you. But I do. That's straight."
+
+"And I adore you, Barbe."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders with a little, comic grimace. "Oh, well! I
+suppose every one has his own way of showing adoration, but I must say
+that yours is original."
+
+"If it's original to be desperate when the woman you worship drives
+you to despair----"
+
+There was another little comic grimace, though less comic than the
+first time. "Oh, yes, I know. It's always the woman whom a man
+worships that's in the wrong. I've noticed that. Men are never
+impossible--all of their own accord."
+
+"I could be as tame as a cat if----"
+
+"If it wasn't for me. Thank you, Rash. I said just now I was fond of
+you, and I should have to be to--to stand for all the----"
+
+"I'm not blaming you, Barbe. I'm only----"
+
+"Thanks again. The day you're not blaming me is certainly one to be
+marked with a white stone, as the Romans used to say. But if it comes
+to blaming any one, Rash, after what happened yesterday----"
+
+"What happened yesterday wasn't begun by me. It would never have
+entered my mind to do the crazy thing I did, if you hadn't positively
+and finally--as I thought--flung me down. I think you must do me that
+justice, Barbe--that justice, at the least."
+
+"Oh, I do you justice enough. I don't see that you can complain of
+that. It seems to me too that I temper justice with mercy to a degree
+that--that most people find ridiculous."
+
+"By most people I suppose you mean your aunt."
+
+"Oh, do leave Aunt Marion out of it. You can't forgive the poor thing
+for not liking you. Well, she doesn't, and I can't help it. She thinks
+you're a----"
+
+"A fool--as you were polite enough to say just now."
+
+She spread her hands apart in an attitude of protestation. "Well, if I
+did, Rash, surely you must admit that I had provocation."
+
+"Oh, of course. The wonder is that with the provocation you can----"
+
+"Forgive you, and try to patch it up again after this frightful gash
+in the agreement. Well, it _is_ a wonder. I don't believe that many
+girls----"
+
+"I only want you to understand, Barbe, that the gash in the agreement
+was made, not by what I did, but what you did. If you hadn't sent me
+to the devil, I shouldn't have been in such a hurry to go there."
+
+She was off. "Yes, there you are again. Always me! I'm the one! You
+may be the gunpowder, the perfectly harmless gunpowder, but it would
+never blow up if I didn't come as the match. _I_ make all the
+explosions. _I_ set you crazy. _I_ send you to the devil. _I_ make you
+go and marry a girl you never laid eyes on in your life before."
+
+So it was the same old scene all over again, till both were exhausted,
+and she had flung herself into a chair to cover her face with her
+hands and burst into tears. Instantly he was on his knees beside her.
+
+"Barbe! Barbe! My beloved Barbe! Don't cry. I'm a brute. I'm a fool.
+I'm not satisfied with breaking my own heart, but I must go to work
+and break yours. Oh, Barbe, forgive me. I'm all to pieces. Forgive me
+and let me go away and shoot myself. What's the good of a poor,
+wrecked creature like me hanging on and making such a mess of things?
+Let me kill myself before I kill you----"
+
+"Oh, hush!"
+
+Seizing his head, she pressed it against her bosom convulsively. By
+the shaking of his shoulders, she felt him sob. He _was_ a poor
+creature. She was saying so to herself. But just because he was,
+something in her yearned over him. He _could_ be different; he could
+be stronger and of value in the world if there was only some one to
+handle him rightly. She could do it--if she could only learn to handle
+herself. She _would_ learn to handle herself--for his sake. He was
+worth saving. He had fine qualities, and a good heart most of all. It
+was his very fineness which put him out of place in a world like that
+of New York. He was a delicate, brittle, highly-wrought thing which
+should be touched only with the greatest care, and all his life he had
+been pushed and hurtled about as if he were a football player or a
+business man. With the soul of a poet or a painter or a seer, he had
+been treated like the typical rough-and-ready American lad, till the
+sensitive nature had been brutalized, maimed, and frenzied.
+
+She knew that. It was why she cared for him. Even when they were
+children she had seen that he wasn't getting fair treatment, either at
+home or in school or among the boys and girls with whom they both grew
+up. He was the exception, and American life allowed only for the rule.
+If you couldn't conform to the rule, you were guyed and tormented and
+ejected. Among all his associates she alone knew what he suffered, and
+because she knew it a vast pity made her cling to him. He had forced
+himself into the life of clubs, into the life of society, into the
+life of other men as other men lived their lives, and the effect on
+him had been so nearly ruinous that it was no wonder if he was always
+on the edge of nervous explosion. His very wealth which might have
+been a protection was, under the uniform pressure of American social
+habit, an incitement to him to follow the wrong way. She knew it, and
+she alone. She could save him, and she alone. She could save him, if
+she could first of all save herself.
+
+With his head pressed against her she made the vow as she had made it
+fifty times already. She would be gentle with him; she would be
+patient; she would let him work off on her the agony of his suffering
+nerves, and smile at him through it all. She would help him out of the
+idiotic situation in which he found himself. The other girl was only
+an incident, as the show-girl had been to the Bellington boy, and
+could be disposed of. She attached to that only a secondary importance
+in comparison with the whole thing--her saving him. She would save
+him, even if it meant rooting out every instinct in her soul.
+
+But as he made his way blindly back to the club, his own conclusions
+were different. He must go to the devil. He must go to the devil now,
+whatever else he did. Going to the devil would set her free from him.
+It was the only thing that would. It would set him free from the other
+woman, set him free from life itself. Life tortured him. He was a
+misfit in it. He should never have been born. He had always understood
+that his parents hadn't wanted children and that his coming had been
+resented. You couldn't be born like that and find it natural to be in
+the world. He had never found it natural. He couldn't remember the
+time when he hadn't been out of his element in life, and now he must
+recognize the fact courageously.
+
+It would be easy enough. He had worked up an artificial appetite for
+all that went under the head of debauchery. It had meant difficult
+schooling at first, because his natural tastes were averse to that
+kind of thing, but he had been schooled. Schooled was the word, since
+his training had begun under the very roof where his father had sent
+him to get religion and discipline. There had been no let-up in this
+educational course, except when he himself had stolen away, generally
+in solitude, for a little holiday.
+
+But as he put it to himself, he knew all the roads and by-paths and
+cross-country leaps that would take him to the gutter, and to the
+gutter he would go.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+And all this while Letty was in the dining-room, learning certain
+lessons from her new-found friend.
+
+For some little time she had been alone. Steptoe finished his
+conversation with Miss Walbrook on the telephone, but did not come
+back. She sat at the table feeding Beppo with bread and milk, but
+wondering if, after all, she hadn't better make a bolt for it. She had
+had her breakfast, which was an asset to the good, and nothing worse
+could happen to her out in the open world than she feared in this
+great dim, gloomy house. She had once crept in to look at the
+cathedral and, overwhelmed by its height, immensity, and mystery, had
+crept out again. Its emotional suggestions had been more than she
+could bear. She felt now as if her bed had been made and her food laid
+out in that cathedral--as if, as long as she remained, she must eat
+and sleep in this vast, pillared solemnity.
+
+And that was only one thing. There were small practical considerations
+even more terrible to confront. If Nettie were to appear again ...
+
+But it was as to this that Steptoe was making his appeal. "I sye,
+girls, don't you go to mykin' a fuss and spoilin' your lives, when
+you've got a chanst as'll never come again."
+
+Mrs. Courage answered for them all. To sacrifice decency to
+self-interest wasn't in them, nor never would be. Some there might be,
+like 'Enery Steptoe, who would sell their birthright for a mess of
+pottage, but Mary Ann Courage was not of that company, nor any other
+woman upon whom she could use her influence. If a hussy had been put
+to reign over them, reigned over by a hussy none of them would be. All
+they asked was to see her once, to deliver the ultimatum of giving
+notice.
+
+"It's a strynge thing to me," Steptoe reasoned, "that when one poor
+person gets a lift, every other poor person comes down on 'em."
+
+"And might we arsk who you means by poor persons?"
+
+"Who should I mean, Mrs. Courage, but people like us? If we don't 'ang
+by each other, who _will_ 'ang by us, I should like to know? 'Ere's
+one of us plyced in a 'igh position, and instead o' bein' proud of it,
+and givin' 'er a lift to carry 'er along, you're all for mykin' it as
+'ard for 'er as you can. Do you call that sensible?"
+
+"I call it sensible for everyone to stye in their proper spere."
+
+"So that if a man's poor, you must keep 'im poor, no matter 'ow 'e
+tries to better 'imself. That's what your proper speres would come
+to."
+
+But argument being of no use, Steptoe could only make up his mind to
+revolution in the house. "The poor's very good to the poor when one of
+'em's in trouble," was his summing up, "but let one of 'em 'ave an
+extry stroke of luck, and all the rest'll jaw against 'im like so many
+magpies." As a parting shot he declared on leaving the kitchen, "The
+trouble with you girls is that you ain't got no class spunk, and
+that's why, in sperrit, you'll never be nothink but menials."
+
+This lack of _esprit de corps_ was something he couldn't understand,
+but what he understood less was the need of the heart to touch
+occasionally the high points of experience. Mrs. Courage and Jane, to
+say nothing of Nettie, after thirty years of domestic routine had
+reached the place where something in the way of drama had become
+imperative. The range and the pantry produce inhibitions as surely as
+the desk or the drawing-room. On both natures inhibitions had been
+packed like feathers on a seabird, till the soul cried out to be
+released from some of them. It might mean going out from the home that
+had sheltered them for years, and breaking with all their traditions,
+but now that the chance was there, neither could refuse it. To a
+virtuous woman, starched and stiffened in her virtue, steeped in it,
+dyed in it, permeated by it through and through, nothing so stirs the
+dramatic, so quickens the imagination, so calls the spirit to the
+purple emotional heights, as contact with the sister she knows to be a
+hussy. For Jane Cakebread and Mary Ann Courage the opportunity was
+unique.
+
+"Then I'll go. I'll go straight now."
+
+As Steptoe brought the information that the three women of the
+household were coming to announce the resignation of their posts,
+Letty sprang to her feet.
+
+"May I arsk madam to sit down again and let me explyne?"
+
+Taking this as an order, she sank back into her chair again. He stood
+confronting her as before, one hand resting lightly on the table.
+
+"Nothink so good won't 'ave 'appened in this 'ouse since old Mrs.
+Allerton went to work and died."
+
+Letty's eyes shone with their tiny fires, not in pleasure but in
+wonder.
+
+"When old servants is good, they're good, but even when they're good,
+there's times when you can't 'elp wishin' as 'ow the Lord 'ud be
+pleased to tyke them to 'Imself."
+
+He allowed this to sink in before going further.
+
+"The men's all right, for the most part. Indoor work comes natural to
+'em, and they'll swing it without no complynts. But with the women
+it's kick, kick, kick, and when they're worn theirselves out with
+kickin', they'll begin to kick again. What's plye for a man, for them
+ain't nothink but slyvery."
+
+Letty listened as one receiving revelations from another world.
+
+"I ain't what they call a woman-'ater. _I_ believe as God made woman
+for a purpose. Only I can't bring myself to think as the human race
+'as rightly found out yet what that purpose is. God's wyes is always
+dark, and when it comes to women, they're darker nor they are
+elsewheres. One thing I do know, and we'll be a lot more comfortable
+when more of us finds it out--that God never made women for the
+'ome."
+
+In spite of her awe of him, Letty found this doctrine difficult to
+accept.
+
+"If God didn't make 'em for the home, mister, where on earth would you
+put 'em?"
+
+The wintry color came out again on the old man's cheeks. "If madam
+would call me Steptoe," he said ceremoniously, "I think she'd find it
+easier. I mean," he went on, reverting to the original theme, "that 'E
+didn't make 'em to be cooks and 'ousemaids and parlormaids, and all
+that. That's men's work. Men'll do it as easy as a bird'll sing. I
+never see the woman yet as didn't fret 'erself over it, like a wild
+animal'll fret itself in a circus cage. It spiles women to put 'em to
+'ousework, like it always spiles people to put 'em to jobs for which
+the Lord didn't give 'em no haptitude."
+
+Letty was puzzled, but followed partially.
+
+"I've watched 'em and watched 'em, and it's always the syme tyle.
+They'll go into service young and joyous like, but it won't be two or
+three years before they'll have growed cat-nasty like this 'ere Jyne
+Cykebread and Mary Ann Courage. Madam 'ud never believe what sweet
+young things they was when I first picked 'em out--Mrs. Courage a
+young widow, and Jynie as nice a girl as madam 'ud wish to see, only
+with the features what Mrs. Allerton used to call a little
+hover-haccentuated. And now--!" He allowed the conditions to speak for
+themselves without criticizing further.
+
+"It's keepin' 'em in a 'ome what's done it. They knows it
+theirselves--and yet they don't. Inside they've got the sperrits of
+young colts that wants to kick up their 'eels in the pasture. They
+don't mean no worse nor that, only when people comes to Jynie's age
+and Mrs. Courage's they 'ave to kick up their 'eels in their own wye.
+If madam'll remember that, and be pytient with them like------"
+
+Letty cried in alarm, "But it's got nothin' to do with me!"
+
+"If madam'll excuse me, it's got everything to do with 'er. She's the
+missus of this 'ouse."
+
+"Oh, no, I ain't. Mr. Allerton just brung me here----"
+
+Once more there was the delicate emphasis with which he had corrected
+other slips. "Mr. Allerton _brought_ madam, and told me to see that
+she was put in 'er proper plyce. If madam'll let me steer the thing,
+I'll myke it as easy for 'er as easy."
+
+He reflected as to how to make the situation clear to her. "I've been
+readin' about the time when our lyte Queen Victoria come to the throne
+as quite a young girl. She didn't know nothin' about politics or
+presidin' at councils or nothin'. But she had a prime minister--a kind
+of hupper servant, you might sye--'er servant was what 'e always
+called 'imself--and whatever 'e told 'er to do, she done. Walked
+through it all, you might sye, till she got the 'ang of it, but once
+she did get the 'ang of it--well, there wasn't no big-bug in the world
+that our most grycious sovereign lydy couldn't put it all hover on."
+
+Once more he allowed her time to assimilate this parable.
+
+"Now if madam would only think of 'erself as called in youth to reign
+hover this 'ouse----"
+
+"Oh, but I couldn't!"
+
+"And yet it's madam's duty, now that she's married to its 'ead----"
+
+"Yes, but he didn't marry me like that. He married me--all queer like.
+This was the way."
+
+She poured out the story, while Steptoe listened quietly. There being
+no elements in it of the kind he called "shydy," he found it romantic.
+No one had ever suspected the longings for romance which had filled
+his heart and imagination when he was a poor little scullion boy; but
+the memory of them, with some of the reality, was still fresh in his
+hidden inner self. Now it seemed as if remotely and vicariously
+romance might be coming to him after all, through the boy he adored.
+
+On her tale his only comment was to say: "I've been readin'--I'm a
+great reader," he threw in parenthetically, "wonderful exercise for
+the mind, and learns you things which you wouldn't be likely to 'ear
+tell of--but I've been readin' about a king--I'll show you 'is nyme in
+the book--what fell in love with a beggar myde----"
+
+"Oh, but Mr. Allerton didn't fall in love with me."
+
+"That remynes to be seen."
+
+She lifted her hands in awed amazement. "Mister--I mean,
+Steptoe--you--you don't think----?"
+
+The subway dream of love at first sight was as tenacious in her soul
+as the craving for romance in his.
+
+He nodded. "I've known strynger things to 'appen."
+
+"But--but--he couldn't--" it was beyond her power of expression,
+though Steptoe knew what she meant--"not _him_!"
+
+He answered judicially. "'E may come to it. It'll be a tough job to
+bring 'im--but if madam'll be guided by me------"
+
+Letty collapsed. Her spirit grew faint as the spirit of Christian when
+he descried far off the walls of the Celestial City, with the Dark
+River rolling between him and it. Letty knew the Dark River must be
+there, but if beyond it there lay the slightest chance of the
+Celestial City....
+
+She came back to herself, as it were, on hearing Steptoe say that the
+procession from the kitchen would presently begin to form itself.
+
+"Now if madam'll be guided by me she'll meet this situytion fyce to
+fyce."
+
+"Oh, but I'd never know what to say."
+
+"Madam won't need to say nothink. She won't 'ave to speak. 'Ere
+they'll troop in--" a gesture described Mrs. Courage leading the
+advance through the doorway--"and 'ere they'll stand. Madam'll sit
+just where she's sittin'--a little further back from the
+tyble--lookin' over the mornin' pyper like--" he placed the paper in
+her hand--"and as heach gives notice, madam'll just bow 'er 'ead.
+See?"
+
+Madam saw, but not exactly.
+
+"Now if she'll just move 'er chair----"
+
+The chair was moved in such a way as to make it seem that the
+occupant, having finished her breakfast, was giving herself a little
+more space.
+
+"And if madam would remove 'er 'at and jacket, she'd--she'd seem more
+like the lydy of the 'ouse at 'ome."
+
+Letty took off these articles of apparel, which Steptoe whisked out of
+sight.
+
+"Now I'll be Mrs. Courage comin' to sye, 'Madam, I wish to give
+notice.' Madam'll lower the pyper just enough to show 'er inclinin' of
+'er 'ead, assentin' to Mrs. Courage leavin' 'er. Mrs. Courage will be
+all for 'avin' words--she's a great 'and for words, Mrs. Courage
+is--but if madam won't sye nothin' at all, the wind'll be out o' Mrs.
+Courage's syles like. Now, will madam be so good----?"
+
+Having passed out into the hall, he entered with Mrs. Courage's
+majestic gait, pausing some three feet from the table to say:
+
+"Madam, things bein' as they are, and me not wishin' to stye no longer
+in the 'ouse where I've served so many years, I beg to give notice
+that I'm a givin' of notice and mean to quit right off."
+
+Letty lowered the paper from before her eyes, jerking her head
+briskly.
+
+"Ye-es," Steptoe commended doubtfully, "a lettle too--well, too
+habrupt, as you might sye. Most lydies--real 'igh lydies, like the
+lyte Mrs. Allerton--inclines their 'ead slow and gryceful like. First,
+they throws it back a bit, so as to get a purchase on it, and then
+they brings it forward calm like, lowerin' it stytely--Perhaps if
+madam'ud be me for a bit--that 'ud be Mrs. Courage--and let me sit
+there and be 'er, I could show 'er----"
+
+The places were reversed. It was Letty who came in as Mrs. Courage,
+while Steptoe, seated in the chair, lowered the paper to the degree
+which he thought dignified. Letty mumbled something like the words the
+hypothetical Mrs. Courage was presumed to use, while Steptoe slowly
+threw back his head for the purchase, bringing it forward in
+condescending grace. Language could not have given Mrs. Courage so
+effective a retort courteous.
+
+Letty was enchanted. "Oh, Steptoe, let me have another try. I believe
+I could swing the cat."
+
+Again the places were reversed. Steptoe having repeated the role of
+Mrs. Courage, Letty imitated him as best she could in getting the
+purchase for her bow and catching his air of high-bred condescension.
+
+"Better," he approved, "if madam wouldn't lower 'er 'ead _quite_ so
+far back'ard. You see, madam, a lydy don't _know_ she's throwin' back
+'er 'ead so as to get a grip on it. She does it unconscious like,
+because bein' of a 'aughty sperrit she 'olds it 'igh natural. If
+madam'll only stiffen 'er neck like, as if sperrit 'ad made 'er about
+two inches taller than she is----"
+
+Having seized this idea, Letty tried again, with such success that
+Mrs. Courage was disposed of. Jane Cakebread followed next, with
+Nettie last of all. Unaware of his possession of histrionic ability,
+Steptoe gave to each character its outstanding traits, fluttering like
+Jane, and giggling like Nettie, not in zeal for a newly discovered
+interpretative art, but in order that Letty might be nowhere caught at
+a disadvantage. He was delighted with her quickness in imitation.
+
+"Couldn't 'ave done that better myself," he declared after Nettie had
+been dismissed for the third or fourth time. "When it comes to the
+inclinin' of the 'ead I should sye as madam was about letter-perfect,
+as they sye on the styge. If Mr. Rash was to see it, 'e'd swear as 'is
+ma 'ad come back again."
+
+A muffled sound proceeded from the back part of the hallway, with
+some whispering and once or twice Nettie's stifled cackle of a laugh.
+
+"'Ere they are," he warned her. "Madam must be firm and control
+'erself. There's nothink for 'er to be afryde of. Just let 'er think
+of the lyte Queen Victoria, called to the throne when younger even
+than madam is----"
+
+A shuffling developed into one lone step, heavy, stately, and
+funereal. Doing her best to emulate the historic example held up to
+her, Letty lengthened her neck and stiffened it. A haughty spirit
+seemed to rise in her by the mere process of the elongation. She was
+so nervous that the paper shook in her hand, but she knew that if the
+Celestial City was to be won, she could shrink from no tests which
+might lead her on to victory.
+
+Steptoe had relapsed into the major-domo's office, announcing from the
+doorway, "Mrs. Courage to see madam, if madam will be pleased to
+receive 'er."
+
+Madam indicated that she was so pleased, scrambling after the standard
+of the maiden sovereign of Windsor Castle giving audience to princes
+and ambassadors.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+"I'm 'ere."
+
+Letty couldn't know, of course, that this announcement, made in a
+menacing female bass, was due to the fact that three swaying
+bodies had been endeavoring so to get round the deployed paper
+wings as to see what was hidden there, and had found their efforts
+vain. All she could recognize was the summons to the bar of social
+judgment. To the bar of social judgment she would have gone
+obediently, had it not been for that rebelliousness against being
+"looked down upon" which had lately mastered her. As it was, she
+lengthened her neck by another half inch, receiving from the
+exercise a new degree of self-strengthening.
+
+"Mrs. Courage is 'ere, madam," Steptoe seconded, "and begs to sye as
+she's givin' notice to quit madam's service----"
+
+The explosion came as if Mrs. Courage was strangling.
+
+"When I wants words took out of my mouth by 'Enery Steptoe or anybody
+else I'll sye so. If them as I've come into this room to speak to
+don't feel theirselves aible to fyce me----"
+
+"Madam'll excuse an old servant who's outlived 'er time," Steptoe
+intervened, "and not tyke no notice. They always abuses the kindness
+that's been showed 'em, and tykes liberties which----"
+
+But not for nothing had Mrs. Courage been born to the grand manner.
+
+"When 'Enery Steptoe talks of old servants out-livin' their time and
+tykin' liberties 'e speaks of what 'e knows all about from personal
+experience. 'E was an old man when I was a little thing not _so_
+high."
+
+The appeal was to the curiosity of the girl behind the screen. To
+judge of how high Mrs. Courage had not been at a time when Steptoe was
+already an old man she might be enticed from her fortifications. But
+the pause only offered Steptoe a new opportunity.
+
+"And so, if madam can dispense with 'er services, which I understand
+madam can, Mrs. Courage will be a-leavin' of us this morning, with all
+our good wishes, I'm sure. Good-dye to you, Mary Ann, and God bless
+you after all the years you've been with us. Madam's givin' you your
+dismissal."
+
+Obedient to her cue Letty lowered her guard just enough to incline her
+head with the grace Steptoe had already pronounced "letter perfect."
+The shock to Mrs. Courage can best be narrated in her own terms to
+Mrs. Walter Wildgoose later in the day.
+
+"Airs! No one couldn't imagine it, Bessie, what 'adn't seen it for
+theirselves--what them baggages'll do--smokin'--and wearin' pearl
+necklaces--and 'avin' their own limousines--all that I've seen and 'ad
+got used to--but not the President's wife--not Mary Queen of
+England--could 'a myde you feel as if you was dirt hunder their feet
+like what this one--and 'er with one of them marked down sixty-nine
+cent blouses that 'adn't seen the wash since--and as for looks--why,
+she didn't 'ave a look to bless 'erself--and a-'oldin' of 'erself like
+what a empress might--and bowin' 'er 'ead, and goin' back to 'er
+pyper, as if I'd disturbed 'er at 'er readin'--and the dead and
+spitten image of 'Enery Steptoe 'imself she is--and you know 'ow many
+times we've all wondered as to why 'e didn't marry--and 'im with
+syvings put by--Jynie thinks as 'e's worth as much as--and you know
+what a 'and Jynie is for ferritin' out what's none of 'er
+business--why, if Jynie Cykebread could 'a myde 'erself Jynie
+Steptoe--but that's somethink wild 'orses wouldn't myke poor Jynie
+see--that no man wouldn't look at 'er the second time if it wasn't for
+to laugh--pitiful, I call it, at 'er aige--and me always givin' the
+old rip to know as it was no use 'is 'angin' round where I was--as if
+I'd marry agyne, and me a widda, as you might sye, from my crydle--and
+if I did, it wouldn't 'a been a wicked old varlet what I always
+suspected 'e was leadin' a double life--and now to see them two fyces
+together--why, I says, 'ere's the explanytion as plyne as plyne can
+make it...."
+
+All of which might have been true in rhetoric, but not in fact. For
+what had really given Mrs. Courage the _coup de grace_ we must go back
+to the scene of the morning.
+
+Ignoring both Letty's inclination of the head and Steptoe's
+benediction she had shown herself hurt where she was tenderest.
+
+"Now that there's no one to ryse their voice agynst the disgryce
+brought on this family but me----"
+
+"Speak right up, Jynie. Don't be afryde. Madam won't eat you. She
+knows that you've come to give notice----"
+
+Mrs. Courage struggled on. "No one ain't goin' to bow me out of the
+'ouse I've been cook-'ousekeeper in these twenty-seven year----"
+
+"Sorry as madam'll be to lose you, Jynie, she won't stand in the wye
+of your gettin' a better plyce----"
+
+Mrs. Courage's roar being that of the wounded lioness she was, the
+paper shook till it rattled in Letty's hand.
+
+"I _will_ be listened to. I've a right to be 'eard. My 'eart's been as
+much in this 'ouse and family as 'Enery Steptoe's 'eart; and to see
+shyme and ruin come upon it----"
+
+Steptoe's interruption was in a tone of pleased surprise.
+
+"Why, you still 'ere, Mary Ann? We thought you'd tyken leave of us.
+Madam didn't know you was speakin'. She won't detyne you, madam won't.
+You and Jynie and Nettie'll all find cheques for your wyges pyde up to
+a month a 'ead, as I know Mr. Rashleigh'd want me to do...."
+
+Shame and ruin! Letty couldn't follow the further unfoldings of
+Steptoe's diplomacy because of these two words. They summed up what
+she brought--what she had been married to bring--to a house of which
+even she could see the traditions were of honor. Vaguely aware of
+voices which she attributed to Jane and Nettie, her spirit was in
+revolt against the role for which her rashness of yesterday had let
+her in, and which Steptoe was forcing upon her.
+
+Jane was still whimpering and sniffling:
+
+"I'm sure I never dreamed that things would 'appen like what 'as
+'appened--and us all one family, as you might sye--'opin' the best of
+everyone----"
+
+"Jynie, stop," Mrs. Courage's voice had become low and firm, with
+emotion in its tone, making Letty catch her breath. "My 'eart's
+breakin', and I ain't a-goin' to let it break without mykin' them
+that's broken it know what they've done to me."
+
+"Now, Mary Ann," Steptoe tried to say, peaceably, "madam's grytely
+pressed for time----"
+
+"'Enery Steptoe, do you suppose that you're the only one in the world
+as 'as loved that boy? Ain't 'e my boy just as much as ever 'e was
+yours?"
+
+"'E's boy to them as stands by 'im, Mrs. Courage--and stands by them
+that belongs to 'im. The first thing you do is to quit----"
+
+"I'm not quittin'; I'm druv out. I'm druv out at a hour's notice from
+the 'ome I've slyved for all my best years, leavin' dishonor and
+wickedness in my plyce----"
+
+Letty could endure no more. Dashing to the floor the paper behind
+which she crouched she sprang to her feet.
+
+"Is that me?" she demanded.
+
+The surprise of the attack caught Mrs. Courage off her guard. She
+could only open her mouth, and close it again, soundlessly and
+helplessly. Jane stared, her curiosity gratified at last. Nettie
+turned to whisper to Jane, "There; what did I tell you? The commonest
+thing!" Steptoe nodded his head quietly. In this little creature with
+her sudden flame, eyes all fire and cheeks of the wine-colored damask
+rose, he seemed to find a corroboration of his power of divining
+character.
+
+It seemed long before Mrs. Courage had found the strength to live up
+to her convictions, by faintly murmuring: "Who else?"
+
+"Then tell me what you accuse me of?"
+
+Mrs. Courage saw her advantage. "We ain't 'ere to accuse nobody of
+nothink. If it's 'intin' that I'd tyke awye anyone's character it's a
+thing I've 'ardly ever done, and no one can sye it _of_ me. All we
+want is to give our notice----"
+
+"Then why don't you do it--and go?"
+
+Once more Steptoe intervened, diplomatically. "That's what Mrs.
+Courage is a-doin' of, madam. She's finished, ain't you Mary Ann?
+Jynie and Nettie is finished too----"
+
+But it was Letty now who refused this mediation.
+
+"No, they ain't finished. Let 'em go on."
+
+But no one did go on. Mrs. Courage was now dumb. She was dumb and
+frightened, falling back on her two supporters. All three together
+they huddled between the portieres. If Steptoe could have calmed his
+protegee he would have done it; but she was beyond his control.
+
+"Am I the ruin and shame to this house that you was talkin' about just
+now? If I am, why don't you speak out and put it to me plain?"
+
+There was no response. The spectators looked on as if they were at the
+theater.
+
+"What have you all got against me anyhow?" Letty insisted,
+passionately. "What did I ever do to you? What's women's hearts made
+of, that they can't let a poor girl be?"
+
+Mrs. Courage had so far recovered as to be able to turn from one to
+another, to say in pantomime that she had been misunderstood. Jane
+began to cry; Nettie to laugh.
+
+"Even if I was the bad girl you're tryin' to make me out I should
+think other women might show me a little pity. But I'm not a bad
+girl--not yet. I may be. I dunno but what I will. When I see the
+hateful thing bein' good makes of women it drives me to do the other
+thing."
+
+This was the speech they needed to justify themselves. To be good made
+women hateful! Their dumb-crambo to each other showed that anyone who
+said so wild a thing stood already self-condemned.
+
+But Letty flung up her head with a mettle which Steptoe hadn't seen
+since the days of the late Mrs. Allerton.
+
+"I'm not in this house to drive no one else out of it. Them that have
+lived here for years has a right to it which I ain't got. You can go,
+and let me stay; or you can stay, and let me go. I'm the wife of the
+owner of this house, who married me straight and legal; but I don't
+care anything about that. You don't have to tell me I ain't fit to be
+his wife, because I know it as well as you do. All I'm sayin' is that
+you've got the choice to stay or go; and whichever you do, I'll do
+different."
+
+Never in her life had she spoken so many words at one time. The effort
+drained her. With a torrent of dry sobs that racked her body she
+dropped back into her chair.
+
+The hush was that of people who find the tables turned on themselves
+in a way they consider unwarranted. Of the general surprise Steptoe
+was quick to take advantage.
+
+"There you are, girls. Madam couldn't speak no fairer, now could
+she?"
+
+To this there was neither assent or dissent; but it was plain that no
+one was ready to pick up the glove so daringly thrown down.
+
+"Now what I would suggest," Steptoe went on, craftily, "is that we all
+go back to the kitchen and talk it over quiet like. What we decide to
+do we can tell madam lyter."
+
+For consent or refusal Jane and Nettie looked to Mary Ann, whose
+attitude was that of rejecting parley. She might, indeed, have
+rejected it, had not Letty, bowing her head on the arms she rested on
+the table, begun to cry bitterly.
+
+It was then that you saw Mrs. Courage at her best. The gesture with
+which she swept her subordinates back into the hall was that of the
+supremacy of will.
+
+"It shan't be said as I crush," she declared, nobly, directing
+Steptoe's attention to the weeping girl. "Where there's penitence I
+pity. God grant as them tears may gush out of an aichin' 'eart."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+By the time Letty was drying her eyes, her heart somewhat eased,
+Steptoe had come back. He came back with a smile. Something had
+evidently pleased him.
+
+"So that's all over. Madam won't be bothered with other people's
+cat-nasty old servants after to-dye."
+
+She felt a new access of alarm. "But they're not goin' away on account
+o' me? Don't let 'em do it. Lemme go instead. Oh, mister, I can't stay
+here, where everything's so different from what I'm used to."
+
+He still smiled, his gentle old man's smile which somehow gave her
+confidence.
+
+"Madam won't sye that after a dye or two. It's new to 'er yet, of
+course; but if she'll always remember that I'm 'ere, to myke
+everythink as easy as easy----"
+
+"But what are you goin' to do, with no cook, and no chambermaid----?"
+
+Standing with the corner of the table between him and her, he was
+saying to himself, "If Mr. Rash could only see 'er lookin' up like
+this--with 'er eyes all starry--and her cheeks with them dark-red
+roses--red roses like you'd rubbed with a little black...." But he
+suspended the romantic longing to say, aloud:
+
+"If madam will permit me I'll tyke my measures as I've wanted to tyke
+'em this long spell back."
+
+Madam was not to worry as to the three women who were leaving the
+house, inasmuch as they had long been intending to leave it. Both Mrs.
+Courage and Jane, having graduated to the stage of "accommodating,"
+were planning to earn more money by easier work. Nettie, since coming
+to America, had learned that housework was menial, and was going to be
+a milliner.
+
+Madam's remorse being thus allayed he told what he hoped to do for
+madam's comfort. There would be no more women in the house, not till
+madam herself brought them back. An English chef who had lost an eye
+in the war, and an English waiter, ready to do chamberwork, who had
+left a foot on some battlefield, were prepared under Steptoe's
+direction to man the house. No woman whose household cares had not
+been eased by men, in the European fashion, knew what it was to live.
+A woman waited on by women only was kept in a state of nerves. Nerves
+were infectious. When one woman in a household got them the rest were
+sooner or later their prey. Unless strongly preventative measures were
+adopted they spread at times to the men. America was a dreadful
+country for nerves and it mostly came of women working with women;
+whereas, according to Steptoe's psychology, men should work with women
+and women with men. There were thousands of women who were bitter in
+heart at cooking and making beds who would be happy as linnets in
+offices and shops; and thousands of men who were dying of boredom in
+offices and shops who would be in their element cooking and making
+beds.
+
+"One of the things the American people 'as got back'ards, if madam'll
+allow me to sye so, is that 'ouse'old work is not fit for a white man.
+When you come to that the American people ain't got a sense of the
+dignity of their 'omes. They can't see their 'omes as run by anything
+but slyves. All that's outside the dinin' room and the drorin' room
+and the masters' bedrooms the American sees as if it was a low-down
+thing, even when it's hunder 'is own roof. Colored men, yellow men,
+may cook 'is meals and myke 'is bed; but a white man'd demean 'imself.
+A poor old white man like me when 'e's no longer fit for 'ard outdoor
+work ain't allowed to do nothink; when all the time there's women
+workin' their fingers to the bone that 'e could be a great 'elp to,
+and who 'e'd like to go to their 'elp."
+
+This was one reason, he argued, why the question of domestic aid in
+America was all at sixes and sevens. It was not considered humanly. It
+was more than a question of supply and demand; it was one of national
+prejudice. A rich man could have a French chef and an English butler,
+and as many strapping indoor men--some of them much better fitted for
+manual labor--as he liked, and find it a social glory; while a family
+of moderate means were obliged to pay high wages to crude incompetent
+women from the darkest backwaters of European life, just because they
+were women.
+
+"And the women's mostly to blyme," he reasoned. "They suffers--nobody
+knows what they suffers better nor me--just because they ain't got the
+spunk to do anything _but_ suffer. They've got it all in their own
+'ands, and they never learn. Men is slow to learn; but women don't
+'ardly ever learn at all."
+
+Letty was thinking of herself, as she glanced up at this fount of
+wisdom with the question:
+
+"Don't none of 'em?"
+
+Having apparently weighed this already he had his answer. "None that's
+been drilled a little bit before 'and. Once let woman feel as so and
+so is the custom, and for 'er that custom, whether good or bad, is
+there to stye. They sye that chyngin' 'er mind is a woman's privilege;
+but the woman that chynged 'er mind about a custom is one I never met
+yet."
+
+She took him as seriously as he took himself.
+
+"Don't you like women, mister--I mean, Steptoe?"
+
+He pondered before replying. "I don't know as I could sye. I've never
+'ad a chance to see much of women except in 'ousework, where they're
+out of their element and tyken at a disadvantage. I don't like none
+I've ever run into there, because none of 'em never was no sport."
+
+The inquiry in her golden eyes led him a little further.
+
+"No one ain't a sport what sighs and groans over their job, and don't
+do it cheerful like. No one ain't a sport what undertykes a job and
+ain't proud of it. If a woman _will_ go into 'ousework let 'er do it
+honorable. If she chooses to be a servant let 'er _be_ a servant, and
+not be ashymed to sye she _is_ one. So if madam arsks me if I like 'em
+I 'ave to confess I don't, because as far as I see women I mostly 'ear
+'em complyne."
+
+Her admiration was quite sincere as she said: "I shouldn't think
+they'd complain if they had you to put 'em wise."
+
+He corrected gently. "If they 'ad me to _tell_ 'em."
+
+"If they 'ad you to _tell_ 'em," she imitated, meekly.
+
+"Madam mustn't pick up the bad 'abit of droppin' 'er haitches," he
+warned, parentally. "I'll learn 'er a lot, but that's one thing I
+mustn't learn 'er. I don't do it often--Oh, once in a wye, mybe--but
+that's something madam speaks right already--just like all
+Americans."
+
+Delighted that there was one thing about her that was right already
+she reminded him of what he had said, that women never learned.
+
+"I said women as 'ad been drilled a bit. But madam's different. Madam
+comes into this 'ouse newborn, as you might sye; and that'll myke it
+easier for 'er and me."
+
+"You mean that I'll not be a kicker."
+
+Once more he smiled his gentle reproof. "Oh, madam wouldn't be a
+kicker any'ow. Jynie or Nettie or Mary Ann Courage or even me--we
+might be kickers; but if madam was to hobject to anything she'd
+be--_displeased_."
+
+She knitted her brows. The distinction was difficult. He saw he had
+better explain more fully.
+
+"It's only the common crowd what kicks. It's only the common crowd
+what uses the expression. A man might use it--I mean a real 'igh
+gentleman like Mr. Rashleigh--and get awye with it--now and then--if
+'e didn't myke a 'abit of it; but when a woman does it she
+rubberstamps 'erself. Now, does madam see? A lydy couldn't be a
+lydy--and kick. The lyte Mrs. Allerton would never demean 'erself to
+kick; she'd only show displeasure."
+
+With a thumb and two fingers Letty marked off on the table the three
+points as to which she had received information that morning. She must
+say brought, and not brung; she must say tell, and not put wise; she
+must not kick, but show displeasure. Neither must she drop her
+aitches, though to do so would have been an effort. The warning only
+raised a suspicion that in the matter of speech there might be a
+higher standard than Steptoe's. If ever she heard Rashleigh Allerton
+speak again she resolved to listen to him attentively.
+
+She came back from her reverie on hearing Steptoe say:
+
+"With madam it's a cyse of beginning from the ground up, more or less
+as you would with a byby; so I 'ope madam'll forgive me if I drop a
+'int as to what we must do before goin' any farther."
+
+Once more he read her question in the starry little flames in her
+eyes.
+
+"It's--clothes."
+
+The damask red which had ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged
+back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her
+lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except
+those she wore; but she couldn't utter a syllable.
+
+"I understand madam's position, which is why I mention it. You might
+sye as clothes is the ABC of social life, and if we're to work from
+the ground up we must begin there."
+
+She forced it out at last, but the statement seemed to tear her.
+
+"I can't get clothes. I ain't got no money."
+
+"Oh, money's no hobject," he smiled. "Mr. Rash 'as plenty of that, and
+I know what 'e'd like me to do. There never was 'is hequal for the
+'open 'and. If madam'll leave it to me...."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allerton's office was much what you would have expected it to be,
+bearing to other offices the same relation as he to other business
+men. He had it because not to have it wouldn't have been respectable.
+A young American who didn't go to an office every day would hardly
+have been a young American. An office, then, was a concession to
+public sentiment, as well as some faint justification of himself.
+
+It was in the latter sense that he chiefly took it, making it a
+subject of frequent reference. In his conversation such expressions as
+"my office," or "due at my office," were introduced more often than
+there was occasion for. The implication that he had work to do gave
+him status, enabling him to sit down among his cronies and
+good-naturedly take their fun.
+
+He took a good deal of fun, never having succeeded in making himself
+the standardized type who escapes the shafts of ridicule. It was
+kindly fun, which, while viewing him as a white swan in a flock of
+black ones, recognized him as a swan, and this was as much as he could
+expect. To pass in the crowd was all he asked for, even when he only
+passed on bluff. If he couldn't wholly hide the bluff he could keep it
+from being flagrantly obtrusive; and toward that end an office was a
+help.
+
+It was an office situated just where you would have expected to find
+it--far enough downtown to be downtown, and yet not so far downtown as
+to make it a trouble to get there. Being on the eastern side of
+Washington Square, it had a picturesque outlook, and the merit of
+access from East Sixty-seventh Street through the long straight artery
+of Fifth Avenue.
+
+It was furnished, too, just as you might have known he would furnish
+it, in the rich and sober Style Empire, and yet not so exclusively in
+the Style Empire as to make the plain American business man fear he
+had dropped into Napoleon's library at Malmaison. That is what
+Rashleigh would have liked, but other men could do what in him would
+be thought finicky. To take the "cuss" off his refinement, as he put
+it to Barbara, he scattered modern American office bits among his
+luscious brown surfaces, adorned with wreaths and lictors' sheaves in
+gold, though to himself the wrong note was offensive.
+
+But wrong notes and right notes were the same to him as, on this
+particular morning, he dragged himself there because it was the hour.
+His office staff in the person of old Mr. Radbury was already on the
+spot, and had sorted the letters for the day. These were easily dealt
+with. Reinvestment, or new opportunities for investment, were their
+principal themes, and the only positive duty to attend to was in the
+endorsement of dividend checks for deposit. A few directions being
+given to Mr. Radbury as to such letters as were to be answered,
+Allerton had nothing to do but stroll to the window and look out.
+
+It was what he did perhaps fifty times in the course of the two or
+three hours daily, or approximately daily, which he spent there. He
+did so now. He did so because it put off for a few minutes longer the
+fierce, exasperating, acrid pleasure of doing worse. To do worse had
+been his avowed object in coming to the office that morning, and not
+the answering of letters or the raking in of checks.
+
+Looking down from his window on the tenth floor he asked himself the
+fruitless question which millions of other men have asked when folly
+has got them into trouble. Among these thousands who, viewed from that
+height, had a curious resemblance to ants, was there such a fool as he
+was? From the Square they streamed into Fifth Avenue; from Fifth
+Avenue they streamed into the Square. In the Square and round the
+Square they squirmed and wriggled and dawdled their seemingly aimless
+ways. Great green lumbering omnibuses disgorged one pack of them
+merely to suck up another. Motors whirled them toward uptown, toward
+downtown, or east, or west, by twos and threes, or as individuals.
+Like ants their general effect was black, with here and there a moving
+spot of color, or of intermingling colors, as of flowers in the wind,
+or tropic birds.
+
+He watched a figure detach itself from the mass swirling round a
+debouching omnibus. It was a little black figure, just clearly enough
+defined to show that it was a man. Because it was a man it had been a
+fool. Because it had been a fool it had dark chambers in its life
+which it would never willingly open. But it had doubtless got
+something for its folly. It might have lost more than it had gained,
+but it could probably reckon up and say, "At least I had my fun."
+
+And he had had none. He had squandered his whole life on a single act
+of insanity which even in the action had produced nothing but disgust.
+He hadn't merely swindled himself; he had committed a kind of suicide
+which made death silly and grotesque. The one thing that could save
+him a scrap of dignity--and such a sorry scrap!--would be going to the
+devil by the shortest way.
+
+He had come to the office to begin. He would begin by the means that
+seemed obvious. Now that going to the devil was a task he saw, as he
+had not seen hitherto, how curiously few were the approaches that
+would take him there. Song being only an accompaniment, he was limited
+to the remaining two of the famous and familiar trio.
+
+Very well! Limited as he was he would make the most of them. Knowing
+something of their merits he knew there was a bestial entertainment to
+be had from both. It was a kind of entertainment which his cursed
+fastidiousness had always loathed; but now his reckoning would be
+different. If he got _anything_ he should not feel so wastefully
+thrown away. He would be selling himself first and making his bargain
+afterwards; but some meager balance would stand to his credit, if
+credit it could be called. When the devil had been reached the world
+he knew would pardon him because it was the devil, and not--what it
+was in truth--an idiotic state of nerves.
+
+At the minute when Letty was leaping to her feet to take her stand he
+swung away from the window. First going to Mr. Radbury's door he
+closed it softly. Luckily the old man, an inheritance from his,
+Allerton's, father, was deaf and incurious. Like most clerks who had
+clerked their way up to seventy he was buried in clerking's little
+round. He wouldn't come in till the letters were finished, certainly
+not for an hour, and by that time Allerton would be.... He almost
+smiled at the old man's probable consternation on finding him so
+before the middle of the day. Any time would be bad enough; but in the
+high forenoon....
+
+He went to a cabinet which was said to have found its way via
+Bordentown from the furnishings of Queen Caroline Murat. Having opened
+it he took out a bottle and a glass. On the label of the bottle was a
+kilted Highlander playing on the pipes. A siphon of soda was also in
+the cabinet, but he left it there. What he had to do would be done
+more quickly without its mitigation.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Allerton was making these preparations Judson Flack, in pajamas
+and slippers, was standing in his toy kitchen, looking helplessly at a
+small gas stove. It was the hour in the middle of the morning at which
+he was accustomed to be waked with the information that his coffee and
+eggs were ready. The forenoon being what he called his slack time he
+found the earlier part of it most profitably used for sleep.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+The adjuration was called forth by the fact that he didn't know where
+anything was, or how anything should be done. From the simple
+expedient of going for his breakfast to one of the cheap restaurants
+with which he was familiar he was cut off by the fact of an unlucky
+previous night. He simply didn't have the bones. This was not to say
+that he was penniless, but that in view of more public expenses later
+in the day it would be well for him to economize where economy was so
+obvious. He never had an appetite in the morning anyway. With
+irregular eating and drinking all through the evening and far toward
+daylight, he found a cup of coffee and an egg....
+
+It was easy, he knew, to make the one and boil the other, but he was
+out of practice. He couldn't remember doing anything of the sort since
+the days before he married Letty's mother. Even then he had never
+tried this new-fangled thing, the gas stove, so that besides being out
+of practice he was at a loss.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+The resources of the kitchen being few exploration didn't take him
+long. He found bread, butter, milk that had turned sour, the usual
+condiments, some coffee in a canister, and a single egg. If he could
+only light the confounded gas stove....
+
+A small white handle offering itself for experiment, he turned it
+timidly, applying a match to a geometrical pattern of holes. He jumped
+back as from an exploding cannon.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+Having found the way, however, the next attempt was more successful.
+Soon he had two geometrical patterns of holes burning in steady blue
+buttons of flame. On the one he placed the coffee-pot into which he
+had turned a pint of water and a cupful of coffee; on the other a
+saucepan half full of water containing his egg. This being done he
+retired to the bathroom for the elements of a toilet.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+Washing, shaving, turning up his mustache with the little curling
+tongs, he observed with self-pity his increasing haggardness. He
+observed it also with dismay. Looks were as important to him as to an
+actress. His role being youth, high spirits, and the devil-may-care,
+the least trace of the wearing out would do for him. He had noticed
+some time ago that he was beginning to show fatal signs, which had the
+more emphatically turned his thoughts to the provision Letty might
+prove for his old age.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+It was cursing the girl which reminded him that he had allowed more
+than the necessary time for his breakfast to be ready for consumption.
+Hurrying back to the kitchen he found the egg gracefully dancing as
+the water boiled. He fished it out with a spoon and took it in his
+hand, but he didn't keep it there. Dashing it to the table, whence it
+crashed upon the floor, he positively screamed.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+He cursed her now licking and sucking the tips of his fingers and
+examining them to see if they were scalded. No such calamity having
+occurred he took up the coffee pot, leaving the mashed egg where it
+lay. Ladling a spoonful of sugar into a cup, and adding the usual
+milk, he poured in the coffee, which became a muddy dark brown
+mixture, with what appeared to be a porridge of seeds floating on the
+top. One sip, which induced a diabolical grimace, and he threw the
+beverage at the opposite wall as if it was a man he meant to insult.
+
+"Curse the girl!"
+
+The appeal to the darker powers being accompanied now by a series of
+up-to-date terms of objurgation, the mere act of utterance, mental or
+articulate, churned him to a frenzy. Seizing the coffee pot which he
+had replaced on the gas stove he hurled it too against the wall. It
+struck, splathered the hideous liquor over a hideous calsomining which
+had once been blue, and fell to the floor like a living thing knocked
+insensible.
+
+The resemblance maddened him still more. It might have been Letty,
+struck down after having provoked him beyond patience. He rushed at
+it. He hurled it again. He hurled it again. He hurled it again. The
+exercise gave relief not only to his lawful resentment against Letty,
+but to those angers over his luck of last night which as "a good
+loser" he hadn't been at liberty to show. No one knew the repressions
+he was obliged to put upon himself; but now his inhibitions could come
+off in this solitary passion of destruction.
+
+When the coffee pot was a mere shapeless mass he picked up the empty
+cup. It was a thick stone-china cup, with a bar meant to protect his
+mustache across the top, a birthday present from Letty's mother. The
+association of memories acted as a further stimulus. Smash! After the
+cup went the stone-china sugar bowl. Smash! After the sugar bowl the
+plate with the yellow chunk of butter. Smash! After the butter plate
+the milk jar, a clumsy, lumpy thing, which merely gurgled out a splash
+of milk and fell without breaking.
+
+"Curse the girl! Curse the girl! Curse the girl! I'll learn her to go
+away and leave me! I'll find her and drag her back if she's in...."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+While Letty was beginning a new experience Judson Flack was doing his
+best to carry out his threat. That is to say, he was making the round
+of the studios in which his step-daughter had occasionally found work,
+discreetly asking if she had been there that day. It was all he could
+think of doing. To the best of his knowledge she had no friends with
+whom she could have taken refuge, though the suspicion crossed his
+mind that she might have drowned herself to spite him.
+
+As a matter of fact Letty was asking the question if she wasn't making
+a mistake in not doing so, either literally or morally. Never before
+in her life had she been up against this problem of insufficiency.
+Among the hard things she had known she had not known this; and now
+that she was involved in it, it seemed to her harder than everything
+else put together.
+
+In her humble round, bitter as it was, she had always been considered
+competent. It was the sense of her competence that gave her the
+self-respect enabling her to bear up. According to her standards she
+could keep house cleverly, and could make a dollar go as far as other
+girls made two. When she got her first chance in a studio, through an
+acquaintance of Judson Flack's, she didn't shrink from it, and had
+more than once been chosen by a director to be that member of a crowd
+who moves in the front and expresses the crowd psychologically. Had
+she only had the clothes....
+
+And now she was to have them. As far as that went she was not merely
+glad; she was one sheer quiver of excitement. It was not the end she
+shrank from; it was the means. If she could only have had fifty
+dollars to go "poking round" where she knew that bargains could be
+found, she might have enjoyed the prospect; but Steptoe could only
+"take measures" on the grand scale to which he was accustomed.
+
+The grand scale frightened her, chiefly because she was dressed as she
+was dressed. It was her first thought and her last one. When Steptoe
+told her the hour at which he had asked Eugene to bring round the car
+the mere vision of herself stepping into it made her want to sink into
+the ground. Eugene didn't live in the house--she had discovered
+that--and so would bring the stare of another pair of eyes under whose
+scrutiny she would have to pass. Those of the three women having
+already scorched her to the bone, she would have to be scorched
+again.
+
+She tried to say this to Steptoe, as they stood in the drawing-room
+window waiting for the car; but she didn't know how to make him
+understand it. When she tried to put it into words, the right words
+wouldn't come. Steptoe had taken as general what she was trying to
+explain to him in particular.
+
+"It'll be very important to madam to fyce what's 'ard, and to do it
+bryve like. It'll be the mykin' of 'er if she can. 'Umble 'ill is
+pretty stiff to climb; but them as gets to the top of it is tough."
+
+She thought this over silently. He meant that if she set herself to
+take humiliations as they came, dragging herself up over them, she
+would be the stronger for it in the end.
+
+"It'd 'ave been better for Mr. Rashleigh," he mused, "if 'e'd 'ad 'ad
+somethink of the kind to tackle in 'is life; it'd 'ave myde 'im more
+of a man. But because 'e adn't--Did madam ever notice," he broke off
+to ask, "'ow them as 'as everythink myde easy for 'em begins right off
+to myke things 'ard for theirselves. It's a kind of law like. It's
+just as if nyture didn't mean to let no one escype. When a man's got
+no troubles you can think of, 'e'll go to work to create 'em."
+
+"Didn't _he_"--she had never yet pronounced the name of the man who
+had married her--"didn't _he_ ever have any troubles?"
+
+"'E was fretted terrible--crossed like--rubbed up the wrong wye, as
+you might sye,--but a real trouble like what you and me 'ave 'ad
+plenty of--never! It's my opinion that trouble is to char-_ac_-ter
+what a peg'll be to a creepin' vine--something to which the vine'll
+'ook on and pull itself up by. Where there's nothink to ketch on to
+the vine'll grow; but it'll grow in a 'eap of flop." There was a
+tremor in his tone as he summed up. "That's somethink like my poor
+boy."
+
+Letty found this interesting. That in these exalted circles there
+could be a need of refining chastisement came to her as a surprise.
+
+"The wife as I've always 'oped for 'im," Steptoe went on, "is one
+that'd know what trouble was, and 'ow to fyce it. 'E'd myke a grand
+'usband to a woman who was--strong. But she'd 'ave to be the wall
+what the creepin' vine could cover all over and--and beautify."
+
+"That wouldn't be me."
+
+"If I was madam I wouldn't be so sure of that. It don't do to
+undervalyer your own powers. If I'd 'a done that I wouldn't 'a been
+where I am to-dye. Many's the time, when I was no more than a poor
+little foundlin' boy in a 'ome I've said to myself, I'm fit for
+somethink big. Somethink big I always meant to be. When it didn't seem
+possible for me to aim so 'igh I'd myde up my mind to be a valet and a
+butler. It comes--your hambition does. What you've first got to do is
+to form it; and then you've got to stick to it through thick and
+thin."
+
+To say what she said next Letty had to break down barrier beyond
+barrier of inhibition and timidity. "And if I was to--to form the--the
+ambition--to be--to be the kind of wall you was talkin' about just
+now----"
+
+"That wouldn't be hambition; it'd be--consecrytion."
+
+He allowed her time to get the meaning of this before going on.
+
+"But madam mustn't expect not to find it 'ard. Consecrytion is always
+'ard, by what I can myke out. When Mr. Rash was a little 'un 'e used
+to get Miss Pye, 'is governess, to read to 'im a fairy tyle about a
+little mermaid what fell in love with a prince on land. Bein' in love
+with 'im she wanted to be with 'im, natural like; but there she was in
+one element, as you might sye, and 'im in another."
+
+"That'd be like me."
+
+"Which is why I'm tellin' madam of the story. Well, off the little
+mermaid goes to the sea-witch to find out 'ow she could get rid of 'er
+fish's tyle and 'ave two feet for to walk about in the prince's
+palace. Well, the sea-witch she up and tells 'er what she'd 'ave to
+do. Only, says she, if you do that you'll 'ave to pye for it with
+every step you tykes; for every step you tykes'll be like walkin' on
+sharp blydes. Now, says she, to the little mermaid, do you think it'd
+be worth while?"
+
+In Letty's eyes all the stars glittered with her eagerness for the
+denouement. "And did she think it was worth while--the little
+mermaid?"
+
+"She did; but I'll give madam the tyle to read for 'erself. It's in
+the syme little book what Miss Pye used to read out of--up in Mr.
+Rash's old nursery."
+
+With the pride of a royal thing conscious of its royalty the car
+rolled to the door and stopped. It was the prince's car, while she,
+Letty, was a mermaid born in an element different from his, and
+encumbered with a fish's tail. She must have shown this in her face,
+for Steptoe said, with his fatherly smile:
+
+"Madam may 'ave to walk on blydes--but it'll be in the Prince's
+palace."
+
+It'll be in the Prince's palace! Letty repeated this to herself as she
+followed him out to the car. Holding the door open for her, Eugene,
+who had been told of her romance, touched his cap respectfully. When
+she had taken her seat he tucked the robe round her, respectfully
+again. Steptoe marked the social difference between them by sitting
+beside Eugene.
+
+Rolling down Fifth Avenue Letty was as much at a loss to account for
+herself as Elijah must have been in the chariot of fire. She didn't
+know where she was going. She was not even able to ask. The succession
+of wonders within twenty-four hours blocked the working of her
+faculties. She thought of the girls who sneered at her in the
+studios--she thought of Judson Flack--and of what they would say if
+they were to catch a glimpse of her.
+
+She was not so unsophisticated as to be without some appreciation of
+the quarter of New York in which she found herself. She knew it was
+the "swell" quarter. She knew that the world's symbols of money and
+display were concentrated here, and that in some queer way she, poor
+waif, had been given a command of them. One day homeless, friendless,
+and penniless, and the next driving down Fifth Avenue in a limousine
+which might be called her own!
+
+The motor was slowing down. It was drawing to the curb. They had
+reached the place to which Steptoe had directed Eugene. Letty didn't
+have to look at the name-plate to know she was where the great stars
+got their gowns, and that she was being invited into Margot's!
+
+You know Margot's, of course. A great international house, Margot--the
+secret is an open one--is but the incognita of a business-like English
+countess who finds it financially profitable to sign articles on
+costume written by someone else, and be sponsor for the newest
+fashions which someone else designs. As a way of turning an
+impoverished historic title to account it is as good as any other.
+
+Without knowing who Margot was Letty knew what she was. She couldn't
+have frequented studios without hearing that much, and once or twice
+in her wanderings about the city she had paused to admire the door. It
+was all there was to admire, since Margot, to Letty's regret, didn't
+display confections behind plate-glass.
+
+It was a Flemish chateau which had been a residence before business
+had traveled above Forty-second Street. A man in livery would have
+barred them from passing the wrought-iron grille had it not been for
+the car from which they had emerged. Only people worthy of being
+customers of the house could afford such cars, and he saw that Steptoe
+was a servant. What Letty was he couldn't see, for servants of great
+houses never looked so nondescript.
+
+In the great hall a beautiful staircase swept to an upper floor, but
+apart from a Louis Seize mirror and console flanked by two Louis Seize
+chairs there was nothing and no one to be seen. Steptoe turned to the
+right into a vast saloon with a cinnamon-colored carpet and walls of
+cool French gray. A group of gilded chairs were the only furnishings,
+except for a gilded canape between two French windows draped with
+cinnamon-colored hangings. A French fender with French andirons filled
+the fireplace, and on the white marble mantelpiece stood a _garniture
+de cheminee_, a clock and two vases, in biscuit de Sevres.
+
+At the end of the room opposite the windows a woman in black, with
+coiffure a la Marcel, sat at a white-enamelled desk working with a
+ledger. A second woman in black, also with coiffure a la Marcel,
+stood holding open the doors of a white-enamelled wardrobe, gazing at
+its multi-colored contents. Two other women in black, still with
+coiffure a la Marcel, were bending over a white-enamelled drawer in a
+series of white-enamelled drawers, discussing in low tones. There were
+no customers. For such a house the season had not yet begun. Though in
+this saloon voices were pitched as low as for conversation in a
+church, the sharp catgut calls of Frenchwomen--and of French
+dressmakers especially--came from a room beyond.
+
+Overawed by this vastness, simplicity, and solemnity, Steptoe and
+Letty stood barely within the door, waiting till someone noticed them.
+No one did so till the woman holding open the wardrobe doors closed
+them and turned round. She did not come forward at once; she only
+stared at them. Still keeping her eye on the newcomers she called the
+attention of the ladies occupied with the drawer, who lifted
+themselves up. They too stared. The lady at the desk stared also.
+
+It was the lady of the wardrobe who advanced at last, slowly, with
+dignity, her hands genteelly clasped in front of her. She seemed to be
+saying, "No, we don't want any," or, "I'm sorry we've nothing to give
+you," by her very walk. Letty, with her gift for dramatic
+interpretation, could see this, though Steptoe, familiar as he was
+with ladies whom he would have classed as "'igher," was not daunted.
+He too went forward, meeting madam half way.
+
+Of what was said between them Letty could hear nothing, but the
+expression on the lady's face was dissuasive. She was telling Steptoe
+that he had come to the wrong place, while Steptoe was saying no. From
+time to time the lady would send a glance toward Letty, not in
+disdain, but in perplexity. It was perplexity which reached its climax
+when Steptoe drew from an inside pocket an impressive roll of bills.
+
+The lady looked at the bills, but she also looked at Letty. The honor
+of a house like Margot's is not merely in making money; it is in its
+clientele. To have a poor little waif step in from the street....
+
+And yet it was because she was a poor little waif that she interested
+the ladies looking on. She was so striking an exception to their rule
+that her very coming in amazed them. One of the two who had remained
+near the open drawer came forward into conference with her colleague,
+adding her dissuasions to those which Steptoe had already refused to
+listen to.
+
+"There are plenty of other places to which you could go," Letty heard
+this second lady say, "and probably do better."
+
+Steptoe smiled, that old man's smile which was rarely ineffective.
+"Madam don't 'ave to tell me as there's plenty of other plyces to
+which I could go; but there's none where I could do as well."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"I'm butler to a 'igh gentleman what 'e used to entertyne quite a bit
+when 'is mother was alive. I've listened to lydies talkin' at tyble.
+No one can't tell me. I _know_."
+
+Both madams smiled. Each shot another glance at Letty. It was plain
+that they were curious as to her identity. One of them made a
+venture.
+
+"And is this your--your daughter?"
+
+Steptoe explained, not without dignity, that the young lady was not
+his daughter, but that she had come into quite a good bit of money,
+and had done it sudden like. She needed a 'igh, grand outfit, though
+for the present she would be content with three or four of the dresses
+most commonly worn by a lydy of stytion. He preferred to nyme no
+nymes, but he was sure that even Margot would not regret her
+confidence--and he had the cash, as they saw, in his pocket.
+
+Of this the result was an exchange between the madams of comprehending
+looks, while, in French, one said to the other that it might be well
+to consult Madame Simone.
+
+Madame Simone, who bustled in from the back room, was not in black,
+but in frowzy gray; her coiffure was not a la Marcel, but as Letty
+described it, "all anyway." A short, stout, practical Frenchwoman, she
+had progressed beyond the need to consider looks, and no longer
+considered them. The two shapely subordinates with whom Steptoe had
+been negotiating followed her at a distance like attendants.
+
+She disposed of the whole matter quickly, addressing the attendants
+rather than the postulants for Margot's favor.
+
+"Mademoiselle she want an outfit--good!--bon! We don't know her, but
+what difference does that make to me?--qu'est ce que c'est que cela me
+fait? Money is money, isn't it?--de l'argent c'est de l'argent,
+n'est-ce pas?--at this time of year especially--a cette saison de
+l'annee surtout."
+
+To Steptoe and Letty she said: "'Ave the goodness to sit yourselves
+'ere. Me, I will show you what we 'ave. A street costume first for
+mademoiselle. If mademoiselle will allow me to look at her--Ah, oui!
+Ze taille--what you call in Eenglish the figure--is excellent. Tres
+chic. With ze proper closes mademoiselle would have style--de
+l'elegance naturelle--that sees itself--cela se voit--oui--oui----"
+
+Meditating to herself she studied Letty, indifferent apparently to the
+actual costume and atrocious hat, like a seeress not viewing what is
+at her feet but events of far away.
+
+With a sudden start she sprang to her convictions. "I 'ave it. J'y
+suis." A shrill piercing cry like that of a wounded cockatoo went down
+the long room. "Alphonsine! Alphon_sine_!"
+
+Someone appeared at the door of the communicating rooms. Madame Simone
+gave her orders in a few sharp staccato French sentences. After that
+Letty and Steptoe found themselves sitting on two of the gilded
+chairs, unexpectedly alone. The other ladies had returned to their
+tasks. Madame Simone had gone back to the place whence they had
+summoned her. Nothing had happened. It seemed to be all over. They
+waited.
+
+"Ain't she goin' to show us nothin'?" Letty whispered anxiously. "They
+always do."
+
+Steptoe was puzzled but recommended patience. He couldn't think that
+Madame could have begun so kindly, only to go off and leave them in
+the lurch. It was not what he had looked for, any more than she; but
+he had always found patient waiting advantageous.
+
+Perhaps ten minutes had gone by when a new figure wandered toward
+them. Strutted would perhaps be the better word, since she stepped
+like a person for whom stepping means a calculation. She was about
+Letty's height, and about Letty's figure. Moreover, she was pretty,
+with that haughtiness of mien which turns prettiness to beauty. What
+was most disconcerting was her coming straight toward Letty, and
+standing in front of her to stare.
+
+Letty colored to the eyes--her deep, damask flush. The insult was
+worse than anything offered by Mrs. Courage; for Mrs. Courage after
+all was only a servant, and this a young lady of distinction. Letty
+had never seen anyone dressed with so much taste, not even the stars
+as they came on the studio lot in their everyday costumes. Indignant
+as she was she could appreciate this delicate seal-brown cloth, with
+its bits of gold braid, and darling glimpses of sage-green wherever
+the lining showed indiscreetly. The hat was a darling too, brown with
+a feather between brown and green, the one color or the other
+according as the wearer moved.
+
+If it hadn't been for this cool insolence.... And then the young lady
+deliberately swung on her heel, which was high, to move some five or
+six yards away, where she stood with her back to them. It was a
+darling back--with just enough gold braid to relieve the simplicity,
+and the tiniest revelation of sage-green. Letty admired it the more
+poignantly for its cold contempt of herself.
+
+Steptoe was not often put out of countenance, but it seemed to have
+happened now. "I _can't_ think," he murmured, as one who contemplates
+the impossible, "that the French madam can 'ave been so civil to begin
+with, just to go and make a guy of us."
+
+"If all her customers is like this----" Letty began.
+
+But the young lady of distinction turned again, stepping a few paces
+toward the back of the room, swinging on herself, stepping a few paces
+toward the front of the room, swinging on herself again, and all the
+while flinging at Letty glances which said: "If you want to see scorn,
+this is it."
+
+Fascination kept Letty paralyzed. Steptoe grew uneasy.
+
+"I wish the French madam'd come back agyne," he murmured, from half
+closed lips. "We 'aven't come 'ere to be myde a spectacle of--not for
+no one."
+
+And just then the seal-brown figure strolled away, as serenely and
+impudently as she had come.
+
+"Well, of all----!"
+
+Letty's exclamation was stifled by the fact that as the first young
+lady of distinction passed out a second crossed her coming in. They
+took no notice of each other, though the newcomer walked straight up
+to Letty, not to stare but to toss up her chin with a hint of laughter
+suppressed. Laughter, suppressed or unsuppressed, was her note. She
+was all fair-haired, blue-eyed vivacity. It was a relief to Letty that
+she didn't stare. She twitched, she twisted, she pirouetted, striking
+dull gleams from an embroidery studded with turquoise and jade--but
+she hadn't the hard unconscious arrogance of the other one.
+
+All the same it pained Letty that great ladies should be so beautiful.
+Not that this one was beautiful of face--she wasn't--only
+piquant--but the general effect was beautiful. It showed what money
+and the dressmaker could do. If she, Letty could have had a dress and
+a hat like this!--a blue or a green, it was difficult to say
+which--with these strips of jade and turquoise on a ground of the
+purplish-greenish-blue she remembered as that of the monkshood in the
+old farm garden in Canada--and the darlingest hat, with one long
+feather beginning as green and graduating through every impossible
+shade of green and blue till it ended in a monkshood tip....
+
+No wonder the girl's blue eyes danced and quizzed and laughed. As a
+matter of fact, Letty commented, the eyes brought a little too much
+blue into the composition. It was her only criticism. As a whole it
+lacked contrast. If she herself had worn this costume--with her
+gold-stone eyes--and brown hair--and rich coloring, when she had any
+color--blue was always a favorite shade with her--when she could
+choose, which wasn't often--she remembered as a child on the farm how
+she used to plaster herself with the flowers of the blue succory--the
+dust-flower they called it down there because it seemed to thrive like
+the disinherited on the dust of the wayside--not but what the
+seal-brown was adorable....
+
+The spectacle grew dazzling, difficult for Steptoe to keep up with. He
+and Letty were plainly objects of interest to these grand folk,
+because there were now four or five of them. They advanced, receded,
+came up and studied them, wheeled away, smiled sometimes at each other
+with the high self-assurance of beauty and position, pranced, pawed,
+curveted, were noble or coquettish as the inner self impelled, but
+always the embodiment of overweening pride. Among the "real gentry,"
+as he called them, there had unfailingly been for him and his
+colleagues a courtesy which might have been called only a distinction
+in equality, whereas these high-steppers....
+
+It was a relief to see the French madam bustling in again from the
+room at the back. Steptoe rose. He meant to express himself. Letty
+hoped he would. For people who brought money in their hands this
+treatment was too much. When Steptoe advanced to meet madam, she went
+with him. As her champion she must bear him out.
+
+But madam forestalled them. "I 'ope that mademoiselle has seen
+something what she like. Me, I thought the brown costume--_coeur de le
+marguerite jaune_ we call it ziz season----"
+
+Letty was quick. She had heard of mannequins, the living models,
+though so remotely as to give her no visualized impression. Suddenly
+knowing what they had been looking at she adapted herself before
+Steptoe could get his protest into words.
+
+"I liked the seal-brown; but for me I thought the second one----"
+
+Madame Simone nodded, sagely. "Why shouldn't mademoiselle 'ave both?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+While this question was being put, and Steptoe was rising to what he
+saw as the real occasion, Rashleigh Allerton too was having a new
+experience. He couldn't understand it; he couldn't understand himself.
+Not that that was strange, since he had hardly ever understood himself
+at any time; but now he was, as he expressed it, "absolutely
+stumped."
+
+He had put on the table the bottle on which the kilted Highlander was
+playing on the pipes; he had poured himself a glass. It was what he
+called a good stiff glass, meant, metaphorically, to kill or cure, and
+he hoped it would be to kill.
+
+And that was all.
+
+He had sat looking at it, or he had looked at it while walking about;
+but he had only looked at it. It was as far as he could go. Now that
+to go farther had become what he called a duty the perversity of his
+nerves was such that they refused. It was like him. He could always do
+the forbidden, the dare-devil, the crazily mad; but when it came to
+the reasonable and straightforward something in him balked. Here he
+was at what should have been the beginning of the end, and the demon
+which at another time would have driven him on was holding him back.
+Temptation had worked itself round the other way. It was temptation
+not to do, when saving grace lay in doing.
+
+An hour or more had gone by when Mr. Radbury knocked at the door,
+timidly.
+
+"Come in, Radbury," Allerton cried, in a gayety he didn't feel. "Have
+a drink."
+
+Mr. Radbury looked at the bottle and the glass. He looked at his young
+employer, who with his hands in his pockets, was again standing by the
+window. It was the first time in all the years of his service, first
+with the father and then with the son, that this invitation had been
+given him.
+
+"Thanks, Mr. Rash," he said, with a thick, shaky utterance. "Liquor
+and I are strangers. I wish I could feel----"
+
+But the old man's trembling anxiety forced on Allerton the fact that
+the foolish game was up. "All right, Radbury. Was only joking. No harm
+done. Had only taken the thing out to--to look at it."
+
+Before sitting down to read and sign the letters he put both glass and
+bottle back into the keeping of Queen Caroline Murat, saying to
+himself as he did so: "I must find some other way."
+
+He was thrown back thus on Barbara's suggestion of a few hours
+earlier. He must get rid of the girl! He had scarcely as yet
+considered this proposal, though not because he deemed it unworthy of
+himself. Nothing could be unworthy of himself. A man who was so little
+of a man as he was entitled to do anything, however base, and feel no
+shame. It was simply that his mind hadn't worked round to looking at
+the thing as feasible. And yet it was; plainly it was. The law allowed
+for it, if one only took advantage of the law's allowances. It would
+be beastly, of course; and more beastly for him than the average of
+men; but because it was beastly it were better done at once, before
+the girl got used to luxurious surroundings.
+
+But even this resolution, speedy as it was, came a little late. By
+evening Letty was already growing used to luxurious surroundings, and
+finding herself at home in them.
+
+First, there were no longer any women in the house, and with the three
+men--Steptoe's friends being already installed--she found herself safe
+from the prying and criticizing feminine.
+
+Secondly, some of the new clothes had already come home, and she was
+now wearing the tea-gown she had long dreamt of but had never aspired
+to possess. It was of a blue so dark as to be almost black, with a
+flame colored bar across the breast, harmonizing with her hair and
+eyes. Of her eyes she wasn't thinking; but her hair....
+
+That, however, was another part of the day's fairy tale.
+
+When the dresses had been bought and paid for madame presumed to
+Steptoe that mademoiselle was under some rich gentleman's protection.
+Taking words at their face value, as she, Letty, did herself, Steptoe
+admitted that she was. Madam made it plain that she understood this
+honor, which often came to girls of the humblest classes, and the need
+there could be for supplementing wardrobes suddenly. After that it was
+confidence for confidence. Madame had seen that in the matter of
+lingerie mademoiselle "left to desire," and though Margot made no
+specialty in this line, they happened to have on an upper floor a
+consignment just arrived from Paris, and if monsieur would allow
+mademoiselle to come up and inspect it.... Then it was Madame Simone's
+coiffeur. At least it was the coiffeur whom Madame Simone recommended,
+who came to the house, after Letty had donned a peignoir from the
+consignment just arrived from Paris.... And now, at half past nine in
+the evening, it was the memory of a day of mingled agony and
+enchantment.
+
+Having looked her over as he summoned her to dinner, Steptoe had
+approved of her. He had approved of her with an inner emphasis
+stronger than he expressed. Letty didn't know how she knew this; but
+she knew. She knew that her transformation was a surprise to him. She
+knew that though he had hoped much from her she was giving him more
+than he had hoped. Nothing that he said told her this, but something
+in his manner--in his yearning as he passed her the various dishes and
+tactfully showed her how to help herself, in the tenderness with which
+he repeated correctly her little slips in words--something in this
+betrayed it.
+
+She knew it, too, when after dinner he begged her not to escape to the
+little back room, but to take her place in the drawing-room.
+
+"Madam'll find that it'll pass the time for 'er. Maybe too Mr.
+Rashleigh'll come in. 'E does sometimes--early like. I've known 'im to
+come 'ome by 'alf past nine, and if 'is ma wasn't sittin' in the
+drorin' room 'e'd be quite put out. Lydies mostly wytes till their
+'usbands comes in; and in cyse madam'd feel lonely I'll leave the
+door open to the back part of the 'ouse, and she'll 'ear me talkin' to
+the boys."
+
+The October evening being chilly he lit a fire. Drawing up in front of
+it a small armchair, suited for a lady's use, he placed behind it a
+table with an electric lamp. Letty smiled up at him. He had never seen
+her smile before, and now that he did he made to himself another
+comment of approval.
+
+"You're awful good to me."
+
+He reflected as to how he could bring home to her the grammatical
+mistake.
+
+"Madam finds me _horfly_ good, does she? P'rhaps that's because madam
+don't know that 'er comin' to this 'ouse gratifies a tyste o' mine for
+which I ain't never 'ad no gratificytion."
+
+As he put a footstool to her feet he caught the question she so easily
+transmitted by her eyes.
+
+"P'raps madam can hunderstand that after doin' things all my life for
+people as is used to 'em I've 'ad a kind o' cryvin' to do 'em for them
+as 'aven't 'ad nothink, and who could enjoy them more. I told madam
+yesterday I was somethink of a anarchist, and that's 'ow I am--wantin'
+to give the poor a wee little bit of what the rich 'as to throw
+awye."
+
+Later he brought her an old red book, open at a page on which she
+read, _The Little Mermaid_.
+
+Her heart leaped. It was from this volume that Miss Pye had read to
+the Prince when he was a child. She let her eyes run along the opening
+words.
+
+"Far out in the sea the water is as blue as the petals of the
+cornflower, and clear as the purest glass."
+
+She liked this sentence. It took her into a blue world. It was
+curious, she thought, how much meaning there was in colors. If you
+looked through red glass the world was angry; if through yellow, it
+was lit with an extraordinary sun; if through blue, you had the
+sensation of universal happiness. She supposed that that was why blue
+flowers always made you feel that there was a want in life which ought
+to be supplied--and wasn't.
+
+She remembered a woman who had a farm near them in Canada, who grew
+only blue flowers in her garden. The neighbors said she was crazy; but
+she, Letty, had liked that garden better than all the gardens she
+knew. She would go there and talk to that woman, and listen to what
+she had to say of Nature's peculiar love of blue. The sea and sky were
+loveliest when they were blue, and so were the birds. There were blue
+stones, the woman said, precious stones, and other stones that were
+little more than rocks, which said something to the heart when pearls
+and diamonds spoke only to the eyes. In the fields, orchards, and
+gardens, white flowers, yellow flowers, red flowers were common; but
+blue flowers were rare and retiring, as if they guarded a secret which
+men should come and search out.
+
+To this there was only one exception. Letty would notice as she
+trudged back to her father's farm that along the August roadsides
+there was a blue flower--of a blue you would never see anywhere else,
+not even in the sky--which grew in the dust, and lived on dust, and
+out of the dust drew elements of beauty such as roses and lilies
+couldn't boast of. "That means," the crazy woman said, "that there's
+nothing so dry, or parched, or sterile, that God can't take it and
+fashion from it the most priceless treasures of loveliness, if we only
+had the eyes to see them."
+
+Letty never forgot this, and during all the intervening years the dust
+flower, with its heavenly color, had been the wild growing thing she
+loved best. It spoke to her. It not only responded to the ache she
+felt within herself, but gave a promise of assuagement. She had never
+expected the fulfilment of that promise, but was it possible that now
+it was going to be kept?
+
+With her eyes on the fire she saw the color of the dust flower close
+to the flaming wood. It was the closest of all the colors, the one the
+burning heart kept nearest to itself. It seemed to be, as the crazy
+woman said, dear to Nature itself, its own beloved secret, the secret
+which, even when written in the dust of the wayside, or in the fire on
+the hearth, hardly anyone read or found out.
+
+And as she was dreaming of this and of her Prince, Rashleigh was
+walking up the avenue, saying to himself that he must make an end of
+it. He was walking home because, having dined at the Club, he found
+himself too restless to stay there. Walking relieved his nerves, and
+enabled him to think. He must have the thing over and done with. She
+would go decently, of course, since, as he had promised her, she would
+have plenty of money to go with--plenty of money for the rest of her
+life--and that was the sole consideration. She would doubtless be as
+glad to escape as he to have her disappear. After that, so his lawyer
+had assured him in the afternoon, the legal steps would be relatively
+easy.
+
+Letting himself in with his latchkey he was surprised to see a light
+in the drawing-room. It had not been lighted up at night, as far as he
+could remember, since the days when his mother was accustomed to sit
+there. If he came home early he had always used the library, which was
+on the other side of the house and at the back.
+
+He went into the front drawing-room, which was empty; but a fire burnt
+in the back one, and before it someone was seated. It was not the girl
+he had found in the park. It was a lady whom he didn't recognize, but
+clearly a lady. She was reading a book, and had evidently not heard
+his entrance or his step.
+
+With the shadows of the front drawing-room behind him he stood between
+the portieres, and looked. He had looked for some seconds before the
+lady raised her eyes. She raised them with a start. Slowly there stole
+into her cheek the dark red of confusion. She dropped the book. She
+rose.
+
+It wasn't till she rose that he knew her. It wasn't till he knew her
+that he was seized by an astonishment which almost made him laugh. It
+wasn't till he almost laughed that he went forward with the words,
+which insensibly bridged some of the gulf between them:
+
+"Oh! So this is--_you_!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+Letty had not heard Allerton's entrance or approach because for the
+first time in her life she was lost in the magic of Hans Andersen.
+
+"The sun had just gone down as the little mermaid lifted her head
+above the water. The clouds were brilliant in purple and gold, and
+through the pale, rose-tinged air the evening star shone clear and
+bright. The air was warm and mild; the sea at rest. A great ship with
+three masts lay close by, only one sail unfurled, for there was no
+breath of air, and the sailors sat aloft in the rigging or leaned
+lazily over the bulwarks. Music and singing filled the air, and as the
+sky darkened hundreds of Chinese lanterns were lighted. It seemed as
+if the flags of every nation were hung out. The little mermaid swam up
+to the cabin window, and every time she rose upon the waves she could
+see through the clear glass that the room was full of brilliantly
+dressed people. Handsomest of all was the young prince with the great
+dark eyes."
+
+Allerton's eyes were dark, and though she did not consider him
+precisely young, the analogy between him and the hero of the tale was
+sufficient to take her eyes from the book and to set her to dreaming.
+
+"He could not be more than sixteen years old, and this was his
+birthday. All this gaiety was in honor of him; the sailors danced upon
+the deck; and when the young prince came out a myriad of rockets flew
+high in the air, with a glitter like the brightest noontide, and the
+little mermaid was so frightened that she dived deep down under the
+water. She soon rose up again, however, and it seemed as if all the
+stars of heaven were falling round her in golden showers. Never had
+she seen such fireworks; great, glittering suns wheeled by her, fiery
+fishes darted through the blue air, and all was reflected back from
+the quiet sea. The ship was lighted up so that one could see the
+smallest rope. How handsome the young prince looked! He shook hands
+with everybody, and smiled, as the music rang out into the glorious
+night. It grew late, but the little mermaid could not turn her eyes
+away from the ship and the handsome prince."
+
+Once more Letty's thought wandered from the page. She too would have
+watched her handsome prince, no matter what the temptation to look
+elsewhere.
+
+"The colored lanterns were put out, no rocket rose in the air, no
+cannon boomed from the portholes; but deep below there was a surging
+and a murmuring. The mermaid sat still, cradled by the waves, so that
+she could look in at the cabin window. But now the ship began to make
+more way. One sail after another was unfurled; the waves rose higher;
+clouds gathered in the sky; and there was a distant flash of
+lightning. The storm came nearer. All the sails were taken in, and the
+ship rocked giddily, as she flew over the foaming billows; the waves
+rose mountain-high, as if they would swallow up the very masts, but
+the good ship dived like a swan into the deep black trough, and rose
+bravely to the foaming crest. The little mermaid thought it was a
+merry journey, but the sailors were of a different opinion. The ship
+strained and creaked; the timbers shivered as the thunder strokes of
+the waves fell fast; heavy seas swept the decks; the mainmast snapped
+like a reed; and the ship lurched heavily, while the water rushed into
+the hold. Then the young princess began to understand the danger, and
+she herself was often threatened by the falling masts, yards, and
+spars. One moment it was so dark that she could see nothing, but when
+the lightning flamed out the ship was as bright as day. She sought for
+the young prince, and saw him sinking down through the water as the
+ship parted. The sight pleased her, for she knew he must sink down to
+her home. But suddenly she remembered that men cannot live in the
+water, and that he would only reach her father's palace a lifeless
+corpse. No; he must not die! She swam to and fro among the drifting
+spars, forgetting that they might crush her with their weight; she
+dived and rose again, and reached the prince just when he felt that he
+could swim no longer in the stormy sea. His arms were beginning to
+fail him, his beautiful eyes were closed; in another moment he must
+have sunk, had not the little mermaid come to his aid. She kept his
+head above water, and let the waves carry them whither they would."
+
+Letty didn't want Allerton's life to be in danger, but she would have
+loved saving it. She fell to pondering possible conditions in which
+she could perform this feat, while he ran no risk whatever.
+
+"The next day the storm was over; not a spar of the ship was left in
+sight. The sun rose red and glowing upon the waves, and seemed to pour
+down new life upon the prince, though his eyes remained closed. The
+little mermaid kissed his fair white forehead and stroked back his wet
+hair. He was like the marble statue in her little garden, she thought.
+She kissed him again, and prayed that he might live."
+
+Letty saw herself seated somewhere in a mead, Allerton lying
+unconscious with his head in her lap, though the circumstances that
+brought them so together remained vague.
+
+"Suddenly the dry land came in sight before her, high blue mountains
+on whose peaks the snow lay white, as if a flock of swans had settled
+there. On the coast below were lovely green woods, and close on shore
+a building of some kind, the mermaid didn't know whether it was church
+or cloister. Citrons and orange trees grew in the garden, and before
+the porch were stately palm trees. The sea ran in here and formed a
+quiet bay, unruffled, but very deep. The little mermaid swam with the
+prince to the white sandy shore, laid him on the warm sand, taking
+care that his head was left where the sun shone warmest. Bells began
+to chime and ring through all parts of the building, and several young
+girls entered the garden. The little mermaid swam farther out, behind
+a tiny cliff that rose above the waves. She showered sea-foam on her
+hair that no one might see its golden glory, and then waited patiently
+to see if anyone would come to the aid of the young prince."
+
+To Letty that was the heart-breaking part of the story, the leaving
+the beloved one to others. It was what she and the little mermaid had
+in common, unless she too could get rid of her fish's tail at the cost
+of walking on blades. But for the little mermaid there the necessity
+was, as she, Letty read on.
+
+"Before long a young girl came by; she gave a start of terror and ran
+back to call for assistance. Several people came to her aid, and after
+a while the little mermaid saw the prince recover his consciousness,
+and smile upon the group around him. But he had no smile for her; he
+did not even know that she had saved him. Her heart sank, and when she
+had seen him carried into the large building, she dived sorrowfully
+down to her father's palace."
+
+Lifting her eyes to meditate on this situation Letty saw Allerton
+standing between the portieres. Her dream of being little mermaid to
+his prince went out like a pricked bubble. Though he neither smiled
+nor sneered she knew he was amused at her, with a bitterness in his
+amusement. In an instant she saw her transformation as it must appear
+to him. She had spent his money recklessly, and made herself look
+ridiculous. All the many kinds of shame she had ever known focused on
+her now, making her a glowing brand of humiliations. She stood
+helpless. Hans Andersen dropped to the floor with a soft thud.
+Nevertheless, it was she who spoke first.
+
+"I suppose you--you think it funny to see me rigged up like this?"
+
+He took time to pick up the book she had dropped and hand it back to
+her. "Won't you sit down again?"
+
+While she seated herself and he followed her example she continued to
+stammer on. "I--I thought I ought to--to look proper for the house as
+long as I was in it."
+
+Her phrasing gave him an opening. "You're quite right. I should like
+you to get whatever would help you in--in your profession before
+you--before you leave us."
+
+Quick to seize the implications here she took them with the submission
+of those whose lots have always depended on other people's wills.
+
+"I'll go whenever you want me to."
+
+Relieved as he was by this willingness he was anxious not to seem
+brutal. "I'd--I'd rather you consulted your own wishes about that."
+
+She put on a show of nonchalance. "Oh, I don't care. It'll be
+just--just as you say _when_."
+
+He would have liked to say when at that instant, but a pretense at
+courtesy had to be maintained. "There's no hurry--for a day or two."
+
+"You said a week or two yesterday."
+
+"Oh, did I? Well, then, we'll say a week or two now."
+
+"Oh, not for me," she hastened to assure him. "I'd just as soon go
+to-night."
+
+"Have you hated it as much as that?"
+
+"I've hated some of it."
+
+"Ah, well! You needn't be bothered with it long."
+
+Her candor was of the kind which asks questions frankly. "Haven't you
+got any more use for me?"
+
+"I'm afraid--" it was not easy to put it into the right words--"I'm
+afraid I was mistaken yesterday. I put you in--in a false position
+with no necessity for doing so."
+
+It took her a few seconds to get the force of this. "Do you mean that
+you didn't need me to be--to be a shame and a disgrace to you _at
+all_?"
+
+"Did I put it in that way?"
+
+"Well, didn't you?"
+
+The fact that she was now dressed as she was made it more embarrassing
+to him to be crude than it had been when addressing the homeless and
+shabby little "drab."
+
+"I don't know what I said then. I was--I was upset."
+
+"And you're upset very easy, ain't you?" She corrected herself
+quickly: "aren't you?"
+
+"I suppose that's true. What of it?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. I--I just happen to know a way you can get over that--if
+you want to."
+
+He smiled. "I'm afraid my nervousness is too deeply seated--I may as
+well admit that I'm nervous--you saw it for yourself----"
+
+"Oh, I saw you was--you were--sick up here--" she touched her
+forehead--"as soon as you begun to talk to me."
+
+Grateful for this comprehension he tried to use it to his advantage.
+"So that you understand how I could go off the hooks----"
+
+"Sure! My mother'd go off 'em the least little thing, till--till she
+done--till she did--the way I told her."
+
+"Then some of these days I may ask you to--but just now perhaps we'd
+better talk about----"
+
+"When I'm to get out."
+
+Her bluntness of expression hurt him. "That's not the way I should
+have put it----"
+
+"But it's the way you'd 'a' meant, isn't it?"
+
+He was the more disconcerted because she said this gently, with the
+same longing in her face and eyes as in that of the little mermaid
+bending over the unconscious prince.
+
+The unconscious prince of the moment merely said: "You mustn't think
+me more brutal than I am----"
+
+"Oh, I don't think you're brutal. You're just a little dippy,
+ain't--aren't--you? But that's because you let yourself go. If when
+you feel it comin' on you'd just--but perhaps you'd rather _be_ dippy.
+Would you?"
+
+If he could have called these wide goldstone eyes with their tiny
+flames maternal it is the word he would have chosen. In spite of the
+difficulty of the minute he was conscious of a flicker of amusement.
+
+"I don't know that I would, but----"
+
+"After I'm gone shall we--shall we _stay_ married?"
+
+This being the real question he was glad she faced it with the
+directness which gave her a kind of charm. He admitted that. She had
+the charm of everything which is genuine of its kind. She made no
+pretense. Her expression, her voice, her lack of sophistication, all
+had the limpidity of water. He felt himself thanking God for it. "He
+alone knows what kind of hands I might have fallen into yesterday,
+crazy fool that I am." Of this child, crude as she was, he could make
+his own disposition.
+
+So in answer to her question he told her he had seen his lawyer in the
+afternoon--he was a lawyer himself but he didn't practice--and the
+great man had explained to him that of all the processes known to
+American jurisprudence the retracing of such steps as they had taken
+on the previous day was one of the simplest. What the law had joined
+the law could put asunder, and was well disposed toward doing so.
+There being several courses which they could adopt, he put them before
+her one by one. She listened with the sort of attention which shows
+the mind of the listener to be fixed on the speaker, rather than on
+anything he says. Not being obliged to ask questions or to make
+answers she could again see him as the handsome, dark-eyed prince whom
+she would have loved to save from drowning or any other fate.
+
+Of all he said she could attach a meaning to but one word:
+"desertion." Even in the technical marital sense she knew vaguely its
+significance. She thought of it with a tightening about the heart. Any
+desertion of him of which she would be capable would be like that of
+the little mermaid when she dived sorrowfully down to her father's
+palace, leaving him with those to whom he belonged. It was this
+thought which prompted a question flung in among his observations,
+though the link in the train of thought was barely traceable:
+
+"Is she takin' you back--the girl you told me about yesterday?"
+
+He looked puzzled. "Did I tell you about a girl yesterday?"
+
+"Why, sure! You said she kicked you out----"
+
+"Well, she hadn't. I--I didn't know I'd gone so far as to say----"
+
+"Oh, you went a lot farther than that. You said you were goin' to the
+devil. Ain't you? I mean, aren't you?"
+
+"I--I don't seem able to."
+
+"You're the first fellow I've ever heard say that."
+
+"I'm the first fellow I've ever heard say it myself. But I tried
+to-day--and I couldn't."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"I tried to get drunk."
+
+She half rose, shrinking away from him. "Not--not _you!_"
+
+"Yes. Why not? I've been drunk before--not often, but----"
+
+"Don't tell me," she cried, hastily. "I don't want to know. It's
+too----"
+
+"But I thought it was just the sort of thing you'd be----"
+
+"I'd be used to. So it is. But that's the reason. You're--you're
+different. I can't bear to think of it--not with you."
+
+"But I'm just like any other man."
+
+"Oh, no, you're not."
+
+He looked at her curiously. "How am I--how am I--different?"
+
+"Oh, other men are just men, and you're a--a kind of prince."
+
+"You wouldn't think so if you were to know me better."
+
+"But I'm not goin' to know you better, and I'd rather think of you as
+I see you are." She dropped this theme to say: "So the other
+girl----"
+
+"She didn't mean it at all."
+
+"She'd be crazy if she did. But what made her let you think so?"
+
+"She's--she's simply that sort; goes off the hooks too."
+
+"Oh! So there'll be a pair of you."
+
+"I'm afraid so."
+
+"That'll be bloody murder, won't it? Momma was that way with Judson
+Flack. Hammer and tongs--the both of them--till I took her in hand,
+and----"
+
+"And what happened then?"
+
+"She calmed down and--and died."
+
+"So that it didn't do her much good, did it?"
+
+"It did her that much good that she died. Death was better than the
+way she was livin' with Judson Flack--and it wasn't always his fault.
+I do' wanta defend him, but momma got so that if he did have a quiet
+spell she'd go and stir him up. There's not much hope for two married
+people that lives like that, do you think?"
+
+"But you say your mother, under your instruction, got over it."
+
+"Yes, but it was too late. The more she got over it the more he'd
+lambaste her, and when her money was all gone----"
+
+"But do you think all--all hot-tempered couples have to go it in that
+way?"
+
+She made a little hunching movement of the shoulders. "It's mostly cat
+and dog anyhow. You and her--the other girl--won't be much worse than
+others."
+
+"But you think we'll be worse, to some extent at least."
+
+She ignored this to say, wistfully: "I suppose you're awful fond of
+her."
+
+"I think I can say as much as that."
+
+"And is she fond of you?"
+
+"She says so."
+
+"If she is I don't see how she could--" Her voice trailed away. Her
+eyes forsook his face to roam the shadows of the room. She added to
+herself rather than to him: "I couldn't ha' done it if it was me."
+
+"Oh, if you were in love----"
+
+The eyes wandered back from the shadows to rest on him again. They
+were sorrowful eyes, and unabashed. A child's would have had this
+unreproachful ache in them, or a dog's. Though he didn't know what it
+meant it disturbed him into leaving his sentence there.
+
+It occurred to him then that they were forgetting the subject in hand.
+He had not expected to be able to converse with her, yet something
+like conversation had been taking place. It had come to him, too, that
+she had a mind, and now that he really looked at her he saw that the
+face was intelligent. Yesterday that face had been no more to him than
+a smudge, without character, and almost featureless, while to-day....
+
+The train of his thought being twofold he could think along one line,
+and speak along another. "So if you go to see my lawyer he'll suggest
+different things that you could do----"
+
+"I'd rather do whatever 'ud make it easiest for you."
+
+"You're very kind, but I think I'd better not suggest. I'll leave that
+to him and you. He knows already that he's to supply you with whatever
+money you need for the present; and after everything is settled I'll
+see that you have----"
+
+The damask flush which Steptoe had admired stole over a face flooded
+with alarm. She spoke as she rose, drawing a little back from him. "I
+do' want any money."
+
+He looked up at her in protestation. "Oh, but you must take it."
+
+She was still drawing back, as if he was threatening her with
+something that would hurt. "I do' want to."
+
+"But it was part of our bargain. You don't understand that I
+couldn't----"
+
+"I didn't make no such--" She checked herself. Her mother had rebuked
+her for this form of speech a thousand times. She said the sentence
+over as she felt he would have said it, as the people would have said
+it among whom she had lived as a child. The cadence of his speech, the
+half forgotten cadences of theirs, helped her ear and her intuitions.
+"I didn't make any such bargain," she managed to bring out, at last.
+"You said you'd give me money; but I never said I'd take it."
+
+He too rose. He began to feel troubled. Perhaps she wouldn't be at his
+disposition after all. "But--but I couldn't stand it if you didn't let
+me----"
+
+"And I couldn't stand it if I did."
+
+"But that's not reasonable. It's part of the whole thing that I should
+look out for your future after what----"
+
+"I know what you mean," she declared, tremblingly. "You think that
+because I'm--I'm beneath you that I ain't got--that I haven't got--no
+sense of what a girl should do and what she shouldn't do. But you're
+wrong. Do you suppose I didn't know all about how crazy it was when I
+went with you yesterday? Of course I did. I was as much to blame as
+you."
+
+"Oh, no, you weren't. Apart from your being what you call beneath
+me--and I don't admit that you are--I'm a great deal older than
+you----"
+
+"You're only older in years. In livin' I'm twice your age. Besides I'm
+all right here----" she touched her forehead again--"and I could see
+first thing that you was a fellow that needed to be took--to be
+taken--care of."
+
+"Oh, you did!"
+
+She strengthened her statement with an affirmative nod. "Yes, I did."
+
+"Well, then, I've always paid the people who've taken care of me----"
+
+"Oh, but you didn't ask me to take care of you, and I didn't take no
+care. You wanted me to be a disgrace to you, and I thought so little
+of myself that I said I'd go and be it. Now I've got to pay for that,
+not be paid for it."
+
+Her head was up with what Steptoe considered to be mettle. Though the
+picture she presented was stamped on his mind as resembling the proud
+mien of the girl in Whistler's Yellow Buskin, he didn't think of that
+till later.
+
+"There's one thing I must ask you to remember," he said, in a tone he
+tried to make firm, "that I couldn't possibly accept from you anything
+in the way of sacrifice."
+
+Her eyes were wide and earnest. "But I never thought of _makin'_
+anything in the way of sacrifice."
+
+"It would be sacrifice for you to help me get out of this scrape, and
+have nothing at all to the good."
+
+"But I'd have lots to the good." She reflected. "I'd have
+rememberin'."
+
+"What have you got to remember?"
+
+With her child's lack of self-consciousness she looked him straight in
+the eyes. "You--for one thing."
+
+"Me!" He had hardly the words for his amazement. "For heaven's sake,
+what can you have to remember about me that--that could give you any
+pleasure?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't say it would give me any pleasure. I said I'd _have_ it.
+It'd be mine--something no one couldn't take away from me."
+
+"But if it doesn't do you any good----"
+
+"It does me good if it makes me richer, don't it?"
+
+"Richer to--to remember _me_?"
+
+She nodded, with a little twisted smile, beginning to move toward the
+door. Over her shoulder she said: "And it isn't only you.
+There's--there's Steptoe."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+Making her nod suffice for a good-night, Letty, with the red volume of
+Hans Andersen under her arm, passed out into the hall. It was not easy
+to carry herself with the necessary nonchalance, but she got strength
+by saying inwardly: "Here's where I begin to walk on blades." The
+knowledge that she was doing it, and that she was doing it toward an
+end, gave her a dignity of carriage which Allerton watched with
+sharpened observation.
+
+Reaching the little back spare room she found the door open, and
+Steptoe sweeping up the hearth before a newly lighted fire. Beppo,
+whose basket had been established here, jumped from his shelter to paw
+up at her caressingly. With the hearth-brush in his hand Steptoe
+raised himself to say:
+
+"Madam'll excuse me, but I thought as the evenin' was chilly----"
+
+"He doesn't want me to stay."
+
+She brought out the fact abruptly, lifelessly, because she couldn't
+keep it back. The calm she had been able to maintain downstairs was
+breaking up, with a quivering of the lip and two rolling tears.
+
+Slowly and absently Steptoe dusted his left hand with the hearth-brush
+held in his right. "If madam's goin' to decide 'er life by what
+another person wants she ain't never goin' to get nowhere."
+
+There were tears now in the voice. "Yes, but when it's--_him_."
+
+"'Im or anybody else, we all 'ave to fight for what we means to myke
+of our own life. It's a poor gyme in which I don't plye my 'and for
+all I think it'll win."
+
+"Do you mean that I should--act independent?"
+
+"'Aven't madam an independent life?"
+
+"Havin' an independent life don't make it easier to stay where you're
+not wanted."
+
+"Oh, if madam's lookin' first for what's easy----"
+
+"I'm not. I'm lookin' first for what he'll _like_."
+
+Hanging the hearth-brush in its place he took the tongs to adjust a
+smoking log. "I've been lookin' for what 'e'd like ever since 'e was
+born; and now I see that gettin' so much of what 'e liked 'asn't been
+good for 'im. If madam'd strike out on 'er own line, whether 'e liked
+it or not, and keep at it till 'e 'ad to like it----"
+
+"Oh, but when it's--" she sought for the right word--"when it's so
+humiliatin'----"
+
+"Humiliatin' things is not so 'ard to bear, once you've myde up your
+mind as they're to be borne." He put up the tongs, to busy himself
+with the poker. "Madam'll find that humiliation is a good deal like
+that there quinine; bitter to the tyste, but strengthenin'. I've
+swallered lots of it; and look at me to-dye."
+
+"I know as well as he does that it's all been a crazy mistake----"
+
+"I was readin' the other day--I'm fond of a good book, I am--occupies
+the mind like--but I was readin' about a circus man in South Africa,
+what 'e myde a mistyke and took the wrong tryle--and just when 'e was
+a-givin' 'imself up for lost among the tigers and the colored savages
+'e found 'e'd tumbled on a mine of diamonds. Big 'ouse in Park Lyne in
+London now, and 'is daughter married to a Lord."
+
+"Oh, I've tumbled into the mine of diamonds all right. The question
+is----"
+
+"If madam really tumbled, or was led by the 'and of Providence."
+
+She laughed, ruefully. "If that was it the hand of Providence 'd have
+to have some pretty funny ways."
+
+"I've often 'eard as the wyes of Providence was strynge; but I ain't
+so often 'eard as Providence 'ad got to myke 'em strynge to keep pyce
+with the wyes of men. Now if the 'and of Providence 'ad picked out
+madam for Mr. Rash, it'd 'ave to do somethink out of the common, as
+you might sye, to bring together them as man had put so far apart." He
+looked round the room with the eye of a head-waiter inspecting a table
+in a restaurant. "Madam 'as everythink? Well, if there's anythink else
+she's only got to ring."
+
+Bowing himself out he went down the stairs to attend to those duties
+of the evening which followed the return of the master of the house.
+In the library and dining-room he saw to the window fastenings, and
+put out the one light left burning in each room. In the hall he locked
+the door with the complicated locks which had helped to guarantee the
+late Mrs. Allerton against burglars. There was not only a bolt, a
+chain, and an ordinary lock, but there was an ingenious double lock
+which turned the wrong way when you thought you were turning it the
+right, and could otherwise baffle the unskilful. Occupied with this
+task he could peep over his shoulder, through the unlighted front
+drawing-room, and see his adored one standing on the hearthrug, his
+hands clasped behind him, and his head bent, in an attitude of
+meditation.
+
+Steptoe, having much to say to him, felt the nervousness of a prime
+minister going into the presence of a sovereign who might or might not
+approve his acts. It was at once the weakness and the strength of his
+position that his rule was based on an unwritten constitution. Being
+unwritten it allowed of a borderland where powers were undefined.
+Powers being undefined his scope was the more easily enlarged, though
+now and then he found that the sovereign rebelled against the mayor of
+the palace and had to be allowed his way.
+
+But the sovereign was nursing no seeds of the kind of discontent which
+Steptoe was afraid of. As a matter of fact he was thinking of the way
+in which Letty had left the room. The perspective, the tea-gown, the
+effectively dressed hair, enabled him to perceive the combination of
+results which Madame Simone had called _de l'elegance naturelle_. She
+had that; he could see it as he hadn't seen it hitherto. It must have
+given what value there was to her poor little roles in motion
+pictures. Now that his eye had caught it, it surprised, and to some
+degree disturbed, him. It was more than the show-girl's inane
+prettiness, or the comely wax-work face of the girl on the cover of a
+magazine. With due allowance for her Anglo-Saxonism and honesty, she
+was the type of woman to whom "things happen." Things would happen to
+her, Allerton surmised, beyond anything she could experience in his
+cumbrous and antiquated house. This queer episode would drop behind
+her as an episode and no more, and in the multitude of future
+incidents she would almost forget that she had known him. He hoped to
+God that it would be so, and yet....
+
+He was noting too that she hadn't taxed him, in the way of calling on
+his small supply of nervous energy. Rather she had spared it, and he
+felt himself rested. After a talk with Barbara he was always spent.
+Her emotional furies demanded so much of him that they used him up.
+This girl, on the contrary, was soothing. He didn't know how she was
+soothing; but she was. He couldn't remember when he had talked to a
+woman with so little thought of what he was to say and how he was to
+say it, and heaven only knew that the things to be said between them
+were nerve-racking enough. But they had come out of their own accord,
+those nerve-racking things, probably, he reasoned, because she was a
+girl of inferior class with whom he didn't have to be particular.
+
+She was quick, too, to catch the difference between his speech and her
+own. She was quick--and pathetic. Her self-correction amused him, with
+a strain of pity in his amusement. If a girl like that had only had a
+chance.... And just then Steptoe broke in on his musing by entering
+the room.
+
+The first subject to be aired was that of the changes in the household
+staff, and Steptoe raised it diplomatically. Mrs. Courage and Jane had
+taken offense at the young lydy's presence, and packed themselves off
+in dishonorable haste. Had it not been that two men friends of his own
+were ready to come at an hour's notice the house would have been
+servantless till he had procured strangers. No condemnation could be
+too severe for Mrs. Courage and Jane, for not content with leaving the
+house in dudgeon they had insulted the young lydy before they went.
+
+"Sooner or lyter they would 'a' went any'ow. For this long time back
+they've been too big for their boots, as you might sye. If Mr. Rash
+'ad married the other young lydy she wouldn't 'a' stood 'em a week. It
+don't do to keep servants too long, not when they've got no more than
+a menial mind, which Jynie and Mrs. Courage 'aven't. The minute they
+'eard that this young lydy was in the 'ouse.... And beautiful the wye
+she took it, Mr. Rash. I never see nothink finer on the styge nor in
+the movin' pictures. Like a young queen she was, a-tellin' 'em that
+she 'adn't come to this 'ouse to turn out of it them as 'ad 'ad it as
+their 'ome, like, and that she'd put it up to them. If they went she'd
+stye; but if they styed she'd go----"
+
+"She's going anyhow."
+
+Steptoe moved away to feel the fastenings of the back windows.
+"That'll be a relief to us, sir, won't it?" he said, without turning
+his head.
+
+"It'll make things easier--certainly."
+
+"I was just 'opin' that it mightn't be--well, not too soon."
+
+"What do you mean by too soon?"
+
+"Well, sir, I've been thinkin' it over through the dye, just as you
+told me to do this mornin,' and I figger out--" on a table near him he
+began to arrange the disordered books and magazines--"I figger out
+that if she was to go it'd better be in a wye agreeable to all
+concerned. It wouldn't do, I syes to myself, for Mr. Rash to bring a
+young woman into this 'ouse and 'ave 'er go awye feelin' anythink but
+glad she'd come."
+
+"That'll be some job."
+
+"It'll be some job, sir; but it'll be worth it. It ain't only on the
+young lydy's account; it'll be on Mr. Rash's."
+
+"On Mr. Rash's--how?"
+
+The magazines lapping over each other in two long lines, he
+straightened them with little pats. "What I suppose you mean to do,
+sir, is to get out o' this matrimony and enter into the other as you
+thought as you wasn't goin' to enter into."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And when you'd entered into the other you wouldn't want it on your
+mind--on your conscience, as you might sye--that there was a young
+lydy in the world as you'd done a kind o' wrong to."
+
+Allerton took three strides across the corner of the room, and three
+strides back to the fireplace again. "How am I going to escape that?
+She says she won't let me give her any money."
+
+"Oh, money!" Steptoe brushed money aside as if it had no value. "She
+wouldn't of course. Not 'er sort."
+
+"But what _is_ 'er sort. She seemed one thing yesterday, and to-day
+she's another."
+
+"That's somethink like what I mean. That young lydy 'as growed more in
+twenty-four hours than lots'd grow in twenty-four years." He
+considered how best to express himself further. "Did Mr. Rash ever
+notice that it isn't bein' born of a certain kind o' family as'll myke
+a man a gentleman? Of course 'e did. But did 'e ever notice that a
+man'll often _not_ be born of a certain kind o' family, and yet be a
+gentleman all the syme?"
+
+"I know what you're driving at; but it depends on what you mean by a
+gentleman."
+
+"And I couldn't 'ardly sye--not no more than I could tell you what the
+smell of a flower was, not even while you was a-smellin' of it. You
+know a gentleman's a gentleman, and you may think it's this or that
+what mykes 'im so, but there ain't no wye to put it into words. Now
+you, Mr. Rash, anybody'd know you was a gentleman what merely looked
+at you through a telescope; but you couldn't explyne it, not if you
+was took all to pieces like the works of a clock. It ain't nothink you
+do and nothink you sye, because if we was to go by that----"
+
+"Good Lord, stop! We're not talking about me."
+
+"No, Mr. Rash. We're talkin' about the queer thing it is what mykes
+a gentleman, and I sye that I can't sye. But I _know_. Now, tyke
+Eugene. 'E's just a chauffeur. But no one couldn't be ten minutes with
+Eugene and not know 'e's a gentleman through and through.
+Obligin'--good-mannered--modest--polite to the very cat 'e is--and
+always with that nice smile--wouldn't _you_ sye as Eugene was a
+gentleman, if anybody was to arsk you, Mr. Rash?"
+
+"If they asked me from that point of view--yes--probably. But what has
+that to do with it?"
+
+"It 'as this to do with it that when you arsk me what sort that young
+lydy is I 'ave to reply as she's not the sort to accept money from
+strynge gentlemen, because it ain't what she's after."
+
+"Then what on earth _is_ she after? Whatever it is she can have it, if
+I can only find out what it is."
+
+Steptoe answered this in his own way. "It's very 'ard for the poor to
+see so much that's good and beautiful in the world, and know that they
+can't 'ave none of it. I felt that myself before I worked up to where
+I am now. 'Ere in New York a poor boy or a poor girl can't go out into
+the street without seein' the things they're cryvin' for in their
+insides flaunted at 'em like--shook in their fyces--while the law and
+the police and the church and everythink what mykes our life says to
+'em, 'There's none o' this for you.'"
+
+"Well, money would buy it, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Money'd buy it if money knew what to buy. But it don't. Mr. Rash must
+'ave noticed that there's nothink 'elplesser than the people with
+money what don't know 'ow to spend it. I used to be that wye myself
+when I'd 'ave a little cash. I wouldn't know what to blow myself to
+what wouldn't be like them vulgar new-rich. But the new-rich is vulgar
+only because our life 'as put the 'orse before the cart with 'em, as
+you might sye, in givin' them the money before showin' 'em what to do
+with it."
+
+Having straightened the lines of magazines to the last fraction of an
+inch he found a further excuse for lingering by moving back into their
+accustomed places the chairs which had been disarranged.
+
+"You 'ave to get the syme kind of 'ang of things as you and me've got,
+Mr. Rash, to know what it is you want, and 'ow to spend your money
+wise like. Pleasure isn't just in 'avin' things; it's in knowin'
+what's good to 'ave and what ain't. Now this young lydy'd be like a
+child with a dime sent into a ten-cent store to buy whatever 'e'd
+like. There's so many things, and all the syme price, that 'e's kind
+of confused like. First 'e thinks it'll be one thing, and then 'e
+thinks it'll be another, and 'e ends by tykin' the wrong thing,
+because 'e didn't 'ave nothink to tell 'im 'ow to choose. Mr. Rash
+wouldn't want a young lydy to whom 'e's indebted, as you might sye, to
+be like that, now would 'e?"
+
+"It doesn't seem to me that I've got anything to do with it. If I
+offer her the money, and can get her to take it----"
+
+"That's where she strikes me as wiser than Mr. Rash, for all she don't
+know but so little. That much she knows by hinstinck."
+
+"Then what am I going to do?"
+
+"That'd be for Mr. Rash to sye. If it was me----"
+
+The necessity for getting an armchair exactly beneath a portrait
+seemed to cut this sentence short.
+
+"Well, if it was you--what then?"
+
+"Before I'd give 'er money I'd teach 'er the 'ang of our kind o' life,
+like. That's what she's aichin' and cryvin' for. A born lydy she is,
+and 'ankerin' after a lydy's wyes, and with no one to learn 'em to
+'er----"
+
+"But, good heavens, I can't do that."
+
+"No, Mr. Rash, but I could, if you was to leave 'er 'ere for a bit. I
+could learn 'er to be a lydy in the course of a few weeks, and 'er so
+quick to pick up. Then if you was to settle a little hincome on 'er
+she wouldn't----"
+
+Allerton took the bull by the horns. "She wouldn't be so likely to go
+to the bad. That's what you mean, isn't it?"
+
+Moving behind Allerton, who continued to stand on the hearthrug,
+Steptoe began poking the embers, making them safe for the night.
+
+"Did Mr. Rash ever notice that goin' to the bad, as 'e calls it, ain't
+the syme for them as 'ave nothink as it looks to them as 'ave
+everythink? When you're 'ungry for food you heats the first thing you
+can lie your 'ands on; and when you're 'ungry for life you do the
+first thing as'll promise you the good you're lookin' for. What people
+like you and me is hapt to call goin' to the bad ain't mostly no more
+than a 'ankerin' for good which nothink don't seem to feed."
+
+Allerton smiled. "That sounds to me as if it might be dangerous
+doctrine."
+
+"What excuses the poor'll often seem dyngerous doctrine to the rich,
+Mr. Rash. Our kind is awful afryde of their kind gettin' a little bit
+of what they're longin' for, and especially 'ere in America. When
+we've took from them most of the means of 'aving a little pleasure
+lawful, we call it dyngerous if they tyke it unlawful like, and we go
+to work and pass laws agynst them. Protectin' them agynst theirselves
+we sye it is, and we go at it with a gun."
+
+"But we're talking of----"
+
+"Of the young lydy, sir. Quite so. It's on 'er account as I'm syin'
+what I'm syin'. You arsk me if I think she'll go to the bad in cyse
+we turn 'er out, and I sye that----"
+
+Allerton started. "There's no question of our turning her out. She's
+sick of it."
+
+"Then that'd be my point, wouldn't it, sir? If she goes because she's
+sick of it, why, then, natural like, she'll look somewhere else for
+what--for what she didn't find with us. You may call it goin' to the
+bad, but it'll be no more than tryin' to find in a wrong wye what life
+'as denied 'er in a right one."
+
+Allerton, who had never in his life been asked to bear moral
+responsibility, was uneasy at this philosophy, changing the subject
+abruptly.
+
+"Where did she get the clothes?"
+
+"Me and 'er, Mr. Rash, went to Margot's this mornin' and bought a
+bunch of 'em."
+
+"The deuce you did! And you used my name?"
+
+"No, sir," Steptoe returned, with dignity, "I used mine. I didn't give
+no 'andle to gossip. I pyde for the things out o' some money I 'ad in
+'and--my own money, Mr. Rash--and 'ad 'em all sent to me. I thought as
+we was mykin' a mistyke the young lydy'd better look proper while we
+was mykin' it; and I knew Mr. Rash'd feel the syme."
+
+The situation was that in which the _faineant_ king accepts the act of
+the mayor of the palace because it is Hobson's choice. Moreover, he
+was willing that she should have the clothes. If she wouldn't take
+money she would at least apparently take them, which, in a measure,
+would amount to the same thing. He was dwelling on this bit of
+satisfaction when Steptoe continued.
+
+"And as long as the young lydy remynes with us, Mr. Rash, I thought
+it'd be discreeter like not to 'ave no more women pokin' about, and
+tryin' to find out what 'ad better not be known. It mykes it simpler
+as she 'erself arsks to be called Miss Gravely----"
+
+"Oh, she does?"
+
+"Yes, sir; and that's what I've told William and Golightly, the waiter
+and the chef, is 'er nyme. It mykes it all plyne to 'em----"
+
+"Plain? Why, they'll think----"
+
+"No, sir. They won't think. When it comes to what's no one's business
+but your own women thinks; men just haccepts. They tykes things for
+granted, and don't feel it none of their affair. Mr. Rash'll 'ave
+noticed that there's a different kind of honor among women from what
+there is among men. I don't sye but what the women's is all right,
+only the men's is easier to get on with."
+
+There being no response to these observations Steptoe made ready to
+withdraw. "And shall you stye 'ome for breakfast, sir?"
+
+"I'll see in the morning."
+
+"Very good, sir. I've locked up the 'ouse and seen to everythink, if
+you'll switch off the lights as you come up. Good-night, Mr. Rash."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+While this conversation was taking place Letty, in the back spare
+room, was conducting a ceremonial too poignant for tears. There were
+tears in her heart, but her eyes only smarted.
+
+Taking off the blue-black tea-gown, she clasped it in her arms and
+kissed it. Then, on one of the padded silk hangers, she hung it far in
+the depths of the closet, where it wouldn't scorch her sight in the
+morning.
+
+Next she arrayed herself in a filmy breakfast thing, white with a
+copper-colored sash matching some of the tones in her hair and eyes,
+and simple with an angelic simplicity. Standing before the long mirror
+she surveyed herself mournfully. But this robe too she took off,
+kissed, and laid away.
+
+Lastly she put on the blue-green costume, with the turquoise and jade
+embroidery. She put on also the hat with the feather which shaded
+itself from green into monkshood blue. She put on a veil, and a pair
+of white gloves. For once she would look as well as she was capable of
+looking, though no one should see her but herself.
+
+Viewing her reflection she grew frightened. It was the first time she
+had ever seen her personal potentialities. She had long known that
+with "half a chance" she could emerge from the cocoon stage of the old
+gray rag and be at least the equal of the average; but she hadn't
+expected so radical a change. She was not the same Letty Gravely. She
+didn't know what she was, since she was neither a "star" nor a "lady,"
+the two degrees of elevation of which she had had experience. All she
+could feel was that with the advantages here presented she had the
+capacity to be either. Since, apparently, the becoming a lady was now
+excluded from her choice of careers, "stardom" would still have been
+within her reach, only that she was not to get the necessary "half a
+chance." That was the bitter truth of it. That was to be the result of
+her walking on blades. All the same, as walking on blades would help
+her prince she was resolved to walk on them. For her mother's sake,
+even for Judson Flack's, she had done things nearly as hard, when she
+had not had this incentive.
+
+The incentive nerved her to take off the blue-green costume, kissing
+it a last farewell, and laying it to rest, as a mother a dead baby in
+its coffin. Into the closet went the bits of lingerie from the
+consignment just arrived from Paris, and the other spoils of the day.
+When everything was buried she shut the door upon it, as in her heart
+she was shutting the door on her poor little fledgling hopes. Nothing
+remained to torment her vision, or distract her from what she had to
+do. The old gray rag and the battered black hat were all she had now
+to deal with.
+
+She slept little that night, since she was watching not for daylight
+but for that first stirring in the streets which tells that daylight
+is approaching. Having neither watch nor clock the stirring was all
+she had to go by. When it began to rumble and creak and throb faintly
+in and above the town she got up and dressed.
+
+So far had she travelled in less than forty-eight hours that the old
+gray rag, and not the blue-green costume, was now the disguise. In
+other words, once having tasted the prosperous she had found it the
+natural. To go back to poverty was not merely hard; it was contrary to
+all spontaneous dictates. Dimly she had supposed that in reverting to
+the harness she had worn she would find herself again; but she only
+discovered that she was more than ever lost.
+
+Very softly she unlocked her door to peep out at the landing. The
+house was ghostly and still, but it was another sign of her
+development that she was no longer afraid of it. Space too had become
+natural, while dignity of setting had seemed to belong to her ever
+since she was born. Turning her back on these conditions was far more
+like turning her back on home than it had been when she walked away
+from Judson Flack's.
+
+She crept out. It was so dark that she was obliged to wait till
+objects defined themselves black against black before she could see
+the stairs. She listened too. There were sounds, but only such sounds
+as all houses make when everyone is sleeping. She guessed, it was pure
+guessing, that it must be about five o'clock.
+
+She stole down the stairs. The necessity for keeping her mind on
+moving noiselessly deadened her thought to anything else. She neither
+looked back to what she was leaving behind, nor forward to what she
+was going to. Once she had reached the street it would be time enough
+to think of both. She had the fact in the back of her consciousness,
+but she kept it there. Out in the street she would feel grief for the
+prince and his palace, and terror at the void before her; but she
+couldn't feel them yet. Her one impulse was to escape.
+
+At the great street door she could see nothing; but she could feel.
+She found the key and turned it easily. As the door did not then yield
+to the knob she fumbled till she touched the chain. Slipping that out
+of its socket she tried the door again, but it still refused to open.
+There must be something else! Rich houses were naturally fortresses!
+She discovered the bolt and pulled it back.
+
+Still the door was fixed like a rock. She couldn't make it out. A
+lock, a chain, a bolt! Surely that must be everything! Perhaps she had
+turned the key the wrong way. She turned it again, but only with the
+same result. She found she could turn the key either way, and still
+leave the door immovable.
+
+Perhaps she didn't pull it hard enough. Doors sometimes stuck. She
+pulled harder; she pulled with her whole might and main. She could
+shake the door; she could make it rattle. The hanging chain dangled
+against the woodwork with a terrifying clank. If anyone was lying
+awake she would sound like a burglar--and yet she must get out.
+
+Now that she was balked, to get out became an obsession. It became
+more of an obsession the more she was balked. It made her first
+impatient, and then frantic. She turned the key this way and that way.
+She pulled and tugged. The perspiration came out on her forehead. She
+panted for breath; she almost sobbed. She knew there was a "trick" to
+it. She knew it was a simple trick because she had seen Steptoe
+perform it on the previous day; but she couldn't find out what it was.
+The effort made her only the more desperate.
+
+She was not crying; she was only gasping--in raucous, exhausted,
+nervous sobs. They came shorter and harder as she pitted her impotence
+against this unyielding passivity. She knew it was impotence, and yet
+she couldn't desist; and she couldn't desist because she grew more and
+more frenzied. It was the kind of frenzy in which she would have
+dashed herself wildly, vainly against the force that blocked her with
+its pitiless resistance, only that the whole hall was suddenly flooded
+with a blaze of light.
+
+It was light that came so unexpectedly that her efforts were cut
+short. Even her hard gasps were silenced, not in relief but in
+amazement. She remained so motionless that she could practically see
+herself, thrown against this brutal door, her arms spread out on it
+imploringly.
+
+Seconds that seemed like minutes went by before she found strength to
+detach herself and turn.
+
+Amazement became terror. On the halfway landing of the stairs stood a
+figure robed in scarlet from head to foot, with flying indigo lapels.
+He was girt with an indigo girdle, while the mass of his hair stood up
+as in tongues of forked black flame. The countenance was terrible, in
+mingled perplexity and wrath.
+
+She saw it was the prince, but a prince transformed by condemnation.
+
+"What on earth does this mean?"
+
+He came down the rest of the stairs till he stood on the lowest step.
+She advanced toward him pleadingly.
+
+"I was--I was trying to get out."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I--I--I must get away."
+
+"Well, even so; is this the way to do it? I thought someone was
+tearing the house down. It woke me up."
+
+"I was goin' this way because--because I didn't want you to know
+what'd become of me."
+
+"Yes, and have you on my mind."
+
+"I hoped I'd be takin' myself off your mind."
+
+"If you want to take yourself off my mind there's a perfectly simple
+means of doing it."
+
+"I'll do anything--but take money."
+
+"And taking money is the only thing I ask of you."
+
+"I can't. It'd--it'd--shame me."
+
+"Shame you? What nonsense!"
+
+She reflected fast. "There's two ways a woman can take money from a
+man. The man may love her and marry her; or perhaps he don't marry
+her, but loves her just the same. Then she can take it; but when----"
+
+"When she only renders him a--a great service----"
+
+"Ah, but that's just what I didn't do. You said you wanted me to send
+you to the devil--and now you ain't a-goin' to go."
+
+He grew excited. "But, good Lord, girl, you don't expect me to go to
+the devil just to keep my word to you."
+
+"I don't want you to do anything just to keep your word to me," she
+returned, fiercely. "I only want you to let me get away."
+
+He came down the remaining step, beginning to pace back and forth as
+he always did when approaching the condition he called "going off the
+hooks." Letty found him a marvelous figure in his scarlet robe, and
+with his mass of diabolic black hair.
+
+"Yes, and if I let you get away, where would you get away _to_?"
+
+"Oh, I'll find a place."
+
+"A place in jail as a vagrant, as I said the other day."
+
+"I'd rather be in jail," she flung back at him, "than stay where I'm
+not wanted."
+
+"That's not the question."
+
+"It's the biggest question of all for me. It'd be the biggest for you
+too if you were in my place." She stretched out her hands to him. "Oh,
+please show me how to work the door, and let me go."
+
+He flared as he was in the habit of flaring whenever he was opposed.
+"You can go when we've settled the question of what you'll have to
+live on."
+
+"I'll have myself to live on--just as I had before I met you in the
+Park."
+
+"Nothing is the same for you or for me as before I met you in the
+Park."
+
+"No, but we want to make it the same, don't we? You can't--can't marry
+the other girl till it is."
+
+"I can't marry the other girl till I know you're taken care of."
+
+"Money wouldn't take care of me. That's where you're makin' your
+mistake. You rich people think that money will do anything. So it will
+for you; but it don't mean so awful much to me." Her eyes, her lips,
+her hands besought him together. "Think now! What would I do with
+money if I had it? It ain't as if I was a lady. A lady has ways of
+doin' nothin' and livin' all the same; but a girl like me don't know
+anything about them. I'd go crazy if I didn't work--or I'd die--or I'd
+do somethin' worse."
+
+It was because his nerves were on edge that he cried out: "I don't
+care a button what you do. I'm thinking of myself."
+
+She betrayed the sharpness of the wound only by a deepening of the
+damask flush. "I'm thinkin' of you, too. Wouldn't you rather have
+everything come right again--so that you could marry the other
+girl--and know that I'd done it for you _free_--and not that you'd
+just bought me off?"
+
+"You mean, wouldn't I rather that all the generosity should be on your
+side----"
+
+"I don't care anything about generosity. I wouldn't be doin' it for
+that. It'd be because----"
+
+He flung out his arms. "Well--why?"
+
+"Because I'd like to do something _for_ you----"
+
+"Do something for me by making me a cad." He was beside himself.
+"That's what it would come to. That's what you're playing for. I
+should be a cad. You dress yourself up again in this ridiculous
+rig----"
+
+"It's not a ridic'lous rig. It's my own clothes----"
+
+"Your own clothes _now_ are--are what I saw you in when I came home
+last evening. You can't go back to that thing. We can't go back in any
+way." He seemed to make a discovery. "It's no use trying to be what we
+were in the Park, because we can't be. Whatever we do must be in the
+way of--of going on to something else."
+
+"Well, that'd be something else, if you'd just let me go, and do the
+desertion stunt you talked to me about----"
+
+"I'll not let you do it unless I pay you for it."
+
+"But it'd be payin' me for it if--if you'd just let me do it. Don't
+you see I _want_ to?"
+
+"I can see that you want to keep me in your debt. I can see that I'd
+never have another easy moment in my life. Whatever I did, and whoever
+I married, I should have to owe it to _you_."
+
+"Well, couldn't you--when I owe so much to you?"
+
+"There you go! What do you owe to me? Nothing but getting you into an
+infernal scrape----"
+
+"Oh, no! It's not been that at all. You'd have to be me to understand
+what it _has_ been. It'll be something to think of all the rest of my
+life--whatever I do."
+
+"Yes, and I know how you'll think of it."
+
+"Oh, no, you don't. You couldn't. It's nothin' to you to come into
+this beautiful house and see its lovely kind of life; but for me----"
+
+"Oh, don't throw that sort of thing at me," he flamed out, striding up
+and down. "Steptoe's been putting that into your head. He's strong on
+the sentimental stuff. You and he are in a conspiracy against me.
+That's what it is. It's a conspiracy. He's got something up his
+sleeve--I don't know what--and he's using you as his tool. But you
+don't come it over me. I'm wise, I am. I'm a fool too. I know it well
+enough. But I'm not such a fool as to----"
+
+She was frightened. He was going "off the hooks." She knew the signs
+of it. This rapid speech, one word leading to another, had always been
+her mother's first sign of super-excitement, until it ended in a
+scream. If he were to scream she would be more terrified than she had
+ever been in her life. She had never heard a man scream; but then she
+had never seen a man grow hysterical.
+
+His utterance was the more clear-cut and distinct the faster it
+became.
+
+"I know what it is. Steptoe thinks I'm going insane, and he's made you
+think so too. That's why you want to get away. You're afraid of me.
+Well, I don't wonder at it; but you're not going. See? You're not
+going. You'll go when I send you; but you'll not go before. See? I've
+married you, haven't I? When all is said and done you're my wife. My
+wife!" He laughed, between gritted teeth. "My wife! That's my wife!"
+He pointed at her. "Rashleigh Allerton who thought so much of himself
+has married _that_--and she's trying to do the generous by him----"
+
+Going up to him timidly, she laid her hand on his arm. "Say, mister,
+would you mind countin' ten?"
+
+The appeal took him so much by surprise that, both in his
+speech and in his walk, he stopped abruptly. She began to
+count, slowly, and marking time with her forefinger.
+"One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten."
+
+He stared at her as if it was she who had gone "off the hooks." "What
+do you mean by that?"
+
+"Oh, nothin'. Now you can begin again."
+
+"Begin what?"
+
+"What you was--what you were sayin'."
+
+"What I was saying?" He rubbed his hand across his forehead, which was
+wet with cold perspiration. "Well, what was I saying?"
+
+He was not only dazed, but a pallor stole over his skin, the more
+ghastly in contrast with his black hair and his scarlet
+dressing-gown.
+
+"Isn't there no place you can lay down? I always laid momma down after
+a spell of this kind. It did her good to sleep and she always slept."
+
+He said, absently: "There's a couch in the library. I can't go back to
+bed."
+
+"No, you don't want to go back to bed," she agreed, as if she was
+humoring a child. "You wouldn't sleep there----"
+
+"I haven't slept for two nights," he pleaded, in excuse for himself,
+"not since----"
+
+Taking him by the arm she led him into the library, which was in an
+ell behind the back drawing-room. It was a big, book-lined room with
+worn, shiny, leather-covered furnishings. On the shiny,
+leather-covered couch was a cushion which she shook up and smoothed
+out. Over its foot lay an afghan the work of the late Mrs. Allerton.
+
+"Now, lay down."
+
+He stretched himself out obediently, after which she covered him with
+the afghan. When he had closed his eyes she passed her hand across his
+forehead, on which the perspiration was still thick and cold. She
+remembered that a bottle of Florida water and a paper fan were among
+the luxuries of the back spare room.
+
+"Don't you stir," she warned him. "I'm goin' to get you something."
+
+Absorbed in her tasks as nurse she forgot to make the sentimental
+reflections in which she would otherwise have indulged. Back to the
+room from which she had fled she hurried with no thought that she was
+doing so. From the grave of hope she disinterred a half dozen of the
+spider-web handkerchiefs to which a few hours previously she had bid a
+touching adieu. With handkerchiefs, fan, and Florida water, she flew
+back to her patient, who opened his eyes as she approached.
+
+"I don't want to be fussed over----" he was beginning, fretfully.
+
+"Lie still," she commanded. "I know what to do. I'm used to people who
+are sick--up here."
+
+"Up here" was plainly the forehead which she mopped softly with a
+specimen from Margot's Parisian consignment. He closed his eyes. His
+features relaxed to an expression of relief. Relief gave place to
+repose when he felt her hand with the cool scented essence on his
+brow. It passed and passed again, lightly, soothingly, consolingly.
+Drowsily he thought that it was Barbara's hand, but a Barbara somehow
+transformed, and grown tenderer.
+
+He was asleep. She sat fanning him till a feeble daylight through an
+uncurtained window warned her to switch off the electricity. Coming
+back to her place, she continued to fan him, quietly and deftly, with
+no more than a motion of the wrist. She had the nurse's wrist,
+slender, flexible; the nurse's hand, strong, shapely, with practical
+spatulated finger-tips. After all, he was in some degree the drowning
+unconscious prince, and she the little mermaid.
+
+"He'll be ashamed when he wakes up. He'll not like to find me sittin'
+here."
+
+It was broad daylight now. He was as sound asleep as a child. Since
+she couldn't disturb him by rising she rose. Since she couldn't
+disturb him even by kissing him she kissed him. But she wouldn't kiss
+his lips, nor so much as his cheek or his brow. Very humbly she knelt
+and kissed his feet, outlined beneath the afghan. Then she stole
+away.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+The interlacing of destinies is such that you will not be surprised to
+learn that the further careers of Letty Gravely, of Barbara Walbrook,
+of Rashleigh Allerton now turned on Mademoiselle Odette Coucoul, whose
+name not one of the three was ever destined to hear.
+
+On his couch in the library Allerton slept till after nine, waking in
+a confusion which did not preclude a sense of refreshment. At the same
+minute Madame Simone was finishing her explanations to Mademoiselle
+Coucoul as to what was to be done to the seal-brown costume, which
+Steptoe had added to Letty's wardrobe, in order to conceal the fact
+that it was a model of a season old, and not the new creation its
+purchasers supposed. Taking in her instructions with Gallic precision
+mademoiselle was already at work when Miss Tina Vanzetti paused at her
+door. The door was that of a small French-paneled room, once the
+boudoir of the owner of the Flemish chateau, but set apart now by
+Madame Simone for jobs requiring deftness.
+
+Miss Vanzetti, whose Neapolitan grandfather had begun his American
+career as a boot-black in Brooklyn, was of the Americanized type of
+her race. She could not, of course, eliminate her Latinity of eye and
+tress nor her wild luxuriance of bust, but English was her
+mother-tongue, and the chewing of gum her national pastime. She
+chewed it now, slowly, thoughtfully, as she stood looking in on
+Mademoiselle Odette, who was turning the skirt this way and that,
+searching out the almost invisible traces of use which were to be
+removed.
+
+"So she's give you that to do, has she? Some stunt, I'll say. Gee,
+she's got her gall with her, old Simone, puttin' that off on the
+public as something new. If I had a dollar for every time Mamie Gunn
+has walked in and out to show it to customers I'd buy a set of silver
+fox."
+
+Mademoiselle's smile was radiant, not because she had radiance to
+shed, but because her lips and teeth framed themselves that way. She
+too was of her race, alert, vivacious, and as neat as a trivet, as
+became a former midinette of the rue de la Paix and a daughter of
+Batignolles.
+
+"Madame she t'ink it all in de beezeness," she contented herself with
+saying.
+
+With her left hand Miss Vanzetti put soft touches to the big black
+coils of her back hair. "See that kid that all these things is goin'
+to? Gee, but she's beginnin' to step out. I know her. Spotted her the
+minute she come in to try on. Me and she went to the same school.
+Lived in the same street. Name of Letty Gravely."
+
+Seeing that she was expected to make a response mademoiselle could
+think of nothing better than to repeat in her pretty staccato English:
+"Name of Let-ty Grav-el-ly."
+
+"Stepfather's name was Judson Flack. Company-promoter he called
+himself. Mother croaked three or four years ago, just before we moved
+to Harlem. Never saw no more of her till she walked in here with the
+old white slaver what's payin' for the outfit. Gee, you needn't tell
+me! S'pose she'll hit the pace till some fella chucks her. Gee, I'm
+sorry. Awful slim chance a girl'll get when some guy with a wad blows
+along and wants her." The theme exhausted Miss Vanzetti asked
+suddenly: "Why don't you never come to the Lantern?"
+
+In her broken English mademoiselle explained that she didn't know the
+American dances, but that a fella had promised to teach her the steps.
+She had met him at the house of a cousin who was married to a waiter
+chez Bouquin. Ver' beautiful fella, he was, and had invited her to a
+chop suey dinner that evening, with the dance at the Lantern to wind
+up with. Most ver' beautiful fella, single, and a detective.
+
+"Good for you," Miss Vanzetti commanded. "If you don't dance you might
+as well be dead, I'll say. Keeps you thin, too; and the music at the
+Lantern is swell."
+
+The incident is so slight that to get its significance you must link
+it up with the sound of the telephone which, as a simultaneous
+happening, was waking Judson Flack from his first real sleep after an
+uncomfortable night. Nothing but the fear lest by ignoring the call
+the great North Dakota Oil Company whose shares would soon be on the
+market, would be definitely launched without his assistance dragged
+him from his bed.
+
+"Hello?"
+
+A woman's voice inquired: "Is this Hudson 283-J?"
+
+"You bet."
+
+"Is Miss Gravely in?"
+
+"Just gone out. Only round the corner. Back in a few minutes. Say,
+sister, I'm her stepfather, and 'll take the message."
+
+"Tell her to come right over to the Excelsior Studio. Castin'
+director's got a part for her. Real part. Small but a stunner. Outcast
+girl. I s'pose she's got some old duds to dress it in?"
+
+"Sure thing!"
+
+"Well, tell her to bring 'em along. And say, listen! I don't mind
+passing you the tip that the castin' director has his eye on that girl
+for doin' the pathetic stunt; so see she ain't late."
+
+"Y'betcha."
+
+That an ambitious man, growing anxious about his future, was thus
+placed in a trying situation will be seen at once. The chance of a
+lifetime was there and he was unable to seize it. Everyone knew that
+by these small condensations of nebular promise stars were eventually
+evolved, and to have at his disposal the earnings of a star....
+
+It seemed providential then that on dropping into the basement eating
+place at which he had begun to take his breakfasts he should fall in
+with Gorry Larrabin. They were not friends, or rather they were better
+than friends; they were enemies who found each other useful. Mutually
+antipathetic, they quarrelled, but could not afford to quarrel long. A
+few days or a few weeks having gone by, they met with a nod, as if no
+hot words had been passed.
+
+It was such an occasion now. Ten days earlier Judson had called Gorry
+to his teeth "no detective, but a hired sneak." Gorry had retorted
+that, hired sneak as he was, he would have Judson Flack "in the jug"
+as a promoter of faked companies before the year was out. One word had
+led to another, and only the intervention of friends to both parties
+had kept the high-spirited fellows from exchanging blows. But the
+moment had come round again when each had an axe to grind, so that as
+Judson hung up his hat near the table at which Gorry, having finished
+his breakfast, was smoking and picking his teeth, the nod of
+reconciliation was given and returned.
+
+"Say, why don't you sit down here?"
+
+Politely Gorry indicated the unoccupied side of his own table. It was
+a small table covered with a white oil-cloth, and tolerably clean.
+
+"Don't mind if I do," was the other's return of courtesy, friendly
+relations being thus re-established.
+
+Having given his order to a stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture,
+Judson Flack launched at once into the subject of Letty. He did this
+for a two-fold reason. First, his grievance made the expression of
+itself imperative, and next, Gorry being a hanger-on of that
+profession which lives by knowing what other people don't might be in
+a position to throw light on Letty's disappearance. If he was he gave
+no sign of it. As a matter of fact he was not, but he meant to be. He
+remembered the girl; had admired her; had pointed out to several of
+his friends that she had only to doll herself up in order to knock
+spots out of a lot of good lookers of recognized supremacy.
+
+Odette Coucoul's description of him as "most ver' beautiful fella"
+was not without some justification. Regular, clean-cut features, long
+and thin, were the complement of a slight well-knit figure, of which
+the only criticism one could make was that it looked slippery.
+Slipperiness was perhaps his ruling characteristic, a softness of
+movement suggesting a cat, and a habit of putting out and drawing back
+a long, supple, snake-like hand which made you think of a pickpocket.
+Eyes that looked at you steadily enough impressed you as untrustworthy
+chiefly because of a dropping of the pupil of the left, through
+muscular inability.
+
+"Awful sorry, Judson," was his summing up of sympathy with his
+companion's narrative. "Any dope I get I'll pass along to you."
+
+Between gentlemen, however, there are understandings which need not be
+put into words, the principle of nothing for nothing being one of
+them. The conversation had not progressed much further before Gorry
+felt at liberty to say:
+
+"Now, about this North Dakota Oil, Judson. I'd like awful well to get
+in on the ground floor of that. I've got a little something to blow
+in; and there's a lot of suckers ready to snap up that stock before
+you print the certificates."
+
+Diplomacy being necessary here Judson practiced it. Gorry might indeed
+be seeking a way of turning an honest penny; but then again he might
+mean to sell out the whole show. On the one hand you couldn't trust
+him, and on the other it wouldn't do to offend him so long as there
+was a chance of his getting news of the girl. Judson could only
+temporize, pleading his lack of influence with the bunch who were
+getting up the company. At the same time he would do his utmost to
+work Gorry in, on the tacit understanding that nothing would be done
+for nothing.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allerton too had breakfasted late, at the New Netherlands Club, and
+was now with Miss Barbara Walbrook, who received him in the same room,
+and wearing the same hydrangea-colored robe, as on the previous
+morning. He had called her up from the Club, asking to be allowed to
+come once more at this unconventional hour in order to communicate
+good news.
+
+"She's willing to do anything," he stated at once, making the
+announcement with the glee of evident relief. "In fact, it was by pure
+main force that I kept her from running away from the house this
+morning."
+
+He was dashed that she did not take these tidings with his own
+buoyancy. "What made you stop her?" she asked, in some wonder. "Sit
+down, Rash. Tell me the whole thing."
+
+Though she took a chair he was unable to do so. His excitement now was
+over the ease with which the difficulty was going to be met. He could
+only talk about it in a standing position, leaning on the mantelpiece,
+or stroking the head of the Manship terra cotta child, while she gazed
+up at him, nervously beating her left palm with the black and gold
+fringe of her girdle.
+
+"I stopped her because--well, because it wouldn't have done."
+
+"Why wouldn't it have done? I should think that it's just what would
+have done."
+
+"Let her slip away penniless, and--and without friends?"
+
+"She'd be no more penniless and without friends than she was
+when--when you--" she sought for the right word--"when you picked her
+up."
+
+"No, of course not; only now the--the situation is different."
+
+"I don't see that it is--much. Besides, if you were to let her run
+away first, so that you get--whatever the law wants you to get, you
+could see that she wasn't penniless and without friends afterwards.
+Most likely that's what she was expecting."
+
+His countenance fell. "I--I don't think so."
+
+"Oh, you wouldn't think so as long as she could bamboozle you. I was
+simply thinking of your getting what she probably wants to give
+you--for a price."
+
+"I don't think you do her justice, Barbe. If you'd seen her----"
+
+"Very well; I shall see her. But seeing her won't make any difference
+in my opinion."
+
+"She'll not strike you as anything wonderful of course; but I know
+she's as straight as they make 'em. And so long as she is----"
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Why, then, it seems to me, we must be straight on our side."
+
+"We'll be straight enough if we pay her her price."
+
+"There's more to it than that."
+
+"Oh, there is? Then how much more?"
+
+"I don't know that I can explain it." He lifted one of the Stiegel
+candlesticks and put it back in its place. "I simply feel that we
+can't--that we can't let all the magnanimity be on her side. If she
+plays high, we've got to play higher."
+
+"I see. So she's got you there, has she?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't be disagreeable about it, Barbe."
+
+"My dear Rash," she expostulated, "it isn't being disagreeable to have
+common sense. It's all the more necessary for me not to abnegate that,
+for the simple reason that you do."
+
+He hurled himself to the other end of the mantelpiece, picking up the
+second candlestick and putting it down with force. "It's surely not
+abnegating common sense just to--to recognize honesty."
+
+"Please don't fiddle with those candlesticks. They're the rarest
+American workmanship, and if you were to break one of them Aunt Marion
+would kill me. I'll feel safer about you if you sit down."
+
+"All right. I'll sit down." He drew to him a small frail chair,
+sitting astride on it. "Only please don't fidget me."
+
+"Would you mind taking _that_ chair?" She pointed to something solid
+and masculine by Phyffe. "That little thing is one of Aunt Marion's
+pet pieces of old Dutch colonial. If anything were to happen to
+it--But you were talking about recognizing honesty," she continued, as
+he moved obediently. "That's exactly what I should like you to do,
+Rash, dear--with your eyes open. If I'm not looking anyone can pull
+the wool over them, whether it's this girl or someone else."
+
+"In other words I'm a fool, as you were good enough to say----"
+
+"Oh, do forget that. I couldn't help saying it, as I think you ought
+to admit; but don't keep bringing it up every time I do my best to
+meet you pleasantly. I'm not going to quarrel with you any more, Rash.
+I've made a vow to that effect and I'm going to keep it. But if I'm to
+keep it on my side you mustn't badger me on yours. It doesn't do me
+any good, and it does yourself a lot of harm." Having delivered this
+homily she took a tone of brisk cheerfulness. "Now, you said over the
+phone that you were coming to tell me good news."
+
+"Well, that was it."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"That she was ready to do anything--even to disappear."
+
+"And you wouldn't let her."
+
+"That I couldn't let her--with nothing to show for it."
+
+"But she will have something to show for it--in the end. She knows
+that as well as I do. Do you suppose for a minute that she doesn't
+understand the kind of man she's dealing with?"
+
+"You mean that----?"
+
+"Rash, dear, no girl who knows as much as this girl knows could help
+seeing at a glance that she's got a pigeon to pluck, as the French
+say, and of course she means to pluck it. You can't blame her for
+that, being what she is; but for heaven's sake let her pluck it in her
+own way. Don't be a simpleton. Angels shouldn't rush in where fools
+would fear to tread--and you _are_ an angel, Rash, though I suppose
+I'm the only one in the world who sees it."
+
+"Thank you, Barbe. I know you feel kindly toward me, and that, as you
+say, you're the only one in the world who does. That's all right, I
+acknowledge it, and I'm grateful. What I don't like is to see you
+taking it for granted that this girl is merely playing a game----"
+
+"Rash, do you remember those two winters I worked in the Bleary Street
+Settlement? and do you remember that the third winter I said that I'd
+rather enlist in the Navy that go back to it again? You all thought
+that I was cynical and hard-hearted, but I'll tell you now what the
+trouble was. I went down there thinking I could teach those
+girls--that I could do them good--and raise them up--and have them
+call me blessed--and all that. Well, there wasn't one of them who
+hadn't forgotten more than I ever knew--who wasn't working me when I
+supposed she was hanging on my wisdom--who wasn't laughing at me
+behind my back when I was under the delusion that she was following my
+good example. And if you've got one of them on your hands she'll fool
+the eyes out of your head."
+
+"You think so," he said, drily. "Then I don't."
+
+"In that case there's no use discussing it any further."
+
+"There may be after you've seen her."
+
+"How can I see her?"
+
+"You can go to the house."
+
+"And tell her I know everything?"
+
+"If you like. You could say I told you in confidence--that you're an
+old friend of mine."
+
+"And nothing else?"
+
+"Since you only want to size her up I should think that would be
+enough."
+
+She nodded, slowly. "Yes, I think you're right. Better not give
+anything away we can keep to ourselves. Now tell me what happened this
+morning. You haven't done it yet."
+
+He told her everything--how he had been waked by hearing someone
+fumbling with the lock of the door, whether inside or outside the
+house he couldn't tell--how he had gone to the head of the stairs and
+switched on the lower hall light--how she had flung herself against
+the door as a little gray bird might dash itself against its cage in
+its passion to escape.
+
+"She staged it well, didn't she? She must have brains."
+
+"She has brains all right, but I don't think----"
+
+"She knew of course that if she made enough noise someone would come,
+and she'd get the credit for good intentions."
+
+"I really don't think, Barbe.... Now let me tell you. You'll _see_
+what she's like. I felt very much as you do. I was right on the jump.
+Got all worked up. Would have gone clean off the hooks if----"
+
+There followed the narrative of his loss of temper, of his wild talk,
+of her clever strategy in counting ten--"just like a cold douche it
+was"--and the faint turn he so often had after spells of emotion. To
+convince Miss Walbrook of the queer little thing's ingenuousness he
+told how she had made him lie down on the library couch, covered him
+up, rubbed his brow with Florida water, and induced the best sleep he
+had had in months.
+
+She surprised him by springing to her feet, her arms outspread. "You
+great big idiot! Really there's no other name for you!"
+
+He gazed up at her in amazement. "What's the matter now?"
+
+Flinging her hands about she made inarticulate sounds of exasperation
+beyond words.
+
+"There, there; that'll do," she threw off, when he jumped to her side,
+to calm her by taking her in his arms. "_I'm_ not off the hooks. _I_
+don't want anyone to rub Florida water on my brow--and hold my
+hand--and cradle me to sleep----"
+
+"She didn't," he exclaimed, with indignation. "She never touched my
+hand. She just----"
+
+"Oh, I know what she did--and of course I'm grateful. I'm delighted
+that she was there to do it--_delighted._ I quite see now why you
+couldn't let her go, when you knew your fit was coming on. I've seen
+you pretty bad, but I've never seen you as bad as that; and I must say
+I never should have thought of counting ten as a cure for it."
+
+"Well, _she_ did."
+
+"Quite so! And if I were you I'd never go anywhere without her. I'd
+keep her on hand in case I took a turn----"
+
+He was looking more and more reproachful. "I must say, Barbe, I don't
+think you're very reasonable."
+
+She pushed him from her with both hands against his shoulders. "Go
+away, for heaven's sake! You'll drive me crazy. I'm _not_ going to
+lose my temper with you. I'll never do it again. I've got you to bear
+with, and I'm going to bear with you. But go! No, go now! Don't stop
+to make explanations. You can do that later. I'll lay in a supply of
+Florida water and an afghan...."
+
+He went with that look on his face which a well meaning dog will wear
+when his good intentions are being misinterpreted. On his way to the
+office he kept saying to himself: "Well _I_ don't know what to do.
+Whatever I say she takes me up the wrong way. All I wanted was for her
+to understand that the little thing is a _good_ little thing...."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+While Allerton was making these reflections Steptoe was summoned to
+the telephone.
+
+"Is this you, Steptoe? I'm Miss Barbara Walbrook."
+
+Steptoe braced himself. In conversing with Miss Barbara Walbrook he
+always felt the need of inner strengthening. "Yes, Miss Walbrook?"
+
+"Mr. Allerton tells me you've a young woman at the house."
+
+"We 'ave a young lydy. Certainly, miss."
+
+"And Mr. Allerton has asked me to call on her."
+
+Steptoe's training as a servant permitted him no lapses of surprise.
+"Quite so, miss. And when was it you'd be likely to call?"
+
+"This afternoon about four-thirty. Perhaps you could arrange to have
+me see her alone."
+
+"Oh, there ain't likely to be no one 'ere, miss."
+
+"And another thing, Steptoe. Mr. Allerton has asked me just to call as
+an old friend of his. So you'll please not say to her that--well,
+anything about me. I'm sure you understand."
+
+Steptoe replied that he did understand, and having put up the receiver
+he pondered.
+
+What could it mean? What could be back of it? How would this
+unsophisticated girl meet so skilful an antagonist. That Miss Walbrook
+was coming as an antagonist he had no doubt. In his own occasional
+meetings with her she had always been a superior, a commander, to whom
+even he, 'Enery Steptoe, had been a servitor requiring no further
+consideration. With so gentle an opponent as madam she would order and
+be obeyed.
+
+At the same time he could not alarm madam, or allow her to shirk the
+encounter. She had that in her, he was sure, which couldn't but win
+out, however much she might be at a disadvantage. His part would be to
+reduce her disadvantages to a minimum, allowing her strong points to
+tell. Her strong points, he reckoned, were innocence, an absence of
+self-consciousness, and, to the worldly-wise, a disconcerting candor.
+Steptoe analyzed in the spirit and not verbally; but he analyzed.
+
+For Letty the morning had been feverish, chiefly because of her
+uncertainty. Was it the wish of the prince that she should go, or was
+it not? If it was his wish, why had he not let her? If, on the other
+hand, he desired her to stay, what did he mean to do with her? He had
+passed her on the way out to breakfast at the Club--she had been
+standing in the hall--and he had smiled.
+
+What was the significance of that smile? She sat down in the library
+to think. She sat down in the chair she had occupied while he lay on
+the couch, and reconstructed that scene which now, for all her life,
+would thrill her with emotional memories. There he had lain, his head
+on the very indentation which the cushion still bore, his feet here,
+where she had pressed her lips to them. She had actually had her hand
+on his brow, she had smoothed back his hair, and had hardly noted at
+the time that such was her extraordinary privilege.
+
+She came back to the fact that he had smiled at her. It would have
+been an enchanting smile from anyone, but coming from a prince it had
+all the romantic effulgence with which princes' smiles are infused.
+How much of that romantic effulgence came automatically from the
+prince because he was a prince, and how much of it was inspired by
+herself? Was any of it inspired by herself? When all was said and done
+this last was the great question.
+
+It brought her where so many things brought her, to the dream of love
+at first sight. Could it have happened to him as it had happened to
+herself? It was so much in her mental order of things that she was far
+from considering it impossible. Improbable, yes; she would admit as
+much as that; but impossible, no! To be sure she had been in the old
+gray rag; but Steptoe had informed her that there were kings who went
+about falling in love with beggar-maids. She would have loved being
+one of those beggar-maids; and after all, was she not?
+
+True, there was the other girl; but Letty found it hard to see her as
+a reality. Besides, she had, in appearance at least, treated him
+badly. Might it not easily have come about that she, Letty, had caught
+his heart in the rebound? She quite understood that if the prince
+_had_ fallen in love with her at first sight, there might be
+convulsion in his inner self without, as yet, a comprehension on his
+part of the nature of his passion.
+
+She had reached this point when Steptoe entered the library on one of
+his endless tasks of re-arranging that which seemed to be in
+sufficiently good order. Putting the big desk to rights he said over
+his shoulder:
+
+"Perhaps I'd better tell madam as she's to 'ave a caller this
+afternoon."
+
+Letty sprang up in alarm. "A--_what_?"
+
+"A lydy what'll myke a call. Oh, madam don't need to be afryde. She's
+an old friend o' Mr. Rash's, and'll want, no doubt, to be a friend o'
+madam too."
+
+"But what does she know about me?"
+
+"Mr. Rash must 'a told 'er. She spoke to me just now on the telephone,
+and seemed to know everything. She said she'd be 'ere this afternoon
+about four-thirty, if madam'd be so good as to give 'er a cup o'
+tea."
+
+"Me?"
+
+Having invented the cup of tea for his own purpose Steptoe went on to
+explain further. "It's what the 'igh lydies mostly gives each other
+about 'alf past four or five o'clock, and madam couldn't homit it
+without seemin' as if she didn't know what's what. It'll be very
+important for madam to tyke 'er position from the start. If the lydy
+is comin' friendly like she'd be 'urt if madam wasn't friendly too."
+
+Letty had seen the giving and taking of tea in more than one scene in
+the movies, and had also, from a discreet corner, witnessed the
+enacting of it right in the "set" on the studio lot. She remembered
+one time in particular when Luciline Lynch, the star in _Our Crimson
+Sins_, had driven Frank Redgar, the director, almost out of his senses
+by her inability to get the right turn of the wrist. Letty, too, had
+been almost out of her senses with the longing to be in Luciline
+Lynch's place, to do the thing in what was obviously the way. But now
+that she was confronted with the opportunity in real life she saw the
+situation otherwise.
+
+"And I won't be able to talk right," was the difficulty she raised
+next.
+
+"That'll be a chance for madam to listen and ketch on. She's horfly
+quick, madam is, and by listenin' to Miss Walbrook, that's the lydy's
+nyme, and listenin' to 'erself--" He broke off to emphasize this line
+of suggestion--"it's listenin' to 'erself that'll 'elp madam most.
+It's a thing as 'ardly no one does. If they did they'd be 'orrified at
+their squawky voices and bad pernounciation. If I didn't listen to
+myself, why, I'd talk as bad as anyone, but--Well, as I sye, this'll
+give madam a chance. All the time what Miss Walbrook is speakin' madam
+can be listenin' to 'er and listenin' to 'erself too, and if she mykes
+mistykes this time she'll myke fewer the next."
+
+Letty was pondering these hints as he continued.
+
+"Now if madam wouldn't think me steppin' out of my plyce I'd suggest
+that me and 'er 'as a little tea of our own like--right now--in the
+drorin' room--and I'll be Miss Walbrook--and William'll be
+William--and madam'll be madam--and we'll get it letter-perfect before
+'and, just as with Mary Ann Courage and Jyne."
+
+No sooner said than done. Letty was already wearing the white filmy
+thing with the copper-sash, buried with solemn rites on the previous
+night, but disinterred that morning, which did very well as a
+tea-gown. Steptoe placed her in the corner of the sofa which the lyte
+Mrs. Allerton had generally occupied when "receivin' company", and
+William brought in the tea-equipage on a gorgeous silver tray.
+
+Before he did this it had been necessary to school William to his
+part, which, to do him justice, he carried out with becoming gravity.
+Any reserves he might have felt were expressed to Golightly by a wink
+behind Steptoe's back before he left the kitchen. The wink was the
+more expressive owing to the fact that Golightly and William had
+already summed up the old fellow as "balmy on the bean," while their
+part was to humor him. Plain as a bursting shell seemed to William
+Miss Gravely's position in the household, and Steptoe's chivalry
+toward her an eccentricity which a sense of humor could enjoy.
+Otherwise they justified his reading of the fundamental non-morality
+of men, in bringing no condemnation to bear on anyone concerned. Being
+themselves two almost incapacitated heroes, with jobs likely to prove
+"soft," it was wise, they felt, to enter into Steptoe's comedy. At
+half past ten in the morning, therefore, Golightly prepared tea and
+buttered toast, while William arranged the tea-tray with those
+over-magnificent appointments which had been "the lyte Mrs. Allerton's
+tyste."
+
+From her corner of the sofa Letty heard the butler announce, in a
+voice stately but not stentorian: "Miss Barbara Walbrook."
+
+He was so near the door that to step out and step in again was the
+work of a second. In stepping in again he trod daintily, wriggling the
+back part of his person, better to simulate the feminine. In order
+that Letty should nowhere be caught unaware he put out his hand
+languidly, back upward, as princesses do when they expect it to be
+kissed.
+
+"So delighted to find you at 'ome, Mrs. Allerton. It's such a very
+fine dye I was sure as you'd be out."
+
+Rising from her corner Letty shook the relaxed hand as she might have
+shaken a dog's tail. "Very pleased to meet you."
+
+From the histrionic Steptoe lapsed at once into the critical. "I think
+if madam was to sye, 'So glad to be _at_ 'ome, Miss Walbrook; do let
+me ring for tea,' it'd be more like the lyte Mrs. Allerton."
+
+Obediently Letty repeated this formula, had the bell pointed out to
+her, and rang. The ladies having seated themselves, Miss Walbrook
+continued to improvise on the subject of the weather.
+
+"Some o' these October dyes'll be just like summer time! and then
+agyne there'll be a nip in the wind as'll fairly freeze you. A good
+time o' year to get out your furs, and I'm sure I 'ope as 'ow the
+moths 'aven't gone and got at 'em. Horfly nasty things them moths.
+They sye as everything in the world 'as a use; but I'm sure I don't
+see what use there is for moths, eatin' 'oles in the seats of
+gentlemen's trousers, no matter what you do to keep the coat-closet
+aired--and everything like that. What do you sye, Mrs. Allerton?"
+
+Letty was relieved of the necessity of answering by the entrance of
+William with the tray, after which her task became easier. Used to
+making "a good cup of tea" in an ordinary way, the doing it with this
+formal ceremoniousness was only a matter of revision. As if it was
+yesterday she recalled the instructions given to Luciline Lynch,
+"Lemon?--cream?--one lump?--two lumps?" so that Miss Walbrook was
+startled by her readiness. She, Miss Walbrook, was betrayed, in fact,
+into some confusion of personality, stating that she would have cream
+and no sugar, and that furthermore Englishmen like herself 'ardly ever
+took lemon in their tea, and in her opinion no one ever did to whom
+the tea-drinking 'abit was 'abitual.
+
+"It's a question of tyste," Miss Walbrook continued, sipping with a
+soft siffling noise in the way he considered to be ladylike. "Them
+that 'as drunk tea with their mother's milk, as you might sye, 'll
+tyke cream and sugar, one or both; but them that 'as picked up the
+'abit in lyter life 'll often condescend to lemon."
+
+What the rehearsal did for Letty was to make the mechanical task
+familiar, while she concentrated her attention on Miss Walbrook.
+
+It has to be admitted that to Barbara Walbrook Letty was a shock.
+Having worked for two years in the Bleary Street Settlement she had
+her preconceived ideas of what she was to find, and she found
+something so different that her first consciousness was that of being
+"sold."
+
+Steptoe had received her at the door, and having ushered her into the
+drawing-room announced, "Miss Barbara Walbrook," as if she had been
+calling on a duchess. From the semi-obscurity of the back drawing-room
+a small lithe figure came forward a step or two. The small lithe
+figure was wearing a tea-gown of which so practiced an eye as Miss
+Walbrook's could not but estimate the provenance and value, while a
+sweet voice said:
+
+"I'm so glad to be at home, Miss Walbrook. Do let me ring for tea."
+
+Before a protest could be voiced the bell had been rung, so that Miss
+Walbrook found herself sitting in the chair Steptoe had used in the
+morning, and listening to her hostess as you listen to people in a
+dream.
+
+"Beautiful weather for October, isn't it? Some of these October
+days'll be just like summer time. And then again there'll be a nip in
+the wind that'll fairly freeze you. A good time of year to get out
+your furs, isn't it? and I'm sure I hope the moths ain't--haven't--got
+at them. Awfully nasty things moths----"
+
+Letty's further efforts were interrupted by William bearing the tray
+as he had borne it in the morning, and in the minutes of silence while
+he placed it Miss Walbrook could go through the mental process known
+as pulling oneself together.
+
+But she couldn't pull herself together without a sense of outrage. She
+had expected to feel shame, vicariously for Rash; she had not expected
+to be asked to take part in a horrible bit of play-acting. This
+dressing-up; this mock hospitality; this desecration of the things
+which "dear Mrs. Allerton" had used; this mingling of ignorance and
+pretentiousness, inspired a rage prompting her to fling the back of
+her hand at the ridiculous creature's face. She couldn't do that, of
+course. She couldn't even express herself as she felt. She had come on
+a mission, and she must carry out that mission; and to carry out the
+mission she must be as suave as her indignation would allow of. _She_
+was morally the mistress of this house. Rash and all Rash owned
+belonged to _her_. To see this strumpet sitting in her place....
+
+It did nothing to calm her that while she was pressing Rash's ring
+into her flesh, beneath her glove, this vile thing was wearing a plain
+gold band, just as if she was married. She could understand that if
+they had absurdly walked through an absurd ceremony the absurd
+minister who performed it might have insisted on this absurd symbol;
+but it should have been snatched from the creature's hand the minute
+the business was ended. They owed that to _her_. _Hers_ was the only
+claim Rash had to consider, and to allow this farce to be enacted
+beneath his roof....
+
+But she remembered that Letty didn't know who she was, or why she had
+come, or the degree to which she, Barbara Walbrook, saw through this
+foolery.
+
+Letty repeated her little formula: "Lemon?--cream?--one lump?--two
+lumps?" though before she reached the end of it her voice began to
+fail. Catching the hostility in the other woman's bearing, she felt it
+the more acutely because in style, dress, and carriage this was the
+model she would have chosen for herself.
+
+Miss Walbrook waved hospitality aside. "Thank you, no; nothing in the
+way of tea." She nodded over her shoulder towards William's retreating
+form. "Who's that man?"
+
+Her tone was that of a person with the right to inquire. Letty didn't
+question that right, knowing the extent to which she herself was an
+usurper. "His name is William."
+
+"How did he come here?"
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+"Where are Nettie and Jane?"
+
+"They've--they've left."
+
+"Left? Why?"
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+"And has Mrs. Courage left too?"
+
+Letty nodded, the damask flush flooding her cheeks darkly.
+
+"When? Since--since you came?"
+
+Letty nodded again. She knew now that this was the bar of social
+judgment of which she had been afraid.
+
+The social judge continued. "That must be very hard on Mr. Allerton."
+
+Letty bowed her head. "I suppose it is."
+
+"He's not used to new people about him, and it's not good for him. I
+don't know whether you've seen enough of him to know that he's
+something of an invalid."
+
+"I know--" she touched her forehead--"that he's sick up here."
+
+"Oh, do you? Then I shouldn't have thought that you'd have--" but she
+dropped this line to take up another. "Yes, he's always been so. When
+he was a boy they were afraid he might be epileptic; and though he
+never was as bad as that he's always needed to be taken care of. He
+can do very wild and foolish things as--as you've discovered for
+yourself."
+
+Letty felt herself now a little shameful lump of misery. This woman
+was so experienced, so right. She spoke with a decision and an
+authority which made love at first sight a fancy to blush at. Letty
+could say nothing because there was nothing to say, and meanwhile the
+determined voice went on.
+
+"It's terrible for a man like him to make such a mistake, because
+being what he is he can't grapple with it as a stronger or a coarser
+man would do."
+
+But here Letty saw something that might be faintly pleaded in her own
+defence. "He says he wouldn't ha' made the mistake if that--that other
+girl hadn't been crazy."
+
+Barbara drew herself up. "Did he--did he say that?"
+
+"He said something like it. He said she went off the hooks, just like
+he did himself." She raised her eyes. "Do you know her, Miss
+Walbrook?"
+
+"Yes, I know her."
+
+"She must be an awful fool."
+
+Barbara prayed for patience. "What--what makes you say so?"
+
+"Oh, just what _he's_ said."
+
+"And what has he said? Has he talked about her to _you_?"
+
+"He hasn't talked about her. He's just--just let things out."
+
+"What sort of things?"
+
+"Only that sort." She added, as if to herself: "I don't believe he
+thinks much of her."
+
+Barbara's self-control was miraculous. "I've understood that he was
+very much in love with her."
+
+"Well, perhaps he is." Letty's little movement of the shoulders hinted
+that an expert wouldn't be of this opinion. "He may think he is,
+anyhow."
+
+"But if he thinks he is----"
+
+Letty's eyes rested on her visitor with their compelling candor. "I
+don't believe men know much about love, do you, Miss Walbrook?"
+
+"It depends. All men haven't had as much experience of it as I suppose
+you've had----"
+
+"Oh, I haven't had any." The candor of the eyes was now in the whole
+of the truthful face. "Nobody was ever in love with me--never. I never
+had a fella--nor nothing."
+
+In spite of herself Barbara believed this. She couldn't help herself.
+She could hear Rash saying that whatever else was wrong in the
+ridiculous business the girl herself was straight. All the same the
+discussion was beneath her. It was beneath her to listen to opinions
+of herself coming from such a source. If Rash didn't "think much of
+her" there was something to "have out" with him, not with this little
+street-waif dressed up with this ludicrous mummery. The sooner she
+ended the business on which she had come the sooner she would get a
+legitimate outlet for the passion of jealousy and rage consuming her.
+
+"But we're wandering away from my errand. I won't pretend that I've
+come of my own accord. I'm a very old friend of Mr. Allerton's, and
+he's asked me--or practically asked me--to come and find out----"
+
+For what she was to come and find out she lacked for a minute the
+right word, and so held up the sentence.
+
+"What I'd take to let him off?"
+
+The form of expression was so crude that once more Barbara was
+startled. "Well, that's what it would come to."
+
+"But I've told him already that--that I want to let him off anyhow."
+
+"Yes? And on what terms?"
+
+"I don't want any terms."
+
+"Oh, but there must be _terms_. He couldn't let you do it----"
+
+"He could let me do it for _him_, couldn't he? I'd go through fire, if
+it'd make him a bit more comfortable than he is."
+
+Barbara could not believe her ears. "Do you want me to understand
+that----?"
+
+"That I'll do whatever will make him happy just to _make_ him happy?
+Yes. That's it. He didn't need to send no one--to send anyone--to ask
+me, because I've told him so already. He wants me to get out. Well,
+I'm ready to get out. He wants me to go to the bad. Well, I'm
+ready----"
+
+"Yes; he understands all that. But, don't you see? a man in his
+position couldn't take such a sacrifice from a girl in yours----"
+
+"Unless he pays me for it in cash."
+
+"That's putting it in a nutshell. If you owned a house, for instance,
+and I wanted it, I'd buy it from you and pay you for it; but I
+couldn't take it as a gift, no matter how liberal you were nor how
+much I needed it."
+
+"I can see that about a house; but your own self is different. I could
+sell a house when I couldn't sell--myself."
+
+"Oh, but would you call that selling yourself?"
+
+"It'd be selling myself--the way I look at it. When I'm so ready to do
+what he wants I can't see why he don't let me." She added, tearfully:
+"Did he tell you about this morning?"
+
+She nodded. "Yes, he told me about that."
+
+"Well, I would have gone then if--if I'd known how to work the door."
+
+"Oh, that's easy enough."
+
+"Do you know?"
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"Will you show me?"
+
+Miss Walbrook rose. "It's so simple." She continued, as they went
+toward the door: "You see, Mr. Allerton's mother always kept a lot of
+valuable jewelry in the house, and she was afraid of burglars. She had
+the most wonderful pearls. I suppose Mr. Allerton has them still,
+locked away in some bank. Burglars would never come in by the front
+door, my aunt used to tell her, but--" They reached the door itself.
+"Now, you see, there's a common lock, a bolt, and a chain----"
+
+Letty explained that she had discovered them already.
+
+"But, you see these two little brass knobs over here? That's the
+trick. You push this one this way, and that one that way, and the door
+is locked with an extra double lock, which hardly anyone would
+suspect. See?"
+
+She shook the door which resisted as it had resisted Letty in the
+morning.
+
+"Now! You push that one this way, and this one that way--and there you
+are!"
+
+She opened the door to show how easily the thing could be done; and
+the door being open she passed out. She had not intended to go in
+this way; but, after all, was not her mission accomplished? It was
+nothing to her whether this girl accepted money, or whether she did
+not. The one thing essential was that she should take herself away;
+and if she was sincere in what she said she had now the means of doing
+it. Without troubling herself to take her leave Miss Walbrook went
+down the steps.
+
+Before turning toward Fifth Avenue she glanced back. Letty was
+standing in the open doorway, her flaming eyes wide, her expression
+puzzled and wounded. "It's nothing to me," Barbara repeated to herself
+firmly; but because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady,
+almost before she was a woman, she smiled faintly, with a distant, and
+yet not discourteous, inclination of the head.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+It was because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, that
+by the time she had walked the few steps into Fifth Avenue Miss
+Walbrook already felt the inner reproach of having done something
+mean. To do anything mean was so strange to her that she didn't at
+first recognize the sensation. She only found herself repeating two
+words, and repeating them uneasily: "_Noblesse oblige!_"
+
+Nevertheless, on the principle that all's fair in love and war, she
+fought this off. "Either she must go or I must." That she herself
+should go was not to be considered; therefore the other must go, and
+by the shortest way. The shortest way was the way she had shown her,
+and which the girl herself was desirous to take. There was no more
+than that to the situation.
+
+There was no more than that to the situation unless it was that the
+strong was taking a poor advantage of the weak. But then, why
+shouldn't the strong take any advantage it possessed? What otherwise
+was the use of being strong? The strong prevailed, and the weak went
+under. That was the law of life. To suppose that the weak must prevail
+because it was weak was sheer sentimentality. All the same, those two
+inconvenient words kept dinning in her ears: "_Noblesse oblige!_"
+
+She began to question the honesty which in Letty's presence had
+convinced her. It was probably not honesty at all. She had known
+girls in the Bleary Street Settlement who could persuade her that
+black was white, but who had proved on further knowledge to be lying
+all round the compass. When it wasn't lying it was bluff. It was
+possible that Letty was only bluffing, that in her pretense at
+magnanimity she was simply scheming for a bigger price. In that case
+she, Barbara, had called the bluff very skilfully. She had put her in
+a position in which she could be taken at her word. Since she was
+ready to go, she could go. Since she was ready to go to the bad....
+
+Miss Walbrook was not prim. She knew too much of the world to be
+easily shocked, in the old conventional sense. Besides, her Bleary
+Street work had brought her into contact with girls who had gone to
+the bad, and she had not found them different from other girls. If she
+hadn't known....
+
+She could contemplate without horror, therefore, Letty's taking
+desperate steps--if indeed she hadn't taken them long ago--and yet she
+herself didn't want to be involved in the proceeding. It was one thing
+to view an unfortunate situation from which you stood detached, and
+another to be in a certain sense the cause of it. She would not really
+be the cause of it, whatever the girl did, since she, the girl, was a
+free agent, and of an age to know her own mind. Moreover, the secret
+of the door was one which she couldn't help finding out in any case.
+She, Miss Walbrook, could dismiss these scruples; and yet there was
+that uncomfortable sing-song humming through her brain: "_Noblesse
+oblige! Noblesse oblige!_"
+
+"I must get rid of it," she said to herself, as Wildgoose admitted
+her. "I've got to be on the safe side. I can't have it on my mind."
+
+Going to the telephone before she had so much as taken off her gloves
+she was answered by Steptoe. "This is Miss Walbrook again, Steptoe. I
+should like to speak to--to the young woman."
+
+Steptoe who had found Letty crying after Miss Walbrook's departure
+answered with resentful politeness. "I'll speak to Mrs. Allerton,
+miss. She _may_ be aible to come to the telephone."
+
+"Ye-es?" came later, in a feeble, teary voice.
+
+"This is Miss Walbrook again. I'm sorry to trouble you the second
+time."
+
+"Oh, that doesn't matter."
+
+"I merely wanted to say, what perhaps I should have said before I
+left, that I hope you won't--won't _use_ the information I gave you as
+I was leaving--at any rate not at once."
+
+"Do you mean the door?"
+
+"Exactly. I was afraid after I came away that you might do something
+in a hurry----"
+
+"It'll have to be in a hurry if I do it at all."
+
+"Oh, I don't see that. In any case, I'd--I'd think it over. Perhaps we
+could have another talk about it, and then----"
+
+Something was said which sounded like a faint, "Very well," so that
+Barbara put up the receiver.
+
+Her conscience relieved she could open the dams keeping back the
+fiercer tides of her anger. Rash had talked about her to this girl! He
+had given her to understand that she was a fool! He had allowed it to
+appear that "he didn't think much of her!" No matter what he had
+said, the girl had been able to make these inferences. What was more,
+these inferences might be true. Perhaps he _didn't_ think much of her!
+Perhaps he only _thought_ he was in love with her! The idea was so
+terrible that it stilled her, as approaching seismic storm will still
+the elements. She moved about the drawing-room, taking off her gloves,
+her veil, her hat, and laying them together on a table, as if she was
+afraid to make a sound. She was standing beside that table, not
+knowing what to do next, or where to go, when Wildgoose came to the
+door to announce, "Mr. Allerton."
+
+"I've seen her." Without other form of greeting, or moving from beside
+the table, she picked up her gloves, threw them down again, picked
+them up again, threw them down again, with the nervous action of the
+hands which betrayed suppressed excitement. "I didn't believe
+her--quite."
+
+"But you didn't disbelieve her--wholly?"
+
+"It's a difficult case."
+
+"I've got you into an awful scrape, Barbe."
+
+She threw down the gloves with special vigor. "Oh, don't begin on
+that. The scrape's there. What we have to find is the way out."
+
+"Well, do you see it any more clearly?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+He came near to her. "I see this--that I can't let her throw herself
+away for me. I've been thinking it over, and I want to ask your
+opinion of this plan. Let's sit down."
+
+She thought his plan the maddest that was ever proposed, and yet she
+accepted it. She accepted it because she was suspicious, jealous, and
+unhappy. "It'll give me the chance to watch--and _see_," she said to
+herself, as he talked.
+
+In his opinion Letty couldn't take their point of view because she was
+so inexperienced. It seemed to her a simple thing to go away, leaving
+them with the responsibilities of her future on their consciences; and
+it would not seem other than a simple thing till she saw life more as
+they did. To bring her to this degree of culture they must be subtle
+with her, and patient. They mustn't rush things. They mustn't let her
+rush them. To end the situation in such a way as to make for happiness
+they must end it at a point where all would be best for all concerned.
+For Barbara and himself nothing would be best which was not also best
+for the girl. What would be best for the girl would be some degree of
+education, of knowledge of the world, so that she might go back to the
+life whence they had plucked her less likely to be a prey to the
+vicious. In that case, if they supplied her with a little income she
+would know what to do with it, and would perhaps marry some man in her
+own class able to take care of her.
+
+Barbara's impulse was to cry out: "That's the most preposterous
+suggestion I ever heard of in my life!" But she controlled this quite
+reasonable prompting because another voice said to her: "This will
+give you the opportunity to keep an eye on them. If he's not true in
+his love for you--if there _is_ an infatuation on his part for this
+common and vulgar creature--you'll be able to detect it." Jealousy
+loving to suffer she was willing to inflict torture on herself for the
+sake of catching him in disloyalty.
+
+Expecting a storm, and bringing out what he considered his wise
+proposals with great embarrassment, Allerton was surprised and pleased
+at the sympathetic calm in which she received them.
+
+"So that you'd suggest----?"
+
+"Our keeping her on a while longer, and making friends with her. I'd
+like it tremendously if you'd be a friend to her, because you could do
+more for her than anyone."
+
+"More than you?"
+
+"Oh, I'd do my bit too," he assured her, innocently. "I could put her
+up to a lot of things, seeing her every day as I should. But you're
+the one I should really count on."
+
+Because the words hurt her more than any she could utter; she said,
+quietly: "I suppose you remember sometimes that after all she's your
+wife."
+
+He sprang to his feet. Knowing that he did at times remember it he
+tried to deny it. "No, I don't. She's not. I don't admit it. I don't
+acknowledge it. If you care anything about me, Barbe, you'll never say
+that again."
+
+He came and knelt beside her, taking her hands and kissing them.
+Laying his head in her lap, he begged to be caressed, as if he had
+been a dog.
+
+Nevertheless by half past nine that evening he was at home, sitting by
+the fireside with Letty, and beginning his special part in the great
+experiment.
+
+"She's not my wife," he kept repeating to himself poignantly, as
+he walked up the Avenue from the Club; "she's not--she's _not_. But
+she _is_ a poor child toward whom I've undertaken grave
+responsibilities."
+
+Because the responsibilities were grave, and she was a poor child, his
+attitude toward her began to be paternal. It was the more freely
+paternal because Barbe approved of what he was undertaking. Had she
+disapproved he might have undertaken it all the same, but he couldn't
+have done it with this whole-heartedness. He would have been haunted
+by the fear of her displeasure; whereas now he could let himself go.
+
+"We don't want to keep you a prisoner, or detain you against your
+will," he said, with regard to the incident of the morning, "but if
+you'll stay with us a little longer, I think we can convince you of
+our good intentions."
+
+"Who's--we?"
+
+She shot the question at him, as she lay back in her chair, the red
+book in her lap. He smiled inwardly at the ready pertinence with which
+she went to a point he didn't care to discuss.
+
+"Well, then, suppose I said--I? That'll do, won't it?"
+
+She shot another question, her flaming eyes half veiled. "How long
+would you want me to stay?"
+
+"Suppose we didn't fix a time? Suppose we just left it--like that?"
+
+The question rose to her lips: "But in the end I'm to go?" only, on
+second thoughts she repressed it. She preferred that the situation
+should be left "like that," since it meant that she was not at once to
+be separated from the prince. The fact that she was legally the
+prince's wife had as little reality to her as to him. Could she have
+had what she yearned for law or no law would have been the same to
+her. But since she couldn't have that, it was much that he should
+come like this and sit with her by the fire in the evening.
+
+He leaned forward and took the book from her lap. "What are you
+reading? Oh, this! I haven't looked at it for years." He glanced at
+the title. "_The Little Mermaid!_ That used to be my favorite. It
+still is. When I was in Copenhagen I went to see the little bronze
+mermaid sitting on a rock on the shore. It's a memorial to Hans
+Andersen. She's quite startling for a minute--till you know what it
+is. Where are you at?"
+
+Pointing out the line at which she had stopped her hand touched his,
+but all the consciousness of the accident was on her side. He seemed
+to notice nothing, beginning to read aloud to her, with no suspicion
+that sentiment existed.
+
+"Many an evening and morning she rose to the place where she had left
+the prince. She watched the fruits in the garden ripen and fall; she
+saw the snow melt from the high mountains; but the prince she never
+saw, and she came home sadder than ever. Her one consolation was to
+sit in her little garden, with her arms clasped round the marble
+statue which was like the prince----"
+
+"That'd be me," Letty whispered to herself; "my arms clasped round a
+marble statue--like my prince--but only a marble statue."
+
+"Her flowers were neglected," Allerton read on, "and grew wild in a
+luxuriant tangle of stem and blossom, reaching the branches of the
+willow-tree, and making the whole place dark and dim. At last she
+could bear it no longer and she told one of her sisters----"
+
+"I wouldn't tell my sister, if I had one," Letty assured herself. "I'd
+never tell no one. It's more like my own secret when I keep it to
+myself. Nobody'll ever know--not even him."
+
+"The other sisters learned the story then, but they told it to no one
+but a few other mermaids, who told it to their intimate friends. One
+of these friends knew who the prince was, and told the princess where
+he came from and where his kingdom lay. Now she knew where he lived;
+and many a night she spent there, floating on the water. She ventured
+nearer to the land than any of her sisters had done. She swam up the
+narrow lagoon, under the carved marble balcony; and there she sat and
+watched the prince when he thought himself alone in the moonlight. She
+remembered how his head had rested on her breast, and how she had
+kissed his brow; but he would never know, and could not even dream of
+her."
+
+Letty had not kissed her prince's brow, but she had kissed his feet;
+but he would never know that, and would dream of her no more than this
+other prince of the little thing who loved him.
+
+Allerton continued to read on, partly because the old tale came back
+to him with its enchanting loveliness, partly because reading aloud
+would be a feature of his educational scheme, and partly because it
+soothed him to be doing it. He could never read to Barbara. Once, when
+he tried it, the sound of his voice and the monotony of his cadences,
+so got on her nerves that she stopped him in the middle of a word.
+But this girl with her uncritical mind, and her gratitude for small
+bits of kindliness, gave him confidence in himself by her rapt way of
+listening.
+
+She did listen raptly, since a prince's reading must always be more
+arresting than that of ordinary mortals, and also because, both
+consciously and subconsciously, she was taking his pronunciation as a
+standard.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+And just at this minute her name was under discussion in a brilliant
+gathering at The Hindoo Lantern, in another quarter of New York.
+
+If you know The Hindoo Lantern you know how much it depends on
+atmosphere. Once a disused warehouse in a section of the city which
+commerce had forsaken, the enthusiasm for the dance which arose about
+1910, has made it a temple. It gains, too, by being a temple of the
+esoteric. The Hindoo Lantern is not everybody's lantern, and does not
+swing in the open vulgar street. You might live in New York a hundred
+years and unless you were one of the initiated and privileged, you
+might never know of its existence.
+
+You could not so much as approach it were it not first explained to
+you what you ought to do. You must pass through a tobacconist's, which
+from the street looks like any other tobacconist's, after which you
+traverse a yard, which looks like any other yard, except that it is
+bounded by a wall in which there is a small and unobtrusive door.
+Beside the small and unobtrusive door there hangs a bell-rope, of the
+ancient kind suggesting the convent or the Orient. The bell-rope
+pulls a bell; the bell clangs overhead; the door is opened cautiously
+by a Hindoo lad, or, as some say, a mulatto boy dressed as a Hindoo.
+If you are with a friend of the institution you will be admitted
+without more inspection; but should you be a stranger there will be a
+scrutiny of your passports. Assuming, however, that you go in, you
+will find a small courtyard, in which at last The Hindoo Lantern hangs
+mystic, suggestive, in oriental iron-work, and panels of colored
+glass.
+
+Having passed beneath this symbol you will enter an antechamber rich
+in the magic of the East. In a reverent obscurity you will find Buddha
+on the right, Vishnu on the left, with flowers set before the one,
+while incense burns before the other. Somewhere in the darkness an
+Oriental woman will be seated on the ground, twanging on a sarabar,
+and now and then crooning a chant of invitation to come and share in
+darksome rites. You will thus be "worked up" to a sense of the
+mysterious before you pass the third gate of privilege into the shrine
+itself.
+
+Here you will discover the large empty oval of floor, surrounded by
+little tables for segregation and refreshment, with which the past ten
+years have made us familiar. The place will be buzzing with the hum of
+voices, merry with duologues of laughter, and steaming with tobacco
+smoke. A jazz-band will strike up, coughing out the nauseated,
+retching intervals so stimulating to our feet, and two by two, in
+driblets, streamlets, and lastly in a volume, the guests will take the
+floor.
+
+In the way of "steps" all the latest will be on exhibition. You will
+see the cow-trot, the rabbit-jump, the broom-stick, the washerwoman's
+dip. Everyone who is anyone will be here, if not on one night then on
+another, in a jovial fraternity steeped in the spirit of democracy.
+Revelry will be sustained on lemonade and a resinous astringent known
+locally as beer, while a sense of doing the forbidden will be in the
+air. For commercial reasons it will be needful to keep it in the air,
+since in the proceedings themselves there will be nothing more occult,
+or more inciting to iniquity, than a kindergarten game.
+
+Hither Mr. Gorry Larrabin had brought Mademoiselle Odette Coucoul, to
+teach her the new dances. As a matter of fact, he had just led her
+back to their little table, inconspicuously placed in the front row,
+after putting her through the paces of the camel-step. Mademoiselle
+had found it entrancing, so much more novel in the motion than the
+antiquated valses she had danced in France. Mr. Larrabin had retreated
+like a camel walking backwards, while she had advanced like a camel
+going forwards. The art was in lifting the foot quite high, throwing
+it slightly backwards, and setting it down with a delicate
+deliberation, while you craned the neck before you with a shake of the
+Adam's apple. To incite you to produce this effect the jazz-band urged
+you onward with a sob, a gulp, a moan, an effect of strangulation,
+till finally it tore up the seat of your being as if you had been
+suddenly struck sea-sick.
+
+"Mon Dieu, but it is lofely," mademoiselle gurgled, laughing in her
+breathlessness. "It is terr-i-bul to call no one a camel--_un
+chameau_--in France; but here am I a--_chameau_!"
+
+Gorry took this with puzzled amusement. "What's the matter with
+calling anyone a camel? I don't see any harm in that."
+
+Mademoiselle hid her face in confusion. "Oh, but it is terr-i-bul,
+terr-i-bul! It is almost so worse as to call no one a--how you say zat
+word in Eenglish?--a cow, n'est ce pas?--_une vache_--and zat is the
+most bad name what you can call no one."
+
+Looking across the room Gorry was struck with an idea. "Well, there's
+a--what d'ye call it--_a vashe_--over there. See that guy with the
+girl with the cream-colored hair--fella with a big black mustache,
+like a brigand in a play? There's a _vashe_ all-righty; and yet I've
+got to keep in with him."
+
+As he explained his reasons for keeping in with the "vashe" in
+question mademoiselle contented herself with shedding radiance and
+paying no attention. Neither did she pay attention when he went on to
+tell of the girl who had disappeared, and of her stepfather's reasons
+for finding her. She woke to cognizance of the subject only when Gorry
+repeated the exact words of Miss Tina Vanzetti that morning: "Name of
+Letty Gravely."
+
+It was mademoiselle's turn for repetition. "But me, I know dat name. I
+'ear it not so long ago. Name of Let-ty Grav-el-ly! I sure 'ear zat
+name all recently." She reflected, tapping her forehead with vivacity.
+"Mais quand? Mais oui? C'etait--Ah!" The exclamation was the sharp cry
+of discovery. "Tina Vanzetti--my frien'! She tell me zis morning. Zat
+girl--Let-ty Grav-el-ly--she come chez Margot with ole man--what he
+keep ze white slave--and he command her grand beautiful
+trousseau--Tina Vanzetti she will give me ze address--and I will tell
+you--and you will tell him--and he will put you on to _riche
+affairs_----"
+
+"It'll be dollars and cents in the box office for me," Gorry
+interpreted, forcibly, while the band belched forth a chord like the
+groan of a dying monster, calling them again to their feet.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"'Remember,' said the witch," Allerton continued to read, "'when you
+have once assumed a human form you can never again be a mermaid--never
+return to your home or to your sisters more. Should you fail to win
+the prince's love, so that he leaves father and mother for your sake,
+and lays his hand in yours before the priest, an immortal soul will
+never be granted you. On the same day that he marries another your
+heart will break, and you will drift as sea-foam on the water.' 'So
+let it be,' said the little mermaid, turning pale as death.'"
+
+Allerton lifted his eyes from the book. "Does it bore you?"
+
+There was no mistaking her sincerity. "_No!_ I _love_ it."
+
+"Then perhaps we'll read a lot of things. After this we'll find a good
+novel, and then possibly somebody's life. You'd like that, wouldn't
+you?"
+
+Her joy was such that he could hardly hear the "Yes," for which he was
+listening. He listened because he was so accustomed to boring people
+that to know he was not boring them was a consolation.
+
+"Is there anybody's life--his biography--that you'd be specially
+interested in?"
+
+She answered timidly and yet daringly. "Could we--could we read the
+life of the late Queen Victoria--when she was a girl?"
+
+"Oh, easily! I'll hunt round for one to-day. Now let me tell you about
+Hans Andersen. He was born in Denmark, so that he was a Dane. You know
+where Denmark is on the map, don't you?"
+
+"I think I do. It's there by Germany isn't it?"
+
+"Quite right. But let me get the atlas, and we'll look it up."
+
+He was on his feet when she summoned her forces for a question. "Do
+you read like this to--to the girl you're engaged to?"
+
+"No," he said, reddening. "She--she doesn't like it. She won't let me.
+But wait a minute. I'll go and get the atlas."
+
+"'On the same day that he marries another,' Letty repeated to herself,
+as she sat alone, 'your heart will break, and you will drift as
+sea-foam on the water.' 'So let it be,' said the little mermaid."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+On the next afternoon Allerton reported to Miss Walbrook the success
+of his first educational evening.
+
+"She's very intelligent, very. You'd really be pleased with her,
+Barbe. Her mind is so starved that it absorbs everything you say to
+her, as a dry soil will drink up rain."
+
+Regarding him with the mysterious Egyptian expression which had at
+times suggested the reincarnation of some ancient spirit Barbara
+maintained the stillness which had come upon her on the previous day.
+"That must be very satisfactory to you, Rash."
+
+He agreed the more enthusiastically because of believing her at one
+with him in this endeavor. "You bet! The whole thing is going to work
+out. She'll pick up our point of view as if she was born to it."
+
+"And you're not afraid of her picking up anything else?"
+
+"Anything else of what kind?"
+
+"She might fall in love with you, mightn't she?"
+
+"With me? Nonsense! No one would fall in love with me who----"
+
+Her mysterious Egyptian smile came and went. "You can stop there,
+Rash. It's no use being more uncomplimentary than you need to be. And
+then, too, you might fall in love with her."
+
+"Barbe!" He cried out, as if wounded. "You're really too absurd.
+She's a good little thing, and she's had the devil's own luck----"
+
+"They always do have. That was one thing I learnt in Bleary Street. It
+was never a girl's own fault. It was always the devil's own luck."
+
+"Well, isn't it, now, when you come to think of it? You can't take
+everything away from people, and expect them to have the same
+standards as you and me. Think of the mess that people of our sort
+make of things, even with every advantage."
+
+"We've our own temptations, of course."
+
+"And they've got theirs--without our pull in the way of carrying them
+off. You should hear Steptoe----"
+
+"I don't want to hear Steptoe. I've heard him too much already."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"What can I mean by it but just what I say? I should think you'd get
+rid of him."
+
+Having first looked puzzled, with a suggestion of pain, he ended with
+a laugh. "You might as well expect me to get rid of an old
+grandfather. Steptoe wouldn't let me, if I wanted to."
+
+"He doesn't like me."
+
+"Oh, that's just your imagination, Barbe. I'll answer for him when it
+comes to----"
+
+"You needn't take the trouble to do that, because I don't like him."
+
+"Oh, but you will when you come to understand him."
+
+"Possibly; but I don't mean to come to understand him. Old servants
+can be an awful nuisance, Rash----"
+
+"But Steptoe isn't exactly an old servant. He's more like----"
+
+"Oh, I know what he's like. He's a habit; and habits are always
+dangerous, even when they're good. But we're not going to quarrel
+about Steptoe yet. I just thought I'd put you on your guard----"
+
+"Against him?"
+
+"He's a horrid old schemer, if that's what you want me to say; but
+then it may be what you like."
+
+"Well, I do," he laughed, "when it comes to him. He's been a horrid
+old schemer as long as I remember him, but always for my good."
+
+"For your good as he sees it."
+
+"For my good as a kind old nurse might see it. He's limited, of
+course; but then kind old nurses generally are."
+
+To be true to her vow of keeping the peace she forced back her
+irritations, and smiled. "You're an awful goose, Rash; but then you're
+a lovable goose, aren't you?" She beckoned, imperiously. "Come here."
+
+When he was on his knees beside her chair she pressed back his face
+framed by her two hands. "Now tell me. Which do you love most--Steptoe
+or me?"
+
+He cast about him for two of her special preferences. "And you tell
+me; which do you love most, a saddle-horse or an opera?"
+
+"If I told you, which should I be?--the opera or the saddle-horse?"
+
+"If I told you, which would you give up?"
+
+So they talked foolishly, as lovers do in the chaffing stage, she
+trying to charm him into promising to get rid of Steptoe, he charmed
+by her willingness to charm him. Neither remembered that technically
+he was a married man; but then neither had ever taken his marriage to
+Letty as a serious breach in their relations.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+While he was thus on his knees the kindly old nurse was giving to
+Letty a kindly old nurse's advice.
+
+"If madam 'ud go out and tyke a walk I think it'd do madam good."
+
+To madam the suggestion had elements of mingled terror and attraction.
+"But, Steptoe, I couldn't go out and take a walk unless I dressed up
+in the new outdoor suit."
+
+"And what did madam buy it for?--with the 'at and the vyle, and
+everythink, just like the lyte Mrs. Allerton."
+
+It was the argument she was hoping for. In the first place she was
+used to the freedom of the streets; and in the second the outdoor suit
+was calling her. Letty's love of dress was more than a love of
+appearing at her best, though that love was part of it; it was a love
+of the clothes themselves, of fabrics, colors, and fashions. When her
+dreams were not of wandering knights who loved her at a
+glance--bankers, millionaires, casting directors in motion-picture
+studios, or, in high flights of imagination, incognito English
+lords--they dealt in costumes of magic tissue, of hues suited to her
+hair and eyes, in which the world saw and greeted her, not as the poor
+little waif whom Judson Flack had put out of doors, but the true Letty
+Gravely of romance. The Letty Gravely of romance was the real Letty
+Gravely, a being set free from the cruel, the ugly, the carking, the
+sordid, to flourish in a sunlight she knew to be shining somewhere.
+
+Oddly enough her vision had come partly true; and yet so out of focus
+that she couldn't see its truth. It was like the sunlight which she
+knew to be shining somewhere, with a wrong refraction in its rays. The
+world into which she had been carried was like that in a cubist
+picture which someone had shown her at the studio. It bore a relation
+to the world she knew, but a relation in which whatever she had
+supposed to be perpendicular was oblique, and whatever she had
+supposed to be oblique was horizontal, and nothing as she had been
+accustomed to find it. It made her head swim. It was literally true
+that she was afraid to move lest she should make a misstep through an
+error in her sense of planes.
+
+But clothes she understood. In the swirling of her universe they
+formed a rock to which her intelligence could cling. They kept her
+sane. In a sense they kept her happy. When all outside was confusion
+and topsy-turvyness she could retire among Margot's cartons, and find
+herself on solid ground. I should be sorry to record the hours she
+spent before the long mirror in the little back spare room. Here her
+imagination could give itself free range. She was Luciline Lynch, and
+Mercola Merch, and Lisabel Anstey, and any other star of whom she
+admired the attainments; she could play a whole series of parts from
+which her lack of a wardrobe had hitherto excluded her. From time to
+time she ventured, like Steptoe, to be Barbara Walbrook herself,
+though assuming the role with less intrepidity than he.
+
+It was easier, she found, to be any of the stars than Barbara
+Walbrook, for the reason that the latter was "the real thing." She was
+living her part, not playing it. She was "letter perfect," in
+Steptoe's sense, not because a director moved her person this way, or
+turned her head that way, but because life had so infused her that she
+did what was right unconsciously. Letty, by pretending to enter at the
+door and come forward to the mirror as to a living presence, studied
+what was right by imitation. Miss Walbrook walked with a swift, easy
+gait which suggested the precision of certain strong birds when
+swooping on their prey. Between the door and the mirror Letty aimed at
+the same effect till she made a discovery.
+
+"I can't do it her way; I can only do it my way."
+
+The ways were different; yet each could be effective. That too was a
+discovery. Nature had no rule to which every individual was obliged to
+conform. The individual was, in a measure, his own rule, and got his
+attractiveness from being so. The minute you abandoned your own gifts
+to cultivate those with which Nature had blessed someone else you lost
+not only your identity but your charm.
+
+Letty worked this out as something like a principle. However many the
+hints she took it would be folly to try to be anything but herself.
+After all, it was what gave her value to a star, her personality. If
+Luciline Lynch whom Nature had endowed with the grand manner had tried
+to be Mercola Merch who was all vivacious wickedness--well, anyone
+could see! So, if Barbara Walbrook suggested an eagle on the wing and
+she, Letty Gravely, was only a sparrow in the street, the sparrow
+would be more successful as a sparrow than in trying to emulate the
+eagle.
+
+And yet there was a value to good models which at first she found
+difficult to reconcile with this truth of personal independence. This
+too she thought out. "It's like a way to do your hair," was her method
+of expressing it. "You do what's in fashion, but you twist it so that
+it suits your own style. It isn't the fashion that makes you look
+right; it's in being true to what suits you."
+
+There was, however, in Barbara Walbrook a something deeper than this
+which at first eluded her. It was in Rashleigh Allerton too. It was in
+Lisabel Anstey, and in a few other stars, but not in Mercola Merch,
+nor in Luciline Lynch. "It's the whole business," Letty summed up to
+herself, "and yet I don't know what it is. Unless I can put my finger
+on it...."
+
+She was just at this point when Steptoe addressed her on the subject
+of going out. That she do so was part of his programme. Madam would
+not be madam till she felt herself free to come and go; and till madam
+was madam Mr. Rash would not understand who it was they had in the
+'ouse. That he didn't understand it yet was partly due to madam
+'erself who didn't understand it on 'er side. To cultivate this
+understanding in madam was Steptoe's immediate aim, in which Beppo,
+the little cocker spaniel, unexpectedly came to his assistance.
+
+As the two stood conversing at the foot of the stairs Beppo lilted
+down, with that air of having no one to love which he had worn during
+all the eighteen months since his mistress had died. The cocker
+spaniel's heart, as everyone knows, is imbued with the principle of
+one life, one love. It has no room for two loves; it has still less
+room for that general amiability to which most dogs are born. Among
+the human race it singles out one; and to that one it is faithful. In
+separation it seeks no substitute; in bereavement it rarely forms a
+second tie. To everyone but Beppo the removal of Mrs. Allerton had
+made the world brighter. He alone had mourned that presence with a
+grief which sought neither comfort nor mitigation. He had followed his
+routine; he had eaten and slept; he had gone out when he was taken out
+and come in when he was brought in; but he had lived shut up within
+himself, aloof in his sorrow. For the first time in all those eighteen
+months he had come out of this proud gloom when Rashleigh's key had
+turned in the door that night, and Letty had entered the house.
+
+The secret call which Beppo had heard can never be understood by men
+till men have developed more of their latent faculties. As he lay in
+his basket something reached him which he recognized as a summons to a
+new phase of usefulness. Out of the lethargy of mourning he had jumped
+with an obedient leap that took him through the obscurity of the house
+to where a frightened girl had need of a little dog's sympathy. Of
+that sympathy he had been lavish; and now that there was new
+discussion in the air he came with his contribution.
+
+In words Steptoe had to be his interpreter. "That, poor little dog as
+'as growed so fond of madam don't get 'alf the exercise he ought to be
+give. If madam was to tyke 'im out like for a little stroll up the
+Havenue...."
+
+Thus it happened that in less than half an hour Letty found herself
+out in the October sunlight, dressed in her blue-green costume, with
+all the details to "correspond," and leading Beppo on the leash. To
+lead Beppo on the leash, as Steptoe had perceived, gave a reason for
+an excursion which would otherwise have seemed motiveless. But she was
+out. She was out in conditions in which even Judson Flack, had he met
+her, could hardly have detected her. Gorgeously arrayed as she seemed
+to herself she was dressed with the simplicity which stamps the French
+taste. There was nothing to make her remarked, especially in a double
+procession of women so many of whom were remarkable. Had you looked at
+her twice you would have noted that while skill counted for much in
+her gentle, well-bred appearance, a subtle, unobtrusive, native
+distinction counted for most; but you would have been obliged to look
+at her twice before noting anything about her. She was a neatly
+dressed girl, with an air; but on that bright afternoon in Fifth
+Avenue neatly dressed girls with an air were as buttercups in June.
+
+Seizing this fact Letty felt more at her ease. No one was thinking her
+conspicuous. She was passing in the crowd. She was not being "spotted"
+as the girl who a short time before had had nothing but the old gray
+rag to appear in. She could enjoy the walk--and forget herself.
+
+Then it came to her suddenly that this was the secret of which she was
+in search, the power to forget herself. She must learn to do things so
+easily that she would have no self-consciousness in doing them. In big
+things Barbara Walbrook might think of herself; but in all little
+things, in the way she spoke and walked and bore herself toward
+others, she acted as she breathed. It seemed wonderful to Letty, this
+assurance that you were right in all the fundamentals. It was
+precisely in the fundamentals that she was so likely to be wrong. It
+was where girls of her sort suffered most; in the lack of the
+elementary. One could bluff the advanced, or make a shot at it; but
+the elementary couldn't be bluffed, and no shot at it would tell. It
+betrayed you at once. You must _have_ it. You must have it as you had
+the circulation of your blood, as something so basic that you didn't
+need to consider it. That was her next discovery, as with Beppo
+tugging at the end of his tether she walked onward.
+
+She was used to walking; she walked strongly, and with a trudging
+sturdiness, not without its grace. She came to the part of Fifth
+Avenue where the great houses begin to thin out, and vacant lots, as
+if ashamed of their vacancy, shrink behind boardings vivid with the
+news of picture-plays. It was the year when they were advertising the
+screen-masterpiece, _Passion Aflame_; and here was depicted Luciline
+Lynch, a torch in her hand, her hair in maenadic dishevelment, leading
+on a mob to set fire to a town. Letty herself having been in that mob
+paused in search of her face among the horde of the great star's
+followers. It was a blob of scarlet and green from which she dropped
+her eyes, only to have them encounter a friend of long standing.
+
+At the foot of the boarding, and all in a row, was a straggling band
+of dust-flowers. It was late in the season, yet not too late for their
+bit of blue heaven to press in among the ways of men. She was not
+surprised to find them there. Ever since the crazy woman had pointed
+out the mission of this humble little helper of the human race she had
+noted its persistency in haunting the spots which beauty had deserted.
+You found it in the fields, it was true; but you found it rarely,
+sparsely, raggedly, blooming, you might say, with but little heart for
+its bloom. Where other flowers had been frightened away; where the
+poor crowded; where factories flared; where junk-heaps rusted; where
+backyards baked; where smoke defiled; where wretchedness stalked;
+where crime brooded; where the land was unkempt; where the human
+spirit was sodden--there the celestial thing multiplied its celestial
+growths, blessing the eyes and making the heart leap. It mattered
+little that so few gave it a thought or regarded it as other than a
+weed; there were always those few, who knew that it spelled beauty,
+who knew that it spelled something more.
+
+Letty was of those few. She was of those few for old sake's sake, but
+also for the sake of a new yearning. Slipping off a glove she picked a
+few of the dusty stalks, even though she knew that once taken from
+their task of glorifying the dishonored the blue stars would shut
+almost instantly. "They'll wither in a few days now," she said, in
+self-excuse; "and anyhow I'll leave most of them." Having shaken off
+the dust she fastened them in her corsage, blue against her
+blue-green.
+
+They were her symbol for happiness springing up in the face of
+despair, and from a soil where you would expect it to be choked. She
+herself was happy to-day as she could not remember ever to have been
+happy in her life. For the first time she was passing among decent
+people decently; and then--it was the great hope beyond which she
+didn't look--the prince might read with her again that evening.
+
+But as she turned from Fifth Avenue into East Sixty-seventh Street the
+prince was approaching his door from the other direction. Even she was
+aware that it was contrary to his habits to appear at home by five in
+the afternoon. She didn't know, of course, that Barbara had so
+stimulated his enthusiasm for the educational course that he had come
+on the chance of taking it up at the tea hour. He could not remember
+that Barbara had ever before been so sympathetic to one of his ideas.
+The fact encouraged his feeble belief in himself, and made him love
+her with richer tenderness.
+
+In the gentle girl of quietly distinguished mien he saw nothing but a
+stranger till Beppo strained at his leash and barked. Even then it
+took him half a minute to get his powers of recognition into play. He
+stopped at the foot of his steps, watching her approach.
+
+By doing so he made the approach more difficult for her. The heart
+seemed to stop in her body. She could scarcely breathe. Each step was
+like walking on blades, yet like walking on blades with a kind of
+ecstasy. Luckily Beppo pranced and pulled in such a way that she was
+forced to give him some attention.
+
+The prince's first words were also a distraction from terrors and
+enchantments which made her feel faint.
+
+"Where did you get the poor man's coffee?"
+
+The question by puzzling her gave her some relief. Pointing at the
+sprays in her corsage he went on:
+
+"That's what the country people often call the chicory weed in
+France."
+
+She was able to gasp feebly: "Oh, does it grow there?"
+
+"I think it grows pretty nearly everywhere. It's one of the most
+classic wild flowers we know anything about. The ancient Egyptians
+dried its leaves to give flavor to their salad, and I remember being
+told at Luxor that the modern Copts and Arabs do the same. You see
+it's quite a friendly little beast to man."
+
+It eased her other feelings to tell him about the crazy woman in
+Canada, and her reading of the dust-flower's significance.
+
+"That's a good idea too," Allerton agreed, smiling down into her eyes.
+"There are people like that--little dust-flowers cheering up the
+wayside for the rest of us poor brutes."
+
+She said, wistfully: "I suppose you've known a lot of them."
+
+[Illustration: THE PRINCE'S FIRST WORDS WERE ALSO A DISTRACTION FROM
+TERRORS, AND ENCHANTMENTS WHICH MADE HER FEEL FAINT]
+
+As he laughed his eyes rested on a man sauntering toward them from the
+direction of Fifth Avenue. "I've known about two--" his eyes came back
+to smile again down into hers--"or _one_." He started as a man starts
+who receives a new suggestion. "I say! Let's go in and look up chicory
+and succory in the encyclopedia. Then we'll know all about it. It
+seems to me, too," he went on, reminiscently, "that I read a little
+poem about this very blue flower--by Margaret Deland, I think it
+was--only a few weeks ago. I believe I could put my hand on it. Come
+along."
+
+As he sprang up the steps the pearly gates were opening again before
+Letty when the man whom Allerton had seen sauntering toward them
+actually passed by. Passing he lifted his hat politely, smiled, and
+said, "Good afternoon, Miss Gravely," like any other gentleman. He was
+a good-looking slippery young man, with a cast in his left eye.
+
+Because she was a woman before she was a lady, as she understood the
+word lady, Letty responded with, "Good afternoon," and a little
+inclination of the head. He was several doors off before she bethought
+herself sufficiently to take alarm.
+
+"Who's that?" Allerton demanded, looking down from the third or fourth
+step.
+
+"I'm sure I haven't an idea. I think he must be some camera-man who's
+seen me when they've been shooting the pitch--" she made the
+correction almost in time--"who's seen me when they've been shooting
+the _pick-tures_. I can't think of anything else."
+
+They watched the retreating form till, without a backward glance, it
+turned into Madison Avenue.
+
+"Come along in," Allerton called then, in a tone intended to disperse
+misgiving, "and let's begin."
+
+Ten minutes later he was reading in the library, from a big volume
+open on his knees, how for over a century the chicory root had been
+dried and ground in France, and used to strengthen the cheaper grades
+of coffee, when Letty broke in, as if she had not been following him:
+
+"I don't think that fella could have been a camera-man after all. No
+camera-man would ha' noticed me in the great big bunch I was always
+in."
+
+"Oh, well, he can't do you any harm anyhow," Allerton assured her.
+"I'll just finish this, and then I'll look for the poem by Mrs.
+Deland."
+
+With her veil and gloves in her lap Letty sat thoughtful while he
+passed from shelf to shelf in search of the smaller volume. Of her
+real suspicion, that the man was a friend of Judson Flack's, she
+decided not to speak.
+
+Seated once more in front of her, and bending slightly toward her,
+Allerton read:
+
+                 "Oh, not in ladies' gardens,
+                 My peasant posy!
+                 Smile thy dear blue eyes,
+                 Nor only--nearer to the skies--
+                 In upland pastures, dim and sweet--
+                 But by the dusty road
+                 Where tired feet
+                 Toil to and fro;
+                 Where flaunting Sin
+                 May see thy heavenly hue,
+                 Or weary Sorrow look from thee
+                 Toward a more tender blue."
+
+Allerton glanced up from the book. "Pretty, isn't it?"
+
+She admitted that it was, and then added: "And yet there was the times
+when the castin' director put me right in the front, to register what
+the crowd behind me was thinkin' about. He might ha' noticed me
+then."
+
+"Yes, of course; that must have been it. Now wouldn't you like me to
+read that again? You must always read a poem a second or third time to
+really know what it's about."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile a poem of another sort was being read to Miss Barbara
+Walbrook by her aunt, who had entered the drawing-room within five
+minutes after Allerton had left it. During those five minutes Barbara
+had remained seated, plunged into reverie. The problem with which she
+had to deal was the degree to which she was right or wrong in
+permitting Rashleigh to go on in his crazy course. That this outcast
+girl was twining herself round his heart was a fact growing too
+obtrusive to be ignored. Had Rashleigh been as other men decisive
+action would have been imperative. But he was not as other men, and
+there lay the possibilities she found difficult.
+
+If the aunt couldn't help the niece to solve the difficult question
+she at least could compel her to take a stand.
+
+As she entered the drawing-room she came from out of doors, a slender,
+unfleshly figure, all intellect and idea. Her vices being wholly of
+the spirit were not recognized as vices, so that she passed as the
+highest type of the good woman which the continent of America knows
+anything about. Being the highest type of the good woman she had,
+moreover, the privilege which American usage accords to all good women
+of being good aggressively. No other good woman in the world enjoys
+this right to the same degree, a fact to which we can point with
+pride. The good English woman, the good French woman, the good Italian
+woman, are obliged by the customs of their countries to direct their
+goodness into channels in which it is relatively curbed. The good
+American woman, on the other hand, is never so much at home as when
+she is on the warpath. Her goodness being the only standard of
+goodness which the country accepts she has the right to impose it by
+any means she can harness to her purposes. She is the inspiration of
+our churches, and the terror of our constituencies. She is behind
+state legislatures and federal congresses and presidential cabinets.
+They may elude her lofty purposes, falsify her trust, and for a time
+hoodwink her with male chicaneries; but they are always afraid of her,
+and in the end they do as she commands. Among the coarsely, stupidly,
+viciously masculine countries of the world the American Republic is
+the single and conspicuous matriarchate, ruled by its good women. Of
+these rulers Miss Marion Walbrook was as representative a type as
+could be found, high, pure, zealous, intolerant of men's weaknesses,
+and with only spiritual immoralities of her own.
+
+Seated in one of her slender upright armchairs she had the
+impressiveness of goodness fully conscious of itself. A document she
+held in her hand gave her the judicial air of one entitled to pass
+sentence.
+
+"I'm sorry, Barbara; but I've some disagreeable news for you."
+
+Barbara woke. "Indeed?"
+
+"I've just come from Augusta Chancellor's. She talked about--that
+man."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"She said two or three things. One was that she'd met him one day in
+the Park when he decidedly wasn't himself."
+
+"Oh, it's hard to say when he's himself and when he isn't. He's what
+the French would call _un original_."
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that. The originality of men is commonplace as
+it's most novel. This man is on a par with the rest, if you call it
+original for him to have a woman in the house."
+
+Barbara feigned languidness. "Well, it is--the way he has her there."
+
+"The way he has her there? What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean what I say. There's no one else in the world who would take a
+girl under his roof in the way Rash has taken this girl."
+
+"How, may I ask, did he take her?"
+
+Having foreseen that one day she should be in this position Barbara
+had made up her mind as to how much she should say. "He found her."
+
+"Oh, they all do that. They generally find them in the Park."
+
+"Exactly; it's just what he did."
+
+"I guessed--it was only guessing mind you--that he also tried to find
+Augusta Chancellor."
+
+"Oh, possibly. He'd go as far as that, if he saw her doing anything he
+thought not respectable."
+
+"Barbara, please! You're talking about a friend of mine, one of my
+colleagues. Let's return to--I hope you won't find the French phrase
+invidious--to our mutton."
+
+"Oh, very well! Rash found the girl homeless--penniless--with no
+friends. Her stepfather had turned her out. Another man would have
+left her there, or turned her over to the police. Rash took her to his
+own house, and since then we've both been helping her to--to get on
+her feet."
+
+"Helping her to get on her feet in a way that's driven from the house
+the good old women who've been there for nearly thirty years."
+
+"Oh, you know that too, do you?"
+
+"Why, certainly. Jane, that was the parlor maid, is very intimate with
+Augusta Chancellor's cook; and she says--Jane does--that he's actually
+married the creature."
+
+Barbara shrugged her shoulders. "I can't help what the servants say,
+Aunt Marion. I'm trying to be a friend to the girl, and help her to
+pull herself together. Of course I recognize the fact that Rash has
+been foolish--quixotic--or whatever you like to call it; but he hasn't
+kept anything from me."
+
+"And you're still engaged to him?"
+
+"Of course I'm still engaged to him." She held out her left hand.
+"Look at his ring."
+
+"Then why don't you get married?"
+
+"Are you in such a hurry to get rid of me?"
+
+The question being a pleasantry Miss Walbrook took it with a gentle
+smile. When she resumed it was with a slight flourish of the document
+in her hand and another turn to the conversation.
+
+"I went to the bank this morning. I've brought home my will. I'm
+thinking of making some changes in it."
+
+Barbara looked non-committal, as if the subject had nothing to do with
+herself.
+
+"The question I have to decide," Miss Walbrook pursued, "is whether to
+leave everything to you, in the hope that you'll carry on my
+work----"
+
+"I shouldn't know how."
+
+"Or whether to establish a trust----"
+
+"I should do that decidedly."
+
+"And let it fall into the hands of a pack of men."
+
+"It will fall into the hands of a pack of men, whatever you do with
+it."
+
+"And yet if you had it in charge----"
+
+"Some man would get hold of it, Aunt Marion."
+
+"Which is what I'm debating. I'm not so very sure----"
+
+"That I shall marry in the end?"
+
+"Well, you're not married yet ... and if you were to change your
+mind ... the world has such a need of consecrated women with men
+so unscrupulous and irresponsible ... we must break their power
+some day ... and now that we've got the opportunity ... all I want
+you to understand is that if you shouldn't marry there'd be a
+great career in store for you...."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+By the end of twenty-four hours the possibility of this great career
+quickened Barbara's zeal for taking a hand in Letty's education. Not
+only did that impulse of furious jealousy, by which she meant at first
+to leave it wholly to Rash, begin to seem dangerous, but there was a
+world to consider and throw off the scent. Now that Augusta Chancellor
+knew that the girl was beneath Rash's roof all their acquaintances
+would sooner or later be in possession of the fact. It was Barbara's
+part, therefore, to play the game in such a way that a bit of
+quixotism would be the most foolish thing of which Rash would be
+suspected.
+
+That she would be playing a game she knew in advance. She must hide
+her suspicions; she must control her sufferings. She must pretend to
+have confidence in Rash, when at heart she cried against him as an
+infant and a fool. Never was woman in such a ridiculous situation as
+that into which she had been thrust; never was heart so wild to ease
+itself by invective and denunciation; and never was the padlock fixed
+so firmly on the lips. Hour by hour the man she loved was being weaned
+and won away from her; and she must stand by with grimacing smiles,
+instead of throwing up her arms in dramatic gestures and calling on
+her gods to smite and smash and annihilate.
+
+Since, however, she had a game to play, a game she would play, though
+she did it quivering with protest and repulsion.
+
+"Do you mind if I take the car this afternoon, Aunt Marion, since
+you're not going to use it."
+
+"Take it of course; but where are you going?"
+
+"I thought I would ask that protegee of Rash Allerton's, of whom we
+were speaking yesterday, to come for a drive with me. But if you'd
+rather I didn't----"
+
+"I've nothing to do with it. It's entirely for you to say. The car is
+yours, of course."
+
+The invitation being transmitted by telephone Steptoe urged Letty to
+accept it. "It'll be all in the wye of madam's gettin' used to
+things--a bit at a time like."
+
+"But I don't think she likes me."
+
+"If madam won't stop to think whether people likes 'er or not I think
+madam 'd get for'arder. Besides madam'll pretty generally always find
+as love-call wykes love-echo, as the syin' goes."
+
+Which, as a matter of fact, was what Letty did find. She found it from
+the minute of entering the car and taking her seat, when Miss Walbrook
+exclaimed heartily: "What a lovely dress! And the hat's too sweet!
+Suits you exactly, doesn't it? My dear, I've the greatest bother ever
+to find a hat that doesn't make me look like a scarecrow."
+
+From the naturalness of the tone there was no suspecting the cost of
+these words to the speaker, and the subject was one in which Letty was
+at home. In turn she could compliment Miss Walbrook's appearance, duly
+admiring the toque of prune-colored velvet, with a little bunch of
+roses artfully disposed, and the coat of prune-colored Harris tweed.
+In further discussing the length of the new skirts and the chances of
+the tight corset coming back they found topics of common interest. The
+fact that they were the topics which came readiest to the lips of both
+made it possible to maintain the conversation at its normal
+give-and-take, while each could pursue the line of her own summing up
+of the other.
+
+To Letty Miss Walbrook seemed friendlier than she had expected, only
+spasmodically so. Her kindly moods came in spurts of which the
+inspiration soon gave out. "I think she's sad," was Letty's comment to
+herself. Sadness, in Letty's use of words, covered all the emotions
+not distinctly cheerful or hilarious.
+
+She knew nothing about Miss Walbrook, except that it appeared from
+this conversation that she lived with an aunt, whose car they were
+using. That she was a friend of the prince's had been several times
+repeated, but all information ended there. To Letty she seemed
+old--between thirty and forty. Had she known her actual age she would
+still have seemed old from her knowledge of the world and general
+sophistication. Letty's own lack of sophistication kept her a child
+when she was nearly twenty-three. That Miss Walbrook was the girl to
+whom the prince was engaged had not yet crossed her thought.
+
+At the same time, since she knew that girl she brought her to the
+forefront of Letty's consciousness. She was never far from the
+forefront of her consciousness, and of late speculation concerning her
+had become more active. If she approached the subject with the prince
+he reddened and grew ill at ease. The present seemed, therefore, an
+opportunity to be utilized.
+
+They were deep in the northerly avenues of the Park, when apropos of
+the dress topic, Letty said, suddenly: "I suppose she's awfully
+stylish--the girl he's engaged to."
+
+The response was laconic: "She's said to be."
+
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"I don't think you could say that."
+
+"Then what does he see in her?"
+
+"Whatever people do see in those they're in love with. I'm afraid I'm
+not able to define it."
+
+Dropping back into her corner Letty sighed. She knew this mystery
+existed, the mystery of falling in love for reasons no one was able to
+explain. It was the ground on which she hoped that at first sight
+someone would fall in love with her. If he didn't do it for reasons
+beyond explanation he would, of course, not do it at all.
+
+It was some minutes before another question trembled to her lips.
+"Does she--does she know about me?"
+
+"Oh, naturally."
+
+"And did she--did she feel very bad?"
+
+Barbara's long eyes slid round in Letty's direction, though the head
+was not turned. "How should you feel yourself, if it had happened to
+you?"
+
+"It'd kill me."
+
+"Well, then?" She let Letty draw her own conclusions before adding:
+"It's nearly killed her."
+
+Letty cowered. She had never thought of this. That she herself
+suffered she knew; that the prince suffered she also knew; but that
+this unknown girl, whatever her folly, lay smitten to the heart
+brought a new complication into her ideas. "Even if he ever did come
+to--" she held up her unspoken sentence there--"I'd ha' stolen him
+from her."
+
+There was little more conversation after that. Each had her motives
+for reflections and silences. They were nearing the end of the drive
+when Letty said again:
+
+"What would you do if you was--if you were--me?"
+
+"I'd do whatever I felt to be highest."
+
+To Letty this was a beautiful reply, and proof of a beautiful nature.
+Moreover, it was indirectly a compliment to herself, in that she could
+be credited with doing what she felt to be highest as well as anyone
+else. In her life hitherto she had been figuratively kicked and beaten
+into doing what she couldn't resist. Now she was considered capable of
+acting worthily of her own accord. It inspired a new sentiment toward
+Miss Walbrook.
+
+She thought, too, that Miss Walbrook liked her a little better.
+Perhaps it was the fulfillment of Steptoe's adage, love-call wakes
+love-echo. She was sure that somehow this call had gone out from her
+to Miss Walbrook, and that it hadn't gone out in vain.
+
+It hadn't gone out in vain, in that Miss Walbrook was able to say to
+herself, with some conviction, "That's the way it will have to be
+done." It was a way of which her experiences in Bleary Street had made
+her skeptical. Among those whom she called the lower orders innocence,
+ingenuousness, and integrity were qualities for which she had ceased
+to look. She didn't look for them anywhere with much confidence; but
+she had long ago come to the conclusion that the poor were schemers,
+and were obliged to be schemers because they were poor. Something in
+Letty impressed her otherwise. "That's the way," she continued to nod
+to herself. "It's no use trusting to Rash. I'll get her; and she'll
+get him; and so we shall work it."
+
+Arrived in East Sixty-seventh Street she went in with Letty and had
+tea. But it was she who sat in dear Mrs. Allerton's corner of the
+sofa, and when William brought in the tray she said, "Put it here,
+William," as one who speaks with authority. Of this usurpation of the
+right to dispense hospitality Letty did not see the significance,
+being glad to have it taken off her hands.
+
+Not so, however, with Steptoe who came in with a covered dish of
+muffins. Having placed it before Miss Walbrook he turned to Letty.
+
+"Madam ain't feelin' well?"
+
+Letty's tone expressed her surprise. "Why, yes."
+
+"Madam'll excuse me. As madam ain't presidin' at 'er own tyble I was
+afryde----"
+
+It being unnecessary to say more he tiptoed out, leaving behind him a
+declaration of war, which Miss Walbrook, without saying anything in
+words, was not slow to pick up. "Insufferable," was her comment to
+herself. Of the hostile forces against her this, she knew, was the
+most powerful.
+
+Neither did Rash perceive the significance of Barbara's place at the
+tea-table when he entered about five o'clock, though she was quick to
+perceive the significance of his arrival. It was not, however, a
+point to note outwardly, so that she lifted her hand above the
+tea-kettle, letting him bend over it, as she exclaimed:
+
+"Welcome to our city! Do sit down and make yourself at home. Letty and
+I have been for a drive, and are all ready to enjoy a little male
+society."
+
+The easy tone helped Allerton over his embarrassment, first in finding
+the two women face to face, then in coming so unexpectedly face to
+face with them, and lastly in being caught by Barbara coming home at
+this unexpected hour. Knowing what the situation must mean to her he
+admired her the more for her sangfroid and social flexibility.
+
+She took all the difficulties on herself. "Letty and I have been
+making friends, and are going to know each other awfully well, aren't
+we?" A smile at Letty drew forth Letty's smile, to Rashleigh's
+satisfaction, and somewhat to his bewilderment. But Barbara, handing
+him a cup of tea, addressed him directly. "Who do you think is
+engaged? Guess."
+
+He guessed, and guessed wrong. He guessed a second time, and guessed
+wrong. There followed a conversation about people they knew, with
+regard to which Letty was altogether an outsider. Now and then she
+recognized great names which she had read in the papers, tossed back
+and forth without prefixes of Mr. or Miss, and often with pet
+diminutives. The whole represented a closed corporation of intimacies
+into which she could no more force her way than a worm into a billiard
+ball. Rash who was at first beguiled by the interchange of
+personalities began to experience a sense of discomfort that Letty
+should be so discourteously left out; but Barbara knew that it was
+best for both to force the lesson home. Rash must be given to
+understand how lost he would be with any outsider as his companion;
+and Letty must be made to realize how hopelessly an outsider she would
+always be.
+
+But no lesson should be urged to the quick at a single sitting, so
+that Barbara broke off suddenly to ask why he had come home. In the
+same way as she had given the order to William she spoke with the
+authority of one at liberty to ask the question. Not to give the real
+reason he said that it was to write a letter and change his clothes.
+
+"And you're going back to the Club?"
+
+He replied that he was going to dine with a bachelor friend at his
+apartment.
+
+"Then I'll wait and drop you at the Club. You can go on from there
+afterwards. I've got the time."
+
+This too was said with an authority against which he felt himself
+unable to appeal.
+
+Having written a note and changed to his dinner jacket he rejoined
+them in the drawing-room. Barbara held out her hand to Letty, with a
+briskness indicating relief.
+
+"So glad we had our drive. I shall come soon again. I wish it could be
+to-morrow, but my aunt will be using the car."
+
+"There's my car," Allerton suggested.
+
+"Oh, so there is." Barbara took this proposal as a matter of course.
+"Then we'll say to-morrow. I'll call up Eugene and tell him when to
+come for me."
+
+With Allerton beside her, and driving down Fifth Avenue, she said: "I
+see how to do it, Rash. You must leave it to me."
+
+He replied in the tone of a child threatened with the loss of his role
+in a game. "I can't leave it to you altogether."
+
+"Then leave it to me as much as you can. I see what to do and you
+don't. Furthermore, I know just how to do it."
+
+"You're wonderful, Barbe," he said, humbly.
+
+"I'm wonderful so long as you don't interfere with me."
+
+"Oh, well, I shan't do that."
+
+She turned to him sharply. "Is that a promise?"
+
+"Why do you want a promise?" he asked, in some wonder.
+
+"Because I do."
+
+"That is, you can't trust me."
+
+"My dear Rash, who _could_ trust you after what----?"
+
+"Oh, well, then, I promise."
+
+"Then that's understood. And if anything happens, you won't go hedging
+and saying you didn't mean it in that way?"
+
+"It seems to me you're very suspicious."
+
+"One's obliged to foresee everything with you, Rash. It isn't as if
+one was dealing with an ordinary man."
+
+"You mean that I'm to give you carte blanche, and have no will of my
+own at all."
+
+"I mean that when I'm so reasonable, you must try to be reasonable on
+your side."
+
+"Well, I will."
+
+As they drew up in front of the New Netherlands Club, he escaped
+without committing himself further.
+
+If he dined with a bachelor friend that night he must have cut the
+evening short, for at half past nine he re-entered the back
+drawing-room where Letty was sitting before the fire, her red book in
+her lap. She sat as a lover stands at a tryst as to which there is no
+positive engagement. To fortify herself against disappointment she had
+been trying to persuade herself that he wouldn't come, and that she
+didn't expect him.
+
+He came, but he came as a man who has something on his mind. Almost
+without greeting he sat down, took the book from her lap and proceeded
+to look up the place at which he had left off.
+
+"Miss Walbrook's lovely, isn't she?" she said, before he had found the
+page.
+
+"She's a very fine woman," he assented. "Do you remember where we
+stopped?"
+
+"It was at, 'So let it be, said the little mermaid, turning pale as
+death.' You know her very well, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, very well indeed. I think we begin here: 'But you will have to
+pay me also----'"
+
+"Have you known her very long?"
+
+"All my life, more or less."
+
+"She says she knows the girl you're engaged to."
+
+"Yes, of course. We all know each other in our little set. Now, if
+you're ready, I'll begin to read."
+
+"'But you will have to pay me also,' said the witch; 'and it is not a
+little that I ask. Yours is the loveliest voice in the world, and you
+trust to that, I dare say, to charm your love. But you must give it
+to me. For my costly drink I claim the best thing you possess. I shall
+give you my own blood, so that my draught may be as sharp as a
+two-edged sword.' 'But if you take my voice from me, what have I
+left?' asked the little mermaid, piteously. 'Your loveliness, your
+graceful movements, your speaking eyes. Those are enough to win a
+man's heart. Well, is your courage gone? Stretch out your little
+tongue, that I may cut it off, and you shall have my magic potion.' 'I
+consent,' said the little mermaid."
+
+Letty cried out: "So that when she'd be with him she'd understand
+everything, and not be able to tell him anything."
+
+"I'm afraid," he smiled, "that that's what's ahead of her, poor
+thing."
+
+"Oh, but that--" she could hardly utter her distress--"Oh, but that's
+worse than anything in the world."
+
+He looked up at her curiously. "Would you rather I didn't go on?"
+
+"No, no; please. I--I want to hear it all."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+At The Hindoo Lantern Mr. Gorry Larrabin and Mr. Judson Flack found
+themselves elbow to elbow outside the rooms where their respective
+ladies were putting the final touches to their hats and hair before
+entering the grand circle. It was an opportunity especially on Gorry's
+part, to seal the peace which had been signed so recently.
+
+"Hello, Judson. What's the prospects in oil?" Judson's tone was
+pessimistic. "Not a thing doin', Gorry. Awful slow bunch, that lump
+of nuts I'm in with on this. Mentioned your name to one or two of 'em;
+but no enterprise. Boneheads that wouldn't know a white man from a
+crane." That he understood what Gorry understood became clear as he
+continued: "Friend o' mine at the Excelsior passes me the tip that
+they've held up that play they were goin' to put my girl into. Can't
+get anyone else that would swing the part. Waitin' for her to turn up
+again. I suppose you haven't heard anything, Gorry?"
+
+Gorry looked him in the eyes as straight as was possible for a man
+with a cast in the left one. "Not a thing, Judson; not a thing."
+
+The accent was so truthful that Judson gave his friend a long
+comprehending look. He was sure that Gorry would never speak with such
+sincerity if he was sincere.
+
+"Well, I'm on the job, Gorry," he assured him, "and one of these days
+you'll hear from me."
+
+"I'm on the job too, Judson; and one of these days----"
+
+But as Mademoiselle Coucoul emerged from the dressing-room and shed
+radiance, Gorry was obliged to go forward.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+
+It was May.
+
+In spite of her conviction that she knew what to do and how it to do
+it, Barbara perceived that at the end of seven months they were much
+where they had been in the previous October. If there was a change it
+was that all three, Rashleigh, Letty, and herself, had grown strained
+and intense.
+
+Outwardly they strove to maintain a semblance of friendship. For that
+Barbara had worked hard, and in a measure had succeeded. She had held
+Rash; she had won Letty.
+
+She had more than won Letty; she had trained her. All that in seven
+months a woman of the world could do for an unformed and ignorant
+child she had done. Her experience at Bleary Street had helped her in
+this; and Letty had been quick. She had seized not only those small
+points of speech and action foundational to rising in the world, but
+the point of view of those who had risen. She knew how, Barbara was
+sure, that there were certain things impossible to people such as
+those among whom she had been thrown.
+
+Since it was May it was the end of a season, and the minute Barbara
+had long ago chosen for a masterstroke. Each of the others felt the
+crisis as near as she did herself.
+
+"It's got to end," Letty confessed to her, as amid the soft
+loveliness of springtime, they were again driving in the Park.
+
+Barbara chose her words. "I suppose he feels that too."
+
+"Then why don't he let me end it?"
+
+"I fancy that that's a difficult position for a man. If you ask his
+permission beforehand he feels obliged to say----"
+
+"And perhaps," Letty suggested, "he's too tender-hearted."
+
+"That's part of it. He _is_ tender-hearted. Besides that, his position
+is grotesque--a man with whom two women are in love. To one of them
+he's been nominally married, while to the other he's bound by every
+tie of honor. No wonder he doesn't see his way. If he moves toward the
+one he hurts the other--a man to whom it's agony to hurt a fly."
+
+"Does the other girl still feel the way she did?"
+
+"She's killing herself. She's breaking her heart. Nobody knows it but
+him and her--and even he doesn't take it in. But she is."
+
+"I suppose she thinks I'm something awful."
+
+"Does it matter to you what she thinks?"
+
+"I don't want her to hate me."
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't say she did that. She feels that, considering
+everything, you might have acted with more decision."
+
+"But he won't let me."
+
+"And he never will, if you wait for that."
+
+"Then what do you think I ought to do?"
+
+"That's where I find you weak, Letty, since you ask me the question.
+No one can tell you what to do--and he least of all. It's a situation
+in which one of you must withdraw--either you or the other girl. But,
+don't you see? he can't say so to either."
+
+"And if one of us must withdraw you think it should be me."
+
+"I have to leave that to you. You're the one who butted in. I know it
+wasn't your fault--that the fault was his entirely; but we recognize
+the fact that he's--how shall I put it?--not quite responsible. We
+women have to take the burden of the thing on ourselves, if it's ever
+to be put right."
+
+In her corner of the car Letty thought this over. The impression on
+her mind was the deeper since, for several months past, she had
+watched the prince growing more and more unhappy. He was less nervous
+than he used to be, less excitable; and for that he had told her the
+credit was due to herself. "You soothe me," he had once said to her,
+in words she would always treasure; and yet as his irritability
+decreased his unhappiness seemed to grow. She could only infer that he
+was mourning over the girl to whom he was engaged, and on whom he had
+inflicted a great wrong. For the last few weeks Letty's mind had
+occupied itself with her almost more than with the prince himself.
+
+"Do you think I shall ever see her?" she asked, suddenly now.
+
+Barbara reflected. "I think you could if you wanted to."
+
+"Should you arrange it?"
+
+"I could."
+
+"You're sure she'd be willing to see me?"
+
+"Yes; I know she would."
+
+"When could you do it?"
+
+"Whenever you like."
+
+"Soon?"
+
+"Yes; sooner perhaps than--" Barbara spoke absently, as if a new idea
+was taking possession of her mind--"sooner perhaps than you think."
+
+"And you say she's breaking her heart?"
+
+"A little more, and it will be broken."
+
+By the time Letty had been set down at the door in East Sixty-seventh
+Street the afternoon had grown chilly. In the back drawing-room
+Steptoe was on his knees lighting the fire. Letty came and stood
+behind him. Without preliminary of any kind she said, quietly:
+
+"Steptoe, it's got to end."
+
+Expecting a protest she was surprised that he should merely blow on
+the shivering flame, saying, in the interval between two long breaths:
+"I agrees with madam."
+
+"And it's me that must end it."
+
+He blew gently again. "I guess that'd be so too."
+
+She thought of the little mermaid leaping into the sea, and trembling
+away into foam. "If he wants to marry the girl he's in love with he'll
+never do it the way we're living now."
+
+He rose from his knees, dusting one hand against the other. "Madam's
+quite right. 'E won't--not never."
+
+She threw out her arms, and moaned. "And, O Steptoe! I'm so tired of
+it."
+
+"Madam's tired of----?"
+
+"Of living here, and doing nothing, and just watching and waiting, and
+nothing never happening----"
+
+"Does madam remember that, the dye when she first come I said there
+was two reasons why I wanted to myke 'er into a lydy?"
+
+Letty nodded.
+
+"The one I told 'er was that I wanted to 'elp someone who was like
+what I used to be myself."
+
+"I remember."
+
+"And the other, what I didn't tell madam, I'll tell 'er now. It
+was--it was I was 'opin' that a woman'd come into my poor boy's life
+as'd comfort 'im like----"
+
+"And she didn't come."
+
+"'E ain't seen that she's come. I said it'd be a tough job to bring
+'im to fallin' in love with 'er like; but it's been tougher than what
+I thought it'd be."
+
+"So that I must--must do something."
+
+"Looks as if madam'd 'ave to."
+
+"I suppose you know that there's an easy way for me to do it?"
+
+"Nothink ain't so very easy; but if madam 'as a big enough
+reason----"
+
+She felt the necessity of being plain. "I suppose that if he hadn't
+picked me up in the Park that day I'd have gone to the bad anyhow."
+
+"If madam's thinkin' about goin' to the bad----"
+
+She threw up her head defiantly. "Well, I am. What of it?"
+
+"I was just thinkin' as I might 'elp 'er a bit about that."
+
+She was puzzled. "I don't think you know what I said. I said I
+was----"
+
+"Goin' to the bad, madam. That's what I understood. But madam won't
+find it so easy, not 'avin 'ad no experience like, as you might sye."
+
+"I didn't know you needed experience--for that."
+
+"All good people thinks that wye, madam; but when you tackle it
+deliberate like, there's quite a trick to it."
+
+"And do you know the trick?" was all she could think of saying.
+
+"I may not know the very hidentical trick madam'd be in want of--'er
+bein' a lydy, as you might sye--but I could put 'er in the wye of
+findin' out."
+
+"You don't think I could find out for myself?"
+
+"You see, it's like this. I used to know a young man what everythink
+went ag'in' 'im. And one dye 'e started out for to be a forgerer
+like--so as 'e'd be put in jyle--and be took care of--board and
+lodgin' free--and all that. Well, out 'e starts, and not knowin' the
+little ins and outs, as you might sye, everythink went agin 'im, just
+as it done before. And, would madam believe it? that young man 'e
+hended by studying for the ministry. Madam wouldn't want to myke a
+mistyke like that, now would she?"
+
+Letty turned this over in her mind. A career parallel to that of this
+young man would effect none of the results she was aiming at.
+
+"Then what would you suggest?" she asked, at last.
+
+"I could give madam the address of a lydy--an awful wicked lydy, she
+is--what'd put madam up to all the ropes. If madam was to go out into
+the cold world, like, this lydy'd give 'er a home. Besides the
+address I'd give madam a sign like--so as the lydy'd know it was
+somethink special."
+
+"A sign? I don't know what you mean."
+
+"It'd be this, madam." He drew from his pocket a small silver thimble.
+"This'd be a password to the lydy. The minute she'd see it she'd know
+that the time 'ad come."
+
+"What time?"
+
+"That's somethink madam'd find out. I couldn't explyne it
+before'and."
+
+"It sounds very queer."
+
+"It'd _be_ very queer. Goin' to the bad is always queer. Madam
+wouldn't look for it to be like 'avin' a gentleman lead 'er in to
+dinner."
+
+"What's she like--the lady?"
+
+"That's somethink madam'd 'ave to wyte and see. She wouldn't _seem_ so
+wicked, not at first sight, as you might sye. But time'd tell. If
+madam'd be pytient--well, I wouldn't like to sye." He eyed the fire.
+"I think that fire'll burn now, madam; and if it don't, madam'll only
+'ave to ring."
+
+He was at the door when Letty, feeling the end of all things to be at
+hand, ran after him, laying her fingers on his sleeve.
+
+"Oh, Steptoe; you've been so good to me!"
+
+He relaxed from his dignity sufficiently to let his hand rest on hers,
+which he patted gently. "I've been madam's servant--and my boy's."
+
+"I shall never think of you as a servant--never."
+
+The frosty color rose into his cheeks. "Then madam'll do me a great
+wrong."
+
+"To me you're so much higher than a servant----"
+
+"Madam'll find that there ain't nothink 'igher than a servant. There's
+a lot about service in the pypers nowadyes, crackin' it up, like; but
+nobody don't seem to remember that servants knows more about that than
+what other people do, and servants don't remember it theirselves. So
+long as I can serve madam, just as I've served my boy----"
+
+"Oh, but, Steptoe, I shall have gone to the bad."
+
+"That'd be all the syme to me, madam. At my time o' life I don't see
+no difference between them as 'as gone to the bad and them as 'as gone
+to the good, as you might sye. I only sees--people."
+
+Left alone Letty went back to the fire, and stood gazing down at it,
+her foot on the fender. So it was the end. Even Steptoe said so. In a
+sense she was relieved.
+
+She was relieved at the prospect of being freed from her daily
+torture. The little mermaid walking on blades in the palace of the
+prince, and forever dumb, had known bliss, but bliss so akin to
+anguish that her heart was consumed by it. The very fact that the
+prince himself suffered from the indefinable misery which her presence
+seemed to bring made escape the more enticing.
+
+She was so buried in this reflection as to have heard no sound in the
+house, when Steptoe announced in his stately voice: "Miss Barbara
+Walbrook." Having parted from this lady half an hour earlier Letty
+turned in some surprise.
+
+"I've come back again," was the explanation, sent down the long room.
+"Don't let William bring in tea," the imperious voice commanded
+Steptoe. "We wish to be alone." There was the same abruptness as she
+halted within two or three feet of where Letty stood, supporting
+herself with a hand on the edge of the mantelpiece. "I've come back to
+tell you something. I made up my mind to it all at once--after I left
+you a few minutes ago. Now that I've done it I feel easier."
+
+Letty didn't know which was uppermost in her mind, curiosity or fear.
+"What--what is it?" she asked, trembling.
+
+"I've given up the fight. I'm out of it."
+
+Letty crept forward. "You've--you've done _what_?"
+
+"I told you in the Park that one or the other of us would have to
+withdraw----"
+
+"One or the other of--of _us_?"
+
+"Exactly and I've done it."
+
+With horror in her face and eyes Letty crept nearer still. "But--but I
+don't understand."
+
+"Oh, yes, you do. How can you help understanding. You must have seen
+all along that----"
+
+"Not that--that you were--the other girl. Oh, not that!"
+
+"Yes, that; of course; why not?"
+
+"Because--because I--I couldn't bear it."
+
+"You can bear it if I can, can't you--if I've had to bear it all these
+weeks and months."
+
+"Yes, but that's--" she covered her face with her hands--"that's what
+makes it so terrible."
+
+"Of course it makes it terrible; but it isn't as terrible now as it
+was--to you anyhow."
+
+"But why do you withdraw when--when you love him--and he loves
+you----?"
+
+"I do it because I want to throw all the cards on the table. It's what
+my common sense has been telling me to do all along, only I've never
+worked round to it till we had our talk this afternoon. Now I
+see----"
+
+"What do you see, Miss Walbrook?"
+
+"I see that we've got to give him a clean sheet, or he'll never know
+where he is. He can't decide between us because he's in an impossible
+position. We'll have to set him absolutely free, so that he may begin
+again. I'll do it on my side. You can do--what you like."
+
+She went as abruptly as she came, leaving Letty clearer than ever as
+to her new course.
+
+By midnight she was ready. In the back spare room she waited only to
+be sure that all in the house were asleep.
+
+She had heard Allerton come in about half past nine, and the
+whispering of voices told that Steptoe was making his explanations,
+that she was out of sorts, had dined in her room, and begged not to be
+disturbed. At about half past ten she heard the prince go upstairs to
+his own room, though she fancied that outside her door he had paused
+for a second to listen. That was the culminating minute of her
+self-repression. Once it was over, and he had gone on his way, she
+knew the rest would be easier.
+
+By midnight she had only to wait quietly. In the old gray rag and the
+battered black hat she surveyed herself without emotion. Since making
+her last attempt to escape her relation to all these things had
+changed. They had become less significant, less important. The
+emblems of the higher life which in the previous autumn she had buried
+with ritual and regret she now packed away in the closet, with hardly
+a second thought. The old gray rag which had then seemed the livery of
+a degraded life was now no more than the resumption of her reality.
+
+"I'll go as I came," she had been saying to herself, all the evening.
+"I know he'd like me to take the things he's given me; but I'd rather
+be just what I was."
+
+If there was any ritual in what she had done since Miss Walbrook had
+left her it was in the putting away of small things by which she
+didn't want to be haunted.
+
+"I couldn't do it with this on," she said of the plain gold band on
+her finger, to which, as a symbol of marriage, she had never attached
+significance in any case.
+
+She took it off, therefore, and laid it on the dressing table.
+
+"I couldn't do it with this in my pocket," she said of the purse
+containing a few dollars, with which Steptoe had kept her supplied.
+
+This too she laid on the dressing table, becoming as penniless as when
+Judson Flack had put her out of doors. Somehow, to be penniless seemed
+to her an element in her new task, and an excuse for it.
+
+Since Allerton had never made her a present there was nothing of this
+kind to discard. It had been part of his non-committal, impersonal
+attitude toward her that he had never given her a concrete sign that
+she meant anything to him whatever. He had thanked her on occasions
+for the comforting quality he found in her presence. He had, in so
+many words, recognized the fact that when he got into a tantrum of
+nerves she could bring him out of it as no one else had ever done. He
+had also imparted to her the discovery that in reading to her, and
+trying to show her the point of view of a life superior to her own, he
+had for the first time in his life done something for someone else;
+but he had never gone beyond all this or allowed her to think that his
+heart was not given to "the girl he was engaged to." In that at least
+he had been loyal to the mysterious princess, as the little mermaid
+could not but see.
+
+She was not consciously denuded, as she would have felt herself six
+months earlier. As to that she was not thinking anything at all. Her
+motive, in setting free the prince from the "drag" on him which she
+now recognized herself to be, filled all her mental horizons. So
+dominated was she by this overwhelming impulse as to have no thought
+even for self-pity.
+
+When a clock somewhere struck one she took it as the summons. From the
+dressing-table she picked up the scrawl in Steptoe's hand, giving the
+name of Miss Henrietta Towell, at an address at Red Point, L. I. She
+knew Red Point, on the tip of Long Island, as a distant, partially
+developed suburb of Brooklyn. In the previous year she had gone with a
+half dozen other girl "supes" from the Excelsior Studio to "blow in" a
+quarter looking at the ocean steamers passing in and out. She had no
+intention of intruding on Miss Towell, but she couldn't hurt Steptoe's
+feelings by leaving the address behind her.
+
+For the same reason she took the silver thimble which stood on the
+scrap of paper. On its rim she read the inscription, "H.T. from H.S."
+but she made no attempt to unravel the romance behind it. She merely
+slipped the scrawl and the thimble into the pocket of her jacket, and
+stood up.
+
+She took no farewells. To do so would have unnerved her. On the
+landing outside her door she listened for a possible sound of the
+prince's breathing, but the house was still. In the lower hall she
+resisted the impulse to slip into the library and kiss the place where
+she had kissed his feet on the memorable morning when her hand had
+been on his brow. "That won't help me any," were the prosaic words
+with which she put the suggestion away from her. If the little mermaid
+was to leap over the ship's side and dissolve into foam the best thing
+she could do was to leap.
+
+The door no longer held secrets. She had locked it and unlocked it a
+thousand times. Feeling for the chain in the darkness she slipped it
+out of its socket; she drew back the bolt; she turned the key. Her
+fingers found the two little brass knobs, pressing this one that way,
+and that one this way. The door rolled softly as she turned the
+handle.
+
+Over the threshold she passed into a world of silence, darkness,
+electricity, and stars. She closed the door noiselessly. She went down
+the steps.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+
+Having the choice between going southward either by Fifth Avenue or by
+Madison Avenue, Letty took the former for the reason that there were
+no electric cars crashing through it, so that she would be less
+observed. It seemed to her important to get as far from East
+Sixty-seventh Street as possible before letting a human glance take
+note of her personality, even as a drifting silhouette.
+
+In this she was fortunate. For the hour between one and two in the
+early morning this part of Fifth Avenue was unusually empty. There was
+not a pedestrian, and only a rare motor car. When one of the latter
+flashed by she shrank into the shadow of a great house, lest some eye
+of miraculous discernment should light on her. It seemed to her that
+all New York must be ready to read her secret, and be on the watch to
+turn her back.
+
+She didn't know why she was going southward rather than northward,
+except that southward lay the Brooklyn Bridge, and beyond the Brooklyn
+Bridge lay Beehive Valley, and within Beehive Valley the Excelsior
+Studio, and in the Excelsior Studio the faint possibility of a job.
+She was already thinking in the terms that went with the old gray rag
+and the battered hat, and had come back to them as to her
+mother-tongue. In forsaking paradise for the limbo of outcast souls
+she was at least supported by the fact that in the limbo of outcast
+souls she was at home.
+
+She was not frightened. Now that she was out of the prince's palace
+she had suddenly become sensationless. She was like a soul which
+having reached the other side of death is conscious only of release
+from pain. She was no longer walking on blades; she was no longer
+attempting the impossible. Between her and the life which Barbara
+Walbrook understood the few steps she had taken had already marked the
+gulf. The gulf had always been there, yawning, unbridgeable, only that
+she, Letty Gravely, had tried to shut her eyes to it. She had tried to
+shut her eyes to it in the hope that the man she loved might come to
+do the same. She knew now how utterly foolish any such hope had been.
+
+She would have perceived this earlier had he not from time to time
+revived the hope when it was about to flicker out. More than once he
+had confessed to depending on her sympathy. More than once he had told
+her that she drew out something he had hardly dared think he
+possessed, but which made him more of a man. Once he harked back to
+the dust flower, saying that as its humble and heavenly bloom
+brightened the spots bereft of beauty so she cheered the lonely and
+comfortless places in his heart. He had said these things not as one
+who is in love, but as one who is grateful, only that between
+gratitude and love she had purposely kept from drawing the
+distinction.
+
+She did not reproach him. On the contrary, she blessed him even for
+being grateful. That meed he gave her at least, and that he should
+give her anything at all was happiness. Leaving his palace she did so
+with nothing but grateful thoughts on her own side. He had smiled on
+her always; he had been considerate, kindly, and very nearly tender.
+For what he called the wrong he had done her, which she held to be no
+wrong at all, he would have made amends so magnificent that the mere
+acceptance would have overwhelmed her. Since he couldn't give her the
+one thing she craved her best course was like the little mermaid to
+tremble into foam, and become a spirit of the wind.
+
+It was what she was doing. She was going without leaving a trace. A
+girl more important than she couldn't have done it so easily. A
+Barbara Walbrook had she attempted a freak so mad, would be discovered
+within twenty-four hours. It was one of the advantages of extreme
+obscurity that you came and went without notice. No matter how
+conspicuously a Letty Gravely passed it would not be remembered that
+she had gone by.
+
+With regard to this, however, she made one reserve. She couldn't
+disappear forever, not any more than Judith of Bethulia when she went
+to the tent of Holofernes. The history of Judith was not in Letty's
+mind, because she had never heard of it; there was only the impulse to
+the same sort of sacrifice. Since Israel could be delivered only in
+one way, that way Judith had been ready to take. To Letty her prince
+was her Israel. One day she would have to inform him that the
+Holofernes of his captivity was slain--that at last he was free.
+
+There were lines along which Letty was not imaginative, and one of
+those lines ran parallel to Judith's experience. When it came to love
+at first sight, she could invent as many situations as there were
+millionaires in the subway. In interpreting a part she had views of
+her own beyond any held by Luciline Lynch. As to matters of dress her
+fancy was boundless.
+
+Her limitations were in the practical. Among practical things "going
+to the bad" was now her chief preoccupation. She had always understood
+that when you made up your mind to do it you had only to present
+yourself. The way was broad; the gate wide open. There were wicked
+people on every side eager to pull you through. You had only to go out
+into the street, after dark especially--and there you were!
+
+Having walked some three or four blocks she made out the figure of a
+man coming up the hill toward her. Her heart stopped beating; her
+knees quaked. This was doom. She would meet it, of course, since her
+doom would be the prince's salvation; but she couldn't help trembling
+as she watched it coming on.
+
+By the light of an arc-lamp she saw that he was in evening dress. The
+wicked millionaires who, in motion-pictures, were the peril of young
+girls, were always so attired. Iphigenia could not have trodden to the
+altar with a more consuming mental anguish than Letty as she dragged
+herself toward this approaching fate; but she did so drag herself
+without mercy. For a minute as he drew near she was on the point of
+begging him to spare her; but she saved herself in time from this
+frustration of her task.
+
+The man, a young stock-broker in a bad financial plight, scarcely
+noticed that a female figure was passing him. Had the morrow's market
+been less a matter of life and death to him he might have thrown her
+a glance; but as it was she did not come within the range of his
+consciousness. To her amazement, and even to her consternation, Letty
+saw him go onward up the hill, his eyes straight before him, and his
+profile sharply cut in the electric light.
+
+She explained the situation by the fact that he hadn't seen her at
+all. That a man could actually _see_ a girl, in such unusual
+conditions, and still go by inoffensively, was as contrary to all she
+had heard of life as it would have been to the principles of a Turkish
+woman to suppose that one of this sex could behold her face and not
+fall fiercely in love with her. As, however, two men were now coming
+up the hill together Letty was obliged to re-organize her forces to
+meet the new advance.
+
+She couldn't reason this time that they hadn't seen her, because their
+heads turned in her direction, and the intonation of the words she
+couldn't articulately hear was that of faint surprise. Further than
+that there was no incident. They were young men too, also in evening
+dress, and of the very type of which all her warnings had bidden her
+beware. The immunity from insult was almost a matter for chagrin.
+
+As she approached Fifty-ninth Street encounters were nearly as
+numerous as they would have been in daylight; but Letty went on her
+way as if, instead of the old gray rag, she wore the magic cloak of
+invisibility. So it was during the whole of the long half mile between
+Fifty-ninth Street and Forty-second Street. In spite of the fact that
+she was the only unescorted woman she saw, no invitation "to go to the
+bad" was proffered her. "There's quite a trick to it," Steptoe had
+said, in the afternoon; and she began to think that there was.
+
+At Forty-second Street, for no reason that she could explain, she
+turned into the lower and quieter spur of Madison Avenue, climbing and
+descending Murray Hill. Here she was almost alone. Motor-car traffic
+had practically ceased; foot-passengers there were none; on each side
+of the street the houses were somber and somnolent. The electric lamps
+flared as elsewhere, but with little to light up.
+
+Her sense of being lost became awesome. It began to urge itself in on
+her that she was going nowhere, and had nowhere to go. She was back in
+the days when she had walked away from Judson Flack's, without the
+same heart in the adventure. She recalled now that on that day she had
+felt young, daring, equal to anything that fate might send; now she
+felt curiously old and experienced. All her illusions had been dished
+up to her at once and been blown away as by a hurricane. The little
+mermaid who had loved the prince and failed to win his love in return
+could have nothing more to look forward to.
+
+She was drifting, drifting, when suddenly from the shadow of a flight
+of broad steps a man stalked out and confronted her. He confronted her
+with such evident intention that she stopped. Not till she stopped
+could she see that he was a policeman in his summer uniform.
+
+"Where you goin', sister?"
+
+"I ain't goin' nowheres."
+
+She fell back on the old form of speech as on another tongue.
+
+"Where you come from then?"
+
+Feeling now that she had gone to the bad, or was at the beginning of
+that process, she made a reply that would seem probable. "I come from
+a fella I've been--I've been livin' with."
+
+"Gee!" The tone was of deepest pity. "Darned sorry to hear you're in
+that box, a nice girl like you."
+
+"I ain't such a nice girl as you might think."
+
+"Gee! Anyone can see you're a nice girl, just from the way you walk."
+
+Letty was astounded. Was the way you walked part of Steptoe's "trick
+to it?" In the hope of getting information she said, still in the
+secondary tongue: "What's the matter with the way I walk?"
+
+"There's nothin' the matter with it. That's the trouble. Anyone can
+see that you're not a girl that's used to bein' on the street at this
+hour of the night. Ain't you goin' _anywheres_?"
+
+Fear of the police-station suddenly made her faint. If she wasn't
+going _anywheres_ he might arrest her. She bethought her of Steptoe's
+scrawled address. "Yes, I'm goin' there."
+
+As he stepped under the arc-light to read it she saw that he was a
+fatherly man, on the distant outskirts of youth, who might well have a
+family of growing boys and girls.
+
+"That's a long ways from here," he said, handing the scrap of paper
+back to her. "Why don't you take the subway? At this time of night
+there's a train every quarter of an hour."
+
+"I ain't got no bones. I'm footin' it."
+
+"Footin' it all the way to Red Point? You? Gee!"
+
+Once more Letty felt that about her there was something which put her
+out of the key of her adventure.
+
+"Well, what's there against _me_ footin' it?"
+
+"There's nothin' against you footin' it--on'y you don't seem that
+sort. Haven't you got as much as two bits? It wouldn't come to that if
+you took the subway over here at----"
+
+"Well, I haven't got two bits; nor one bit; nor nothin' at all; so I
+guess I'll be lightin' out."
+
+She had nodded and passed, when a stride of his long legs brought him
+up to her again. "Well, see here, sister! If you haven't got two bits,
+take this. I can't have you trampin' all the way over to Red
+Point--not _you_!"
+
+Before knowing what had happened Letty found her hand closing over a
+silver half-dollar, while her benefactor, as if ashamed of his act,
+was off again on his beat. She ran after him. Her excitement was such
+that she forgot the secondary language.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't accept this from you. Please! Don't make me take it.
+I'm--" She felt it the moment for making the confession, and possibly
+getting hints--"I'm--I'm goin' to the bad, anyhow."
+
+"Oh, so that's the talk! I thought you said you'd gone to the bad
+already. Oh, no, sister; you don't put that over on me, not a nice
+looker like you!"
+
+She was almost sobbing. "Well, I'm going--if--if I can find the way. I
+wish you'd tell me if there's a trick to it."
+
+"There's one trick I'll tell you, and that's the way to Red Point."
+
+"I know that already."
+
+"Then, if you know that already, you've got my four bits, which is
+more than enough to take you there decent." He lifted his hand, with a
+warning forefinger. "Remember now, little sister, as long as you spend
+that half dollar it'll bind you to keep good."
+
+He tramped off into the darkness, leaving Letty perplexed at the ways
+of wickedness, as she began once more to drift southward.
+
+But she drifted southward with a new sense of misgiving. Danger was
+mysteriously coy, and she didn't know how to court it. True, there was
+still time enough, but the debut was not encouraging. When she had
+gone forth from Judson Flack's she had felt sure that adventure lay in
+wait for her, and Rashleigh Allerton had responded almost
+instantaneously. Now she had no such confidence. On the contrary; all
+her premonitions worked the other way. Perhaps it was the old gray
+rag. Perhaps it was her lack of feminine appeal. Men had never flocked
+about her as they flocked about some girls, like bees about flowers.
+If she was a flower, she was a dust flower, a humble thing, at home in
+the humblest places, and never regarded as other than a weed.
+
+She wandered into Fourth Avenue, reaching Astor Place. From Astor
+Place she descended the city by the long artery of Lafayette Street,
+in which teams rumbled heavily, and all-night workers shouted
+raucously to each other in foreign languages. One of a band of
+Italians digging in the roadway, with colored lanterns about them,
+called out something at her, the nature of which she could only infer
+from the laughter of his compatriots. Here too she began to notice
+other women like herself, shabby, furtive, unescorted, with terrible
+eyes, aimlessly drifting from nowhere to nowhere. There were not many
+of them; only one at long intervals; but they frightened her more than
+the men.
+
+They frightened her because she saw what she must look like herself, a
+thing too degraded for any man to want. She was not that yet, perhaps;
+but it was what she might become. They were not wholly new to her,
+these women; and they all had begun at some such point as that from
+which she was starting out. Very well! She was ready to go this road,
+if only by this road her prince could be freed from her. Since she
+couldn't give up everything for him in one way, she would do it in
+another. The way itself was more or less a matter of indifference--not
+entirely, perhaps, but more or less. If she could set him free in any
+way she would be content.
+
+The rumble and stir of Lafayette Street alarmed her because it was so
+foreign. The upper part of the town had been empty and eerie. This
+quarter was eerie, alien, and occupied. It was difficult for her to
+tell what so many people were doing abroad because their aims seemed
+different from those of daylight. What she couldn't understand struck
+her as nefarious; and what struck her as nefarious filled her with the
+kind of terror that comes in dreams.
+
+By these Italians, Slavs, and Semites she was more closely scrutinized
+than she had been elsewhere. She was scrutinized, too, with a hint of
+hostility in the scrutiny. In their jabber of tongues they said things
+about her as she passed. Wild-eyed women, working by the flare of
+torches with their men, resented her presence in the street. They
+insulted her in terms she couldn't understand, while the men laughed
+in frightful, significant jocosity. The unescorted women alone looked
+at her with a hint of friendliness. One of them, painted, haggard,
+desperate, awful, stopped as if to speak to her; but Letty sped away
+like a snowbird from a shrike.
+
+At a corner where the cross-street was empty she turned out of this
+haunted highway, presently finding herself lost in a congeries of
+old-time streets of which she had never heard. Her only knowledge of
+New York was of streets crossing each other at right angles, numbered,
+prosaic, leaving no more play to the fancy than a sum in arithmetic.
+Here the ways were narrow, the buildings tall, the night effects
+fantastic. In the lamp light she could read signs bearing names as
+unpronounceable as the gibbering monkey-speech in Lafayette Street.
+Warehouses, offices, big wholesale premises, lairs of highly
+specialized businesses which only the few knew anything about, offered
+no place for human beings to sleep, and little invitation to the
+prowler. Now and then a marauding cat darted from shadow to shadow,
+but otherwise she was as nearly alone as she could imagine herself
+being in the heart of a great city.
+
+Still she went on and on. In the effort to escape this overpowering
+solitude she turned one corner and then another, now coming out
+beneath the elevated trains, now on the outskirts of docks where she
+was afraid of sailors. She was afraid of being alone, and afraid of
+the thoroughfares where there were people. On the whole she was more
+afraid of the thoroughfares where there were people, though her fear
+soon entered the unreasoning phase, in which it is fear and nothing
+else. Still headed vaguely southward she zigzagged from street to
+street, helpless, terrified, longing for day.
+
+She was in a narrow street of which the high weird gables on either
+side recalled her impressions on opening a copy of _Faust_,
+illustrated by Gustave Dore, which she found on the library table in
+East Sixty-seventh Street. On her right the elevated and the docks
+were not far away, on the left she could catch, through an occasional
+side street the distant gleam of Broadway. Being afraid of both she
+kept to the deep canyon of unreality and solitude, though she was
+afraid of that. At least she was alone; and yet to be alone chilled
+her marrow and curdled her blood.
+
+Suddenly she heard the clank of footsteps. She stopped to listen,
+making them out as being on the other side of the street, and
+advancing. Before she had dared to move on again a man emerged from
+the half light and came abreast of her. As he stopped to look across
+at her, Letty hurried on.
+
+The man also went on, but on glancing over her shoulder to make sure
+that she was safe she saw him pause, cross to her side of the street,
+and begin to follow her. That he followed her was plain from his whole
+plan of action. The ring of his footsteps told her that he was walking
+faster than she, though in no precise hurry to overtake her. Rather,
+he seemed to be keeping her in sight, and watching for some
+opportunity.
+
+It was exactly what men did when they robbed and murdered unprotected
+women. She had read of scores of such cases, and had often imagined
+herself as being stalked by this kind of ghoul. Now the thing which
+she had greatly feared having come upon her she was nearly hysterical.
+If she ran he would run after her. If she only walked on he would
+overtake her. Before she could reach the docks on one side or Broadway
+on the other, where she might find possible defenders, he could easily
+have strangled her and rifled her fifty cents.
+
+It was still unreasoning fear, but fear in which there was another
+kind of prompting, which made her wheel suddenly and walk back towards
+him. She noticed that as she did so, he stopped, wavered, but came on
+again.
+
+Before the obscurity allowed of her seeing what type of man he was she
+cried out, with a half sob:
+
+"Oh, mister, I'm so afraid! I wish you'd help me."
+
+"Sure!" The tone had the cheery fraternal ring of commonplace
+sincerity. "That's what I turned round for. I says, that girl's lost,
+I says. There's places down here that's dangerous, and she don't know
+where she is."
+
+Hysterical fear became hysterical relief. "And you're not going to
+murder me?"
+
+"Gee! Me? What'd I murder you for? I'm a plumber."
+
+His tone making it seem impossible for a plumber to murder anyone she
+panted now from a sense of reassurance and security. She could see too
+that he was a decent looking young fellow in overalls, off on an
+early job.
+
+"Where you goin' anyhow?" he asked, in kindly interest. "The minute I
+see you on the other side of the street, I says Gosh, I says! That
+girl's got to be watched, I says. She don't know that these streets
+down by the docks is dangerous."
+
+She explained that she was on her way to Red Point, Long Island, and
+that having only fifty cents she was sparing of her money.
+
+"Gee! I wouldn't be so economical if it was me. That ain't the only
+fifty cents in the world. Look-a-here! I've got a dollar. You must
+take that----"
+
+"Oh, I couldn't."
+
+"Shucks! What's a dollar? You can pay me back some time. I'll give you
+my address. It's all right. I'm married. Three kids. And say, if you
+send me back the dollar, which you needn't do, you know--but if you
+_must_--sign a man's name to the letter, because my wife--well, she's
+all right, but if----"
+
+Letty escaped the necessity of accepting the dollar by assuring him
+that if he would tell her the way to the nearest subway station she
+would use a portion of her fifty cents.
+
+"I'll go with you," he declared, with breezy fraternity. "No distance.
+They're expecting me on a job up there in Waddle Street, but they'll
+wait. Pipe burst--floodin' a loft where they've stored a lot of
+jute--but why worry?"
+
+As they threaded the broken series of streets toward the subway he
+aired the matrimonial question.
+
+"Some think as two can live on the same wages as one. All bunk, I'll
+say. My wife used to be in the hair line. Some little earner too. Had
+an electric machine that'd make hair grow like hay on a marsh. Two
+dollars a visit she got. When we was married she had nine hunderd
+saved. I had over five hunderd myself. We took a weddin' tour;
+Atlantic City. Gettin' married's a cinch; but _stayin_' married--she's
+all right, my wife is, only she's kind o' nervous like if I look
+sideways at any other woman--which I hardly ever do intentional--only
+my wife's got it into her head that...."
+
+At the entrance to the subway Letty shook hands with him and thanked
+him.
+
+"Say," he responded, "I wish I could do something more for you; but I
+got to hike it back to Waddle Street. Look-a-here! You stick to the
+subway and the stations, and don't you be in a hurry to get to your
+address in Red Point till after daylight. They can't be killin' nobody
+over there, that you'd need to be in such a rush, and in the stations
+you'd be safe."
+
+To a degree that was disconcerting Letty found this so. Having
+descended the stairs, purchased a ticket, and cast it into the
+receptacle appointed for that purpose, she saw herself examined by the
+colored man guarding the entry to the platform. He sat with his chair
+tilted back, his feet resting on the chain which protected part of the
+entrance, picking a set of brilliant teeth. Letty, trembling, nervous,
+and only partly comforted by the cavalier who was now on his way to
+Waddle Street, shrank from the colored man's gaze and was going down
+the platform where she could be away from it. Her progress was
+arrested by the sight of two men, also waiting for the train, who on
+perceiving her started in her direction.
+
+The colored man lifted his feet lazily from the chain, brought his
+chair down to four legs, put his toothpick in his waistcoat pocket,
+and dragged himself up.
+
+"Say, lady," he drawled, on approaching her, "I think them two fellas
+is tough. You stay here by me. I'll not let no one get fresh with
+you."
+
+Languidly he went back to his former position and occupation, but when
+after long waiting, the train drew in he unhooked his feet again from
+the chain, rose lazily, and accompanied Letty across the otherwise
+empty platform.
+
+"Say, brother," he said to the conductor, "don't let any fresh guy get
+busy with this lady. She's alone, and timid like."
+
+"Sure thing," the conductor replied, closing the doors as Letty
+stepped within. "Sit in this corner, lady, next to me. The first mutt
+that wags his jaw at you'll get it on the bean."
+
+Letty dropped as she was bidden into the corner, dazed by the
+brilliant lighting, and the greasy unoccupied seats. She was alone in
+the car, and the kindly conductor having closed his door she felt a
+certain sense of privacy. The train clattered off into the darkness.
+
+Where was she going? Why was she there? How was she ever to accomplish
+the purpose with which two hours earlier she had stolen away from East
+Sixty-seventh Street? Was it only two hours earlier? It seemed like
+two years. It seemed like a space of time not to be reckoned....
+
+She was tired as she had never been tired in her life. Her head sank
+back into the support made by the corner.
+
+"There's quite a trick to it," she found herself repeating, though in
+what connection she scarcely knew. "An awful wicked lydy, she is,
+what'd put madam up to all the ropes." These words too drifted through
+her mind, foolishly, drowsily, without obvious connection. She began
+to wish that she was home again in the little back spare room--or
+anywhere--so long as she could lie down--and shut her eyes--and go to
+sleep....
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+
+It was Steptoe who discovered that the little back spare room was
+empty, though William had informed him that he thought it strange that
+madam didn't appear for breakfast. Steptoe knew then that what he had
+expected had come to pass, and if earlier than he had looked for it,
+perhaps it was just as well. Having tapped at madam's door and
+received no answer he ventured within. Everything there confirming his
+belief, he went to inform Mr. Rash.
+
+As Mr. Rash was shaving in the bathroom Steptoe plodded round the
+bedroom, picking up scattered articles of clothing, putting outside
+the door the shoes which had been taken off on the previous night,
+digging another pair of shoes from the shoe-cupboard, and otherwise
+busying himself as usual. Even when Mr. Rash had re-entered the
+bedroom the valet made no immediate reference to what had happened in
+the house. He approached the subject indirectly by saying, as he laid
+out an old velvet house-jacket on the bed:
+
+"I suppose if Mr. Rash ain't goin' out for 'is breakfast 'e'll put
+this on for 'ome."
+
+Mr. Rash, who was buttoning his collar before the mirror said over his
+shoulder: "But I am going out for my breakfast. Why shouldn't I? I
+always do."
+
+Steptoe carried the house-jacket back to the closet.
+
+"I thought as Mr. Rash only did that so as madam could 'ave the dinin'
+room to 'erself, private like."
+
+As a way of expressing the fact that Allerton had never eaten a meal
+with Letty the choice of words was neat.
+
+"Well? What then?"
+
+"Oh, nothink, sir. I was only thinkin' that, as madam was no longer
+'ere----"
+
+Allerton wheeled round, his fingers clawing at the collar-stud, his
+face growing bloodless. "No longer here? What the deuce do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, didn't Mr. Rash know? Madam seems to 'ave left us. I supposed
+that after I'd gone upstairs last night Mr. Rash and 'er must 'ave 'ad
+some sort of hunderstandin'--and she went."
+
+"Went?" Allerton's tone was almost a scream. Leaping on the old man he
+took him by the shoulders, snaking him. "Damn you! Get it out! What
+are you trying to tell me?"
+
+Steptoe quaked and cowered. "Why, nothink, sir. Only when William said
+as madam didn't come down to 'er breakfast I went to 'er door and
+tapped--and there wasn't no one in the room. Mr. Rash 'ad better go
+and see for 'imself."
+
+The young man not only released the older one, but pushed him aside
+with a force which sent him staggering backwards. Over the stairs he
+scrambled, he plunged. Though he had never entered the back spare room
+since allotting it to Letty as her own he threw the door open now as
+if the place was on fire.
+
+But by the time Steptoe had followed and reached the threshold
+Allerton had calmed suddenly. He stood in front of the open closet
+vaguely examining its contents. He picked up the little gold band,
+chucked it a few inches into the air, caught it, and put it down. He
+looked into the little leather purse, poured out its notes and pennies
+into his hand, replaced them, and put that also down again. He opened
+the old red volume lying on the table by the bed, finding _The Little
+Mermaid_ marked by two stiff dried sprays of dust flower, which more
+than ever merited its name. When he turned round to where Steptoe,
+white and scared by this time, was standing in the open doorway, his,
+Allerton's, face was drawn, in mingled convulsion and bewilderment.
+With two strides he was across the room.
+
+"Tell me what you know about this, you confounded old schemer, before
+I kick you out."
+
+Shivering and shaking, Steptoe nevertheless held himself with dignity.
+"I'll tell you what I know, Mr. Rash, though it ain't very much. I
+know that madam 'as 'ad it in 'er mind for some time past that unless
+she took steps Mr. Rash'd never be free to marry the young lydy what
+'e was in love with."
+
+"What did she mean by taking steps?"
+
+"I don't know exactly, but I think it was the kind o' steps as'd give
+Mr. Rash 'is release quicker nor any other."
+
+Allerton's arm was raised as if to strike a blow. "And you let her?"
+
+The old face was set steadily. "I didn't do nothin' but what Mr. Rash
+'imself told me to do."
+
+"Told you to do?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Rash; six months ago; the mornin' after you'd brought madam
+into the 'ouse. I was to get you out of the marriage, you said; but I
+think madam 'as done it all of 'er own haccord."
+
+"But why? Why should she?"
+
+Steptoe smiled, dimly. "Oh, don't Mr. Rash see? Madam 'ad give 'erself
+to 'im 'eart and spirit and soul. If she couldn't go to the good for
+'im, she'd go to the bad. So long as she served 'im, it didn't matter
+to madam what she done. And if I was Mr. Rash----"
+
+Allerton's spring was like that of a tiger. Before Steptoe felt that
+he had been seized he was on his back on the floor, with Allerton
+kneeling on his chest.
+
+"You old reptile! I'm going to kill you."
+
+"You may kill me, Mr. Rash, but it won't make no difference to madam
+'avin' loved you----"
+
+Two strong hands at his throat choked back more words, till the sound
+of his strangling startled Allerton into a measure of self-control. He
+scrambled to his feet again.
+
+"Get up."
+
+Steptoe dragged himself up, and after dusting himself with his fingers
+stood once more passive and respectful, as if nothing violent had
+occurred.
+
+"If I was Mr. Rash," he went on, imperturbably, "I'd let well enough
+alone."
+
+It was Allerton who was breathless. "Wha--what do you mean by well
+enough alone?"
+
+"Well the wye I see it, it's this wye. Mr. Rash is married to one
+young lydy and wants to marry another." He broke off to ask,
+significantly: "I suppose that'd be so, Mr. Rash?"
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Why, then, 'e can't marry the other young lydy till the young lydy
+what 'e's married to sets 'im free. Now that young lydy what 'e's
+married to 'as started out to set 'im free, and if I was Mr. Rash I'd
+let 'er."
+
+"You'd let her throw herself away for me?"
+
+"I'd let 'er do anythink what'd show I knowed my own mind, Mr. Rash.
+If it wouldn't be steppin' out of my place to sye so, I wish Mr. Rash
+could tell which of these two young lydies 'e wanted, and which 'e'd
+be willin' for to----"
+
+"How can I tell that when--when both have a claim on me?"
+
+"Yes, but only one 'as a clyme on Mr. Rash now. Madam 'as given up 'er
+clyme, so as to myke things easier for _'im_. There's only one clyme
+now for Mr. Rash to think about, and that mykes everythink simple."
+
+An embarrassed cough drew Steptoe's attention to the fact that someone
+was standing in the hall outside. It was William with a note on a
+silver tray. Beside the note stood a small square package, tied with a
+white ribbon, which looked as if it contained a piece of wedding cake.
+His whisper of explanation was the word, "Wildgoose," but a cocking of
+his eye gave Steptoe to understand that William was quite aware of
+wading in the current of his employer's love-affairs. Moreover, the
+fact that Steptoe and his master should be making so free with the
+little back spare room was in William's judgment evidence of drama.
+
+"What's this?"
+
+Glancing at the hand-writing on the envelope, and taking in the fact
+that a small square package, looking like a bit of wedding cake stood
+beside it, Allerton jumped back. Steptoe might have been presenting
+him with a snake.
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Rash. William 'as just brought it up. Someone seems
+to 'ave left it at the door."
+
+As Steptoe continued to stand with his offering held out Allerton had
+no choice but to take up the letter and break the seal. He read it
+with little grunts intended to signify ironic laughter, but which
+betrayed no more than bitterness of soul.
+
+    "DEAR RASH:
+
+    I have come to see that we shall never get out of the impasse
+    in which we seem to have been caught unless someone takes a
+    stand. I have therefore decided to take one. Of the three of
+    us it is apparently easiest for me, so that I am definitely
+    breaking our engagement and sending you back your ring. Any
+    claim I may have had on you I give up of my own accord, so
+    that as far as I am concerned you are free. This will simplify
+    your situation, and enable you to act according to the
+    dictates of your heart. Believe me, dear Rash, affectionately
+    yours
+
+                                              BARBARA WALBROOK."
+
+Though it was not his practice to take his valet into the secret of
+his correspondence the circumstances were exceptional. Allerton handed
+the letter to Steptoe without a word. As the old man was feeling for
+his glasses and adjusting them to his nose Mr. Rash turned absently
+away, picking up the volume of Hans Andersen, from which the sprays
+of dust flower tumbled out. On putting them back his eyes fell upon
+the words, which someone had marked with a pencil:
+
+"Day by day she grew dearer to the prince; but he loved her as one
+loves a child. The thought of making her his queen never crossed his
+mind."
+
+A spasm passed over his face. He turned the page impatiently. Here he
+caught the words which had been underlined:
+
+"I am with him every day. I will watch over him--love him--and
+sacrifice my life for him."
+
+Shutting the book with a bang, and throwing it on the table, he
+wheeled round to where Steptoe, having folded the letter, was taking
+off his spectacles.
+
+"Well, what do you say to that?"
+
+"What I'd sye to that, Mr. Rash, is that it's as good as a legal
+document. If any young lydy what wrote that letter was to bring a
+haction for breach, this 'ere pyper'd nyle 'er."
+
+"So where am I now?"
+
+"Free as a lark, Mr. Rash. One young lydy 'as turned you down, and the
+other 'as gone to the bad for you; so if you was to begin agyne with a
+third you'd 'ave a clean sheet."
+
+He groaned aloud. "Ah, go to ----"
+
+But without stating the place to which Steptoe was to go he marched
+out of the room, and back to his dressing upstairs.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+More dispassionate was the early morning scene in the little basement
+eating house in which the stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture was
+serving breakfast to two gentlemen who had plainly met by
+appointment. Beside the one was an oblong packet, of which some of the
+contents, half displayed, had the opulent engraved decorations of
+stock certificates.
+
+The other gentleman, resembling an operatic brigand a little the worse
+for wear, was saying with conviction: "Oil! Don't talk to me! No, sir!
+There's enough oil in Milligan Center alone to run every car in Europe
+and America at this present time; while if you include North Milligan,
+where it's beginnin' to shoot like the Old Faithful geyser----"
+
+"Awful obliged to you, Judson," the other took up, humbly. "I thought
+that bunch o' nuts 'd never----"
+
+"So did I, Gorry. I've sweated blood over this job all winter. Queer
+the way men are made. Now you'd hardly believe the work I've had to
+show that lot of boneheads that because a guy's a detective in one
+line, he ain't a detective in every line. Homicide, I said, was Gorry
+Larrabin's specialty, and where there's no homicide he's no more a
+detective than a busted rubber tire."
+
+"You've said it," Gorry corroborated, earnestly. "One of the cussed
+things about detectin' is that fellas gets afraid of you. Think
+because you're keepin' up your end you must be down on every little
+thing, and that you ain't a sport."
+
+"Must be hard," Judson said, sympathetically.
+
+"I'll tell you it's hard. Lots of fun I'd like to be let in on--but
+you're kept outside."
+
+The drawbacks of the detective profession not being what Judson
+chiefly had on his mind he allowed the subject to drop. An interval of
+silence for the consumption of a plateful of golden toasties
+permitted Gorry to begin again reminiscently.
+
+"By the way, Judson, do you remember that about six months ago you was
+chewin' over that girl of yours, and what had become of her?"
+
+To himself Judson said: "That's the talk; now we're comin' to
+business." Aloud he made it: "Why, yes. Seems to me I do. She's been
+gone so long I'd almost forgot her."
+
+"Well, what d'ye know? Last night--lemme see, was it last night?--no,
+night before last--I kind o' got wind of her."
+
+"Heaven's sake!"
+
+"Guy I know was comin' through East Sixty-seventh Street, and there
+was my lady, dressed to beat the band, leadin' one of them little toy
+dogs, and talkin' to a swell toff that lives in one of them houses.
+Got the number here in my pocket-book."
+
+While he was searching his pocket-book Judson asked, breathlessly:
+"Couldn't be no mistake?"
+
+"It's nix on mistakes. That guy don't make 'em. Surest thing on the
+force. He said, 'Good afternoon, Miss Gravely'; and she said, 'Good
+afternoon' back to him--just like that. The guy walked on and turned a
+corner; but when he peeped back, there was the couple goin' into the
+house just like husband and wife. What d'ye know?"
+
+"What do I know? I know I'll spill his claret for him before the week
+is out."
+
+"Ah, here it is! Knew I had that address on me somewheres." He handed
+the scrap of paper across the table. "That's his name and number.
+Seems to me you may have a good thing there, Judson, if you know how
+to work it."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+In another early morning scene the ermine was cleaning her nest; and
+you know how fastidious she is supposed to be as to personal
+spotlessness. The ermine in question did not belie her reputation, as
+you would have seen by a glance at the three or four rooms which made
+up what she called her "flat."
+
+Nothing was ever whiter than the wood-work of the "flat" and its
+furnishings. Nothing was ever whiter than the little lady's dress. The
+hair was white, and even the complexion, the one like silver, the
+other like the camelia. Having breakfasted from white dishes placed on
+a white napkin, she was busy with a carpet-sweeper sweeping up
+possible crumbs. In an interval of the carpet-sweeper's buzz she heard
+the telephone.
+
+"Hello!" The male voice was commanding.
+
+"Yes?" The response was sweetly precise.
+
+"Is this Red Point 3284-W?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Can I speak to Miss Henrietta Towell?"
+
+"This is Miss Henrietta Towell."
+
+"This is the Brooklyn Bridge Emergency Hospital. Do you know a girl
+named Letitia Rashleigh?"
+
+There was a second's hesitation. "I was once a lady's maid to a lady
+whose maiden name was Rashleigh. I think there may be a connection
+somewhere."
+
+"She was found unconscious on a car in the subway last night and
+brought in here."
+
+"And has she mentioned me?"
+
+"She hasn't mentioned anyone since she came to; but we find your
+address on a paper in her pocket."
+
+"That seems singular, but I expect there's a purpose behind it. Is
+that everything she had?"
+
+"No; she had forty-five cents and a thimble."
+
+"A thimble! Just an ordinary thimble."
+
+"Yes, an ordinary thimble, except that it has initials on the edge.
+'H.T. from H.S.' Does that mean anything to you?"
+
+"Yes; that means something to me. May I ask how to reach the
+hospital?"
+
+This being explained Miss Towell promised to appear without delay,
+begging that in the meantime everything be done for Miss Rashleigh's
+comfort.
+
+She was not perturbed. She was not surprised. She did not wonder who
+Letitia Rashleigh could be, or why her address should be found in the
+girl's pocket. She was as quiet and serene as if such incidents
+belonged to every day's work.
+
+Dressed for the street she was all in black. A mantua covered with
+bugles and braid dropped from her shoulders, while a bonnet which rose
+to a pointed arch above her brow, and allowed the silver knob of her
+hair to escape behind, gave her a late nineteenth century dignity.
+Before leaving the house she took two volumes from her shelves--read
+first in one, then in the other--sat pensive for a while, with head
+bent and eyes shaded--after which she replaced her books, turned the
+key in her door, and set forth for Brooklyn Bridge.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+
+"Why you should hold me responsible," Barbara was saying, "I can't
+begin to imagine. Surely I've done everything I could to simplify
+matters, to straighten them out, and to give you a chance to rectify
+your folly. I've effaced myself; I've broken my heart; I've promised
+Aunt Marion to go in for a job for which I'm not fitted and don't care
+a rap; and yet you come here, accusing me----"
+
+"But, Barbe, I'm _not_ accusing you! If I'm accusing anyone it's
+myself. Only I can't speak without your taking me up----"
+
+"There you go! Oh, Rash, dear, if you'd only been able to control
+yourself nothing of this would have happened--not from the first."
+
+She was pacing up and down the little reception room, and rubbing her
+hands together, while the twisting of the fish-tail of her
+hydrangea-colored robe, like an eel in agony, emphasized her
+agitation. Rashleigh was seated, his elbows on his knees, his head
+bowed between his hands, of which the fingers clutched and tore at the
+masses of his hair. Only when he spoke did he lift his woe-begone
+black eyes.
+
+"Well, I didn't control myself," he admitted, impatiently; "that's
+settled. Why go back to it? The question is----"
+
+"Yes; why go back to it? That's you all over, Rash. You can do what no
+one else in his senses would ever think of doing; and when you've
+upset the whole apple cart it must never be referred to again. I'm to
+accept, and keep silence. Well, I've _kept_ silence. I've gone all
+winter like a muzzled dog. I've wheedled that girl, and kow-towed to
+her, and made her think I was fond of her--which I am in a way--you
+may not believe it, but I am--and what's the result? She gets sick of
+the whole business; runs away; and you come here and throw the whole
+blame on me."
+
+He tried to speak with special calmness. "Barbe, listen to me. What I
+said was this----"
+
+She came to a full stop in front of him, her arms outspread. "Oh,
+Rash, dear, I know perfectly well what you said. You don't have to go
+all over it again. I'm not deaf. If you would only not be so
+excitable----"
+
+He jumped to his feet. "I'm excitable, I know, Barbe. I confess it.
+Everybody knows it. What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm not
+excited _now_."
+
+She laughed, a little mocking laugh, and started once more to pace up
+and down. "Oh, very well! You're not excited now. Then that's
+understood. You never are excited. You're as calm as a mountain." She
+paused again, though at a distance. "_Now?_ What is it you're going to
+do? That's what you've come to ask me, isn't it? Are you going to run
+after her? Are you going to let her go? Are you going to divorce her,
+if she gives you the opportunity? If you divorce her are you going
+to----?"
+
+"But, Barbe, I can't decide all these questions now. What I want to do
+is to _find_ her."
+
+"Well, I haven't got her here? Why don't you go after her? Why don't
+you apply to the police? Why don't you----?"
+
+"Yes, but that's just what I want to discuss with you. I don't _like_
+applying to the police. If I do it'll get into the papers, and the
+whole thing become so odious and vulgar----"
+
+"And it's such an exquisite idyll now!"
+
+He threw back his head. "_She's_ an exquisite idyll--in her way."
+
+"There! That's what I wanted to hear you say! I've thought you were in
+love with her----"
+
+He remembered the penciled lines in Hans Andersen. "If I have been,
+it's as you may be in love with an innocent little child----"
+
+She laughed again, wildly, almost hysterically. "Oh, Rash, don't try
+to get that sort of thing off on me. I know how men love innocent
+little children. You can see the way they do it any night you choose
+to hang round the stage-door of a theatre where the exquisite idylls
+are playing in musical comedy."
+
+"Don't Barbe! Not when you're talking about her! I know she's an
+ignorant little thing; but to me she's like a wild-flower----"
+
+"Wild-flowers can be cultivated, Rash."
+
+"Yes, but the wild-flower she's most like is the one you see in the
+late summer all along the dusty highways----"
+
+She put up both palms in a gesture of protestation. "Oh, Rash, please
+don't be poetical. It gets on my nerves. I can't stand it. I like you
+in every mood but your sentimental one." She came to a halt beside
+the mantelpiece, on which she rested an elbow, turning to look at him.
+"Now tell me, Rash! Suppose I wasn't in the world at all. Or suppose
+you'd never heard of me. And suppose you found yourself married to
+this girl, just as you are--nominally--legally--but not really. Would
+you--would you make it--really?"
+
+They exchanged a long silent look. His eyes had not left hers when he
+said: "I--I might."
+
+"Good! Now suppose she wasn't in the world at all, or that you'd never
+heard of her. And suppose that you and I were--were on just the same
+terms that we are to-day. Would you--would you want to marry me?
+Answer me truly."
+
+"Why, yes; of course."
+
+"Now suppose that she and I were standing together, and you were led
+in to choose between us. And suppose you were absolutely free and
+untrammelled in your choice, with no question as to her feelings or
+mine to trouble you. Which would you take? Answer me just as truly and
+sincerely as you can."
+
+He took time to think, wheeling away from her, and walking up and down
+the little room with his hands behind his back. It occurred to neither
+that Barbara having broken the "engagement," and returned the ring,
+the choice before him was purely hypothetical. Their relations were no
+more affected by the note she had written him that morning than by the
+ceremony through which he and Letty had walked in the previous year.
+
+To Barbara the suspense was almost unbearable. In a minute or two, and
+with a word or two, she would know how life for the future was to be
+cast. She would have before her the possibility of some day becoming a
+happy wife--or a great career like her aunt's.
+
+Pausing in his walk he confronted her just as he stood, his hands
+still clasped behind his back. Her own attitude, with elbow resting on
+the mantelpiece, was that of a woman equal to anything.
+
+He spoke slowly. "Just as truly and sincerely as I can answer you--I
+don't know."
+
+She stirred slightly, but otherwise gave no sign of her impatience.
+"And is there anything that would help you to find out?"
+
+He shook his head. "Nothing that I can think of, unless----"
+
+"Yes? Unless--what?"
+
+"Unless it's something that would unlock what's locked in my
+subconsciousness."
+
+"And what would that be?"
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea."
+
+She moved from the mantelpiece with a gesture of despair. "Rash,
+you're absolutely and hopelessly impossible."
+
+"I know that," he admitted, humbly.
+
+With both fists clenched she stood in front of him. "I could kill
+you."
+
+He hung his head. "Not half so easily as I could kill myself."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Letty's judgment on Miss Henrietta Towell was different from yours and
+mine. She found her just what she had expected to see from the
+warnings long ago issued by Mrs. Judson Flack in putting her daughter
+on her guard. In going about the city she, Letty, was always to be
+suspicious of elderly ladies, respectably dressed, enticingly
+mannered, and with what seemed like maternal intentions. The more any
+one of these traits was developed, the more suspicious Letty was to
+be. With these instructions carefully at heart she would have been
+suspicious of Henrietta Towell in any case; but with Steptoe's
+description to fall back upon she couldn't but feel sure.
+
+By the time Miss Towell had arrived at the hospital Letitia Rashleigh
+had sufficiently recovered to be dressed and seated in the armchair
+placed beside the bed in the small white ward. On one low bedpost the
+jacket had been hung, and on the other the battered black hat.
+
+"There's nothing the matter with her," the nurse explained to Miss
+Towell, before entering the ward. "She had fainted in the subway, but
+I think it was only from fatigue, and perhaps from lack of food. She's
+quite well nourished, only she didn't seem to have eaten any supper,
+and was evidently tired from a long and frightening walk. She gives us
+no explanation of herself, and is disinclined to talk, and if it
+hadn't been that she had your address in her pocket----"
+
+"I think I know how she got that. From her name I judge that she's a
+relative of the family in which I used to be employed; but as they
+were all very wealthy people----"
+
+"Even very wealthy people often have poor relations."
+
+"Yes, of course; but I was with this family for so many years that if
+there'd been any such connection I think I must have heard of it.
+However, it makes no difference to me, and I shall be glad to be of
+use to her, especially as she has in her possession an article--a
+thimble it is--which once belonged to me."
+
+At the bedside the nurse made the introduction. "This is the lady
+whose address you had in your pocket. She very kindly said she'd come
+and see what she could do for you."
+
+Having placed a chair for Miss Towell the nurse withdrew to attend to
+other patients in the ward, of whom there were three or four.
+
+Letty regarded the newcomer with eyes that seemed lustreless in spite
+of their tiny gold flames. Having a shrewd idea of what she would mean
+to her visitor she felt it unnecessary to express gratitude. In a
+certain sense she hated her at sight. She hated her bugles and braid
+and the shape of her bonnet, as the criminal about to be put to death
+might hate the executioner's mask and gaberdine. The more Miss Towell
+was sweet-spoken and respectable, the more Letty shrank from these
+tokens of hypocrisy in one who was wicked to the core. "She wouldn't
+seem so wicked, not at first," Steptoe had predicted, "but time'd
+tell." Well, Letty didn't need time to tell, since she could see for
+herself already. She could see from the first words addressed to her.
+
+"You needn't tell me anything about yourself, dear, that you don't
+want me to know. If you're without a place to go to, I shall be glad
+if you'll come home with me."
+
+It was the invitation Letty had expected, and to which she meant to
+respond. Knowing, however, what was behind it she replied more
+ungraciously than she would otherwise have done. "Oh, I don't mind
+talking about myself. I'm a picture-actress, only I've been out of a
+job. I haven't worked for over six months. I've been--I've been
+visiting."
+
+Miss Towell lowered her eyes, and spoke with modesty. "I suppose you
+were visiting people who knew--who knew the person who--who gave you
+my address and the thimble?"
+
+This question being more direct than she cared for Letty was careful
+to answer no more than, "Yes."
+
+Miss Towell continued to sit with eyes downcast, and as if musing. Two
+or three minutes went by before she said, softly: "How is he?"
+
+Letty replied that he was very well, and in the same place where he
+had been so long. Another interval of musing was followed by the
+simple statement: "We differed about religion."
+
+This remark had no modifying effect on Letty's estimate of Miss
+Towell's character, since religion was little more to her than a word.
+Neither was she interested in dead romance between Steptoe and Miss
+Towell, all romance being summed up in her prince. That flame burned
+with a pure and single purpose to wed him to the princess with whom he
+was in love, while the little mermaid became first foam, and then a
+spirit of the air. It took little from the poetry of this dissolution
+that it could be achieved only by trundling over Brooklyn Bridge, and
+through a nexus of dreary streets. In Letty's outlook on her mission
+the end glorified the means, however shady or degraded.
+
+It was precisely this spirit--mistaken, if you choose to call it
+so--which animated Judith of Bethulia, Monna Vanna, and Boule de Suif.
+Letty didn't class herself with these heroines; she only felt as they
+did, that there was something to be done. On that something a man's
+happiness depended; on it another woman's happiness depended too; on
+it her own happiness depended, since if it wasn't done she would feel
+herself a clog to be cursed. To be cursed by the prince would mean
+anguish far more terrible than any punishment society could mete out
+to her.
+
+"If you feel equal to it we might go now, dear," Miss Towell
+suggested, on waking from her dreams of what might have been. "I wish
+I could take you in a taxi; but I daresay you won't mind the tram."
+
+Letty rose briskly. "No, I shan't mind it at all." She looked Miss
+Towell significantly in the eyes, hoping that her words would carry
+all the meaning she was putting into them. "I shan't mind--anything
+you want me to do, no matter what."
+
+Miss Towell smiled, sweetly. "Thank you, dear. That'll be very nice. I
+shan't ask you to do much, because it's your problem, you know, and
+you must work it out. I'll stand by; but standing by is about all we
+can do for each other, when problems have to be faced. Don't you think
+it is?"
+
+As this language meant nothing to Letty, she thanked the nurse, smiled
+at the other patients, and, trudging at Miss Towell's side with her
+quaintly sturdy grace, went forth to her great sacrifice.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allerton had drawn from his conversation with Barbara this one
+practical suggestion. As he had months before consulted his lawyer,
+Mr. Nailes, as to ways of losing Letty after she had been found, he
+might consult him as to ways of finding her now that she had been
+lost. Mr. Nailes would not go to the police. He would apply to some
+discreet house of detectives who would do the work discreetly.
+
+"Then, I presume, you've changed your mind about this marriage," was
+Mr. Nailes' not unnatural inference, "and mean to go on with it."
+
+"N-not exactly." Allerton was still unable to define his intentions.
+"I only don't want her to disappear--like this."
+
+Mr. Nailes pondered. He was a tall, raw-boned man, of raw-boned
+countenance, to whom the law represented no system of divine justice,
+but a means by which Eugene Nailes could make money, as his father had
+made it before him. Having inherited his father's practice he had
+inherited Rashleigh Allerton, the two fathers having had a
+long-standing business connection. Mr. Nailes had no high opinion of
+Rashleigh Allerton--in which he was not peculiar--but a client with so
+much money was entitled to his way. At the same time he couldn't have
+been human without urging a point of common sense.
+
+"If you _don't_ want to--to continue your--your relation with
+this--this lady, doesn't it strike you that now might be a happy
+opportunity----?"
+
+Allerton did what he did rarely; he struck the table with his fist. "I
+want to find her."
+
+The words were spoken with so much force that to Mr. Nailes they were
+conclusive. It was far from his intention to compel anyone to common
+sense, and least of all a man whose folly might bring increased fees
+to the firm of Nailes, Nailes, and Nailes.
+
+It was agreed that steps should be taken at once, and that Mr. Nailes
+would report in the evening. Gravely was the name Allerton was sure
+she would use, and the only one that needed to be mentioned. It needed
+only to be mentioned too that Mr. Nailes was acting for a client who
+preferred to remain anonymous.
+
+It was further agreed that Mr. Nailes should report at Allerton's
+office at ten that evening, in person if there was anything to
+discuss, by telephone if there was nothing. This was convenient for
+Mr. Nailes, who lived in the neighborhood of Washington Square, while
+it protected Rash from household curiosity. At ten that night he was,
+therefore, in the unusual position of pacing the rooms he had hardly
+ever seen except by daylight.
+
+Not Letty's disappearance was uppermost in his mind, for the moment,
+but his own inhibitions.
+
+"My God, what's the matter with me?" he was muttering to himself. "Am
+I going insane? Have I been insane all along? Why _can't_ I say which
+of these two women I want, when I can have either?"
+
+He placed over against each other the special set of spells which each
+threw upon his heart.
+
+Barbara was of his own world; she knew the people he knew; she had the
+same interests, and the same way of showing them. Moreover, she had in
+a measure grown into his life. Their friendship was not only intimate
+it was one of long standing. Though she worried, hectored, and
+exasperated him, she had fits of generous repentance, in which she
+mothered him adorably. This double-harness of comradeship had worked
+for so many years that he couldn't imagine wearing it with another.
+
+And yet Letty pulled so piteously at his heart that he fairly melted
+in tenderness toward her. Everything he knew as appeal was summed up
+in her soft voice, her gentle manner, her humility, her unquestioning
+faith in himself. No one had ever had faith in him before. To Barbe he
+was a booby when he was not a baby. To Letty he was a hero, strong,
+wise, commanding. It wasn't merely his vanity that she touched; it was
+his manliness. Barbe suppressed his manliness, because she herself was
+so imperious. Letty depended on it, and therefore drew it out. Because
+she believed him a man, he could be a man; whereas with Barbe, as with
+everyone else, he was a creature to be liked, humored, laughed at, and
+good-naturedly despised. He was sick of being liked, humored, and
+laughed at; he rebelled with every atom in him that was masculine at
+being good-naturedly despised. To find anyone who thought him big and
+vigorous was to his starved spirit, as the psalmist says, sweeter also
+than honey and the honeycomb. In having her weakness to hold up he
+could for the first time in his life feel himself of use.
+
+If there was no Barbe in the world he could have taken Letty as the
+mate his soul was longing for. Yet how could he deal such a blow at
+Barbe's loyalty? She had protected him during all his life, from
+boyhood upwards. Between him and derision she had stood like a young
+lioness. How could he deny her now?--no matter what frail, gentle
+hands were clinging around his heart?
+
+"How can I? How can I? How can I?"
+
+He was torturing himself with this question when the telephone rang,
+and he knew that Letty had not been found.
+
+"No; nothing," were the words of Mr. Nailes. "No one of the name has
+been reported at any of the hospitals, or police stations, or any
+other public institution. They've applied at all the motion-picture
+studios round New York; but still with no result. This, of course, is
+only the preliminary search, as much as they've been able to
+accomplish in one afternoon and evening. You mustn't be disappointed.
+To-morrow is likely to be more successful."
+
+Rash was, therefore, thrown back on another phase of his situation.
+Letty was lost. She was not only lost, but she had run away from him.
+She had not only run away from him, but she had done it so that he
+might be rid of her. She had not only done it so that he might be rid
+of her, but....
+
+His spirit balked. His imagination could work no further. Horror
+staggered him. A mother who knows that her child is in the hands of
+kidnappers who will have no mercy might feel something like the
+despair and helplessness which sent him chafing and champing up and
+down the suite of rooms, cursing himself uselessly.
+
+Suddenly he paused. He was in front of the cabinet which had come via
+Bordentown from Queen Caroline Murat. Behind its closed door there was
+still the bottle on the label of which a kilted Highlander was
+dancing. He must have a refuge from his thoughts, or else he would go
+mad. He was already as near madness as a man could come and still be
+reckoned sane.
+
+He opened the door of the cabinet. The bottle and the glass stood
+exactly where he had placed them on that morning when he had tried to
+begin going to the devil, and had failed. Now there was no longer that
+same mysterious restraint. He was not thinking of the devil; he was
+thinking only of himself. He must still the working of his mind.
+Anything would do that would drug his faculties, and so....
+
+It was after midnight when he dragged himself out of a stupor which
+had not been sleep. Being stupor, however, it was that much to the
+good. He had stopped thinking. He couldn't think. His head didn't
+ache; it was merely sore. He might have been dashing it against the
+wall, as figuratively he had done. His body was sore too--stiff from
+long sitting in the same posture, and bruised as if from beating. All
+that was nothing, however, since misery only stunned him. To be
+stunned was what he had been working for.
+
+Out in the air the wind of the May night was comforting. It soothed
+his nerves without waking the dormant brain. Instead of looking for a
+taxi he began walking up the Avenue. Walking too was a relief. It
+allowed him to remain as stupefied as at first, and yet stirred the
+circulation in his limbs. He meant to walk till he grew tired, after
+which he would jump on an electric bus.
+
+But he did not grow tired. He passed the great milestones, Fourteenth
+Street, Twenty-third Street, Forty-second Street, Fifty-ninth Street,
+and not till crossing the last did he begin to feel fagged. He was
+then so near home that the impulse of doggedness kept him on foot. He
+was a strong walker, and physically in good condition, without being
+wholly robust. Had it not been for the kilted Highlander he would
+hardly have felt fatigue; but as it was, the corner of East
+Sixty-seventh Street found him as spent as he cared to be.
+
+Advancing toward his door he saw a man coming in the other direction.
+There was nothing in that, and he would scarcely have noticed him,
+only for the fact that at this hour of the night pedestrians in the
+quarter were rare. In addition to that the man, having reached the
+foot of Allerton's own steps, stood there waiting, as if with
+intention.
+
+Through the obscurity Rash could see only that the man was well built,
+flashily dressed, and that he wore a sweeping mustache. In his manner
+of standing and waiting there was something significant and menacing.
+Arrived at the foot of the steps Allerton could do no less than pause
+to ask if the stranger was looking for anyone.
+
+"Is your name Allerton?"
+
+"Yes; it is."
+
+"Then I want my girl."
+
+It was some seconds before Rash could get his dulled mind into play.
+Moreover, the encounter was of a kind which made him feel sick and
+disgusted.
+
+"Whom do you mean?" he managed to ask, at last.
+
+"You know very well who I mean. I mean Letty Gravely. I'm her father;
+and by God, if you don't give her up--with big damages----"
+
+"I can't give her up, because she's not here."
+
+"Not here? She was damn well here the day before yesterday."
+
+"Yes; she was here the day before yesterday; but she disappeared last
+night."
+
+"Ah, cut that kind o' talk. I'm wise, I am. You can't put that bunk
+over on me. She's in there, and I'm goin' to get her."
+
+"I wish she was in there; but she's not."
+
+"How do I know she's not?"
+
+"I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it."
+
+"Like hell I'll take your word for it. I'm goin' to see for myself."
+
+"I don't see how you're going to do that."
+
+"I'm goin' in with you."
+
+"That wouldn't do you any good. Besides, I can't let you."
+
+The man became more bullying. "See here, son. This game is my game.
+Did j'ever see a thing like this?"
+
+Watching the movement of his hand Rash saw the handle of a revolver
+displayed in a side pocket.
+
+"Yes, I've seen a thing like that; but even if it was loaded--which I
+don't believe it is--you've too much sense to use it. You might shoot
+me, of course; but you wouldn't find the girl in the house, because
+she isn't there."
+
+"Well, I'm goin' to see. You march. Up you go, and open that door, and
+I'll follow you."
+
+"Oh, no, you won't." Allerton looked round for the policeman who
+occasionally passed that way; but though a lighted car crashed down
+Madison Avenue there was no one in sight. He might have called in the
+hope of waking the men upstairs, but that seemed cowardly. Though in a
+physical encounter with a ruffian like this he could hardly help
+getting the worst of it--especially in his state of half
+intoxication--it was the encounter itself that he loathed, even more
+than the defeat. "Oh, no, you won't," he repeated, taking one step
+upward, and turning to defend his premises. "I don't mean that you
+shall come into this house, or ever see the girl again, if I can
+prevent it."
+
+"Oh, you don't, don't you?"
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Then take that."
+
+The words were so quickly spoken, and the blow in his face so
+unexpected, that Rash staggered backwards. Being on a step he had
+little or no footing, and having been drinking his balance was the
+more quickly lost.
+
+"And that!"
+
+A second blow in the face sent him down like a stone, without a
+struggle or a cry.
+
+He fell limply on his back, his feet slipping to the sidewalk, his
+body sagging on the steps like a bit of string, accidentally dropped
+there. The hat, which fell off, remained on the step beside the head
+it had been covering.
+
+The man leaped backward, as if surprised at his own deed. He looked
+this way and that, to see if he had been observed. A lighted car
+crashed up Madison Avenue, but otherwise the street remained empty.
+Creeping nearer the steps he bent over his victim, whose left hand lay
+helpless and outstretched. Timidly, gingerly, he put his fingers to
+the pulse, starting back from it with a shock. He spoke but two words,
+but he spoke them half aloud.
+
+"Dead! God!"
+
+Then he walked swiftly away into Madison Avenue, where he soon found a
+car going southward.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+
+Barbara was late for breakfast. Miss Walbrook, the aunt, was scanning
+the morning paper, her refined, austere Americanism being as
+noticeable in the dining-room as elsewhere in the house. Everything
+was slender and strong; everything was American, unless it was the
+Persian rug. On the paneled walls there were but three portraits, a
+Boston ancestress, in lace cap and satins, painted by Copley; a
+Philadelphia ancestor in the Continental uniform, painted by Gilbert
+Stuart; and her New York grandmother, painted by Thomas Sully, looking
+over her shoulder with the wild backward glance that artist gives to
+the girl Victoria in the Metropolitan Museum. In a flat cabinet along
+a wall was the largest collection of old American glass to be found in
+the country.
+
+Barbara rushed in, with apologies for being late. "I didn't sleep a
+wink. It doesn't seem to me as if I should ever sleep again. Where's
+my cup?"
+
+"Wildgoose will bring it. As the coffee had grown cold he took that
+and the cup to keep warm. What's the matter?"
+
+Wildgoose stepped in with the missing essentials. A full-fed,
+round-faced, rubicund man of fifty-odd he looked a perennial
+twenty-five. Barbara began to minister to herself.
+
+"Oh, everything's the matter. I told you yesterday that that girl had
+run away. Well, I begin to wish she'd run back again."
+
+Miss Walbrook, the elder, had this in common with Miss Henrietta
+Towell, that she believed it best for everyone to work out his own
+salvation. Barbara had her personal life to live, and while her aunt
+would help her to live it, she wouldn't guide her choice. She
+continued, therefore, to scan the paper till her niece should say
+something more.
+
+She said it, not because she wanted to give information, but because
+she was temperamentally outspoken. "I begin to wish there were no men
+in the world. If women are men in a higher stage of development, why
+didn't men die out, so that we could be rid of them? Isn't that what
+we generally get from the survival of the fittest?"
+
+Miss Walbrook's thin, clear smile suggested the edge of a keenly
+tempered blade. "I've never said that women were men in a higher stage
+of development. I've said that in their parallel states of development
+women had advanced a stage beyond men. You may say of every generation
+born that women begin where men leave off. I suppose that that's
+what's meant by the myth of Eve springing from Adam's side. It was to
+be noticed even then, in the prehistoric, in the age that formed the
+great legends. Adam was asleep, when Eve as a vital force leaped away
+from him. If it wasn't for Eve's vitality the human race would still
+be in the Stone Age."
+
+Barbara harked back to what for her was the practical. "Some of us are
+in the Stone Age as it is. I'm sure Rash Allerton is as nearly an
+elemental as one can be, and still belong to clubs and drive in
+motorcars."
+
+Miss Walbrook risked her principles of non-interference so far as to
+say: "It's part of our feminine lack of development that we're always
+inclined to look back on the elemental with pity, and even with
+regret. The woman was never born who didn't have in her something of
+Lot's wife."
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Marion. In a way that lets me out. If I'm no weaker
+than the rest of my sex----"
+
+"Than many of the rest of your sex."
+
+"Very well, then; than many of the rest of my sex; if I'm no weaker
+than that I don't have to lose my self-respect."
+
+"You don't have to lose your self-respect; you only risk--your
+reason."
+
+Barbara stared at her. "That's the very thing I'm afraid of. I'd give
+anything for peace of mind. How did you know?"
+
+"Oh, it doesn't call for much astuteness. I don't suppose there's a
+married woman in the world in full command of her wits. You've noticed
+how foolish most of them are. That's why. It isn't that they were born
+foolish. They've simply been addled by enforced adaptation to mates of
+lower intelligence. Oh, I'm not scolding. I'm merely stating a
+natural, observed, psychological fact. The woman who marries says
+good-bye to the orderly working of her faculties. For that she may get
+compensations, with which I don't intend to find fault. But
+compensations or no, to a clear-thinking woman like----"
+
+"Like yourself, Aunt Marion."
+
+"Very well; like myself, if you will; but to a clear-thinking woman
+it's as obvious as daylight that her married sisters are partially
+demented. They may not know it; the partially demented never do. And
+it's no good telling them, because they don't believe you. I'm only
+saying it to you to warn you in advance. If you part with your reason,
+it's something to know that you do it of your own free will."
+
+Once more Barbara confined herself to the case in hand. "Still, I
+don't believe every man is as trying as Rash Allerton."
+
+"Not in his particular way, perhaps. But if it's not in one way then
+it's in another."
+
+"Even he wouldn't be so bad if he could control himself. At the minute
+when he's tearing down the house he wants you to tell him that he's
+calm."
+
+"If he didn't want you to tell him that it would be something equally
+preposterous. There's little to choose between men."
+
+Barbara grew thoughtful. "Still, if people didn't marry the human race
+would die out."
+
+"And would there be any harm in that? It's not a danger, of course;
+but if it was, would anyone in his senses want to stop it? Looking
+round on the human race to-day one can hardly help saying that the
+sooner it dies out the better. Since we can't kill it off, it's well
+to remember----"
+
+"To remember what, Aunt Marion?"
+
+Miss Walbrook reflected as to how to express herself cautiously.
+"To remember that--in marrying--and having children--children who
+will have to face the highly probable miseries of the next
+generation--Well, I'm glad there'll be no one to reproach me with his
+being in the world, either as his mother or his ancestress."
+
+"They say Rash's father and mother didn't want _him_ in the world, and
+I sometimes wish they'd had their way. If he wasn't here--or if he was
+dead--I believe I could be happier. I shouldn't be forever worrying
+about him. I shouldn't have him on my mind. I often wonder if it's--if
+it's love I feel for him--or only an agonizing sense of
+responsibility."
+
+The door being open Walter Wildgoose waddled to the threshold, where
+he stood with his right hand clasped in his left. "Mr. Steptoe at Mr.
+Allerton's to speak to Miss Barbara on the telyphone, please."
+
+Barbara gasped. "Oh, Lord! I wonder what it is now!"
+
+Left to herself Miss Walbrook resumed her scanning of the paper, but
+she resumed it with the faintest quiver of a smile on her thin,
+cleanly-cut lips. It was the kind of smile which indicates patient
+hope, or the anticipation of something satisfactory.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+The exclamation was so loud as to be heard all the way from the
+telephone, which was in another part of the house. Miss Walbrook let
+the paper fall, sat bolt upright, and listened.
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+It was like a second, and repeated, explosion. Miss Walbrook rose to
+her feet; the paper rustled to the floor.
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+The sound was that which human beings make when the thing told them is
+more than they can bear. Barbara cried out as if someone was beating
+her with clubs, and she was coming to her knees.
+
+She was not coming to her knees. When her aunt reached her she was
+still standing by the little table in the hall which held the
+telephone, on which she had hung up the receiver. She supported
+herself with one hand on the table, as a woman does when all she can
+do is not to fall senseless.
+
+"It's--it's Rash," she panted, as she saw her aunt appear. "Somebody
+has--has killed him."
+
+Miss Walbrook stood with hands clasped, like one transfixed. "He's
+dead?--after all?"
+
+Barbara nodded, tearlessly. She could stammer out the words, but no
+more. "Yes--all but!"
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the flat at Red Point there was another and dissimilar breakfast
+scene. For the first time in her life Letty was having coffee and
+toast in bed. The window was open, and between the muslin curtains,
+which puffed in the soft May wind, she could see the ocean with
+steamers and ships on it.
+
+The room was tiny, but it was spotless. Everything was white, except
+where here and there it was tied up with a baby-blue ribbon. Anything
+that could be tied with a baby-blue ribbon was so tied.
+
+Letty thought she had never seen anything so dainty, though her
+experienced eye could detect the fact that nothing had really cost
+money. As an opening to the career on which she had embarked the
+setting was unexpected, while the method of her treatment was
+bewildering. In the black recesses of her heart Miss Henrietta Towell
+might be hiding all those feline machinations which Mrs. Judson Flack
+had led Letty to believe a part of the great world's stock-in-trade;
+but it couldn't be denied that she hid them well. Letty didn't know
+what to make of it. "There's quite a trick to it," Steptoe had warned
+her; but the explanation seemed inadequate to the phenomena.
+
+Sipping her coffee and crunching her toast she was driven to ponder on
+the ways of wickedness. She had expected them to be more obvious. All
+her information was to the effect that an unprotected girl in a world
+of males was a lamb among lions, a victim with no way of escape. That
+she was a lamb among lions, and a victim with no way of escape, she
+was still prepared to believe; only the preliminaries puzzled her.
+Instead of being crude, direct, indelicate, they were subtle and
+misleading. After twenty-four hours in Miss Towell's spare room there
+was still no hint of anything but coddling.
+
+"You see, my dear," Miss Towell had said, "if I don't nurse you back
+to real 'ealth, him that gave you the thimble might be displeased with
+me."
+
+It was not often that Miss Towell dropped an _h_ or added one; but in
+moments of emotion early habit was too strong for her.
+
+Coming into the room now, on some ermine's errand of neatness, she
+threw a glance at Letty, and said: "You don't _look_ like a Rashleigh,
+do you, dear? But then you never can tell anything about families from
+looks, can you?"
+
+It was her nearest approach as yet to the personal, and Letty
+considered as to how she was to meet it. "I'm not a Rashleigh--not
+really--only by--by marriage. Rashleigh isn't my real name.
+It's--it's the name I'm going by in pictures."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Miss Towell's exclamation was the subdued one of acquiescence. She
+knew that ladies in pictures often preferred names other than their
+own, and if Letty was not a Rashleigh it "explained things." That is,
+it explained how anyone called Rashleigh could be wandering about in
+this friendless way, though it made 'Enery Steptoe's intervention the
+more mysterious. It was conceivable that he might act on behalf of a
+genuine Rashleigh, however out at elbow; but that he should take such
+pains for a spurious one, and go to the length of sending the sacred
+silver thimble as a pledge, rendered the situation puzzling.
+
+Schooled by her religious precepts to taking her duties as those of a
+minute at a time Miss Towell made no effort to force the girl's
+confidence, and especially since Letty, like most young people in
+trouble, was on her guard against giving it. So long as she preferred
+to be shut up within herself, shut up within herself she should
+remain. Miss Towell felt that, for the moment at least, her own
+responsibility was limited to making the child feel that someone cared
+for her.
+
+At the same time she couldn't have been a lonely woman with a
+love-story behind her without the impulse to dwell a little longingly
+on the one romantic incident in her experience. Though it had never
+come to anything, the fact that it had once opened its shy little
+flower made a sweet bright place to which her thoughts could retire.
+
+The references came spasmodically and without context, as the little
+white lady busied herself in waiting on Letty or in the care of her
+room.
+
+"I haven't seen him since a short time after the mistress went away."
+
+Letty felt herself coloring. Though not prudish there were words she
+couldn't get used to. Besides which she had never thought that
+Steptoe.... But Miss Towell pursued her memories.
+
+"It always worried him that I should hold views different from his but
+I couldn't submit to dictation, now, could I, dear?"
+
+Once more Letty felt herself awkwardly placed. The only interpretation
+she could put on Miss Towell's words referring to moral reformation on
+her hostess's part she said, as non-committally as might be: "He's a
+good deal of a stickler."
+
+"He's been so long in a high position that he becomes--well, I won't
+be 'arsh--but he becomes a little harbitrary. That's where it was. He
+was a little harbitrary. With a mistress who allowed him a great deal
+of his own way--well, you can hardly blame him, can you, dear?"
+
+Letty forced herself to accept the linguistic standard of the world.
+"I suppose if she hadn't allowed him a great deal of his own way he'd
+have looked somewhere else."
+
+"That he could easily have done. He had temptations enough--a man like
+him. Why, dear, there was a lady in Park Avenue did everything she
+could that wasn't positively dishonorable to win him away----"
+
+"He must have been younger and better looking than he is now," Letty
+hazarded, bluntly.
+
+"Oh, it wasn't a question of looks. Of course if she'd considered
+that, why, any foolish young fellow--but she knew what she would have
+got."
+
+Not being at her ease in this kind of conversation, and finding the
+effort to see Steptoe as Lothario difficult, Letty became blunt again.
+"He must have had an awful crush on the first one."
+
+"It wasn't her exactly; it was the boy."
+
+"Oh, there was a boy?"
+
+"Why of course, dear! Didn't you know that?"
+
+"Whose boy was it?"
+
+"Why, the mistress's boy; but I don't think _he_----" Letty understood
+the pronoun as applying to Steptoe--"I don't think _he_ ever realized
+that he wasn't his very own." Straightening the white cover on the
+chest of drawers Miss Towell shook her head. "It was a sad case."
+
+"What made it sad?"
+
+"A lovely boy he was. Had a kind word for everyone, even for the cat.
+But somehow his father and mother--well, they were people of the
+world, and they hadn't wanted a child, and when he came--and he so
+delicate always--I could have cried over him."
+
+Letty's heart began to swell; her lip trembled. "I know someone like
+that myself."
+
+"Do you, dear? Then I'm sure you understand."
+
+Partly because the minute was emotional, and partly from a sense that
+she needed to explain herself, Letty murmured, more or less
+indistinctly: "It's on his account that I'm here."
+
+Failing to see the force of this Miss Towell was content to say: "I'm
+glad you were led to me, dear. There's always a power to shepherd us
+along, if we'll only let ourselves be guided."
+
+To Letty the moment had arrived when plainness of speech was
+imperative. Leaning across the tray, which still stood on her lap, she
+gazed up at her hostess with eager, misty eyes. "_He_ said you'd teach
+me all the ropes."
+
+Miss Towell paused beside the bed, to look inquiringly at the tense
+little face. "The ropes of what, dear?"
+
+"Of what--" it was hard to express--"of what you--you used to be
+yourself. You don't seem like it now," she added, desperately, "but
+you were, weren't you?"
+
+"Oh, that!" The surprise was in the discovery that an American girl of
+Letty's age could entertain so sensible a purpose. "Why, of course,
+dear! I'll tell you all I know, and welcome."
+
+"There's quite a trick to it, isn't there?"
+
+"Well, it's more than a trick. There are two or three things which you
+simply _have_ to be."
+
+"Oh, I know that. That's what frightens me."
+
+"You needn't be afraid, once you've made up your mind to it." She
+leaned above the bed to relieve Letty of the tray. "For instance--you
+don't mind my asking questions do you?"
+
+"Oh, no! You can ask me anything."
+
+"Then the first thing is this: Are you pretty good as a
+needle-woman?"
+
+Letty was astounded. "Why--why you don't have to _sew_, do you?"
+
+"Certainly, dear. That's one of the most important things you'd be
+called on to do. You'd never get anywhere if you weren't quick with
+your needle and thread. And then there'd be hair-dressing. You have to
+know something about that. I don't say that you must be a
+professional; but for the simpler occasions--after that there's
+packing. That's something we often overlook, and where French girls
+have us at a disadvantage. They pack so beautifully."
+
+Letty was entirely at sea. "Pack what?"
+
+"Pack trunks, dear."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"For travel; for moving from town to country; or from country to town;
+or making visits; you see you're always on the go. Oh, it's more than
+a trick; it's quite an art; only--" She smiled at Letty as she stood
+holding the tray, before carrying it out--"only, I shouldn't have
+supposed you'd be thinking of that when you act in moving pictures."
+
+"I--I thought I might do both."
+
+"Now, I should say that that's one thing you couldn't do, dear. If you
+took up this at all you'd find it so absorbing----"
+
+"And you're very unhappy too, aren't you? I've always heard you
+were."
+
+"Well, that would depend a good deal on yourself. There's nothing in
+the thing itself to make you unhappy; but sometimes there are other
+women----"
+
+Letty's eyes were flaming. "They say they're awful."
+
+"Oh, not always. It's a good deal as you carry yourself. I made it a
+point to keep my position and respect the position of others. It
+wasn't always easy, especially with Mary Ann Courage and Janie
+Cakebread; but----"
+
+Letty's head fell back on the pillow. Her eyes closed. A
+merry-go-round was spinning in her head. Where was she? How had she
+come there? What was she there _for?_ Where was the wickedness she had
+been told to look for everywhere? Having gone in search of it, and
+expected to find it lying in wait from the first minute of passing the
+protecting door, she had been shuffled along from one to another, with
+exasperating kindness, only to be brought face to face with Jane
+Cakebread and Mary Ann Courage at the end.
+
+Miss Towell having borne away the tray, Letty struggled out of bed,
+and put on the woollen dressing gown thrown over a chair by the
+bedside. This was no place for her. Beehive Valley was not far off,
+and her forty-five cents would more than suffice to take her there.
+She would see the casting director. She would get a job. With food to
+eat and a place to sleep as a starting point she would find her own
+way to wickedness, releasing the prince in spite of all the mishaps
+which kept her as she was.
+
+But she trembled so that having wrapped the dressing gown about her
+she was obliged to sit down again. She would have to be crafty. She
+must get this woman to help her with her dressing, without suspecting
+what she meant to do. How could she manage that? She must try to
+think.
+
+She was trying to think when she heard the ring of the telephone. It
+suggested an idea. Some time--not this time, of course--when the
+telephone rang and the woman was answering it, she, Letty, would be
+able to slip away. The important thing was to do her hair and get her
+clothes on.
+
+"Yes?... Yes?" There was a little catch to the breath, a smothered
+laugh, a smothered sigh. "Oh, so this is you!... Yes, I got it....
+Seeing it again gave me quite a turn.... I never expected that you'd
+keep it all this time, but.... Yes, she's here.... No; she didn't come
+exactly of her own accord, but I--I found her.... I could tell you
+about it easier if you were--it's so hard on the telephone when
+there's so much to say--but perhaps you don't care to.... Yes, she's
+quite well--only a little tired--been worked up somehow--but a day or
+so in bed.... Oh, very sensible ... and she wants me to teach her how
+to be a lady's maid...."
+
+So that was it! Steptoe had been treacherous. Letty would never
+believe in anyone again. She could make these reflections hurriedly
+because the voice at the telephone was silent.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+It was the same exclamation as that of Barbara Walbrook, but in
+another tone--a tone of distress, sharp, sympathetic. Pulling the
+dressing gown about her, frightened, tense, Letty knew that something
+had gone wrong.
+
+"Oh! Oh!... last night, did you say?... early this morning...."
+
+Letty crept to where her hostess was seated at the telephone. "What is
+it?"
+
+But Miss Towell either didn't hear the question or was too absorbed to
+answer it. "Oh, 'Enery, _try_ to remember that God is his life--that
+there can be no death to be afraid of when----"
+
+Letty snatched the receiver from the other woman's hands, and fell on
+her knees beside the little table. "Oh, what is it? What is it? It's
+me; Letty! Something's happened. I've got to know."
+
+Amazed and awed by the force of this intrusion Miss Towell stood up,
+and moved a little back.
+
+Over the wire Steptoe's voice sounded to Letty like the ghost of his
+voice, broken, dead.
+
+"I think if I was madam I'd come back."
+
+"But what's happened? Tell me that first."
+
+"It's Mr. Rash."
+
+"Yes, I know it's Mr. Rash. But what is it? Tell me quickly, for God's
+sake."
+
+"'E's been 'it."
+
+Her utterance was as nearly as possible a cry. "But he hasn't been
+_killed_?"
+
+"Madam'd find 'im alive--if she 'urried."
+
+When Letty rose from her knees she was strong. She was calm, too, and
+competent. She further surprised Miss Towell by the way in which she
+took command.
+
+"I must hurry. They want me at once. Would you mind helping me to
+dress?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+
+"The queer thing about it, miss," Steptoe was saying to Barbara, "is
+that I didn't 'ear no noise. My winder is just above the front door,
+two floors up, and it was open. I always likes an open winder,
+especially when the weather begins to get warm--makes it 'ealthier
+like, and so----"
+
+"Yes, but tell me just how he is."
+
+"That's what I'm comin' to, miss. The minute I see what an awful styte
+we was in, I says, Miss Walbrook, she'll 'ave to know, I says; and so
+I called up. Well, as I was a-tellin you, miss, I couldn't sleep all
+night, 'ardly not any, thinkin of all what 'ad 'appened in the 'ouse,
+in the course of a few months, as you might sye--and madam run
+awye--and Mr. Rash 'e not 'ome--and it one o'clock and lyter. Not but
+what 'e's often lyter than that, only last night I 'ad that kind of a
+feelin' which you'll get when you know things is not right, and you
+don't 'ardly know 'ow you know it."
+
+"Yes, Steptoe," she interposed, eagerly; "but is he conscious now?
+That's what I want to hear about."
+
+Steptoe's expression of grief lay in working up to a dramatic climax
+dramatically. He didn't understand the hurried leaps and bounds by
+which you took the tragic on the skip, as if it were not portentous.
+In his response to Miss Walbrook there was a hint of irritation, and
+perhaps of rebuke.
+
+"I couldn't sye what 'e is now, miss, as the doctor and the nurse is
+with 'im, and won't let nobody in till they decides whether 'e's to
+live or die." Rocking himself back and forth in his chair he moaned in
+stricken anticipation. "If 'e goes, I shan't be long after 'im. I may
+linger a bit, but the good Lord won't move me on too soon."
+
+Barbara curbed her impatience to reach the end, going back to the
+beginning. "Well, then, was it you who found 'im?"
+
+"It was this wye, miss. Knowin' 'e wasn't in the 'ouse, I kep' goin'
+to my winder and listenin'--and then goin' back to bed agyne--I
+couldn't tell you 'ow many times; and then, if you'd believe it I must
+'ave fell asleep. No; I can't believe as I was asleep. I just seemed
+to come to, like, and as I laid there wonderin' what time it was,
+seems to me as if I 'eard a kind of a snore, like, not in the 'ouse,
+but comin' up from the street."
+
+"What time was that?"
+
+"That'd be about 'alf past one. Well, up I gets and creeps to the
+winder, and sure enough the snore come right up from the steps. Seems
+to me, too, I could see somethink layin' there, all up and down the
+steps, just as if it 'ad been dropped by haccident like. My blood
+freezes. I slips into my thick dressin' gown--no, it was my thin
+dressin' gown--I always keeps two--one for winter and one for
+summer--and this spring bein' so early like----"
+
+"But in the end you got down stairs."
+
+"If I didn't, miss, 'ow could I 'a' found 'im? I ain't one to be
+afryde of dynger, not even 'ere in New York, where you can be robbed
+and murdered without 'ardly knowin' it--and the police that slow about
+follerin' up a clue----"
+
+"And what happened when you'd opened the front door?"
+
+"I didn't open it at once, miss. I put my hear to the crack and
+listened. And there it was, a long kind of snore, like--only it wasn't
+just what you'd call a snore. It was more like this." He drew a deep,
+rasping, stertorous breath. "Awful, it was, miss, just like somebody
+in liquor. 'It's liquor,' I says, and not wantin' to be mixed up in no
+low company I wasn't for openin' the door at all----"
+
+"But you did?"
+
+"Not till I'd gone 'alf wye upstairs and down agyne. I'm like that. I
+often thinks I'll not do a thing, and then I'll sye to myself, 'Now,
+perhaps I'd better, and so it was that time. 'E's out, I says, and who
+knows but what 'e's fell in a fynt like?' So back I goes, and I peeps
+out a little bit--just my nose out, as you might sye, not knowin' but
+what if there was low company----"
+
+"When did you find out who it was?"
+
+"I knowed the 'at, like. It was that 'at what 'e bought afore 'e
+bought the last one. No; I don't know but what 'e's bought two since
+'e bought that one--a soft felt, and a cowboy what he never wore but
+once or twice because it wasn't becomin'. You'll 'ave noticed, miss,
+that 'e 'ad one o' them fyces what don't look well in nothink
+rakish--a real gentleman's fyce 'e 'ad--and them cowboy 'ats----"
+
+"Well, when you saw that hat, what did you do?"
+
+"For quite a spell I didn't do nothink. I was all blood-curdled, as
+you might sye. But by and by I creeps out, and down the steps, and
+there 'e was, all 'uddled every wye----"
+
+His lip trembled. In trying to go on he produced only a few incoherent
+sounds. Reaching for his handkerchief, he blew his nose, before being
+able to say more.
+
+"Well, the first thing I says to myself, miss, was, Is 'e dead? It was
+a terrible thing to sye of one that's everythink in the world to me;
+but seein' 'im there, all crumpled up, with one leg one wye, and the
+other leg another wye, and a harm throwed out 'elpless like--well,
+what was I to think? miss--and 'im not aible to sye a word, and me
+shykin' like a leaf, and out of doors in my thin dressin' gown--if I'd
+'ad on my thick one I wouldn't 'a' felt so kind of shymeful like----"
+
+"You might have known he wasn't dead when you heard him breathing."
+
+"I didn't think o' that. I thought as 'e was. And when I see 'is poor
+harm stretched out so wild like I creeps nearer and nearer, and me
+'ardly aible to move--I felt so bad--and I puts my finger on 'is
+pulse. Might as well 'ave put it on that there fender. Then I looks at
+'is fyce and I see blood on 'is lip and 'is cheek. 'Somethink's struck
+'im,' I says; and then I just loses consciousness, and puts back my
+'ead, as you'll see a dog do when 'e 'owls, and I yells, 'Police!'"
+
+"Oh, you did that, did you?"
+
+"I'm ashymed to sye it, miss, but I did; and who should come runnin'
+along but the policeman what in the night goes up and down our beat.
+By that time I'd got my 'and on 'is 'eart, and the policeman 'e calls
+out from a distance, 'Hi, there! What you doin' to that man?' Thought
+I was murderin' 'im, you see. I says, 'My boy, 'e is, and I'm tryin'
+to syve 'is life.' Well, the policeman 'e sees I'm in my dressin'
+gown, and don't look as if I'd do 'im any 'arm, so 'e kind o' picks up
+'is courage, and blows 'is whistle, and another policeman 'e runs up
+from the wye of the Havenue. Then when there's two of 'em they ain't
+afryde no more, so that the first one 'e comes up to me quite bold
+like, and arsks me who's killed, and what's killed 'im, and I tells
+'im 'ow I was layin' awyke, with the winder open, and Mr. Rash bein'
+out I couldn't sleep like----"
+
+"How long did they let him lie there?"
+
+"Oh, not long. First they was for callin' a hambulance; but when I
+tells 'em that 'e's my boy, and lives in my 'ouse, they brings 'im in
+and we lays 'im on the sofa in the libery, and I rings up Dr. Lancing,
+and----"
+
+But something in Barbara snapped. She could stand no more. Not to cry
+out or break down she sprang to her feet. "That'll do, Steptoe. I know
+now all I need to know. Thank you for telling me. I shall stay here
+till the doctor or the nurse comes down. If I want you again I'll
+ring."
+
+[Illustration: "BUT BY AND BY I CREEPS OUT AND DOWN THE STEPS, AND THERE
+'E WAS, ALL 'UDDLED EVERY WYE."]
+
+Lashing up and down the drawing-room, wringing her hands and moaning
+inwardly, Barbara reflected on the speed with which Nemesis had
+overtaken her. "If he wasn't here--or if he was dead," she had said,
+"I believe I could be happier." As long as she lived she would hear
+the curious intonation in Aunt Marion's voice: "He's dead?--after
+all?" It was in that _after all_ that she read the unspeakable
+accusation of herself.
+
+Waiting for the doctor was not long. On hearing his step on the stair
+Barbara went out to meet him. "How is he?" she asked, without wasting
+time over self-introductions.
+
+"It's a little difficult to say as yet. The case is serious. Just how
+serious we can't tell to-day--perhaps not to-morrow. I find no trace
+of fracture of the cranium, or of laceration of the brain; but it's
+too soon to be sure. Dr. Brace and Dr. Wisdom, who've both been here,
+are inclined to think that it may be no more than a simple concussion.
+We must wait and see."
+
+Relieved to this extent Barbara went on to explain herself. "I'm Miss
+Walbrook. I was engaged to Mr. Allerton till--till quite recently.
+We're still great friends--the greatest friends. He had no near
+relations--only cousins--and I doubt if any of them are in New York as
+late in the season as this--and even if they are he hardly knows
+them----"
+
+The doctor, a cheery, robust man in the late thirties, in his own line
+one of the ablest specialists in New York, had a foible for social
+position and his success in it. Even now, with such grave news to
+communicate, he couldn't divest himself of his dinner-party manner or
+his smile.
+
+"I've had the pleasure of meeting Miss Walbrook, at the Essingtons'
+dinner--the big one for Isabel--and afterwards at the dance."
+
+"Oh, of course," Barbara corroborated, though with no recollection of
+the encounter. "I knew it was somewhere, but I couldn't quite
+recall--So I felt, when the butler called me up, that I should be
+here----"
+
+"Quite so! quite so! You'll find Miss Gallifer, who's with him now, a
+most competent nurse, and I shall bring a good night nurse before
+evening." The professional side of the situation disposed of, he
+touched tactfully on the romantic. "It will be a great thing for me to
+know that in a masculine household like this a woman with knowledge
+and authority is running in and out. The more you can be here, Miss
+Walbrook, the more responsibility you'll take off my hands."
+
+"May I be in his room--and help the nurse--or do anything like that?"
+
+"Quite so! quite so! I'm sure Miss Gallifer, who can't be there every
+minute of the time, you understand, will be glad to feel that there's
+someone she can trust----"
+
+"And he couldn't know I was there?"
+
+"Not unless he returned unexpectedly to consciousness, which is
+possible, you understand----"
+
+Her distress was so great that she hazarded a question on which she
+would not otherwise have ventured. "Doctor, you're a physician. I can
+speak to you as I shouldn't speak to everyone. Suppose he did return
+unexpectedly to consciousness, and found me there in the room, do you
+think he'd be--annoyed?"
+
+It was the sort of situation he liked, a part in the intimate affairs
+of people of the first quality. "As to his being annoyed I can't say.
+It might be the very opposite. What I know is this, that in the
+coming back of the mind to its regular functions inhibitions are
+often suspended----"
+
+"And you mean by that----?"
+
+"That the first few minutes in which the mind revives are likely to be
+minutes of genuine reality. I don't say that the mind could keep it
+up. Very few of us can be our genuine selves for more than flashes at
+a time; but a returning consciousness doesn't put on its inhibitions
+till----"
+
+"So that what you see in those few minutes you can take as the
+truth."
+
+"I should say so. I'm not in a position to affirm it; but the
+probabilities point that way."
+
+"And if there had been, let us say, a lesser affection, something of
+recent origin, and lower in every way----"
+
+"I think that until it forged its influence again--if it ever
+did--you'd see it forgotten or disowned."
+
+She tried to be even more explicit. "He's perfectly free, in every
+way. I broke off my engagement just to make him free. The--the other
+woman, she, too, has--has left him----"
+
+"So that," he summed up, "if in those first instants of returning to
+the world you could read his choice you'd be relieved of doubts for
+the future."
+
+Having made one or two small professional recommendations he was about
+to go when Barbara's mind worked to another point. "You know, he's
+been very excitable."
+
+"So I've understood. I go a good deal to the Chancellors'. You know
+them, of course. I've heard about him there."
+
+"Well, then, if he got better, is there anything we could do about
+that?"
+
+"In a general way, yes. If you're gentle with him----"
+
+"Oh, I am."
+
+"And if you try to smooth him down when you see him beginning to be
+ruffled----"
+
+"That's just what I do, only it seems to excite him the more."
+
+"Then, in that case, I should say, break the conversation off. Go away
+from him. Let him alone. Let him work out of it. Begin again later."
+
+"Ye-es, only--" she was wistful, unconvinced--"only later it's so
+likely to be the same thing over again."
+
+He dodged the further issue by running up to explain to the nurse Miss
+Walbrook's position in the house, and as helper in case of necessity.
+By the time he had come down again Barbara's anguish was visible. "Oh,
+doctor, you think he _will_ get better, don't you?"
+
+He was at the front door. "I hope he will. Quite--quite possibly he
+will. His pulse isn't very strong as yet, but--Well, Dr. Brace and Dr.
+Wisdom are coming for another consultation this afternoon; only his
+condition, you understand, is--well, serious."
+
+Barbara divined the malice beneath Steptoe's indications, as he
+conducted her upstairs. "That was the lyte Mrs. Allerton's room;
+that's the front spare room; and that's our present madam's room--when
+she's 'ere--heach with its barth. I'm sure if Miss Walbrook was
+inclined to use the front spare room I'd be entirely welcome, and
+'ave put in clean towels, and everythink, a-purpose."
+
+When Rash's door was pointed out to her she tapped. Miss Gallifer
+opened it, receiving her colleague with a great big hearty smile.
+Great, big, and hearty were the traits by which Miss Gallifer was
+known among the doctors. Healthy, skilful, jolly, and offhand, she
+carried the issues of life and death, in which she was at home, with a
+lightness which made her easy to work with. Some nurses would have
+resented the intrusion of an outsider--professionally speaking--like
+Miss Walbrook; but to Miss Gallifer it was the more the merrier, even
+in the sickroom. The very fact of coming to close quarters with the
+type she knew as a "society girl" added spice to the association.
+
+For the first few seconds Barbara found her breeziness a shock. She
+had expected something subdued, hushed, funereal. Miss Gallifer hardly
+lowered her voice, which was naturally loud, or quieted her manner,
+which, when off duty, could be boisterous. It was not boisterous now,
+of course; only quick, free, spontaneous. Then Barbara saw the
+reason.
+
+There was no need to lower the voice or quiet the manner or soften the
+swish of rustling to and fro, in presence of that still white form
+composed in the very attitude of death. If Barbara hadn't known he was
+alive she wouldn't have supposed it. She had seen dead men before--her
+father, two brothers, other relatives. They looked like this; this
+looked like them. She said _this_ to herself, and not _he_, because it
+seemed the word.
+
+But by the time she had moved forward and was standing by the bed Miss
+Gallifer's businesslike tone became a comfort. You couldn't take such
+a tone if you thought there was danger; and in spite of the hemming
+and hawing of the doctors Miss Gallifer didn't think there was.
+
+"Oh, I've seen lots of such cases, and _I_ say it's a simple
+concussion. Old Wisdom, he doesn't know anything. I wouldn't consult
+him about an accident to a cat. Laceration of the brain is always his
+first diagnosis; and if the patient didn't have it he'd get it to him
+before he'd admit that he was wrong."
+
+Barbara put the question in which all her other questions were
+enfolded. "Then you think he'll get better?"
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised."
+
+"Would you be surprised--the other way?"
+
+"I think I should--on the whole. Pulse is poor. That's the worst
+sign." She picked up the hand lying outside the coverlet and put her
+finger-tips to the wrist, doing it with the easy nonchalant
+carelessness with which she might have seized an inanimate object, yet
+knowing exactly what she was about. "H'm! Fifty-six! That's pretty
+low. If we could get it above sixty--but still!" Dropping the hand
+with the same indifference, yet continuing to know what she was about,
+Miss Gallifer tossed aside the index of the pulse as wholly
+non-convincing. "I've known cases where the pulse would go down till
+there was almost no pulse at all, and _yet_ it would come up again."
+
+"So that you feel----?"
+
+"Oh, he'll do. I shouldn't worry--yet. If he wasn't going to pull
+through there would be something----"
+
+"Something to tell you?"
+
+"Well, yes--if you put it that way. I most always know with a patient.
+It isn't anything in his condition. It's more like a hunch. There's
+often the difference between a doctor and a nurse. The doctor goes by
+what he sees, the nurse by what she feels. Nine times out of ten the
+doctor'll see wrong and the nurse'll feel right--and there you are!
+You can't go by doctors. A lot of guess-work gumps, I often think; and
+yet the laity need them for comfort."
+
+Making the most of all this Barbara asked, timidly: "Is there anything
+I could do?"
+
+"Well, no! There isn't much that anyone can do. You've just got to
+wait. If you're going to stay----"
+
+"I should like to."
+
+"Then you can be somewhere else in the house so that I could call
+you--or you could sit right here--whichever you preferred."
+
+"I'd rather sit right here, if I shouldn't be in the way."
+
+"Oh, when you're in the way I'll tell you."
+
+On this understanding Barbara sat down, in a small low armchair not
+far from the foot of the bed. Miss Gallifer also sat down, nearer to
+the window, taking up a book which, as Barbara could see from the
+"jacket" on the cover, bore the title, _The Secret of Violet Pryde_.
+It was clear that there was nothing to be done, since Miss Gallifer
+could so easily lose herself in her novel.
+
+Not till her jumble of impressions began to arrange themselves did
+Barbara realize that she was in Rash's room, surrounded by the objects
+most intimate to his person. Here the poor boy slept and dressed, and
+lived the portion of his life which no one else could share with him.
+In a sense they were rifling his privacy, the secrecy with which every
+human being has in some measure to surround himself. She recalled a
+day in her childhood, after her parents and both her brothers had
+died, when their house with its contents was put up for sale. She
+remembered the horror with which she had seen strangers walking about
+in the rooms sanctified by loved presences, and endeared to her
+holiest memories. Something of that she felt now, as Miss Gallifer
+threw aside her book, sprang lightly to her feet, hurried into Rash's
+bathroom, and came out with a towel slightly damped, which she passed
+over the patient's brow. She was so horribly at ease! It was as if
+Rash no longer had a personality whose rights one must respect.
+
+But he might get better! Miss Gallifer believed that he would! Barbara
+clung to that as an anchor in this tempest of emotions. If he got
+better he would open his eyes. If he opened his eyes it would be, for
+a little while at least, with his inhibitions suspended. If his
+inhibitions were suspended the thing he most wanted would be in his
+first glance; and if his first glance fell on her....
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI
+
+
+Waiting was becoming dreamlike. She didn't find it tedious, or
+over-fraught with suspense. On the contrary, it was soothing. It was a
+little trance-like, too, almost as if she had been enwrapped in Rash's
+stillness.
+
+It was so strange to see him still. It was so strange to be still
+herself. Of her own being, as of his, she had hardly any concept apart
+from the high winds of excitement. Calm like this was new to her, and
+because new it was appeasing, wonderful. It was not unlike content,
+only the content which comes in sleep, to be broken up by waking.
+Somewhere in her nature she liked seeing him as he was, helpless,
+inert, with no power of enraging her by being restive to her will. It
+was, in its way, a repetition of what she had said that morning: "If
+he wasn't here--or if he was dead!" Longing for peace, her stormy soul
+seemed to know by instinct the price she would have to pay for it. For
+peace to be possible Rash must pass out of her life, and the thought
+of Rash passing out of her life was agony.
+
+While Miss Gallifer was downstairs at lunch Barbara had the sweet,
+unusual sense of having him all to herself. She had never so had him
+in their hours together because the violence of their clashes had
+prevented communion. Seated in this silence, in this quietude, she
+felt him hers. There was no one to dispute her claim, no one whose
+claim she had in any way to recognize as superior. Letty's claim she
+had never recognized at all. It was accidental, spurious. Letty
+herself didn't put it forth--and even she was gone. If Rash were to
+open his eyes he would see no one but herself.
+
+She was sorry when Miss Gallifer came back, though there was no help
+for that; but Miss Gallifer was obtrusive only when she chatted or
+moved about. For much of the time she pursued the secret of Violet
+Pryde with such assiduity that the room became quiescent, and
+communion with Rash could be re-established.
+
+The awesome silence was disturbed only by the turning of Miss
+Gallifer's pages. It might have been three o'clock. Once more Barbara
+was lost in the unaccustomed hush, her eyes fixed on the white face on
+the pillow, in almost hypnotic restfulness. The pushing open of the
+door behind was so soft that she didn't notice. Miss Gallifer turned
+another page.
+
+It was the sense that someone was in the room which made Barbara
+glance over her shoulder and Miss Gallifer look up. A little gray
+figure in a battered black hat stood just within the door. She stood
+just within the door, but with no consciousness of anything or anyone
+in the room. She saw only the upturned face and its deathlike fixity.
+
+With slow, spellbound movement she began to come forward. Barbara, who
+had never seen the Letty who used to be, knew her now only by a
+terrified intuition. Miss Gallifer was entirely at a loss, and
+somewhat indignant. The little gray vagrant was not of the type she
+had been used to treating with respect.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she asked quickly, as soon as speech came
+to her.
+
+Letty didn't look at her, or remove her eyes from the face on the
+pillow. A woman in a trance could not have spoken with greater
+detachment or self-control. "I came--to see."
+
+"Well, now that you've seen, won't you please go away, before I call
+the police?"
+
+Of this Letty took no notice, going straight to the bedside, while
+Miss Gallifer moved toward Barbara, who stood as she had risen from
+her chair.
+
+"Do you know who she is?" Miss Gallifer asked, with curiosity greater
+than her indignation.
+
+Barbara nodded. "Yes, I know who she is. I thought she'd--disappeared."
+
+"Oh, they never disappear for long--not that kind. What had I better
+do? Is she anything--to _him_?"
+
+Barbara was saved the necessity of answering because Letty, who was on
+the other side of the bed, bent over and kissed the feet, as she had
+kissed them once before.
+
+"Is she dotty?" Miss Gallifer whispered. "Ought I to take her by the
+shoulders and put her out the door? I could, you know--a scrap of a
+thing like that."
+
+Barbara whispered back. "I can't tell you who she is, but--but I
+wouldn't interfere with her."
+
+"Oh, the doctor'll do that. _He'll_ not----"
+
+But Letty raised herself, addressing the nurse. "Is he--dead?"
+
+Miss Gallifer's tone was the curt one we use to inferiors. "No, he's
+not dead."
+
+"Is he going to die?"
+
+"Not this time, I think."
+
+Letty looked round her. "Well, I'll just sit over here." She went to a
+chair at the back of the room, in a corner on a line with the door. "I
+won't give any trouble. The minute he begins to--to live I'll go."
+
+It was Barbara who arranged the matter peaceably, mollifying Miss
+Gallifer. Without explaining who Letty was she insisted on her right
+to remain. If Miss Gallifer was mystified, it was no more than Miss
+Towell was, or anyone else who touched the situation at a tangent. To
+that Barbara was indifferent, while Letty didn't think of it.
+
+In rallying her forces Barbara's first recollection had been, "I must
+be a sport." With theoretical sporting instincts she knew herself the
+kind of sport who doesn't always run true to form. Hating meanness she
+could lapse into the mean, and toward Letty herself had so lapsed.
+That accident she must guard against. The issues were so big that
+whatever happened, she couldn't afford to reproach herself.
+Self-reproach would not only magnify defeat but poison success, since,
+if she availed herself of her advantages, no success would ever prove
+worth while.
+
+For her own sake rather than for Letty's she made use of the hour
+while the doctors were again in consultation to explain the
+possibilities. She would have the whole thing clearly understood.
+Whether or not Letty did understand it she wasn't quite sure, since
+she seemed cut off from thought-communication. She listened, nodded,
+was docile to instructions, but made no response.
+
+To be as lucid as possible Barbara put it in this way: "Since you've
+left him, and I've broken my engagement he'll be absolutely free to
+choose; and yet, you must remember, we may--we may both lose him."
+
+That both should lose him seemed indeed the more probable after the
+consultation. All the doctors looked grave, even Dr. Lancing. His
+dinner-party manner had forsaken him as he talked to Barbara, his
+emphasis being thrown on the word "prepared." It was still one of
+those cases in which you couldn't tell, though so far the symptoms
+were not encouraging. He felt himself bound in honor to say as much as
+that, hoping, however, for the best.
+
+Closing the front door on him Barbara felt herself shaken by a
+frightful possibility. If he never regained consciousness that would
+"settle it." The suspense would be over. Her fate would be determined.
+She would no longer have to wonder and doubt, to strive or to cry. No
+longer would she run the risk of seeing another woman get him. She
+would find that which her tempestuous nature craved before
+everything--rest, peace, release from the impulse to battle and
+dominate. Not by words, not so much as by thought, but only in wild
+emotion she knew that, as far as she was concerned, it might be better
+for him to die. If he lived, and chose herself, the storm would only
+begin again. If he lived and chose the other....
+
+But as to that she could see no reasonable prospect. She had only to
+look at Letty, shrinking in her corner of the bedroom, to judge any
+such mischance impossible. She was so humble; so negligible; so much
+a bit of flotsam of the streets. She had an appeal of her own, of
+course; but an appeal so lowly as to be obscured by the wayside dust
+which covered it. What was the flower to which Rash had now and then
+compared her? Wasn't that what he called it--the dust flower?--that
+ragged blue thing of byways and backyards, which you couldn't touch
+without washing your hands afterwards. No, no! Not even the legal tie
+which nominally bound them could hold in the face of this inequality.
+It would be too grotesque.
+
+The hours passed. The night nurse was now installed, and was reading
+_Keith Macdermot's Destiny_. She was one of those tall, slender women
+whom you see to be all bone. As businesslike as Miss Gallifer, and
+quite as detached, Miss Moines was brisk and systematic. It being her
+habit to subdue a household to herself before she entered on her
+duties her eyes regarded Miss Walbrook and Letty with the startled
+glance of a horse's.
+
+For before going Miss Gallifer had given her a hint. "You'll have to
+do a lot of side-stepping here. This is the famous House of Mystery.
+You'll find two nuts upstairs--that's what I'd call them if they were
+men--but they're women--girls, sort of--and you've just got to leave
+them alone. One's a high-stepper--regular society--was engaged to the
+patient and now acts as if she'd married him; and the other--well,
+perhaps you can make her out; I can't. Seems a little off. May be the
+poor castaway, once loved, and now broken-hearted but faithful, you
+read about in books. Anyhow, there they are, and you'd best let them
+be. It won't be for more than--well, I give him twenty-four hours at
+the most. I begin to think that for once old Wisdom is right.
+Good-looker too, poor fellow, and can't be more than thirty-five. I
+wonder what could have happened? I suppose they'll go into that at the
+inquest."
+
+But Miss Moines was too systematic to have companions in the room
+without marshaling them to some form of duty. They needed to eat; they
+needed to sleep. Now and then someone had to go out on the landing and
+comfort or reassure Steptoe, who sat on the attic stairs like a
+grief-stricken dog.
+
+Letty was the first to consent to go and lie down. She did so about
+nine o'clock, extracting a promise that whatever happened she would be
+called at twelve. If there was any change in the meantime--but that,
+Miss Moines assured her, was understood in all such ride-and-tie
+arrangements. At twelve Letty was to return and Barbara lie down till
+three, with the same proviso in case of the unexpected. But, so to put
+it, the unexpected seemed improbable, in view of that rigid form, and
+the white, upturned face.
+
+"And yet," Miss Moines confided to Barbara, "I don't think he's as far
+gone as they think. Miss Gallifer only changed her mind when they
+talked her round. A doctor just sees the patient in glimpses, whereas
+a nurse lives with him, and knows what he can stand."
+
+About eleven Miss Moines closed _Keith Macdermot's Destiny_, and took
+the pulse. She nodded as she did so, with a slight exclamation of
+triumph. "Ah, ha! Fifty-eight! That's the first good sign. It may not
+mean anything, but----"
+
+Barbara was too exhausted to feel more than a gleam of comfort. The
+lassitude being emotional rather than physical Miss Moines detected it
+easily enough, and sent her to rest before the hour agreed upon. She
+went the more willingly, since the pulse had risen and hope could
+begin once more.
+
+On the stairs Steptoe raised his bowed head, with a dazed stare.
+Seeing Miss Walbrook he stumbled to his feet.
+
+"'Ow is 'e now, miss?"
+
+She told him the good news.
+
+"Ah, thank God! Perhaps after all 'E'll spare 'im."
+
+Steptoe informed Letty, who right on the stroke of midnight returned
+to her post. "Pulse gone up two of them degrees, madam. 'E's goin' to
+pull through!"
+
+To Letty this was a signal. On going to rest in the little back
+spare room she had thrown off her street things, worn during all
+the hours of watching, and put on the dressing gown she had left
+there a few nights earlier. She was still wearing it, but at
+Steptoe's news she went back again. On passing him the second time
+she was clad in the old gray rag and the battered hat in which it
+would be easier to escape. Steptoe said nothing; but he nodded to
+himself comprehendingly.
+
+A clock struck two. Miss Moines was hungry. Expecting to be hungry she
+had had a small tray, with what she called a "lunch," placed for her
+in the dining-room. Had there been immediate danger she would not have
+left her post; but with Letty there she saw no harm in taking ten or
+fifteen minutes to conserve her strength.
+
+For the first time in all those hours Letty was alone with him. Not
+expecting to be so left she was at first frightened, then audacious.
+Except for the one time when she had approached the bedside and kissed
+his feet she had remained in her corner, watching with the silent,
+motionless intentness of a little animal. Her eyes hardly ever left
+the white face; but at this distance even the white face was dim.
+
+Now she was possessed by a great daring. She would steal to the
+bedside again. Again she would see the beloved features clearly. Again
+she would have the amazing bliss of kissing the coverlet that covered
+the dear feet. When Miss Moines returned she would be back again in
+her corner, as if she had never left it. If the pulse rose higher, if
+there was further hope, if he seemed to be reviving, she could slip
+away in the confusion of their joy.
+
+She rose and listened. The house was as still as it had been at other
+times when she had listened in the night. She glided to the bed.
+
+He lay as if he had been carved in stone, propped up with pillows to
+make breathing easier, his arms outside the coverlet. He was a little
+as he had been on the morning when she had passed her hand across his
+brow. As then, too, his hair rose in tongues of diabolic flame.
+
+She was near him. She was bending over him. She was bending not above
+his feet, but above his head. She knew how mad she was, but she
+couldn't help herself. Stooping--stooping--closer--closer--her lips
+touched the forked black mane of his hair.
+
+She leaped back. She leaped not only because of her own boldness, but
+because he seemed to stir. It was as if this kiss, so light, so
+imperceptible, had sent a galvanic throbbing through his frame. She
+herself felt it, as now and then in winter she had felt an electric
+spark.
+
+Her sin had found her out. She was terrified. He lay just as he had
+lain before--only not quite--not quite! His arms were not just as they
+had been; the coverlet was slightly, ever so slightly, disturbed. The
+nurse would see it and know that....
+
+There was a stirring of a hand. It was so little of a stirring that
+she thought her eyes must have deceived her when it stirred again--a
+restless toss, like a muscular contraction in sleep. She was not
+alarmed now, only excited, and wondering what she ought to do. She
+ought to run to the head of the stairs and call Miss Moines, only that
+she couldn't bring herself to leave him.
+
+Then, as she stood in her attitude of doubt, the eyes opened and
+looked at her. They looked at her straight, and yet glassily. They
+looked at her with no gladness in the look, almost with no
+recognition. If anything there was a kind of sickness there, as if the
+finding her by his bedside was a disappointment.
+
+"I know what it is," she said to herself. "He wants--_her_."
+
+But the eyes closed again. The face was as white, the profile as
+rigid, as ever.
+
+She sped to Barbara, who was lying on a couch in the front spare room.
+"Come! He woke up! He wants you!"
+
+Back in the bedroom she effaced herself. They were all there
+now--Barbara, Steptoe, and Miss Moines.
+
+"It's what he would do," Miss Moines corroborated, "if he was coming
+back."
+
+Letty had told part of what she had seen, but only part of it. The
+rest was her secret. The little mermaid's kiss had left the prince as
+inanimate as before; hers had brought him back to life!
+
+It was the moment to run away. Miss Moines had said that having once
+opened his eyes he would open them again. When he did he mustn't find
+her there. They were all so intent on watching that this was her
+opportunity.
+
+They were all so intent--but Steptoe. She was buttoning her jacket
+when she saw his eyes steal round in her direction. A second later he
+had tiptoed back into the hall, and closed the door behind him.
+
+It was vexing, but not fatal. He had probably gone for something.
+While he was getting it she would elude him. One thing was
+certain--she couldn't face the look of disappointment in those sick
+dark eyes again. She opened the door. She shut it noiselessly behind
+her. Steptoe wasn't there, and the way was free.
+
+Barbara stood just where Letty had described herself as standing when
+the eyes had given her that glassy stare. To herself she seemed to
+stand there for ever, though the time could be counted in minutes. The
+pounding of her heart was like a pulsating of the house.
+
+The eyes opened again. They opened, first wearily, and then with a
+fretful light which seemed to be searching for what they couldn't
+find.
+
+Barbara stood still.
+
+There was another stirring of the hand, irritated, impatient. A little
+moan or groan was distinctly of complaint. The eyes having rolled
+hither and thither helplessly, the head turned slowly on the pillow so
+as to see the other side of the room.
+
+"He's looking for something that he misses," Miss Moines explained,
+wonderingly. "What do you suppose it can be?"
+
+"He wants--_her_."
+
+Barbara found her at the street door, pleading with Steptoe, who
+actually held her by the arm. The loud whisper down the stairs was a
+cry as well as a command.
+
+"Come!"
+
+At the bedroom door they parted. With a light instinctive push Barbara
+forced Letty to go back to the spot on which she had stood earlier.
+She herself went to the other side of the bed, only to find that the
+head, in which the eyes were closed again, was now turned that way.
+
+As if aware that some mysterious decision was approaching Miss Moines
+kept herself in the background. Steptoe had hardly advanced from the
+threshold. Neither of the women by the bedside seemed to breathe.
+
+When the eyes opened for the third time the intelligence in them was
+keener. On Barbara they rested long, quietly, kindly, till memory came
+back.
+
+With memory there was again that restless stirring, that complaining
+moan. Once more, slowly, distressfully, the head turned on the
+pillow.
+
+On Letty the long, quiet, kindly regard lay as it had lain on Barbara.
+They waited; but in the look there was no more than that.
+
+From two hearts two silent prayers were going up.
+
+"Oh, God, end it somehow--and let me have _peace_!"
+
+"Oh, God, make him live again--and give them to each other!"
+
+Then, when no one was expecting it, a faint smile quivered on the
+lips, as if the returning mind saw something long desired and
+comforting. Faintly, feebly, unsteadily, the hands were raised toward
+the dust flower. The lips moved, enough to form dumbly the one word,
+"Come!"
+
+The invitation was beyond crediting. Letty trembled, and shrank back.
+
+But from the support of the pillow the whole figure leaned forward.
+The hands were lifted higher, more firmly and more longingly. Strength
+came with the need for strength. A smile which was of life, not death,
+beamed on the features and brought color to the face which had all
+these hours seemed carved in stone.
+
+"He'll do now," the nurse threw off, professionally. "He'll be up in a
+few days."
+
+It was Barbara who gave the sign to both Steptoe and Miss Moines. By
+the imperiousness of her gesture and her uplifted head she swept them
+out before her. If she was leaving all behind her she was leaving it
+superbly; but she wasn't leaving all. Back of her tumultuous passions
+a spirit was crying to her spirit, "Now you'll get what you want far
+more than you want this--rest from vain desire."
+
+Letty approached the bedside slowly, as if drawn by an enchantment. To
+the outstretched hands she stretched out hers. The door was closed,
+and once more she was alone with him.
+
+But neither saw that for the space of a few inches the closed door was
+opened again, and that an old profile peered within. Then, as slowly,
+slowly, slowly, Letty sank on her knees, bowing her head on the hands
+which drew her closer, and closer still, a pair of old lips smiled
+contentedly.
+
+When the head drew back, the door was closed again.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+  Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved as printed in the
+  original book except for the following changes.
+
+  Page 38: burred to blurred (her appearance struck him simply as
+           blurred)
+
+  Page 207: musn't to mustn't (They mustn't rush things.)
+
+  Page 264: unbridgable to unbridgeable (The gulf had always been
+            there, yawning, unbridgeable,)
+
+  Missing/extra quote marks were silently corrected, however,
+  punctuation has not been changed to comply with modern standards.
+  Inconsistency in hyphenation and accented words has also been retained.
+
+  Two deviations in paragraph-ending punctuation in the original book
+  should be noted: on Page 14, the paragraph beginning, "Within, a toy
+  entry led...." and on Page 42, "There was that about him...." Both
+  paragraphs end with a comma and have been retained, although
+  throughout the book a colon was used to end these types of paragraphs
+  in which dialogue immediately followed.
+
+
+
+
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