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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of What Will People Say?, by Rupert Hughes
+
+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: What Will People Say?
+       A novel
+
+Author: Rupert Hughes
+
+Release Date: December 15, 2011 [EBook #38311]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY? ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Darleen Dove, Shannon Barker, Cathy Maxam, and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THEY WERE AS OBLIVIOUS OF THEIR PERIL AS TRISTAN AND
+ISOLDE
+
+[See page 405]]
+
+
+
+
+  WHAT WILL
+  PEOPLE SAY?
+
+  A NOVEL
+  BY
+  RUPERT HUGHES
+
+  ILLUSTRATED
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+  NEW YORK AND LONDON
+  MCMXIV
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY HARPER & BROTHERS
+
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+  PUBLISHED APRIL, 1914
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  THEY WERE AS OBLIVIOUS OF THEIR PERIL
+    AS TRISTAN AND ISOLDE                     _Frontispiece_
+
+  AND NOW DESIGN EMERGED, A WOMAN STOOD
+    REVEALED                                  _Facing p.  18_
+
+  "THERE'S THAT OTHER ME DOWN IN THE POOL,
+    WATCHING THIS ME"                         _Facing p. 252_
+
+
+  HER OBSTINATE PLUCK BEWILDERED HIM          _Facing p. 480_
+
+
+
+
+WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Fifth Avenue at flood-tide was a boiling surf of automobiles. But at
+nearly every corner a policeman succeeded where King Canute had failed,
+and checked the sea or let it pass with a nod or a jerk of thumb.
+
+The young army officer just home-come from the Philippines felt that he
+was in a sense a policeman himself, for he had spent his last few years
+keeping savage tribes in outward peace. When he was away or asleep the
+Moros rioted at will. And so the traffic-officer of this other extreme
+of civilization kept these motor-Moros in orderly array only so long as
+he kept them in sight.
+
+One glare from under his vizor brought the millionaire's limousine to a
+sharp stop, or sent it shivering back into position. But once the vista
+ahead was free of uniforms all the clutches leaped to the high; life and
+limb were gaily jeopardized, and the most appalling risks run with
+ecstasy.
+
+The law of New York streets and roads forbids a car to commit at any
+time a higher speed than thirty miles an hour; and never a man that owns
+one but would blush to confess it incapable of breaking that law.
+
+As Lieutenant Forbes watched the surge of automobiles from the superior
+height of a motor-bus it amused him to see how little people lose of the
+childhood spirit of truancy and adventure. All this grown-up,
+sophisticated world seemed to be run like a school, with joyous deviltry
+whenever and wherever the teacher's back was turned, but woe to whoso
+was caught; every one winking at guilt till authority detected it, then
+every one solemnly approving the punishment.
+
+Mr. Forbes had not seen Fifth Avenue since the pathetic old
+horse-coaches were changed to the terrific motor-stages. He had not seen
+the Avenue since it was widened--by the simple process of slicing off
+the sidewalks and repairing their losses at the expense of the houses.
+The residences on both sides of the once so stately corridor looked to
+him as if a giant had drawn a huge carving-knife along the walls,
+lopping away all the porticos, columns, stoops, and normal approaches,
+and leaving the inhabitants to improvise such exits as they might.
+
+The splendid facade of the Enslee home had suffered pitifully. He
+remembered how the stairway had once come down from the vestibule to the
+street with the sweeping gesture of a hand of welcome. Now the door was
+knee-deep in the basement, and the scar of the sealed-up portal was not
+healed above.
+
+The barbarity of the assault along the line had not apparently relieved
+the choke of traffic. Or else the traffic had swollen more fiercely
+still, as it usually does in New York at every attempt in palliation.
+
+As far as Forbes could see north and south the roadway was glutted from
+curb to curb with automobiles. And their number astonished him even less
+than their luxury. The designers had ceased to mimic hansoms, broughams,
+and victorias following invisible horses ridiculously. They had begun to
+create motors pure and simple, built to contain and follow and glorify
+their own engines.
+
+Many of the cars were gorgeously upholstered, Aladdin's divans of
+comfort and speed; and some of them were decorated with vases of
+flowers. Their surfaces were lustrous and many-colored, sleekly
+tremendous. They had not yet entirely outgrown the imitation of the
+wooden frame, and their sides looked frail and satiny, unfit for rough
+usage, and sure to splinter at a shock. But he knew that they were
+actually built of aluminum or steel, burnished and enameled.
+
+What he did not know was that the people in them, lolling relaxed, and
+apparently as soft of fiber as of skin, were not the weaklings they
+looked. They, too, like their cars, only affected fatigue and
+ineptitude, for they also were built of steel, and their splendid
+engines were capable of velocities and distances that would leave a
+gnarled peasant gasping.
+
+This was one of the many things he was to learn.
+
+From his swaying eery he seemed to be completely lost in a current of
+idle wealth. The throng, except for the chauffeurs, the policemen, and a
+few men whose trades evidently fetched them to this lane of
+pleasure--the throng was almost altogether women. And to Forbes' eye,
+unused to city standards, almost all the women were princesses.
+
+At first, as his glance fell on each radiant creature, his heart would
+cry: "There is one I could love! I never shall forget her beauty!" And
+before the vow of eternal memory was finished it was forgotten for the
+next.
+
+By and by the show began to pall because it would not end. As peers
+become commonplace at a royal court, since there is nothing else there,
+so beauty canceled itself here by its very multitude. For the next mile
+only the flamboyantly gorgeous or the flamboyantly simple beauty caught
+his overfed eye. And then even these were lost in the blur of a
+kaleidoscope twirled too fast.
+
+There was one woman, however, that he could not forget, because he could
+not find out what she was like. In the slow and fitful progress up the
+Avenue it chanced that his stage kept close in the wake of an open
+landaulet. The stage never fell far behind, and never quite won
+alongside.
+
+A young woman was alone in the tonneau. At least, he judged that she was
+young, though his documents were scant. Her head was completely hidden
+from his view by a hat that was just exactly big enough to accomplish
+that work of spite.
+
+It was a sort of inverted flower-pot of straw--one of those astonishing
+millinery jokes that women make triumphs of. It bore no ornament at all
+except a filmy white bird-of-paradise feather stuck in the center of the
+top and spraying out in a shape that somehow suggested an
+interrogation-mark.
+
+Even a man could see that it was a beautiful plume and probably
+expensive. It had a sort of success of impudence, alone there, and it
+mocked Forbes by trailing along ahead of him, an unanswerable query.
+
+He grew eager and more eager to see what flower-face was hidden under
+that overturned straw flower-pot of a hat.
+
+Now and then, as the stage pushed forward, he would be near enough to
+make out the cunning architecture of the mystery's left shoulder and the
+curious felicity of her left arm. Seen thus detached, they fascinated
+him and kindled his curiosity. By and by he was swept near enough to
+glimpse one rounded knee crossed over the other, and one straight shin
+creasing a tight skirt, and a high-domed instep, and the peak of one
+slim shoe.
+
+And once, when the traffic was suddenly arrested, he was close enough to
+be wildly tempted to bend down and snatch off that irritating hat. He
+would have learned at least the color of her hair, and probably she
+would have lifted her startled face to view like a reverted rose. He was
+a fearless soldier, but he was not so daring as all that. Still, he
+heard her voice as she gossiped to a momentary neighbor who raised his
+hat in a touring-car held up abeam her own.
+
+Her voice did not especially please him; it was almost shrill, and it
+had the metallic glitter of the New York voice. Her words, too, were a
+trifle hard, and as unpoetic as possible.
+
+"We had a rotten time," she said. "I was bored stiff. You ought to have
+been there."
+
+And then she laughed a little at the malice implied. The policeman's
+whistle blew and the cars lurched forward. And the stage lumbered after
+them like a green hippopotamus. Forbes began to feel a gnawing anxiety
+to see what was under that paradise feather. He assumed that beauty was
+there, though he had learned from shocking experiences how dangerous it
+is to hope a woman beautiful because the back of her head is of good
+omen.
+
+It became a matter of desperate necessity to overtake that
+will-o'-the-wisp chauffeur and observe his passenger. Great expectations
+seemed to be justified by the fact that nearly every policeman saluted
+her and smiled so pleasantly and so pleasedly that the smile lingered
+after she was far past.
+
+Forbes noted, too, that the people she bowed to in other cars or on the
+sidewalk seemed to be important people, and yet to be proud when her hat
+gave a little wren-like nod in their directions.
+
+At Fifty-first Street, in front of the affable gray Cathedral, there was
+a long and democratic delay while a contemptuous teamster, perched atop
+a huge steel girder, drove six haughty stallions across the Avenue;
+drove them slowly, and puffed deliberate smoke in the face of the
+impatient aristocracy.
+
+Here a dismounted mounted policeman paced up and down, followed by a
+demure horse with kindly eyes. This officer paused to pass the time of
+day with the mysterious woman, and the horse put his nose into the car
+and accepted a caress from her little gloved hand. Again Forbes heard
+her voice:
+
+"You poor old dear, I wish I had a lump of sugar."
+
+It was to the horse that she spoke, but the officer answered:
+
+"The sight of you, ma'am, is enough for um."
+
+Evidently he came from where most policemen come from. The lady laughed
+again. She was evidently not afraid of a compliment. But the policeman
+was. He blushed and stammered:
+
+"I beg your pairdon, Miss--"
+
+He gulped the name and motioned the traffic forward. Forbes was
+congratulating himself that at least she was not "Mrs." Somebody, and
+his interest redoubled just as the young woman leaned forward to speak
+to her chauffeur. She had plainly seen that there was a policeless space
+ahead of her, for the driver put on such speed that he soon left Forbes
+and his stage far in the rear.
+
+Forbes, seeing his prey escaping, made a mental note of the number of
+her car, "48150, N. Y. 1913."
+
+He had read how the police traced fugitive motorists by their numerals,
+and he vowed to use the records for his own purposes. He must know who
+she was and how she looked. Meanwhile he must not forget that
+number--48150, N. Y. 1913--the mystic symbol on her chariot of
+translation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Helpless to pursue her with more than his gaze, Forbes watched from his
+lofty perch how swiftly she fled northward. He could follow her car as
+it thridded the unpoliced traffic by that dwindling bird-of-paradise
+plume, that sphinxic riddle of a feathery question-mark.
+
+He mused indulgently upon her as she vanished: "She breaks the law like
+all the rest when no one is there to stop her. She wheedles the police
+with a smile, but behind their backs she burns up the road."
+
+Evidently there were narrow escapes from disaster. One or two
+pedestrians leaped like kangaroos to escape her wheels. Once or twice
+collisions with other cars were avoided by sharp swerves or abrupt
+stops.
+
+The plume went very respectably across the Plaza, for policemen were
+there on fixed post; but, once beyond, the feather diminished into
+nothingness with the uncanny speed of a shooting-star.
+
+She was gone. And now he wondered whither she sped, and why. To what
+tryst was she hastening at such dreadful pace, with such rash desire? He
+felt almost a jealousy, at least an envy, of the one who waited at the
+rendezvous.
+
+And then he felt alarm for her. Already she might have met disaster. Her
+car might have crashed into some other--into a great steel-girder truck
+like that that crossed the Avenue. She might even now be lying all
+crumpled and shattered in a tangle of wreckage.
+
+That taunting white question-feather might be dabbled with red. The face
+might be upturned to any man's view and every man's horror. He was
+almost afraid to follow farther lest his curiosity be more than sated.
+
+His irresolution was solved for him. The stage was turning out of Fifth
+Avenue, to cross over to Broadway and Riverside Drive. Forbes was not
+done with this lane. He rose to leave the bus. It lurched and threw him
+from bench to bench. He negotiated with difficulty the perilous descent,
+clutched the hand-rail in time to save himself from pitching head first
+to the street, clambered down the little stairway with ludicrous
+awkwardness, stepped on solid asphalt with relief, and walked south.
+
+The press gradually thickened, and before long it was dense and viscid,
+as if theater audiences were debouching at every corner.
+
+The stream was still almost entirely woman: beautiful woman at the side
+of beautiful woman, or treading on her high heels; chains of womankind
+like strings of beaded pearls, hordes of women, dressed in infinite
+variations of the prevailing mode. They strode or dawdled, laughing,
+smiling, bowing, whispering, or gazing into the windows of the shops.
+
+The panorama of windows was nearly as beautiful as the army of women.
+The great show-cases, dressed with all expertness, were silently
+proffering wares that would tempt an empress to extravagance.
+
+A few haberdashers displayed articles of strange gorgeousness for
+men--shirt-patterns and scarves, bathrobes, waistcoats that rivaled
+Joseph's; but mainly the bazars appealed to women or to the men who buy
+things for women.
+
+The windows seemed to say: "How can you carry your beloved past my
+riches, or go home to her without some of my delights?" "How fine she
+would look in my folds!" "How well my diamonds would bedeck her hair or
+her bosom! If you love her, get me for her!" "It is shameful of you to
+pretend not to see me, or to confess to poverty! Couldn't you borrow
+money somewhere to buy me? Couldn't you postpone the rent or some other
+debt awhile? Perhaps I could be bought on credit."
+
+Show-windows and show-women were the whole cry. The women seemed to be
+wearing the spoils of yesterday's pillage, and yet to yearn for
+to-morrow's. Women gowned like manikins from one window gazed like
+hungry paupers at another window's manikins.
+
+The richness of their apparel, the frankness of their allure were almost
+frightful. They seemed themselves to be shop-windows offering their
+graces for purchase or haughtily labeling themselves "sold." Young or
+antique, they appeared to be setting themselves forth at their best,
+their one business a traffic in admiration.
+
+"Look at me! Look at me!" they seemed to challenge, one after another.
+"My face is old, but so is my family." "My body is fat, but so is my
+husband's purse!" "I am not expensively gowned, but do I not wear my
+clothes well?" "I am young and beautiful and superbly garbed, and I have
+a rich husband." "I am only a little school-girl, but I am ready to be
+admired, and my father buys me everything I want." "I am leading a life
+of sin, but is not the result worth while?" "My husband is slaving
+down-town to pay the bills for these togs, but are you not glad that I
+did not wait till he could afford to dress me like this?"
+
+Lieutenant Forbes had been so long away from a metropolis, and had lived
+in such rough countries, that he perhaps mistook the motives of the
+women of New York, and their standards, underrated their virtues. Vice
+may go unkempt and shabby, and a saint may take thought of her
+appearance. Perhaps what he rated as boldness was only the calm of
+innocence; what he read as a command to admire may have been only a
+laudable ambition to make the best of one's gifts.
+
+But to Forbes there was an overpowering fleshliness in the display. It
+reminded him of the alleged festivals of Babylon, where all the women
+piously offered themselves to every passer-by and rated their success
+with heaven by their prosperity with strangers.
+
+It seemed to him that the women of other places than New York must have
+dressed as beautifully, but in an innocenter way. Here the women looked
+not so much feminine as female. They appeared to be thinking amorous
+thoughts. They deployed their bosoms with meaning; their very backs
+conveyed messages. Their clothes were not garments, but banners.
+
+He had dwelt for years among half-clad barbarians, unashamed Igorrotes;
+but these women looked nakeder than those. The more studiously they were
+robed, the less they had on.
+
+A cynicism unusual to his warm and woman-worshiping soul crept into
+Forbes' mind. He went along philosophizing:
+
+"All these women are paid for by men. For everything that every one of
+these women wears some man has paid. Fathers, husbands, guardians,
+keepers, dead or alive, have earned the price of all this pomp.
+
+"The men who pay for these things are not here: they are in their
+offices or shops or at their tasks somewhere, building, producing; or in
+their graves resting from their labors, while the spendthrift sex gads
+abroad squandering and flaunting what it has wheedled.
+
+"What do the women give in return? They must pay something. What do they
+pay?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+He brooded like a sneering Satan for a time upon the meaning of the
+dress-parade, and then the glory of it overpowered him again. He felt
+that it would be a hideous world without its luxuries. It was well, he
+concluded, that men should dig for gold, dive for pearls, climb for
+aigrets, penetrate the snows for furs, breed worms for silk, build
+looms, and establish shops--all in order that the she half of the world
+should bedeck itself.
+
+The scarlet woman on the beast, the pink girl with the box of
+chocolates, the white matron, the widow in the most costly and becoming
+weeds--they were all more important to the world than any other of man's
+institutions, because they were pretty or beautiful or in some way
+charming--as useless, yet as lovely as music or flowers or poetry.
+
+He was soon so overcrowded with impressions that he could not arrange
+them in order. He could only respond to them. The individual traits of
+this woman or that, swaggering afoot or reclining in her car, smote him.
+Every one of them was a Lorelei singing to him from her fatal cliff, and
+his heart turned from the next to the next like a little rudderless
+boat.
+
+Each siren rescued him from the previous, but the incessant impacts upon
+his senses rendered him to a glow of wholesale enthusiasm. He rejoiced
+to be once more in New York. He began to wish to know some of these
+women.
+
+It was apparent that many of them were ready enough to extend their
+hospitality. Numbers of them--beautiful ones, too, and lavishly
+adorned--had eyes like grappling-hooks. Their glances were invitations
+so pressingly urged that they inspired opposition. They expressed
+contempt in advance for a refusal. But men easily find strength to
+resist such invitations and such contempt.
+
+It was not in these tavern-like hearts that Forbes would seek shelter.
+He wanted to find some attractive, some decently difficult woman to make
+friends with, make love to. He was heart-free, and impatient for
+companionship.
+
+When a man is a soldier, an officer, and young, well-made and well-bred,
+it is improbable that he will remain long without opportunity of
+adventure.
+
+The woman of the bird-of-paradise feather was buried in Forbes' mind as
+deeply as if a balcony full of matinee girls had collapsed upon her.
+Forbes fell in love at first sight a hundred and fifty times on the
+Avenue. Had he met any one of that cohort again under favoring auspices
+he might have found in her arms the response he sought. It might have
+brought him tragic unrest, or the sort of home comfort that makes no
+history.
+
+Perhaps he did meet some of these potential sweethearts later; but if he
+did, he could not remember them and he did not heed them, for he was by
+then involved inextricably with the one he had hunted for and lost.
+
+When he found her he did not remember her any more than the others. She
+impressed him as a woman of extreme fragility, yet she was to test his
+strength to its utmost, his endurance, his courage, his readiness for
+hazard.
+
+He had won a name among brave men for caution in approaching danger, for
+bravery in the midst of it, and for agility in extricating himself from
+ambush and trap. This most delicate lady was to teach him to be
+reckless, foolhardy, maladroit. She would wear him out in the pursuit of
+happiness and disgust him with his profession, with himself and her.
+Under her tutelage he would run through scenes of splendor and scale the
+heights of excitement. He would know beauty and pleasure and intrigue
+and peril. He would know everything but repose, contentment, and peace.
+He would love her and hate her, abhor her and adore her, be her greatest
+friend and enemy, and she his.
+
+At his first meeting with her he pursued her without knowing who she was
+and without overtaking her. And she, not knowing she was pursued,
+unconsciously teased him by keeping just out of his reach and denying
+him the glimpse of her face.
+
+Perhaps it would have been better for both if they had never come nearer
+together than in that shadowy, that foreshadowing game of hide-and-seek
+in the full sun among the throngs.
+
+Perhaps it was better that they should meet and endure the furnace of
+emotions and superb experiences in gorgeous scenes.
+
+But, whether for better or worse, they did meet, and their souls engaged
+in that grapple of mutual help and harm that we call love.
+
+The world heard much of them, as always, and inevitably misunderstood
+and misjudged, ignoring what justified them, not seeing that their most
+flippant moments were their most important and that when they seemed
+most to sin they were clutching at their noblest crags of attainment.
+
+It is such fates as theirs that make the human soul cry aloud for a God
+to give it understanding, to give it another chance in a better world.
+The longing is so fierce that it sometimes becomes belief. But while we
+wait for that higher court it is the province of story-tellers to play
+at being juster judges than the popular juries are.
+
+Meanwhile Forbes was unsuspicious of the future, and unaware of nearly
+everything except heart-fag and foot-weariness.
+
+When he returned to his hotel he was a tourist who has done too much
+art-gallery. Fifth Avenue had been an ambulant Louvre of young
+mistresses, not of old masters.
+
+He crept into a tub of water as hot as he could endure, and simmered
+there, smoking the ache out of him, and imagining himself as rich as
+Haroun al Raschid, instead of a poor subaltern in a hard-worked little
+army, with only his pay and a small sum that he had saved, mainly
+because he had been detailed to regions where there was almost nothing
+fit to buy.
+
+The price of his room at the hotel had staggered him, but he charged it
+off to a well-earned holiday and pretended that he was a millionaire. He
+rose from the steaming pool and turned an icy shower on himself with
+shuddering exhilaration. His blood leaped as at a bugle-call, a reveille
+to life.
+
+He heard the city shouting up to his windows, and he began to fling on
+his clothes. And then he realized that he knew nobody among those
+roaring millions. He cursed his luck and flung into his bathrobe. As he
+knotted the rope he felt that he might as well be a cowled and
+cloistered monk in a desert as his friendless self in this wilderness of
+luxury.
+
+Happiness was bound to elude him as easily as that woman of the white
+query-plume eluded him when he in his ten-cent bus pursued her in her
+five-thousand-dollar landaulet. All he had of her was the back of her
+hat and the number of her car--N. Y. 41508. Or was it N. Y. 85140,
+or--what the devil was the number?
+
+He had not brought away even that!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Nothing can be lonelier than a room in even a best hotel when one is
+lonesome and when one's window looks out upon crowds. Forbes had pitched
+his tent at the Knickerbocker, and his view was of Longacre Square.
+
+The Times Building stood aloft, a huddled giraffe of a building. A
+fierce wind spiraled round it and played havoc with dignity. It was an
+ill-mannered bumpkin wind from out of town with a rural sense of humor.
+Women pressed forward into the gale, bending double and struggling with
+their tormented hats and writhing skirts. Some of the men seemed to find
+them an attractive spectacle till they felt their own hats caught up and
+kited to the level of the fourth and fifth windows.
+
+A flock of newsboys, as brisk as sparrows, drove a hustling trade in
+recovering hats for men who were ashamed of bare heads as of a
+nakedness. The gamins darted among the street-cars and automobiles,
+risking their lives for dimes as sparrows for corn, and escaping death
+as miraculously.
+
+At the western end of Forty-second Street stood a space of sunset like a
+scarlet canvas on exhibition. Then swift clouds erased it, and gusts of
+rain went across the town in volleys of shrapnel, clearing the streets
+of a mob. Everybody made for the nearest shelter.
+
+The onset ended as quickly as it began. The stars were in the sky as
+suddenly as if some one had turned on an electric switch. On the
+pavements, black with wet and night, the reflected electric lights
+trickled. All the pavements had a look of patent leather.
+
+Forbes sat in the dark room in an arm-chair and muffled his bathrobe
+about him, watching the electric signs working like solemn acrobats--the
+girl that skipped the rope, the baby that laughed and cried, the woman
+that danced on the wire, the skidless tire in the rain, the great sibyl
+face that winked and advised chewing-gum as a panacea, the kitten that
+tangled itself in thread, the siphons that filled the glasses--all the
+automatic electric voices shouting words of light.
+
+Forbes wanted to be among the crowds again. He could not tolerate
+solitude. He resolved to go forth. It inspired him with pride to put on
+his evening clothes. While he dressed he sent his silk hat to be ironed
+by the hotel valet. It came back an ebon crown.
+
+He set it on his head, tapped the top of it smartly, swaggered to the
+elevator, bowed to the matronly floor clerk as to a queen, went down to
+the main dining-room, and tried to look at least a duke. He was glad to
+be in full dress, for the other people were. The head waiter greeted him
+with respect and handed him the bill of fare with expectation.
+
+He ordered more than he had appetite for, and tried not to blanch at the
+prices.
+
+The flowers, the shaded candles, the tapestries, the china and the glass
+and silver, the impassioned violinist leading the sonorous orchestra,
+all gave him that sense of royalty from which money is most easily
+wooed. But the cordiality of the thing was fascinating. The whole city
+seemed to be attending a great reception. New York was giving a party.
+
+And now, indeed, he was in New York again--in it, yet not of it; a poor
+relation at the wedding feast. He lingered at his solitary banquet like
+a boy sent away from the table and forced to eat by himself. His
+extrusion seemed to be a punishment for not being rich. But while his
+funds held out to burn he would pretend.
+
+The room emptied rapidly as the hour for opera and theater arrived. But
+he lingered, not knowing where to go. He pretended to be in no hurry. He
+had, indeed, more leisure than he enjoyed. Still he sat smoking and
+protracting his coffee, and haughtily playing that he was not starving
+for companionship.
+
+When almost the last couple was gone he realized that he faced an
+evening of dismal solitude. He realized also that a number of
+kind-thoughted gentlemen had erected large structures for the
+entertainment of lonely people and had engaged numbers of gifted persons
+to enact stories for their diversion.
+
+He called for his account, paid it with a large bill, and ignored the
+residue with a ruinous lifting of the brows as he accepted a light for
+his exotic cigar.
+
+He helped to put false ideas in the hat-boy's head with the price he
+paid for the brief storage of his hat and coat and stick. He sauntered
+to the news-stand with the gracious stateliness of a czarevitch
+incognito, and asked the Tyson agent:
+
+"What's a good play to see?"
+
+The man named over the reigning successes, and some of their titles fell
+strangely pat with Forbes' humor:
+
+"Romance," "The Poor Little Rich Girl," "Oh, Oh, Delphine!" "Peg o' My
+Heart," "The Lady of the Slipper," "The Sunshine Girl."
+
+"They're mostly about girls," Forbes smiled.
+
+"They mostly always are," the agent grinned. "But there's others:
+'Within the Law,' 'The Argyle Case,' 'The Five Frankfurters,' 'Years of
+Discretion.'"
+
+"I reckon I'd better see 'Within the Law.' I've heard a good deal about
+that."
+
+"I guess you have. It's been a sell-out for months."
+
+"Can't I get in?"
+
+"I'm afraid not. How many are you?"
+
+"One."
+
+"One? Let me see. Here's a pair ordered by a party that hasn't called
+for them. Could you use them both?"
+
+"I could put my overcoat in one seat," Forbes groaned, at this added
+irony in his loneliness and penuriousness.
+
+"I'd split the pair, but it's too late to sell the other one."
+
+"I'll take both." Forbes sighed and waved a handsome five-dollar bill
+farewell.
+
+The boy who twirled the squirrel-cage door told him that the theater was
+just down the street, and received a lavish fee for the information.
+Forbes was soon in the lobby, but the first act was almost finished.
+Rather than disturb the people already seated, he stood at the back,
+leaning over the rail. He thrilled instantly to the speech of the
+shop-girl sentenced to the penitentiary for a theft she was not guilty
+of, and warning the proprietor that she would amply revenge herself when
+she came back down the river. At the height of the outcry of militant
+innocence Forbes heard the susurrus of robes and turned to see a small
+group of later comers than himself.
+
+At the head went something that he judged to be a woman, though all he
+saw was a towering head-dress, a heap of elaborately coiffed hair, a
+wreath of mist, an indescribably exquisite opera-cloak shimmering down
+to an under-cascade of satin.
+
+This tower of fabrics went along as if it were carried on a pole, and
+Forbes could see no semblance of human shape or stride inside it. But he
+judged that it contained a personality, for it paused to listen to
+something another pile of fabrics said to it, and from both came a
+snicker--or was it only a frou-frou of garments? In any case, it angered
+the part of the audience adjacent. The group went down the side-aisle,
+up a few steps to the little space behind the box.
+
+From where he stood Forbes could see the usher helping them lay off
+their wraps. They showed no anxiety to catch the remainder of the act,
+but stood gossiping while the frantic usher waited, not daring to
+reprimand them, yet dreading the noise of their incursion.
+
+[Illustration: AND NOW DESIGN EMERGED, A WOMAN STOOD REVEALED]
+
+Forbes watched one of the clothes-horses stripped of its encumbrances.
+
+From somewhere in the chaos two long-gloved arms came up; they were
+strangely shapely; they made motions like swan's necks dipping into
+water-lilies. A garland of fog came away, and a head on a throat
+appeared, a bust set upon a heap of drapery. Then the opera-cloak
+slipped off into the usher's hands. And now design emerged, a woman
+stood revealed. The head and throat were seen to be attached to a scroll
+of shoulders, and a figure like a column rose from the floor--strangely
+columnar it was, and so slender that there was merely the slightest
+inslope of waist, merely the slightest entasis at the hips.
+
+In other periods only portions of the human outline have been followed
+by the costume. The natural lines have been broken, perverted, and
+caricatured by balloon sleeves, huge farthingales, or paniers like a
+jennet's pack-saddles, the incredible Botocudo ideal of the bustle,
+corsets like hour-glasses, concentric hoops about the legs, with
+pantalets coquetting inanely at the ankles--the almost impossible facts
+of fashion.
+
+Just then the costume was hardly more of a disguise than the gold or
+bronze powder smeared on by those who pose as statues at the
+vaudevilles. Inside their outer wraps women were rather wall-papering
+themselves than draping their forms. It was saner so, and decenter, too,
+perhaps.
+
+And yet Forbes stared at this woman as Adam must have stared at Eve when
+the scales were off his eyes. Even her hair was almost all her own, and
+it was coiled and parted with simple grace. Her head-dress was something
+bizarre--not a tiara of diamonds, but a black crest with a pearl or two
+studding it--the iridescent breast of a lyre-bird it was, though he did
+not know. A cord of pearls was flung around her throat. At the peak of
+each shoulder her gown began, but the two elements did not conjoin till
+just in time above the breast, and just a little too late at the back.
+
+The fabric clung lovingly to the loins, thighs, and calves, so closely
+that an inverted V must be cut between the ankles to make walking
+possible at all. There was a train of a fish-tail sort, a little
+twitching afterthought. And so this woman-shape came forth from a
+shapelessness as Aphrodite from the sea-foam.
+
+Forbes was so startled that he felt all the chagrin of one who is caught
+staring at a woman just returned from the surf in a wet bathing-suit. He
+shifted his eyes from her. When he looked back she had vanished into the
+crimson cavern of the box.
+
+The other women followed her, and the men them. They seated themselves
+just as the curtain fell.
+
+And now Forbes felt at liberty to go to his own seat, found an usher to
+pilot him down the aisle. He bowed and murmured "Beg pardon" and "Thank
+you" to each of those who shoved back awkwardly and wonderingly to let
+him in. He felt like explaining to them that he had not just arrived,
+and that he really was not so foolish or so dilatory as he looked. He
+put his overcoat in his extra seat and studied his program.
+
+A voice that should have reminded him of the landaulet, but did not,
+caught his ear and led his eyes to the box. He was not far from the late
+arrivals.
+
+They were attracting a deal of attention from the audience, and paying
+it none. The loudness of their speech and their laughter would have
+shocked him in a crowd of farmers. Coming from people of evident wealth
+and familiarity with town customs, it astounded him.
+
+He had not yet seen the face of the woman of whom he had seen so much
+else. She was talking to a man in the interior of the box. Her back was
+turned to the house.
+
+It never occurred to Forbes that it might be the same back he had
+followed up the Avenue. How could he have told?
+
+That back was clothed and cloaked, and even that famous left arm was
+sleeved. These shoulder-sheaths, not blades, were so astoundingly bare
+that he felt ashamed to look at them. Their proprietress was evidently
+not ashamed to submit them for public inspection. One might not approve
+her boldness, but one could hardly fail to approve her shoulders. When
+she moved or shrugged or laughed or turned to speak, their exquisite
+integument creased and rippled like shaken cream.
+
+At length the footlights went up, the curtain went up. The three women
+aligned themselves in profile along the rail as if they were seated on
+unseen horses. The men were mere silhouettes in the background.
+
+The bulk of the audience was in darkness; but the people in the boxes
+were illumined with a light reflected from the scenery, and it warmed
+them like a dawn glowing upon peaks of snow.
+
+And now, at last, Forbes saw the face he had watched for with such
+impatience. It did not disappoint him. At first she gave him only the
+profile; but that magic light of stage-craft was upon it, and once she
+turned her head and cast a slow, vague look along the shadowy valley of
+the audience. She could not have seen him, but he saw her and found her
+so beautiful, so bewitchingly beautiful and desirable, that he caught
+his breath with a stitch of pain, an ache of admiration.
+
+Just a moment her eyes dreamed across the gloom, and she turned back to
+watch the stage. It was like a parting after a tryst. Then she broke the
+spell with a sudden throe of laughter. The little shoplifter and
+blackmailer on the stage was describing her efforts to learn the ways of
+society, the technique of pouring tea and pretending to like it. She
+swore, and the audience roared. Formerly an actor could always get a
+laugh by saying "damn." Now it must be a woman that swears.
+
+Jarred back to reasonableness by the shock of laughter, Forbes looked
+again to the box to see what manner of women this woman went with. One
+of them was tiny but quite perfect. She had the face of a debutante
+under the white hair of a matron. If her age were betrayed by her neck,
+the dog-collar of pearls concealed the ravage. She sat exceedingly erect
+and seemed to be cold and haughty till another splurge of slang from the
+shoplifter provoked her to a laugh that was like a child's.
+
+The other woman laughed, too, laughed large and wide. She was beautiful,
+too, a Rubens ideal, drawn in liberal rotundities--cheeks, chin, throat,
+bust, hips. No Cubist could have painted her, for she was like a cluster
+of soap-bubbles. Her face was a great baby's.
+
+The men were almost invisible, mere cut-outs in black and white.
+
+None of them had the jaded look of boredom that Forbes supposed to be
+the chief characteristic of New York wealth. They were as eager and
+irrepressible as a box-load of children fighting over a bag of peanuts
+at a circus.
+
+One of the men leaned forward and whispered something; all the women
+turned to hear. They forgot the play, though the situation was critical.
+They chattered and laughed so audibly that the audience grew restive;
+the people on the stage looked to be distressed.
+
+Forbes was astonished at such bad manners from such beautiful people. He
+wondered how the play could go on. He had heard of actors stepping out
+of the picture to rebuke such disturbers of the peace. He expected such
+an encounter now.
+
+Then somebody in the audience hissed. Somebody called distinctly, "Shut
+up!" The group turned in surprise, and received another hiss in the
+face. Silence and shame quieted it instanter. The women blushed like
+grown girls threatened with a spanking. Tremendous blushes ran all down
+their crimson backs.
+
+Forbes could see that they wanted to run. A kind of pluck held them.
+They pretended to toss their heads with contempt, but the mob had cowed
+them so completely that Forbes felt sorry for them--especially for her.
+She was too pretty for a public humiliation.
+
+When the curtain fell on the second act Forbes saw one of the men in the
+box rise and leave along the side-aisle. Forbes knew the man. His name
+was Ten Eyck--Murray Ten Eyck.
+
+Forbes dreaded to repeat that voyage through the strait between knees
+and seat-backs; but he had seen at last a man he knew. And the man he
+knew knew the woman he wanted to know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The women he passed glared hatpins at Forbes and groaned as they rose
+and hunched back to let him by. They clutched at the wraps he
+disarranged. He rumpled one elaborate hat stuck in the back of a seat,
+and one silk tie that had fallen out of the wire rack he kicked under
+the row ahead. He had an impulse to go after it; but when he realized
+the postures and scrambles it would involve, it was too horrible an
+ordeal. He pretended not to have noticed, and pressed onward.
+
+None was so indignant as the man who had similarly climbed out for a
+drink the _entr'acte_ before. Forbes knew it was a drink he had gone out
+for the moment he passed him. Forbes was not going out for a drink, but
+for important information.
+
+He apologized meekly, yet continued on his course. By the time he was in
+the open Ten Eyck had disappeared. He was not in the lobby, nor among
+the men smoking on the sidewalk or dashing across the street to one of
+the cafes where coffee could not be obtained. Forbes found his man at
+last in the smoking-room below-stairs.
+
+He was puffing a cigarette, and met Forbes' eager glance with such blank
+indifference that Forbes' words of greeting stopped in his throat.
+
+To explain his presence in the smoking-room Forbes lighted a cigar,
+though he knew that he could have but a few puffs of it. And it was such
+a good cigar! There can only be so many good cigars in the world.
+
+The two men paced back and forth on crisscrossing paths as violently
+oblivious of each other as the two traditional Englishmen who were cast
+away on the same desert island and had never been introduced.
+
+It was not till Murray Ten Eyck flung down his cigarette and made to
+leave that Forbes mustered courage enough to speak, in his Virginian
+voice:
+
+"Pardon me, suh, but aren't you Mr. Mu'y Ten Eyck?"
+
+"Yes," said Ten Eyck--simply that, and nothing more.
+
+Forbes, nonplussed at the abrupt brevity of the answer, tried again:
+
+"I reckon you don't remember me."
+
+Ten Eyck showed a hint of interest. If he were a snob he blamed it on
+his own weaknesses.
+
+"I seem to, but--well, I'm simply putrid at names and faces. A man
+pulled me out of the surf at Palm Beach last winter--I had a cramp, you
+know. I cut him dead two weeks later. When I knew what I had done I
+wished he had let me drown. So don't mind me if I don't remember you.
+Who are you? Did you ever save my life? Where was it we met?"
+
+"It was in Manila. You were--"
+
+"Oh, God bless me! You're Harvey Forbes--well, I'll be--" He reversed
+the prayer. "Of course it's you." He was cordial enough now as he
+clapped both hands on Forbes' shoulders. "But how the hell was I to know
+you all dolled up like this? I used to see you in uniform with cap and
+bronze buttons and sword and puttees. You were a lieutenant then. I dare
+say you're a colonel by now, what?" Forbes shook his head. "No? Well,
+you ought to be. You did save my life out in that Godforsaken hole. And
+now you're here! Well, I'll be--Let's have a drink."
+
+"No, thank you!"
+
+"Yes, thank you!" He hurried Forbes up the stairs, out into the street,
+and into a peacock-rivaling cafe. With one foot on the rail, one elbow
+on the bar, and one elbow crooked upward, they toasted each other in a
+hearty "How!" Then, with libations tossed inward, the old friendship was
+consecrated anew.
+
+"Tell me," said Ten Eyck, "are you alone--or with somebody? Don't answer
+if it will incriminate you."
+
+"No such luck," groaned Forbes. "I'm alone, a castaway on this deserted
+island."
+
+"Well, I'm the little rescuing party. How long you here for?"
+
+"I don't know. I was ordered to Governor's Island. I don't have to
+report for a week, so I thought I'd have a look at New York."
+
+"That won't take you long. There's nothing going on, and nobody in
+town."
+
+Forbes remembered the crowds he had seen, and smiled. "I saw three ve'y
+charming ladies in that party of yours."
+
+"Glad you like 'em. Come and meet 'em."
+
+"Perhaps one of them is your wife. Are you ma'ied yet?"
+
+"Not yet. Not while I have my health and strength."
+
+"I'm right glad to hear it. I was beginning to feel afraid that you had
+ma'ied that wonderful one."
+
+Ten Eyck shook his head and laughed.
+
+"Who? Me? Me marry Persis Cabot?"
+
+"Is that her name? Well, why not?"
+
+"If you only knew her you wouldn't ask why. I'm not a millionaire."
+
+"She doesn't look mercenary."
+
+"She's not. Money is nothing to her; she doesn't know what it means; she
+just tosses it away. She's like a yacht. You think it costs a lot to
+buy, but wait till you count the upkeep. Persis is a corker. She's a
+fine girl to play with. But you must promise not to marry her."
+
+"I promise."
+
+"Fine! Come along." As they climbed the stairs Ten Eyck was saying: "I
+hate an obligation like poison. Always want to pay back a mean turn or
+a good one. You made a devil of a hit with me, Forbesy, out in Manila
+there, when I was blue and sick and a million miles from home. I suppose
+there's nothing makes a hit with a man like calling on him when he's
+sick. You got your hooks on me that way, and I'm yours to boss around.
+I'll put you up at a lot of clubs and trot you about till you flash the
+S. O. S. That is, if you want that sort of thing. Maybe you want to be
+let alone. If you do, you can kick me out whenever I'm in the way."
+
+Forbes denied any inclination to solitude. When they reached the head of
+the aisle to the box he paused. He had the Southern idea of ceremonial
+courtesy, and he suggested that Ten Eyck had better ask the permission
+of the ladies before he introduced a stranger. Forbes had the rare knack
+of using the word "lady" without an effect of middle class.
+
+And he had never forgotten what Ten Eyck had said to him once: "I love
+the extremes of society. I can get along with the highest, and I dote on
+the lowest, but God, how I loathe a middle-class soul."
+
+Ten Eyck waived Forbes' scruples, dragged him to the box, and presented
+him to the women and the two other men. Forbes was too much perturbed to
+catch a single name. Even the last name of Persis escaped both his
+memory and his attention.
+
+Ten Eyck gave Forbes a glowing advertisement as a brilliant soldier and
+a life-saver, and offered him his own chair next to Persis.
+
+She had answered his low bow of homage with nothing more than a
+wren-like nod and half a hint of a smile.
+
+Ten Eyck threw Forbes into confusion by saying:
+
+"You'll have to do better than that, old girl. Mr. Forbes not only
+rescued me from the depths, but he told me you were the most beautiful
+thing he ever saw on earth."
+
+Persis smiled a little more cordially and murmured:
+
+"That's very nice of him."
+
+She was evidently so used to bouquets in the face that they neither
+offended nor excited her. But Miss--or was it Mrs?--anyway, the plump
+woman interposed:
+
+"He must have been referring to me. My mirror tells me I am fatally
+beautiful, and God knows there's more of me than of anybody else on
+earth."
+
+Forbes was in a dilemma. He had not made the comment ascribed to him,
+yet he could hardly deny it. Nor could he deny the plump lady's claim to
+the praise. He simply flushed and smiled benignly on everybody.
+
+Fortunately, the lights sank just then, and the curtain went up with a
+sound like a great "Hush!" The party, having been once rebuked, fell
+into silence. Forbes rose to return to his own seat, but Ten Eyck,
+standing back of him, pressed him into his chair with powerful hands.
+
+He stayed put. But the play no longer held him. He could think only of
+one thing. He was posted at the side of this creature who had fascinated
+him from afar and terrified him anear, and whose last name he did not
+yet know.
+
+The lesson of the previous act was not long remembered by the
+irrepressibles. One of the men, a queer little fellow he was, whispered
+a comment to Persis. She laughed and answered it. The other women had to
+be told. They giggled. Their voices gradually rose in pitch and volume.
+
+When the thief in the play shot the stool-pigeon with a silencered
+revolver a man seated below the box was overheard to say:
+
+"I wish somebody would invent a silencer for box-parties."
+
+Again there were almost audible stares of reproach from the audience,
+and quietude settled down once more like a pall. At the end of this act
+again Forbes rose to go, but Ten Eyck checked him again.
+
+"What you doing after the play?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Come turkey-trotting with us."
+
+"Turkey-trotting!" Forbes gasped. "Do nice people--"
+
+"We're not nice people," said Persis, "but we do."
+
+"It's all we do do," said the lady of the embonpoint, whose first name
+by now he had gleaned as Winifred.
+
+Forbes was surprised to hear himself speaking as if to old acquaintance.
+"When I was in San Francisco, six years or so ago, slumming parties were
+taking it up along the 'Barbary Coast.' And on my way East just now I
+read an editorial about its rage in New York, but I didn't believe it."
+
+"It's awful," said the little man. "People have gone stark mad over it.
+The mayor ought to stop it."
+
+"Oh, Willie, don't be a prude," said Persis. "You know it's healthier
+than playing bridge all day and all night."
+
+"And much less expensive," said the white-haired one.
+
+"It's sickening," Willie insisted. "It's unfit for a decent woman."
+
+"Thanks!" said Persis, with a tone of zinc.
+
+The little man made haste with an apology. "I don't mean you, my dear,
+of course; you dance it harmlessly enough; but--well, I don't like to
+see you at it, that's all."
+
+"Your own mother is learning it," said Winifred.
+
+"Oh, mother!" Willie gasped. "I gave her up long ago."
+
+Ten Eyck intervened. Forbes remembered now that he was always
+intervening between extremists in the club quarrels in Manila.
+
+"What difference does it make?" he said. "All dancing is impure to some
+people. The waltz and polka used to be considered bad enough to get you
+kicked out of the churches. The turkey-trot is only vulgar when vulgar
+people dance it, and they'd be vulgar anyway, anywhere. The trot has set
+people to jigging again. That's one good, wholesome thing. For several
+years you couldn't get people to dance at all. Now they're at it
+morning, noon, and night."
+
+"The police ought to stop it, I tell you," Willie insisted, with a
+peevishness that was like a dash of vinegar. "I hate to see it."
+
+"Then don't come along, my dear," Persis answered, with a glint of
+temper.
+
+Forbes did not like that "my dear." It might mean nothing, but it might
+mean everything.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When the final curtain came down like a guillotine on the play there was
+a general uprising, a sort of slow panic to escape from this finished
+place and move on to the next event--by street-car to a welsh rabbit in
+a kitchenette, or by motor to a restaurant of pretense.
+
+Everybody being in haste, everybody went slowly. Forbes retrieved his
+hat and overcoat after a ferocious struggle. In the lazy ooze-out of the
+crowd he was gradually shunted to the side of Persis, and willing enough
+to be there, proud to be there. He walked a little more militarily than
+he usually did in civilian's.
+
+He heard people whispering with a shrillness that Persis had evidently
+grown accustomed to, for she could not have helped hearing, yet showed
+no sign. And now Forbes recaptured her last name, and it was familiar to
+him, little as he knew of social chronicles.
+
+"Look! That's Persis Cabot," said one. "There's the Cabot girl you read
+so much about," said another. "She's got a sister who's a Countess or
+Marquise, or something." Then Forbes learned by roundabout the last name
+of Willie, and learned it with alarm from two of the sharpest
+whisperers:
+
+"That's Willie Enslee with her, I suppose."
+
+"I guess so."
+
+"Don't see why they call that big fellow Little Willie."
+
+"Just a joke, I guess."
+
+"They say he's worth twenty million dollars."
+
+"He looks it."
+
+At any other time it would have amused Forbes immensely to be called so
+far out of his name and to receive twenty million dollars by
+acclamation.
+
+But now he could only busy himself with deductions: why did they assume
+that any man who was with Persis Cabot was sure to be Willie Enslee?
+Could it mean--what else could it mean?
+
+He glanced around to take another look at Willie Enslee. Now that he
+knew him for what he was, the situation was intolerable. Marry this
+dream of beauty to that cartoon, that grotesque who came hardly to her
+shoulder!
+
+His glance had showed him that the men and women they had passed were
+looking up and down Persis' back like appraising dry-goods merchants or
+plagiarizing dressmakers. When he turned his head forward he saw that
+the women in front were inspecting her with even more brazen curiosity.
+It astounded Forbes to see such well-dressed people behaving so
+peasantly. But Persis seemed as oblivious of their study as if they were
+painted heads on a fresco. Forbes, however, flushed when their eyes
+turned to him, because he felt that they were saying, "That must be
+Willie Enslee," and "Why do they call that big thing Little Willie?"
+
+Meanwhile Little Willie himself was handing the attendant at the
+switchboard a punctured carriage check, with which to flash the number
+on the sign outside.
+
+There was a long wait for their own car, while motor after motor slid up
+and slid away as soon as its number had been bawled and its cargo had
+detached itself from the waiting huddle.
+
+After the close, warm theater Forbes flinched at the edged night wind
+coming from the river. With the caution of an athlete he turned up his
+collar and buttoned his overcoat over his chest. But Persis stood with
+throat and bosom naked to the wind, and to all those staring eyes, and
+never thought to gather about her even the flimsy aureole of chiffon
+that took the place of a scarf. And equally unafraid and unashamed
+stood Winifred and Mrs. Neff. (He had collected her name, too, during
+the conversation that flourished throughout the last act.)
+
+At length the footman, who had howled out other people's numbers, held
+up a timid finger and murmured, awesomely, "Mr. Enslee?"
+
+The limousine, whose door he opened, was by no means the handsomest of
+the line. Enslee was evidently rich enough to afford a shabby car. The
+three women bent their heads and entered with difficulty, their tight
+skirts sliding to their knees as they clambered in.
+
+There was a great ado over the problem of room. Every man offered to
+walk or take a taxi. Ten Eyck made sure that Forbes should not be
+omitted. Ignoring his protests, he bundled him into one of the little
+extra seats and crawled in after him. The huge third man (still
+anonymous and taciturn) next inserted his bulk--a large cork in a small
+bottle.
+
+Willie put his head in to ask:
+
+"Where d'you want to go, Persis?"
+
+"Trotting, of course," came from the crowded depths.
+
+"But I don't think--"
+
+"Then take me home and go to the devil."
+
+"We'll trot," sighed Willie. He spoke to the chauffeur dolefully, then
+appeared at the door to wail helplessly:
+
+"There seems to be no room for me."
+
+"You're only the host," said Winifred. "Hop on behind."
+
+"You can sit on my lap," said Ten Eyck.
+
+And as that was the only vacant space, the big man lifted him up and set
+him there. The footman, reassured by the tip in his hand, grinned at the
+spectacle and laughed, as he closed the door: "Is you all in?"
+
+Seven persons were packed where there was hardly space for five; but
+Forbes noted that they were as informal and good-natured as yokels on a
+hay-ride. All except Willie, and his distress was not because of the
+crowd.
+
+The car had no more than left the theater when Mrs. Neff was groaning:
+
+"A cigarette, somebody, quick--before I faint!"
+
+Winifred by a mighty twisting produced a concaved golden case and
+snapped it open, only to gasp:
+
+"Empty! My God, it's empty!"
+
+Persis saved the day. "I have some. Give us a light, Willie. There's a
+dear."
+
+As usual, Willie had a counter-idea.
+
+"But, Persis, don't you think you could wait till--"
+
+Her only answer was, "Murray, give me a light."
+
+Ten Eyck called out, "Right-o, milydy, if Bob will hold our little
+hostlet half a mo." And he deposited Willie in the arms of the big man
+while he fumbled in his waistcoat for a book of matches and passed it
+back into the dark. "'Ere you are, your lydyship." He was forever
+talking in some dialect or other.
+
+But Persis gave him her cigarette and pleaded: "It's so conspicuous
+holding a match to your face on Broadway. Light mine for me, Murray."
+
+"It's highly unsanitary," said Ten Eyck; "but if you don't mind I don't.
+I fancy these cigarettes of yours would choke any self-respecting
+microbe to death."
+
+Ten Eyck kindled her cigarette as delicately as he could and handed it
+to her. The same service he performed for the other eager women, and the
+three were soon puffing the close compartment so full of smoke that the
+men felt no need of burning tobacco of their own.
+
+When a particularly bright glare swept into the car from the street the
+women made a pretense of hiding their cigarettes; but it was an
+ostrich-like concealment, and Forbes could see other women in other cabs
+similarly engaged. During his absence smoking had evidently become
+almost as commonplace among the women as among the men.
+
+Forbes, cramped of leg and choked of lung, was wondering at his presence
+here. It was a far cry from Manila. He had never dreamed when he showed
+an ordinary human interest in the melancholy Ten Eyck, fallen ill there
+on a jaunt around the world, that his courtesy in the wilderness would
+be repaid with usury in the metropolis. Nor had he learned from Ten
+Eyck's unobtrusive manner that he was a familiar figure in the halls of
+the mighty. Forbes had cast an idle crust on the waters, and lo, it
+returned as a frosted birthday cake!
+
+He had come to town at noon a lonely stranger, and before midnight he
+was literally in the lap of beauty and chumming with wealth and
+aristocracy in their most intimate mood.
+
+The sidewalks outside were packed with theater crowds till they spilled
+over at the curbs, and the streets were filled with all sorts of
+vehicles till they threatened the sidewalks. Guiding a car there was
+like shooting a rapids full of logs in a lumber-drive, but Enslee's man
+was an expert charioteer.
+
+Suddenly they whirled off Broadway, and, describing a short curve, came
+to a stop. A footman opened the door, but nobody moved.
+
+Ten Eyck said: "The problem now is how do we get out. I'm so mixed up
+with somebody, I don't know my own legs." Like a wise man of Gotham, he
+jabbed his thumb into the mixture, and asked, "Are those mine?"
+
+"No, they are not!" said Winifred.
+
+Willie was lowered ashore first. Bob What's-his-name bulged through
+next, then Ten Eyck, then Forbes. Ten Eyck dropped into the gutter the
+three lighted cigarettes that had been hastily pressed into his hand,
+and turned to help the women out.
+
+Forbes, wondering where they were, looked up and read with difficulty a
+great sign in vertical electric letters, "Reisenweber's."
+
+Willie told his chauffeur to wait, and the car drew down the street to
+make room for a long queue of other cars. Ten Eyck led the flock into a
+narrow hall, and filled the small elevator with as many as could get in.
+He included Forbes with the three women, and remained behind with Willie
+and Bob.
+
+Crowded into the same space were two young girls, very pretty till they
+spoke, and then so plebeian that their own beauty seemed to flee
+affrighted. The blonde seraph was chanting amid her chewing-gum:
+
+"He says to me, 'If you was a lady you wouldn't 'a' drank with a party
+you never sor before,' and I come back at him, 'If you was a gempmum
+you'd 'a' came across with the price of a pint when you seen I was dyin'
+of thoist.'"
+
+And the brunette answered: "You can't put no trust in them kind of
+Johns. Besides, he tangoes like he had two left feet."
+
+Forbes was uneasy till Persis whispered, "Don't you just love them?"
+Then a door opened and they debarked into a crowded anteroom. While they
+waited for the car to descend and rise again with the rest of the party
+the women gave their wraps to a maid, and Forbes delivered his coat and
+hat and stick across a counter to a hat-boy.
+
+When Ten Eyck, Willie, and Bob appeared and had checked their things the
+seven climbed a crowded staircase into an atmosphere riotous with
+chatter and dance-music of a peculiarly rowdy rhythm.
+
+But they could only hear and feel the throb of it. They could not see
+the dancers, so thick a crowd was ahead of them.
+
+A head waiter appeared, and, curt as he was with the rest of the mob, he
+was pitifully regretful at losing Mr. Enslee, who had failed to reserve
+a table and who would not wait.
+
+It was disgusting to slink back down the stairs, regain the wraps and
+coats and hats, and make two elevator-loads again. Willie alone was
+cheerful.
+
+"Now, maybe you'll go to the Plaza or some place and have a human
+supper."
+
+"I'm going to have a trot and a tango if I have to hunt the town over,"
+said Persis.
+
+Willie gnashed his teeth, but had the car recalled, and asked her where
+she would go.
+
+"Let's try the Beaux Arts," she said; and they huddled together once
+more.
+
+"It's too bad we were thrown out of Reisenweber's," Winifred pouted. "I
+was dying to see Francois dance and have a dance with him."
+
+Forbes felt well enough acquainted by now to ask: "Pardon my ignorance,
+but who is Francois?"
+
+"Oh, he's a love of a French lad," said Winifred. "Everybody's mad over
+him. I used to see him in Paris dancing between the tables at the Cafe
+de Paris or the Pre-Catalan with some girl or other. Then somebody
+brought him over here for a musical comedy, and he's been on the crest
+of the wave ever since."
+
+"They say he's getting rich dancing in theaters and restaurants and
+giving lessons at twenty-five per."
+
+"Somebody was telling me he actually makes fifteen hundred to two
+thousand dollars a week," said Mrs. Neff.
+
+"If I had that much, would you marry me, Persis?" said Ten Eyck.
+
+"In a minute," said Persis. "We might earn it ourselves. You dance as
+well as he does, and you could practise whirling me round your neck."
+
+"Then we're engaged," said Ten Eyck.
+
+"It's outrageous!" said Willie. "That fellow with an income equal to
+five per cent. on a couple of million dollars."
+
+"What you kicking about, Willie?" said Winifred. "You get several times
+as much, and you never lifted hand or foot in your life."
+
+"But Willie's father did," said Mrs. Neff. "He killed himself working."
+
+"Willie has it much better arranged," said Bob. "Instead of Willie
+working for money he has the money working for him."
+
+"It works while he sleeps," said Winifred.
+
+Forbes was thinking gloomily in the gloom of the car. This dancer, this
+mountebank, Francois, was earning as much in a week as the government
+paid him in a year, after all his training, his campaigning, his
+readiness to take up his residence or lay down his life wherever he was
+told to.
+
+Then he compared his income with Willie Enslee's. Enslee did not even
+dance for his supper, yet into his banks gold rained where pennies
+dribbled into Forbes' meager purse. And it was not a precarious salary
+such as dancers and soldiers earned by their toil; it was the mere sweat
+from great slumbering masses of treasure.
+
+Forbes felt no longer an exultance at falling in with these people. He
+felt ashamed of himself. He was no more a part of the company he kept
+than a gnat on an ox or a flea caught up in the ermine of a king. The
+air grew oppressive. He felt like a tenement waif patronized for a
+moment on a whim, and likely to be tossed back to his poverty at any
+moment. He wanted to get out before he was put out. The very luxuries
+that enthralled him at first were intolerable now. The perfume of the
+women and their flowers lost its savor. Their graces had gone. They were
+all elbows and knees. He suffocated as in a black hole of Calcutta.
+
+When a footman at the Cafe des Beaux Arts wrenched the door open and let
+the cool air in, it was welcome. Forbes moved to escape. But he was kept
+prisoner while Bob was sent as an avant courier. He returned with the
+bad news that he was unable even to reach a head waiter.
+
+The car nosed round, turned with difficulty, and went to Bustanoby's. It
+was the same story here.
+
+"New York's gone mad, I tell you!" Willie raved. "And nobody is as crazy
+as we are. To think of us going about like a gang of beggars pleading
+to be taken in and allowed to dance with a lot of hoodlums and muckers.
+Even they won't have us."
+
+"We'll try once more," said Persis. "The Cafe de Ninive."
+
+After a brief voyage farther along Broadway the suppliant outcasts
+entered a great hall imposingly decorated with winged bulls and other
+Assyrian symbols. The huge space of the restaurant was a desert of
+tables untenanted save by a few dejected waiters and a few couples
+evidently in need of solitude.
+
+An elevator took the determined Persis and her cohort up to another
+thronged vestibule.
+
+Persis had said to Willie in the car, "If you don't get us a table here
+I'll never speak to you again."
+
+With this threat as a spur Little Willie accosted a large captain of
+waiters, who shrugged his shoulders and indicated the crowd inside and
+the crowd outside. Willie fumbled in his pockets, and his hand slyly met
+that of the captain, who glanced into his palm, then up to heaven in
+gratitude, and laid aside all scruple.
+
+Willie triumphantly beckoned Persis, who approached the captain with the
+pouting appeal of a lady of the court to a relenting sovereign.
+
+"Fritz," she said, "you've got to take care of us."
+
+"How can I refuse Mees Cabot," said Fritz. "Do you weesh to seet and
+watch the artists, or to seet weeth the dancers?"
+
+"We want to dance," said Persis.
+
+"There is one table resairve for a very great patron. You shall have it.
+I shall lose me my poseetion, and he will tear down the beelding; but
+that is better as to turn away Mees Cabot and Meester Enslee."
+
+He whispered to a horrified captain on the other side of a silk rope.
+The barrier was removed, and they were within the sacred inclosure,
+while the baffled remnant gnashed its teeth outside.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The room they were in was a mass of tables compacted around a central
+space, where professional entertainers were displaying the latest
+fashions in song and dance. A pair of "Texas Tommy" dancers were
+finishing a wild gallopade with a climax, in which the man hurled the
+woman aloft as if he were playing diabolo with her, caught her on his
+long sticks of arms, and spun her round his neck, then let her drop head
+first, rescuing her from a crash by the breadth of her hair, swinging
+her back between his legs and across his hip. When her heels touched the
+floor he bent her almost double and gazed Apache murder into her eyes.
+Her hair fell loose on cue, and then he righted her, and they were
+bowing to the rapturous applause. When they retired they were panting
+like hunted rabbits and sweating like stevedores.
+
+And now a somewhat haggard girl, who looked as if she had forgotten how
+to sleep, dashed forward in a snowbird costume and sang a sleigh-bell
+song. Little bells jingled about her, and the crowd kept time by tapping
+wine-glasses with forks or spoons. Some kept time also with their
+rhythmic jaws.
+
+The girl sang in a mock childish voice in the nasal dialect of the
+vaudevilles, with "yee-oo" for "you," and "tree-oo" for "true," and
+"lahv" for "love." The words of the song were too innocent, and not
+important enough to detain Persis, who felt herself drawn by the distant
+music of a turkey-trot in the farthest room. The warring counterpoint of
+the two orchestras only added to the lawless excitement of the throng.
+The dance was just over, and the dancers were settling down to their
+chairs, their deserted plates and glasses. The guide led them to the
+only empty table, whisked off the card "Reserved," and turned them over
+to a waiter.
+
+While Willie scanned the supper card Mrs. Neff lapsed into reminiscence.
+It was the only sign she had given thus far that she had earned her
+white hair by age, and not by a bleach.
+
+"Funny how this building tells the story of the last few years," she
+said. "A few winters ago we thought it was amusing to go to supper at a
+good restaurant after the theater, have something nice to eat and drink,
+talk a while, and go home to bed. We thought we were very devilish, and
+preachers railed at the wickedness of late-supper orgies. And now the
+place down-stairs is deserted. Just taking late supper is like going to
+prayer-meeting.
+
+"Then somebody started the cabaret. And we flocked to that. We ate the
+filthiest stuff and drank the rottenest wine, and didn't care so long as
+they had some sensational dancer or singer cavorting in the aisle. They
+were so close you could hear them grunt, and they looked like frights in
+their make-up. But we thought it was exciting, and the preachers said it
+was awful. But it has become so tame and stupid that it is quite
+respectable.
+
+"At present we are dancing in the aisles ourselves, crowding the
+professional entertainers off their own floors. And now the preachers
+and editors are attacking this. Whatever we do is wrong, so, as my
+youngest boy says, 'What's the use and what's the diff?'"
+
+"Only one thing worries me," said Winifred, as she peeled her gloves
+from her great arms and her tiny hands. "What will come next? Even this
+can't keep us interested much longer."
+
+"The next thing," Willie snapped, "will be that we'll all go into
+vaudeville and do flip-flaps and the split and such things before a
+hired audience of reformed ballet-girls."
+
+"I hope they play a tango next," was all Persis said. "Willie, call a
+waiter and ask him to ask the orchestra to play a tango."
+
+"Wait, can't you?" he protested. "Let's get something to eat ordered
+first. We've got to buy champagne to hold our table; but we don't have
+to drink the stuff. What do you want, Persis? Winifred? Mrs. Neff, what
+do you want?--a little caviar to give us an appetite, what? What sort of
+a cocktail, eh? What sort of a cocktail, uh?"
+
+Before an answer could be made the orchestra struck up a tune of
+extraordinary flippance. People began to jig in their chairs, others
+rose and were in the stride before they had finished the mouthfuls they
+were surprised with; several caught a hasty gulp of wine with the right
+hand while the left groped for the partner. The frenzy to dance was the
+strangest thing about it.
+
+"Come on, Murray!" cried Persis. "Willie, order anything. It doesn't
+matter." Her voice trailed after her, for she was already backing off
+into the maelstrom with her arms cradled in Ten Eyck's arms.
+
+Bob Fielding, with his usual omission of speech, swept Winifred from her
+chair, and she went into the stream like a ship gliding from her
+launching-chute. Mrs. Neff looked invitingly at Willie, but he answered
+the implication:
+
+"I'll not stir till I've had food."
+
+Forbes leaned over to explain to the marooned matron:
+
+"I wish I could ask you to honor me; but I don't know how."
+
+She smiled almost intolerantly and sank back with a sigh just as a huge
+and elderly man of capitalistic appearance skipped across the floor and
+bowed to her knees. She fairly bounded into his arms. The two white
+polls mingled their venerable locks, but their curvettings were
+remarkably coltish. Mrs. Neff, who had sons in college and daughters of
+marriageable age, was giving an amazing exhibition. She backed and
+filled like a yacht in stays; she bucked and ducked like a yacht in a
+squawl; she whirled like a dervish, slanting and swooping; her lithe
+little body draped itself closely about the capitalist's great curves;
+her little feet followed his big feet or retreated from them like two
+white mice pursued by two black cats.
+
+At first Forbes was disgusted; the one epithet he could think of was
+"obscene." As he watched the melee he felt that he was witnessing a
+tribe of savages in a mating-season orgy. He had seen the Moros, the
+Igorrotes, the Samoans, and the Nautch girls of Chicago, and the meaning
+of this turmoil was the same. He knew that the dance was the invention
+of negroes. Its wanton barbarity was only emphasized by the fact that it
+was celebrated on Broadway, in the greatest city of what we are pleased
+to admit is the most civilized nation in the world.
+
+He could not adjust it to his mind. In the eddies he saw women of
+manifest respectability, mothers and wives in the arms of their
+husbands, young women who were plainly what are called "nice girls," and
+wholesome-looking young men of deferential bearing; yet mingled with
+them almost inextricably, brushing against them, tripping over their
+feet, tangling elbows with them, were youth of precocious salacity,
+shop-girls of their own bodies, and repulsive veterans from the barracks
+of evil. And the music seemed to unite them all into one congress met
+with one motive: to exploit their sensual impulses over the very borders
+of lawlessness.
+
+Thus Forbes, left alone with Willie Enslee, regarded the spectacle with
+amazement verging on horror, and thought in the terms of Jeremiah and
+Ezekiel denouncing Jerusalem, Moab, and Baal.
+
+Meanwhile Willie Enslee studied the menu and gave his orders to the
+waiter. When the supper was commanded Enslee lifted his eyes to the
+dancers, shook his head hopelessly, and, reaching across the table,
+tapped Forbes on the arm and demanded:
+
+"Look at 'em! Just look at 'em! Can you believe your own eyes, uh? Now I
+ask you, I ask you, if you can see how a white woman could hold herself
+so cheap as to mix with those muckers, and forget her self-respect so
+far?"
+
+It was a weak voicing of Forbes' own repugnance, yet as soon as Willie
+spoke Forbes began to disagree with him. Willie was fatally established
+among those people with whom one hates to agree. As soon as one found
+Willie holding similar views, one's own views became suspect and
+distasteful--like food that is turned from in disgust because another's
+fork has touched it.
+
+And there might have been a trace of jealousy in Forbes' immediate anger
+at Enslee's opinions. In any case, here he was, in the notorious haunts
+of society, seated in its very unholy of unholies, and gazing on its
+pernicious rites, and saying to his host:
+
+"I must say I don't see anything wrong."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Harvey Forbes came of a Southern stock that inherited its manners with
+its silver. Both were a trifle formal, yet very gracious and graceful.
+
+The family had lost its silver in the Civil War; but the formalities and
+the good manners remained as heirlooms that could be neither confiscated
+nor sold off.
+
+He had known something of New York as a cadet at West Point. He had seen
+the streets as he paraded them on one or two great occasions; he had
+known a few of its prominent families; but principally Southrons.
+
+He knew that the careful people of that day would have shuddered at the
+thought of dancing even a minuet in public. They surrounded admission to
+their festivities with every possible difficulty, and conducted
+themselves with rigid dignity in the general eye. Even the annual event
+of the Charity Ball had been countenanced only for the sake of charity,
+and fell into disfavor because of the promiscuity of it.
+
+In the Philippines Forbes had seen the two-step drive out the waltz; but
+it had not there, as here, almost ended the vogue of dancing altogether.
+
+And now, after a few years of immunity, people were tripping again as if
+the plague of the dancing sickness had broken out. The epidemic had
+taken a new form. Grace and romance were banished for grotesque and
+cynical antics. The very names of the dances were atrocious--bunny-hug,
+Texas Tommy, grizzly bear, turkey-trot.
+
+It was a peculiar revolution in social history that people who for so
+long had refused to dance in public or at all should take up the dance
+and lay down their exclusiveness at the same time, and with a sort of
+mania; and that they should be converted to these steps by a dance that
+had first startled the country from the vaudeville stage, and had been
+greeted as a disgusting exhibition even for the cheaper theaters.
+
+By a strange insidiousness the evil rhythms had infected the general
+public. The oligarchy was infatuated to the point of finding any place a
+fit place. The aged were hobbling about. The very children were capering
+and refusing the more hallowed dances.
+
+Forbes was not ready to see how quickly such things lose their
+wickedness as they lose their novelty and rarity. "The devil has had
+those tunes long enough," said John Wesley, as he turned the ribald
+street ballads into hymns.
+
+But with Forbes, as with everybody, vice lost her hideous mien when her
+face became familiar. Like everybody else, he first endured, then
+pitied, then embraced. Later he would talk as Persis did and Ten Eyck;
+he would proclaim the turkey-trot a harmless romp, and the tango a
+simple walk around. Later still he would turn from them all in disgust,
+not because he repented, but because they were tiresome. But for the
+present he was smitten with revulsion. The very quality of the company
+had served as a proof of the evil motive.
+
+Even though he told Willie Enslee he saw nothing wrong, he sat gasping
+as at a turbulent pool of iniquity.
+
+Motherly dowagers in ball costumes bumped and caromed from the ample
+forms of procuresses. Young women of high degree in the arms of the
+scions of great houses jostled and drifted with walkers of the better
+streets, chorus-girls who "saved their salary," sirens from behind the
+counters.
+
+As the dance swirled round and round among the gilded pillars, the same
+couples reeled again and again into view and out, like passengers on a
+merry-go-round.
+
+Forbes watched with the eager eyes of a fisher the reappearance of
+Persis. It pleased him to see in her manner, and in Ten Eyck's, an
+entire absence of grossness; but it hurt him surprisingly to see her in
+such a crew and responding to the music of songs whose words, unsung but
+easily remembered or imagined, were all concerned with "teasing,"
+"squeezing," "tantalizing," "hypnotizing," "honey babe," "hold me
+tight," "keep on a-playin'," "don't stop till I drop," and all the
+amorous animality of the slums.
+
+He found himself indignant at Ten Eyck's intimacy with the wonderful
+girl. They clung together as closely as they could and breathe. Now they
+sidled, now they trotted, now twirled madly as on a pivot. Their feet
+seemed to be manacled together except when they dipped a knee almost to
+the ground and thrust the other foot far back.
+
+Then gradually, in spite of him, the music began to invade his own feet.
+He felt a yearning in his ankles. The tune took on a kind of care-free
+swagger, a flip boastfulness. He wanted to get up and brag, too. His
+feeling for Ten Eyck was not of reproof, but of envy. He longed to take
+his place.
+
+When at length the music ended he felt as if he had missed an
+opportunity that he must not miss again. He had witnessed a display of
+knowledge which he must make his own.
+
+Ten Eyck brought Persis back to the table, and the other women returned,
+Mrs. Neff's partner nodding his head with a breathless satisfaction as
+he relinquished her and rejoined his own group.
+
+The eyes of all the women were full of sated languor. They had given
+their youthful spirits play, and they were enjoying a refreshed fatigue.
+
+The waiter had meanwhile set cocktails about, and deposited two silver
+pails full of broken ice, from which gold-necked bottles protruded. And
+at each place there were slices of toast covered with the black shot of
+caviar.
+
+The dancers fell on the appetizers with the appetite of harvesters.
+Persis thrilled Forbes with a careless:
+
+"It's too bad you don't trot, Mr. Forbes."
+
+"He's not too old to learn," said Ten Eyck. "It's really very simple,
+once you get the hang of it."
+
+And he fell into a description of the technic.
+
+"The main thing is to keep your feet as far from each other as you can,
+and as close to your partner's as you can. And you've got to hold her
+tight. Then just step out and trot; twirl around once in a while, and
+once in a while do a dip. Keep your body still and dance from your hips.
+And--get up here a minute and I'll show you."
+
+Forbes was embarrassed completely when Ten Eyck made him stand up and
+embrace him. But the people around made no more fun of them than
+revivalists make of a preacher and a new convert. They were proselytes
+to the new fanaticism. Forbes, as awkward as an overgrown school-boy,
+picked up a few ideas in spite of his reluctance.
+
+He sat down flushed with confusion, but determined to retrieve himself.
+In a little while the music struck up once more.
+
+"L'ave your pick in the air, the band's begun again," said Ten Eyck.
+"Come on, Winifred!" Bob Fielding lifted Mrs. Neff to her feet and haled
+her away, and Persis was left to Forbes.
+
+"Don't you want to try it?" she said, with an irresistible simplicity.
+
+"I'm afraid I'd disgrace you."
+
+"You can't do that. Come along. We'll practise it here."
+
+She was on her feet, and he could not refuse. He rose, and she came into
+his arms. Before he knew it they were swaying together. He had a native
+sense of rhythm, and he had been a famous dancer of the old dances.
+
+He felt extremely foolish as he sidled, dragging one foot after the
+other. He trod on her toes, and smote her with his knee-caps, but she
+only laughed.
+
+"You're getting it! That's right. Don't be afraid!"
+
+Her confidence and her demand gave him courage like a bugle-call. But he
+could not master the whirl till she said, as calmly as if she were a
+gymnastic instructor:
+
+"You must lock knees with me."
+
+Somehow and quite suddenly he got the secret of it. The music took a new
+meaning. With a desperate masterfulness he swept her from their
+back-water solitude out into the full current.
+
+He was turkey-trotting with Persis Cabot! He wanted everybody to know
+it. This thought alone gave him the braggadocio necessary to success.
+
+Perhaps he was too busy thinking of his feet, perhaps the dance really
+was not indecent; but certainly his thoughts of her were as chivalrous
+as any knight's kneeling before his queen.
+
+And yet they were gripping one another close; they were almost one
+flesh; their thoughts were so harmonious that she seemed to follow even
+before he led. She prophesied his next impulse and coincided with it.
+
+They moved like a single being, a four-legged--no, not a four, but a
+two-legged angel, for his right foot was wedded close to her left, and
+her left to his right.
+
+And so they ambled with a foolish, teetering, sliding hilarity. So they
+spun round and round with knees clamped together. So they seesawed with
+thighs crossed X-wise, all intermingled and merged together. And now
+what had seemed odious as a spectacle was only a sane and youthful
+frivolity, an April response to the joy of life, the glory of motion.
+David dancing before the Lord could not have had a cleaner mind, though
+his wife, too, contemned and despised him, and for her contempt won the
+punishment of indignant God.
+
+Abruptly, and all too soon, the music stopped. The dancers applauded
+hungrily, and the band took up the last strains again. Again Forbes
+caught Persis to him, and they reveled till the music repeated its final
+crash.
+
+Then they stood in mutual embrace for an instant that seemed a long time
+to him. He ignored the other couples dispersing to their tables to
+resume their interrupted feasts.
+
+He was bemused with a startled unbelief. How marvelous it was that he
+should be here with her! He had come to the city a stranger, forlorn
+with loneliness, at noonday. And at noon of night he was already
+embracing this wonderful one and she him, as if they were plighted
+lovers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Willie Enslee brought the dancers off their pinions and back to earth by
+a fretful reminder that the bouillon was chilling in the cups, and the
+crab-meat was scorching in the chafing-dish.
+
+The question of drinks came up anew. Forbes was in a champagne humor;
+his soul seemed to be effervescent with little bubbles of joy. But Mrs.
+Neff wanted a Scotch highball. Winifred was taking a reduction cure in
+which alcohol was forbidden. Persis wanted two more cocktails. Ten Eyck
+was on the water-wagon in penance for a recent outbreak. Bob Fielding
+was one of those occasional beings who combine with total abstinence a
+life of the highest conviviality. Offhand, one would have said that Bob
+was an incessant drinker and a terrific smoker. As a matter of fact, he
+had never been able to endure the taste of liquor or tobacco. When he
+ordered mineral water, or even milk, nobody was surprised; even the
+waiter assumed that the big man had just sworn off once more.
+
+Forbes experienced a sinking of the heart as each of the guests named
+his choice, and nobody asked for any of the waiting champagne.
+
+Yet when Willie turned to him and said, "Mr. Forbes, you have the two
+bottles of _brut_ all to yourself," Forbes felt compelled to shake his
+head in declination. He never knew who got the champagne. He wondered if
+the waiter smuggled it out or juggled it on the accounts. And Willie
+forgot to ask Forbes what he would have instead! Willie ordered for
+himself that most innocent of beverages which masquerades ginger ale
+and a section of lemon peel under the ferocious name, the bloodthirsty
+and viking-like title of "a horse's neck." There was a lot of it in a
+very large glass, and Forbes noted how Willie's little hand looked like
+a child's as he clutched the beaker. And he guzzled it as a child mouths
+and mumbles a brim.
+
+Forbes observed how variously people imbibed. There were curious
+differences. Some shot their glasses to their lips, jerked back their
+heads, snapped their tongues like triggers, and smote their throats as
+with a solid bullet. Some stuck their very snouts in their liquor like
+swine; others seemed hardly to know they were drinking as they flirted
+across the tops of their glasses.
+
+Persis did not raise her eyes as she sipped her cocktail. She looked
+down, and her lips seemed to find other lips there. Forbes wondered
+whose.
+
+There was some rapid stoking of food against the next dance. When it
+irrupted, Forbes, greatly as he longed to dance again with Persis,
+invited Winifred for decorum's sake. Winifred speedily killed the
+self-confidence he had gained from his first flight. His sense of rhythm
+was incommensurate with hers. When she foretold his next step, she
+foretold it wrong. He lost at once the power to act as leader, and when
+she usurped the post he was no better as follower.
+
+As Forbes wrestled with her he caught glimpses of Persis dancing with
+Willie for partner. Little Willie's head barely reached her bare
+shoulder. He clutched her desperately as one who is doomed from babyhood
+not to be a dancer. Still he hopped ludicrously about, and almost made
+her ludicrous.
+
+Forbes longed to exchange partners with Willie, for he felt that he and
+Winifred were equally ludicrous. They were making the heaviest of going.
+He gave up in despair and returned to the table.
+
+When the music stopped there was another interlude of supper. People
+gulped hastily, as at a lunch-counter when the train is waiting. Forbes
+intended to sit out the next dance; but he found himself abandoned as on
+a desert island with Mrs. Neff.
+
+"Come along, young man," she said.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know how."
+
+"Then I'll teach you."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Don't be afraid of me. I've got a son as old as you, and I taught him."
+
+Forbes had danced at times with elderly women, but not such a dance as
+this. It was uncanny to be holding in his arms the mother of a grown
+man, and to be whirling madly, dipping and toppling like wired puppets.
+
+Mrs. Neff's spirit was still a girl's. Her body felt as young and
+lissome in his arms as a girl's. Her abandon and frivolity were of the
+seminary period. Now and then he had to glance down at the white hair of
+the hoyden to reassure himself. The music had the power of an
+incantation; it had bewitched her back to youth. It seemed to Forbes
+that this magic alone, which should turn old women back to girlhood for
+a time, could not be altogether accursed.
+
+Perhaps the music had unsettled his reason, but in the logic of the
+moment he felt that there was a splendid value in the new fashion, which
+broke down at the same time the barriers of caste and the walls of old
+age.
+
+It was the Saturnalia come back. The aristocrats mingled as equals with
+the commoners, and the old became young again for yet a few hours.
+
+He had read so much about the cold, the haughty, and the bored-to-death
+society of New York, yet here he was, a young lieutenant from the
+frontier, and he was dancing a breakdown with one of the most important
+matrons in America. And she was cutting up like a hired girl at a
+barn-dance. Plainly the nation was still a republic.
+
+When the music ended with a jolt Mrs. Neff clung dizzily to him, gave
+him an accolade of approval with her fan, and booked him for the next
+dance but one. If Forbes had had social ambitions, he would have felt
+that he was a made man. Yet if he had had social ambitions he would
+probably have betrayed and so defeated them.
+
+Mrs. Neff having granted him a reprieve of one dance, Forbes made haste
+to ask Persis for the next. She smiled and gave him that wren-like nod.
+
+His heart beat with syncopation when he rose at the first note of music.
+How differently she nestled and fitted into his embrace. Winifred had
+been more than an arm-load, and gave the impression of an armor of silk
+and steel and strained elastic. Mrs. Neff was too slender for him, and
+for all her agility there was a sense of bones and muscles. But Persis
+was flesh in all its magic. She was not bones nor muscles nor corsets,
+she was a mysterious embodiment of spirit and beauty, fluid yet shapely,
+unresisting yet real, gentle and terrible.
+
+By now Forbes was familiar enough with the trickeries of the steps to
+leave his feet to their own devices. He was a musician who knows his
+instrument and his art well enough to improvise: soul and fingers in
+such rapport that he hardly knows whether the mood compels the fingers
+or the fingers suggest the mood.
+
+And the same rapport existed with Persis. They evaded collisions with
+the other dancers and with the gilded columns by a sort of instinct;
+they sidled, whirled, dipped, pranced, or pirouetted, composed strange
+contours of progress as if with one mind and one body.
+
+And now the rapture of the dance was his, and he was enabled to play
+upon her grace and her miraculously pliant sympathy. Her brow was just
+at the level of his lips, and he began to wish to press his lips there.
+Now and then her eyelids rose slowly and she looked up into his downward
+gaze. They were mysterious looks she gave him. They were to her as
+impersonal and vague as the rapture that fills the eyes when the west is
+epic with sunset, or when an orchestra pours forth a chord of unusual
+ecstasy, or a rose is so beautiful that it inspires a kind of heavenly
+sorrow.
+
+But Forbes misunderstood. He usurped to himself the tribute she was
+unconsciously paying to the mere beatitude of being alive and in
+rhythmic motion to music.
+
+We have built up strange subtleties of perception. The most intolerable
+discords are those of tones that lie just next each other; the harshest
+of noises rise when an instrument is only a little out of tune or a
+voice sings a trifle off the key.
+
+Persis had accepted Forbes at Ten Eyck's rating as a gentleman to whom
+she could intrust her body to embrace and carry through the complex
+evolutions of a dance on a floor whose very throngs made a solitude and
+concealment for wantonness of thought and carriage.
+
+So intimate a union is required when two people dance that it is easy to
+understand why the enemies of the dance denounce it as shameless
+carnality. It is hard to explain to them how potently custom and minute
+restraints permit an innocent dalliance with the materials of passion.
+One can only compare it to skating over thin ice, and say that so long
+as one keeps on skating a tiny crust of chill permits a joyous exercise
+without a hint of the depths beneath. And the ice itself gives warning
+when the danger is too close; its tiny crackling sound is thunder in the
+ears.
+
+This was Forbes' experience. A beautiful woman of exquisite breeding
+gave him a certain enfranchisement of her person. He could take her in
+his arms, and she him in hers. She would make herself one flesh with
+him; he could sway her this way and that, drag her forward or backward,
+co-exist with her breast to breast, thigh to thigh, and knee to knee.
+But he must not ever so slightly take advantage of her faith in him. He
+must not by the most delicate pressure or quirk of muscle imply anything
+beyond the nice conventions and romantic pretenses of the dance.
+Actresses make the same distinctions with stage kisses, and endure with
+pride before a thousand eyes what they would count a vile insult in the
+shadow of the wings or at a dressing-room door.
+
+Forbes made the old mistake. Nothing venture, nothing gain, is a risky
+proverb. He ventured almost unconsciously, without any baseness of
+motive. Or, rather, he did not so much venture as relax his chivalry. He
+breathed too deeply of her incense, paid her the tribute of an enamored
+thought, constrained her with an ardor that was infinitesimally more
+personal than the ardor of the dance.
+
+Somehow she understood. Instantly she was a little frightened, a little
+resentful. As subtle as the pressure of his arm was the resistance of
+her body. The spell of the dance was dissolving, the thin ice crackling.
+He whispered hastily:
+
+"Forgive me!"
+
+She simply whispered:
+
+"All right."
+
+And the spirit of the temple of dance was rescued and restored. He had
+sung a trifle sharp, and she, like a perfect accompanist, had brought
+him back to the key.
+
+But even as they whirled on and hopped and skipped in the silly
+frivolity of the turkey-trot he was solemnly experiencing an awe of her.
+And now her beauty was less victorious over him than that swift pride
+which could rebuke so delicately, that good-sportsmanship which could so
+instantly accept apology.
+
+When the music ended he mumbled:
+
+"Will you ever dance with me again?"
+
+She abashed him with the true forgiveness that forgets, and spoke with
+all cheerfulness:
+
+"Of course! Why not?"
+
+The incident was closed in her heart. Its influence had just begun in
+his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The turbulence of the dance increased as the respectable people were
+sifted out. Hysteria is a kind of fretful fatigue, and the wearier these
+children of joy were, the more reckless they grew.
+
+Willie Enslee first insinuated, then declared that he had had enough. He
+yawned frankly and abysmally. He urged that it was high time they were
+all in bed. But the women begged always for yet another dance.
+
+"Just one little 'nother," Winifred wheedled.
+
+Ten Eyck whispered, "About this time Winifred always begins to talk
+baby-talk."
+
+She was soon calling Forbes "the li'l snojer man." Whether the wine or
+the dance were the chief intoxicant, a tipsiness of mood prevailed
+everywhere. It affected individuals individually: this one was
+idiotically amused, that one idiotically tearful, a third wolfishly
+sullen, a fourth super-royally dignified, a fifth so audacious that her
+befuddled companions tried to restrain her.
+
+The thin ice was breaking through in spots, and a few of the couples
+were floundering in black waters.
+
+Others were merely childish in their wickedness. They tried to be
+vicious, and their very effort made them only naughty.
+
+It all reminded Forbes of certain savage debauches he had witnessed.
+Only the savages lacked the weapons of costume. It was curious--to a
+philosopher it was amusingly curious--to see how much excitement it gave
+some of these people to expose or behold a shoulder or a shin more than
+one ordinarily did. The peculiar cult that has grown about the human
+leg, since it has been wrapped up, is surely one of the quaintest phases
+of human inconsistency.
+
+But intention is the main thing, and a circus woman in trapeze costume
+may suggest less erotic thought than a flirt who merely gathers her
+opera cloak about her closely. There was no mistaking the intention of
+some of these dancers. It was vile, provocative, and, since it was
+public, it was hideous. Mobs left without rule or inspiring rulers
+always degenerate into excesses. The pendulum that swings too far one
+way is only gathering heavier and heavier impetus to the other extreme.
+
+It happens whenever emotions are overstrained. At religious revivals and
+camp-meetings and crusades, no less than at revels, the aftermath is apt
+to be grossness. These people had danced too long. It was time to go
+home.
+
+Forbes finally agreed with Willie that it was no place for decent
+people. He began to wish very earnestly that Persis were not there. He
+would rather miss the sight of her than see her watching such
+spectacles. He felt a deep yearning that she should be ignorant of the
+facets of life that were glittering here. This longing to keep another
+heart clean or to restore it to an earlier purity is the first blossom
+of real love.
+
+The floor grew so rowdy that Forbes would no longer take Persis out upon
+it. He did not ask her to dance again. Even when she raised her eyebrows
+invitingly he pretended not to understand.
+
+Then she spoke frankly:
+
+"Sha'n't we have another dance? They're playing the tune that made
+Robert E. Lee famous."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm too tired," he pleaded. As soon as he had spoken he felt
+that the pretext was insultingly inadequate addressed to a woman and
+coming from a soldier used to long hikes. But it was the only evasion he
+could imagine in his hurry. Instead of turning pale with anger, as he
+expected, she amazed him by her reply:
+
+"That's very nice of you."
+
+"Nice of me," he echoed, fatuously, "to be tired?"
+
+"Umm-humm," she crooned.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, just because."
+
+Then he understood that she had read his mind, and she became at once a
+sibyl of occult gifts. This ascription of extraordinary powers to
+ordinary people is another sign that affection is pushing common sense
+from his throne. Parents show it for their newborn, and what is loving
+but a sort of parentage by reincarnation?
+
+Forbes thought that he wore a mask of inscrutable calm, because he was
+accustomed to repressing his naturally impetuous nature. He had not
+realized that the most eloquent form of expression is repression. It is
+the secret of all great actors, and enables them to publish a volume of
+meaning in a glance or a catch in the voice, a quirk of the lips or a
+twiddling of the fingers.
+
+Forbes never dreamed that the gaucherie of his excuse showed the
+desperation of his mind and the strain on his feelings, and that while
+his lips were mumbling it his eyes were crying:
+
+"Don't stay here any longer. You are tired. You do not belong here. I
+beg you to be careful of your soul and body. Both are precious. It makes
+a great difference to me what you see and do and are."
+
+All this was writ so large on his whole mien that anybody might have
+read it. Even Winifred read it and exchanged a glance with Mrs. Neff,
+who read it, too. Naturally, Persis understood. The feeling surprised
+her in a stranger of so brief acquaintance. But she did not resent his
+presumption as she did Willie's equal anxiety. She rather liked Forbes
+for it.
+
+Then she saw his consternation at her miraculous powers, and she liked
+him better yet for a strong and simple man whose chivalry was deeper
+than his gallantry. And when a man from another table came across to
+ask her to dance with him, she answered:
+
+"Sorry, Jim, we're just off for home. Come along, Willie. Are you going
+to keep us here all night?"
+
+Willie lost no time in huddling his flock away from the table. He fussed
+about them like a green collie pup.
+
+They paused at the door for a backward look. Seen in review with sated
+eyes, it was a dismal spectacle. On the floor a few dancers were glued
+together in crass familiarity, making odious gestures of the whole body.
+At the disheveled tables disheveled couples were engaged in dalliance
+more or less maudlin. Many of the women were adding their
+cigarette-smoke to the haze settling over all like a gray miasma.
+
+"Disgusting! Disgusting!" Willie sneered.
+
+"Oh, the poor things!" sighed Mrs. Neff. "What other chance have they?
+At a small town dance they'd behave very carefully in the light, and
+stroll out into the moonlight between dances. Good Lord, I used to have
+my head hugged off after every waltz. I'd walk out to get a breath of
+air, and have my breath squeezed out of me. But these poor city
+couples--where can they spoon, except in a taxi going home, or on a park
+bench with a boozy tramp on the same bench and a policeman playing
+chaperon? Let 'em alone."
+
+But she yawned as she defended them, and looked suddenly an old woman
+tired out. They all looked tired.
+
+They slipped weary arms into the wraps they had flung off with such
+eagerness. In the elevator they leaned heavily against the walls, and
+they crept into the limousine as if into a bed.
+
+Forbes said that he would walk to his hotel. It was just across the
+street. They bade him good night drearily and slammed the door.
+
+He watched the car glide away, and realized that he was again alone.
+None of them had asked him to call, or mentioned a future meeting. Had
+he been tried and discarded?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The sky was black, and the stars dimmed by the street-lights. Stars and
+street-lights seemed to be weary. The electric acrobats had knocked off
+work, and hung lifeless upon their frames like burned-out fireworks.
+
+A grown-up newsboy, choosing a soft tone as if afraid to waken the
+sleeping town, murmured confidentially:
+
+"Morn' paper? _Joinal_, _Woil_, _Hurl_, _Times_, _Sun_, _Tolegraf_?
+Paper, boss?"
+
+Forbes bought one to enjoy the paradox of reading to-morrow's paper last
+night.
+
+He entered the brightly lighted lobby of the hotel. It was deserted save
+by two or three scrubwomen dancing a "grizzly bear" on all fours. They
+looked to be grandmothers. Perhaps their granddaughters were still
+dancing somewhere.
+
+Once in his room, Forbes stared from his window across the slumbrous
+town. The very street-lamps had the droning glimmer of night lights in a
+bedroom. The few who were abroad wore the appearance of prowlers or
+watchmen or hasteners home. New York was not so lively all night as he
+had been taught to believe.
+
+While he peeled off his clothes he glanced at his newspaper. The chief
+head-lines were given, not to the epochal event of the first parliament
+in the new republic of China, nor to the newest audacity in the
+Amazonian insurrection in London, but to an open letter sent by the
+mayor of New York to the police commissioner of New York, calling upon
+him "to put an end to all these vulgar orgies" of the "vulgar,
+roistering, and often openly immodest" people who "indulge in
+lascivious dancing." The mayor announced that one o'clock in the morning
+was none too soon for reputable people to stop dancing. He instructed
+the commissioner to see to it that at that hour thereafter every
+dance-hall was empty, if he had to take the food and drinks from the
+very lips of the revelers and put them in the street.
+
+Forbes was amazed. The great, the wicked city still had a Puritan
+conscience, a teacher to punish its naughtiness and send it to bed--and
+at an hour that many farmers and villagers would consider early for a
+dance to end. Forbes was startled to realize that he was included in the
+diatribe, and that those ferocious words were applied to Persis, too.
+
+In all the things he had to wonder at this was not the least wonderful.
+He stepped into his pajamas and spread himself between his sheets, too
+weary to reach forth a hand and turn out the little lamp by his bed.
+
+He had slept no more than half an hour when suddenly he wakened. The
+last cry of a bugle seemed to be ringing in his ears. He sat up and
+looked at his watch. It was the hour when for so many years the
+cock-a-doodle-doo of the hated reveille had dragged him from his
+blankets. Habit had aroused him, but he thanked the Lord that now he
+could roll over and go back to sleep.
+
+He rolled over, but he could not sleep. Daylight was throbbing across
+the sky like the long roll of the drums. Street-cars were hammering
+their rails. The early-morning population was opening the city gates,
+and the advance-guards of the commercial armies were hurrying to their
+posts. The city, which he had seen at its dress-parade and at its night
+revels, was beginning its business day with that snap and precision,
+that superb zest and energy and efficiency that had made it what it was.
+
+It was impossible for Forbes to lie abed where so much was going on.
+Fagged as he was, the air was electric, and he had everything to see.
+
+He pried his heavy legs from the bed, and clenched his muscles in
+strenuous exercise while his tub filled with cold water. He came out of
+it renewed and exultant.
+
+When he was dressed and in the hall he surprised the chambermaids at
+their sweeping. They were running vacuum cleaners like little
+lawn-mowers over the rugs.
+
+In the breakfast-room he was quite alone. But the streets were alive,
+and the street-cars crowded with the humbler thousands.
+
+He walked to Fifth Avenue. It was sparsely peopled now, and even its
+shops were still closed. The homes were sound asleep, save for an
+occasional tousled servant yawning at an area, or gathering morning
+papers from the sill.
+
+He walked to Central Park. The foliage here was wide awake and all alert
+with the morning wind. He strolled through the Zoo; the animals were up
+and about--the bison and deer, the fumbling polar bears. The lions and
+tigers were already pacing their eternal sentry-posts; the hyenas and
+wolves were peering about for the loophole that must be found next time;
+the quizzical little raccoons were bustling to and fro, putting forth
+grotesque little hands.
+
+Forbes crossed bridges and followed winding paths that led him leagues
+from city life, though the cliffs of the big hotels and apartment-houses
+were visible wherever he turned. On one arch he paused to watch a
+cavalcade of pupils from a riding-school. He was surprised to see them
+out so early. Other single equestrians came along the bridle-path,
+rising and falling from their park saddles in the park manner.
+
+There were few women riding, and few of these rode sidewise. He was used
+to seeing women astride in the West; but here they did not wear divided
+skirts and sombreros; they wore smart derby hats, long-tailed coats,
+riding-trousers, and puttees.
+
+Coming toward him he noted what he supposed to be an elderly man and
+his son. They were dressed almost exactly alike. As they approached, he
+saw that the son was a daughter. The breeze blew back the skirts of her
+coat, and as far as garb was concerned she was as much a man as the
+white-mustached cavalier alongside.
+
+He clutched the rail hard. The girl was Persis, different, yet the same.
+There was a quaintly attractive boyishness about her now, an unsuspected
+athleticism. Her hair was gathered under her hat, her throat was clasped
+by a white stock. Her cutaway coat was buttoned tightly over a manly
+bosom, and her waist was not waspish. Her legs were strong, and gripped
+the horse well.
+
+He could hardly believe that the lusciously beautiful siren he had seen
+with bare shoulders and bosom, and clinging skirts, the night before,
+was this trimly buttoned-up youth in breeches and boots. Could an orchid
+and a hollyhock be one and the same?
+
+He had felt sure that at this hour, and on till noon, she would be
+stretched out in a stupor of slumber under a silken coverlet in a dark
+room.
+
+The night had been almost ended when he had left her heavy-eyed with
+fatigue, yet the morning was hardly begun when he saw her here with face
+as bright and heart as brisk as if she had fallen asleep at sunset.
+
+Her eyes were turned full upon him when she looked up before she passed
+under the bridge.
+
+A salvo of greeting leaped into Forbes' eyes, and his hand went to his
+hat; but before he could lift it she had lowered her eyes. She vanished
+from sight beneath him, without recognition.
+
+He hurried to the other side of the bridge, to catch her glance when she
+turned her head. But she did not look. She was talking to the elderly
+man at her side. She was singing out heartily:
+
+"Wake up, old boy, I'll beat you to the next policeman."
+
+The old boy put spurs to his horse, and they dwindled at a gallop.
+
+Forbes watched her till the trees at the turn in the bridle-path
+quenched her from his sight. The light went out of his sky with her.
+
+She had looked at him and not remembered him! He would have known it if
+she had meant to snub him. He had not even that distinction. He was
+merely one of the starers always gazing at her.
+
+He had held her in his arms. But then so many men had held her in their
+arms when she danced. Even his daring had not impressed her memory. So
+many men must have pressed her too daringly. It was part of the routine
+of her life, to rebuff men who made advances to her.
+
+Forbes left the bridge and left the park, humbled to nausea. His cheeks
+were so scarlet that the conductor on the Seventh Avenue car stared at
+him. He could not bear to walk back to his hotel. When he reached there
+he went to his room, dejected. There was nothing in the town to interest
+him. New York was as cold and heartless as report had made it.
+
+He realized that he was very tired. He lay down on his bed. A mercy of
+sleep blotted out his woes. It seemed to be only a moment later, but it
+was high noon when his telephone woke him. He thought it an alarm-clock,
+and sat up bewildered to find himself where he was and with all his
+clothes on.
+
+From the telephone, when he reached it, came the voice of Ten Eyck.
+
+"That you, Forbesy? Did I get you out of bed? Sorry! I have an
+invitation for you. You made a hell of a hit with Miss Cabot last night.
+I know it, because Little Willie is disgusted with you. Winifred says
+she is thinking of marrying you herself, and Mrs. Neff says you can be
+her third husband, if you will. Meanwhile, they want you to have tea
+with us somewhere, and more dancings. Wish I could ask you to take
+breakfast with me at the Club, but I was booked up before I met you.
+Save to-morrow for me though, eh? I'll call for you this afternoon about
+four, eh? Right-o! 'By!"
+
+Forbes wanted to ask a dozen questions about what Persis had said, but a
+click showed that Ten Eyck had hung up his receiver. Forbes clung to the
+wall to keep the building from falling on him.
+
+She had not forgotten him! She had been impressed by him! It was small
+wonder that she had not known him this morning. Had he not thought her a
+young man at first? Besides, she had had only a glance of him, and he
+was not dressed as she had seen him first.
+
+The main thing was that she wanted to see him again, she wanted to dance
+with him again. She had betrayed such a liking for him that the
+miserable runt of a Little Willie had been jealous.
+
+What a splendid city New York was! How hospitable, how ready to welcome
+the worthy stranger to her splendid privileges!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Forbes had planned to visit the Army and Navy Club, in which he held a
+membership, but now he preferred to lunch alone--yet not alone, for he
+was entertaining a guest.
+
+The head waiter could not see her when Forbes presented himself at the
+door of the Knickerbocker cafe. And when he pulled out the little table
+to admit Forbes to a seat on the long wall-divan that encircles the
+room, the head waiter thought that only Forbes squeezed through and sat
+down. The procession of servitors brought one plate, one napkin, silver
+for one, ice and water for one, brown bread and toast for one; and the
+waiter heard but one portion ordered from the _hors d'oeuvres varies_,
+from the _plat du jour_ in the _roulante_, and from the _patisseries_.
+
+But Forbes had a guest. She sat on the seat beside him and nibbled
+fascinatingly at the banquet he ordered for her.
+
+The vivacious throng that crowds this corner room at noon paid Forbes
+little attention. Many would have paid him more had they understood that
+the ghost of Persis Cabot was nestling at his elbow, and conspiring with
+him to devise a still newer thing than the dancing tea or the tango
+luncheon--a before-breakfast one-step. In fancy he was now thridding the
+maze between the tables with her.
+
+But he paid for only one luncheon. The bill, however, shocked him into a
+realization that he could not long afford such fodder as he had been
+buying for himself. He decided to get his savings deposited somewhere
+before they had slipped through his fingers.
+
+On his way to New York he had asked advice on the important question of
+a bank, and had been recommended to an institution of fabulous strength.
+It did not pay interest on its deposits, but neither did it quiver when
+panics rocked the country and shook down other walls.
+
+When Forbes computed the annual interest on his savings, the sum was
+almost negligible. But the thought of losing the principal in a
+bank-wreck was appalling. He chose safety for the hundred per cent.
+rather than a risky interest of four. Especially as he had heard that
+Wall Street was in the depths of the blues, and New York in a doldrums
+of uncertainty.
+
+To Forbes, indeed, nearly everybody looked as if he had just got money
+from home and expected more, and the talk of hard times was ludicrous in
+view of these opulent mobs and these shop-windows like glimpses of
+Golconda. But perhaps this was but the last flare of a sunset before
+nightfall.
+
+In any case, he was likely to have his funds tempted away from him, and
+he must hasten to push them into a stronghold. He found at the bank that
+there was a minimum below which an account was not welcome. His painful
+self-denials had enabled him just to clear that minimum with no more
+interval than a skilful hurdler leaves as he grazes the bar.
+
+He felt poorer than ever for this reminder of his penury, and he almost
+slunk from the bank. Just outside he stumbled upon Ten Eyck, who greeted
+him with a surprised:
+
+"Do you bank here?"
+
+"I was just opening an account," Forbes answered.
+
+"Pardon my not lifting my hat before," said Ten Eyck. "I didn't know
+your middle name was Croesus."
+
+Forbes could only shrug his shoulders with deprecation. He had no desire
+to pose as a man of means, and yet he had too much pride to publish his
+mediocrity.
+
+"I'll call for you at four, Mr. Rothschild," said Ten Eyck. "Got a date
+at Sherry's here. Good-by!"
+
+The afternoon promised to be unconscionably long in reaching four
+o'clock, and Forbes set out for another saunter down the Avenue. There
+was a mysterious change. It might have been that the sky had turned
+gray, or that the best people were not yet abroad; but the women were no
+longer so beautiful. He kept comparing them with one that he had learned
+to know since yesterday afternoon's pageant had dazzled him. Already
+there was a kind of fidelity to her in this unconscious disparagement of
+the rest of womankind.
+
+He did not explain it so easily to himself, nor did he understand why
+the shop-windows had become immediately so interesting. Yesterday a
+spadeful of diamonds dumped upon a velvet cloth was only a spadeful of
+diamonds to him, and it was nothing more. It stirred in him no more
+desire of possession than the Metropolitan Art Gallery or the Subway. He
+would have been glad to own either, but the lack gave him no concern.
+
+This afternoon, however, he kept saying: "What would she think if I gave
+her that crown of rubies and emeralds? Does she like sapphires, I
+wonder? If only I had the right to take her in there and buy her a dozen
+of those hats? If that astounding gown were hung upon her shoulders
+instead of on that wax smirker, would it be worthy of her?"
+
+He found himself standing in front of jewelers' windows, and trying to
+read the prices on the little tags. He had already selected one ring as
+an engagement ring, when he managed by much craning to make out the
+price. He fell back as if a fist had reached through the glass to smite
+him. If he could have drawn out his bank-account twice he could not have
+paid for it.
+
+He gave up looking at diamonds and solaced himself by the thought that
+before he bankrupted the United States Army with buying her an
+engagement ring, he had better get her in love with him a little.
+
+This train of thought impelled him to pause now before the windows of
+haberdashers. Without being at all a fop, he had a soldier's love of
+splendor, and he saw nothing effeminate in the bolts of rainbow
+clippings which men were invited to use for shirts. He looked amorously
+at great squares of silk meant to be knotted into neck-scarves, of which
+all but a narrow inch or two would be concealed. And he saw socks that
+were as scandalously brilliant as spun turquoises or knitted opals.
+
+These little splashes of color were all that the sober male of the
+present time permits himself to display. They were all the more enviable
+for that. From one window a hand seemed to reach out, not to smite, but
+to seize him by his overworked scarf and hale him within. He departed
+five dollars the poorer and one piece of silk the richer, and hurried
+back to his room ashamed of his vanity.
+
+On his way thither he remembered that he was still an officer in the
+regular establishment, and the first thing he did on his return to his
+room was to compose a formal report of his arrival in New York City. He
+sent it to the post at Governor's Island, so that in case a war broke
+out unexpectedly, an anxious nation might know where to find him.
+
+The only war on the horizon, however, was the civil conflict inside his
+own heart. His patriotism was undergoing a severe wrench. He was
+expected to maintain the dignity of the government on a salary that a
+cabaret performer would count beneath contempt. And for this he was to
+give up his liberty, his independence, and his time. For this he was to
+teach nincompoops to raise a gun from the ground to their round
+shoulders, and to keep from falling over their own feet; for this he was
+to plow through wildernesses, give himself to volleys of bullets or
+mosquitoes to riddle, or worse yet, to live in the environs of a great
+city where beauty and wealth stirred a caldron of joy from which he must
+keep aloof.
+
+But that was for next week. For a few days more he was exempt; he was a
+free man. And she wanted to dance with him again! She would not even
+wait for night to fall. She would dance with him in the daylight--with
+tea as an excuse!
+
+He began feverishly to robe himself for this festival. Luckily for him
+and his sort, men's fashions are a republic, and Forbes' well-shaped,
+though last year's, black morning coat, the pin his mother gave him
+years ago skewering the scarf he had just bought, his waistcoat with the
+little white edging, his heavily ironed striped trousers, and his last
+night's top-hat freshly pressed, clothed him as smartly as the richest
+fop in town. It is different with women; but a male bookkeeper can dress
+nearly as well, if not so variously, as a plutocrat.
+
+Forbes had devoted such passionate attention to the proper knotting of
+that square of silk, that he was hardly ready when the room telephone
+announced that Mr. Ten Eyck was calling for Mr. Forbes.
+
+But his pains had been so well spent that Ten Eyck, meeting him in the
+lobby, lifted his hat with mock servility again, and murmured:
+
+"Oh, you millionaire! Will you deign to have a drink with a hick like
+me?"
+
+Forbes pleasantly requested him not to be a damned fool, but the
+flattery was irresistible.
+
+They went to the bar-room, where, under the felicitous longitude of
+Maxfield Parrish's fresco of "King Cole," they fortified themselves with
+gin rickeys, and set forth for the short walk down Broadway and across
+to Bustanoby's.
+
+They had been rejected here the night before, but Ten Eyck, at Persis'
+request, had engaged a table by telephone.
+
+"It's Persis' own party," he explained; "but I have sad news for you:
+Little Willie isn't invited. He's being punished for being so naughty
+last night."
+
+"He acted as if he owned Miss Cabot," said Forbes.
+
+"He usually does."
+
+"But he doesn't, does he?--doesn't own her, I mean?" Forbes demanded,
+with an anxiety that did not escape Ten Eyck, who answered:
+
+"Opinions differ. He'll probably get her some day, unless her old man
+has a change of luck."
+
+"Her old man?"
+
+"Yes. Papa Cabot has always lived up to every cent he could make or
+inherit; but he's getting mushy and losing his grip. The draught in Wall
+Street is too strong for him. Persis will hold on as long as she can,
+but Little Willie is waiting right under the peach-tree with his basket,
+ready for the first high wind."
+
+"She couldn't marry him."
+
+"Oh, couldn't she? And why not?"
+
+"She can't love a--a--him?"
+
+"He is an awful pill, but he's well coated. His father left him a pile
+of sugar a mile high, and his mother will leave him another."
+
+"But what has that to do with love?"
+
+"Who said anything about love? This is the era of the modern business
+woman."
+
+Forbes said nothing, but looked a rebuke that led Ten Eyck to remind
+him:
+
+"Remember you promised not to marry her yourself. Of course, you may be
+a bloated coupon-cutter, but Willie has his cut by machinery. If you put
+anything less than a million in the bank to-day, you'd better not take
+Persis too seriously. Girls like Persis are jack-pots in a big game. In
+fact, if you haven't got a pair of millions for openers, don't sit in.
+You haven't a chance."
+
+"I don't believe you," Forbes thought, but did not say.
+
+They reached the restaurant, and, finding that Persis had not arrived,
+stood on the sidewalk waiting for her. Many people were coming up in
+taxicabs, or private cars, or on foot. They were all in a hurry to be
+dancing.
+
+"It's a healthier sport than sitting round watching somebody else play
+baseball--or Ibsen," Ten Eyck observed, answering an imaginary critic;
+and then he exclaimed:
+
+"Here she is!" as a landaulet with the top lowered sped down the street.
+The traffic rules compelled it to go beyond and come up with the curb on
+its right. As it passed Forbes caught a glimpse of three hats. One of
+them was a man's derby, one of them had a sheaf of goura, one of them
+was a straw flower-pot with a white feather like a question-mark stuck
+in it. His heart buzzed with reminiscent anxiety. He turned quickly and
+noted the number of the car, "48150, N. Y. 1913." The woman he had
+followed up the Avenue was one of those two.
+
+The chauffeur turned sharply, stopped, backed, and brought the landaulet
+around with the awkwardness of an alligator. A footman opened the door
+to Bob Fielding, Winifred Mather, and Persis Cabot.
+
+The answer to the query-plume was Persis. Forbes saw a kind of mystic
+significance in it.
+
+Winifred, as she put out her hand to him, turned to Persis:
+
+"You didn't tell me our li'l snojer man was coming."
+
+"I wasn't sure we could get him," said Persis, and gave Forbes her hand,
+her smile, and a cordial word. "Terribly nice of you to come."
+
+He seized her hand to wring it with ardor, but its pressure was so lax
+that he refrained. His eyes, however, were so fervid that she looked
+away. For lack of support his hopes dropped like a flying-machine that
+meets a "hole in the air."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+She was talking the most indifferent nothings as they went up the stairs
+to the dancing-room, a largish space with an encircling gallery. As
+usual the dancing-floor was a clearing in a thicket of tables. It was
+swarming already with couples engaged in the same jig as the night
+before.
+
+The costumes were duller than at night, of course. Most of the men wore
+business suits; the women were not decolletees, and they kept on their
+hats.
+
+Only Forbes noted at once that the crowd included many very young girls
+and mere lads. Here, too, there was a jumbled mixture of plebeian and
+aristocrat and all the grades between. There were girls who seemed to
+have been wanton in their cradles, and girls who were aureoled with an
+innocence that made their wildest hilarity a mere scamper of wholesome
+spirits.
+
+An eccentricity of this restaurant was a searchlight stationed in the
+balcony. The operator swept the floor with its rays, occasionally
+fastening on a pair of professional dancers, and following it through
+the maze, whimsically changing the colors of the light to red or green
+or blue. For the general public the light was kept rosy.
+
+When Forbes arrived a certain couple whirled madly off the dancing-floor
+straight into the midst of Persis' guests, with the havoc of a strike in
+a game of tenpins.
+
+The young man's heel ground one of the buttons of Forbes' shoe deep into
+his instep, and the young girl's flying hand smote him in the nose. He
+needed all his self-control to repress a yowl of pain and dismay.
+Persis must have suffered equal battery, but she quietly straightened
+out the dizzy girl and smiled.
+
+"Come right in, Alice; don't stop to knock."
+
+The girl under whose feet the floor still eddied clung to Persis and
+stared at her a second, then gasped:
+
+"Oh, Miss Cabot, is it _you_? I must have nearly _killed_ you. Can you
+ever _ever_ for_give_ me?"
+
+Persis patted her hand and turned her round to Forbes: "You'd better ask
+Mr. Forbes. You gave him a lovely black eye."
+
+The girl acknowledged the introduction with a duck and a prayer of wild
+appeal:
+
+"Oh, Mr. Forbes, _what_ a ghastly, _ghastly_ shame! Did I really hurt
+you? I must have simply _murdered_ you. I'm so _ashamed_. Can you ever
+_ever_ forgive me?"
+
+Forbes smiled at her melodramatic agitation: "It's nothing at all,
+Miss--Miss--I never liked this nose, anyway. I only wish you had hit it
+harder, Miss--"
+
+"Miss Neff," Persis prompted. "You met her mother last night."
+
+Forbes vaguely remembered that somebody had said something about a
+beautiful mother of a more beautiful daughter; but he could not frame it
+into a speech, before Persis startled the girl beyond reach of a pretty
+phrase, by casually asking:
+
+"Were you expecting to meet your mother here this afternoon, Alice?"
+
+"Good Lord, I should say _not_! Why?"
+
+"I just wondered. She is to meet us here."
+
+"When? In heaven's _name_! When?"
+
+"She ought to be here now."
+
+Alice thrust backward a palsied hand and, clutching the young man she
+had danced with, dragged him forward. He was shaking hands with Ten
+Eyck, and brought him along.
+
+"Stowe! Stowe!" Alice exclaimed, with a tragic fire that did not greatly
+alarm the young man; he was apparently used to little else from her.
+
+"Yes, dear," he answered, with a lofty sweetness; and she cried:
+
+"Oh, honey, what _do_ you sup_pose_?"
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"That awful Mother of mine is expected here any _moment_!"
+
+The young man's majesty collapsed like an overblown balloon in one pop:
+"Lord!"
+
+Tableau! Ten Eyck, seeing it, muttered, gloatingly:
+
+"Some folks gits ketched."
+
+Alice turned eyes of reproach upon him:
+
+"She'll _kill_ us if she finds us together. Isn't there some other way
+out?"
+
+"I could go down the stairs the waiters come up," said Stowe; "but how
+will you get home?"
+
+"Oh, Mother will get me home all right, never fear!" said Alice. "Run
+for your _life_, honey. I'll have my maid call you on the 'phone later."
+
+The young man gave her one long sad look fairly reeking with desperate
+kisses and embraces. Then he vanished into the crowd.
+
+Alice must have remarked the comments in Forbes' eyes, for she turned to
+him:
+
+"You mustn't misunderstand the poor boy, Mr. Forbes. Mr. Webb is as
+_brave_ as a _lion_, but he runs away on my account. He knows that my
+mother will give me no rest if she finds it out."
+
+"I understand perfectly," said Forbes. "There are times when the better
+a soldier is the faster he runs!"
+
+"Mr. Forbes is a soldier," Persis explained.
+
+"Oh, thank you, twice as much!" said Alice, "for appreciating the
+situation." Then she turned to Persis, and clenched her arm as if she
+were about to implore some unheard-of mercy: "And, Oh, Miss Cabot, will
+you do me one _terribly_ great favor? I'll remember it to my _dying_
+day, if you only will."
+
+"Of course, my dear," Persis answered, with her usual serenity. "What is
+it? Do you want me to tell your mother that I met you somewhere and
+dragged you here against your will to meet her?"
+
+Alice's wide eyes widened to the danger-point:
+
+"Aren't you simply _wonderful_! How on earth could you possibly have
+ever _ever_ guessed it?"
+
+Persis cast a sidelong glance at Forbes; it had all the effect of a wink
+without being so violent.
+
+"I'm a mind-reader," she said.
+
+Alice caught the glance but not the irony of it, and exclaimed:
+
+"In_deed_ she is, Mr. Forbes. She really _is_."
+
+"I know she is," said Forbes, with a quiet conviction that was almost
+more noisy than the violent emphasis of Alice.
+
+Persis gave Forbes another sidelong glance; this time with a meek
+wonderment in place of irony. Once more the man had shown a kind of awe
+of her. Unwittingly he was attacking her on her most defenseless wall;
+for a woman who is always hearing praise of her beauty or her vivacity,
+so hungers and thirsts after some recognition of her intellectual
+existence that she is usually quite helpless before a tribute to it.
+
+Persis knew that there was no importance in her guess at what Alice was
+about to ask; but there was importance in the high rating Forbes gave
+it. The comfort she found in this homage was put to flight by Alice's
+nails nipping her arm.
+
+"Before mother comes we must rehearse what we're to say. She thinks I
+went to one of those lectures on Current Topics. They're so very
+im_proving_ that Mother can't bear to go herself. She sends _me_ and
+then forgets to ask me what it was all about. So I sneaked it to-day and
+met Stowe."
+
+Persis could not resist a motherly question: "Is this an ideal
+trysting-place, do you think?"
+
+"Where's the harm? We couldn't go to the Park very well. Everybody's
+always going _by_ and looking _on_."
+
+"Why don't you receive Mr. Webb at home?"
+
+"Oh, _why_ don't I, indeed! Mother won't allow him within a _mile_ of
+the place. Didn't you know that?"
+
+Persis shook her head and turned to Forbes: "Doesn't it sound
+old-fashioned, a young girl afraid of her parents?"
+
+"Quite medieval," Forbes agreed.
+
+"Oh, but you are quaint, Alice," Persis laughed. "I thought it only
+happened in books and plays, but here's Alice actually obeying a cruel
+order like that. I'd like to see my father try to boss me. I'd really
+enjoy it as a change."
+
+Alice broke in: "Oh, fathers--they're different! My poor Daddelums was
+the sweetest thing on earth. I wrapped him round my little finger. But
+mother--umm, she gets her own way, I can tell you--at least she _thinks_
+she does. I wouldn't let _any_ earthly power tear me away from my
+darling Stowe, but I don't dare face her down."
+
+"I thought she always liked Mr. Webb?" Persis said.
+
+"Oh, she did till his father's will was probated. His insurance was
+immense, but his debts were immenser. So poor Stowe is dumped upon the
+world with hardly a cent. Of course, I love him all the more; but mother
+has turned against him. I wouldn't mind starving with Stowe, but mother
+is _so_ materialistic! She wants to marry me off to that dreadful old
+Senator Tait."
+
+"Dreadful?" snorted Winifred, who had listened in silence. "Old? Senator
+Tait is neither dreadful nor old. He is a cavalier, and in the prime of
+his powers."
+
+"You can have him!" snapped Alice, with a flare of temper that she
+regretted instantly, and the more sincerely since she knew that Winifred
+had long been angling vainly and desperately for the Senator. There was
+a bitterer sarcasm in her retort than she meant, but Winifred knew what
+Alice was thinking, and canceled it by meeting it frankly:
+
+"I wish I could have him. God knows I'd prefer him to any of these
+half-baked whippersnappers that--"
+
+"Winifred!" Persis murmured, subduingly; and Miss Mather subsided like a
+retreating thunder-storm. "The Senator is one of the--"
+
+"I know he is, my dear," Alice broke in, in her most soothing tone.
+"He's far, _far_ too splendid a man for a fool like me. But can't I
+admit how splendid he would be in the Senate Chamber without wanting him
+in my boudoir?"
+
+"Alice!" gasped Persis. "Remember that there are young men present."
+
+Forbes spoke very solemnly: "Pardon my asking, but do you really mean
+that Senator Tait is--is proposing for your hand?"
+
+"So my awful mother says."
+
+"It doesn't sound like the Senator Tait I used to know."
+
+"You knew him well?" Persis asked, with a quick eagerness that did not
+quite conceal a note of surprise.
+
+Forbes caught it, and answered somewhat icily: "I had that privilege. He
+and my father used to ride to the hounds together. In fact, they were
+together when my father's horse threw him and fell on him, and crushed
+him to death. Senator Tait brought the body home to my poor mother. He
+was very dear to us all."
+
+Persis looked what sympathy she could for such remote suffering. And
+Forbes was something less of a stranger. Also he had moved one step
+closer to her degree.
+
+He had appeared first under the auspices of Murray Ten Eyck, who
+guaranteed him as an officer in the army. He had demonstrated his own
+dignity and magnetism. And now his family was sponsored by an old-time
+friendship with Senator Tait, a very Warwick of American royalty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Persis was not of the period or the set that thinks much of family. In
+fact, the whole world and its aristocracies have been shaken by too many
+earthquakes of late to leave walls standing high enough to keep youth
+from overlooking and overstepping them. Few speak of caste nowadays
+except novelists, editors, and the very old. What aristocracies we have
+are clubs or cliques gathered by a community of tastes, and recruited
+individually.
+
+In any case, the Persis that was willing to go out into the byways and
+highways and public dancing-places would have made no bones of granting
+her smiles and her hospitality to anybody that entertained her,
+mountebank or mummer, tradesman or riding-master.
+
+And yet it did Forbes no harm in her eyes to be established as of high
+lineage and important acquaintance. If only now he were rich, he would
+be graduated quite into the inner circle of those who were eligible to
+serious consideration.
+
+Unconsciously Ten Eyck gave him this diploma also, though his motive was
+rather one of rebuke to Persis for her little tang of surprise.
+
+"You needn't raise your brows, Persis, because Forbesy knows senators
+and things," he said. "He's a plutocrat, too. I caught him depositing a
+million dollars in one of our best little banks to-day."
+
+"A million dollars!" Forbes gasped. "Is there that much money in the
+world?"
+
+Forbes had no desire to obtain the reputation of money under false
+pretenses. Yet he could not delicately discuss his exact poverty. He
+could not decently announce: "I have only my small army pay and a few
+hundred dollars in the bank." It would imply that these people were
+interested in his financial status. Yet even the pretense by silence
+troubled him, till his problem was dismissed by an interruption:
+
+"Is anybody at home?"
+
+Mrs. Neff spoke into the stillness as if she had materialized from
+nothing. Nobody had noticed her approach, and every one was startled. To
+Forbes her sharp voice came as a rescue from incantation. And Mrs. Neff
+was in the mood of the most unromantic reality. She did not pause to be
+greeted or questioned, but went at her discourse with a flying start:
+
+"I'm mad and I'm hungry as the devil--oh, pardon me! I didn't see my
+angel child. Alice, darling, how on earth did you get here? Murray, if
+you have a human heart in your buzzum get the waiter man to run for a
+sandwich and a--a--no, I'll be darned if I'll take tea, in spite of
+example to youngers, who never follow our good examples, anyway; make it
+a highball, Murray; Scotch, and quick!"
+
+The waiter nodded in response to Ten Eyck's nod, and vanished with an
+excellent imitation of great speed.
+
+"Give over, Win!" Mrs. Neff continued, prodding Miss Mather aside and
+wedging forward with the chair Ten Eyck surrendered to her. "What's in
+those sandwiches? Lettuce? Thanks! Don't all ask me at once where I've
+been! I'm the little lady what seen her dooty and done it. If my angel
+child had done hers she would be even now listening to a lecture on
+Current Topics, so that she could inform her awful mother, as she calls
+me, what the tariff talk is all about, and who Salonica is, and why the
+Vulgarians are fighting the Balkans. But, of course, being a modern
+child, she plays hookey and goes to _thes dansants_ while her poor old
+mother works."
+
+"But mother dear, I was just--"
+
+"Don't tell it, my child! I know what you're going to say: that Persis
+picked you up and dragged you here by the hair, and Persis will back you
+up, of course, like the dear little liar she is. But I'll save you the
+trouble, darlings. Where is he? Is he still here or did he learn of my
+approach and flit?"
+
+"He--who?" said every one, zealously, with a stare of innocence sadly
+overdone.
+
+"He--who?" Mrs. Neff mocked. "He-haw! Oh, but you're a putrid lot of
+actors. So he has been here. Well, I mention no names, but if a certain
+young person whose initials are Stowe Webb wants to meet a little old
+lady named Trouble, let him come out from under the table."
+
+"Mother dear, how you do run on," Alice protested. "I don't think you
+really need another highball."
+
+"Another! Listen to that. Dutiful child trying to save erring mother
+from a drunkard's grave! And me choking with thirst since luncheon! Do
+you know where I've been? Yes? Then I will tell you. I've been at a
+committee meeting of the Vacation Savings Fund."
+
+The waiter brought a tiny flask, a tall glass, and a siphon, and offered
+to mix her a potion; but she motioned him aside and arranged it to her
+own taste. The band struck up, and she sipped hastily as she talked:
+
+"That's the most insulting music I ever heard, and I'm just mad enough
+to dance well. If nobody has any prior claim on this young soldier man,
+he's mine. Mr. Forbes, would you mind supporting your grandmother around
+the room once or twice?"
+
+Forbes had counted on having this dance with Persis. He had wasted one
+important tango while Alice poured out her woes. To squander this dance
+on her mother was a grievous loss. There was nothing for him to do,
+however, but yield.
+
+He bowed low and smiled. "Nothing would give me more pleasure."
+
+Mrs. Neff returned his bow with an old-fashioned courtesy, as she
+beamed:
+
+"Very prettily said! Old fashioned and nice. My first husband would have
+answered like that. Did Murray tell you that I had offered you the job
+of being my third husband?"
+
+"Mother!" Alice gasped.
+
+Forbes was exquisitely ill at ease. It is hard to parry banter of that
+sort from a woman. He bowed again and answered with an ambiguous smile:
+
+"Nothing would give me more pleasure."
+
+"Fine! Then we may as well announce our engagement. Kind friends, permit
+me to introduce my next husband, Mr.--Mr.--what is your first name,
+darling?"
+
+"Mother!" Alice implored.
+
+"Oh, I'm sure his first name can't be Mother. But we're missing the
+dance. Come along, hero mine!"
+
+Forbes cast a farewell look of longing at Persis, who was regarding him
+with an amused bewilderment.
+
+The blare of the band was as effectual as a Gabriel's trumpet opening
+graves. From the tables the dead came to life and took on stilts if not
+wings.
+
+Big Bob Fielding and Winifred Mather set out at once in close embrace.
+
+"Look at 'em! Look at 'em!" Ten Eyck chortled. "They're grappled like
+two old-time battleships on a heavy sea." Ten Eyck was the
+great-great-grandson of one of the first commissioned officers in the
+American navy, a rival even of Paul Jones. So now his comment was
+nautical. "Bob and Winifred remind me of the _Bonhomme Richard_ and the
+_Serapis_. And Winifred is like old John Paul Jones: when everybody else
+is dead her motto is: 'I've just begun to fight.'"
+
+But Alice could not smile. She folded her hands and sighed. "It's awful
+to be a widow when they play that tango."
+
+Persis provided for her at once. "Murray, you take Alice out and dance
+with her."
+
+Ten Eyck saluted. "Come on, Alice, we'll go in for the consolation
+stakes."
+
+Alice protested: "But we can't leave you alone."
+
+Persis beckoned to a lonesome-looking acquaintance at another table, and
+he came to her with wings outstretched. She locked pinions with him, and
+they were away.
+
+Ten Eyck put his arms up like racks; Alice hung herself across them, and
+they romped away. As they performed it, the dance was as harmless as a
+game of tag.
+
+As Persis was twirled past Forbes now and again, her eyes would meet his
+with a gaze of deep inquiry.
+
+And he was thinking so earnestly of her that at some indefinitely later
+period he was almost surprised to find that Mrs. Neff was in his arms,
+and that they were footing it intricately through a restless maze. He
+realized, also, that he had not spoken to her yet. He cast about in his
+mind for a topic of conversation, as one whips a dark trout-pool, and
+brought up a question:
+
+"That Vacation Savings Fund--may I ask what it is?"
+
+"You may, indeed, young man," she answered, and talked glibly as she
+danced, occasionally imitating a strain of music with mocking sounds.
+"It's an attempt a lot of us old women have been making to teach the
+poor woiking goil what we can't learn ourselves; namely, to save up
+money--_la-de-de-da-de-da!_ The poor things slave like mules and
+they're paid like slaves--_te-dum-te-dum!_--yet most of them never
+think of putting a penny by for a rainy day, or what's more
+important--_ta-ra-rum!_--a sunny day.
+
+"So Willie Enslee's mother, and Mrs. Clifton Ranger, and the Atterby
+girls, and a gang of other busybodies got ourselves together and cooked
+up a scheme--_la-de-de-da-de-da!_--to encourage the girls to stay
+home--_ta-ra-rum!_--from a few moving-picture fetes and cut down their
+ice-cream-soda orgies a little, and put the pennies into a fund to be
+used in giving each of them--_te-dum-te-dum_--a little holiday when her
+chance came--_te-di-do-dee!_"
+
+"Splendid!" said Forbes. "Did it work out?"
+
+"Rather. We started with forty girls, and now we've got--how many do you
+suppose?"
+
+"A hundred and fifty."
+
+"Eight thousand! And they've saved fifty thousand dollars!"
+
+"That's wonderful!" Forbes exclaimed, stopping short with amazement.
+Instantly they were as battered and trodden by the other dancers as a
+planet would be that paused in its orbit.
+
+"Come on, or we'll be murdered!" cried Mrs. Neff, and dragged him into
+the current again.
+
+Forbes looked down at her with a different feeling. This typical
+gadabout, light-minded, cynical little old woman with the girlish ways,
+was after all a big-hearted toiler in the vineyard. She did not dress as
+a Sister of Charity, and she did not pull a long and philanthropic face,
+but she was industrious in good works.
+
+He was to learn much more of this phase of New York wealth, its enormous
+organizations for the relief of wretchedness, and its instant response
+to the human cry once it makes itself heard above the noise of the cars
+or the music of the band.
+
+City people have always made a pretense of concealing their sympathetic
+expressions under a cynical mask. It is this mask that offends so many
+of the praters against cruelty, irritates them to denunciations more
+merciless than the lack of mercy they berate, and blinds their
+nearsighted eyes to the village heart that beats in every city--a huge
+heart made up of countless village hearts.
+
+So Mrs. Neff, having betrayed an artless Samaritanism, made haste to
+resume the red domino of burlesque to hide her blushes, as children
+caught in a pretty action fall to capering. Her motive was not lost on
+Forbes when she said:
+
+"We've got to do something to get into heaven, you know. That line about
+the camel and the needle's eye is always with us poor rich, though the
+Lord knows I'm not rich. I hope you have a lot of money, or we'll
+starve--unless we loot the Savings Fund."
+
+He hardly knew what to say to this, so he danced a little harder and
+swept her off her feet, till she was gasping for breath and pleading:
+
+"Stop, stop! I'm afraid I'm only an old woman after all. And I didn't
+want you to know."
+
+He led her to a chair, where she sank exhausted and panting hard. By the
+time the dance was over and the rest had returned, she was herself
+again.
+
+"My new husband is the love of a tangoist," she babbled across her
+highball. "If that infernal committee meeting hadn't kept me so late, I
+could have had more. Are you all going to the Tuesday to-night?"
+
+They all were.
+
+"I was to have taken Alice, but I'm going to put her to bed without any
+supper. I'll take Mr. Forbes instead. Will you come? Nothing would give
+you more pleasure. That's right. Sorry I can't accept your invitation to
+dinner, but I'm booked. What about the opera to-night? It's 'Tristan and
+Isolde' with Fremstad. Senator Tait was to have taken us, but he can't
+go; so Alice won't care to go. He sent me his box, and I have all those
+empty chairs to fill. Mr. Forbes can fill one. You can, can't you?" He
+nodded helplessly, and she hunted him a ticket out of a handbag as
+ridiculously crowded as a boy's first pocket. "It begins at a quarter to
+eight. I can't possibly be there before nine. You go when you want to.
+Who else can come?"
+
+Persis said that she was dining at Winifred's with Willie, and added:
+"He hates the opera, but if I can drag him along I'll come. And if I
+can't I'll come anyway."
+
+Winifred accepted for Bob. "I always think I ought to have been a
+grand-opera singer," she sighed, "I've got the build for it."
+
+Ten Eyck "had a dinner-job on," but promised to drop in when he could.
+
+Having completed her quorum, and distributed her tickets, Mrs. Neff made
+ready to depart by attacking her highball again. The music began before
+she had finished it, and Forbes rose before Persis with an old-time
+formula.
+
+"May I have the honor?"
+
+As Persis stepped into his arms, Winifred cried:
+
+"Traitress! It's my turn with the li'l snojer man."
+
+And Mrs. Neff caught Persis' elbow to say: "Be very circumspect or I'll
+sue you for alienation of the alimony."
+
+Forbes and Persis sent back mocking smiles as they side-stepped into the
+carousel.
+
+She was his again in the brief mock-marriage of the dance. His very
+muscles welcomed her with such exultance that he must forcibly restrain
+them from too ardent a clasp. The whole mood of the music was triumph,
+overweening boastfulness, and irresistible arrogance. It was difficult
+to be afraid of anything in that baronial walk-around.
+
+But Forbes was afraid of silence. It gave imagination too loose a rein.
+To keep himself from loving her too well, and offending her again after
+she had forgiven him once, he had recourse to language, the old
+concealer of thought.
+
+At first he had been too new to the steps to talk freely. Words had
+blurted out of him as from a beginner in a riding-school. But now there
+was a spirit in his feet that led him who knows how?
+
+Forbes astonished Persis and himself by his first words:
+
+"Don't you ever sleep, Miss Cabot?"
+
+She threw him a startled glance. "Do I look so jaded as all that?"
+
+He was so upset that he lost step and regained it with awkwardness of
+foot and word. "No, no, it's be--because you look--you look as if you
+slept for--forever. I don't mean that exact--exactly, either."
+
+"Then what do you mean, Mr. Forbes?"
+
+"I mean: I left you this morning at about four o'clock in one costume,
+and I saw you at eight in another."
+
+"At eight this morning? Oh yes, I was riding with my father. Were you
+riding, too? I didn't see you."
+
+"Oh yes, you did. I stood on the bridge at daybreak. And you looked at
+me and cut me dead."
+
+"Did I really? I must have been asleep."
+
+"Far from it. Your eyes were as bright as--as--"
+
+"This music is very reassuring, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes; please blame the music if I grow too rash. But you really were
+wonderful. I thought you were a boy at first. And you ride so well! You
+were racing your father. How could you be so wide awake after so
+strenuous a night?"
+
+"Oh, I had to get up. It is poor Dad's only chance nowadays. He's
+awfully busy in the Street, and he's so worried. And he needs the
+exercise. He won't take it unless I go along."
+
+There was an interlude of tenderness in the music. He responded to it.
+
+"That's very beautiful and self-sacrificing of you. But how can you keep
+up the pace?"
+
+"I can't, much longer. I'm almost all in. The season is nearly over,
+though. If everything goes right, Dad and I will get out of town--to the
+other side, perhaps. Then I can sleep all the way across. If he can't go
+abroad, we'll be alone anyway, since everybody else will leave town.
+Then I can catch up on sleep."
+
+"You must be made of iron," he said.
+
+"Am I so heavy as all that?"
+
+"Oh, no, no, you are--you are--" But he could not say anything without
+saying too much. She saved the day by a change of subject.
+
+"And I stared right at you, and didn't know you?"
+
+"Why should you? It was stupid of me to expect you to remember me. But I
+did, and--when you didn't, I was crushed."
+
+"Of course you were," she crooned. "I always want to murder anybody who
+forgets me."
+
+"Surely that can't happen often? How could any one forget You?"
+
+It was perfectly sincere, yet it sounded like the bumptious praise of a
+yokel. She raised her eyelids and reproved him.
+
+"That's pretty rough work for a West-Pointer. Rub it out and do it over
+again."
+
+Again he lost the rhythm, and suffered agonies of confusion in
+recovering it. But the tango music put him on his feet again. How could
+he be humble to that uppish, vainglorious tune, that toreador pomposity?
+
+Persis herself was like a pouter pigeon strutting and preening her high
+breast. All the dancers on the floor were proclaiming their grandeur,
+playing the peacock.
+
+Forbes grew consequential, too, as he and Persis marched haughtily
+forward shoulder to shoulder, and outer hands clasped, then paused for a
+kick, whirled on their heels, and retraced their steps with the high
+knee-action of thoroughbreds winning a blue ribbon.
+
+Then each hopped awhile on one foot, the other foot kicking between the
+partner's knees. Then they dipped to the floor. As he swept her back to
+her full height, the music turned sly and sarcastic. It gave an unreal
+color to his words.
+
+"Will you pardon me one question?"
+
+"Probably not. What is it?"
+
+"Didn't you wear this same hat yesterday?"
+
+Her head came up with a glare. "Isn't that a rather catty remark for a
+man to make?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean it that way," he faltered. "It's a beautiful hat."
+
+"No hat is beautiful two days in succession. It's unkind of you, though,
+to notice it, and rub it in."
+
+"For heaven's sake, don't take it that way. I--I followed this hat of
+yours for miles and miles yesterday."
+
+"You followed this hat?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+They danced, marched, countermarched, pirouetted, in a pink mist. And he
+told her in his courtly way, with his Southern fervor, how he had been
+captivated by the white plume, and the shoulder and arm, and the foot;
+how vainly he had tried to overtake her for at least a fleeting survey.
+He told her how keen his dismay was when she escaped him and fled north.
+He told her how he made a note of the number of her car. He did not tell
+her that he forgot it, and he did not dare to tell her that he was
+jealous of the unknown to whom she had hastened.
+
+Persis could not but be pleased, though she tried to disguise her
+delight by saying:
+
+"It must have been a shock to you when you saw what was really under
+this hat."
+
+She had not meant to fish so outrageously for a compliment. She
+understood, too late, that her words gave him not only an excuse, but a
+compulsion to praise. Praise was not withheld.
+
+"If you could only know how I--how you--how beautiful you--how--I wish
+you'd let me say it!"
+
+"You've said it," she murmured. His confusion revealed an ardor too
+profound to be rebuked or resisted. She luxuriated in it, and rather
+sighed than smiled:
+
+"I'm glad you like me."
+
+It was a more girlish speech than she usually made. Unwittingly she
+crept a trifle closer to him, and breathed so deeply that he felt her
+bosom swell against him with a strangely gentle power. By immeasurably
+subtle degrees the barrier between them dissolved, or rather shifted
+until it surrounded them. They were no longer strangers. They were
+together within a magic inclosure.
+
+He understood the new communion, and an impulse swept him to crush her
+against him. He fought it so hard that his arm quivered. She felt the
+battle in his muscles, and rejoiced in the duel of his two selves, both
+hers. She knew that she had a lover as well as a guardian in his heart.
+
+She looked up to see what manner of man this was who had won so close to
+her soul in so brief a time. He looked down to see who she really was.
+Their eyes met and held, longer than ever before, met studiously and
+hospitably, as the eyes of two lonesome children that have become
+neighbors meet across a fence.
+
+What she saw in his gaze gave a little added crimson to her cheeks. And
+then the music flared up with a fierce ecstasy that penetrated even
+their aloofness. He caught her close and spun with her in a frenzied
+rapture round and round. He shunted other dancers aside and did not know
+it. He was glared at, rebuked, and did not know it. The impetus of the
+whirl compelled a tighter, tighter clutch. Their hands gripped faster.
+He forgot everything in the mystic pursuit and surrender of the dance,
+the union and disunion of their bodies--her little feet companioning
+his, the satin and steel of her tense sinews, the tender duality of her
+breast against the rock of his, the flutter of her quick, warm breath on
+his throat, the sorcery of her half-averted eyes tempting his lips
+almost unbearably.
+
+The light burned about them like a flaming rose. The other couples had
+paused and retreated, staring at them; but they did not heed their
+isolation. They swooped and careened and twirled till they were blurred
+like a spinning top, till they were exhausted and wavering in their
+flight.
+
+At length he found that she was breathless, pale, squandered. She hung
+all her weight on his arm, and grew so heavy that it ached.
+
+And now, when he looked down at her, he saw that the operator had
+inadvertently put upon them the green light. In Forbes' eyes it had a
+sickly, cadaverous glimmer as of death and dissolution. He did not know
+that she was about to swoon; but she was so gray and lifeless that he
+was frightened. In the green, clammy radiance she looked as if she had
+been buried and brought back to the daylight. She was horribly
+beautiful.
+
+Just in time the music came to an abrupt end, and the _danse macabre_
+was done. But the floor still wheeled beneath his feet, and he staggered
+as he held her limp and swaying body.
+
+She shook the dizziness from her eyes, and put away his arm, but seized
+it again. He supported her to the table and guided her to a seat. Then
+he caught up a glass and put it to her wan mouth.
+
+Ten Eyck, who had been watching them from his place, shoved a chair
+against Forbes relaxing knees, and set a tall glass in his hand, saying:
+
+"Gad, old man, you need a drink!"
+
+Forbes took a gulp of a highball and sat staring at Persis. Ten Eyck was
+quietly dipping his fingers into his own glass and flicking water on
+Persis' face. She regained her self-control wonderingly. Her lips tried
+pluckily to smile, though her eyes studied Forbes with a kind of
+terrified anger--more at herself than at him. He met them with a gaze of
+adoration and dread.
+
+As his hot brow cooled, it seemed that an icy hand passed across it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The safety match that resists all other friction needs only the touch of
+its peculiar mate to break into flame. And many chemical compounds,
+including souls, change their behavior and expose their secret
+identities when they meet just the right--or the just the
+wrong--reagent.
+
+Persis Cabot was the wonder of her world for being at the same time so
+cordial and so cold, so lightly amused, so extravagant, and yet
+apparently so immune to the follies of passion. She was thought to be
+incapable of losing either her head or her heart. Mrs. Neff called her
+"fireproof."
+
+Willie Enslee was universally accepted as her fiance, simply because his
+wealth and his family's prestige were greater than anybody's else in her
+circle. This made him the logical candidate. Everybody knew that he was
+mad about Persis in his petty way. But nobody expected Persis to fall
+madly in love with Willie, or to let that failure keep her from marrying
+him.
+
+And now Forbes appeared from the wilderness and strange influences began
+to work upon her. She began to study the man with increasing interest.
+She resented his effect upon her, and could not resist it. He was like a
+sharp knife, or a loaded revolver, or the edge of a cliff, quiet and
+unpursuing, yet latent with danger, terrifying and therefore
+fascinating.
+
+Hitherto she had played with firearms and danced along abysses and
+juggled daggers in many a flirtation, but always she had kept her poise
+and felt no danger. Now she was just a trifle startled by a feeling of
+insecurity.
+
+Many men had made ferocious love to her, had tried to set up a
+combustion in her heart, had threatened her with violence, with murder
+and with suicide; and she had laughed at them, laughed them back to the
+sanity she had never lost.
+
+But this man Forbes made no campaign against her. If he pressed her too
+hard in the dance he apologized at once. He seemed to be at her mercy,
+and yet she felt that he brought with him some influence stronger than
+both. He was like one of Homer's warriors attended by a clouded god or
+goddess bent on his victory or his destruction--she could not tell
+which. When she caught him gazing at her devouringly he looked away, yet
+she found herself looking away, too, and breathing a little faster.
+
+Scores of men had embraced her as she danced with them and some of them
+had muttered burning love into her ear. But they left her cold. This man
+said little or less, and he held her almost shyly; yet she felt a
+strange kindling in his touch, saw in his eye a smoldering.
+
+In this last dance with him a panic of helplessness had confounded her.
+He had whirled her about till she had lost all sense of floor and
+ceiling. She felt herself falling and spinning down the gulfs of space
+in a nightmare of rapture. She would have swooned had he not seen how
+white and lost she was and stopped short. She had felt that other people
+were staring and making comments.
+
+She was afraid to dance with him again. When she had regained her
+self-control she made a pretext to escape out of the lateness of the
+hour and the necessity of dressing for dinner and the opera.
+
+There was an almost hysterical flippancy in her chatter. In spite of the
+protestations of the three men, she insisted on paying the bill. It was
+her own party, she said. The waiter looked sad at this, but what she
+left on the plate tempered his despair of her sex.
+
+She offered to drop Forbes and Ten Eyck at their destinations, and they
+clambered into her car with Winifred and Bob. Forbes was all too soon
+deposited at his hotel, where the footman and the starter hailed Persis
+with affectionate homage and Forbes with a new courtesy because of her.
+Forbes lingered at the curb to watch her away. As the landaulet sped
+toward Fifth Avenue all he saw of her was the fluttering white
+interrogation-mark.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Forbes was prompt at the Opera. Though it was barely half past seven, he
+found the foyer already swarming with a bustling mob of women swaddled
+in opera-cloaks, and prosperous-looking men overcoated and mufflered.
+Everybody was making haste. Dinners had been gulped or skimped, and
+there was evident desire not to miss a note.
+
+Forbes knew nothing of the music except a vague echo of the ridicule on
+which Wagner had ridden to the clouds. He was just as ignorant of the
+poem, and though he bought a libretto from an unpromising vocalist in
+the lobby, he had time only to skim the argument, and to learn with
+surprise that Isolde was Irish, and her royal husband, Mark, a
+Cornishman.
+
+The head usher directed him up a brief flight of steps, and another
+attendant unlocked a door marked with the name-plate of Lindsley Tait.
+From the little anteroom where he hung up his hat and coat, Forbes saw
+as through a telescope the vast curtain and the tremendous golden arch
+of the proscenium; at its foot a pygmy orchestra settling into tune and
+making oddly pleasant discords.
+
+When Forbes stepped to the edge of the box, he seemed to be the entire
+audience, another mad King of Bavaria come to witness a performance in
+solitude. The famous red horseshoe stretched its length a hundred yards
+or more on either side of him. In each of its little scallops a family
+of empty chairs sat facing the stage in solemn silliness. The owners
+were still filling chairs at dinner-tables.
+
+But when Forbes took the next step forward he found a multitude. Above
+him he saw other horseshoes in tiers dense with faces peering downward.
+Below him a plain of Babel inhabited by the tops of heads, numberless
+pates in long windrows, the men's skulls close-cropped or bald, and
+their shoulders black; the women's elaborately coiffed, over an enormous
+acreage of bared shoulders and busts.
+
+Suddenly all the white-gloved hands fluttered in coveys with the show
+and sound of innumerable agitated pigeons. Toscanini was picking his way
+through the orchestra to the desk.
+
+From the opening phrase of the Vorspiel Forbes became a Wagnerian. Those
+first stifled moans of almost sullen desire so whelmed him that he
+wondered how Persis and Mrs. Neff and her guests should dare to be late
+and lose this precious expression. Before the opera had finished
+breaking his heart on its eternal wheel of anguish, he wondered that any
+one should care to submit to its intolerable beauty a second time.
+
+Yet here were thousands thronging to its destroying blaze like fanatic
+moths--moths that paid a high price to be admitted to the lamp, and
+clamored to be consumed in its divine distress.
+
+Forbes smiled at the universal lust for artistic and vicarious suffering
+that has made other people's pathos the most lucrative of all forms of
+entertainment.
+
+The time was to come when he himself would pay dearly for the privilege
+of great pain; when his mind would strive futilely to dissuade his heart
+from clenching upon the thorn that made it bleed. Humanity has almost
+always preferred strong emotions at any cost, to peace however cheap.
+
+The prelude was one long stream of bitter-sweet honey, and it affected
+Forbes as music had never affected him. He wondered how people could
+ever have ridiculed or resisted this man Wagner. He wished that Persis
+would come soon. He thought of her as "Persis"--or "Isolde"; he could
+not think of her as Miss Cabot to this music.
+
+The first act was ended and the long intermission almost over before she
+arrived, with Enslee, followed immediately by Bob and Winifred, and last
+of all by the hostess, Mrs. Neff.
+
+Everybody greeted Forbes with the casual informality of old friendship,
+except Willie Enslee, who nodded obliquely, and murmured:
+
+"H' are yu, Mr. Ward."
+
+Nobody corrected him, least of all Forbes, who was too much disgusted
+with Willie's existence there to feel any minor resentment. The three
+women fell to wrangling, altruistically, of course, over the two front
+seats. Mrs. Neff was trying to bully Persis and Winifred into occupying
+them. Winifred's demurrer was violent:
+
+"If I sit there nobody can see the stage. You're such a little wisp I
+can see round you or through you."
+
+Persis preferred almost anything to a disturbance, and her protest was a
+mere form.
+
+Only the rising curtain brought the battle to a close. Persis dropped
+into a chair on the right. Winifred pushed Mrs. Neff into the other, and
+sat back of her. Willie annexed the chair behind Persis, Bob Fleming
+took that aft of Winifred, and motioned Forbes to the center chair. Then
+Mrs. Neff beckoned him to hunch forward into the narrow space between
+her and Persis.
+
+All along the horseshoe people were just arriving or returning from
+visits among the boxes. There was much chatter. The orchestra might as
+well have been wasting its sweetness on a crowded restaurant.
+
+Forbes pretended to be looking over the audience on his right, but he
+was looking at Persis. The music of the garden where Isolde awaited her
+Tristan, and the far-off rumorous hunting-horns of the King, her
+husband, were working a magic upon her. He could see its influence on
+her face.
+
+She wore brighter raiment than at the theater; her head-dress was more
+imperious, and more jewelry glittered about her. When she breathed or
+moved the diamonds at her ears, her throat, and in her corsage flashed
+and dulled as if they had eyelids; the pearls had a veiled radiance.
+
+She was a combination of beauty unadorned and most adorned. Despite her
+trappings of gem and fabric, even more of her was candidly presented
+than at the theater last night--or was it not a year ago? Surely he must
+have known her for more than a day.
+
+Her bodice would have seemed to be shamelessly low, had it not been as
+high as almost any other there. This was one of those common yet amazing
+sessions where thousands of women of every age and class agree to
+display as much of their skins as the police will allow, and far more
+than their husbands and fathers approve.
+
+But Forbes had not yet reached the stage where a man resents the
+publication of his charmer's charms. He was still hardly more than a
+fascinated student of Persis. He found her a most engrossing text.
+
+She was so thoroughly alive--terribly alive all over! Wordsworth's
+phrase would have suited Forbes' understanding of her: she "felt her
+life in every limb." Her brows now moved sinuously, and now relaxed as
+Isolde sang of her longing and quenched the torch for a signal to her
+lover. One moment Persis' eyelids throbbed with excitement; the next
+they fell and tightened across her eyes. Accesses of emotion swelled her
+nostrils and made her lips waver together. Her throat arched and flexed
+and was restless; and her lovely disparted bosom filled and waned.
+
+If she sat with clasped hands, the fingers seemed to convene and
+commune. She was incessantly thrusting back her hair and stroking her
+temples, or her forearms. Her knees were always exchanging places one
+above the other; her feet crossed, uncrossed, and seemed unable to
+settle upon precedence.
+
+If she had been a child she would have been called fidgety, but all her
+motions were discreet and luxurious. She was like a lotos-eater stirring
+in sleep and just about to open her eyes.
+
+The second act of the opera proved to be hardly more than a prolonged
+duet. The rapture of it outlasted Forbes' endurance; it did not bore
+him, it wore him out. He grew weary of eavesdropping on these two. He
+was jealous to love and be loved on his own account.
+
+The woman next him was becoming more beautiful every moment. He felt a
+craving to touch her--with reverence; to link arms in comradeship, and
+to clench hands with her when the music stormed the peaks.
+
+An aura seemed to transpire mistily from his pores to meet the aureole
+that shimmered about her.
+
+His mood was far above any thought of flirtation, or evil desire. He was
+too knightly at heart to dream of adventure against her sacred
+isolation. But he wished and wished that he knew her better; had known
+her longer. Unconsciously he plagiarized the sigh of Johanna Ambrosius'
+poem: "_Ach, haett' ich frueher dich geseh'n!_"
+
+But Fate can play the clown as well as the tragedian, and accomplish as
+much by an absurd accident as by elaborate glooms.
+
+That afternoon, when Forbes was lured into the haberdashery, he had
+invested in black silk hosiery, very sheer and very dear. Later he had
+acquired a pair of new pumps. The shoes were not too small, but their
+rigid edge cut his instep like a dull knife. By the time that Isolde's
+husband had found her in Tristan's arms, and begun to deplore his
+friend's treachery at great length, the pressure upon Forbes' heart
+relaxed enough to let his feet attract his attention. They proclaimed
+their discomfort acutely.
+
+After some hesitation he resolved to slip them out of their glistening
+jails a moment, under cover of the darkness.
+
+A sense of immense relief rejoiced him when he sat with his
+silk-stockinged feet perched on top of instead of inside of his shoes.
+Though he was unaware of it, he was not the only one in that box to
+seize the opportunity. Heaven alone knew how much empty foot-gear was
+scattered along the floors of that opera-house. Persis for one had
+vacated her slippers long ago. She always did at every opportunity.
+
+Eventually she tucked her little left foot back of her and bent it round
+the leg of her chair. By and by Forbes, in shifting his position,
+straightened his right knee. His foot collided with a most smooth
+something, and paused in a kind of surprise. Primevally our feet had as
+much tactile intelligence as our hands, and Forbes' almost prehensile
+big toe pondered that tiny promontory a second; then it hastily explored
+the glossy surface of Persis' sole.
+
+Silk is a facile conductor of electricity, and Persis was not divine
+enough to be above ticklishness. Shudders of exquisite torment ran
+through her before she could snatch her foot away. And before she could
+check the impulse she snickered aloud.
+
+And Forbes, suddenly understanding what he had done, snickered too, and
+just managed to throttle down a loud guffaw.
+
+Mrs. Neff and Winifred turned in amazement at hearing such a sound at
+such a time, and the women in the next box craned their necks to inflict
+a punitive glare. Which made it all the worse.
+
+Persis and Forbes were suddenly backslidden almost to infancy. They were
+like a pair of children attacked with a fit of giggles in church. The
+more they wanted to be sober, the more foolish they felt. The harder
+they tried to smother the laughter steaming within them, the more it
+threatened to explode.
+
+Persis would have taken to flight, but one of her slippers she could not
+find, and she could not get the other on.
+
+She and Forbes were still stuffing their handkerchiefs into their mouths
+when the act ended, as the pitifully distraught Tristan permitted the
+infuriated Melot to thrust him through with a sword, and fell back in
+Kurwenal's arms.
+
+Mrs. Neff and her faction did not join the ovation to the singers. They
+were too busily demanding what Persis and Forbes had found to laugh at.
+But neither of them would tell. It was their secret.
+
+Willie Enslee was acutely annoyed. He had not curiosity enough to be
+quick to jealousy, nor intelligence enough to suspect that Persis' and
+Forbes' laughter might be, must be, due to some encounter.
+
+Still, he had ideals of his own, such as they were, and his religion was
+to avoid attracting attention. He had liked Persis because she was of
+the same faith; but now she had sinned against it, and he rebuked her.
+She did not flare up as usual. She laughed.
+
+She was ashamed to have been so frivolous, ashamed to have profaned the
+temple of art with her childishness. And so was Forbes. But when they
+looked into each other's eyes now they no longer stared with timorous
+wonderment; they smiled together in a dear and cozy intimacy. And
+already they owned a secret.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Mrs. Neff and Winifred may have had their suspicions. They were both
+amiable cynics, and always put the worst possible interpretation on any
+happening. But whatever their theories, they could never have guessed
+the actual reason for the contretemps, and Persis speedily changed the
+subject. But her feet remembered it and tingled with reminiscent little
+electric storms. And when she looked at Forbes she tittered like a
+school-girl. So she avoided his eyes.
+
+Willie was furious at Persis' lack of dignity, and forgot his own in
+complaining of it.
+
+"Cut out the soubrette spasms, for God's sake, Persis, or let us all in
+on the joke. If you have any comic relief for this ghastly opera let me
+have it. Why did you drag me here, anyway? We might have gone to
+Hammerstein's. It wouldn't be so bad if Caruso were singing; but Caruso
+knows better than to bark himself hoarse on this Wagner fella. And that
+Dutch tenor has got to die yet. He'll be two hours dying, and then the
+lady has to follow suit. Why should we sit here all that time watching
+people die? Why didn't we go to Bellevue Hospital and watch an amusing
+operation? What would you say to making a sneak just about now and--"
+
+"I'd say, run right along, Willie, if you want to," said Persis. "_Moi,
+j'y suis, j'y reste!_"
+
+"Oh, all right, I suppose I'll have to _suis_ and _reste_, too. But
+don't mind if I snore."
+
+Ten Eyck appeared now with apologies for his delay. And a number of
+callers knocked at the back door of the box and were admitted to an
+informal little reception, shared by the next-door neighbors, who
+gossiped across the rail with a charming friendliness. These latter were
+determined to find out what Persis had been laughing at. But she shook
+her head mysteriously.
+
+Forbes heard great names bandied, and he judged that he was meeting
+important people, but there were no introductions, except in the case of
+a man and a woman who were treated with deference. To these Ten Eyck
+presented Forbes with flourish as an eminent military expert called home
+from the Philippines to help fortify New York against foreign attack.
+
+Forbes denied this violently, but Ten Eyck winked.
+
+"Diplomatic, eh?"
+
+When they were gone Forbes asked who they were.
+
+"Society reporters!" said Ten Eyck. And the next day Forbes read in two
+of the papers a varying description of the costumes of Persis, Winifred,
+and Mrs. Neff, and a duplicated mention of his own name with the added
+information that he was "the eminent military expert called home from
+the Philippines to help fortify New York against foreign attack."
+
+When he read this Forbes breathed a prayer that none of his superior
+officers might be addicted to the social columns.
+
+But that was to-morrow's excitement.
+
+The third act brought him back under the Wagnerian yoke. Tristan's
+castle walls ran along a cliff overlooking the ocean; in a green space
+under a tree the wounded knight lay eternally demanding of his devoted
+squire if he could not yet see the ship, the ship that was to bring
+Isolde to nurse him back to life.
+
+Forbes forgot all light thoughts before the infinitely pathetic wail of
+the shepherd's pipe and the reiterated appeal of Tristan for "_das
+Schiff!_ _das Schiff!_"
+
+Like most men of to-day, Forbes never wept except at the theater, or at
+some other fiction. He had not wept so well since he had seen "Romeo
+and Juliet" played. Now again, as then, it startled him to think what a
+genius for love some hearts have, while others have only a talent or a
+taste for it. He felt a little ashamed that he had never been able to
+love as Romeo or Tristan loved, and yet he thanked his stars that he had
+been spared that fatal power.
+
+How often we thank our stars that we have never met the very thing that
+waits us round the corner! Perhaps that Pharisee who stands immortally
+thanking the Lord that he was not as other men, found out the same
+afternoon how very like he was.
+
+The thrall of the theater was so complete upon Forbes that when the
+sorrowful drone of the shepherd's pipe suddenly turned to joy at the
+sight of Isolde's ship, Forbes' heart leaped up as if he were witnessing
+a rescue in actual life.
+
+The hurrying rapture of the music that described Isolde's arrival, and
+her haste up the cliff, sent his hopes to heaven; but when the delirious
+Tristan rose from his couch to his staggering feet and began to tear at
+the bandages about his wound, Forbes felt the stab of fear. He wanted to
+cry out, "Oh no! no!" He sat with lips parted in anguish, and his hand
+groping for support.
+
+The left hand of Persis was reaching about in the same gesture of
+protest against intolerable cruelty. It met the hand of Forbes. Their
+fingers clutched each other in an instinct for companionship. The two
+souls were so intent upon the action of the scene, and so swept along by
+the torrential music, that they hardly knew their hands were joined.
+
+When Tristan fell at Isolde's feet, with one poor wailing "Isolde!" and
+died before she could clasp him in her arms, it seemed that Forbes'
+heart broke. A groan escaped him; his hand clenched the hand of Persis
+with all its might. He heard a little gasp from her, and he thought that
+her heart had broken with his.
+
+He had bitten into one of the beautiful apples of Hades, and his mouth
+was filled with ashes. The tears poured down his cheeks, and in his
+aching throat there was a lump like broken glass.
+
+The noblest song in all music, the "love-death" of Isolde, gave the
+tragedy nobility; but it was the mad beauty of a grief too great for
+grieving over. Passion shivered in the air and seemed to come from
+Forbes' own soul. The harmonies kept climaxing, eternally reaching the
+last possible thrill, only to find that it led on to one yet higher. The
+melodies were crowded like the angels climbing Jacob's ladder into the
+clouds, where every rung seemed heaven, till it disclosed one more.
+
+The music was a love-philter to Forbes and Persis; they could not escape
+it, had no thought of escape. Their hands swung in a little arc,
+clenched and unclenched in an utter sympathy of mind and body, in a kind
+of epic dance.
+
+And then the opera was over, and Forbes began to dread the raising of
+the lights. He was grateful for the long ovation to the singers, since
+it kept the house dark till he could shake off the tears he was ashamed
+to dab with a handkerchief. Time was when greater soldiers than he were
+proud rather than ashamed of their tears, but Forbes was thankful for
+the gloom. He applauded and joined the cries of "Bravo!" to prolong the
+respite.
+
+Mrs. Neff was sniffling as she beat her gloves together.
+
+"Even Isolde's husband couldn't hate her--or him--for a love like that."
+
+And Winifred, with her cheeks all blubbered, swallowed hard as she
+applauded.
+
+"Why don't we have such lovers nowadays? Even I could play Isolde if I
+could find a Tristan."
+
+"Permit me," said Bob Fielding. But he was referring to the opera-cloak
+he was holding out for her.
+
+Willie Enslee, however, shook his head contemptuously and made no
+pretense of applause.
+
+"Can you beat 'em, Mr. Lord? They're never so happy as when they're
+crying their make-up off. They pretend they're blue, but they've been
+having the time of their lives."
+
+And Forbes hated him for saying it. Then he noted that Persis was not
+applauding. She was pulling off a long glove slowly and wincingly. When
+it was off, she looked ruefully at her left hand and nursed it in her
+right. She glanced to see that the others were busy with their wraps,
+then she held her hand out where Forbes could see it; and gave him a
+look of pouting reproach.
+
+His first stare showed him only that her soft, slim fingers were almost
+hidden with rings. And then he saw that the flesh was all creased and
+bruised and marred with marks like tiny teeth. He realized that it was
+his fierce clench that had ground the rings and their settings into her
+flesh, and his heart was wrung with shame and pity.
+
+He saw, too, that on one of the little fingers there was a thread of
+blood. The alert old eyes of Mrs. Neff caught the by-play of the two,
+and her curiosity brought her forward with a question.
+
+"How in heaven did you hurt your finger?"
+
+Persis answered quietly and at once:
+
+"I caught it on the thorn of a rose. It's nothing."
+
+Willie insisted on seeing the wound, and was frantic with excitement. He
+was genuinely distressed. He poured out sympathy for the pain, anxiety
+for the future of the wound, the necessity for sterilizing it. But it
+was Willie's doom to be always tactless or unwelcome, and his sympathy
+was an annoyance.
+
+Forbes was compelled to silence by Persis' explanation of the accident.
+He must not say how sorry he was, though he had wounded her--he had
+wounded Persis till she bled!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+There was an atmosphere of mourning everywhere as the enormous audience
+issued from the exits. It had assisted at the obsequies of a tremendous
+love, and all the eyes were sad.
+
+Forbes had seen it stated until he had come to believe it, that the
+Metropolitan Opera was supported by snobs who attended merely to show
+off their jewels, and that the true music-lovers were to be found in the
+gallery. It came upon him now that this is one of the many cheap
+missiles poor people of poor wit hurl at luckier folk, with no more
+discrimination than street Arabs show when they throw whatever they can
+find in the street at whoever passes by in better clothes.
+
+Forbes was sure that most of these sad-eyed aristocrats, so lavish in
+their praise of the singers and the music and the conductor, had come
+with a musical purpose, and he wondered if some few, at least, of those
+in the gallery might not have climbed thither less for art's sake than
+to see in the flesh those people of whose goings and comings and
+dressings, weddings and partings, they read so greedily in the
+newspapers.
+
+During the long wait for the carriage, a wealthy rabble stood in a
+draughty doorway waiting turns at the slowly disintegrating army of
+limousines and landaulets and touring-cars and taxicabs--even of
+obsolete broughams and coaches drawn by four-legged anachronisms.
+
+Mrs. Neff claimed Forbes as her personal escort, and carried him off in
+her own chariot, which rolled up long before Enslee's.
+
+Forbes regretted to leave Persis standing there, with throat open as
+usual to the night gale; but his consolation was that he could gossip
+about her.
+
+Mrs. Neff's first word, of course, was of tobacco. The door was hardly
+slammed upon them before she had her cigarettes out.
+
+"Give me a light, there's a dear boy. I've just time for a puff. And you
+light your cigar; I know you're dying for it. You can finish it in the
+cloak-room. You men have still a few advantages left. The one I envy you
+most is your right to smoke in public."
+
+It was strange to Forbes to be proffering a light to a white-haired
+lady. His own mother had thought it almost an escapade to sit on a
+piazza with a man who was armed with a cigar. Years ago, when Forbes had
+come home from West Point, she had said to him after dinner:
+
+"I reckon my boy is simply pe'ishing for a cigar. Of course a gentleman
+can't smoke in the drawing-room, and the odor never comes out of the
+curtains. But I don't mind it in the open air--much. We'll stroll in the
+garden. They say tobacco is good for the plants--bad for the insects."
+
+And she took his arm and sauntered with him while he ruined the scent of
+the honeysuckle vines.
+
+And Forbes had heard an anecdote, probably untrue, of the great Mrs.
+Astor; according to this legend, a man, hankering for a cigar, yet
+hesitating to suggest it, asked her casually: "What would you say if a
+man asked you for permission to smoke?" To which she answered, in her
+stately way: "I don't know. No man ever asked me." And neither did he.
+
+But nowadays a man rarely ever murmurs the formula: "Do you object to
+smoke?" He is apter to say: "Do you carry your own, or will you try
+mine?"
+
+The petite grande dame, Mrs. Neff, carried her own. The glow of it in
+the dark seemed to add one more ruby to her burdened fingers. And when
+she lost her light, she reached out for Forbes' cigar and rekindled her
+cigarette, smiling:
+
+"Aren't we nice and clubby?"
+
+Once her weed was prospering, she began to puff gossip:
+
+"Isn't she a darling--Miss Cabot, I mean? Everybody is crazy over her,
+but Willie scares 'em all off. What a pity she's mixed up with the
+little bounder! Of course, she needs a lot of money, and her It of a
+father is nearly ready for the Old Ladies' Home; but what a shame that
+love and money go together so rarely! For the matter of that, though, I
+don't think Persis knows what love is--yet. Maybe she never will. Maybe
+she won't learn till it's too late. Murray Ten Eyck says you are rich.
+Why don't you marry Persis? What a pair you'd make! What children you'd
+have! They'd win a blue ribbon at any stock-breeder's show."
+
+Forbes was much obliged to the dark for hiding his blushes. Besides, he
+felt it a little premature to be discussing the quality of his
+offspring. He made bold to ask a leading question.
+
+"You say that Miss Cabot is mixed up hopelessly with Mr. Enslee. Do you
+mean that they are engaged?"
+
+"They haven't announced it, of course, but it's generally agreed that
+they are. Still, I suppose that if some handsome devil came along with a
+million or two, he might coax her away."
+
+"But they are not actually engaged?"
+
+"I don't know. But it looks inevitable to me. If you've got a lot of
+money, ask her--and save her from Willie. She'd make a nice wife to a
+nice man, with a nice income. Go on and get her. Oh, Lord, here we are
+at Sherry's and I've got to throw my cigarette away. I'll have to sneak
+another in the women's room somehow."
+
+They went through the revolving doors and into the corridor, where women
+in opera-cloaks were moving forward with something of the look of a
+spice caravan, some to the supper-rooms, and some toward the elevators
+to the various assembly-rooms, where various coteries were giving
+dances.
+
+The ways of Mrs. Neff and Forbes parted at the elevator's upper door.
+His led to the large room where he passed his hat and coat across a
+table to be stowed in a compartment in one of the wicker wardrobes.
+
+While he waited for Mrs. Neff, he sauntered to and fro, smoking and
+feeling a stranger among the men, who were just beginning to collect.
+Forbes noted the callowness of most of them, and felt himself a veteran
+among the shiny-haired blonds and glistening brunettes pulling on their
+white gloves, straightening their ties and trying, some of them, to find
+mustache enough to pull.
+
+He could see the women they brought--girls and their mothers, or aunts
+or something.
+
+After his experience at the restaurant dances, Forbes had begun to
+wonder if New York's aristocracy had been entirely converted to
+socialism, and had given over all attempt at exclusiveness. Here at last
+he found selection. People were here on invitation, and they were at
+home--_chez eux_.
+
+If they went among the common herd, it was only as a kind of slumming
+excursion, a sortie of the great folk from the citadel into the town. It
+did not mean that the town was invited to repay the visit at the castle.
+
+This was a dance at the castle. Everybody here seemed to belong. There
+were no shop-girls, no pavement-nymphs, or others of the self-supporting
+classes. These women had been provided for by wealthy parents. They had
+been provided with educations, and aseptic surroundings, and sterilized
+amusements, and pure food of choicest quality. Hence they all looked
+hale and thoroughbred. And they were not discontent. They came with the
+spirit of the dance.
+
+Yet there was variety enough in the unity. Girls of intellectual type,
+girls of plain and old-maidish prospects, girls of prudish manner,
+wantons, athletes, flirts, and uncontrollables. There were good taste
+and bad in costume, simple little pink frocks and Sheban splendors, loud
+voices and soft, meek eyes and insolent. But they were all protected
+plants, not hothouse flowers, yet flowers from high-walled, well-tended
+gardens.
+
+Inside the wall there was the pleasantest informality. Everybody seemed
+to call everybody else by the first name or by some nickname, and there
+were surprisingly many old-fashioned "Jims" and "Bills," "Kates" and
+"Sues." There was much hilarity, much slang, and the women seemed to use
+the music-hall phrases even more freely than the men.
+
+In the dances there was a deal of boisterous romping. The turkey-trot,
+here called the one-step, was as vigorously performed as in the
+restaurants, and some of the highest born showed the most professional
+skill and recklessness.
+
+While Forbes was waiting for Mrs. Neff, he saw Persis arrive with her
+entourage. She was like the rest, yet ever so different. In her there
+was the little more that meant so much. She had, of course, the
+advantage of his affection. Yet he could see that everybody else gave
+her a certain prestige, too. It was "Oh, there she is!" "Look, there's
+Persis!" "Hello, Persis, how darling of you to come!"
+
+The fly in the ointment was Willie Enslee, preening himself at her side,
+taking all her compliments for his own, as if he were the proprietor of
+a prize-winning mare at a horse-show. Forbes hated himself for hating
+him, but could not help it. When Enslee left Persis and entered the
+men's coat-room, Forbes' eyes followed him balefully.
+
+Ten Eyck happened to glance his way as he held out his hand for his coat
+check. He noted the glare in Forbes' eyes and followed their direction
+to Enslee. He was so amazed, that when the attendant put the check in
+his hand, he started as if some one had wakened him. Then he went to
+Forbes and took him by the elbow. And Forbes also started as if some one
+had wakened him. Ten Eyck smiled sadly:
+
+"Is it as bad as that, already, old man?"
+
+"Is what as bad as what already?" Forbes answered, half puzzled and half
+aware. Ten Eyck replied with a riddle.
+
+"You can buy 'em for almost any price. It's the upkeep that costs."
+
+"What the devil are you talking about?"
+
+"Yachts."
+
+"Yachts?"
+
+"Yachts. Better do as I do, Forbesy: instead of trying to own and run
+one, cultivate the people who do; and then you can cruise without
+expense."
+
+"What's that about yachts?" Willie Enslee asked, unexpectedly at his
+elbow. Ten Eyck answered, blandly:
+
+"I was making the highly original remark that it's not the initial
+expense--"
+
+"--But the up-keep that costs," Willie finished for him. "And that's no
+joke, either. Thinking of buying one, Mr. Forbes? Take my advice and
+don't! Gad, that ferryboat of mine costs me twenty-five or thirty
+thousand a year, and she's not in commission two months in the season."
+
+Twenty-five thousand a year! The words clanged in Forbes' mind like a
+locomotive's warning bell. He would hardly earn so much in the next ten
+years. He would certainly take Enslee's advice and not buy a yacht. He
+was as ill-equipped for a contest with the Enslee Estates as David was
+for the bout with Goliath. David won, indeed; but he had only to kill
+the giant, not to support him in the manner he had been accustomed to.
+
+What could Forbes offer a woman like Persis in place of a yacht? He
+could offer her only love. His love must be cruiser and automobile, town
+house and country house, home and travel. Isolde had married the king
+only to run away from his palace to the ruined castle of the wounded
+knight. Perhaps this Isolde would take warning and prefer the poor
+knight and his shabby castle in the first place.
+
+As Forbes glanced down at Willie Enslee he could not feel that even the
+Enslee millions could suffice to make the fellow attractive. They
+certainly had not added a cubit to his stature. Persis could not
+conceivably mate herself for life to a peevish underling like him.
+
+Plainly Forbes needed only to be brave and persistent and he would win
+her. Then Persis reappeared, and looked to be a prize worth fighting
+for, at any hazard of failure. There was a bevy of young women about
+her, bright clouds around a new moon. They were all jeweled to
+incandescence. On their fingers and wrists were rings and bracelets
+whose prices Forbes could guess from his inspection of shop-windows the
+day before. He could not give such gifts.
+
+But he would not let anything chill him. He advanced to Persis with as
+much cordiality as if he had not seen her for years. Persis was too
+human to follow the usual New York and London custom of avoiding
+introductions. She presented Forbes to the galaxy with a statement that
+he was a famous soldier (which brought polite looks of respect), and a
+love of a tangoist (which evoked gushes of enthusiasm).
+
+He had not caught a single name, and as the group dispersed, each girl
+took even her face from his memory as effectually as if it were a
+picture carried out of a room.
+
+This did not distress him at the time, for the orchestra on the stage in
+the grand ballroom was busily at work.
+
+"The music is calling us," said Forbes. "May I have the honor?"
+
+"I wish you might," Persis sighed, "but Willie would be furious if I
+gave his dance away. And Mrs. Neff would snatch me baldheaded if I
+kidnapped her _preux chevalier_. I'm afraid she'll expect you to pay
+for your ride in her car by a little honest work, won't she?"
+
+"I'm afraid so. Of course she will," Forbes groaned, ashamed of his
+oversight. "But the next one I may have?"
+
+"The next one is yours. Don't forget."
+
+"Forget!" He cast his eyes up in a look of horror at the possibility. He
+hastened to Mrs. Neff, who was just simmering to a boil. She forgot her
+pique with the first sidewise stride. She tried to imagine herself
+young, and Forbes tried to imagine her Persis.
+
+He passed Persis in the eddies again and again, and she always had some
+amiable wireless greeting to flash across the space. She was difficultly
+following the spasmodic leadership of Willie, who puffed about her like
+a little snubby tug conducting a graceful yacht out to sea.
+
+When the dance was done and the inevitable encore responded to, Forbes
+tried to carry on a traffic of conversation with his hostess; but he had
+only the faintest idea of what she said or what he himself said--if
+anything. His mind was lackeying Persis, who knew so many people and was
+having so good a time. At the first squeak of the next dance Forbes
+abandoned Mrs. Neff like an Ariadne on a beach of chairs, and presented
+himself open-armed before Persis.
+
+She slipped into his embrace as if she were mortised there. The very
+concord of their bodies seemed an argument for the union of their souls.
+They were as appropriate to each other as the melodies of a perfect
+duet, such a love-duet as Tristan and Isolde's.
+
+Once more Forbes was master of Persis; she followed wherever he led. He
+could whirl her, dip her, sidle her, lead or pursue her; and she obeyed
+his will as instantly as if he were her owner. She did belong to him.
+How could he ever give her up? And yet at the moment the orchestra
+stopped he must let her go.
+
+The end of the dance was their divorce. He transferred her into Bob
+Fielding's arms for a time, while he swung Winifred with as much
+rapture as he would have taken from trundling a bureau around. Even
+Winifred's surprising lightness of foot reminded Forbes of nothing more
+poetic than casters.
+
+After this ordeal a strict sense of duty forced him to dance with Mrs.
+Neff once more. And after her with an anonymous sprig, to whom Mrs. Neff
+bequeathed him. This girl was as young as Alice Neff, but loud of voice,
+gawky, and awkward. Some day she would grow up to herself and enter into
+her birthright of beauty. Now she was neither chick nor pullet, but at
+the raw-boned, pin-feathered stage between--just out from her mother's
+wings. Her knees were carried so well forward that Forbes could not
+avoid them. He came out of the dance with both patellas bruised.
+
+And then, at last, he was free to tango with Persis again. In the brief
+space of a few dances, he had held in his clasp the young-old Mrs. Neff,
+the super-abundant charms of Winifred, and the large-jointed frame of a
+young girl. When Persis was his again the contrast was astonishing. In
+these forms the cycle of the rose was complete; the girl was the bud
+still clenched in its calyx; Winifred was the flower too far expanded;
+Mrs. Neff the flower of yesterday with the bloom gone from the petal and
+the wrinkles in its place; but Persis! Persis was the rose at its exact
+instant of perfection.
+
+At the close of the dance, the hour being somewhat past midnight, supper
+was announced. Persis seized upon one of the small tables, and stood
+guard over it while she despatched Forbes to round up Mrs. Neff and
+Willie and Bob and Winifred, and Ten Eyck and a debutante he was
+rushing.
+
+Persis saw to it quite casually that Forbes sat close to her; and that
+was very close, since the little clique was crowded so snugly about the
+table, that half of those who ate had to convey the food across the
+elbows and knees of the others.
+
+Persis sat with both elbows on the table, and raised her bouillon cup
+with both hands. Her elbow touched that of Forbes, and she did not draw
+it away. For the matter of that, all the elbows were clashing in the
+crowded circle.
+
+It was now that Forbes was tempted to make his first advance. How was he
+to marry her if he never made love to her? How show his love except by
+some signal? Before all those ears he could not speak his infatuation;
+before all those eyes he could not seize her hand and kiss it, or kneel,
+or push his arm around her.
+
+Under the table he might have held hands with her, but she kept her
+hands above the board. Then, as she leaned close to him to speak across
+him to Mrs. Neff, her foot struck lightly against his. It was gone at
+once, but it suggested to his mind an ancient form of flirtation that
+has been more honored in modern observance than in modern literature.
+Remembering the experience at the Opera House, he was visited with a
+tender temptation to renew that acquaintance of feet.
+
+He gathered his courage together, as if he were about to step off a
+precipice into a fog, and pursued her foot with his. He found it, but at
+a touch it vanished again. Realizing that she took his silly action for
+an accident, he determined to see the adventure through. He sent his
+foot prowling after hers, found it, and raising his toe, pressed hers
+softly.
+
+This time her foot was not withdrawn, and he felt that his emprise was
+rewarded. But a moment later, when every one's attention was attracted
+to another table, and the rest were discussing a prematurely fashionable
+costume, Persis leaned close to him and murmured:
+
+"In the first place, how dare you? In the second place, I have on white
+slippers. And in the third place, you are perfectly visible from all the
+other tables."
+
+And then she slipped her foot away. It was as if she had unclasped his
+arms from about her waist, only not so hallowed a precedent.
+
+Forbes turned pale with shame. He felt that his deed was boorish, and
+now it had been properly rebuked and resented. The gentleness of the
+reproof made it the more galling; for it was the gentleness of authority
+so sure of itself that it needed no clamor of assertion. Another woman
+might have been, or pretended to be, furious at an insult; a flirt might
+have rebuked him only to encourage and tease him on; a vixen might have
+dug her other heel into his instep and forced her release.
+
+But Persis was sophisticated enough not to set her protest in italics.
+She was probably used to such suggestions. It hurt Forbes' pride to feel
+that he was not the first man she had rebuffed for this. He had loved
+her and longed to tell her his secret secretly, and had merely apprised
+her that he was a blundering bumpkin. She had shamed him yet spared him
+open disgrace. She had made him respect her intelligence and her tact.
+
+He gnawed his lip with remorse; but his apologies were frustrated by the
+return of all hands to the table. Persis chattered with the rest and
+nibbled a marron with an apparent relish that implied forgetfulness of
+what was only an incident to her.
+
+Forbes was learning what Persis was, by all these little tests, as a
+general studies the enemy's strength and disposition, by trying the line
+at all points. If he finds the pickets always alert, his respect
+increases the more he is baffled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+After the supper no time was lost in returning to the main business of
+the meeting. Again Willie claimed the first dance, and Forbes was
+deputed to Ten Eyck's debutante. The next dance, however, brought him
+back to Persis. He had asked for it, uneasily, and she had granted it
+with an amiable "Of course."
+
+The moment they were safely lost in the vortex he began to make amends.
+While he was strutting his proudest through the tango, he was stammering
+the humblest apologies.
+
+"Oh, don't let that worry you," she answered. "I suppose all men believe
+they have to do that sort of thing to entertain us. Poor fellows, you
+think we women expect it of you. Some of us do, I suppose; but I don't
+like it. And it doesn't seem quite what I had expected of you."
+
+He got a little comfort from the thought that she had taken the trouble,
+at least, to form an opinion of him. But mainly he admired her for the
+continued good sportsmanship of her attitude. There was a kind of
+manliness about it, as if one gentleman should say to another:
+
+"Pardon me, but you are trespassing on my property. It was a natural
+mistake, but I thought you'd like to know my boundary line."
+
+And yet something was gone from her warmth. She danced with him,
+chatted, laughed. But a chill was upon her. That little bloom of
+tenderness that had softened her words as the down velvets the peach,
+had vanished. Frost had nipped the firstling of spring.
+
+Forbes was infinitely repentant, rebuffed, but not routed. He began once
+more to scout along her outposts.
+
+"That hat you wore, you remember, day before yesterday?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I told you how I followed it."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"My heart ran after you like a newsboy calling to you. But you didn't
+hear."
+
+"I'm so sorry!"
+
+"All of a sudden you spoke to your driver, and he put on full speed up
+the Avenue, as if you were in a great hurry. I had a funny idea that you
+might be making haste to meet some man."
+
+"Let me see! Yes, I was. I was hurrying home to meet Willie. He is
+always furious when I am late."
+
+This time the name of Enslee was like a blow in the face. It dazed
+Forbes with a confirmation of his worst fears. He did not realize that
+he thought aloud:
+
+"I guessed right! I knew it was a man, and I was jealous."
+
+Persis stared up at him. She smiled incredulously.
+
+"You were jealous? But you hadn't even seen me."
+
+"No, but I wanted to see you. I felt you in the air. And I was jealous."
+
+His eyes were laughing into her laughing eyes. But both of them were a
+trifle solemn at heart. Forbes determined to learn how her affairs stood
+with Enslee. He could never have found the temerity to demand the
+information if the music had not flared with such dare-deviltry.
+
+"Would you mind if I asked you one very personal question?" he said.
+
+"Not if you'll look the other way when I answer it."
+
+"Are you engaged to Willie Enslee?"
+
+The question was so unexpected and so forthright that it almost
+staggered her. She flashed one look up into his earnest eyes and
+laughed; but it was a cold laugh.
+
+"You are the most amazing piece of impudence I ever met."
+
+"You haven't answered."
+
+"What difference could it make to you?"
+
+"All the difference in the world. It is a matter of the utmost
+importance to me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because if you are not--" The music was the most inconsequential jig,
+and their feet were frolic, but his voice was solemn as a prayer. "If
+you are not, I want to--to tell you that you have--you are--that--well,
+my heart is at your feet."
+
+"Watch out, then, for I can't see my feet, and my heels are sharp."
+
+"Won't you be serious?"
+
+"You are the frivolous one. You've only just met me; you don't know
+anything about me, nor I about you, yet you talk this talk."
+
+"I've known you long enough to know that you are--"
+
+"Oh no, you haven't. You've only seen me with my party manners on."
+
+"But you--you--oh, I can't talk to this music. Will you sit down a
+moment somewhere?"
+
+"No, indeed. I came here to dance, and I wish you would stick to your
+knitting."
+
+"You haven't answered my question. Are you engaged to that man?"
+
+"Oh, so he is 'that man' already?"
+
+"Are you going to marry him?"
+
+"I'm no prophet, Mr. Forbes."
+
+The medley broke into the ribald tune of a popular song: a woman's
+celebration of the generosity of her keeper whom she called "Daddy," and
+who always brought her gifts. The refrain was a disgustingly
+irresistible hilarity: "Here comes my Daddy now, Pop, oh, Pop, oh Pop!"
+Half the dancers shouted the refrain as they whirled.
+
+Forbes' heart selected from the sordid lyric only its rejoicing. He
+selected from Persis' words only the hope they negatively implied. He
+began to dance in a frenzy, locking knee to knee, whipping her off her
+feet, and clenching her sweet body so close to him that she gasped:
+
+"I have to breathe, you know."
+
+"Forgive me," he murmured into the curls about her ear. "But you're a
+wonderful thing!"
+
+"Am I?" she laughed, but with a sort of patient indifference.
+
+"I'm mad about you."
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"I wish I dared to tell you that I love you."
+
+"I hope you won't."
+
+"Men are always telling you that?"
+
+"No--not always--once or twice." She was so far away, though in his
+arms, that her voice seemed to come to him across a long wire.
+
+"Did you love any of them?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"There's nothing I'm surer of than that."
+
+"Does that mean that you are not engaged to Mr. Enslee?"
+
+She laughed again.
+
+"Not necessarily."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Forgiveness and garters lose their snap when they are stretched too
+often. Once before Forbes had apologized to Persis for an excess of
+enthusiasm, and her forgiveness had brought back her cordiality with
+perfect elasticity. The second time there had been a slight sag.
+
+The boundary between the impertinence of a cad and the privilege of a
+suitor is vague and wavering. The act that is accepted as a
+manifestation of devotion, a pretty caress, from the accepted lover
+becomes a liberty from the libertine. In his ardor Forbes had
+overstepped the dead-line.
+
+There was no especial reason why the pressure of foot upon foot should
+be a less poetic tribute than a lingering clasp of the hands. But
+thinking makes it so, and when Forbes put his best foot forward, Persis
+resented it as a familiarity, an affront. It meant in her eyes that he
+held her cheap and easy. It was like her to be less angry with him than
+with herself. She reasoned that if a man she had just met could so
+speedily rate her so low, there must be some appalling fault in her
+manner. Her self-confidence was shaken.
+
+But just as she had set Forbes in the category of men with whom a woman
+must be on her guard, he spoke of being jealous of her, and his very
+eyes and the flush on his cheeks shouted that he meant it.
+
+There is, perhaps, no other tribute a woman prizes so highly as
+jealousy. Other tokens of esteem may be silver, gilt, or plated ware,
+but jealousy is the hallmark of sincerity; jealousy is at least eighteen
+karats fine.
+
+The moment Forbes said he had been jealous, and by his eager questions,
+by their very insistent impertinence, indeed, proved that he was now
+jealous, he became important to Persis. The fervor of his previous
+actions was almost justified. Even the intrusion upon her foot was a
+different act.
+
+Women usually think that love excuses almost everything, and sanctifies
+what were else ridiculous or disgusting. They absolve the sinner who can
+plead, "I was in love," more easily than the self-righteous abstainer.
+
+Besides, there was something uncanny to Persis in Forbes' statement that
+he had followed her up the Avenue, and had felt a jealousy of her haste;
+because that had been a momentous day altogether.
+
+She had begun it by a shopping raid. She had run across a flock of new
+hats, curious oddities from Paris, perched like strange birds alighted
+in a window. They pulled down so far on one side that they blinded one
+eye of the wearer, and they thrust out so far to the rear and the side
+that they blinded the passer-by.
+
+As she was trying one of them on, she turned her head to speak to the
+rhapsodical manager. She swept the face of the saleswoman till she
+sneezed; and when Persis turned to apologize to the saleswoman, the
+manager found himself inhaling exotic goura. It was fascinating. She
+simply must have some of these hats.
+
+But there had been a very polite note with her last bill, a timid plea
+that she pay a trifle on the venerable debt. She hardly dared increase
+the sum instead of diminishing it. She decided to ask her father's help.
+The price was beyond her own private bank-account, which was usually
+chaotically overdrawn, and which the bank carried along with an amused
+patience, because her father was one of its oldest customers.
+
+Determined to have those hats that day or die, Persis had ridden all the
+way to her father's office in Broad Street to ask him to buy them. She
+had found him in great distress. Before she could explain her errand,
+he had said, with a smile that was pitifully brave:
+
+"I needn't ask what evil motive brings you down here. It was just to
+tell your old father how much you love him."
+
+"Yes, of course; you know how I worship you." She sat on the arm of his
+chair with a smile as alluring as a mining-stock prospectus. "Also, I
+thought you'd like to know that I've struck the most wonderful hats ever
+imported. They're marked down to almost nothing, and they're really an
+amazing bargain--especially when you deduct the cost of an ocean voyage,
+for I couldn't equal them this side of Paris."
+
+He shook his head with a helpless finality that gave her pause. This
+terrified her. He had refused her something! She knew that the only
+things that would prevent him from giving her money were absence of
+funds and inability to borrow them. He explained, tenderly:
+
+"I'm in a lot of trouble, honey. I've got to shift some of my loans to
+other banks, and I've got to borrow a lot more somewhere. And I don't
+know where. I'm sorry to tell you, but you'd better know."
+
+She soothed him with loving terror. She told him how little she really
+cared for the hats; she wanted them only because everybody else had
+them. The hat she had on would do for a while. It had been so far in
+advance when she bought it that it was quite good style now--not the
+very latest, of course, but still good enough since he was feeling poor.
+
+He told her that she need not worry; everything would come out all
+right. He was just a little pinched for the moment. But he kissed her
+very devoutly, and sighed and told her how beautiful she was and how
+dear to him.
+
+She returned to her car, and ordered the driver home. It was a long
+journey up the canon of Broadway, a plank road for miles, since a subway
+was burrowing underneath. She had ample time to figure out just what it
+meant to her to be poor. They had been pinched before. Her father was
+the fourth generation of wealth, and the inheritance of financial genius
+was wearing out in the family.
+
+Cold flashes of fright ran through Persis as the car rumbled and
+swerved. Then she remembered that Willie Enslee was to call upon her
+that afternoon. He had said that he had something very important to say,
+and she had laughed inly, knowing just what he meant. He was so
+ridiculous in his love. But now she thought of him as a salvation. She
+resolved to be sensible and cut the silly romance out of her hopes. She
+could save her father, and have all the hats in the world. She must not
+keep Willie waiting. He might not wait. It was in this mood that Forbes
+had first seen her and her old hat from the bus.
+
+At home she had found Willie. As she walked into the drawing-room he was
+pacing up and down rehearsing his proposal in whispers. He went into a
+blue funk at the sight of her, and she had the greatest difficulty in
+coaxing him to propose. Then she accepted him with proper surprise.
+
+Willie had brought the ring--a wonderful composition by Rene Lalique.
+Fashion had changed enough to permit an engagement ring to be something
+besides a solitaire diamond. This poem in gold had cost him more than
+Forbes' salary for two years. Persis had worn it when she met Forbes
+that same night at the theater. She had worn it when she taught him to
+turkey-trot. It was the edge of that ring that had cut her finger till
+it bled under the fierce grip of Forbes' hand at the performance of
+"Tristan and Isolde."
+
+Thoughts like this danced through Persis' mind now, while her body
+danced in Forbes' arms. And Forbes was talking of his jealousy!
+
+Forbes was different from Willie in so many ways. He could be loved. She
+did not love him now. But he was of the type that women love. She
+wondered, rather helplessly, if she were going to love him. She
+certainly could never love Willie, and no woman wants to die without
+loving somebody.
+
+She would not be indiscreet, of course, or disloyal in any important
+way. But--After all, she might not marry Willie. She might marry Mr.
+Forbes. All things were possible. Why not this? He would be a husband
+worth having--a soldier, a gentleman, a lover, distinguished--nobody
+would laugh if she went up the aisle with him.
+
+Luckily Forbes had money. He was surely not so rich as Willie. But then
+Persis was not mercenary. She wanted only a reasonable amount--just
+enough to keep up with the procession, have a fresh hat now and then,
+and some gowns and a contemporary car, and a place in town and a place
+out of town, and enough to go abroad on every summer, and South every
+winter, and a few things like that. Surely Mr. Forbes must have enough
+money for such a simple household.
+
+Of course, she would not marry him, and it might be dangerous to play
+with fire; but it would be pitiful never to go near the fire. Worse, it
+would be pusillanimous. Now that she had accepted Willie, it was certain
+that she was not to have love in her life unless she took it outside.
+
+Not all of this Cubist chaos of meditation went on during the brief
+remainder of the dance. But it began there, and it was small wonder if
+the logic had a little rag-time in it; as for instance:
+
+Since Persis and Willie had agreed not to announce their engagement just
+yet, this justified lying to a lot of people; for one surely had a right
+to evade a question that nobody had a right to ask. Of course, if Forbes
+were really in love with Persis he had a right to ask. But if she told
+him, then he would stop loving her; at least he would stop seeing her.
+She knew the man. And she didn't want him to stop seeing her. He was
+really very nice!
+
+He was a box of matches. She would not strike a light. Or perhaps she
+might strike one; but she would let it burn only a moment, and then blow
+it out and not light another. Besides, she was not an official fiancee
+till it was announced. And Mr. Forbes danced so wonderfully--oh, Lord,
+it was a sad world. Yet it was very comfortable, dancing in this man's
+arms.
+
+Meanwhile he was pounding at the door of her heart again:
+
+"Are you going to ride in Central Park to-morrow--this morning?" he
+said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Rain or shine?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"May I ride there, too?"
+
+"It's not my park."
+
+"That's not very encouraging."
+
+"Isn't it? Well, haven't you been a trifle discouraging yourself?"
+
+"I'm terribly sorry," he pleaded; and she surprised him by sighing:
+
+"I'm rather glad."
+
+"Glad? Why?"
+
+"Because I had come dangerously near to feeling that you
+were--different."
+
+"I am," he cried, stung by the deep significance of her light regret.
+"Please let me prove it. Please let me ride with you in the park?"
+
+"I'll be with my father, you know," she answered, with a trace of
+relentment. "It's my only chance to visit with the poor old boy. You'd
+better not."
+
+"But some day you will ride with me?"
+
+"Maybe."
+
+"To-morrow may I stand on the bridge and watch you go by?"
+
+"The park is open to the public at all hours."
+
+"Would you mind if I got a horse and rode by and said 'Good morning!'"
+
+"Fine. Come along. I'll introduce you to my father."
+
+"I'll be there!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Persis had not misjudged Forbes. If she had told him then that she was
+another man's betrothed, he would have changed his whole attitude toward
+her. He would have flirted with her no more. He would have ceased to
+regard her with ambition or desire. She would have become again only
+another piece of jewelry in a shop-window--beautiful, but not for him;
+beautiful, but already bespoken. He was not of the covetous and
+burglarious type that always wants other people's property.
+
+Equally, the romance would have ended before it began if Forbes had told
+Persis that he was not rich, as Ten Eyck had carelessly assumed.
+
+Persis might have liked him and admired him and been great friends with
+him; but she would not have admitted him to the anteroom that all hearts
+have where those eligible to the inner soul are first admitted to wait
+their time.
+
+Persis did not make a test of money any more than the rest of her set
+did. Many enormously wealthy strugglers were wasting coin and labor in a
+vain effort to bribe a smile from these really unimportant persons. Many
+poor artists, actors, authors, town wits, were welcomed to their boon
+companionship. These latter paid their way by bringing along their charm
+or notoriety as their contribution to the picnic. But they rarely
+married into the set.
+
+In spite of all the talk of snobbery and wealth-worship, it is really
+very simple. People are people, and classes are merely clubs where more
+or less congenial neighbors coagulate, more or less haphazard. Those
+that cannot pay the dues drop into other clubs. Even labor-unions are
+run in that way.
+
+And in classes as well as in clubs two kinds of persons are most
+offensive: those who try to force their way in unsolicited, and those
+who do not keep up their end of the expenses. The social struggler and
+the man who never stands treat when it comes his turn are welcome
+nowhere, from the slums up.
+
+Some such thought as this came by coincidence into Forbes' mind. He
+realized suddenly that he was accepting a deal of hospitality and
+repaying none. He knew that he could do nothing to dazzle these people,
+but he could not endure to take their favors as charities or tips. He
+was wondering vaguely just what he could do when the problem was solved
+for him.
+
+He was resolved not to relinquish what he had gained in Persis' esteem.
+He would cling to her, keep at her heels, till the chance came to prove
+how dear he held her.
+
+He had dropped the question of her betrothal to Enslee, sure that it was
+a paradox. Now he realized that he had no further promise of meeting
+Persis except on horseback and with her father alongside. He put forth
+an antenna.
+
+"Am I ever going to see you again?"
+
+"I shouldn't be at all surprised," she answered, blowing neither cold
+nor hot.
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"Maybe."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Oh, I'll probably be dancing at some tea-place or other, as usual."
+
+"Don't you ever stop dancing?"
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"Could I see you one of those times?"
+
+"Why, yes, of course."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Oh, almost any time."
+
+"Any time is no time."
+
+"I haven't my engagement-book here. I can't remember."
+
+He was hoping that she would ask him to call, but she failed to take the
+hook. He surprised himself by saying with an abrupt rashness:
+
+"Will you take lunch with me to-morrow?"
+
+He had a vision of a charming little hour alone with her in the solitude
+made by a crowd. She missed the point, and asked:
+
+"Do you mean all of us?"
+
+"I suppose I do. I reckon I wouldn't dare ask you alone."
+
+"I reckon you betta hadn't," she said, mocking his accent as best she
+could.
+
+"When will you-all come?"
+
+"Oh, it would be right smart of a job to get us-all together at the same
+time."
+
+He smiled at her burlesque, but persisted:
+
+"How would you like to--to give the party and order the fodder? I'm just
+back from the Philippines, you know. I could get up a mess for my
+company, but I'm afraid I couldn't feed you people to your liking."
+
+"Oh, nobody eats anything any more, or drinks much of anything."
+
+"All the more reason for having what you do have right. Won't you order
+it for me, and tell me where to have it?"
+
+She was tempted to seize the chance. It was a delight to her to compose
+a meal. It was a kind of millinery or dressmaking in its art of
+arrangement. She checked herself on the brink of acceptance, realizing
+that it would set people to talking if she conducted Forbes'
+entertainments for him. Even Willie, who was neither very observing nor
+very jealous, would raise a row at that.
+
+"I'll tell you," she said. "Ask Mrs. Neff to be the hostess. You're
+under some obligations to her, and none to me."
+
+"May I ask her to order the luncheon, too?" said Forbes, with dwindled
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Oh no; you must do that!"
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know what to have."
+
+"It's the simplest thing in the world. Just go to the Ritz-Carlton and
+ask for Fernand. Tell him I'm coming, and I said for him to take good
+care of you--of us. And now let's see who can come."
+
+She strolled about with him while he made his invitations. Everybody had
+engagements of various sorts, but they were brittle. Mrs. Neff was
+flattered immeasurably, and asked if she could bring Alice along. She
+was afraid to leave her lest she connive with Stowe Webb at some
+escapade. Bob Fielding could not come so far up-town from his office,
+and Winifred could be present only if she were permitted to be late.
+
+"I'm not allowed to eat anything, anyway," she moaned, "except a little
+dried toast and some lemon-juice; and the waiters treat me like a dog.
+But I'll be there if you'll protect me."
+
+Ten Eyck had planned to run down to Piping Rock, but he would not desert
+Forbes in his hour of peril. Willie had an important engagement with one
+of the executors of his father's estate, but he quickly shifted it when
+he found that Persis was to be present. This made seven all told, four
+women and three men.
+
+"I could get more if you want," said Persis; "but seven is lucky, and
+more is no fun."
+
+"Seven is just right," said Forbes, with a little premonitory chill at
+the thought of the probable cost.
+
+It was finally agreed that they were to lunch late, take a little spin
+round town, and then turkey-trot again in the afternoon.
+
+Forbes was amazed at himself. Now he was to play the host, and Persis
+was to be at his elbow! Or should he put her opposite him, as if she
+were his wife? What a decoration she would be at a man's home table!
+
+The word "home" took a new timbre in his soul. Hitherto home had meant
+the tall, white columns and broad lawns where his mother lived. Now it
+began to mean almost any place--soldiers' quarters, hotel--any place
+where Persis would rest awhile. Even the humming-bird has a nest to go
+to when its wings are tired. Some day Persis must nest, too. Her wings
+could not beat on forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+There had come to be more and more room on the floor as the crowd
+dispersed slowly. Many of the young owls were by daylight bank-clerks
+and office assistants, learning their father's trades of money. They
+were remembering that they must be up betimes in the morning. They had
+been campaigning all winter on short rations of sleep. If they made up
+lost slumber anywhere, it was at their desks, to which nothing but a
+spanking cold bath could have roused them day after day.
+
+They were glad now when their demoiselles confessed to fatigue, too, or
+the mothers began to mention the hour.
+
+Even Mrs. Neff was a trifle groggy. The poor old soul was trying hard to
+keep from confessing how tired and sleepy she was. She kept herself
+young by pretending to be young, and her motto was, "A woman is just as
+old as she says she is." Though, for the matter of that, if her
+statement of her age had been correct, her eldest son must have been
+born before she was; and Alice would have come along when her mother was
+about eight years old.
+
+Persis was growing drowsy-eyed, too, and heavy-limbed, with an almost
+voluptuous longing for sleep. She drooped like a flower at sunset. She
+ceased to smuggle her yawns as sighs, and once or twice she forgot to
+lift her hand to hide them.
+
+Forbes was so infatuated that he admired even her yawns. He wanted to
+whisper over her round shoulder, "How pretty you are when you are a
+sleepy-head!" But he had been lessoned enough for one evening.
+
+At last, however, she gave up the effort to go on dancing forever. She
+inquired for Willie. He was not to be seen. Ten Eyck went exploring, and
+found him in retirement clutching a big highball glass with his little
+raccoon-like fingers, and blinking his little raccoon-like eyes. He was
+of a surly trend in his cups, but Ten Eyck was angelically patient as he
+lugged him to the coat-room. Forbes was horrified at the thought of
+Persis under such escort; but she seemed to ignore Willie's temper, and
+Forbes dared not intervene.
+
+However, as they were all waiting on the curb in the fresh auroral air,
+while the starter whistled up their cars, he ventured a chance to murmur
+to Persis:
+
+"I beg you to go home and sleep till noon. Please don't try to get up
+and ride in the morning."
+
+"I must," she answered. "It's the one duty I do."
+
+But the note of protecting solicitude in his voice had touched her. She
+turned softer eyes upon him and smiled.
+
+"We'll dance some more to-morrow afternoon. Till then, _au revoir_."
+
+"But I am to _revoir_ you in the park in a few hours?"
+
+"So you say."
+
+"Also at luncheon?"
+
+"Oh yes, of course."
+
+"Persis, are you never c-coming?" Willie Enslee hiccoughed.
+
+"Yes, pet," she laughed, ironically, and nodded again to Forbes. Forbes
+winced at the endearment she gave Enslee, even though he felt it to be
+sarcastic. He winced again as Enslee took her white elbow in his white
+glove and made a fumbling effort to help her in. The white fleece she
+was vanished into his dark car like a moon slipping into clouds.
+
+Ten Eyck boosted Willie in and clambered after him "as a chaperon."
+
+Bob Fielding and Winifred tested the capacity of a taxicab, and Forbes
+stood ready to escort Mrs. Neff home in her own car; but she shook her
+head as she gaped:
+
+"Nonsense! I'll not be so cruel. You've done enough for me. You go on
+back to your hotel and get to bed. But first wait--oh wait--have you a
+box of matches you can give me? Thanks! You've saved my life. Good
+night."
+
+Forbes paused to say: "Does the chauffeur know you want to go home?"
+
+"I should hope so, at this hour!"
+
+Forbes closed the door with an apology and set out to walk to his hotel.
+It was only a few blocks away, but it seemed a hundred miles. And he
+yawned so ferociously that he feared for the buildings. He found the
+scrubwomen agonizing again on their knees across the lobby floor. He was
+too drowsy to feel sorry for them, or to remember to leave a call for
+six o'clock at the desk, as he had planned.
+
+He plucked off his clothes in a stupor, and slid straight into the abyss
+of sleep as he shoved his dance-weary toes down into the sheets. At five
+the imaginary reveille woke him for a moment. He simply came up to
+consciousness like a diver gulping a breath, and was underneath again at
+once. He dreamed that he was riding in the park and, catching sight of a
+saddle-horse in a tantrum, galloped forward to find that Persis was the
+rider. She was having a desperate battle with the frothing beast and was
+about to be thrown off. But Forbes, outstripping two or three mounted
+policemen, swept alongside and caught her from her saddle to his pommel.
+Her father, whose own horse was plunging, was so grateful that he
+presented Forbes with Persis' hand. A mounted clergyman chanced to be
+cantering by, and he was recruited to perform the ceremony, with the
+mounted policemen as bridesmaid and best man. By one of those splendid
+coincidences in which dreams are so fertile, a thicket of trees proved
+to be a pipe-organ, and began to blare a popular tune of Mr.
+Mendelssohn's. The noise woke Forbes, and to his unspeakable
+disappointment he found himself in a bachelor bed at a hotel, with Times
+Square furnishing a roaring offertory.
+
+Automatically he reached for his watch, wondering if he could not have a
+little further nap to get back into that dream without delay.
+
+But the dial blandly informed him that it wanted a few minutes to noon.
+Horror shocked him wide awake.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+He leaped from his hateful couch, swearing at himself like an army
+teamster. He stumbled to the telephone and curtly demanded the exact
+time, hoping to prove his watch a liar. Back from space came the reply:
+"K'reck time is 'le'm fifty-eight."
+
+His "Thanks!" had almost the effect of an oath. He slammed the innocent
+receiver on the hook and stood staring at the bare feet protruding from
+his indolent pajamas, where there should have been puttees and spurs and
+smartly flaring riding-breeches. He was doubly indignant with himself
+because he had counted upon that morning galopade. He rode like a
+centaur, though with the military and not the park seat, and he had
+expected his horsemanship to commend him to Persis.
+
+He wondered what he should do. He reversed Sancho Panza and cursed the
+man that invented sleep. He formed a wild project to fling into his
+things, leap to horse, and hunt the park through. But he had not yet
+bespoken the horse, and he knew that Persis must have finished her ride
+hours ago, doffed her boyish togs, cold-showered her glowing body, and
+put on whatever finery her engagements required. She had probably spent
+the irretrievable hours at a committee meeting of some society for
+rescuing working-girls from work. And her father had probably earned or
+lost a million while Forbes lay annulled in a coma of stupidity.
+
+How should he apologize? He could not wait till he saw her. The offense
+must be erased before it set. He must call her up instantly. He
+ransacked the dangling telephone-tome. Her father's office was
+mentioned, but not his residence. Yet he must have a residence, and it
+must have a telephone.
+
+Forbes banged the hook and demanded "Information," and when that
+mysterious dame answered from her airy throne he besought her to give
+him at once the number.
+
+Information answered with a lilt as if the name of Persis were one of
+importance:
+
+"I think it's a private wire; I'll see."
+
+While Forbes waited he was interrupted, incessantly cut off, restored to
+the wrong number, helplessly forced into other people's personal chats,
+and left dangling in empty space. When at length he retrieved
+Information, she told him:
+
+"Jus' z'I thought, 's a priva twire."
+
+"Of course it's a private wire!" Forbes thundered. "I don't want to have
+a public conversation. What's the number?"
+
+"'S 'gainst comp'ny rules to give numbers listed as private. Sorry."
+
+"But this is a matter of life and death."
+
+There was an almost audible sigh, as if she had heard that before.
+
+"Sorry, but under no soic'mstances are we p'mitted to give numbers of
+parties listed private."
+
+He insisted, pleaded, threatened; but she answered with implacable
+politeness. "Sorry, but--"
+
+At length he screwed his courage to the point of calling up the office
+of her father. Here he learned only that Mr. Cabot had left the office,
+and it was contrary to orders to give his house number.
+
+After beating his head and hands vainly for a long time against those
+walls that New-Yorkers have to build about themselves if they are ever
+to know seclusion, Forbes remembered Ten Eyck and called up his house.
+He was not at home, and his whereabouts were unknown.
+
+A deferential, yet stately voice with the indescribable tone of a butler
+or a valet advised "Mr. Forbes, ah, yes," to try various clubs; "The
+Racquet or the Brook, possibly," or "I believe I heard him say" (the two
+h's were hazy) "that he was to be at the Metropolitan at one. If you
+could call him then, sir, I'm quite sure you'd--Not at all! Very good,
+sir."
+
+Ten Eyck could give him Persis' occult number; then he could send a note
+and some flowers to plead for him and appease her wrath before they met
+at the luncheon. When they met no time must be wasted in more apologies.
+
+But Ten Eyck was not to be found anywhere. Forbes gave up. He telephoned
+for "coffee and rolls and a morning paper in a powerful hurry," and
+stormed into his bathroom. When he came out as sparsely dressed as most
+of the gentlemen are in the advertising pages of the magazines, he found
+his breakfast on a little half-table mysteriously apported.
+
+While he danced into his trousers his eyes were caught by head-lines on
+the paper folded at his plate:
+
+"Mayor puts Lid on _Thes Dansants_."
+
+Forbes seized the paper, flung himself into a chair, and read with
+violence the dire news that the same mayor who had ordered people to
+quit dancing at one now ordered them not to begin dancing before dinner.
+He grew hot with rage, while his coffee cooled and his rolls brittled.
+He had found the dancing-tea a delightful institution, a joyous
+democracy. But, according to the scathing indictment of the mayor and
+the adroit wording of the reporters, the tea-dance was a home-wrecking,
+youth-defiling abomination, only the more dreadful because it wrought
+its hellish purposes in the broad daylight.
+
+According to the newspaper account of a typical dancing-tea, it was
+apparent that Forbes had failed to grasp the depravity of the crowd he
+had been dancing with; it seemed that the women were all fat fiends
+pursuing immature school-girls, and the men all evil-eyed brokers whose
+corpulence alone was proof enough of their wickedness.
+
+Forbes stared aghast at a wholesale condemnation that must include Mrs.
+Neff, Persis, Winifred, Alice, and the respectable rest. He had not yet
+learned that certain journalists are mere newsboys always beating out of
+their dreadnaught typewriters cries of "Extra! Extra! All about the
+turrible moider!"
+
+Forbes was dumfounded to learn that the modern Babylon plus Nineveh, New
+York, could be sent to bed at one o'clock and forbidden to dance by
+daylight. Ordinarily nothing on earth would have mattered less to Forbes
+than the fate of tea-dances. But this ukase drove him further than ever
+from his Persis.
+
+The curious mania for public dancing had enabled him, though come to
+town a stranger, to join immediately in festival relations with people
+to whose homes he would normally have been months in penetrating. The
+mayor's edict revoked this democracy, and he was once more a stranger in
+the city. He must meet his new-found friends formally and at long
+intervals, if at all. He thanked his stars that he had arranged to give
+the luncheon in time. He must set about ordering it at once, and he must
+see to it that there was no flaw in its perfection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+On his way to the Ritz-Carlton, Forbes stopped at his bank to draw some
+money. He decided that he would better take along a hundred dollars. It
+would look impressive when he paid the waiter. He realized that it would
+drag his bank-account below the acceptable minimum. But he set his teeth
+and determined to do the thing right if he bankrupted the government. He
+would probably need most of the rest of the hundred before the week was
+out. He could begin to save again when he was in his uniform again.
+
+He drew the money, strolled to the hotel, asked for Fernand, and found
+him at a glass screen in a superb room that ran from street to street. A
+multitude of red chairs populated the floor, and the medallioned white
+ceiling was a huge ellipse that looked as big as the earth's orbit.
+
+Fernand was cautiously gracious till he learned that Miss Cabot had sent
+Forbes to him; then he became quite paternal. Forbes slipped him a
+ten-dollar bill, and he listened almost tenderly as Forbes explained:
+
+"I want to give a little luncheon--nothing elaborate, but--well,
+something rather nice, you know."
+
+"Perfectly, M'sieur. And how many will there be?"
+
+Fernand spoke English glibly, with hardly more accent than a sweetish
+thickness.
+
+"We are seven," said Forbes.
+
+"Very good, sir. Will you select what you wish, or--"
+
+He handed Forbes the card of the day. Forbes looked at the French. He
+could read military memoirs and strategical works in French, but he was
+floored by the technical food-terms. A glimpse at the prices unnerved
+him further; but he asked: "What would you suggest--I'm just home from
+Asia. I feel a little out of it."
+
+"If Monsieur would permit me," said Fernand, with the eagerness of a
+benevolent conspirator, an artist with a mission, "I will arrange it and
+give you a pleasant surprise or two."
+
+Forbes swallowed a small lump of embarrassment, and was careful to ask
+carelessly:
+
+"About how much would it be?"
+
+He wanted to forestall at least one surprise.
+
+"Oh, not a great deal," Fernand smiled, with the bedside manner of a
+family doctor. "Miss Cabot hates heavy food. Zhoost a little cocktel,
+and some _caviar d'Astrakhan_ to begin; and perhaps a little broth; ah,
+better! she likes _puree St.-Germain_. And after, a little berd and some
+salade, a sweet, perhaps, or a cheese, some coffee--nothing more! Very
+simple is best."
+
+This sounded so sane that Forbes began to pluck up hope. He asked:
+
+"Does she--do they--will you give us wine of any kind?"
+
+"Miss Cabot does not care for champagne; and Mr. Enslee--did you say he
+would be of the party?"
+
+Forbes had not said it, and he flushed to think that everybody, even a
+head waiter, must be linking Persis' name with Enslee's. But more than
+ever now he must make sure not to give a shabby meal. Meanwhile he
+answered the question with a casual nod:
+
+"Yes, Mr. Enslee will be here."
+
+Fernand spoke with indulgent pity: "Mr. Enslee takes usually only a
+highball of the Scotch. But I think you could tempt them both with a
+little sherry--for the sake of the berd. I have a sherry that is
+delicious."
+
+"How much delicious?" Forbes asked, trying to be flippant at his own
+funeral.
+
+"Eight dollars the bottle. But very fine! They would all like it very
+much."
+
+At the mention of a concrete price Forbes grew uneasy, and asked
+outright: "Could you tell me how much--about how much this luncheon is
+going to cost me?"
+
+Forbes felt ashamed of discussing prices, though many a richer man,
+especially Enslee, would have fought all along the line and delivered an
+oration on the extortions of restaurateurs. But Fernand began to
+compute:
+
+"Let me see; seven cocktels at twenty-five is one-seventy-five. Caviar
+would be one-twenty-five per person; for seven would be
+eight-seventy-five. The _puree St.-Germain_ we shall make it
+special--say, about five dollars. I should recommend the _poulet de
+grain aux cepes_; it is two-fifty per person. You do not really need any
+_legumes_, except the asparagus. Oh, this morning what asparagus! I saw
+it! Asparagus, yes?" Forbes nodded desperately. "That will be seven
+dollars more; but then you will not wish _salade_--no, you will not wish
+_salade_, though the endive is--no, we will not have endive. For the
+sweet would you wish special favors? No, it is too much; the Nesselrode
+pudding is nice. Miss Cabot adores the marrons--good! We might serve
+cheese, though it is too much. But we will have it ready. Then the
+coffee is special, and a liqueur, perhaps--yes? Miss Cabot likes the
+white mint. There will be some cigars for the gentlemen, of course--and
+the ladies will take their cigarettes with their coffee down the steps
+here, I presume. Now, let me see." He mumbled his addition a moment,
+then broke the news. "That makes--about fifty-four-seventy-five. Yes--ah
+no! we have not added the sherry--one bottle, perhaps two. So you see,
+Monsieur, it will come only to sixty--sixty-five dollars--roughly."
+
+Forbes thought the word "roughly" appropriate. In his soul there was a
+sound like the last sough of water in an emptying bathtub. He added
+mentally the ten dollars he had given Fernand, and the ten dollars he
+must give the waiter. He wondered if he looked as sick as he felt; as
+sick as his hundred dollars would look. He had cherished a mad fancy for
+inviting everybody to dinner, the theater, and a tango supper. If his
+modest luncheon put him where it did, he wondered where such an evening
+would have left him. From this point of view he was escaping cheaply.
+Anyway, he had crossed the Rubicon. He was too poor to be able to afford
+to skimp. If he had been an Enslee Estate, he could have offered his
+guests toast and distilled water without being suspected of poverty.
+
+And once committed to the course he had chosen, he would have beggared
+his family rather than stint his hospitality. He was a gentleman; a
+fool, perhaps, but a gentleman.
+
+He gave Fernand the order to go ahead. Fernand was upset by the brevity
+of the time allotted him, but promised to do his best. Forbes cast his
+eye about for a good table. Fernand put up his hand:
+
+"Miss Cabot has her favorite table. You shall have that, also her
+captain and her waiter."
+
+Forbes remembered Persis' warning.
+
+"But this luncheon is really in honor of Mrs. Neff," he said.
+
+"Ah, in that case you will want her table. She prefers the opposite
+side, nearer the band."
+
+Forbes, having a little while to kill, set out for a stroll round the
+block. It came to him suddenly that the precious hundred dollars he had
+drawn to make a good show would evaporate and leave almost nothing. He
+went to his bank and wrote a check for fifty dollars more. As he stood
+waiting at the paying-teller's grill he felt as if he were a forger
+taking money he had no right to. But the teller expressed no surprise.
+When Forbes returned to the Ritz-Carlton he found his guests already
+gathering in the lounge. Willie Enslee came in late and surly. He
+explained that his man had had the impudence to fall ill, and had left
+him to dress himself.
+
+They had their cocktails, and then Forbes led his little flock up to the
+rich pasture. He had to beg pardon through a knot of people pleading
+vainly for tables in the circle. They were being turned off into the
+side rooms of mediocrity.
+
+It gave Forbes a feeling of elation to be greeted with homage by name
+and led at once to his table. It made a brave showing with silver,
+glass, and napery already disposed, and a great bouquet of fresh lilacs
+in the center.
+
+Fernand whispered to Forbes that he had taken the liberty of changing
+the bill of fare somewhat. The result was a surprise to those spoiled
+palates, and Forbes' guests were like children in their expressions of
+delight. Forbes was voted a gourmet, but he gave the credit to the
+hovering Fernand. He was honest enough still for that, though he had not
+the courage to admit how deep a gouge the luncheon made in his savings.
+
+Still, he felt as he surveyed his triumph that wealth was a noble thing.
+If only he could give such artistic banquets every day! If only he could
+frequent such places and hold up his end among all these brilliant
+crowds! So many, many people had so much money. Thousands of them were
+banqueting here and in other restaurants, encouraging all the arts from
+architecture to salad-dressing. Why should he be denied the status of
+his tastes?
+
+He attempted to grovel before Persis in apology for oversleeping. But
+she refused to take the offense seriously, and she congratulated him for
+having the courage and the honesty to confess the real excuse for
+absence. He told her that he was sure, from her alert and lustrous eye,
+that she too had overslept, but she vowed she had not, and he wondered
+again that such delicate beauty should be conjoined to such unfailing
+strength.
+
+Save when it was interrupted by exclamations of applause for the choice
+of the dishes, or childish yum-yums for the exquisiteness of their
+preparation, the talk was all about the mayor's order closing the _thes
+dansants_.
+
+"They call this a free country," Mrs. Neff grumbled, "and yet they tell
+us we may not dance with our tea!"
+
+"A good thing, too!" said Enslee. "It was time somebody stepped in
+before the whole country went absolutely nutty over this dance business.
+A little more and they'd have had the waiters trotting in with soup."
+
+"But what are we to do with our afternoons?" Winifred sighed.
+
+"What did you do before?" said Willie.
+
+"I don't know; but I'm sure it was stupid."
+
+Ten Eyck, the consoler, came to the rescue. "Sigh no more, ladies!
+There'll be turkey-trotting in this old town when we're all trotted out
+to Woodlawn. Forbesy, were you ever in Yellowstone Park?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you see the Old Faithful geyser geyse?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Remember how she would lie quiet as a tub for an hour, and then blow
+off her head and explode a stream of water to the clouds, make an awful
+fuss for a few minutes, and then drop off to sleep again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, that's reform in New York or any big town. There's wild
+excitement now; there'll be editorials and sermons and police raids and
+license-revoking for a few days. Then everything will quiet down, and in
+a week all the old dancing-stands will be running away as before."
+
+Willie changed the subject with his usual abruptness. All this time he
+had been revealing an unexpected enthusiasm for the little purple forest
+of lilacs in the centerpiece. He kept pulling the nearest sprays to him
+and breathing their incense in.
+
+"Do you know I simply adore lilacs," he smiled. "Up at my country place
+they must be glorious. My gardener writes me they have never been so
+good as this year. I wish I could see them."
+
+Nobody paid much heed to his emotions until, a little later, he broke
+out suddenly:
+
+"By Jove, I believe I'll take a run up in the country and see my lilacs
+and spend a night in real air."
+
+"That's a fine idea," said Winifred; "we'll all go along."
+
+"Oh no, you won't," said Willie. "The place isn't open yet. Nobody there
+but the gardener and his helpers."
+
+This checked Winifred only for a moment, then she returned to the
+charge.
+
+"All the more fun," she exclaimed. "Let's all go up and make a week-end
+of it."
+
+"But there are no servants there, I tell you," Willie insisted.
+
+"That's where the fun comes in," said Winifred, in love with her
+inspiration. "It would be a glorious lark. There's nothing to do here in
+town."
+
+"We have to eat, you know," Willie reminded her, coldly; "and nobody to
+cook it."
+
+"I'm a love of a cook," said Winifred. "And I've been through your
+kitchen up there. It's a model--electric dingblats and all sorts of
+things. I'll cook the meals if the rest of you will build the fires and
+make the beds and wash the dishes."
+
+"Oh, Winifred, behave!" Willie sniffed.
+
+But Winifred would not behave. She drummed up her scheme until she
+raised the others to a kind of amused interest in the venture. It would
+be a novelty at least.
+
+"We can always cut and run at a moment's notice," Winifred explained,
+for a clincher. "A couple of hours in a car and we're back in town."
+
+"But there are no servants there, I tell you," Willie reiterated. "You
+don't seriously expect us to go up there and do our own work?"
+
+"Why not?" said Winifred. "It's time you learned to use your lazy hands
+before they drop off from neglect."
+
+"No thank you!" Willie demurred. "If we've got to go, we'll take along
+some deck-hands. What do you say, Persis?"
+
+"The only thing I like about it," said Persis, "is the absence of the
+servants. I can't remember a time when they haven't been standing round
+staring or listening through the doors. Oh, Lord, how good it would be
+to be out from under their thumbs for a few days!"
+
+"We can't afford the scandal," said Willie. "Servants are the best
+chaperons there are. If we went up without them there'd be a sensation
+in the papers."
+
+"You and your fear of the newspapers!" Winifred retorted. "They need
+never know."
+
+"You can't go up to my place without some chaperon!" Willie snapped,
+with a pettish firmness. "I don't run a road-house, you know."
+
+"If you've got to have a chaperon, maybe you'd take me," said Mrs. Neff.
+
+"You!" Willie laughed cynically. "And who'll chaperon the chaperon?
+You'll make more mischief than anybody. Your affair with Mr. Lord--er,
+pardon me, Mr. Ward--is the talk of the town already."
+
+Mrs. Neff's laugh was a mixture of ridicule at the possibility and
+yearning that it might not be impossible. Her comment was in the spirit
+of burlesque.
+
+"But if I marry him afterward it will put a stop to the scandal."
+
+"Mother, you are simply indecent!" her daughter piped up, with a kind of
+militant innocence.
+
+The luxury of such a reproof was too dear to Mrs. Neff's unwithered
+heart to be neglected. She added her vote to those of Winifred and
+Persis.
+
+Forbes dared not speak, but he was aglow with the vision of a few days
+with Persis in the country. As he crossed the continent he had seen the
+traces of spring everywhere; everywhere the mad incendiary had been
+kindling fires in tree and shrub and sward. From the train window he
+had watched the splendors unroll like a moving film. He had wished to
+leap from the car and wander with somebody--with a vague somebody. And
+now he had found her, and the golden opportunity tapped on the window.
+
+Willie fenced with Winifred till the luncheon was finished. Then they
+retired to the lounge for coffee. Here women had the franchise for
+public smoking, and they puffed like small boys. Winifred renewed the
+battle for the picnic.
+
+Ten Eyck had watched the contest with a grin. At last he spoke: "It's a
+pretty little war. Reluctant host trying to convince guests that they
+are not invited. Guests saying, 'We'll come anyway.' Better give in
+peacefully, Willie, or they'll take possession and lock you outside."
+
+Then Willie gave in, but on the ground that Persis wanted it. He
+attempted a sheepish gallantry and a veiled romantic reference. He, too,
+had a touch of April in his frosty little heart. Forbes winced at the
+rivalry; but at any price he wanted to be with Persis where the spring
+was.
+
+Willie, yielding to the role of _hote malgre lui_, announced that since
+they were determined to invade his respectable ancestral home, the
+sooner they got it over with the better. Persis and the rest were
+creatures of impulse, glad to have an impulse, and they agreed to the
+flight as quickly as a flock of birds. What engagements they had they
+dismissed. Their maids could send telegrams of "regret that, owing to
+unexpected absence from town," etc.
+
+Willie went to call up his gardener and have the house thrown open to
+the air and fresh provisions ordered in.
+
+He had just gone when a page came to Persis with the word that her
+father wanted to speak to her on the telephone.
+
+She gave a start and looked afraid as she rose. Forbes watched her go,
+and his heart prayed that no bad news might await her. She was so
+beautiful as she moved, and so plucky. He knew that she was frightened,
+but she spoke to various people she passed with all the light-hearted
+graciousness imaginable. She came back speedily with a look of anxiety
+vainly resisted. She explained that her father was leaving for Chicago
+on the Twentieth Century, and wanted to tell her good-by. She would
+barely have time to reach the house before he left.
+
+Forbes offered to accompany her home. She insisted that he should not
+leave his guests. Winifred and Mrs. Neff rose at once, claiming that
+they must also leave to make ready for the excursion.
+
+Forbes bade them good-by rather awkwardly. He regretted the disorder of
+his exit as a host, but he would not forfeit this chance to be alone
+with Persis.
+
+She was so distressed about her father that she forgot Willie's
+existence, and left no message for him. When he had finished his tempest
+in a telephone-booth, and conveyed his orders to his head gardener, he
+found Mrs. Neff and Winifred waiting for their cars. They explained
+Persis' flight and made arrangements for the hour and place of meeting
+for the journey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+When Forbes hastened after the hastening Persis and saw how distraught
+she was he felt the sharp cutting-edge of sympathy. It was his first
+sight of her in a mood of heartache, and his own heart ached akin.
+
+When they reached the outer door they found to their amazement that it
+was raining hard. Within doors there had been such luxurious peace under
+such glowing lights that the sun was not missed and the rain was not
+heard. But along the street, gusts of wind swept furious, with long
+javelins of rain that made the awning almost useless. Women gathered
+their finery about them, and men clung to their hats while they waited
+for their cars, and then bolted for them as they came up dripping under
+the guidance of dripping chauffeurs.
+
+While Persis waited for a taxicab Forbes tried to shelter her with his
+body. He ventured to hope that her father's absence would not distress
+her.
+
+"Oh no," she answered, bravely, "not at all. He's going on business. He
+told me the other day he might have to leave town for a few days--on
+business."
+
+Forbes hesitated over his next words.
+
+"I hope this won't prevent you from going up to Mr. Enslee's."
+
+"Oh no, quite the contrary," she said. "I'd be alone at home. I'll be
+glad of the--the diversion. Here's the taxi. It's really not necessary
+for you to go with me."
+
+For answer he took her arm and ran with her to the door the footman
+opened. A blast of windy rain lashed them as they crept into the car.
+The door slammed and they were under way, running cautiously on the
+skiddish pavement.
+
+At last he was alone with her. The rain made their shelter cozier, and
+for all its bluster it was a spring rain. With its many-hoofed clatter
+it was a battalion of police clearing the way for the flower procession.
+
+Thinking of this, Forbes said:
+
+"I'm mighty glad you're not leaving town."
+
+"But I am."
+
+"With your father, I mean. You're leaving town with me, instead."
+
+She looked him in the eye with some surprise.
+
+"It's a good thing we put the blame for that luncheon on Mrs. Neff. It
+tickled her to death and--do you know that Willie really thinks you're
+flirting with her--or aiming at Alice? He can't tell which." She laughed
+deliciously. It did not grieve her to fool Willie.
+
+The cab rocked in the wind, and the rain beat upon it with the sound of
+waves protesting against the rush of a yacht's prow. Forbes caught a
+glimpse of a street sign. It warned him that they were already passing
+Fiftieth Street. In a few minutes they would be at her home.
+
+"I'm not flirting with anybody," he said. "I'm adoring you."
+
+A little frown of bewilderment troubled the smile she gave him. She felt
+his hand on hers and tried to draw it away, but he held it fast.
+
+"We're not at the opera, you know," she said. "That noise isn't the
+music of 'Tristan and Isolde.' That's rain."
+
+"I know it," he answered, "and I don't want you to be Isolde. If only
+she had married Tristan in the first place--"
+
+"They might have been divorced in the second place."
+
+"Don't be--don't talk that way. I'm in deadly earnest," he pleaded, but
+she laughed evasively.
+
+"That was very heady sherry you gave us to-day."
+
+He shook his head sadly, as over the flippancy of a child, and took her
+hand in both of his.
+
+"It's broad daylight, Mr. Forbes, and this is Madison Avenue."
+
+"But nobody can see us," he answered. "Look at the rain."
+
+"What difference does that make?" she answered, tugging at her hand. But
+she looked, and saw how they were closed away from the world. Sheets of
+water splashed and spread so thickly that they covered the windows with
+gray curtains.
+
+It was as if a brief tropical flood had burst upon New York.
+
+Somehow it did make a difference that nobody could see. It always makes
+a difference in us that nobody can see us.
+
+Even Forbes felt the change in Persis. Perhaps it was only that her
+resistance was minutely diminished, or that one of her many fears was
+removed, one support gone. As a soldier he had sometime felt that
+slackening of morale across the space between firing-lines. It is then
+that the military genius orders a charge and turns the enemy's momentary
+weakness into a panic.
+
+So Forbes charged Persis. In his face gathered a fierce determination.
+His fingers tightened upon hers, no longer caressingly, but cruelly,
+till they hurt. He pulled her right hand across him with his right, and
+thrust his left arm back of her, caught her farther shoulder in the
+crook of it, and drew her close till their faces almost touched, till
+her eyes were so close to his that they were grotesquely one.
+
+And then he paused. He lacked the elan to seize the red flag of her
+lips. He paused weakly to stare at her and to beseech the kiss he might
+have captured.
+
+"Kiss me!" he said.
+
+So silly a phrase for so warm a deed. She shook her head, and her
+fright was gone. She taunted him from her eyes as from an unconquered
+citadel.
+
+"Kiss me!" he repeated, feeling poltroon and idiotic.
+
+She did not upbraid him or feel any anger or any helplessness; she just
+studied him, ignoring the fact that he held her body close to him in a
+crushing embrace. After all, that meant nothing. Almost anybody might
+hold her so at a dance for all the world to see. Nothing mattered, she
+thought, so long as their souls did not embrace.
+
+But therein she was wrong, for their souls were not dancing to music. He
+was demanding her love, her submission to his love. Their souls were
+debating that vital question, without speech, yet with every argument.
+
+She enjoyed the struggle. She was striking the first of the matches. She
+would watch the pretty blue flame a moment before it blazed red, then
+she would blow it out with a little breath from the lips he demanded.
+
+It was fascinating to see how tremendously excited he was over the
+privilege of touching his lips to hers. It was a quaint little act to
+make so much of. He was a splendid man, brave, charming, good to see,
+and now he was crimson and fierce-eyed and breathing hard, trembling
+with the struggle to keep from taking what was so close. She smiled at
+him triumphantly. She was about to puff out the flame with a whiff of
+sarcasm, when he said, with all the simplicity of truth:
+
+"I couldn't take a kiss unless you gave it to me. I don't want to kiss
+you unless you want me to. May I?"
+
+It was such a boyish plea that she could not be sophisticated in its
+presence. She could not answer such hunger with wit. She felt a sudden
+power from somewhere pressing her head forward to his lips and her heart
+closer to his.
+
+She smiled tenderly with veiled eyes, and no longer held off. With a
+gasp of joy he understood and caught her against him. But just as their
+lips would have met another instinct saved her.
+
+She had always felt a kind of sanctity about her mouth, a preciousness
+that must not be cheaply cast away. Among all the kisses she had given
+and taken there still remained this first kiss, still vestal and virgin.
+And that was the kiss he asked.
+
+She turned her head swiftly, and it was her cheek that he touched. There
+was such a burning in the touch that the fire ran through her. Her
+cheeks crimsoned. She closed her eyes in a kind of sweet shame.
+
+She was amazed to be there, huddled in his arms, with his lips preying
+upon her cheek. Her soul was in wild debate with itself, busy with
+reproaches and summons to battle against the invader. But it was like a
+senate without president. There was no one to give the order.
+
+At last she opened her eyes to see again what manner of man this was
+that had conjured away all her pride and her wisdom and her strength.
+Her eyes saw that the curtain of rain was slipping from the windows. The
+downpour had abated. They were drawing up at her own curb.
+
+She flung off his hands with a gasp of anger and terror. He stared at
+her in a daze. Then he understood.
+
+"Forgive me!" he pleaded.
+
+She was furious with him; but she blamed herself more, and breathed hard
+with rage as she straightened her hat and her hair.
+
+An old footman was waiting at the top of the steps with an umbrella. He
+ran down and opened the door.
+
+"Your father is waiting for you, miss," he said.
+
+Forbes stepped forth into the light drizzle and helped her out.
+
+"Good-by," he said. And again "Good-by." But she hurried up the steps.
+Forbes followed her with his eyes, and saw an elderly gentleman waiting
+for her at the door. There was a troubled look on his face. The door
+closed upon him as he caught Persis in his arms.
+
+Forbes told the chauffeur to take him to his hotel, and crept back into
+the deserted nest of romance. The taxicab turned slowly round. As it
+passed the house again, Forbes saw another car stop at the curb. From it
+stepped Willie Enslee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+All the way back to the hotel, all the while he was selecting what
+clothes he should take, all the while he waited for the hour of the
+general rendezvous to arrive Forbes was troubled by the remembrance of
+Willie Enslee's appearance at Persis' home.
+
+He had apparently come in hot pursuit. On the other hand, he might have
+come merely to make the final arrangements for the excursion to the
+country. And yet Willie must be accepted as a rival. Or, rather, it was
+Forbes that was the rival, since Enslee's infatuation for Persis was
+generally known long before Forbes reached New York.
+
+Forbes did not approve of men who went after other men's sweethearts to
+take them away. But Persis had told him that she had never loved any
+man; ergo, she had not loved Enslee--if Enslee could be called a man.
+
+Even so, Forbes would have preferred to make love to Mr. Enslee's
+sweetheart somewhere else than at Mr. Enslee's home. But how was he to
+fight his rival except where his rival was? How rescue the imprisoned
+princess but by invading the ogre's castle? Physically, Enslee was
+hardly more than a pocket ogre, but his wealth made him a giant. It was
+with the Enslee Estates that Forbes must grapple. He feared that Persis
+might drift into their wizard power, and he wanted to save her from that
+life of "luxurious misery" of which he had read so much, for that life
+of "blissful poverty with love" of which he had read so much.
+
+Besides, in invading Enslee's own domain he was giving Enslee every
+advantage. All of the splendor of Enslee's chateau, the armor of riches
+and the sword of gold, would defend him, while Forbes would attack only
+with his empty hands and the power of love. If Goliath thought that
+David took an unfair advantage of him, why did not Goliath lay aside his
+buckler and his bludgeon and use a sling, too? Pebbles were plentiful
+enough.
+
+Forbes reasoned at his scruples till they faced the other way. He argued
+till what he would have called vicious in other men became sincerely
+virtuous in his own special instance. So men and empires, republics and
+religions have always argued when they were about to try to take
+something away from somebody.
+
+As Forbes folded his togs and wished them better and braver, he paused
+to laugh at what Persis had told him: Willie believed that Forbes was
+flirting with Mrs. Neff for herself or her daughter! What a blind little
+ape Enslee was! Then Forbes straightened up and flushed and called
+himself a double-dyed cad. He flung aside the things he was folding and
+resolved not to go to Enslee's home at all.
+
+He sank into a chair and pondered. If he did not go he would be left
+alone in New York. Only a few days remained of his little vacation. By
+the time Persis came back Forbes would be at his army post, a slave of
+discipline and the everlasting round of the same dull duties. Persis
+would be angry and hurt, and she would marry Enslee; she would live in
+that home with Enslee; she would become part of the Enslee Estates, body
+and soul.
+
+Forbes' gorge rose at the visions this brought to his mind. He ripped
+out an oath, and flung off the withes of such false honor. He would, he
+must, save Persis at any cost. If Enslee were foolish enough to think
+that Forbes was hunting Mrs. Neff or Alice, let him take the
+consequences. If Enslee had not thought so, he would not have asked
+Forbes to come along. To take advantage of an enemy's weaknesses was the
+first rule of warfare. To shoot from cover was the first business of a
+marksman.
+
+This was not a contest in sharp-shooting at targets under strict rules,
+with a medal for a prize. This was a battle in rough country for the
+rescue of a beautiful girl.
+
+Forbes granted himself a plenary indulgence, and resumed packing,
+smiling again at Willie's idea that he was a suitor for the post of
+third husband to Mrs. Neff.
+
+He did not smile so well a few hours later, when Willie, with the
+kindliest of motives, assigned him to Mrs. Neff's automobile.
+
+"You two sweethearts," Enslee said, with a matchmaker's grin, "will want
+to ride together, of course. Persis and I will keep out of your way as
+much as we can."
+
+Forbes was sportsman enough to credit Willie with a bull's-eye. He
+smothered his chagrin and helped Mrs. Neff into her car, while his two
+suit-cases were strapped in the trunk-rack with the family baggage.
+
+The motor-caravan was made up of three machines. Winifred ran her own
+roadster, nursing the steering-wheel to her bosom, while her fat elbows
+harried Ten Eyck's cramped form. Bob Fielding had been unable to get
+away from the troubled waters of Wall Street, and Winifred had adopted
+Ten Eyck as his understudy.
+
+Mrs. Neff took her four-passenger touring-car. Forbes decided after
+several appalling bumps that it had belonged to her first husband. Alice
+sat with the chauffeur, dreaming of Stowe Webb, no doubt. In the rear
+Mrs. Neff, in her most garrulous mood, talked nonsense through a veil
+whose flying ends kept snapping in Forbes' face. And when they were
+beyond Broadway her cigarette ashes kept sifting into his eyes.
+
+He was as polite as possible, but his thoughts were trying to pierce the
+dust-wake of the great six-cylinder touring-car in which Willie Enslee
+led the way with Persis. All Forbes could see of her was the top of her
+motor-hood and the veil that fled back like a signal beseeching him to
+make haste and save her.
+
+Broadway in the late afternoon was thick with the home-going armies, and
+it seemed to stretch as long and as crowded as the Milky Way. On through
+Yonkers to Dobbs Ferry and Tarrytown the journey took them, passing an
+occasional monument of our brief history, a tablet to mark where
+Rochambeau met Washington and brought France to our rescue, or a
+memorial to the cowboys that arrested Major Andre.
+
+In Forbes' then humor no small charms of nature or legend could have
+caught his mind from his jealousy. Even the epic levels of the Hudson
+River and the Valhalla walls of the Palisades hardly impressed him. What
+success they had with him was mainly due to his remembrance of seeing
+them first from the train that brought him to New York a few days, or a
+few eons, ago. He was full then of ambitions to shine as a soldier in an
+enlarged camp. Now his treasons and stratagems were concerned with a
+love-campaign whose spoils was Persis Cabot.
+
+There was a pause by agreement for dinner at a road-house--"their last
+civilized meal," as Ten Eyck mournfully prophesied, "before they entered
+the Purgatory of Winifred's cooking at Willie's boarding-house."
+
+When the task of fretting out a dinner was finished they got under way,
+pushing north again.
+
+Eventually the pilot-car, or, rather, its guiding cloud of dust, swept
+off to the east, turning its back on the Hudson and plunging into the
+heart of Westchester County, an ocean of hills like green billows, and
+valleys like their troughs; peaceful castles set on high places, and
+pleasant villages dispersed in low; the homely roominess of farms, and
+now and then a huddle of crowded rookeries, where Italian peasants had
+set up a congenial little slums along some ugly waste.
+
+Everything took on a wistfulness in the evening air, which the sunset
+was tincturing like claret poured into water. Forbes was aching to be
+with Persis, and he hoped that she was wistful to be with him. The moon
+had loitered with torch half aglow in the wings of the sky until the sun
+was gone, and then its lamp was raised, and it entered its own scene. In
+the houses lights began to pink the dark with the trite but irresistible
+appeal of Christmas-card transparencies.
+
+Forbes lost all sense of direction in the winding roads, and even Mrs.
+Neff's chatter yielded to the brow-caressing dusk. The swift progress of
+the car gave no suggestion of wheels, but rather of a flying keel on a
+smooth stream.
+
+Finally the searchlights of Enslee's machine turned sharp at right
+angles. A beautiful granite bridge leaped into view as suddenly as if
+the great god Wotan had builded it with a word. At the farther side of
+the bridge stood a lodge-keeper's home, whose architecture seemed to
+shift the scene instantly to the France of the first Francis.
+
+"Here we are!" Mrs. Neff cried. "And I'm half frozen. I hope the
+gardener has aired the rooms and put dry sheets on the beds, or I'm in
+for lumbago."
+
+"Mother, you're just death to romance!" Alice protested. She had
+doubtless been thinking of Stowe Webb.
+
+The car glided across the bridge, and the moon-whipped stream reveling
+below it, then preceded through a granite gateway with a portcullis
+suspended like a social guillotine. And then the sense of privacy began.
+The very moon seemed to become a part of the Enslee Estates.
+
+The motors tilted backward as the hill rose; and Mrs. Neff's rheumatic
+car groaned and worried a spiraling road up and up through masses of
+anonymous shrubs pouring forth incense, through spaces of moon-swept
+hillside and thickets of somber velours. Then there was a glimpse of the
+radiant geometry of moon-washed roofs. A turn or two more, and the
+wheels were swishing into the graveled court of a stately mansion.
+
+The door under the porte-cochere was open, and in its embrasure stood a
+leanish man and his fattish wife, hospitable as innkeepers, the warm
+light streaming back of them like peering children.
+
+Enslee's voice came out of the silence:
+
+"That you, Prout? H'are you, Martha?" And then, with characteristic
+originality, "Well, we got here."
+
+To which Prout responded with equal importance:
+
+"So you did, sir."
+
+He and his wife had been working like mad since Enslee telephoned,
+trying to turn themselves into a troop of servants, whisking shrouds
+from table and piano and chairs, and mopping a cloth of dust from every
+surface. They were as respectful now as Philemon and Baucis welcoming
+Jupiter, and as apologetic as if the palace were their own unworthy cot.
+
+"I've got a pack of Indians with me, Prout," said Enslee. "I didn't want
+'em, but they would come, and now we've got to make the best of it.
+Don't let 'em trample your flower-beds. And if anybody breaks a
+flower-stem we'll have him or her shot at sunrise."
+
+Martha giggled into her fat palm.
+
+"Oh, 'e will 'ave 'is joke; 'e will so. And isn't this Miss Cabot? Of
+course it is."
+
+Forbes, seated in the rear car, heard again that assumption of Persis
+and Enslee as a couple.
+
+The cars rolled up to the door in turn. The women as they got out piled
+their wraps on Martha till she completely disappeared, except for a pair
+of clutching hands, and a voice from the depths.
+
+The chauffeurs made off down the road to the distant garage, with
+instructions to stay there after one of them should have come back for
+Winifred's roadster.
+
+The gardener, apologizing for his awkwardness in the office of a butler,
+led the little troop into the great living-room, where a big fire
+blazed, splashing walls and floors with banners of red and yellow.
+
+Prout explained that he had been unable to start either the hot-water
+furnace that heated the house or the dynamo that lighted it. And, being
+short-handed like, and took with a stroke of sciatiky from the
+onseasonable cold of the backward spring, he had found time to make
+fires only in the master's room, his mother's room, and one other. The
+caretaker, who had kept a fire going all winter for the sake of the
+water-pipes, had let it go out at the first warm weather and gone for a
+visit to his wife's mother.
+
+"That's what we get for coming up before the place has been set to
+rights," Willie grumbled. "I suppose you girls will have to draw lots
+for my room."
+
+"Me for the nursery," said Winifred. "It's the sunniest place in the
+house, and--"
+
+"You're not going to try to sleep on one of those children's beds?"
+Willie gasped.
+
+"No, nor on two of them," said Winifred; "but there's a glorious
+window-seat a mile wide."
+
+Willie's self-sacrifice was of the parsimonious sort that made
+acceptance impossible. None of the women would deprive him of his bed.
+Mrs. Neff was assigned to Willie's mother's room, and Alice and Persis
+to those on either side. Forbes and Ten Eyck were exiled to the
+southwest wing.
+
+Prout and Martha could not believe that Mr. Enslee had come without the
+retinue of servants that ordinarily preceded his august appearance. In
+fact, the adventure was as unlike Enslee as it was uncongenial to him.
+He could not and would not see the fun of it.
+
+Martha and Prout offered their service, but Winifred would not let them
+mar the perfection of her Swiss Family Robinson. She overawed Willie and
+drove the old couple back to their own cottage.
+
+When they had retired with prophecies of disaster and evil the would-be
+gipsies felt relieved of all the encumbrances of civilization. Winifred
+called it a return to nature. For the time being, however, the chief
+emotion was one of blissful weariness. Host and guests had kept
+themselves keyed up all season, like instruments in a concert, and now
+that the tension was released they seemed to collapse upon themselves.
+
+In front of the great fireplace was a divan almost as big as a
+life-boat, and cushioned into such a cloud as the gods rested on.
+Winifred and Mrs. Neff and Alice were lolling on it, and Murray Ten Eyck
+sat on the edge. Back of it was the usual living-room table with a pile
+or two of books and magazines.
+
+Persis paused for a moment, looking over the books to select something
+to take up to her room. She pushed them about with indifference.
+
+"Last year's novels!" she smiled. "As thrilling as last year's birds'
+nests."
+
+She turned up an illustrated society weekly of a former spring. The
+frontispiece held her a moment, and she shook her head.
+
+"And last year's reputations. Here's a big portrait of Mrs. Richard
+Lanthorpe and her two children." She read the caption aloud: "'Prominent
+young matron who is just opening her Newport villa. Though a devoted
+mother to her charming little daughters, Mrs. Lanthorpe is also well
+known as a skilful whip.'"
+
+"Good Lord!" said Winifred, reaching out her hand. "Let me see the cat.
+A whip, eh? You could drive a coach and four through her reputation
+now."
+
+Mrs. Neff took the paper from her hand. "Her husband got the kiddies.
+Pretty little tikes, too."
+
+"She sold 'em for the Newport villa," said Alice, looking over her
+mother's shoulder. Mrs. Neff turned on her with a glare of amazement.
+
+"Where do you children pick up such things?"
+
+"I'm not children," said Alice, "and the papers were full of it."
+
+"Mrs. Dicky was up here last spring for a week-end with her husband,"
+said Willie. "And so was the other man. What's his name? Later I heard
+that people had been talking a lot even then, but I never suspected
+anything till later."
+
+"You never would, Willie," said Mrs. Neff. She stared at the picture.
+"She's really very good-looking, and she wasn't a bad sort altogether. I
+wonder which one of us will be gone next winter?"
+
+"You, probably," Willie snickered, and the others laughed lazily. But
+Mrs. Neff bristled.
+
+"I don't see why you have to laugh. Am I too old to misbehave?"
+
+"Far from it, darling!" said Willie. "You're just at the dangerous age.
+I--er--I don't mean exactly that, either."
+
+Mrs. Neff turned a page hastily. "Here's a picture of Deborah Reeve in
+her coming-out gown."
+
+"She came out so far and so fast she went right back," said Ten Eyck,
+and explained to Forbes: "Hesitated between her riding-master and her
+mother's chauffeur, and finally ran off with the first officer of her
+father's yacht. She was a born democrat."
+
+"Here's a snapshot of Mrs. Tom Corliss at the Meadowbrook Steeplechase.
+Look, that's 'Pup' Mowat standing with her. Good Lord, he was hanging
+round her a year ago, and people are just beginning to notice. Haven't
+they been clever? A whole year under the rose and right under the
+public's nose."
+
+"Tom Corliss will be finding it out before long," said Winifred.
+
+"Oh no," said Willie, "I've discovered that the husband is always the
+last to find out." And he tossed his head in careless pride at the
+novelty of his pronouncement.
+
+"Isn't Willie the observing little thing?" said Winifred. The others
+exchanged glances of contemptuous amusement while their host looked
+wise.
+
+Persis strolled round to the divan, took Murray by the ear, and hoisted
+him from his place.
+
+"No, thanks, Murray," she said. "I couldn't think of taking your seat."
+And dropped into it.
+
+"What are we going to do for amusement to-night?" said Willie. "Who
+wants to play auction?"
+
+"Hush!" said Mrs. Neff.
+
+"Shall we have some music, then?" A general declination. "Some singing?
+A dance?"
+
+They refused even that, and he grew desperate.
+
+"Charades?"
+
+"Shut up!" came from the crowd.
+
+"I don't want to be entertained," said Persis. "I'm never so miserable
+as when I'm being entertained."
+
+Everybody approved. Just to be let alone was a luxury.
+
+Willie ventured a last retort: "Anybody want a drink?"
+
+Everybody wanted a drink. Willie went to a side-wall and groped for a
+button, pushed it and held it, then resumed his place before the fire.
+After a time he pushed it again.
+
+"Where is everybody?" he snapped. Then the truth dawned on him again.
+"Good Lord, we're marooned!"
+
+Winifred chuckled at the situation. "You'll have to be your own barkeep,
+Willie. Go rustle us what you can find."
+
+"But everything would be in the cellar," he answered. "If there's
+anything here at all, which I doubt. And the key is in town. Couldn't
+trust Prout with it. Fine old gardener--give his life to save a
+peony--but he's death on liquor. I couldn't trust him to order in
+drinkables--besides, I forgot."
+
+There were groans of horror.
+
+"'Water, water, everywhere,'" said Ten Eyck, "'and not a drop to
+drink.'"
+
+"It's bad enough having no servants to wait on us," Mrs. Neff pondered,
+"but who's to do our thinking for us? Which'll we die of first? thirst
+or starvation?"
+
+"We'll get in a supply from the village to-morrow," said Willie,
+handsomely.
+
+"To-morrow never comes," said Winifred.
+
+For lack of artificial stimulus the momentary enthusiasm lapsed again.
+Nobody cared even to read. The fireplace was books enough.
+
+Forbes and Ten Eyck stood at either end of the mantel, mere supporting
+statuary, their heads in shadow. Willie teetered at the center of the
+hearth, toasting his coat-tails.
+
+The four women occupied the divan, sketched out brilliantly against the
+dark like a group portrait of Sargent's. The light worked over their
+images as a painter works, making and illuminating shadows, touching a
+strand of hair or a cheek-bone with a high light, modeling with a streak
+of red some lifted muscle, then brushing it off again.
+
+The poses of the women were as various as their bodies and souls. At one
+corner Mrs. Neff sat erect among the cushions in a sleepy stateliness.
+Winifred filled the other corner like another heap of cushions, hardly
+moving except to flick her cigarette ashes on the floor to the acute
+distress of Willie's neat soul. Alice drooped with arched spine in a
+young girl's slump, and clung to a hand of Persis', doubtless wishing it
+were Stowe Webb's. Persis sat cross-legged, a smoking Sultana, her chin
+on the back of one hand, one elbow on one knee.
+
+From his coign of shadow Forbes watched them. Vague reverie held them
+all. The very shadows seemed to breathe unevenly in restless meditation.
+The fire-logs alone conversed aloud in mysterious whispers, with
+crackling epigrams.
+
+Forbes wondered at the group, so real and so unreal. He wondered what
+they were thinking of, each in her castle of self, each with her
+yearnings backward and forward. Winifred was wishing her lover there,
+perhaps, and that her slim and gracile soul were not mislodged in so
+determinedly fat a body; Mrs. Neff was wishing, perhaps, that her gray
+hair and her calendar of years did not so thwart the young, romantic
+girl that housed in her body, and must sleep alone, perhaps, forever.
+Suddenly Forbes wished that he had not smiled so ruthlessly at the
+thought of her expecting to be courted. Her longings were pitiful,
+perhaps, but not ridiculous.
+
+It was easy to guess at Alice's thoughts. She was wishing to be not so
+young and curbed by authority. She was years older than Juliet had been
+when she went to the church with Romeo and threw him the ladder and
+preceded him to the tomb; yet Alice's well-matured desires were smiled
+away and patronized as childish.
+
+And Persis: what were the thoughts that burned within her soul and
+twitched at her fingers, or tugged at her eyebrows, shook her eyelids,
+or tightened her lips? Was she thinking of Forbes as he was thinking of
+her?
+
+Suddenly her drooping bosom expanded with a great breath, her lips
+parted, her eyes widened, her hand rose. She was about to speak. What
+would she say?
+
+She yawned. Her hand automatically came up for politeness' sake, but
+lingered to pat her straining lips as if in approval. Her eyes blurred
+and fairly writhed. All the muscles of her divine beauty were contorted.
+She was not so much yawning as yawned. She was enjoying it, too, and as
+it ended she sighed over it as over a sweetmeat. The musing goddess had
+been suddenly restored to humanity with a thump.
+
+Her comfortable sigh was echoed and her yawn outdone by Winifred, who
+moaned:
+
+"I'm so damned sleepy I'll turn in here if the rest of you will get off
+the bed."
+
+Then Alice yawned and wriggled, and Mrs. Neff gaped with a slight
+restraint and staggered to her feet.
+
+"I'm on my way. I'd be bored to death if I weren't so excited over the
+wonderful sleep I'm to have. I hope I don't wake up for a week."
+
+"I hope you don't," said Willie, thrusting out his arms in an
+all-embracing oscitation.
+
+There was an epidemic of yawns, and they staggered to the console table
+where a long row of candles waited. Ten Eyck lighted them and
+distributed them, and the line moved on like a drunken torchlight
+procession, helped and hindered one another up, and sang out faint "Good
+nights" as they dispersed in the upper hall.
+
+Doors were closed, only to be flung open with wails of distress. Martha
+and Prout had lugged all the trunks and suit-cases and handbags to the
+wrong rooms.
+
+The three men were compelled to act as porters. Willie was furious and
+full of "I told you so's"; but Ten Eyck impersonated the transfer-men he
+had met, and had a different dialect for every room.
+
+Forbes went timidly into the exquisite apartment where Persis was
+ensconced. It was a shrine to him, and he averted his eyes from the
+carved and lace-adorned altar of her bed.
+
+But Ten Eyck turned back to pound on the door and put in his palm,
+whining:
+
+"Don't forget the poor baggage-smasher, lady."
+
+Persis opened the door a trifle and gave him a twenty-five-cent piece.
+She held out another for Forbes, and he took it with a foolish rapture.
+
+Ten Eyck bit his coin and touched his hat, with a husky murmur of:
+
+"'Ch obliged, mum! 'Ch obliged!"
+
+Forbes kept his for a lucky piece--the first keepsake he had had from
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+If Persis and the others were rejoicing in their emancipation from
+formalities too familiar, Forbes was glad that he had escaped them for
+the reverse reason. Hospitality had been dispensed on a lavish scale at
+his own home in the South before his father's death, but the servants
+there were negroes, slaves, or descendants of slaves, and he knew just
+the right mixture of affection and tyranny to administer to them. But
+where servile white foreigners, with their curious humilities and
+pomposities, bowed heads and elevated eyebrows, he had not learned just
+how much to demand and how much to concede.
+
+He was glad that there was no valet to unpack his things, for he was
+afraid that his secret wardrobe might not pass such experienced
+inspection. He laid out his own pajamas, brushes, and clean things
+against the morning.
+
+Ten Eyck, who shared the same bathroom with Forbes, came in to borrow a
+match for his pipe, noted Forbes' industry, and quoted one of the few
+classics that he still read--Rabelais: "Panurge had it right when he
+said, 'I am never so well served as when I am my own valet.'"
+
+"Is this your first experience as your own man?" said Forbes.
+
+"I should say not!" Ten Eyck snorted, with a cloud of smoke. "I've
+roughed it as rough as any rough-neck going, Forbesy."
+
+Forbes, from the experience of a campaigner, a wilderness hiker, lifted
+an eyebrow of patronizing incredulity. Ten Eyck retorted:
+
+"You needn't grin. I don't mean any of this roughing _de luxe_. I had
+the real thing. I quarreled with the governor once. I was hitting it up
+pretty hard, and he gave me a call. I told him I didn't need his dirty
+money; I could earn my own, and I swore I'd never ask him for a cent. I
+lit out for the Wild and Woolly. What I took with me went fast. I
+couldn't get a job I'd look at; and by the time I was ready to look at
+any job I could get, nobody would look at me. Finally they took me on as
+unskilled labor in the construction camp of a railroad. I slept in
+cattle-cars, or on the ground, or in wooden bunks with Swedes and Finns,
+and Huns and coons, and other swine in the adjoining styes. I fought
+'em, too, when I had to. Later I waited on the table in a cheap hashery.
+
+"God knows where I'd have ended if my dear old dad hadn't got so
+homesick he put the Pinkertons on my trail. And when he found me he
+apologized and begged me to come back. And I very graciously accepted. I
+had had all the poverty I needed for a lifetime. Hereafter, Forbesy, I'm
+for the nap on the velvet and the plush on the peach. I tell you,
+Forbesy, we millionaires may have our little troubles, but we escape the
+worst of 'em, eh John D.?"
+
+"I wish you'd cut out that talk about my being a millionaire," Forbes
+broke in, impatiently.
+
+"Millionaire is a newspaper term," Ten Eyck explained, "for anybody who
+is worth more than a few thousand dollars."
+
+"But I'm not worth anything and never shall be," Forbes confessed. "I'm
+not rich at all. I've nothing but a few hundred dollars and my picayune
+salary."
+
+Ten Eyck took the great denial without emotion. "Then I congratulate you
+on being one of the poor but honest, instead of the criminal rich."
+
+"I'm poor, but I'm not honest," Forbes said; "I'm obtaining courtesy
+under false pretenses."
+
+"Rot!" said Ten Eyck. "Money couldn't buy what you're getting, and the
+lack of it couldn't lose what you've gained. They like you. You belong.
+That's all there is to it."
+
+"I wonder."
+
+"Of course that's all. What does anybody here care how much you've got
+or haven't got, so long as you're congenial and aren't proposing to
+marry anybody."
+
+Forbes lifted his head with a quick, startled movement that did not
+escape Ten Eyck, who pretended to misunderstand.
+
+"Of course, if you really are after Mrs. Neff or the little Neffkin,
+there might be a call for a show-down of bankbooks."
+
+"I'd be just as much obliged if you people would drop that joke about my
+courting Mrs. Neff," Forbes grumbled. Ten Eyck was patient; his voice
+fell to a deep and earnest tone:
+
+"What I say goes along the line, Forbesy. You were good to me when I was
+sick in Manila. Don't you go and get sick here. You told me what I
+mustn't eat and drink and wear out there, and I want to warn you against
+the dangers of this place. There's a tropics right here, too, with
+deadly miasmas and mosquitoes that buzz strange things and sting you
+full of delirious fevers. Don't fall in love too far, Forbesy. I like
+you mighty well and--naming no names--I like her mighty well, but don't
+get false notions in your head, and don't put false notions in hers."
+
+"About my money, you mean?"
+
+"Umm-humm."
+
+"You think that money would make a difference to her?"
+
+"Hah!" Ten Eyck snorted. "Would water make any difference to a fish?"
+
+"But if she loved--"
+
+"My boy, you can keep a mighty sweet canary in a mighty little cage, and
+it will sing away like mad and be very fond of you; but you can't keep
+a bird of paradise there--or a sea-gull--can you?"
+
+"I reckon not," said Forbes.
+
+"It isn't the fault of the bird of paradise, either, is it?"
+
+Forbes shook his head and sighed: "It's the fault of the man that puts
+it in the cage."
+
+"Well, maybe he means well. He may be crazy about the bird, just crazy
+to keep it near him, but--he can't. That's all, he can't. It'll beat
+itself to death or break loose."
+
+"Unless he lets it go," said Forbes.
+
+"That's it! You understand me, don't you, old man?"
+
+"I get you, Steve."
+
+"And you won't feel too hard about it, will you? There's a lot of other
+birds besides the big ones. There's nothing cozier than a little
+canary--is there?"
+
+"I reckon not," said Forbes, dismally.
+
+"And there's a lot of them to be had. And some of them are very pretty."
+
+They sat and smoked a long while. Then Ten Eyck yawned, and gripped
+Forbes' shoulder hard and went out, pausing to look at him sadly. For
+his good night he dropped into a cockney quotation: "'Wot I meanter s'y,
+Pip, is: allus the best o' friends?'"
+
+He ended with a querying inflection, and Forbes echoed it with a period:
+
+"Allus the best o' friends."
+
+He sat smoking his cigar till it was gone. Then he made ready for bed,
+blew out the candle, raised the curtain, and paused to stare blankly
+into the dark mass of a green hill or a great cloud, whichever it was,
+piled up against a sky sprinkled over with a powder of little stars.
+Among them was one planet whose name he did not know. As he watched, it
+moved with imperceptible stealth out of his sight behind the hill.
+
+He gave up Persis as completely as he gave up the planet. A few days
+ago he did not know her name. A few days more and she would have slipped
+from his sky.
+
+He was so tired, so full of the need of sleep, that despair was only
+another kind of night, black but blessed, without ecstasy, but void of
+torment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+The only dream that Forbes knew that night--or remembered, at least--was
+a dream of his latest garrison, and the same bugle humming like the
+single nagging morning fly that frets a sleeper awake. It was warily
+intoning its old "I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get
+'em up in the morning."
+
+He leaped from his bed, and was astonished to find himself standing in a
+strange room with an open window facing an unknown landscape. He screwed
+his fists into his eyes boyishly before he realized his whereabouts.
+
+At night he had seen his room in vast shadows clouded about a meek
+candle. The window had shown him only a blur of gloom against a sky of
+star-dust.
+
+Now he found himself in a sumptuously furnished chamber, whose window
+framed a scene of royally ordered beauty--a great lawn as level and
+almost as spacious as a parade-ground, and bordered with a marble
+balustrade that seemed to run on forever regardless of expense. Marble
+statues and bronzes and fountains were here and there. And up a noble
+hill a stairway, as beautiful as a sea-gull's wings, soared to a parked
+space where a little marble temple sheltered an image which he judged to
+be Cupid's.
+
+Beyond the big hill reared aloft a primeval forest which the sunrise
+wind was shaking. The tips of the topmost trees were crimsoned, as if
+roses had bloomed at last on pines. The climbing sun had just reached
+them, its rays climbing down the hill as itself climbed the east.
+
+Forbes crept back to bed, but only to reproach himself with sloth. He
+could not afford to miss a sunrise such as this would be. There would be
+occasions enough for sleep; but he was going to leave the Enslee Eden
+this very day forever. The flaming sword of gold would keep him from
+re-entering the Paradise he had got into as a boy crawls under a circus
+tent.
+
+He flung himself from the alien linen and mahogany, and, hastening into
+the bathroom, stepped into the tub, drew the circular curtain around him
+quietly not to waken his neighbor, Ten Eyck, and turned the little
+wheels marked "shower" and "needle" and "cold," and received the
+responding rains. There was no question that they were cold.
+
+But the reaction was a jubilee in every artery, and he dressed with
+eagerness for whatever the day might bring. He opened his door softly
+and went down the twilight of the stairway like an escaping thief. The
+servantless tenants had neglected to bolt and chain the outside door. He
+swung it back and stepped out.
+
+He glanced with admiring awe at the dew-pebbled lawn, the colonnades,
+and the cloisters, but hastened to the eastern side to watch the day
+breaking over the sky-lines of Westchester. The scene was Alpine with
+the Alps removed, and the green herds of foothills left. Across a
+marble-walled pool stood a family of birches, and held the red sun
+prisoner in a web of green leaves and white boughs. The light that shot
+through them played upon shrubs and trees and walks arranged according
+to the highest canons of the landscaping art, taking nature's scenario
+and dramatizing it.
+
+One imperial group of lilac-trees seemed to hold torches up for the sun
+to kindle. They blazed with purple flame.
+
+Forbes thought: "Those are the lilacs Enslee loves and owns. This is
+Enslee's heaven. That is Enslee's sun. And she is Enslee's, too." Then,
+with all the bravery and optimism the dawn could lavish, he felt: "Well,
+she belongs here; I don't. She needs these things. I can't get 'em for
+her. So it's good-by, Persis, and no harm done."
+
+He was sure that Enslee would never know of the kiss he had stolen from
+Enslee's property. And he was sure that Enslee would never miss a
+certain lilac cluster whose grace and color especially caught Forbes'
+fancy. He plucked it. Just as it snapped in his hand and flung a
+fragrant dew upon his face he heard another slight sound above. He
+glanced up.
+
+The vision he saw smote him with beauty like a thunderbolt, and knocked
+him Saul-wise backward off the high horse of jaunty resolution into a
+new religion.
+
+At an upper window, a few paces from where Forbes stood, Persis leaned
+out like another blessed damosel looking downward at the sun. It kindled
+her eyes as it kindled the lilacs, and she frowned a little against it.
+She did not see Forbes as her drowsy gaze swept the hills. She was not
+there, however, to adore the dawn. It had troubled her sleep, and she
+wanted to shut it out. Her hands were tugging drowsily at one of the
+blinds, but it was held by a catch in the wall. She must lean far out to
+release it.
+
+The very homeliness of her motive and the act made her the more
+appealing to Forbes. A creamy nightcap of lace and bow-knots was all
+askew on her tousled hair, and a long loop of it slid down into her
+bosom as she bent far forward. She had not paused even to throw on a
+shawl, and her nightgown was so vaporous a drapery that it hardly
+mattered where it clung or lapsed.
+
+Forbes blushed for her, but gazed entranced while she fumbled at the
+lock till it yielded. Then she reached out for the other shutter and
+stared forth into the sun, stared between her white arms, outstretched
+like the wings of an angel at a window in the sky.
+
+Now Forbes knew that he loved her irretrievably. He would storm the
+clouds to win her. He could afford a home with a pair of shutters, and
+she could close them against the sun and be as snug as a cuckoo in a
+clock.
+
+After all, she was no bird of paradise, no sea-gull. She was just a
+fascinating sleepy-head pouting at the morning for interfering with her
+dreams.
+
+He was so resolved upon winning her that he counted her already his,
+and, with a gesture like throwing up his cap, flung the lilacs he held
+straight at her. They missed her, but they caught her eye, and she
+followed them down to where he darted to catch them for another cast.
+
+When he looked up again the blinds were shut. He was alone in the world,
+his lilacs and his heart barred out and rejected. She had retreated to
+Enslee's stronghold and shuttered herself in.
+
+Forbes turned away to exile in a world of gloom. He heard a little sound
+above, and whirled quickly. The shutters were opening again. He saw her
+eyes. She was frowning fiercely; but that was because of the sharp sun,
+for her lips were smiling and she was whispering something.
+
+He hurried to the spot beneath her window. He saw that her hair had been
+stuffed back into her nightcap. She was muffled to the ears in a heavy
+bathrobe, so shapeless and opaque that its big sleeves hid her very
+hands. But she smiled through like an Eskimo angel. And she was
+whispering in Eskimese.
+
+He could not understand her, and she could not hear his whisper. They
+were afraid to waken the house with louder talk. So he beckoned to her
+to come down. She shook her head. He insisted with ardent gesticulation
+at the beauty of the scene. She shook her head so violently that her cap
+fell off. She clutched at it, and her hair fell all about her. He caught
+the cap as it drifted down like a tired butterfly. She brushed her hair
+back and pleaded for the cap. He shook his head and tossed her the
+lilacs. She refused to take them, and put out her hands for the cap. He
+beckoned her again to come down, and she frowned ferociously. Then, at
+length, she smiled and nodded and turned away.
+
+He waited, afraid to walk because the gravel crunched alarmingly. He
+could see the gardener's cottage down the hill, and he was glad that no
+one was stirring there; not a thread of smoke spun from the chimney.
+
+After he had waited for a tiny eternity he heard her snap her fingers,
+and looked up to find her fully dressed, all kempt and shiny-faced and
+precise. She held out beseeching palms for her cap, but he pocketed it
+and commanded her to descend. She left the window with a look of angry
+amusement, and he knew that she was yielding to his orders.
+
+It was his first command, and she had obeyed it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+For convincing the human heart there is no argument like a parable or
+analogy, and there is no more worthless proof to the mind. So long as
+Persis could be called a bird of paradise, too rich for a canary cage,
+or a sea-gull, too wild, or a planet unattainable, Forbes admitted that
+his hopes of winning her and keeping her were foolish. He gave her up.
+So much for the metaphors. But when he saw her at the window in the
+daylight, and saw, not a sea-gull nor a planet, but just a pretty,
+drowsy girl with rumpled hair, he tossed aside all the arguments by
+parable and analogy, as candle-ends unfit for sunshine. She was only a
+woman, and he was all of a man, and this was America, and, by George
+Washington, he would have her to wife!
+
+He would begin the day right with a wholesome morning smack. He tiptoed
+along the grass around to the door, and met her in the living-room. And
+as soon as he met her he set his arms about her. But she was almost
+sullen as she pushed him away.
+
+"I won't have it!" she said, with a harshness that shocked him. "It's
+too early in the morning. And I don't like it. And I don't want gossip
+set going. And you must be doubly circumspect."
+
+He fell back, baffled, and dropped his eyes in discontent. He saw that
+her little high boots were sprawling open. He smiled at the homely touch
+again.
+
+"If you're so circumspect," he said, "you'd better button your shoes."
+
+"I forgot to bring up a button-hook," she laughed, "and when I bent
+over with a hairpin I got so sleepy that I nearly fell back in bed."
+
+"Permit me," he urged.
+
+"No, thank you!"
+
+"You can't walk with 'em falling off like that," he insisted. "A
+hairpin, please."
+
+She took one from her hair, and he dropped to one knee. He could not
+seem to find the right position to work from. After hunching about from
+position to position he said:
+
+"I reckon your feet are put on the wrong way."
+
+"Thanks."
+
+"For being buttoned, I mean."
+
+"My maid buttons them every morning."
+
+"Tell me how on earth she gets at your foot?"
+
+"No, thanks. I'll button them myself."
+
+"Oh no, you won't. How do the shoe clerks manage it?"
+
+She set her foot on the rung of a chair, and he went at his task with
+all awkwardness. Her feet were small, yet the shoes were as tight as
+could be, and she winced as the buttons ground or bit. But she choked
+back the little cries of pain that rose to her lips.
+
+"Get away," she said; "you're killing me."
+
+But he would not surrender the privilege. He took her foot on his knee
+and wrought with all care. The hairpin was soon a twisted wreck, and he
+must have another, and another.
+
+When the lowest buttons were done she checked him. "That's enough! I'd
+rather my shoes fell off than my hair. And that reminds me: where is my
+cap?"
+
+"In my pocket next my heart."
+
+"Give it to me, please."
+
+"I'm going to keep it."
+
+"By what right?"
+
+"Conquest and possession."
+
+"What if somebody should see you with it?"
+
+"Nobody shall."
+
+"Somebody always does. Nobody would believe it fell out of a window!"
+
+"It fell straight into my heart."
+
+She gave him up with a shrug. "Good Lord, you men! I don't suppose
+there's any coffee? I'm so used to having it in bed before I get up that
+I'm faint."
+
+"I could make you some, if I knew where the coffee was, and the
+coffee-pot, and if there were any fire."
+
+"Let's look into the kitchen."
+
+She knew the way, and led him into a great food-studio--a place to
+delight a chef with its equipment and an artist with its coppers.
+
+But the range was as cold as its white-glazed chimney. They cast about
+for fuel, and found that Prout had fetched kindling and coal the
+afternoon before.
+
+Forbes soon had a fire snapping under one lid, and Persis hunted through
+cupboards and closets till she discovered a coffee-pot, evidently
+belonging to the servants' dining-room, and a canister half full of
+coffee.
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea how much of that goes in, have you?" she
+said, helplessly. He nodded and made the measurements deftly.
+
+"Where did you learn so much?" she asked, with a primeval woman's first
+wonder at a cave-man's first blaze and first cookery.
+
+"A soldier ought to be able to build a fire and make a cup of coffee,
+oughtn't he?"
+
+"Oh," she shrugged, "I always forget that you're a soldier. I've never
+seen you in uniform. You never tell me anything about yourself. I always
+think of you as just one of us loafers."
+
+"It's mighty pleasant to be building a fire for you--for just us," he
+maundered.
+
+"It is fine, isn't it?" she chuckled, with glistening eyes. "Rather
+reversing the usual, though, for idiotic woman to stand by while strong
+man boils the coffee--or are you baking it? I might be getting the
+dishes."
+
+"I'd be willing to do this every morning--for you--for us," he ventured,
+his heart thumping at its own dauntlessness.
+
+She evaded the implied proposal as she ransacked a cabinet. "I fancy it
+would rather lose its charm in time. As a regular thing, I like to see
+breakfast brought up on a tray by a nice-looking maid."
+
+She brought out a perilous, double arm-load of cups and saucers, and a
+sugar-bowl.
+
+"This is the service china, I suppose. You could drive nails with it."
+
+He stared at her with idolatry. She was so variously beautiful; at the
+theater, the opera, the luncheon, here in a country kitchen--everywhere
+somebody else, and everybody of her beautiful. His hands went out to
+seize her again, but she tumbled the crockery crackingly on the table
+and waved a cup at him. "Stand back, or I'll brain you with this.
+There's no cream. I suppose even the cows aren't up yet. And I can't
+find any butter--or any bread--just these tinned biscuits."
+
+They sat at the kitchen table. The coffee was not good, really; but she
+found it amusing, and he thought it was ambrosia--Mars and Venus at
+breakfast in an Olympian dining-room. He told her something of the sort,
+and implied once more that he longed to make the arrangement permanent.
+
+"I wish you'd quit proposing before breakfast," she said. "I feel very
+material in the morning, anyway, and I'm having a bully time. I'm
+feeling far too sensible to listen to any nonsense about the simple
+life. I can enjoy a bit of rough road as well as anybody. I can turn in
+and work or do without, or dress in rags--anything for a picnic--for a
+while. But as a regular thing--ugh! To get breakfast once in somebody's
+else kitchen at an ungodly hour with a captivating stranger--glorious!
+But to get up every morning--every every morning, rain or shine, cold
+or hot, sleepy or sick or blue--no, thank you!"
+
+"You think the rich are happier than the poor?"
+
+"Of course they are. That's why everybody wants to be rich."
+
+"But the rich aren't contented."
+
+"Oh, contented! Nobody's contented except the blind, and hopeless
+invalids. Contentment is a question of being a sport. There's a lot of
+good losers that will grin if they have to walk home in the rain from
+the races, and there are a lot of what they call 'bum sports' that throw
+their winnings on the ground because the odds weren't longer. But don't
+tell me that there's any special joy in being poor. If I had to be poor,
+I suppose I'd put the best face I could on it. That happens to be my
+nature. It's the good sports making the best of poverty that cause so
+much talk; but all the poor and middlers that I've met have hated it and
+envied the rich.
+
+"You see, the rich can buy everything the poor have, but the poor can
+buy hardly anything the rich have. Sometimes my father goes out in the
+field on his farm and tosses hay, or beds down the horses, or chops dead
+trees. Sometimes he likes to have just a bowl of milk and some crackers
+for his supper. But when he wants something else he can have it--at
+least, he always has been able to--up to now."
+
+A little shiver agitated her like a flaw of wind running along a calm
+lake.
+
+"It's cold and damp in here," she said. "Let's get out in the sunshine
+and quit talking poverty. We're neither of us poor--yet."
+
+She rose and moved out to the kitchen porch, and, round the house, up a
+sweep of stairs to the main terrace.
+
+"Look," she cried, "isn't it wonderful? Isn't it worth while? It costs
+thousands of dollars just to make that lawn smooth, and thousands more
+for the marble balustrades, and the fountains are a fortune, and the
+sunken garden--the poor can't have a glimpse of it! They don't know it
+exists. Even Mr. Enslee's cook hardly knows it's here; he doesn't permit
+any of the servants except the house staff to come out front. Isn't it a
+shame? But don't you love it? Isn't it heavenly under your feet? My eyes
+fly over it like birds. It's splendid to have tea out here in the
+summer, and wear long sweeping gowns and picture-hats, and have
+delicious things brought to you on the finest of china. Oh, I never was
+meant for a poor man's daughter. Even if I feed the chickens or pat the
+cattle, I like to do it as Marie Antoinette did at the Petit Trianon
+just for a contrast--an _hors d'oeuvre_."
+
+Forbes thought of the bird of paradise and the sea-gull again, and he
+doubted the value of his cage again. They sauntered across the lawn and
+up the stairs. He took her arm to help her, but she shook her head.
+
+"Please! Now, tell me all about yourself."
+
+"There's nothing to tell."
+
+"There must be. I've a right to hear it. Think of it, you've kissed me
+once, and I didn't fight. I let you. Good Lord, I nearly kissed you!"
+His arms rushed toward her; but she frowned. "Don't make me go back. I
+was saying, you've kissed me, and we've had a terrible escapade in a
+strange kitchen, and I hardly know your first name. So you're a
+soldier." He nodded. "West Point?" He nodded. "Did you ever get in a
+real fight?" He nodded. "Where?"
+
+"Cuba. Philippines."
+
+"You were in the Spanish War? Really! I didn't know you were so old."
+
+"I wasn't so old then. I'm very ancient now."
+
+She mused aloud: "They say a husband should be ten years older than his
+wife."
+
+The implication enraptured him. It showed that she was at least toying
+with the thought. "Then there's no hope for me. I'm far too old for
+you."
+
+"But I'm very ancient," she said. "I ought to have been married years
+ago."
+
+"I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long. There's no need for further
+delay."
+
+"Are you proposing again? The man's a regular phonograph with only one
+old broken record! So you've been in battles and battles. Were you
+afraid?"
+
+"Afterward. I suppose it's because I'm slow and stupid: but I don't
+usually get scared till the trouble's over. Then I'm sick as a dog and
+as frightened as a girl."
+
+"That's something like me. Only I get terribly scared of little things
+that don't count. A mouse or a spider or anything crawly--ugh! is that a
+caterpillar?"
+
+She shrank back against him in a palsy of repugnance at about an inch of
+moving fuzz on a rhododendron. He held her with one hand, and with the
+other broke off the twig and cast the vermin into space. She put his arm
+away, and said:
+
+"You are brave!"
+
+"St. George and the dragon," he smiled.
+
+"In those battles of yours," she resumed, "were you ever by any chance
+wounded or killed or anything?"
+
+"I was never killed entirely," he answered, "but I stopped a few bits of
+lead."
+
+She shuddered and caught his arm with a rush of sympathy none the less
+fierce for being belated.
+
+"Wounded! You were wounded?"
+
+He put his hand on hers where it lay on his sleeve. "Yes, you blessed
+thing. Does it make any difference to you?"
+
+She drew her hand away gently. "I hate to think of--of anybody getting
+hurt. Did it hurt--to be wounded?"
+
+"Afterward. I didn't notice it much at the time--except when I was shot
+in the mouth."
+
+"Good Lord, how?"
+
+"I was yelling something to my sergeant, and a bullet went right in and
+out here." He put his finger on his cheek.
+
+"Great heavens! I thought it was a dimple. I rather liked it."
+
+"Then I'm glad I got it."
+
+She writhed with pain for his sake.
+
+"Did it hurt--hideously?"
+
+"Not half as much as the two pellets I got in my side. They probed for
+them till I made them stop, partly because I wasn't enjoying it and
+partly because probing kills more than cartridges."
+
+"How did they get them out, then?"
+
+"They didn't."
+
+She stared at him wild-eyed.
+
+"You don't mean to say that you're standing there with a couple of
+bullets in you? Why, you're positively uncanny."
+
+"I'm sorry, if it disturbs you."
+
+"Oh, please! You're wonderful. But aren't you afraid they'll kill
+you--turn green or something?"
+
+"They're neatly surrounded by now with aseptic sacs, the surgeon tells
+me. I'd forgotten all about them till you reminded me."
+
+"And they never pain you?"
+
+"The only wound I'm suffering now is from the arrow of this
+sharp-shooter."
+
+They were standing in the little temple, between them a little marble
+rascal with a bow and arrow. Persis put her hand to her heart. He
+mistook the gesture and asked, with sudden zest:
+
+"He didn't hit you, too, did he?"
+
+"I was thinking of you," she murmured, staring at him with wet eyes.
+"Wounded and bleeding, your flesh all torn, and the surgeons gouging in
+the wounds. Oh!"
+
+She toppled backward and sank on a marble bench before he could help
+her. He stared at her in bewildered unbelief. He understood that she
+was nearly aswoon because he had suffered once.
+
+"Why, God bless your wonderful sweet soul!" he gasped, and would have
+knelt and clasped his arms around her. But even in the swimming of her
+senses her prudence was on guard, and his indiscretion restored her to
+herself like a dash of water.
+
+"I beg you to be careful," she said. "You are perfectly visible from the
+house."
+
+"But nobody's awake. The blinds are closed."
+
+"There are always eyes behind blinds."
+
+"Then let them see me tell you how much I--"
+
+"Not here!" she gasped. "Don't tell me that here."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Do you really want to know?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mr. Enslee built this little temple to this little Cupid to propose to
+me in."
+
+"And did he?" Forbes asked, in a voice that rattled. "Did he propose to
+you?"
+
+"Regularly."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+She studied Forbes closely and laughed aloud at the almost nausea he
+plainly felt.
+
+"I thought that would shock the nonsense out of you," she triumphed.
+"Now let's be sensible while the sun shines, and get better acquainted.
+Tell me more about you, and I'll tell you some awful things about me."
+
+She sauntered on in an arch and riant humor. He resented it, and yet he
+followed her, hating this mood of hers, yet finding her more precious as
+he found her more difficult. If he had known women better he would have
+guessed, or "reckoned," that her very effort to make herself difficult
+was a proof that she was not really so difficult as she would have him
+believe. The one who takes such joy in being pursued is not entirely
+unwilling to be caught.
+
+She quizzed him about his life, his home, his earlier loves. She
+demanded descriptions of every sweetheart he had cherished, from the
+first chub of infancy to the girl he left behind in Manila; and she said
+she hated them all impartially.
+
+She told him of her life: endowed with every material comfort, yet with
+a vague unhappiness for something or somebody--"perhaps it was for you,"
+she added, but spoke teasingly. She had had nurses and governesses and
+maids from her first day on earth. She had been to school in France, and
+traveled round the world; she had been presented at the courts of
+England and Italy, Germany and Russia; had visited at castles and
+chateaux. Her sister was in England. She had married a title and was
+unhappy; but for the matter of that, so were the wives of most of the
+stanch Americans she knew, rich and poor.
+
+Persis had had flirtations of cosmopolitan variety. Her ambition was to
+go on skimming the cream off of life. She had given up the hope of ever
+loving, at least with abandonment. There was too much else in the world.
+She had been so thoroughly and incessantly schooled in self-control that
+she doubted if even her heart could forget the rules of conduct. She did
+not want love to make the fool of her it had made of so many of her
+friends, and of the people she read about in newspapers and books.
+
+She never took much enjoyment in adventures, anyway, she said, because
+her imagination was always busy with the appearance of her acts. She
+found herself considering: "How will this look? What gossip will that
+start?" She hated herself for the cold, calculating instinct; but she
+could not rid herself of it.
+
+"This very minute," she admitted, "my fun is half spoiled by thinking of
+what those people down there in the house will say if they learn that
+I've been up here with you? Nothing could be more harmless than a stroll
+before breakfast in a highly illuminated forest, but they'd talk
+and--well, I'd rather they wouldn't."
+
+She led the protesting Forbes homeward again, down the long flight of
+steps. The most he could exact was the promise of another walk
+together--sometime when it could be arranged without attracting
+attention or detracting from the duties toward the host and his other
+guests.
+
+As they started across the lawn, whose dew the risen sun had pretty well
+imbibed, they met the gardener. Prout was yawning, and when he took off
+his hat he looked sleepy enough to fall over into it.
+
+"You folks been up all night?" he asked, with a drowsy surliness.
+
+Persis shook her head and smiled. "It's you that have overslept."
+
+He changed the subject abruptly. "I just been buildin' a fire for Miss
+Mather."
+
+"Good Lord, is she awake?" Persis gasped.
+
+"Well," said Prout, "as to that, she's not wot you'd exackly call awake,
+but she's up an' doin' in the kitchin."
+
+While the gardener shuffled away to play valet to his flowers, Persis
+stood irresolute.
+
+"I hope Winifred hasn't seen us," she said. "The kitchen and the nursery
+are both to the east. We'll take a chance. You go on into the kitchen
+and help her, and I'll telephone down from my room. _Au 'voir!_"
+
+She opened the outer door ever so slightly and oozed through the slit as
+narrowly as Bernhardt used to when she had murdered Scarpia. Forbes
+dawdled a few moments, then went into the kitchen.
+
+He found Winifred playing the part of cook with a vengeance. Her hair
+was disheveled, her sleeves rolled back, and her face smudged from her
+smudgy fingers. She had assumed a cook's prerogative of wrath. The
+moment she saw Forbes she began with a savage, "Oh, it's you! And who's
+been littering up my clean kitchen?"
+
+"I took the liberty of making myself a little coffee," said Forbes.
+
+"There are two cups."
+
+"I made two cups," said Forbes; and she was too busy to notice the
+evasion.
+
+"Then, since you've had your breakfast," she snapped, "you can help me
+get something for the rest. You'd better put this on."
+
+Like another Omphale, she fastened a womanish apron on Hercules, and set
+him at uncongenial tasks, retrieving butter, milk, salt, and eggs.
+
+After a time there was a buzz, and a little hopper fell in a box on the
+wall. Winifred went to the house telephone and called out:
+
+"Well! H'lo, Perse, what you doing awake so early? Insomnia? No, I will
+not send your breakfast up on a tray! You can come down and get it. My
+little snojer man is helping me."
+
+She hung up the ear-piece and turned to Forbes with her broad smile.
+
+"A cook has no chance to entertain her gempman friends. The minute I get
+a policeman in here somebody rings."
+
+She kept him wretchedly ill at ease by more of the same banter, which he
+hardly knew how to take. And she seized his arm with a gesture of
+culinary coquetry just as Persis sauntered in. Forbes was horrified to
+note a look of anger in Persis' eyes. He should have been flattered. She
+greeted Winifred, and also Forbes, with a discreet "Good morning!"
+
+"Good get-busy!" Winifred growled.
+
+"What can I do?" said Persis, helplessly.
+
+"For one thing, you can rout the other loafers out of bed."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Use the telephone. Tell 'em the house is on fire."
+
+While Forbes fetched and carried at Winifred's beck and call, Persis
+rang up the various rooms and conveyed Winifred's orders. But her gentle
+voice carried no conviction, and Winifred took her place at the
+instrument and howled in her best cook lingo:
+
+"Get up and come down, or I'll quit you cold and lave you to starve.
+It's scrambled eggs and bacon the marnin', and no goods exchanged."
+
+She went back to the range, only to be called to the telephone again.
+Mrs. Neff was imploring a brief respite. Water boiling over and
+scuttering in hot hailstones from the stove brought Winifred back with a
+screech. She upbraided Persis for a useless scullery maid and threatened
+Forbes with a skillet. She was enjoying herself tremendously. She
+ordered Persis to set the table in the breakfast-room, but refused
+Forbes permission to help her.
+
+But he slipped away a little later, when she went to rummage the
+ice-room. He found Persis drifting about in a lake of golden sunshine,
+distributing delicate chinas and looking like a moving figurine of
+bisque. There was a pleasant clink of silver as she laid the knives and
+forks and spoons, and he thought how wonderful she would be in such a
+little home as he could offer her, how she would grace the quarters at
+an army post. She smiled on him, and her smile was sunshine. He went at
+her once more with that rush of desire. She put up her hand to fend him
+off, and he knocked a cup out of it.
+
+They knelt together to pick up the pieces. He began:
+
+"While I'm down here on my knees, I ask you again--" She put her hand to
+her lips in warning, but he seized the hand. She snatched it away and
+rose to her feet just as Willie Enslee came in.
+
+Forbes, still on his knees, set busily to work picking up the scattered
+petals of the china. He felt guilty as a caught burglar, but the
+unsuspecting Willie paused on the threshold to yawn. Willie was always
+yawning on the threshold of discovery.
+
+"'Morning! 'Morning!" was his almost swallowed greeting.
+
+"We just broke one of your cups," said Persis, "while we were setting
+the table."
+
+"So long as you don't break the table, I suppose I'm to be
+congratulated. Had a fearful time this morning without my man. Had to
+fill my own tub, put own buttons in, shave self--cut a map of Russia on
+face. Couldn't get tie tied to save life. Persis, you'll have to help
+your little Willie with his bib."
+
+So Persis knotted his scarf for him while Forbes grew restive at the
+sight. Willie was proprietary in his tone, and he clung drowsily to
+Persis' arm while her hands hovered about his throat. But when the task
+was done he toddled through the swinging-door to see what wreck had been
+made of the kitchen.
+
+"You see!" said Persis, reproachfully, putting down the silver very
+slowly. "You nearly got caught."
+
+"But what of it?" Forbes broke out. "I love you. I'm not ashamed of my
+love or of you. I want you to be my wife."
+
+The boyish manly sincerity of this convinced her and filled her eyes
+with a morning haze.
+
+"You do? Really?" She moved on to the next place. He followed her.
+
+"Of course I do. Will you?"
+
+She continued slowly circling the table, with side trips to the
+sideboard, and he followed with a great ado of helping her. The two were
+making a slower job of it than either would have required alone.
+
+"It's rather fun being proposed to while one is setting the table,"
+Persis murmured. "We're getting terribly domestic already."
+
+"You'd be so beautiful domesticated," Forbes urged.
+
+"But so somebody else thinks--and we're on his grounds." And since it
+was characteristic of Persis to express a virtue in a sporting term, she
+shook her head. "We're not playing strictly according to Hoyle. It's not
+quite cricket."
+
+"I know it," said Forbes. "And I--I dare you to come outside--off the
+place."
+
+"All right. I will, the first chance I get."
+
+"The first chance you get to what?" said Mrs. Neff, who appeared as
+suddenly as Cinderella's witch. And she looked a trifle witchy this
+morning without the rejuvenating spells of her maid. "I couldn't help
+overhearing, but my eyes aren't open. I didn't see anything."
+
+Persis surprised Forbes and Mrs. Neff by her frankness.
+
+"I was saying I would take a long walk with Mr. Forbes the first chance
+I get."
+
+"Good work!" said Mrs. Neff, quite earnestly. "I was telling him what a
+love of a couple you two would make."
+
+Persis turned on her in amazement. "You were telling Mr. Forbes that?"
+
+"Yes, I was. When a woman gets as old as I feel of mornings, she has the
+right to be a matchmaker. You two go on and work out your own salvation
+and I'll keep Willie off the scent. If I could prevent Alice from
+marrying Stowe Webb, and you from marrying Willie, I'd retire on my
+laurels. I dote on conspiracies. That's where Alice gets her knack for
+plots."
+
+This to her daughter, who sauntered in just in time to receive the facer
+and gasp:
+
+"Why, mother, what do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, I can smell a mouse even if I can't trap it right away. I know you
+telephone him and write him and all that. I used to when I was your age.
+Only, I fooled my mother and married the man I wanted to. If I'd married
+the one she wanted me to, I'd be one of the richest women on earth
+instead of a starving twice-widow with a pack of children to drive to
+market."
+
+"Isn't she the most appalling mother a poor child ever had?" Alice
+gasped. "Sometimes I think I ought to take her over my knee and spank
+her."
+
+Forbes and Persis paid little heed to the usual duel of these two women.
+They were thinking of the complexity of outside interference in their
+own program of quiet communion.
+
+Persis' mind was full of reproof for Mrs. Neff; but she was silenced by
+the presence of Alice, and Ten Eyck's appearance, and the irruption of
+Winifred with a great tray of egg-gold and bacon-bronze.
+
+It was an informal gathering at that breakfast-table. Important articles
+of toilet had been forgotten, and there were no maids or men to repair
+the omissions. But too great correctness would have been an anachronism
+at Winifred's table. Everybody had gone to bed early and tired, and had
+slept longer and better than usual. Doing without was a new game to
+these people, and they made a picnic-ground of the breakfast-room.
+
+Even Willie tried to romp with his guests, but he lacked the genius for
+hilarity, and his jokes consisted principally of repeating exactly what
+somebody else had just said, then laughing as hard as he could.
+
+He told Persis that he wanted to show her the farm, and the new fountain
+in the sunken gardens, and he told her in such a way that the others
+felt themselves cordially invited not to go along. But they were used to
+tactlessness from Willie, and they merely winked mutually.
+
+Willie seemed to feel the winks in the air, and to realize that he had
+not done exactly the perfect thing, so he reverted to his favorite
+witticism: "You take Mrs. Neff, Mr. Forbes" (he was getting the name
+right at times now). "You take Mrs. Neff and go where you please. You
+turtle-doves will find several arbors and summer-houses and lovers'
+lanes scattered around the place. I'll tell the gardener and his men to
+keep out of the way. Come along, Persis."
+
+Forbes watched them off with a look of jealousy that did not escape Mrs.
+Neff. She put a kindly hand on his arm.
+
+"After all, he owns the place; he's the host--a poor thing, but our
+host. She'd rather be with you, and you'd rather be with her; but you'll
+have to wait. You'll probably get plenty of each other soon enough."
+
+Winifred detailed Alice and Ten Eyck to wash the breakfast dishes. The
+turn of the others would come later. Persis and Mrs. Neff were to make
+the beds.
+
+"Winifred was born to be a poor man's wife," said Mrs. Neff, as she led
+Forbes across the lawn. "She dotes on cooking and pot-walloping and
+mending, and she had to be born with a mint of money, and the only man
+that ever cared for her is Bob Fielding, who will hardly let her lift
+her teacup to her lips, for fear she'll overwork herself.
+
+"Now Persis is as dainty as a cat, and as hard to boss. And she has a
+fatal attraction for men who can't afford to keep her. Willie's the only
+suitor she ever had that has more money than she could spend. And I
+think she likes him less than anything on earth except work."
+
+Forbes was tempted to confess to Mrs. Neff what he had divulged to Ten
+Eyck, but he postponed the miserable business. It was an uncongenial
+company for proclaiming one's poverty.
+
+The surroundings were as tempting as Naboth's vineyard was to David. He
+understood why men grew unscrupulous in the hunt for great wealth.
+
+Mrs. Neff led Forbes about the place, which she knew well. But the
+beauties were only torments to him. Below the climbing marble stairway
+to the temple there was a broken stairway winding down the hill. It
+meandered like the dry bed of a stream, between brick walls, bordered
+with flowers, with now and then a resting-place, or some quaint niche
+where a little statue smiled or a fountain trilled and tinkled.
+
+At two stages of the descent there were circular levels with ornate
+shelters and aristocratic plants. From the lowest shelf there was only a
+path dropping down the long hill to a distant wall; beyond this a ragged
+woods like a mob of poor shut out from a rich man's place.
+
+"That wall is the end of the Enslee estate," said Mrs. Neff.
+
+"There is an end to it, then?" said Forbes, more bitterly than he
+intended.
+
+"There's an end to everything, my boy," Mrs. Neff brooded, with a
+far-off bitterness of her own--"an end to wealth and love
+and--everything."
+
+"Who owns that place off there, I wonder?" said Forbes.
+
+"Nobody in particular," said Mrs. Neff. "Some old cantankerous absentee
+that won't sell. Do you want to buy it to be near Mrs. Enslee? Willie
+has offered him all sorts of money, but he won't let go. You might have
+better luck."
+
+Forbes again ignored the assumption that he was wealthy, and said:
+
+"There are things, then, that even the Enslee money can't buy?"
+
+"Many things," said Mrs. Neff. "Persis' love, for one, and Willie's own
+happiness, and a foot more of height and a certain charm, and--but
+aren't we stupid and cynical this beautiful morning?"
+
+"Are we?" Forbes smiled.
+
+"We are, and I have a right to be," said Mrs. Neff. "But you haven't.
+You are not white-haired, nor old, nor a woman."
+
+"Are those the only causes for unhappiness?"
+
+"They are three of the worst, and the most incurable."
+
+But Forbes was too young in his own anxieties to give much importance to
+her ancient plaints, though she was not too old to understand his. He
+was glancing upward now and then to the little temple. It was visible
+from here, though the two figures in it were small and blurred with
+light.
+
+Forbes was sure that Enslee was proposing to Persis, for he
+gesticulated, pointed at the landscape and the house. He was evidently
+commending these to Persis, laying them at her feet, begging her to
+become at once the chatelaine of this splendor.
+
+Forbes wanted to abandon Mrs. Neff and fly to the rescue of Persis. He
+wanted to break in on that proposal, prove to her how much better he
+loved her than Enslee did, how much greater happiness she could have
+with him than with Enslee. But he made no move in that direction. It was
+one of those simple things that almost nobody can find the courage to
+do. He loitered with Mrs. Neff, hating himself for a skulker.
+
+He could not know that he pleaded well enough at a distance. His absence
+wrought for him against Willie Enslee's presence. Willie was indeed
+commending his estate to Persis, urging her to marry him at once and
+settle here for the summer, except what time they might spend abroad or
+on the yacht, or his other palace at Newport.
+
+But while he pleaded Persis was searching Enslee's landscape for Forbes.
+The view had been entrancing from the temple with Forbes at her side.
+Now she felt that it was not after all so satisfying. The very fact that
+Willie praised it brought up suspicion. She would prefer to choose
+another landscape, one better suited to her and Forbes, not a
+second-hand landscape built along some other person's lines.
+
+It would be a joy for Forbes and her to pick out a hundred acres or
+more--not too far from New York; perhaps among the hunting and poloing
+colonies on Long Island. While they were building they could cruise.
+
+But perhaps Forbes could not afford a yacht. She must not run him into
+extravagances. Well, after all, the suites _de luxe_ on some of the
+ocean liners were not so bad, with their own dining-saloons attached. By
+omitting the yacht they could have a stunning town house. Mrs. Jimmie
+Chives wanted to sell her place for a song, and nearly every room in it
+was imported bodily from some European castle or mansion. With a few
+changes it could be made quite a habitable shack.
+
+And so, while Willie pleaded in his nagging way, her own imagination was
+attorney for Forbes. Only it was imagining a Forbes that did not exist,
+a fairly rich and decently leisurely Forbes. Down below, looking up to
+her with such eyes as lovers in hell cast on their beloveds in heaven,
+was the real Forbes, poor, hard-worked, with no financial prospects
+beyond a minute increase of wage by slow promotion. And he had only a
+few days more of leisure before he resumed the livery of the nation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+Luncheon was breakfast again with a few additions. Winifred had lost the
+hang of the range, and what successes she had were ruined by her
+inability to corral the herd on time. The soup was salted beyond the
+sanction of even the most amiable palate. The chickens were guaranteed
+not to be resurrections from a cold-storage tomb; but they would have
+been the better for a little longer hanging and a little shorter
+cooking. The vegetables had not been salted at all, nor warmed quite
+through.
+
+"The average is perfect," was Ten Eyck's verdict.
+
+"And the salad's fine, Winifred," said Mrs. Neff, in a desperate effort
+to console the despondent cook, who retreated to the kitchen and cried a
+little more salt into the soup.
+
+Ten Eyck rubbed his sagging waistcoat and groaned:
+
+"This is the emptiest empty house-party I ever went to."
+
+"It would have been a noble institution in Lent," Persis sighed.
+
+"You would come," Willie snapped.
+
+"Thank heaven," Alice purred, "I have a five-pound box of chocolates in
+my room."
+
+Mrs. Neff glared at her. "He'd better save his money. Or has he an
+account at Maillard's? You can't live on candy, you know."
+
+"It's quite as nourishing as the Congressional Record," said Alice.
+
+"Deuce all!" cried Ten Eyck. "But family matters aside, we've got to do
+something about food. I've survived the fireless and foodless cooking at
+breakfast and luncheon, but the dinnerless dinner would finish me.
+Winifred can afford to bant, I can't. I'm going to give a party. We'll
+all dine over at the Port of Missing Men and have dinner on me; that
+will get us through until to-morrow at least."
+
+This was agreed upon with enthusiasm. Winifred was tactfully proffered a
+vote of thanks and a vacation. There remained only the afternoon to
+kill. Persis thought to steal a few minutes with Forbes, and they struck
+out for the sunken gardens, but Willie came panting after them and
+constituted himself their guide.
+
+He was like one of those pests that can rob the Pitti Palace of interest
+and make the Vatican an old barn. He led them through the gardens, the
+greenhouses, the stables, and the kennels. Here a little sea of beagles
+flowed and frothed round Persis' feet. They were a relic of the days
+before the hunting fever left Westchester for Long Island. They were mad
+for exercise, and so were the horses in the stables.
+
+"We must take these poor nags out for a run," said Persis, looking at
+Forbes, who accepted with his eyes.
+
+"All right, we will. To-morrow morning," said Willie; and Forbes
+resigned with a look.
+
+Unable to shake off Willie, Persis pleaded the need for a little sleep
+and retreated to her room. Forbes wandered about, puzzled at the
+appalling loneliness he could feel in so beautiful a place with so many
+people around and only one missing.
+
+Eventually, however, the sun, which had begun the day with such ecstasy
+for him, began to approach the top of the western hill, and the caravan
+set out for the Port of Missing Men, which proved to be a little cottage
+of an inn set upon the edge of a small mountain and surveying a vast
+panorama.
+
+On the piazza the crowd dined well, and returned through the great park
+to the homeward roads, for when they reached the Enslee bridge it was
+like coming home. The wings of the motor had made it possible to run
+twenty-five miles to dinner and twenty-five miles back in almost
+negligible time; but the exultant speed of the journey and the multitude
+of sights that had fled past fatigued the mind like a long voyage, and
+it was once more a subdued company that gathered before the living-room
+fireplace.
+
+Silence fell upon them all, and they sat once more staring into the
+flames, each finding there the glittering castles of desire.
+
+Prout came in with more logs of wood and tiptoed out, shaking his head
+in stupefaction at this latest game of these amazing people.
+
+At some vaguely later hour Persis rose and went into the adjoining
+music-room. Forbes longed to follow, but feared to move. She strummed a
+few inexpert chords on the piano. Then she went to the victrola and
+searched among the black disks. A little later she called out:
+
+"Everything in this house is last year's. There's not a turkey-trot on
+the place, or a tango."
+
+A little later she spoke again, "Here's a bit of ancient history." She
+cranked up the machine, set the needle to the disk, and "The Beautiful
+Blue Danube" came twanging forth from a scarred record that riddled the
+melody with curious spatterings.
+
+The once world-victorious rhapsody had almost a dirge-like tameness now;
+but it brought Willie to his feet, and he began to circle the room with
+Persis. She drooped over his inferior shoulders like a wilted flower.
+
+Ten Eyck scooped Alice off the floor and danced in double time. Forbes
+bowed to Winifred, but she waved him away with a heavy hand. Mrs. Neff
+beckoned him.
+
+"I'd rather be second choice than a wallflower. That music takes me back
+a thousand years."
+
+She glided with an old-time dignity. Forbes tried to keep his eyes from
+Persis and heed Mrs. Neff's reminiscences.
+
+"Waltzes, waltzes!" she wailed. "How much they meant once to me. There
+are no dances like the old dances."
+
+"There never were," said Forbes. "I reckon that twenty years from now
+old folks will be shaking their heads and telling how sweet and
+dignified the turkey-trot was compared with the epileptic crawl and the
+hydrophobia skedaddle they'll be doing then."
+
+"I reckon so," said Mrs. Neff. "I can just remember when the polka was
+considered immoral."
+
+Other waltzes were played, but Willie's appetite for them was quenched
+after the first. He sank into a chair by the living-room table and took
+up a story in an old magazine.
+
+Persis waltzed with Forbes more often than with the others; but Willie
+never knew. In fact, it was not long before his head grew heavier and
+heavier, and finally, with his chin in his necktie, he slept.
+
+The dancing, the copious wine, and the sudden warmth of the weather soon
+led to the opening of doors. From the music-room one stepped out into a
+kind of cloister opening on the lawn.
+
+Eventually Persis set a two-step record whirling on the machine. Forbes
+asked her to dance with him. As they were passing one of the doors a
+little gust of summer-night air blew upon them so appealingly that
+Forbes swung Persis across the sill and stepped out into the cloister,
+where the moonlight streamed like a distant searchlight.
+
+The music followed them, but muffled, by the pat of their feet along the
+tiled floor. To silence this noise Forbes danced across the margin of
+stone out upon the smooth, short, silent grass. Persis made no
+resistance, and he danced always a little deeper into the lawn, a little
+farther from the house. He danced her round the inky plumes of a
+cluster of cedars. These shut out the lights from the door. The music
+was quite lost here, and Persis hummed the tune herself; seemed to croon
+it into his very heart.
+
+The music must have stopped in the house long before they knew it, and
+some one must have put on a disk in whose hard-rubber surface was
+embedded the voice of Sembrich singing a waltz-song of Chopin's.
+
+This angelic melody floated on the air as if it came from nowhere and
+everywhere, and Forbes and Persis fell into the swift rhythm of it. They
+must needs dance furiously fast to keep up; but the music brought with
+it some of its own resistless energy.
+
+Out here in this moon-world they seemed to be utterly aloof from the
+earth. They seemed to whirl like twin stars in a cosmic dance to the
+music of the spheres, the song the stars sing together. The Milky Way
+was but moonlit dew on the lawn of the sky. And they darted between the
+planets in a divine rhythm on a vast orbit, until at last a
+breathlessness of soul and body compelled Persis to end the occult rite.
+
+The moonlight fell about her in a magic veil, and Forbes could not let
+her go. He caught her closer to him. But before his lips could brush her
+cheek, she broke his clasp and said:
+
+"We must get back."
+
+"Oh, please!" he implored.
+
+"The others will wonder."
+
+"What of it?"
+
+"We can't afford to set them talking."
+
+"We can't afford to waste a night like this in a stuffy room."
+
+"There will be other moonlight nights."
+
+"How do you know? We can't be sure."
+
+"The moon is pretty regular in its habits."
+
+"But we may not be alive. It may rain to-morrow. And the day after I
+must be getting back to my post."
+
+"Really? Oh, that is too bad!" There was such deep regret in her words
+that he took courage to say:
+
+"If we could only walk together a long, long distance! Doesn't the moon
+seem to--to command you to march?"
+
+"Yes; but--but my slippers are all wet with the dew."
+
+"You could change them."
+
+"And what would the others say?"
+
+"Must they know?"
+
+"How could they help knowing?"
+
+"If you told them all good night and went to your room and changed your
+slippers, and came out later, and I met you--"
+
+It was a very elaborate conspiracy for him, and she gasped:
+
+"Do you think I'm quite mad?"
+
+"I know I am, or it seems that I'll go mad unless I can be with you in
+this wonderful light."
+
+"It is wonderful, but--even if I were crazy enough to do as you say you
+would spoil it all--you wouldn't be good."
+
+"Oh yes, I would. I promise."
+
+"Solemnly?"
+
+"I solemnly promise that I will not annoy you. I will not presume to--to
+kiss you unless you ask me to."
+
+"That ought to be safe enough," she laughed. "Well, I'll think it over.
+And now we really must get back. Alice and Murray are at the door
+looking this way."
+
+They returned slowly to the cloister, discussing the beauty of the night
+and the brilliance of the moon. Persis told on herself; confessed that
+she had been foolish enough to dance on the grass, and her shoes and
+stockings were drenched.
+
+Willie, who was partially awake, supplied the necessary excuse for
+absence. He demanded that she change at once and not risk pneumonia.
+
+"If I'm sent to my room I won't come back," said Persis, and yawned
+convincingly. This set up a contagion of yawns. Everybody was instantly
+smitten with sleepiness. There was no necessity to keep awake, and they
+were all easy victims of the demands of long-deferred sleep.
+
+There was some flurry over the nightcap drinks, and a leisurely exit of
+all except Persis, who left immediately. When the rest went up to their
+rooms Forbes went to his.
+
+He waited with frantic impatience for the light to go out in Ten Eyck's
+room. It was nearly midnight when Forbes felt it safe to venture out
+into the hall and tiptoe down the stairs. He had just arrived there when
+Persis stole down and met him. There was no light except a shaft of
+moonshine weirdly recolored by a stained-glass window. They did not
+venture even a whisper. He took her arm and groped with his free hand
+through a black tunnel to a blacker door, which opened stealthily and
+admitted a flood of moonlight.
+
+Persis was dressed warmly, and she had put on high boots and a short,
+thick mackinaw jacket. But she shivered with the midnight chill and with
+a kind of ecstatic terror.
+
+Forbes had planned his route. He would avoid the ascending stairway to
+the temple of Enslee's worship, and lead her to the sunken gardens,
+which he had longed to explore with her at his side.
+
+They did not wade out into the mid-sea of the lawn. He remembered
+Persis' dictum that behind the blinds there are always eyes. Like
+snickering truants they skirted the balustrade, the shadowy privet
+hedge, the masses of juniper and bay and box, till they reached the
+point where the winding stairway dropped down between its high brick
+walls.
+
+The shadows were doubly dense here, and Persis hung back, but Forbes
+laughed at her for a poltroon, and she refused to take the dare. He was
+so afraid that she might fall that he finally suggested:
+
+"If you are afraid of stumbling here, I--I'm not forgetting my promise;
+but I just wanted to say that I--I don't mind holding on to you, if you
+want to ask me to."
+
+She declined with whispered thanks. Down, down the walk drifted. At
+length they heard a murmur--the mysteriously musical noise of a
+fountain. They rounded a few more curves and came upon a niched Cupid
+riding a dolphin, from whose mouth an arc of water poured with a sound
+of chuckling laughter. The green patina that covered the bronze was
+uncannily beautiful in the moonlight, and the water was molten silver.
+
+They stood and watched it like children for a long while. Then Forbes
+urged Persis along to the lowest of the circular levels.
+
+There he led her to a bench and dropped down beside her. They both
+looked off into the huge caldron of the hills, filled with moonlight as
+with a mist.
+
+The ragged woods in the distance were superb now in blue velvet.
+Everything was ennobled--rewritten in poetry. Everything plain and
+simple and ugly took on splendor and mystic significance. Every object,
+every group of objects, became personal and seemed to be striving to say
+something.
+
+Persis and Forbes sat worshiping like Parsees of the moon, in awesome
+silence, till Forbes could no longer hush the clamor in his heart.
+
+"Miss Cabot," he said, "I promised not to annoy you. Would it annoy you
+if I told you that--that I love you with all my heart and soul and
+being?"
+
+"How could you love me?" she answered, softly, hoping to be
+contradicted. "You've known me only a few days."
+
+"There are some people we live with for years and never like nor
+understand; others we know and love the moment our eyes meet."
+
+"And did you love me the moment our eyes met?"
+
+"Long before that. I loved the back of your hat and one shoulder."
+
+"Do you tell everybody you meet the same thing? It's rather a stale
+question to ask a man, but you do seem rather impulsive on so short an
+acquaintance."
+
+"Short acquaintance? We've seen each other more than most people see of
+each other in six months. I know you and I know myself, and I know that
+I shall never be happy unless I can be trying to make you happy."
+
+"I am very happy just now," she murmured.
+
+"But we can't sit here forever, and we can't even be together for more
+than a day or two. I want you for my own. I don't want to see you
+only--only on--Mr. Enslee's property."
+
+"Which reminds me," Persis said, with a tone of dispelled romance, "that
+we are still on Mr. Enslee's property, and it doesn't seem fair to him."
+
+"Then let's leave Mr. Enslee's property."
+
+"How? In an airship?"
+
+"See that wall down there. That is one of the boundary lines. If we were
+over that I could tell you some things that I've got to tell you."
+
+"It's an awfully long way."
+
+"Not so long as you think."
+
+"No, no; it's easy to descend to Avernus, or whatever it was; but to get
+back! I'd never have the strength for that."
+
+"It's not far. Let's walk to keep warm. You are cold, aren't you?"
+
+"Frozen, that's all. Well, come along, I'll go part way with you."
+
+They set out upon the little path. There were no trees to shelter them
+now from the moon, and its light seemed to beat upon the hillside like
+waves. The moon that draws the sea along in tides could not but have its
+influence on these two atoms, and on the blood that sped through their
+tiny veins. The moon filled them with the love of love.
+
+Constantly pausing to turn back, but finding it easier to drift on down
+than begin the upward climb, Persis went on and on, arm in arm with
+Forbes. By and by they reached the boundary wall. He helped her to set
+one knee upon it and mount awkwardly. He clambered up and sat down at
+her side. Their backs were toward the Enslee demesne, their feet in the
+unknown.
+
+And there, without delay, Forbes told her that she must be his wife,
+told her that he loved her as woman had never been loved before.
+
+His hands fought to caress her, his lips tingled to be again at her
+cheek, but he kept his promise.
+
+Yet the influence of the promise was potent on her, too. She knew that
+he was in an anguish of temptation, and she glowed with his struggle.
+The moon and the width of the world, the silent night-cry of the world
+in the lonely dark, and the yearning light filled her with a need of
+love. She regretted the promise, she wished that he would break it, and
+her absolution waited ready for his deed.
+
+But his sense of honor prevailed upon his hands, though he could not
+keep silent about his heartache.
+
+"Couldn't you possibly love me, Miss Cabot? Couldn't you possibly?" he
+pleaded; and she whispered, with a sad sweetness:
+
+"I could--all too easily, Mr. Forbes, but I am afraid to love. I thought
+I never should love anybody really. And now that I know I might, it is
+so terrible an awakening that I--I'm afraid of it."
+
+"Don't be afraid," he implored. "Love me. Let yourself love me."
+
+"I'm afraid, Mr. Forbes."
+
+"Then if you're afraid to love, it's because you don't, because
+you--can't."
+
+This hurt her pride. Her heart was so swollen with this new power that
+it would not be denied either by herself or him.
+
+"Yes, I could! Oh, I could! But I mustn't--I mustn't let myself love
+you--not now--not so soon."
+
+"Then I must wait," he sighed, and said no more. And she sat in a
+silence, though there was a great noise of heartbeats in her breast and
+in her temples and ears.
+
+She began to shiver with the night and with her excitement. She wanted
+to say that they must start back; but her tongue stumbled thickly
+against her chattering teeth. The world was bitter cold--so far from
+him. In his arms would be warmth and comfort as at a fireplace. She was
+lonely, unendurably lonely and wistful.
+
+And he sat at her side in an equal ague of distance and need.
+
+Finally he took his eyes from the moon and bent his gaze on her. He saw
+how her shoulders quaked.
+
+"You're cold, you poor, sweet child--you're cold. I'm dying to take you
+in my arms, but I promised--I promised."
+
+She was afraid to surrender, and afraid to defy the will of the night.
+The chill shook her with violence again and again till she felt the
+world rocking, the stone wall wavering. Then she leaned toward him and
+whispered:
+
+"Kiss me!"
+
+He could hardly believe that he heard, but he caught her to him and
+sought her lips with his. Immediately she was afraid again. Again she
+hid the preciousness of her mouth from him, writhed and struggled and
+twisted her face, hid it in his breast. But now he fought her with
+gentle ruthlessness, took her cold cheeks in his cold hands, and,
+holding her face up to the moonlight, kissed her eyes, and her
+dew-besprent hair and her cheeks, and pressed the first great kiss on
+her lips. They fled from him no more.
+
+Only a moment she lingered in Elysium, and then she sighed:
+
+"We must go back--we must! I hate to, but there's to-morrow--and the
+people! What wouldn't they think if they saw us?"
+
+He knew that they would not think the beautiful and holy thoughts that
+filled his heart and hers, so he consented to climb back from this lowly
+heaven to the Upper Purgatory.
+
+Her strength was gone, and he had little of his own; but somehow he
+helped her up. Again and again they paused to rest, and every time he
+tried to tell her that he was poor, and at each pause found her lips so
+sweet that he could not speak of so mean a thing as money and the meaner
+lack of it.
+
+And behind her aching brows there were wild decisions made and unmade to
+tell him that she had no right to his love until she had released
+herself from her pledge to Enslee. But at each pause she, too, put off
+the harsh truth. It was sacrilege to intrude the name of Enslee into
+this divine communion.
+
+They could not harm the perfection of that bliss by any other
+confessions than their love.
+
+And this is one of the pitifulest things in this world, that people lie
+mutely lest they spoil a beautiful truth; they put off till to-morrow
+what would mar to-night; they spare some heart-pain; they pay some
+virtue too exclusive court, and lo, they find afterward that they have
+brought about only corruption and confusion and damnation.
+
+So Persis and Forbes climbed slowly the winding stairway, and their mood
+was one of hallowed reverence for God and His beautiful world. They
+paused to wish even the little bronze Cupid well, and his dolphin and
+the stream of living water; the moon had deserted it now, but still it
+chuckled. Forbes and Persis skirted the balustrade with a guilty
+rapture, avoiding the almost daylight of the moon-swept lawn. They
+opened the door with the innocent stealth of good fairies.
+
+They mounted the stairway with their arms about each other's bodies, and
+in the hall above they kissed and whispered, "Good night! Good night!
+Good night!" and tiptoed in opposite directions.
+
+At their remote doors they paused to throw kisses into the black dark
+toward each other's invisible presences.
+
+Forbes turned the knob of his door with fierce caution, and waited to
+hear Persis close hers. There was a faint thud and a little click like a
+final kiss. He tiptoed across his sill, and was just closing his door
+after him when he heard somewhere in the hall the soft thud of another
+door, the click of another lock. His heart leaped as if a fist had
+seized it suddenly. Some one else had been in the hall. In the deep
+black there was no telling whose door it was. But some one else had been
+in the hall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Lieutenant Forbes had known what it was to bivouac in the black of night
+in Mindanao, surrounded by wild men native to the trees and as stealthy
+as the dark, and armed with blow-guns, carved, painted, sometimes
+studded with gems, but emitting poisonous darts. He had stood then
+trying to peer them out in the gloom, knowing they were there and unable
+to descry them.
+
+So he stood now gripping his door-knob lest it turn in his hand and
+betray him. He realized that he and Persis had lingered in a social
+ambush. They were in no peril of life, but the unknown spy might let
+loose upon them an envenomed dart from the silent, the sometimes jeweled
+blow-gun of gossip.
+
+Forbes' eyes fought in vain against a dark that was like a black
+bandage. He felt sure that it was not Ten Eyck's door that had thudded
+so slyly shut. But he could not even guess whether it were the door of
+Enslee or of one of the women.
+
+He waited and waited, hoping that a light would be made, but there was
+no glimmer along any sill. Even Persis was evidently undressing in the
+dark, or in the moonlight that must be pouring into her room.
+
+Forbes visioned her there chilled and tired, her sleepy hands fumbling
+at the sepals of her clothing till she stripped them off and stood
+glimmering in the blue a moment before she slipped into that creamy
+nothing he had seen her wear at the window. And then he visioned her
+with chattering teeth and shivering hands immersing her lonely beauty
+in the sheets, snow-white, snow-cold, like a nymph returning to her
+brook in winter-time. He felt immensely sorry that she should be cold
+and alone.
+
+He wondered if she prayed at her bedside, and thought of her as a nun in
+one long, white line of beauty, from her brow bent down, to the palms of
+her little bare feet upturned on the floor. He hoped that she would not
+pray too long lest she catch cold. And this seemed a kind of
+sacrilegious thought, like individual communion cups.
+
+All these things he thought as he waited, gripping the door-knob and
+listening fiercely for a sign of the eavesdropper. And lest she should
+have been too cold to pray, he prayed for her, that calumny might not be
+the reward of her innocent love, the sweet surrender she had made of her
+discretion and her good repute into his keeping.
+
+Yet he feared for her. He doubted that the secret observer would think
+her free of guile. He did not fear for himself. The man would be
+regarded at worst as a successful adventurer, but the woman despised for
+an easy victim or a willing accomplice.
+
+Forbes reproached himself for bringing this blight on Persis. It was he
+that had dragged her protesting from the house, persuaded her to steal
+forth, led her into the distance, and kept her while the respectable
+hours slipped by.
+
+The only atonement he could make was to proclaim as speedily as possible
+that their love was honest and that they carried the franchise of
+betrothal. To-morrow he must make sure of her. He closed his door with
+the utmost caution, and got out of his clothes and into his bed with all
+possible silence. He was exhausted with the long day of love's anxieties
+and triumph, and the new anxiety he had stumbled into. He had yet to
+tell her how far from rich he was. He had yet to persuade her to leave
+this golden world of hers for the parsimony he offered.
+
+Perhaps her courage or her love would flinch from the sacrifice. Then he
+could not protect her from the unknown sneerer. Indeed, if the unknown
+listener were Enslee, Forbes would not stand as the protector of Persis
+at all, but as a ruthless tempter of another man's love. If it were Ten
+Eyck, he would have ground for reviling Forbes as one whom he regretted
+sponsoring, a wolf admitted into the fold in sheep's clothing. Or if it
+were one of the women--everybody knows what mercy females have for one
+another.
+
+In the chaos of his perplexities he fell asleep, and did not waken till
+the whir of the telephone on his wall called him from his slumber.
+Winifred's voice gruffly informed him that his breakfast was waiting for
+him.
+
+When, as little later as he could manage, he joined the group already at
+the table, he tried to read in the "Good morning" of each some telltale
+hint. Mrs. Neff's A.M. languor might mask a reproach. Alice's casual
+glance might mean aversion. Ten Eyck's reproving frown might be a
+comment on his tardiness or a rebuke for his bad faith. Winifred's curt
+manner might be merely her way of play-acting a surly cook, and it might
+represent disgust.
+
+Willie Enslee smiled--smiled! Was it a crafty sneer, or was it simply
+his stinted hospitality? If Enslee knew that he was clandestine with
+Enslee's sweetheart, how could Enslee smile? He must eliminate Enslee,
+at least, from his suspicion.
+
+Persis alone greeted him with heartiness; her blessed and blessing eyes
+were like kisses on the brow. But Persis did not know that they had been
+watched. She had closed her door first. How was he to tell her? how put
+her on her guard?
+
+Forbes ate his breakfast in the mixed humor of a detective and a
+suspect. He studied the others, and they seemed to study him or to avoid
+him. He could not settle upon even a theory.
+
+After the breakfast he sought an opportunity for a secret word with
+Persis. She was told off to the bed-making squad. She was even to do
+his room! He caught her at the foot of the stairs. She warned him with a
+gesture, and he broke the news to her without preparation:
+
+"Last night when we were saying good night some one else was in the
+hall."
+
+Her lips parted in a gasp of terror, and her eyes whitened. "How do you
+know?" she whispered.
+
+"I heard her--or him."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"I don't know. I can't even guess," he mumbled.
+
+"Do you think it could have been--All right, Mr. Forbes, I'll be careful
+of your razor-blades."
+
+This last aloud for the benefit of Mrs. Neff, who came by and spoke with
+icy severity--was it ironical?
+
+"Chambermaids are not allowed to flirt with customers in this hotel."
+She went on up; and Persis followed helplessly, leaving Forbes
+distraught.
+
+Later he saw her at his windows beating his pillows. The intimate
+implication thrilled him, and he threw her a kiss while pretending to
+take his cigar from his lips, and she retreated into the embrasure to
+answer it with a secret waft from her own mouth.
+
+Forbes had hoped to be invited to ride with Persis, and had put on a
+pair of civilian riding-breeches and his army puttees. But he was
+ignored in the program for the day, announced by Enslee, who decreed
+that he and Persis would ride over to the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, by
+the quietest roads they could find, while the rest were to motor across.
+They would all have luncheon together and return in the same way. "If
+that horse of mine doesn't break both of our fool necks," he added.
+
+"What about Persis and her horse's neck?" Ten Eyck asked, speaking
+Forbes' own uneasy thought.
+
+"Oh, Persis can ride anything," Willie said. "She's a born centaurette,
+while a horse and I are like oil and water--only oil always stays on
+top, and I don't."
+
+But Forbes did not feel so sure of Persis as Willie did. He ventured to
+say as much when she appeared, but she laughed at him:
+
+"Horses are not among my afraids. I've ridden since I graduated from the
+back of a Great Dane to a Shetland pony. I've got rubber bones; when I
+fall off I bounce back."
+
+He could make no further protest, and hung about in the futile
+discomfort of an old woman. There was no reassurance for him in the
+behavior of the horses, which two stablemen brought up the hill with a
+difficulty that led Ten Eyck to comment:
+
+"Are those men leading horses, Willie, or flying kites?"
+
+There was a slight break in Willie's laugh as he said: "My horse had
+better behave or I'll let him find his way home alone. I wish I had a
+parachute."
+
+Persis was wearing the bowler hat and the coat and breeches and boots
+Forbes had seen her in that morning in Central Park. He knew how well
+she rode in the bridle-path, but he feared for her in the motor-swept
+roads. He told her so, but she laughed again.
+
+She set her foot in the stirrup, flung her leg across the saddle, and
+warned the groom away. While Willie got one foot in the stirrup and went
+hopping hither and yon in pursuit of it with the other, Persis was
+getting acquainted with her own mount, humoring him in his school-boy
+hilarity, and sharply repressing any malicious mischief.
+
+The moment Willie was aboard the two horses whirled and charged down the
+winding road in a mad gallopade. And Forbes' heart galloped in his
+breast as he wondered if he should ever see her alive again. He had felt
+this same fear for her that first day on the Avenue, when her motor shot
+forward so wildly. He was always feeling afraid for her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+The motor passengers were in no haste to be gone, and they loitered,
+watching the mad riders on their breakneck descent, now hidden, now
+revealed again by a swerve of the road, a jut of hillside, or a group of
+trees.
+
+Forbes was sure at every vanishing that they would never come into view.
+But they always did, and getting their horses in hand at last, finished
+the hill with sobriety, trotted across the granite bridge, and turned to
+wave good-by.
+
+They were as small as dolls on toys where they jogged along the distant
+high-road. A tiny motor-cycle, whose thumping flight was faintly audible
+even at such a distance, whizzed round a curve and almost cut the
+horses' feet from under them. The animals lifted their hoofs well out of
+danger, but they came to earth again out of the cloud of dust, and
+Forbes dared to resume the business of breathing.
+
+He saw that Enslee was a well-schooled rider who annoyed his horse a
+good deal, yet ruled him somehow. But Persis was perfect to the saddle,
+part of the horse, as fearless and as expert in her smart gear as any
+cowgirl of the plains.
+
+Forbes watched her till the last curve blotted her from his sight, and
+yearned after her like a child left behind from a picnic. He looked at
+his own riding-costume ruefully, and said that he would better change.
+But the others would not wait for him. Mrs. Neff urged:
+
+"They're very becoming. Keep 'em on. You've got good legs, and you make
+Willie look like a wishbone."
+
+Enslee had sent his own driver and his own car to take them to the club,
+and with an unusual thoughtfulness had ordered the robe-rack filled with
+lilacs. And so they rode behind a screen of purple beauty, and breathed
+in a spicy air filtered through flowers.
+
+Forbes continued his search for a clue to last night's eavesdropper in
+the manner of his fellow-passengers. They were all in high spirits,
+which might be in any one's case either ghoulish glee or innocence. As a
+matter of fact, Mrs. Neff's enthusiasm was owing to her knowledge that
+Senator Tait was at the Country Club; but she did not tell Forbes lest
+her daughter hear. Alice was rapturous in the knowledge that Stowe Webb
+had arranged before she left New York to be at the club against just
+such an opportunity as this; but she did not explain to Forbes lest her
+mother hear. Winifred was buoyant because Ten Eyck had promised her a
+few sets of tennis, and she saw herself already whole ounces leaner. And
+Ten Eyck was cheerful because the world usually amused Ten Eyck when the
+weather was fit. And to-day, as old Gower put it, "The weder was merie
+and faire ynough."
+
+Merry and fair enough for any wight, and the scenery wonderful. After a
+few swift miles of country whose old walls, well-groomed meadows, and
+shapely forests gave a look of England, the land rose higher and higher,
+till the car swung out at last on a height commanding a river in the
+utmost contrast with England's stream. As Ten Eyck put it, "The Thames
+and the Hudson are as much alike as a pearl necklace and an
+anchor-chain." The water came down between its hills in tremendous calm,
+and the Palisades opposite were no longer sheer cliffs, but a congress
+of ponderous masses like reclining gods along a banquet board.
+
+The homes responded, of necessity, to the scene. In place of the
+ballroom levels and exquisite parks along the reaches of the Thames,
+with its flat punts and its houseboats moored in shady niches, these
+lawns sloped and rolled in massive sweeps, fronting a mighty stream.
+
+Forbes' heart could not rise to the bigness of the scene; it was too
+much tossed between the hope that the next turn might reveal Persis,
+spick and span on a glossy horse, and the fear that some of these
+countless whizzing, hooting motors might frighten the beast into panic
+and hurl her under the swarming wheels.
+
+Ten Eyck seemed to note the anxiety that kept his eyes shuttling this
+way and that, for he remarked, as if quite casually:
+
+"Small chance of meeting Persis and Willie here. They said they'd try to
+keep off the busiest roads, and Willie has probably got himself lost
+somewhere in the twists and turns of Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is
+just where Willie belongs, all right; he is the most headless headless
+horseman that ever threw a pumpkin. I'll bet he turns up late to
+luncheon and makes a spectacular entrance on the back of his neck."
+
+Ten Eyck was as nearly right as a prophet is required to be.
+
+The car reached its destination without encountering Persis or Willie.
+More majestic than the usual country club, that of Sleepy Hollow was
+approached by a stately entrance gate. The road wound between broad
+lawns, where children played among tropical thickets of veteran
+rhododendrons tall as trees, and studded with flowers as big and
+brilliant as Chinese lanterns. The club-house was a pile of creamy
+brick, tall and spacious as a hotel. The servants were in livery, some
+of them already in summer white, with dark collars and lapels--"to
+distinguish them from the members," said Ten Eyck.
+
+Ten Eyck and Winifred offered Forbes a racquet in their tennis game, but
+he preferred to be alone with his loneliness. He accepted Ten Eyck's
+suggestion, however, that he might care to go round the links, and Ten
+Eyck procured him a bag of clubs and a caddy, promising him ample time
+for at least nine holes before Persis could arrive.
+
+Mrs. Neff, meanwhile, had vanished with Alice. She had learned that
+Senator Tait was on the golf-course, and had dragged Alice forth. Mrs.
+Neff loathed walking, but to-day she announced a determination to
+reform. Alice went along with double reluctance. She lost her chance to
+get word to Stowe Webb, who did not know she was coming, and she feared
+she might find him on the links in some spot exposed to her mother's
+far-sweeping vision.
+
+Forbes, left to his own devices, and feeling like a dolt for golfing in
+horse costume, dawdled about marveling at the luxury of the club and the
+splendor of the views that met the eye everywhere within or without its
+walls. At length he reached the golf-grounds squired by a lean little
+caddy, who might almost have crawled into the bag of sticks and passed
+for one of them.
+
+With the usual luck of beginners and re-beginners at a game, Forbes did
+his best work at the start. His first drive from the first tee drew such
+a white arc across the sky that even the caddy was moved to an
+exclamation of applause, hitched his sack on his shoulder, and set off
+in search of the ball with vicarious pride.
+
+The ball waited for Forbes in a position so good as to be almost
+suspicious. It was an ideal brassy lie; but Forbes, thinking now of his
+form, just missed it with surprising nicety, and sent gouts of turf
+flying. According to the rules, he was to replace them; and, according
+to custom, he affected not to see them. His score mounted rapidly while
+he mauled the air and the grass around the ball, and when he finally got
+away he had lost his temper and the respect of the caddie irretrievably.
+
+As he worked his way up a steep ridge green and vast as the back of a
+tidal wave he saw at the top of the height a bunker thrusting out into
+the sky like the comb on the top of a Spanish woman's head. He paused
+for his approach, to let two women clear the way. He recognized Mrs.
+Neff and Alice, but they did not see him. Mrs. Neff seemed to be in a
+mood of displeasure. There was vexation in her very heels.
+
+Thinking the pathway clear, Forbes mumbled "Fore," and, picking the ball
+up neatly in his iron, sent it over the edge of the bunker with a
+hurdler's economy of gap. And just as it escaped the top a head arose,
+followed by a pair of shoulders.
+
+Forbes shrieked an _ex post facto_ "Fore!" but it was drowned in the
+snort of pain and rage from the man, whose left shoulder-blade stopped
+the ball.
+
+As Forbes ran forward with abject apologies a glaring face peered over
+the bunker and roared out:
+
+"Damn it, man! Where do you think you--Why, it's you! Harvey, my boy!"
+
+"Senator Tait!" Forbes cried, darting for one corner of the bunker as
+Senator Tait dashed for the other. They paused, turned back, and made
+for the opposite ends, stopped short foolishly in the middle, and
+laughingly clasped hands over the ledge.
+
+"I'll come round," said Forbes; and the Senator met him, put his arms
+about him, and hugged him with a fatherly roughness. After he had told
+Forbes how much he had grown and how fine he was, and Forbes had
+exclaimed how young the Senator looked, the Senator hugged him again.
+
+"I can't believe that you are yourself. The first time I saw you was in
+your father's arms; you were about half an hour old, and your father
+said you were very handsome. I couldn't see it at the time, but you've
+improved. I wish he could see you now. I was with him, you know, when
+his horse fell with him and--"
+
+"Yes, I know," Forbes murmured. "You were his best friend--our best
+friend."
+
+"It's a shame that we've lost sight of each other. We mustn't any more.
+Life's too short to waste in not seeing people we love. I must say,
+though, I'm rather hurt at your not looking me up before. Mrs. Neff has
+just told me you've been in town nearly a week."
+
+"I--I've been very busy," Forbes stammered.
+
+"So I hear, you young scoundrel!" Tait growled, jovially. "You're at the
+heartbreaking, heartaching age, and no time to spend on old duffers like
+me when young beauties are drooping on every bough. But what's this Mrs.
+Neff tells me about your being rich? I hadn't heard it. I hadn't
+expected it, either, for your father was a better fox-hunter than a
+financier. What did you do--invent some new explosive--or a new gun?"
+
+Forbes smiled bitterly and explained the foolish mistake, too foolish to
+correct at first, and later embarrassing.
+
+The Senator stared at him a moment searchingly with a tender
+inquisition, then said:
+
+"Unless you're golf-hungry, let's send the caddies back and have a
+talk."
+
+"By all means," Forbes agreed; and even as he cast his glance about in
+search of his caddy he looked farther to see if Persis were not visible
+somewhere from this Pisgah height. He was fond of the old man, but he
+loved the young woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Forbes' caddy was standing by the ball, and came in with it, cannily
+claimed his pay and tip for the full course, and hurried back with the
+Senator's caddy to pick up other fares. They took both the golf-bags
+with them to put away.
+
+Tait and Forbes strolled aside from the traffic of the golf-course and
+found a quiet seat in the shade.
+
+"And now tell me," the Senator said; "but first have a cigar?"
+
+He took out a portly wallet stuffed with brown backs, the famous cigars
+made expressly for him in Havana. Forbes accepted one and sniffed its
+bouquet.
+
+"It's a shame to waste these in the open air," he said, and sprung a
+cigar-lighter he carried, holding the flame to Tait, who waived it with
+a sigh:
+
+"Doctor's orders."
+
+"Then I won't."
+
+"Go on; I carry them for my friends. I love to see others enjoy what I
+can't. Well, I will smoke just one to celebrate the prodigal's return."
+And he took a cigar from the case as tenderly as if it were forbidden
+ambrosia. As Forbes made a light again, he asked:
+
+"What's this about doctor's orders? You're the kind of picture that goes
+with the testimonials--after taking."
+
+"I'm a hollow sham, my boy; bad heart, bad liver, fat and sluggish,
+ordered to Carlsbad, but I hate to go. May have to," he puffed. "Did you
+see my daughter Mildred at the club-house?"
+
+"No, I don't think so. I don't suppose I'd know her. She was a little
+tike in short skirts when I saw her last."
+
+"She's a big woman now--regular old maid--fanatic on charities--fine
+mind--great heart. Thinks too much about the poor and the downtrodden to
+be very cheerful company; but somebody ought to look after 'em, I
+suppose. She's one of those hotheads that are trying to make the world
+over. Sounds hopeless, but they do get a lot done. She thinks poverty is
+no more necessary than slavery was. And she says the same of the oldest
+profession in the world.
+
+"Good Lord, Harvey, what that child knows! Her mother to her dying day
+never heard of half the things that young spinster discusses, and has
+never had a flirtation so far as I know. Her conversation is really what
+has turned my hair white. Things that used to be kept for the medical
+books or smoking-room conversation she tosses off glibly, earnestly,
+and--to me! And spends my money, too, on scientific rescue work among
+women who--whew! And to think her mother and I didn't dare to tell her
+things! Now she tells 'em to me! She knows more about the seamy side
+than I do. But she's wonderful, Harvey. I'm afraid of her, but I do
+admire and love her. Women like her make these mad tango-trotters look
+pretty cheap."
+
+Forbes resented the unintended criticism on the wonderful soul the tango
+mania had enabled him to meet and know so well so soon. He murmured
+something formulaic about his eagerness to see Mildred, and then he
+added, with a little hint of raillery:
+
+"You congratulated me on my wealth. Am I to congratulate you the same
+way for your success with little Miss Neff?"
+
+The Senator stared at him. "My success with little Miss Neff? What do
+you mean? Who's little Miss Neff? Alice?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The girl that was just here with her mother?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What success should I have with her?"
+
+Forbes was confused, and tried to back out, but Tait would know, and
+Forbes at last explained: "Alice says that her mother is trying to marry
+her off to you."
+
+Tait's eyes popped, and his mouth gaped stupidly, then he swore with
+sonority, and blurted out: "Do you mean that that old harridan of a
+Cornelia Neff has gone mad enough to--Why, Alice is younger than
+Mildred! I thought of her as a little tot. I tweaked her cheek and told
+her how sweet she was, and never dreamed she'd grown up yet. So that's
+why Cornelia has been so hospitable to me. I had a kind of sneaking fear
+that she wanted to add me to her own regiment of husbands. But it's her
+daughter, eh? Well, I'll be double--Is Alice in on the game, too?"
+
+"Oh no; Alice is crazy to marry Stowe Webb."
+
+"Poor old Jim Webb's boy, eh?" Forbes nodded. "Well, why doesn't she?"
+
+"He has no money."
+
+"Oh, she's one of those."
+
+"He hasn't even a job."
+
+The Senator puffed like an unmufflered cut-out, and he frowned like a
+pirate, then he began to chuckle in the manner of a pirate ordering the
+plank put over the side.
+
+"He hasn't a job, eh? Well, I'll get him one. I'll pay that old lady in
+her own coin. Make a fool out of me, will she? Well, we'll see what an
+old politician can do to countermine an old lady."
+
+"Speaking of politics," said Forbes, "the papers are full of the
+possibility of your being an ambassador somewhere. Is there anything in
+it?"
+
+"Well, my old friend the President has written me a few letters and
+whispered it in my ear, but I don't want to go. I'm too old. I like my
+own country and my own slippers. Foreign languages and foreign cooking
+and all that would play the devil with me. I don't want to go."
+
+Forbes laughed at the spectacle of a big, rich man pouting like a
+reluctant child against having a sweetmeat forced on him.
+
+"Then why are you going?" he grinned.
+
+"How did you know I was?"
+
+"Because you said you didn't want to. We only say, 'I don't want to'
+when we're just about to."
+
+Tait looked at him in surprise. Forbes was not the type from whom one
+expects epigrams and generalizations. That was among his chief
+attractions. Tait laughed sheepishly.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you, Harvey. There's just one reason--I'm worried about
+Mildred. She's getting in too deep with her crusades and causes. She's
+done enough. She mustn't lose her own life as a woman--a wife--a mother.
+I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that that's a woman's first
+business, as a man's first business is to build a home and keep it.
+Afterward all the charity and uplift they can do is legitimate and
+worthy. But first pay your debts, I say, before you make donations. Now
+I can't pry Mildred loose from her clubs and committees. No marrying
+young man will go near her. There's no encouragement to the pink
+nonsense of love in an atmosphere of tenement-house needs, tuberculosis
+exhibits, and the harrowing statistics of white slavery.
+
+"I got an idea that if I went abroad as an ambassador she'd have to go
+along to take care of me and run the social end of the embassy. She'd
+have to dress up and give dinners, and go places and dance and meet
+cheerful people, and--well, who knows? Anyway, my last business on this
+earth is leaving my only child provided for, and I'm worried
+because--because--well, I'm too fat around the heart, and my neck is too
+thick, and the doctor tells me to be ready. You understand?
+
+"My father went that way. He had to be very careful of his health, and
+one day, when he was about to go out in the rain, my mother told him he
+must wear his rubbers. He bent over to pull on an overshoe, and--he
+just went on over and sprawled out on the rug--dead."
+
+He stared off into space, and seemed not to be a venerable old man any
+more, but a lonely orphan with the sad eyes of boyhood in the presence
+of death.
+
+Forbes knew what it means for a man to think of the death of his first
+great man, his father; and his hand wrung the Senator's. Tait looked up,
+smiled sadly, and returned the pressure with his big, soft fingers.
+
+"I wish I had a son to leave her with, Harvey; then I'd feel better, but
+my only boy--well, he married the wrong woman, and she drove him to the
+dogs, deceived him and tormented him, and--finally he had to make her
+divorce him. And he loved her in spite of it--he was ashamed of his
+love; but he couldn't kill it; she couldn't kill it; drink couldn't kill
+it. But the two of them killed him. Oh, Lord, Harvey, it's a cruel
+world, and we're so helpless! I could have done so much for my boy; but
+I couldn't help him in the one way he needed help. I couldn't make the
+woman over.
+
+"Don't repeat his mistake, Harvey. Don't let a pretty face and a
+fascinating body blind you to a bad, selfish heart. Don't let yourself
+love the wrong woman. You can do a good deal with your heart if you hold
+a tight rein on it and keep it on the right road. There are fine enough
+women on the straight road, just as beautiful, just as passionate with
+the right man. If only--"
+
+He paused, looked at Harvey, who was looking everywhere but at the
+Senator. He was searching the landscape for Persis, and he was as
+restless among his own thoughts as the young usually are when the old
+are commenting on the helplessness of life. The young know so much
+better. It is the young who have theories of the universe and who expect
+to carry out their hopes; it is the old scientists who are bewildered
+and who merely observe and accept.
+
+But Tait did not notice Forbes' inattention. Rummaging among the
+confusions of his own griefs, he had come upon a bright hope. What if
+Forbes should be the man to win Mildred away from her avocations back to
+the main business of love? He was such a youth as even Mildred could
+hardly ignore or despise. He had little money, but Tait had more than
+enough for the two, and he had made many a poor man rich.
+
+He smiled. He felt like apologizing to Mrs. Neff for stealing a hint
+from her. Why should not old men engage in the pleasant chess-game of
+match-making, too? What better task could he undertake than making this
+beloved son of his old comrade the husband of his own beloved daughter?
+
+The idea was so exhilarating that it almost leaped from his heart. But
+he was politician enough to realize that such a plan would be frustrated
+in advance by premature publication. This was a benevolent conspiracy
+that must be kept dark.
+
+He studied Forbes with admiring affection. His heart went out to him as
+to a son, or, better yet, a son-in-law. He put a hand on Forbes'
+shoulder to claim him just as Forbes started with a sudden elation, just
+as a light broke forth in his eyes.
+
+Tait followed the line of Forbes' gaze and made out a man and a woman on
+horseback turning in at the gate marked "Exit Only." That was like
+Willie Enslee. If any gate could excite his interest as an entrance it
+would be one marked "Exit Only." Tait could not see who it was; he
+hastily got out his distance-glasses and put them on. But a glowing wall
+of rhododendrons and cedars concealed the riders by the time his great
+tortoise-shell spectacles hobgoblined his eyes.
+
+Forbes spoke. "Sha'n't we stroll back to the club-house? I'm expected
+there for luncheon."
+
+"By all means," said Tait. "And I want you to meet Mildred again."
+
+"I'd love to," said Forbes, absently. He said nothing more, but strode
+on so rapidly down the steep slope that Tait had to take his arm for
+support and to hold him back.
+
+"You're visiting at the Enslees', Mrs. Neff tells me," the old man
+panted.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Excuse my fatherly familiarity, but how can you afford to gad with
+those wild asses?"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"What's her name?" Tait laughed.
+
+"I may be able to tell you later, and I may not."
+
+"Well, my boy, I don't know who she is, but I bet she isn't worth
+it--not if she trails with the Enslee pack."
+
+"Oh, but she is beautiful--she is wonderful."
+
+"You must be hit damned hard."
+
+"Am."
+
+And then, not heeding the connotation, he exclaimed, as Persis emerged
+from the eclipsing shrubbery:
+
+"There's only one woman can ride like that."
+
+Tait stared again, and now he made her out. Instantly, with the
+exultance one feels over a secret some one else lets slip, he cried:
+"Oho, my boy, that's the woman who keeps you here! Mrs. Neff hinted at
+it, but I wouldn't believe it till I had it from you." His gloating sank
+again to fatherly solicitude as he pleaded earnestly: "For God's sake,
+boy, don't love her! Of all women don't love Persis Cabot! She's the
+most heartless of them all."
+
+Forbes was tempted to ask him how he could accept a reputation as a
+proof of character, but he was still calm enough to pay Tait's white
+hair the homage of silence. Tait, feeling the import of his silence,
+grew uneasy, and demanded:
+
+"Harvey, it's not possible that you love her--actually love her?"
+
+"Is it possible not to?"
+
+"But you've not known her long."
+
+"No, but I've known her well. Do you know her?"
+
+"Yes, and I knew her mother. Once I thought I loved her mother. But I
+had less money--when I proposed to her than I have now--Heaven be
+praised!"
+
+"Heaven be praised?"
+
+"Yes, for she might have married me. Harvey, a certain part of the
+society here is like a big aquarium. The people are all fish--the men
+goldfish, the women catfish. Their blood is cold--Lord, how cold! Just
+look at their eyes! Hard eyes, hard hearts. They despise sincerity; they
+laugh at honest emotion."
+
+"But Persis has soft eyes," Forbes broke in, "and a warm heart."
+
+"Has she?" Tait sighed, feeling that the siren had already sung Forbes'
+wits away. "Well, maybe, in the moonlight. But she'll soon freeze. Now,
+if she had been born poor--"
+
+"But, Senator, the rich can't all be bad," Forbes complained.
+
+"The rich are no worse than anybody else as a class," said Tait. "My
+father and mother were rich, and they were as good and sweet and simple
+as any poor people that ever lived. They were like Romeo and Juliet. The
+Montagues and Capulets were both rich. But if young Mr. Montague had
+been poor we might have had a different story. Or, if you had only gone
+into finance."
+
+"It's too late for me to dream of money. I'm a soldier."
+
+"And it's too late for you to dream of Persis Cabot, not merely because
+she's wealthy. One class is as good as another; it's the set that
+counts. And she gallops with the rich runaways. Their life is one long
+stampede. There are rich women who toil like slaves for the poor, who
+lead lives of earnestness and purity, who respond to every appeal, and
+make organized charity possible. But there are others, rich and poor,
+that never think of anybody but themselves, never have real pity except
+for themselves, never toil or fret except for their own amusement. And
+those people gravitate together into colonies and cliques. Don't run
+with that pack, Harvey."
+
+He was not the first man of eld that had warned youth against beauty.
+Nor was he the last that shall fail to be heeded. He tried another tack.
+
+"I understand that Willie Enslee expects to marry her."
+
+"She doesn't expect to marry him."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Oh, I have my reasons for believing that she doesn't love him."
+
+"Nobody ever accused her of that, but--well, does she think what Mrs.
+Neff thinks--that you have money?"
+
+Forbes did not answer except with a blush. The Senator spared him any
+pressure on that point. He said, simply:
+
+"Enslee has a lot of money--more than her father has. In fact, her
+father is in a very bad plight."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I am about six bank directors, Harvey, and a few other things. Her
+father is about to be forced into involuntary bankruptcy; her father's
+pet railroad may go into receiver's hands to-day or to-morrow."
+
+"Poor Persis!" Forbes groaned. "Poor Persis!"
+
+There was such anguish in his tone that the Senator gripped his arm hard
+and murmured:
+
+"Do you care so much for her?"
+
+Forbes stopped short and stared into the old man's eyes. "A man like me
+loves once, and loves hard. If I lost her, my life wouldn't be worth the
+snap of my finger." And he added in a raucous voice, "Or the click of a
+trigger."
+
+The Senator leaned heavily on him and closed his eyes in a wince of
+pain. He had heard his own dead son speak just that way.
+
+When he opened his eyes he saw that Forbes was smiling glowingly.
+
+"Look at her, Senator! She's so beautiful! I can't let Enslee have her!
+Look at him! He's as afraid of his horse as his horse is ashamed of him.
+What's he up to now? Rein him in, you fool! He'd drive a hobbyhorse into
+hysterics. And now he's sent Persis' horse in the air! What's the matter
+with him? Why doesn't he--"
+
+But the fault was not Enslee's, nor was he so bad a rider as an expert
+like Forbes might think. As the event proved, even Persis could not
+control her mount in the face of what was happening unseen by Forbes. A
+chauffeur, relying on the fact that he was on the exit road, was driving
+a big red six at high speed along the curves. He had not seen Enslee and
+Persis till he was almost into them. He swung aside so sharply that he
+almost capsized, and ran into something sharp enough to rip open a shoe.
+
+This was just one too many automobiles for the horses Persis and Enslee
+rode. They had been curbed and scolded and kept in hand all morning; but
+to have a dragon leap at them from the cedar-trees was too much. They
+went frantic, dancing erect, and threshing the air with their fore
+hoofs. And then the tire exploded like a cannon, and they went mad. They
+feared nothing but what was behind them; nothing could hurt them but
+their terror.
+
+They crashed through cedars and rhododendrons, and plunged across the
+lawn to the clear space of the golf-links. Forbes saw the demon look in
+the white eyes of Persis' horse. He had seen mustangs in that humor
+shake off their tormentors and tear them wolfishly with their fangs.
+
+"He's got the bit in his teeth!" he groaned. "He'll kill her! My God,
+he'll kill her! She can't hold him! I've got to get him somehow."
+
+He had a fierce impulse to meet the horse, leap at him, catch him by the
+bridle and the nose and smother him to a standstill. But Tait had seen
+a policeman killed trying to stop a horse so, and he flung his arms
+about Forbes.
+
+"No, you won't!" he gasped. "You can't stop him! I won't let you risk
+your life--not for that woman."
+
+"Let me go! Let me go!" Forbes pleaded, unwilling to use his strength
+against the old man. But Tait clung to him, seized him anew as Forbes
+wrenched his hand loose; fell to his knees, but still held fast and was
+dragged along, moaning:
+
+"My boy, I love you like a son. You sha'n't risk your life--not for
+her!"
+
+Then suddenly his clutch relaxed; his fingers opened; he rolled forward
+on his face, his white hair fluttering in the grass.
+
+And Forbes, hardly knowing that he was released, felt himself free, and
+ran with all his might to intercept the plunging monster, who came
+snorting his rage, flinging his huge barrel this way and that, and
+shaking the white saliva from his mouth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Persis met equine wrath with female rage. The fiercer the horse plunged
+the harder she beat him with the crop, the more bloodthirstily she
+stabbed his sides with her keen-spurred heels. Her hair flung looser and
+looser, and at length set free her hat, and then shook out its own
+tortoise-shell moorings and flew to the winds. She sawed at the horse's
+head, stabbed him with the spurs, railed at him with shrill voice, and
+fought him as a Valkyr might have fought her charger panic-stricken at
+the noise of battle.
+
+Even the old man, who lay on the ground clutching at his heart, could
+not but feel a thrill at the wild beauty of the girl; her long hair
+flowed and writhed smokily, her face was the more commandingly beautiful
+for the very merciless hate that fired it; her girlish body in her
+boyish costume was strangely alive. Her thighs gripped the horse's sides
+visibly like arches of steel. All this beauty Forbes saw also, and more,
+for he saw with the eyes of idolatry; and yet more again, for his
+beloved was in mortal danger. He ran in a frenzy of fear and
+determination. As he and the horses met on their converging paths Persis
+shrieked to him: "Keep away! Keep away!"
+
+None the less he leaped for the bridle with both hands flung out. But
+she would not let him endanger himself. She threw all the power of both
+her arms and her weight on the farther bridle, dragging the horse's head
+aside till he swerved out of Forbes' reach.
+
+Forbes sprawled on the turf; but at least he had not been struck by the
+hoofs or knees of the horse. And then the horse came down in turn,
+thrown out of his stride and with his head brought round so sharply that
+he came down on his shoulder and almost broke his neck.
+
+Persis went through the air like a pinwheel, and those who witnessed the
+affair gave up her and the horse for dead. But she clung to the bridle,
+and got up on all fours. For once Persis was awkward. She and Forbes met
+and stared like quadrupeds, and the horse rolled over on his belly and
+stared too.
+
+What had almost been a tragedy was turned to a farce by coincidence. If
+all the corpses in the last act of Hamlet should rise and stare at one
+another--as they do when the curtain is down--audiences might roar as
+the golfers and the club servants and members roared at this spectacle.
+
+Willie, meanwhile, had vanished over the hill like the headless horseman
+Ten Eyck had likened him to.
+
+After the first automatic recovery Persis was overtaken by a wave of
+terror she had had no time to feel. She turned ashen about the mouth,
+and a queasy feeling sickened her. Her elbows gave way, and she sank to
+the ground.
+
+Senator Tait came up with difficulty, forgetting that he had been,
+perhaps, nearer death on that green battle-field than any other of the
+fallen. He heard Forbes wailing, as he gathered Persis into his arms and
+strengthened his own weak knees:
+
+"Persis, my darling, my angel, speak to me! Are you dead?"
+
+Persis opened her eyes with a flash. She began to realize that she had
+been very conspicuous. "Of course I'm not dead. But what's worse, my
+hair's down. I must be a sight! And my breeches are torn. Oh, Lord, why
+wasn't I killed romantically? Turn your backs at once."
+
+The two men stared all the more, but she released herself from Forbes'
+arms, rose to her feet with some twinges of evident pain, and put up her
+hair with what few hairpins remained of her store, and borrowed a pin
+from the Senator's lapel to mend a rip that let one exquisite knee
+escape to view. A caddy came running up with her hat, and she thanked
+him.
+
+"Come along," she said; "I feel as if I were on the stage of the
+Metropolitan Opera House."
+
+The horse got clumsily to his feet, all the battle knocked out of him,
+and followed weakly till she handed him over to a groom.
+
+Eager to escape the stares that met her and the sympathy and
+felicitations that greeted her, she walked so rapidly that the Senator
+dropped back. She found herself alone with Forbes, and she murmured:
+
+"You were wonderful to try to save me as you did."
+
+"As I didn't," he groaned. "You wouldn't let me."
+
+"No, I don't want you ever to risk anything for me, Harvey. But I'm just
+as grateful--and more than that. If there weren't so many people looking
+on do you know what I'd say?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Kiss me." The words came so unexpectedly that he forgot their
+subjunctive mode. He took them to be in the imperative, and came near
+obeying. He checked himself in time, and said:
+
+"How soon shall I be able to call you mine before all the world?"
+
+"Do you wish that?"
+
+"Madly! It is my one great wish."
+
+She breathed deeply and caressed him with a delicious smile, and
+murmured:
+
+"It is mine, too."
+
+And then Ten Eyck and Winifred and Mrs. Neff and Alice, and others of
+her acquaintance, crowded round, summoned by the flying rumor of the
+incident. At length some one exclaimed:
+
+"But where's Willie?"
+
+"Good Lord," Persis gasped, "I forgot all about him."
+
+Some one else who had been on the links described Willie's disappearance
+over the brow of the hill. He had been still attached to the horse when
+last heard from. But his prospects were reported to be poor.
+
+By the time Persis had reached the club-house and had undergone the
+ministrations of a maid, who was also a seamstress, Willie came limping
+up on the terrace, where Persis was seated with the others.
+
+"Oh, there you are, my dear," Willie drawled. "And not a bit hurt, not a
+hair turned, so far as I can make out, eh? And here I've been worrying
+myself sick over you--simply sick."
+
+"Well, I'll go out and break a few bones if it would make you feel any
+easier," Persis answered. "But what happened to you? Where's your
+horse?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you. It was like this. You see, that beast I was on
+went galumphing up the hill playing the deuce with putting-greens, until
+he came to that big bunker at the top, you know--you know the one I
+mean--at the top there--the big bunker?"
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"Well, he refused it."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"I took it alone."
+
+"Where's your horse?"
+
+"I don't know. I hope to God he breaks a leg or rips himself open on
+barbed wire or something."
+
+There was a vindictive ferocity in his voice that surprised Forbes.
+
+The luncheon, which Ten Eyck had commanded, was announced just then, and
+they all adjourned to the dining-room. Forbes resented Enslee's habit of
+"my-dear"-ing Persis, but took solace from the thought that he should
+soon confound his rival with the news of his own triumph.
+
+Suddenly, in his joy at being near to Persis, he remembered that he had
+neglected Senator Tait, after promising to meet his daughter. He did not
+venture to leave his own table; but as soon as the luncheon was eaten,
+and while Winifred and Mrs. Neff and Persis sneaked off somewhere for
+their after-coffee cigarettes, he sought out Tait and found him with a
+tall and self-reliant girl whom he introduced as Mildred.
+
+Forbes made the usual remarks one makes to a little girl one meets again
+as a grown woman. She had indeed changed from the shy and leggy little
+minx to this robust, ample-bosomed bachelor girl with the sorrows of the
+world on her shoulders and pity and courage warring in her resolute
+eyes.
+
+Recalling what the Senator had said of her appalling lore, Forbes was at
+some loss for words. He said, at last, the obvious thing, waving his
+hand toward the great park and the panorama of river and headland spread
+out beyond:
+
+"Wonderful, isn't it?"
+
+But Mildred, instead of an equally commonplace answer, sighed: "I
+suppose it is, but I--somehow I can't take much pleasure in beautiful
+things like these. I keep thinking how the poor kiddies and their
+worn-out mothers in the tenements would love to see it--and never will.
+And when I think how much money it costs to build and keep up this place
+I can't help saying to myself: 'How many loaves of bread this would buy
+for hungry waifs! how many pairs of shoes! how many lives it could
+save!' I see this big lawn all overrun with little newsboys and
+factory-girls and sick men and women."
+
+Senator Tait shrugged his shoulders and smiled at Forbes.
+
+"Isn't she hopeless?"
+
+"She's very splendid," Forbes said, with admiration and also a little
+awe. The father felt this in Forbes' manner, and it strengthened his
+resolution to rescue his daughter from her rescue work.
+
+Mildred had not yet learned the exact point where nobility becomes
+offensive because it is too consistent and too insistent. She had not
+yet learned that charity, like art, must conceal itself, and that
+grandeur of soul unchecked by tact provokes only resentment.
+
+But she was young and radiant with unfocused love, and she had seen too
+much wretchedness. The people whose miseries she relieved did not resent
+her, but adored her. She was tactful enough with them.
+
+Forbes was ashamed of himself for feeling a little chilled by Mildred's
+irrepressible enthusiasm for sorrow. He blamed himself, not her. But
+when Persis returned he thanked heaven for beauty untroubled by any
+deeper concerns than its own loveliness, and for a heart that inspired
+desire for itself rather than pity for the submerged myriads.
+
+He bade the Senator and his daughter as cordial a good-by as he could,
+and promised to meet the Senator as soon as possible in town. Then he
+forgot them both, for when Enslee's automobile swept up to the
+club-house door, Enslee's two horses were also brought up, and he
+imagined Persis riding away again on that dangerous beast with that
+dangerous escort.
+
+Enslee stared at the horses in disgust. "There are those brutes of mine,
+and not a bit hurt, either--worse luck. I'll have 'em both sold to
+somebody who'll work 'em hard and beat 'em harder."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort," said Persis. "If you don't want them
+I'll take them."
+
+"And get your neck broken, eh?" Enslee snarled. "Oh no, you won't. Look
+at that beast! I'll have his throat cut for him."
+
+There was something in his voice like the edge of a knife, and it made
+Forbes' blood run cold. Enslee had unsuspected streaks of viciousness.
+But Persis was used to this quality of his nature, and it did not alarm
+her. When he said, "Hop into the car, Persis; I'll send a groom over for
+the nags," Persis shook her head, and answered:
+
+"I propose to show my horse who is master. He can't spill me all over
+the landscape and get away with it. You ride home in the car, and I'll
+go back as I came."
+
+"And a pretty fool you'll make of me," Enslee wrangled. "Besides, I
+haven't ridden much lately; I'm saddle-sore."
+
+"I've been riding every morning in the Park," Persis insisted. "I'll
+lead your horse back, unless--" She hesitated and looked at Forbes, who
+leaped at the cue.
+
+"I'd be glad to ride him, if you don't object, Mr. Enslee."
+
+Enslee stared at Forbes, saw nothing ulterior in his eyes, and yielded
+with a bad grace.
+
+"Oh, all right. Go ahead. Only don't sue me for damages if you get
+pitched under an auto."
+
+"I won't," Forbes laughed, elated beyond belief by the unimaginable luck
+of riding at Persis' stirrup for miles and miles.
+
+And so they mounted. Persis' horse was humbled beyond struggle; but
+Enslee's big black had lately tossed his rider over his head. He tested
+the seat of his new visitor. Forbes was a West-Pointer, a cavalryman,
+and the horse had not made more than one pirouette before he understood
+that he was bestridden by one whom it was best to obey.
+
+Willie tried at first to keep the motor back with the horses, but Persis
+ordered him to go about his business, and turned off the hard track to a
+soft road.
+
+And now at last they were free, Forbes and Persis, cantering along a
+plushy road, a lovers' lane that mounted up and up till they paused at
+the height to give the horses breath.
+
+Back of them the Hudson spread its august flood between mountainous
+walls. Before them the road dipped into the deep forest seas of Sleepy
+Hollow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+"Is it possible that we're actually alone?" Forbes gloated, turning in
+his saddle to take her in in her brisk, youthful beauty.
+
+"I shouldn't exactly call it alone up here on the mantelpiece of the
+world in broad daylight," Persis smiled. "But it's nice, isn't it?"
+
+"Wonderful, to be riding with you!"
+
+"I'm immensely happy," she said. "Even the horses know the difference.
+This morning they hated each other. They wouldn't trot in rhythm or
+alongside, and they fought like snapping-turtles. Now look at them
+nuzzle and flirt. Ouch! that's my game knee you're colliding with. It
+would be better if I rode side-saddle. There were advantages in
+old-fashioned ways. You ride splendidly, don't you?"
+
+"Do I?" he said. "As you told me the first time I met you, I'm glad you
+like me."
+
+"I more than that, now."
+
+"More than like me?"
+
+"Umm-humm!"
+
+"Love me?"
+
+"Umm-humm!"
+
+"If I could only brush away all of these houses and people and take you
+in my arms! If this were only a Sahara or Mojave!"
+
+"I doubt if there's a desert where nobody is peeking. They used to tell
+me that God was looking when no one else was."
+
+"Well, He would understand."
+
+"Maybe He would see too much. But the human beings don't understand. And
+they're everywhere. Oh, Lord, I'm so sick of other people's eyes and
+ears. All my life I've had them on me--servants', nurses', maids',
+waiters', grooms', footmen's! Sometimes I think I'd love to live on a
+desert island. Couldn't you buy me a desert island somewhere--a
+thoroughly equipped desert island with hot and cold water and automatic
+cooking?"
+
+"I'll see if there's one in the market."
+
+"It would be a fine addition to the same old town and country house and
+yacht. Had you thought where you will have your--our country place?"
+
+"Er--no, I hadn't."
+
+"Shall you have to be at your post much? Are the office-hours very
+strict?"
+
+"Pretty strict. We'd have to live on Governor's Island, you know."
+
+"Really? In one of those little houses?" He nodded. "I saw them there
+once when they gave a lawn fete. I never dreamed I'd live in one of
+them. They aren't very commodious, are they?"
+
+"That depends."
+
+"Nichette--she's my maid--would make an awful row, and my chauffeur--I
+suppose we could keep him? He expects to marry Nichette."
+
+"Does he?"
+
+"If they can stop fighting long enough to get married. Does a garage go
+with the house we should occupy there?"
+
+"I doubt it."
+
+"No garage!" she exclaimed. "How should we manage? It's rather awkward
+getting to the Island, too, as I remember--a ferry or something. I don't
+suppose you could arrange to live up-town and do your army work by
+telephone on rainy days?"
+
+"I'm afraid not."
+
+His heart was thumping. She grew more exquisite as she grew more
+fairy-like in her visions. He could not tell her the truth--not
+yet--not, at least, till they had passed through the woods ahead, where
+there was a promise of opportunity for at least a moment's embrace, at
+least one hasty kiss.
+
+They jogged on in silence awhile, she pondering like a solemn child, he
+longing to give her the toys she kept imagining. They drew into the
+thicket, shady and soft with a breeze that wandered about murmuring
+"Woo! woo!" and leaves that whispered "Kiss! kiss!" and a deep forest
+voice that mumbled "Love!"
+
+No one was visible ahead. He turned and stared back. They were shut in
+by a projecting hill that seemed to close after them like a door. He
+leaned sidewise with arm outstretched to enfold her waist. But with a
+quick lift of her hand and a scratch of the spur she carried her horse
+aside and ahead.
+
+"You mustn't!" she warned. "Really!"
+
+"But no one can see us."
+
+"So we thought in the dark hall. And there was some one there. Do you
+know who it was?"
+
+"I haven't been able to find out."
+
+"I have!" She spoke triumphantly.
+
+"Who was it, in Heaven's name?"
+
+"Who would be your last guess?"
+
+"Enslee."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he smiled; because he let me ride with you."
+
+"That shows how much a man's reasoning power is worth. That was just who
+it was."
+
+"Why do you think so?"
+
+"I know so. He told me."
+
+Forbes was dazed; he marveled aloud: "And yet he smiled? He let me ride
+with you?"
+
+She laughed. "Willie is such an idiot! He knew it was you; but he never
+dreamed that the woman was me. He thought the woman was Mrs. Neff or
+Winifred. That's why he smiled at you."
+
+Forbes chuckled a moment, then flushed, as Persis went on:
+
+"He could only hear our whispers, you know, and you can't distinguish
+whispers. He thought it was a great joke. He laughed his head off. And I
+laughed too. It was delicious. It came near being serious, though. What
+do you suppose? He heard the door open below and thought it was a
+burglar. He had a revolver and a flashlight. The flash wouldn't
+work--thank the Lord! So he was going to shoot first and then call,
+'Who's there!' That would have been nice, wouldn't it? Then he heard
+our--our kisses. He didn't shoot. He kept quiet, smothering his
+snickers. He could only judge by the closing of the door who was who. He
+recognized your door, and he got mine mixed. But you're not laughing."
+
+"It doesn't seem very funny to me," Forbes admitted. "My love for you is
+no joke. I don't enjoy sneaking about in dark halls and having you
+mistaken for some other woman."
+
+She stared at him, and her mischief turned to a deep tenderness. She
+rode closer and put her free hand on his bridle-hand. "How right you
+are! That's the way I want you to feel, the way I want you to love me."
+And then she laughed again. "What do you suppose Willie told me?
+To-night he's going to wait till you sneak out with your lady bird, and
+then he's going to lock the door and make you beg for admission. That'll
+be nice, eh?"
+
+"That means I can't be with you to-night."
+
+"It seems so."
+
+"And you won't let me kiss you now?"
+
+"But we couldn't go spooning about in the daylight, could we? Not even
+if we were an old married couple, could we?"
+
+"I suppose not. But when--when are we going to be an old married
+couple?"
+
+"Whenever you say," she said, with a shy down-look. "We'd have to
+announce our engagement, I suppose, and then it would take a long time
+to get my clothes made."
+
+"Would it?"
+
+"Yes. I haven't a thing. I'm in perfect rags. And besides, a bride ought
+to begin new. Isn't it thrilling to be talking of such things! Am I
+blushing as red as I feel?"
+
+"You're like a rose on fire."
+
+"I feel deliciously a ninny. Can you get away from your hateful army for
+a good long honeymoon, do you suppose?"
+
+"I don't know. Where would you like to go?"
+
+"The Riviera isn't bad. A trip around the world would be pleasant."
+
+"Wouldn't it!" he groaned. "But I'm afraid I couldn't."
+
+"I suppose the country would be afraid to let you get so far away, with
+all this talk about trouble with the Mexicans. Oh, well, it doesn't
+matter so long as we are together, does it?"
+
+"Do you feel that way?" he asked, hungrily.
+
+"Terribly. I love you--I love you hideously much. Watch out! Will you
+never learn that somebody's always looking?--a whole picnic this time."
+
+They were nearing Pocantico Lake. In a thicket on its shores a
+wagon-load of villagers had finished its basket-lunch and scattered in a
+rather dreary effort at inexpensive happiness.
+
+Among the trees the wagon waited pitifully to take them back from their
+dingy cheer to their dull homes. It was rendered only the more pitiful
+by a strip of red-white-and-blue bunting. A coat of paint would have
+become it better.
+
+While the horses cropped the grass soberly a pack of substantial wives
+cleared away such part of the debris of the banquet as was not scattered
+about the ground.
+
+As Forbes and Persis rounded the turn that disclosed the revelers a
+homely couple evidently in search of a less populous nook severed a
+highly unromantic-looking clasp. It was hard to see how either took much
+pleasure from the other. The man was in his shirt-sleeves, with his hat
+askew; the girl, shapeless and freckled, in a shapeless freckled dress.
+They squinted their eyes against the sun, gaped at the tailor-made
+couple on the varnished horses, and stumbled in the roadside gully to
+let them pass.
+
+"Isn't it ghastly?" Persis whispered. "They were trying to spoon--just
+as we were. And we both broke up both of us. It makes love rather a
+silly, shabby spectacle, doesn't it?"
+
+"I don't think so," Forbes said. "I should say that instead of their
+making love shabby, love covered them with a little glory."
+
+"That's a much prettier way to put it. But shabby people--oh Lord! Look
+at that family, dear! If that's wedded bliss, give me chloroform."
+
+It was a doleful exhibit on the edge of the woods: a fat, paunchy,
+sweaty man was taking his picnic in carrying a squally, messy baby.
+Alongside him a bunchy woman with stringy hair waddled in answering
+stupidity, hanging to her husband's suspenders.
+
+"You can't tell which of them's going to have the next one," Persis
+commented, before she caught herself. "Forgive me, I didn't realize how
+it would sound."
+
+Forbes laughed sheepishly. "It was what I was thinking, too."
+
+As they rode on she shuddered. "What an odious thing to be like that!
+Suppose you lost your job in the army and we got very poor, and I had to
+take in washing, and we had a lot of children; should we be like that,
+do you think?--should we?"
+
+"You could never be anything that was not beautiful!" Forbes exclaimed,
+partly because he believed it to be unquestionable truth and partly to
+quell her ferocious repugnance for anything that was ugly and tawdry.
+
+"Perhaps that awful man told that awful woman the same thing," she
+groaned, "and believed it! Come on; let's run away from it." She lifted
+her horse to a gallop and fled so fast that Forbes, for all the
+authority and help he gave his horse, could not overtake her, since hers
+was the better mount. As he followed, lumbering and scolding his black
+beast, he felt that she was indeed too fleet, too elusive for him ever
+to capture and keep.
+
+But at length she relented, and reined in till he came abeam. Then she
+urged her horse on again, and they galloped in the mad swoop of a
+cavalry charge with boots griding together. She forgot her wounded knee,
+and he forgot his doubts of her.
+
+There were narrow escapes, unexpected swerves round loitering wagons or
+deliberate wayfarers. Once she rode up a shelving bank to give him room
+to avoid a mangy canine landlord so earnestly attempting to evict a
+family of tenants from his left ear that he paid no heed to the risk of
+his own life or hers.
+
+"If we ride fast on levels, we can take more time later," she said;
+"then they won't wonder at our being so late."
+
+She was always thinking of what other people would think. He wished that
+she would forget the eternal audience, the unbroken spectators, now and
+then. And yet it was intelligent. It was wise. Only he loved her more
+when she was uttering those childish plans of hers for a life in which
+the funds were to be taken from a fairy purse automatically replenished
+as fast as it was depleted.
+
+Yet he feared both of the women she was: the cautious and forethoughtful
+who might in all wisdom refuse his penury, and the spoiled demander who
+might resent it.
+
+They trotted now into a park-like domain with roads branching out on
+either side. At the edge of each of them stood a sign-board warning
+against trespass and signed with the resounding name of the richest man
+on earth.
+
+"They say he's worth a hundred or two hundred million dollars," Persis
+called across to Forbes.
+
+"That ought to be enough," said Forbes. "It's more than we shall have."
+And he smiled at the comparison. Persis sighed:
+
+"If he could lend us just one million for a few years we could make good
+use of it."
+
+"I might ask him," said Forbes. "I'll send a boy over for it to-night."
+
+He said it lightly, yet there was a sardonic bitterness in his smile. He
+understood for the moment why the established poor become so eager to
+take away from men who were once poor the wealth they have somehow
+amassed.
+
+It seemed to Forbes that he would never reach the limit of this man's
+acres. But at last he escaped from the oppression of some one else's
+success. They cantered through a little village, and crossed rusty
+railroad-tracks into another ocean of sparsely settled country. It
+amazed Forbes to find so much wilderness so close to so vast a
+metropolis. There were long stretches where the woods on either side had
+a look of the primeval. He felt a longing to explore some of these leafy
+jungles. He told her his whim, and it was hers.
+
+By and by they came to a grass-matted road that lost itself in ferns and
+undergrowth. Forbes looked at Persis. Her eyes consented. He laid his
+bridle-hand on the left side of his horse's mane and shifted his weight
+a trifle. And his horse shouldered hers into the jungle. Heads bent low,
+the horses mounted with cautious hoofs till the ferns were brushing
+their saddle-girths. The prattle of a brook somewhere lured them
+farther, and they pressed on into a fog of leaves and crackling boughs
+and flowers. Birds cried warnings and shot through the branches, bearing
+news of the invasion. Others in sentimental oblivion did not budge, but
+sat still and went on sawing the air with silver phrases shrilly sweet.
+
+Suddenly the brook was visible, rushing here and there through the woods
+and making noises that were rapture just to hear. And with that music of
+water and woods, and that multitudinous beauty about them, they gazed
+only into each other's eyes, inclined together, and locked arms and
+breasts and lips in close embrace. They clung together till the soulless
+horses, nibbling here and there, sundered them.
+
+And then they slid from the saddles and, slipping the bridles to their
+elbows, walked on with arms about each other's bodies and eyes so
+mutually engaged that they stumbled like blind folk. At last she sank to
+the ground at the edge of the brook, and he, instead of helping her up,
+dropped down at her side.
+
+He took her into his arms again and kissed her and laughed at her.
+
+"I reckon you'll warn me now that the horses are looking."
+
+"No," she said; "but one of them is standing on one of my coat-tails."
+
+So he rose and led the horses to a tree a few paces off and tied them
+there. When he came back he found her swinging her little boots over a
+still pool in an alcove of the brook. Its quiet surface mirrored her
+feet from beneath quaintly. "We're at the antipodes already," he
+laughed. She put out her hand beggingly.
+
+"It's secluded enough for a smoke. Can you give me a cigarette? I forgot
+mine." He had nothing but a cigar, and she ventured a puff or two of
+that, then gave it back and sighed, "I wish we were married and all."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'd take off my boots and dip my poor aching feet in that water."
+
+"Why don't you?"
+
+"In the first place, I don't know you well enough to go barefoot before
+you. In the second, somebody would be sure to come along."
+
+[Illustration: "THERE'S THAT OTHER ME DOWN IN THE POOL, WATCHING THIS
+ME"]
+
+"Not here," he urged.
+
+"Well, then, there's that other Me down in the pool watching this Me,
+and saying, 'Don't make a fool of yourself, honey.'"
+
+"There are two Persises, then?"
+
+"At least a hundred. But there's one down there. Look, you can see her
+yourself!"
+
+She knelt above the water-glass, and he bent over to gaze. He saw her
+looking up at him, and his own image looking up close to hers. They
+smiled and made faces like children. And when he rubbed his cheek
+against hers the images imitated the foolishness.
+
+"See, they're mocking us," she said. A little breeze wrinkled the
+mirror, and she cried: "They're frowning! They want us to be sensible!
+Come along! They'll be missing us at home."
+
+"At home?" he echoed, reprovingly.
+
+"At Willie's, I mean," she corrected. And then she put his hands away
+and spoke earnestly. "It came mighty near being home to me. I have a
+confession to make. I ought to have made it before. I have been amazed
+at myself for not telling you, for taking your love when I had no right
+to."
+
+He stared at her in terror, and she smiled with pride at his fear and
+babbled on almost incoherently.
+
+"Don't be afraid--though I'm glad you are. But I hope you won't despise
+me. But I couldn't seem to help myself. You're really to blame for being
+so terribly overwhelming. You see, I--I--I've told you how often Willie
+Enslee proposed to me, and--well, one day--that very day you saw me in
+my old hat--the first time, you know--well, I had just had a talk with
+my father, and the poor old boy was all cut up about his--his money
+matters. He's too nice and sweet to be much of a financier, you know,
+and--well, I was scared to death, and I thought the world was coming to
+an end, and I'd better--better get aboard the ark, you know--and I
+hadn't met you then, you know, and Willie proposed again, and I--I
+accepted him."
+
+"You promised to be his wife!" Forbes whispered, chokingly.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "I--you see, I didn't know you. I didn't dream I
+should ever meet anybody who would--would thrill me--that's the only
+word--as you did, as you do. I didn't imagine that I should ever love as
+other people do--insanely, madly, dishonorably--anythingly to be with
+the one I loved. And I didn't dare give up Willie till I was sure I
+loved you, and when I was sure I loved you, I--it seemed so hateful even
+to mention his name. It would have been like--like this."
+
+With her heel she pushed a rock into the water, and it thumped and
+splashed and curdled the little pool.
+
+"That's the effect his name would have had on our moonlight, and I
+couldn't tell you then. Will you forgive me, or do you think I'm a
+hopeless rotter and a sneak?"
+
+He smiled at her mixed vocabulary, and gathered her into his arms. "My
+love! My Persis! But you'll tell him now, won't you?"
+
+"Oh, now, yes!" she cried, ecstatic as a comforted child. "You are
+glorious to forgive me so easily, and not be nasty and lecture-y. And
+see the pool; it's all smooth and clear again."
+
+He looked, and held back the confession he was about to make in his
+turn. The mention of his poverty would be pushing another rock into the
+pool. And he wondered if the mirror would clear after that. He could
+forgive her her betrothal to Enslee because that was of the past; but
+the lack of money was not a matter for forgiving and forgetting; it was
+something to endure. It was asking love to accept poverty as a concubine
+or a mother-in-law.
+
+He kept silent on that score, and they murmured their loves and kissed
+and laughed with contentedness purling through their hearts, and the
+world far away. She glanced back at the horses blissfully tearing young
+leaves from high branches.
+
+"We ought to keep those horses as a souvenir of our engagement. It would
+be a pity to let any one else ride the dear old brutes, wouldn't it?"
+
+"It would, indeed!" he said.
+
+"Let's buy them from Willie. He would sell them for a song."
+
+"That's a fine idea," Forbes answered, with a gulp. He knew how much
+horses like these were worth--and saddles, bridles, and stables.
+
+"We shouldn't want to ride in a car all the time, should we?" she asked.
+
+"No, indeed," he answered. She was at her fairy plans again, and his
+heart sickened.
+
+"We mustn't let ourselves get fat. Of all things we must avoid that,"
+she said. "We might have just a little car like Winifred's--to hold only
+two. I could drive down and get you and bring you home. It would save
+wear on our limousine--or perhaps we won't get a limousine just yet. If
+we didn't have a big car it would be a good excuse for not having a lot
+of people tagging round with us everywhere, wouldn't it? I feel an awful
+longing for a lot of solitude with just you and me. I suppose we'll have
+to put up with the United States army. But I want to shake the gang I've
+been running with--at least for a year or so, till you and I can get
+acquainted. Will you buy me a little car like Winifred's--a good one?
+There's no use wasting money on the cheap kind. The good little ones
+cost as much as the good big ones; but once they're paid for, they don't
+run up repair bills, and they take you where you're going instead of
+dying under you half-way there. Will you buy me a little car for just
+us? You can get a darling for about twenty-five hundred; I was asking
+Winifred."
+
+He made no answer. She turned and looked at him and saw on his face the
+look she had seen on her father's that day--the look a man wears when
+he cannot buy his beloved what she pleads for. Now, as then, Persis felt
+ashamed rather than resentful, and she hastened to add:
+
+"If you can't afford it, old boy, say so. You mustn't mind me. My father
+says I'm a terrible asker. Just say No, and I won't mind. Promise me
+that, dear. I want to be a good economical housewife to you; and I was
+only thinking that if we had a little car it would save taking the big
+car out, and that saves tires and gasolene and general upkeep."
+
+He heard Enslee's words, "It's the upkeep that costs," and they mocked
+him again. He realized that in persuading this girl to choose him
+instead of Enslee, who had already chosen her, he was not only robbing
+her of a yacht, a palace, two or three palaces, half a dozen
+automobiles, servants, and servants of servants, foreign travel and
+foreign clothes and jewels--he was not only robbing her of such things,
+but he was asking her to learn a new way of life, a habit of infinite
+denial, eternal economy, and meager amusement.
+
+Experience and common sense--for he had them in large measure in his
+ordinary life--seemed to bend down and say: "Let your sea-gull go.
+She'll die in your cage, or she'll break it apart."
+
+But she was in his arms. She was leaning against him, flicking his boots
+with her riding-crop, and loving him, contented utterly. Romance elbowed
+Reason aside and said: "See how happy she is. It isn't money that makes
+happiness. You're sitting on the edge of a silly little brook in
+somebody's backwoods, and you're happy as a king and queen on a throne
+of gold."
+
+Common Sense grinned: "Suppose it should rain? This is all very well for
+a while, but what of next winter?"
+
+Reason and Romance wrangled in his head while she was babbling something
+in her elfin economy about, "So we won't have two cars yet, just one, a
+nice big 1913 six, with my chauffeur to run it. Father pays him fifteen
+hundred a year, and that's good pay. Don't you let him wheedle you out
+of a penny more."
+
+Forbes' heart cried aloud within him: "My God! her very chauffeur gets
+nearly as much as I do!" This was the spark of resentment that gave him
+his start. He spoke bitterly, almost glad that she was dazed. And he put
+her away from him that both might be free. And he savagely kicked a rock
+into the smiling little pool and watched it grow turbid as he poured out
+his confession.
+
+"Listen, honey; you've got a wrong idea of my situation. I'm to blame
+for it, I reckon. I've been meaning to speak about it, but I didn't--for
+just the same reason that kept you quiet about Enslee. I'm not rich,
+honey. I didn't tell anybody I was rich, but the idea got started from
+Ten Eyck's fool joke about seeing me coming out of a big bank. I told
+him the truth, and now I must tell you. You'll hate me, but you've got
+to know some time. I'm not rich, honey."
+
+"What of it, dear?" she said, creeping toward him. "I love you for
+yourself. I never thought you were rich like Willie. I gave up all that
+gladly."
+
+"But I'm what you would call--a pauper, I suppose. I have only my army
+pay."
+
+"Isn't that enough?"
+
+"Plenty of couples seem to be happy on it, but they're mostly the sons
+and daughters of army people. You've been brought up so differently.
+Wild extravagances for our people would be shabby makeshifts to you."
+
+"Don't you think I'd be able to adapt myself?"
+
+"Would you?"
+
+"I should hope so. How much is your army pay, if you don't mind my
+asking?"
+
+"As first lieutenant I get a little over two thousand."
+
+"Two thousand a week? Why, that's not bad at all. Why did you frighten
+me?"
+
+He laughed aloud, and she corrected herself.
+
+"Oh, two thousand a month. That's about twenty-five thousand a year. It
+isn't much, is it? But we could skimp and scrape, and we'd have each
+other."
+
+She had given him his death-blow unwittingly.
+
+He smiled dismally, and groaned:
+
+"Two thousand a year with forage."
+
+She stared at him in unbelief. "Two thousand a year with forage! We
+couldn't eat the forage, could we? They give you a pittance like that
+for being an officer and a gentleman and a hero?"
+
+"The hero business is the worst paid of all. Look at the firemen."
+
+"But, my dear, two thousand a--why, our chef gets more than that, and
+our chauffeur nearly as much; and my father's secretary--everybody gets
+more than that."
+
+"Not everybody. The vast majority of people get much less. But that's
+what I get."
+
+She had been prepared for self-denial, but this was self-obliteration.
+If he had told her that he had the yellow fever she could hardly have
+felt sorrier for him, or more appalled at the prospect of their union.
+She loved him, perhaps, the more for the pity that welled up in her. She
+denounced the government for a miser.
+
+"We're better paid than other armies," said Forbes. "Officers in foreign
+armies are supposed to have private fortunes."
+
+"I don't wonder," she gasped. "And you haven't any?" He shook his head.
+"No relatives?"
+
+"None that aren't poorer than I am."
+
+She put out her hand and caressed his brow. "Poor boy, it's cruel, it's
+hateful! Willie Enslee with all that money, and you with two thousand a
+year! And no prospects for more?"
+
+"Well, I hope to be promoted captain very shortly--any day now I should
+get my commission. That carries with it twenty-four hundred a year."
+
+She sighed. "The little car I wanted would cost more than that. Well,
+let it go. Walking is healthier. It would save the chauffeur's wages,
+too. And my maid--I don't know what Nichette would say. But--well, let
+her go. Let everything go but you."
+
+She clasped her arms round him, and he clutched her tight; but his
+embrace was like a farewell. She was infinitely pathetic to him. She had
+so much sophistication, and was so innocent of so much. She kissed him
+tenderly, but her mood was an elegy.
+
+"That knocks out my wedding plans, too, doesn't it? It was the dream of
+all my life, the ambition of all my girlhood." And she fell to musing
+aloud. "Many's the night I've lain awake planning that wedding, and that
+divine wedding-gown all of ivory satin--with a train a mile long, and
+with point lace like whipped cream all over it, and the veil floating in
+a cloud about me. And I was to have counts and barons and things for
+ushers, and the belles of the season for bridesmaids--all very envious
+of me. And the cathedral was to be one ocean of flowers and silk
+ribbons, and--and I was to have at least an archbishop to marry me. And
+the presents! Oh, they were to have been so glorious that everybody that
+gave them would be bankrupted for life and hate me; and there were to be
+no duplicates. And the bridegroom was to be so wealthy that all the
+bridesmaids would loathe me for winning him. And we were to go away in a
+private car to a palace built brand new just for me."
+
+He was so fascinated with watching her soul in debate with itself that
+he did not speak. He just held her fast and listened. She went on:
+
+"It was a silly dream. It's not the ceremony that counts--it's the long
+life after. Love's the main thing, isn't it?"
+
+He lifted her gauntleted hand to his cheek and said nothing. She was
+silent a long while. Then she pondered aloud again: "I wonder what sort
+of a poor man's wife I'll make. I'm afraid I'll be an awful failure. You
+know, we were poor once--yes. My father got squeezed in a corner, and
+nearly went bankrupt. Oh, but mother and I had to skimp and scrape! I
+had to turn my old gowns, give up our box at the opera, sell my
+saddle-horses. We couldn't go to dinners or receptions because we
+couldn't return them. We sat at home and received--indignant creditors.
+Oh, the bills, the bills--my God, the bills!
+
+"At the end of a year father found a man who was unbusinesslike enough
+to put him on his feet again. It was Willie Enslee, of course. We had
+money once more; we could hold our heads high, snub those who snubbed
+us, get even with those who had patronized us, or--ugh! insulted us with
+their sympathy. Oh, money is a great thing, isn't it? It was like coming
+out of a cave again into the sunlight. I used to say I would face
+anything rather than poverty again.
+
+"And think of it, Harvey, when we were at our poorest we were spending
+thirty or forty thousand a year. And we called it poverty. But you and
+I--two thousand a year--and forage!
+
+"Why, Harvey, it would take you a year and a half of work to pay for the
+little car I wanted--if we did without a big car and didn't spend a cent
+on clothes or theaters or the opera or taxies or the seaside or Europe
+or entertaining people or servants' wages, and--and ate only the forage.
+We couldn't have a chauffeur. I couldn't have my maid. I couldn't have
+any friends--what should I do? I couldn't have anything! Those two
+horses I wanted would cost a year of your salary. My dressmaker's bills
+are four or five times as much, and at that I never have anything to
+wear. Why, Harvey, it's frightful! I never knew what money meant before.
+I don't see how we could ever manage it. I don't see how."
+
+She put his arms away as if they irked her and hampered her breath. She
+was breathing hard. Merely to imagine a life devoid of everything she
+had always found about her was like a suffocation. She was
+understanding how a fish must feel when it is drawn from the water and
+flung to stifle on dry pebbles. She suffered such dismay as overwhelms a
+rat in the bell of an air-pump when the experimenter begins to create a
+vacuum.
+
+She had seen poverty and its wreckage, and her mind was filled with
+pictures, not from the charming homes of moderate means, but from the
+slums that she had visited once and avoided thereafter as a nightmare.
+She had had friends who had gone into bankruptcy and slunk off into
+obscurity to hide its penalties. One very dear woman, whose husband
+lapsed from affluence to mediocrity, had written a few little notes,
+calmly taken an overdose of a headache powder, stretched herself out on
+her mortgaged chaise-longue and fallen asleep over an unusually sedative
+novel. Persis had received one of the notes.
+
+     Good-by, Persis dear. You know the situation, and you at least will
+     understand. Would it be too much trouble for you to have a little
+     talk with the undertaker man and have things as nicely managed as
+     possible? Don't let them treat me too shabbily, will you? I
+     couldn't rest easily even There. You understand, don't you?
+
+Persis had understood, and, being in funds at the time, had seen all
+conducted with taste and even with a little splendor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To every one his or her especial cowardice. Persis, so brave in so many
+ways, was afraid of creepy things like caterpillars and creditors and
+poverty. They spoiled for her everything that they touched, flower or
+ceremony or future.
+
+She was silent a long while. Forbes longingly set his arms about her;
+but she did not respond; her hands were idly rolling her riding-crop up
+and down the shin of her boot, for she was thinking hard.
+
+Forbes felt that he clung to the mere clothes of her soul. Herself was
+already gone from him. Yet he loved her so that he found her not
+unworthy nor selfish nor craven, but infinitely precious and beautiful,
+difficult to win and wear.
+
+A great many shining throngs of water went down the brook, making all
+the conversation there was, before Persis began to flog her boots with
+her riding-crop. She wanted to groan, but as was her custom in torment,
+smiled instead; and, having something of tragic solemnity to utter, put
+it forth with a plucky flippancy:
+
+"Well, old boy, I'm afraid all bets are off."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+Forbes had been recruiting strength to tell her that he released her;
+but she anticipated him by jilting him first--and in sporting terms. He
+stared at her, but he could not see the tears raining down in her heart.
+He heard her, but was deaf to the immense regret in the little words she
+added:
+
+"You're pretty poor, aren't you?"
+
+His very forehead was drenched with red shame at such comment from her.
+She could see how she had hurt his pride, and she put on the solemnity
+he expected her to wear.
+
+"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Harvey, I implore you! I love you all the
+more for being just your glorious self. You've paid me the greatest
+honor I ever had--or shall have. You asked me to be your wife, and you
+are willing to divide up your pitiful little income with me. You'd give
+it all to me. You'd run into debt till you smothered. But it wouldn't
+work out. Mother was right: 'People can do without love easier than
+without money.'"
+
+"Not people with hearts like yours," he ventured at last to put in as a
+feeble objection.
+
+"Oh, I'm afraid of this heart of mine," she answered. "If it had any
+sense it wouldn't have fallen in love with you--you of all men. I knew
+you weren't really terribly rich, but I didn't think you were so
+pitifully, cruelly poor."
+
+The epithet reiterated stung him like a whip in the face. He protested
+impatiently:
+
+"I'm not really poor. Army officers have many ways of saving expenses. I
+might not give you princely luxuries, Persis, but I'd make your life
+happy."
+
+His resistance gave her something to fight, and her resentment at fate
+welcomed it.
+
+"Me happy at an army post? With nothing but poker for you and gossip for
+me? No, thank you!"
+
+She caught a twitch of anger in his brows, and she grew harsher:
+
+"Look here! Would you give up your career for me?"
+
+"A woman can't ask a man to give up his career," he answered; and she
+retorted with the spirit of her time:
+
+"Then why should she give up hers for him?"
+
+He looked an old-fashioned surprise. "And have you a career?"
+
+"Of course I have. Every woman has; and nowadays a woman has got to look
+out for herself and her future, or she'll get left at the post."
+
+"And what career have you?" he asked, amazed.
+
+"Marriage. It's the average woman's main business in life, Harvey. If
+she fails in that she fails in everything."
+
+"Then you think the poor have no right to marry?"
+
+"Oh no, I'm not such a fool as that. There are people with simple tastes
+who can be happy on nothing a year--sweet domestic women who love to
+manage and cook and sweep and mend and sew. There are lots of unhappy
+rich women who would be thoroughly contented if they were the wives of
+laboring-men. But that doesn't happen to be my type. I can't help it. I
+grow positively sick at the sight of a needle. Even fancy stitching
+hurts my eyes. And I can't help that. There are lots of poor women who
+are making their homes hells because they have no money. They'd be
+angels if they didn't have to economize. Some people, rich and poor,
+take a sensuous delight in watching a bank account grow, and they get
+more thrill out of saving a penny than out of getting something more
+beautiful for it.
+
+"But I'm not one of those. I'm a squanderer by nature. I hate to be
+denied things. I loathe counting the cost of things. I can't endure to
+see some one else wearing better things than I've got on. I want to
+throttle a woman who has a later hat than mine. Oh, I may be a bad one,
+Harvey, but it isn't my fault. I am what I was born to be. I've got to
+marry money, Harvey. I've just got to."
+
+He cried out against her self-portrait as a libel. "Oh, Persis, don't
+tell me that you are mercenary--a woman with a big heart like yours."
+
+"I'm not mercenary exactly; I loathe money as money, but I like nice
+things. I have to have them. I'm trying to be honest with myself and
+with you--in time--before it's too late. It's hard; but I didn't arrange
+the world, did I? I didn't choose my own soul, did I? But I've got to
+get along with what was given me, haven't I? I tell you I'd ruin your
+life, Harvey. You'd divorce me in a year."
+
+"Don't talk like that, or you will ruin your own life! There's a big
+tragedy in store for you, Persis, unless you--"
+
+She was so tortured with disillusion and with the death of her first
+romance that she grew very hard.
+
+"Well, so long as it isn't the tragedy of being unable to pay my bills
+and of eating my own cooking I can stand it. I'd rather be unhappy than
+shabby. But it's growing late; we must get back."
+
+He aided her to her feet, untied the horses, and offered her his hand
+for a mounting-block. But she said:
+
+"We can walk quicker here than we can ride." Taking her bridle in her
+arm, she set out swiftly. She seemed once more to be running away from
+something--a shadow of poverty, no doubt. He felt unspeakably sorry for
+her. Again he was about to offer her back her heart when an abrupt light
+broke over her face. She paused, laughed, turned to him.
+
+"What a fool I am! My father set my sister up in business as a British
+peeress and bought her her husband and settled a whacking dower on her.
+He can do the same for me and keep the money in this country--and get
+me a real husband. He could give me enough for us both to live on
+comfortably."
+
+"I reckon I could hardly accept that arrangement," Forbes said, as
+gently as he might.
+
+"You see!" she cried out. "You expect me to murder my pride and accept
+poverty, but you won't accept wealth because you must keep your pride.
+You couldn't object to my having the money to spend on myself, could
+you?"
+
+"No, I could hardly object to that," he said.
+
+"Well, then, if everything goes right with my father's plans we'll have
+love and money and all. It will be wonderful--heaven on earth! Kiss me!"
+
+She put up her lips, and he kissed them and found them bitter-sweet.
+Then she strode on with a lilting joy, humming a song and putting her
+horse to his paces to keep up with her. Forbes remembered what Senator
+Tait had said of her father's impending doom, and her rapture was a
+heartbreak to him--a final irony.
+
+As they issued from the green cave of the forest and walked down to the
+State Road to take the saddle, a motor came along. Two men were in it.
+The driver stopped the car in front of Persis, and the other man lifted
+his hat. It disclosed a shock of brindle hair and half of one eyebrow
+gone.
+
+"Can you tell me if this road leads to Briarcliff?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I think so," Persis answered.
+
+"Thank you, Miss Cabot," he called out, as the car whirred away.
+
+Persis stared after him in amazement. "Now who was that? How did he know
+my name?"
+
+"By your pictures in the papers," Forbes suggested.
+
+"No," said Persis; "I've met him somewhere. Oh, I know. He's a reporter
+on the--some paper. Lord, I hope he didn't misconstrue our being here. I
+didn't like the grin on his face."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+The reporter's fleering smile and his acidulous "Thank you, Miss Cabot,"
+convinced Persis that the man had, with the sophistication reporters
+learn too well, put the worst possible interpretation on her forest
+promenade with Forbes. This was all that it needed to turn her
+disappointment into dismay, her bewilderment into panic. She had lost
+rhythm with her life and the world.
+
+She thrust one boot into its stirrup, swung the other across the saddle,
+and jerked her horse's head impatiently. Her temper threw his motor
+machinery out of gear, and he found himself with at least two too many
+feet. He bolted and sidled in a ragged syncopated gait, snorting and
+flinging his head angrily. She could not get him into meter with himself
+or her, or with the horse that Forbes brought clattering alongside.
+
+At first she had felt infinitely sorry for Forbes and indignant only at
+the fate that made him poor. As she rode her fretful horse she began to
+feel infinitely sorry for herself and indignant at Forbes. He had
+permitted her to think that he had ample means. He had encouraged her to
+love him seriously. Her resentment was the fierce resentment people feel
+when those they love and idealize do not live up to the standards set
+for them.
+
+Forbes had come into her life like a bull sauntering into a china shop.
+A moment before his entrance everything was arranged, orderly,
+exquisite, and formal--a little cold, perhaps, but charmingly definite.
+Now everything was crashing about her. She must walk warily among the
+fragments or she would suffer.
+
+Persis was an orderly soul, and had not suspected that she was also a
+passionate one. She was more like Forbes than either of them understood.
+For all the deep intensity of his nature, training had made him first
+the soldier. In battle he was the fiery warrior; but battles were
+infrequent, and almost all his days had been spent in acquiring and
+instilling precision, exactness in the manual of arms, rectitude in the
+lines of drill formations, perfection in uniform and equipment, in the
+company books and reports--everywhere.
+
+So Persis had acquired from infancy the rituals of household service,
+the proprieties and their observance, the arrangement of ceremonies,
+social book-keeping. And now she was discovering what a disorganizer
+love is, what an anarch among plans, what a smasher of china.
+
+Before the advent of Forbes she had almost given up the expectation of
+love. Then out of nothing the fates evoked this man. If he had confessed
+even a pittance of twenty-five thousand a year, that would have meant at
+worst "love in a cottage"--cottage being an elastic word. Friends of
+hers owned cottages of palatial dimensions. But two thousand a
+year--with a prospect of twenty-four hundred a year! She simply could
+not imagine it.
+
+She tried to mask her anger under an unusually cheerful manner. She
+spoke with approval of the landscape, chattered vivaciously about
+everything, and all the while was burning with resentment. It was small
+wonder that Forbes felt the blight of her wrath when the very horses
+knew of it. The most determined politeness can never imitate the fine
+flower and bouquet of genuine enthusiasm. But what could Forbes say to
+set things right? The one effective speech would have been a declaration
+of independent means, a smiling disclaimer of poverty: "I was only
+joking; I am really very rich."
+
+That would have re-established the _entente_. But that was the one thing
+Forbes could not say. He rode on at Persis' side, a silent and dejected
+prisoner of circumstances, a spy captured in the enemy's camp in the
+enemy's uniform.
+
+Eventually they reached the Enslee place--the mountain that was
+Enslee's, with the stately pleasure dome he had decreed there. The
+majesty of it belittled Forbes still more. The beauty of it shamed him.
+
+They trotted across the granite bridge and urged the horses to the
+ascent.
+
+The horses plodded doggedly up and up, and the beauty of every spot as
+they reached it wore away Persis' anger. It was difficult to feel a
+bitterness against anybody, even against the fates, when they permitted
+some aromatic shrub to throw an almost visible veil of perfume about
+her, and another to dandle before her eyes a smiling throng of blossoms
+almost audibly singing like clustered cherubim. The mere dapple of
+shadow and sun-splash was felicity, and the white road that curved among
+its lawns was voluptuously sinuous, like a tawny Cleopatra on a green
+divan or one of Titian's high-hipped Venuses.
+
+The gardening was formal, the swards were shaved, the trees seemed to
+have been whisk-broomed, the shrubs had been curled and scented; but
+they were beautiful, and only wealth could have collected them or kept
+them at their best. And above them all loomed the house, a chateau of
+stately charm enthroned in beauty.
+
+Forbes saw how good it was, and coveted it. But it was as if Naboth, the
+soldier, had envied David, the King, his garden. Persis also saw how
+good it was, and she could possess it all, become the chatelaine of this
+place.
+
+She spoke her thought aloud:
+
+"It's this sort of thing, Harvey, that I love and need--beautiful things
+and plenty of them."
+
+"I understand," Forbes groaned.
+
+"If only you could get them for us!"
+
+"If only I could!"
+
+A little farther she checked her horse, whose trunk was heaving like a
+bellows. It was in a little colonnade of trees with an arched roof of
+green leaves in more than Gothic confusion. Birds were everywhere,
+fluting, fighting, and building.
+
+"Listen to them, Harvey," Persis murmured, with a kind of sad joy, as he
+reined in alongside. "It's their courtship-time, too. And the male bird
+is the better dressed of the two."
+
+Forbes noted how sweet her throat was as it arched back; and the under
+surface of her chin, how beautiful. They were no longer his to admire,
+and bitterness came into his heart. His smile was close to a sneer as he
+said:
+
+"The males put on their Sunday best and pour out their finest songs, and
+the lady bird chooses, they say, the one that wears the best clothes."
+
+She gave him a look that was both rebuking and rebuked, and urged her
+horse along. But a little later her response to beauty filled her again
+with the contentment of repletion, and she checked her horse by the
+marble-walled pool, whose surface was broken and circled here and there
+by gleaming red fish with lacy fins and tails; they were darting and
+leaping in acrobatic ecstasies.
+
+"They're making love, too, I suppose," Persis said, a trifle anxiously.
+
+And he was still aggrieved enough to answer: "And the fish ladies also
+select the gentleman with the most gold."
+
+She stared at him a moment, hurt and shamed. Then she flung back at him:
+
+"Then you oughtn't to blame us--us other females for making the wisest
+choice we can. It must be a law of nature."
+
+"It must be," he sighed, so humbly that she regretted her victory. She
+would have put out her hand to comfort him, but she saw above them
+Willie Enslee leaning across the balustrade. She lifted her horse into a
+jog-trot, and they rode into the court, where a chauffeur waited to take
+the horses to the stable.
+
+Willie greeted them in his whiniest tone.
+
+"Where on earth were you? We've been home for ages."
+
+"We got off the main road," Persis said, as she climbed the steps,
+followed by Forbes, "and the horses were tired and--"
+
+"I was awfully anxious. I was about to start out to look for you."
+
+"There was no occasion to be anxious."
+
+"Besides, your father telephoned you."
+
+"My father! Is he back in New York?"
+
+"No; he telephoned from Chicago. He was just leaving on the twenty-hour
+train. He couldn't wait till you got back."
+
+"What did he have to say?"
+
+"Lots." Willie looked uneasily at Forbes, as if he were in the way.
+
+"I'll be changing for dinner," Forbes said, with uncomfortable haste.
+
+"You'd better be cooking the dinner," Willie said. "Winifred is counting
+on your soldierly experience to help her out."
+
+So Forbes went to the kitchen to salute and report for duty. As he
+entered the house he looked back to see Enslee leading Persis toward the
+marble steps to the little temple where he proposed regularly.
+
+Forbes' heart thudded heavily in his breast. He felt helpless to protest
+or intervene in any way. Persis was up at auction. He had bidden her in
+under a misapprehension of the upset price, and she was put back for
+sale again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+As she mounted the steps with Willie, Persis felt something of Forbes'
+regret. She was a slave on the block, and the man she wanted for owner
+was crowded from the mart.
+
+"What did father have to say?" she asked, in a dull tone already
+despairing.
+
+"I--I--it wasn't very pleasant."
+
+"Hand it to me."
+
+"He said to break it to you gently."
+
+"Well, speak up, Willie. Break it! For the Lord's sake, break it!"
+
+"Sit down, won't you?" He led her to a bench in the temple. "I hardly
+know where to begin."
+
+"Begin at the ending."
+
+"Well, you see, your poor governor--"
+
+"Has lost all his money?"
+
+"Well, yes--in a way."
+
+"It's getting to be rather a habit with the poor old boy, isn't it? Is
+he smashed up badly?"
+
+"Pretty badly."
+
+"The house in town and the country place will have to go?"
+
+"I'm afraid so."
+
+"The cars and the horses--my car, too?"
+
+"Looks like it."
+
+"Then I needn't worry about it's being a last year's model," she
+laughed. Willie stared at her admiringly.
+
+"Gad, but you're a good loser."
+
+"I try to be; an easy winner, an easy loser. I'm awfully sorry for
+father, though. Did you--did you tell him anything?"
+
+"I told him we were engaged."
+
+She shivered and mumbled, "What did he say to that?"
+
+"He seemed immensely relieved. He said, 'God bless her.' His voice was
+very faint, but I think that's what he said."
+
+"Perhaps he said, 'God help her.'"
+
+"Maybe he did," Willie sighed. "Anyway, we're to meet him in town
+to-morrow."
+
+He stared at her with hungry eyes, and his little lean fingers crept
+toward the exquisite hand of hers that lay supine, relaxed, with
+upturned fingers like the petals of an open rose. He took that flower in
+his hands timidly. She looked down into his famished eyes and smiled
+pitifully--perhaps a little for him, certainly for herself.
+
+He overestimated the tenderness in her gaze and squeezed her fingers in
+his. She winced and drew her hand away.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry I hurt you," he said.
+
+"It was this ring again," she explained, though she had not meant to say
+the "again."
+
+"My ring? Our ring?" he murmured, with such joy that her sportsmanship
+compelled a last effort at playing fair.
+
+"Under the circumstances," she said, "I think I'd better return it to
+you--with thanks for the loan."
+
+"I don't want it back!" he gasped. "I won't have it back."
+
+"You didn't agree to marry a beggar."
+
+"I want to marry you--just you," he pleaded. "The engagement stands."
+
+"You're terribly polite, but I can't--not for charity."
+
+"Charity--bosh!" he stormed. "I can't get along without you. You
+couldn't get along without a lot of money, Persis. If--if you'll let the
+engagement stand I'll put your father on his feet again. I'll--I'll do
+anything."
+
+"How put him on his feet? I thought he was smashed?"
+
+"He went to Chicago to raise a lot of money. He couldn't. He's coming
+back to face the music. It's a funeral march unless--unless--well, I
+could take up his obligations. I don't understand it very well myself,
+to say nothing of explaining it to you. But I've got a lot of money, and
+money is what your father's enemies want. He'll be all right if he's
+tided over the shallow places. So for my sake and your governor's, let
+me announce the engagement."
+
+"Think what people would say. It looks so hideously mercenary on my
+part."
+
+"We can prove that we were engaged before this thing threatened.
+Everybody will have to confess it's a true love match on both sides.
+Please, please, Persis! pretty please!"
+
+She resigned herself to all the shames she foresaw, and sighed:
+
+"All right, Willie, it will brace Dad up a bit."
+
+"Is he the only one you think of?" Willie pouted. "Haven't you a word
+of--of love for me?" He wrung her hands in his little claws again, and
+they set her nerves on edge. She wanted to shriek her detestation of her
+plight; but she controlled herself enough to keep down her feelings. She
+could not, however, mimic love where she felt loathing--the best she
+could do was to mumble:
+
+"We can't very well play a love scene up here before everybody, can we?
+I may feel more enthusiastic when I've had a bath and a change of
+costume."
+
+She broke from him and hurried down the steps. He overtook her half-way
+to plead:
+
+"Let me announce our engagement now--to the people here."
+
+"Not now," she pleaded; "not here!" And she ran on. But he followed
+chuckling. He had a great dramatic idea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+That was an extraordinary dinner. The famished aristocracy hovered about
+the kitchen porch like waifs, pleading for the privilege of assisting.
+Ten Eyck wanted to scour the cake-dish or put raisins in something. He
+and the rest were set to work dusting the palatial dining-hall and
+bringing forth the best Enslee plate. Willie stood by and warned them to
+be careful. He was in so triumphant a humor that he felt nearly like
+breaking something himself.
+
+When at last the board was decked, the candelabra alight, fresh flowers
+lavished everywhere, and chairs arranged, the guests were ravenous.
+
+"Do we dress for dinner?" said Ten Eyck. Winifred threw a boiled potato
+at him. It grazed Mrs. Neff, who swore splendidly and was prepared to
+respond with a mop when disarmed.
+
+It was one of the necessities of the feast that the entire body of
+guests should be also the corps of waiters. The service would have
+appalled the shabbiest butler. There were woeful collisions at the
+deadly swinging doors; wine-glasses that had been made in Bohemia and
+monogrammed there were splintered. A wonderful soup-tureen of historic
+associations was juggled and lost. It fell on a venerable rug of every
+color except spilled soup. The tureen was picked up empty and badly
+dented.
+
+But nothing could check the riot. There were battles around the
+serving-tables in the kitchen and the pantry and at the sideboard. Those
+who got their plates filled rushed to their places like fed dogs
+dispersing each with its bone.
+
+Winifred was exhausted by her long day's work. She made no pretense of
+toilet, but followed her viands in and slumped into her chair with
+sleeves rolled up, knees apart, and the general collapsed look of cooks.
+
+Forbes had taken off his coat for his kitchen work. Winifred would not
+let him put it on again.
+
+"My butler and footmen eat with their livery on the back of their
+chairs," she said. "We'll make this a regular banquet in the servants'
+hall."
+
+The idea pleased everybody but Willie. They had all happened into the
+servants' dining-rooms during the meals of those weary ministers, so now
+they sprawled and gobbled and chattered in the best imitation they could
+improvise.
+
+"Our own people are probably eating at our own tables at home," said
+Mrs. Neff, "and passing scandal with every plate."
+
+"There's the one thing missing to make this a true servant's soiree,"
+said Ten Eyck--"a lot of down-stairs gossip. I am now Willie's man:
+'Whatever do you suppose I turned up this morning whilst I was unpacking
+the mahster's bag after his trip to Philadelphia--a receipted bill for
+five-and-twenty dollars for Mr. and Mrs. William Jones, one night's
+lodging, so 'elp me!'"
+
+Everybody glanced at Willie, but he giggled. "You flatter me."
+
+Alice, with the sophistication that young women have apparently always
+had except in fiction, put up her hand reprovingly to Ten Eyck.
+
+"No depravity, no depravity! Remember my young mother is present. Now
+I'm our second man talking to my maid: 'My Missus, for all she's so
+crool to her darling dorter Aluss, do you knaow the hour she come in
+lawst night? Nao? Four o'clock this mornin', she did! Strike me if she
+didn't!'"
+
+Mrs. Neff smiled and retaliated: "Now I'm Alice's Hibernian maid: 'At
+that the ould shrew had nothin' on Miss Aluss. Whilst her mother was
+toorkey-trattin', wasn't the darlin' child after tahkin' four dollars'
+worth of baby-tahk over the telephone to that young bosthoon of a Stowe
+Webb.'"
+
+"How on earth did you find out?" said Alice.
+
+Mrs. Neff's answer was further revelation of the domestic secret
+service: "It's a nice little colleen, Aluss is, and pays me liberal for
+smooglin' notes in and out of the house. And then the ould woman pays me
+still more liberal to bring the notes to her first. It's a right careful
+mother she is."
+
+Alice stared in horror, and Mrs. Neff tee-hee'd like a malicious little
+girl. Winifred came to Alice's rescue with a cross-fire:
+
+"Now I'm Mrs. Neff's secretary talking to my little niece's governess."
+
+"Help, help!" cried Mrs. Neff. "No fair, Winifred. I had to discharge
+the cat. If you dare, I'll give an imitation of your laundress talking
+to--"
+
+"I surrender," said Winifred, hastily.
+
+"Go on," said Ten Eyck. "As Connie Ediss sang, 'It all comes out in the
+wash.'"
+
+Mrs. Neff put up her hand. "As official duenna of this family, I think
+we'd better change the game or put out the lights."
+
+"That's a fine idea!" said Ten Eyck. "A game of tag in the dark."
+
+"Not in my dark!" said Willie, sternly, with a calm incisiveness that
+surprised everybody and ended the project before it was begun.
+
+Ten Eyck complained: "We came here to be rid of the spying servants, and
+we've been more respectable than ever."
+
+"Crowds are almost always respectable," said Mrs. Neff, "unless they're
+drunk."
+
+"Everybody is almost always respectable," said Ten Eyck. "Even the worst
+of us only sin for a few minutes at a time. A murder takes but a
+moment, and thieves are notorious loafers. This talk of a life of sin is
+mostly rot, I think. Sin is a spasm, not a life."
+
+"It's the remorse and the atonement that make up the life," said Mrs.
+Neff.
+
+"Good Lord, how funereal we are," said Persis, "talking about sin and
+spasms and remorse when the flowers are blooming and the moonlight is
+pounding on the windows! We ought to be--"
+
+"Washing the dishes," said Winifred, rising. "Come on, the all of youse,
+clear up this mess and get into the suds. Persis and Mrs. Neff and Alice
+are the dish-washing squad to-night, and Willie and Murray can wipe them
+dry."
+
+"We haven't had our smoke yet," protested Mrs. Neff. A respite was
+granted for this.
+
+Everybody smoked but Alice.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Alice?" said Winifred. "Sore throat?"
+
+Alice shrugged her shoulders and answered, "Ask my awful mother."
+
+Mrs. Neff flicked the ashes off her cigarette. "My father always used to
+tell my brothers that tobacco wouldn't hurt them if they didn't smoke
+till they were twenty-one. I think it applies to women also."
+
+"Great heavens!" said Winifred, pretending to put away her cigarette,
+"I've ruined my life. No wonder I'm wasting away."
+
+"Eighteen is the legal age for women," said Ten Eyck.
+
+Winifred resumed her cigarette with a mock childishness. "Then I can
+just qualify. I was eighteen last--"
+
+"Last century, my dear?" Mrs. Neff cooed.
+
+"For that you can scrub the pots and pans, darling," Winifred crooned.
+"And I was going to let you off with the wine-glasses. Another crack
+like that and I'll have you stoking the range."
+
+"I am a martyr in the cause of truth," Mrs. Neff groaned. "Come on;
+let's get it over with."
+
+Winifred was a sharp taskmaster, and so bulky that none of the women
+dared to disobey. Nor the men either. Forbes was for helping Persis and
+saving her delicate hands, but Winifred would not have him in the pantry
+at all:
+
+"The little snojer cooked the dinner, and he gets a furlough. If I could
+trust the rest of you I'd walk with him in the moonlight and let him
+hold my dainty white mitt in his manly clasp."
+
+Forbes was banished, and spent his exile pacing up and down smoking and
+peering in at the window, where Persis, aproned and wet-armed and with a
+speck of soot on her nose, buried her jeweled fingers in greasy
+dish-water, and smoked the while her customary cigarette. She was more
+fascinating than ever to Forbes, whose mind kept ringing the domestic
+chimes.
+
+When the kitchen and dining-room chores were done to the satisfaction of
+Winifred, who demanded as much of her amateur scullions as she would
+have demanded of her own servants, they were all exhausted. Returning to
+the living-room, they sprawled in those inelegant attitudes that tired
+laborers assume. Their minds were jaded with their muscles.
+
+"I never understood before why my servants are so snappy at night," said
+Mrs. Neff. "If anybody speaks to me I'll cry."
+
+"Pull down your skirts, at least, mother," said Alice.
+
+"They're too far away," sighed Mrs. Neff. "And nobody's interested in my
+old legs."
+
+Alice, with the fierce decency of the young, rose wearily, bent down,
+put her mother's ankles together, and covered them with the skirt.
+
+"Isn't it odd," sighed Mrs. Neff, "how we pretend that old people must
+go along to chaperon the young? It ought to be the other way about."
+
+Alice was too tired to get up. She sank on the floor and laid her head
+on her mother's knee. And Mrs. Neff put out a thin, white hand upon the
+girl's soft hair.
+
+"It's a nice little girl, sometimes," she sighed.
+
+"And it would be a nice little mother," said Alice, "if--"
+
+"Don't say it, my child. He's not the man for you at all. I know best.
+I'm thinking of your happiness." Alice shrugged a skeptical comment.
+
+Her mother went on: "Do you remember how you had all the chocolate
+creams you wanted--once? You couldn't look at one for a year after.
+Well, living on love alone is like trying to live on chocolate creams
+alone. And he couldn't afford even to keep you in chocolate creams."
+
+Alice made no answer. She sat studying her own thoughts.
+
+Forbes felt a sudden kinship with Alice's absent lover and beloved, this
+Stowe Webb, whose crime was lack of money. He imagined that Persis'
+mother had told her the same cold things that Alice was hearing now. He
+began to believe that many daughters must hear such financial talk
+against love from their mothers. He had heard so many married women
+scoff at love as a delusion. He wondered if, after all, it were not
+really man, rather than woman, who is the romantic animal.
+
+"Men," he pondered, "write the great poems and the great romances, paint
+the great pictures, fight the great fights against nature and ignorance
+and oppression and poverty. They compose the great music, supply the
+demand for love songs and love stories, and build the places to love in.
+Then they lay their wealth and ambition and achievement at the feet of
+little women, and each little woman selects from those that gather at
+her feet the one that she thinks will dress her best and house her best
+and give her the best time."
+
+He had read much in books, written chiefly by gallant gentlemen whose
+flattery was greater than their accuracy, that woman was a slave, a toy,
+a plaything, a victim of man's cruelty. Now he began to believe that in
+the vast bulk of instances the reverse was true. The little women set
+their feet on the men's necks and rode upon their shoulders, and when
+they were displeased pulled the men's hair, poked fingers into their
+eyes, or abandoned them entirely.
+
+He felt again what he had felt when he studied Fifth Avenue and its
+womankind; for every woman's finery some man pays. Woman was the
+grasping sex, the exacting, yet extravagant sex. The eternal feminine
+was the eternal calculatrix.
+
+He had wondered what these women paid for what they got from men. He
+believed now that he had found the answer. They paid with their bodies,
+their kisses, the encircling of arms, the cooing of tender words. In
+return for so much money they granted permission to spend yet more.
+
+He studied Persis; how beautiful she was, how soft and gracile, how apt
+to endearments! Yet she held herself at a price, at a high price, and
+called it pride, self-protection. What was it but self-exploitation?
+
+Yet what man ever desired an object less because it was beyond his
+means? Persis was certainly no less adorable to Forbes because he could
+not buy her. He would have to get along without her. But, having once
+held her in his arms while she held him in hers, he would never cease to
+desire her. Like the father of a spendthrift child, he rather felt
+ashamed of himself for being incompetent to meet her demands, than
+contemned her for making them.
+
+After a while of silent meditation Mrs. Neff spoke up, briskly:
+
+"There's only one thing that would rest me, and that's a tango. Where
+are those records we bought this afternoon?"
+
+On the homeward way the motor party had passed a shop where disks were
+kept, and had bought up the entire visible supply of latter-day tunes to
+replace the dances of yesteryear. There was general agreement that it
+was high time to turkey-trot again.
+
+"I'll run the machine," said Winifred. "Bob Fielding isn't here, and
+I'll be true to his memory for a dance or two."
+
+"I choose to dance with Major General Forbes," said Mrs. Neff, "unless
+he's otherwise engaged."
+
+"Before we dance," said Willie, "I have an announcement to make. Ladies
+and gentlemen, so to speak"--he cleared his throat and ran his fingers
+round inside his tight collar--"I am about to--er--give birth--er--to an
+after-dinner speech--my first and only."
+
+"Hear! Hear!"
+
+"Some time ago Miss Persis--er--Cabot, whom you all know, did me
+the--er--unspeakable honor of consenting to become Mrs.
+William--er--Enslee. Circumstances rendered it--er--advisable to
+defer--er--the publication of the glorious--er--news, so to speak. But
+Miss Cabot has to-night given me--er--permission to announce--"
+
+"I have not!" Persis broke in; but Willie put up his hand.
+
+"Order in the court--er! Anyway, now you know the worst. You behold in
+me the happiest man on--er--earth."
+
+There was a round of applause, and Ten Eyck proposed "three lusty chahs
+and a tigress for the--er--bride and--er--groom--er."
+
+Forbes felt as if a shell full of shrapnel had burst at his feet.
+Military instinct brought his heels together, and he stood as erect as
+Dreyfus did when they tore the buttons from his tunic and snapped his
+sword in two before him. He stared at the revel that broke out around
+Persis and Enslee. In his eyes it had something of the hideousness of
+savages dancing. It was a torture dance, and he was the man at the
+stake.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+Forbes tried to smile, but his muscles seemed unable to support his
+lips. He heard much noise, yet distinguished nothing till he seemed to
+wake suddenly at finding Willie Enslee smirking up at him.
+
+"You haven't congratulated me, Mr. Ward--er--Forbes."
+
+Forbes seized Enslee's small hand and wrung it, and said in a tone more
+fitted to condolence:
+
+"I do congratulate you, indeed, and Miss Cabot, I--I congratulate her."
+
+He tried to look at her, but Willie was clinging to his hand and
+driveling on: "I want to thank you for--er--at least trying to save her
+when her horse bolted this morning. They told me you were--er--quite
+splendid, and I take it as a--er--personal favor."
+
+"Don't mention it, please."
+
+"And now let's--er--dance," said Willie. "I will dance with the blushing
+bride, if you don't mind. Let 'er go, Winifred."
+
+Winifred set off the Victrola, and a blare of nasal cacophony broke from
+the machine imitating a steamboat whistle; then ensued a negroid music
+of infinite inappropriateness to Forbes' tragic mood. He saw the woman
+who loved him, and whom he loved, tagged and claimed by a contemptible
+pygmy, the accidental inheritor of wealth. He saw his beautiful Persis
+in the fellow's incompetent arms and her body drooping over him as if he
+had carried her off in a kind of burlesque rape of the Sabines. The
+music was not Wagnerian epopee, nor were the words something from
+Sophokles; it was a romping ditty about
+
+    'Way down on the lev-ee
+    In old Alabam-y,
+    There's daddy and mam-my,
+    There's Ephraim and Sam-my
+    On a moon-light night.
+
+Forbes felt Mrs. Neff's presence in front of him. Her wiry arms clutched
+him and danced him away. She was chattering reproaches because he had
+not taken her advice and captured Persis for himself. And her unwitting
+irony ran on against the words that Alice and Ten Eyck were singing as
+they danced:
+
+    Watch them shuf-flin' along,
+    See them shuf-flin' along.
+    Go take your best--gal--real--pal,
+    Go down to the lev-ee,
+    I said to the lev-ee,
+    And join that shuf-flin' throng.
+    Hear that mu-sic and song.
+    It's simply great--O mate.
+    Waitin' on the levee, waitin' for the _Robert E. Lee_.
+
+Forbes felt a ribaldry in the whole situation, an intolerable contumely.
+He watched Persis darting here and there as Willie urged her. The little
+whelp could not keep time to the music, and his possession of Persis was
+as grotesque as the presence of a gargoyle on a cathedral. But
+cathedrals are thick with gargoyles, and life is full of such pairings.
+
+For the second dance Forbes demanded Persis, and she granted him the
+privilege with some terror; the look on his face had alarmed her.
+
+The music now celebrated "dancing with the Devil; oh, the little Devil!
+dancing at the Devil's ball." There was a fiend raging in Forbes' heart,
+and something infernal in the frenzy with which he whipped Persis this
+way and that.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me?" he groaned. "Why didn't you warn me? The last
+I knew was that you and I were to be married. And suddenly that man
+speaks up and claims you. And you don't deny it. What in God's name does
+it mean?"
+
+"Not so loud, my love!"
+
+"'My love?'" he quoted. "You can call me that?"
+
+"You're not going to make a scene, are you?" she whispered, trembling in
+his arms.
+
+"A scene!" he laughed. "Is that your greatest terror in life?"
+
+"One of them."
+
+"You intended to marry him, and you let me kiss you! Were you simply
+making a fool of me?"
+
+("_At the Devil's ball, at the Devil's ball._")
+
+"No, Harvey, no! I love you. It is you that were making a fool of me. I
+can explain, but I don't think you would understand."
+
+("_I saw the cute Mrs. Devil, so pretty and fat._")
+
+"When will you explain?"
+
+"The first chance I get."
+
+("_Dressed in a beautiful fireman's hat._")
+
+"To-night?"
+
+"I don't dare. Willie is going to stand guard, as he said he would.
+Seeing you dancing with Mrs. Neff, he was just telling me what a joke it
+would be to lock you out. He's going to pretend to go to bed. Then he's
+going to slip down-stairs, lock the front door, and wait till you and
+Mrs. Neff come back. Isn't it ridiculous?"
+
+("_Dancing with the Devil; oh, the little Devil!_")
+
+"Everything on earth is ridiculous, but nothing is so ridiculous as I
+am."
+
+"Don't say that, dear."
+
+"'Dear!'" he echoed, bitterly. "When do I see you, I say?"
+
+("_Dancing at the Devil's Ball._")
+
+"There's no chance."
+
+"Then I'll make one. I'll--I'll come to your room."
+
+"Oh, in Heaven's name, are you mad? Or do you think I am? Mrs. Neff's
+room adjoins mine. She could hear the softest whisper."
+
+"Then let Willie Enslee lock us out."
+
+She saw that he was in a frenzy. He had the bit in his teeth. He would
+bolt in a moment. She thought hard and swiftly. Then she said:
+
+"There's just one way. When I was playing chambermaid to-day I wandered
+about and found the servant's stairway in the service wing. It leads
+down into the kitchen. We could get from there into the dining-room and
+the drawing-room. There's a great window there--well cut off from view.
+I don't think Willie or anybody would see us there. Listen for Willie's
+door, and when he has gone down into the front hall, slip out and tiptoe
+down the service stairs to the kitchen and wait for me there. Will you?"
+
+It was a nauseating role to play; but he was bent upon making a last
+appeal to her before they returned to town on the morrow. He whispered
+his assent to the elaborate deceit, and made a whirlwind of the last
+measures of the tune, "Dancing with the devil; oh, the little Devil!
+dancing at the Devil's ball!"
+
+And then he and Persis, dizzy on the swirling floor, reeled to chairs
+and sat gasping for breath. Mrs. Neff, passing on Willie's arm, urged
+Forbes to give Alice the next dance, and he obeyed, surrendering Persis
+to Enslee, who was so elate with triumph that only the braggart pomp of
+the tango could express him.
+
+Alice was lonely and forlorn, and so much in Forbes' mood that they were
+unintentional parodies on each other. Forbes remembered his talk with
+Senator Tait, and, feeling that Alice was desperately in need of
+comfort, told her the whole conversation. If she resented the discussion
+of her affairs and her mother's plans, she kept silent; but when he told
+her that Senator Tait had vowed to help her defeat Mrs. Neff's
+match-making plot by giving Stowe Webb a position she became a maenad of
+joy. She italicized every other word, and declared herself insanely
+grateful. She declared now that she simply idolized the Senator, and had
+always thought him the most adorable of men in every respect except the
+quality of husband.
+
+"I'm afraid he won't give Mr. Webb much of a salary to begin with,"
+Forbes said, to moderate her fantastic hopes.
+
+"Oh, I don't care how little it is," Alice panted, "so long as it's
+enough for us two to live on, if we have to live in a Harlem flat eleven
+stories high and no elevator!"
+
+She made so startling a contrast with Persis that Forbes regretted
+thinking her shallow and hysterical. Under her volatile explosiveness
+was evidently a deep store of loyalty, as under Persis' reposeful manner
+was a shifty uncertainty, a terror of consequences. "Still waters run
+deep" was plainly as fallible as any other proverb, for very shallow
+ponds may lie very calm, and very spluttering geysers may come from far
+underground.
+
+But it is one thing to approve and quite another to love. Forbes admired
+Alice, but he loved Persis. He approved Alice as much as he distrusted
+Persis. But he loved Persis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+There were not many more dances before Willie, in his new capacity of
+Benedick-to-be, declared for early closing hours, and ordered his guests
+off to bed, warning them that the next morning the caravan would set out
+on its return betimes in order that Persis might "break the news to her
+father as soon as he got back." So Willie phrased it, and flattered
+himself that it was rather considerate and tactful to put it so.
+
+When good-nights were said, and Forbes had gone to his room, Ten Eyck
+came in to smoke a night-cap cigar. His words were congratulatory, but
+his intent was sympathetic.
+
+"You looked a bit cut up, old boy," he said, "when Willie, with his
+usual tact, exploded the news of his marriage. I hope you weren't hit
+too hard. I warned you, you know."
+
+"I know," said Forbes; "I promised you I wouldn't take Miss Cabot
+seriously. I--I admit I was surprised. That's all. And it rather shocks
+me to think of so--so--of her tying up with a man like Enslee. That's
+all."
+
+"It's her own choice," said Ten Eyck. "And it's a good choice. She can't
+bankrupt the Enslee estates, and she'll earn all she squanders. Being
+the wife of Willie Enslee is not going to be any sinecure, believe me.
+
+"And the sooner she's married to Enslee and beyond your reach, the
+better for your peace of mind and the efficiency of the U. S. A. Get
+back on the job, Forbesy. You're too important a man to be wasting
+yourself even on a siren like Persis. I believe in sirens, and I like to
+hear 'em sing; but they don't convince me one little minute, and I drop
+anchor at a safe distance from the reef. Promise me you won't let Persis
+haunt you. Get yourself a pretty canary and forget the siren, eh what?"
+
+"That's the best of advice," Forbes assented.
+
+He thought that he sounded convinced; but Ten Eyck shook his head and
+masked a sigh as a yawn.
+
+"Am I as deadly as all that? And papa always told me that the man who
+gives the best of advice might better have saved his breath for blowing
+out his candle. Instead of more advice I will now do so. Good night!"
+
+And he closed his door.
+
+Forbes knew that Ten Eyck was right, and told himself so. He told
+himself that common decency, self-respect, Persis-respect, and respect
+for the rights of a host and a fiance forbade him to keep tryst with
+Persis. And having resolved that the one thing he ought not to do was to
+sneak down the servants' stairs, he sneaked down the servants'
+stairs--after he had put out his light, opened his door delicately, and
+waited till he heard Enslee open his door and tiptoe down to the
+entrance hall.
+
+As Forbes waited in that least poetic of bowers, the kitchen, he felt
+like a thief. He had abundant time for pondering what a destroyer of
+dignity love is. But Persis came at last, and so silently and so vaguely
+through the moonlight that he could hardly believe her to be more than a
+phantom.
+
+She gave him a hand, however, that was warm and human, and when he
+caught her in his arms and she yielded rather than struggle, her body
+was as real as rose-leaves and lilies, a delight to his embrace; and her
+cheek such a sweetmeat to his lips that he dismissed all scruples as
+follies beneath contempt.
+
+When she had extricated herself from his clasp she took his hand and led
+him through the butler's pantry and its swinging door, across the
+moonlit dining-room, through a majestic somber portal into a cave of
+black gloom, which was the salon.
+
+"Have you a match?" she whispered. "If you haven't I have."
+
+"I have a cigar-lighter," he whispered.
+
+He snapped the little engine, and a small, blue flame threw a sickly
+light that helped them to find a channel through the islands of chairs
+and divans and tables, to the lofty hangings masking the windows.
+
+The wee taper gave Forbes a glimpse as well of the place he was in.
+
+This superb chamber had not been opened to the present guests. It was
+still in its winter garb, the portraits in shrouds, and chairs and
+tables disguised in winding sheets. There was the hint of a mortuary
+vault about the place. The walls were of Istrian stone hung with gray
+tapestries of unhappy lovers. The floor was of marble devoid of
+rugs--they were rolled up against the walls like mummies. The mantel was
+a huge carved structure. In this dull light it might have been a funeral
+monument. Noises seemed to be repeated here with spooky comment, and to
+Forbes the spirit in the air was ominous.
+
+Persis knew the room well, and remembered it as she had first seen it
+glowing with color, flooded with sunlight, and crowded with gorgeous
+people; she did not feel the oppression that weighed on Forbes.
+
+To her it was a clandestine romance--the sort of poetic encounter she
+had read about in ever so many books. Her heart was beating with terror
+of discovery and ecstasy of adventure. When she gained the window she
+reached up and persuaded the hangings back on gently tinkling rings. A
+well of moonlight was revealed--a broad, padded seat in front of a tall
+mullioned window. Within the window was a smaller window, and she swung
+this back.
+
+Into the dreary air of the unvisited room flowed a little brook of
+perfumed breeze scented with the lilacs it streamed across. It shook
+with all gentleness the hair about Persis' face and the soft lace around
+her throat. For now she was not in boyish riding-duds with collar and
+cravat, but in the exquisite trifle of a silken house gown she had put
+on for dinner.
+
+She was so beautiful in Forbes' eyes that the very faults he had found
+in her seemed to enhance her. The absence of utility and reliability and
+other homely virtues seemed to leave her the unmarred unity of futile,
+fragile loveliness. But this was the fantasy of the moment only. She had
+no sooner spoken than she was committed to something more than a vision
+for the eyes.
+
+She smiled at him, and he gathered her up into his arms once more and
+gave and took a blindly sweet kiss from her smiling lips.
+
+When he released her from this constraint she sighed luxuriously:
+
+"Well, Harvey, it seems as if all the happiness in the world had to be
+sneaked, doesn't it?"
+
+Instantly he realized again the dishonesty of their communion.
+
+"Is that your creed?" he groaned.
+
+"It's my experience. Stolen fruit, you know--"
+
+"I hate stolen fruit. I want to have the right to own--you."
+
+"You do--pretty nearly."
+
+"I want everybody to know it. I want you to be my wife. It's not too
+late, if you love me."
+
+"Oh, there's no question of that, for I do love you. You are--it's funny
+how hard it is to find new expressions for anything you really mean,
+isn't it? All I can think of is the same old comic-paper line: you are
+the only man I ever loved. But--oh, Lord, if you only had a little more
+money! For I sha'n't have any, Harvey. My father can't give me any. I've
+just found that out. He can't get enough to save himself. I can get
+enough for us both if I take Willie.
+
+"It's horrible talk, Harvey, but it's business. It's for your sake as
+much as mine. If I married you I'd drive you mad. I'd rather have you
+hate me lovingly, as you do now, than have you hate me loathingly, as
+you would if I became a millstone round your neck. You'd be faithful and
+work hard and try to love me, but I'd be simply unendurable.
+
+"My brother--you haven't met him; he's loafing through college--he knows
+more about sport than he does about books. He's always talking about
+prize-fighters and class. He's always telling about some poor fellow
+getting knocked senseless because he strayed out of his class. I
+remember one brilliant welterweight champion who lasted only one round
+with a broken-down heavyweight. My brother said the welterweight got
+what was coming to him because he hadn't intelligence enough to stay
+where he belonged. I'm trying to do that. I'm horribly tempted just to
+fling everything to the winds and run away with you. I'm starving for
+your love. My heart says, 'Put love before everything else--'"
+
+"Obey your heart!" Forbes broke in, at last. She shook her head.
+
+"But my brain says, 'Think of the long, long future!' A woman spends so
+little of her married life with her husband. It's the long days that
+count, the days she spends with other women, with rivalries, jealousies,
+with economy, economy, economy. That's what I'm afraid of. Economy would
+play the devil with me, Harvey. Two thousand a year and forage! I'm
+afraid of it."
+
+"So you will marry this rich man. And then?"
+
+"Then I shall probably learn to hate him."
+
+"And to love somebody else?"
+
+"I shall never love anybody but you, Harvey. I've never told anybody
+else my real mind as I have you, for I am trained to conceal--always to
+conceal."
+
+"But don't conceal from yourself the failure you are going to make of
+your life. No woman can play false to her heart and prosper. I beg you
+not to despise my love."
+
+"Despise your love!" she cried. "It's myself I despise. Ah, Harvey, try
+to understand me."
+
+"I can't! I can only warn you."
+
+"Oh, don't warn me! Don't lecture me! Just love me! Let's not think of
+the future--it's always full of tragedy. If we married in all our love,
+we should meet so much unhappiness! The most loving love matches I've
+known have burned out--ended in divorces and open scandal, or scandal
+concealed like ostriches for everybody to see and laugh at. Two people
+fall in love and meet opposition and run away together to a preacher.
+Then they have nobody to oppose them, so they oppose each other. And by
+and by they run away from each other and don't meet till they get to a
+divorce court in some small town to avoid the notoriety."
+
+"And you think that you will escape that by marrying without love?"
+
+"Yes. Because I don't expect love. I sha'n't expect Willie to be a
+romantic saint, and then hate him for not living up to my
+specifications."
+
+"But yourself--your body--you will give that to him?"
+
+She closed her eyes and turned ghastly white as she whispered: "I
+suppose so. That's the usual price a woman pays, isn't it?"
+
+He flung her from him as something unclean, common, cheap.
+
+From the huddle she was in she whispered:
+
+"I understand. I--I don't blame you."
+
+There was a sort of burlesque saintliness about her meekness that
+nauseated him. He did not realize that she forgave him because his rage
+seemed a proof of his love. She would have forgiven him with bruised
+lips if he had struck her in the face.
+
+He loathed himself for his vicious wrath, but he almost loathed her more
+for compelling it. Yet when she got to her feet and stood clinging to
+the velvet curtain, and mumbled:
+
+"It was better that this happened before we were married, wasn't it? And
+now that you are cured of loving me I may go, mayn't I?"
+
+He stared at her; his lips parted to utter words he could not find; he
+put out his hands, and she went back to his arms. And she cried a
+little, not forgetting even in her grief to sob stealthily lest some one
+hear. And he understood that, too, and hated her for her eternal
+vigilance. Even while he kissed the brackish tears from her cheeks and
+eyes he hated her for being so beautiful and so wise, so full of passion
+and so discreet.
+
+She wept but a little while, and then she was quiet, reclining against
+him in silence and meditating.
+
+And he pondered the mystery of his own behavior. A sense of duty and a
+sense of honor had always guided his acts hitherto. This woman acted
+upon him like the drug that doctors use for controlling violent patients
+and the criminal insane; it leaves the senses all alive but annuls the
+power of motion.
+
+Here he was, convinced to the very depths of his soul that it was
+abominable to embrace the betrothed of another, yet he did not take his
+arms from about her, he did not put her away from him. Instead, he held
+her fast even when she made to go. And yet he blamed her.
+
+This much at least he accomplished in the long silence: he ceased to
+blame Persis and accused himself, tried himself before the tribunal of
+his own soul, and denounced himself as guilty of treason to himself and
+her and the laws of the world. But he did not put her from him.
+
+And now, having condemned himself, he followed the usual program and
+forgave himself. He bent down and kissed her forehead and her hair, and
+tightened his arms about her. She did not answer his kiss. Once more he
+felt, as in the sunlight by the brook, that he held only the shell of
+her, while her soul--that other man's soul of her--was gone voyaging.
+
+But now it was in the cold of night, in the dark chill of a room long
+closed up like a grave and her body was the only warmth in the room, or
+in the world for him. It seemed to glow like an ember breathing rosily
+in ashes.
+
+And now gradually desire grew imperious, the angry, sullen desire of
+Tristan seeing his Isolde given to another man to wife. He burned with
+resentment at the ill-treatment accorded him by the fates, who saved his
+love and her love for this mockery, this money-infected, money-paralyzed
+romance. His wrath rose in revolt against a world where such a sarcasm
+was possible. The laws of the world became suspect with the mercy of the
+world. The pangs of disprized love were so bitter that he began to claim
+revenge, revenge especially on her.
+
+He clenched his arms about her with a new and different ardor--no longer
+the sacred fervor of a lover who protects his affianced from himself,
+but the outlaw that raids and desecrates.
+
+She understood and was afraid and fought against him, but her mutinous
+love fought for him. And nature, and the moonlight, and the scented
+breeze purring at the window fought for him. All her beauty clamored to
+surrender. She was already lost when some last impulse of horror cried
+out against the irreparable profanation. Even as her arms went round him
+she murmured:
+
+"Help me! Harvey, help me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+In the panic of her soul there was just honor enough awake to raise that
+prayer, and in the fury of his there was just honor enough left to
+answer it. It was the one irresistible appeal she could have made--the
+cry of "Help!" that never falls in vain on the ears of a man unless he
+has become a beast--or a god.
+
+Mysteriously the almost stifled cry released from the dungeon of Forbes'
+soul all the powers of decency; they took possession of him anew. His
+senses and his muscles obeyed, and he was now so pure-hearted a defender
+of Persis' integrity that he resisted even the little moan of almost
+regret that escaped her tormented soul when he let her go.
+
+The aftermath of the ordeal was an ague of reaction. The blood seemed to
+flow backward into her heart. She was overwhelmed with the terror one
+feels for a disaster narrowly escaped, and with shame for the
+realization that the credit was none of hers.
+
+Forbes did not take her in his arms, but contented himself with closing
+out the breeze that seemed to have turned colder now, and with wrapping
+about her quivering shoulders the heavy velvet of the curtain.
+
+Whatever other flaws she had, Persis was not marred by self-conceit.
+Even her nobler motives she tended to reinterpret from some cynical
+point of view. When she was calmer she spoke with that intelligence of
+hers that always chilled Forbes' idealizing heart.
+
+"I can't tell you how grateful I am, Harvey, and how ashamed. I didn't
+know I was so--so hopelessly like other people. I didn't know I could
+forget myself so completely. But I've learned my lesson. I've had my
+scare. And I must keep away from the edge of the cliff. We mustn't meet
+alone this way any more, Harvey. I love you too well, and I don't want
+to go altogether to the bad, do I? It isn't that I'm good; I'd love to
+be good, but I'm afraid I wasn't meant to be. But I must be sensible. I
+mustn't be a fool. A woman risks too much, Harvey. It's too hideously
+unfair. The consequences would be nothing at all to you--and might be
+utter destruction to me. I told you there were a hundred Persises in me.
+And now I've seen one of them face to face that I never knew was there.
+I've got to starve her to death. We mustn't meet alone any more, must
+we?"
+
+He could not say anything without saying too much. So he simply shook
+his head and pressed her hand, and, rising, led her from the niche of
+peril. With his free hand he found his cigar-lighter and snapped it; but
+it would not flame, and they stumbled through an archipelago of
+furniture, jostling together, more afraid of contact with each other
+than of any other danger.
+
+They walked into the wall, but, groping, found at last the door and
+entered the dining-room again. The moonlight was gone, and the first
+tide of daybreak was seeping through the windows. There was no
+rose-color in this dawn. It promised to be a gray day.
+
+They hurried to the kitchen and came back indeed to life in its most
+material surfaces, a chill, drab light beating upon pots and pans.
+
+They bade each other good night and good-by there; but their embrace was
+appropriately matter-of-fact, galvanized ware upon cold iron. They
+tiptoed wearily up the service stairway and into the main corridor
+above.
+
+Here, too, there was daylight like dirty pond water. Persis went
+stealthily to the railing of the stairway, and, glancing down, beckoned
+to Forbes, who moved to her side and peered where she pointed.
+
+He saw that Willie Enslee, exhausted by his vigil, had fallen asleep on
+a sumptuous divan. The divan would have honored a palace, and Willie's
+pajamas were of silk, and his bathrobe was of brocaded silk. But after
+all it was Willie Enslee that was in them. And he slept with his little
+eyes clenched and his mouth ajar. And a cold cigarette was stuck to his
+lower lip.
+
+Forbes was impelled to taunt her with a whispered: "There is your
+husband. Go to him!"
+
+But when he looked at her she was so wan and pitiful that he could not
+be as pitiless as the wan daylight was. She was making an advance
+payment on her price; and she was shivering and lonely. So he kissed her
+icy hands and whispered to her how beautiful she was and a sorrowful
+"God bless you!" and sneaked back into his room, his bachelor room.
+
+Had he paused as once before to throw her another kiss, he would have
+found her with her arms stretched out to him pleading for rescue from
+the vision she had seen and the unspoken taunt she had understood. But
+he did not look back, and she dared not knock at his door. The click of
+his lock frightened her, and she fled to her room like a ghost surprised
+by the morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+When Forbes shut the door upon Persis (and unwittingly shut out her
+little gesture of appeal to come back, be stronger than she was, and
+rescue her from herself in spite of herself) he looked from his room
+upon a world that was just the colorless color of the glass in his
+window.
+
+There was a menace of rain in the sky, and the dawn was a colorless
+affair, neither night nor morning. The day woke like a sleeper that has
+not rested well.
+
+As a mere formality Forbes took off his clothes and lay down. Life was
+colorless ahead of him. The woman who had fascinated him utterly had
+utterly disappointed him. She loved Forbes, but not his penury; she
+would marry Enslee's money, but not Enslee. She wanted success in
+life--called it her "career"!
+
+Men, he knew, put their careers first, made everything subservient to
+success, asked their women to kowtow to it. Perhaps women were going to
+do the same thing. Perhaps they had been all these centuries hunting
+success and disguising the materialism of their ambition under more
+romantic words, aided in their deceit by the numberless gallantries of
+authors. Perhaps Persis was not different from millions of women, except
+for being frank where the others were hypocrites, more or less
+intentionally.
+
+This thought softened his heart toward Persis, and he regretted it. He
+did not want to think softly of Persis any more. It unnerved his
+resolution, and uncertainty and irresolution were terrific strains on a
+man of action and precision. If he could renounce Persis with contempt
+he would be able to close that incident and resume the progress of
+life. But to find in every beauty of hers something of ugliness, and to
+find in every cruelty of hers something to respect and something to
+pity, was the paralysis of decision.
+
+How could he hate her when he loved her so madly, and was so unhappy out
+of her sight? How was he to endure it that she should marry another man,
+and how was he to prevent it?
+
+He tossed between sleeping and waking, between condemnation of Persis
+and acquittal, between resolutions to cut her out of his heart and his
+life, and resolutions to win her yet. Eventually he heard people
+stirring about the house, and he rose drearily.
+
+The shower-bath gave forth a lukewarm drizzle that neither stimulated
+nor soothed him. Outside, rain was falling lazily in a gray air that hid
+the hills and gardens as if the sky, too, were a curtained shower-bath.
+
+He began to pack his suit-cases. As he was folding one of his coats
+there dropped from its inside pocket a mesh of beribboned lace. It
+surprised him by its inappropriateness. He picked it up, and it was the
+nightcap that had fallen from her tousled hair as she looked from the
+window into that wonderful dawn of day before yesterday. What a liar
+that dawn had been! It was illustrious and spendthrift of promises.
+To-day's dawn was the fulfilment. That was romance, this was truth. The
+nightcap itself was but a snare, a broken snare.
+
+He flung it angrily back to the floor and went on packing his bachelor
+things to take back into his bachelor future. The little cap lay
+huddled--as she had crouched when he flung her out of his arms. She had
+whispered, "I understand." It seemed also not to reproach him. But it
+was very beautiful. He could not leave it there for some servant to
+find. Especially not, as she had prophesied just such a result and he
+had promised to keep it secret. He picked it up. It was fragrant and
+pink and silken and lacy--as she was.
+
+He rebuked himself for venting his spite on an inanimate object, a
+nightcap of all things! Thence he was led to reproach himself for
+condemning Persis. She, too, was knitted and bow-knotted together with
+the sole purpose of being exquisite. As well blame the nightcap for not
+being a helmet as blame Persis for not being a heroine.
+
+He found himself caressing the cap and murmuring to it. He folded it
+tenderly and slipped it into the suit-case. Then he took it out and put
+it in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. It seemed to nestle there, and
+he felt a lurch in his heart, as if Persis had just crept back into it
+and curled up to sleep. He buttoned them in, Persis and the nightcap,
+and, closing his suit-cases, carried them down-stairs as one does in a
+hotel where there are no bell-boys.
+
+He found Willie Enslee staring at him, rubbing his eyes. Willie had
+wakened only a moment before, had realized the hour with bewilderment,
+had tried the front door and found it still locked. He was just
+wondering where Forbes and Mrs. Neff had spent the night when Forbes
+walked down the stairs and said "Good morning!" but with a queer tone
+and an odd something in his eyes.
+
+Willie drowsily answered "G'maw!" and stared harder, for Mrs. Neff came
+down the steps after Forbes. She was sneezing so violently that she had
+to cling to the banister-rail to keep from sneezing herself into space.
+
+She did not see Willie; but her appearance and her sneeze confirmed his
+theory. He backed out through a side door and made his way through the
+kitchen and up the stairway there to his own room. His mind was still
+fumbling with the riddle of how Forbes and Mrs. Neff got in.
+
+He wondered what he should tell Persis when she asked him what had
+happened during his night-watch. He had promised her great things from
+his practical joke. But she never asked him, and he was so greatly
+relieved that he never broached the subject himself.
+
+Breakfast was served more slipshoddily than before. Even the novelty of
+the experience had gone. Henceforward Winifred was converted to the
+vital importance of servants.
+
+Persis was the last to appear. Mrs. Neff greeted her with:
+
+"Persis, your eyes are all red. Have you been cry-cr-cry-ing-g-gk!" She
+finished with an almost decapitating sneeze. It gave Persis a hint.
+
+"I caught cold, too," she said. "The change in the weather."
+
+The explanation sufficed to satisfy Mrs. Neff and to convince Forbes
+that Persis was dangerously apt at concealments.
+
+When the breakfast was eaten the dishes were washed and dried at
+Winifred's direction. But when it came to what Forbes called "policing
+the camp," it was unanimously voted to leave that to the gardener and
+his wife, or to the caretaker on his return.
+
+The three automobiles rolled up through the rain, all shipshape for the
+storm, with tops hooded and side-curtains buttoned down snugly.
+
+Forbes remembered that other rain with Persis in the taxicab. How much
+better the opportunity here, with the world shut out from view and two
+hours' cruise ahead. But he was again consigned to Mrs. Neff's car, and
+it was Willie Enslee who had Persis and the opportunity. Forbes could
+not follow even the flutter of her veil. All he could see ahead was the
+shoulder of Mrs. Neff's chauffeur and the windshield studded and
+streaked with rain.
+
+There was no landscape to divert the mind, only his imagination of the
+courtship Willie would be paying to his newly announced fiancee. Forbes
+pictured the privileges he would exact, and Persis would not deny. And
+he gnashed his teeth in wrath. In the cave of Mrs. Neff's car Alice had
+nothing to say. She was thinking too eagerly ahead. Mrs. Neff had
+nothing to say. She was wondering what Alice was so cheerful about.
+
+And so the car pushed south, with no passing scenery to indicate
+progress, only the bumps and teeterings, the swerves and slitherings,
+and the nauseating belches of noise made by the horn. Eventually the
+wheels ceased to run upon irregular ground and glided on asphalt. This
+must be New York.
+
+At Seventy-second Street they turned off Broadway and crossed Central
+Park. At the eastern gate Mrs. Neff's chauffeur checked his car
+alongside a whale-like mass, from which Willie Enslee's voice was heard
+shrilly calling through the rain:
+
+"Good-by, Mrs. Neff! Good-by Alice! Good-by Mr. Wa--er--Forbes. Awfully
+glad you could come. See you again. Go on to Miss Cabot's house." This
+last to his own driver.
+
+Mrs. Neff and Alice cried in unison: "Good-by! Had lovely time! See you
+soon!"
+
+And out of space came the disembodied voice of Persis as from a grave:
+"Good-by, Mrs. Neff! By-by, Alice! Good-by, Mr. Forbes!"
+
+"Good-by, P--Miss Cabot!" he called. Her voice trailed away as if it
+were her soul going to death, and his voice followed with an ache of
+despair in it. Mrs. Neff caught the pathos hovering over the cries like
+overtones sounding above and beyond a tone of music. She said:
+
+"Too bad you let Willie take her away from you; it's not too late yet if
+you've any ambition."
+
+Forbes smiled dully, and Alice said:
+
+"Mother, you do say the most tactless things!"
+
+"I had set my heart on that love-match," sighed Mrs. Neff.
+
+"Better begin at home," said Alice, with unusual cheer.
+
+Mrs. Neff changed the subject. "We'll get out at our house, if you don't
+mind, and the man can take you to your hotel."
+
+"That's mighty kind of you," said Forbes. He helped them to alight,
+promised to call, and re-entered the car.
+
+On his way to the hotel he pondered what Mrs. Neff had said. It cheered
+him until he realized she was still assuming that he had a respectable
+income. If she had known the truth she would have thought him as unfit
+for Persis as she thought Stowe Webb unfit for Alice. She would have
+approved Persis' theory that such a wedding was impossible.
+
+It is doleful travel that takes one home from an unaccomplished
+errand--only Forbes was not returning even to his home. His home was as
+shifty as a Methodist minister's. At present it was a hotel, and after
+that the army post.
+
+And now those duties which he had dreaded so to resume became in his
+mind a refuge. He had spent a few wild days pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp
+of a woman's whim through a moonlit marsh, never sure which turn it
+would take, sure only that it would not be where he expected it to be.
+
+After such a maddening recreation there was a kind of heaven in the
+thought of living according to a rigid program. At such an hour a bugle
+would exclaim and drums would ruffle, and the day's work would begin. At
+such an hour a roll-call would be due, or a sick-call, or a guard-mount
+call, or a headquarters call. Certain books were to be inspected and
+corrected; certain men were to be taught to do certain things exactly
+so. If there were ever a doubt, the answer was printed in a book, or in
+an order numbered and dated.
+
+Everything was gloriously impersonal and objective, accurate and
+material.
+
+Forbes understood the spirit of old convicts who, after cursing their
+penitentiaries for years, are let out into the world's turmoil, and by
+and by return, pleading to be let in again.
+
+Only yesterday he had been trying to concoct schemes for postponing the
+date of his return to duty; now he was resolved to anticipate it.
+
+He paid his bill at the hotel--with further erosion of the
+bank-account--and took the Subway and the ferry to Governor's Island.
+
+The first sentinel he encountered recognized him for an officer by his
+shoulders and his carriage; and, halting on his post at just the right
+distance, faced outward and presented arms with decorative rigidity. As
+Forbes' hand went to the brim of his derby hat it felt a vizor there,
+and his heart went up in thanks. And his eyes went to the colors!--the
+little piece of wrinkling sky in the corner and the red stripes swimming
+in luxurious curves.
+
+Next Forbes noted a doting smile half hidden by a saluting hand. It was
+a sergeant who had served with him in the Philippines; the very man
+Forbes had been shouting to when the bullet passed through his cheek;
+the very sergeant who had carried him half a mile to a field hospital in
+a rain of sun that beat upon the head like a thug's sandbag. That was
+man's work. Forbes returned the salute and shook the hand of the
+sergeant. As he remembered, he had got the sergeant out of some woman
+scrape. Why should good soldiers always be so easily defeated by women?
+
+And next he met two officers he had known in West Point and in Cuba and
+at Manila. The small army of the United States seemed hardly more than a
+large club.
+
+One of these officers, Major Chatham, dragged Forbes to his home for
+dinner--as pretty a home as a man could wish, with as pretty a wife and
+two children. And they had a maid to wait on them--and they kept a
+little automobile, too, the major being his own chauffeur. They seemed
+happy. Perhaps it was only manners, but the wife seemed as happy as a
+lark--or, rather, a canary. And yet Forbes could see how she differed
+from Persis. And he was glad that he had not brought a sea-gull down
+there for a mate.
+
+He left, after his first cigar, on a pretext of unpacking. In the late
+twilight the sea-gulls that swung and tilted and dipped about the bay
+like little air-yachts did not seem so desirable, after all. He declared
+himself emancipated and contented. He thrust his head high and bulged
+his chest and walked soldierly.
+
+And so he prospered till he was alone in his quarters, and the dark
+closed in and he turned on the light, and set about the establishment of
+his effects with all the fanatic neatness and order a West Point
+training could give a man.
+
+He put his coats and overcoats on the hangers, and the trousers in their
+holders, flat and creased, and set his shoes out in rows, and the boxes
+of belts and spurs, and the sword-cases, and the various hat-boxes. He
+took off his civilian coat and waistcoat--and found in the inside pocket
+that perfumed nightcap.
+
+And then he wanted Persis! He thirsted and hungered for her. He fevered
+for her. He called himself names, reasoned, laughed, cursed, tried to
+read, to write; but "Persis! Persis! Persis!" ran among his thoughts
+like a tune that can neither be seized nor forgotten. He put out the
+light, flung up the curtain and the window, and a soft breeze moving
+from the ocean up the bay seemed to pause like a serenader and croon her
+name. The torch of the Statue of Liberty glowed like a chained star, and
+it seemed to be that planet which was Persis and which he could not
+reach.
+
+Only last night she was in his arms, in his power, and so afraid of him
+that she cried to him for help from her love; and he had given her
+up--given her back to herself!
+
+He had kept her pure that Enslee might take her intact! His nobility
+seemed very cheap to him now. He repented his virtue. If he had taken
+her then he could have kept her for his own. Now that she had escaped
+she would never risk the danger again. She had told him so. And she
+could be very wise, very cold, very resolute.
+
+That night was a condensed eternity. The next morning's duties were
+performed in a kind of somnambulism.
+
+The second day brought his commission as captain. He glanced over it
+listlessly and tossed it aside.
+
+For years he had fretted for this document, focused his ambitions on it,
+upbraided a tardy government for withholding it so long. And now that it
+was here he sneered at the accolade of it. The increase of pay was a
+mere sarcasm; it brought him no nearer his planet than going to the roof
+and standing on tiptoe would have done. The commandant congratulated
+him. His fellow-officers wrung his hand. He was no longer to be called
+"Mr. Forbes," but "Captain Forbes." He had a title. But what was the
+good of it? It did not even make him a rival of Enslee, whose only title
+was "Little Willie."
+
+Now and then the profundity of his gloom was quickened with resolutions
+to seek Persis, to storm her home and carry her off. Perhaps that was
+what she was waiting for. He had often read that women love to be
+overmastered. Then his pride would revolt. It was not his way of
+courtship.
+
+But at least he would telephone her. Then he remembered the fruitless
+effort he had made to discover her number--that mystical "private wire."
+Ten Eyck would know it. He would call up Ten Eyck. With the receiver off
+the hook and Central asking, "Number, please?" he grew afraid and
+answered, "Never mind." He dared not invite another of Ten Eyck's
+fatherly lectures.
+
+Besides, if Persis cared enough for him to grant him an interview she
+would seek it herself. But perhaps she had called up the hotel and found
+him gone. Perhaps she was afraid to call up the post and have him
+summoned. Women do not like to call up men's organizations; it is like
+visiting them.
+
+No! she had undoubtedly crossed him off her books, as he ought to cross
+her off his. He ought to write the word "Dropped" under her name, as
+under that of a soldier who was out of the service.
+
+And so he tossed hope and despair like a mad juggler who cannot rest.
+On the third day, when he came from the parade-ground, he was informed
+that he had been wanted on the telephone. He was to call up such a
+number. "Yes, sir, it was a lady's voice, sir."
+
+It must be Persis. No, it might be an operator in a hotel. It might be
+her maid. It might be anybody. It proved to be the telephone-girl in the
+office of Senator Tait.
+
+In a moment, by the occult influence of the telephone, the unknown woman
+vanished and Senator Tait's soul was in communication with his. The
+genial heart seemed to quiver in the air.
+
+"That you, Harvey?"
+
+"Yes. Hello, Senator."
+
+"You sound mighty doleful, my boy. Anything the matter?"
+
+"No, I'm all right."
+
+"Are you sure you're not dead? You disappeared so completely I thought
+you might be. You sound as if you wished you were."
+
+"Oh no, I'm all right."
+
+"Can't you come up to the house for dinner to-night?"
+
+He realized that this would mean meeting Mildred--and dressing in his
+evening things. He did not want to put on his evening things. They had
+danced with Persis last. He did not want to meet any woman. He was in
+mourning. All this flashed through his mind while he was inventing an
+excuse of official duty.
+
+"To-morrow night, then?"
+
+"Terribly sorry. I can't get off."
+
+"How about lunch? At the club--to-morrow."
+
+"I'd like that."
+
+"I have something to discuss with you."
+
+"I'll be there! At one?"
+
+"Fine! One o'clock. Metropolitan Club. Do you know where it is?"
+
+"I'll find it."
+
+"Good! Perhaps Mildred can be there."
+
+"Fine!" His voice wavered. He was trapped. He had not guessed that the
+club would have an annex. The Senator felt the constraint across the
+wire. It hurt him, but he laughed.
+
+"Cheer up! Maybe she can't come!"
+
+"Oh, I--I hope she can. She's--I'd love to see her, I assure you."
+
+"All right. Don't worry. Good-by."
+
+The Senator was laughing, but there was a wounded pride in his voice.
+Forbes hung up the telephone, feeling a cad and an ingrate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+The next forenoon, having obtained the privilege of absence, Forbes
+crossed from Governor's Island to Manhattan Island, took the Subway from
+South Ferry to Fifty-ninth Street, and, entering Central Park, kept
+along its southernmost path till he reached the Plaza, where he paused a
+moment to admire Saint-Gaudens' statue of General Sherman, a gilded
+warrior on a gilded horse squired by a gilded girl--Victory or Peace or
+something, he was not sure just what.
+
+In his present humor of misogyny he wondered why it was thought to be
+necessary to put a woman in everything. Of all the campaigns where she
+was lacking, surely the March to the Sea was among her most conspicuous
+absences. But he admired the lean warrior with the doffed hat and the
+splendid stride of the big horse--a very different horse from the Park
+horses he found, with their tan-clad grooms clustered at the
+mounting-blocks near by.
+
+Toward this starting-point fat women with looped-up skirts and top-hats
+and little knock-kneed girls in breeches were hurrying. He smiled with
+the superiority of a cavalry officer.
+
+Among the living caricatures were a few expert riders. Suddenly Forbes'
+heart shivered and raced with a feeling that a certain one of them might
+be Persis. Surely there could not be another back so trim, another grip
+so firm. But it was his longing that created the resemblance, for as the
+horse whirled and loped away he caught sight of the woman's profile. It
+was less like Persis' profile than like the horse's!
+
+But the moment's agitation had gone like an earthquake through his
+calmed soul. It shook down the towers of resolution and independence and
+sickened him with the instability of his poise.
+
+He would have turned back from his engagement, but he had not even the
+strength for that much action. He crossed the Avenue to where the
+Metropolitan Club stood four square in its gray and white dignity. As he
+passed through the carved and colonnaded entrance-court a motor-car
+deposited two women at the door of the annex.
+
+He feared that one of them might be Mildred; but he was unnecessarily
+alarmed. Mildred had pleaded official duties. She had shown the same
+reluctance Forbes had revealed. Perhaps she saw through her father's
+motives. But the old Senator was willing to wait. He was a born
+compromiser, a genius at making fusions out of factions.
+
+When Forbes entered the club and asked for Tait, the doorman consulted
+the roster-board, and, finding a cribbage peg opposite the Senator's
+name, sent a page for him. He was not far to fetch, and he was in a
+humor of Falstaffian heartiness. He came upon Forbes' foggy mood like a
+morning sun. He was just what Forbes needed.
+
+He clapped his arm across Forbes' shoulder, and, as he registered him in
+the guest-book, wrote the new word "Captain" large, and pointed to it;
+then dragged Forbes to the cigar-case and commanded "the biggest cigar
+there is, one with a solid-gold wrapper." He treated the forlorn victim
+of a woman's jilt as a notable worthy of notable entertainment. It was
+the lift that the prodigal son got when he slunk home and was met with a
+bouquet instead of blame.
+
+He led Forbes into the great central hall, with its white-marble cliffs
+and its red-velveted double stairway mounting like a huge St. Andrew's
+cross, placed him on a settle where a platoon of men might have sat
+a-knee, and gave the bell a royal bang. He recommended a special
+cocktail, and joined Forbes in it in joyous disobedience of his
+physician's warning.
+
+When the cocktail arrived Forbes gave him the army toast of "How!" and
+Tait answered "Happy days!" On the way up to the dining-room he led
+Forbes through the building, pausing before the crimson opulence of the
+two reading-rooms; the lounging-room, with its windows commanding Fifth
+Avenue; the card-rooms, deserted battle-fields now; the board-rooms,
+where committees gathered to settle huge financial destinies, the solemn
+library walled solid with books.
+
+Forbes wondered at the almost complete absence of other people in the
+club; but Tait explained that most of the members were hard-working
+millionaires who lunched down-town "or took their dinner-pails with
+them," some of them hardly stopping to eat a sandwich from a desk leaf.
+
+On the top floor their luncheon awaited them at a table by the window.
+As Forbes drew his napkin across his knee he gazed down at the corner of
+the Park and the lake where white swans drifted like the toy sloops of
+children. From this height the hills and curving walks looked miniature
+as a Japanese garden.
+
+When the clam-shells were emptied they were replaced with chicken, a
+second waiter served rice, and a third curry. It was strangely
+comforting to be well served with choice food in a beautiful room above
+a beautiful scene. He felt that in places like this wealth justified
+itself--wealth the upholsterer, the caterer, the artist, the butler.
+
+Forbes looked down at a shuffling vagrant slouching across the Plaza. He
+felt sorry for that man, and yet was glad that he was here instead of
+there. He wished that he himself might belong to this delightful place
+they called the "Millionaire's Club." He longed for riches, especially
+as they would mean Persis. He remembered what she had said: "The rich
+can get anything that the poor have, but the poor can't get what the
+rich have." The rich Enslee could even get Persis.
+
+He sat musing bitterly, forgetting that he had a host, and unaware that
+the host was looking at him with sad affection, not resenting his
+listlessness, but hoping to relieve it. Remembering Forbes' father, Tait
+knew that he must move warily about that sensitive Forbes pride, as
+swift to strike an awkward hand as a caged tiger that greets an
+unwelcome caress with a wound.
+
+Tait hesitated to open his real business. He began obliquely.
+
+"Well, I've just fired the first gun in my war with Mrs. Neff."
+
+"Yes?" said Forbes, drearily.
+
+"Yes," said Tait, positively. "Just before you came young Stowe Webb was
+here--nice young fellow. I sent for him, and said to him: 'Young man,
+Miss Alice Neff, whom I believe you know'--he blushed like a house
+afire--'tells me,' I said, 'that her mother objects to you because you
+have no money.' He flashed me a look of amazement, and I said: 'If you
+need money, why don't you make it?' And he said: 'How can I?' 'Why,
+money is growing on bushes everywhere,' I said, 'just waiting to be
+picked off; poor men are getting rich every day,' I said; and he said:
+'Yes, and rich men are getting poor. My family is one of the bushes, and
+we've been pretty well picked. My father left me nothing but his
+blessing, and I can't pawn that,' he said. 'Still, I'm not dead yet,' he
+said. 'I'll show you all some day.' And I said: 'There must be something
+in any man that a good girl loves and believes in. And any girl that's
+worth having is worth working for, and if she really wants you she'll
+wait for you.' And then I lowered my voice about an octave and growled,
+'I wonder if you have the grit to go out in this hard old world and work
+for that girl and--and earn her?' He said, 'You bet I have!' So I said:
+'Well, I know where there's a job you might get; it's small salary and a
+lot of work at first, and by and by a little more salary and much harder
+work; and you won't be able to see her often; perhaps not at all for a
+long while; but eventually, if she'll wait, you'll be able to support
+her as well as any girl needs to be supported who has love in the
+bargain. Do you want that job, young man?' I said, glaring at him. And
+he said: 'Lead me to it!'"
+
+Forbes listened with eagerness and envy. The portrait of Alice, who
+would wait till her lover worked his way up to a competence, contrasted
+sharply with Persis, who would not accept the competence Forbes already
+had. He asked, with an effort at enthusiasm:
+
+"And what is the job?"
+
+"I'm going to make him my secretary, at twelve hundred a year, at first.
+He won't be worth it, and I'll have to do all my own work for a while;
+but I'll give him his chance. I won't pamper him. I'll test him out--and
+her, too. If they can't stand the test they wouldn't last long in the
+battle of matrimony."
+
+"Your secretary?" said Forbes. "Does he know any law?"
+
+"I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm going to be a diplomat--in Paris."
+
+"Splendid!" cried Forbes, reaching across to squeeze his hand. "I
+congratulate the country--and France. I envy you Paris. I've never been
+there."
+
+"How would you like to go?"
+
+"How should I like to be a major-general?"
+
+Tait opened his lips to say something important, then stammered, and
+said instead:
+
+"Waiter, give Captain Forbes some more of that curry. It's good here,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Splendid," said Forbes, who had hardly touched what was on his plate.
+
+Senator Tait shifted uncomfortably, made to speak, pursed his lips, eyed
+Forbes, and then said, with abrupt irrelevance:
+
+"I was wrong, I see, about old Cabot."
+
+"Were you?" Forbes mumbled, with a sudden flush at the broaching of that
+dangerous theme.
+
+"Yes, I said that he was to be closed up, forced into involuntary
+bankruptcy, and all that."
+
+"Wasn't he?" said Forbes, weakly.
+
+"No, he got money and credit and a new start--from the Enslee estates.
+There is a rumor that his daughter is to marry Willie Enslee. I thought
+that perhaps you--did you--did you hear anything of it--from Enslee?"
+
+Tait made an elaborate pretense of indifference and showed a violent
+interest in the leg of a chicken. Forbes turned curry-color with shame
+as he answered: "Yes, Enslee announced the engagement himself--the very
+day I saw you last."
+
+His head drooped as if his neck could no longer hold it up. Tait noted
+his harrowed look and broke out angrily:
+
+"Don't be cut up, my boy, just because she's fool enough to marry a
+bigger fool than herself."
+
+"Oh, please!" Forbes protested. He could have struck a younger man in
+Persis' defense, but he could only appeal to so old a man as Tait. Tait,
+however, persisted:
+
+"You ought to be glad to be revenged so neatly."
+
+Forbes was in desperate case; he laughed bitterly. "Revenge is a little
+late. My life is ruined. I might as well put an end to it."
+
+The old man stared at the tragic face, the brow corded with veins, the
+eyes fanatic with despair. He could not believe that so brilliant an
+officer could kill himself. And yet men did kill themselves--several
+thousand every year. When Forbes' father was a young man courting the
+fickle young beauty who was later to become the so steadfast wife and
+the mother of Forbes, they had quarreled, and Forbes' father had been
+frantic with grief, had threatened self-destruction. Tait himself had
+taken the revolver away from him and helped to lift him across the dark
+waters of jealousy. It startled him to see the father's black despair
+repeated in the son. He felt that he must repeat the rescue.
+
+Yet, as humanity is constituted, tragedy becomes grotesque when it is
+repeated. He felt a certain helpless amusement at finding the son just
+as desperate as the father had been. He had laughed the elder Forbes out
+of his gloom. He attempted to ridicule the son free of the same
+obsession. He spoke in a low tone surcharged with an anxiety whose
+exaggeration was too dolorous to catch.
+
+"You say that you can't stand the loss of Miss Cabot, and you might as
+well commit suicide?"
+
+"I might as well."
+
+"I'll tell you, Harvey, let's commit suicide together!" Forbes' haggard
+glance showed that he was not yet awake to the old man's parody of his
+solemnity.
+
+"Do you mean it?" Forbes asked.
+
+"Yes," Tait murmured; "all good Americans go to Paris when they
+die--let's go to Paris."
+
+Now Forbes caught the twinkle in his eye. It took him off his guard. It
+was as if some one had made a funny face at a funeral. A guffaw of
+laughter escaped him. It shocked him and shamed him, but it shattered
+his depression.
+
+Tait seized the opportunity of Forbes' disorder and urged his idea:
+
+"I've got to have a military attache, you know. I could get the billet
+for you."
+
+"Why select me for the honor? You'll be beset with applications."
+
+"Yes, but I like you, Harvey. You are your father come to life again. I
+love you--as if you were your father--or my son. I'm old. I need young
+shoulders to lean on. I've nobody else but you. And you need me. You've
+had a whack in the solar plexus. You're seeing stars. But you mustn't
+let 'em count you out. Once you get your breath you'll be as good a man
+as you ever were. But don't lie down and take the count.
+
+"Besides, I can help you while you're helping me. It's a new world for
+you, Harvey. Nobody ought to die without seeing France and England--the
+Old World that's so much newer than ours and so much wiser in so many
+ways. It's your opportunity. It may mean wonderful things for you. You
+can't refuse. You won't refuse, will you?"
+
+The very impact of his blows pounded Harvey's cold heart to a glow. The
+word "opportunity" glinted like a shower of sparks in the night. He
+smiled in spite of himself. He felt such a leap of new blood in his
+arteries, such a rush of fresh air into his lungs, that he seemed to
+waken from a coma. He could not speak, but he thrust his hand across the
+table and wrung the Senator's fat old fingers till they ached.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+Willie Enslee was as little masculine as a man could be without being in
+the least effeminate. Ten Eyck, whose French was more fluent than exact,
+called him "_petite_." His head was small and childish, and the more
+infantile for a great rearward overhang that would have looked better on
+a yacht. His voice was high and trebling in its sound. His costumes were
+always of next season or the season after next. Yet, carefully as he
+dressed, his clothes never dignified him nor he them. Rich as he was, he
+attracted few parasites.
+
+Now, no one realized Willie Enslee's defects half so thoroughly as did
+Willie Enslee. But his failings did not amuse him as they did other
+people; he could not laugh with the world at himself. He knew the world
+laughed at him, and not without cause, and yet he hated the world for
+its laughter. He hated everybody he knew almost as much as he hated
+himself. To this misanthropy there was one exception--Persis. He hated
+her, too, in a way, for she never concealed her scorn of him, and she
+ridiculed his foibles before his face; but he found her so beautiful
+that he loved her while he loathed her, desired while he abhorred.
+
+He found her cold and flippant to his most earnest moods, but he assumed
+that she was cold and flippant to everybody else. She certainly had that
+reputation, and he comforted himself with the feeling that, while she
+may have failed in response to his ardors, it was not because she was in
+love with anybody else.
+
+So little jealousy he had--or, rather, so slow a jealousy--that the
+silly theory of Forbes' flirtation with Mrs. Neff sufficed to prevent
+him from paying the slightest attention to Forbes' conversation with
+Persis. Lack of jealousy is sometimes a form of conceit. Perhaps it was
+this feeling that no woman could prefer any other man to an Enslee that
+led him to ignore the ordinary caution of a lover. Perhaps it was just
+his idolatry of Persis, his inability to believe her capable of the
+infamy of duplicity.
+
+But somewhere in his soul there must have been a latent spark of
+suspicion which might some day burst into a consuming flame, for into
+his dreams came now and then little glints of uneasiness. He dismissed
+them as the results of indigestion, but they persisted.
+
+One day, shortly after his return from his Westchester estate, he sat
+down in the living-room of his town house to read the evening papers.
+All of them published the announcement of his engagement to Persis,
+under the general heading of "June brides." There were portraits of
+Persis in various poses and costumes. Willie saw no picture of himself,
+and the allusions to him were mainly concerned with "William Enslee,
+Esq., son of the famous William Enslee."
+
+Willie took so much pride in the fame of his betrothed that he was not
+jealous even of her monopoly of the newspaper attention. He felt only a
+great pride in being the future owner of all that beauty.
+
+He lolled on the divan and smoked the cigarettes of prosperity. The
+divan was so comfortable, and his satisfaction so soothing, that he grew
+drowsy. His jaw fell open as his eyes fell shut. The newspapers dropped
+to the floor, and he was asleep.
+
+Into the room, which was now almost ready for the closing of the house
+and the emigration to Newport or the country, came his mother, a young
+matron whose aristocratic face and figure were markedly Spanish. Her
+black hair was fogged with gray at the temples, as if with a careless
+powder-puff. She pushed back the covering of the mirror over the mantel
+that she might catch a glimpse of her hair.
+
+She brightened at the vision she saw within, and not without reason, for
+she had broken many hearts in Cuba and in New York before the elder
+William Enslee won her and married her. The only result of the union had
+been that at his death he left a widow who was more attractive than a
+widow has a right to be, and a son who was less attractive even than is
+expected of a millionaire's son.
+
+As Mrs. Enslee stared at her image in the looking-glass Willie's heavy
+breathing caught her ear, and she heard that he was asleep even before
+she saw him. And then she spoke sharply:
+
+"But you mustn't sleep here. Go to your own room--or the club."
+
+"Let me alone," Willie protested, with querulous anger, still befuddled,
+and relapsing at once into sleep.
+
+"When I was young parents weren't spoken to like that," said Mrs.
+Enslee, forgetting how she used to speak to her parents. She paused to
+muse upon her man-child. She felt sorry for him, but sorrier for herself
+for having him. As she watched him he began to mumble a gibberish. She
+bent closer to hear. Then his hand, hanging limply near the floor, began
+to clench and twitch.
+
+Suddenly from his lips broke a half-strangled gurgle, then a wild shriek
+of "Persis! Persis!"
+
+His own outcry seemed to waken him. His eyes flew open, and he stared
+about him as if searching for some one whose absence bewildered him.
+
+His mother peered into his eyes, and he clutched her by the arms,
+staring at her. Then he mumbled:
+
+"Oh, it's you," and smiled foolishly, and laughed as with a great
+relief.
+
+"What is it, my boy?" said Mrs. Enslee.
+
+"I must have dropped off to sleep. It was only a dream."
+
+"What was it?" Mrs. Enslee repeated; but he spoke with a sickly cheer:
+
+"That's the one consolation about nightmares, when you wake up--thank
+God, they're not true!"
+
+"But what did you dream?" Mrs. Enslee demanded till he explained:
+
+"Well, it seemed to be my--er--wedding-day. And I was standing there by
+Persis--I was--er--fumbling in my pocket for the--er--ring, and feeling
+like a fool--because she's so much taller than I am--and the preacher
+said, 'If anybody knows any--er--reason why these two should not
+be--er--wed, let him speak now, or forever--'"
+
+"Yes, yes," said his audience of one.
+
+"There was--er--silence for a minute. Then a man stood up in the
+church--I couldn't see his face--but he was tall, and he called out--er,
+'I forbid the banns! She loves me. She is only marrying that man for
+his--er--money!' I turned to Persis and said: 'Is that true?' And she
+said: 'I don't know the man. I never saw him.' And then, when she said
+that, he gave her one look and--er--walked out of the church. And
+the--er--ceremony went on. But Persis shivered all the time--er--just
+shivered, and when I kissed her her lips were like--er--like ice. Then
+the music began, and we marched down the aisle--and then--then
+we--er--er--no, I won't tell you."
+
+"Go on--please go on!" the mother pleaded; but Willie grew embarrassed,
+and his eyes wandered as he stammered:
+
+"Well--at last--we were in our room--and I--er--she shrank away from me
+as if I were--er--a toad. And she swore she hated me--and loved
+the--er--other man. Then I saw everything red--I hated her. I wanted to
+throttle her--to tear her to pieces. But she ran to the window and fell,
+all--er--tangled up in the veil and the long train. I tried to save
+her--but I couldn't. And then--when it was too late--my love for her
+came back, and I cried, 'Persis! Persis!' and--er--woke up. Mother, do
+you believe in--er--dreams?"
+
+"No, no, of course not," said Mrs. Enslee, without conviction. "Or else
+they go by contraries."
+
+"Ugh! How real they are while they last. I can't get over it."
+
+"Well, of course, I'm not superstitious," Mrs. Enslee insinuated; "but,
+if you are, perhaps--I just say perhaps--it might be a sort of omen that
+you'd better not marry Persis, after all."
+
+"Not marry Persis!" Willie gasped.
+
+"There are other women on earth," Mrs. Enslee suggested.
+
+"Not for me!"
+
+Mrs. Enslee pondered a moment before she took up the debate again. "But
+do you think she loves you as much as you'd like to be loved?"
+
+Willie laughed. "Huh! nobody ever loved me like that; nobody ever will."
+
+"Except your mother," said Mrs. Enslee, laying her hand on his hair.
+Willie hated to have his hair smoothed, and he edged away, laughingly
+bitterly.
+
+"I'm afraid even you've found me--er--unattractive, mother. I couldn't
+have been much to be proud of even as a little brat. I never had a chum
+as a boy. I never had a girl--er--sweetheart. It wasn't that I didn't
+like other people, but other people can't seem to--er--like me."
+
+He pondered the mystery so tragically that Mrs. Enslee caressed him, and
+said: "You mustn't say that. I adore you."
+
+Willie eyed her with a cynical stare. "Don't be--er--literary, mother. I
+remember when I was a little boy how lonely I used to get in this big
+old house. Poor father was so busy heaping up money I hardly knew him by
+sight. Once he--er--passed me on the street and didn't speak to me! Then
+at night you used to give big dinners. I had to eat early and alone up
+in the--er--nursery. But I used to lie awake for hours, and when the
+doors opened I could hear laughter. And often there was music. You used
+to go down to dinner after I had gone to bed."
+
+"But I always stopped in to kiss you good night, didn't I?" the mother
+urged, in self-defense.
+
+"Sometimes you would forget," Willie sighed. "Then I'd be left there
+alone with the governess. I didn't want to--er--speak French to a
+governess. I wanted to--er--talk to my mother. And when you did stop in
+to kiss me, your lips sometimes used to--er--leave red marks on my
+cheek."
+
+"Willie!" Mrs. Enslee gasped; but he went on:
+
+"I couldn't put my arms around your neck for fear I'd--er--disarrange
+your hair, and even that was--er--dyed!"
+
+Mrs. Enslee turned on him in rage. "Willie! How dare you?"
+
+He rounded on her fiercely. "You know it was! You know it was!"
+
+"You little beast!" Mrs. Enslee cried; but Willie laughed maliciously.
+
+"See! See! Now you're showing your--er--real feelings to me."
+
+Mrs. Enslee controlled her pain and her wrath, and implored: "Come, my
+boy, let's be friends."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, mother," said Willie. "Friends is the word. It's
+too late for anything else."
+
+"You're in one of your nasty moods, Willie," said Mrs. Enslee,
+retreating from this hateful situation. "But we were talking of Persis.
+You must decide about her."
+
+"I have decided."
+
+"You won't marry her, then?"
+
+"Not marry her?" Willie repeated, like a sarcastic echo. "Of course I
+will. And why not?"
+
+Motives are hard tangles to unravel, especially a mother's toward other
+women. Perhaps Mrs. Enslee was really afraid of Persis. Perhaps she
+wanted to assure herself of the future ability to say, "I warned you."
+Perhaps it was just motherly jealousy of the new proprietress of
+Willie's time and attention. In answer to Willie's "Why not?" she
+insinuated: "People might say she is marrying you for your money."
+
+"Well, what of it? What if she is?" Willie stormed. "What else is there
+to marry me for? My--er--beauty? What does it matter, so I get her? Why
+do dukes marry--er--chorus-girls--when they can afford 'em? Because they
+want 'em! That's why, isn't it? What fools they'd be not to take 'em if
+they want 'em and can get 'em?"
+
+His mother shrugged his troubles from her shoulders and left him to
+ferment in his own vinegar. But Willie was not happy. He was getting
+what he asked for, and it was not what he wanted. Perhaps he had never
+been truly happy in his whole existence. He had been amused at times,
+but usually then with a cynical delight in somebody's misfortunes or
+mistakes.
+
+How could he have been thoroughly happy when he had never been truly
+well? What health he had was a negation, a convalescence; it was at best
+a not being sick. He was of a fabric that broke down and wore through
+constantly. He could understand the definition of happiness as "having a
+splinter in your finger and getting it out."
+
+But the joy that comes from bounding arteries, glowing skin, a galloping
+heart, a volcanic desire to laugh because the soul is bursting with
+laughter, or to sing for mere song's sake, or to be an instrument in the
+symphonic universe when it is playing one of its mighty ensembles--that
+cosmic happiness was unknown to Willie Enslee.
+
+When he found a rapture he always found something the matter with it;
+there was a worm in the apple, a slug in the salad, a fly in the
+ointment, a flaw in the diamond. And so it was with his one big
+ambition--Persis. He had won his choice of all the world's women. And
+now his mother was asking if he thought she loved him, and if people
+would not question her motives. She was already perhapsing and
+better-notting.
+
+And he was dreaming dreams that somebody else had a priority in her
+heart. Of course, dreams were follies. According to some superstitions,
+they went by contraries. But they are as hard to disbelieve as a
+convincing play. One may not be sure that Josephine was untrue to
+Napoleon; but he knows that Mrs. Tanqueray II. had a most inconvenient
+lover, and that her past spoiled her husband's daughter's future.
+
+So Willie, emerging from the playhouse of his nightmare, wondered who it
+was that was likely to interrupt his wedding with Persis. He suspected
+everybody except Forbes. Him he canceled at once from the list, because
+Forbes had met Persis only a week ago, and had never seen her alone, and
+had, furthermore, devoted himself to Mrs. Neff. He set Forbes down as a
+fortune-hunter willing to marry a much older woman of moderate means. He
+doubted if he were important enough for an invitation to the wedding.
+
+He could not decide upon any other man to fit the faceless vision of his
+nightmare, that shadowy being who stood up in the dream-cathedral and
+claimed Persis for his own. He was tempted to ask Persis. But he was not
+tempted long. Naturally she would deny it; but what if she should
+confess? Then he would have to give her up. And he wanted her more than
+anything else on earth.
+
+He resolved that the one safe step was to get Persis safely married at
+once and take her away from all of her acquaintances. Aboard his yacht
+would be one secure asylum. When they tired of that they could travel
+Europe, and the moment any old friend appeared he could decamp with her
+overnight.
+
+He chuckled triumphantly over this plot, and set about its perfection.
+He rejoiced to be in a position to compel Persis by way of her father's
+necessities. The support he had advanced to the "old flub" he could
+threaten to withdraw unless the wedding were hastened. That would clinch
+it.
+
+And then he glowed with the imagined scenes of the honeymoon. Persis
+might not love him as he wished, but he would have her for his own. He
+would have as much of her as any man could be sure of in possessing a
+woman. He knew he was not handsome, but he knew handsome men whose
+homely wives were notoriously false to them. Did he not know of wild
+romances that had ended in mutual contempt? Did he not know of
+unpromising beginnings that had ended in happiness? Monogamy was a
+gamble at best. And at worst he should have Persis for his own for a
+while.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+When Willie's mother left him in the aftermath of his nightmare she went
+to pay her duty call on Persis, to welcome her formally into the family
+and proffer her the use of the family name.
+
+There was the most gleaming cordiality on the surface of their meeting,
+but the depths of both streams were a trifle murky. Willie's mother
+understood now why her own husband's fierce old mother, known as
+"Medusa" Enslee, had received her with such constraint on a similar
+occasion. That mother had had to give up part of her name, too, and step
+back from being queen to being queen-mother, with endless confusion in
+the newspapers, the invitations, the correspondence, and the gossip.
+
+The present Mrs. Enslee felt now a sympathy for the old woman she
+had hated. But it crowded out the sympathy she should have felt
+for Persis, who was suffering what she had suffered as a
+young-woman-afraid-of-her-mother-in-law.
+
+It was bitter for Willie's mother, still beautiful, feeling herself as
+young as ever, to realize that henceforth she must be the "the elder,"
+or, worse yet, the "old Mrs. Enslee." Perhaps in a year or two a
+grandmother! It would be just like Persis to hasten that ghastly day.
+
+At present Persis was not thinking of motherhood. She would have called
+it quite a ghastly day herself--one to be postponed by every ingenuity
+and subtlety known to American womanhood. She was thinking of her new
+name.
+
+"You'll be Mrs. Enslee, and I suppose I'll be Mrs. William Enslee, or
+Mrs. Little Willie, sha'n't I, mama? Do you want me to call you mama,
+or shall I stick to Mrs. Enslee?"
+
+"As you like, my dear," said Mrs. Enslee, with a little shudder at being
+"mama" to a strange woman and a rival. Persis rattled on in ill-managed
+embarrassment.
+
+"It will be pretty mixy with two Mrs. William Enslees, won't it? Like
+two in a single bed--pardon me! I'll have to be awfully good or awfully
+careful, sha'n't I, for fear my letters may fall into your hands? But
+I'll promise not to give away what I find in yours if you won't tell on
+me."
+
+Mrs. Enslee was rather pleased than offended at this. At least it
+credited her with the ability to create scandal.
+
+She was like Mrs. Neff in hating to get too old to be suspected.
+
+She smiled at Persis with Spanish coquetry, and offered her aid in the
+appalling details of announcing the engagement. It was the new mode to
+use the telephone for the more intimate friends. For others there were
+letters, calls, advertisements, luncheons, and dinners in all the
+exquisite degrees of familiarity.
+
+She and Persis were going into business for a while on a large scale--a
+business for which Persis was peculiarly fitted and in which she
+developed an extraordinary energy.
+
+When Persis had returned to New York from the Enslee country place to
+find her father helpless and dejected, the offer of Willie's aid had
+acted like a magic elixir. It had meant the payment of old bills, or
+their enlargement, and the opening of new credits. Dealers whom the
+mercantile agencies had secretly filled with alarm for the Cabot
+accounts had been subtly reassured.
+
+In place of letters of pathetic appeal for a little something to meet a
+pay-roll there came letters announcing private views of new
+importations. Persis' own father called her his loan-broker, and said
+that she had earned the usual commission; he ordered her to buy new
+things. He complained of the shabbiness of her hats. Why hadn't she
+bought the lot she had spoken to him about some time ago? She did at
+once--and more.
+
+Persis was like a child waking from a bad dream to find that it is
+Christmas morning and that its stockings are cornucopias spilling over
+with glittering toys.
+
+And what woman lives that does not find more rapture in shopping with a
+full purse or an elastic charge-account than in any other earthly or
+spiritual pleasure?
+
+The barbaric love of beads and red feathers and mirrors has never been
+civilized out of the sex. The male succeeds in love and elsewhere by
+what he thinks and makes and gives; the female by what she looks and
+wears and extracts. The shops are her art-museums, her gymnasiums, her
+paradises, and the privilege of reveling among them is more voluptuous
+than any other of her sensualities. Shopping takes the place of
+exploration. That is her Wanderlust.
+
+And so when Willie Enslee arrived at the Cabot house with all his
+weapons ready to force Persis to an early marriage, he was astounded--he
+was even dismayed--to find that she offered no resistance, but greeted
+his proposal with delight. It was like making ready to besiege and storm
+a castle and being met half-way there by flower-girls instead of troops.
+Persis was so instant with acceptance that he took credit to himself. He
+cherished a pitiful delusion that she wanted to marry him--was actually
+in a hurry to marry him!
+
+But it was because she had seen in the shops the new things for this
+year's brides. They were absolutely ravishing! Whatever they are in
+reality or in retrospect, fashions are always ravishing as they dawn on
+the horizon. Such beauties brighten as they make their entrance and
+wither as they take their flight.
+
+To prepare herself for a wedding did not mean--to Persis, at least,
+whatever it may mean to other women--that she must prepare her soul for
+a mystic union with a stranger soul. It meant that she must prepare her
+wardrobe for the inspection of all sorts of critics, from the most
+casual to the most intimate. It meant not only buying a veil and some
+orange blossoms and a meekly glorious white dress, but it meant
+outfitting a private department store. It meant preparing for travel and
+a prolonged campaign known as a honeymoon, rather than entering shyly
+into obscurity and domestic bliss. It meant not half so much what the
+groom should think and see as what to show and what to whisper to the
+bridesmaids, hysterically envious and ecstatically horrified.
+
+Persis' father had nearly bankrupted himself once before over the
+wedding of Persis' sister into the British peerage, when she ceased to
+be the beautiful Miss Cabot and became the Countess of Kelvedon, and had
+the privilege of being nineteenth in the fifty-seven varieties of
+precedence among British women.
+
+Mr. Cabot had learned nothing from that investment. He encouraged Persis
+to extravagances she would never have dared even in her present mood. It
+was like chirruping and taking the whip to a horse that was already
+running away.
+
+He sent a long cablegram to Persis' sister, insisting that she come over
+at once for the wedding and bring the Earl and the eight-year-old
+Viscount of Selden, the six-year-old Honorable Paul Hadham, and the
+five-year-old Lady Maude Hadham. Persis received at once a brief reply
+from the Countess:
+
+"Congratulations old girl snooks says awfully glad to be with you if
+papa pays the freight we are stony. Elise."
+
+"Snooks" was the Earl of Kelvedon. Sometimes Elise called him "Kelly"
+for short. Papa cabled the freight--and "freight" was beginning to
+describe his burdens. But he was in for it; yet he felt that, come what
+come would, he should henceforward lean comfortably on the Enslee
+Estates.
+
+Persis kept him signing checks till he was tempted to buy one of those
+ingenious machines by which one signs twenty at a time.
+
+Persis was running amuck among the shops. She was in a torment of
+delight--a cat in a cosmos of catnip. The equipment of the humblest
+bride is a matter of supreme effort. To make a Persis Cabot ready to
+enter the dynasty of the Enslees was a Xerxic invasion.
+
+The wedding-gown, though it was designed and builded with almost the
+importance of St. Paul's Cathedral, was the least part of the trousseau.
+Willie was to take her yachting and motoring and touring--perhaps around
+the world. They were to be presented at court if the Queen forgave the
+Countess her latest epigram in time. They were to visit capitals,
+castles, chateaux, gambling-palaces, golf-links, beaches, spas. Costumes
+and changes of costumes must be constructed for all these; for each
+costume there must be a foundation from the skin out. If it had been
+possible, the skin would have been changed as well. They do their best
+in that direction--these women with their pallor for a gown of one color
+and their carmine for a gown of another.
+
+Persis had to have a going-to-the-altar gown, and a going-away gown, and
+going-to-bed gowns, getting-up gowns, going-motoring costumes, and
+going-in-swimming suits, dinner-gowns, house-gowns, tea-gowns, informal
+theater-gowns, opera-gowns, race-track togs, yachting flannels. And
+these were of numberless schools of architecture from train-gowns to tub
+frocks and smocks, from lingerie dresses to semi-tailored one-piece and
+two-piece suits, coats, and coatees, and coat-dresses, and sport-coats,
+opera wraps, rain slip-ons.
+
+And there were colors to choose from that made the rainbow look like a
+study in sepia. And there were fabrics of strange names--crepe, tulle,
+serge, taffeta, brocade, charmeuse, paillette, jet, batiste, voile--what
+not?
+
+And there were the underpinnings to all these--the stockings and
+garters, the corsets and chiffon corset-covers and combinations,
+chemi-pantalons and petticoats. And there were the accessories--hats,
+caps, bonnets, gloves, fans, parasols, veils, jabots, collars,
+aigrettes, boots, shoes, slippers, powders, paints, cerates,
+massage-cream--_ad infinitum_. And in every instance there must be a
+choice.
+
+The complexity of a woman's wardrobe! A man is fitted out in a small
+haberdashery and a tailoring establishment, a hat shop and a shoe store.
+For woman they build Vaticans of merchandise in order that she may make
+an effect on--other women!
+
+Persis had so many dresses to try on that she had two pneumatic images
+made of her form to stand in her stead. She had the servants' tongues
+hanging out from running errands. Delivery-wagon drivers and
+messenger-boys kept the area doorbells ringing early and late.
+
+There was so much mail to send out that she hired two secretaries. Ten
+Eyck called on her just once, and was used as telephone-boy,
+package-opener, stenographer, change-purse, box-lifter,
+memorandum-maker, doorbell-answerer, gift-cataloguer till he was
+exhausted.
+
+"How does a man ever dare to marry one of you maniacs?" he said.
+"Marriage isn't a sacrament with you; it's a massacre. They have a money
+macerator at the mint that destroys old greenbacks. Why don't they get a
+couple of brides to do the work? A wedding costs as much as a small
+war."
+
+Persis might have retorted that wars were quite as foolish a waste as
+fashions, and not half so pretty. A new style in projectiles, the latest
+fabric of armor plate, the mode in airships--these things, too, come and
+go, cost fortunes, and are soon mere junk. But Persis' head was too full
+of other things, and her mouth too full of pins, to make any answer to
+Ten Eyck.
+
+If Forbes had called he might have seen that Persis was a great general,
+or at least a great quartermaster, equipping not an army with one
+uniform, but one poor little frantic body with an army of uniforms. And
+Forbes would have been glad to take that body without a shift to its
+back and wrap it in one of his own overcoats and ride away with it. But
+for Willie she must loot Paris.
+
+Still it was her career. Forbes would not give up his for her; why
+should she give up hers for him?
+
+If Forbes had been leading his company to war he would have felt sorry
+for Persis, bitterly sorry to leave her, afraid for her; but he would
+still have gone, as men have always gone. He would not have been immune
+to bugles or the gait-quickening thrup of drums. He might have hummed
+love songs to her, but "Dixie" would still have thrilled him. He would
+not have neglected his uniform or his tactics. He would not have skulked
+from a charge or dodged a shell on her account.
+
+That was his trade. This was hers. And Persis was as happy as a man is
+when he is going into battle. She was happy because she was busy and
+because she was buying, exercising choice, spurning, pillaging among
+cities of beautiful things. She dozed standing while skirts were draped;
+at night she simply fell into bed and was asleep; her maid drew her
+skirts from her hips and her stockings from her legs as if she were
+dead. But the next morning she woke without being called, and began the
+day with new ferocity of attack.
+
+She had not forgotten Forbes. The thought of him hovered about her
+heart. She paused now and then, with hand on cheek and eyes far away,
+thinking of him so intently that the saleswoman had to speak twice to
+her, or the dressmaker to lift her arms into the position he wanted for
+the try-on.
+
+Sometimes she woke from dreams in which she seemed to feel Forbes' arms
+about her. As she woke they were withdrawn, as if he fled. She would
+weep a little and lick the salt from her lips and find her tears very
+bitter. She would pout at Fate and muse: "Why couldn't it have been
+Harvey instead of Willie? Oh, what a pitiful sacrifice I am making of my
+life!"
+
+But her anger or despair in these humors was not half so intense as her
+despair at finding that some color could not be matched or that a color
+chosen in electric light was wrong in the daylight, or her anger because
+some tradesman failed to keep his word or some caller came to wish her
+well at a busy time, when true well-wishing would have shown itself in
+keeping out of the way.
+
+A president could hardly have given more thought to selecting his
+cabinet than Persis gave to the choice of her bridesmaids, those
+lieutenants who must stand by in the same uniform like moving
+caryatides. There was the enormously important subject of their costume
+to debate. Since the livery that suited one style of beauty was
+loathsome on another, there was no little politics to play.
+
+Persis invited the four elect to a luncheon at her club, and by having
+her ideas clear and enforcing them in a delicately adamant tone she
+managed to close the session in two hours. It was good work, and it was
+necessary; for the bridesmaids' costumes must be ready in time for the
+photographs.
+
+She managed the luncheon so well that she finished it ahead of the time
+she had told her chauffeur to call for her. She left the bridesmaids all
+talking at once, for she had an appointment with one of her dressmakers.
+As she came down the steps of the quaintly colonial Colony Club she
+found no taxi in sight. She would not wait to have one summoned. The
+brief walk would do her good. She set out briskly down Madison Avenue
+and turned into Twenty-ninth Street to cross to Fifth Avenue.
+
+This brought her to one of the few churchyards in almost grassless New
+York--the pleasant green acre of the Church of the Transfiguration,
+known to theatrical history as "The Little Church Around the Corner,"
+and to the elopement industry as another Gretna Green.
+
+As she approached it a taxicab drew up at the curb, and Stowe Webb and
+Alice Neff bounced out, almost bowling Persis over, as usual. Both had a
+much dressed-up look, and Alice carried a little bouquet.
+
+Persis was in a hurry, but she scented excitement. When the two lovers
+had apologized for their Juggernautical haste she asked, with the
+demurest of smiles:
+
+"And what are you children doing in this dark alley?"
+
+"Oh, we're just--just--" Alice stammered.
+
+"Does your mother know you're out?"
+
+"Naturally not," Alice smiled, more cheerfully.
+
+"Mischief's brewing. I've got to know."
+
+"Can you keep a secret?"
+
+"That's my other name--Inviolate."
+
+Alice hesitated, then took a precaution. "Cross your heart and hope to
+swallow fish-hooks?"
+
+Persis drew an X over her heart, and vowed: "I am full of fish-hooks."
+
+Alice looked up and down the street cautiously, then spoke in a whisper
+of awesome solemnity: "Well, then, Stowe and I have given mama the slip,
+and we're going to--to--"
+
+"Get a chocolate-sundae with two spoons!"
+
+Alice bridled with indignation. "Certainly not! We're not children! We
+are going to run away and be married."
+
+Persis nodded her head gravely. "That was what I was afraid you were
+going to say. But why this haste?"
+
+"Well, you see, Stowe has just got a job--umm-humm! It's a terribly
+important post--secretary to Ambassador Tait."
+
+"Ambassador?"
+
+"Yes; the Senator is going to France, and Stowe is to help him out."
+
+The young secretary spoke in, trying not to look as important as he
+felt: "I simply can't endure the thought of leaving Alice all alone over
+here. So we're going to get married."
+
+"Fine!" said Persis, with subtlety. "I suppose you get a whopping big
+salary."
+
+"Indeed he does!" said Alice. "Twelve hundred a year! It's wonderful for
+a beginning."
+
+Persis suppressed her emotions at the talk of salary. She hated the
+word; but she exclaimed, "Wonderful!" Then she turned to Stowe to ask:
+"Does the Senator know you're going to bring a bride along?"
+
+"No; we're going to surprise him."
+
+Persis thought of her appointment. It was vitally important, but she
+felt a call to duty. She thought it was rather good of her to heed it.
+She bundled the two young people back into the waiting taxicab in spite
+of their protests.
+
+"Take us for a little drive, Stowe," she said. "I want a word with you.
+Tell the man to go down Washington Square way. You're not so likely to
+meet her mother."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+Stowe obeyed reluctantly, and the taxicab groaned on its way. Persis set
+Stowe on the small flap-seat and turned so that she could skewer him and
+Alice with one look.
+
+"Now, Alice," she began, "let's be sensible." Alice looked appealingly
+at Stowe, but Persis objected. "Don't look at him--look at me. First,
+who's going to support you children when you are married?"
+
+They answered like a chorus: "Why, he is (I am), of course."
+
+"Alice, dear, how much has your mother been allowing you for
+pin-money--say, five thousand a year?"
+
+"Oh, she claims it's more than that. We had an awful row the first of
+last month."
+
+Persis looked very innocent and school-girlish as she said: "And Mr.
+Webb gets twelve hundred?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Now, Alice, I'm very backward in mathematics, so you'll have to tell
+me: if one person cannot live on five thousand a year, do you think two
+persons will be perfectly comfortable on twelve hundred?"
+
+"Oh, but I'll economize!" Alice protested. "It will be a pleasure to do
+without things--if I have Stowe."
+
+"Yes," Persis sniffed, "almost anything we're not used to is pleasant
+for a novelty; but in time I should fancy that even economy would cease
+to be a luxury. And where in Paris do you plan to live on your twelve
+hundred?"
+
+"At a hotel, to begin with," Stowe suggested.
+
+"Oh, you'll eat your cake first, eh? Not a bad idea; you're sure of
+getting it, then."
+
+"Then we can get such ducks of flats in Auteuil."
+
+"The Harlem of Paris," Persis sneered, then grew more amiable. "A duck
+of an apartment is all very well, my dear, for those who have wings; but
+climbing stairs--ugh! Four flights of stairs six times a day--that's
+twenty-four flights. Seven times twenty-four is--help!"
+
+"One hundred and sixty-eight, I believe," said Stowe, after a mental
+twist.
+
+"Bravo! You're a regular wizard at mathematics," said Persis. "One
+hundred and sixty-eight flights of stairs a week, and fifty-two times
+one hundred and sixty-eight is how much? Quick!"
+
+"You've got me there. I fancy I could do it with a piece of chalk and a
+blackboard."
+
+"Well, it's a million, I'm sure," Persis summed it. "Think of that! a
+million flights of stairs the first year of marriage! What love could
+survive it? And how many rooms is your sky-parlor going to have?"
+
+"Seven and bath."
+
+"On twelve hundred a year?" Persis gasped. "Aren't you going to eat
+anything?"
+
+"Well, we could manage with two."
+
+"Two rooms!" Persis gasped again. "And your mother's house has thirty!
+Two rooms? Why, where will the servants sleep?"
+
+"We sha'n't have any servants," Alice averred, stoutly.
+
+And her husband-to-be protested: "No, Alice, I'll never let you soil
+your pretty hands with work."
+
+Persis pressed the point. "But really, now, what about food?"
+
+"You can do Wonders with a chafing-dish," said Alice.
+
+"And a chafing-dish can do wonders with a stomach," said Persis. "Bread
+and cheese--that is to say, Welsh rabbits--and kisses as a steady diet?"
+She shook her head.
+
+Alice made another try. "Well, everybody says you can buy almost
+everything in cans."
+
+"Including ptomaines. Oh, children, you don't know what's in store for
+you."
+
+"Of course we shall have hardships," Stowe confessed; "but nothing can
+be worse than this uncertainty, this separation."
+
+"Oh yes, it can, Stowe!" Persis cried. "There are harder things to bear
+than the things we lose, and they are the things we can't lose."
+
+"The things we can't lose?" said Stowe; "that means me, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, Alice, come back to earth," Persis urged, with all her might.
+"Think how tired you'll get of living in a dark little pigeonhole away
+up in the air, with no neighbors but working-people. And when your
+pretty gowns are worn out, and you lose your pretty looks and your
+pretty figure and your fresh color--for those are expensive
+luxuries--and when you see that your husband is growing disappointed in
+you because the harder you work for him the homelier and duller you
+become--that's a woman's fate, Alice: to alienate a man by the very
+sacrifices she makes to bind him closer; and when--"
+
+"Oh, don't tell me any more whens," Alice whimpered. "What do I care? I
+want Stowe. He needs me. We are unhappy away from each other."
+
+Persis shook her head like a sibyl. "Be careful that you don't find
+yourselves more unhappy together. For some day you'll grow bitter.
+You'll remember what you gave up. You'll begin to remind him of it--to
+nag--and nag--oh, the unspeakable vulgarity of it! And then you'll ruin
+Stowe's career--just as it's beginning. The Senator doesn't want a
+secretary with a wife. You'll always be in the way. Stowe will have to
+be leaving you all the time or fretting over you. You'll hamper his
+usefulness, and check his career, and grind him down to poverty, break
+his spirit."
+
+"Oh, I don't want to do that!" Alice wept. "I mustn't do that!"
+
+"Then wait--wait!" Persis pleaded. "Marriage is risky enough when there
+is no worry about money. But when the bills come in at the door love
+flies out at the window."
+
+Stowe seized Alice's hands with ardor. "Don't listen to her, Alice."
+
+"But I'm frightened now," Alice wailed. "It's for your sake, Stowe. We
+mustn't--not yet. And now may I please go home where I can cry my eyes
+out."
+
+Persis in triumph called the address to the chauffeur. Stowe Webb, in
+the depths of dejection, left the cab and stared after it with eyes of
+bitter reproach.
+
+Alice's tears were standing out like orient pearls impaled on eyelashes
+as she said good-by to Persis at her own curb.
+
+"You hate me now," said Persis, "but you'll be very glad this happened
+some day."
+
+"I don't hate you," said Alice. "I know you're terribly wise; but I--I
+wish you hadn't come along."
+
+Persis laughed tenderly. "It's only for your happiness, Alice darling.
+Well, good-by!"
+
+Persis felt that she had done an honest day's work of Samaritan wisdom,
+and ordered the cab to make haste to her dressmaker. A he-dressmaker it
+was, who, like a fashionable doctor, found it profitable to behave like
+a gorilla and abuse his clients. He turned on Persis and stormed up and
+down his show-room. He threatened to throw out all her costumes. She
+bore with him as meekly as if she were a ragged seamstress pleading for
+a job instead of the bride-elect of an Enslee.
+
+When she had thus appeased his wrath he changed his tune to a rhapsody.
+She was to be the most beautiful bride that ever dragged a train up an
+aisle, and she should drag the most beautiful train that ever followed a
+maid to the altar and a wife away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+Persis was not the only busy person in New York. Willie was kept on the
+jump preparing his share of the performance. The ushers were to be
+chosen, and their gifts, and a dinner given to them; and his list of
+friends to receive announcements and invitations must be made up, and
+the bride's gift selected, and the itinerary of the honeymoon arranged,
+his yacht put into commission, and a dinner of farewell to bachelorhood
+accepted and endured.
+
+He hardly caught a glimpse of Persis all this while, and when he heard
+her voice on the telephone it was only to receive some new list of
+chores. He missed the billing and cooing that he knew belonged to these
+conversations. His heart ached to be assured of Persis' love; but she
+was incapable of even imitating the amorous note with him. When he
+pleaded for tendernesses she put him off as best she could by blaming
+her brusqueness on her overwork, as one who does not wish to sign
+oneself "Yours faithfully" or "affectionately" or even "truly" writes
+"Yours hastily."
+
+But Willie's incessant prayer for love harassed her. It was a phase of
+him that had been unimportant hitherto. And it alarmed her a little. It
+would have given her greater uneasiness if she had not had so many other
+matters to worry her, if she had not had so many fascinating excitements
+to divert her.
+
+Forbes was busy, too. Senator Tait had easily arranged his appointment
+as military attache. He had his duties to learn in this capacity. He had
+to polish up his French and take lessons in conversation and
+composition, and learn what he could about the French military
+establishment and procedure. And he had to make ready for a long
+residence abroad.
+
+To him, too, preoccupation was an opiate for suffering. Ambition and
+pride were resuming their interrupted sway. So long as he was busy he
+counted Persis as one of the tragedies of his past, and his love of her
+as a thing lived down and sealed in the archives of his heart.
+
+But when he had an hour of leisure or of sleeplessness, she came back to
+him like a ghost with eery beauty and uncanny charm. He found her in
+nearly every newspaper, too. The announcement of her engagement brought
+forth a shower of portraits. There were articles about the alliance
+between the two families of Enslee and Cabot, about the bride's style of
+beauty, her recipes for beauty, silly accounts of interviews she never
+gave, beauty secrets she never used, exercises she never took, opinions
+on matters on which she had never thought. She was caught by
+camera-bogies on every shopping expedition, at the steeplechases, at the
+weddings of other people--everywhere. There were moving pictures of her;
+pictures of her in her babyhood, her girlhood, in old-fashioned costumes
+and poses. Women began to copy her hats, her coiffures, her costumes. An
+alert merchant with a large amount of an unsalable material on hand
+named it "Persis pink," and women fought for it. It became a household
+word, or, its substitute nowadays, a newspaper word.
+
+Forbes was dumfounded at the publicity of Persis. He was tempted to
+believe that she had gone mad and hired a press-agent. But a woman who
+marries a rich enough man needs no booming to-day. The whisper of her
+engagement starts the avalanche. She becomes as public as a queen or a
+politician or a criminal.
+
+The incessant encounter with Persis' beauty in every newspaper, morning
+and evening and Sunday, and in the illustrated weeklies, kept Forbes'
+wound open. He could not escape her. It was like being a prisoner at a
+window where she was always passing. She smiled at him everywhere, and
+always with the shadow of the Enslee name imminent above her.
+
+On the morning of the day he sailed, as he held his newspaper between
+his coffee and his cigar, certain head-lines leaped up and shouted at
+him from the top of a column with a roar as of apocalyptic trumpets. He
+hastened to his room to be alone while he read the chronicle of what was
+already past.
+
+
+     MISS PERSIS CABOT
+     WEDS WM. ENSLEE
+
+     HEAD OF THE FAMOUS HOUSE
+     MARRIED AT ST. THOMAS'S
+     YESTERDAY AFTERNOON
+
+     Reception at Bride's Home
+
+     Earl and Countess of Kelvedon among Distinguished Guests.
+     Church a Mass of Bloom.
+
+     The marriage of William Enslee, the present head of the great
+     dynasty of Enslee, and Miss Persis Cabot, the famous beauty,
+     daughter of an equally distinguished family, was celebrated at 4:30
+     yesterday afternoon in St. Thomas's Church, Fifty-third Street and
+     Fifth Avenue. This was the largest and most brilliant wedding of
+     the season.
+
+     The chancel of the church was banked with rambler roses and white
+     daisies, against a background of camellia-trees and towering palms,
+     and the way to the altar was marked with bay and orange trees. The
+     altar was a mass of bridal roses under an immense trellis of
+     trailing smilax.
+
+     While the guests were arriving a recital was given by an orchestra,
+     which played several selections at the bride's request, including
+     the "Evening Star" from "Tannhaeuser," the prelude to "Lohengrin,"
+     the gavotte from "Mignon," and Simonetti's "Madrigale."
+
+     The ushers who seated the guests included the bride's brother,
+     LeGrand Cabot, Murray Ten Eyck, Robert Gammell Fielding, and Ives
+     Erskine.
+
+     The full vested-choir service was used for the ceremony, and
+     Barnby's "O Perfect Love" was played as the processional. The bride
+     walked down the nave with her father, who gave her in marriage,
+     being preceded by the ushers, bridesmaids, matron, maid of honor,
+     and flower-bearers. The bride wore a robe of heavy white satin, the
+     skirt being draped with long motifs of old family lace and finished
+     with a square train, which was edged with clusters of orange
+     blossoms. The bodice was cut low and square in front, of lace and
+     chiffon, with a deep collar of rose point lace of square and
+     distinctive cut at the back. Her tulle veil was arranged about her
+     head in cap effect, held by a coronet of orange blossoms. Her only
+     ornament was a superb necklace of diamonds, the gift of the
+     bridegroom.
+
+     She carried a cluster bouquet of white orchids, an ivory
+     prayer-book that was also carried by her mother at her wedding, and
+     a Valenciennes handkerchief.
+
+     The Countess of Kelvedon, the bride's sister, was matron of honor.
+     She wore a costume of soft white charmeuse, with an overskirt
+     drapery effect of green chiffon, almost as deep in color as
+     jade-green, and the upper part of her gown was a combination of
+     satin and white chiffon, with a V opening at the neck. Her round
+     leghorn hat was encircled with jade-green satin, and topped at the
+     side with bows of green ribbon and pink roses. Her only ornament
+     was a solitaire diamond suspended on an invisible platinum chain,
+     and she carried a bouquet of Mme. Chatenay roses.
+
+     Her two little children were the flower-bearers, the tiny Honorable
+     Paul Hadham and the exquisite little Lady Maude Hadham.
+
+     The four bridesmaids, the Misses Winifred Mather, Emma Gay, Lois
+     Twombly, and Frances Iselin, also wore gowns that were a charming
+     combination of white and green. Wide panels of green chiffon fell
+     from the back of the shoulders to the hem of the ankle-length
+     skirts of charmeuse, which disclosed white slippers with large
+     rhinestone buckles. The green chiffon crossed the shoulders in
+     fichu effect, and the elbow-length sleeves were edged with bands of
+     green. Their leghorn hats of brown straw were trimmed with green
+     satin and white chiffon, and faced with black velvet, with upright
+     bows of green at the side. They each carried bouquets of roses,
+     sweet-peas, and field-daisies, tied with pink satin streamers, and
+     their ornaments were locket watches, the gift of the bride.
+
+     The ceremony was performed by the rector of the church, assisted
+     by....
+
+     Twenty-five hundred invitations were sent out for the wedding. The
+     church was quite full, and the residence of the bride's parents,
+     where the wedding reception was held, was crowded to its utmost.
+     Mr. and Mrs. Enslee received congratulations in the Cabot
+     drawing-room. A collation was served in the....
+
+     Some of the wedding-gifts were shown in rooms on the third floor.
+     They were....
+
+     After the reception Mr. and Mrs. Enslee will leave almost
+     immediately for a honeymoon cruise on Mr. Enslee's yacht. They will
+     tour Europe later.
+
+     Among those invited to the wedding were....
+
+The paper dropped from Forbes' hand. The irrevocable was accomplished.
+She was Enslee's, body and soul and name.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+Forbes had not been invited to Persis' wedding. She had debated the
+matter feverishly and resolved that it was the lesser slight to leave
+him out of the twenty-five hundred who received the double-enveloped
+engravings. There was a certain distinction in being omitted, and she
+knew that he could not account it an oversight. She had been tempted to
+write him a letter. She scrawled off a dozen and tore them up in turn.
+What she had to say could not be put on paper. Besides, it would be
+hideously indiscreet.
+
+But Forbes was present in her thoughts. He was the chief wedding guest
+in her soul. He seemed to kneel between her and the groom and try to
+shoulder him away. This added a last terror to the multitude of her
+frights--frights ranging in importance from a fear that she might kneel
+on her veil and pull it askew to nameless terrors of the bridegroom.
+
+There had been a lilt of gaiety in trying on the bridal robe for the
+rehearsals and the posings before the camera. But when she made her
+final entrance into the snowy costume it seemed to be entering into the
+shroud of maidenhood. The journey to the church was like a ride in her
+hearse, only that the progress through the streets was difficult because
+of a crowd so dense that mounted policemen could hardly push and trample
+lane enough for her to reach the awning.
+
+And under the narrow canopy a rabble jostled her and peered into her
+face, even plucked at her robes, as if she had been a French princess on
+her way to the guillotine. The rabble inside the church was hardly less
+insolently inquisitive for being better dressed.
+
+The preliminaries of the march; the whispered instructions and warnings;
+the corrected blunders; the stupidity of her father, made a child by the
+shame that sweeps over a father at delivering his girl-child to a man to
+possess; the sudden grief of her sister, the Countess; Persis' almost
+overpowering tempest of desire to flee from the church and run to Forbes
+for refuge--a whirlpool of emotions and memoranda and impressions.
+
+And then the march beginning, the organ blaring, the ushers setting
+forth, and her sister and the children and the maids of honor; herself
+clinging to her father's arm, which trembled so that she rather
+supported him than he her; the arrival at the altar, where Willie was
+standing, a sick green from church-fright; the waiting priests, the
+rites, the hush of the throng to hear the answers; the strange piping
+tone of Willie's voice; the odd sound of her own.
+
+Now she was filled with a realization of the awe of this great deed, a
+realization so vivid and so new that it seemed to be her first
+understanding of it. While she was kneeling in the prayer her thoughts
+were not soaring aloft, but swirling with thoughts of Forbes and
+memories of his embraces, a sense of his arms clasping her now so that
+she could hardly breathe, a wondering if his eyes and thoughts were on
+her, and where her nightcap was, and a swooning recollection of her cry
+of "Help me, Harvey!" a frightful impulse to leap to her feet and cry
+again to him to help her--then sick shudders at the blasphemy of such
+thoughts amid the sacraments at her husband's side--for Willie was
+already her husband, she wore his ring. He had kissed her. They were
+standing up again. They were signing something. They were leaving the
+church. It was over. It was just beginning. She was no longer her own;
+nor her father's. Her father could not protect her from this man at her
+side. Nobody could. The police and the judges and the laws were drawn
+up to keep her his.
+
+Everybody was congratulating her, everybody was smiling, everybody was
+grinning to think that the marriage was not yet consummated. Back of all
+the gorgeousness and the glitter and the music and the sacrament waited
+the hideous profanation, the grossness, the violation of all that was
+precious and secret and holy.
+
+She had a blurred sense of returning to the carriage and to the house,
+and of the mob there, the clatter of tongues, the price-mark appraisal
+of gifts, the swinish greediness about the buffet, the smirking
+repetition of the same banalities, the lines of drifting hands, the
+faces that floated up like melons on a stream and spoke and sometimes
+kissed her. But what did it matter who kissed her now? They were
+Willie's cheeks and Willie's lips. She was all Willie's, now and for
+evermore.
+
+Eventually, when she was white-mouthed with fatigue and eager to swoon
+out of the pandemonium, some one took pity on her, and she was spirited
+away to her room and her bridal livery taken from her. The weight of the
+veil and the train had been greater than she knew. The blossoms were
+lifted from her head, and in their place a little black straw hat with a
+frill of black tulle was pinned. And in place of her white satin a
+simple Callot gown of sage-green cloth was fastened about her girlhood
+the last time.
+
+She looked to be only a smart young woman, but she was now truly in the
+robe of sacrifice. They whispered about her and called her "Mrs. Enslee"
+with immemorial mischief; but it was still Persis Cabot that slipped
+from the house and met Willie, still a bachelor. They hurried into the
+limousine and sped to that clandestine meeting in the hotel suite where
+they were to tarry till the morrow. And then the yacht was to take them
+on a long cruise across an ocean of bliss to the unknown continent
+beyond the honeymoon.
+
+And now the crowdless silence seemed to ring in her ears. She had heard
+so much noise and suffered so many stares and vibrated to so many
+excitements that the abrupt hush left her dizzy as on the edge of an
+unexpected abyss. It was like one of Beethoven's symphonies, where sound
+is piled on sound and speed on speed till the storm sweeps toward an
+intolerable climax, and just as the thunder and the lightning are to
+come there is instead a complete hush; and then a little oboe voice
+twanging.
+
+She had been swept and spun in a maelstrom, an eternal crash! crash!
+crash! Then suddenly she was alone in a room with this little man. She
+heard the thud of the door like a coffin lid. She heard the lock click;
+she saw him peering at her with a fox-like slyness. He was whipping off
+his coat and waistcoat and fumbling at his scarf. And his words were in
+his whining, oboe voice:
+
+"Well, that's over. And, thank God, I can get out of this damned collar
+before it chokes me!"
+
+That was his first comment on their solitude! But it was better than the
+love speeches he tried to make next.
+
+She sank into a chair; but he was wrapping his arms about her. He was
+trying to say pretty things, and making a complete fiasco. He was
+kissing her with ownership, and she dared not turn her lips from his,
+though all her soul was averted.
+
+He was tugging at her hatpins and pulling her hair naggingly. She rose,
+controlling her impatience, and spoke with a meekness that amazed her:
+
+"Nichette is there. She will--help me."
+
+He grinned peevishly.
+
+"Nichette, eh? I thought we were to be alone--for once? Well, send her
+away--as soon as you can."
+
+He spoke already with command, and she said, with that sick meekness:
+
+"All right, Willie."
+
+She slunk away and was afraid to meet the eyes of Nichette. And even
+Nichette wept at her ministrations. And then she sent Nichette away. At
+the door Nichette paused to stare through eyes of water, then ran back
+and clasped Persis and kissed her, and ran out and closed the door.
+
+And Persis waited for her husband. Her thoughts were bitter. She was
+utterly ashamed. It was not the beautiful shame of a bride whose lover
+knocks at her door. She was understanding her bargain. She had kept
+herself for Willie Enslee. She had fought off lovers and love and fled
+from her own heart that she might be worthy of Willie Enslee and his
+money! Her body was no longer a shrine. She had rented it to the highest
+bidder. And the tenant had arrived.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+
+As Forbes had once surveyed the tide of Fifth Avenue from the upper deck
+of a motor-bus, so now, from a sky-scraping ship he watched the thronged
+traffic along the spacious avenue of the Hudson River and the broad
+plaza of the bay.
+
+Among the tugs, noisy and rowdy as newsboys, the waddling ferry-boats,
+the barges loaded with refuse or freight-trains, the passenger-boats and
+excursion-boats, and the merchantmen from many ports, a few yachts
+picked their way superciliously, their bowsprits like upturned noses,
+their trim white flanks like skirts drawn aside.
+
+Among these yachts, though Forbes was unaware of it, was the _Isolde_,
+known to those who know such things as a ridiculously luxurious craft, a
+floating residence. Persis had christened the yacht at Willie's request,
+and he had accepted the name as a good omen, since he said: "I always
+have a perfect sleep when _Isolde_ is under way."
+
+Persis, herself now an Isolde wedded to one man and loving another,
+passed the famous sky-line which seemed to continue another Palisades,
+only fantastically carved and honeycombed with windows. When these
+cliffs of human fashioning were pulled backward, there was a space of
+dancing water, and then Governor's Island, with its moldy old mouse-trap
+of a fort.
+
+Never dreaming that Forbes was on the liner that had gone down the bay a
+few moments before, Persis fastened her binocular on the island and
+tried to pick him out from among the men whom distance rendered
+lilliputian. She selected some vague promenader and sent him her
+blessings. If he ever received them he never knew whence they came.
+
+Forbes was groping toward her in thought like a wireless telegrapher
+trying to reach another and unable to come to accord. Forbes was
+entering upon the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, and Persis was
+embarking on another sea equally new to her, for marriage is a kind of
+ocean to a woman. Maidens struggle toward it and consecrate themselves
+to it from far inland; they come forth upon the roaring wonder of its
+cathedral music; the surf flings white flowers at their feet. They
+venture farther and encounter the first shocks of the breakers, and
+thereafter the sea lies vast and monotonous with happiness or grief and
+their interchange. But the prosperity of the voyage is less from without
+than from within the boat. Persis was not lucky in the captain she had
+shipped with.
+
+To-day's Persis on the boat was altogether another woman from
+yesterday's Persis. The toil and fever of preparation, the bacchantic
+orgies of purchase, the dressing up, the celebration of the
+festival--these were the joys of the wedding to her, and she had drained
+them to the full. They left her exhausted and sated. The anticipation
+was over, the realization begun.
+
+In some wiser communities the bride and groom separate for a day or two
+after the ceremony. But Persis had no such breathing-space. Persis was
+delivered to Willie Enslee in a state of fagged-out nerves, muscles, and
+brain. To him, however, the weeks of preparation had been a mere
+annoyance, a postponement, a prelude too long, too ornate. And when at
+last the prize was his he found the fact almost intolerably beautiful.
+He possessed Persis Enslee! She had no longer even a name of her own.
+Miss Cabot had been merged into the Enslee Estates.
+
+One does not expect to-day the childlike innocence that was revealed or
+pretended by the brides of other years. Nowadays even their mothers
+"tell them things." And Willie knew that Persis was neither ignorant
+nor ingenuous. Her gossip, the scandal she knew, the books and plays she
+discussed, her sophisticated attitude toward people and life had long
+ago proved that, whatever she might be, she was not without knowledge.
+She knew as much as Mildred Tait, and her talk was nearly as free, but
+always from the cynical, the flippant, or the shocked point of view.
+
+Willie did not expect to initiate an ignoramus into any unheard-of
+mysteries. He expected at most a certain modest reluctance and
+confusion. He was dumfounded to be met with icy horror and shuddering
+recoil. After the first repulse the terror with which she cringed away
+from his caresses enhanced her the more.
+
+He imputed it to a native purity. He believed--and it was true--that she
+had come through all the years and temptations and the dangerous
+environments with her body and her soul somehow protected to this great
+event. It was a kind of purity. But not what he thought it.
+
+Persis' creed--if she had thought much about it--would have been the
+creed of many a woman: that love sanctifies all that it inspires; and
+that unchastity is what Rahel Varnhagen defined it--intercourse without
+love, whether legalized or not.
+
+If Persis had married the man she loved, the man whose touch was like a
+flame, she would still have been terrified; but love would have hallowed
+the conquest, changed fright into ecstasy, and glorified surrender.
+
+Willie's touch had always chilled her clammily. What she saw in his eyes
+now offended her utterly, filled her with loathing and with panic as
+before a violation. But after this first rebellion she regained control
+of her fears and reasoned coldly with herself. When she had said "Yes"
+to Willie's courtship, and when she had made her affirmations in the
+church, she had given him her I. O. U. She was not one to repudiate a
+gambling loss. She forbore resistance, but she could not mimic rapture.
+Yet rapture was part of the bargain. Soul and flesh could not pay the
+obligation her mind had so lightly incurred.
+
+And now it was Enslee that recoiled, strangely smitten with an awe, a
+reverence for her and her integrity. "You are a saint," he murmured, "an
+angel, and I am a brute. You are too good, too wonderful!"
+
+Persis was startled at being treated with reverence. It was perhaps the
+first time she had ever been held sacred. She accepted this tribute in
+lieu of the others, and they left the hotel as they had entered it,
+still bachelor and maid, though they wore the same name.
+
+But she was alone upon the ocean now, and she feared her husband more
+than before. She found him somewhat ridiculous in his uniform, with his
+yachting-cap a trifle top-heavy for his slim skull. Yet he was the
+owner; his flag and his club pennant were fluttering aloft. And Persis
+felt sure that he had repented of his mercy and was ashamed of his
+asceticism.
+
+He ogled her as he paced the unstable deck, and found her more beautiful
+than ever, clad in a trim white suit and curled up in her chair like a
+purring kitten, the sun sifting over her through the awning like a
+golden powder. And he knew that she was his. He paused at her side and
+mellowed her cheek, pinched the lobe of her ear, and pursed his lips to
+kiss her red lips. She winced, then frowned, and shook her head.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded.
+
+"The crew is watching," she explained. And he retorted:
+
+"They expect us to be a little silly, don't they? They'll think it
+stranger if we aren't than if we are, won't they? Even those
+Scandinavian sailors are human."
+
+And so--for the sake of the Scandinavians--she accepted his caresses.
+
+It was such a sarcastic parody of her own code that she laughed aloud.
+She was good sport enough to laugh at herself when the joke was on her.
+
+But it was bitter laughter; and it ended on the margin of hysteria. She
+conquered that--for the sake of the Scandinavians. But she felt
+altogether forlorn, miserably cheap, fooled.
+
+That bitterness of hers embittered Enslee. He felt that he was being
+made ridiculous in the sight of man and God and himself. He remembered
+proverbs about mastership, about women's love of brutality, their
+fondness for being overpowered.
+
+He grew fiercely petulant, sardonic, ugly. He whined and swore and
+muttered. And, finally, to that mood she yielded, feeling herself
+degraded beneath her own contempt.
+
+And now Persis was married and not married. Strange fires were kindled
+and left to smolder sullenly. Unsuspected desires were stirred to mutiny
+and not quelled. Latent ferocities of passion were wakened to terrify
+and torment her. And only now she understood who and what it was she had
+married. Only now she realized what it meant to marry without love and
+to marry for keeps. The vision of her future was unspeakably hideous.
+Her life was already a failure, her career a disaster.
+
+Persis had always loved crowds and the excitement they make. It was only
+with Forbes that she had found contentment in dual solitude, in hours of
+quiet converse, or in mute communion. Next best to being with him was
+being alone, for then she had thoughts of him for company.
+
+Now Forbes was banished from her existence by her own decree. Willie was
+to be her life-fellow for all her days and nights, while her youth
+perished loveless.
+
+And now once more she pined for crowds. Solitude with Willie was an
+alkaline Death Valley without oasis. She grew frantic to be rid of him,
+or, at least, to mitigate him with other companionships. And he who had
+been restlessly unhappy without her found that he could not be happy
+with her, because of the one mad regret that he could not make her love
+him as he loved her.
+
+Mismated and incompatible in every degree, they glared at each other
+like sick wretches in the same hospital ward. The next evening as they
+sat at table in the dining-saloon it came over her that for the rest of
+her days she must see that unbeautiful face opposite her. She felt an
+impulse to scream, to run to the railing and leap overboard, to thwart
+that life-sentence in any possible way. But she kept her frenzy hidden
+in her breast and said, with all the inconsequence she could assume:
+
+"To-morrow they'll be playing the first international polo game."
+
+Even Willie heard the shiver of longing in the tone. It meant that the
+honeymoon was already boring her. His heart broke, but all he said was:
+
+"Er--yes--I believe it is to-morrow. Like to go?"
+
+"Oh no," she murmured. "I was just thinking what a splendid sight it
+will be. Everybody will be there, I suppose."
+
+"Er--yes--I suppose so."
+
+She lighted her third cigarette since the soup, and, rising from the
+table, drifted to the piano clamped to the walls of the drawing-room.
+Her mind was far off, and her fingers, left to themselves, stumbled
+through a disjointed chaos of melodies from nocturnes to tangos and
+back.
+
+Willie stood it as long as he could, then his torment broke out in a cry
+more tragic than its words:
+
+"For God's sake play something or quit."
+
+She quit.
+
+She walked to a porthole and stared out at the dark waves shuffling past
+like stampeding cattle.
+
+He apologized at once. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I apologize."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," she sighed, with doleful graciousness. But when
+he knelt by her and put his arm around her she slipped from his clasp
+and went out on the deck. He followed her. But neither of them spoke.
+
+The moon on the sea spread a pathway of dancing white tiles. She wanted
+to run away, to step forth on that fantastic pavement and follow it out
+of the world.
+
+To Forbes, on a distant ship in midocean the same moon was spreading the
+same path straight to him. He stared into its shifting glamour till his
+eyes were bewitched. He could see Persis walking on the water in the
+boudoir cap and the shimmering thing she wore that morning.
+
+They were thinking of each other, longing for each other, and the space
+between them was widening every moment.
+
+It came over Persis with maddening vividness that she had made a ruin of
+her happiness. All the wealth was nothing but mockery. Even the hats and
+the multitudes of dresses were wasted splendor, weapons of conquest to
+be left in an armory.
+
+The night grew more and more wonderful. The moon was like a white face
+flung back with unappeased desire. The wind across the waves tugged
+amorously at her hair and whimpered and caressed her. And she was with
+Willie Enslee, the unlovable, the hideously uninteresting, the
+intolerable. She was handcuffed to Willie Enslee for life.
+
+The ache of longing that thrilled the night world thrilled Enslee's
+heart, too; and he crept close to her, his adoration, his wife, the only
+soul on earth he deeply loved. He set his cheek against hers and
+clenched her in his arms fiercely. And immediately he encountered that
+hopeless antipathy, though all she said was a faintly petulant "Don't,
+please!"
+
+It struck him in the face like a little fist. He moved aloof from her in
+abject humiliation and thought hard, took out a cigarette, tapped it on
+the back of his hand, puffed restlessly, threw the cigarette over the
+rail, and a moment later took out another. There was no need for words.
+The air throbbed with Persis' detestation of the voyage. The
+sailing-master passed. Willie called to him:
+
+"Svendsen!"
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+"Put about and make for home."
+
+"I beg pardon, sir."
+
+"You heard!"
+
+"Aye, aye, sir."
+
+The commands were given in the distance, a bell rang remotely in the
+engine-room, and the stars wheeled across the sky as the yacht came
+round.
+
+The phosphorescent sea revealed the wake they had plowed in a long
+straight furrow of white fire, and now there was a sharp curve in the
+line. And shortly they were paralleling its dimming radiance.
+
+They were bound for home. The mere thought of the word brought a tragic
+chuckle from Enslee's heart. Home was a word he could not hope to use.
+Home was a thing he must do without.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+
+Persis was sorry for her husband, but just a trifle sorrier for Persis.
+She solaced herself with the thought that it was partly for Willie's own
+sake that she consented to go back, since if she stayed out in that
+solitude with him any longer she would go mad and jump overboard. And he
+would not like that in the least. A bride in town would be worth two in
+the ocean. Besides, a suicide on a honeymoon would be sure to cause a
+fearful scandal. She could imagine the head-lines.
+
+Willie was a darling to yield so easily. It showed her how much he loved
+her--also how meekly he obeyed her. That is always an important question
+to settle. Perhaps it is what honeymoons are for--training-stations in
+which husbands are broken to harness and taught to answer a mere
+chirrup; it saves the whip.
+
+But the comfort Persis took in finding that her husband was her
+messenger-boy ended as they came up the bay again. She suddenly realized
+that for Willie and her to be seen at the polo games, when they had so
+ostentatiously set out on their honeymoon only two days before, would
+provoke a landslide of gossip. Everybody on earth would be at the polo
+games, and she and Willie could not hope to escape attention. They would
+be ridiculed to death behind their backs and to their faces. Therefore
+they must not go.
+
+She explained this to Willie, and he shook his head and broke out,
+peevishly:
+
+"Why the bally hell didn't you think of all this in the first place?"
+
+"In the first place, Willie," said Persis, "you are the man of the
+family, and supposed to do the thinking. In the second place, I won't be
+sworn at."
+
+"I wasn't swearing at you, my love. I was just swearing. Well, if you
+don't want to go to the polo games, where in--where do you want to
+go--up to the country place?"
+
+Here was a problem. She was sure that she did not want to be alone in a
+country house with Willie. That would be worse than the yacht. Since she
+could not endure either to be alone with him or to go among crowds with
+him, the dilemma was perfect. Already there was another incompatibility
+established.
+
+She was mad for diversion, and, being herself a polo player of no small
+prowess, she was frantic to see the effort of the British team to wrest
+back the trophy. But a stronger passion still was the determination to
+evade gossip.
+
+She and Willie, therefore, sneaked from their yacht to their house in
+town. They astounded the servants, and there was much scurrying and
+whisking.
+
+They dined together alone, though Persis was eager to be in a restaurant
+where there was music. She was like a child kept in after school. She
+flattened her nose against a window-pane and stared out at life. After
+dinner the prospect of an evening with Willie rendered her desperate.
+They could at least go to the theater somewhere. Nobody was in town;
+they would be quite unnoticed. But when nobody is in town the theaters
+close up. There was nothing they had not seen or had not been warned
+against. Willie proposed a roof-garden--Hammerstein's.
+
+They went, and beheld a chimpanzee that rode various bicycles, smoked a
+cigar expertly, and spat with amazing fidelity to the technique of the
+super-ape; also a British peeress who danced in less clothes than the
+chimpanzee wore.
+
+Ten Eyck was there. He tried to hide from Persis and Willie, not
+because he was ashamed to be seen by them, but because he was afraid
+that Persis and Willie would not want to be seen by him. He had
+cherished no illusions for the success of the match on its sentimental
+side, but he had expected them to see the honeymoon through. He kept out
+of their sight, but they stumbled on him during the intermission, when
+the audience crowded into a space at the back of the roof where a
+patient cow was milked by electricity at an uncowly hour, and where
+couples rowed boats up and down an almost microscopic lake.
+
+Ten Eyck had not expected Persis and Willie to join this hot and foolish
+mob. But he felt a hand seize his arm. He turned and looked into Persis'
+eyes. She welcomed him as a rescuer, but it was Willie that urged him to
+sit with them. Ten Eyck's hesitation was misconstrued by Persis. She
+said:
+
+"Perhaps he is--er--not alone."
+
+"Oh yes, I am," Ten Eyck hastened to say. "I'll join you." And he went
+with them to an upper box. Even Ten Eyck felt a little shy.
+
+Persis and Willie knew what he was thinking, and they were like a pair
+of youngsters caught spooning. Only their misdemeanor was that they had
+been caught not spooning. Ten Eyck ventured to speak.
+
+"So the penance is over already? I thought you two doves were still on
+the ark."
+
+"We are, officially," said Persis.
+
+Ten Eyck wanted to help them out, so he said:
+
+"What's the matter? Did the yacht puncture a tire or lose a shoe or--"
+
+Willie attempted to carry along the idea by saying:
+
+"It was trouble with the sparker." And he did not understand why Persis
+blushed and Ten Eyck blurted.
+
+They were rescued from this personal confusion by what would have thrown
+any audience into a panic ten years before and now was greeted almost
+with apathy: the appearance of the British peeress in a costume that
+was hardly more than Eve wore after the eviction. A gauzy shift was all
+she had on, with a few wisps of chiffon as opaque as cigarette-smoke.
+Shoulders, arms, and all of both legs were as bare as her face.
+
+No policeman interfered, and not a sermon had been preached against her.
+Nudity had lost its novelty, and her posturings and curvetings were
+regarded with as academic a calm as if she were a trick pony or an
+acrobat. There was much laughter later when a male comedian burlesqued
+her, with a bosom composed of two toy balloons, one of which escaped,
+and one of which exploded when he fell on it.
+
+"I think this age will go down in history as the return to nature," Ten
+Eyck said, struggling for some impersonal topic. "Women in and out of
+vaudeville have left off more and more of their concealments, till the
+only way a woman can arouse suspicion now is by keeping something on.
+And I can't see that we are any worse--or any better. An onion is an
+onion, no matter how many skins it has on or off. We'll see
+bathing-suits on Fifth Avenue next season."
+
+He did not know that the next season was to bring a sudden revolution
+and divert women from disclosure to the covering of their bodies with
+chaotic fabrics till they resembled dry-goods counters in disarray.
+
+Philosophizing did not interest Willie. He came always back to the
+individual. By and by he wrestled with silence, and asked:
+
+"Er--whatever became of that--er--soldier you brought up to the farm?
+Stupid solemn fella--Ward--or Lord--or something?"
+
+"Forbes, you mean?" said Ten Eyck, taking pains not to look at Persis.
+But he could feel her eager attention in the sudden check of her fan.
+
+"That's it--Forbes. Still at Ellis Island--or is it Ward's?"
+
+"Governor's," said Ten Eyck. "He's been made military attache at the
+French Embassy. Sailed for Paris the other day with Senator
+Tait--and--and Mildred."
+
+Persis' whole body seemed to clench itself like a hand. But Willie,
+everlastingly oblivious to significant things, driveled on:
+
+"Paris, eh? Racing season's on over there now. How'd you like to run
+across for the Grand Prix, Persis?"
+
+"Paris is a nice place," said Persis, with a mystic veil about her
+voice.
+
+And now Ten Eyck looked at her. Their eyes met. His were angry, and hers
+fell before their prophetic ire. She stammered a little as she said:
+
+"I like London better. We could make the Royal Cup at Ascot if we
+hurried. My sister could take care of us in the country."
+
+But Ten Eyck slapped his knees impatiently, glared at her, and growled:
+
+"Bluffer! Good night!"
+
+And he was gone without shaking hands.
+
+"What did he mean by bluffer?" said Enslee. "Doesn't he like your
+sister?"
+
+"Apparently not," said Persis. "And he used to be crazy about her. She
+threw him overboard for 'Kelly.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+
+Willie had arranged for supper at home. As they left the theater and
+sped through the streets crowded with uncharacteristic mobs Persis
+thought longingly of the tango-hunts she had indulged in during the past
+season. But there was no one to dance with her now. And she realized
+that she would be impossibly conspicuous as a cafe-hunting bride with a
+husband who abhorred this whole chapter in the chronicle of diversion.
+
+Alone with Willie in the Enslee palace, which Ten Eyck described as "a
+sublime junk-shop," Persis was oppressed to melancholia. The air that
+came in at the windows had a mournful breath. The peculiar aversion for
+the city, that overtakes New-Yorkers in the late spring seized her and
+shook her. The mansions neighborly to theirs were boarded up now, with
+only a caretaker's window alight here and there. There was nobody even
+to summon by telephone as a rescuing third party to make a crowd out of
+the appallingly tiresome duet with Willie.
+
+"This town is a cemetery," she exclaimed, as she quenched her eighth
+cigarette stump. "Opening a house here now is like opening a grave in
+Woodlawn at midnight. You've got to take me away or leave me in
+Bloomingdale."
+
+"What about Paris?" Willie suggested.
+
+She remembered Ten Eyck's eyes, and said, "Let's make it London."
+
+"I'll get what I can to-morrow. You wouldn't like to cross in the
+yacht?" he asked, haughtily. "_Isolde's_ all right in the ugliest
+weather."
+
+She shook her head violently, and yawned and spoke so eloquently of her
+fatigue that he slunk away to his own room.
+
+The next day he set his secretary to work running down a berth on a
+steamer. Everything seemed to be gone. People whom the panicky times had
+reduced from wealth to anxiety were crossing the ocean to places where
+they could economize without ostentation. The final report was that the
+only suitable berth was the imperial suite on the new _Imperator_.
+
+"Did you grab it?" said Willie. The secretary shook his head.
+
+"Why the devil didn't you?" Willie snapped.
+
+"They ask five thousand dollars for it."
+
+Even Willie winced at this. "I don't want it for a year," he groaned.
+"Just one voyage."
+
+"It has a private deck, a drawing-room, two bath-rooms, two servants'
+rooms--"
+
+The "private deck" decided Willie; but when he told Persis he laid
+stress on the price he paid; not from any braggart motive, but as a
+pathetic sort of courtship.
+
+Persis smiled a little. It was something. But when she found the private
+deck she took pains to invite other passengers she knew to make it their
+own piazza. Among the passengers were Mrs. Neff and Alice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After Persis had thwarted Alice's elopement with Stowe Webb the boy had
+been tempted to go to Mrs. Neff and plead with her to withdraw her ban,
+seeing that he was now a man of affairs with an assured income. But he
+imagined what she would say when she asked him the amount of that
+income; and he imagined her smile. She did not have to ridicule his
+fortune. The sum itself was so petty that it ridiculed itself.
+
+He and Alice had met clandestinely a few times at the houses of friends,
+but both were young and both were timid, and their friends were cynical
+with discouragement. Alice wanted to go to watch him off at the dock,
+but had not dared, and only sent him a tear-blotted steamer letter. And
+while he was down in his state-room reading it she was locked in her
+pink-and-white virginal chamber crying her blue eyes crimson on her bed.
+She never spoke of him to her mother, and Mrs. Neff did not know what
+had become of him.
+
+So the two child-lovers pined away. New York became a deserted village
+to Alice, and Stowe found the ocean a congenial waste, for he felt in
+his breast an Atlantic loneliness. Nor was Paris less sad; its
+allurements were only thorns; he felt that he must be true to his little
+wife-to-be, and it seemed that even to indulge in the more innocent
+gaieties would belie his desolation.
+
+Then Mrs. Neff grew just a trifle too shrewd. Noting that Alice never
+spoke of Stowe Webb, she made up her crafty old mind that the two young
+wretches were meeting secretly. Since nothing happened at all, she all
+too cleverly decided that something was about to happen, and resolved to
+nip the passion-flower in the bud. She read Alice a long curtain-lecture
+on the perfection with which children obeyed their parents when she was
+young, then dilated on the advantages of European travel in broadening
+the mind, and drew such a glowing portrait of her own benevolence in
+offering Alice the opportunity of going abroad that the girl began to
+foresee what was coming, and what real motive was actuating her mother.
+By the time Mrs. Neff arrived at the heartbreaking news that she was
+about to drag Alice off to Paris the simple child was able to dissemble
+her ecstasy and give a convincing portrayal of a daughter who would
+rather go anywhere on earth than to France. Like Br'er Rabbit, she
+pleaded not to be thrown into the briar-patch of all places. So she was
+thrown into the briar-patch. Alice was on her way to Paris.
+
+She took Persis into her confidence, and Persis found a dreary pleasure
+in the joke. She even forbore to warn Alice against the folly of
+marrying into poverty. She was not so satisfied with her own triumph as
+to recommend her example to others.
+
+There was, as there will always be, a certain joy in having the best and
+the most expensive things of every sort. But there was, as there will
+always be, a disappointment in getting by merely wishing or commanding;
+especially as the fairy gift of wishes has always carried a few
+amendments: "You may have anything you wish for except--" Whereupon the
+"excepts" become the only things sincerely wishable.
+
+Persis found London at the height of its June festivity. The President
+of France was visiting the King of England, and there were state
+banquets and state balls and state everything, mingled with private
+celebrations that rivaled them in pomp; and a horse-show, and
+horse-races, regimental polo tournaments; the annual hysterical
+wholesale celebration of nothing in particular.
+
+Many of Persis' school-girl friends were duchesses, countesses,
+marchionesses, mere ladies. Lady Crainleigh, whom Persis had once beaten
+in a potato-race at a country horse-show in Westchester, gave a dance
+where seven hundred guests were present and where titles were as common
+as pebbles on a shore. Persis wore her "all-around" diamond crown, and
+danced with a Russian grand-duke and a prince or two.
+
+The tango and the turkey-trot had spread overseas, and royalties trod on
+Persis' toes as they bungled the steps like yokels. It was fantastic to
+hear the trashy tunes of American music-halls resounding through the
+ballrooms of mansions and palatial hotels.
+
+At the Royal Ascot the Queen sent a duke to fetch Persis to the royal
+box, and spoke amiably of her sister.
+
+But, however Persis glittered abroad, when the inevitable time came to
+become mere woman and go to bed, she must always return to the nagging
+presence of Willie, infatuated the more by the inaccessible distances
+her soul kept from his.
+
+With his harrowed face, his unwelcome caresses, his unanswerable prayers
+for a little love, he ceased to be tragic. He became a pest.
+
+Persis was learning wherein wealth, as well as poverty, has its
+poverties, its nauseas, its petty annoyances, its daily denials, its
+hair-cloth shirts.
+
+She began to feel that if she had married Forbes and made her own
+clothes she could not have grown wearier than she grew from putting on
+and taking off the complicated harnesses devised by intoxicated
+dressmakers.
+
+Sometimes she declared that she would rather trim one bonnet and wear it
+the rest of her life than try on any more of the works of the mad
+hatters of Europe.
+
+And what mockery her splendor was!--for the ulterior purpose of
+gorgeousness is love. Humanity has stretched its mating season
+throughout the whole year, but the meaning of bright plumage remains an
+invitation to courtship, a more or less disguised advertisement:
+"Behold, I am ready. I am desirable!"
+
+Persis was dressing herself up for yesterday's party. Men courted her
+still, slyly and disgustingly, but she felt herself insulted by the
+adventure, degraded by the implications. Whatever other faults she had,
+Persis was not promiscuous. There was nothing of the female rake in her
+nature. She was meant to be loved by many and to love one. Her heart had
+selected its one among the ones; but the hand had married elsewhere.
+There was great danger for her soul if she did not meet that One. And
+greater danger if she did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+
+Paris and London were like two rival circuses bidding for the public,
+beating tom-toms, blowing horns, and sending out band-wagons and
+parades. While Persis was wearying of the English side-shows, Forbes was
+tiring of the French. The wounds Persis had inflicted on his heart and
+his pride were still fresh and bleeding. The fever had not left him. At
+the thought of her, or the sight of her name frequently in the daily
+papers, or her portrait in the illustrated papers, the scarlet shame of
+his defeat still ran across his brow, still the hunger for her gripped
+him, regret sickened him.
+
+Senator Tait had not enjoyed the progress of his conspiracy. For
+secretary he had taken Stowe Webb, who moved about like an immature
+Hamlet with a heart draped in black. For military attache he had brought
+Forbes, whose thoughts flew backward to the past instead of scouting
+ahead. For acting ambassadress he had brought a daughter who, though
+torn away from her New York charities, found new miseries to engage her
+everywhere. Even on the ship she had sought distress--in the stokehold,
+in the steerage and the second cabin. Instead of holding hands in
+moonlit nooks and funnel-corners, she was taking up purses, sterilizing
+milk for sick babies, and selling tickets for a benefit concert.
+
+Forbes admired Mildred profoundly, but he preferred his own sorrows to
+the woes she discovered in other people. Mildred liked Forbes immensely,
+in a motherly, elder-sisterly, trained-nursish way. But of love between
+them there was no visible trace.
+
+Tait grew fonder and fonder of Forbes as a son, but he could not
+contrive him as a son-in-law. The mating of human hearts, he found, was
+a task beyond diplomacy or politics. He wondered if he would have more
+success in promoting affection between America and France, the two
+republics that made each other possible. He wished that he had never
+undertaken any of his tasks. He felt old, ill, tired. He had agreed to
+take over the Embassy on the fifth of July. Hardly more than a week
+remained of his freedom, and that week was the big week of the year--the
+_grande semaine_.
+
+He did not know that other dangers lurked in ambush ahead of himself.
+Mrs. Neff, ignorant of Stowe Webb's office, had come straight to Paris
+from the _Imperator_, bound to expose Alice again to the Senator's
+inspection. More dangerous yet was Winifred Mather. Tait had been warned
+of Mrs. Neff, but not of Winifred.
+
+The heavy times in Wall Street had played havoc with Bob Fielding's
+means and with his spirits. The gradual jolting down and down of values,
+and the buying public's desertion of the market left the Stock Exchange
+like a neglected billiard parlor, where in the absence of customers the
+professionals played against one another--for points.
+
+Bob Fielding was so big that when he was happy he was a Falstaff, but
+when he was unhappy he was a whale ashore. Winifred liked him happy. She
+grew weary of her blue Behemoth and began to think again of Senator
+Tait. She reasoned that he really needed a wife; it was a handicap to
+the Embassy to have only an elder daughter to run its social branch,
+especially such a daughter as Mildred, with her exasperating to-morrow's
+virtues and her last year's clothes. Winifred felt it her patriotic duty
+to marry the Embassy over.
+
+She had a widowed sister in Paris, Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe. With her as
+complotter and under her aegis Winifred attacked Senator Tait in a
+campaign so skilfully arranged under so many disguises that Tait was
+left hardly a minute to himself. All his invitations included Forbes
+and Mildred and young Stowe Webb.
+
+At one of them, a night fete in Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe's house in the Rue
+de Monceau, with musicians in Persian costume playing in the garden
+under the illuminated trees, Mrs. Neff and Alice were included unbeknown
+to Winifred. She was aghast at the tactical mistake, and she was curt
+enough when Alice, hastening as usual in one direction and looking in
+another, ran into her.
+
+"Oh, it's you Alice. How are you? I didn't know you were in Paris.
+Followed the Senator over, I suppose."
+
+"I suppose so," said Alice. "Did you?"
+
+"Where's your mother?"
+
+"She's probably looking for me. I hope she doesn't find me. Have you
+seen Stowe?"
+
+"Somewhere," said Winifred, with a perceptible thaw. "Does your mother
+know he's here?"
+
+"If she did, should I be here?" Alice giggled, and laughter bubbled from
+Winifred, too. It continued with increase as Alice went on: "The Senator
+and I have come to a perfect understanding. He knows I don't love him,
+and that I do love Stowe. He gave Stowe his job as a starter to get me
+with. Yes, he did! My awful mother, of course, is always conspiring to
+leave the Senator alone with me. Sends us driving and Louvre-ing
+together. Well, that angel man, the Senator, just waits till mama is
+safely out of sight, then he notifies Stowe and goes away about his
+business and leaves us together."
+
+"Oh, then the Senator's devotion for you is all for Stowe's sweet sake?"
+and there was a rapturous little break in Winifred's voice.
+
+"Of course. Isn't he an angel?"
+
+"He is, indeed!" said Winifred, with a sigh of relief so deep that Alice
+stared at her in surprise and exclaimed:
+
+"Why, do you really want him?"
+
+Winifred bridled as proudly as she could, but Alice only gasped:
+"Heavens! here comes that awful mother of mine. Don't give me away!"
+And she fled from tree to tree.
+
+There was small risk that Winifred would violate the secret left with
+her, and she greeted Mrs. Neff with an unprecedented smile when she
+swept into the arbor and found there the last person on earth she would
+have wished to see.
+
+"Why, it's Winifred Mather!" was her undeniable affirmation. "So you are
+in Paris!"
+
+"Yes, dear. Did you bring dear Alice to Paris with you?"
+
+"I was just going to ask if you had seen her."
+
+Winifred lied with the glibness of long training:
+
+"No, indeed. But I'd love to. Let's look for her."
+
+And she took Mrs. Neff's sharp elbow in her fat hand, and led her in the
+wrong direction. A moment later she whirled her away from an alley of
+roses where Stowe Webb was blundering along in such eager search of
+Alice that he would have walked into her mother but for Winifred's
+alertness as a chauffeuse.
+
+"She's here somewhere," Mrs. Neff was saying as her eyes ransacked the
+glittering crowd. "I snatched her away from America to keep her from the
+possibility of meeting that young Webb."
+
+"What a very clever idea!" said Winifred, and she began to laugh so
+helplessly that Mrs. Neff grew suspicious. But having no clue to work
+on, she changed the subject:
+
+"Persis and Willie are here, I see."
+
+"Are they? I telegraphed the dear girl an invitation, but I was afraid
+she was stuck in London."
+
+"She came over for the _Prix des Drags_ to-morrow."
+
+"How does the poor child look after--after honeymooning with Willie;
+Heaven help her!--and him!"
+
+"She looks--oh, of course, she's still our dear beautiful Persis, but
+Willie, of course, is the same dear little dam-phool. Alice's maid, the
+Irish one, said Persis looked like her heart was dead in her, the
+creature. She had it from his man that Willie and she get along like
+the monkey and the parrot. But, of course, one can't listen to
+servants."
+
+"No, of course not; though God knows what we'd do for news without 'em."
+
+As they entered the house Mrs. Neff saw Forbes. He was in his military
+full dress, and he was standing alone in a reverie. He was as solitary
+in the crowd as if he were a statue on a battle-field gazing through
+eyes of bronze.
+
+"There's our little snojer man," said Winifred.
+
+"So it is," said Mrs. Neff, struggling toward him through a sort of
+panic of complexly moving groups. "How is the dear boy? Paris has swept
+him off his feet, eh?"
+
+"He's the melancholiest man here--the ghost of the boulevards."
+
+"It's too bad," said Mrs. Neff. "He was the man for Persis." She reached
+his side, took his hand, and laughed up into his face. He came out of a
+dream and stared at her foggily, then answered the warm clench of her
+little fingers. She said:
+
+"And what are you staring at so hard?--Mrs. Enslee?"
+
+He started at the name--"Mrs. Enslee?"
+
+"Yes, Persis. You haven't forgotten her so soon?"
+
+"Oh no, of course not. But she isn't here?"
+
+"Oh yes, she is, with her brand-new husband."
+
+"Really," he said, trying to sound casual, though the warning of her
+nearness frightened him and put his heart to its paces.
+
+"I'll never forgive you for not marrying her after you flirted with her
+so dreadfully."
+
+"Did I?" he laughed, wretchedly. "And you say she's in Paris?"
+
+"She's right behind you."
+
+Forbes felt as a man feels when some one says, "There's a rattlesnake
+just back of you." He became an automaton of wax and turned slowly as on
+a creaking pivot. Yes, there she was. Persis had just come in with her
+husband. The news, and the presence of the man at her side, sent a
+shudder through Forbes. The Enslees had happened upon Ambassador Tait,
+and Forbes could see that the old man was struggling hard to be decently
+polite to them.
+
+Persis caught sight of Forbes, and her beautiful brows went up as she
+smiled. He had an intuition that her look was an appeal for mercy. Then
+she moved on with Willie, to lay off her cloak.
+
+Tait, glancing about, saw Forbes and came to him at once. Mrs. Neff,
+seeing him, forgot the study she was making of Forbes' emotions. She
+demanded of Tait: "Have you seen Alice? I hoped she was with you."
+
+"No, I haven't seen her to-night," he answered guilelessly, forgetting
+his role in his excitement.
+
+"Then I must look for her. Come along, Winifred. I can't run about
+alone."
+
+Winifred did not want to come along, but Mrs. Neff did not intend to
+leave the Senator in her clutches. She ran her arm through Winifred's
+and dragged her away.
+
+Then Tait took Forbes by the arm and spoke with a curious sick
+thickness: "Let's get out into the air a minute."
+
+Forbes was alarmed by his tone and by the prominence of the veins about
+his forehead and throat. They walked into the garden filled with soft
+lantern lights like luminous flowers, the moon over all and the
+strangely zestful air of Paris like an intoxicant. The orchestra in the
+garden was just finishing a tune, and the orchestra in the house was
+just beginning an American tango played with a marked French accent.
+They found a marble seat in a green niche where it was yet too early for
+flirts to be found.
+
+"Well, Harvey, she's here--that damned woman--and her toy husband."
+
+Forbes smarted under the hatred the man he loved bore for the woman he
+loved, and when the Ambassador, trying to be cheerful, spoke hopefully,
+"But, then, that flame has smoldered out, hasn't it?" Forbes only
+sighed:
+
+"Oh, I think so--I hope so!"
+
+"What's this? What's this?" Tait gasped. "Are you still at her
+mercy--_her_ mercy?"
+
+Forbes made a gesture of distress: "I don't know! The thought of her has
+never left me. The sight of her again hurts like the bullet I got in
+that first brush with the Spanish. And she doesn't look happy. There was
+a shadow over her."
+
+"There ought to be," Tait grumbled. "She's a cold-blooded, mercenary,
+calculating--"
+
+"Don't!" Forbes pleaded, but the old man raged on.
+
+"She sold herself to a man she didn't love. She's to blame for--"
+
+"The older I grow," Forbes interposed, "the less I feel that people
+deserve either blame or praise for being what they are or doing what
+they do."
+
+"Don't waste your pity on her; she had none for you."
+
+"It's not pity--it's--"
+
+Tait clapped his hand to his left side and choked back a cry of
+distress. Forbes turned to him with an exclamation of alarm. "You ought
+to see your doctor."
+
+Tait shook his head: "No, he'd only swear at me for disobeying him. I'm
+all right--if I can only avoid any excitement. Been going a little too
+hard. It's that damned dilated heart of mine. The doctor said I ought to
+be in bed to-night."
+
+"Why did you come here then?"
+
+"Oh, young Webb was afraid that Alice's mother would drag her home if
+she knew I was not about. But I'm a fool. This life is killing me. I
+ought to run down to Vichy or Evian for a few days."
+
+"Yes; you mustn't delay any further."
+
+"I'll go if you'll come with me, Harvey. For one thing, it will get you
+away from that woman."
+
+"Oh, there's no danger from her," said Forbes. "She's married now."
+
+Tait shrugged his shoulders: "That's when a woman is most dangerous.
+Young girls tied to their mother's apron-strings are risky enough, the
+Lord knows, but when a woman unhappily married meets an old lover who is
+still unmarried--humph, the weather doesn't last long as a topic of
+conversation. You come along with me."
+
+Forbes felt doubly humiliated by his position. "I don't like the idea of
+running away from a woman."
+
+"You're good enough soldier to know that there are times when it is
+cowardly not to run away. Do we go to Evian-les-Bains?"
+
+"Yes. To-morrow, if you wish."
+
+"Good! And I want you to promise not to see that woman at all to-night.
+There are a lot of sharp eyes about, and the gossips can work up a big
+trade on a very small capital. Will you promise?"
+
+"You are needlessly worried."
+
+"Harvey, I never believed in playing with fire. I haven't asked you many
+favors. Will you grant me this one?"
+
+Forbes was almost filial in his obedience: "Why, of course I promise not
+to meet her if I can avoid it."
+
+"Good!" Tait rose to his feet with some difficulty. He was weak and
+shaken with premonitions. When a man's heart races and misses fire he is
+filled with dismay. He paused to lay his hands on Forbes' shoulders and
+plead as if for forgiveness for his solicitude. "Harvey, you may think
+I'm an old fool, but if you didn't run away from this danger, in after
+years you might have been sorry that you didn't."
+
+"I understand," said Forbes. "God bless you, I appreciate it. I shall
+always be grateful for all you've done for me."
+
+"I've done nothing but make a crutch of you, used you to fill the place
+of my own boy. If only you could--but we won't talk of her. But if
+anything happens to me--"
+
+"Nothing is going to happen to you."
+
+"I know that, but if anything should, I--I want you to promise to take
+care of Mildred. She'll have money enough--and so will you. I've fixed
+that--but--she'll need somebody to--well, we'll talk it over at Evian.
+Let's go, home."
+
+He moved on, leaning heavily on Forbes, but Winifred, seeing him about
+to escape, pounced on him and led him away in search of an imaginary
+diplomat.
+
+Forbes, left alone, sank again on the marble bench, a prey to his
+thoughts. He felt that if he waited in this semi-obscurity he would not
+be discovered by Persis.
+
+But she was hunting for him. She had eluded Willie, and appeared in the
+garden just as the Ambassador was being haled away. She paused to wait
+for Forbes to be alone, and at that moment her husband regained her
+side; she heard his voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+
+"I say, Persis, I lost track of you in that ghastly mob. I'm sorry. By
+the way, wasn't that tall fella in the uniform the same Lieutenant
+What's-his-name that was honeying around Mrs. Neff?"
+
+Persis was in too fierce a mood to continue that nonsense. She turned on
+Willie as a she-wolf turns on a terrier at her heels:
+
+"Oh, Lord! Can't I escape you for a moment? Do go somewhere and smoke
+something. Or if the worst comes to the worst, drink something; but
+don't stand there making green eyes at me like an ape."
+
+"Green eyes like an ape!" he echoed, stupidly. "Well, I'll be--" Then an
+unusual vigor of wrath stirred him. "Look here, Persis, I won't have you
+make fun of me. Everybody else laughs at me, even for winning you. They
+think you've made a fool of me, and they think you couldn't have married
+me except for my money. I don't suppose it could be love--nobody ever
+did love me. But whatever it was that made you marry me, you did marry
+me, and, by gad, you've got to remember it."
+
+"There's no danger of my forgetting that," Persis snapped, frantic lest
+Forbes escape her. "Don't be odious! Don't make me hate you."
+
+Willie grew the more fierce. "Well, I'd rather have you hate me than
+make a fool of me. I won't be laughed at--I won't."
+
+Persis groaned with repugnance: "Oh, you've ceased to be a laughing
+matter to me, Willie."
+
+Willie was about to reply in kind, but he gave her a long look and,
+seeing how beautiful she was, grew more tender. "Everything seems to
+have ceased to be a laughing matter to you, Persis. What has come over
+you? Before we were married you were always laughing--at everything,
+everybody. I used to love to watch you. Even when you guyed me I didn't
+much mind--because there was fun in it. I used to say I'd give
+everything I possessed just to have you about, and see the world through
+your eyes. But from the time we were married you quit laughing. Hang it
+all, I married you to cheer me up a bit. What in Heaven's name has
+changed you?"
+
+Before this weakness she relented a little. "Oh, nothing has changed me.
+Don't worry about me. I'm just a trifle bored with life."
+
+"I've bought you everything you asked for, haven't I?" he asked. "Gad,
+your dressmaker's bills were enough. But the minute a gown came home you
+sickened of it. You tired of the theater, of the opera, of dancing. When
+I took you to the Royal Ascot you yawned as the horses came down the
+stretch. I bought you three new automobiles, and when we came down from
+Dieppe to Paris at a million miles an hour the pace scared me cold, but
+you--you went to sleep."
+
+"It was soothing," she smiled.
+
+"Soothing? Gad! do you want a bally flying-machine?"
+
+"If it could take me to another planet."
+
+Never dreaming how eager she was to be rid of him, he tried to please
+her in every manner save the one sure method of going away. He grew
+desperate: "Isn't there anything you want that money can buy?"
+
+"I don't want anything that money can buy," was her dreary confession.
+Somehow he seemed at last to understand.
+
+"I suppose you're just tired of me," he sighed--"everlasting me. I must
+be a nuisance to you. Lord knows I am to myself!"
+
+She looked at him with suddenly gentler eyes. In contemning himself he
+was commending himself. The best approach to a human tribunal, as to a
+divine, is a humble and a contrite heart. She put out her hand to him,
+but he did not see it; he set off to find some one to lead him to a
+Scotch highball. And Persis, now that she was rid of him, was free to
+glide forward to the marble bench, where she could see Forbes half
+concealed in a grotto of shadow and a mood of gloom.
+
+The thought of what she was about to do gave her pause. She realized the
+atrocity of attempting to keep Forbes in mind when she had taken such
+solemn vows so publicly. She must be kinder to Willie. She tried to
+dismiss her conscience by telling herself that it would be childish to
+run away from Forbes. She caught sight of Mrs. Neff hovering about with
+the recaptured Alice. She dreaded what interpretation Mrs. Neff would
+put upon her appearance in the environs of Forbes. She remembered with
+what fierce criticism she had always met the slightest indiscretions of
+other married women.
+
+A wife's progress must be along a tight wire, and she must walk it
+exactly. The least step aside attracts attention and invites disaster
+like the inaccuracy of a Blondel crossing Niagara and carrying a man on
+his shoulders.
+
+Persis hesitated, breathing hard with enormous excitement over so small
+a matter. While she hesitated an Italian duke who had been a little too
+gracious in London approached her like an erect cobra. Her skin crawled
+at his manner. Yet he had no worse motive than she was dallying with.
+
+Before she could exquisitely make it clear to him that with all due
+deference she despised him, she saw Senator Tait hurrying toward Forbes,
+greeting hastily those who stopped him and thredding the increasingly
+mucilaginous crowd till he reached Forbes' side. Then the two men made
+their way out beyond the intervening mass.
+
+Persis went back into the house and danced with the Italian duke what
+he called "_il trotto alla turca_." She was so distraite that she never
+knew how well he made love and how badly he danced.
+
+Later she happened upon the surreptitious Stowe Webb, and learned that
+Senator Tait and Forbes were leaving Paris in the morning to take the
+waters somewhere--Vichy, Carlsbad, Marienbad, or Matlock; he was not
+sure where.
+
+Now Persis regretted her hesitation. She had wasted a precious
+opportunity to warm her chilled soul with a word from the beloved lips
+and a look from the eyes and a pressure of the hand that were dearer
+than any other in the world to her.
+
+She was amazed at her own ability to suffer so much from the loss of so
+little. She felt an impulse to be alone with her anguish, to huddle over
+the hearth where the ashes could at least remind her of how warm and
+cozy she once had been.
+
+She sent for Willie, and he came with a slight elevation of manner which
+showed that he had found some one to arrange him at least one
+Scotch-and-soda.
+
+He was demonstrative in the car and very affectionate in the elevator at
+the Hotel Meurice, where they were stopping. This did not endear him to
+Persis.
+
+His man exchanged a glance with her maid as they peeled off their wraps.
+When man and maid had been sent to bed Willie came shuffling into
+Persis' dressing-room where she sat staring at her doleful beauty in the
+mirror. He saw how listless she was, and was awkwardly eager to cheer
+her up. He could not have depressed her more than by trying to cheer her
+up. Even he realized his failure eventually and yawned sonorously:
+
+"We're married, and I suppose we've got to stay married--for a while, at
+least. But I hate to see you unhappy. It's an awful slam on me to have
+you so blue before the honeymoon is really begun."
+
+"Don't worry any more, Willie," she said, gently. "I suppose I'm just
+like a child on Christmas afternoon. I always used to get blue after I'd
+looked over all the presents and broken most of my toys--and grown tired
+of the others--and eaten too much candy. And I thought, 'So this is the
+Christmas I've waited for the whole year long! It doesn't amount to
+much. I've had all that money can buy--and--and I'm too tired to
+sleep.'"
+
+"I used to feel like that, too," he said. "And I remember that I usually
+turned back to some cheap old toy; usually it was a little lead
+soldier--my first love."
+
+"First love!" she murmured.
+
+He tried to shake off gloom as a wet spaniel shakes off water.
+
+"Oh, I say, Persis, buck up! Don't feel like this. You're so beautiful;
+you're simply ripping to-night." He laid his hand on her bare arm. She
+started at his touch and before she realized it gasped, "Please don't
+paw me."
+
+He stared at her, aghast: "Do you hate me as much as that?"
+
+"Oh, I don't hate you, Willie! It's myself I hate," Persis cried. "You
+mustn't mind me; I'm just a little blue and lonely."
+
+He laughed gruesomely. "Bride and groom together on honeymoon, and both
+terribly lonely! Gad! I wonder if other married couples come to feel
+this way when the honeymoon turns to green cheese. And do they just
+bluff it through? It reminds me of that chap in Hogarth's _Mariage a la
+Mode_, where the wife is yawning and the husband is sunk back in his
+chair in a dismal stupor. Only he was drunk--I think I'll get drunk."
+
+He stumbled out to find his usual nepenthe. When he came back her door
+was locked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+
+Persis sat in grim communion with her image for hours. She faintly heard
+her husband's tapping on her door, and calling through it at intervals
+in thicker and thicker speech. But it was like a far-off rumor from a
+street. She was in session with herself.
+
+She took her boudoir cap from her hair, and sat in the cascade of it
+peering through as from a cavern, and smoking always. She was smoking
+much too much, but she felt a companionship in tobacco. As she held the
+cap in her hand she thought of Forbes; and the remembrance was so joyous
+that she vowed to brave the world to get back to him.
+
+But she pondered what the world would say of her, how it had dealt with
+the others that had openly defied it, and she was afraid. Then she vowed
+that she would take her love secretly and cleverly. She would hunt for
+Forbes till she met him and regained him.
+
+Then she pictured how he would look at her when he understood. She
+imagined him starting back from her as from something abhorrent. She
+threw a cigarette-stub at her face in the mirror and gasped: "Pagh!" She
+could endure anything better than such cheapening of herself in Forbes'
+eyes. And after a while she began to think of her self-respect. She had
+only herself. She must keep that self precious.
+
+Worn out at last with her silent war, she bent her head on her crossed
+hands and fell asleep among the fripperies of her dressing-table. These
+temptations in the wilderness come to people in various places. This
+tired butterfly fought with evil and won the duel in a boudoir in a
+fashionable hotel in Paris.
+
+Hours later she woke in broad daylight and crept to bed with tingling
+arms and aching forehead. She did not wake again till noon. Nichette had
+tiptoed about her like a sentinel and had kept Willie at a distance. He
+discharged her a dozen times, but she simply shrugged and sniffed and
+answered him in French too rapid for him to follow or reply to.
+
+When at last Persis sat up with her coffee and crescents on her knees,
+Nichette read to her the news in the French columns of the Paris
+_Herald_. She learned that Ambassador-elect Tait and his entourage had
+gone to Evian-les-Bains.
+
+Willie came in with new plans for Persis' diversion. He suggested a
+visit to Switzerland and Lake Geneva. She would have liked to go to the
+mountains. There was something heroic in them. But Evian was closely
+adjacent to Switzerland. She nobly suggested Norway and Sweden. The
+thought of fjords and midnight suns and things was also heroic.
+
+In the meanwhile she must make haste to dress for the _Prix des Drags_,
+and she took some interest in the choice of a gown sufficiently striking
+to insure success in the fierce rivalry of that great costume race.
+
+Everybody said that the world had not seen such undressing in public
+since the Grecian revival at the time of the Directoire. Persis was not
+the least astounding figure there. She felt that, after a deed of such
+sacrifice as she had achieved in forswearing love, she had earned an
+extra license in her draperies. Willie raised a tempest about her gown,
+but she felt that she had done enough for him. She was suffering that
+morning-after sullenness which follows unusual indulgences in virtue as
+well as other excesses.
+
+Life once more was a tango. She shifted from costume to costume like a
+dressmaker's model. She went the rounds of _thes dansants_, and
+musicales, and embassies, town houses, hotels, and chateaux,
+watering-places, and mountains, lakes, and seas. But she kept away from
+Switzerland till she read that Ambassador Tait was at his desk in Paris;
+and then she avoided Paris and went to Trouville.
+
+And so the days totaled into weeks, and the weeks became a month, two,
+three, six. She fled from boredom to boredom. She skimmed the cream of
+life and whipped it, and it turned sour. Though her abiding-places were
+all oases and her tents were of silk, she led only a Bedouin existence.
+After all, she and Willie were but tramps--velvet-clad hoboes. Variety
+became monotony, luxury an oppression, contentment a will-o'-the-wisp.
+
+She went to America and found that loveless contentment was not among
+the Yankee inventions. She went back to Europe, and it was not among the
+Parisian devices. There was everything for sale on the Rue de la Paix
+except peace. She had not come to Paris purposely to find Harvey Forbes,
+but she had sickened of being good, and she had grown nauseated with
+denying her heart. If fate willed that their communion should be renewed
+she would no longer tamper with destiny.
+
+She wondered if time had cured Forbes' love. She wondered if he cared
+for some one else--Mildred Tait, for instance, or some Parisian witch.
+At the mere thought her heart beat like the wings of a wounded bird, and
+she knew that she loved him and always would love him.
+
+Half a year of Willie's tempers and whinings, his indigestions and
+colds, and his diminishing patience with her whims, his growing habit of
+complaining of her extravagances, his quarrels with their servants, with
+every waiter, every messenger-boy, and hotel-keeper, had worn out even
+her courtesy. They quarreled shamelessly in private, and with less and
+less caution in public.
+
+And now she was beginning to feel that she earned all she got, and was
+paying usury on her money, and being badly treated in the bargain. She
+was arriving at that sick frame of mind that makes cashiers and
+statesmen and married people unfaithful to their trusts.
+
+This was her humor when she met Forbes again. She had tried in various
+ways to gain invitations to affairs of the Embassy. But Tait wasted no
+diplomacy on cutting out the Enslees. He was the more brutal about this
+since he felt that he was guarding his daughter's welfare.
+
+Mildred had made herself dear to the more earnest elements of Paris. She
+had grown somewhat less of a joke to the more frivolous. The
+entertainments at the Embassy were not quite so Puritanical now, and her
+costumes had amazingly improved since her father had put her under the
+direct control of a tyrannical dressmaker of world-wide fame.
+
+Whether she were growing to be merely a habit with Forbes or not, they
+were more and more together. They fought bitterly on the question of
+war, which she considered an unmitigated horror and he believed to be
+the loftiest form of tragedy. But the whetting of mind on mind was
+producing sparks, and Tait hoped that some day one of them would set
+their two hearts on fire.
+
+He was preparing for that day by making Forbes less poor. His post kept
+him from taking advantage of the financial secrets he stumbled on. But
+when he put Mildred in the hands of a dressmaker he gave the financial
+destinies of Forbes to a retired capitalist, who juggled Forbes' five
+hundred dollars into a thousand in a pair of weeks; and that thousand
+into three. Then he encouraged Forbes to borrow, indorsed his notes and
+speculated with the proceeds pyramidally. He was enjoying it as a form
+of chess. At the end of half a year Forbes was talking as much of the
+Bourse and Argentines as he was of projectiles and trajectories.
+
+Having assured Forbes of enough money in bank to give him a salubrious
+self-confidence, Tait dropped hints of a certain clause in his will and
+sat back to watch the result. He was counting on receiving as his
+Christmas gift the news that Forbes and Mildred were to be married, and
+he was polishing up a joke about giving them inside rates on the
+consular fees for that complicated ceremony.
+
+And then the Enslees came to Paris in an unusual snow-storm, and winter
+set in about the old man's overworked, undermined heart. He did his best
+to keep Persis and Forbes apart; but when were the old ever vigilant
+enough to thwart the young?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+
+One day Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe found the Enslees shivering like a pair of
+waifs in a restaurant famous for its cuisine and infamous for its
+heating arrangements. She asked them if they were coming to the _the
+dansant_ she was giving at her home that afternoon. They had forgotten
+all about it, and Persis pleaded an engagement with her doctor. Mrs.
+Edgecumbe was "so sorry. There would be hardly any Americans there,
+then, except the old faithful Ambassador and Captain Forbes."
+
+Persis' heart warmed instantly, but she said she was afraid that she had
+some other engagement booked; in any case, they might drop in for a
+minute. She shivered with exultance and blamed it on the chill.
+
+When five o'clock came round Persis carelessly remembered the
+half-promise to Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe. Willie was out of humor. Persis
+angelically urged him to stay in his room and nurse his cold. Her
+unusual thought for his welfare startled him. It delighted him. He
+decided to stay by her and get more of the tenderness she was lavishing
+to-day. She could not shake him loose.
+
+The _the dansant_ was a failure in Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe's mind, and in
+her sister Winifred's heart, for the storm kept most of the Parisians
+away, and the Ambassador sent word by Forbes that he would be tardy if
+he came at all. He pleaded motives of state. But he sent Forbes with his
+apologies.
+
+Forbes, having been on a visit in his official capacity, was again in
+uniform. His eyes and cheeks were aglow from the cold, and Persis
+watched him with adoration as he came nearer and nearer.
+
+He did not see her, even when he paused to talk to Mrs. Edgecumbe, so
+close to Persis that she could have touched him. And when she could not
+endure the delay any longer, she thrust her hand beneath his eyes, and
+murmured: "Captain Forbes doesn't remember me, but I met him in New York
+ages ago."
+
+Her voice, suddenly leaping out of the grave of memory, terrified him.
+He whirled so quickly that his sword caught in her gown. He knelt to
+disengage it, and there was laughter over the confusion, and then Mrs.
+Edgecumbe was called away by a new-comer, and they were left together.
+
+Persis beamed upon the complete disarray of all his faculties, and spoke
+with affected raillery, though her own mind was in a seethe.
+
+"At last we meet again! And how magnificent we are in our gorgeous
+uniform! It's only the second time I've seen you in it. And I believe we
+are no longer plain Mr. Forbes--but Captain! Captain Harvey Forbes, U.
+S. A.! And they say we are rich now. What a pity I didn't wait a
+little!"
+
+Forbes was hurt at her flippancy. He smiled dismally, and she purred on:
+"I assure you your title and your wealth are vastly becoming; almost as
+becoming as all these buttons and epaulettes and things." She walked
+around him, looking him over like an inspecting officer. "Um-m! How very
+nice! Magnificent!"
+
+"Oh, I beg of you--" Forbes protested, tortured with chagrin.
+
+But she went on, "And a sword, too!" She ventured even to pull the blade
+a little way from its scabbard. He would have killed a man for doing
+that, and he almost wanted to kill Persis as she tantalized him with a
+strange mixture of ridicule and idolatry. "I've no doubt the boulevards
+are strewn with the broken hearts of Frenchwomen. Who could resist you?
+I'm sure my own heart isn't anywhere near healed. It was very cruel of
+you, Harvey, to throw me over and run away after you had stolen my poor
+young affections."
+
+Forbes was distraught; he groaned, "I see you've not forgotten how to
+make fun of me."
+
+But Persis went on in mock petulance: "It wasn't at all nice of you to
+cast me off just because I married Willie."
+
+This gave Forbes a chance to return her ridicule and he asked, "By the
+way, how is your excellent husband?"
+
+"You can see for yourself. There he is, still unable to learn the tango
+and trying to teach it to a fat Marquise."
+
+Forbes attempted that most uncivil of tones to a woman, the ironical: "I
+hear that you and Mr. Enslee are the most devoted of couples."
+
+"Oh, it's a silly custom that married people should pretend to be
+congenial during their honeymoon," Persis said. "Thank heaven, my
+initiation is almost over."
+
+Forbes was genuinely horrified at such dealing with a subject so sacred
+as marriage; he forsook irony for his usual forthright utterance:
+
+"Surely your--your husband doesn't neglect you?"
+
+There was a touch of quick anxiety in Forbes' tone that showed how
+deeply he still cherished her.
+
+"Neglect me?" Persis quoted. "If he only would! Willie does tag after me
+even more than I could wish; but he is growing restless. I can usually
+escape him by staying at home. He's doing the music-halls very
+thoroughly. If I can only suggest some very shocking _revue_ I am
+assured of an evening alone. He is going to one over on Montmartre
+to-morrow night. I shall be quite deserted. We are stopping at the Hotel
+Meurice."
+
+There was so dire a meaning in her hint and so much danger in playing
+again with the fire whose scar he still bore that Forbes ceased fencing
+and slashed: "Why do you torment me? You refused my love once."
+
+"Never your love, my dear boy," said Persis, with abrupt seriousness.
+"I never refused your love--only your hand. I always encouraged your
+love."
+
+"But I was poor," Forbes sneered.
+
+"Yes, you were poor," Persis said, taking his own word and turning it
+against him, "and I knew less than I do now." She walked away to a niche
+beside a statue where they could talk without being overheard, but,
+being visible, were chaperoned by the crowd. She sank upon a settle of
+gold and old rose and motioned him to her side. Then, while her face and
+her fan proclaimed that their conversation was of the idlest, her voice
+was deep with elegy:
+
+"Harvey, try to be just. If you had been rich--oh! if you had been
+rich!--then, as you are now, Harvey, then I could have believed that
+such a thing as a love-match is feasible."
+
+"But I was poor!" Forbes reiterated, with a knell-like persistence.
+
+"That was Fate's fault, not mine," said Persis, in all solemnity. "But
+haven't I been honest with you? You declared that you loved me; I
+confessed that I loved you."
+
+"Was it honest, then, not to give me your heart?"
+
+"My whole heart has always been yours for the asking--and still is."
+
+Forbes recoiled with a sudden: "What are you saying? You have a husband
+now!"
+
+"What does that prove?" was Persis' grim reply. "I don't owe him
+anything in the inside of my heart. He didn't buy that, thank God!
+Before the world, I owe him everything, and I should be the first to
+abhor any open indiscretion, for my ten commandments are condensed to
+two: 'Don't be indiscreet!' and 'Beware of what people will say!' What
+more could a husband ask?"
+
+Forbes tossed his hands in despair. He gave her up. She and her creed
+were beyond his understanding. "A fine code, that!"
+
+"It is the morality of half the world, Harvey, rich or poor, city or
+country," Persis declared. "The crime consists in being found out."
+
+"Do you realize what you are saying?" Forbes demanded, eager to shield
+her from her own blasphemies. But she ran on unheedingly.
+
+"Even I have a heart; and why should I play the hypocrite before you of
+all men? Before Willie Enslee? Yes; he is my husband. Before the gossipy
+world? Yes; it is the one duty I feel I owe that man. Ours was no
+marriage for love."
+
+"But it was a marriage," Forbes urged, stoutly, and rose to escape.
+
+"Yes, but after all, what is a marriage?" Persis demanded, like a Pilate
+asking, "What is truth?" She rose to her feet, but paused as ardor swept
+her headlong. "Do you think it possible for any woman to live her life
+out without a lover? She may cherish the memory of a dead man or a
+faithless man; or throw her affection away on a fool or a rake; she may
+keep it a secret almost from herself, but never, never, never believe
+that any woman can exist without some man to pay worship to."
+
+Forbes could only attempt a weak sarcasm, "Is it impossible that a woman
+should love her husband?"
+
+In a daze he fell back to his seat, forgetful that he left her standing;
+but she was too much engrossed with her great problem to heed this; she
+went on, earnestly:
+
+"Any woman may love her husband for a little while; or in rare case for
+a lifetime, especially if he beats her or is a drunkard." Then her
+unwonted oratory on abstract subjects palled on her. She came back to
+the concrete instance with an abrupt, "But Harvey, Harvey, why should we
+be wasting time talking about love?" She bent over him, but he did not
+even look up at her. He shook his head helplessly.
+
+"I wasn't bred in your world. I can't understand a thing you have said."
+
+His aloofness of manner gave Persis a sense of loneliness, and she
+wailed to him as from afar, though she sank down close to him. "But
+can't you understand how fate has made a fool of me? I married for
+wealth and to cut a wide swath. Well, I have the wealth. I can cut the
+swath. But I've found that my ambition isn't enough, any more than your
+soldier ambitions were enough. Harvey, I'm lonely, terribly lonely. My
+heart is empty; it is like an old deserted house, and a ghost haunts it,
+and the ghost is--I don't have to tell you who the ghost is?"
+
+"And you know," Forbes echoed, "what ghost haunts me."
+
+Persis was melted by his kinship with her suffering. She leaned so close
+to him that her very perfume appealed to him as the perfume wherewith
+one flower calls to another in the noontime of desire. And she said:
+"Harvey, I'm going to tell you a terrible secret that I've hardly dared
+to tell myself: I--I crossed the ocean to find you!"
+
+He was suffocated with longing for her, and horror of her. He gasped,
+"My God! on your honeymoon!"
+
+Everywhere in that day there seemed to be a band somewhere playing a
+turkey-trot. There was such a band here, and such music was to be
+expected; but there was something whimsical about the fact that the tune
+this band struck up now was a rag-time version of "Mendelssohn's Wedding
+March."
+
+Persis was so eager to be in Forbes' arms again, and the dance was so
+ample an excuse, that she smiled into his mask of horror. "We haven't
+danced for ever so long."
+
+A wanton whoop of the violins swept away all such solemn things as
+honor, decency, duty. He rose and caught her in his embrace. It was the
+same girlish body, irresistibly warm and lithe. They swung and sidled
+and hopped with utter cynicism. The only remnant of his horror was a
+foolish, bewildered, muttered: "How could you?"
+
+"Come to Paris?" she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Because I felt you still loved me as I still love you, and because I
+thought you were--perhaps--afraid."
+
+"Afraid, eh?" He laughed, his professional soldier's pride on fire.
+"Well, I don't think you will find me a coward."
+
+And he tightened his arm about her like a vise and spun her so dizzily
+that, though she was rejoiced by his brutality, the discretion that was
+her decalogue spoiled her rapture. She felt again that swoon of fear,
+and made him lead her back to their niche.
+
+She did not know that Ambassador Tait had come in and had watched the
+vortex, was watching now with terror the look on Forbes' face and her
+answering smile. He could not hear their words--he did not need to. He
+knew what their import would be. The burlesque of the wedding music was
+the final touch of sarcasm.
+
+Persis, ignorant of his espionage, sighed, "Oh, it is wonderful to be
+together again!"
+
+"Wonderful," Forbes panted. "But it is in a crowd, and you are married."
+
+"That does not mean that I am never to see you alone, does it?" she
+asked, anxiously and challengingly.
+
+Forbes was still wise enough and well enough aware of his own passion to
+say, "But discovery and scandal would be the only result."
+
+"Not if we were very discreet," Persis pleaded, thinking of those lonely
+months.
+
+"But your husband?"
+
+Persis uttered that ugly old truth, "If we can evade gossip abroad, we
+shall be safe enough at home."
+
+And as if in object-lesson, Willie Enslee joggled up that very moment.
+He showed the influence of mild tippling on a limited capacity, and,
+coming forward, shook hands foolishly and forcibly with Captain Forbes.
+"How d'ye do--Mr. Ward," he drawled.
+
+"Captain Forbes, dear," Persis corrected.
+
+"That's right. I always was an ass about names, Mr. Ward. I haven't seen
+you for years and years, have we? Have you met my wife? Oh, of course
+you have."
+
+Forbes was revolted. There was something loathsome about the little
+farce. Enslee reminded him of the clown in "I Pagliacci," and Persis,
+like another Nedda, was determined to finish the scene. Tucking her fan
+under her thigh, she said with innocent voice, "Oh, Willie, I've lost my
+fan somewhere; would you mind looking for it?"
+
+Obediently Enslee turned and wandered about, scanning the floor
+carefully and chortling idiotically, "Fan, fan, who's got the fan?" And
+so he floated harmlessly and blindly out of the cloud that was
+thickening around his household.
+
+Persis laughed. "You see what an ideal husband Willie is?" But Forbes,
+who had a strong stomach for warfare with its mangled enemies and
+shattered comrades, shuddered at this tame domestic horror. He blurted
+out:
+
+"It is all the more shameful to deceive a fool."
+
+"Oh, now you're becoming scrupulous again!" said Persis, who thought
+pride of little moment in the face of the victory she had set her heart
+on.
+
+But now she was confronted by an adversary of more weight and acumen
+than Willie, a man whose trade was diplomacy and politics. Ambassador
+Tait came forward. He was a little pale and weak, and he felt his heart
+laboring in his breast, but he had at least one more good fight in him,
+and when he found Forbes plainly enmeshed, though struggling, in Persis'
+gossamer web, the old man resolved to make the fight at whatever cost.
+
+After a moment of hesitation he came briskly forward with a blunt:
+"Pardon me a moment, Mrs. Enslee, I have an important communication for
+the Captain. These state secrets you know." And he led Forbes to an
+adjoining room, the library, where he said in a low tone, "Harvey, my
+boy, I've cooked up an imaginary errand to get you away from her."
+
+But Forbes tossed his head at this aspersion on his ability to take care
+of himself. He answered, "I'm not afraid."
+
+Tait's eyes grew very sad, though his lips smiled when he said: "Well,
+I'm afraid for you. You're not responsible when you're in her magnetic
+circle." Then, seeing that Persis had resolutely followed them into the
+room, he raised his voice for Persis' benefit: "You'll find the papers
+on my desk. Read them carefully and sign them if they're all right. They
+must be mailed this evening." Then he deliberately pushed the reluctant
+and faltering captain from the room, hardly leaving him time to say,
+"You'll excuse me, Mrs. Enslee?"
+
+Persis understood it all and answered with thinly veiled pique, "I'll
+have to." But she would not surrender him so easily. She called after
+Forbes, "I'll expect you back as soon as you have signed those--alleged
+papers."
+
+The Ambassador was jolted. He could think of nothing to say. He watched
+Forbes go, then started to follow; noted that Persis was alone, and
+remembered the laws of courtesy enough to ask:
+
+"May I send you an ice--or your husband?"
+
+"An ice--or my husband?" Persis was forced to smile at such a
+collocation. "Neither, please. Sit down, Ambassador."
+
+Tait had not expected this. With a hesitating "Er--ah! Thank you!" he
+seated himself as far as possible from her on a leather divan.
+Immediately she rose, crossed the room, and sat next to him. There was
+no escaping her now, and Tait felt like calling for help.
+
+Persis forsook all the modulations of diplomacy and cut straight to the
+point. "Ambassador Tait, why don't you like me?"
+
+"Why, I--I admire you immensely," he gasped, amazed.
+
+"Oh, drop diplomacy; I'm not the President of France!" Persis said, with
+a whit of vexation. When a woman answers a compliment with anger she
+means business. Persis repeated: "I said, why don't you like me?"
+
+"But--I--I--" Tait fumbled for a word; then, somewhat angered by his
+discomfort, met a woman's directness with a man's bluntness. "Well, why
+should I?"
+
+Persis parried his rudeness with a return to gentle measures; she
+beamed. "I'm very nice! I was good to my mother. I'm good to my
+husband."
+
+"But are you?"
+
+"I'm as good a wife as he deserves. You've seen him?"
+
+Tait smiled in spite of himself, for he was one of Willie's numberless
+non-admirers. Now Persis, seeing him smiling, returned to open attack:
+
+"Last summer you took Captain Forbes to Evian-les-Bains to get him away
+from me. Didn't you?"
+
+Tait was off his guard; he stammered: "Certainly not--that is--well, how
+did you find it out?"
+
+Persis shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "My mother took me to England
+when I was very young to get me away from a beautiful butcher's boy. She
+succeeded; she was a woman. You won't; you're a man."
+
+"Help, help!" Tait gasped, in a parody of fear that had a groundwork of
+reality.
+
+"You love Captain Forbes, don't you?" Persis lunged at his heart again;
+and he answered, solemnly:
+
+"Yes, I do, as if he were my own son."
+
+"Why don't you want me to see him?"
+
+"Why do you want to see him? You're married."
+
+"But they don't keep women in harems nowadays. Paris is very dull this
+winter. Don't take Captain Forbes away again."
+
+"As I remember, you gave him marching orders once yourself. You mustn't
+mind if he goes of his own accord now."
+
+"But he won't go of his own accord if you don't make him. Why do you?
+You're not afraid of me?"
+
+"Oh, but I am."
+
+Persis laughed with a kind of pride. "Really! You flatter me! But why?"
+
+Tait twisted his big, soft hands together and stared at her a long while
+before he could speak. "This is very embarrassing, Mrs. Enslee; but
+since you are so frank, let me ask you one question. Will you answer it
+frankly?"
+
+"That depends upon the question." Persis chuckled, never dreaming of its
+nature. When it came it was:
+
+"Are you in love with Captain Forbes?"
+
+She laughed evasively now. "What a remarkable question!"
+
+The old lawyer repeated the demand:
+
+"Are you in love with Captain Forbes?"
+
+"I think he is very nice," she dodged. "But what has that to do with our
+friendship?"
+
+"Everything," Tait answered, with tightened lips. "Mrs. Enslee, your
+father and I rowed together in the same college crew, and Harvey's
+father was my best friend. May I speak freely to you?"
+
+She responded immediately to the almost affection of his tone. "I wish
+you would."
+
+"What little success in life I have had," Tait began, with the somewhat
+formal speech of an orator, "has been due to my habit of foreseeing
+dangerous combinations and preventing them, or running away from them.
+The most dangerous combination on earth is a woman, a man, and another
+man. No married woman has a right to the--I believe you said
+'friendship,' of a man who cares for her as Harvey cares for you."
+
+She extracted from his warning only the hidden sweet. "And he does care
+for me still!"
+
+"But you've married another man."
+
+"Of course," she answered. "But do you think that I can find Mr. Enslee
+so fascinating that I must give up all my friends?"
+
+"Friends!" Tait exclaimed, with bitterness. "In my day, Mrs. Enslee, I
+have seen some of the proudest families in New York dragged into the
+mire of public shame by tragedies that began as innocent experiments in
+friendship. Don't risk it, Mrs. Enslee. You are on dangerous ground."
+
+She mused aloud. "And you think he loves me still?"
+
+Tait tossed his mane in despair. "Good Lord! That's all my words have
+meant to you? Well, since we are talking so bluntly, you'll perhaps
+permit me to say that I know you are not happily married. Everybody knew
+you never would be happy with Willie Enslee."
+
+"I thought I'd be as happy with him as with anybody-else," she answered,
+meekly; "but since you assume that I am not happy, why deny me the
+friendship of a man whose society I am fond of? Don't you think that
+everybody has the right to be happy?"
+
+"Indeed I don't!"
+
+"Doesn't the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, or
+something guarantee everybody the right to life, liberty, and the
+pursuit of--"
+
+"Yes, the pursuit!" Tait cried. "But the Constitution doesn't guarantee
+that anybody will get happiness, and there are laws that take away life,
+take away liberty, take away even the right to the pursuit of
+happiness."
+
+She was on unfamiliar ground among constitutions. She was more at home
+in emotion. "Let's not get into a legal debate. All I know is that
+Harvey used to love me, and I loved him too much to marry him, because
+he was poor, and because I was bred to reckless extravagance. Besides, I
+had ambitions. I didn't know then what a vanity they were. But
+now--well, I don't pretend to be a saint, but I have a heart--a kind of
+heart. I love only one man on earth. You know that he still loves me.
+Don't rob us of the happiness we can find in each other's society--the
+innocent happiness."
+
+A gesture of unbelief escaped the Ambassador. "How long could such love
+remain innocent--when it begins by being unlawful?"
+
+"But I love him," she insisted, "and he loves me with all his heart.
+Some day, I presume"--the coming sorrow cast its shadow over her
+already--"some day, no doubt, he'll find somebody he loves more, and
+he'll marry her. He can have anybody now; but when he came to me he was
+poor; he needed money. But I also needed money! Things have changed;
+money has come to him, as it always comes, too late. But that's no
+reason for robbing me of my chance for a little while of happiness. And
+you mustn't--oh, you mustn't rob him of the happiness I could give him!"
+
+Tait was always afraid of himself when his tenderness was appealed to,
+for he knew from experience that such an appeal if harkened a moment too
+long, would smother all judgment, all resistance. He felt his heart
+yearning toward Persis' world-old cry, "Happiness! happiness! a little
+happiness!" He tried to be harsh.
+
+"But, my good woman--my dear girl--you had your chance; you made your
+choice. You must pay the price. We can't all have the love we want. I
+can't. You can't."
+
+Persis laid her hand on his arm. "But why? Why?"
+
+And Tait, after a weak temptation, girded himself for the eternal battle
+with unholy happiness, and answered with Mosaic simplicity:
+
+"Because it is against the law."
+
+"But you know," Persis returned, unabashed, "you were once a lawyer--you
+know that the laws in the books are only made for those who haven't the
+skill to bend them without breaking them."
+
+"Such a love as yours is against the great unwritten laws of society."
+
+Persis would not be crushed with precepts. She sneered: "Society! Is
+anybody on the square? Why shouldn't we be happy in our own way?"
+
+Tait hesitated, then answered coldly: "There are ten thousand reasons,
+Mrs. Enslee. I'll give you the one that will appeal to you most
+strongly: 'You're bound to get found out.'"
+
+"Don't you think I have any discretion? Do you think I am a fool?"
+
+"The first sign of being a fool is trying to play double with the world.
+Some day--let me warn you--some day you will find yourself so tangled up
+in your own cleverness that you will be delivered, bound hand and foot,
+to the shame--yes, the shame of a horrible exposure."
+
+She blenched at this facer. "Don't speak to me as though I were a
+criminal!"
+
+He struck out again. "Then don't become one. You have no right to love
+Captain Forbes, nor he to love you. It is a simple question of duty."
+
+"Duty?" she raged. "I want happiness. I'm like a hungry woman standing
+before a window filled with bread. Your duty says, Stay there and
+starve. But it isn't duty that lets people starve. It's being afraid."
+
+Tait put off all restraint of courtesy. "Oh, I understand your creed.
+It's the creed of your set. You're not afraid of any risk. You fear
+nothing but self-sacrifice. Your greatest horror is being bored. But
+you'll find that there is a worse boredom than you suffer now--the ennui
+of exile, of ostracism. The very set that practises your theory is the
+most merciless to those that get found out. It's like a pack of wolves
+on the chase. The one that falls or is wounded is torn to pieces by the
+rest, and then they rush on again. I mean to save Harvey from that pack
+at any cost."
+
+She had no refuge but a prayer. "I implore you not to break my heart."
+
+Tait donned in manner the black cap of a judge. "Such hearts as yours
+ought to be broken, Mrs. Enslee, for the health of the world. I
+understand you. I don't blame you. I don't blame your mother in her
+grave. It was her breeding, as it is yours and that of your pack. You
+are the people who bring wealth into disrepute. The noise of your revels
+drowns the quiet charities of the rich who are also good and busy with
+noble works. I'm afraid of you all. But I don't blame you. I don't blame
+the criminals, the thieves, madmen; but I fear them. And in all mercy I
+would mercilessly put them out of the way of doing harm to the peace of
+the world."
+
+Persis saw that for once appeal could not melt. She said, with
+resignation: "Then you are my sworn enemy?"
+
+"No," Tait protested, "I would be your friend as far as I safely can.
+But I love Harvey as a son. I would save him from the fire of perdition,
+beautiful as it is, bright as it is. And you are the fire."
+
+"And so you will fight me?" Persis faltered.
+
+"To the death!" the old jurist cried, as he got heavily to his feet;
+"though it breaks Harvey's heart--and your heart--and mine." He
+staggered weakly and jolted against the divan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+
+Persis, forgetting that he was her enemy, leaped to his aid with
+instinctive womanliness. "You are ill; let me get you something."
+
+Tait straightened himself with an effort, saying: "I'm all right now,
+thank you. I mustn't let myself get excited, that's all." He was touched
+by her sudden charity in his behalf. He gazed at her sadly, and, taking
+her hand, spoke venerably as a father. He was too sad for her sake to be
+sad for his own. "I'm sorry for you, little woman. You've a big, warm
+heart; but this is a cold, hard world, and you mustn't try to break its
+laws. They are based on the scandals and the tragedies of thousands of
+years, millions on millions of foolish lovers. The world is old, my
+child, and it is stronger than any of us. And it can punish without
+mercy. Don't risk it."
+
+An almost unknown earnestness stirred Persis. "You're right, of course.
+I suppose I must give up all hope of happiness. It's my punishment. I'll
+take my medicine like a little man."
+
+"That's splendid!" Tait cried. "Live square--in the open. Respect the
+conventionalities; they're the world's code of morals. If you really
+love Harvey, let him go his way."
+
+"I'll prove to you that I do love him!" she said, laughing nervously.
+"I'll give him up. He used to think I was heartless and mercenary. He
+shall go on thinking so. It's awfully hard, but it is the one way I can
+help him, isn't it?"
+
+The old man squeezed her slim hand in both of his. "It's the one way.
+God bless you! And you won't see him again?"
+
+"No," she said, with all the vigor of her soul. Then she caught a
+glimpse of Forbes. He had returned hurriedly. He was looking for her.
+She amended her promise: "Except to tell him good-by. I've got to tell
+him good-by--and make him think I was only--only fooling him, haven't
+I?"
+
+The old man's triumph collapsed again. But he could not demand
+everything. He nodded and left her as Forbes appeared at the door. With
+the mocking laughter of fiends, the band brayed another tango. It was
+faint in the distance, but it was a satanic comment. Persis made haste
+to get her business done.
+
+"Well, Harvey, good-by. I'm off to Capri to-morrow."
+
+"But I thought--" he stammered. "You're not going to leave just as we
+meet again? I thought--"
+
+"You never could take a joke, could you, Harvey?"
+
+"But you said--"
+
+"I'm sorry, Harvey. But I'm married now."
+
+She was turning his own weapons on him. He was befuddled with her whims.
+He repeated, "You told me you loved me, that you were unhappy."
+
+"You ought to have known I was only fooling you. I'm Mrs. Enslee now.
+And whom God hath joined--"
+
+He was beside himself with rage. She had wheedled him out of his honor,
+and now she mocked him where she had left him. He sneered:
+
+"God didn't join you and Enslee. God's voice doesn't speak every time a
+hired preacher reaches out for a wedding fee! It was the devil that
+joined you, and God keeps you asunder. God joined you with me. He meant
+us for each other. But you hadn't the courage to face a little poverty.
+You wanted prestige and position, and you bought them with the love that
+belonged to me. You haven't the courage now to deny that you are
+unhappy, that you love me still."
+
+She trembled before the storm of his wrath. "But I don't--I don't love
+you any more. I am happy."
+
+"You can't look me in the eyes, Persis, and repeat that lie."
+
+She tried vainly to meet his glare. She mumbled weakly, "Why, I'm
+happy--enough."
+
+"Do you love me still?" he demanded.
+
+"N-no! Of course not!"
+
+He wanted to strike her, primevally, for a coward, a liar, a female cad.
+He controlled himself and groaned: "Well, that makes everything simpler.
+Good-by."
+
+She seized his arm and threw off the disguise. "Harvey, Harvey, I can't
+stand it. I can't endure the thought of it. I can't live without your
+love. I don't care what happens. I never did love anybody else but you.
+I never shall."
+
+His love came back in a wild wave. He seized her blindly, and she hid
+blindly in his arms, sobbing: "I am so unhappy, so unutterably lonely!
+You must love me, Harvey, for I love you. I love you."
+
+They were as oblivious of their peril as Tristan and Isolde in the spell
+of the love philter. Only the old Ambassador, who had hovered near to
+shield their farewell, saw them. The vision was like a thunderbolt. To
+hear of a scandal, to be convinced of it is as nothing to seeing it.
+That comes like an exposure, an indecency, a slap in the face. The
+Ambassador was furious with disgust. He stormed into the room: "Can I
+believe my eyes? Are you both lost to common sense? Is this your
+discretion, Mrs. Enslee? Do you realize where you are?"
+
+Persis toppled out of Forbes' relaxed embrace, and spoke from a daze:
+"No--I forgot--I must be out of my mind."
+
+Forbes came to her defense: "You mustn't blame her. It was my fault."
+
+"No, it was mine," Persis insisted. "But I couldn't help it."
+
+Tait was filled with contempt. "What if it had been any of the guests
+that had found you two maniacs as I did. What if I had been Enslee!"
+
+Persis was as amazed as he was. She muttered, "I know--I know--but I
+can't stand everything."
+
+Tait tried to patch up his broken plan. "Harvey, you've disappointed me
+bitterly. But I give you one more chance to retrieve yourself. Promise
+me never to see Mrs. Enslee again."
+
+Forbes shook his head.
+
+Tait could hardly believe his senses. "My God! Must the deep friendship
+of two men always be at the mercy of the first woman that comes along?
+Harvey, Harvey, I beg you to give this woman up!"
+
+"I can't."
+
+Tait's voice glittered with anger. "You've got to! I command you to! You
+can't commit this infamy and remain with me!"
+
+Forbes set his jaw hard. "I resign."
+
+Tait snapped: "I accept."
+
+Persis was frantic at this outcome of her passion. "No, no! Oh, don't!
+I'd rather die than be the cause of a breach between you two." She
+clutched Tait's arm. "Don't listen to him!"
+
+Forbes seized her other hand. "I'll not give you up again. You belong to
+me."
+
+"You are wrecking my trust in humanity," Tait groaned; then his wrath
+blazed again. "But I'll break up this intrigue at any cost, even if I
+have to tell Enslee."
+
+Persis stared at him in a panic. "You couldn't do that."
+
+Tait had made one step to the door. He hung irresolute before the
+loathsome office of the tattle-tale. "What in the name of God is a man
+to do? If I tell your husband I am a contemptible cad. If I don't tell
+him I am your accomplice." He pondered deeply, and chose between the
+evils. "Well, I'd rather have you two think me a cad than to be a
+criminal and a coward." He took another step to the door.
+
+Persis clung to his sleeve. "Oh, I implore you!"
+
+He shook her loose. "I am going to tell your husband what I saw."
+
+And then the man most deeply concerned appeared in the doorway. Willie
+Enslee stumbled at the sill and spoke with a blur: "Pershish, itsh time
+we were dresshing for d-dinner."
+
+Tait looked at him in disgust, then at Persis and Forbes, who stood
+cowering with suspense. The old man shivered in an agony of decision.
+"Mr. Enslee, I must tell you--"
+
+He clapped his hand to his heart, and strangled at the words: "I must
+tell you--I must tell you--good night!"
+
+He could not force his tongue to the task. The fierce effort broke him.
+He wavered. A sudden languor invaded him. His muscles turned to sand. He
+crumbled in a heap.
+
+Forbes ran to him, and with all difficulty heaved the limp huge frame
+into a chair that Persis pushed forward. He straightened the arms that
+flopped like a scarecrow's, and steadied the great leonine head that
+rolled drunkenly on the immense shoulders. And he spoke to Enslee as if
+he were a servant.
+
+"Run for a doctor--quick--you fool!"
+
+Willie staggered away, almost sobered with fright. Persis stood wringing
+her hands. Through her brain ran the music of the tango they were
+playing:
+
+    At the devil's ball, at the devil's ball,
+    Dancing with the devil--oh, the little devil!
+    Dancing at the devil's ball.
+
+She ran to the door like a fury and shrieked: "Stop that music! For
+God's sake, stop that music!"
+
+The music ended in shreds of discord. The dancers paused in puppet
+attitudes, then turned like a huddle of curious cattle and drifted
+toward the door. Persis returned to Forbes' side, and, bending close,
+heard the old man speaking thickly as his hands fluttered feebly about
+Forbes' arm.
+
+"Harvey--I'm so--sor-ry for you--and for her. Take care of--my
+poor--ch-child, won't you?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" Forbes whispered.
+
+"And--and Harvey--I wanted to--to die in A-mer-America. Take me b-back
+and bury me--at home, won't you?"
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+The soft hands glided along Forbes' arm in a fumbling caress.
+
+"Th-thass--a goo' boy. You've been a--a--a--a son to me. Har-har-vey.
+Goo'-b-b--Good-by!"
+
+Forbes bent down and pressed his lips to the old man's forehead.
+
+Liveried servants with wan faces glided through the crowd, and, lifting
+the chair, struggled from the room with its great burden, the old head
+wagging, the lips laboring at the messages they could not accomplish.
+
+Forbes followed the chair as if it were already the coffin of his ideal
+among men. Persis waited in a trance, shaken now and then with sudden
+onsets of ague, but otherwise motionless, her whole soul pensive. Willie
+hung about her, whining:
+
+"I say, old girl, let's be getting home--I feel all creepy. Awfully
+unfortunate, wasn't it? Let's be getting home. Rotten luck for the
+Ambassador. Nice old boy, too. Let's be getting home."
+
+Persis did not answer. By and by Willie went in search of his coat and
+her furs. The other guests dispersed. Outside there was a muffled hubbub
+of chasseurs calling carriages and cars, of horns squawking, of doors
+slammed.
+
+Winifred could be heard sobbing in the room where the musicians were
+putting up their violins and slinking out. Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe was
+audible in the stillness telephoning the alarm to the Embassy.
+
+Persis stood fixed, still staring where Forbes had gone. Suddenly her
+face lighted up. Forbes wandered back all bewildered. She forced her
+hand on him, and he took it idly. It was some time before he could speak
+that ultimate word "Dead!"
+
+Persis wrung his hand and sighed:
+
+"Poor old fellow! I'm sorry he hated me so bitterly. He said he'd fight
+against my happiness till he died, and now--"
+
+Forbes did not hear her. He was thinking only of the foster-father he
+had lost. He mumbled, with dark dejection:
+
+"I'm alone now--alone!"
+
+But Persis' face was overswept with a shaft of light. Glancing over her
+shoulder, and seeing that no one was near their door, she moved closer
+to Forbes, laid her other hand on his, and spoke with all meekness and
+with a questioning appeal.
+
+"Not alone, Harvey? I'm here."
+
+He opened his clenched eyes a little and met her upward gaze. He closed
+his eyes again against her. She waited. Only a moment, and then with a
+sudden frenzy he gripped her in a mad embrace and smote her lips with
+his. She closed her eyes in ecstasy.
+
+Immediately he started back from her in horror, groaning: "What am I
+thinking? And he's just dead!"
+
+"He's dead, but I live!" She meant only to soothe him, but through her
+low voice an exultance broke like a bugle of triumph, and she whispered
+again: "I live! I live!"
+
+So the eyes of Jael must have widened when she had driven the nail
+through the temples of Sisera.
+
+In her victory she remembered discretion and glided aside from Forbes
+just before Willie entered the room with a servant carrying Persis'
+furs.
+
+"Come along, Persis," Willie complained; "we can't stay here all night."
+
+"I'm quite ready," she answered, with bridal gentleness. Then,
+"Good-by, Captain Forbes; so glad to have seen you again. Good-by."
+
+She offered her hand formally, and he took it formally, dumbly. As it
+slipped warmly, reluctantly from his grasp it was replaced by the
+clammy, bony fingers of Willie, who was doing his best in the gentle art
+of consolation:
+
+"Awfully sorry, old chap. These things have got to happen, though,
+haven't they? Don't take it too hard, and if you get too blue come round
+and let us try to cheer you up a bit. We're at the Meurice."
+
+"Thank you," said Forbes. He bowed and did not raise his eyes for fear
+of what might be smoldering in the eyes of Persis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+
+In the exceeding industry of the days following the death of Ambassador
+Tait, Captain Forbes found no chance to see Mrs. Enslee. Their meeting
+would have been perilous. The Ambassador had received his death-stroke
+in their presence.
+
+Physicians, police, reporters, all demanded minute descriptions of the
+event, and from the first Forbes blurred the account so that Persis
+should not be drawn into it. He emphasized the strenuous diplomatic
+labors of the last week and the final afternoon. He italicized the
+presence of Mr. Enslee at the moment of death, which came, he said,
+without immediate explanation. He described how the Ambassador's father
+had died--just died while pulling on his overshoes.
+
+He lied about the last words of the Ambassador in spirit at least, for
+it was sadly incomplete truth to say that the Ambassador, after
+discussing trivial matters, had said, "Mr. Enslee, I must tell you good
+night," and fallen to the floor.
+
+Yet the account was not questioned. Enslee was too befuddled to know or,
+when the shock sobered him, to remember. Persis could be trusted to keep
+silent. In fact, she retired from view "prostrated with the shock." It
+was explained that the Ambassador had been a classmate of her father's,
+an old friend of the family's.
+
+The story was telegraphed and cabled about the world. As usual, every
+newspaper published a minutely circumstantial account with a pretendedly
+_verbatim_ statement of the last words, and, as usual, the accounts were
+as discrepant mutually as they were commonly remote from the truth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The idea that the Ambassador's death might be concerned with an intrigue
+between Mrs. Enslee and Captain Forbes occurred perhaps only to one mind
+on earth, and that the too-sophisticated brain of a reporter in New
+York, a brindle-haired man with half of one eyebrow gone. He could not
+confirm his suspicion even enough for publication, so he hid it in the
+cellar of his soul, alongside the memory of seeing Persis Cabot walk out
+of a lonely forest with a man he afterward learned to be Forbes.
+
+When this reporter--Hallard, his name was--was comfortably drunk he
+would discuss New York society's rotten state of morals, usually with a
+horrified barkeeper, forgetting his own morals and that of his class and
+of the other classes low and middle that he knew well enough. He would
+add: "There's lovely li'l lady growin' a peach of a scan'al--um-m, a
+pippin!--swee' li'l dynamite bomb. Story's going to break some day, and
+I'm lovely li'l feller's goin' to break it."
+
+But he would not tell the name. He was holding that in trust for
+whatever newspaper should be employing his fanatic loyalty at the time
+of the break. And he was waiting, listening, following.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Persis had been soft-hearted enough to feel the pity of the Ambassador's
+death. She had wept a little for her stricken enemy, and she suffered
+some acute stabs of repentance as the instrument of his assassination.
+But regret was mingled with the lilt of victory and successful
+evasion--even with blasphemous prayers of gratitude to the Lord for
+saving her from exposure in the matter. She had fallen on her knees to
+pour out this thanksgiving, and piously or impiously promised her Lord
+not to be indiscreet again.
+
+One's god is apt to be one's ideal servant magnified. As the daughters
+of joy in old Florence used to keep a votive Mary in their rooms and
+pray to it for success in their offices, so Persis whispered to her
+heaven words of praise and gratitude for aid in escaping the
+consequences of her mad whim to nestle in Forbes' arms.
+
+She went to the Ambassador's funeral, partly as a tribute of awesome
+esteem, partly as good sportsmanship toward a beaten adversary, and
+chiefly because it would have been conspicuous to stay away when almost
+every other American in Paris was sure to be there. She compelled Willie
+to go along, an unwilling and unwitting chaperon.
+
+She saw Forbes in the church, but at a distance, and noted with a gush
+of pity how haggard and lonely he seemed. She hoped that not all of his
+grief was for his dead friend. She longed to go to him with comfort, but
+she ventured only a nod from afar and one of her slow, sweet, tender
+smiles.
+
+Forbes had been kept intensely active at the Embassy, where the Consul
+took over the interrupted duties of the Ambassador's office, but left to
+Forbes the personal details of the funeral ceremony, the closing up of
+the house, and the arrangements for getting Mildred back to New York.
+The Ambassador's body was to be taken home to America on board a
+war-ship proffered by the French Republic.
+
+For three days Forbes was too grimly busy and too grief-stricken to feel
+more than a longing to see Persis; an impossible desire without impulse
+to achieve it.
+
+Mildred was, for once, demanding help instead of giving it. The loss of
+her father was a devastation in her soul. She clung to Forbes as to a
+brother. Had Persis seen her in his arms she might have felt a jealousy;
+but not if she could have seen Forbes' heart. That was filled only with
+a sense of shame. He felt that in denying Mildred his love he had robbed
+the old man of his last great wish. At times he reproached himself with
+the very murder of his best friend, the murder of a great statesman,
+the noble father of a noble woman. And the motive of the assassination
+was his obstinate devotion to another man's wife!
+
+People have a genius for remorse as for other emotions, and Forbes was
+of those who can mercilessly indict their own souls. Storms of
+self-condemnation were succeeded by storms of longing. About him hovered
+the tantalizing beckoning vision of Persis. He was mad to see her. He
+kept alternately vowing that he would not go near her and wondering when
+he should.
+
+At first he dared not make an effort to see her, because he feared to
+involve her and because he had not a moment he could call his own. He
+was burdened with tasks of every sort, and in and out of his office he
+was beset with correspondents like sparrows demanding crumbs of news to
+cable to America. He had no leisure of his own except the black hours
+when he sank into his bed.
+
+He would trudge to his room so exhausted, so drowsy, that he could
+hardly get his clothes off. The moment he lay down he was the prey to a
+swarm of black emotions that swooped about him like bats in a cave,
+swooped and shot and chittered, swept him with their vile wings and
+fastened their claws in his hair. He reproached himself with every
+wickedness and worthlessness from hideous ingratitude to murder and
+adultery that dared not take what it lusted for.
+
+Sleepless nights and restless days wore him out until the funeral, an
+affair of great pomp and enormous impressiveness. When he saw Persis in
+the church her beauty was overwhelming in the black costume she wore
+under the shadow of a black hat.
+
+Somehow, after the funeral ceremony, the prayers, and the long ritual,
+with which the church formally restored the soul to the heaven from
+which it emigrated and the body to the earth of which it was made, there
+came a great relief to Forbes--the restful word "Finis."
+
+That night he dined with Mildred. She, too, felt the relaxation of a
+burden removed. She almost collapsed into sleep at the table, and her
+maid supported her to her room. She had wept herself out.
+
+Forbes envied her nothing but her fluency in weeping. He carried about
+with him the ache of the tears a man feels but cannot release, the
+unshed tears that scratch the eyes like blown grit. He longed to be a
+boy again and cry his heart out as he had cried when his father was
+brought home dead. He longed to weep stormily as he had wept when the
+boy he was had been denied some luxury he greatly desired--honey, or a
+staying home from school, or some wild animal for a pet.
+
+The thought of Persis came to him now with the charm of all
+three--honey, truancy to duty, and danger. He lifted the telephone from
+the rack to ask her permission to call. He put it down again, his heart
+beating as if he had touched a snake. He went out into the air.
+
+It was a typical, sharp, wet winter night in Paris, the chill going with
+a peculiar directness straight to the marrow of the bones and freezing
+the body from within outward. Forbes had buffeted blizzards and the
+still, grim, icy airs of Dakota when the mercury seemed to crowd into
+the bulb of the thermometer to keep warm. But he wondered if he had ever
+been so cold in his life as he was now, when the thermometer had not
+reached even the zero of the French centigrade.
+
+Paris was not Paris. The sidewalks were not peopled with tables, and the
+restaurants were deserted within. There were few people abroad, for the
+audiences were at this hour in the theaters and the home-keepers were at
+home. Nobody loitered in the streets but a few miserables, and they were
+wretchedly cold.
+
+Forbes was so desperately lonely that he resolved to call upon Persis,
+even if he had to talk to her husband. He walked to the Meurice, but
+dared not turn in; he went on by. Later he was back again. Three times
+his courage--or his cowardice--failed him. The last time he stopped
+short as if he heard a sudden "Halt!"
+
+Willie Enslee was just stepping into a car with two other men, violently
+American and manifestly bent on finding in Paris what Paris manufactures
+for American visitors.
+
+Willie paused and cast his eyes along the street idly while he waited
+for the other two to precede him. Forbes stepped behind a shelter till
+Willie vanished.
+
+Forbes, the brave, the upright, found himself dodging to escape Willie's
+fishy eyes, found himself chuckling over Willie's blindness. Then he
+cursed himself for a reptile. He turned away from the hotel and started
+back to his apartment, groaning to himself, "The woman doesn't live that
+can make a sneak of me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+
+When he had gone a few hundred paces he whirled about and hurried back
+to the hotel; asked for Monsieur _et_ Madame Enslee; sent up his card;
+wished he had it back; received a summons to come up; cursed the
+slowness of the Parisian _ascenseur_; wished it would fall and kill him;
+moved toward Persis' door as to his execution; and was ushered in by
+Nichette, who was cloaked and bonneted for an evening out. She left him
+a moment, then came back and rattled off a string of French, from which
+he gleaned that he was _voulez-vous'd_ to seat himself and attend a
+little moment. Then Nichette left him and hastened to the corner of the
+street, where a little waiting _piou-piou_ shivered in his uniform.
+
+The hostility Forbes read in Nichette's look was merely her impatience
+at being kept a few moments longer from her sergeant after having been
+detained an hour by a quarrel of the Enslees--a quarrel ending in a
+defiant announcement from Willie that he was going to see the wickedest
+show he could find in Paris, and from Persis an hilarious "_Bonne
+chance!_ I hope you find somebody to take you off my hands for a while!"
+
+This had horrified Willie as a sacrilege, and he had regretted his vow.
+But in the court of the hotel he found two Americans who had typically
+arrived in Paris, and bibulously prepared for a night of social
+investigation without having taken the trouble to learn a word of
+French, the distinction of coins, or the system of cab fares and tips.
+They welcomed Enslee as a life-saver, embraced him, and bade him confirm
+their worst suspicions of Paris.
+
+This Forbes did not know, and he misinterpreted Nichette's brusquerie.
+His own thoughts were brusque. He loathed himself, and hated Persis and
+blamed her as if she had cast down a net from her window and dragged him
+to her feet.
+
+He paced the lavishly furnished reception-room of the suite and resolved
+to escape before it was too late. The thought of the cold loneliness of
+the streets, of the town, of the world, held him back. He was
+unutterably forlorn. He sank into a chair and clenched his hands
+together.
+
+Then he heard Persis' voice. It came through the glistening portieres
+masking the doors to the room adjoining, a kind of living-room. Music
+and welcome and all of Persis' beauty were in the little hospitable
+words:
+
+"Come in here, Harvey, won't you? I can't budge, and I'm all by myself."
+
+Wondering where she was and how he should find her, he pushed through
+the curtains timidly, as timidly as Joseph entering Potiphar's wife's
+boudoir.
+
+He found Persis cuddled up on a chaise longue of gold and satin. She was
+almost lost in a jumble of parcels and toys and knickknacks. She had
+been writing addresses, and the fingers she gave into his were smudged
+with ink.
+
+She sat like a sultana, with her feet curled under her. She wore a light
+confection of a house-gown of some astonishingly attractive hue, with
+plentiful display of white lace and arms and bosom and a good deal of
+stocking. She wore a boudoir-cap fetchingly awry.
+
+Forbes put her hand up to his lips and laughed as he kissed the smudge
+of ink. It was the first laugh he had known for days. It was like the
+first chuckle of rain after a drought. It brought moisture to his eyes.
+
+He clung to her hand. It was now a rescuing hand put out to lift him
+from the dry well of gloom. He dropped to his knee, and without any
+coquetry she put her arms around him and huddled him close. His hot
+cheek knew the ineffable comfort of her silken shoulder; his brow felt
+her lips upon them. He was at home.
+
+All the strength that had sustained him, all his ideas of duty and
+honor, were blown away like the down of a dandelion puff by the mere
+breath of her lips. And now the tears his eyes had refused broke from
+them in flood. He wept because he was happy and because he had found
+contentment and refuge. He wept as great heroes and fierce warriors used
+to weep before tears went out of fashion for men and began to fall into
+disuse even among women.
+
+Persis mothered him, wondering at his childishness. She did not weep
+with him. She smiled. She laughed the low, thorough laughter of the
+victorious Delilah getting her Samson back. She loved him though she
+betrayed him. She loved the triumph of her beauty, the victory of her
+soft bosom, over all the hateful inconveniences of law and justice and
+piety.
+
+By and by he was smiling, too, with shame at his humanity and his return
+to boyhood, and with the revel of her companionship. She humiliated him
+deliciously by drying his wet eyelids with her fragrant tiny
+handkerchief and by the silly baby talk she lavished on him. But it was
+the only comfortable shame he had felt in the past black days.
+
+And now they were indeed acquainted with each other. She had seen him
+weep. When a woman has gained that advantage over a man, what dignity
+has he left? She can make a face at him, and all his pride becomes a
+laughing-stock.
+
+At length, to avoid the reefs of more important talk, he asked her how
+she came to be alone, and what all the bundles were for. She explained
+that she had been shopping betimes for Christmas presents and had been
+making the things ready for the morrow's American mail; Willie had
+mutinied and gone vaudevilling; his man had taken the English maid of a
+neighbor in the hotel to a dance at the Red Mill; and Nichette had
+refused to miss her soldier's evening out.
+
+Persis made Forbes help her with the remaining packages, and they
+laughed like youngsters over the knots she tied, and the blots she made,
+and the things she had bought for all the people she had to buy things
+for--her father, her mother-in-law, her sister, her sister's children,
+and an army of servants. When finally the last address was inscribed she
+felt that she had done enough duty for a month, and voted herself a
+vacation--also a cigarette. She told Forbes where Willie's cigars were
+kept, but he made a punctilio of not smoking them, though he had none of
+his own and would not order any from the hotel.
+
+They talked small talk and love talk; they laughed and cooed. They were
+congenial to the infinitesimal degree. The world outside was dank and
+cheerless. They shut it away with great curtains. They forgot that there
+was any curse upon their rapture. They shut out all their obligations as
+things clammy and odious.
+
+Nature had selected them for each other. Nature mated them and wooed for
+them, and did not know or did not care what other plans they had made,
+what contracts or pledges had been assumed. The true damnation was in
+the earlier crime: that solemn marriage in the church before the world.
+The wickedness was begun at the altar: the violation of duty, the breach
+of the seventh "Thou shalt not." It was there that Persis' feet took
+hold on hell.
+
+Yet the world had made a jubilee of that occasion. People had put on
+their best clothes and were proud to be asked to assist. Rather, they
+should have hidden their eyes from the abomination; they should have
+resented the request to play accomplice to that indecency. Instead, they
+celebrated the crime with flowers, and music, and with surplices in a
+church.
+
+There would be resentment enough, but belated, when the consequences of
+that impious sacrifice were reaped, when nature demanded restitution and
+scoffed at the mortgage. If this night's rite were ever heard of it
+would be cried out against, the celebrants would be shunned, banished.
+
+None of this is to say that faith should not be kept, however rashly
+pledged, or that people should make a virtue of refusing to pay the
+debts they run and repudiating the laws that shelter them.
+
+Persis' earlier crime did not justify or cancel the latter, but added
+another to it. She had entered with open eyes into her compact with
+Enslee; she auctioned herself off; he was the highest bidder, and she
+knocked herself down. She was in honor bound to stay sold. But the very
+readiness to commit that infamy, the yielding to that temptation, was
+instruction for the next. Easy bind, easy break.
+
+Her only safety was in keeping away from Forbes. That was the
+Ambassador's wisdom. He feared the very proximity of Persis and Forbes.
+He foresaw that, while nature would hold cheap the laws of mankind,
+mankind would not accept nature as an excuse for lawlessness.
+
+In spite of him Persis and Forbes were reunited. The withes that
+marriage had bound about her were as nothing to the great changes it had
+made in her soul. It had taken away the enormous power that exists in
+maidenhood, with its self-awe and its fierce defense of integrity. That
+instinct of self-preciousness that had made Persis hide her lips from
+Forbes' kisses on a far-off day was annulled, for her lips had been
+Willie Enslee's for more than half a year. Her body had been his toy. He
+had schooled her to maturity, made a woman of the girl.
+
+And now in the presence of the bridegroom selected by nature and love
+what protection had she? She had no harem walls to inclose her, no
+guardians to keep the suitor away or to threaten exposure. She had lost
+the fawn-like girlishness that would take flight; there was no
+nun-spirit within her now to cry "Help me!"
+
+What remorse there was was the man's. He blamed himself for overpowering
+where he was overpowered and decoyed. With the traditional mistake of
+the man he accused himself of a ruthless conquest when he was really the
+prey of ancient guile and wile. And this again is not to blame Persis.
+She was herself the mere puppet of world-old impulses along the wires of
+sense. She was a victim, too. But her remorse was hardly remorse at all,
+rather amazement or dismay. It was Forbes that condemned himself for
+dishonor.
+
+Man is the maker of laws, the upholder of laws, the punisher of those
+who violate the majesty of the law.
+
+But law for law's sake has little or no meaning for woman. She has her
+own codes and reads them within. The complex tissue of her loves and
+hates is her attorney, always plaintiff or defendant, not often referee.
+She has her glories, and perhaps they are greater than any of man's; but
+the creation of laws and constitutions and codes is not one of them. She
+is timid, she is brave, she is merciful, she is ruthless. She may
+reproach herself for indiscretion, for folly, for misplaced trust, for
+misguided emotion; but did any woman ever honestly reproach herself for
+a breach of honor as honor? A disloyalty to religion, yes; to faith,
+yes; to love, oh yes; but to honor?
+
+Persis was dumfounded at the completeness of her success by surrender
+and at its rashness. She was afraid that Forbes might despise her; but
+she felt also the barbaric primeval perfection of the triumph of nature.
+She had achieved her destiny. She had been female to the male of her
+choice. She would fight the consequences; she would deny the fact, but
+she felt that she could never regret it.
+
+Immediately having made conquest of Forbes, she began to own him. She
+began to resent his other obligations, his other codes; her jealousy
+began to function.
+
+She implored him to postpone his return to America; to follow the
+Ambassador's body on a later steamer; not to go, at least, on the
+steamer Mildred took--anything to escape the breaking of the rose-chains
+wherewith she withed him. But his almost filial love for his benefactor
+overcame even his passion. Nothing could move him from that last
+foothold on self-respect.
+
+The triumph of love wound up in a war, a downright quarrel, with all the
+brutality of a married couple. And that came to an abrupt end with the
+tinkle of a clock sounding the hour. Both of them blenched. It was as if
+rats fighting heard the bell of the cat.
+
+"You must hurry," she gasped, "Willie is long past due."
+
+Forbes needed no urging. He fled so precipitately that he hardly paused
+for a farewell kiss. They had time for no future plans. He sneaked along
+the corridors of the hotel. He feared to summon the elevator lest Willie
+step out of it. He went down by the stairways. From the entresol he
+studied the lobby of the hotel to make sure of not meeting Enslee. A
+detective might have suspected him for a thief had not his manner been
+the immemorial stealth of clandestine lovers. Love had belittled him
+thus in one evening.
+
+Little Willie Enslee could have put him to flight, have struck him
+without resistance, have shot him down without provoking an answering
+shot.
+
+So Forbes had coerced and terrified soldiers of his who were far
+superior to him in bulk and brawn. They saw his shoulder-straps and
+respected them, took a pride in being humble before them. Back of them
+was the whole power and dignity of the nation.
+
+Willie Enslee wore the shoulder-straps of the husband. He wore that
+authority, and back of it was arrayed the decency and the safety of
+human society.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI
+
+
+Forbes took the steamer he had planned to take, though he had such
+battles with his recalcitrant heart that he did not feel safe till the
+tender at Cherbourg put away from the ship and left him no opportunity
+of return.
+
+Equally disconsolate was young Stowe Webb, who had lost his post with
+his chief, and who was in a panic of uncertainty. But Mildred, on her
+first day of calm, reverted to habit and began to take thought of the
+welfare of others. She asked Stowe of his plans, and, learning of his
+hopelessness, immediately begged him to act as her own secretary--"at an
+increase of salary because of the extra trouble she would give him."
+
+The reaction from despair to this paradise was so great that young Webb
+found it hard to maintain the appropriate solemnity. He fired off a
+wireless to the friend who received his messages for Alice, and when he
+heard it crackling from the mast it was like a volley of festival
+sky-rockets.
+
+He told Forbes of his new-found hope and how poor it was at best, and
+Forbes envied him his very deferment; there was something so clean and
+beautiful about a young lover trying to earn enough to earn the girl
+that waits for him. Young Webb was building a home, and Forbes was
+destroying one.
+
+The arrival in New York brought a new mountain of tasks for Forbes.
+Mildred had adopted him as an elder brother; she gave him power of
+attorney in the endless interviews with the lawyers, executors,
+directors, and the officials in the Department of State.
+
+Forbes soon learned what the Ambassador's hints as to his will had
+meant. A recent codicil bequeathed to him almost as much as Tait's dead
+son was to have had.
+
+It seemed to Forbes as if Satan had laid the wealth of Ormus and of Ind
+at his feet and knelt there grinning over the hoard. There was a further
+sardonic bitterness in the legacy, since he knew that it had been given
+him so that he might feel able to make Mildred his wife without
+sacrifice of his pride.
+
+The thought came to him that he could square himself with the dead and
+with the living by carrying out this implied, if not inscribed,
+condition of the deed of gift.
+
+Mildred was a splendid soul. She was not Aphrodite like Persis, but
+Minerva was beautiful, too. Mildred was far nobler than Persis, who was
+not noble at all. She would be a magnificent wife. She would make their
+home a bee-hive of lofty purposes amid serene delights. A union with
+Mildred would be wonderful. It would crown life.
+
+And he felt that Mildred would not oppose it. He resolved again and
+again to ask her; but he simply could not tell her that he loved her as
+a wife ought to be loved. He and Mildred had become so dear to each
+other as brother and sister that no other affection seemed possible. To
+marry her would mean not only an infidelity to Persis, but a more cruel
+infidelity to Mildred.
+
+Unable to fulfil the condition of the legacy, he tried to refuse it. The
+executors asked him why; his evasions led them to suspect his sanity.
+Mildred would ask him why? What could he tell her?
+
+He consulted Ten Eyck, but could tell him only that he could not give
+Mildred the love that was needed to sanctify the marriage. Ten Eyck
+probably understood more than he admitted. He lifted one eyebrow and
+lowered the other, as if his mind were divided between two comments. He
+said:
+
+"I see why you can't go to nice old Mildred and say, 'Dear girl, I
+wouldn't marry you for a hundred thousand dollars.' That would be an
+awful black eye to hand a charming lady. But I can't say that your
+motives of love appeal to me, Forbesy. You sound like the heroine of an
+old-fashioned novel refusing to marry a rich man because she loves old
+Dr. A. Nother.
+
+"But whatever you do, Forbesy, don't refuse the money. In times like
+these, when bank presidents are robbing their children's savings-banks
+for carfare, don't spurn any real money, or you'll cause several persons
+to die of apoplexy, and strong men will lead you to the paddedest cell
+in the house of foolishness.
+
+"Take the money and build an Old Ladies' Home with it; but don't make a
+solemn jackass of yourself right out in public."
+
+Forbes took the money, promising himself that he would scatter it in
+beautiful deeds of charity.
+
+But he didn't.
+
+One never does.
+
+In the first place, money in large quantities has singular adhesive and
+cohesive properties. In the second place, when the news of his wealth
+was published he received such serial avalanches of begging letters of
+every sort, noble and ignoble, that he was dismayed. He showed a stack
+of them to Ten Eyck, who said:
+
+"You could give away your fortune in a week, and make about as much of a
+show as if you drove a sprinkling-cart along the main street of hell.
+All millionaires grow callous; if they don't, they cease to be
+millionaires."
+
+Forbes answered a few of the appeals with cheques, and planned to file
+the others alphabetically for future reference. But he never got round
+to filing them.
+
+This was not the only sarcasm of his wealth. He had returned to his
+duties as a line captain and was restored to Governor's Island. But here
+again there was discomfort. His fellow-officers envied him his luck, but
+despised him for not profiting by it. And it did seem peculiarly
+grotesque that a man of his important means should be trudging about on
+a drill-ground giving orders to stupid privates and taking orders from
+stupid superiors. His very men seemed to think he was a ludicrous
+fanatic. He felt that he must leave the service.
+
+He poured out his woes to Ten Eyck again, who advised caution. "Don't
+jump out of the frying-pan, Forbes, till you've tested the fire with
+your big toe. You might be even unhappier out of the army than in it.
+Ask for a long leave of absence--say, six months, and see how you like
+it. Then you can resign or go back."
+
+"They won't give me six months' leave without a good reason," Forbes
+demurred, though he was fascinated by the idea.
+
+"A lot of money is a good reason for nearly anything. Anybody will give
+a rich man what he asks for," Ten Eyck insisted. "Take some of the high
+boys out in your car, and blow them off to a gorgeous evening, and
+promise them some more of the same. Then pop the question."
+
+Forbes made the attempt, and it succeeded with surprising ease; he was
+granted six months' leave of absence without pay "for special research
+and experiment."
+
+His research was into the comforts of wealth, and his experiment was the
+effect of life without labor or ambition.
+
+Forbes had a car now. He had not intended to get one, but after dodging
+salesmen for weeks one of them lay in ambush for him and carried him off
+for a ride--a demonstration in disguise. He was so captivated by the
+1915 model and the enlarged powers it gave him that he capitulated and
+bought. He learned to be his own chauffeur; but this was so inconvenient
+at times that he was soon hiring a charioteer. And, of course, he never
+skimmed the earth or sped through beauties of landscape that he did not
+wish for Persis at his side. He had a better car than Enslee's now. He
+could buy Persis the costly, cozy little runabout she wanted; he could
+hire her father's chauffeur and Nichette. He could buy her great
+quantities of clothes, and he had leisure for her entertainment. But he
+had not her, nor the right to buy things for her.
+
+Away from her he found that time was softening his remorse without
+hardening his heart against her. His wealth was mockery, his leisure was
+mockery. His mind was hardly more than a music-box eternally purling one
+little tune: "Persis-Persis-Persis!"
+
+And then Persis came back, as if his longing had pulsed across the sea.
+She had no difficulty in persuading Willie to return to New York. He
+felt positively footsore from travel.
+
+As they came up the Bay on a home-bound liner her heart was beating as
+if she were entering a dark room full of ghosts. As Governor's Island
+was reached she studied it again with a marine-glass.
+
+She thought of the little homes of the officers' wives, the little
+garage-less quarters where there must be so much content. She wished to
+God that she were living in one of those little homes there.
+
+If she had married Forbes she would never have caused the Ambassador's
+death; she would not have given herself to Willie Enslee. She could not
+have had more unhappiness, more loneliness and vain regrets. She would
+have dwelt in Forbes' arms; she would have been his all day long and all
+the long nights. All this past and horrible year would have been a true
+honeymoon. Love would have been wealth enough.
+
+As she had told Alice Neff, "Almost anything that we are not used to is
+a luxury." She had learned the corollary, that almost any luxury becomes
+a poverty as soon as one is used to it. She was all too familiar with
+splendor. She hungered for a life of little comforts. The word "cozy"
+grew magically beautiful.
+
+She had not been long ashore before she learned the new status of
+Forbes. It was Mrs. Neff who told her, taunting her with having jumped
+into the marital noose with Willie too soon.
+
+She had not been long ashore before she met Forbes. And once more it was
+Willie who brought her into his presence.
+
+Forbes was now a member of several of the more important clubs. Willie
+met him at one of them, and asked him to join a crowd he was inviting up
+to the country place.
+
+Forbes' heart began to knock at his breast at the thought of being with
+Persis again in the Enslee Eden. A remnant of honesty led him to decline
+the invitation on the ground of another engagement, but Willie insisted.
+
+"You had such a rotten time there last spring," he said. "I want to make
+up. There won't be any lilacs yet; but there'll be servants--and
+something to eat."
+
+Forbes flung off his scruples, and promised to "motor up." The phrase
+sounded odd in his ears, for he remembered the poverty of his first
+visit, when he went as a passenger in Mrs. Neff's car.
+
+When he spoke of his car Enslee said: "By the way, if you're motoring up
+you might bring Mrs. Neff and Alice. The old lady's old car has got the
+sciatica or something."
+
+So Forbes brought Mrs. Neff along, and Alice. Mrs. Neff had much to say
+of his wealth. And now that she knew Persis to be out of the running,
+she had evidently entered Alice for the Forbes stakes. Forbes could feel
+the idea in the air, and he was exceedingly embarrassed.
+
+He was embarrassed more by his arrival at the country home. The great
+hill was as bleak as the granite bridge. The trees were shaggy with
+snow. The house was part of the winter, as white as an igloo. The
+statues were oddly distorted with icicles and snow; they looked very
+cold--especially the Cupid in the temple--a windy and forlorn white
+kiosk where a naked child suffered exile. It struck him as pitifully
+appropriate to the Enslee menage that Love should be left out in the
+cold.
+
+Persis received him now in her quality of owner and housewife, with a
+flock of servants everywhere. He found her in the living-room,
+surrounded by guests, chattering and lounging and sprawling. He had not
+seen her since he left her that night in Paris.
+
+She gave him her hand and a few commonplace words, but their eyes
+embraced and their lips were tremulous with unspoken messages and
+ungiven kisses.
+
+Her manner warned him, and her apparent neglect of him gave him the cue
+of his behavior. But there were brief collisions when it was possible to
+murmur a word or two before one of the numerous other guests drifted up
+and ruined the tete-a-tete. He pleaded ruthlessly for a meeting; she
+pleaded for discretion above all things. She reminded him of the great
+difference between the condition of their former visit and the present.
+With only a few about them before, they had narrowly escaped discovery;
+what chance had they now?
+
+As the dinner-hour approached, and the others went up to dress, Forbes
+lingered, and Persis sat with him a moment in the embrasure of that
+drawing-room window where they had once held rendezvous. The mystery was
+gone from it, and the poetry. But they seized each other in one swift
+embrace of arms and lips. Even this was broken just in time to escape
+the sight of the butler, who entered to ask a question as to the wines
+for the dinner.
+
+Persis gave her orders with an impatience that could hardly have escaped
+the man's notice. She felt a little extra effort at impassivity in his
+manner, and was sure that he suspected her of more than a hospitable
+interest in Forbes. She could not resent an unexpressed intuition, but
+she felt humbled and shamed and afraid.
+
+When the butler was gone she repeated her warning to Forbes, but he took
+her in his arms again. Her mind told her that she must not go on
+risking, go on registering faint impressions in the minds of servants
+and of guests; but her heart would not defer entirely to her
+intelligence.
+
+Forbes was taciturn at the dinner. Mrs. Neff could not provoke him to
+vivacity. She noted that his gaze returned constantly to Persis, and
+that when her look came down the board to him it softened strangely.
+
+After dinner little cliques were formed about the billiard and the pool
+tables, the card-tables, and a few danced the everlasting tango with
+some new variation. Forbes and Persis danced together, and many eyes
+noted the perfect rapport of their mood, the solemn joy they took in the
+welded union.
+
+"How well they dance!" was the spoken comment; but the thought was, "How
+congenial they seem!"
+
+Shortly after nine there was an excitement. On the hill opposite a
+building was on fire. The guests crowded and jostled at the windows.
+Somebody proposed that they all go to the scene of the blaze. The
+irresistible fascination of a burning building at night was inducement
+enough. Motors were telephoned for from the distant garage, and there
+was a scramble for wraps. Forbes' car was not brought up, and he was
+invited into Enslee's. He climbed in, but clambered out again to get an
+extra wrap for Mrs. Neff. A maid had already run for it, and by the time
+he returned the cars had all gone.
+
+He stood regretting boyishly the loss of the opportunity to go to a
+fire. He watched for a few moments from the steps, and then turned back
+into the house. He found Persis at the drawing-room window. She had
+declined to go. He joined her. Out on the white edge of the lawn they
+could see the servants in a little mob staring at the pyrotechnics of an
+upward rain of sparks.
+
+"I'll put out the light. We can see better," he said.
+
+"No, no!" she protested; but he had already found and turned the switch.
+They were in a cavern of darkness, with one window dimly reddened. He
+found his way back to her. She urged him to turn the light on again,
+but he refused. She moved to turn it on herself, but he held her fast,
+and compelled her back to the deep embrasure, and drew the curtains
+behind them.
+
+She could count the servants on the lawn outside. They were all there.
+She felt that it was safe to be alone with Forbes, at least till one of
+the domestics should detach himself from the group and move across the
+snowy sheet of white.
+
+They watched in silence awhile the leaping red geyser of the flames. It
+grew and expanded till it formed a huge ember-mottled orchid with vast
+petals trembling in the wind.
+
+On the far-off roads they could see the long shafts of motor-lights
+wavering like antennae. From all the homes of the region the neighbors
+were hastening to the spectacle, huge night moths drawn by the flaring
+lamp.
+
+For a long, blissful while the flame-flower bloomed against the black
+sky. At last it wilted and failed and shriveled. Then the servants
+turned back to the house. Persis fled from Forbes' arms to her own room,
+where Nichette found her, apparently established the past hour.
+
+Forbes waited at another window, and when at last the motors came
+puffing back the home-comers were too benumbed with cold and too eager
+for warming drinks to know or care whether Forbes had been with them or
+not. Any one who might have missed him would have supposed him to be in
+one of the other cars.
+
+The next day some of the guests rode over to see the ruins. Forbes and
+Persis went along. To their amazement, what had seemed, while flaming,
+to be a miracle of enchantments, a palace afire, proved in the daylight
+to have been a miserable shack whose hollow shams and rotten timbers the
+flames had mercilessly exposed to public contempt, stark, charred, cold,
+obscene.
+
+"It was so beautiful while it burned," said Persis. "I can't believe
+it's the same. It was like a wild rose in the night; but in the daylight
+it's hideous, it's revolting. Look at the fraud in the building of the
+house--the rotten timbers, the ghastly furniture in the back rooms!"
+
+Forbes was about to say that their passion had something akin to this.
+But as he raised his eyes to hers he saw that she had the same thought.
+
+She shivered and said, "Let's get away from the place."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII
+
+
+Never, it seems, has human ingenuity been able to devise a scheme of
+guardianship that human ingenuity could not thwart. Seeing that seraglio
+walls, and yashmaks, and eunuchs, and bow-strings, and scarlet letters,
+and pillories, and divorce courts, and gossips have failed to scare
+fidelity into the disloyal, perhaps the modern honor system is as good
+as any. But the honor system is not infallible; and not all the spies of
+Mrs. Grundy can coerce from without those who are not coerced from
+within their own hearts.
+
+For those who are willing to devote themselves to deceit and make an
+industry of other people's property, opportunities have always been
+infernally provided. Persis and Forbes did not find it difficult to be
+alone. Solitudes seemed to be created suddenly in crowds, chances to
+escape and to creep back undetected seemed to be brandished in their
+faces. The unabated plague of the tango explained their presence at all
+sorts of hours at all sorts of places. There were morning classes in new
+steps; between the courses of luncheon at numerous restaurants in and
+out of town there were dances, and these were prolonged till tea, and
+after that till dinner, and on until whatever hour of closing the
+individual cabareteer had arranged with the police. The private
+hostesses seemed to vie with the restaurateurs.
+
+The dancing frenzy had shown no signs of passing. It had developed into
+a revolution that swept the world. Dancers who were yesterday unknown,
+to-day were wealthy. A dancer and his wife had grown to such dimensions
+of fame that influential people rented them a house on Fifth Avenue,
+where lessons could be given at all hours. A girl who had danced in a
+restaurant became a national figure and hired a hall. The clergy and the
+editors fought in vain; the Kaiser and the Pope were unheeded; all the
+nations danced; even the Japanese caught the contagion. New steps
+abounded, became so complex that it was not easy to change partners. The
+turkey-trot was laughably obsolete. Everything and everybody was
+influenced by the tango in one of its countless forms. It had already
+made itself an epoch in human history.
+
+Willie Enslee was one of the stubborn minority that refused to dance or
+go to dances. After a number of vain assertions of an authority he could
+not enforce he ceased to concern himself with Persis' whereabouts; she
+ceased to announce her program in advance or to report it afterward.
+
+The motor-car was another immense enlargement of liberty--and license;
+it was so easy to outstrip pursuit and outwit espionage. In two hours
+one could vanish into the wilderness and return without evidence of
+escape. At distant road-houses and motor-caravansaries the twang of
+tango music troubled the country midnights.
+
+And so the intrigue of Captain Forbes and Mrs. Enslee prospered and
+established itself as the habit of their lives; their souls adapted
+themselves to it. Precautions against discovery became second nature,
+like precautions against disease and accident. They were bound together
+in a kind of secret wedlock, what Tibullus called the _furtivi foedera
+lecti_.
+
+Persis, like another Guenevere, justified herself to herself by the
+feeling that she was true to one Launcelot; she flirted with no one
+else; she kept Willie's home in order as best she could; she paid him
+the tribute of outward devotion and public respect. Above all, she
+justified herself by her success. So far as she could see, not a human
+being suspected her love for Forbes, not a breath of scandal had been
+stirred.
+
+And all the while gossip was busy with them; evidence accumulated
+against them grain by grain, as sand-dunes are formed into walls.
+Everybody spoke of the intrigue to everybody but those most concerned.
+Nobody warned Persis or rebuked Persis or tattled to Willie. A few
+fearless persons talked to Persis' father, but he could not believe, or,
+believing, could not touch so repulsive a topic in his few meetings with
+his daughter. How could a father accuse his little girl of outrages
+against a commandment he had been afraid even to mention to her. Several
+women broached the theme with Willie's mother, who had been suspicious
+on her own account. She answered the gossips with fervent denials and
+with vigorous defense of Persis; but she vowed to herself that she would
+descend upon her daughter-in-law with vengeance. Yet, before Persis'
+eyes she could only dissemble; then she would resolve to warn her son,
+but she feared the terrific possibilities of lighting such a fuse.
+Willie was like herself in so many ways, and half of her blood was from
+the Spanish aristocracy through an international marriage.
+
+Eventually people began to say that somebody must tell Willie, and some
+day somebody might. Some day he might stumble upon some tryst, or open a
+letter, or overhear a gossip's careless word.
+
+Ten Eyck heard plenteous scandal, and he was heartbroken. Even his
+cynicism could not stomach the intrigue. But even his affection could
+not bring him to protest.
+
+He had intervened once before in such a scandal; but the husband had
+forgiven his wife because of her beauty and her gaiety, and both of them
+had thereafter been his bitterest enemies, because he knew and had said
+too much. Friends who had merely gossiped behind their backs were
+reinstated to complete favor.
+
+Everybody felt that Persis and Forbes, in their mad gallop across
+another man's boundary line, were riding for a fall. But everybody was
+fascinated by the breathlessness of the gallopade, the escapes from
+disaster. Nobody cut Persis, omitted her from a list of invitations, or
+treated her otherwise than as a valued and charming ornament to the
+world. Nobody would desert her so long as she kept the saddle, held her
+head up, and remained attractive.
+
+But should she fall and be dragged in the dirt, then the panic would
+come; then the majesty of public morals would assert itself, and her
+friends would flee from her as if she appeared among them chalk-faced
+and scaly-handed with leprosy.
+
+Meanwhile the poison of their Judas life was wearing upon their own
+souls. Forbes was growing restive to be at work again upon his career.
+To be the messenger-boy of a woman's summons grew increasingly irksome.
+He dreaded an official cognizance of his new career as home-wrecker, and
+his innate decency was more and more rebellious against the outrages he
+committed incessantly against his self-respect, his creeds, his codes,
+his position.
+
+And, last of all, a strange new horror assailed the basking luxury of
+Persis. It dawned upon her that in spite of all her precautions nature
+was about to make the use of her that all this rapture was for. Her
+physician confirmed her dread, and congratulated her--and her husband!
+She dared not ask his aid in foiling her destiny. She dared not ask
+anybody's aid. Her life of pleasure-hunting had made a coward of her.
+
+And so at length remorse found a lodging even in her voluptuous life.
+She understood the fearful responsibility she had assumed to a future
+soul. And she groveled in abject self-derision to think that even she
+could not be sure of her child's legitimacy. So helpless a vessel for
+nature's chemistry she was that she was not permitted to know even that!
+And she could not so much as be sure whether she even wished it to be
+love's child or the law's.
+
+The treachery to her own child was so hideous that she would have killed
+herself had she not dreaded to add murder to suicide. She longed to pour
+out her woes to Forbes, but she could not bring herself to confess her
+degradation. He only knew that somehow all the rapture was gone from
+their union. It had lost even that compensation.
+
+The thought came to Forbes that there was but one way to make their life
+livable--to make it frank and public. Persis must enter the divorce
+court, and as soon as possible after marry him. That sort of solution
+for such intrigues had been much practised of late. It had become so
+fashionable that protest was losing its vigor.
+
+He opened the subject to Persis. She shrank from it with revulsion. She
+could not tell him her secret even then; but it was a mighty argument to
+herself against such a step. She gave other reasons cogent enough in her
+opinion.
+
+"Anything but divorce, Harvey. I'd rather die than go through it. Willie
+couldn't do the polite thing. He is a Catholic, you know, and his
+mother's Spanish blood boils at the divorce habit."
+
+"Then if he won't give it, you can take it, anyway."
+
+"But suppose he should fight. Suppose he should set detectives going
+back over our trail or bribe the servants. Look at this morning's
+papers--the ghastly head-lines about Mrs. Tom Corliss--her photographs!
+Did you read the testimony of the maid at that big hotel? Suppose Willie
+should get hold of that bellboy who was so insolent to us--the one we
+didn't dare rebuke and had to tip so heavily. Did you read Mrs. Tom's
+love letters yesterday? Only one paper dared to print them all. Mrs.
+Neff said everybody bought it specially. Mrs. Neff laughed till she
+cried.
+
+"Wouldn't you rather die than go through with it? And, my God, how they
+would tear me to pieces! The poor people and the middle-class people
+push through the divorce court in droves--eighty divorces were granted
+in two hours the other day, Murray Ten Eyck was telling me, and only one
+paper mentioned it--in a paragraph! But if Mrs. Tom Corliss gets the
+front page, what wouldn't they give to Mrs. Willie Enslee?"
+
+Forbes said no more. Somehow he was reminded of the time when he was
+dancing with Persis, and the rose light was suddenly changed to green.
+There was a charnel odor in the air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII
+
+
+The following afternoon Persis came home from a tango-tea, where she had
+expected to meet Forbes. Through some misunderstanding he had failed to
+appear. This left her plans in a decided tangle. He was probably trying
+to find her by telephone. He would doubtless call up the house. Things
+were in a mess there, too. An ancient romance in the servants' quarters
+had resulted in a wedding between the second man and one of the
+chambermaids. Nichette had been chosen as a bridesmaid and had begged
+off for the afternoon, as had all of the others that could be spared.
+
+Nichette had long ago been taken into their confidence as a necessary
+go-between. Persis trembled lest a message from Forbes should fall into
+inexperienced hands.
+
+To complicate matters Willie had resolved to go to the opera that night
+and to be on time. He had read an editorial somewhere ridiculing the
+horseshoe of box-holders for their indifference to overtures and first
+acts. Willie naturally selected this one evening for his rebuke to the
+editor. Dinner was to be served an hour earlier than usual.
+
+Harrowed by the multiplex difficulties surrounding an intrigue, Persis
+was kept waiting at the door a long time in the cold. She was about to
+rend the tardy footman to pieces when the door was opened by Crofts, the
+superannuated butler, an heirloom from Enslee's father.
+
+Crofts had long ago reached the age when he was too venerable to wear
+the Enslee livery. He was an ideal gentleman, respected and loved by all
+the family and its friends. But as an officer of the household he was
+deaf, decrepit, and almost useless. Yet he was too much of an
+institution to discharge, and he simply would not retire.
+
+He was permitted to lag superfluous as a sort of butler _emeritus_. At
+large dinners he hovered about in the offing correcting and directing
+with a marvelous tact and an infallible memory for the encyclopedic lore
+of nice service. For a guest to be recognized by his watery old eyes and
+named by his thin lips was in itself a distinction.
+
+To-day he was blissfully happy. The young upstart servants had flocked
+to the wedding, and he was called to the helm. When Persis saw him at
+the door her heart melted, but it also sank.
+
+"Did anybody call?" she asked, and asked several times in _crescendo_.
+
+"Only Mrs. Enslee, ma'am," he whispered, in his dry, cackling, deaf
+man's voice.
+
+Persis cast her eyes up in despair and hastened to pay her devoirs to
+her mother-in-law. The elder Mrs. Enslee was looking radiantly beautiful
+in her white hair and her black eyes and the assisted red of her Spanish
+lips, with her cascade of furs falling about her.
+
+She smiled at Persis sadly. Her daughter-in-law was beautiful
+undeniably. What a pity that she was not also good! But she kept back
+her reproaches, and said in the most delicate of accents, with her
+tendency to an exquisite lisp:
+
+"Don't worry, my dear. It's only a duty call."
+
+"Won't you stop to dinner?" Persis urged. "We're only going to have a
+bite. We're dining early and hurrying away to the opera. Willie is
+determined to hear the overture and the first act. I dote on 'Carmen,'
+but I've never been in time for the first of it."
+
+"'Carmen!'" Mrs. Enslee sniffed. "That old slander on my race--as if
+Spanish women were all faithless!"
+
+"But if it's Carmen for Spain," Persis said, "it's Camille for France,
+and Becky Sharp for England, and--who for America?"
+
+"Hester Prynne, perhaps."
+
+"Oh yes," laughed Persis. "Even the Puritans had their scandals; but she
+was a grass-widow, and the town was so dull, and the preacher so
+handsome. Can you blame her?"
+
+"Cynical Persis!" Mrs. Enslee sighed. "Well, I shall be late."
+
+"I wish you'd stay," Persis lied, graciously. "You're a picture. And
+everybody says you are flirting dreadfully with old General Branscomb."
+
+"I hope you don't believe all you hear."
+
+"Only the worst."
+
+"Then you're on the safe side. But remember, my dear, other people can
+apply the same rule. I'm not the only one who has been suspected of
+flirting with an army officer." The doorbell had punctuated their
+chatter several times. It rang again. "Now, who's that? Expecting
+anybody?"
+
+"No, and I've got to fling into my opera-gown."
+
+"What are you wearing to-night?"
+
+The rhapsody of description was interrupted by the incursion of Willie.
+He wore his overcoat and top hat into the room, and his key-chain
+dangled. He was in one of his most fretful moods. He vouchsafed his
+mother a casual "Oh, hello, _madre mia_," then turned to Persis.
+
+"What the devil has happened to the servants? Nobody to answer the bell.
+Had to let myself in. Deuced nuisance unbuttoning coat, getting keys
+out, finding right one. What are we coming to? I'll fire that Dobbs."
+
+"You forget, dear, he is getting married this afternoon."
+
+"We all ought to have gone," said Mrs. Enslee; but Willie has no sense
+of obligation to his employees.
+
+He ignored the suggestion and raged on, "Well, Dobbs isn't our only
+servant, is he?"
+
+"No," Persis explained; "but, you see, he's marrying the housekeeper's
+daughter, and the butler is best man, and the maids are bridesmaids--"
+
+"Romance everywhere," Willie sneered, as he laid off his things and
+threw them on a chair, "except up-stairs. I suppose that's why my man
+was so surly when I told him he'd have to stay and dress me. He'll
+probably cut my throat while he shaves me. I wish he would."
+
+"That's cheerful!" said Persis. "What brings you home from the club so
+early? It's such an unusual honor."
+
+"I heard something I didn't like--gossip."
+
+"Tell us what you heard," Mrs. Enslee asked, hungrily.
+
+"I prefer not to retail club gossip in my home," said Willie.
+
+"Oh, aren't we punctilious?" Persis railed; and Willie answered, curtly:
+
+"One of us ought to be."
+
+Persis was jarred a trifle, but her only comment was: "Why is it that
+when men are feeling ugly they always come home early?"
+
+Willie threw her a look of wrath and turned to his distressed mother.
+"Won't you stop to dinner?"
+
+"Not when there's so much war-paint visible, thanks!"
+
+"But hang it all--" Willie began, and checked himself, for Crofts
+shuffled through the room. Willie rounded on him. "Oh, somebody at last,
+eh? Why the deuce was no one at the door? I had to let myself in."
+
+Crofts cupped his hand behind his ear, and crackled, "Beg pardon, sir?"
+
+"I had to let myself in, I say."
+
+"Very sorry, sir, but owing to Dobbs' wedding and your early dinner,
+sir, the servants have a great deal to do."
+
+"But I rang and rang!" Willie stormed, and repeated, wrathfully, "I rang
+and rang!"
+
+"Very sorry, indeed, sir," Crofts pleaded. "My hearing isn't as good as
+it was when I entered your father's service."
+
+"Well, I won't have my house turned into a--an infirmary."
+
+Crofts heard that and withered. "Your father never complained of me,
+sir."
+
+"You heard better then and jumped quicker," Willie shouted.
+
+The old man, at bay, answered with unintended irony: "I meant no
+offense, sir, by growing old."
+
+"Oh, get out!" Willie snapped.
+
+Crofts bowed and turned on Persis a pitiful look. She gave him a glance
+of sympathy, then pointed to Enslee's coat and hat. Crofts took them,
+and, touching the back of his hand to his eyes and swallowing hard,
+shuffled away.
+
+Willie's mother rebuked him. "You've broken his poor old heart."
+
+And Persis was more severe. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
+
+Willie retorted, more sharply: "Oh, we all ought to be ashamed of
+ourselves--for something or other. Crofts isn't the only man on earth
+with a broken heart."
+
+As Persis stared in wonderment at his unusual mood Crofts came back.
+"You are wanted on the telephone, ma'am. The gentleman wouldn't give his
+name."
+
+Persis flinched at this, and stammered, "You'll excuse me?"
+
+Mrs. Enslee answered with a sudden frigidity, "Of course, but I'll not
+wait. Good-by."
+
+"Good-by!" said Persis, uneasily, and left the room. The moment she was
+gone Mrs. Enslee put her hand on Willie's arm and spoke in some
+confusion.
+
+"Willie, I--it's very hard for me to say it. But I think you allow
+Persis too much liberty."
+
+Willie snorted. "Gad! a lot of good it does an American husband to try
+to manage his wife!"
+
+"I know, and Persis is very headstrong," Mrs. Enslee faltered;
+"but--well, if anything happens, remember I tried to--"
+
+"Enjoying the luxury of an 'I told you so' already, eh?" Willie sneered.
+"What's up?"
+
+"Oh, nothing--nothing definite--but I--I'm just a little uneasy. It
+can't hurt to keep your eyes open, can it?"
+
+She had said this much at last. Willie took it solemnly. "What could
+hurt a man worse than to have to watch his wife?"
+
+"Well, if that's the way you feel, just forget what I've said. I'm a
+foolish old woman. Good-by!"
+
+Willie let her make her way out unattended. He stood musing till Persis
+came back, then he wakened with a start, and demanded, "Who was it
+telephoned you?"
+
+The question took Persis by surprise. "No one that would interest you."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Since when this sudden concern in my affairs?"
+
+"Aren't your affairs mine?" he pleaded; but she was curt:
+
+"Indeed they're not. I don't nag you with questions."
+
+He answered this with a sorrowful humility. "Sometimes I wish you would
+take a little more interest."
+
+"You're in a funny mood," she said, more gently.
+
+"It's not very funny to me," he groaned.
+
+"You'll feel better after dinner. Run along and let Brooks dress you."
+
+"What about you?"
+
+"I had my hair done while I was out. I've got to wait for Nichette to
+get back. I--I'll come up as soon as I--as soon as I write a letter or
+two."
+
+"All right," he sighed, and went out obediently, but paused to stare at
+her with a curious craftiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV
+
+
+Persis awaited his departure impatiently, tapping her foot with
+restlessness. She fell into reverie of indefinite duration. The bell
+rang. She gave a start of joy. Crofts went by on his way to the door.
+She checked him. "I'm expecting Captain Forbes." He got the name on the
+third iteration. "If it is he, show him in here." He nodded and set out
+again. She called after him, "If it is any one else I'm not at home."
+
+She ran to a mirror, preened herself expectantly, and waited with a look
+of joy. Crofts returned with a card. Persis took it, and asked, "You
+told her I was out?"
+
+Crofts was alarmed at once. "No, ma'am, I said you were at home."
+
+"But I said I was out to every one except--"
+
+Crofts was in despair at his blunder. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I'm afraid I'm
+too old and deaf to--"
+
+She relented and patted his hard shoulder-blade. "There, there! don't
+worry, we'll get through the day somehow. Show Mrs. Neff in; but nobody
+else except Captain Forbes."
+
+Crofts smiled like a forgiven child, and returned with Mrs. Neff, who
+bustled in crying, "Ah, my dear, such luck to find you at home."
+
+"So sweet of you to come," said Persis. She was in no mood for Mrs.
+Neff. She determined to be rid of her. She explained about the early
+dinner and begged to be excused lest Willie murder her for being late.
+Persis rang for Crofts, kissed Mrs. Neff a grateful good-by, and fled.
+As Crofts opened the door to let Mrs. Neff out he let Winifred Mather
+in. Crofts protested feebly that Persis was not at home, but Winifred
+came in anyway.
+
+Winifred was just returned from Paris, foiled in her campaign for the
+late Ambassador, and determined to regain her control over Bob Fielding.
+She had not seen Mrs. Neff, and she had much to say. Ignoring the
+helpless Crofts, they drifted back to the drawing-room to swap scandals
+from the opposite shores of the ocean. In this fascinating barter they
+forgot the flight of time, forgot even the place they were in, for they
+fell to discussing Persis and her affair with Forbes.
+
+Winifred had heard of it even in Paris.
+
+"But what does Willie think of it?" she asked; "if he can think?"
+
+"In any intrigue, my dear," Mrs. Neff pronounced, "the last three
+persons to learn what all the world knows are the husband and the two
+intriguers."
+
+"I saw Bob Fielding yesterday," said Winifred. "He told me about it on
+the dock. He's furious at Persis. He said somebody ought to tell
+Willie."
+
+"He's right, my dear," said Mrs. Neff; "but who wants to do that sort of
+job? It's like street-cleaning--very necessary and sanitary, but we
+don't care to do it ourselves, and we don't admire the people who do.
+Crooked things have a way of arranging themselves in this naughty world.
+Leave Persis alone. Some day some little accident she couldn't
+foresee--the mistake of a messenger-boy or a postman or somebody--and
+bang! out comes the whole scandal. Persis is clever, but she's juggling
+with dynamite."
+
+It was only the last thirteen words that Persis overheard as she came
+down to the drawing-room, never dreaming that Mrs. Neff had not gone or
+that Winifred had come. Her slippers were soft, and her gown made no
+frou-frou. The voices of the women, softened to a ghoulish stealth,
+reached her with uncanny clearness.
+
+She paused, struck to stone. Her heart pummeled her till her throat
+throbbed visibly. She wanted to fall down and die. She wanted to run
+from the house and from the town. Instead, she shook off every primitive
+impulse, and, tossing her head in defiance of fate, marched into the
+room with all the gracious majesty of a young queen going to her
+coronation. Her costume completed the picture: she was robed for the
+opera, and she wore her all-around crown of diamonds. She stared
+incredulously at Winifred, and cried with ardent hospitality:
+
+"Winifred, it's you! I didn't know you were in town!"
+
+And Winifred, assured by her manner that she had not overheard, hastened
+to embrace her, exclaiming: "Persis, darling! I haven't seen you for a
+thousand years."
+
+And they kissed each other.
+
+"You see, I haven't gone yet," Mrs. Neff apologized. "Winifred and I
+fell to talking--about you, of course."
+
+"Say it to my face," said Persis.
+
+Winifred lied angelically. "Cornelia was telling me how famously you and
+Willie get along. You're so congenial."
+
+Persis recognized the intended obloquy, and beamed in answer: "Willie is
+a duck of a husband. Why don't you try marriage?"
+
+This was so straight a lunge that Winifred slid in a sly _riposte_:
+
+"Do you ever see that li'l snojer man of yours any more?"
+
+"Li'l snojer man? Have I one?" said Persis, white-mouthed with fear at
+the directness of the attack, and at the simultaneous tingle of the
+door-bell. She tried to check Crofts, calling to him as he moved to the
+door. But he did not hear.
+
+Mrs. Neff was enjoying the rare treat of seeing Persis discomfited, ill
+at ease. She joined the onset.
+
+"She means Captain Forbes."
+
+"Yes--that's the one," Winifred smiled. "See him often?"
+
+"Oh, once in a long while," Persis confessed. "Why?"
+
+"I just wondered. He used to be so devoted to you."
+
+"Oh, that was ages ago," Persis laughed. And then Crofts came in with
+his little salver. Persis regarded it with as much dread as if it bore
+the head of John the Baptist instead of a tiny white card.
+
+Crofts was so proud of remembering his instructions that he murmured,
+with a senile smile: "You told me you were at home to him, ma'am."
+
+Persis read the name, and it danced before her eyes, fantastically. In
+the phrase of the prize-fighters, "they had her going." It was all so
+simple and foolish, yet so naggingly annoying, that she was utterly
+nonplussed. She stood a moment snapping the card in her fingers. Then
+she had a mad inspiration. She smiled stupidly between Mrs. Neff and
+Winifred and said:
+
+"It's my--my lawyer. I--I'll go to the door and see him."
+
+"But I asked him to come up!" Crofts protested in a doddering collapse,
+and vanished like a ghost at cockcrow.
+
+Forbes appeared at the door. He saw Persis, and there was no mistaking
+the love in his eyes. Then he saw Winifred and Mrs. Neff, and there was
+no mistaking his confusion, though he tried to put on a smile of delight
+at the sight of them.
+
+Mrs. Neff grinned with rapturous malice, and bewildered Forbes utterly
+by asking three ironical questions and not staying for an answer:
+
+"Changed your profession, Captain Forbes? A lawyer now? Specialty
+divorces?"
+
+Then she nodded to Winifred, and they made their way out, ignoring
+Persis' outstretched hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV
+
+
+Forbes stared after the two women in complete perplexity. He turned to
+Persis to ask stupidly:
+
+"What did they mean, Persis?"
+
+Persis had lost almost every whit of self-control. She had an insane
+desire to scream, to hide somewhere and go into hysterics. She sank into
+a chair and mumbled:
+
+"They know everything."
+
+"Good God, it's not possible! Was it because I came in as I did?"
+
+"Yes, but it wasn't your fault. It was mine and Crofts'."
+
+He made to take her in his arms, but she warned him where he was with a
+gesture. He sank into a chair, groaning:
+
+"I'd rather cut off my right hand than bring suspicion on you, Persis."
+
+Staring idly ahead of her, Persis maundered in a hollow voice, "And they
+refused my hand!" The lash of this remembered insult brought her to her
+feet with a snarl. "They refused my hand! Oh, it's all over now. A war
+extra couldn't spread the scandal faster than those two women. But I
+suppose it had to come some day. And we thought we were so discreet!"
+
+She laughed bitterly, for the luxury of self-contempt was alkali upon
+her tongue. But Forbes could only sigh, "How you must hate me!"
+
+"How much I love you!" she whispered. Even in her panic she had no
+reproach for the author of her defeat; and as she paced the floor she
+touched his cheek with a passing caress.
+
+She walked to the window idly and stared out into the street. She fell
+back with a gasp. "Oh, they saw me!--they saw me!"
+
+"Who?--who saw you?"
+
+"Alice Neff and Stowe Webb just drove up. They waved to me. They're
+coming here. Good Lord of heaven, at such a time!"
+
+The door-bell rang in confirmation, and Crofts shuffled down the hall.
+He glanced timidly at Persis, and she nodded her head.
+
+"You can't see them now," Forbes protested; "tell the man not to let
+them in."
+
+"It wouldn't do any good. Besides, they saw me. Now of all times I must
+keep up a bold front. Wait in the library, Harvey. I'll get rid of them
+as soon as I can." He was hardly gone before Alice came running, crying,
+"Oh, here you are," and seizing the hand that Persis thrust at her
+absent-mindedly. Stowe Webb seized her other hand and clung to it as
+Alice rattled on: "We had the narrowest escape! Just as our taxi drew up
+to your door my awful mother and Winifred drove away--without seeing
+us!"
+
+"And do you poor children still have to meet in secret, too?" Persis
+asked with a dreary sympathy.
+
+"Indeed we have to," Webb replied, "and always shall. Her mother won't
+let me in the house! And I am doing a little better now--two thousand a
+year. But Alice's mother still calls me a pauper. Our only hope is a
+runaway marriage. But Alice always remembers what you told her. I wish
+you could advise her differently now, for we are hopelessly unhappy. We
+couldn't be more miserable even if we were married."
+
+Alice corroborated this theory. "It's simply terrible the trials we are
+put to now. But you made it so vivid to me--the other side of it--the
+sordidness, the poverty, the stairs, the bills; how I should grow plain,
+and begin to nag; how I should ruin Stowe's career. Oh, why do we women
+always seem to be getting in the way of the careers of the men we love!
+Why can't we help them?"
+
+"We can, Alice, we can!" Persis averred, with a sudden energy. "If we
+begin the right way, if our love is the right sort, if we don't wait too
+long. Marry him, Alice."
+
+"But you said," Alice reminded her, "that I should miss all the comforts
+that make life worth while." And Persis answered with a solemnity that
+was unwonted in her:
+
+"If you don't marry the one you love you miss everything that makes life
+worth while. If you don't sacrifice everything that love asks, why, love
+robs you of all your delight in the things you have kept. Your mother
+will forgive you, Alice. But what if she doesn't? It is better to lack
+the forgiveness of some one else--of every one else!--than to feel that
+you can never, never forgive yourself. That is the most horrible thing
+in life, not to forgive yourself."
+
+"But you talk so differently now!" Alice interposed; and Persis
+explained it dismally enough:
+
+"I know more now than I did then."
+
+Alice went into her arms, eager to be coerced and decided for: "And you
+really think it is my duty to go?"
+
+"A woman's first duty is to her love," Persis cried. "Go, marry the boy,
+Alice, and be true to him--oh, be true to him!--always!
+whatever--whoever--comes into your life. Love and fidelity!--what a
+marriage they make!"
+
+Young Webb bent and kissed her hand, saying: "You must be a very good
+woman to give such noble advice. And Willie Enslee must be a mighty good
+husband. Come along, Alice, remember your promise!"
+
+He started to drag her out, but Alice hung back and demanded, "Give us
+your blessing first."
+
+"My blessing? My blessing?" And Persis' amazement was hardly greater
+than a curious shock of rapture over the unheard-of prayer.
+
+"Yes, for you are so good!" Alice insisted. And Persis, in
+half-hysterical emotion, waved her shivering hands over them and
+murmured:
+
+"God be with you forever!"
+
+When they had gone and Forbes came back to her she was mumbling in a
+strange delight: "I don't believe any one ever before called me good. It
+has a rather pleasant sound." She was half laughing, half crying. "I've
+done some good in the world at last."
+
+"I don't believe I ever truly loved you till now," Forbes said. He had
+played eavesdropper to her counsel, and it had endeared her to him
+magically. He took her in his arms and she kissed him, and there was a
+moment of peaceful oblivion. Then the habit of stealth resumed control
+of Persis. She began anew to hear footsteps everywhere and to imagine
+eyes gazing from all sides.
+
+"You mustn't stay a minute longer," she whispered. "Willie is at home.
+You telephoned you had something awfully important to tell me."
+
+"Yes. You've got to help me make the most important decision of my
+life."
+
+"Can't it wait?"
+
+"No. I must decide to-day. My leave of absence has been withdrawn, and
+I've been ordered back to my cavalry regiment at once."
+
+So disaster followed disaster.
+
+"Isn't there any way out of it?" she asked, weakly.
+
+"I tried to get the order recalled, but there is some influence against
+me at Washington."
+
+"Some woman! I know! It's Willie's mother. She has General Branscombe
+under her thumb."
+
+"But that would mean that she suspected us!"
+
+"A woman always suspects the worst. And she's always right. Well, what
+are we to do?"
+
+"That is for you to decide, Persis," Forbes said. "I have two letters
+here, two requests." He produced two formidable official envelopes. "I
+have influence enough to get either of them granted."
+
+"What are they?" she asked, terrified by the documents.
+
+"This is an acknowledgment of the order and a statement that I take the
+train to-morrow for New Mexico."
+
+"New Mexico!" Persis gasped. "I shouldn't see you again for a long, long
+while."
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then I choose that you send the other letter, of course," she spoke
+almost gaily. "What is it?"
+
+"My resignation from the service."
+
+"Your resignation?" she gasped. "Why should you resign?"
+
+"To avoid court-martial for the crime of stealing another man's wife.
+Either you go away with me where your husband can't follow, or I go away
+where you can't follow."
+
+"You don't mean to force a choice like that on me?" she protested. He
+nodded grimly.
+
+But her frantic soul was incapable of decision; it fled from the effort.
+The memory of her humiliation before Mrs. Neff and Winifred swept back
+over her with intolerable shame; she began to stride along the floor
+again, gnashing her teeth in rage:
+
+"What can I do to silence those women? Harvey, you must help me. Think
+up some neat lie that will look like the truth."
+
+He was so tired of deception that he groaned aloud. She whirled on him
+in raucous fury: "Do you suppose I'm going to give in to a couple of
+frumps like those two? Do you think I'll let an old hen and an old maid
+down me?--now! Well, hardly! I'm no quitter, Harvey. I never was a
+quitter, was I? But what can I do? No story would convince them. I must
+stop their mouths--that's it. Everybody's got a scandal somewhere. What
+do I know about them? What have I heard?" She beat her head to stir her
+memory. "If I can't find out something I must make it up."
+
+Forbes glared at her incredulously. "Persis! Are you lost to all
+decency?"
+
+"You ought to know," she retorted. "But what of that? I'm desperate. I'm
+fighting for life."
+
+"Oh, my God, Persis, what have we come to?" he moaned. "Is this the
+result of our love?"
+
+"Yes, this is it!" she laughed. "This is what comes of having a heart. I
+see now why a love like ours is against all the laws, written and
+unwritten. It's the wisdom of the ages, Harvey." His very neck rebelled
+against the galling yoke of their intrigue. He groaned:
+
+"We can't go on with the situation any more. We are getting
+degraded--driven to lies, and now you suggest blackmail. What next? We
+must pull up short and sharp, Persis. You must decide this minute:
+either to go away with me or to stay here without me."
+
+"You've got to stay here and help me fight."
+
+"I tell you I won't fight such a battle. It isn't fighting; it's
+cowardice, it's treachery. Decide now, once for all. Give me up or free
+yourself from Enslee and become my wife. You advised Alice to run away;
+you can't go back on your own advice."
+
+"Oh, but the elopement of a young unmarried couple is a pretty romance;
+ours would be a hideous scandal."
+
+"But we're all smothered in scandal now. Everybody is talking about
+us--everybody. The only way to make our love right is to come out before
+the world and proclaim it."
+
+"And even now, when I should be thinking of you, all I can think of is
+what they'll be saying of me to-morrow."
+
+"If we do the best we can what difference does it make what people say?
+Persis, I'd rather die than endure another hour of this underhand life.
+But I can't give you up. I can't leave you here to the mercy of these
+people and the evil influences around you. I offer you happiness. We
+shall be together always. You can't refuse."
+
+"You're right, of course. I've got to decide. I'm afraid to be alone.
+I'll go with you. Give me just one moment to get my cloak. I--I can't
+very well go like this, though, can I--in an opera-gown and tiara? I
+must change to a traveling-suit. And Willie expects me to go to the
+opera."
+
+The little things, the little briery things of life were holding her
+fast, tripping her headlong desires. She grew more irresolute with
+delay. "It's a terrible step, and it means the end of me. Everybody will
+cut me dead on the street. My own father will never speak to me again.
+The newspapers will be full of it. They'll only remember the scandal
+when they see us. It will follow us everywhere, and come between us and
+turn even you against me."
+
+Then she shivered and sank into a chair helpless.
+
+"I can't go, Harvey, I just can't go. I'm afraid of what people will
+say."
+
+That was the acid phrase that turned his love to hate, his adoration to
+disgust. He broke the vials of his wrath upon her head.
+
+"What will people say?" he sneered. "Is that all you can think of? Why,
+that has become your religion, Persis. You can stand the lying--the
+sneaking--the treachery--can't you? You've courage enough for the
+crimes, but when it comes to consequences, you're a coward, eh? But I'm
+not afraid of the consequences. I'm afraid of the crimes. I'm not afraid
+of the gossips, but of giving them cause. I offered you protection,
+devotion. I wanted to rescue our honor. But you--what do you care for
+me--for love--for honor? You care only for yourself and for what people
+will say--well, you'll soon know. But I won't help you to ruin your
+life. I won't let you ruin mine. I'm sorry I ever saw you. Before God,
+I'll never see you again!"
+
+He turned to go. A cry of anguish broke from her. She rushed in pursuit
+of him, flung her arms about him, sobbing: "No, no, I won't let you!
+You've no right to leave me. I've given up everything for you. I've
+been everything to you. You can't leave me! Don't, don't, don't!"
+
+He was too deeply embittered to have mercy. Her panic only angered him
+the more. He ripped her hands from his shoulders, jeering at her: "Agh,
+you're faithless to your duty to your husband, faithless to your love of
+me, faithless to everybody--everything."
+
+"Don't say that, Harvey," she pleaded, brokenly. "Take that back."
+
+"You've killed my trust," he raged. "You've killed my love. I hate the
+sight of you."
+
+She put her hand over his cruel mouth to silence it. "Don't let me hear
+that from you--pity me, pity me!"
+
+He tried to break her intolerable clasp, but she fought back to him.
+Abruptly she ceased to resist. She just stared past him. Startled, he
+looked where she stared. She whispered:
+
+"Some one is behind that curtain--listening!"
+
+The curtain trembled, and she gasped again: "Look!"
+
+A shudder of uneasiness shook him, but he muttered: "It's only a draught
+from somewhere."
+
+"Perhaps it is," she answered, weakly. "I feel all cold." And then she
+stared again and whispered: "No! See! There's a hand there in the
+curtain!"
+
+And Forbes could descry the muffled outlines of fingers clutching the
+heavy fabric. He hesitated a moment, then he moved forward.
+
+She put out her arm and stayed him, and spoke with abrupt
+self-possession. "No, it is my place." Then she called, hoarsely:
+"Crofts, is that you? Crofts!" There was no answer, but the talons
+seemed to grip the shivering arras tighter. She called again: "Nichette!
+Dobbs! Who's there?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"It's none of the servants," she whispered. Then, after a pause of
+tremulous hesitation, she strode to the curtain and hurled it back with
+a clash of rings. It disclosed Willie Enslee cowering in ambush. He held
+a silver-handled revolver in his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI
+
+
+A little groan of dismay broke from Persis' lips as she rushed between
+Forbes and the danger, interposing her body to protect his. Forbes
+seized her and thrust her away and leaped toward Enslee.
+
+But Enslee darted aside and, running behind a great carved table,
+covered Forbes with the revolver, and cried, in a quivering voice,
+"Don't you move or I'll fire!"
+
+Forbes smiled grimly at the plight, and spoke with the calm of the
+doomed. "All right, if you want to. It's your privilege. But I wouldn't
+if I were you. In the first place, I'm sure you'd miss; you don't hold
+your revolver like a marksman."
+
+"The first shot might miss," Enslee admitted; "but there are five
+others."
+
+"You'd never pull the trigger a second time," said Forbes, icily. "And
+there's not one chance in a thousand of that toy stopping me. I've got
+two bullets in me now--from real guns. And I'm not dead yet. If you
+should wing me, though, I'm afraid you'd never shoot a second time, for
+I'd have you by the wrist and by the throat--and I'd strangle you to
+death before I realized what I was doing."
+
+Enslee quaked with terror, less of Forbes than of his own fatal
+opportunities and his own weapon; Forbes began to edge imperceptibly
+closer and closer as he reasoned with the wretch, who, having lost the
+momentum of his frenzy, was a prey to reason.
+
+"After all, what good would it do to shed a lot of blood?" Forbes urged,
+gently, as to a child. "It would only publish your disgrace. Besides,
+people don't indulge in pistol-play any more. It's out of style, man.
+That ought to appeal to you, if nothing else will. And then it's so
+unjust. Why kill a man because your wife preferred him to you? It's a
+free country, isn't it? What does a man want with a wife who doesn't
+want him? The days of slavery are over, aren't they? If she doesn't love
+you enough to--" There was such a pitiful sag of Enslee's head at this
+stab that Forbes spared him more, and went on soothingly: "Better let
+this whole affair just drop. I was going away. She wouldn't go with me.
+She didn't love me enough, either. She preferred to stay with you. I'll
+never see her again. I promise that."
+
+He put his right hand out appealingly. "Come, let's make the best of it
+and cheat the gossips."
+
+One quick motion and he had struck Enslee's wrist aside and down, and
+clamped it to the table with his left hand. It was hardly necessary to
+press his thumb between Enslee's knuckles to force his inert fingers
+open. Forbes picked up the revolver, pressed the catch to the safety,
+and dropped it into his pocket. Then he breathed a deep sigh, less of
+relief than regret, and turned to go. He almost stumbled over the body
+of Persis. She had swooned to the floor when he thrust her off, and had
+lain unnoticed while the males fought through their feud on her account.
+
+Forbes stared down at her. Shame and anger had so burned him out that he
+had no love left for her and no mercy. She seemed an utter stranger to
+him. He did not even stoop and lift her to a chair. He shook his head,
+smiled bitterly, and went out.
+
+Enslee hung across the table in a stupor of imbecility. The noise of the
+outer door, as Forbes closed it, shocked him back to life. He peered
+about the room and understood. He dropped into a chair and hid his face
+in his hands.
+
+By and by Persis gradually returned to consciousness. She rose to her
+elbow in a daze, striving to collect her senses. With a sudden start she
+recalled everything, got to her knees, and hobbled with all awkwardness
+toward Enslee, whispering, haggardly: "Have you killed him? Where is
+he?"
+
+"Gone!"
+
+"Gone! No, no! No, no!" She raised herself to her feet to set out in
+pursuit of him, but just as she reached the door she was confronted by
+Crofts, who bowed once and walked away.
+
+Persis' training and her heart fought a duel in her quivering frame.
+Then she gained her self-control, turned to Willie, and murmured:
+
+"Dinner."
+
+The marvelously inappropriate word sent through him a shudder of nausea.
+
+Persis appealed to his other self. "Must we take the servants into our
+confidence?"
+
+"I think you may trust my breeding," he answered, frigidly. He stalked
+woodenly to the door, held back the curtain, and bowed with mechanical
+gallantry.
+
+"Thank you!" she sighed. She wavered a moment and clutched at her
+throat. Then she flung her head high in that thoroughbred way of hers
+and walked steadily from the room.
+
+And Willie followed in excellent form.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII
+
+
+In the famous Enslee dining-room, where brilliant companies had gathered
+for a generation, giving and taking distinctions, and where Persis in
+her brief reign had mustered cohorts of pleasure that outgleamed them
+all, only two chairs were drawn up to the table; and that was contracted
+to its smallest circle. All the other chairs were aligned along the
+white marble walls with a solemn look as of envious, uninvited ghosts
+sitting with hands on knees and brooding. The walls were broken with
+dark columns like giant servants, and between them hung tapestries as
+big as sails. The tapestries told in a woven serial the story of
+"Tristram and La Beale Isoud."
+
+Only three servants waited now: Roake and Chedsey--in the somber Enslee
+livery, whispering together as they straightened a rose stem or balanced
+a group of silver--and Crofts, eternally bent in an attitude of
+deference, standing near the door--the great golden portal ripped from
+the Spanish castle of one of the senior Mrs. Enslee's ancestors.
+
+For all their listening the servants had been unable to learn the
+details of the immediate wrangle, though they knew that war was in the
+air.
+
+Crofts had kept them at their tasks and at a distance, and Crofts either
+had not heard or would not have told if one of them had presumed to ask
+him.
+
+He had lived through so many family tragedies that he rather celebrated
+in his heart a day of good spirits than remarked a period of stress. And
+of all times, he felt, a good servant shows his quality best when the
+atmosphere is sultry with quarrel and a precarious truce is declared in
+the dining-room. To Crofts that was a temple for peace and perfect
+ceremony. There flourished the genius for self-effacement and the
+invisible, inaudible provision of whatever might be needed, that made
+service a high art, a priesthood.
+
+Crofts, in his plain black, slightly obsolete evening dress, looking
+rather like a poor relation than a servant, had been in his day an
+aristocrat among servants. To-night he was old and alarmed. He had seen,
+when he announced the dinner, that he broke in upon some unusually
+desperate conflict, and his old heart fluttered with terror. He had
+heard so much gossip at the servants' table, such ribald comment and
+interchange of eavesdroppings, that he wondered what new stain
+threatened the old glory of Enslee.
+
+He loved the new Mrs. Enslee. All the servants did--as much as they
+disliked Mr. Enslee. But they all felt that she was as dangerous in the
+house as a panther would have been in a wicker cage. And they all
+gossiped with other people's servants. And one of the maids, on her
+evenings off, was meeting a very attentive gentleman with brindle hair
+and half an eyebrow. She didn't know his business, but he was generous;
+he took her to tango-places, and he loved to hear her talk about her
+employers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly Crofts lifted his head and threw Roake and Chedsey a glance of
+warning; they came to attention, each behind a chair, watching with
+narrow eyes where Persis slowly descended, as into a gorgeous dungeon,
+the three velveted steps leading down through the red-velvet-curtained
+golden portal.
+
+First they saw Persis' slipper, a golden slipper on a slim, gold-silk
+stocking. Next the gleaming shaft of her white-satin skirt, with its
+wrinkles flashing and folding round her knees; and then a rose-colored
+mist with glints of gold spangles; a few flowers fastened at her waist;
+the double loop of a long rope of pearls; then her wide, white bosom,
+with half the breasts revealed in the deep V between. And next her
+shoulders; her long throat, passionate and bare save for one coil of
+pearl-rope; and then her high-held, resolute chin; her grim, red lips;
+her tense nostrils; her downcast eyelids; her brows; and, finally, the
+crown of diamonds sparkling in her hair.
+
+Her velvet-muffled footsteps grew faintly audible as her heels advanced
+with a soft tick-tock across the black-and-white chessboard of the
+marble floor. There was such a hush in the room that even her soft,
+short train made a whispering sound as it followed reluctantly after
+her.
+
+Then Enslee's glistening black shoes appeared on the steps; his short
+legs; the black-rimmed bay of white waistcoat and shirt, and tie, and
+the high, choking collar, where his fat little head rested like a ball
+on a gate-post.
+
+In the rich gloaming of the big room the table waited, a little altar
+alight and very beautiful with its lace and glass and silver and its
+candles gleaming upon strewn roses.
+
+Overhead the massive chandeliers hung dark from an ornate ceiling
+powdered with dull Roman gold. It was illuminated now only by the
+fretful glow of the fire slumbering beneath the carved mantel ravished
+from a bishop's palace in Spain.
+
+In such a scene the audience of three servants awaited the performance
+of the polite comedy by the farceur and farceuse, who would pretend to
+leave their personal tragedies in the wings. The actors made their
+entrance with a processional formality, faced each other, and were about
+to be seated in the chairs the men had drawn back a little.
+
+But the dignity vanished when the male buffoon, glancing at the array
+before him, broke out with a sharp whine:
+
+"Where's my cocktail?"
+
+There was such a twang of temper in his voice that Crofts heard at once,
+and made a quick effort at placation.
+
+"Very sorry, sir, but, the other servants being away, I was not able to
+learn just how you had it mixed, sir."
+
+"Just my luck!" Enslee snarled. "When I need a bracer most I can't have
+one." He shook his head so impatiently that Persis foresaw calamity and
+hastened to intervene.
+
+"Let me make it for you, dear."
+
+Enslee threw her an ugly glance, and wanted to refuse, but could find no
+reason to give except the truth: that he hated to accept any more of her
+ministrations. And truth was the one thing that must be kept from these
+menials at all cost. So he said:
+
+"Mighty nice of you."
+
+Persis went to the vast sideboard, and, while Crofts fussed about her,
+handing her the shaker, the ice, and bottle after bottle, she prepared
+the cup as if it were a mystic philter of love. She poured each
+ingredient into one of the glasses, and held it up to the light to make
+sure of the measure; then she emptied its contents into the shaker and
+filled it again from another bottle; and so when the square, squat
+flagon of gin, the longnecks of Italian and of French vermouth, and the
+flask of bitters, had contributed each its quota, she pondered aloud:
+
+"That's all, isn't it?"
+
+Willie, who had strolled to the sideboard in a kind of loathing
+fascination, spoke up:
+
+"Here, barkeeper, you're forgetting the absinthe."
+
+"Oh yes," she said, recalling his particular among the numberless
+formulas--"six drops of absinthe and twelve drops of lemon."
+
+Crofts passed her the absinthe, and, finding a lemon, sliced it across
+and handed it to her on a plate. She held it over the shaker and,
+squeezing, counted the drops.
+
+"Nine, ten, eleven, twelve--oh, there went the thirteenth! That's a bad
+omen." She was so overwrought that a little genuine fear troubled her.
+Enslee felt it, too, but would frighten the bogie with indifference:
+
+"Hang the omen, so long as the cocktail's not bad."
+
+Persis nodded with a difficult smile, and, setting the top on the
+shaker, said:
+
+"Now, Crofts."
+
+The old man was so slow and so feeble with his agitation that she
+snatched the shaker from his hand and shook it herself, the ice clacking
+merrily. Then she lifted off the top and poured the cold amber through
+the strainer into the two glasses and dried her chilled hands on a
+napkin.
+
+Willie was too eager for the stimulus to go back to the table and take
+the cocktail there. He lifted his glass.
+
+"We'll take it standing at the bar." And he reached for an imaginary
+foot-rail, as he had seen the vaudeville comedians do. Persis laughed,
+and he laughed, but sorrily. Still another idea occurred to him in his
+determination to enact domestic bliss.
+
+"And now what's the toast? To the absent one?"
+
+The ghastly patness of this unnerved him, but Persis came to the rescue
+with, "Toasts are out of date." And Willie, setting the glass to his
+lips, guzzled it in that chewing way they had never been able to correct
+in him since his infancy. Persis stood a moment with a far-off look of
+fierce regret in her eyes, then drained her glass swiftly and dabbed her
+rouged lips with her handkerchief.
+
+Crofts held out a little tray, and Willie set his glass down so hard
+that the stem cracked. He gave Crofts the blame in a sullen look, then
+went back to the table and sat in the chair that Roake pushed under him.
+
+He was up again instantly with another complaint. Willie was by nature
+one of the tribe of waiter-worriers. In his present tension he was
+doubly irascible.
+
+"Where the devil is my cushion?" he barked. "You know I can't carve
+without my cushion."
+
+The cushion was whisked under him instantly.
+
+He stabbed at his canape of caviar with his fork as if he hated it, ate
+but a morsel of it, and turned aside in his chair. Persis, watching him
+with anxious eyes, gave Crofts a command in a glance, and the plates
+were removed and replaced with oysters, the men bringing everything to
+the table, but Crofts alone serving their Majesties.
+
+Crofts was senile and slow, and unusually aspen with anxiety and the
+rebukes he had had. His deliberation was maddening to Enslee. The
+old-fashioned deference of Crofts' manner was only further irritation.
+
+Persis' own heart was wretched enough with its load of shame; she was
+hard put to it to sit and smile at the husband who had caught her in the
+arms of her paramour and heard him casting her off. But she had that
+social understanding of the actor's creed that the show must go on to
+the last curtain, no matter what had preceded it, or what might happen
+between the acts, or what might follow. She was certain of only one
+thing, that she and Willie must sit out this dinner somehow.
+
+The entr'actes in the solemn mummery were the spaces between the courses
+while the servants left the room for a few moments to bring on the next
+thing.
+
+When the caviar had been nibbled and rejected, the oysters set down and
+refused without being tasted, the two men went into the pantry for the
+soup-tureen and the hot plates. The swinging door oscillated with little
+puffs of air like sneers, and a breath ran around the tapestries hung on
+the walls. Ripples went through them in shudders, and, as the wrinkles
+traveled, averted faces seemed to turn and glance quickly at the
+Enslees, then turn away again.
+
+With all the surreptition possible Crofts and his lieutenants brought in
+the silver urn and the ladle and the plates, and set them down on the
+serving-table behind the screen of Spanish leather with its glowing
+landscape and its gilded sky.
+
+But Enslee's raw nerves shrieked at the soft thud of plate on tray, the
+infinitesimal click of ladle on tureen, the very endeavor not to make a
+sound. He fidgeted, bit his knuckles, wrung his hands out like damp
+cloths, played a tattoo on the arm of his chair, and passed his hand
+wildly across his eyes. At length he whirled, and shouted:
+
+"In God's name, less noise! Less noise!"
+
+Crofts turned to bow and made a trifle more noise. And when he took the
+plate from Roake's tray and set it before Enslee his hand trembled
+perilously. It was Enslee's favorite soup, a luscious _puree Mongole_.
+He lifted one spoonful now to his lips and put it away with disgust. His
+ignominy was so vile that it sickened his stomach. He had been told that
+his wife was unfaithful to him; he had found it true; he had wrought
+himself to a frenzy of revenge upon the destroyer of his home; but the
+lover, instead of leaping from the window like the typical man of guilt,
+had taken the husband's weapon from him, denounced the wife, and left
+the wrecked home in triumph.
+
+Enslee had endured all these disgraces; why should he add one more? Why
+should he play a part before his own menials? Why should he care what
+they thought? None the less, as mutinous soldiers keep the line
+automatically, so a lifetime of paying devotion to the ordinances of
+etiquette held him to the mark now.
+
+Seeing that Persis had not even made a pretense of lifting her spoon to
+her lips, he nodded to Crofts, "Take it away."
+
+The failure of a dinner was a catastrophe to Crofts, and he forgot his
+wonted reticence enough to ask:
+
+"Isn't it good, sir? Sha'n't I tell the chef to--"
+
+His solicitude brought him only a reproof:
+
+"Crofts, if you speak again I'll have the other servants serve the
+dinner. Take it away, I said."
+
+Hurt and frightened, Crofts hurried the soup and its apparatus off. As
+he slipped out with his aides the swinging door went "Phew!" and the
+tapestried figures glanced and whispered together.
+
+As soon as he was alone with his wife, Enslee's voice rose querulously:
+
+"If Dobbs ever leaves us in the lurch again I'll fire him for keeps.
+This old fool gets on my nerves. Everything is going wrong here. The
+whole house is falling to rack and ruin. Ought at least to have decent
+servants--if I can't have a decent wife!"
+
+Persis smiled patiently at this, but as with lips bruised from a blow.
+
+"I trust, Willie, that you won't forget yourself. All these doors have
+ears, you know."
+
+"You bet they have!" he snapped. "And eyes, too. Are you crazy enough to
+think that lowering our voices will conceal the truth from any one?
+Don't you realize that those hounds out there know everything that goes
+on in this house? Don't you understand that your good name and my honor
+were gossiped away down-stairs long before my dishonor became public
+property?"
+
+Persis felt a panic in her own heart at his manner. Still she tried
+suasion. "I implore you to postpone this. At any moment Crofts will be
+back."
+
+"Crofts, eh?" Willie shouted. "Crofts! Crofts will be back! Why, do you
+imagine for a moment that even that deaf old relic is ignorant of this
+intrigue you have carried on? Don't you know that every servant of ours
+that has left the house for weeks has carried through the area-gate a
+bundle of news and innuendo and suspicion and keyhole information, to be
+scattered broadcast in every servants' hall in town?"
+
+And then he heard Crofts at the door, and in spite of him habit
+throttled him; he pulled down the comic mask he had pushed back from his
+dour face. He ransacked his brain for something humorous to serve as a
+libretto, and he was reminded of a story he had laughed at heartily
+before he learned that his own household was a theme for laughter.
+
+He began to giggle uncannily, gruesomely. Persis looked at him,
+wondering if he had gone mad and begun to gibber. But while Crofts and
+the others served deviled crabs in their grotesque shells he began to
+explain his elation, overacting sadly:
+
+"I heard the best story to-day about Mrs. Tom Corliss."
+
+Forgetfully Persis, from her own glass house, protested: "Oh, don't tell
+me anything about that woman!"
+
+Enslee sneered. "Oh, you're always so easily shocked--such a prude, so
+conventional!"
+
+Persis understood and blanched. "Go on, I'll stand it."
+
+Enslee began to snicker again, taking some support in his shame from
+another man's disgrace.
+
+"Well, you know old plutocrat Crane?"
+
+"Not old Deacon Crane," Persis gasped, "that passes the plate at
+church?"
+
+Willie nodded.
+
+"What can he have to do with any story about Mrs. Tom?"
+
+Enslee he-he'd. "That's the fun of it. Mrs. Tom, it seems--one day when
+Tom was off to the races--entertained the dear Deacon at a little
+dinner--served _a deux_. The Deacon used to give her tips on the market
+and back them himself for her, and she--well, he was talking about the
+present-day craze for dancing with bare feet, _et cetera_; and she vowed
+that she wasn't ashamed of her feet either; and so she made the Deacon
+play Mendelssohn's Spring Song on the pianola, and--"
+
+He looked up to find that Chedsey, while pretending to be very busy at
+the sideboard, wore a smile that extended almost into the ear he perked
+round for the gossip. Willie choked on his own laughter, and roared:
+
+"Chedsey, leave the room, and don't come back!"
+
+Chedsey slunk away, and Roake became a statue of gravity. Crofts had not
+heard at all. Willie finished his story without mirth.
+
+"Anyway, Tom Corliss came in unexpectedly just then, and--well, when the
+Deacon finally got home his wife met him in the hall; he told her he had
+been sandbagged by a footpad; and she believed him!"
+
+Willie found Tom Corliss' shame so piquant that he began to relish his
+food. Crofts, a little encouraged, nodded to Roake and led him out for
+the next dish.
+
+Persis took small comfort from other people's sordid scandals. They
+seemed to have no relation to the pure and high tragedy that had ended
+the romance of her own love. Seeing that they were alone again, she
+expressed her dislike before she realized its inconsistency.
+
+"And where did you pick up all this garbage?"
+
+Enslee was outraged at this ingratitude for his hard work. "Oh, it
+shocks you, eh? So beautiful a veneer of refinement and so thin!"
+
+"Where did you hear it?" Persis persisted, lighting herself a cigarette
+to give her restless hands employment; and Willie answered:
+
+"Mrs. Corliss' second man told it to Mrs. Neff's kitchen maid, and she
+to Mrs. Neff's maid, and she to Mrs. Neff; and Mrs. Neff to Jimmie
+Chives, and he to me--at the Club."
+
+"At the Club?"
+
+"Where I heard of your behavior."
+
+"You heard of me at the Club?" Persis gasped.
+
+"Yes, that crowning disgrace was reserved for me. Big Bob Fielding took
+me to one side and said: 'Willie, everybody in town knows something that
+you ought to be the first to know--and seem to be the last. I hate to
+tell you, but somebody ought to,' he said. And I said 'What's all that?'
+And he said: 'Your wife and Captain Forbes are a damned sight better
+friends,' he said, 'than the law allows,' he said."
+
+The room swam, and Persis clung to her chair to keep from toppling out
+of it.
+
+"So that's what he said. And what did you say?"
+
+"I didn't believe him--then. I was too big a fool to believe him; but he
+opened my eyes, and I came home to see what was going on. And I saw!"
+
+Persis was on fire with a woman's anxiety to know if any champion had
+defended her name. She demanded again:
+
+"What did you say to Bob Fielding?"
+
+And Enslee answered with a helpless, mincing burlesque of dignity:
+
+"I told him he was a cad, and I didn't want him ever to speak to me
+again."
+
+"And you didn't strike him?"
+
+Enslee cast up his eyes at the thought of attacking the famous
+center-rush; then he lowered his eyes before her blazing contempt. She
+demanded again, incredulously: "You didn't strike him?"
+
+Enslee dropped his face into his two palms and wept, the tears leaking
+through his fingers. Persis felt outlawed even from chivalry. She gagged
+at the thought: "Agh! The humiliation!"
+
+Enslee lifted his head again, his wet eyes flashing. "Humiliation?" he
+screeched, in a frenzy of self-pity. "Do you talk of humiliation? What
+about me? My father and mother brought me into the world with a small
+frame and a poor constitution. They left me money as a compensation. And
+what did my money do for me? It bought me a woman--who despised me--who
+dishonored me before the world. And I'm too weak to take revenge. I'm
+helpless in my disgrace, helpless!"
+
+He sobbed like a lonely girl, his eyes hid in the crook of his left arm,
+his elbow on the table, his little hand clenching and unclenching. His
+tears brought tears to Persis. It was the first time she had ever felt
+sorry for Willie; had ever realized that a weak man does not select his
+weaknesses, though he must endure their consequences. She had often
+justified herself by the plea that she had not chosen her own soul, but
+must get along with it. That defense was her husband's, too.
+
+The swinging door thudded softly, and Willie raised himself in his
+chair, but he could not quell the buffets of his sobs, and he dared not
+put his handkerchief to his eyes. And so Crofts, bending close to remove
+the crab-shells, noted the grief-crumpled face and the drench of tears;
+his mind went back to the time when Willie Enslee was a child and wept
+in a high chair in his nursery. Before he could suppress it the old man
+had let slip the query:
+
+"Why, Master Willie, you're not crying?"
+
+Willie, with splendid presence of mind, answered:
+
+"Nonsense, you old fool, it's that deviled crab. There was so much
+cayenne pepper in it, it w-went to my eyes."
+
+Crofts was desolated.
+
+"Oh, I am sorry, sir. The chef shall hear of it, sir. And the roast
+now--shall I carve it, or will you?"
+
+Willie looked drearily across at Persis. "Do you want any roast?"
+
+She frowned with aversion. "I couldn't touch it."
+
+And Willie shook his head to Crofts. "We'll skip the roast. What follows
+that? Be quick about it!"
+
+Crofts lowered his voice, as if a game-warden might be listening, for it
+was after the season had closed. "There is a pheasant, sir--sent down
+from your own run, sir. It is braised, _financiere_. I'm sure you'll
+like it. You may have to wait a little, seeing as you didn't eat the
+roast; but it's worth waiting for, sir."
+
+The old man was pleading both for the honor of his menu and for the
+welfare of his master. Willie nodded curtly, and the roast, that had
+ridden in so royally on its silver palanquin with its retinue of cutlery
+and its hot plates, was removed in disgrace.
+
+Once more husband and wife were abandoned to themselves. But now Persis
+looked with new eyes at the heap of misery collapsed in the opposite
+chair. All these years Willie had tried to win her love with gifts, with
+splendors, with caresses, prayers, compliments, and with weak
+experiments in tyranny. And he had failed dismally. Finally his failure
+and his shame had crushed him into abjection.
+
+And now her heart went out to him with a melting tenderness. But now she
+was unworthy to approach him. Now it was she that must plead:
+
+"I'm awfully sorry for you, Willie. You haven't had a fair deal. I never
+realized what a rotter I've been till now. But if you'll let me, I'll
+try again; I'll try hard, really, honestly, Willie. The only man I ever
+seemed to care for has taken himself out of my life. He hates me as you
+hate me. I haven't much of anything to live for now except to try to
+square things with you. I'll do better by you. I'll be on the level with
+you after this. Honestly I will. We'll find happiness yet."
+
+"Happiness!"
+
+Even at this belated hour the world's ambition was so dear to him that
+he was wrung with longing.
+
+"It might have been possible if I hadn't found you out. I was a fool to
+trust you so blindly, but I was a happy fool. I didn't know how happy I
+was till I learned how unhappy I can be. Oh, Persis, how could you--how
+could you? You seemed so clean and so cold and so proud, and you've let
+that man make as big a fool of you as you've made of me."
+
+She took her lashings meekly, hoping thereby to achieve some atonement.
+"I know, I know," she confessed. "But we can keep other people from
+knowing. We don't have to tell all the world, do we?"
+
+Again the vision of stalking gossip enraged him. "The world--ha! It
+always knows everything before the husband suspects anything. I've said
+that about so many other fools I've known. Now it's my turn. Here we sit
+at dinner in this ruined home as if everything were all right. Think of
+it! After what I saw and heard I'm sitting here trying to persuade a
+pack of flunkeys that you have been a good wife to me!"
+
+"It's hideous, I know, Willie. I'll go away to-morrow. You can divorce
+me if you want to. I won't resist. It will be horrible to drag your name
+through the yellow papers. But I won't resist--unless you think you
+might let our life run along as before until gossip has starved to
+death? We'll be no worse than the rest, Willie. Every family has its
+skeleton in the closet. The worst gossips have the worst skeletons.
+Let's fight it out together, Willie, won't you? Please!"
+
+She stretched one importunate hand across the table to him, but he
+stared at her with glazed eyes. "And go on like this the rest of our
+lives? Sitting at table like this every day, facing each other and
+knowing what we know? Knowing what other people know of us? Keep up the
+ghastly pretense till we grow old?"
+
+She drew back her rejected hand with a sigh, but pleaded on: "It's not
+very pretty, that's true; but let's be good sports and play the game. We
+tried marriage without love, for you knew I didn't really love you,
+Willie. You knew it and complained of it. But you married me. I tried to
+do what was right. I ran away from him in France, and I tried to love
+you and unlove him. But you can't turn your heart like a wheel, you
+know. We've married and failed. But nearly everybody else has failed one
+way or another, Willie. Nobody gets what he wants out of life. Let's
+play the game through. You said to me once--do you remember?--you said,
+'Gad, Persis, but you're a good loser.' And I've lost a little, too,
+Willie. I've had a pretty hard day of it, too. Let's be good losers,
+Willie; let's try it again, won't you? Won't you, please?"
+
+She sat with hands clasped, and thrust them out to him and prayed to him
+as if he were an ugly little idol. But contrition did not seem to render
+her more attractive in his eyes. It hardened his heart against her.
+
+"When I look at you I can only think what you've been to that man;
+where you've gone, what you've done. You sit there half naked now, ready
+to go to the opera, to expose your body before the mob--my body--my
+wife's body. You show it in public--and you dance it in public with
+anybody--with him! The first time you saw him you were dressed like
+that, and you danced with him that loathsome tango. You taught him how.
+And he has taught you how to be his wife--not mine.
+
+"You've set everybody laughing at me. They're all saying I was a blind,
+infatuated fool before. Now you want them to fasten that filthy word
+'complacent' on me. You want me to overlook what you have done and what
+you've brought me to. I'm just to say: 'Well, Persis, you've had your
+lover and your fling, and you're tired of each other, so come home and
+welcome, and don't worry over what's past. It's a mere trifle not worth
+discussing. What's the Seventh Commandment between friends?"
+
+She was trying to silence him, but he had not heeded the return of
+Crofts till the pheasant was placed before him in all its garnishment,
+and the plates and the carving-fork and the small game-knife. He was
+ashamed, not of what he had said of her, but of his own excitement.
+
+"Is the knife sharp?" he asked, for lack of other topic.
+
+"Oh yes, sir," said Crofts. "I steeled it myself."
+
+Willie began anew, groping in his tormented brain for something to
+dispel the silence. The result was a dazed query:
+
+"By the way, my dear, what's the opera to-night?"
+
+"Carmen," she said.
+
+He brightened. "Oh, of course. That's the opera where the fellow kills
+the girl who betrays him, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"With a knife like this, eh?" And with a fierce absent-mindedness he
+made a quick slash in the air. The knife was small and curved a little,
+and it fitted his hand like a dagger. He chuckled enviously. "Ah, he was
+the wise boy, that Don Jose. He knew how to treat faithless women. He
+knew how to talk to 'em. A knife in the back--that's all they can
+understand."
+
+Crofts was too anxiously trying to avoid spilling a drop of the wine he
+was pouring to heed the warning gestures of Persis. She felt that the
+breaking-point of Willie's self-control had been reached. She must
+dismiss the audience. She spoke hastily:
+
+"Willie, my dear--my dear! Won't you send for some champagne--or sherry.
+I hate this red wine, and, besides, we've skipped the roast."
+
+"Oh yes," Willie agreed, with abrupt calm. "Crofts, down in
+the--er--wine-cellar in the farthest end--you'll find laid away by
+itself one bottle of--er--L'Ame de Rheims--one bottle, the last of its
+ancient and--er--honorable name. Bring that here."
+
+As Crofts stumbled out on his long journey, Willie commented, ominously:
+
+"It's a good time to say good-by to that vintage!"
+
+His roving eyes discovered Roake standing aloof. Willie snapped his
+fingers and yelped at him:
+
+"Get out! And stay out!"
+
+Roake withdrew in haste, and Enslee muttered:
+
+"I'm sick of seeing so many people standing around, staring, smirking,
+listening, thinking about me. I wish I were on a desert island."
+
+He sat forward to the pheasant, set the fork into it, and paused with
+the knife motionless. Suddenly there were beads of sweat on his
+forehead, and he was panting hard; then he groaned:
+
+"My God, he took my revolver away from me!"
+
+His eyelids seemed to squeeze his eyes in anguish. When he opened them
+they were bloodshot and so fierce that they seemed to be crossed. He
+laughed.
+
+"I was too weak to kill your soldier. But I think I'm just about strong
+enough to pay you up. Carmen got her reward with a knife, and you're no
+better than she was."
+
+He looked at the knife; it was beautifully sharp, and it inspired a
+desire to use it. As a man seeing a gun wants to fire it at something,
+he felt the call to employ this implement. He pushed back his chair,
+rose, and groped his way round the table toward her, all crouched and
+prowling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII
+
+
+Persis watched him come, and did not move. It was unbelievable that
+disaster should fall to such as her from such as him in such a way. He
+was evidently only playing a part to frighten her.
+
+She blew a puff of smoke from her cigarette and fanned it away with
+leisure, and smiled.
+
+"You'd look well, now, wouldn't you, if one of the servants came in?"
+
+She laughed at the picture.
+
+"You're laughing at me again!" he groaned. "You're always laughing at
+me. But you won't feel so funny with this knife in you."
+
+She saw now that he was not fooling. But she despised him for his effort
+to prove his bravery by a cowardice, and she eyed him with a marble calm
+worthy of a nobler cause and a better reward.
+
+"Sit down, Willie, and don't threaten me. You don't frighten me at all.
+But you may alarm some of the servants and give them more of that gossip
+you have harped on so much."
+
+Her obstinate pluck bewildered him, but he lowered his voice as he
+commented to some imaginary spectator: "My God! she has no higher
+thought than that! Even now when death stares her in the face!" Then he
+had a fanatic's mercy for her. "Why aren't you saying your prayers, you
+fool?"
+
+She answered him with all the authority she could command:
+
+"Put down that knife! Put it down, I say! You know I could save myself
+from any danger by raising my voice. And you know I'd rather die than
+bring the servants in on such a scene."
+
+"A scene!" he shrieked. "A scene! Why, woman, I'm going to kill you.
+Don't you understand anything? You've only got a minute more to live.
+Say your prayers! Damn you! say your prayers!"
+
+There was an insanity in his look that frightened her at last. She tried
+persuasion now, and her voice was soft and caressing.
+
+"Gently, Willie; gently now, I beg you. You're not yourself, you know.
+You must control yourself. Please!--as a favor to me."
+
+It was the wrong word. It maddened him, and he snarled: "As a favor to
+you? You dare ask favors of me? Go ask 'em of the man you've given
+favors to! The man? The men!"
+
+And this was sacrilege to her one love. Her lip curled in angry
+contempt, and she turned from him in loathing, muttering:
+
+"You dirty little beast!"
+
+It was his muscles rather than his mind that did it. While his mind was
+recoiling from the insult his arm had struck out, and the knife had slid
+deep in the snow of her half-averted left breast; through the petal of a
+rose, and the satin gown, and the deep white flesh beneath it, and on
+into the wall of her struggling heart.
+
+The blow and her effort to escape flung her backward, but the heavy
+chair held her. Before she could remember a wild scream broke from her
+lips.
+
+As Enslee fell back his hand withdrew the knife. It came out all red. He
+gaped at it and shuddered, and it fell with a little clatter on the
+marble floor, flinging a few crimson drops on the black-and-white.
+
+The noise startled him, and he retreated from her, clinging to the edge
+of the table. He felt queasy, and pushed back till he felt his chair and
+dropped into it--still staring at her and wondering, and she
+wondering at him.
+
+[Illustration: HER OBSTINATE PLUCK BEWILDERED HIM]
+
+It seemed a long time before her cry brought any response. Chedsey was
+in the cellar with Crofts and heard no sound, but Roake was in the
+pantry. He paused a moment, not trusting his ears, then he pushed the
+door open slightly and peered through. Other servants came crowding into
+the pantry whispering and jostling. He motioned them back.
+
+His master and mistress were in their places. Mrs. Enslee looked pale
+and was lying back in her chair. He slipped through the door and spoke
+timidly:
+
+"Beg pardon, ma'am; but did you call?"
+
+Persis, at the sound of the door, finding her fan still in her hand, had
+instantly spread it across her wound. And her first impulse was to deny.
+
+"No," she answered; then quickly: "Yes, I--I am ill--a little--suddenly.
+Telephone for Doctor--Doctor--the nearest doctor. You'd better run."
+
+He turned to obey, but paused to ask:
+
+"Isn't there anything I can do first, ma'am?"
+
+"No, go! Go!" she fluttered.
+
+"Sha'n't I send some one else while I am gone, ma'am?"
+
+"No, no; keep them all away, all of them, till I ring."
+
+Roake, with a face like ashes, still waited, staring.
+
+"But, ma'am, you are hurt! You are bleeding!"
+
+"Nonsense!" she stormed. "I spilled some claret on my fan. The doctor!
+Will you never go?" And he ran out through the jumble of servants,
+ordering them back to their stations.
+
+And then Nichette came stumbling through the golden portal. She had
+heard the cry above, and had understood the pain and terror in it, and
+had run pell-mell down the great stairs, her hand whistling on the
+marble balustrade.
+
+She paused now, clinging to one of the red curtains, and stammering:
+
+"_Madame, Madame! qu'y a-t-il? qu'avez-vous?_"
+
+Persis turned her head dolefully toward the face so wild with anxiety
+for her sake, and murmured, with a smile of affection and a tender form
+of speech:
+
+"_C'est toi, Nichette? Ce n'est rien, mais--mais_"--A shiver ran through
+her. "_Je sentis des frissons. Va faire mon lit. Je me vais coucher._"
+
+Nichette came forward unconvinced or to help her, but she motioned her
+off with a frantic hand, crying impatiently, "_Depeche-toi! veux-tu te
+depecher!_"
+
+And Nichette, mutinously obedient, ran away, leaving Persis shivering
+indeed with a chill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now husband and wife were alone once more. And Willie could only
+stare and murmur, vacuously:
+
+"What have I done? What have I done?"
+
+"You've killed me, that's all," she answered, with a curious amusement.
+"It was such a funny thing for you to do, so old-fashioned."
+
+There is a strange fact about wounds in the heart. If they are not so
+deep that they flood the lungs and smother out life they inspire a wild
+desire to talk, a fluttering garrulity.
+
+So Persis, now, with that madly stitching shuttle in her breast, and
+that red seepage from her side, had unnumbered things to say. She
+chattered desperately, disjointedly:
+
+"Oh, I suppose it had to come. It's what I get for trying to run things
+my own way. And now the tango-shop's closed up. But it's so funny that
+you should be the one to--and with a knife! You didn't mar my face,
+anyway. I thank you for that much. I'd hate to have my face hidden at
+the funeral. I should hate to make an ugly cor--"
+
+Her lips refused the awful word as a thing unclean, abominable. Her body
+and all the voluptuous company of her senses felt panic-stricken at the
+thought of dissolution. She moaned and struggled with her chair.
+
+"No, no, not that! What have I to do with death? I'm not ready to die.
+I'm not ready to die."
+
+Willie got up and ran to her left side, but shrank back from what was
+there, and moved cautiously round on the slippery floor, crying: "You're
+too beautiful to die, too beautiful! You'll not die! The doctors will
+save you!"
+
+"They must come very soon, then," Persis said, "for I'm bleeding--oh, so
+fast." She looked down along her side and complained: "See, my gown is
+quite ruined. And it was such a pretty gown. I'm afraid of my blood. How
+it gushes! Will it never stop? And it hurts! Willie, it hurts!"
+
+In a long writhe of pain she gathered the table-cloth about her left
+side as if to stanch its flow. There was a rattle of falling glasses and
+a chink of tumbled silver as she moaned: "Oh, what shall I do? What
+shall I do?" And she turned her head this way and that, panting as one
+pursued, bewildered, utterly at a loss. "Oh, what shall I do? I don't
+want to die. It's an awful thing to die--just now of all times, with no
+chance to make good the wrong I've done."
+
+"You can't die; I won't let you die. You're too beautiful to die,"
+Willie protested, and then turned to pleading: "I didn't mean to. I
+didn't mean to strike you, Persis, at all. It was just my hand. It
+wasn't me that stabbed you, Persis. I couldn't hurt you, Persis."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, Willie. I understand. I understand things better
+now, with so few minutes more to live. It is you that must forgive me. I
+haven't been a good wife to you, Willie. And he--he, of all men!--said I
+wasn't worth fighting for! Faithless to you--faithless to him! But oh,
+God knows, most faithless to myself. And now I must die for it."
+
+"You are too beautiful to die! I won't let you die! You can't die!"
+
+"But I must, boy. Don't hate me too much. I didn't mean to harm you.
+Some day--long after--you'll forgive me, won't you?"
+
+"Oh, if you only won't die I'll forgive you anything."
+
+"That's awfully nice of you, Willie," she said, with almost a smile. "I
+wonder if God will be as polite? They--they usually pray for dying
+people, don't they? I'm afraid they'll never get a doctor in time, to
+say nothing of a preacher. So you'd better pray for me, Willie."
+
+The idea was so ridiculously tragic that she laughed; but he would not
+so far surrender her as to pray. He sobbed:
+
+"You've got to live! I don't know a single prayer. You mustn't die, I
+tell you. You've got to live!" And he wept his little heart out as he
+knelt at her side, and, clinging to her hand, mumbled it with kisses.
+
+She wept, too; moaned, and dreaded the black Beyond, which she must
+voyage prayerless. Still she must talk. From her silence came a frail,
+thin voice like a far-off cry.
+
+"It's growing very dark, Willie--very dark! And I'm drifting, I wonder
+where? Can you hear my voice away off there? Better throw me a kiss, and
+wish me bon voyage! for this--is the last--of Persis. Poor Persis!"
+
+Something of old habit reminded her of the gossip that would break into
+storm at her death. This spurred her heart to strive again. She clutched
+at the table and at Willie's arm and shoulder, and held herself erect as
+with claws, while she babbled:
+
+"Willie, Willie, I've just thought. They'll try you for--for murder. The
+newspapers--the newspapers! Oh, my poor father! And they'll put you in
+jail! That mustn't happen to you--not to one of your family!--not
+through me!--no--no, it just mustn't! You must run--run--run!"
+
+Enslee shivered at the future, and would have fled if he could have
+found the strength to rise from his knees.
+
+And then the swinging door puffed softly, sardonically, and on the
+tapestries Tristram and Isoud looked at each other and then at her and
+shook their heads in pity.
+
+Crofts, who had neither heard nor been told, came in with that eminent
+champagne in a dingy and ancient bottle.
+
+He went behind the screen to untwist the wires and rub away the
+spider-webs. Then he came forward toward Willie's place to pour the
+first few drops there, according to the rite, before he filled Persis'
+glass. He had eased out the cork, and the soul of the wine was frothing
+forth into the swathing cloth when he blinked at the empty chair; then
+his eyes went across to Persis. He stared at her in mute amazement. She
+stared at him. She beckoned.
+
+He put the bottle on the table and shuffled toward her.
+
+She motioned him nearer with a limp and tremulous hand, and he bent down
+to hear her tiny voice.
+
+"Crofts, come closer--listen to me--do you hear?" He nodded.
+"Perfectly?" He nodded, wringing his dry old hands.
+
+"Well," she began, "I must tell you--and you must remember. Mr. Enslee
+and I had a--a little quarrel--and I--I lost my temper--you know--and
+seized the knife and--and stabbed myself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old man did nothing unbecoming to his caste, but he stood doddering
+and longed to die in place of that beautiful youth. She beckoned him
+nearer again, and spoke in a strangled voice: "Remember, I did
+it--myself! Re-mem--"
+
+Her head fell forward, her exquisite chin rested in her bosom. Her body
+collapsed upon itself, and only the arms of the chair and the table kept
+it from rolling out on the floor.
+
+But as if even this last ugliness of attitude were intolerable to her,
+she fought against the chair and the table, and pushed and slid backward
+till her head was erect. And she was whispering courage to herself,
+hoarsely:
+
+"Come--come--Persis!"
+
+She seemed to be trying to die like a thoroughbred, a good loser.
+
+And then her head rolled back in the billows of her hair, with the
+jeweled crown pointing downward and her eyes staring upward. Her wan,
+pouting, parted lips and the long arch of her perfect throat were
+themselves a prayer for mercy, offering up beauty as its own undoing and
+its own excuse.
+
+She was dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE AFTERMATH
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+We cannot live to ourselves alone, nor die so. If a man or a dog crawl
+off to perish in a wilderness, immediately death sets in motion a great
+activity. On the ground ants muster, flies drum and pound; in the earth
+worms make haste upward. On the empty sky a speck appears, wings gather,
+buzzards are overhead. In the bushes eyes peer, paws are lifted and set
+down with caution; coyotes, hyenas arrive. A city of scavengery is
+founded and begins to flourish.
+
+Persis had said, "This is the last of Persis." As if there were ever the
+last of anybody or anything.
+
+Of Persis it was almost the beginning. People were to hear of her now
+who had never known of her existence. She who had never done anything
+ambitious or earnest in any large sense was to become the cause of
+world-wide debate. The newspapers she dreaded so much were to give her
+head-lines above panics, wars, and empires.
+
+When Persis screamed at the horror and the shame of being knifed, and
+Roake appeared, and she told him that she was ill, he believed her. He
+dispersed the servants. They knew, as servants always know, that a
+quarrel had been raging; but family quarrels were the staple of their
+lives, and they suspected nothing unusual.
+
+Persis had told Roake to call the nearest physician. The telephone is
+the confusion of distance; it mixes near and far hopelessly. So Roake
+called the family physician, Dr. Thill; caught him dressing for the
+opera. He promised to "be right over."
+
+Then Roake went back to give Mrs. Enslee this word. He found the woeful
+spectacle of Persis no longer able to hide her wound, no longer thinking
+of appearances. Enslee was on his knees sobbing. Crofts, too good a
+servant to express his emotions noisily, had not fallen to the floor or
+sunk into a chair; he had turned a little aside and stood waiting the
+next command; only, rubbing his hands together a little harder than
+usual, while the tears poured across his eyelids.
+
+Roake tiptoed to him and put his hand on his arm, and whispered, "Mr.
+Crofts."
+
+Crofts put his finger to his quivering lips and, beckoning his underling
+aside, whispered to him: "No word of this to the rest of the house, mind
+you. We'd best carry Mrs. Enslee to her room. Then we must help the
+master to his."
+
+They took Persis' chair by the arms dreadfully; but Crofts could not
+lift his share of the weight. It was necessary to call Chedsey, and to
+explain things a little to him and to pledge him to silence for the
+honor of the house. He sickened of his burden and nearly fainted in the
+little elevator as they crowded into it with their hideously beautiful
+freight.
+
+Nichette had the bed ready, and Enslee's man was helping her. Also two
+other chambermaids had gathered to talk of the scream that had shot
+through the house. Nichette banished the men while she took what care
+she could of what remained of Persis--so different an office now from
+what it had always been to Nichette.
+
+Crofts told Roake to see to things below, and Roake and Chedsey went
+down to the dining-room. Here there were tasks that were not pleasant.
+They stared at the ruined graces of the table, the spilled wine and the
+red-stained flowers, the glasses shattered and fallen, as if an orgy had
+preceded there. The cook was told that the rest of the dinner would not
+be served. The laundress was called from her supper to take away the red
+table-cloth and the napkin. The housekeeper must know that Roake and
+Chedsey were not to be charged with the breakage. The kitchen-maid was
+sent to scrub the marble, and on her knees she must follow the crimson
+trail to the door of the elevator, and wash that, too.
+
+Before the doctor arrived a dozen people had been told that the mistress
+of the household had killed herself. It was easy to warn them that
+loyalty to the family imposed absolute silence. But what money or what
+threat or plea could ever bribe a loose tongue to keep a secret for
+somebody else?
+
+Then Dr. Thill came in his motor. He left his huge fur coat on the hall
+floor, and, dashing up-stairs, flung off his evening coat and his white
+waistcoat, and rolled back his cuffs. He wrought upon the exquisite bare
+flesh of Persis and upon the stopped clock of her heart with all his
+science; yet he could not make her anything but a cadaver.
+
+As he toiled he asked questions. Crofts and Nichette told him what they
+knew, or thought they knew. Willie was supported in and questioned.
+Remorse and fright made him pitiable. Still there remained a fox-like
+intelligence. He told the doctor what Persis had told Crofts, but he was
+so full of contradictions and confusion that Dr. Thill quickly suspected
+the truth. He was enraged and revolted. The cruelty of the murder was
+bad enough; but the wantonness of destroying so perfect a machine, as he
+found Persis to be, was more wicked in his eyes.
+
+Still, he was a typical family doctor. People who were dead were outside
+his province. His clients were the living, and his business to keep them
+alive and well. He had foiled death-bed revenges, aborted scandals that
+threatened ruin to the young; risked his life and his liberty for his
+patients. His trade was fighting the ravages of sin and error; saving
+people, not destroying them. He felt no call to deliver an Enslee to the
+electric chair.
+
+He put Willie to bed, jammed bromides into him, and forbade him to talk
+or to see any one. He telephoned Persis' father and Willie's mother to
+come at once. He told them as delicately as he could. It was like
+breaking a thunderbolt gently. Persis' father was stricken frantic. He
+could not believe that his beautiful, his wonderful girl was dead. He
+ran to her bedside, lifted her in his arms as if she were again his
+little child, called to her, wept horribly over her, imagined the truth,
+and vowed every revenge.
+
+After the first tempests had worn him out he began to feel that it would
+not comfort her to add scandal to her fate. He loathed the very name of
+Enslee; but he had profited by it; he was still involved with it
+financially; it was his daughter's final name. He joined the conspiracy
+to bury the truth in Persis' grave. To say that she had killed herself
+was an appeal for mercy; to proclaim that her indignant husband had
+executed her for her crimes was a damning epitaph. He solaced himself
+with the thought that it would be her wish.
+
+Mrs. Enslee was first and last Willie's mother. Her thought was of him;
+her heart was his advocate alone. She committed herself utterly to his
+defense.
+
+Dr. Thill was ready to give a certificate that Persis had died of
+heart-failure. Even the story of suicide would attract the noisy
+attention of the journals. He left the matter in abeyance for the
+moment. The needful thing was a few hours of saving peace and silence.
+He would be glad even to postpone the news from the next morning's to
+the next evening's papers.
+
+But little things thwart great schemes.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+One of the Enslee housemaids, who had been flirting with the
+brindle-haired reporter Hallard, remembered in the midst of the panic
+that he was to take her that night to a moving-picture theater. He would
+be loitering in the area now. She ran out bareheaded to explain that she
+could not keep her engagement. When he asked why, she told him
+falteringly that there had been a death in the family. She apologized
+for permitting such an affair to interfere with her promised evening
+out, but he gasped:
+
+"A death in the Enslee family! Gosh, I've spent so many dismal hours on
+death-watches that it's great to have you slip me a nice little
+ready-made death like this. Whose was it? Who died?"
+
+The maid felt that she had a clue now to Mr. Hallard's profession: from
+his cheerful reception of such news he must be an undertaker. She
+explained that it was Mrs. Willie Enslee who was dead.
+
+"My God! the young one?" he cried, afire with the news possibilities.
+
+"Yes; she killed herself."
+
+This was almost too good to be true. Hallard grew greedy as a miser.
+
+"Does anybody else know of this? Have any reporters called at the
+house?"
+
+"Nobody; only the doctor."
+
+Hallard looked at his watch. He had time to build up a big story, which
+was good; but there was time enough for the other papers also to arrive
+on the ground, which was bad.
+
+"Why did she kill herself?"
+
+"Nobody knows. She had a terrible quar'l with Mr. Enslee, though."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Nobody could find out."
+
+Hallard thought hard. The name of Forbes occurred to him, for he
+remembered the time he had seen Forbes with Persis.
+
+"Did Captain Forbes call to-day?"
+
+The maid stared. "Ain't you a wonder! How did you know?"
+
+"Did they quarrel about him?"
+
+"Nobody knows they did, but all of us feels sure they did."
+
+Hallard bade his inamorata good night with genuine affection. She had
+been worth while.
+
+He went to the door of the house and reached it just as Persis' father
+arrived in his car and was helped up the steps. Hallard tried to push in
+with him, but was thrust out. He sent his card in, and it was returned
+to him.
+
+Dr. Thill threw up his hands in despair at the card. Reporters seemed to
+be as ubiquitous as microbes. But he realized that it was now necessary
+to make a formal announcement to the papers. He wrote out for Hallard a
+statement, and had the housekeeper telephone it to a press bureau, that
+"Mrs. William Enslee, during a period of mental aberration, committed
+suicide at her home at seven-thirty o'clock, in the presence of her
+husband. Mr. Enslee is prostrated with the shock." It was a simple
+announcement.
+
+Meanwhile Hallard, rebuffed at the front door and at the tradesman's
+entrance, and rebuffed by telephone when he called up from a booth in
+the nearest drug-store, was trembling with the opportunities almost
+within his reach. His was the ecstasy of the writer of tragedies who
+exults in every new horror that he can inflict on his characters. Only,
+the Hallards are dealing in real lives, and not feigned.
+
+Hallard's scent for news quickened at the thought of Forbes. Easily
+enough he learned the name of Forbes' hotel. He hurried there and sent
+up his card, with a penciled note: "Would appreciate expert opinion
+regard to probable fate Philippine Islands in case of war with Japan."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The card found Forbes not yet recovered from the hurricane of passion
+that had swept through his heart. He was dumfounded at what he had done
+and said; at his ruthless cruelty, his revulsions from love to hate and
+back again; at the supreme insolence of his treatment of the husband he
+had wronged.
+
+He found Enslee's little silver-handled revolver in his pocket and
+tossed it on the table. He felt that he ought to turn it against himself
+in self-execution. It was too weak an instrument for such a business. He
+got out his own big army revolver. But he was not of the type that is
+capable of suicide, any more than Persis was.
+
+He began to pack his things for his return to hard service away from the
+frivolities of the city. The sight of his uniforms made him the soldier
+once more. He grew homesick for the brisk salute of his soldiers, the
+gruff and wholesome joviality of fellow-officers, the noble reality of
+his chosen career.
+
+And then he came across her boudoir cap again. It bewitched him. It was
+so utterly unmilitary, so far from usefulness or importance, all pliant
+and fragrant and adorably foolish. He put it back in its nest in the
+pocket next his heart. And his heart quickened its pace.
+
+With that quickening came by reflex a sense of terror. What had become
+of Persis? He had left her to the mercies of Enslee. It occurred to
+Forbes that if a man had dealt with him as he had dealt with Enslee he
+would be so maddened that he would run amuck and slay the first thing he
+met, and first of all the woman who had dragged him into such shame
+below shame.
+
+What if Enslee had attacked Persis? Beaten her, or torn her face with
+his nails, or hurled her out into the street? Forbes felt that he must
+go to her rescue. The impulse lasted only long enough to be ludicrous.
+What right had he in that household? What harm could Enslee wreak upon
+Persis to equal the wrongs that Forbes had done her? He blamed himself
+for everything, and, blaming himself, absolved Persis, forgave her,
+loved her again.
+
+In this seethe of moods the card of Hallard arrived with a request for
+his expert military opinion on a subject that had been one of his
+hobbies in the days when military ambition was the major theme of his
+life. It renewed his hope. It was like the feel of something solid
+underfoot to a spent swimmer in cross-currents.
+
+He welcomed Hallard with cordiality, apologized for the disorder of the
+room, expressed an opinion that he had met Hallard somewhere before.
+Hallard said he thought not. As he stated his plans for a Sunday
+special, a "symposium" of views on Philippine fortification, he picked
+up the silver-handled revolver on the table and laughed:
+
+"Is this lady-like weapon the latest government issue?"
+
+Forbes did not laugh; he flushed as he shook his head. A wild thought
+came to Hallard. Forbes might have been present at Mrs. Enslee's death.
+He might have killed her himself with her own revolver. It was a wild
+theory; but he had known so much of murder, and had come upon such
+fantastic crimes, that nothing seemed impossible to him.
+
+With pretended carelessness he broke the silver revolver open and
+glanced at the cylinder. Every chamber was full but one. Had a shot been
+fired from it, or had one chamber been left unloaded for the hammer to
+rest on?
+
+Hallard put down the weapon and talked yellow journalism of the
+Philippine problem. A little later he said, quite casually:
+
+"Too bad about Mrs. Enslee, wasn't it, Captain?"
+
+The startled look of Forbes confounded his theories.
+
+"What is too bad about Mrs. Enslee?"
+
+"Her sudden death, I mean."
+
+"Her death!" Forbes cried, the world rocking with sudden earthquake.
+"Her death! Not Persis! Persis isn't dead?"
+
+"Why, yes; didn't you know?"
+
+"My God! My God! how did she die? She was well, perfectly well
+at--at--this afternoon when I--tell me, man, man, what do you mean?"
+
+Hallard was readjusting his case. He spoke very gently.
+
+"I'm mighty sorry to have told you without warning. I thought, of
+course, you knew. You were a great friend of the family, weren't you,
+Captain?"
+
+Forbes whitened at this, but his grief was keener than his shame.
+
+"Tell me, how did she die?"
+
+"The story we get is that she killed herself--stabbed herself!"
+
+Forbes gripped his head in his arms and bowed to the thunderbolts
+crashing about him. At length his distorted face appeared again and he
+demanded:
+
+"Who was with her when she killed herself?"
+
+"Her husband."
+
+"Then it's a lie. She never--she wouldn't--he killed her! And it's my
+fault for leaving her with him. I ought to have known better. I was
+tempted to go back to her. I shouldn't have left her there with
+that--that--and now she's dead! He butchered her! I'll kill him for it.
+I will! He wasn't man enough to fight me--he--did you say you were a
+reporter?"
+
+"Well, I'm a special writer."
+
+Forbes' words began to roar back through his memory. He began to hear
+them as they would fall on a stranger's ear. Even in his frenzy he
+realized the danger of his madness. Talking to a reporter was like
+crying his thoughts aloud in Madison Square Garden. Grief, discretion,
+remorse, revenge, assailed him from all sides at once.
+
+He seized Hallard by the shoulder and raged at him.
+
+"Look here! This Philippine idea was just a trick, wasn't it, to startle
+me and make me forget myself? You fooled me, but you can't get away with
+it."
+
+He saw his big Colt's revolver in his trunk-tray, and he thundered:
+
+"I ought to shoot you for this, and I will unless you swear that you
+will never print a word of what I've said, never breathe a word of it to
+a soul. Promise, or by--"
+
+Hallard smiled and raised his half-eyebrow.
+
+"You're a little excited, Captain, aren't you? You're kind of forgetting
+that shooting a reporter would be about the poorest way of escaping
+publicity ever imagined. People would naturally ask what it was you were
+so anxious to conceal, eh?"
+
+Forbes turned away helpless.
+
+Hallard anticipated his next desperate idea. "I'm much obliged to you,
+Captain, for not offering me a ten-dollar bill or a new suit of clothes.
+They usually begin with that. But it rarely works, Captain. We're a
+shiftless lot, some of us, but we've got our ideas of duty, too."
+
+"Duty to what?" Forbes sneered. "Duty to act as grave-robbers and expose
+the sorrows of the world to the laughter of the public? To drag families
+down to ruin?"
+
+"Duty to throw the light into dark places, Captain; duty to make it hard
+to conceal things the public ought to know; duty to keep digging up the
+truth and throwing it into the air."
+
+"Truth!" Forbes raged. "What have you got to do with the truth? Would
+you know it if you saw it? Would you use it if you had it?"
+
+"You bet I would," Hallard said. "If you'll tell me the exact truth, as
+far as you know it, about the suicide--or murder, as you call it--of one
+of the most beautiful members of one of the most prominent
+families--I'll publish it."
+
+"In your own way, yes."
+
+"In your own words, Captain. I write shorthand. Just dictate to me the
+whole story of your acquaintance with Mrs. Enslee and your reasons for
+believing that her husband killed her; and I'll not change a word. You
+can read it, and sign it, and take affidavit that it's the truth, so
+help you--"
+
+Forbes dropped into a chair, discredited, his bluff called. All the
+lofty motives and compulsions of chivalry took on an ugly look. Sir
+Launcelot was an adulterer and a welcher.
+
+The hideously altered face of things shattered him so that Hallard felt
+merciful.
+
+"I'm sorry, Captain; but you see how it is. You see why reporters get a
+little hard, why our mouths sag. We don't publish the truth oftener
+because people won't tell it to us. The truth isn't the pure white lady
+in a nice clean well that the painters represent her: the truth is a
+kind of a worm-eaten turnip that comes out of the ground with a lot of
+dirt on it. We don't print all we find out by a long shot. If we did
+this old town would make for the woods, and the people in the woods
+would run to cover in town. I'd be glad to drop this affair right here;
+but, don't you see, I can't. The Enslees are too big to overlook.
+There'll be an army of reporters on the job, with their little
+flashlights poking everywhere. The police will fall in line later.
+There'll be editorials on the wickedness of society. Society--if there
+is such a thing--isn't any wickeder than anybody else. The middle
+classes are rotten, and the lower classes are putrid. But society makes
+what old Horace Greeley called 'mighty interesting reading.'
+
+"The name of Enslee is going to be a household word, because when an
+Enslee sins it's like sinning in the grandstand. I saw something like
+this coming a year ago. I thought it might simmer down; but it's broken
+bigger than I ever dreamed. You're in for it, Captain. The Great
+American People is going to rise on the bleachers and holler for blood.
+It will forget all about you the minute something else happens. Take
+your medicine, Captain. It will be somebody else's turn soon, for most
+of us are doing the tango on a thin crust of ashes over a crater. But
+it's the face-cards that the two-spots like to read about. The minute
+somebody else that's prominent pops through we'll let you alone. But
+you're in for it, Captain--'way in. Better crawl under my umbrella and
+give me the story."
+
+He meant it well, but it was impossible for Forbes to accept his
+philosophy or his counsel. To Forbes he was a slimy reptile with a
+hellish mission. Forbes told him so, denied all that he had said, defied
+him, and turned him out. And now he had leisure to understand the full
+meaning of it all. First, his grief for Persis broke his heart open. He
+mourned her as a sweetheart, a betrothed, a wife; mourned her with an
+intolerable aching and rending and longing, and with an utter remorse
+because of his last words to her. When she was afraid and distraught he
+had heaped condemnation on her! And who was he to reproach her? Had he
+not pursued her, overwhelmed her, made and kept her his? And then to
+discard and desert her, knock aside her pleading hands and leave her in
+the clutch of the maniac who had threatened them both! He had taken
+Enslee's revolver away--as if that were the only weapon in the world!
+
+Never had Persis seemed so beautiful to Forbes as he remembered her now,
+cowering under his wrath, pleading for pity, rushing to protect him even
+then, and falling in a white swoon at his feet, as if already dead. And
+even then he had spat on her and left her!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The next morning's papers, without exception, gave the death of Mrs.
+Enslee "under mysterious circumstances" the doubtful honor of the front
+page, right-hand column. In some of them the account bridged several
+columns. The head-lines ranged from calm statements to blatant
+balderdash.
+
+To Forbes, who had not slept all night and had sent down for the papers
+soon after daybreak, the stories were inconceivably cruel, ghoulish,
+fiendishly ingenious. The fact that Persis' wedding had been celebrated
+only a year before was emphasized in every account. She was called a
+"bride" in most of them, and her "honeymoon" was used dramatically in
+others. The importance of her family and of Enslee's was exaggerated
+beyond reason. Her portrait was published even in papers that rarely
+used illustrations.
+
+Her beauty pleaded from every frame of head-lines till it seemed as if
+her face had been clamped in a pillory, and that the newspapers were
+pelting her without mercy or decency.
+
+There was no way of protecting her, no way of punishing the anonymous
+rabble, no way of crying to the mob how lovable she had been and how
+impossible it was that she should have taken her own life. Forbes was
+understanding now how much worse a scandal it implied to say that she
+had been murdered. A woman might kill herself for any number of reasons,
+most of them pathetic; but a woman whom her husband puts to death can
+hardly escape calumny. Her lover was silenced by the reasons that
+silenced her father.
+
+Forbes had not heard, or had forgotten, what paper Hallard represented.
+He soon recognized his touch. One paper, and one only, implied that
+Persis' death might not have been a suicide, but a murder. One paper
+alone referred to her "interest in a certain well-known army officer who
+had recently come into a large fortune and was much seen with her."
+
+When he read this Forbes turned as scarlet as if he had been bound hand
+and foot and struck in the mouth.
+
+Only one morning paper implied that Persis had strayed into the primrose
+path of dalliance. Not one evening paper failed to emphasize this
+theory. The editors of these sheets, appearing at their office before
+dawn, issued their first "afternoon" editions at 8 A.M., and had their
+"night" editions ready by noon. They all made use of Hallard's material
+and tried to supplement it.
+
+Before Forbes had finished his breakfast he was visited by the first
+reporter, and refused to see him. Within the next half-hour a dozen
+reporters were clustered in the hotel lobby. They lay in wait for him
+below like a vigilance committee zealous for his lynching.
+
+Forbes felt like a trapped desperado. He dared not venture out into that
+lurking inquisition. He dared not call upon any of his friends for help,
+lest they be tarred with the brush that was blackening his name. He had
+planned to take a morning train to his Western post. He was afraid to go
+to it now. He was afraid to arrive at the garrison, knowing that the
+scandal would have preceded him on the wires.
+
+He decided that he must resign from the army before he was dismissed the
+service for bringing disgrace upon the uniform. There were officers
+enough whose irregularities were overlooked, but they had kept from the
+public prints. Forbes had not only sinned, but had been found out.
+
+He felt like a mortgager who sees himself foreclosed and sold up. He had
+lost Persis, and he was about to lose his career. He wrote out his
+resignation, addressed the envelope, sealed it, bent his head down in
+his arms above it, and gave himself up to despair. His loneliness was
+almost more than he could endure.
+
+By and by a letter was brought to his room. He had refused to answer the
+telephone, and he ignored the knocks of the hall boys. This letter was
+pushed under the door. It was from Ten Eyck:
+
+     DEAR HARVEY,--Just a line to tell you that my heart aches for you
+     and with you. The thought of Persis dead is almost unthinkable,
+     nearly unbearable to me. What it must be to you I dread to imagine.
+
+     I always remember the old Persian philosopher's motto when he was
+     tempted to enjoy joy too much or grieve too much over grief: "This,
+     too, will pass away."
+
+     You are too big a man to let this or anything break you down. Bend
+     to it, but don't break.
+
+     It occurs to me that you may need a little time to recuperate,
+     where you can't read the papers or hear them bawled under your
+     window.
+
+     On Long Island I have a little shack on a sandbar on the edge of
+     the ocean. How would you like to run down there for a few days? You
+     can do your own cooking. If you wish I'll go along; but if you'd
+     rather be by yourself I won't go. I think you'd better be by
+     yourself and think it all out.
+
+     I enclose a time-table with the best trains marked.
+
+     Take a closed taxi to the station, and you'll not be noticed. If I
+     can do anything, command me.
+
+    Affectionately yours,
+
+    MURRAY TEN EYCK.
+
+
+Not a reproach. Not an "I told you so." Not a minimizing of the tragedy.
+Just a life-preserver thrown to a man in deep waters.
+
+Forbes wrote:
+
+     God love you for this. I'll never forget. I'll prove my gratitude
+     by sparing you the ordeal of my company.
+
+He packed a suit-case, bribed a porter and an elevator man, and escaped
+from the hotel by one of the service elevators and the trade entrance.
+He swore to Heaven that this should be the last time he would sneak or
+cower. He reached his destination without remark, and found it
+congenially dreary.
+
+There was a furious storm that night. Wind and rain flogged his cabin,
+and the sea cannonaded the beach. But the shack survived, and the beach
+was still there in the morning. There was only the wreckage of a little
+schooner cast ashore.
+
+At first Forbes railed against the heartlessness of the sea. But
+gradually he came to understand that the ocean is not heartless; it
+simply obeys its own compulsions, and the wrecks it makes are those that
+should not have been out upon the waters or those that got in the way of
+the laws. That was what Forbes had done.
+
+As he strolled the sands or sat and watched the endless procession of
+waves, waves, waves, hurling themselves upon the shore to their own
+destruction, in his thoughts memories came up one after another, like
+waves: memories of beautiful hours that seemed to have no meaning beyond
+their own brief charm; visions of Persis in a thousand attitudes of
+enchantment, in costume after costume. He saw her at the theater, lithe,
+exposed, incandescent; he clasped her in the tango; he clenched her hand
+at the opera; he saw her riding her cross-saddle in her boyish togs; he
+clasped her in the taxi-cab in the rain; he walked with her in moonlight
+and in the auroral rose; he galloped alongside her, strode with her in
+the woods; he held her in his arms while they watched the building
+burning gorgeously at night; he saw her in all the lawless intimacies of
+their secret life--careless, childish ecstasies and wild throes of
+rapture.
+
+Then he remembered what she had told him of Ambassador Tait's warning:
+"The world is old, my child, but it is stronger than any of us. And it
+can punish without mercy."
+
+He was tasting now the mercy of the world, and Persis, lying in cold
+white state, as he imagined her, was the visible slain sacrifice on the
+altar. They had indeed sinned. She had chosen wealth instead of love,
+and then had tried to steal love, too. The simple fact was that they had
+been wicked. They had duped and sneaked and feasted on stolen sweets.
+Their punishment was just. Many others had sinned more viciously and
+prospered in their sin or repented comfortably and suffered nothing. But
+they were not to be envied altogether.
+
+Somehow to his man's heart it brought a strange kind of comfort to feel
+that this ruination was not a wanton cruelty, but a penalty exacted. It
+made the world less lonely; it replaced chaos with law and order.
+Perhaps other souls would take warning from their fate; perhaps other
+guilty couples would be frightened back to duty; perhaps somebody
+tempted by the scarlet allurements of passion would be helped toward
+contentment with the gray security and homely peace of fidelity.
+
+The world was in a tempest against him. The waves had cast up his
+beautiful fellow-voyager on the sands. If only their shipwreck might
+keep somebody else from putting out to sea in pleasure craft unseaworthy
+and unlicensed!
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Had Forbes read the papers he would have known that the storm had not
+subsided yet. The wealth of Enslee could not bribe the least mercy; it
+was rather a stimulus to the press.
+
+At the height of the tempest the funeral of Persis was held. Almost
+nobody attended it, and the few that did were rather drawn by curiosity
+than respect. Those who knew Persis well were afraid to be seen in the
+company even of her body. They were busy denying their earlier intimacy
+or telling how they had foreseen this disaster. She went in lonely state
+to join the silent throng in the cemetery, and she knew no more of the
+storm that raged about her than the world knew of the one high
+achievement of her soul. She was like some little brilliant bird of
+paradise flung to the ground by a lightning stroke. The storm roared on,
+the ferocity of the newspaper attacks increased with every extra. The
+fact that a theory was hinted in an early edition was taken as proof
+enough for a positive statement in a later. Finally there were demands
+for the arrest of the husband.
+
+The district-attorney was busy, however, on an Augean task--the cleaning
+out of the police stable. He delayed or forbore to take up the Enslee
+matter. He was accordingly attacked as a toady to the rich. This stung
+him to an investigation.
+
+And at last the police entered into the affair. Enslee was sent for and
+cross-questioned by commissioners. He was at bay, and he revealed
+unexpected gifts of evasion. Willie's lawyers stood by him. They were
+high-priced men, and they earned whatever he paid them. They succeeded
+in fighting off an indictment.
+
+But even now Hallard and his cronies would not let him rest above ground
+or Persis beneath. Conflicting bits of Enslee's testimony were published
+in parallel columns, and his explanation that Persis, in her final rage,
+had seized the knife from his hand and stabbed herself was declared
+impossible and unconvincing. Her dying statement, as sworn to by Crofts,
+stood, however, as the one strong shelter over Enslee's head.
+
+The skeptics insisted that Crofts, being deaf, had heard wrong or been
+bribed to perjury. None of them dreamed that Persis could have devised
+that snow-white lie as her atonement to the man she had betrayed.
+Hallard was obsessed with an idea that if Persis' body were exhumed it
+would be shown that she could not have dealt the fatal wound with her
+own hand. He had once organized a campaign against a decision of the
+court sentencing a valet to the penitentiary, and kept it up until the
+prison gates were opened and the man gained an opportunity to tell his
+story anew. He was found guilty again and sent back to his cell; but the
+despotic power of the press was demonstrated. If Hallard could open the
+penitentiary, why not the grave in which a _corpus delicti_ had been
+hastily hidden?
+
+With every weapon in the vast armory of newspaperdom Hallard waged his
+battle. The political ambition of the district-attorney finally yielded
+to the coercion. An order was obtained from the court commanding the
+officials of the cemetery to unseal the tomb where Persis' body had been
+stored until the great monument Enslee had commissioned could be made
+ready to weigh her down irretrievably.
+
+Forbes, having regained his courage in his absence in the wilderness,
+was seized with a mad desire to gaze upon his beloved's face once more
+and to whisper to her a prayer that she forgive him for abandoning her
+in her desolation and her peril. Ten Eyck used every plea to dissuade
+him; but, failing, determined to go with him.
+
+Permission to be present at the exhumation was secured with little
+difficulty, and the two men joined the group of court officials and the
+six experts who were to decide from examination whether or not Persis
+could have inflicted the fatal wound upon herself.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+And so Persis came back again to the world in a mockery of resurrection,
+back again from the sodden earth to the light of day that had blessed
+her beauty and not known her sin.
+
+Forbes waited her reappearance in a frenzy of anxiety. It was to him a
+kind of holy tryst that he must keep at any cost.
+
+Slowly the casket was raised; one by one the screws in the coffin-lid
+were removed, and at last the board was removed from over the white,
+white face. Some impulse of protection led Ten Eyck to thrust Forbes
+back until he himself had taken the first look. He gazed and groaned at
+the havoc death had wrought in all that beauty. When Forbes pressed
+forward, Ten Eyck whirled and clapped his hands over Forbes' eyes and
+dragged him aside, whispering huskily:
+
+"Don't look! In God's name keep the memory of her as she was."
+
+Forbes suffered himself to be led aside. He and Ten Eyck waited at a
+distance while the tests were made. The knife was closed in the icy
+fingers, and the exquisite arms moved here and there. Over the cold and
+silent body the experts wrangled. And the upshot of the desecration was
+that they could not agree; three of the jurors declared that Persis
+could not have reached so far around to set the knife in her side; and
+three that she could have done it, whether she did or not.
+
+Persis, wherever she was, kept her secret. And Willie, abiding the
+decision in a stupor of terror, thanked God and her for their silence.
+
+The newspapers had much to say of this last phase of the Enslee mystery.
+They summed up again all the old scandals, and then they, too, went
+silent. Their readers grew weary of the juggle of facts and falsehoods.
+The mishaps of other lovers furnished them with unfailing supply of the
+old mistakes that are the eternal news. Forbes, who had withheld his
+resignation from the army at Ten Eyck's bidding, was received back into
+his place, shorn of his ambitions, his youth, and his pride.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Often and often when he is alone he takes from its hiding shelter a
+little nightcap of ribbons and laces and shakes his head with vain
+regret.
+
+He thinks of Persis always as she was that morning when the filmy cap
+fell from her lawless curls. He cannot but feel that there was something
+elect in her, something divinely beautiful, however thwarted for this
+world.
+
+But then he loved her, he could forgive her anything. If God loved her,
+could he not do as much?
+
+When the skies are clouded he remembers her wise little saying, "Behind
+the blinds there are always eyes." He wonders if there are eyes behind
+the clouds and beyond the sun. And if there are, and if they are the
+seeing eyes of perfect understanding, What do those people say?
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Obvious typographical errors in spelling and punctuation have been
+corrected without comment. One example of an obvious typographical error
+is on page 345 where the word "irrevocaable" was changed to
+"irrevocable" in the phrase: "The irrevocable was accomplished." Other
+than obvious typographical errors, the author's original spelling,
+punctuation, hyphenation and use of accents has been left intact with
+the following exceptions:
+
+     Page 24: "tile" was changed to "tie" in the phrase: "... one silk
+     tie..."
+
+     Page 99: "lovelily" was changed to "lovely" in the phrase: "... her
+     lovely disparted bosom..."
+
+     Page 206: "darkled": was changed to "darted" in the phrase: "And
+     they darted between the planets..."
+
+     Page 251: The phrase: "... some one's else success." was changed
+     to: "... some one else's success."
+
+     Page 284: "ditto" was changed to "ditty" in the phrase: "... it was
+     a romping ditty...."
+
+     Page 423: A question mark (?) was changed to a period (or
+     full-stop) in the sentence ending: "... stealth of clandestine
+     lovers."
+
+The author's use of the words "thridding" and "thredding" have been left
+unchanged as in the following instances:
+
+     Page 13: "... as it thridded the unpoliced traffic...."
+
+     Page 67: "... he was now thridding the maze...."
+
+     Page 380: "... thredding the increasingly mucilaginous crowd...."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What Will People Say?, by Rupert Hughes
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